​(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.)

I meant to get this email out earlier but I got busy googling Can you freeze red lentil soup? and then best lesbian dating apps for Kansas City, then I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the free NYT daily puzzles.

Just kidding. I HAVE, however, been thinking about how distractions have innocent motives*. Your little or grand time-wasting side trips carry messages & invitations for your greater well-being—if only they can elbow past your self-accusations of lazy distractible unfocused procrastinating or whatever you choose to call it to make yourself feel bad.

(*Thank you to brilliant coach Jude Spacks for giving me this phrase and concept of the innocent motive.)

Ever notice that feeling bad about your behavior (thus yourself) is possibly the LEAST likely way to move away from what you’re not loving? It’s certainly not the easiest, quickest, or kindest way out!

So, wanna drop the judgments with me for a moment and explore what wants to come through that could actually feel good to you? That could in fact usher you right into the next bigger-better version of yourself?

DISCLAIMER: Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying you should never play games or run curious online searches or binge-watch a good show. I’m not saying that at all. I’m addressing the surplus of that—and how you know it’s too much is not related to a concept or number of minutes. Just this: It feels like too much TO YOU. It feels BAD.

See what hits you in this list of possible invitations seeking to come in when you reach for the stuff that zaps your time and messes with your ideas of productivity. Which messages might be for you? Or what else do they bring in as fresh ideas for what you’re really after?

Your (loving, entirely UNscolding) guidance system may be saying:

• Are you sure you’ve been playing enough, honey? Schedule in some fun time more consciously. Stuff that’s REALLY fun, please. Run & play with dogs & children. Ambush a cat who will ambush you back. Dance, laugh, take a field trip somewhere new.
  
  
• Hey, you’re really seeking to alleviate some discomfort here. Move away from your [desk, cubby, work station] more often. Take more small breaks. GO OUTSIDE, even to step out and breathe a bit with your senses activated. Move the body and get energy flowing all through you. Give your eyes the rest and treat of looking up into trees, skies, light.
  
  
• The thing you’re avoiding you actually want to do. There are some [fears, worries, not-sure-how’s] in the way. Come along. Let’s step into the shallow end at your point of least resistance and take one simple step with ease. See how that goes. Watch for the possibility of momentum building.
  
  
• You’re not CLEARLY making certain choices in your life to create & experience more of what’s actually important to you—what you truly want. Where are you abdicating to what others want from or expect of you? Choose what you actually want to be/do/have in order to fully be you (then maybe you won’t choose this piddly-distraction stuff you don’t actually want to give hours to).

It could be so many things! More below for you to see what’s yours or jogs your thinking toward the more precise issue/s for you.​

  

• There’s something you’re [sad, mad, confused, disturbed] about and you’d actually feel better sitting with that a minute. What if you just sat and breathed it without trying to figure it out? Just feel it in the body and give it a kind, compassionate gaze. Pause to breathe in and around it. Don’t go to the head, leave solutioning alone, and instead offer what feels bad a few conscious moments to see what may arise.
  
  
• ACTUALLY, dear one, you’re too obsessed with productivity, and your inner rebel wants to push against that. Consider your natural fluctuations of energy. What if you went with the flow more & consciously chose the nonproductive sometimes? Let it be okay to have ebb & flow. Your experiment with this could show you increased productivity overall! (I dare you to run the experiment!)
  
  
• The more you don’t let yourself be as big as you could be, my love, the more you reach for things that diminish you, that trivialize the fullness of all that you are, and that fill your time with the superfluous & insubstantial.
  
  
• Sweetheart, you’re working too hard, pure & simple. Work easier. Spend more time relaxing & aligning, even in small spurts and transitional moments, so that the quality of your work (your offering to the world!) is imbued with ease, flow, a satisfied sense of well-being.
  
  
• Do less, and opt in fully to what you do choose to do. Don’t allow yourself to be divided.

Hey, I recently did a group EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) session that felt like an inspired journey of connecting to and honoring the guidance system that’s unique to each of us. Check it out if drawn! Your guidance system can support you to get out of anything you don’t actually feel good about doing RIGHT NOW and point you to what would truly meet your needs, fulfill your desires, and move you along toward your visions and intentions!

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

(Photo of person with tattooed arms gripping head from Blake Cheek on Unsplash)

... AND GET ONTO HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL

I can already hear someone out there mumbling about denial or spiritual bypassing. Please just come with me on this ride. Afterward, I’ll drop you back off where we started, and if you want to carry on with what you were doing before … you get to do that.

Note that this writing includes a 3-min audio I made to support you in how to think and speak about how you want to feel.

What do we typically do with a topic that’s problematic to us? The topic where we’re not where we want to be and we really REALLY want it to change?

WE STAY ON IT.

We’re taught that’s a good thing. It’s the right thing. It’s how we’ll be sure to change it. 3 examples of our problem topics and how we stay on it follow.

Finances: we keep looking at the bank account, reviewing spendings, fretting over how else to make money; we keep an eye on news of the economy.
Relationship: we keep going over what we’ve done wrong, compare ourselves to what others are doing around us, get caught up in the sorry way the song or movie makes us feel, stalk an ex or a new interest on social media.
Job: we think about how underused our skills & talents are, worry about the dynamics with boss or colleagues that make things problematic, stay on top of job notices and what’s happening in our field.

My favorite current phrase is No no no no no no no no no.

Side trip: Check out this quick clip from the film Get Out and just stop when she’s all done saying no. (In this part, we found the nice black woman creepy before we learned that the creep effect came from—SPOILER ALERT—her body being occupied by an old white woman.) (If you watch a couple of seconds beyond the no, you get the priceless way our protagonist is looking at her.)

So here’s what I invite you to instead of staying on it.

GET OFF THE TOPIC.

Look away. Do not give it your time and energy. Don’t speak about it. Interrupt your own thoughts about it—obviously (but let’s be explicit) especially when thinking about it feels bad and starts taking you to nefarious places (like finding yourself wrong or not enough, predicting horrible futures for yourself, comparing yourself to others or imagining what they think about you, etc).

By staying on it, you think you’re minding what needs minding, but you’re really reinforcing what’s wrong. As Abraham-Hicks loves to point out, you’re focusing on what’s missing, what’s lacking, what’s not here yet—when you think you’re focusing on what you want.

Quick reminder of the most basic basic basic Law of Attraction (LOA) teaching: What you focus on expands. Or, what you rehearse and review, you get more of.

And what you’re focused on is the problem.

Even holding something like it’s a problem and constantly looking for solutions is focusing on the problem. So what expands—or WHAT YOU GET MORE OF—is the problem. I have this problem. This is a problem. I can’t figure out this problem.

Or worse: I’m doing everything right and there’s still this problem. Then it just all feels like a mind-fuck and you start to feel life is against you. Or you turn that problem-focused gaze to every realm of life and start finding it all wrong, and you were just kidding yourself about all you thought was improving, and ... Let’s quit that.

Okay, so let’s say you want to run an experiment here (I highly recommend thinking in terms of experiments) and actually practice getting off the topic. What would you focus ON if you go OFF that?

FOCUS ON HOW YOU FEEL AND HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL.

How you feel tells you where you are with the topic now. Notice you don’t need to analyze thought to just know that, right now, how you feel with this whole topic is

• anxious or fearful
• riddled with doubts or worries
• heavy
• discouraged or defeated
• overwhelmed
• unhappy
• incapable or unteachable
• less than or not enough

How you want to feel is easy to identify. What would you feel like if the topic were not a problem and did not require cracking a code or tensing up to give it your full focus to make sure you tame this beast???

I began with negative phrasing, there, so now let’s flip it and get more to the point.

How would you feel, related to this topic in your life,

• if it looked just how you wanted it to look?
• if conditions were just as you wanted them?
• if you loved yourself in this realm of life and felt like you were rocking it?

I’ve made a 3-min audio to demonstrate how you might think about it. I made this during a session with a client using the topic of not liking the body you’re in because you think it’s too heavy. If you get off the topic and stop focusing on what’s wrong with it, and how to change its size, and what those imagined or perceived others think of it, then this audio gives you words for how to frame things instead, focused on your feeling state. (Hey, start at the 55-second mark if you JUST want the things you could say to yourself to grope toward how you want to feel. There’s some preliminary stuff that repeats some of the above.)

Let’s take a moment to look at WHAT TERRIFIES PEOPLE ABOUT THIS TACTIC.

In short, the fear is that then YOU’LL BE STUCK WITH THE PROBLEM. If you make yourself feel good now—or feel how you’d feel if all this realm of life were just as you’d like it--then you’ll just stay put right where you are.

Okay, well, if that happens, at least you’ll be a fool who feels much better.

HOWEVER, what’s more likely to happen is that your life will gradually (and sometimes very quickly) start to match how you feel.

Your behaviors will match what you want more of.

It will be easier to head toward what you want more of because you’ll feel better and more hopeful.

That’s how LOA actually works. I invite you to play with it. In summary: Lighten up, quit thinking there’s a problem, look away from what’s wrong, and let the work and play be about feeling how you want to feel.

Bonus: how you feel NOW alerts you to whether you’re focused in the right place or not. If not, please head back toward how you want to feel. Say things to yourself like I said in the audio. Get off the topic of what’s wrong.

Has this concern popped in yet? YEAH, BUT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO SOME THINGS IN THE PRACTICAL, MATERIAL WORLD RELATED TO THIS TOPIC.

Cool. Of course. That’s reality. I’m not saying don’t do stuff. Just do it when you feel good. Do it when you feel how you want to feel. And DO NOT TRY TO WORK ON THINGS AND MOVE THEM FORWARD WHEN YOU’RE BACK IN THE OLD PROBLEM MENTALITY AND THE FEELING STATE THAT GOES WITH THAT. And if you started working on things while feeling good and you even START to feel bad again (at the first whiff of feeling bad), get off the topic again.

Got it?

Now we’ve come full circle. If you’re still worried about denial or spiritual bypassing or losing track of the problem and being stuck with it—now’s your chance to just say Jaya’s full of shit and I just want to do what I’ve been doing.

If you get what I’m offering here and you’d like to get it better, a great old LOA-oriented blog post to review is Are you a match to the problem or the solution?

Love & blessings, Jaya

(hey, hit the 2 sets of bullet points for the short version!)

In my book Scooch! I wrote about my experiment with the idea that it might be a friendly Universe. Starting so broadly (the whole Universe!) naturally took me to smaller-scale experiments in life about … anything.
 
So why experiments and what constitutes grand?
 
I’m pretty enamored of the idea that all of life and aspect of life is or can be an experiment. Looks to me like it’s closer to the truth (how much do we really know for sure?) and everything loosens up a bit and feels better if you know (admit?) you’re experimenting.
 
Since I’m no scientist, I think of experiments as playful and fun, not serious and scary. As a life coach, I encounter people’s fears and the self-generated pressure that we human beings typically put on others or on circumstances until we realize we’re in charge of whether we opt in for pressure or not. I’m in favor of setting things up and cultivating mindsets for maximum spaciousness and ease. Hence, experiments!
 
Here are some ways to think of experiments:

• Pressure’s off: you don’t know and you don’t need to know. (Beginner’s mind!)
• You just get to try stuff and course-correct as you go.
• You can’t get it wrong, so there’s nothing to judge. (You can certainly notice and work with judgments that arise.)
• You get out of habitual, stale stuff that’s your norm and try new things that could work better or take you to surprising places.
• No foregone conclusions: anything can happen, so you get out of outcomes and show up for the journey.
• With no expectations, you don’t set yourself up for disappointment; you can use any that does come up (use ANYTHING that comes up) to redirect the experiment!
• Best attendant mindsets include curiosity, awe, wonder; a playful sense of exploration.
• Presence is your best ally: show up, senses engaged to take in and respond to new information as it comes in.

Why a grand experiment? I do like to say, If you’re going to bother experimenting at all, make it a grand experiment.
 
The following could make a simple, humble experiment very grand indeed:

• Stay with it. Do something different for a while, because rushing back to what you already know and do is typical, not grand.
• Believe in and intend inspiration, epiphanies, new directions—transformation.
• Do the unexpected. Do what you think you can’t. Do what you’ve been saying you want to do.
• Open to surprises—and meet your responses to them so you don’t shut beautiful doors that are opening to you.
• Look again at first reactions and interpretations. Do some inquiry. Reframe.
• Follow your guidance system where you haven’t before, in minute and large things, responding to what tugs at you or flashes in. (Don’t talk back to the guidance! Do question your thoughts and fears if you notice back-talk.)
• Don’t teach yourself the wrong lessons. Don’t just quit when something doesn’t feel good or doesn’t go as you wanted it to go. Drop the language of “It’s not working.” It works now and now and now, as you try one more thing, get more present, pay attention. (Presence!)

 
(Need some support with questioning thoughts or reframing?)
(Need help choosing or holding your focus?)
(Need help following a path of least resistance and/or choosing ease and forcing nothing?)
(Need help reeling it all in when you’re discouraged or distressed?)
 
Have fun with your grand experiments.
Love & blessings, Jaya
 
P.S. Hey, would you like to approach dating as a grand experiment? I've got some audio and written resources to support you in that.

Join me, if you will, in a new vision of love. As you read this to try it on, you might put many faces & kinds of relationships to the word BELOVED. I invite you to stretch yourself in love, stretch your ideas around love, stretch into new behaviors in love. I invite you to a love overhaul--a grand experiment, if you will.


My aim, which I may grope toward gracelessly & will only achieve imperfectly, is to love as purely as I’m able at any given moment. I love myself at least enough to let love be pure perfection in the imperfect ways I give and receive it as I evolve. I love others by appreciating and accepting the gorgeously imperfect love with which they grace me. I am willing to grapple with, to keep meeting, what challenges me in the realms of love.

     Toward the beloved, I seek to be in a state of ongoing discovery (awe, curiosity, joy!), instead of holding to all I’ve decided so far about who they are (and worse, letting that become an accruing list of here-we-go-again grievances). My love gets to allow their becoming, and to acknowledge the journey that they’re on beyond me and sometimes (I am wowed by this privilege daily) with or near me.

     I allow the journey of the beloved to follow its own timeline, not the one I would draw up—as if I had such drafting skills!—and not the one my impatience or discomfort would demand. When I require others to make me comfortable or to pander to my fears or to fix what’s unhealed inside me, I have stepped out of love. I accept this. I must and I will step out of love; others must and they will, too. It’s madness to expect anything else. I aim to witness with no judgment when either of us slips off-track—or to witness the judgment of self or other, and start there, soothe that first. I aim to simply call myself back to love.

     My ongoing intention is swift course-correction back to love. I am in love with this very intention!

     Maybe I don’t instantly feel love in such course-correcting moments. I know there’s no problem. Sometimes simply reversing the direction of my focus is all that’s needed to get me back to love (and eventually the feelings always follow): I shift the focus away from changing, correcting, instructing the beloved (even with the innocent motive to help them get me!) and bring the focus inward instead, toward soothing and perhaps better understanding myself. (The conversations with the other can follow, from a more grounded and kinder place.)

     If something in my interactions with the beloved pushes a button or rubs up against a raw, unhealed place inside me, I am not shocked or dismayed; I do not believe something has gone wrong. I do seek to soothe myself. I do deconstruct the old, wrong decisions I made about myself or about love or about the way life works. I will bring love to myself first. I will love the beloved so much that I will take care of myself first, so great is my clarity that my well-being is no one else’s job and that my purest love comes from a place of self-love, of wholeness within myself. (I also allow my self-love and wholeness to be works in progress, dynamic entities or energies that wax and wane.)

     I understand that it happens, in love connections of all kinds, in both directions, that buttons are pushed, core wounds are triggered, pain arises. It is not the job of love to prevent this. It is not a failure of love when this occurs. In fact, it’s the opposite at play: the job of love is to expose what needs to heal, so the hand of love will brush against every available bruise without meaning to, without trying.

     When it’s my button pushed or my pain prodded, I well know the tendency  to make that about the wrongs of the other: what they do wrong, how they don’t show up for me, the maddening way they phrase it, the way they’ve done this before and have failed to hear what I said about the impact on me. I aim to make it about me instead, my greater self-understanding, my healing and evolution, my expansion into greater love.

     I aim to hear in my own mind and speech anything that resembles: Correct yourself faster for me, see what you can’t yet see because I insist that you see it for me, do the impossible to please me and make me feel loved, be who you are not—so I can relax. I know how to course-correct. I can come back to I release you to your life; I release myself to mine. I can and will come back to love, even if all that means at first is feeling the pain, soothing myself, loving the beloved for a moment from afar, as best I can, coming close again with nothing understood or just a fragment of wavering light to tender.

     I will sing with Iris Dement, Just because I’m hurting, that don’t mean that you’ve done something wrong. I am willing to apply that going in both directions. People hurt on planet Earth. People hurt in human relationships. Sometimes I hurt in mine; sometimes the beloved hurts in relationship to me. Still, I’m willing to love.

     I love myself so much that I’m willing to let the beloved be mad at me or disappointed in me --and I won't use that as an excuse to believe there’s something wrong with me. In those moments, I go after my pain to soothe it--I do not go after the beloved to see who they want me to be now. I go after love to embody it. I don't go after the beloved when I’m unclear with myself. I will not abandon myself. I will not think I’m bad or wrong when their pain is called forth, when their buttons have been pushed (as they must be; as they will be).

     I am willing to hear them talk when they’re ready and to listen carefully, to listen with love. This does not mean that I rush to fix their reactions—never mind seek to prevent them! I allow the beloved to be in their process. I invite them back to connection, to communication, and to love in right timing. I may get that timing wrong. I’m willing.

     I am willing to listen to the beloved and I am willing to look at myself, but I am not willing to automatically think that I’m wrong just because another thinks I am. I will always feel compassion when my phrasing or timing—or whatever—came in the wrong package for them and brought up their pain. I am sincerely sorry when my reactivity or wrong interpretation or personality tendencies got played out in a way that was hurtful to the beloved, and I want to make it right however I may be able to do so.

     But I will not grovel. I cannot be sorry that their stuff comes up with me: it must, it will, and I trust they’re equipped to meet it; I trust we’re both equipped to find love again together. I will not be sorry when my stuff comes up with them: it must, it will, and I trust I’m equipped to meet it; I trust we’re both equipped to find love again together.

Love & blessings, Jaya