David and Michelle
Session 4
Session 4
The Session Before The Session
Michelle:
If I look strange, I was eating some frozen blueberries.
David:
I just said something about eating frozen blueberries to somebody two hours ago.
Michelle:
Are you kidding me? I don't think five times in my whole life I've eaten frozen blueberries.
David:
I've never eaten them. I put them in smoothies almost daily, but I never think to eat them frozen.
Michelle:
I've only done it a couple times. My little cousin loved to eat frozen blueberries and peas. Her mother gave them to her when she was teething as a baby, and she grew up really liking them. She mentioned it to me and I realized I’d never thought to eat them frozen! They make a fun little snack; probably better to use a fork or spoon because they melt quickly and make a mess. They melt quickly. But it's a fun little bonus.
Everything Manifests
David:
Now here's the interesting thing, when we talk about being co-creators in our lives, we talk about how what we think and what we say is somehow manifested in our life. I mentioned something to a friend about sucking on frozen blueberries for lunch, and now here you are doing that. The reason I want to point this out is that when we say that what you say and think manifests, everything does. How quickly it comes to fruition in your life reflects how tuned in you are to the flow of everything.
Manifestation is the reason we do indeed want to be alert and focused on what we do want, and pay no mind, no attention, to the things we don't want. When we go into great detail talking about what we don't want and all the reasons we don't want it, or the great details of how unpleasant that experience will be, we are putting out the command in the universe, in the world, that these things should be presented to us again so we want to be very careful about what we say and do because it does come back and it does manifest.
Another Action Step
Monitor your words, watch your words. When you say something, immediately do a self-check; ask yourself if those words physically show up in your life right now, do you want that? If you want it, then you’re on track and if not, you can cancel it. Just saying, “Cancel, cancel, cancel.” Three times is usually enough. But five, if you're a little paranoid. Follow that by saying what you do want, the opposite of what you said that is not what you want. I don't want to mention any specific things because I don't want to put that out in the universe with people reading, but if I'm sitting there grumbling about something I can simply say, "Oh, no, that's not what I want. What I want is the good thing that is the opposite of it.” That's a misunderstanding of the circumstances. What I want is the money coming in, not the money just going out. I'm grateful for the money that I have and I'm grateful that it's a continual flow of money coming in.
It’s the same for relationships; instead of complaining about your partner you say, “I'm grateful for the relationship being this way. My partner drives me nuts sometimes, but that allows me to grow.”
Michelle:
They don’t have to drive us nuts for us to grow, right?
David:
The truth is the growing will be when that habit or behavior hasn’t changed, but it no longer drives you nuts.
Words Become Reality
Michelle:
I'm still looking at my little blue tongue and thinking I love that manifestation of something you were casually talking about earlier. I truly understand, at least at a completely different level from what I used to understand, how powerful our words are in creating our reality.
Perfect Is Possible
As I was meditating earlier today, I was asking what is the gap between where I am and where I want to go? What would help me to only speak to what I want to really experience my life? What would allow it to be even better, what’s the difference between getting it right most of the time and getting it perfectly? I realized it’s that I haven't claimed it; I just began to claim that I am perfect with my words. I am perfect with what I focus on and everything I focus on is genuinely what I want. I am a child of God: I am that limitless. I am that powerful. I was really basking in that.
I'm a person who themes every year of my life. I love the idea of focusing on something specific for the year and deepening that focus. As started playing with my 2020 theme, I just kept getting the word “perfect”. The three things I feel will really move the needle is perfect health, perfect wealth, and perfect mind. That might sound crazy to some people, but I have a perfect God who lives in me and why not have perfect health and perfect money and perfect mind? So as I was meditating earlier and thinking about the power of saying it and then seeing it I realized, "I've never said it that way. And I'm saying it that way now." Growing Perfectly David: That makes me think back to when my son was younger. When he was four, I was very aware that he was perfect at being four. He was also perfect at being two, and he’s perfect at being 30. This is one of things to recognize: we can allow ourselves to be perfect now, even while we're on the path of growing. While we're striving for something else, we can allow ourselves to be perfectly striving. We can allow ourselves to be perfect where we are now, not grumbling about where we are or how we’re doing things, just realizing we’re growing perfectly. Awhile ago we did a seminar, and we had a series of about 8 photos of a plant. They started at the seed followed by the first sprout, growing bigger, finally blooming, and then dying. We asked, "Which one of these is wrong? Which one of these is not perfect where it is?" The answer is none; in each photo, the plant is perfect at that stage. The reason this is important to understand is it takes the pressure off while we are striving. It set us up to do it with more joy in heart, and then we're striving for it because we love the growth rather than trying to attain perfection. So often people are stuck on “X has to happen before Y.” I can have the good mind or the good health or the good whatever it is, but I need to do something first. Actually though it’s, “You can start with a good mind and you can still make it better. You can start with good money and still make it better. You can start with good love and still make it better." When if we can recognize that I'm good where I am, then right off the bat we don't have to play the would've, should've, could've game. I'm fine where I am, I'm perfect where I am, only who do I want to be next, what do I want to experience next?
We're always going to be growing, so we may as well be growing in the direction we want to be. But we don't have to begrudge the fact that we aren’t there yet. If you saw a second grader walking around and hitting himself with a stick because he wasn't a sixth grader, you would take him aside and send him into social services and get him some help, but we do that to ourselves all the time. We look at others and think that because we aren’t where they are or experiencing what they are that somehow, we’ve messed up. The approach that will get us there is actually to say, "Ooh, that looks like something that I want, and that’s where I’m going.”
Growth is Constant
Michelle:
That comes back to removing the resistance, it’s acknowledging that things are perfect the way they are, and things are happening in divine perfection. I loved your example of a second grader not being a sixth grader because we're constantly growing. We have this perception that we get out of school and now we're adults and that’s it, and I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make. Every year is a new year, every year is a new grade. We don't finish high school, then go to college or maybe grad school, and then we’re done. You grow at 23, you grow at 24, you grow at 25, you grow in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, your 70s, your 80s, and I’m all about celebrating those 100 plus birthdays.
Every year we're meant to grow, and a new year or a new birthday is such a great time to look ahead and think what's going to be even better, more perfect, while realizing it’s perfect now. Some of that comes from compassion: for ourselves, for others, for what's happened, for what is.
What Just Happened?
David:
I was thinking this morning about how you can be in a room with 20 people and when something happens, there are going to be 20 impressions of what happened. We talked about how we create an experience, and then we pass judgment on the experience, and then we decide how we want to react or respond.
A vase falls of the mantle, hits the floor and breaks. Somebody is going to be thinking, "Oh, thank God. I have hated that vase for so long, it's driven me nuts. I'm so glad that it broke." Somebody else will be thinking, "Oh, my God, I just broke their vase. They're going to hate me forever. I've bought my ticket to a very hot place.” That person is going to revert to be a terrified little kid that, afraid they're going to get yelled at because they forget what you were just talking about, that they're an adult.
Yet others might be thinking, "Oh, that interrupted my conversation at the wrong time." while somebody else is thinking, "Whew, that interrupted my conversation just at the right time."
Who is right? Is there a “right”? When we pass judgment on the experience, where does that come from? Do we all carry this cosmic book, find the experience in the index and then we turn to the page and say, "Oh, this is good."? Or do we project upon that experience whether it’s good or bad? Ultimately, it comes from us, from within the mind.
Everything Doesn’t Mean Something
Michelle:
We're always giving something a meaning; I've heard us as humans called meaning manifestors. There’s an event, and then there’s: what inside of us happens — to create the meaning of the event even when there’s no meaning because it’s just something that happened, it just is.
There's not a meaning. It just happened. Right? And how is it called? There's the object, there's the perception of it, and then we're the person who views it. What's it called? Like object ... I forget. There's a way to phrase it from-
David:
In Sanskrit it's called Rishi, Devata, and Chhandas. Chhandas is the object, Devata is the link between the object and the perceiver, and Rishi is the perceiver.
Michelle:
Exactly. The object, that's a perception, and the perception itself. There's no meaning attached, it’s not good or bad, it's not right or wrong: It just is. That’s when there is zero resistance.
Judgements Are Only Impressions
David:
Most people view things based on past impressions, beliefs, patterns, things they’ve gone through. If we can create a blank slate and just look at something in terms of “is this useful to me or not?” then we don’t have to try to analyze the meaning. If it's useful to me, then I can take advantage of it and enjoy the experience; if it's not useful to me, I can just leave it.
We all have so many impressions and things we've learned from parents, teachers, advertising, from walking by somebody and hearing part of a sentence, from all of these things, so we look at everything as we experienced it in the past.
The last time the vase fell off the mantle, this person got in trouble, this person got a cut, this bad thing happened, therefore this is a bad thing and I need to go into my “a bad thing happened” response. If we just can be devoid of all of that mental noise which doesn't particularly serve us, we can be perfect to start with and perfectly becoming something else that we want to be. We're saying the same thing, Michelle, from a couple of different ways. We want to be coming with a clean slate, be allowing it, accepting it, letting it be fine the way it is. When we’re able to do that, we can then decide who we want to be and what we want to experience in that moment. And who we want to become.
Fullness to Fullness I think what we're both saying is that the first thing is to allow yourself to be who you are right now, allow yourself to be perfect now. It sounds misleading that if you can improve, you’re not perfect, but you’re perfect now and you’ll be perfect where you are in five days or months or years. What we want to do is we want to move from fullness to fullness. You're great where you are, but there are other experiences you will enjoy. Maybe I decide to take up water rafting. I don't know anything about it now, that means I'm a perfect beginner. I'll learn a little bit about it and then I'll be a perfect amateur. If I really want to do it, I can get perfect at each level but I don't need to start by saying , "I haven't been here before, this guy who's been doing it for 30 years, he's so much better than me."
Redefining Perfection
Michelle:
The word “perfect” comes with a lot of perception, a lot of judgment within itself. If you say, "Wow, I just had a perfect day." their perception determines how that lands in their world. They could think, "Oh, you snot. Who are you to get to live a perfect day?" while someone else says, "Oh, that's so inspiring to me." If we tell someone, "You're perfect”, one might respond with "Oh my gosh, thank you." while others ask, "What are you looking at? I am so not perfect." The point isn’t that we’re perfect in the sense that there’s no room for improvement, but we’re perfect because we’re exactly as we are to be.
Here’s my experience: being perfect means you're in the moment to the fullness of the moment. You're using your senses, seeing everything that you can see. When the vase falls in the room, you notice the sound of it shattering into pieces, you felt the shock of everyone in the room, maybe you were close enough that you felt a couple of the pieces hit up against your leg as an example. Seeing, hearing, and feeling are primary. Taste and smell are secondary, so maybe there was no taste or smell, but you’ve experienced the moment fully.
What’s In The Vase?
David:
It depends what was in the vase, maybe it was an aroma vase full of peppermint oil.
Michelle:
For some reason my brain went to the vase being an urn or something. "Oh my God. Maybe it was the remains of somebody." What is in the vase is a whole other experience in itself, but it still just is, and that’s really where we want to keep bringing people back to: It just is, and the way it is is perfect. A carrot isn’t wrong for being a carrot, it’s perfect being a carrot. We can say, "Okay, I'm in my 52nd year of life. It's perfect. And moving into 2020 and when I'm going to turn 53, that's going to be perfect.”
That’s what I hear you saying, like the perfect two-year-old is the perfect two-year-old. They're being a perfect two-year-old, or the perfect ten-year-old or teenager. There's got to be the no resistance. How do people really embrace perfectness? They're just sensing it with all of their senses, experiencing the feeling of perfect without all the energy that comes with that word.
Well, That Happened
David:
I was watching one of the talent shows on TV and a young girl, about 10 or 11 had an interaction with the judges during her audition and as she walked off the stage, she said, "Well, that happened." That is a really innocent and nonjudgmental way of experiencing things because the story you tell yourself afterwards is not colored with things that really aren’t important.
"Well, that happened," completely frees up from judgment and then ask, "Well, what do I want to do with it? The answer could be “I never want to think about that again” or "That makes a great story and I want to share it." When someone says, "I had a perfect day," and describes it to somebody else and to that person, the perfect day is their worst nightmare. They’re both perfect in their way of seeing things; God didn't want us all to be exactly the same because that's boring. We want to have that ability to freely have the experience, to completely be in the moment without judgment, and then afterwards be fully clear in mind, body, and senses to the experience that's being presented without the mental noise. That way, as it's being experienced, we can decide who we want to be in relationship to it based on what we want to experience.
Compassion Breeds Perfection
Compassionate beings, first and foremost, are slow to judge. Compassionate beings are always for others: you're for the other guy, but the other guy can also be us. Compassion says we're leading with understanding, leading with love, leading with well-wishing of you. We're leading with wanting to support you and wanting you to have what you want. We can do that towards other people, and we can also do it towards ourself. This is a really special time in the world because right now we have a lot of people who have spent decades, if not their whole life, trying to wake up the world, trying to bring it to a much more compassionate level of functioning. But some of these people have been very hard on themselves or feel like they haven't done enough. This idea that we're perfect where we are, that we can be a well-wisher for the world and we can have some particular skillset or knowledge or gifts that we can bring and promote to the world with is what creates that feeling of everything is perfect as it is. Not only do we want to be compassionate to the world, but we want to embody compassion to ourselves that whatever is done is enough.
There’s an older movie called Shogun. Richard Chamberlain plays this character who is from England or Portugal or something and he ends up in Japan. The Shogun is the head military person, and he wants the Richard Chamberlain character to learn Japanese. He says the whole village is responsible for teaching him Japanese, and after a certain amount of time, if he hasn’t learned it well enough, the Shogun is going to wipe out the village. That was not an unusual practice at that time, but to the Richard Chamberlain character who comes from Europe and has different principles, it’s appalling. He’s been in Japan long enough to see people pull out their sword and say, "Yeah, I can't live with this. I can't live with the shame of what you're doing," and threaten hara-kiri. So he says, "I can't do that. You can't put that burden on the village because if I don't learn, that's on me. I might be not smart enough to be able to learn and I can’t live with the village being destroyed because of me”, and he threatens hara-kiri and moves to his sword. The Shogun really wants this guy; he likes him a lot and he’s crucial to his future, so he's distraught. As Richard Chamberlain goes to do it and somebody stops him and says, "However much you learn, it will be enough." It’s Enough The reason I brought up this example is so many people think that there's so much good they want to do for the world, or they won't feel good about themselves and what we want to bring to mind is: Whatever you have done is enough. That doesn't mean you may not want to stop, but if you do you’ve done enough.
Maybe you’re putting up posters for your friend who lost her cat, and all you did was one poster. If you put up one poster, you helped. You helped. Maybe you took five posters, but then your family calls, your kids need something, something happens, and you don't get to put up the five. You still put up the one. Don't keep beating yourself for not putting up the other four, allow yourself to see that you helped by putting up the one. In This Moment There's a saying: "If you get a house with a lovely living room but it doesn’t have a garden, don't spend all your time thinking about not having the garden. Enjoy the living room." We spend a lot of time looking over the fence, metaphorically, at what someone else has and thinking, "I should have this, it would be great if I had this. I would feel better. I feel happier." We want to learn to allow ourselves to be what we are in this moment, and be grateful for what we have now, in this moment. Gratitude is the key because when we're looking at how to have a perfect day, gratitude will get us there. How do we come more perfect, if there's such a thing is possible or how do we come perfect in the next moment? Gratitude is staggeringly amazing. I know you're a big believer of this.
Agreements
Michelle:
Absolutely. I'd love to come back to the poster. I live by the perspective of keeping your word with yourself and with others. I tell my friend, "I'll put up five posters for your lost kitten," I get to one, and then maybe my family calls and it's a time-sensitive thing. In my mind, I need to create a new agreement. I call my friend and explain what happened, and then I’d ask, "Can I drop them back off to you? Do you have someone else that can put them up? Do you think you'll have time to put up these other four?" What I have found through my life is we continuously make agreements, whether consciously or underneath your breath. Sometimes we're better at keeping agreements with other people, but it's still so easy to feel we didn’t do enough or that we completely fall short, and then we don't realize that's why we're not feeling so good about ourselves. So many times, we're making these agreements, but we don't really discern that it's a real agreement but when we fall short it affects us.
Full On Yes The solution for this is to be really careful about what you agree to, really discerning about what you're committing to. Only say "yes," to something that's a full-on yes, because once you say "yes," there's that agreement. We talked about doing this book, and when I said “yes” it meant "I'm here, you're here; you're showing up, I'm showing up." It’s flowing so easily because we're both keeping our agreements.
David:
I agree. Here’s the very simplest thing: say, "I'll put up some posters, I'll do what I can help." Now I don't have five, I don't have the weight or the burden of that. But here's the other thing: If I say, "I'll put up five posters," and I put up one poster and then my phone rings and he tells me they found the cat, am I obligated to still put up five? Mind Games
David:
These are mind games. When we talk about where the problem exists, what we want to talk about is where the boundaries and the limiting beliefs exist. They’re all in the mind. When I was a kid, probably 10 or 11, I got the idea that I should have some idiosyncrasies (like I don't have enough). I decided to create a thing that said that if I walked in a handicapped parking place, I would become handicapped, which means I just have to walk around handicapped parking places. If I step on the blue line that says handicapped, something will happen. I'm very aware as I'm creating this that it's lame and just for entertainment purposes only, but I did it for years, probably decades. It wasn't a big thing, but I would be in a parking lot zig zagging around the handicap spaces until eventually I thought, "Yeah, I should probably just let go of that because it's lame."
What Are The Rules?
We’re doing the same thing. We really need to come back to the belief, to the understanding, that all of creation is for entertainment purposes. There are parameters, which is what we think and what we say we're going to create, and we set up certain things in that process that allow us to be the co-creator or that are the processes by which we are the co-creator. But within those parameters, it's totally up to us what we do.
I remember reading an article by somebody who was talking about why the liked writing romance novels. They said “Really, all that a romance novel says is that you have one individual who at some point is going to meet another individual, and then they're going to end up together; that’s it. That's it." Now, that's all that's a given. Everything else, the names of the characters, where they are, whether they're in the Wild West or in the future, whether they're in New York City or Iowa, wherever they are, is up to the writer and all you have to adhere to is to that little bit. Everything else is all about exploring and discovering who, where, why, how did these characters go? Some people write by a process called "writing to discover," where they create the situation. Everything is from scratch, no formula, and the writer is just as fascinated as the reader by what happens next. Other people map out the whole thing and stick to their outline, and all of those are fine.
The Parameters Are Self Made
What we want to come back to is that those parameters, those boundaries that exist, are self-created. "The definition of a romance is this." The belief that if I say "I have to put up five posters," I have to put up five posters no matter what because I've created an agreement, and if I don’t then I punish myself.
Instead of saying "I will put up five posters," say, "I'll help you. I'll do what I can. I'll help you find your cat." Inherent in that agreement, without anybody saying it, is "I'm going to stop looking once you find your cat." Don't say things that your own understanding of the world will cause you to be negative towards yourself when you create this situation.
Intention Over Effort I want to be very clear about it in the sense that we get to decide, and we do get to decide. Some people say, "Well, he's a really good friend. I feel bad that I'm only taking five posters." How about realizing you’re doing as much as you can to help instead?
Your intention is to help your friend out of love."The reason I'm going to help you find your cat is because I love you. I'm being compassionate towards you. I'm being compassionate towards the cat.” I'm willing to help, but that doesn't mean I should do it at the expense of being compassionate towards myself which affects my family, my friends, my work and everything else that I'm doing, so I will help you as much as I can. That's a lovely thing to say, and very meaningful for the person who hears it. When we say, "I will help you as much as I can”, it's a lovely agreement because the judge of what we can do is us.
Optimal Solutions
Michelle:
It's so empowering. I've learned through the years that what allows me to keep my best agreements is instead of saying a knee-jerk “yes”, I stop for a minute. I say, "You know what? Let me check-in. Let me see what I'm guided to do. Maybe it is just one poster from the beginning, or maybe it's, "Let me see hire my niece to put up posters for you.” There's always an optimal solution when you are asking for guidance. I think the point that we both want to make with people is to check-in with their source energy: the divine, Divine Mother, Lord God, however they phrase it. We feel something stirring and want to help, especially when this is a friend or someone we care about as opposed to sacrificing ourself and agreeing to something we don’t really even have the will or the time to do.
You Matter Also A few years ago a friend of mine was moving, and I wanted to be supportive, but I knew I didn't want to show up and pack. I don't pack my own boxes when I move, I hire a company. I said, "After you move out, I'll pay for the whole house to be cleaned." They said, "No, that's too much." It was the perfect solution, because I wanted to show compassion and help them but showed compassion to myself by not committing in a way that didn’t work for me. You matter also. David: You matter, also. You matter, also. Michelle:
The world got a lot nicer to me when I realized I matter here in this equation.
David:
People don't always feel that they can be here because I don't know if you've ever noticed, but if you bump into somebody, most often they immediately jump back and say, "Oh, I'm so sorry," or they're apologizing for blocking you. I always say, "You have to be somewhere. You're fine. You're good. You're not blocking me. I'm not blocked. We just met. “Hi, hope you're having a great day."
Humorous Compassion
You don't have to feel small or try to make yourself invisible. My mother was in her 70’s, walking across the crosswalk in a small town in Massachusetts when a guy honks his horn. He's obviously in a hurry to get somewhere, and my mother hobbles back across where she's just walked in front of him, and she says, "Yes?" He says, "What?" She said, "Well, you honked. I assumed you wanted something." He said, "I was trying to get you to hurry up." She looked at him and said, "I'm old." It's a little thing, an amusing story I've used before. She felt that was a good use of who she was; she was a firm believer in fighting for the underdog so for that guy to honk at an old person who is already halfway across isn't really helpful, but we have to have compassion for him, too. Clearly, he needed to slow down and lower his blood pressure.
Compassion Vs Sensitivity
Michelle:
The other thing I believe to add to compassion is this: There's compassion where you are in tune to what’s going on, you’re the person driving the car and there’s compassion that this woman isn't a 20-year-old out for a jog, and then there is a sensitivity people take on. They take on that other person's stuff; had the guy in the car adopted a dialogue like "Oh, my gosh, maybe she has a physical ailment," and, "Oh, my gosh, when I get that age, suppose I have that?" I've seen so many people through the years who talk to me about something a friend is going through, a relationship ending or something like that, and their heart is breaking because their friend's heart is breaking. As the coach, I have to remind them that there's no benefit in your heart breaking for them. I'll say, "Let's wrap that person in love. Let's wrap that person in this light energy, see them and hold the space of them getting into a great and happy and healthy relationship and to stop hurting for that other person.”
We think we’re being compassionate, but when we become sensitive in that way, I don't think that's compassionate towards you. I don't believe that helps the other person; if anything, we're projecting the painful energies onto that person versus being the person that holds the space for their greatness. David:
I'm completely in sync with that, although you're being much kinder to the guy that beeped at my mother. I think he had no awareness of anything, but we don't need to go there.
That’s Not Helping
Here's the thing: I completely concur with what you're saying. Say you're walking down the street and somebody's sitting on the side of the road crying. They tell you their story and then you sit down and start crying: you now have two people sitting on the road crying, that doesn't help the situation.
It's perfect, but it isn't necessarily better. It's perfect in the sense of what we were talking about earlier that everything is perfect, but in truth, if your goal is to help that person then getting them to stand up and helping them walk is more along the lines of what you’re trying to do. When you start to recognize that everything is as it should be, you stop having to fix things.
Everything Is As It Should Be
Someone once asked my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, what the difference was for someone in unity consciousness. In unity consciousness, which is a higher state of consciousness where we're aware that everything that we are, that level of unbounded awareness, unified field of all the laws of nature, that expanded awareness: we're aware that we're That. And we're also aware that everybody, everything, and everything else we're looking at is also That; we're seeing everything in terms of our own unbounded, huge capital “S” Self. So, we have love automatically for everything because it's love, it's appreciation for everything.
This person said to Maharishi, "What's the difference for a person in unity?" Maharishi said, "In unity, one knows everything is as it should be." It’s being present in the moment, allowing ourselves to experience the moment with heart, mind, soul, and allowing ourselves to be there without all the mental "Yama yama yama yama," we do when we’re thinking, "This person's talking. What am I going to say when they stop talking? Is that red the right color? Is their hair the best way it could be? Oh, my god, they're wearing fluorescent on their T-shirt." All of these things can be going on, so many levels of mental noise. We’re talking about immunity to that; we don't bother with that. We're just there experiencing the world. Everything is as it should be.
Instead of Postering, Just Find The Cat
Let's go back to the person who lost a cat that we talked about before. They lost a cat and so their whole focus is finding the cat and asking people to put up posters. Well, some of us are very good finders and just as you said about not wanting to pack your friend’s boxes we might say, “I don't want to stick up your posters, but I'll find your cat." Which do you want done? We’ve talked several times about Newtonian physics, X has to happen before Z, versus the quantum physics, which is: Have what you want. Things can just pop into existence without having to go through the other things. If we can find your cat without putting up the posters or we can put up the posters, which would you prefer? You'd be surprised at how many people say, "I'm not doing something. I need to be doing something."
Trust Your Guide
A long time ago, I was in-between jobs and I thought, "I should get a job." Normally, you send out all kinds of resumes and contact a bunch of people and make it happen, and I remember one of the counselors I went to way back when I was right out of college saying, "When you don't have a job, make getting a job your job. Get better at it, go to the library, study this stuff. Practice, contact people." Here it is decades later, I've got kids and responsibilities and I'm between jobs. I think, “I should send out all these resumes," but instead, my guidance said, "Nah, just send out seven” along with, "On this day in March, it's going to be resolved." I'm chewing my nails, but I trust enough to Guidance that I've been getting my whole life." So, I sent out seven letters and then I just played. I did all kinds of other stuff, but every day, I thought, "Shouldn't I send out resumes? Shouldn't I do this?" Everyone around me was asking what I was doing to find a job, and I didn’t want to sound irresponsible, but I was just sure of what I knew.
Then the date I’d heard came along six, seven, eight weeks later and around 10 a.m. I got a phone call from this person I did some freelance work for 10 years before. He said, "All I remember is really liking you. Why don't you come in?" The next day, I had a job. Activity Is Not Accomplishment
Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment. If I had been sending out resumes, making phone calls, talking to everyone possible about a job, I have to wonder if I would have created innumerable obstacles or not allowed it to be as effortless as it was.
I have a friend who likes to go house-shopping or apartment-shopping when he moves. He makes appointments and sees a whole bunch of them; I like to just find the place, look at one. My thinking is, "Let's get the right one. I have other things I want to do." But he enjoys it, and last time he moved he did it for a week or two before he finally said, "Yeah, I think I'm ready to find the place now. I've looked at enough, so now I'm going to find it." And he did.
We really want to be alert to what it is we want to experience, who we want to be. If we want to be the person who looks everywhere and explores all the options, we can be that person. If we want to be the person that is led right to what we want so we can go get a sundae, we can be that person.
How That Looks In Real Life
Michelle:
We had decided we wanted to move before my son started his next grade, anytime between May and July that we wanted to be in our new house. We were talking about when to start looking, and we said, "You know what? This isn't going to take us more than 30 days”, and we tuned into that. We got super clear on what we were looking for; the size of the house, the location, certain amenities we wanted, even the certain range of the mortgage. We said, "Okay, the universe knows what we want and we're going to get guided on exactly when to start looking." That is literally how my husband and I operate.
Weeks later, we were out in the front yard of the house we lived in at the time. It was a Sunday afternoon, we were playing kickball with our little eight-year-old, and my husband out of nowhere says, "You know what? I just had the sense to go inside. I'm going to go check Zillow and I just feel like today we're going to get led to our house." A house just come on the market that day, 15 minutes earlier. He found it, showed me, we made an appointment to see it.
We had driven from two different locations. He got here 10 15 minutes or so before me and had walked through the house. I knew right away that I liked it, I kept saying, "Wow. This is us. This is great." He said he liked it too and I said, "Let's just say 'yes.'” I hadn’t even seen the rest, hadn’t been upstairs yet, but I knew that was the house.
The only action step here is if you allow this to be easy, if you allow that your intention is out there in the universe, know it's being received, and stay in tune to what you're being guided to, it plays out in a pretty effortless way. Effortless, in my world, is the ability to take action without all the mental distraction.
The Vision
David:
Know exactly what you want. I’d go shopping with friends in high school is, and someone would say they needed a new shirt or pair of pants or whatever. When you knew what you wanted, you could walk in and it would be right there; when you didn’t know what you wanted, you could spend hours looking and not find anything. I'm sure a salesperson's nightmare is a customer saying, "Well, I'm looking for this and I don't know what it is, but I'll know it when I see it." Yes, you will know it when you see it. But when you have a clear vision, you see it sooner. The thing is, you can think you want one thing and have a clear vision, and then see something that is your vision but better. It could be that you're looking for a long sleeve pullover, and then you see a cardigan and it has the energy you’re looking for. When we talk about what we want, remember that what drives our wants is how they make us feel. Action Step 1 When we're thinking about what we want, the first step is to imagine how we want to feel once we have it. What is it about it that makes us want it? I want to be in that house because it makes me feel warm, secure, safe, loved, happy, carefree. We don't necessarily need the words; we can just go to what that feeling is. What's the ideal place for me just to relax, be comfortable, be me? We want that. Next, we define what that looks like. Sometimes we have an idea, and sometimes we don’t, and that's okay because that's a better order to the universe than, "I want it to be facing East, one side blue, one side green, six windows on the second floor," which is okay too, but that's more expressed. When we look at the sequence from the unified field, from unbounded awareness, of how things come, that's on the level of the senses which is more expressed than the level of thinking and feeling. The more profound it is, the easier it is to fulfill. The next thing we do is spend some time, even five minutes a day, creating that feeling. I'm looking for a work situation where I feel appreciated, well paid, with this kind of atmosphere. I can come and go, or I'm at the desk all the time and don't have to be a lot of different places. Whatever the specific situation is: the relationship we want, the clothes we want, the goal we want to accomplish. How do we want to feel when they manifest? Then we spend the time, just five minutes a day, feeling how we want to feel when we get it. Divine Mother called that technique "A thousand hours in five minutes”. She said, "If you do this for five minutes, it's the equivalent of a thousand hours of working towards getting it." It's a thousand hours of activity versus five minutes of just feeling how you want and asking for it with that trust that you’ll get it.
Action Step 2 The other action step that you touched on, Michelle, is the idea of how we want to be able to check within ourselves that we're in alignment, we're in flow with the wholeness and totality within and around us. Some people use muscle checking, some people have different steps of inner guidance; for those who don't have something else, or even if they do, we can go back to those prayer meditation techniques that we talked about earlier and ask for alignment, for guidance.
You Get What You Ask For
There’s a movie called The Bishop's Wife, the original version, that came out in the 60's. David Niven is the pastor at this church, and he somehow gets the idea that he needs to build a bigger one. He’s trying to get a bunch of money, so he asks for guidance and Cary Grant comes in as an angel. All kinds of things start to go wrong for the David Niven character after that, I mean, really embarrassing things go wrong. Finally, he's having this big confrontation with Cary Grant and he said, "You're here to help me get the money for this church," and Cary Grant said, "No, that's not what you asked for. What you asked for was guidance."
The end result was that he realized he was doing so much more good in the neighborhood where he started as opposed to this wealthy, uptown neighborhood. He gets more connected to his wife and what is being presented to him and the fullness of his life, so he gets the guidance.
We want to be able to get the guidance which helps us live the life that we want. We start with the different ways, whatever way that works with us, connecting to the highest within us: Divine Mother, Divine Father, Lord God, Lord Christ, Jesus, Mohammed, whatever aspect of the divine, Beloved, whatever warms your heart. It's rarely, "Hey you," but the divine does have a great sense of humor.
Then what we do is ask for what we want: “May I be completely in tune with what will please you. What is highest and best for me, what is fulfilling for me, what allows me to fulfill my purpose? Please guide me and show me the way.” This is a very legitimate kind of prayer, and once it’s said, you wait. It won’t take long, asking for the “check”. Just give me a clear sign that I should or should not do this, that this is where I want to go. All we have to do then is pay attention to the sign.
Wait, Was That A Sign?
Steve Martin was in a crazy comedy called The Man With Two Brains. His first wife passed away, which happened before the movie began, so he's got this big picture of her up on the wall when he meets Catherine Turner who is this evil, horrible person. Somehow, he thinks that she loves him, so he goes in and talks to this picture of his wife and says, "If there's any reason that I shouldn't be with her, just give me a sign." Suddenly this deep, booming wind blows, and the windows crash open, curtains fly, the candles go out. There’s a big, "No! No! No!” and the a picture of his wife starts spinning like crazy, lights are blinking, it’s this really ridiculously funny scene and he's just standing there in the middle of all this and says, "No, just any sign. Just give me a sign." It’s a comedy, so it all works out in the end but the reason I mentioned this is because when we ask for a sign, one of the things we might want to add to that prayer is, "And make it so clear and obvious that I cannot miss it, and don't let me miss it. Make sure that I get it."
Sometimes the signs we get can seem very subtle. We're looking at a newspaper or something online and one phrase kind of just jumps out at you, but you're thinking, "Was that a sign?" Let it be it. If you're reading a whole page and it's all in 10-point font size, and then something jumps at you in 36-point font size even though it’s actually all the same, acknowledge it. Once you've asked for guidance, don’t doubt it. Listen to yourself and allow yourself to trust that. The more you do it the more easily it comes; attunement comes over time. You can certainly develop this; always ask for the divine that comes in the name of truth and wholeness and totality, above which there is no other.
A Few Other Things To Do These action steps can be done as often as you want; you can save them for big things or use them for everything. Something else you can start doing is whenever you're doing your own self talk, stop and ask, “Am I being kind to me? Am I being compassionate to me? Am I saying things that encourage me or am I saying things that make me feel bad about being me?” Another simple exercise is to set an alarm for yourself on your phone throughout the day to stop and check in with yourself. How am I doing? How am I compared to last time, am I more empowered? We talked about standing up, how we stand up straight and our spine gets taller and we feel stronger and more present, so are you able to stand tall or feeling hunched over? How am I treating myself? You’re a child of the divine: if for no other reason, be kind to yourself.
Be Kind, Be Kind, Be Kind
Michelle:
It absolutely is that. The movie Mr. Rogers Neighborhood has recently come out, I highly recommend everyone see it. Mr. Rogers had three rules for being successful: Number one, be kind. Number two, be kind. Number three, be kind.
It's the kindness to yourself, and also the permission. We're talking so much about compassion for yourself, that you get to ask for and have what you want, but the compassion really comes from you getting a brand new present moment, allowing yourself to step into the fullness of who you're called to be, and giving yourself permission to do that.
Forward Focus
There is no benefit of beating yourself up, condemning yourself for the past. It’s as simple as saying, “That's not who I am. That's not who I am called to be. I showed up that way, and it’s not going to happen again.” Give yourself permission to move forward, to step into more of who you are called to be. We’ve said multiple times that you may not get it right the first, the second, the third, the fourth, or the fifth or the 10th time, but that's okay. We are perfect in where we are, that's the best you can do with where you are right now. Whatever experience you have, you're doing the best with what you know to do.
I'm on my second marriage, and I know we’re staying together. But I know people on their third, and they make themselves so wrong for that. Or they lost weight and gained it back or made a lot of money and then lost it all. I’ve done that more times than I can begin to tell you. But I'm focused on being wealthy and healthy, peaceful and happy, joyous and loving and kind. The more I put the attention on who I'm called to be, the more consistent results show up. I want to give everyone full permission to step into being who you really know you are meant to be, deep in your heart, versus who you were in past experiences. We can all beat ourselves up and make ourselves wrong, and that there's no benefit to doing that.
You Do You
David:
I actually think that’s something the whole world needs to understand: you have permission to be you.
Michelle:
Woohoo! Yes. And the world needs you to be you!
David:
Right. You have permission to be you, with your likes and dislikes.
Patient Expectation
When we're now making these decisions about who we want to be, what we want to experience, what we want to bring into our lives, we need to be patient while these things manifest but also expect the best now. When we know, concretely, what we want the house to look like, the job to look like, the person to look like and figure on the emotional level of how we want to feel about it, be patient but expect it.
If you've been asking for a red car for 30 years, and now suddenly you want a pony, it can take a while for the gears to shift. If you live in Manhattan and you want a pony, more than one thing has to change for you to have a pony. Whether its laws changing in Manhattan, or that you need to leave Manhattan to get the pony, there are ramifications. A boat going 50 knots in one direction takes a really long distance before for it to do a U turn, so we need to allow that.
Your Order Is On It’s Way
We want to be free of the X has to happen before Y thinking, and we want to allow what we’re asking for to come immediately but we also need to be patient so that the mechanisms in the universe and those who are responsible for propelling it can do it in a way that's comfortable for us. We may want a new air conditioner, but we don't want it to fall on us from the 30th floor of a building. We want it to be in our house in a particular way, so at the same time we're asking and expecting it to come now we need to be flexible and enjoy the anticipation of what's coming.
We feel differently when we've ordered something and we know it's on the way than when we’re just wishing for it. Once you place the Amazon order or once you order the dinner in the restaurant, there is a calm anticipation and excitement about it that is very different from asking, “Will I get it? Will it happen?” It’s the difference between wanting something but still questioning whether we deserve it or if it’s really coming and knowing it’s on the way. We want to ask for it and trust that we’re getting it, or something even better.
Small “s” Self
Michelle:
You did such a brilliant job when we were talking about truth, talking about the capital “T” versus the little “t”; this is a great opportunity to talk about the capital “S” Self versus the little “s” self. Self with a small “s” is more of that ego-driven self, for self-conscious reasons. It's the things that make us say, “Is this going to make me look good? Does this make me fit in with the crowd?”
A lot of times that comes with stress and tensions and worries and fears, especially if you're buying something expensive. You’re stressed about whether you can even afford it or, how painful the credit card payments will be. It's all this kind of pressure and tension and anxiety associated with that, but when you are manifesting from the capital “S” self, there's the guidance that allows you to know this is optimal. When you're in that space of being guided, you feel it. You know it, it expands you. The way I look at it is once you have God's anointing on it, you're in flow. You got the blessing and somehow it comes together. You aren’t worried about it being tomorrow or next week or next month, you just know it’s coming.
I've said this before, but I kind of walk around with my little Dumbo ears, and my big antennas. I know it's a yes, it's been in my heart, it's been stamped yes, and I’m just curious to know where is it showing up from? I live in expectancy; not in expectation, but in positive expectancy, and I believe this is where faith comes back in the picture. Faith is that feeling like you've touched the future, you remember the future, and you know it's going to happen even without the exact when and how it's going to happen.
Ego Wants What It Wants
David:
Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. One of the products that we have in the Ascension line is a tincture that's called EGOless/ego. When you get less EGO, what you end up with is lower case ego and that exactly the point we were illustrating. Small “s” self can be talked about in terms of petty; when we talked about the capital “T” truth and the small “t” truth, we talked about about longevity. If we're spending a long time working on something that only is a momentary flash, it’s probably not worth a lot of time but that doesn't mean our ego doesn't want it.
I'll use the example of an Oscar; there are people who feel it's important to win one, but most of the people who win the Oscars or get nominated frequently say, "Yeah, that's one party. People think this is the life of actors, that's one thing. That's one night a year," and then the next they say they're back and they're walking across the floor and there's the nailed down cables all over the floor, and the cameras, and all the behind the scenes stuff that isn’t so glamorous.
When you see a movie, you think you're looking in the beautiful mansion or this gorgeous thing, and what you don't see are the rails and the nailed down cables all over the floor, and the cameras, you don't see all the behind the scenes stuff. And one person was saying, "People think that that's what it's about. It's about the Oscars," but he said, "You do that, and then the next day you walk in and you walk to cross across the floor, and there's all this stuff going on," and he said, "No, this is what it's about. This is what I'm here to do." And in this particular case, it’s the day-to-day grind of being an actor.
When we ask what does the small self-want, it may want the tattoo, it may want the hairdo, it may want the award, it may want, "I want this guy on my arm. I don't love this guy or this gal but they look good on my arm." We just recently watched Disney's cartoon Beauty and the Beast recently, and the really handsome guy in the village doesn't care about Belle as a person or her unique features; all he cares about is that she's the best girl in the village, and he thinks he should have the best. That's very ego-driven, very capital “E”: his ego is most important. What we want to do is to be in that flow that you were talking about and shrink it down to small “e” ego. When we do that, we automatically take small self “s” and turn it into capital “S” and they happen simultaneously.
Want In Truth When we want to do something, we want to do it as close to truth, as close to wholeness, as possible. We do that by being loving and kind, and asking who is being glorified in this experience? Who does this serve?
There’s a book I mention a lot called Return from Tomorrow by George Ritchie. It's a quick afternoon read, very short. It’s about a guy who is in the military in Texas in 1944 when he dies. He's dead for eight and a half minutes and tells about what happened in those eight and a half minutes.
I'm always clear to point this out because different people have different belief patterns about who the Almighty is, or what God is, or what happens when we die. He grew up with a Christian tradition, so in his case after he died, he met Lord Christ, who takes him to a bunch of places. One of the places he takes him is way up high, to a room where there are several other beings. He tells the story in first person, and said he was very aware that Lord Christ and these other people in the room were not passing judgment on him at all, but only showering him with love, unbounded love.
When he walked into the room, he saw his whole life in way greater detail than he could ever remember. There were some things he’d done that weren’t particularly bad, just embarrassing, but he was aware that while this was playing out, none of the other beings around him, especially Lord Christ, were passing judgment. I think is a lesson for all of us too, that if the Divine doesn't pass judgment on us, let’s stop. Let's us not do it.
When he’s done looking at his life, Lord Christ turns to him and says, "What did you do with your life?" George is thinking, "Why are you asking me? You just showed me," but he figures he has to come up with something, so he says, "I became an Eagle Boy Scout.” Lord Christ says, "That glorified you. What did you do with your life?" He asked him this a second time, and then other things happen and all of the sudden he’s back in his body. Flash towards the end of the book and he's in the medical corps. World War II has just ended, he is now at a concentration camp where they're releasing everybody, freeing them from the camp. They're fixing everybody, healing them, trying to find any living relatives that are there.
There is a character there who they call Wild Bill, because he looks like Wild bill Hitchcock with his mustache. He's from Poland, really healthy and robust, and he's the first guy there in the morning when they open to help people and the last guy to leave at night. At the end of the day when they're about to close, he'll come up to them and say, "Oh, can you do this? One guy's been waiting for so long, can't you do him today too?" He's a very compassionate, loving man, and very helpful to everyone there.
In the book, George said he figures the guy has been there a couple of weeks, that he was just captured before the end of the war, but it turns out he's been there for seven years. He was in one of the first villages that the Nazis came into, and they had lined up all the people from his village against a wall, including his wife and children. Then they gunned them all down, except for this man. He begged to be killed to be with his family, but he had some skillset that they wanted so they wouldn’t kill him. He said in that moment that he watched his family get killed, he had to make a decision. He said he had to make a decision between hate and love, and after having just seen what hate did, he chose love.
He went into the concentration camp and just loved everybody. He ended up being the one that was the go-between for the people in the camp and the Nazi’s because everybody respected him. Although he’d been there the longest, he looked bright and healthy and vibrant because of his attitude to appreciate the situation.
I was thinking this morning about extreme examples of people saying, "Oh, you can't do that. This is not possible." When you look at somebody who does this in an extreme situation, who can find a way to be loving and accepting and appreciating of the worst horrors that have ever been propagated on people, and to come out of it seven years later healthy and vibrant, what is impossible? George, the one telling the story, says for the first year after this experience one of the things he longed for was he just being in the presence of Lord Christ. He said one of the things he missed most was his eyes, and when he met Wild Bill in the concentration camp it was the first time he saw those eyes again.
You Have Permission
It's deeply moving and when we look at what we can become and what we want to do, you’ve got to cut yourself some slack. Don't pass judgment, don’t beat yourself up. Allow yourself to be who you want to be. We've given you permission. God gives you permission to be who you are, to like what you like, to not like what you don’t like. You have permission to live the life that honors you, even if it doesn’t honor somebody for some flash-in-the-pan moment that can make a quick buck, or they'll tell stories about you, or you'll be a notch on somebody's belt or whatever it is. Or you're going to wear the clothes because these are the clothes that are going to make you whatever. If it doesn't allow you to be who you want to be, it's not for you. That's small “s” self, that's capital “E” and small “s”; it’s temporary and you want that which is going to serve you longer.
Surround yourself with like-minded people who feel that life is worth living, who feel that your life itself is what you're offering the divine, and the divine doesn't want you to suffer.
I Love You
Michelle:
People have called this mirror work: you literally look at yourself in the mirror, genuinely say, "I love you", and learn to really feel it. I've done this more with my eyes closed, you could do it with your whole body if you want but go through and take inventory of what you really do love about you. Not just physically, but is it that you are kind, compassionate, generous? That you are loving, you are spontaneous. Whatever you are. Adventurous, right?
David:
Or cautious.
Michelle:
Or cautious or shy. Whatever it is that you can say, “I love this about me. I love everything about me.” It’s not for the sake of the words, but to allow yourself to find how you can love everything about you. It’s said often and it’s true that you really can't love others more than you love yourself. We've got to find that love for ourselves; I know myself better than anyone and I can see all the places I've dropped the ball or screwed up. If I live there, I'm not going to get very far. Whereas the more we can have compassion for ourselves, and to add, “to love” yourselves, and to take a moment to do that, to take multiple moments.
Energize
I told the story a few sessions back where I felt stuck in a job where I was really unhappy, and in less than 90 minutes, I don't even think it took me 75, I went through and I found love for not just the company but every single person I worked with and that forever changed the environment. It works for yourself, too. We’ve talked so much about encouraging people to be who they are, not to condemn them, or make them wrong. We want to help people see the good in themselves, see their gifts, their talents, their beauties, their strengths. And then we want to energize that, strengthen that inside of them.
I want to follow up on the story about my son beating himself up last weekend. He had come home from school and saying things like, "I'm such a bad boy." It brought me to tears, it broke my heart that he was doing that. And then while meditating, I got this message within about 30 seconds: "Remind him of who he is." I wrote out 12 little things about him; he's such a great and loving boy, he's God-filled and a good friend, a great skateboarder and brother, he's a leader and he does well in school and well in life. Every day I allow him, I was going to say make him, but I really allow him to read that, and remember who he is.
Show Up For Yourself It’s been interesting, because the more he reads it, the more he takes it on. Here’s the follow-up: this morning I did it again before he went to school, he wasn't feeling so good about himself. He was dragging his feet getting ready, hadn't eaten his food, hadn't put his shoes on. We were needing to go, five minutes ago, and I just had this sense, that said, “You know what, we're going to take a minute.” I said, "John Robert, I want you to read this, and I want you to remember who you really are." He got about three things on the list down, and he just held his head and started to cry. I said, "What's showing up?" He just said, “Okay,” like he got it. It was this realization: that's who I am, and I know that's not the way that I'm showing up. It brought him to tears, and it almost brought me to tears. But for everyone who's hearing this, listening to this, reading this: who you are is spectacular. You are a creation of God, and you are a gift to this planet. Please take a few minutes, right now, to go through and find what you love about you. I bet you it's more than you consciously realize.
The Mirror Exercise David:
I want to support that. So we talked about the mirror exercise of loving yourself, and I think that's an excellent exercise and I want to add a little more details to it.
One of the things that you can is just actually write the words, “I love you”, or find some nice picture with the words. I'm sure there's some meme somewhere that you could put up if you want to print it out and put it right next to the fridge, but put it next to the mirror. And what I want to tell you is, not just “I love you”, because you can love yourself and still feel that you're not worthy. So I'm going to add two more things to it.
One is I want to remind you, and if you need to, write this down too: you have permission to be you. So if you need to put that above the mirror, go ahead. But on a separate sign, right? And you should do it whatever way works for you. It could be so that you're reading it and you're saying it out loud, and the three levels are, “I love you”, “I respect you”, “I trust you”.
I heard Maharishi say once, "No self-respecting man will sit in a place unworthy of him." You can love yourself, but still think you're not worthy. You can love yourself, and still think that you’re a small person or feel uncomfortable loving yourself. But if you love and respect yourself, you respect yourself and allow yourself to be treated this way.
“I love you”, “I respect you”, “I trust you” go at the top of the mirror too. Or if you don’t like that, another way to say it is “love yourself”, “respect yourself”, “trust yourself”. Whatever way works; “love me”, “respect me”, “trust me”. When you're beginning, just do it for five minutes and be patient with yourself. Don’t worry if it just feels like you're saying words and not necessarily finding things to love; in the beginning it’s normal to say, "I love me, yeah, but look at that nose," or "look at my teeth," so then we do that for 10 seconds before we come back to, “I love you.”
Say It, Feel It
What you'll find is that fairly quickly, within a week or two, those emotions start to come up. Those emotions of self-love, loving yourself, respecting yourself start to become very real, very powerful. I recommend doing this for a month but try it for three weeks. Watch and see; after doing this five minutes a day for three weeks, you will find you’re standing up straighter. You’re not putting up with things you shouldn’t, you’re not letting people give you crap. You’ll find that you won't let people question you, "Why did you do this?" You’ll be able to own it and say, "I just did it, deal with it." We don't have to be rude, we can be kind to people, but sometimes we realize that a lot of our interactions are about justifying ourselves to others. The truth for the most part is that unless there's some legal thing going on, you don't have to justify.
Where Is Your Power?
There's a really great cartoon from the '30s or '40s by James Thurber. It’s the era of big, domineering woman with husbands who are small and meek; a man is standing there, hunched over shoulders, wearing polka dot pajama bottoms and striped pajama tops. He’s looking down, she's already in bed, and she's just glaring at him saying, "Well, it makes a difference to me!” You know just by the picture what was going on with that, and you know what? That's her problem. I'm ready for bed, and I'm sorry that's the way you feel.
In a relationship like that, we get to make a decision: is it going to cause me more pain to stay the same and deal with her stuff, or is it going to be easier for me to change? I’m going to say staying that way, because eventually she'll get used to it. She's foisting her craziness, and it's a cartoon. He's going to bed, they're going to sleep. The first thing that's going to happen is everybody's going to close their eyes. Who cares if he's wearing polka dots and stripes going to bed? These days you can wear that out in the world anyway. But the question is: where are you giving your power? As you learn to love yourself, learn to respect yourself, and learn to trust yourself given that you have permission to be you, you start to stand up for those things about yourself that are worth standing up for, and you start letting go of those things that you don't care about. It just happens automatically.
How Comfortable Are You?
Michelle:
No doubt. I've really found is, in that case like this cartoon, if I'm really comfortable with it, I can say, "Hey, this is okay, man, look at this fun outfit I got going on tonight, right?" I feel fine and lighthearted and funny about it, and the spouse says, "Oh my God, that's really cute. That's really funny." Or "You look hot in anything.”
On the other hand, if you’re worried and thinking, "Oh my God, this person is just going to rip me apart”, then that's the way that one really plays out. How are you showing up and how comfortable are you? If the spouse is coming from love, they're just really wanting to bring out the best in you, and you can hear it then you can grow from it. If a guy is going out wearing a polka dotted tie and a striped shirt with a checkered blazer, and his wife says, "Oh babe." It has everything to do with the energies of everything. It's never anything to do with the outer world circumstance, it’s just what is going on inside of us, and can we come from the big self, the capital “S”? Can we allow ourselves to have fun, allow ourselves to have a win-win? This is my spouse; I'm going to love and respect and honor and trust that other person, and I'm going to love and honor respect and trust me. As we do that, life gets so good when we can come from those feel good energies.
How We Show Up Is How They Respond
David:
The first thing you said is the key point: it's how we're showing up. Remember how I described the guy as hunched over, looking down and she's very dominant? What if, instead, he came from “isn't this outrageous?” “Look what I'm wearing, is this fun or is this crazy?” How is he showing up? Because if we're showing up, loving ourselves and respecting ourselves, how we show up will determine how they respond.
If somebody says, "Well, it makes a difference to me," I could use so many responses. “These are the only clean pajamas I have”, or “I lost all the others”, or just say, "Hey, it's just a nothing, babe. Your choice." But you're showing up, you're being strong and you're being equal. In his particular cartoon, the way he's showing up is, "I'm barely here, I don't even want it." Hunched over and head down, "I know I'm doing something wrong, and I'm a puppy, and please don't beat me." And she's getting to be domineering, which doesn't bring out the best in either of them.
It brings out pettiness in her instead of the opportunity to rise to the occasion and be accepting and loving, receiving the world as it is and then making the best of it. And I get this, that the vibes of that are a little uncomfortable for him, but maybe he checked and that was the guidance he got. When he stands up, instead of just bowing instead of shrinking, she might have respected him. A lot of relationships have this problem; one person lets the other dominate just because they're louder, yet it would benefit them both and allow both of them more growth and fulfillment. The one who's louder often knows that they're wrong, but nobody's saying, “you should rethink this.” They're just letting them bolt down, and they're bouncing off the walls. They need somebody to counteract them, to say, "Look, I understand you feel very strongly about this, but have you considered this?"
It Can Go Either Way
When we're in a relationship, both people need to show up and be willing to commit. And sometimes that means say, "Really? Polka dots stripes and a plaid shirt? God, I love you, but just what are you trying to do? Who are you going to see today? Are you going to be a clown at something? I want to find out what you're doing because I love you too much to allow you to be seen in public like that." Michelle:
It’s the energies of the whole relationship is happening, and it’s crazy that something as silly as pajamas having polka dots and stripes could start a fight. The guy could say, “Well, you know what, I thought it was your job to get the laundry done and I have nothing clean and this is all I have left." They could go bickering, rip each other apart. It's so comical because it's this comedy, it's this little strip of a scenario. A little comic strip, but why? What is going on underneath that it's going to take it in that direction of a battle instead of, “You look good in anything, come give me a kiss”?
Show Up, Lovingly
David:
When we greet our significant other, we should do it with love, compassion towards each other, compassion towards yourself. If the other one seems to be having a rough day, what can you do within yourself? How can you send love to the situation to settle them down? The big thing to ask is, “Are we meeting each other's needs? Are we where we want to be together?” There are things we can do about this, but you're exactly right that when we say, love yourself, respect yourself, trust yourself even if you're the person in the polka dots and stripes.
It may be true that somebody else was supposed to do the laundry, we all know how busy we are in life these days, so if someone needed to unwind and watched tv instead of doing the laundry that’s still part of who they are. When they say, "Well, it makes a difference to me," you can say, "Yeah, I totally get that, but I don't know what else to do.” We can stand up for ourselves and still be loving, we don't have to start shooting from the hip right away. We can respect ourselves, love ourselves, and be compassionate to everyone involved. "Yeah, I get it. I can see why this bothers you. It is a little strange."
Or we can say, “Believe me, I checked guidance. This is what I got. There is no other thing that I can wear. Well, I could wear my street clothes, but I think you'd like that even less. How can we make this work? I do love you. I do. I want you to be happy. If this is going to keep you awake at night, and it's my only option, I'm going to sleep in the other room.” Or as you said Michelle, “Let's kiss and cuddle and maybe nobody's going to wear anything all night.”
Talk It Out
Michelle:
Or, maybe this isn't the time right before everyone's going to bed, but how about asking your partner some questions? Say, “I’m just really curious, what is it about this that is tweaking you so much?” And you might find that, "Oh my gosh, her father did that same crazy thing, and he didn't treat her well, and he didn't treat her with kindness.” and it's a trigger you didn’t know about. Now, it’s here to be healed for her. It’s incredible to be so aware of, isn't that what happens a lot? It's polka dots and stripes but they trigger something else, and if you could just look inside and handle it with compassion there’s healing instead of fighting.
Or, Love It Out
Last Friday, we were driving, and we stopped at a red light that had a sign saying, “no turn on red”. My husband's driving, I'm in the back seat with my eight-year-old, and someone lays on the horn. We didn’t even realize they were honking at us, then we started looking around and saw the guy ready to lay on his horn again, and 10 seconds later he did. I'm over here pointing to the sign, and I have an eight-year-old, so God knows my mouth stayed clean, but I'm mouthing, "There's no turn on red." Finally, the light turned green, we turned to the right, and the guy pulled around and in front of us really fast.
For the next five minutes, this is all I was thinking about. And I'm in this frame of mind thinking, "Jerk, idiot, inappropriate, what was that?" I'm not saying anything because I got my son next to me, but in my mind, I'm just ripping this person apart. And then I caught it, and I said, "Wow, what just happened that got you so...", and I call it tweaked sometimes. I slowed my thoughts down and I said, "It was so inappropriate. That was completely uncalled for." And then I heard myself say, "That person really must have a lot of stuff going on." When I said that, I learned that this is a call for love. When someone is acting so rude, so inappropriate, so annoying, it’s because they're hurting. I took this pissed off energy in my mind and moved to wrapping this person in love and wrapping them in light, and just feeling so much better about myself.
Compassion Always
It's the compassion, and to find it even if you're getting tweaked or twisted or turned around or upset is when it matters so much. When you can create a little more awareness, find this compassion for yourself and others, the quality of your life is so transformed. Then you come from that, the capital “S” versus that smaller ego, self-centered “s”.
David:
When we come from compassion, we can look at the other person and be aware that we don't know what's going on with them. Maybe he desperately had to use the bathroom, maybe he was racing to the hospital, maybe something was going on emotionally. We don't know what it was, but we can say, “I'm sorry for that.” It’s so easy for us to jump and assume that when somebody does something wrong that they must be a jerk.
Truth be told, even jerks don't want to be jerks. They're trying to do the best they can, and if we can understand that everybody's doing the best they can, we can live a life that through our own actions inspires others. It’s not so much what we do, it's who we are. When we radiate light around us, even at night, we can have an influence.
© David Adelson. All rights reserved.