 (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
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,
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
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Craziest thing when people use spiritual principles against themselves: to justify staying or to force themselves to stay in situations, in relationships, in jobs—in short, in the life—they don’t want to be in. SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES ARE SUPPOSED TO SUPPORT YOU TO MOVE TOWARD THE LIFE YOU WANT. By life in the phrase life you want, I mean your one precious life (at least in this form). Please stop turning that life over to other people who have their own ego-desires and ego-fears and ego-requirements of you. Please stop diminishing that life by staying where it has shown you you don’t want to be. By want in the phrase life you want, I’m coming from the idea that your wanting comes from Source or your Inner Being. You want what you want because it fuels your movement toward what you’re here to get to (to learn, experience, be, do, have, offer to the world). RECAP AND ELABORATIONS Last week I wrote about shifting arrows of attention inward—reversing the arrows that go outward as you obsess over what others are doing wrong, or what’s hurtful or problematic about their behavior. My intention in inviting you to turn the arrows inward, back to you, was and is for your healing and empowerment, NOT to invite you to limit yourself or make yourself small. Certainly not to invite you to live the life that feels bad to you. Part of the point of this arrow-flipping is this: When you’re mulling over what THEY’re up to, you can’t choose what you’re up to, and you can’t go after what you want. Focused outward, you have no agency, because your attention is on what you cannot control (them, their behavior). You also make yourself feel bad by keeping the focus on their bad behavior and how it affects you, instead of shifting your focus to what you want to do to heal yourself (which will at some point make you feel better). It’s not just that I would like you to feel bad less often (I would). It’s also that when you feel bad, you’re out of alignment. So yes, you feel bad when your arrows of attention go outward. Yep, you’re out of alignment when you do that. So yeah, you might wanna turn them around. AND you also feel bad when you’re not creating the life you want. You’re also out of alignment when you’re not creating the life you want. Heal yourself, but not to stay in the life you don’t want. Heal yourself, and head toward what you want. Heal yourself AND create the life you want. Is that clear yet? DON’T USE THE CONCEPT This is here to heal you AGAINST YOURSELF I personally totally love the spiritual concept that the situation, any situation, however unwanted, is here to heal you—not to thwart you or harm you. It’s here for your evolution, to build muscles where you’re weak, to move you toward greater well-being. For me, adopting this idea as a mindset has been a brilliant way to meet whatever life sends me and keep heading toward the expansion, the evolution. It has kept me empowered and in motion where I used to be defeated and immobilized. If you’re AT ALL willing to play with that idea, then you can benefit. (You don’t have to believe it or see it as some universal law). So, for example, if the current problem-person in your story is pushing against every last boundary you have, you’re powerless and keeping your distress active if you ruminate over this disrespectful thing they do (arrows of attention outward). Conversely, if you see the unwanted reality as being here to heal you, you can optimize for healing by turning the arrows of attention inward. WHAT FLIPPING ARROWS OF ATTENTION MEANS FOR SELF-HEALING Using the above example, you might shift the focus back to you by doing any of the following (and this is not even close to an exhaustive list):
That’s the work—the work that heals you. That’s where you’ll be taking care of yourself because you’ll be
Again, focusing on others and all they’re doing wrong will not heal you. WHAT SHIFTING ARROWS OF ATTENTION INWARD DOES NOT MEAN Someone wrote me saying something along the lines of: yeah, but do you really just work on you and do you just shift your perceptions and do you just forgive them and let them keep doing blah blah blah and let it all go? NO! NO, YOU DO NOT. Can you remember back (or, hey, just look back) to the before-last set of bullet points—the ones followed by the words, That’s the work—the work that heals you? The work is NOT to keep yourself in unwanted situations and stay close to people who do things you don’t want in your field. And CRAZY CONCEPT: The work that heals you is not your only work! There’s also the work of creating your life consciously. (And that work can involve a whole lot of play. It’s fun. It’s meant to be fun.) YOU’RE HERE TO CREATE THE LIFE YOU WANT. Please use spiritual principles to support you to create the life you want. NOT TO ACCEPT THE LIFE YOU DON’T WANT. A POINT THAT I ESPECIALLY WANT YOU TO GET Just because a situation or person is here for your healing does NOT mean you want more of them. It often means quite the opposite. METAPHORS TO HELP YOU GET THIS FOR REAL Let’s say a nasty painful full-body red rash is here to heal you because it’s reacting to something in your field that’s not good for you and it’s seeking to push toxins out through your skin. Thank you, rash. I can see you as a healing event. AND I FUCKING DON’T WANT TO THEN ENSURE THAT I HAVE A RASH GOING ALL OVER MY BODY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE SO I CAN KEEP HEALING. Another metaphor (no really, aren’t metaphors the best?): Let’s say you’re in a car accident and it shows you that you have a bad habit of not paying full attention while you drive. You’ve always [known you’re] [thought of yourself as] a good driver, so you gave yourself permission to do stuff with eating and drinking or texting or playing music or having chats, and this time that got you into big-bad trouble (or a close-enough glimpse of big-bad trouble). THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS NOT TO SCHEDULE CAR ACCIDENTS ONCE MONTHLY TO MAKE SURE YOU KEEP IN VIEW HOW IMPORTANT IT IS NOT TO DO THINGS THAT COULD CAUSE TROUBLE. The moral of the story is more like, quit doing those things. Stay alert. Connect to guidance: pay attention when you get an inner tug reminding you it’s a bad idea when you even think of reaching for something unsafe. Change your behavior. Change your life. Did the metaphors help? THE PARTICULAR CASE OF FORGIVENESS Let’s look at this from the forgiveness angle, since that especially trips some people up. Go to next subheading if you don’t need this one (or just hit the bulleted list). Some version of this question comes up a lot: If I do my work (question my thoughts, shift my perceptions, turn my arrows of attention around), does that mean I forgive them and carry on as before? Don’t pair forgiving with allowing what does not work for you to keep happening. There’s no virtue in that. Forgiveness does not require or even want that. So sure, forgive. More precisely stated, intend forgiveness, move toward forgiveness; forgive at the point you’re able to now and forgive more as life calls you to it. (Forgiveness almost never happens as a one-time thing. There’s no switch to flip.) BUT FORGIVENESS DOES NOT MEAN
NO NO NO NO NO nonononononononononono. (And turning outward-pointing arrows of attention back inward to yourself doesn’t mean any of that either.) AT THE RISK OF REPEATING MYSELF: YOUR WORK IS BOTH HEALING YOURSELF AND CREATING THE LIFE YOU WANT Whether you do or don’t forgive, to whatever degree you’re able to forgive now, your work isn’t just to shift perceptions or arrows, or to focus on your inner healing. Your work is also to create the life you want. And life (especially problem-situations with problem-people) shows you what you do and don’t want. YES, they’re here for your healing. And they’re here to show you
So … Question your thoughts, and leave. Change your perceptions, and head toward what you like better. Flip your arrows of attention, and establish clear boundaries that you keep honoring. Any work you do that you do for healing, also do it to point yourself toward more of what you want and to keep heading that way. Love & blessings, Jaya P.S. Without changing the language of what's written here, I'm increasingly moving away from ideas of healing ourselves to a focus on cultivating total well-being. Abraham-Hicks teaches that when we think in terms of healing, we're in a consciousness of disease, or believing that there's something wrong with us that needs healing. It's more empowered and more conducive to thriving for us to hold a consciousness of evolving into ever- greater well-being and vitality.  Photo of stylized arrows going in different directions on differently colored backgrounds from Roma Kaiuk on Unsplash
Does it kind of irk you when something can still GET you? Maybe when you’re REACTIVE and you just don’t react so often or in the same way but DAMN, this time it totally grabbed you before you could think to pause? Or when you go down the rabbit hole that you actually have a whole bunch of tools to avoid in the first place or hop back out of in a hurry? Oh but now you’re in it, and tunneling in ever deeper. Or when you CANNOT STOP TELLING THE STORY of what’s happening or what happened. Maybe you’re even doing so well in general these days that you’re not even telling it to others—but here it is on a loop inside your own head, this unwanted thing replaying like the worst muzak in the department store you can hardly stand to walk into? I kind of do have an easy fix for this. And by easy (um, of course), I don’t mean fun. The ego-self or ego-mind (or the part of you who knows you’re right about what you’re right about here) won’t like it one bit. Ready? TURN THOSE ARROWS OF ATTENTION AROUND.
But all of that has this in common: your arrows of attention are pointed outward. To state it simply & succinctly (and you know I can go on & on about most anything): This does not serve you. What would serve you instead? Like really serve you? Like put you on the Fast Train to your Liberation—or if we scale down how grandly that’s phrased, how bout the fast train to getting
I think you know. But just for kicks, let’s make it explicit. Turn those arrows around. Focus on you, not on them. Turn the negative attention you have on them to some positive, kind, healing attention to yourself. No rush, sweetheart. Maybe first you need to exhaust railing about what’s fucked-up about their behavior or words or tone or cluelessness or whatever-whatever. Maybe you need to scream and stomp and cry and get it out of your body. Maybe you need to listen to your heart outside of that story, but the story is needed right now to keep the emotional reality going long and loud enough—as your heart waits patiently, knowing the story will get you there, maybe in another minute or so. … When you’re ready, turn those arrows around. Bring them back to you. Do we even know what this means? Here’s some of what happens when you turn the arrows of attention back to yourself:
MOST IMPORTANT WAY TO WORK THIS CONCEPT: notice your arrows of attention are heading the wrong way, and that all your energy is going there with them! This is a lot of what I do with people as a coach. I strongly believe we can get it on our own, or in other ways, through many venues and modalities, with many kinds of helpers, good books, etc. However you want to go about it flipping those arrows, with or without external support, first and foremost, NOTICE they’re aimed outward. Need some clues for what it looks like when arrows of attention point out, not in?
Meet yourself, luv. Be your own cupid and send some love arrows your own way. You’re worth your own attention. (Strategies in linked article for things to do and not do when you're OFF. Be excellent to yourself with these 11 rules!) Love & blessings, Jaya The following blog post on the idea to keep creating the life you want as you heal old things follows and builds on the concept of arrows of attention quite nicely.. |
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