 Photo of a person sitting with cat and holding a mug from Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash. FINE HAS A BAD RAP. Twelve-step folks use FINE as an acronym for fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. It’s common for anyone to plug in FINE for meh, or not much going on, nothing to say, business as usual. By and large, people believe they don’t want to feel FINE. They typically want to feel something more pronounced or more ideal. They want to feel something essential to how they love moving through life. Little SIDE TRIP FOR ENNEAGRAM LOVERS with how each type may want to feel (skip down to Who wants fine? above pic to skip it):
Note that he bullets above follow the essence qualities & preferences of 8, 9, 1 … and count sequentially from there to land at 7. As taught by Russ Hudson, I always begin with the three body types, hence 8 as the starting point.) So … who wants FINE?  Photo of a person raking a lawn with German Shepherd dog looking on from Kübra Arslaner on Unsplash. You do, I promise. Hear me out, if you will. I’ll make it worth your while. Consider FINE to be synonymous with content. Just a baseline contentment that asks nothing of life, for right now, beyond what’s actually happening. Equate FINE with satisfied. This works. It’s enough. It’s good enough. It’ll do for now. In FINE, you’re in acceptance of what is. You’re not finding fault, you’re not squirming in your seat, you’re not resisting what is. You’re letting things be without giving up on what else you might want. You’re certainly not getting out the microscope to magnify some kind of discontent or pointing out the what’s not-quite-right to others. Treat FINE like needs met. Okay. All right. And here’s a little trick I played: Embedded in how I wrote the above is an example right off the bat of what I most want to invite you to do with fine—because this is the latest invitation from Abraham-Hicks in their amazing teachings on aligned living. Did you notice the lingering, the repetition? Don’t just say it’s fine, you’re fine, things are fine. SUSTAIN IT. Remember finding the feeling place? Find the feeling place of FINE and stay with it. Get a solid, strong, embodied sense of FINE. Believe it. Hold it. Know it. Intend it. Look for it. Speak it. Think it. Review it. Bring it to that visceral knowing, right into your bones. For real: be FINE. When you sustain that, guess what happens??? What happens from FINE is a lingering sense of a baseline well-being that feels pretty damn good. It’s reliable and real. You’re really fine—no bullshit. As you SUSTAIN feeling FINE (loving me some repetition, as sustaining it is key), you can’t get stuck there! You truly cannot. You don’t sustain it forever, only long enough for it to take you to what you like even better. And hey—as long as it takes. Stay with it!  Photo of a person in a wheelchair paused in a courtyard with someone ahead they’re smiling at and someone behind them holding the chair, from Getty Images on Unsplash. Remember, everything in the Universe gains momentum. It works both ways: build momentum from everything that annoys, upsets, and distresses you, or build momentum from feeling pretty good. Whatever you focus on will take you to the next level, up or down. From FINE, or content, satisfied, and accepting, you could soon have easy access to optimistic, confident, sure. You could start feeling playful then bump into some (not so) serious fun, amusement, hilarity. You could shift into delight, head-shaking appreciation, pure awe. Those joy spikes could grab you anytime. You know that strong connection to what matters, to the magic, the flow? That sense of being guided and in purposeful motion? Suddenly you’re inspired and taking inspired actions without overthinking things or needing to be sure of any outcome. You’re just catching the wave or riding the current right toward what you most want! You know that feeling when life keeps taking you effortlessly round the next bend? I want you to know it and know that you know it. And let yourself get there from establishing a strong foundation of FINE. Wait, why not just start with feeling fantastic? Let’s just follow our bliss and rev up the passion, no? Um, no. For the simple reason that you don’t always have access to the highest and best. You may be nowhere in the vicinity, as Abraham says. You might fool yourself into thinking you should have access, and then get down on yourself, then plummet quickly from dissatisfaction to depression or even ongoing blah-malaise. So don’t even aspire to that. Aspire to fine. You may have no access to higher emotions because of a (habitual and culturally sanctioned) way of focusing on what’s wrong, what bothers you, what isn’t up to par, what you haven’t gotten done yet, how you’re not healthier, more fit, or further along in your career. It becomes NORMAL for all kinds of NOT FINE things to take up your field of vision, your time, your energy. It’s not just your FOCUS, but also your life force. Then you generate all kinds of unhappiness & unnecessary suffering from there, and you start to think that’s what life is, then all you see is more evidence of that. Momentum. (Aka, Law of Attraction.) YOU HAVE EASY ACCESS TO FINE. You can walk yourself to fine and hang out there. Seriously, it’s okay. Be okay. Just be fine. You won’t get stuck there. Fine is your gateway to all those larger feelings and ways of being that you live for. Call it in, give it your focus, and sustain it. I invite you to a grand experiment: collect the data of all that flows in from FINE. Love & blessings, Jaya Try SEGMENT INTENDING from Abraham-Hicks to point yourself toward FINE bit by bit all day long. Did you notice this post has an audio version? See button just under the title.
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FROM TWISTED FEAR TO FEELING THE VIBEStrange things to experiment with, here in the midwest. So it turns out even how you get through a violent storm is all about focus. And your power to focus is something you can consciously control, whether you use (develop, hone) that power or not. Click on button just above (below subtitle) to skip reading and hear the 11-min audio version.  Photo of a tornado and dark, ominous sky with a field in the foreground from Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash. I have always been afraid of tornadoes. You don’t need a big story for that to be true. Violent wind conglomerates that can twist a house off its foundation and give it a new address—that’ll do right there. My dad did have a childhood tale of trying to race a twister home and getting plucked off his bike and deposited unceremoniously (also unscathed) in the cotton field up the road a ways. So I was predictably feeling fear the other night when a tornado watch had been declared till midnight. Watch means the conditions are right, so pay attention for the screaming sirens that mean the actual demented winds have been sighted—then head for the basement post-haste. I’d made the trip downstairs the week before with my 89-year-old mother, so I could still access the felt sense of that particular warning system—uncomfortably weird, eerie, relentless. (I could use the same words to describe the song of coyote packs, which I also occasionally hear from my bedroom, but I consider that sound divine.) I decided it would feel better not to go to bed for real, but to lie fully clothed on my made-up bed. Solid plan, if based in fearful vigilance: just lie on the edge of trembling for a few hours, ready to walk my unsteady housemate downstairs if need be.  Photo of blurred figure near a window with a blurred nighttime storm visible through textured glass from Emanuel Haas on Unsplash. I’m practiced at and now predicated to think in terms of feeling better. I also treasure the concept and experience of presence, so I make it a point to get back to body awareness as quick as I notice I’ve left it. In fear, I left. In noticing, I wondered right away what else I might do to feel better. The breath is always a great first thing to tune in to and bring in as a felt sense, and doing that brought me back to my senses. I could see and hear the lightning storm exploding in the darkness behind my blinds. I could feel the power of the storm, something charged in the air even here inside the house. From that conscious contact with body and breath, a better-feeling thought came in on its own: There’s something I like about this. That singular thought shifted everything, as I then chose to make it my predominant thought—my focus. I decided to bring the storm closer and let it make its impressions on me. I opened the blinds, then felt inspired to crack the window, and that felt okay. So I lay back on my bed, not quite relaxed, but curious. I was going to allow myself a fuller, more sensory experience of the storm and just let my fear be in the room too. Beyond my uncovered window, the lightning was so striking (okay, no pun initially intended, for real), with traveling craggy patterns and gorgeous, intermittent sheets of light. The cloud shapes staggered in and out of luminescent relief against the darkness. Here I was in a light show! I could also smell the storm-drenched air. It smelled good. The sound, uninterpreted, was magnificent. The more I felt into the storm and engaged with it in a sensory way, the more (and more quickly) my experience shifted. The noise went from scary and bomblike to interesting, intense, insistently alive. Everything felt vibrant. This was the crux of the feeling state that ended up eclipsing the fear I’d begun with: vitality, wide-awakeness, aliveness. In this now-moment, the storm was my connection to life. Lying within that perspective, allowing that to take over my focus, I didn’t even care about tornado or no tornado anymore. (And it never manifested.)  Photo of lightning in the night sky from Ahmed on Unsplash.
Culturally and thus individually, we’re predicated to focus on thinking rational thoughts and taking appropriate actions. In fact we think of focus as meaning focused thought, focus on a task. You don’t need to throw all that out (there’s a baby somewhere in that murky bathwater), but what if you played with more focusing of EMOTION? What if you first paid attention to and worked with and mastered your feeling states? Then from a place of feeling how you want to feel (perhaps something more easy, relaxed, clear, confident), you could think and act accordingly. This has been my grand experiment thanks to the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. It was amazing and surprising to bring it to the storm. I’ve never done such a thing before—just tried with more or less success to soothe my fear and tell myself calming things. My predominant emotion at the beginning of the storm was fear. Lying on the bed consciously seeking to drop down tense muscles and find some flow in the breath, I tuned in to a new possibility of focus. Storms may be scary but they’re also beautiful and fascinating in their electrical fervor. Immersing myself in that didn’t exactly take me to a relaxed, peaceful vibe, but I don’t need peace as a constant emotional setpoint. Do you? I don’t want anything as the only thing I ever feel! And feeling (not thinking about, not taking an action against) the power of the storm took me to awe, wonder, vibrancy—states that emotionally feel way better than fear. This is the power of presence. I left the dream of danger on the horizon (which was rushing my way in a screaming crescendo), I shifted to feeling solid in my body and connected to the breath. Through my senses, I became connected to the storm, no longer separate. The story of being snatched in the night evaporated because it gave way to actual experience and a chosen focus that brought a wanted feeling state. I think if I can do it with tornadoes, I can do it with anything. I think you can do it with anything, whatever the particulars of your amazing life, whatever your senses may bring in as you bring yourself to presence in any moment, in whatever circumstances, and scooch toward your best possible focus here and now. I’ve written about the importance of just feeling better, of prioritizing feeling good. I invite you to a strong intention to keep catching yourself feeling bad for any reason (and it’s so easy to justify feeling bad because … life), and vow to walk yourself, PRACTICE walking yourself in one way or another toward better, better, better … good. This comes straight from the teachings of Abraham-Hicks. The more I play with, learn, practice, and support others in the concepts and processes offered from Abraham, the more I like myself and my life. The more I hone the power of my focus. The more things around me look like more of what makes me feel good. I want this for everyone on the planet. This stuff can freak people out a bit, as we’re taught to be suspicious of too much well-being or feeling good. We’re suspicious of feelings, period. With and without helpers of whatever kind, I invite you to risk feeling good too much of the time and play with meeting yourself and your life head-on, whatever the current conditions. For the record, I love to combine these teachings with coaching processes. I’m very skilled at helping you look into your thinking, notice what you’re prioritizing, find how to create worthwhile experiments to test these principles for yourself in the lab that is your life. I strongly believe that you (anyone!) can find the power of generating more of the feeling states you want, and from there more of everything that makes your life something beautiful and fulfilling that must then be a blessing to the beings of this planet and the Earth herself. Love & blessings, Jaya Did you notice this post has an audio version? See button just under the title. 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 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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