play with your power to create, enjoy your dance with consciousness Image of sewing supplies, including a button drawer, on mint-green mesh fabric from Curated Lifestyle on Unsplash. GAME = FUN GAME = EASE GAME = LOW STAKES GAME = A WONDERFUL WAY TO LEARN & PRACTICE SOMETHING NEW GAME = GETTING OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY GAME = NOT TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY GAME = Since this is no big deal, I’m going to see how well I can do, have fun doing it, and not worry about results. (Aka, detachment from outcomes already in place.) I’m going to tell you here about a game I made up to play with clients that has served us all very well. Think of it as a manifestation game. Or think of it as a way to play with everyday magic. Or simply see it as an opportunity to feel more alive and generate more easy fun as you move through each new day. You may know I’m a proponent of grand experiments. This is a small one! It costs next to nothing (a simple intention & some awareness) and can yield high results. Kind of like buying a scratch-off lottery ticket and winning the jackpot—except it’s more fun than scraping gray gummy stuff off a card with the edge of a quarter. The button game allows you to gather bits of data every day that confirm your relationship with a responsive Universe—you’re in dialogue with Source energy and not the only one talking. Maybe you already cultivate and love being in a dance with consciousness. Or perhaps you want to increase your ongoing awareness of your connection to your Inner Being and ALL THAT IS (along with the delicious fun & sense of belonging that goes with that). If you have any interest whatsoever in knowing & harnessing your power to create your reality or living in conscious contact with all that is alive and sparkles, I highly encourage you to run this gentle experiment.  Image of castle in the mist from Tim Rebkavets on Unsplash. The basis of the button game is an intriguing quote from Abraham-Hicks: It’s as easy to manifest a castle as a button. Maybe you beg to differ. Buttons are a dime a dozen. You may be wearing several right now. So you have little or no resistance to buttons—no aversion, outrage, annoyance, or even much of an opinion! You’re not worried about not having enough buttons or being unworthy of buttons. You’re not concerned about anyone seeing you as an entitled jerk or a fraud if you have too many or insufficient buttons. You don’t think you need more resources than you have access to in order to fill up on all the buttons you could want. They’re just buttons! Conversely, you might have all kinds of resistance to castles. Just reverse everything above, and there it is: lots of reasons to keep castles way out of reach from the realm of possibility you typically reside in. So how do you play the button game? If you’re curious about this idea that it could be as easy to manifest a castle as a button, then at least show yourself that you’re a rock star at manifesting buttons. Establish with a playful daily practice—a GAME— that you can manifest a button just because you’re carrying that intention and constantly seeing it fulfilled. You’ll find your solid footing on the button end of the scale and, from there, you can scooch all the way to castles. Note that you’re not GENERATING buttons. You’re inviting life to send buttons your way, then your job is to notice that life is doing just that. Look, there’s a button! Damn, another button! Add to your job description to appreciate the button, admire the button, enjoy the button, and more than all of that, appreciate that you’ve set up a game to play with the Universe (the Force, Source energy, God, whatever you like) AND IT HAS JOINED YOU IN IT. Which can equally happen if you play a castle game. If you go for the things you want in life (the job, the relationship, the creative expression) and you actually believe that your intention plus noticing how life is playing with you can bring it on. … But start with buttons.  Image of person buttoning up a nicely crumpled linen golden shirt from Hrant Khachatryan on Unsplash.
To play the button game, declare a low-stakes (button-sized) thing you’d like to see every day that you have no resistance to and ultimately no need for. You’re going to manifest this thing daily just because you’re intending and inviting that. It will in no way affect your life, never mind your well-being, if you turn out to be a total loser at this game. (You won’t, though.) Clients I’ve played this game with (especially in my manifestation groups) have declared these sorts of things as buttons:
Note that button-sized is quite a subjective concept. If you have a big story about feeling disconnected and no one else ever reaching out to you first, then setting other people reaching out first or initiating things as your button won’t work at all. It’s got too much charge. Go for something easy that will rev up no resistance FOR YOU. When you’ve got buttons down, you can go for something bigger on your way to castles. Perhaps you’re already up for a heftier project. Find your just-right level of engagement, and tweak it if it’s not feeling fun and easy. This game works best when it activates your joy, delight, awe, wonder … A word about forms (and more of what the button game can teach you) Let your daily button surprise you. It can take many forms, and some may be so unexpected, you could miss them altogether. Some buttons already obviously leave room for unspecified form—for example, heart-shaped things could come as flowers, leaves, rocks, puddles, clouds; jewelry, dots on I’s, a mark on a dog’s fur; a dollop of mashed potatoes, a pile of laundry on the floor. But any button can come to you in various forms and venues. Here are just a few:
My client whose button was yellow birds had it delivered one day in audio form when someone else had the TV on. Their focus on their own task was interrupted by a classic cartoon voice—Tweetie Bird musing out loud about spotting a cat. (Does everyone know what color Tweetie Bird is?) When I was playing with unexpected bird sightings, I had so much fun with that. The red cardinal poking in and out of a bush in different spots. The sparrow in the coffee shop’s outdoor space taking a sip of water from the edge of the dog dish provided. The hawk suddenly twisting at the tree line as if deciding on the fly to perch here now (with a brilliant flash of sun on its fiery tail feathers). I recently launched a new round with TWEAKS as my button—that is, representations of little adjustments needed (as opposed to major revamps). I hadn’t thought of my new button once on day one, until my last client told me they were bringing a topic that just needed a tweak. I got a fun little jolt and felt a little secret smile form inside me. (I love that aspect of the button game.) In every realm of life, the Universe can always bring in what you want in any number of forms. Super-specific instructions about your desires are not needed (and indeed, could get in the way of forms coming in that you haven’t yet dreamed up—certainly not that specifically)! The button game will give you a visceral knowing of this truth as you engage with it daily, and better, feel surprised and delighted by the plenitude and sheer brilliance of the forms your intention takes when manifest. As in all of life, you don’t need, in the button game, to determine the how. You don’t need to figure out, declare, or orchestrate the specifics of what comes to you. Staying with the general essence of what you want and knowing that it’s on the way is the bulk of what’s needed. Watch for it, and fully enjoy and appreciate it when you notice it’s here. Trust your own capacity to recognize what you’re after, and maybe find a time daily to remember and savor your button—or look for it retroactively if you missed it in the moment. What you playfully train yourself to do in the button game, you can do with everything you want in life. And that could even be castles! Love & blessings, Jaya Did you notice this post has an audio version? See button just under the title.
0 Comments
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.  Photo of rainbow from car on highway from Husam Yaghi on Unsplash. JUNE 22 WAS MY BIRTHDAY—my favorite day of the year. I stepped outside early in the morning then fetched a broom to sweep the messy walkway. I took my time so I could linger in one of the most delicious breezes I’ve ever felt on my skin. It was a strong one, too, and I knew I was doing thankless work that’s instantly nullified by the next mess. But … I wasn’t in it for the thanks, or even for the task. WHICH IS THE MAIN EVENT? Have you ever had the experience of going outside to work in the garden or do some fix-it project or wash your car—really because you just wanted to be outside? And bonus, a chore gets done while you’re out there. Or have you ever gone out into the world rationally believing that what you’re up to is shopping or picking something up from your work place, and as you go about your business, you take in some beautiful or interesting sights and lovely sensations, or you hear a near-forgotten song you love on the radio, or you run into someone wonderful (and maybe something recent made you think about them, so now the magic has kicked in as well)? Which was in fact the main event—the errand or the joy-producing, soul-nourishing stuff along the way? Or have you ever gone somewhere with a particular idea of what would unfold or a particular goal in mind, or entered a conversation thinking you were moving with this person in a certain direction, and then you discovered that something entirely different was underway? Whether you expected a proposal and got a break-up instead, or you expected a routine catch-up and instead got a tempting business proposal—truly, the good or the bad of it doesn’t matter. You could say it’s all good, and you might notice it all comes with challenges. More important, it’s all the stuff of life! WAKING UP TO REALITY So what’s more aligned with reality? The stuff we check off lists, or the stuff that grabs us and generates awe and other stirring emotion? The stuff that feels good because we’re properly adulting or the stuff that reminds us of what we’ve known since earliest childhood, that life is fun and fascinating and delicious and hilarious and profound? The stuff we sleep-walk through or the stuff that wakes us up? Well, actually, in presence, we can be awake through both kinds of events. And, of course, both are reality. And both are happening concurrently ALL THE TIME. OUR REALITY ON PLANET EARTH IS OUR DANCE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS. The spiritual stuff that delivers goosebumps or quiet smiles or hard laughter is in no way opposed to or separate from the stuff that keeps us financially solvent or takes care of the physical well-being of our bodies or homes. I have a friend spending this day cleaning up flooding in her basement. I learned this in a WhatsApp exchange in which I did NOT write that I’m so sorry she has to do this pain-in-the-bum stuff. I wrote, Wishing you any bit, glimpse, or, um, flood of sparkle and joy as you set your basement straight. She will not be offended that I didn’t treat her like some god-awful thing had gone wrong, because she’s right with me. She lives in a gorgeous flow with whatever life delivers and walks herself through it brilliantly & kindly and keeps learning and loving as she goes. She’s also hilarious and I love being around her. LET LIFE SHOW YOU Let life show you what you’re doing as a human being in a material world, and let life show you what is constantly shimmering under the surface. Let life show you whether the next event is to your liking or not, but go in no matter which you think it is, curious about what cool next experience or what gorgeous new understanding or what kind of fun you’ll get this time. Go swimming without knowing whether you’ll be in the shallows or the depths this time, and just LOVE the swim.  Image of two dolphins leaping out of the water from A Chosen Soul on Unsplash. As I keep celebrating my 63rd birthday, as I savor this amazing life I’m in, I invite you to the following. Keep having fun and keep being curious and keep showing up IN CHOICE, as if you’re doing it all for you. Because ultimately, you are. This is YOUR DANCE WITH CONSCIOUSNESS, however you choose it, whether you hold a consciousness of choice or not. If you choose according to other people’s expectations, you’ll end up in resentment or deep dissatisfaction or at some level of disconnection from your authentic self. FORGETTING & REMEMBERING Later, if you find yourself telling someone (in your head or out loud) (we can be even more shrill in our heads, can’t we?) (I have a head, I know all about this) (I digress) … If you find yourself declaring how hard you worked or how much you sacrificed or alllllllllllll that you did (that they’re failing to appreciate), you’ll be inaccurate or at least beside the point in your take on the matter. What’s truer is that you forgot why you’re really here. What’s truer is, you forgot to have fun and love every moment of the journey—or at least appreciate its value and stay open to the capacity for anything lovely, interesting, wondrous—for anything life- or love-infused)—to show itself at any time; to enter into your lived visceral sensory experience of the dynamic now in the dynamic now, NO MATTER THE CONTENT OF THE MOMENT. Don’t accept being in autopilot. It’s fine to catch yourself there (yay, you caught it!). Course-correct back to presence. Don’t do things to check them off lists. Don’t miss the journey. And don’t suffer to be good or do a good job or have others think you’re a good person. Nothing will be accomplished by that except more suffering for you to live through and walk yourself out of. Live your beautiful life. The beauty is astonishing. THIS, TOO, IS ABOUT MANIFESTATION I’ve been sharing manifestation nuggets. I didn’t call this one that, but it really is. When you’re living in the mindset described here and the feeling state that goes with it, you’re much open, you’re in a state of allowing, and you generate the creative ideas & energy to move toward what you want with concrete actions in this physical world. Again, the spiritual and the earthly all married together, not separate, not at odds with each other. Love & blessings, Jaya Two more posts that touch on your dance with consciousness: 1. Follow the whispers & impulses that call you to feel alive 2. Trees & Coral put to proper use (or, Are you a Clown fish or a Mockingbird?) third (hu)manifestation nugget Photo of two bees on a yellow flower from Mario Beducci on Unsplash. This writing contains one manifestation principle plus: 1) some thoughts to support your deeper understanding; 2) some ways to play with it and practice. Here’s nugget #3. TREAT & USE APPRECIATION AS YOUR GREATEST ALLY IN MANIFESTATION. WHAT THIS MEANS When you’re …
… YOU’RE OUT OF ALIGNMENT WITH YOUR INNER BEING. Other ways to say that: You’re out of alignment with …
Hey, you can even just call it being out of alignment, period, and drop any name for the pure-essence-can-do-creative-energy you’re out of alignment with! Is it already clear & obvious to you that you’re not going to step into your life at your most powerful level when you feel like it’s such a struggle and things are kind of stacked against you or you’re doing it all wrong or missing some crucial piece? Is it equally clear & obvious that when you’re out of alignment, you’re not at ease or feeling your power to generate more of what you want? What’s the quickest way to come into alignment? We’ve already looked at feeling good and loving your life on an ongoing basis, or prioritizing feeling better when you can’t feel good. That will keep you aligned and coming back to alignment as you simply care about and manage or take care of how you feel. Really make a project of it. The P-word again: Prioritize it. But is it also clear & obvious to you that APPRECIATION is the easiest access point to feeling good? To establishing an ongoing feel-good place inside you that you can keep coming back to as an easy touchstone or point of reference? Let’s look at the practice, or the practical application of APPRECIATION AS YOUR PORTAL TO ALIGNMENT. HOW TO WORK WITH THIS CONCEPT Cultivate appreciating anything you can feel good about having and benefiting from in your world, life, home, relationship, work, family, location, etc, etc, all day every day. Appreciate what you like about your bed and bedroom or sleeping space when you wake up. Appreciate your access to drinking water and the supplies and utensils to make or buy the hot beverage of your choice. Appreciate the weather, the yard, the street, the signs of nature all around, the breezes, the temperature, the green, the gray. Appreciate the clothes you have to wear. Appreciate each small thing your amazing body allows you to do. Appreciate good sensations and flavors and smells and movement. Appreciate your five senses, or however many you have access to at whatever level! Appreciate the food you’re eating. Choose it, take time to prepare it consciously, chew it, taste it, savor it. Appreciate the faces around you. Appreciate the energies around you. Appreciate the silence, appreciate the sounds. Appreciate your agency, all the minute and huge ways you have choice, your capacity to choose. Appreciate how you show up. Appreciate how others show up. Appreciate time and how it supports you and quit saying there’s not enough of it; quit treating it like it’s working against you. Appreciate your capacity to NOTICE that you’re functioning right now in a stressful, anxious, irritated, fretting [whatever] way, and your ability to reach for soothing tactics, movement, breathing, pausing, reframing, opting in, redirecting, delegating, asking for help … Appreciate how you grow, how you’ve grown, how you’re teachable, how amazing teachers, guides, wisdom has come to you. Appreciate that you do enough, you’ve done enough, this is all enough, for now. You are enough, always. Is it clear and obvious that I could keep going and so could you? All that we can appreciate in a life, an era, a season, a day, a moment, one single task, the one that’s ours to do right now—truly, it’s endless. Living in a bottomless pit—okay, maybe a well—okay, fountain, ocean … or how about infinite space of APPRECIATION! Living in ongoing boundless appreciation is not only possible but extremely advisable for feeling good and living in alignment. Bring that to your moment-to-moment everyday life! It can help to write it down, as in the Easy Existing Matches exercise. The more you appreciate everything as it is here and now ... Wait, there are many ways to say that
AN IMPORTANT WORD ON ENJOYING THE JOURNEY That enjoy-the-journey bit is important, because each arrival, each manifestation, has a whole journey that goes with it and came before. Some are quick, some are long, some are harrowing, some involve lots of fun and adventure … in any case, there’s a journey. Enjoy the journey. Don't miss the journey. (That could be a whole nugget in itself, but we’ll let it piggy-back here onto APPRECIATION AS KEY.) For those wondering why I’m not talking about GRATITUDE, it’s very deliberate. I was already not a fan when I learned from Abraham-Hicks the greater power of APPRECIATION over gratitude. If gratitude feels amazing to you, keep it! But for many of us, it has a tinge (sometimes unconscious) of you’d better be grateful, or you deserve nothing if you’re not grateful, or it’s all going to be snatched away from you if you’re not grateful. None of that is empowered or aligned. I’ve written about appreciation vs. gratitude in this post with a recipe for the gratitude-intolerant. I’ve written here about appreciation as an underappreciated tool for creating your life. ENJOY CULTIVATING APPRECIATION. It naturally feels good, it easily brings you into and supports you to spend more time in alignment. It gives you easy access to coming back to alignment when you’ve slipped away (and slip we will). It’s truly your best ally in the manifestation game—and the game of life. Love & blessings, Jaya Find the second (hu)manifestation nugget here. Find the first (hu)manifestation nuggets here. second (hu)manifestation nugget This writing contains one manifestation principle plus: 1) some thoughts to support your deeper understanding; 2) some ways to play with it and practice.
Here’s nugget #2. LOOK AWAY FROM CURRENT CONDITIONS. WHAT THIS MEANS Current conditions means just that: the things you perceive and can name that describe your reality at this moment in time. Most people love to gaze at and talk about current conditions—but especially focusing on the parts that aren’t wanted, that describe what’s wrong or what’s missing, or that fuel discontent! For example:
A typical argument for paying close attention to current conditions is that they tell the truth! This is the REALITY. We must be rational adults and look at that head on. Anyone who’s worked with or read me knows I’m a fan of reality. It’s great to be real about what is and not tell ourselves pretty or ugly little lies. HOWEVER, when we focus on what’s wrong, what’s missing, what’s not the way we want it, then that’s what we’re keeping in view & amplifying—and that’s what we become a match for. Most people have heard the Law of Attraction 101 statement (it’s probably a poster you can buy at a box store by now) WHAT YOU FOCUS ON EXPANDS. (Too bad it’s not the seventies—would’ve been a velvety neon blue-light poster.) What you carry around as your predominant focus creates your internal climate, then that’s what you see all around you and call forth. Anyone who’s been focused on what BOTHERS them about their mate has seen those things get bigger and bigger, or has been mirrored by their partner being equally BOTHERED by them—or both! Apply that to anything in life. One way to see this differently is to think of what’s happening now, those current conditions, as the result of what you’ve been up to and what you’ve been thinking about and how you’ve been feeling. What’s here now really tells the story of what you’ve been focused on before. If you’ve felt stuck financially, you’ve been worried about money, you’ve given lots of attention to what you don’t have or what isn’t coming in … then you’re a match for the low number currently in your bank account. But your power is here and now, and what you’re thinking, feeling, and focusing on NOW can create a very different set of current conditions, perhaps sooner than you think. Feeling good, prosperous, capable of generating funds and good ideas for how to get more; appreciating how well your needs are met right now in the less-than-ideal current reality—all of that will make you a match to a different number in your bank account. So that’s why it’s (really & truly) okay, as a reasonable person doing your fair share of responsible adulting, to look away from current conditions. They describe what you’ve been up to before. They invite (maybe BEG) you to focus on what’s more to your liking NOW, so that you become a match to (and have inspired ideas that match) something much closer to your ideal vision. HOW TO WORK WITH THIS CONCEPT Once you opt in to the idea that you don’t want to focus on current conditions—or are willing to launch a grand experiment focusing on the wanted that’s already here in your life and keeping your gaze on the vision of what you want—then it’s really just a matter of INTERRUPTING thoughts that bring you back to fixating on what is, as you get increasingly disgruntled or disgusted or distressed. Interrupting is an underrated tool. Interrupt early and often. Stop the thoughts that take you in the wrong direction. Quit talking about it. Interrupt it mid-sentence. If you can say it sweetly, just tell yourself, Oh, shut up, sweetheart. Then REFOCUS as quickly, clearly, and deliberately as you can on what you want and what’s already here that you appreciate. Speak (and think) the vision, not the current conditions. Speak the wanted, not the unwanted that seems to pervade your reality. Reviewing and telling your current conditions AGAIN will get you focused some more on what’s lacking—and make you a match for lack, for stuck, for wondering when what you want will ever come your way. If you can’t feel good or empowered about the problematic topic yet, just refocus anywhere, onto something-anything-whatever you can feel good about easily. Go play. Be in nature. Do a work task that’s easy or pleasurable, that makes you feel competent or kind of brilliant. Hang out with someone who wants to talk about something beautiful or inspiring or hilarious. Current conditions tell the story of yesterday’s focus. Your power is in your focus here and now, and placing that on what you want and what’s already here and working well for you. Love & blessings, Jaya Find the first (hu)manifestation nugget here. Find the third (hu)manifestation nugget here. |
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed