Storytime

This is the plan I told god (who was apparently laughing the whole time!) (not unkindly, I think—I’m way past believing I’m the butt of cosmic jokes).

The haha plan: August in Hawaii to take care of goats (and 3 cats and a bunch of chickens) for my stepdaughter and her husband, so they could go to the mainland and know their animals were being well cared for. A beautiful opportunity for me to show up for her the way a mom does, plus … me in the tropics for the whole month of August.

Meet the two adorable dawgs I met on my way. During my (according to haha plan) 2-night-1-full-day stay in Las Vegas with the two adorable men who are my bro and bro-in-law. Stevie is on the left (girl Stevie—named after Stevie Nicks), and Jack on the right.

​As I walked w/ bro-in-law and dawgs in a beautiful park the evening before my early flight to Hawaii, Jack—yeah, the BIG one—rammed into me full force at the park. Just pure joyful exuberance, all innocence and play. My knee did something, my ankle did something worse, and my ass landed on the ground. An egg formed on my ankle. My foot refused to walk.

​I am not in Hawaii. All that I was going to do there I now cannot do. I’m in Las Vegas.

I’m not spending August in Hawaii. I’m spending it in Las Vegas.

When I tell people what’s going on, I open with these instructions: Please don’t say Oh noooooo. (Did you already? TAKE IT BACK!) Please don’t give me pitying looks and tones. Please don’t treat me like a victim and act like something went wrong.

By video call the next day, I sat with my friend Kelli, who had agreed to those terms and whose approach to life is gorgeously compatible with mine. (In fact, we take clients together and have the most fun in three-way collaborations for amazing healing journeys. Here’s the time she and I and our client Lindsay all had a moment rolling our eyes at the patriarchy—condescending men in the workplace—before we got on with unpacking the gifts of her situation.)

​With Kelli, I had a cry about the disappointment and my attachment to what I was being called to let go. More important, we talked about my commitment to applying my belief system here. Fully. Firmly.

I NEVER BELIEVE something shouldn’t be happening, is a problem, or represents me being deprived or somehow squashed or tortured by life.

The mind may suggest any of that. I do not believe it. I do not follow those thoughts. I come back to what I do believe and give that my focus and my curiosity as I show up for the unfolding and the revelation along the way.

I BELIEVE I’m where I’m supposed to be at all times. If that ever feels like too much of a stretch (supposed-to schmosed to), I can always get behind the idea that, wherever I am, whatever’s happening, there’s much to be gained and something that matters for me to show up for; and that this is always for my benefit and the good of all concerned.

If something feels off where I am, I consider it an invitation to course-correct and I head roughly in the right direction, trusting my capacity to keep course-correcting along the way. If I’m guided somewhere and something different happens than what I thought I was going for, I show up for what’s actually happening. All I want to do is apply this.

Kelli was right with me. She understands that there’s nothing incompatible with acknowledging disappointment & grief AND aligning with reality on its terms. (In fact, we were both open to welcoming my tantruming inner two-year-old if she felt the need to come out and make noise, but apparently that wasn’t needed.)

Together we marveled at what happens when you keep applying your belief system everywhere, in the most challenging moments, at every fork in the road or even during/following some crazy freefall. With her, I touched into the awe of what is happening here and now, far beyond the disappointment. If it’s better than Hawaii with goats, this is gonna be really good.

Together we got excited about the mystery of what is going to happen that won’t at all be what I planned, what I foresaw, what I thought was going on back when everything had so simply and effortlessly aligned for the (nope, not to be) trip to Hawaii. That, I can’t possibly know yet.

So far, it looks like an opportunity to laugh a lot and have some pretty profound conversations with my brother (Tommy) and brother-in-law (Rik). I dedicated my book Scooch! to Rik, because he had the most amazing experience of doing jail time for a white-collar crime he had no part in and didn’t know about. He got behind two years behind bars as something to make the best of and get through as gracefully as possible, with the best self-care and the best service mentality in place. He is a remarkable human being, and that is a remarkable example of following your own belief system no matter the circumstances.

I’ve gotten very little time in adulthood with my bro, never mind the two of them. Something really good could happen here. There was some trauma stuff in my family of origin that I feel pretty resolved with. Ah, but my brother. I don’t know so much. He was enough years behind me (and I was distancing from family so much) that I just didn’t get in on a lot of what he went through. And you never know what gross or deeper or subtler bits of healing will arise for a good, compassionate look and some conscious breath. Stay tuned. …

As for my stepdaughter and her husband, they were able to mobilize a community effort with several people stepping in to do various parts of the whole I was going to do (back when, haha, we pictured me tromping around in the muck boots that are still waiting for me). I really love this. They’re getting that don’t-we-all-need-it practice of LETTING people help them, and they’re carrying on with their plan that apparently no god is laughing at.

Nothing has gone wrong. I’m in Las Vegas, hobbling around on crutches, hollering GET DOWN at two dawgs that are great big love bundles who think I’m amazing. (Um, not that this makes me special, but I’ll take it personally anyway.)

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here’s one from the archives:

Make little of striving to be good.
Make much of knowing your essential goodness.

Make little of living the right life.
Make much of aligning authentically with this moment,
choosing what's right & good right now.

Make little of all you know or could next figure out.
Make much of curiosity, openness, letting in what life wants to show you.

Make little of sorting the stuff of life into good & bad bins.
Make much of allowing the spectrum of experiences & emotions
to touch your being, open your heart, change your mind.

Make little of concepts of silence or rules of meeting it.
Make much of the felt experience when it strikes at random,
in the wee hours, during a shower, in the pause between thoughts,
between snowflakes, in this sip of hot tea.

What you make much of affects you. Your mood, your state, your thoughts, your experience—your life. Especially when you make much of what bothers you, what’s lacking, what isn’t to your liking. Making much of it reinforces it, turns it into a lens you keep looking through (missing other things you might otherwise see), creates something you get rigid about and insist upon when perhaps life is inviting you to let go—or at least open to what else is possible.

Unless you make much of what makes you more spacious & generous & kinder & easier & more trusting & more curious & more open and … Then all of that expands & EXPANDS.

What you make little of affects you. Life will be full of things that aren’t to your liking, aren’t what you’d vote for if you had a vote, bring up your fears & stuff & desire to control. Life will extend any number of invitations for you to go to war, with anything or anyone, if you choose to head that way.

If you make little of those things, you can say yes to more good stuff.

Make little of things you :

• Not what I wanted
• Not to my liking
• Not the way I do it
• Not the way it should be done
• Not how I want them to show up
• Not how I want them to talk to me
• Not comfortable
• etc, etc, etc

Mindsets or stances you might reach for to allow you to make much of the good stuff:

• This is all part of a normal human life
• I don’t need to figure this out right now
• So much supports me to get through this
• This could be so much worse
• I’m equipped for this
• I see this is an opportunity to practice going against tendency
• Here’s where I can trade judgments for curiosity
• I have so many tools to soothe myself
• I’ll prioritize getting my alignment back and then I’ll look again
• I will not abandon myself; I will walk myself through this kindly
• I’ve come so far and more good stuff is on the way
• I can focus on my vision, not get stuck on current conditions
• I like building muscles

Good stuff you might make much of:

• There is magic everywhere
• I run into kindness wherever I go
• Everything is always working out for me*
• I love my life
• I’m growing & learning & healing all the time
• This tastes so good
• This is so beautiful
• This is so kind/soothing/comforting
• How do animals [stars, rainbows, bubbles, seahorses] even exist?
• This is hilarious
• The Universe/life has and/or I have a great sense of humor
• There’s so much love here for me
• I am love, I get to feel love, I get to express love
• I love the symbology in the waking dream
• I love the knowledge/tools I have access to
• No matter what’s going on, there’s music
• I love the care of body, heart, and head I have access to
• I fucking love my life

We’ve talked about where to put your focus. We’ve talked about GETTING OFF THE TOPICS that don’t serve you. Those. Make little of those. Take your focus off that.

Then consider what to reach for that would serve you well to make much of.

Love & blessings, Jaya

* The link on Everything is always working out for me above will take you to an Abraham-Hicks rampage on that topic that I love. Here it is again. It helps a lot with what to make much of.

Mary Oliver said it best in the poem Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Many of us, most of us—whatever our upbringing, however steeped in or removed from religion--have concepts of being GOOD in place that we benefit from undoing. Unlearning. Consciously rejecting. Consciously reworking and rewiring.

Lots of ideas of being good that we were taught were based on lots of wrong thinking—boundary-less-ness, codependency, values that keep us striving and never getting there (like, anything you want, you must work VERY HARD to get it), a mistrust of our wanting, a fear we’ll get too big for our britches, etc, etc.

This good and bad stuff is so deeply wired. Probably because it gets infused with so much identity: you’re good, or you’re bad. Maybe for some areas of life, you’ve more fully unplugged from what you were taught, having already fully (or more fully) recognized it as based in wrong thinking.

I won’t give examples. You know what you’ve rejected that your parents, teachers, or most of culture around you were spouting as something you HAD to go along with to be sensible. Right? You know the shit you were taught about gender and bodies and how you get your worth and racial bullshit and unboundaried kindness that was really codependency, and so on. You know that you’ve learned and keep learning, over the course of your lifetime, which things your were taught as absolute truth aren’t true at all. And you keep finding what feels truer. What feels better to believe or experiment with believing.

It can feel tricky or sticky or treacherous for folks to undo the concepts around Good. We often don’t even fully have in view—or in conscious awareness—what we’re still considering good that maybe objectively, inherently, is not that.

People sometimes fear that rejecting concepts of goodness will mean they’ll suddenly be bad. Or indulgent. Or selfish. They won’t check themselves but will just somehow be caught in some momentum of badness. What?? How does that follow?

Try this on: Whatever is ACTUALLY good is known to you in your innermost being. You’re already living it—some of it, some of the time. You know it in your bones, in your gut. You know what feels off when it feels off. You know when you’re clear and aligned and solid and when you’re confused and off-kilter and unsure.

You even know when you’re trying to think about something in some way that’s right and good but you feel BAD or mean or righteous or judgy or victimized or wounded while you’re thinking it!

YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

So … I’m not asking you to reject ACTUAL REAL OBJECTIVE goodness.

But little is actually objective about good. You are the only one who can define what good means to you. And please don’t.

I mean, don’t define it in some fixed way, as a concept you have a firm grip on and can just keep applying to any and all situations and with any other being you encounter and have dealings with. (That’s what those who taught you wrong were doing. Don’t just turn that around with slightly or even radically different definitions of good.) As soon as the concept of Good gets too fixed (kind of like the concept of God), you get a religion, and right slides into righteous. Don’t have GOOD as a concept you could give a TED talk about or explain to your class or to your rapt audience on social media.

Loosen your grip on your understanding of (or needing to understand) what good means. Define it now and now and now and now, as THIS MOMENT reveals it to you and calls you to something else—calls you beyond what feels not-good in this moment.

Be in a dynamic relationship with your own inner being. Be consciousness dancing with consciousness. Right now, the music playing now, the soundtrack of this moment, tells you where to place your foot as you let it ripple through your being. As you let it move through the soft animal of your body.

Okay, let’s get more clear about the RAMIFICATIONS of not being clear about this goodness thing.

If you think you need to be good, and you seek to apply what’s still in there that got inculcated into your being early and reinforced for years, then

• you’ll also need to be worried about being good
• you’ll also need to fear you’re not good
• you might have to protectively go into denial when you actually do stray off your own aligned knowing of goodness
• you’ll have to feel guilty, maybe often, maybe perpetually
• you’ll use guilt to keep yourself on track (even though that doesn’t ever ever ever work)
• you’ll believe others when they accuse you of not being good
• you’ll be a great target for manipulation
• you’ll have to defend your goodness (because every part of you—e.g., the most ego-based part of you, and your inner child, and your innermost being—KNOW you ARE good)
• you’ll have to feel misunderstood (and again, defensive) when others think you’re bad
• you will be disempowered
• you will, as victims do, lose track of where you have choice … and of your power to create your life … and of your power to create your inner feeling state

When I got to this point in the writing, I checked on my daily message from Abraham-Hicks. It began like this:

The one factor that has been unknown by most humans, that is understood by the beasts, is that Well-being truly does abound; and that you are blessed beings who live in an atmosphere of grace; and that unless you are doing something to pinch off the Well-being, it will be yours.

What Abraham did NOT say: unless YOU DO SOMETHING BAD or if you do something to pinch off your goodness! Your goodness is NOT what allows to flow to you or disallows well-being from flowing to you.

Mary Oliver gave us the soft animal of your body and Abraham brings in the beasts. Can you let things be more simple? Could you trust, or play with trusting, your inherent, implicit goodness so you can bring your focus to other things? Like, to aiming for your well-being?

It goes without saying. You’re good. The animals aren’t worried about this. Find your animal self who simply aims for well-being.

Hey, also, it’s not a merit-based Universe. You don’t have to collect good points and earn your well-being by being good. Well-being is meant to be yours. You don’t lose points when you know you’ve strayed into what feels off to you.

In fact, that’s partly why you’re good, if you need a why. You have a compass. You have a guidance system. You know when something’s off. So when you notice you’re off-track, just course-correct. As Mary O says, don’t walk on your knees 100 miles repenting. Just get back on-track. Or even aim for what feels more on-track, and trust your capacity to keep course-correcting.

Metaphor time: Abraham talks about the rumble strip that your wheels register on the highway when you edge out of your lane while driving. (You even feel hitting the rumble strip in your body. It registers in your own senses.) You don’t need to feel bad or guilty. Just get back in your lane. You don’t need to sit around ascertaining and reviewing and worrying about how bad you are for hitting the rumble strip or vow to never hit it ever again. Just course-correct and think no more about it.

If the rumble strip calls you to pay more attention in the moment, to bring more consciousness to driving, or whatever you’re doing now, marvelous. That’s a call back to presence, and presence will always serve you.

Note that when you’re paying attention (when you’re present), you ARE cultivating well-being for yourself and others. Check it out if you don’t believe me. In fact, don’t believe me. Just watch yourself. Witness. Notice that you’re aiming for well-being. And when you bring in concepts of goodness (NOT GOODNESS ITSELF, but concepts of goodness) to inform your well-being, you confuse yourself and go off-track again. Or you create misery where you were doing just fine and you were sufficiently on track to keep moving and course-correcting as you go.

It’s really no problem when you go off-track again. Your inner rumble strip will rumble and call you to the next course-correction.

Do I need to say you’ll course-correct more swiftly, even seamlessly, if you never have to crawl through the desert repenting???

Rhetorical. I know you know.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Hey, y’all, you know I always have a lot to say. Note that just having the concept in place that you might want to HABITUATE TO FEELING GOOD, or make that your new normal, is something already. Read as much as you’d like below if you want more to chew on, and at any point please make judicious use of bold print and bullet points and such.

When you wonder what the problem is, part of the problem is that you’ve habituated to problems and to problem-solving as a way of being.

What’s still wrong with you is that you’re wondering what’s still wrong with you, and you’ve habituated to thinking that way and keeping that in view.

Why it’s so hard or scary or uncomfortable or unsustainable [or whatever] to feel good is that you’ve spent a lot of time feeling bad … and it became your habit. It’s habitual. It’s normal.

Except it’s not. YOUR NATURAL STATE IS TO FEEL GOOD.

To be clear and in the name of not lying to ourselves or being sloppy in how we speak about what’s what: It’s actually not hard to feel good.

Or scary. Feeling good actually feels like not-fear.

Or uncomfortable. Feeling good actually can bring in a whole lot of comfort, the good kind (the overindulgent kind ends up feeling bad!).

And you can actually get back to feeling good, even pretty quickly, anytime you notice you’re not there. (The quicker you shift back toward feeling good, bee-tee-dubs, the less momentum you’ll accrue toward feeling bad.)

So in fact, you get to feel good, you know what it feels like, you know how to get there, and it’s not that hard or scary or uncomfortable or unsustainable [or whatever].

It’s just not the habitual state, or hasn’t been [fill it in: lately, since XYZ, my whole life, most of my life, a chunk of my life …].

If you actually DO let yourself feel good pretty often at this point in your life, then let’s BRING IT TO NOW. Sometimes, you can simply say, I don’t feel good right now. Which is your invitation to swiftly course-correct toward what does feel good! Which could mean getting off the topic that feels bad, or moving to a topic that holds very little resistance for you, or just heading toward what would most make you feel good right now within the actual working parameters of this moment. Now, you feel-good folks are dismissed (though you don’t have to go).

If you’re someone who hasn’t yet habituated to feeling good, read on.

To establish a new habit of feeling good, you need to hang out there. Treat it as normal. Let it be normal. Make it normal through repetition.

Let’s get away from, I deserve to feel good. I want to get away from it not because it’s not true, but because it goes without saying. Yeah, you deserve it, but quit tripping yourself up with merit-based thinking. Can you feel good not because you deserve it (of course you do) but because …

• you like to feel good
• it feels good to feel good
• everything you’re after (intentions, goals, visions, whatever you’re aiming toward) is ultimately something you think will make you feel good, feel better
• when you feel good you’re more connected, aligned, at ease
• when you feel good you’re more generous, tolerant, kind
• feeling good seems closely connected with love
• feeling good means you’re not working too hard or expending more effort at anything than what’s actually needed
• feeling good means you feel your connection to guidance, Source, higher self [name it what you like] and it all feels easier & like less figuring and plotting & scheming and puzzling and problem-solving and trying hard and struggling and and and …
• when you’re loving yourself and being your authentic self, you feel good
• when you’re aligned with your own values, you feel good
• when you’re applying what you want to live in ways that aren’t punitive or based in judgment or shame, you feel good in the application

As you know, I could go on. So could you. Find more reasons you can feel good beyond any deserving. Seriously, list them, or say them out loud. Or both.

Let’s go to classic objections to feeling good.

When’s the other shoe going to drop?
Well, if you stop wanting life to be all good, then you don’t have to think it’s bad or something’s gone wrong when something not to your liking is happening. Then when something’s happening that feels bad or challenging or god-awful hard, you don’t have to call it the other shoe dropping. You can just call it life. You might stop sorting life into good-bad bins and willingly meet what comes your way. Here it is, I’m willing.

You can willingly meet the hard stuff while prioritizing feeling good. Notice that this doesn’t involve avoiding or preventing feeling bad. It involves feeling good now. Choosing into feeling good. And moving away from what feels bad more quickly and more often.

What if I actually have to stay with what feels bad?
Um, like when something unwanted is still here? Or your kid is sick and you’re doing not-fun or scary things to deal with that? Or you’re up with someone at 3 a.m. even though theoretically you’d really love to sleep, but you’ve actually opted in to accompany them through some kind of moment right now for good reasons?

Again, c’est la vie, my friend. And note the you’ve actually opted in part in that last sentence. There’s really no have to here. It feels good to be in choice, to find your agency, to fully opt in to something that doesn’t feel so great right now but, in the larger scheme of things, makes sense, and is part of a human life. It also makes sense to walk yourself gently through this, here and now.

When something feels bad, walking yourself through it well, being your own best ally, actually using the tools you’ve got while you’re in it—that all feels good.

And as you walk yourself through, you can feel as good as you have access to feeling in any given now-moment. You can walk yourself through reaching for those tools of yours that you know will help you feel better as you go. Soothing breath. Grounding in the moment. Using body-mind practices & practicing other excellent self-care when you can. Staying out of the mind predicting bad outcomes or casting this hard moment into some forever future. Taking breaks as needed & as able. Getting support. Noticing all that supports you. …

What if I’m spiritual bypassing when I go for feeling good?
Oh, quit it.

I kind of want to write just that. But okay, fine, I’ll say a bit more for those of you who torment yourselves with this one.

If you ask yourself that, ever, it probably means you don’t want or intend to spiritual bypass. So you already value that and your internal compass is already calibrated to that. You’re probably not in great danger of spiritual bypassing, and you’ll probably catch it if you are without making it a preoccupation. (Also, don’t judge it when you find yourself spiritual bypassing. Celebrating catching yourself and correct it.)

Those who do a lot of spiritual bypassing typically have that as a blind spot, so they don’t give the topic that much thought.

Those who DON’T spiritual bypass don’t get there by constantly worrying about whether they’re spiritual bypassing or not. They’re just meeting what arises, paying attention to what feels off, letting in the next thing that will bring them to greater alignment. Spiritual bypassing isn’t a focus, but living in integrity and being responsible for their work and following their guidance—and other such thing—are very much examples of what their chosen focus might be.

If you fear spiritual bypassing, you can do any number of things: check it out for yourself when you wonder about that. Is that what’s happening right now? Or you can ask your guidance system to show you if you are—bring it fully into view; declare that you’re willing to see it. Or you can risk spiritual bypassing to experiment with something else (like feeling good), and come back to the spiritual-bypassing fear if/when it arises.

In brief: don’t focus on that and just check it out every once in a while. Spiritual bypassing is not likely to be the thing that ruins your good intentions around feeling good.

You may have other objections to feeling good.
Here are 3 things you can do with those:

1. Take them to inquiry. Question whether they’re fully reality-based, or just old stuff (some of which may have some basis in reality or experience, but that doesn’t make the whole objection to feeling good valid).
2. Put them aside for a while and run your feel-good-more-often experiment. Do that in the now-moment the objection comes up.
3. Notice where your particular objection comes from and work to reparent yourself; teach yourself and practice what you want to believe now. (Example, you were taught, Be polite at all costs, so you still do all kinds of feeling bad in the name of being polite.)

Ready to feel good more often? Would you like to consider feeling good NORMAL? Would you like to pause when things feel bad and tune in to what might feel better? The latter would allow you to practice more self-awareness and more conscious movement toward what you want.

To be clear: you do want to feel good. Right?

If yes, please keep that in view and choose into it. Keep going until it’s normal. Keep meeting your own objections until they’re not preventing your joy.

Love & blessings, Jaya

When people lay out a problem for me, often especially with the stuff involving other human beings, they often need to say A BUNCH OF STUFF to explain the complexity of their feelings and alllllllllll the factors that make knowing how to handle this one so very problematic. I’ve come to almost never trust the sense that (or the phrase) It’s so complicated.

CAN WE PLEASE MAKE IT A WHOLE LOT EASIER?

Think in terms of MOVE TOWARD or MOVE AWAY FROM.

How easy is that? One thing to assess: Do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it?

Too easy? Well, what if you took a break from COMPLICATED and just played with this? Make it a grand experiment.

Also, note that very little harm could come of playing with simply moving TOWARD what right now feels like you want to move toward it, or moving AWAY FROM what right now feels like you want to move away from it.

And then to make it even easier …

Can we please also just bring it to now, so it’s about presence, tuning in to the guidance of the moment, being here & now with what’s actually happening in this moment, and how it’s currently hitting you, and what’s wanted in this moment?

Otherwise, you may go astray in these two ways to feel safer or more solid:

1. You may make global, fixed, forever decisions about people [or whatever]. As in, They have shown me they are always X [this is always X] [this always means X] …
2. You may create a formula to apply unilaterally (as if one size ever fits all). So add to the above, … and so I will always do Y with them [with this]. This is now my policy in every sitch that involves this person [this feeling] [this topic].

So bring it to now: RIGHT NOW, Do I want to move away from this or toward it?

C’mon, for real, LET THIS BE EASY! What could help you take this on as something easy to play with and worth playing with? Imagine stripping away all or any of the following:

• having to crack a code
• having to get it right
• figuring out what response would make you a good person
• weighing in what they want from you
• predicting whether they’ll be angry, disappointed, sad, not okay …
• worrying about what they’ll think of you
• agonizing over future implications
• bringing in the past (to keep something in view, prevent repetition, ensure consistency—whatever your innocent motive for calling in the past)
• telling yourself what’s wrong with you that this [person or sitch] brings up
• worse, figuring out what’s wrong with you

Just ask, Do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it?

That’s it. Then, as you follow through, you can move angrily/agitatedly or calmly (so go for calmly when you can).

You can move saying a bunch of stuff (explain, defend, try to shape how they perceive you) or you can do it in silence or with just a few words (so go for silence or few words when you can).

You can move trying to evaluate yourself in the moment, or just follow what you want to move toward or away from as your grand experiment and evaluate later.

Evaluating now could quickly suck you into

• the old habitual response
• your stuff
• their stuff
• your head
• It’s so complicated

How simple are you willing to make this experiment?

Right now, do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it?

Run your own experiment. I’ve found that I feel lighter, things feel easier, I’m more tapped into guidance, and life feels better when I’m stripping away complicated factors and moving (NOW, for now) toward or away from. I invite you to play with it and gather your own data.

Quick story if you’d like an illustration of the above points (skip it if you don’t want that). I recently wanted to contact some people I adore whom I met in Costa Rica when I was there for the first 3 months of 2023. And the mind started feeding me a bunch of complicated reasons why maybe I shouldn’t … I interrupted that mess. I grounded myself and connected to breathing and simply felt into whether I wanted to move toward or away from them RIGHT NOW. The obvious, instant answer was MOVE TOWARD THEM. (It can be so blessedly obvious and clear when all the blah-blah gets stripped away.) I made contact from a clear place and the result was a lovely and easy and fun connection in that moment. (We’d been having trouble connecting for a number of reasons, hence the mind’s access to evidence of complication.) I know I gave you a relatively low-stakes example (or at least I imagine it appears that way). Just play with it. You may find it applies a lot more often than you now imagine.

I also invite you to pause and take note of where you’ve already done or already do this! You know how to do this. Do it more. Make it a grand experiment for a while and consider making it a much more important part of your repertoire of tools to play with or ways to operate in the new era!

Right now, do I want to move toward this, or do I want to move away from it?

Love & blessings, Jaya