​From a recent Abraham-Hicks daily message: “The Universe is not punishing you or blessing you. The Universe is responding to the vibrational attitude that you are emitting. The more joyful you are, the more Well-being flows to you.”

Some of you have heard that in my current life with my elderly mother, I’m seeing lots of (bits of) Hallmark movies. Which has led me to coin the term Hallmark-movie wisdom. Can you guess how wise I consider these constant nuggets dispensed by vanilla characters who never offend?

Some of the scripts feature references to THE UNIVERSE, and I’m always fascinated by how this Universe is presented. Most recently, our protagonist was in (pretty) tears because it seemed that she and her friends were DOING THE RIGHT THING and while her friends were getting REWARDED (which meant, they were getting something they wanted and having fun in the process), she was being PUNISHED (or, not apparently getting the outcome she wanted and having less & less fun as she focused on that).

The Universe DOES work this way: You will tend to have increasingly less fun as you focus on all that’s not going just as you want it to. (Nailed that one, scriptwriter.)

The Universe, I daresay, DOES NOT work this way: You get rewarded for your goodness or doing it right by getting just the outcome you want (and perhaps even the desired journey on the way to that desired outcome).

And if you don’t get that, you’re being punished.

Factor in the sad predicament of thinking you’re doing the right thing but not being rewarded, then it also feels grossly unfair that the hoped-for outcome was withheld, and now you’re a victim of this cruel Universe that failed to notice what a good little vanilla girl you are (or whatever your flavor & gender identification).

​To get out of punishment/reward mentality:

Notice that this mindset was instilled in you when you were quite young, and perhaps your child self is interpreting events and getting stuck in feeling bad about things when you’re there. Call in your adult self who gets that shit happens and there’s no reward or punishment about it.

Call in your spiritual self who maybe gets or is starting to get or has experimented with getting that when you carry on believing you’re supported by life, and keep aiming the direction you’d like to go, then you don’t need to get tripped up on evaluating all the ups and downs in the journey.

In fact, you can treat open and shut doors as equally helpful—both offering good information to have, and letting you go where you are and aren’t going.

And you can treat hard or challenging things as building muscles for you that are currently still weaker than you might like. (Remember: muscles are appealing and make you feel strong and capable and badass and maybe even sexy, so build those muscles instead of sinking into a puddle of punishment mentality that just makes you want to give up & cry.)

Your spiritual self probably also knows (and can be called on to remind you) that the more we look away from outcomes while we’re on the journey, the more we benefit from the journey (which includes having fun, feeling good feels, and having wondrous & worthwhile encounters & adventures along the way), and the more PRESENT  we are—so we don’t miss the journey or get lost in a constant referencing of the future and what it’s going to bring in terms of outcomes.

Your chronologically aging self, whatever number of years you can put to that, almost certainly knows that outcomes are surprising. And that sometimes, in retrospect, what seemed like a bad outcome was a bullet dodged, or something invaluable learned or gained, or someone precious brought into the story, or a fantastic story to tell, or … or … or …

So here are some possible components of a reframe:

You don’t even need rewards to be happy.
You don’t need to label outcomes as good or bad.
You don’t need to be bothered by the ups and downs along the way.
You don’t need to assign meaning to whether things are going along to your liking or not or landing just as you thought you wanted.
Do not define anything as punishment, then you’ll get increasingly free of needing to evaluate whether you’re good or prove that you are.

Do focus on loving your life.
Aim toward what you want. (Look away more from what you don’t want.)
Have as much fun as possible along the way.
Gain from anything that does or doesn’t happen.
Carry on and watch for how life keeps supporting you in a million wonderful & often wonderfully unexpected ways.
Watch for how much well-being flows your way.
Watch for how much well-being you generate by living & loving your life and not seeing any of it as reward or punishment.

Love & blessings, Jaya

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​Want an even quicker read? Go through and just read the bold. That tells the whole story.


Pivoting is both a simple concept and a simple tool. It’s not even a process. It’s a quick mental adjustment you make and keep making to go from the unwanted to the wanted.

Use it while in motion or being still. Use it while working, walking, cooking--whenever you’re capable of having a thought and being aware of that thought. Use it while waking or dropping off to sleep. Anytime, just for a moment.

Yep, this is also from Abraham-Hicks.

Pivoting has 3 steps.
1) You notice something that’s not to your liking.
2) You consider what WANTED thing corresponds to this UNWANTED thing.
3) You shift your focus to the WANTED.

Examples:
1) You notice you’ve been getting sloppy with punctuality again.
2) You make a mental note that you prefer being a little early to be ready on time.
3) You feel great about that decision (instead of bad about the lapse) and you head out (or to the computer) early for the next appointment.

1) You notice you’re having an irritation response.
2) You pivot toward soothing what bothers you and toward accepting what is, as it is, here and now.
3) Right now, you breathe, relax the muscles that tensed up, tell yourself it’s really okay.

1) You notice you’ve been doing too much and things feel glutted.
2) You pivot toward doing less, finding pauses, making spaces.
3) You tell the story of increasing spaciousness and do every little thing you see to promote that—tidy up this corner of the cabinet, say no just to something between you & you (that shopping trip can actually wait, and today I stay home); say no to an invitation even if it has appeal—because it’s more appealing to do less right now.

Notice from the above examples that what brings the UNWANTED into focus, and thus the call to PIVOT, is simply that SOMETHING FEELS BAD.

When you become quickly responsive to the signals that something feels bad (these signals come from your own system—body, heart, head), then you pause with what you’re noticing and … PIVOT.

What’s so radical—or more to the point, HELPFUL--about this?

I recently heard this gem (during an Abraham Now program): “You can’t get around how you feel when you’re amplifying how you feel with sentences.”

Ever notice you put A LOT of language—even just words in thought, not necessarily spoken—to what you feel? Noticing you’re exhausted, you declare exhausted. You review what’s been exhausting in your life. You give lots of weight to what you can’t control that exhausts you (so now you’re a victim of and stuck in exhausting circumstances). You put much focus on how bad it feels in your body. In short, you tell the story of EXHAUSTED.

So when you have this PIVOT concept in view, noticing exhaustion, you pivot. You tell the story of rest and rejuvenation instead.

And then it’s not so hard to get around how you feel. Your (chosen) focus is now on rest and rejuvenation, you choose your inner and outer narratives accordingly, and you also make choices accordingly.
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​And that’s how you apply it as you go. So let’s go over those 3 ways to apply the pivot one more time:
1) You focus on whatever you’re pivoting toward (e.g., rest & rejuvenation).
2) You choose your inner and outer narratives accordingly.
3) You make ongoing choices to keep heading that way.

As always, it helps to BRING IT TO NOW. Just right now, I can let go of something and go to bed earlier. Now, I can slow down a bit and do an easier version of the task. Right now, I can pause for 15 minutes and meditate or lie down and rest.

You could make pivoting a way of life!

You could swiftly learn to shift …

• from forcing to allowing
• from defending to aligning with the truth of who you are
• from what scares you & makes you anxious to what you’re excited about
• from feeling annoyed with someone to getting okay with letting them be on their journey and do what they do
• from being bored to just being satisfied with what is and gently watching for what else is possible
• from … to …

Have you ever had some of the most satisfying change come from some simply concept you simply applied? I invite you to try that out with PIVOTING.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​Start with believing you’re worthy of thriving. Your worthiness is not earned. You’re here, so you’re worthy to be here. Human beings can thrive, so as a human being, you’re worthy of thriving. You have this one brief life in this form, so what if you kept testing your worthiness to thrive, instead of collecting evidence you haven’t thrived, you’re not thriving, and you probably won’t thrive. Please interrupt that useless waste of your time and energy.

Let go completely of whether others are thriving or not. If part of your mission is to support other individuals or groups to thrive, you will do that, you can’t NOT do that, and you will do it best when you’re thriving.

Abraham-Hicks points out that you can’t get sick enough to help others be well, you can’t get poor enough to help others have more wealth. So how 'bout you thrive as much as you can and from there … the best of what you’ve got (which, BONUS, will keep evolving as you keep thriving) can bolster others to thrive.

Interrupt all comparisons to others. They’re neither here nor there—just a royal distraction that keeps you from walking yourself toward what you want to be, do, and have. All comparisons among human beings are apple-and-orange comparisons. Seriously, what does it matter what or how anyone else is or isn’t doing? What matters is what you’ve got, what wants to come through you, what you’re passionate about, where you trip yourself up, what you’d like to try next, what you can do right now to meet yourself kindly and walk yourself toward thriving.

Go ahead and make this all about you—because ultimately, you’re in charge of your own journey and your own thriving on that journey, and this has nothing to do with anyone else.

Catch any whiff of punitive mentality toward yourself and keep releasing it. If you’ve done something that feels off to you or that makes you disapprove of yourself or feel shame or go into self-castigation—pause with that. Be still with that. Breathe it. Let the part of you that still thinks it deserves to be punished come forth. Be with that one. Love them as they are. Love your own humanity. Love that you’re on a journey. Appreciate anything that makes you let go of idealized self-image, self-righteousness, or foolish thoughts that you should be beyond this.

I sat with someone recently who was being very hard on themself for something they’d done that violated their own ethic and shattered their sense of well-being and worthiness. I heard myself say, Well, unless you want to walk yourself now to some special little corner in hell that’s been rightfully reserved just for you, you could consider this too—and literally everything that unfolds in your life (even your missteps)--as your next opportunity to heal and evolve.

Your best and worst moments, and everything in between (especially if you’re not making identity of them) can all be part of the natural evolutionary thrust toward thriving. I believe that life wants to support you to thrive, constantly. Would you like to play with believing that? You do already? Cool, now what if you found the topic or realm of life that you keep excluding from that concept—because you tell yourself that here, in this special case, you really don’t deserve …?

Releasing identity will support you to thrive. Who are you anyway? What if you’re not the one who fucked up? Just like you’re not the one who’s right or who shouldn’t be talked to this way or the one who created that brilliant art or said those wise words or anything else. Practice being nobody more often.

(Hint: play with presence outside of thought. What is revealed to you right now by your five senses, and the grounded sense of being in a body, and the felt sense of your own breathing in this moment? Not much room in there to tell a lot of story and craft much image or make much identity. And not much room to keep yourself from thriving, either.)

I recently got thrown off by something that passed between me and another human beings. After a number of clarifying and clearing processes, it’s dissolving and releasing. It was one of those episodes that hit with a wallop, so every once in a while the ego-mind will grab it again and start to present a case for how mad I should be and what they violated and blah-blah-blah. It would go on ad nauseam, but I interrupt it. Lately I’ve been able to just look at it and say, This isn’t even real! And this has nothing to do with who I (really) am and who they (really) are. This doesn’t need my attention.

And giving it my attention does not promote my thriving. (To be clear, I gave it the attention of processes when that was needed, and will again as and if the need arises.) We think we’d thrive better if they didn’t do this or hadn’t done that, or if they did do XYZ. Nope, it’s all in our own hands—how we choose to make our interpretations, what we hold on to and release, what we choose to give our focus to. Want to give more focus to what makes you thrive, and to thriving itself?
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​Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project. Oh wait—was the whole start of this paragraph in a recent mailing (on being your own best ally), exactly in those words? Um, yeah. Because that, my friend, is how we believe we’re thriving, want to thrive, practice thriving, get used to thriving, and call forth more thriving.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​In the sky & sea pics that follow, check out the variety of colors. So many. Fewer than in real life (!), but still plenty captured by my phone camera.

It started with noticing one rainbow. We were walking along the shoreline, my long-haired son & I, in that marvelous pre-sunset hour. The winds were whipping up waves and hair, the usual dogs recognized us and bounded over for cuddles & scratches, and LOOK (he said)—a rainbow!
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In the weirdly busy hour that followed, we saw more rainbows and bits of rainbows in clouds and sky. We actually weren’t doing much. We just walked the strip of sand that got us to the lounge chairs we could rent for the price of one fizzy drink full of lime wedges, floaty mint leaves, and small ice cubes. Then everything got still for the next 40 minutes.
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Except nothing was still. The winds kept whipping, the rainbows & dogs came and went, and the colors in the sky never quit changing. We got up once to take a picture when the array of colors was beyond insane, and by the time we found our desired places and the camera was ready (not even a full minute), our background wasn’t the same.
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​Everything changes. Always. Constantly.

Always. Constantly.

That’s why it’s a waste of precious time to fixate on what’s not to your liking in the present moment.

That’s why it serves nothing to say you’re stuck. You really can’t be.

(It’s okay if you feel stuck and notice you feel stuck. It’s great if you hear yourself think or say that you’re stuck. Just use that to come to and remember again--no wait! I really can’t be.)

​Abraham-Hicks tells us again and again, Don’t fixate on current conditions. They’re not reality. (Not a fixed reality. Not the whole reality.) They’re not going to be here in one more moment.

Fixate on how you want to feel, and you’re good. Then you’re completely in charge (AGENCY!) and at nothing and no one’s mercy.

Let conditions come & go. Some will be to your liking, some not. Some you will think are really wrong. Some will be fucking amazing.

Keep the focus on how you feel. Check in with it. Notice it. And reach for what feels better if anything doesn’t feel good at all (subtly or hugely or in any way).
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​What thought would feel better right now? What connection to body & breath would feel better right now? What can you do to soothe your feeling state right now and simply make yourself feel better?

Are you fixating on what feels bad? Sinking into it? Dissecting it? Discussing it? Revving it up?

That’s an option. (And you’re not a bad person if you’re there! Just a person.) What else is possible, though? You could take charge of the one thing you can control as conditions keep changing. Mind how you feel. Reach for what feels better right now.

Love & blessings, Jaya

I've written another blog post since this one on the power of stepping outside as an alignment process in itself. More about skies there!

​As far as I know, no one has (yet) created a cute little online quiz to determine whether you’re a clown fish or a mockingbird. If you were hoping for just that, please forgive me because, nope.

I’ll start you off with a question though, so you can get that buzzy quiz feeling. Have you ever stared at corals in an aquarium? Or been fortunate and adventurous enough to get to swim around and see these enchanting colonial organisms shimmy-dancing in their actual oceanic habitat?

It’s one of the most mesmerizing things, to stare at coral. I especially wish for you that you’ve had the experience of dropping in completely to just stare, keep staring, take it in, keep watching, and let yourself be completely wowed by the constantly moving tentacles waving around in the water. Some seem to barely flutter their long or little fingers while others could give a car-lot inflatable air dancer a run for its money!

But actually, I want to invite you not to analyze, because the real point of this writing is about interrupting stuff going on in the head. Consider getting out of your head FAST when what the mind is up to IN ANY WAY doesn’t serve you.

I want to (again) invite you to interrupt that as fast as you can, because one unhelpful thoughts strings you along faster and faster to the next and the next and the next, and momentum builds in directions you don’t want to go.

I want to invite you to practice dropping in to let yourself be mesmerized. Let yourself be absorbed in presence. Make like a clown fish and absorb yourself in coral. Stop the thoughts, stop the momentum in wrong directions.

Let’s talk about trees, because they may be more readily available to you than coral.

​I believe you can and really should (a word I don’t use lightly or often) let yourself get mesmerized by how breezes and winds move through their leaves. No magic mushrooms needed! Just gaze at what’s happening as the breezes sift through and ruffle things up in super-subtle or sweeping ways (and everything in between).

Watch and keep watching. This is a presence practice. Ground yourself so you feel your embodied self, connect to the sensation of breath, and use your glorious sense of sight, if you’ve got it, to stare at the fluttering leaves.

You are gazing at consciousness itself, consciousness made visible. You are consciousness connecting to consciousness. And … that is soooooo cool.

But it’s also a really practical thing to do for your well-being. This could support you as often as you let it, perhaps MANY TIMES A DAY EVERY DAY, to get out of your head and shift your state when it would serve you to do so.

You can do this with one single tree or a vast treeline, whatever you have access to. Failing that, substitute grass or a bush or anything you can come up with that will do in the moment.

We’re taught to stay with the contents of our heads instead of interrupting it. But it’s actually not helpful to stay with what feels

• disturbing
• confusing
• distressing
• problematic
• unresolved
• solution-oriented

I include solution-oriented, which sounds a whole lot more positive than the others, because, as Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” So you need to LOOK AWAY, not to stay with it, when you don’t feel expansive, fresh, insightful, inspired, creative—all signs that signal you’ve opened to higher mind and are ready to see something new. I know you know the difference.
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​Wanna be a clown fish or a mockingbird? Use coral or use trees. Be whatever you want and use whatever comes into view, whatever comes to your creative mind. Lighten things up by moving away from what’s weighing you down mentally. Laugh at your old self who thought it was good and wise to stay with muddled or distressed thinking and do something radical here and now. Call yourself back to presence.

Here comes a reminder of the 3 steps for coming to presence (and bonus—soothe your nervous system that got agitated by your thoughts).

1. Ground (feel yourself as an embodied being, contact the earth with feet and awareness of the pressure of gravity’s pull, feel inside your own body)
2. Breathe (connect to the felt sense of breath)
3. Check in with your 5 senses (and really sense them) or just one that you focus on fully, as in choosing to gaze at coral or leaves

Let the mind be mesmerized—or at least interrupted--by the staring (ideally as you consciously ground and breathe). Stay with it, even for a bit. Drop in. You can simply step outside or stand at the window for 2 or 3 minutes of leaf gazing. It feels amazing. It’s a great and simple reset.

When you feel soothed and perhaps inspired, Now what? Now you might be able to see something from a new perspective and open to creative ways of moving through your life as it is right now, scooching toward the life you’re seeking to create.

Love & blessings, Jaya