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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
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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. PROCESS #4 of 5 for quick & easy FOCUS & ALIGNMENT Photo of cloudy sky with dark clouds in color variations. From Osarugue Igbinoba on Unsplash. (Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in each post to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.) Today’s piece-of-cake process requires no paper or pen, just the capacity to move through a threshold from indoors to outdoors. If that’s difficult or you can’t leave the premises in the moment you have the impulse to reach for this process (and do follow those impulses!), do you have access to a window? Just look out. Better still if you can open the window for even a moment, in any weather, and breathe a bit of fresh air. STEP OUTSIDE I step outside early in the day, sometimes just for a minute or two, sometimes to hang out for a few. I do this in the midst of my other focusing processes because, seriously, going outside (or your variation of that) fully counts as an alignment process. I’ve met some birds, squirrels, cottontails, and raccoons that way. The bird song is remarkably present in all weathers (even if scant), and the crescendo of music in the springtime is downright life-giving. It’s nice to learn the temperature by encountering it, experiencing it, not reading about it. If you don’t like how it feels, see if you can appreciate the contrast between inside and out; enjoy both the variety and your preference. Gauging the movement in the air as it plays all around you allows a specific kind of connection to consciousness. Air can feel still (almost silent!), flowy, breezy, windy. Watching current air movements register in the rippling branches of trees is a presence practice in itself, calling forth your own ongoing dance with consciousness. And, oh, the sky. The great, ever-present sky, I have learned, provides constant solace.MAKE A GAME OF FINDING COLORS IN THE SKY Spending time in Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, right by the ocean, I was struck by the insane number of beautiful colors in the sky. I developed a habit of being on the beach, usually practicing Qigong, for the hour leading up to and lingering just past sunset. As the sun sets or rises, the shifts are so quick you can almost decipher them (even see them quite clearly) with the naked eye. Watch for this anywhere on the planet. (I once wrote about a little life lesson or reminder from the swiftly changing Caribbean sky.) I’m in Kansas now, landlocked, living in a townhouse in a little cul-de-sac. When I step outside, I see other houses that look almost exactly like my mom’s. My old self would have made this cause for ongoing disdain and possibly depression. Now, I look up. Instead of telling myself that this is not the sky of the tropics (I used to focus relentlessly on what was missing, what I didn’t have), I search for colors in the Midwestern sky. At some point, I started playing a game of finding five colors in any sky. I almost always can. I very often find more. I told this to a color-blind person recently, who was instantly sparked by the idea and declared they would look for textures. (Brilliant! Now I’m noticing textures a lot more.) Even a simple blue sky isn’t monochromatic. There’s a lighter blue near the horizon line, and you may find a deeper shade as the eyes scan upward, and the deepest blue looking right up. White clouds aren’t just white. They’ve got edgy bits of shadow, with notes of violet, mauve, gray. (Get subtle and snobby, as if describing a fine wine.) Closer to the sun, a yellow-gold may gleam through. Even in a gray sky, shades of gray abound, and some of that gray turns out to be mauve or almost dark blue. I could go on. I cannot tell you how fun and fulfilling I find this absurd little game. I can barely express the benefits of looking into the sky. I know them viscerally, not semantically. Russ Hudson, my favorite Enneagram teacher (who gives huge emphasis to presence), sometimes uses the phrase Let it make its impressions on you. I love this phrase. And I love letting the sky make its impressions on me.  Photo of a blue sky with dramatic clouds. Some are dark,and others appear to glow with light. From Jake Weirick on Unsplash. WANT A BRIEF, RELATED AUDIO FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH? Remember that these five quick & easy alignment and focus processes come from Abraham-Hicks. Here is a lovely 10.5-minute video/audio to give you more ideas directly from Abraham about what it does for you to step outside and what you might do, experience, remember, feel, and allow out there. (If you bump into some of their jargon you don’t know, just ignore it and focus on what you instantly get and what appeals to you. There’s something in this for you if you’re drawn in. I find this to be a little gem of a talk.) WANT A LITTLE EXPERIMENT WITH LAW OF ATTRACTION? Of course, it’s nice to be out for the best skies at sunrise and sunset. Here’s a fun experiment to run: if you make a point of stepping outside or gazing out the window more than once in the day, and you’re cultivating a mindset of finding colors, you may notice you start receive tugs or impulses (and follow the impulses!) to look or head out when there’s more going on, when prime-time skies hit. That’s an easy to show yourself that what you give your attention to really does start echoing back to you. This way, you can play with LOA for free and at the risk of catching more amazing skies.  Photo of a pale sky with clouds lit yellow and purple from sunrise or sunset. From Jei Lee on Unsplash. NURTURE & REVEL IN YOUR LOVE FOR THE EARTH For those concerned about the environment, whether as a matter of course or more acutely in the current era, go love it up. Don’t just hate things happening that seem wrong and counterintuitive to you. Do spend time in nature. Remind yourself that beautiful places exist and that birds are flying around and animals are playing, grazing, gathering. The Earth, like your own amazing physical body, is constantly and actively self-repairing and bringing anything that’s off-kilter back into balance. Concern yourself less with what’s wrong (even if you’re right that it’s wrong) and more with healing and thriving mechanisms in progress. And take in and love and experience the beauty, the magic, the ongoing perfection. As Rachel Carson taught, cultivate a sense of wonder and teach and model that to younger human beings (who are almost always predisposed to meet you in the awe). People learn to give a damn better from a sense of what they love and cherish than what they fear and feel as spinning out of control. The Earth is still spinning properly in the perfect orbit. Give her your love. QUICK NOTE ABOUT THE SEDENTARY LIFE As with all of these processes for focus & alignment, stepping outside is great to do several times a day, as needed. You know your body wants to move. Your blood wants some support to circulate. Your screen-weary eyes want to stretch their gaze and take in something that isn’t digital. At the risk of repeating myself, follow every impulse to take even a super-quick pause to look out and up. Your whole body, nervous system, and breathing flow will recalibrate in a lovely way every time you do this. (Drink water while you’re at it!) You can find Abraham-Hicks process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #2, Segment intending, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #3, Zoom in, zoom out, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process $5, Prime the Pump, right here. Process #5 coming soon! And yes, I still love feedback. Love & blessings, Jaya for quick & easy FOCUS & ALIGNMENT  Photo of someone fine-tuning their work on a bicycle wheel. From Natalia Blauth on Unsplash. (Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in each post to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.) I’ve now offered 3 of 5 quick & easy processes (all now on my blog, all linked at the bottom of this writing) to help you choose your focus and come back to alignment (or to a better feeling state) when you find that you’re OFF. Here, I’m hitting the pause button in order to fine-tune what we’re already working with. I’ll come back around with processes 4 & 5 soon. Reminder of where this stuff originates: All of these user-friendly & effective processes come from Abraham-Hicks. If you want it from the horse’s mouth, you can search that name on YouTube and find a ton of free stuff. You can also pay for Abraham Now broadcasts to hear the latest conversations in these virtual international gatherings that happen most months anywhere from one to four times. Past broadcasts are available for purchase, too. I want to flag that for political support in the current reality in the US, both the November 9 and January 29 Abraham Now programs were especially rich with helpful content. Fine-tuning Zoom In, Zoom Out: In brief, this process involves checking out, when you feel bad, how zoomed in you are to a specific topic, or what level of detail you’re in. Noticing that you’re in the thorns, ZOOM OUT! Get away from snaggly details and pull back. Go general. Remind yourself of very general things you can tell yourself or know to be true that soften the whole topic (This too shall pass, I’ve felt this way before and it worked out okay, I don’t need to figure this all out—just need to take one step at a time). Whatever you’re creating or tending or having thoughts & feelings about, approach it or come back to it--ZOOM IN—when you feel good & aligned (capable, supported, calm, trusting, etc). Then the details don’t feel daunting! Great question someone sent: HOW? How do I zoom out when the zoom-in feels like quicksand? My response: By caring more about how you feel. (That, too, is a classic Abraham-Hicks phrase. CARE MORE ABOUT HOW YOU FEEL.) Then you'll catch a whiff of quicksandy stuff before it has so much momentum that it can only suck you in deeper deeper deeper. Everything gains momentum, so please catch things early. Care so much about how you feel that you tune in to the first whiff of feeling bad. Stop and check out what the mind is up to in that moment. You’ll probably find that it’s zoomed in on upsetting details that overwhelm you (stress you out, feel disturbing, …). From there, you have the possibility of choosing your mental focus, and these processes are designed for just that. You can consciously walk yourself to a focus that brings some relief and feels better. Zooming out will almost certainly do that for you. Another way to zoom out before the quicksand takes you is by being willing to interrupt lines of thinking that ego-mind wants to carry on with. The mind will grasp. It will insist on holding to these thought trains for various reasons. Any of these familiar?
Be willing to experiment with letting go fast of habitual thinking that feels bad (whether or not you identify why you typically cling to those thoughts). If you’d like to experiment with a new radical habit of interrupting habitual lines of thinking that feel bad, then you’ll also want new things to reach for to give the mind somewhere else to go. These tools are good ones. They provide very doable ways to focus the mind. I don’t think it’s actually hard to zoom out or to reach for any process in the moment you need one. A lot of the time, what feels hard is simply UNPRACTICED. Are piano scales hard or do they just require practice? I invite you to keep practicing zooming out, no matter when you catch yourself, no matter how deep in the quicksand you end up. Practice any of these tools you feel drawn to play with. Practice because you care about how you feel, you want to feel better, and you see the potential in these tools for helping you feel better more of the time. For some people (certainly for Enneagram heart types!), it helps to keep this in view: Be okay with the fact that your feeling body won’t catch up right away. The heart tends to lag behind the mind—no problem. Work with the mind without demanding that the heart come along swiftly. Your feeling state is always (always, always) affected by what you’re paying attention to. Change your mental focus, and your feelings will eventually follow. IT WON’T WORK IN THE OPPOSITE ORDER, so don’t wait to feel better to focus mentally on something else!  Close cropped view of a person in a shiny suit playing a Schimmel piano. From Dominik Scythe on Unsplash. Fine-tuning Segment Intending: Listening again to a recent broadcast from Abraham, I was reminded of two important things they stress about segment intending (process #2). For that one, you set very simple intentions for just the next thing you’re doing, the next little segment of your day. You’re not writing goals focused on what you want to accomplish (though those are fine too), but instead determining how you’d like to feel during that one bit. If I’m about to work on taxes, I’ll segment-intend all over that to set myself up for being relaxed, at ease, pleased with myself for taking care of business, and so on. (I’ll let your imagination fill in how many laptops may have flown though closed windows before I learned about this tool.) One major point of segment intending: I didn’t mention before that segment intending allows you to choose how you’re presenting yourself to the field of attraction. I love that phrasing. You attract more of what you bring in. Going in to do tax work with anxiety and frustration—hating the task already—means building momentum from there. The risk of flying laptops and shattered window panes increases. Presenting yourself already poised for a relaxed process to be moved through slowly and at ease probably means getting more done, feeling better about the whole thing, and maybe knowing when to quit. Use segment intending to refuel as you go: Segment intending also provides a means of refueling, says A-H. Another super-helpful metaphor. You’ve used a certain amount of energy up to now, and you’re about to rev up for the next activity (task, event, whatever). Are you fueled? The pause to tune in to how you’re feeling and choose consciously how you’d like to feel for the next thing refills your tank. You come back to presence, back to what you’re about & what you’re after. You line back up with Source energy.  Photo of two cats following a robotic vacuum cleaner. From YoonJae Baik on Unsplash. Plug in: Most important, segment intending, and all of these processes, plug you in to Source energy. Abraham has also been using the metaphor of plugging in the vacuum cleaner. If vacuuming stands for the things to get done in life, then you do need to make sure the machine is plugged in, or any amount of pushing the thing around isn’t going to accomplish any of it. (Okay, I did pick a bogus illustration of a robovac that doesn’t plug in, but … cats. To be fair, the robot cleaner does have to charge up first in a plugged-in charging station, so …) Please please please, don’t just propel yourself through the day in any feeling state, going from one thing to the next to get shit done. Live your life consciously. Be in a dance with consciousness. Choose your focus. Connect to what nourishes you all day every day. These process are fantastic ways to do that. Current climate affecting you? Let me throw in that many people in or connected to the US are very distressed these days about political doings and their impact on sentient beings & the Earth herself. If you let the media and the feeling states & preoccupations of those around you choose your focus for you, you know it’s not going to be pretty. I invite you to consciously align with Source. Find larger perspectives. Hold the vision of what you do want and give energy to that. Focus less on what’s horrible and leads you to predict future horrors. How will that get us where we want to be? (Answer: it will not.) Are you planning to feel bad for the next four years? Please don’t. I don’t wish that on anyone. You’re here now, and this is your life. Simply put, when you feel heavy, disturbed & distressed, fearful, angry, outraged—you’re out of alignment with Source energy (and you’re not having fun). Consider how different love feels from fear & dread. Live in love, take excellent care of yourself and your feeling states, and you’ll find where and how to do some good. (Focus on what’s wrong and what’s not as you want it, and your clouds will get darker and darker. You’ll be no good to anyone.) A very different process to help with political pain: Here’s a a tapping or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) session on the topic of minding your state in the midst of the current political climate. NEW ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ll be doing EFT on Saturday mornings in February with anyone who shows up. These will all end up on my YouTube channel. Note that I have a specific playlist to support you with any stress based on political stuff. You can find Abraham-Hicks process #1, Easy Existing Matches, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #2, Segment intending, right here. Find Abraham-Hicks process #3, Zoom in, zoom out, right here. Process #4 coming soon! If you’re drawn to the first 3, please play with them! And keep the feedback coming. It’s part of what fuels me. Love & blessings, Jaya |
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