Note that BOLD TEXT is intentionally set up to help you scan & skim & scram.

Storytime, or Telling on Myself
I found myself unhappy with the choices I made one evening: I was too sedentary, resisted going out into nature when I still could have, then comforted myself by with a digital game that became the phone equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

When I came to for real (the inner tugs were happening all along, but no thanks), I was fascinated once again by how quickly the mind goes to making myself wrong, considering myself a loser, scolding myself for not doing better, accusing myself of being a fraud, and more of the stuff that matches that. Familiar?

None of this is loud or continuous in my current way of being, and typically may even have no words actually or consciously put to it. I do really value catching and practice catching the subtler stuff at earlier stages. And, as it happens for the typical humanoid, the subtle, quiet stuff gets more blaring and glaring as you keep ignoring the earlier stirrings of what feels off. Which I did, that evening, so yeah—glaring & blaring came along as my head started hurting and my eyes burning and actual sentences forming to attack my character.

Catching Yourself & Remembering or Reminding Yourself of a Few Things
I took in that I’d been feeling worse and worse and that I was in low-level self-loathing. I reminded myself of a few things that were within reach (and the more you practice this, the more you have within reach):

• If I’m seeing myself as bad or wrong, I’m not seeing myself through the eyes of Source.
• Feeling bad (according to Abraham-Hicks) means that I’m out of alignment with Source and that my Inner Being is holding the topic at hand in a different way than I’m now narrating it to myself—and it’s that disconnection from Source or Inner Being that makes me feel bad.
• There will always be contrast, and here I am in the midst of a contrasting experience, in that stuff I don’t like and don’t aspire to.
• This is not a punitive Universe unless I make it that way.
• Reconnecting now as best I can would represent my getting behind the idea I don’t deserve punishment. (Note that it doesn’t take much to believe you don’t deserve to sleep well, be happy, keep doing great work, be lovable, feel good in your body have a great life; if you think you don’t do this, I invite you to get more subtle and catch even a whiff of it.)

Refocusing
If I had refocused earlier, it would have been easier, taken less time, and allowed me a shift into an evening of acceptance and baseline contentment at the very least. (You’ll see an image of the Emotional Scale from Abraham-Hicks below, and contentment, at #7, is the last thing on the positive end of the scale before things head into what feels worse and worse. Sometimes they call that point satisfaction. I think of just accepting what is without judging it as being at that baseline as well.)

But no. I refocused at bedtime. I did go to bed ridiculously early, which was a very good idea. Especially since I hold a strong well-practiced credo of putting myself to bed kindly and releasing the day, whatever it did or didn’t hold, and declaring, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible.

By refocusing, I mean reaching for the right process or soothing support here & now. Just reach for what might feel right. If you ever read what I write, you know I love me a good inquiry or focusing process. You can find the word process as a category tag on my blog to find the ones I’ve written up over time. There’s also stuff on my website under tools. A favorite process of mine is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping), and there’s now more than one playlist on my YouTube channel devoted to that. (And for now, I’m still offering free EFT for whoever shows up on a Saturday morning at 10 ET—see link on homepage of my website.)

Reach for the Easiest Process First
That night, I decided to listen to an Abraham audio in the dark while lying in bed. But first, I did a quick mental listing of what had gone right that day. Otherwise stated, I found easy existing matches for the idea that I did do some things right, or that the whole day wasn’t a bust. I generally recommend & practice doing such things in writing or at least speaking them aloud, but I DIDN’T WANNA. The mental review still helped a lot.

The fascinating thing was that I discovered or took in all over again that I’d actually had a great day. I’d felt good all day (till late afternoon); I’d gotten some things done I felt good about doing; I’d been a supportive and kind presence to my elderly parent I live with; I did that in ways that felt easy and genuine for me (not taxing, not sacrificial), including watching The Six Triple Eight together, which we’d both been wanting to see & were happy to watch; I’d had a sweet, fun conversation with my stepdaughter; and then some!

Side Note about Globalizing Bad Feelings
How quickly a bad feeling about one thing in life or one part of a day becomes the whole story! And it’s just not true—or it’s not an accurate assessment (a sure sign that it’s not time to assess). So make it a habit not to believe and take off running with any globalized sense that everything about you is wrong or bad—or everything about your life, your future, your relationship, your work, your finances, your anything. Please certainly do not accept it as a valid basis for beating yourself up (um, because nothing is that).

Reach for the Next Process that Could Help in Another Way, from Another Direction
Then I put on my headset and turned on the desired Abraham audio on my phone, with the intention of receiving good reminders and some soothing. Note that intention matters. I was not looking to find what I’d done wrong or how I could do better. This would have skewed what I heard into a warped process of figuring out what was wrong with me or what I’d done wrong or even how I got off-track.

Is the importance of that crystal clear? That kind of setup basically exacerbates the sense of being wrong and amplifies the feeling bad. Even more important, it doesn’t let in soothing in the fastest or most efficient way. (Kind of like piping water through tubing with kinks in it.)

Sometimes, looking for soothing is the only thing to do (and please don’t read or treat this as a last resort!). Abraham likes to say, Soothing is the solution. Or, Soothing is solving. Especially at the end of the day—and certainly any other time or area when or where you’re particularly vulnerable (too much happening at once, scary or super-hard things going on, experiencing physical or chemical imbalance, having a particular person or group of people in your field, being thrown off in some specific realm of life …).

​Keep Expanding into the Wanted Feeling State
A certain discipline is required to keep rejecting ugly thought forms that introduce themselves. Whether this means self-accusation or hating on someone else or making bleak predictions about the future (anything in the mental realm that feels bad!), just take these thoughts for what they are: concepts still trying to form as words and images to match the bad feelings that took hold. Basically, those feelings have a certain amount of momentum going, and they won’t just screech to a halt, even as you’ve consciously begun the pivot in the other direction.

Let’s say another defeating or self-critical thought creeps in. Give it a nod, or label it something simple--That’s just a thought. Or declare, That’s not completely true, or tell yourself, It’s really not time to evaluate. If you can just witness it and refocus, even better. How quickly can you notice mental activity or feel in your emotional body that you’ve gone off the soothing lane and onto the rumble strip—and simply head back to soothing?

Whenever you’re rejecting or moving away from something, see how clear you can be about what you’re embracing or moving toward. So that night as self-castigation tried to reassert itself, I kept releasing that and heading toward soothing by dropping in again with whatever the Abraham voice was saying in that moment. (And that, of course, was encouraging, not scolding me.)

SIDENOTE about emotional scale above.
I caught this screenshot of the emotional scale from Abraham-Hicks during an Abraham-Now Broadcast. These are amazing video programs you can sign up to receive live (which also gets you the replay to listen to again and again, one of which I was listening to in the story in this writing). They cost about $50 each. There’s a benefit I’m finding from hearing the most current transmission of Abraham wisdom, which is always fine-tuning and evolving, and from being part of the building dialogue as people from various parts of the planet bring questions and share experiences of applying the concepts from one broadcast to the next.


Noticing a Thing or Two for Future Reference
I find that most mental notes to do better next time don’t do much good. Practicing meeting yourself kindly wherever you are, over and over, sitch after sitch, day in and day out—that does all kinds of good. It sets up a new or ever-stronger tendency or habit pattern of walking yourself through anything well. So when I look ahead to a sort of doing it better next time, I like to focus it this way: What could actually help?

That night, I noticed that it helps when I remember that late (in this case not that late but later) in the day is a potentially vulnerable time for me, and it does me good to slow down at that time and check in if anything feels off.

I noticed that I hadn’t done any segment intending for that evening. I love segment intending, and had used it earlier in the day (back when things were going well!), but didn’t use it when hunger struck in the late afternoon … and Mom was ready for food too, and I’m the cook, and I told myself it was too late to go outside for a walk. (In fact, I could still have managed both simple food and simple outing.)

Segment intending sets up simple intentions for how you want to feel, or how you want to show up, in just the next one thing ahead. That could have supported my choices and their execution, as it usually does quite nicely. And, again, maybe using segment intending during or when facing the time I’m most likely to wobble (for me, late in the day) could be an excellent tactic to keep in view. (I like to literally post notes about things like that until they’re imprinted on my consciousness.)

Finally, Abraham said something in the audio reminding me to just feel better, and gently move up the emotional scale. I had lost track of that. I had been moving down that scale over the course of the evening! Look at the tipping point under #7, contentment, on the scale in the diagram above. I could have kept myself there if not headed upward, but I made a boring choice when I sat down to play a game and, from boredom, started feeling pessimistic while going more unconscious. Subtly and surely, then less subtly and super surely, down the scale I went. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye (no debauchery, no meanness, no money gambled or spent), but it felt bad, and my response was a numbing tactic (just onnnnnnnne more word game). I lost track of feeling better and simply CHOOSING into feeling better. Which is the simple and sure-fire way to move up the emotional scale instead of further down.

No Matter What’s Up: EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY
I slept well and woke up predisposed to reach for feeling better. In the past, going to bed in a bad state would have meant waking up in that state and expecting to have, then creating, a wretched day. This is why I remind myself at night, Tomorrow, all things new, all things possible.

I put on an audio first thing (which I typically do anyway as a great way to establish a desired set point quickly). I sat down to do a couple of processes to further establish myself in the focus I wanted for this new day. When I caught some color coming through the window, I stepped outside for one of the best sunrises I’ve seen in a while, with gold and peachy colors at the base and rising layers of violet and mauve, with a few blues peeking through. Bonus, a pair of robins were not only singing heartily nearby, but also doing some acrobatic flirting and frolicking. Spring in the air!

And that, my friends, is how to refocus so you create improvements from a better point of departure.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that trying to do better from the point of telling yourself all that you’ve done wrong and how you must really do better in fact does NOT move you along very quickly or very well? That it creates a miserable journey in conflict with the goal of getting you to a better place? I invite you to to keep finding, practicing, and coming back to simple ways to be your own best ally. Soothe yourself. Walk yourself toward the best version of yourself. But don’t expect yourself to be there all the time.

That last bit is literally a sentence Abraham said into my headset that night. And it was soothing: Of course I won’t be there all the time. There will always be contrast. And I can pay attention to how I feel and reach for feeling better whenever I notice I’m feeling bad. I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’re all in this together.

Love & blessings, Jaya

​(Have you ever noticed you can follow the bold print in these writings to get the gist of it for a quick read and to find where you may want to go in more deeply? Yup.)

I meant to get this email out earlier but I got busy googling Can you freeze red lentil soup? and then best lesbian dating apps for Kansas City, then I looked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any of the free NYT daily puzzles.

Just kidding. I HAVE, however, been thinking about how distractions have innocent motives*. Your little or grand time-wasting side trips carry messages & invitations for your greater well-being—if only they can elbow past your self-accusations of lazy distractible unfocused procrastinating or whatever you choose to call it to make yourself feel bad.

(*Thank you to brilliant coach Jude Spacks for giving me this phrase and concept of the innocent motive.)

Ever notice that feeling bad about your behavior (thus yourself) is possibly the LEAST likely way to move away from what you’re not loving? It’s certainly not the easiest, quickest, or kindest way out!

So, wanna drop the judgments with me for a moment and explore what wants to come through that could actually feel good to you? That could in fact usher you right into the next bigger-better version of yourself?

DISCLAIMER: Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying you should never play games or run curious online searches or binge-watch a good show. I’m not saying that at all. I’m addressing the surplus of that—and how you know it’s too much is not related to a concept or number of minutes. Just this: It feels like too much TO YOU. It feels BAD.

See what hits you in this list of possible invitations seeking to come in when you reach for the stuff that zaps your time and messes with your ideas of productivity. Which messages might be for you? Or what else do they bring in as fresh ideas for what you’re really after?

Your (loving, entirely UNscolding) guidance system may be saying:

• Are you sure you’ve been playing enough, honey? Schedule in some fun time more consciously. Stuff that’s REALLY fun, please. Run & play with dogs & children. Ambush a cat who will ambush you back. Dance, laugh, take a field trip somewhere new.
  
  
• Hey, you’re really seeking to alleviate some discomfort here. Move away from your [desk, cubby, work station] more often. Take more small breaks. GO OUTSIDE, even to step out and breathe a bit with your senses activated. Move the body and get energy flowing all through you. Give your eyes the rest and treat of looking up into trees, skies, light.
  
  
• The thing you’re avoiding you actually want to do. There are some [fears, worries, not-sure-how’s] in the way. Come along. Let’s step into the shallow end at your point of least resistance and take one simple step with ease. See how that goes. Watch for the possibility of momentum building.
  
  
• You’re not CLEARLY making certain choices in your life to create & experience more of what’s actually important to you—what you truly want. Where are you abdicating to what others want from or expect of you? Choose what you actually want to be/do/have in order to fully be you (then maybe you won’t choose this piddly-distraction stuff you don’t actually want to give hours to).

It could be so many things! More below for you to see what’s yours or jogs your thinking toward the more precise issue/s for you.​

  

• There’s something you’re [sad, mad, confused, disturbed] about and you’d actually feel better sitting with that a minute. What if you just sat and breathed it without trying to figure it out? Just feel it in the body and give it a kind, compassionate gaze. Pause to breathe in and around it. Don’t go to the head, leave solutioning alone, and instead offer what feels bad a few conscious moments to see what may arise.
  
  
• ACTUALLY, dear one, you’re too obsessed with productivity, and your inner rebel wants to push against that. Consider your natural fluctuations of energy. What if you went with the flow more & consciously chose the nonproductive sometimes? Let it be okay to have ebb & flow. Your experiment with this could show you increased productivity overall! (I dare you to run the experiment!)
  
  
• The more you don’t let yourself be as big as you could be, my love, the more you reach for things that diminish you, that trivialize the fullness of all that you are, and that fill your time with the superfluous & insubstantial.
  
  
• Sweetheart, you’re working too hard, pure & simple. Work easier. Spend more time relaxing & aligning, even in small spurts and transitional moments, so that the quality of your work (your offering to the world!) is imbued with ease, flow, a satisfied sense of well-being.
  
  
• Do less, and opt in fully to what you do choose to do. Don’t allow yourself to be divided.

Hey, I recently did a group EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, or tapping) session that felt like an inspired journey of connecting to and honoring the guidance system that’s unique to each of us. Check it out if drawn! Your guidance system can support you to get out of anything you don’t actually feel good about doing RIGHT NOW and point you to what would truly meet your needs, fulfill your desires, and move you along toward your visions and intentions!

Love & blessings, Jaya

This is a relatively brief one, so take it in. As always, you can sift through following the bold print if you want a quicker read. Get the gift of this important thing to notice & reframe, with easy tactics for making this all feel better and for your beautiful life to go better for you!

This persistent NOT ENOUGH thing. You too?
I still catch myself, while doing things, moving about my world, transitioning from one task or event to the next, holding a vague sense of finding myself wrong, not doing enough, not having gotten to something yet, not performing or achieving at the right level, not not not …

Sometimes I feel a vague or acute disappointment or dissatisfaction, especially at the day’s end, that I might put any or all of these words to:

• I didn’t get enough done today
• I still haven’t done X or Y
• I’m not doing enough in general
• I’m not accomplishing enough
• How will I fulfill my potential at this rate?

If you amplify all of this (and some egoic part of you actually thinks its job is to amplify this), this swiftly swells into a baseline (wrongly held as factual) of I’M NOT ENOUGH. (Hey, whether you’re actively saying that to yourself OR NOT, that’s the message.) It may even follow a dissonant crescendo all the way to I’M NOT A GOOD PERSON BECAUSE I’M NOT DOING ENOUGH.

Um. WTF?
It’s so unfair, and it’s just wrong. It’s based on a false premise that your worth is and must be established by what and how much you do. It implies that this constant negative assessment (which by some wacky defiance of emotional mathematics keeps adding up to NOT ENOUGH) somehow does something of value.

To be clear: It does not. Go ahead and look for whether that soothes you, bolsters you, motivates you, energizes you, inspires you …

It’s also horrendous self-parenting. Imagine the parent following the kid around while tensely describing what they’re not getting to and how they’re not doing enough and how disappointing they are in what they are and aren’t doing. BAD parenting.

Imagine putting a child to bed at the end of the day with a furrowed brow and a list of all they haven’t gotten to and what they didn’t do well enough and what they’d better be on top of tomorrow …

This is not the picture of parenting that goes with a thriving child, is it?

Here’s what I do with this:
I interrupt it every time. I interrupt it as quickly as I notice it (at the first whiff of it) so it doesn’t build momentum. I do not accept walking around with that sensation, never mind any self-talk that might go with it.

When I catch it and interrupt it, I give myself (usually out loud to fully hear them) new messages that feel good and encouraging. Messages that

• establish: I love my life, my dance with consciousness, myself
• remind me life is not a to-do list
• call me back to grace, to unearned worthiness just because I’m here
• promote holding myself with love and approval and a sense of well-being

Because that positive, generous vision of myself, held in view, reinforced, and constantly cultivated, is actually what points me to flow with life in the best way. That’s what calls me to feeling good and embodying goodness and creating good and beautiful things.

Sometimes living in the flow does look like accomplishment and efficiency, and sometimes it does not. The flow is the flow. One version of it is not better than the others. We all know it feels better when we’re in it. We all know what resistance to the flow feels like. If we try to make the efficient version of flow the right version, we will, again and again, judge ourselves harshly and be disappointed in ourselves.

​Time for reparenting, or conscious self-parenting
If you didn’t get perfect parenting, welcome to the club. Whatever you did or didn’t get, it’s up to you now. Will you parent yourself unkindly, always gazing at yourself through that NOT ENOUGH lens? Or by bringing in calm, soothing, encouragement, positive messaging? Will you tenaciously hold yourself in good esteem?

Why should accomplishment and efficiency be the ruler by which you measure your worth, your whole life, or even any given day? That doesn’t even make sense. That sounds like modern human foolishness, not universal or divine intelligence.

I invite you NOT to ALLOW ongoing self-defeating inner dialogue and negative assessment. I invite you to quick interruption of what is unfair and inaccurate and keeps you feeling bad. Then aim for what feels better, and tell yourself the things you need to hear to soothe and encourage yourself, to promote loving your life as your wondrous dance with consciousness.

Toward that end, here’s a 15-minute 3-centers meditation (addressing body, heart, head) that contains positive messaging in and for each center. And if you like the 3C approach, you can join in live every day from 11:45 to noon six days a week. My lovely colleague Rebecca Mehnert leads on M-W-F, and I’m on T-Th-Sat. Join link is on the homepage of my website (scroll all the way down).

Love & blessings, Jaya

Note that I have a blog post that teaches Abraham Hick's MARBLE GAME and uses the ubiquitous idea of not emough time as the topic to illustrate how the process goes.

Do you ever react to something that looks like it’s gone wrong and then instantly react to your reaction? You feel bad about not having some zen response or about not being unflappable?

No, please, flap away.

You will anyway, so you may as well have your own permission up front to do so. You will react again. You will be reactive sometimes. Something will throw you off faster than you can take a breath and be master of your response. (That’s being triggered. BAM, reaction got set off before you knew what was happening.)

So can that be okay? Because it is. It’s part of life. It’s part of our healing & evolution.

Repeat: It’s part of our healing & evolution. It is NOT evidence we’re off our path or not getting it fast enough or doing well enough.

It’s also part of life that things go wrong. They do! The dog lunges and the leash slips out of your hand, the child runs toward the road, the thing drops and breaks—maybe right when you thought it was the last possible moment to go out the door to get somewhere on time. You missed the stupid rule and got in trouble; you thought you hit SEND but you didn’t; the thing that went wrong got fixed wrong and it’s still not working despite the money & time you spent.

And this: Another human being, in their pain and confusion, says just the thing that pushes a button so old you don’t have even one second to stop your inner 5-year-old from screaming (or heading for the hills, or going still & speechless, or getting all cute and sweet) in response. (Yes, fight, flight, freeze, fawn—4 typical trauma responses.) You react, perhaps in some way you disapprove of.

Please let it be okay. Release the disapproval.

Please get real and get okay with the whole picture: Things will go wrong, and you will sometimes react. If you don’t accept this, you’ll suffer more. You’ll be, as Byron Katie says, in an argument with reality. And when you argue with reality (she loves to add), you lose—but only 100 percent of the time.

But shouldn’t things be going right now since [I’ve healed so much, I’ve grown so much, I’m doing so well, I’ve stopped blah blah blah]?

I noticed long ago that I had an interesting belief about when or under what circumstances things were supposed to go right. Sometimes my clients say things that show me they’re thinking that way too—and thus creating needless suffering. (We’re taught that life works in certain ways and, um, NO, IT DOES NOT.)

Here’s how that interesting belief went: If I was doing well or feeling present or having a cool insight or working with a tool or experiment that I felt great about—or even that I had some lovely sense of discovery or epiphany about (ESPECIALLY then)--then that meant things should go well.

Kind of like a cosmic reward system. Or evidence that yep, you’re on track. See? EVERYTHING is going swimmingly, that’s how you know you’re on track. NOTHING is going to go wrong now.

Great idea. Except it’s not real. It’s a great example of magical thinking.

So in that old belief, when things didn’t go well, I also believed there was a PROBLEM. Something had gone very wrong. Or I had done something wrong. Or I was a FOOL to believe that it was possible to feel good and to have deepening understanding and come into new ways of being. OBVIOUSLY, now that this thing had gone wrong (that shouldn’t have), things would just forevermore keep going wrong and the idea of actually healing or evolving was a pipe dream. Or something was terribly wrong with me and I was unfixable. Or probably all of the above, fuckety-fuck-fuck.

What if you took OUT of the equation all requirements for things going well, smoothly, or in your way (according to your preference) (not costing you anything, not creating discomfort, not triggering some reactivity or taking you out of your zen state)?

What if you simply accepted that, on planet Earth, shit happens. Not a measure of how you’re doing. And when shit happens, you might react.

There was an era when I was seeking to get this new concept wired in. So anytime I got frustrated or distressed or had a flash of a reaction, I would instantly say to myself, Oh, Jaya, you're thinking there's a problem! What if there's no problem?

I did this very kindly. I did it constantly. I rinsed and repeated until it just got worked into my being.

Playing with this, I didn’t have time to judge my reactivity. Or if I was already judging it, the judgment got soothed right along with the soothing of reminding myself that

1. I was simply believing there was a problem, and
2. there really was no problem

Instead of getting caught up in my reaction (and then needing to judge it or defend it or hyperfocus on the conditions that called it forth), I used my reaction as temple bell, or a call to notice that I’m believing something has gone wrong and that, in fact, nothing has gone wrong.

This was more deeply healing than I understood it to be at the time I was playing with this and rewiring my psyche. I was healing old family trauma in which everything imperfect was jumped on, reacted to, punished. In our family system, everything that went wrong gave my parents permission to yell, curse, hit, make their kids wrong. They were wounded human beings who didn’t, at the time, see that they had access to any other way. We are all wounded. And we have access to so many other ways—easier access now than ever.

It’s a good equation to play with. Reaction = Call to notice you’re believing there’s a problem, and to remind yourself there's actually no problem.

I like the way Abraham-Hicks uses the language of contrasting experiences. This unwanted thing is a contrasting experience. And there will always be contrast. Nothing's going wrong when it comes. YOU ARE NOT OFF YOUR PATH WHEN THE CONTRAST COMES. You simply get to meet yourself here and now, and be reminded of what you like better, and consciously SOOTHE YOURSELF, then head that way—toward what you like better.

Let’s all get real with reality and create less pointless suffering. It’s all right. You’re doing all right. This is planet Earth, so … Shit happens.

Love & blessings, Jaya

If you'd like an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or tapping session on reacting vs. responding, find it on my YouTube channel.

Mary Oliver said it best in the poem Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Many of us, most of us—whatever our upbringing, however steeped in or removed from religion--have concepts of being GOOD in place that we benefit from undoing. Unlearning. Consciously rejecting. Consciously reworking and rewiring.

Lots of ideas of being good that we were taught were based on lots of wrong thinking—boundary-less-ness, codependency, values that keep us striving and never getting there (like, anything you want, you must work VERY HARD to get it), a mistrust of our wanting, a fear we’ll get too big for our britches, etc, etc.

This good and bad stuff is so deeply wired. Probably because it gets infused with so much identity: you’re good, or you’re bad. Maybe for some areas of life, you’ve more fully unplugged from what you were taught, having already fully (or more fully) recognized it as based in wrong thinking.

I won’t give examples. You know what you’ve rejected that your parents, teachers, or most of culture around you were spouting as something you HAD to go along with to be sensible. Right? You know the shit you were taught about gender and bodies and how you get your worth and racial bullshit and unboundaried kindness that was really codependency, and so on. You know that you’ve learned and keep learning, over the course of your lifetime, which things your were taught as absolute truth aren’t true at all. And you keep finding what feels truer. What feels better to believe or experiment with believing.

It can feel tricky or sticky or treacherous for folks to undo the concepts around Good. We often don’t even fully have in view—or in conscious awareness—what we’re still considering good that maybe objectively, inherently, is not that.

People sometimes fear that rejecting concepts of goodness will mean they’ll suddenly be bad. Or indulgent. Or selfish. They won’t check themselves but will just somehow be caught in some momentum of badness. What?? How does that follow?

Try this on: Whatever is ACTUALLY good is known to you in your innermost being. You’re already living it—some of it, some of the time. You know it in your bones, in your gut. You know what feels off when it feels off. You know when you’re clear and aligned and solid and when you’re confused and off-kilter and unsure.

You even know when you’re trying to think about something in some way that’s right and good but you feel BAD or mean or righteous or judgy or victimized or wounded while you’re thinking it!

YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.

So … I’m not asking you to reject ACTUAL REAL OBJECTIVE goodness.

But little is actually objective about good. You are the only one who can define what good means to you. And please don’t.

I mean, don’t define it in some fixed way, as a concept you have a firm grip on and can just keep applying to any and all situations and with any other being you encounter and have dealings with. (That’s what those who taught you wrong were doing. Don’t just turn that around with slightly or even radically different definitions of good.) As soon as the concept of Good gets too fixed (kind of like the concept of God), you get a religion, and right slides into righteous. Don’t have GOOD as a concept you could give a TED talk about or explain to your class or to your rapt audience on social media.

Loosen your grip on your understanding of (or needing to understand) what good means. Define it now and now and now and now, as THIS MOMENT reveals it to you and calls you to something else—calls you beyond what feels not-good in this moment.

Be in a dynamic relationship with your own inner being. Be consciousness dancing with consciousness. Right now, the music playing now, the soundtrack of this moment, tells you where to place your foot as you let it ripple through your being. As you let it move through the soft animal of your body.

Okay, let’s get more clear about the RAMIFICATIONS of not being clear about this goodness thing.

If you think you need to be good, and you seek to apply what’s still in there that got inculcated into your being early and reinforced for years, then

• you’ll also need to be worried about being good
• you’ll also need to fear you’re not good
• you might have to protectively go into denial when you actually do stray off your own aligned knowing of goodness
• you’ll have to feel guilty, maybe often, maybe perpetually
• you’ll use guilt to keep yourself on track (even though that doesn’t ever ever ever work)
• you’ll believe others when they accuse you of not being good
• you’ll be a great target for manipulation
• you’ll have to defend your goodness (because every part of you—e.g., the most ego-based part of you, and your inner child, and your innermost being—KNOW you ARE good)
• you’ll have to feel misunderstood (and again, defensive) when others think you’re bad
• you will be disempowered
• you will, as victims do, lose track of where you have choice … and of your power to create your life … and of your power to create your inner feeling state

When I got to this point in the writing, I checked on my daily message from Abraham-Hicks. It began like this:

The one factor that has been unknown by most humans, that is understood by the beasts, is that Well-being truly does abound; and that you are blessed beings who live in an atmosphere of grace; and that unless you are doing something to pinch off the Well-being, it will be yours.

What Abraham did NOT say: unless YOU DO SOMETHING BAD or if you do something to pinch off your goodness! Your goodness is NOT what allows to flow to you or disallows well-being from flowing to you.

Mary Oliver gave us the soft animal of your body and Abraham brings in the beasts. Can you let things be more simple? Could you trust, or play with trusting, your inherent, implicit goodness so you can bring your focus to other things? Like, to aiming for your well-being?

It goes without saying. You’re good. The animals aren’t worried about this. Find your animal self who simply aims for well-being.

Hey, also, it’s not a merit-based Universe. You don’t have to collect good points and earn your well-being by being good. Well-being is meant to be yours. You don’t lose points when you know you’ve strayed into what feels off to you.

In fact, that’s partly why you’re good, if you need a why. You have a compass. You have a guidance system. You know when something’s off. So when you notice you’re off-track, just course-correct. As Mary O says, don’t walk on your knees 100 miles repenting. Just get back on-track. Or even aim for what feels more on-track, and trust your capacity to keep course-correcting.

Metaphor time: Abraham talks about the rumble strip that your wheels register on the highway when you edge out of your lane while driving. (You even feel hitting the rumble strip in your body. It registers in your own senses.) You don’t need to feel bad or guilty. Just get back in your lane. You don’t need to sit around ascertaining and reviewing and worrying about how bad you are for hitting the rumble strip or vow to never hit it ever again. Just course-correct and think no more about it.

If the rumble strip calls you to pay more attention in the moment, to bring more consciousness to driving, or whatever you’re doing now, marvelous. That’s a call back to presence, and presence will always serve you.

Note that when you’re paying attention (when you’re present), you ARE cultivating well-being for yourself and others. Check it out if you don’t believe me. In fact, don’t believe me. Just watch yourself. Witness. Notice that you’re aiming for well-being. And when you bring in concepts of goodness (NOT GOODNESS ITSELF, but concepts of goodness) to inform your well-being, you confuse yourself and go off-track again. Or you create misery where you were doing just fine and you were sufficiently on track to keep moving and course-correcting as you go.

It’s really no problem when you go off-track again. Your inner rumble strip will rumble and call you to the next course-correction.

Do I need to say you’ll course-correct more swiftly, even seamlessly, if you never have to crawl through the desert repenting???

Rhetorical. I know you know.

Love & blessings, Jaya