Have The Relationship You Want

I love this guy. I get these every day from Tut.com. He’s Tom Dooley (of The Secret…yes…), but I think of these as from The Universe…

I can assure you, Rori, that the time will come when you, too, will ask, “In what fields did I sow seeds to deserve so very, very much?”

Then I’ll remind you that the whole sowing-seeds-cause-and-effect concept was just a myth, because you were born deserving.

Hosanna in the Highest,
The Universe

Yeah, should’ve told you a long time ago, Rori. My bad.

Tom’s whole thing is this:

Thoughts become things…choose the good ones.

And I love this. It’s not about turning your negative thoughts into positive ones via affirmations…it’s about CHOOSING the good ones out of all the thoughts you have going on at any given moment. And how do you choose the “good” ones…?

Not by some kind of mental “judgment” that “this is good and this is bad” …but how it FEELS when you think it.

How, if you were to follow that thought and DO the thing that thought is thinking about doing, or the place that thought is thinking about putting you in…how THAT would FEEL.

Same with all the feelings you have. Instead of trying to label a feeling as bad to have (grief, let’s say)…and trying to turn it into something else by distracting yourself or talking yourself out of the feeling…go INTO the feeling for a moment. Honor it. Let it know it’s welcome in your repertoire of feelings. Embrace it, sink down into the feeling Soup where it came from. And THEN…

Feel what ELSE you feel. There are so many floating around in that Soup at any given moment.

If you feel yourself in your head thinking thoughts – choose a different thought that shows up…that drifts by. See if some better-feeling thoughts lead you to some better feeling feelings. See what’s connected to what…what good feeling thing leads to another good feeling thing.

See if there’s something in the Soup that jumps out for your attention that feels a bit better than where you are now…and just GO with THAT one!

I know it sounds too easy…but truly…we make it all so HARD on ourselves.

We cling to our bad feelings as if they are BADGES. We all feel so instinctively guilty for simply feeling Good — we get into our heads trying to JUSTIFY feeling good. Trying to put down in writing how we DESERVE this good feeling.

So…this short note says it all.

You don’t have to DO anything to deserve to feel good. That’s the natural way of things. Feeling good. When bad things happen, and tragedy strikes, and day-to-day challenges seem impossible to get past…yes…the icky feelings get triggered, the fear, the guilt, the sense that we’ve brought all this down on ourselves (after all – if we believe we deserve to feel good only because we DID something to deserve it — then we must’ve done something bad in order to be feeling something bad, right? Well – not right. Wrong.

Think about innocent babies born into unloving, abusive homes. It’s such a horrible thing to contemplate, we struggle to find meaning in it. When it all gets painful to consider – the way people suffer all over the world…I go to trying to figure out a reason why, too. But now, I prefer to bless my personal good luck. I prefer to be in the troop that is working for peace as fully and powerfully as I’m able – to harness all my abilities in the service of good feelings for ALL.

Bottom line…the difficulty for so many of us is – Is it okay to feel good when others are suffering?

And my answer – that is the ONLY choice. The only way you and I can have any effect on the world, can help raise it out of misery, is to engage in creating peace. And everything we’ve ever heard on that one is true – it begins with us. It begins inside you.

Peace happens when the people who feel good and believe in feeling good and are not run by fear or pain and continue to promote feeling good (not by numbing pain) tip the scales in power over those who are driven by fear and greed. This happened in Liberia, where the women rose up, took possession of their country, and stopped war.

You cannot access your full power to affect change in yourself and the world until you claim your entitlement to feel good…no matter what. That’s where the power is. Even anger can feel good, too. Feeling feelings can feel good, just because you feel alive and feeling, and that feels good.

Everything is transformational. Things are always moving. Allow yourself to be moved. And just — and it seems so simple, but try it — make the intellectual decision that you HAVE many choices in any moment. Then choose the good-feeling choices.

Let me know how this works for you…Love, Rori

Here’s a comment I wanted everyone to read:

“I kind of got blown away today and I don’t know how to take it and I am wondering if I am reading more into this than what it actually means.

Since reading this blog here I have started to lean back – way back, and now I also have Rori’s book to help me. It is difficult for me to do at times, it would be so much easier to go downstairs with the every day things and ask or get his opinion on something.

Instead, I am not doing that, nor am I talking with him about our relationship and how much I would love to work things out for us. I’ve basically been doing my own things and every now and then he comes and shares with me things about his interests (diving and boat) and some other things that are on his mind. He has always done that to some extend but there for a while it was a lot less so, but lately (the past 2 weeks or so) he is looking me more into the eyes and sharing more things with me.

Today I went downstairs to get the vacuum cleaner and I waited for a few seconds for him to come out of the bathroom to maybe have give him a chance to talk about whatever. He came out, saw me there with that stupid household appliance, went out of his way to grab it, then looked for his coffee cup, carried both upstairs (with me following him letting him be the man doing something for me), and then he started talking to me about something that is totally not anything that I should, would or could know about even though it has to do with diving. He told me about another person that he knows and what he is doing in life right now and what is happening.

To be honest, I felt a bit – flabbergasted – might be the right word, about him sharing this with me.

I don’t know. What I do know is what I felt – what I felt was that I just wanted to rush over there and just hug him and kiss him for helping me with the cleaner. He has not done something like this in a long time. But I didn’t do that though I felt like doing it ( I am aching for a hug from him).

For a moment I really felt like a woman, a lady, appreciated for doing what I was obviously going to do. To make the whole thing even stranger, it kind of gave me the energy to do it, even though before I felt and thought ‘damn this kitchen and dining room needs cleaning AGAIN’ – I hate cleaning, laundry, dishes etc, – I love cooking.

Anyway, while he was telling me and sharing with me I just leaned back, listened to him and kept eye contact with him. I felt he was giving something to me and I just received and I just let him be him and me be me.

Thinking about letting his male energy in, because that’s what it felt like to me. I didn’t stuff anything down, except my impulse to go over and kiss and hug him but I let myself feel what I was feeling. Wonderment, surprise, some warmth, at the same time some anger cause I want it to be like that all the time and things have so deteriorated, yet at the same time a feeling of us dancing around each other, circling each other, not literally but emotionally in a way. Like he is waiting for something and the same for me.

As you all know during this time I am trying and succeeding in small steps in getting my things organized. So I found this Chinese hat the kind the rice farmers wear and something else that I didn’t know if he wanted to keep or not. So I put on the hat and went to him and asked him about that other item. He bowed down with his hands held together in front of him, like the Chinese and Japanese do, with a shit-eating grin on his face, saying something to me in Chinese (he’s been there and speaks a few words of the language).

Would a man do that if he really felt it was over? Or is he trying in his own way to maybe make a step forward to working things out the only way he knows how?

Did I act or react in the right way today? I really would love some input on this, cause when it comes right down to it I am somewhat confused.”

And here’s my quick answer:

This is a classic result from using the Tools with a man – no matter where a relationship, or a date, or a conversation is right now:

Stop Overfunctioning + Open Heart = More Love

The more you keep doing what you’re doing, the more he’ll step up, the better you’ll feel, the more you’ll trust yourself and him, the safer and more excited he’ll feel — and then the sky’s the limit.

Unless he hits his “wall.”

Sometimes a man has a limit.  A place where his abilities stop him cold.  Where he can go no further, no deeper.  And what do you do when that happens?

You will simply lose interest. That’s what I wish for you, and that’s been my experience with clients who pined after a man until who he really was got suddenly clear.

If you are Circular Dating, you will be continually taking care of yourself, you will not have invested yourself entirely and exclusively with any man until you KNOW if he has a “wall” or not.  Until you KNOW if he can “do the job” of making you happy for the rest of his life.

Brava for this comment – you go girl! – and every encouragement I can toss you so you’ll just keep doing what you’re doing.

If you have any great stories like this…please let us all know!

Love, Rori

I read science fiction. I read science fiction, fantasy romance. It’s my favorite way to find inspiration. I also pretty much only read female authors — (Though I do read Orson Scott Card, having adored his Ender series for those of you who are a bit geeky like me….and Asimov…)

The series of four I’ve just finished, by Lois McMaster Bujold — “The Sharing Knife,” is full of beautiful images, characters and dialogue. I usually forget to write these down, but this time I saved the page numbers, and let’s use them to start talking about things and developing some tools around them.

Reach For lightness, bright spark (the hero of the story calls the heroine “Spark”). You do not betray your sorrow to set it aside for an hour. It’ll be waiting patiently for you to pick it up again on the other side.

Time wears grief smooth like a river stone. The weight will always be there, but it’ll stop scraping you raw at the slightest touch. But you have to let the time flow by; you can’t rush it.

What I love about these is the idea that you don’t have to live by your pain.  If you are in pain, you don’t have to haul it around with you everywhere — and you don’t have to give it up, either.  It can stay with you as a “weight,” but you can put it down and pick it up at will. You can look forward to an end to the “scraping,” no matter how long you carry the “weight.”

And that, although the pain may feel “dark” – you can still “reach for lightness,” rather than give in to the consistent dark voice.

I think pain adds to our sense of the profoundness of life.  It makes us deeper, it makes us feel as though we’re deeper, it makes us feel more deeply, and feel more deeply for others who are in pain.  This is not a small thing, or something to be sniffed at or dismissed.  It’s something to love yourself even more for, not beat yourself over the head for.

So – some of us make pain our calling card.  It may be what links us to other people,  what identifies us to ourselves.  It may be the identity we go by — “I am a person who comes from pain.”

And some of us stuff down our pain and make ourselves the opposite — the cheery, upbeat, stronger than anything, energizer bunny who looks down on our moments of “weakness” and vulnerability and beats ourselves up for not being able to “move on” whenever we stumble.

Some of us steer ourselves deliberately or subconsciously into pain over and over again, because we’ve been unable to experience and accept our old pain.

And some of us, if we work it out for ourselves,  just see pain as part of the picture, and can weave in and out of the experience of pain and joy as if they are experiences to experience — while STILL reaching for the lightness of joy, and PREFERRING the experience of joy just because it FEELS good.

If we’re  fortunate this way, we get to hang out in joy much of the time, still with the weight of pain — ours, our loved one’s, the world’s — in our pockets and our hearts just bringing us deeper, but not into darkness. We get to be bigger, this way…more stretched out.  Reaching for the light, living in the light, and living in the deeps, too.

****

I’m already as full of joy for you as my body can hold, and there you go and put more in. Downright wasteful, I say. It’s just going to spill over…

Just a plain-old lovely thing for a man to say to a woman…

***

He wasn’t sure if it was worse to be loved yet not valued than valued but not loved, but surely it was better to be both.

I thought this was a huge truth about what many of us feel.  We felt valued for our contributions, our potential, our abilities — but love always felt conditional that way.  And so we keep looking, unaware, for a man who demonstrates this, too — exhibiting our abilities, showing our potential, offering our contributions — and yet yearn to simply be loved — for nothing.  Nothing at all.  Just because.  Just because he loves us.

And…you can have that.

As long as we go around trying to get love by offering our value, we will never believe we are loved for nothing.

Today…try going around being aware of what you’re offering. See what it feels like to offer nothing.  See what it feels like to do nothing but respond, and see what happens.

I love you for no reason…I just do.  And it makes me happy to love.

A man feels the same way.  Believe it, and let me know how it goes.

Love, Rori

So I’m sick. A cold. Bad, obnoxious, noisy, icky cough. Not a big deal. We women blow through these things. But I ache, and I want to lay down. Puts me at a romantic disadvantage, I think. Don’t look great. Feel sloggy, so I must look sloggy to my husband.

All of a sudden, he looks even cuter.

Can’t do anything for anyone – don’t want to, anyway. Even so, I try to do myself out of my malaise. I write. I organize. I clean the kitchen. And just to make myself feel better, I have the urge to take care of my husband, who also has a cold. Or maybe my urge is not to make myself feel better, but to make myself feel more indispensable. If I don’t look good, I pretty sure better do good.

Suddenly, I realize all my activity is annoying. Sit down, I can hear him say, though he’s not actually saying it. If I got him dinner and massaged his head and brought him tea, he’d gladly take it. He’d take whatever I’d give. Take it all.

But he wouldn’t like me better.

In fact, he really doesn’t like it at all. Oh, he likes the good stuff, alright, but it doesn’t make him reach for me, or pet my hair, or try to have sex with me in the hallway even though neither of us can stand up for more than a minute. What inspires him to do that is the sight of me asleep in the bed at four in the afternoon because I feel lousy and I’m taking care of myself. He’s inspired when I take care of myself.

What he can’t stand is that air of  — I’m going to impress you all by getting all my work done and pretending I’m not exhausted, even though I let a complaint and an Oooooo I feel lousy slip out every once in awhile. He thinks, when I do that: Is she so much better than me? –  and turns away. So much for romance.

This is an extreme case, but it works the same if we’ve just had a bad day at the office, or our fellow hasn’t called, or we just feel somehow that giving to someone and nurturing someone is the way to his heart. It isn’t.

Have you ever noticed that on your worst days – bad hair, a cold, a huge pimple – you seem to be a man magnet? Every woman I talk to has noticed this (when she’s allowed herself to notice). It’s not because you look bad. It’s because you seem approachable. You seem vulnerable. Open. You seem, for a change in most men’s experience, to be a woman who might allow herself to be taken care of, by him. Instead of what he’s used to – a woman who’d be willing to take care of him.

Giving is what men are supposed to do. Women are supposed to receive the love, affection and gifts that men give, and then give love and affection back to them. Though many of us have caught onto this, it’s challenging to stop doing what we’ve always done, what we’ve been told is the way to do things, and to fly in the face of the fallout we fear. So I’m going to tackle one little issue – Nurturing.

Nurturing is masculine. If you want to get what he wants to give, stop nurturing your man.

Radical as this sounds, try it. Stop doing. Stop giving. Stop massaging a man’s feelings. Stop helping your date do the relationship thing and let him flounder until he figures it out. He will.

This whole concept of nurturing is a dilemma for most of us. We think of mothering, nurturing, caring for our young as a feminine aspect of ourselves.

It isn’t.

Nurturing and caring for others may be a female trait – motherhood is female – but it’s still about action! Nurturing is about doing. Giving. Your energy goes out of you and toward or into someone else. When you give, you are acting from a masculine energy place.

We are so accustomed to the idea of nurturing being feminine, we get confused. We think being loving to our men is nurturing them. Massaging their bodies, minds and spirits. There is nothing wrong with the idea of nurturing – it’s the form our nurturing takes that causes so much difficulty. We are all composed of masculine and feminine (yin and yang) energies. We move through them fluidly at our best, and are stuck in one or the other at our worst.

Too often, many of us find ourselves stuck at one extreme or the other. We either give too much all the time and then find ourselves resentful all the time, or we go the other way and make ourselves emotionally unavailable to our dates, our husbands, our boyfriends, and every man we meet.

Too often, our nurturing energies are perceived by men as mothering. Our actions seem intrusive. We seem to be judging them and finding them coming up short – otherwise why would they need taking care of? On the other hand, they love attention. Don’t we all?

To strike some sort of balance when we are all so mightily out of balance, I’m asking you to pull back to zero.

To at least imagine pulling back to zero. The baby steps you actually take may seem huge. When you stop doing for your man what he doesn’t need you to do, yet has grown accustomed to you doing and may resent you not doing (even though he’ll certainly find himself relieved that you’ve stopped doing them), things may get messy before they get better. But they will get better.

This is all about Overfunctioning. What does Overfunctioning and Overnurturing look like in YOUR love life?

Let me know!  Love,  Rori