Threshold Thursday: Letting Opinions Live

Welcome to Threshold Thursday.

Every week from now on, we're crossing thresholds. The ones that separate what's allowed to be said from what lives in the room unnamed. The ones between what we perform and what we actually know. The ones guarding all the subjects we've been taught not to bring up because they make people uncomfortable or break the unspoken rules.

Thresholds are edges where one territory ends and another begins. Most of us stop right before we reach them. We turn back. We stay safely inside the acceptable. We pretend certain things don't have a place when they're actually present everywhere, buried under layers of niceness and correctness and the desperate need to not disturb the peace.

Some things are taboo not because they're wrong but because they threaten the stories we've agreed to uphold. How conscious we are. How healed. How beyond all that. So we don't talk about them. We skirt around them. We use softer words that don't mean what they mean.

Every Thursday we're going to talk about them anyway.

Because the threshold is where the actual work lives. The place where you either step through or spend your whole life pretending the edge isn't there.

Today we're talking about opinions. About sharing what you actually think with others. About the value of authentic feedback - whatever that feedback contains - and the strangled relationship spiritual community has with criticism. We're crossing the threshold of saying what you really think instead of following the silent crowd, because what waits on the other side is actual change. The kind that only happens when we express what we dislike and what we like. Though the first one is far more problematic, apparently, to both sides.

The Performance of Feedback

Opinions - the act of giving voice to what lives in us, what woke up in response to something we encountered - are necessary for any society that wants to develop. Yet we've made expressing them into this complicated performance where you have to package everything so carefully that by the time it comes out, it barely resembles what you felt.

Holding back from saying what we think is a shot in the knee on every level of life. But we do it constantly because we've been taught that having a reaction that isn't positive is a spiritual failing.

Your opinion creates an opportunity for growth. For you, for the creator, for the culture, for your sense of whether you can actually exist as yourself inside that culture. But only if you let it be what it is instead of forcing it through the filter of what you think you're supposed to feel.

What matters is the opinion that's honest. Which immediately makes most feedback in spiritual circles suspect, because honesty has sharp edges sometimes and we've agreed collectively that sharp edges equal violence.

Sometimes we won't like something. The energy we spend trying to make sure nobody knows we don't like it, trying to arrange our face and our words so the creator doesn't feel bad and nobody thinks we're being negative - that's its own kind of violence. Against ourselves. Against reality. Against the possibility of actual exchange.

The Right to React

Everyone has the right to their reaction to what they encountered. Even if they only heard about it secondhand. Even if the version they know is superficial, shortened, edited, cut down to fit in a social media post or a three-minute conversation. They know that version. They can speak to that version.

Pretending people need the full context before they're allowed to have a response is just another way of saying they should shut up.

Then someone can explain the fuller picture if they want. Someone can get outraged and push back. We can get outraged in return. The whole thing can be messy and alive instead of this weird pantomime of mutual validation where everyone's terrified to say anything real.

Every authentic reaction - not people-pleasing, not angling for social capital through dishonest assessment (because opinions can absolutely be weaponized, we'd be stupid to pretend otherwise) - but what we actually feel without ten layers of spiritual varnish, that reaction is appropriate. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when it disrupts the consensus. Even when it makes the person receiving it feel something they don't want to feel.

The Problem with "Spiritual Criticism"

Spiritual community has a massive problem with criticism. By problem I mean we've essentially made it forbidden unless it's so carefully wrapped in softness and affirmation that it stops being criticism at all. It becomes just another form of praise with a tiny suggestion tucked inside like a vitamin hidden in a piece of cheese.

Constructive criticism is great when you have the bandwidth, the clarity, the emotional resources and the generosity to frame your response in a way that centers the other person's learning. But most of the time you don't have that. Most of the time you're just moving through your life and something lands wrong and you notice it.

In that situation, plain criticism - just naming that something felt off, that you didn't like it, that it struck you as shallow or manipulative or badly made - is better than insincere praise. Better than endless back-patting in circles of mutual adoration where everyone's work is amazing and everyone's process is valid and nobody ever says "actually, this isn't ready" or "I don't think you know what you're talking about."

It's better than silence. Better than hiding behind spiritual concepts that sound elevated but function as shields against ever having to hear that someone experienced us or our work in a way we don't like.

Non-judgment has become a catch-all defense against feedback that stings. But there's a difference worth naming here.

Judgment makes a definition of someone based on your reaction. It draws sweeping conclusions about what kind of person they are at their core. It collapses their entire being into your experience of one thing they did.

Opinion stays with what got stirred. This thing you made or said or did landed in me like this, activated this response, brought up this feeling. No claims about your essential nature. Just the honest report of impact.

We only know what got stirred in us. That's the only piece of information we actually have access to. And it's enough. Intense or mild, pleasant or uncomfortable. We feel emotion toward everything we interact with. We can't not feel. Even apathy is a feeling - not the absence of feeling but a specific kind of numbness that comes from shutting down the response system so many times it stops firing reliably.

When we express negative opinions, we catalyze real change. Only when we say what doesn't work do we give it a chance to transform. And there are difficulties with this, some of them illusory - they're actually our difficulties, not difficulties with the act of inducing change itself.

As long as we can't own that we're not expressing negative opinions about what doesn't sit right, as long as we project the problem outward and say "it won't make a difference anyway," nothing will change. Especially not our relationship to truth and power dynamics.

As long as we don't understand that our voice counts, we'll sit silent.

And this applies to small situations, not just big systemic ones. Not just changing who holds power or dismantling structures, but also the moment when someone crosses your boundary and you don't like it and you want them to stop. Nothing will change without the expression of an opinion.

We've adopted a strange logic: if change doesn't come immediately and completely from one voice, then that voice didn't matter. So we stay quiet, waiting for the moment when our single opinion will topple the whole structure in one go. That moment doesn't exist.

Change accumulates from repeated friction. From many people saying "this doesn't work" until the people holding the thing have to reckon with the pattern. Your one opinion might not flip everything, but without it, you've guaranteed nothing moves at all.

Sting Theory

As the creator behind Effexora who is channeling attunements, writing these texts - I'm starved for the people who dislike what I do to actually say so.

I value every opinion, but I live in a vacuum of polite silence. My work isn't flawless. It's not for everyone. It shouldn't be. But I rarely hear the "no." I almost never hear it.

I lack it because I have a responsive energy system. I don't move until something pushes against me. I need the friction. When someone hates what I've made, it wakes me up. It forces me to look at my own habits - am I doing this because it's true, or just because it's what I always do?

Criticism stings. My first instinct is to throw up a shield. But under that shield, the real work begins. The sting is information. It's the exact location of where I need to look. If it didn't sting, it wouldn't matter. That emotion is fuel.

Without that sting, I'm working blind. And so is everyone else.

The irony is I avoid giving criticism myself. Especially in spiritual spaces, where that avoidance in me gets amplified to extremes. But becoming a creator forced me to see what I was doing. When everyone only tells you they love your work, when the feedback is universally positive, something feels off. Life doesn't work that way. It's not a real situation. Universal approval is a red flag that people are performing, not responding.

That realization hit hard - I need the criticism I'm too afraid to give others. Without it, I'm operating in a bubble where I have no idea what actually lands and what doesn't. The value of an honest opinion, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it points to something I'd rather not look at, became undeniable. You can't know what people genuinely think if they're only willing to show you the positive half.

You think there's not enough authentic content in your field? That's because you're not saying anything. Creators are throwing things into the void and hearing nothing back, so they assume the mediocre version is what you want. Your silence is a vote for more of the same. It protects the average. The safe. The borrowed. It requires zero courage to maintain.

We silence ourselves for approval. But we also do it because self-appointed spiritual teachers sold us a version of "non-judgment" that really means "no negative opinions allowed." Convenient philosophy for people selling shallow products.

We're terrified of being seen as judgmental - of making sweeping declarations about someone's character or worth based on one piece of work we didn't like. Fine. Don't do that. But you can have sharp opinions about the work itself. You can say "this felt hollow" without claiming the person who made it is hollow. You can dislike something intensely without collapsing the creator's entire being into your reaction.

The difference matters. And it's being used to shut down all negative feedback, not just the kind that crosses into personal attack.

We've built entire economies around this. Spiritual content especially. The only feedback loop that works is the positive one - likes, praise, shares. The negative loop got severed. We cut it deliberately, called it toxic, labeled it lower consciousness. Then we sit around wondering why the same five shallow concepts keep getting repackaged. Why nothing deepens. Why it all tastes like variations on a theme we're sick of.

You can't have evolution without selection pressure. You can't have refinement without friction. Things that survive contact with resistance have something real in them. Things we protect from all contact don't get stronger, but fragile and incapable of existing outside the controlled environment we built around them.

So... someone gets sad because you didn't like their content. So what?

Are we building a daycare or are we trying to get somewhere real?

Treating each other like we'll shatter at the first sign of disapproval maintains a status quo nobody benefits from.

When a creator hears your dissatisfaction, one of two things happens: they realize the thing you're pointing at doesn't sit right - it's borrowed, automatic, unexamined - and they change it. Or they realize they actually stand by it, and their conviction gets stronger.

Both are wins. Neither requires anyone to be right.

The point is that speaking creates the conditions where people can locate themselves. There's no single truer truth here, but without different perspectives crashing into each other, we're just floating in separate bubbles. Convinced our version is the only version. Never tested or pushed. Never forced to become more than we started as.

Spiritual Language as Suppression Tool

There's a vocabulary that sounds elevated but functions as a muzzle. You hear it everywhere in spiritual spaces, especially around energy work and channeling. The words themselves are beautiful. Compassionate. Wise-sounding. But watch what they actually do when someone expresses discomfort or doubt.

Someone says they received an attunement and felt nothing. Not numb, not blocked, just genuinely empty. The explanations arrive quickly. "The energy works on subtle levels." "Sometimes the shifts happen outside your awareness." "You might be processing it in your sleep." Every response does the same thing - it takes a clear, simple statement and turns it into a problem with the person who made it.

The attunement itself can't be questioned. The system can't have limits. The only variable allowed to fail is the receiver. They must have blocks. Resistance. Old wounds preventing the energy from landing. Their lack of sensation becomes evidence of spiritual work they still need to do, not evidence that maybe nothing actually transmitted.

This pattern runs deeper. A teacher contradicts themselves from one teaching to the next. Instead of anyone pausing to notice that, the defenses come out slippery and fast. "You're thinking linearly." "Your logical mind is blocking the deeper wisdom." "This teaching exists in paradox." Suddenly using your brain becomes a spiritual failing. If you're trying to make sense of something, you're operating from a lower consciousness.

Then there's the mirror language. Someone points out that a practitioner is consistently vague, disorganized, or avoidant when asked direct questions about their training. If they mention it, they don't get a conversation about professionalism or integrity. They get asked what this is "triggering" in them. "Everyone is your mirror." "What you see in others is what you haven't healed in yourself." The practitioner's behavior exits the conversation entirely. The focus shifts to the observer's unresolved trauma. It's an elegant trap that lets anyone avoid accountability by reframing all criticism as projection.

Money conversations expose this most clearly. Someone says a course feels overpriced for what's included. They're not asking for it to be free, not demanding anything, just naming that the value doesn't match the cost for them. Instead of a straightforward conversation about pricing and access, they get diagnosed. "Scarcity mindset." "Money wounds." "You're not ready to invest in your expansion." Their hesitation stops being a practical response to a number and becomes proof of spiritual inadequacy.

Meanwhile, positive responses get taken as pure truth. Nobody questions whether someone praising an attunement might be performing, wanting to belong, trying to justify what they spent. Glowing feedback is treated as clean data. Critical feedback is treated as pathology.

The phrases themselves sound supportive. "Trust the process." "Everyone's on their own journey." "Hold space for what's arising." They feel kind when you say them. That's the trick. They let you believe you're being compassionate and evolved when what you're actually doing is shutting down honest exchange, maintaining a system where nobody has to sit with the discomfort of hearing that their work didn't land, their teaching was unclear, their method has limits.

If someone only hears praise, they're not getting the full picture. They're getting the picture people feel safe showing them. The rest doesn't disappear because it's unspoken. It just lives in private messages, late-night conversations with friends, in the quiet decision to unsubscribe and walk away without explanation. The person never finds out what caused the distance. They never get the chance to look at it, to decide if something needs adjusting or if they're fine with how it is.

And for the people swallowing their real responses, something else happens. You train your system that your perception is dangerous. That your honest reaction can't be trusted in public. That other people's comfort matters more than your contact with what's true. Do that enough times and the signal starts to fade. The part of you that notices when something feels off learns there's no point in speaking. Eventually you can't tell anymore if you genuinely feel fine about something or if you've just gotten very efficient at overriding your own responses.

The language could be a tool for deepening contact with reality. Mostly it's used to avoid it.

Death of Discernment

Staying quiet feels neutral, like you've opted out and caused no harm. But silence does work. It participates.

When the "no" rises in you and you swallow it, that sensation has to live somewhere. Your throat. Your shoulders. The headache after the call. The irritation you can't trace but that colors your whole day.

You see someone overselling what their system will do. You watch people convince themselves they felt something they didn't because everyone else is performing certainty. You notice a dynamic that feels manipulative but nobody's naming it. The "no" wakes up. This isn't clean.

And you don't say it. You don't want to lower the moods in the room. You don't want to seem blocked or bitter. So you stay polite, say something vague and affirming, log off feeling slightly wrong inside.

On the surface, peace is maintained, yet internally, it's different situation now. You just taught your system that your perception is a problem. That what you sense can't be trusted in public. Repeat that enough and the part of you that notices when something is off starts to go quiet. Not because you stopped sensing it, but because you learned there's no point letting the signal reach your mouth.

This is how dynamics stay in place without anyone enforcing them overtly. Through thousands of tiny moments where people feel something real and decide it's easier to say nothing.

"I don't need to say anything, I'm beyond that."

"I've done the work to not be triggered."

"I just send love and move on."

Sometimes that's genuine freedom. And other times it's self-abandonment wearing spiritual language. Life is life.

Not every thought deserves airtime. But if your real opinions only exist in private chats and never in rooms where they might shake the ground a little bit, you're casting a vote. Your silence lends energy to the continuation of whatever you quietly dislike.

We experience a collective bystander effect when everyone assumes someone braver will say it. Someone with less to lose. Someone who won't shake while typing. But if everyone runs that calculation, nothing moves. The thing you all privately see as hollow continues, held up by performed approval.

Your opinion, when it's honest and not sharpened to wound, is information. Not the only information, but one signal in a system that runs on more than just praise and silent exits.

You might never see what your "no" does. The person receiving it might get defensive, dismiss you, label you as negative. From the outside it will look like nothing changed. But contact doesn't always show its effects immediately. Sometimes you're the first friction someone has felt in months. Sometimes your single honest response makes their next decision a little more grounded. Sometimes it plants something that roots quietly and shifts their trajectory in ways neither of you will connect back to that moment.

And even if it touches nothing outside you, it will change something inside you. You'll have stayed with yourself. You'll have crossed the internal threshold where your experience stops being something you hide to keep a space comfortable.

There's irony in me writing all this when my own website doesn't even have a comment section under blog posts. For the longest time, you couldn't leave reviews for attunements either because the platform didn't support it. That feature exists now, but barely. Still, I mean this - if something I write or channel lands badly, if it feels off, if it stirs resistance or confusion or outright disagreement, send me an email. Actually tell me. I'm not performing openness to feedback as a spiritual gesture. I need it. My work doesn't sharpen without friction, and I don't know what I can't see on my own.

Letting Opinions Live

Opinions aren't sacred and there's no such thing as a "spiritual opinion" that somehow sits above scrutiny just because it arrived through intuition or was framed in elevated language. An opinion can be honest or dishonest. A dishonest one always carries an agenda underneath, even when that agenda looks harmless. People-pleasing is dishonest. Telling someone what they want to hear to avoid conflict is dishonest. Praising work you found empty because you need to stay in someone's good graces is dishonest. These opinions aren't about perception - they're about managing relationships, avoiding consequences, maintaining access to something you're afraid to lose.

Honest opinions aren't always accurate or kind. They can be wrong about the facts, clumsy in delivery, limited by the person's perspective. But they're alive. They move things. They create friction. Without them, clarity becomes impossible. What you get instead is a fog of performed agreement layered over quiet resentment and private disillusionment.

Letting opinions live doesn't mean celebrating cruelty or making a virtue out of being harsh. It means recognizing that your honest response has a place, even when it's uncomfortable. Even when your voice shakes. Even when what you say introduces tension into a room that would rather stay smooth.

When you hold back your real response because you're worried about how it will land, you're making a choice about what kind of world you want to live in. You're voting for one where performance matters more than truth. Where the appearance of harmony is more important than actual exchange. You're agreeing that comfort - someone else's comfort, specifically, not even your own - is worth more than your voice.

Maybe sometimes it is. Maybe sometimes the cost of speaking is genuinely too high, the risk too real. But most of the time we're not calculating an actual cost. We're just used to swallowing it. We've practiced the swallow so many times it feels like breathing. Automatic. The instinct to suppress comes faster than the instinct to speak.

I think this whole theme - learning to share what we actually think, finding our voices in spaces that have made honesty complicated - is something we're collectively stepping into. Not just in spiritual communities but everywhere. It feels like a long-term work, something that will take years to unfold and reshape how we relate to each other. I'm curious where it's going to take us. What becomes possible when enough people stop swallowing their real responses. What changes when we stop pretending that silence is neutral.

We need to reclaim the right to be unimpressed. We need to remember that we can love a person while completely rejecting their work. We can support a community while noticing its blind spots. We can be spiritual beings and still possess critical faculties, taste, and standards.

Evolution doesn't happen in a warm bath of validation. It happens when we are brave enough to let the things that don't work die, so the things that do work can actually breathe. If you want to find what's real, you have to be willing to identify what isn't. You have to be willing to be the one person in the room who isn't smiling.

You don't owe anyone constant praise. You don't owe them your silence either.

Somewhere between those two extremes is a threshold. You cross it quietly the first time you say, out loud, "No. Not for me." And then stay present with what that opens.