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A Trick for Welcoming Yourself to the Human Race  Image of colorful clouds at sunrise or sunset reflected in water with silhouette of a seated human being looking on. From Niilo Isotalo on Unsplash. 2 words to set you free: FIND IT What I offer here will automatically support you to set yourself freer & freer if you play with it. It’s likely to help you do some (maybe all) of the following:
Context for the invitation to FIND IT In 2006, I went to the School for The Work of Byron Katie to save my life. I was deeply immersed in suffering, and because I was a parent to two and step-parent to another, this meant that human beings cuter and more innocent than me were affected, sometimes intensely, by what I couldn’t shake myself free of. The stakes felt high. Also, I was pretty sick of myself. Many things happened in the School’s psychic excavation that spanned 10 days. All of it centered around questioning our thoughts—any thought that felt bad. If some belief, even one we were convinced was right, good, and true caused any modicum of suffering (discomfort, anxiety, disempowerment, self-loathing, confusion, sense of being limited, etc, etc), we were invited to question it. I redefined what nice was, what no meant, what I owed others, what made me a good person, what I had to have in place to be okay, what I thought I couldn’t forgive, and on and on and on. When someone (of the 250-ish international participants) stepped up to question something with Katie, they were bringing some superlative: worst fears, greatest pain, most debilitating shame … the stuff that keeps us most stuck. As soon as their bare-bones story was sufficiently stated to give us the them, Katie would turn to the room and say, FIND IT. By which she meant, find this in your life, find it in you. Obviously, everyone present didn’t have a specific extreme story of the same nature, or even in that same realm of life. But the invitation (or injunction) was to find where that story was our own, to whatever degree, in any way, shape, or form. The invitation was NOT to declare:
 Image of person seated sideways on bench looking out contemplatively over ocean view with cloudy sky. From Mohamed hamdi on Unsplash. Find it meant, locate in yourself something like:
It didn’t matter if you had a thimbleful or a boatload of their oceanic issue. It didn’t matter if you had it in a house or with a mouse, in a box or with a fox. Katie pointed out that if we could find in ourselves no more than a drop of it (whatever the it of the moment), that drop was where our suffering was; that drop was where our work was. This also meant that the other person’s ocean had nothing to do with us. Nothing for us to judge, nothing for us to measure ourselves by for better or worse. And, BONUS, it meant that we could both look upon them with compassion, and see ourselves in the same kind light. Never did another participant bring in a problem or negative tendency that I couldn’t find in myself. Not once. Even when they offered something that no part of me wanted to find in myself, when I looked with some modicum of willingness & curiosity, I found it. I couldn’t have predicted the profound & enduring impact this would have on me. I didn’t realize the ease it would bring in over time, the clarity of self-awareness, and especially the RELAXING OF SELF-JUDGMENT (which inevitably goes hand-in-hand with a less judgy gaze upon others). FIND IT: A great way to shift judgments of others After the School, I kept looking for—and finding—anything in myself that I caught myself (critically) finding in others. Not always instantly, but it never took that long, either. Judging feels bad, and Katie’s inquiry process had calibrated me to QUESTION MY PERCEPTIONS anytime I felt bad. Before that, I just carried on (cheerfully or miserably, or in some weird combo of both) poring over thoughts that made me hate my life, myself, or humankind. I re-trained myself to catch my own judgments of others as mental intrusions (not normal stuff to think about)—which I often noticed precisely because they felt bad. I learned to redirect my attention from the judgee back to me by directing myself as Katie had: FIND IT. I would look to find in myself whatever I saw that I thought was wrong with them. I still always could. I still always can. Yes, I can be that rude, yes I can be that unfocused, yes, I can yell at my children, yes, I can forget that my agenda isn’t the only one, yes, I can give a cringy performance, yes, I can butt in where it’s not wanted, yes, I can stay quiet when someone voiceless could use a mouthpiece, yes, I can stir up a pointless war … Hey, if someone BOTHERS you, feel free to move away from them. That’s a very good idea. But if you persist in judging them, and try to control them, even with useless mental reviews of what they’ve obviously got wrong, you’ll just create suffering for yourself & others. Katie taught me that I can’t stop judging altogether. The mind judges. But I can
Sometimes, Abraham-Hicks taught me, course-correcting just means moving my attention to what makes me feel better. Locate what I value about someone I’m judging by cataloging Easy Existing Matches to focus on what I genuinely appreciate, enjoy, or value about them. Or ZOOM OUT and remember it all comes out in the wash and people shift and change over time, but maybe not today, and maybe not right away in the exact way I’d like. (Turns out I don’t manage anyone else’s growth process and it’s not my business!) It’s alway weirdly effective to get off the tricky topic completely and focus on what doesn’t churn up resistance, doesn’t make me feel superior or inferior, doesn’t involve evaluating others or myself--maybe get on a topic that just feels nice, fun, easy, satisfying, calming. That’s radical, and it makes for a better internal & external reality. Love & blessings, Jaya
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Or Rather: Feeling and THEN Doing  Image of back of human being facing gentle ocean with arms open wide. From Imdadul Hussain on Unsplash. WHY I’M STILL TALKING ABOUT HOW TO FEEL INSTEAD OF WHAT TO DO First, you’ll find good preludes to this new idea in these 3 topics I’ve already covered:
DO NOT BE DISMAYED: I do know my focus hasn’t been on what we can do and even must do—appropriate & necessary action steps needed to create the change we want, to get to where we’d like to be. I’m absolutely not denying that there are such actions to take. I even agree that they’re important. But DON’T START THERE. Don’t keep teaching yourself that it all hinges on what you do. (This is based on doership, a lovely illusion to dispel.) THE OLD WAY YOU WERE TAUGHT & THE NEW WAY I’M PROPOSING You were taught to focus there, weren’t you? They put on their most serious, even scolding faces, and said: Start in the realm of ACTION, and stay there, buckle down there, bite the bullet there, prioritize being there, finish what you start there, work very hard there, collect & demonstrate evidence of all you’re doing & all you’ve done ... I invite you to open to the possibility that ACTION is actually not your best point of departure. I learned this from Abraham-Hicks (and from practicing their teachings). Action FIRST is not best for the most ease, most efficiency, most flow, most satisfaction, most fun & well-being along the way, most success, or most anything else that you may want. It’s really only best for proving YOU ARE ON IT to those looking on (and maybe giving you money or taking you on guilt trips for what they gave you before or telling you what’s what because they always have known and still do know better than you). They strongly believe that your doing is the key. Leave them to it, and consider another way even for a moment. What if it’s truer that the key to your best life and the ideal point of departure is in minding your feeling state? In cultivating good feelings? Then when action comes out of that habitual way of being, it’s inspired action, it’s wanted action, it’s doable action, it’s satisfying action. (I’ll be writing more on that down the line.) GETTING SPECIFIC WITH THE FEELINGS YOU GENERATE Beyond the idea of feeling good in general as a way of being (see link #3 above for some goods on that), you can also cultivate super-specific feelings that match what you’re after by finding where you have them in your reality now and putting focus there. I know some of you have played with the Easy Existing Matches process I’ve written up from the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. This is truly a fabulous DAILY & super-simple process for keeping in view and living into this principle of finding where what you want, and especially how you want to feel, is available to you before you figure out how to create—or rather, LET IN, respond to, flow into—the change you want. So … what makes you feel loved that’s already in your world?  Photo of person with arms around two German Shepherds from Piermario Eva on Unsplash. Focus first on that—not on the ways the love you want is missing, and not on what to DO to go after the love you want! What makes you feel that abundant sense of finding treasures now, before your purchasing power changes?  Photo of someone rummaging through a vinyl records bin from Kevin Turcios on Unsplash. Focus on that, and play at finding within-reach treasures here & now before you focus on going after the wealth that eludes you. What makes you feel attractive that’s within easy reach already?  Photo of beautifully manicured nails from Bryony Elena on Unsplash. Yes, focus there. Let new actions come later, with ease, once you’ve got that feeling nicely established. You won’t truly embody it if you keep focusing on what’s missing and work hard to nail it in place with dense or frenetic energy. That will not put the swagger in your walk! What makes you feel at peace that’s accessible to you now?  Silhouetted photo of someone walking in woods with a small dog from Michael Kucharski on Unsplash. That’s where the real peace is, right here, already in place. You can only get now-peace now—not future peace. Note that your peace is certainly not in the stuff of your current reality that disrupts your sense of harmony & well-being [justice, goodness, unity, etc]. So don’t put your focus there! (Maybe less news-watching for some of you?) The peace disrupters are easy enough to find, aren’t they? Don’t even add something like in the current era or in the current political climate. In truth, it’s always been easy to find what’s not wanted in the current reality; it’s the easiest thing to focus on what’s missing. (You’ve experienced this to different degrees, and at different scales, but you’ve experienced it all your life!) And you will always find the unwanted when you’re focused on it. For a very long time, it’s probably been your default to TAKE ACTION to shape things up—or even to feel bad about yourself and accuse yourself of laziness, procrastination, or failure if you’re not motivated to act. Well … how about this instead? Get your feeling state lined up. Feel good way more often. Interrupt what feels bad to head for feeling good again. Live this way. Make it a grand experiment. (The biggest fool this can make of you is to turn you into the fool who feels good more often.) Once feeling good becomes a normal way of life, inspired action will too. (That’s the way of it. You can’t NOT act when you feel great and ideas are flowing in.) Much love & many blessings, Jaya  Image of person’s face and shoulders bathed in glittery nightclub lights from Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash. Where do you stand toward where you stand right now? This is a bad idea: Focus on current conditions that are not to your liking—that need fixing, that bother you, that make your life feel like a grind, that stir up dread, that make you review history for what’s been wrong forever or what was lost, that pop you to a future with more of the same, etc, etc. (Follow that link if you want more on that.) This is a very good idea: Find what you already like about where you stand now, what your life is like right now, what feeds you and supports you and lights you up right now. These are bad and good ideas respectively not just in terms of determining how happy you are and how much you love or even appreciate your one wild and precious life. They also affect how and how quickly you get to where you’d prefer to be than where you find yourself right now. Feeling bad as a misguided motivator We don’t need to pathologize wanting change, wanting more, wanting things to be better. In fact, evolution and movement toward greater well-being are the way of this world, this Universe. That’s how it works. That will always be operative. We love taking things to the next level and improving on what we got to before. But in some weird, wobbly moment in time, human beings got it in their heads (and taught that idea to younger ones, and wrote it into books and scripts and songs, so that we all started to treat it as fact) that when we focus on what’s wrong, what’s missing, what needs to be fixed and improved, things will go better. Actually, when we focus on what feels bad to us, we feel bad. We cultivate dissatisfaction. We feel stuck and doubt our capacity to change things, or we notice factors that make change seem hard or complicated or unlikely. We lose track of what’s going well. We talk to others from that perspective and create vibes of complaining or criticism. It’s not pretty. That focus on WRONG actually doesn’t motivate us to move forward and create more of what we want. We do keep trying to make this warped tactic work, though. If you’re noticing now that you feel pretty married to that idea, or you’re pretty sure it’s a focus you’d better hang on to (I mean, it’s been really well-rehearsed and -reinforced), you might simply ask yourself whether there might be other and better motivators for creating the change you want and bettering things that aren’t as you want them to be. You don’t even need to locate and name the new motivators right away. Just open to the idea that kinder and more effective ones might actually exist, and they might serve you better.  Image of adult and baby gazing at each other in delight from Ben Iwara on Unsplash. Here’s what I know will serve you better
 Image of young person with hands and face informed by awe from Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash. Appreciate where you stand right now This is now. This is here. This is where you are. Notice what you like about this place. Notice how it serves you. Notice how much your needs are met. Notice that there’s laughter and beauty and functionality in every corner of the Universe, this one you’re in now included. Or as Abraham-Hicks says, there’s wanted and unwanted in every particle of the Universe—and they (A-H) constantly invite us to point toward or focus on the wanted. From feeling good about where you are, you can feel better still. From there, you can see what else is possible. You’ll be open to the inspired idea coming in, and you’ll have the wherewithal to follow the mental spark with physical action. From there, you’ve got enough of a good mood going and good energy stirring that you can notice one next simple thing to do to feel better better better, to like your life (job, relationship, home, kids, location, avocation) even more, to make this work a bit more smoothly, to help the dynamic ease with this person or that machine or this place. …  Image of cat luxuriating as human hand scratches under their chin from Yerlin Matu on Unsplash. I am not asking you to do anything I’m not doing myself. I live in the midwest right now, caring for my mom in the last phase of her life. I’m here until that’s no longer needed (unless I get different operating instructions as I go). I’ve believed I hate this part of the country, it’s landlocked and I love ocean, it’s conservative politically, it’s not the easiest place to be queer (Ithaca was that!), the topography is flat (boring). I could go on. But I don’t. Every day I love the birds I see. I gaze at the sky and remember that I’ve seen similar skies over the ocean, and think about how the ocean could be RIGHT THERE. I find dogs who want to greet me like a best friend. I visit nearby parks that feel great to me, and where I see not only dogs but blue and green herons, where I saw my first indigo bunting and first bright red summer tanager (and I’ve seen them more than once), where big ole turtles hang out on logs and cool snakes sometimes slither across the path. I’ve found some lovely and queer-friendly coffee shops with adorable baristas who remind me of my kids. I have fun making my mom laugh every day and getting involved with her in the convivial drama of The Great British Baking Show. I do my work by zoom and love it every day, every individual and group session. I play with art supplies daily. I listen to things that feel enlivening and elucidating, often in Spanish. Every day, I love my life. And every day, I believe it’s getting better. And one day, as I’ve done before, I’ll be writing you from somewhere I actually prefer, somewhere tropical, maybe, where English isn’t the first language. I’m on my way, I’m in my becoming, and where I am now is just fine. You’re on your way. You’re in your becoming. Where you are now is absolutely just fine. Love it, and love following any small thing you think of that would make things feel even better. That will INEVITABLY take you to larger such things. (The earlier Mary Oliver quote was … your one wild and precious life. It’s from The Summer Day. Did you get gold stars?) Love & blessings, Jaya METAPHOR #3 OF 3 FOR EASIER (hu)manifestation MANY INACCURATE MIRRORS WERE HELD UP FOR YOU EARLIER IN LIFE. STOP LOOKING INTO THOSE MIRRORS.  Image of a person's distorted reflection in multiple mirrors from Andrej Lisakov on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT THAT FRAGMENTED.  Reflection of a person with a bicycle distorted in a round mirror. From yanping-ma on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT THAT SMALL.  A person stands in a wooded area holding an antique mirror in front of their face. The mirror shows a distorted image of trees. From Natalia Blauth on Unsplash. YOU WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE MISSING FROM THIS PICTURE.  A person holds the edge of a round side view mirror on a vehicle, looking at their distorted reflection. From Natalia Blauth on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT THAT REDUCIBLE.  A distorted, upside down reflection of a human in a round mirror. From Jeremy Mura on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT WRONG IN YOUR ORIENTATION.  A person's reflection in an ornate wall mirror seems distorted by smoke. From Baran Lotfollahi on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT THAT INDISTINCT.  Image distorted mirroring from Brandon Grgigs on Unsplash. YOU ARE NOT THAT INCOHERENT. The mirrors were wrong. Stop looking into those mirrors. Stop telling the story of being that, NOT being that, being treated as that, still being treated as that, being victimized by that, being plagued by that, being stuck with that, being sick because of that, being unsuccessful because of that, having fraud syndrome because of that ... If you really want to get radical, stop telling the story even of needing to heal from that, needing to unlearn that, needing to fix or improve that. What mirror has felt beautiful, right, and good to you? What mirror has shown you the truth of who you are, the beauty that you are, the goodness that you cannot help but be? What mirror has filled you with compassion, appreciation, purpose, pleasure, well-being? Go to, hold up, stand in front of, linger with, recognize all the good mirrors life has held and is holding up for you. Be still with that each time it drops in, receive an accurate vision of yourself, even catch glimpses in passing as they pop in constantly. The more you look for them, or notice you’re seeing them or in retrospect did see them, the more they’ll show up. Be well. Be who you really are. Be here now. That’s your key to creating the life you really want going forward. Love & blessings, Jaya My first metaphor involved the story of my failed trip to Rome and the importance of the journey matching the destination. My second metaphor was about the revolving door of the mind and the injunction to keep concertedly heading toward what you WANT with your thoughts. METAPHOR #2 OF 3 FOR EASIER (hu)manifestation  Image of human beings moving through revolving door (with hill and trails beyond) from Derek Lee on Unsplash. Let’s say that what you’re after (something that matches a heartfelt desire) is in a beautiful building with a lovely revolving door as you enter. If you’re someone who’s more lit up by the outdoors, let’s say that beyond the revolving door, you access entry to a gorgeous, protected natural park where flora and fauna thrive, the hiking is lovely, and the vistas take your breath away. So you revolve about halfway around the entryway and emerge into the next space, right? That’s what you do because that’s how you’ll get to where you want to be. Or, I dunno, do you maybe go all the way around (like children might do just for fun), and then hesitate and go around again, and then start normalizing the circular run, and then just keep going round and round? Obviously, that would be foolish and you’re no idiot: you’re going to head toward where you want to be. BRINGING THE METAPHOR TO LIFE (and to creating what you want in your life) I want to call your attention to a ridiculously typical and normalized way of sabotaging your mental focus on what you want. (It’s also so easy to correct, but it does require that you realize you’re doing this and commit to correcting it!) Here’s how it goes in the mind.
 Image from house nestled in trees from Ivana Radević on Unsplash. Smart reader, you get the point, yeah? Point’s a good word. The mind points
Yep, the revolving door of the mind. I know it’s obvious, but let’s say it outright since MOST PEOPLE DON’T LIVE THIS WAY. Do you? What you want to do is keep pointing toward what you want. Develop mental thought habits and spoken speech habits of pointing only toward what you want! When you develop a predominant (not perfect!) mental focus on what you want, it naturally follows that you believe more and more that you can have it, that it’s on the way, that you know what to do to head in the right direction. You catch the inspired actions that pop in as inner guidance, or the external pointers that strike you as just right or you or pique your curiosity enough to send you exploring. That’s also inner guidance, because what matters most is how the thing coming in from outside (as advice or a website you stumbled on or a book title that you keep hearing) must spark some resonance inside for it to have any meaning for you at all. You’ll find how to go into a huge project or creation at your point of least resistance and keep going in that mode as momentum builds—so that each step feels relatively easy and you don’t get sucked into overwhelm about the whole big picture. When you’re committed to keeping your thoughts going in the direction of what you want, you’ll be quicker to catch the thoughts that don’t match (the ones that will suck you back to the endlessly revolving door) and you’ll get off the topic or reach for a process to get your focus where you want it again. (I love me a focus wheel for putting a fine point on my focus, especially in the morning or whenever I feel a wobble, and the marble game’s fantastic for calling forth the thoughts and beliefs that will serve what you’re after—both from Abraham Hicks.) Point toward what you want! Interrupt what points the other way. Reach for any help to get to a better-feeling place and refocus the mind. You’ve got this. Love & blessings, Jaya Manifestation metaphor #1 is about having the journey match the destination. Manifestation metaphor #3 is about warped mirrors held up for you. |
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