 Image of tightrope walker holding a long stick for balance This post is a redo of a writing from 2017 that never made its way to this blog. I was inspired to bring it back because I needed an alignment meditation, then a client needed one, then ... THEY'RE BACK. Alignment meditations reset us when we lose alignment with someone we love or something we believe. Out of the blue, I'm into Alignment Meditations. They take less than 5 minutes—because it's not that hard to align. In fact, alignment is all about ease—the antithesis of straining, striving, forcing, contorting--so it can only be easy to get into alignment. Sound too easy? The caveat is: you have to let go. Let go of all you want to control that isn't actually in your realm of control. The meditation eases you into the water, then your job is to give yourself to the flow, let it take you downstream. If you're in resistance, you'll paddle against the current shouting, No, that way, that way, my way! (You'll make an awful internal ruckus—your inner seagullwill be shrieking Mine! Mine! Mine!) (My first Finding Nemo reference ever.) You know when you're out of aligment. If you're out of whack with a person, everything between you gets needlessly complicated. Out of whack with a place—just feels wrong to be there. Out of whack with a role you play--you feel miscast, even fraudulent. You can be out of alignment with your own body, ay, and that's hard to reconcile—like the discord originates with you while it's also externally imposed. In any case, you know you're out when you're out. The misalignment may not be your doing, so doing isn't likely to make it right. (Kind of radical, really.) You can't require another person to show up the way you want them to (to see you the way you want them to, to treat you ...). You cannot force your way into some society or require it (with its many faces) to look upon you with unconditional welcome. You can't bend time or sway the timing of other minds or machines or the healing mechanisms of the body. You can't require what hasn't yet arrived to come forth NOW. So how do you align with a lot of moving parts that you (rightfully, appropriately, even mercifully) cannot control? You stop trying to control anything external AND you align internally (thoughts, feelings, the vision you keep in view) with what you want. This is why a meditation is a great way to quit pounding on the door that won't yield to you: meditations aren't about DOING. Meditation allows you to slip into where you want to be--but you slip in the back way, with slow, steady breathing to support you. Alignment requires nonresistance. Start there. Nonresistance is simply letting it all be exactly as it is, like it or not. (But only for now—it can and will all change!) Alignment goes well with surrender—the good kind. Let go. Let go of outcome. Let go of what the other person does or doesn't do, what others think, what they think of you. Let go of the future; definitely let go of predicting the future. Let go of how you thought it should go, what you thought you should feel, what level of evolution you thought you should have attained here. Whatever's happening is fine—really. The meditation: alignment first happens internally, energetically, as a powerful precursor to external change. Here comes the white-ligh part. Stay with me? To meditate into alignment, sit in a column of light, aligned with that light. Watch your breathing as you sit there. Now imagine that the situation (person, group) you seek to align with is equally aligned with this column. This light represents and holds the alignment. It's a beam of light—the most effortless, uncrowded thing you might imagine. Now find where you're already aligned. Find your essential oneness with the other or the situation. Don't think it, but feel into it. Find the essential love that unites you. Open to shared philosophies, mission, history. (Invite the mind to play movies of such things.) Focus on the passion for a topic, ethic, or aesthetic that all those involved connect to, even where details of your visions don't match. You may see lots of overlap and feel instant relief—and instant movement toward alignment. You may need to drop down to the lowest common denominator: we're both/all children of the universe, inherently worthy. Or get scientific, if you will: we're made of the same stuff, exchanging the same oxygen and carbon dioxide. Anything that's real to you works. My simple meditation invites you to cast a beam of alignment and sit in it. Feel and breathe into what connects you with the thing, situation, concept, person, or group you're out of alignment with, and let go of where you're stymied by differences, disconnections, disillusionment. Sit in the truth of essential oneness. We're never separate, even when we feel separation. Oneness or unity is truly the way of it, so sit in that, the essential truth of that—never mind where anything in real life makes it hard to feel. Find the easy way to feel it in this meditation. Alignment may require ongoing tweaks and adjustments. The tightrope walker steadies themself with the pole, weaving in and out of balance. Still, they walk the line, however tricky or dangerous it looks. Don't expect yourself to meditate into alignment then hold the alignment. Sit imagining and feeling into alignment for the love of alignment, not to indulge some magical thinking that you get to have your way if you use a spiritual tactic to have it. Align without expecting anything else to happen on the physical plane, in actuality. (This doesn't mean it can't or won't.) Align mentally just to have a private experience of alignment, whether you get it publicly or not, whether you get to share it with another or not. With a touchstone of internal alignment now available, you can keep coming back to alignment as you take action and as events unfold without your orchestration. Keep coming back to alignment, just because alignment feels better. While this doesn't guarantee any certain outcome, it does make feeling better super likely; it makes course-correcting toward alignment much easier; it makes the actions and tasks you step into from that alignment much more effortless. It opens you to guidance for unexpected solutions, inspired actions. If you experiment with this at all, you simply cannot simultaneously white-knuckle it the whole way. Just play with it as you might try a yoga pose, testing the wobbly line between pushing and releasing. Endless applications. I've sat with a teacher, realigning her with the students she's not certain she's serving; a post-grad student, aligning her with a professor she thinks is disappointed in her; an artist, aligning him with the unknown galleries that want to represent him. You can align with the employer who will hire you, the lover you haven't met, the baby on the way. You can align with the maddening political scene, the uncertain marketing thrust, the slippery social event. I do this often for myself, always briefly, always lighter and easier in the aftermath. It's a great thing to do at bedtime: fall asleep from a place of alignment. You just might wake up feeling aligned. Try your own meditation. There's really no formula. Even the column of white light is dispensable if it bothers you. Just sit with your breath, intending alignment with a task, concept, person, group. Sit breathing into the possibility of alignment; open to where it already exists. Let go of striving and experiment with believing that the way is clearer, simpler, more accessible than you currently believe. It's easy to align. Love & blessings, Jaya
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 (Would you, could you believe that it’s supposed to be easy?)
I just found a little note I wrote for myself with an Abraham-Hicks quote that struck me: “The path of least resistance is also the path of greatest joy, greatest clarity, and the most fun!” Abraham’s path of least resistance is a crazy-simple concept: You watch for and find the easiest, most effortless spot to next place your foot. Don’t see the whole picture? Don’t have a start-to-finish plan? No problem. Find your next step, knowing that’s enough. Take the easiest step you have access to. You can do it tired, scared, confused. Point yourself roughly in the right direction (as I talk about in part 4 of Scooch!) and step forward, wherever your foot can land without some big leap or forceful stomping. You can do it with curiosity instead of dread; you can stay tuned for the guidance rather than fear you’ll get it wrong. You can trust yourself to course-correct as you go. It’s always okay to find you’re in resistance. Watch it dispassionately, compassionately. Then find your point of least resistance, and step there. Rinse and repeat; rinse and repeat. You’ll see and feel the resistance melt away. You’ll find the momentum builds as you go, often surprisingly swiftly. To proceed along the path of least resistance, start by noticing when you’re in resistance. In your body, resistance can feel like
You’re in resistance when you're
It also helps to be clear about the signs that you're on a path of least resistance:
How to follow the path of least resistance: All you need to do is gingerly pick your way along the unknown way, one step at a time, simply finding your next point of least resistance. What’s the easiest way to go that feels like it’s in the right direction? Forget the whole picture. Don’t call this one step a drop in the bucket. Your point of least resistance simply gives you access to movement. One step, and another, and the next, until you’re moving so well, you forget you didn’t know how to do this. You’ll course-correct as you go, so don’t worry about whether you’re heading just the right way. You’re meant to build and ride momentum. Hey, it’s not just that the path of least resistance will get you to where you’re going in the most effortless way. Remember the quote I began with from Abraham-Hicks? “The path of least resistance is also the path of greatest joy, greatest clarity, and the most fun!” So when it feels like that … you’re on it! Love & blessings, Jaya Note that an earlier post on least resistance approaches these concepts from another angle. Want to get on with it? Find your point of least resistance.
Hey, have you figured out yet that it’s just resistance when you keep putting off what you say you want to do or what you think you should be doing? It really helps to know it as resistance. It helps to call it resistance. Otherwise, you have to call it lazy or lame. You might get into self-scolding or even self-loathing. And I bet you know that’ll never get you where you want to go. In fact, judging your resistance is more likely to increase it. So what if, instead, you noticed the resistance and just got okay with it—human thing that it is, for human being that you are. What if you declared that you’re in no rush, you’ll get there in your own good time, and you’re simply going to head that way through your point of least resistance? Ah, then you get to actively enjoy the binge-watching (and notice when it’s not fun anymore, because enjoying it means it’s not fraught with shame or misery that keeps you stuck there). Or you get to appreciate prioritizing the easy task, and move swiftly and surely through the ease of the simpler, more obvious, more joyous thing that must also be done. As you feel good about working with ease, you get to increase feeling good in general. And from that place of feeling good, and having had some guiltless fun or checked off a to-do or two that cost you little, you might take a (satisfied, can-do) breath and go for the harder thing. Sound better? I’m giving you three examples to illustrate the point of least resistance, so check out the one or ones you’re most drawn to. Example #1 targets the Enneagram’s self-preservation instinct (self-prez to Enneagram geeks): getting yourself to the gym. Example #2 correlates with the sexual instinct: working up to leaving the relationship, or agonizing over the belief it’s really time to go (but you don’t or can’t). Example #3 addresses the social instinct: wanting to rev up your connections or grow your circles. After reading your preferred example(s), drop down to the subhead “More implications of the point of least resistance.” # 1: What if, instead of judging yourself for not getting to the gym, you welcomed yourself to the human race and considered how very many people struggle with how to work in working out? What if you stopped calling it lazy and instead took a look at the actual issue for you? This could lead you right to your point of least resistance. You might be inspired to get an accountability buddy, try a new modality that looks more fun or doable right now, or find a YouTube guide or a class. You might start simply walking or biking more to get from point A to point B. You might determine that a few good stretches could change how you feel in your body and start taking two-minute stretch breaks when that scrunched-up-at-the-desk sensation creeps in. So much is possible! But not when you get trapped in resistance, and not when you see a point of least resistance but don’t grab it because you treat it like an evil (or at least believe that you’re wimping out, not doing it right, not doing enough). # 2. What if, instead of forcing yourself to walk out of the relationship you suspect you’ve outgrown, or even forcing a stay-or-go decision, you located your point of least resistance? What if you gave yourself full permission to hang out there for a while and see what comes next? Your point of least resistance here could be about spending more time alone or with friends. It could involve making a pact (with your partner or yourself) to have fewer arguments (walk away at the first whiff!) and spend more time in appreciation or admiration, while putting aside stuff-to-work-out or what-to-do-next for a time. Or it could be working on passion and connection in every other realm of life while allowing, in the relationship realm, the relief of simplicity and neutrality (but not misery and criticism, at least on your end)—then you could see where that takes you. # 3. What if, instead of telling yourself you’re hopeless at the social thing (as you wish for more of it), you told yourself that growing your connections is a good intention to hold and play with? There’s already less resistance in that. Then you might consider what feels manageable and aims you roughly in the right direction without some great overhaul of either character or habits. It could be going out to eat alone, even with a book or device for starters, or going to the movies solo or with a friend or partner and appreciating that others are about, having a similar experience. Or you might join a class so that you have a repeating experience of gathering with a fixed population on a shared point of interest in shared space. Your point of least resistance might even be an online group! It might involve self-permission to join something in silence, allowing yourself to begin by focusing on your inner experience. It might be to find a buddy to do something you’ve never done or want to do more of (salsa or karate? wine tastings or vegan cooking? choral singing or meditation?)—something that happens to be done with or among other human beings. More implications of the point of least resistance You won’t grow your social, sexual, or self-prez self from a place of feeling like you’re perpetually off your game (or like it’s a game you’re not remotely equipped to play). But you can grow any one of those by stepping from one point of least resistance to the next, and just see what gives as you allow yourself to step onward, curious about what’s possible, open to what reveals itself. I cannot say enough about my love of the point of least resistance (and how much it’s helped my clients and program participants). It’s all about stepping in where it makes the most sense because it feels best and easiest and most aligned with where you are right now. This concept is super compatible with the idea of scooching (you may already know how much I love to Scooch!). The point of least resistance came to me through Abraham-Hicks, who teaches that it’s also your point of greatest alignment, most fun, and greatest joy. I keep playing with it and loving the experience and results. It’s so much kinder than all the forcing and straining or the judging and shutting down. I invite you to it (and you can learn about it in my beautiful and now beautifully cleaned-up and polished Expansion audio program). Love and Blessings, Jaya Note that my post Force Nothing adds to the ideas presented here on least resistance. Here's a sane, peaceful, trusting alternative to doership.
The idea of doership, or being the doer, is that you’re the one making things happen or getting things done—and when you’re in doership, you’re in illusion (uh, not to mention stress). You’re also prone to getting intense about how things go, in what timing, and with what outcome. Here’s a great sentence from an online dictionary explaining doership: “If there is no feeling of doership in the deed performed, then bondage will not result.” How do you get out of doership? (If you’re skimming or in get-in-get-out mode, drop down to bullet points below for sound things to tell yourself when you catch yourself being the doer.) First, simply notice when you’re believing you’re the one who makes it happen, or you have to get it done, or if you don’t do this, no one else will or it won’t get done right or all hell will break loose. Notice when you’re doing a task or moving from point A to point B between tasks in a way that’s tense, driven, anxious, frenetic. Notice the lack of peace [substitute ease, equanimity, joy, connection to magic] in do-do-do-do-do. Stop. If you can’t take a pause, then follow the next instructions while you’re carrying on with whatever you must do. Tune in to your breath and watch it go in and out. Follow the passage of the breath, right on its heels, experiencing exactly where it is in your body at any given moment. Feel the inevitable pause once the out-breath is spent. Come back to the core of yourself, back to center, by following the breath. This will also instantly serve to calm you, even a bit, and to elongate the breath—with no actual effort to do that. Just watch the breath—don’t slow it down; it will slow down on its own. Now find where you’re believing you’re the one who makes it happen. Notice you think you have to make it happen. Notice you’re believing that your doing is why you’re here, or your most important assignment, or at the very least what you must do right now. Consider the possibility that you’re in illusion. Tell yourself clearly, explicitly: I’m in doership right now, so I must be in illusion. Next tell yourself a number of things you can actually believe to counter this thought that you have to make it happen. I’ll list a bunch of possibilities, and you can adopt those that resonate and come up with more on your own. The point is to counter this potent belief with a good number of other things that you can also believe and that are closer to truth:
If any of that leaves you feeling more relaxed and more expansive, you’re on the right track. Use the contractions you feel to call you to a pause for breath and mental reset. On the physical level, notice clenched muscles, furrowed brow, frenetic motions—even irritated or bossy tones of voice. Catch yourself (kindly, without judgment) in needless intensity and tension. Come back to the breath, back to what’s truer and more aligned than forcing your way through as the doer. You really do get to live in alignment and flow—and you’ll function more effectively and even more efficiently when you’re there. Beyond doership is a great exhale and opening to magic! Note that part of living in everyday magic includes aligning with flow, connecting to your guidance system, living in the now. Show up for the journey, now and now and now, because that’s where the magic reveals itself. Love & blessings, Jaya |
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