 Photo of sunrise on a foggy Hudson River from Susan Meyer (https://www.susantarameyer.com) Scroll down to below the next pic for a few super-helpful resources. Headings are there to guide swift skimming! Almost everybody I work with or know in any context is deeply dismayed by the latest elections in the US. People are using words like devastated, shattered, and terrified, and are talking about grieving. There’s no problem with any absolutely & automatically valid reaction you’re having. More than anything, I invite you to look for soothing. See if you can stay away from ongoing focus on all that’s WRONG. AND I also want to invite you back to what is true, what abides, what is real, what we can actually count on, what matters, what will get us through, where we might put our focus to feel fully equipped to carry on with our intentions for our own lives and the greater good and the Earth itself. Scroll down for a number of resources to explore if & when you feel drawn. First, a story from someone else My friend & colleague Susan Meyer is a mindfulness meditation teacher and nature photographer. She already has a habit well in place, most every morning, to visit the river she lives next to in upstate New York. Via the practical magic of her kayak, she often gets right in it. Her relationship with this river represents a deep soul connection. Susan didn’t watch election results come in on the evening that was happening, and before she looked in the morning, she went out to meet the river—and to meet herself at the river—first of all. What happened was that she got a visceral sense of a sort of timeless view of what matters. Even going only as far back as the beginning of the story of the United States, she felt into how this river had seen the Revolutionary War and all that has taken place in the human realms from then to now. The river had flowed through it all; continued to provide water and take part in the water cycle; held and fed any number of beasts and fishes and birds, plants and trees; provided solace & peace & nourishment to any number of humans. This river was full of hope & love & an ongoing vote cast for life to continue in the healthiest possible way for all concerned. And from that awareness, Susan felt the time was right to check the election results. In that very moment, a two-word text that told all she needed to know popped in from her daughter: “Soooo….. Canada? 😭” What I’ve been doing & holding to Most of y’all know that I do EXTRA processes for soothing & clarity when something feels off, and I’ve been processing away to spend as much time as possible in alignment. (Note that you can click on the tag PROCESS on my blog to see specific tools there. There’s also a helpful tools tab on my website.) Prioritizing alignment and cultivating a sense of well-being includes more time in nature and more care with basic things like nutrition and sleep and qigong, in my case—substitute whatever you do that you know keeps your body feeling better and your breathing coming in more fully. I’m holding fast to all that I care about. All the intentions I had for myself and this country and various populations I care deeply about—these are unchanged and still with me. I’m committed. I’ve been thinking about how many people hold like beliefs and care just as deeply as I do, and we are united. I know the laws of the Universe are unchanged by election results, and I’m still tapping into all that keeps me creating & living into visions of what matters to me and allows me to support others on their journeys. I’m so clear that I cannot support people if I go into depression or deep freeze, things I did routinely in the past anytime the political landscape felt threatening and like it was just going in the wrong direction (seemingly counter to evolution and not aligned with the good of all concerned!). In fact, I believe the evolution is always underway, and it’s evident to me, looking back over time, that the process never looks linear. And still, we’ve evolved, and we will continue to do just that. Further resources, including from others, can be found below the next photo. Headings allow for quick skimming to see if anything calls to you.  Photo of a double rainbow over the Hudson River from Susan Meyer (https://www.susantarameyer.com) RESOURCES
A SONG Here is a song that makes me teary & goosebumpy, written & performed by singer-songwriter Kathleen Hannan of NC. She started writing this right before the election, finishing the recording just before the results started coming in. She wrote me that she wanted to create a song to tap into “what would still be here no matter which way the election went.” EFT I have created an EFT (emotional freedom technique, or tapping) playlist on my YouTube channel for political pain and anxiety. Some were drawn from pre-existing EFT sessions (e.g., EFT/tapping on big disappointments) and I keep adding new EFT sessions specific to this list as I support people bringing me the topic of how the political situation affects (and especially pains) them. A MEDITATION On the night of the American elections, I sent out a link to this mailing list to offer a 3-centers meditation. I had recorded it at noontime with no clue of how things would turn out. Here it is again, as you may still find it helpful in meeting your dread and soothing yourself in body, heart, and head. Find this election-soothing 3-centers meditation on YouTube. POWERFUL TEACHINGS FROM ABRAHAM-HICKS If you ALREADY know & love the work of Abraham-Hicks and want & feel able to invest 50 bucks in a spiritual perspective on the political scene, I strongly recommend purchasing the Abraham Now broadcast that took place a few days after the elections, on November 9. I found all that was said deeply healing, supportive, and full of wisdom, clarity, and encouragement to stay connected to what is always real, whatever may be going on politically for better or worse. If you aren’t already pretty connected to these teachings and to Abraham-speak, you may not vibe with how they talk about this or even get what they’re saying (because of their particular lingo and perhaps because a foundational understanding of what & how they teach would be needed). That said, if you feel drawn, go go go! DROP-IN GROUP COACHING Last Monday night, during drop-in group coaching, we did some beautiful work together to soothe election fears & woes. Please join anytime, including tonight. The topics we cover are set by what people bring forth. You’re always welcome to talk or participate in silence, you can insert a question in the chat, and you can be off-cam, if you prefer, even if you choose to offer a coaching topic. This information, along with very occasional cancellations, can always be found on the homepage of my website. Love & blessings, Jaya
0 Comments
for perspective & far greater ease in any challenge  Photo of a house off its foundation & on top of a car from John Middelkoop on Unsplash Why would it be helpful to imagine you’re in a disaster zone? Honestly, the mind and nervous system often act like we are when we’re not. Maybe you’ve noticed? So play with me a moment here, but only because it could benefit you tremendously to feel at (greater) ease as you move through your most challenging situations, moments, and eras. Let me quickly set the scene. When disaster strikes, all hell breaks loose. Buildings crumble to the ground or fill with water; roads get blocked; people don’t (and don’t even expect to) follow their usual routines; survivors may suddenly have new needs around first-aid care, food & water, shelter. All the usual ways of operating are tossed away—they’ve just become irrelevant, at least for the time being. The usual expectations of others are dropped, too—we’re not going to get mad at someone if they don’t show up on time for a schedule that’s been blown to pieces or if they don’t behave how we prefer for people to behave. We don’t expect things to be in their right places, as the house itself might be off its foundation and on top of the car. No one is shocked or launching into entitled complaining if there’s no available phone, or technology isn’t working, or help isn’t quickly forthcoming. No one expects to be comfortable or to have anyone else make them comfortable. Application to follow. Now imagine you’re attending the kind of social event that shakes up all your stuff; going on a blind date—or maybe any kind of date; gearing up for an interview for a job you really want; meeting family-of-origin characters at a gathering that has historically made you a little crazy; spending hours or days at the hospital as patient or support person, with a bunch of things up in the air—any number of possible outcomes and snags and edgy moments to meet along the way. Or just imagine (or notice, if this is current for you) that you’re in a tricky time because you’re healing something or learning new things that will be tested or moving through a situation that overwhelms you even though you chose it (a move, a break-up, a teaching gig). How could the disaster metaphor serve you?  Photo of two people assisting a car on a severely flooded road in the city from Saikiran Kesari on Unsplash Seeing your current reality as if it were a disaster zone, try telling yourself some of these things:
See how that could help you out when life pushes you to your walls?  Photo of rescue workers in a devastated neighborhood from Dmytro Tolokonov on Unsplash And then maybe you’ll appreciate any comfort. Maybe any kind of food will seem amazing to have. Maybe any way your body functions will seem like a perfect miracle. Maybe you’ll be all tapped in to all that supports you. Maybe you’ll notice and be moved by any decency from anyone. Maybe you’ll slow down and just let things be as they are, and notice that it’s good enough for now and getting better. Maybe any modicum of fun or laughter will seem like more than you could’ve hoped for--again, a perfect miracle. A client’s challenging situation recently reminded me of this, and I realized from a search on my website (did you know there’s a lovely search bar on my site?) that I hadn’t properly written about it. I mentioned the disaster-zone metaphor briefly in a bit about getting through holidays well. And now I’ve officially written about it and we can all play with it to keep making easier and more manageable anything that we might believe is hard. Love & blessings, Jaya use all 3 centers of intelligence to find your relaxed & open way of being & seeing & DECIDING  Photo of person in the dark gazing at string lights glowing in their hands from Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash I want to invite you out of that furrowed-brow, overthinking thing and point you to what could feel & work better. You’ll need a willingness to trust yourself more, and also to trust life. What if you began by committing to EASE around any decision you need to make? Ease in body, heart, and head—your three centers of intelligence. Each lets you know whether you’re on- or off-track for good decision making, and so … whether to LEAVE IT ALONE right now or jump in & run with it—or even dreamily push the pieces around. Let’s walk together through all three centers. Body: LOOK AWAY FROM THE TOPIC when you’re …
In those moments, don’t think about it at all, never mind try to move the decision forward. Seriously. Literally walk away if you need to, and go make your body feel better. Start with a drink of clean water. It’s a great time to come back to the topic when you’re …
Now go! Go ahead & come close to this thing you’re considering. See what wants to be dreamed up, learned, discovered, invented, and maybe fully decided! Heart: DON’T EVEN GO NEAR THE TOPIC, never mind try to make the decision, when you’re …
In your bad feeling states, shift your physical & mental gaze toward what makes you feel better. In fact, just go take care of your heart. Don’t analyze or think about your feelings. Breathe them, soften them, soothe them, carry them around kindly. Take your feelings with you as you go back to the body and do something that will move your limbs & energies and get the blood & breath flowing again. When do you go back into the stuff of your decision? When you feel
All or any of this means you’re ready to dream into your vision again or dive back into the specifics & details of what needs to be known so that the decision can come to you without strain & forcing, never mind agonizing. Head: Screech decision making to a halt when you’re
I mean it. INTERRUPT ALL THOUGHT when that’s the vibe in your headspace. The sooner, the better—before it builds momentum. Get out of your head, please. Back to the body, back to the heart. Take note, in fact, that your body & heart are feeling bad as they sync with those thoughts. Now, go after what makes them feel better. Abandon thinking altogether until you can reach for thoughts that go with a relaxed body and soothed heart. You’ll know you’re ready to bring focus back to the topic when
Now, let your imagination run, do the research, make the phone calls & visits, have the conversations, and make little or large choices that move you toward that readiness to decide—or plunk you right in a decision that you notice kind of made itself. (Byron Katie taught me that decisions make themselves, and I keep finding that when I’m tending my state through my 3 centers, they do just that.) Hey, when you’re in a good place in body-heart-head, I invite you to notice the magic. Are you …
Notice the magic. It will get you where you’re going. (And, um, it’s not magic at all. It’s the way things work when you’re clear & open. You know.) Love & blessings, Jaya ... and let go of the hard & pointless work of being the doer  Photo of a place setting on a table with yellow paper placemats from Getty Images on Unsplash Want a quicker read? You can simply learn or review the placemat process by starting below the first pic. Scroll down, baby … I was thinking about how hard it is for people to LET GO of trying to control all the parts and believing I’M THE ONE who makes it happen. Doership! We even stir up more confusion by accusing ourselves of being irresponsible or not properly showing up when we’re not doing our utmost (as we tense up & exhaust ourselves) to think of everything and manage all the parts. That’s a problem because
Those who use the G-word sometimes say, Let go and let God. Um, sure, that can be used to go complacent or excuse not stepping up. It can also be used to let go of what you can’t control, and let the greater intelligence do its thing. It will always include you in the doing (some of us think you are God and God is you), but won’t put you in charge of what you just don’t have the capacity to do, manage, or control (since you’re also in this limited ego-reality as an individual human being). When I first heard the term the organizing intelligence of the Universe, it just sang to me. I was already aware of the love force and fully down for that. I hadn’t thought about or even begun to take in (and that will be an ongoing process till I die) the unfathomable intricacies & crazy brilliance of what I now call the orchestration. So how do you come to know that, work with it better, FLOW with it, give yourself to that current? Play your part and put down what’s not yours? The PLACEMAT PROCESS from Abraham-Hicks is my favorite way to put stuff down and get crystal clear about what I’m doing and what I’m not doing. And bee-tee-dubs, it’s called that because Esther (yeah, the nice white lady from Texas who channels Abraham, which or who is actually a group of entities, I know, I know, but stay with me, please, because it’s brilliant)—Esther got this process while she was at a restaurant and used a paper placemat to try it out. For those who like Byron Katie’s 3 kinds of business, note that this allow you to clearly and on paper (where you won’t get sidetracked by all the slippery seaweed in the mind) write down in one area what belongs to the Universe and even to other people, and separately note what’s yours.  Photo from Jaya of an exercise layout in a landscape oriented sketchbook. A column on the left is about 1/3 of the page and titled "You," and annotated "Just what you know you'll do today. The right 2/3 of the page is titled "Universal Manager," and annotated with "Put it all down."
The act of writing it down is also a literal and symbolic putting it down. Placing it in those larger hands, or into that great holding net where everything’s being gorgeously woven together in a way that works for the good of all concerned. So in your area on the paper, you write down only what you’ll do today. Abraham says, Mean it. Whatever you put there, you know for sure you’ll get to it. Cool if you get this wrong, folks. Use it to take in how confused you still are about how much you’re supposed to and can get into a day. We’re actually not meant to CRAM OUR DAYS full with productive activity. Ay, that’s the great cultural lie of doership and what it means to be good little worker bees. (I imagine real bees are relaxed & having a good time as they bop around collecting pretty powdered nectar & turning it into exquisite golden honey.) But it’s not just that I’m NOT DOING the things I put down in the Universal Manager area. The organizing intelligence, or what A-H calls the Universal Manager, is all over it. Bringing things together with that uncanny right-place right-time precision, flowing things your way, getting people queued up to enter stage left or bump into you as you round the corner, in short—orchestrating. Or … lining up cooperative components that will support you to get to where you’re going. Do watch if you choose to experiment with this. Notice how things moved forward that you didn’t touch because you gave them, for real, to the UM who knows how to effortlessly make it all happen & come together gorgeously. So ANYTHING you’re thinking about, worried about, wishing you could get to, thinking you should already have gotten to (but truth is, you won’t get to it or can’t do anything about it today), PUT IT DOWN. You’ll know as you write (and after) you really are putting it and did put it down when you feel some RELIEF. When you relax. When you feel light instead of heavy. When you feel you’re doing enough, it’s good enough, all is well. (Notice the trust in this?) Put down all that you don’t need to carry today because it’s really not what’s up for YOU to manage, hold, do, or orchestrate. Examples:
When you can look at your little (way littler) list and feel good about THAT being the stuff of your activity today, you’re on the right track. Maybe you’ll even remember that the ACTUAL stuff of your day is not just what you check off the to-do list but …
Hey, I’ve heard Abraham gently & playfully scold people for acting like they’re delegating things to the Universal Manager, and then they have the right to be upset if something didn’t move something forward the way they’d hoped. You’re getting the benefits of the process when you feel RELIEF. Intend relief. Note relief means less resistance. It means you’re entering or you’re in the flow. It means you’ll give yourself a much easier time of it. There’s more going on too but … that’s enough, isn’t it? Love & blessings, Jaya ... and an example of using it on the lie of NOT ENOUGH TIME  Photo of multicolored marbles from Nick Fewings on Unsplash Want a quicker read? Scroll down for a numbered list of 12 ways to think about time that feel better. If there’s any detrimental belief that A LOT of people from all walks of life share, at least in American culture (and I daresay in plenty of other places around the globe), it’s that there’s not enough time. We have more to do that we have time to do it in. Does that even sound right? Is that even possible? It's certainly disempowering and engenders all manner of stress and feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction. When your thoughts and beliefs are making you feel bad (in other words--when you feel bad, and take note of what you're believing in that moment), Abraham-Hicks has a clarifying and focusing process to call forth and drop in with what you want to believe instead. They call the marble game. It’s really simple and it’s really worth trying. (I do it often, sometimes daily, usually to clarify my focus early in the day. Much as I approach the focus wheel and other amazing Abraham processes.) Think of marbles as a metaphor for your thoughts and beliefs. All the thoughts and beliefs you’ve ever had. Since you've got a lot of those (accrued & revisited over time, and constantly added to), the point is that it will always be a mixed bag. You'll always have some beliefs that serve you (because they're aligned with what you want) and some beliefs that do you no good at all. Those beliefs run counter to what you say you want, so they churn up resistance. Besides the fact that resistance feels bad, it also makes you NOT A MATCH to what you're dreaming up, asking for, working toward. So in the marble game, you determine--and establish--which beliefs you want ACTIVE in this situation. Which beliefs do you want to have in view? Which ones do you want to run the show? For example, you may have three time-related marbles in your bag that make you feel bad about yourself & your daily accomplishments:
You may have three other marbles that support you to feel good about yourself & your work:
Which marbles would you like to have active as you start your work day? Notice you’re likely to feel bad about yourself and ill-equipped for your day if you have the first set of marbles active. If you have all six marbles, or both sets, active, you’ll feel torn and you'll vacillate between the two mindsets. With the second set of marbles activated, you’ll feel more relaxed and at ease and ready for the day ahead. You'll be likely to build momentum in what you do and feel good whether you get as much done as you might have imagined or not. So anytime in life that you notice you’re leading with a bad set of marbles or you have a seriously active marble that neither matches where you want to stand nor promotes or enhances how you want to feel—like, There’s not enough time for all I need to get done--then play the marble game to consciously choose 12 marbles you want to activate and bring to the fore. I did that on that very topic one morning recently. (See my activated, chosen marbles #1-12 below the illustration.)  Here are the components of the process as I do it. It's a simplified version of what Abraham explains (with no component left out). 1. Briefly (BRIEFLY) write down what got you thrown off or where you notice your wobble is. Simply lay out the problem. (I woke up with a light sense of dread and pressure, already feeling like I don't have enough time for all the tasks I think I have to do or want to get done today.) 2. Write down the feeling state that goes with that for you. How do you feel with this story or set of thoughts active? (Discouraged, overwhelmed, lacking in confidence.) 3. In the margin, draw one marble and, next to it, write down a belief you have that would actually support you in this situation. I like to color in or make a design on the marble as I watch the thoughts form. (See below.) 4. Repeat that until you have 12 marbles and 12 statements of more positive, empowering, helpful beliefs you already have (or ones you don’t have to reach too far to get to), the ones you do want to have activated. (Examples for this are just below.) 5. When you've got your 12 shiny chosen marbles out that support you, write down how you feel now. (Confident, equipped, looking forward to my workday.) Since I actually played the marble game on this very topic, here are the 12 marbles (things I actually believe, or that aren’t too far out of reach, and that I want to have as my ACTIVE beliefs) that got me from "Not enough time for all tasks" to "Tasks & time coexist perfectly."
 Hand drawing in a sketchbook from Jaya showing marbles lined up along the left side of the page If you don't get through all 12 marbles because life intervenes, just get some chosen marbles in view! You'll head toward the way you want to feel and can keep cultivating that in other ways. If you're on a roll and you want to hang out with this game for more than twelve marbles, go go go, and enjoy how solidly established you get in the mindset and feeling state you're actually consciously choosing. I personally find this so empowering and satisfying.
I invite you to play with Abraham’s marble game to consciously activate the beliefs you want to live out of in general—and to very specifically carry into your day or the one situation coming up. Love & blessings, Jaya |
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed