Try this on: I am one with the Universe and all the workings of the cosmos, which include what is expressed in a single atom in the microcosm that is my own body. Thus, as you move around thinking more in terms of living in alignment and flow, this could most certainly, at a given moment, look like a parking space opening up for you in that right-place-right-time (seeming) magic.

It could equally land you all the way across the parking lot—in which case you might play with the idea that there’s some gift for you in the journey. Could be a chance meeting with a person, animal, or vista. Or maybe the invitation and opportunity to drop speed and efficiency and simply get present to and value this moment of mundane reality: human being on planet Earth, walking across the expanse of a lot dotted with cars.

Applying this REPLACE-DON’T-JUST-RENAME concept ubiquitously
Where have you changed what you call something? Look at that thing and consider what else you’ve changed besides the name. Do you see and think and speak about it differently? Do you interact with it differently? Do you have a different experience of yourself, others, or life that goes with the new labeling? Is there anything you see to do to take this renaming further so you’re actually in a whole new framework and reality?

Examples of typical renaming to jog your thinking …

• Taking on or giving someone a new job title
• Switching out offensive names or terms for politically correct ones
• Changing your name or what form of your name you ask people to call you
• Changing your pronouns or those you use for others based on their request
• Calling something a more highbrow name (like saying films instead of movies)
• Calling something or someone a kinder or more generous name
• Changing out words you don’t want in your vocabulary for spiritual or personal growth and empowerment (like dropping should, or saying and instead of but)
• Changing what you call something old that happened to you (like acknowledging it was abuse, not just poor communication; or acknowledging it had an innocent component—made sense at the time to the person who you then felt was against you or negatively impacting your reality)

If any of those resonate or make you think of something operative for you, check it out. Is it just a name change? Or are you revising the concept on many levels and feeling the better for it?

Ah, the joy of getting ever more clear …

Love & blessings, Jaya

Here's a related writing: DROP REWARD & PUNISHMENT and set yourself free to live & love your life

​I think of mouse view as what you see and how it feels when you’re down in the nitty-gritty details, and eagle view as what you see and how that feels when you rise up to get the bigger picture or the greater perspective.

There’s more space up there, and you get more spacious in your assessments.

There’s more room for everything, and more points of entry for new characters and resources to come in.

There’s room for surprise.

Let me relate this to something I’ve talked about plenty and some of you know outside of my work—because you, too, listen to Abraham-Hicks to be inspired and to get reminders about how to live as a happy creator of your reality. Remember GO GENERAL? (Skip down to below the eagle pic if you don’t want the review.)

The idea is that stress comes in when we get into the details—how, when, who? Where will the money come from? What about the parts I don’t know how to do? Is there enough time for this? In other words, stress happens in MOUSE VIEW. Look up the totem or symbolic meaning of mouse and you’ll see the word fear all over the place! (Oh, little trembly mouse.)

The teaching, then, is to GO GENERAL when you find yourself in stress. In other words, TAKE EAGLE VIEW. Remind yourself in general terms what you’re doing, what you’re after, what’s likely to work out over time, how you’re doing okay, how it’s all unfolding just fine. Give yourself general, nonspecific reminders of what you can believe that makes you feel better, soothed, and eventually empowered to go back in. (Ah, powerful eagle, soaring above it all.)

And go back in you will! No one’s inviting you to ignore details. I’m very much inviting you to get out of that realm when you’re stressed (at the first whiff of stress!), and go general to get realigned, to gather up courage and hope, to trust life and whatever process you’re in. THEN, go back to the details. Until you get stressed again (and maybe try to catch that first whiff and RESPOND) …
Some things eagle view can do for you:

Shift your perspective of time from all the cutural not-enough message to way more spaciousness to play in.

Remind your body that contraction feels bad and opening, relaxing, breathing good air feels GOOD.

Remind you of the greater journey you’re on and have been on. Bring in that comparative of how you were doing before or how you used to handle this, and WOW-LOOK-HOW-MUCH-BETTER-YOU’RE-DOING-NOW. Just look how far you’ve come.

Remind you of a larger vision that the current task is in service of—and what you CARE ABOUT, perhaps are passionate about, all of which is way larger than any frustrations related to this moment or this task. There’s a reason you’re doing this thing. It’s NOT to plow through it or check it off a list. This task is actually a worthwhile stepping stone toward somewhere you really want to go, something you really want to create.

Call you back to your place in this picture, and even the fact that ultimately, yes you are replaceable. Maybe there’s stuff you can let go, delegate, stop micromanaging or controlling at all, leave alone entirely. Resign from a few jobs you’ve taken on. Let go of micromanaging even yourself according to some pre-chosen standard that doesn’t fit this now-moment. And maybe you can drop back into your right place, your right role, and let it all be easier and more manageable. (LET it be easier & more manageable.)

Bring in a sense of peace and well-being that always exists beyond any tiny or overly precise realm of focus. Beyond what they’re presenting in the news, beyond the thing that’s not working right now, beyond how others in your field are currently showing up, beyond what you have or haven’t figured out up to now, etc, etc.

Remind you that YOU DON’T NEED TO FIGURE IT OUT RIGHT NOW. Or probably ever. Pan out, look away. At the risk of mixing metaphors: Something wants to come in through the back door when you’re looking out the front.

Get you back to LOVE when you’re all focused on what bothers you about someone, what they’re doing wrong, how you’re not getting what you want from them. Beyond this moment’s frustration or fear or resurgence of distress over all you can’t control—there’s nothing but love.

Come back to There’s no problem. It really is all okay. Take satellite view. Take galactic view. It’s really all okay.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​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

4 Things to remind yourself early & often
(which will connect you to self & to guidance)

1. Bring it to now: Come back from the future (quit predicting what you don't want) and come back from the past (quit accruing towers of one thing stacked on top of another so it's all too much) and don't try to figure it all out. What can you do right now to align with this moment? Notice that you're equipped for this one moment.

2. Come back to the breath: Breathing is a felt, sensory experience, but we typically don't feel it. I love to invite people not to breeaaaaathe or even to take a deep breath, but to simply drop into the breath; follow it; stay with it; feel it. Feel its soothing, its kindness, its calming capacity. Feel how it brings you to the core of your being and brings your whole nervous system down a notch or two. It's powerful to take some moments dropping in with the breath and come back to yourself.

3. You don't have to figure it all out right now: This is a great thing to tell yourself to get out of your head, out of fix-it mode, out of believing you're not okay till you have it all sorted out and see the way forward. Actually, if you don't see it all clearly, then you don't have to figure it out right now. Soothe yourself instead (see Come back to the breath above).

4. You are guided: Life wants to get you where you're going. It wants to feed you, provide for your needs, heal and evolve you, keep bringing you closer to love. When you think you need to know what the future will hold, or insist on a blueprint for getting there (when there isn't one), or--yuck--fault yourself because you must be doing something wrong if you don't see the way forward: STOP. Quit thinking you're all alone and it's all up to you to find your way through the dark. You're guided. Connect to guidance.
​
Love & blessings, Jaya

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