​You can set up your life (or this hour, this day, this week, this era) so that it’s more and more and more frustrating.

Or you can set it up so that it’s more and more and more easy and flowy and fine.

Basically, what follows is a simple story to illustrate.

I just had a typical bout of grand frustration while doing taxes. (Not tax time you say? Um, some of us file for an extension when you’re getting yours done on time, so our due date is coming right up.) (Are you starting to get my relationship with taxes?)

So it all started with some thorny stuff. I got frustrated fast, because I came in with the idea that I really wasn’t into this. (Ah, the power of opting in 100 percent.) I was also soothing the frustration as I went, not just letting it rip. I was doing fine. But I wasn’t all joy and sunshine. Let’s say that soft, expansive belly breaths maybe weren’t predominant. Or maybe not in the vicinity.

And then, things got thornier. And I got more frustrated trying to get help from customer service or even trying to get to a human being. Even the chat was intercepted by a mean-girl kind of robot. And I permitted myself a bit of railing to my mother, whose house I’m living in for the purpose of being helpful and uplifting, so … mission not accomplished.

And then a bunch of data got purged from Quickbooks. It all seemed very random, like someone flushed a toilet in a parallel Universe and my data went down the invisible pipes.

I have standards and quite refuse to literally slam my forehead repeatedly into the wall, so I did not do that. I did get up and move away from the task.

If you’re getting anxious, let me tell you this would all end well. I would later be involved in an interesting hours-long process getting data transferred back in. I would learn some stuff. When I solved the puzzle (and I would solve the puzzle), it would be an almost funny and cute matter of two little bunny-eared quotation marks that had hopped away to a distant field, probably very sweetly, maybe in that same parallel universe where that mysterious toilet was, when they were very much needed for the purposes of proper coding within a bunch of crammed-together words and numbers in a tiny font that cryptically contained both my data and a secret code. This code, properly presented, would then allow Quickbooks to open the door to let in the data that I wanted there. I would manage to understand the pattern and see where it was disrupted and …  I would fix it. No bunnies would be hurt in the righting of this data. I wouldn’t even be rough on the computer keys or even my own system. I would breathe lovely, soft belly breaths, while sitting and working in positions that would require no chiropractic adjustments down the line. All would work out.

Fucking Eureka. And bonus, it’s really kind of fun and wondrous to crack a code, right?

Honestly, most of the time I affirm that everything’s always working out for me. I lost track of it for a minute there.

Okay but let me backtrack. How did I get there? Note that I was already witnessing myself FROM THE BEGINNING because my policy and preference is not to live with frustration. I don’t judge it when it comes. However, I witness it coming in and feel the effects and then I usher it out.

(This takes practice, folks, and just noticing when the judgments come in and dropping them again. Keep dropping your self-judgments. They serve nothing except to keep you in modes that better match frustration than flow. They’re not fun, they’re not kind, they don’t make you a better person. They literally serve nothing you’re after.)

Speaking again from my policy and preference (to be clear, not what I was doing with this round of tax work), I do whatever it takes to release any grip on an outcome, a timing, a way the process must go. As quickly as I notice such interference, I let it go and align with reality. I soothe myself with presence in body and breath. I look away from the thorny task and get my alignment back, then I come back again—even if that means no more than a 5-minute break to look up at the sky and breathe and watch the breeze move some leaves around or drink some water or do some stretches or wash a few dishes or whatever.

Back to presence, back to body and breath, back to alignment THEN back to work.

So I wasn’t exactly doing this with tax work. I was watching the frustration (self-witnessing is good and helpful) and I was not entirely believing the messages the mind was forming about what was supposed to go differently or feel better (seeing thoughts as thoughts, not reality, and not believing them is good and helpful), but I also did not properly and fully INTERRUPT it.

So more frustration accrued.

By the time I sat down to spend some comfortable hours cracking the code, a true interruption had taken place. I had stopped. Surrendered. Let go of alllll the things I wanted that I wasn’t getting in this scenario.

I happened to be slated that day to do some EFT/tapping with a group of people on zoom and when we had some minutes left at the end, I brought in this topic. It yielded this 10-min EFT session you might try when you have some frustration about techno-trouble, or about current customer-service realities, or about anything that you believe should be less fraught with trickiness, thus making you more frustrated in the face of reality.

I felt so much better after the tapping.

And then I didn’t go back to frustration. I went back to work already breathing well, and I just settled in, staying conscious of the breath, for whatever was ahead. Which turned out to be some hours. And I got into the puzzle of it in that way that puzzles are actually fun, even when you’re kind of frowning at them going, Well, NOW what?

Because Now what? is in fact a very good question and typically invites the next one thing to try. Especially if you’re in your body, and your breath is flowing.

Also, I played soothing music on YouTube while I worked. Whenever I happened to stop in and see who was swimming by in the ocean footage that went with the music, I kind of wanted to cry, but not the way cruel techno-trouble games in the multiverse make you cry. Just the way dolphins swishing through blue love with little half-smiles on their relaxed and earnest faces makes you cry. Don’t even get me started with the giant turtles. (Though the soothing-music video does start with a giant turtle.)

I didn’t even finish in that sitting. I went to bed early when I felt the first whiff of frustration coming back in. I got up and started fresh and full of hope. I found those two missing quotation marks very quickly, gently grabbed two new ones by the ears, plunked them in, and carried on with a flowy version of finishing my taxes.

Seriously, folks. There’s no problem if we get super frustrated by life’s potentially frustrating things. And we don’t need to fault ourselves for that. Most others wouldn’t fault us.

But we also don’t need to rev up the frustration, and feel justified in it, and rail (and keep railing, and rail to a bunch of people) (and keep railing inside our own minds), and keep creating more of that. Because that will and must keep creating more of that.

As soon as you can interrupt it, INTERRUPT IT. And do whatever you know to do to get your alignment back. And then, if you’ve revved up a bunch of frustration, you may need to take a while in the unraveling, so drop in for whatever it takes. Breathe. Listen to soothing music. Let some part of you weep quietly with achy joy because, in the meantime, there are sea creatures somewhere being too wondrous for words and truly embodying the flow.

We can live in peace and flow. Or we can live in frustration. And that’s true with hard things and things that go wrong and things that are just wrong on this planet and in our current setups at our current level of evolution. And it’s also true when things are relatively wrinkle-free and flowing along.

The more we flow peacefully, present, opting in, the more things flow in general. The more we create frustration and amplify that, the more things bump along uncomfortably or screech to a halt.

So don’t expect yourself to flow nonstop. Do interrupt yourself when you’re out of the flow. And gently soothe yourself back into alignment. Create more and more and more alignment and more and more flow.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Let me just say a few words about your marvelous guidance system (which you can amend as you like to fit what rings true for you) and then I’d like to look with you at what on earth you would let decide your life for you if not that. Head straight for that bullet list below if you just want to consider what else could lead what you do and don’t do, what you choose, what you do or don’t admit to your experience, your heart, your life. And just after the bullet points is a doozy that needed its own paragraph, so maybe read that too.

You have so much freedom to create your life from the inside. You get to notice everything out there that gets your attention and run it by how it makes you feel, whether it feels aligned or off to you, whether it sparks an expansive, excited sense of creating the next thing you want (in all realms of life), or whether it feels defeating or depleting or fraught with obligation, guilt, old stories and decisions made in the past, and so on.

You get to keep it fresh if you want to. That’s true even if you can’t instantly change current conditions. You can always change how you feel. You can always change what you say yes or no or how much to right now. And your guidance system is always calling you to what feels better and more aligned. With zero judgment, coercion, or manipulation. Just letting you know. Now and now and now.

Your job for living at the highest level you’re capable of RIGHT NOW is to respond to your own guidance system.

It’s never out there—it’s inside you. But the out-there stuff is part of your dance with consciousness. It’s full of symbols, signals, suggestions—all kinds of stuff you can respond to. More important, you can notice how you ARE responding—how anything registers for you in body, heart, head. What happens when that comes into your field?

Does it make you feel expansive, more on-course, more curious about life, more authentically you? Does it feel full of new possibility, growth, more fun, more freedom, more ease? MORE OF THAT.

Does it make you feel bad, like you’re doing it wrong and won’t ever get it right, like you have to bite some bullet or put in a bunch of time where nothing remotely matches what you want and who you know yourself to be (or, if. you’ve gotten away from yourself, from what you suspect and still get glimmers of)? To anything that just feels NOT HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL, please, LESS OF THAT.

And if you don’t follow your marvelous guidance system--that originates in you, that comes up from inside you; that has alllll the facts and stats about what’s going on now, what has been, and where you’d actually like to go next; that knows exactly what your obstacles and fears and limited beliefs are, AND IS EQUIPPED TO MOVE YOU THROUGH AND AROUND THOSE—if not that amazing guidance system, then what?

I asked a client that question rhetorically the other day, and then all of these answers wanted to pour in. So I wrote them down.
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You could let yourself choose any one thing and another and another and your whole entire life out of any of the following (instead of in response to your own guidance) (and of course, this is not an exhaustive list, so do open to what else wants to come to you):

• someone else's desires and expectations
• making others comfortable or sparing them some discomfort you predict (that may have no basis in current reality or that they’ll experience anyway)
• saying yes to others whatever they ask
• pandering to their egos, anger, sorrow, manipulations
• your fears and your declarations about what you can’t do or what isn’t accessible or available to you
• some image you're cultivating
• some fixed identity you’re sticking to
• some old concept that doesn't fit anymore (and how you know is that it makes you feel squeezed and out of sorts, like the clothes that chafe and pinch and don't allow freedom of movement and don’t even fall right or flow right)
• some clan mentality you’ve adopted and still operate out of (from family, a friend group, a work culture, any culture or subculture)
• concepts like what it means to be nice, what makes you a good person [or fill in roles--sibling, boss, spouse, etc], what someone your age should or can or can’t do
• obligation
• guilt
• shame
• safety
• habit (this is what I've been doing and always do, so this is what I'll do now despite the tug or impulse or spark to do something else)

To be clear, those things could be choosing your life.

And then there’s this crazy thing: what you promised or committed to before. You SAID, so you’re sticking to it. Never mind that by now, life has brought in a whole bunch of new information (and keeps persistently trying to bring it to your notice, because our guidance system NEVER gives up on us), information that you COULD hold up to the old promise in order to take in that it practically begs and screams for you to appropriately renegotiate and/or revise it—but you’re letting your past self and what they knew and decided and said decide today, against what your guidance system is bringing in today.

Against the fresh dynamic-NOW wisdom of your own marvelous guidance system, that’s actually tapped in to the evolution, to your becoming, to all that you keep stretching into (or at least would like to, at least at the soul level).

But let’s go back to that parenthetical in the above paragraph. Your guidance system is like an adoring dog whose loyalty will not budge. It will not give up on you. It will not punish you for ignoring it or talking back. It will not stop coming up with creative ways to get your attention.

And it will not stop using your EMOTIONS to help you really get and viscerally know: this is what I love and what feels good; this is what makes me feel terrible and what I need to adjust and/or move away from. Heart guidance will be the topic of a future mailing.

In the meantime, my work here is finished: consider what decides it for you if not your guidance system. And whatever you do or don’t see right now, consider more responding to and flowing with the nudges, tugs, flashes, zingy attention-getters, inspired ideas, impulses to act, random people dropping into your field or mind, dreams, persistent desires, and all the magic, synchronicity, and repeating echoing themes that keep coming in from the outside and bumping into your deep inner knowing and the truth of who you really are.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Today I wrote some simple love-drenched words to someone I adore who was upset with themself about … something. A life thing. That’s all we ever get upset with ourselves about. Normal life things on planet Earth that we act are just terrible things from Goddess knows where in this confounding Universe.

After sending the message, the thought occurred to me this was my message to everyone. Everyone on the planet, but I’ll just start with my mailing list.

Please err on the side of NO [NO, ZERO, ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE IOTA OF] FEELING BAD ABOUT YOURSELF.
Do a pendulum swing away from any idea that you’re doing it wrong, away from any reason to be disappointed in yourself.
Follow your knowing, not other people's expectations or desires or beliefs.
And you don't have to get it right. You can course-correct as you go.

That’s the message. Can you feel it? Those are whole-life instructions right there. Can you imagine WASTING NO TIME ON BEATING YOURSELF UP or worrying about what others think or feel about YOU (YOUR LIFE, YOUR CHOICES, YOUR EXPERIMENTS, YOUR MISTAKES)?

Then what?

You’d be available to notice you feel bad when something’s off and you could care about not feeling bad and head toward feeling good. You might actually just come close to your heart, soothe yourself, take care of your body and nervous system, then open your mind to what other perspective or action is possible. You might notice INSTANTLY that the opposite of beating yourself up is called for.

So life could look like this:

You could just make your best choice in the moment without overthinking it and you could have access to quick access to course-correction.

And course-correction wouldn’t be about righting a wrong. It would just be about tweaking your direction.

Here you are, a human being in motion, giving it your best shot here & now to move toward the next thing that feels likely to be your right next thing, and then … you notice something feels off. So then you head roughly in the right direction—whatever feels a bit more right.

That’s it. Nothing to find fault with. No need to bury your head in your hands (or under the covers or in the sand). No need to go over what on earth you were thinking when you pointed yourself to where you find yourself now.

YOU’RE JUST A HUMAN BEING on planet Earth.

Will you please let yourself just be a human being? Here are 4 simple facts that could help with that.

1. You were never supposed to get it right on planet Earth. (No one does that here.)
2. Getting it right is not a thing. (Actually doesn’t exist in Earth reality.)
3. You were never meant NOT to disappoint or frustrate anyone. (That’s the stuff of desert islands and other planets.)
4. You were never meant to know the right direction and head straight that way as the crow flies. (That’s what crows do. And they make a lot of crazy noise doing it.)

This bit is important:
You were never even meant to sit around hating on yourself because you’re noticing now that you missed some cues and maybe are way farther down the path (or rabbit hole) that feels off that you would ever hope to be.

There’s one thing to do when you find yourself in the above scenario. And, craziest thing (put it to crow music): It’s the same thing  to do if you hadn’t found yourself in that sorry place!

Just be a human being in motion here & now heading roughly in the right direction.

That’s what people do at rock-bottom. It’s what they do when things are a bit messy. It’s what they do when things are just kind of normal. It’s what they do when things are humming along.

Move. ROUGHLY in the right direction. Not even trying to get anything right. You’ll keep getting operating instructions as you go. You’ll course-correct as you go.

And would you please have fun while you’re doing that? THAT, my friends, is very possible and desirable here in a human life on planet Earth. You’re supposed to have fun and feel the joy and notice the magic and laugh your fool head off. You can even scream like a crow. And this sense of fun and connection to joy makes you better company for the other journeyers here. And for yourself. And for other animals and sentient beings of all kinds (like trees and … I include rocks). Please have fun.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here’s what I’m not saying. I’m not saying BE more and DO less.

That’s an old construct that was nice to talk about when we first thought to bring the concept of being front and center. (That is so way yesterday!) And maybe no one had dared think in terms of doing less as something sane and good because we were just all about efficiency and cramming in more.

It’s truer to say that being & doing go together. Be vs. Do is an example of a binary, which is always ultimately a false construct. In fact, if you’re doing, you’re being, and if you’re being, you’re doing. They are inextricable one from the other.

So don’t be versus do. Be fully. Be in the fullness of all that you are. Do fully. Do with all your caring and creative verve, and opt in fully wherever you opt in. Be present in body, mind, and heart to what you’re doing. (That is, make it your doing to come back to being.)

Do nothing just to get through it. Do everything because this is your beautiful life and this is the thing to do right now in support of your beautiful life, and all its beautiful parts.

• Do the dishes that way
• Do conversations that way, even with customer service
• Do lovemaking and even hugs that way
• Do walking that way, whether moving away from or moving toward
• Do creative brainstorming that way
• Do work tasks that way
• Do dancing that way
• Do connecting to nature that way
• Do all connecting and dropping in with another and bouncing energies back and forth that way

If you’re being while doing, you’re inhabiting this moment and opting in fully to what you’re doing. You’re here, in presence. You’re inhabiting the body. You’re connected to breath. (Or, again, just coming back. Keep coming back.)

So why did I title this DO LESS?

When you’re doing without being, you’re doing unconsciously.  You’ve literally withdrawn your consciousness from the doing. You’re in autopilot. You’re just doing the thing to do it and check it off the list. You might actually do less (or do more things one at a time, with a more one-pointed focus) in order to marry doing & being together in the most beautiful way.

So here are some things you might consider playing with, more or less:

• Multitask less.
• Put your phone down more.
• Ruminate way less.
• Come back to the breath way more.
• Do less while talking and listening.
• Go outside more.
• Do less figuring.
• Tell yourself way more often you don’t have to figure it out right now.
• Do less staying with thoughts & feelings that feel bad.
• Do more interrupting of what feels off, early & often.
• Do less because you think you have to do it or someone will be disappointed or this is the way you always do it or [fill in your own old bullshit concept that still gets you]
• Do more because it feels good, it makes you laugh, it’s kind, it brings you to this precious moment here & no
• Watch squirrels more, run with the chickens more, look up at the sky more

THESE TWO PARAGRAPHS ARE FOR MILDLY-BUT-TENACIOUSLY ADDICTED ADDICTS. (Oh, yeah. That’s everybody.)

Do the things you feel divided about in a single focus and opt in fully. (Eating, smoking, drinking, playing the game, watching whatever …) What do you keep telling yourself you should quit or do less of or do differently? Start by giving it your full permission and full opt-in and full presence as you do it.

Example: go sit outside and smoke, and do nothing else. Experience it, because you’re not NOT smoking, so SMOKE. Don’t be divided. If you’re not ready to quit, drop in for real. Do it while being, while being present to alllllllll that comes in for you as you do it, including pleasure, self-disapproval, old voices, your own guidance system. Witness it all. Get present to it. Your experience will shift.

The best (and EASIEST) way to marry together doing and being is to come back to presence, often, in anything you’re doing. Inhabit your body (drop in consciously and feel it, ground it). Inhabit the breath (take MANY moments to feel what breathing feels like right now). (Stay with that for at least a full breath cycle.)

Let every moment and your whole being and life be fuller and more conscious. Do less. Do more while being. Appreciate this beautiful life and the fullness of all that you are.

Love & blessings, Jaya