Have The Relationship You Want

There is simply no way to live a full, magnificent life without getting your inner “Boy” out there in a huge way.

You WANT to encourage your Boy energy to to do the tech, logistical, organizational things that need doing to get yourself where you want to be, making the contribution to this world you want to make.

There is no reason we can’t do this and be PRESENT at the same time…but it doesn’t take away from the fact that we are DOING.

And practicing ANYTHING makes it the “default” position. More…

Love This woman – Charu…I’ve done a Tantra workshop with her:

Really, really helpful little video….

This is a newsletter I just got from here…click the link…

I’ve been asked wonderful questions by women in my teleclass support group this session –   here’s one  I wanted to answer:

“Rori, Can’t you make feeling statements without saying “I feel…”?  I feel like saying it so much is redundant and awkward.  Aren’t there other ways to make feelings statements without using those words?”

The answer is – No.

A “Feeling Statement”  is exactly what it is – a “Feeling Statement” -  capitalized because it’s a “Rori Raye Tool.”

The word “feel” here IS the tool.  (The full explanation and guide for exactly how to do a Feeling Statement is in my ebook...) For now – the tool is the More…

Here’s a great piece from Ann O’Brien, and so I wanted to let you know about her upcoming classes, too…I love Ann, so check out her website and get to know her and her work…

Are you pulling your hair out wishing your man would come forward and initiate more… whether you’re wanting a date, sex, or lifelong commitment? Have you ever found yourself “taking over” when your man doesn’t come through the way you want, and then been disappointed by the result?

Do you yearn to deeply surrender in love, but feel so frustrated that you’ve practically given up because no man has ever really been there for you? Are you telling yourself how healthy it is to be a strong, independent woman who can take care of your own life, even though deep down you know more is possible?

More IS possible, and no matter what you’ve experienced so far with men, YOU are infinitely powerful and you can learn to attract that “more” even if you can’t exactly pinpoint what it is yet. Just as much as we want to surrender, men deep-down want to please women; in fact, they More…

I’m laying in bed with a cold/flu for company. My husband is out of town, my mother is doing without me today, my card and gift sit on my dining room table, my daughter will see me later with food rescue, and I wonder how I can Circular Date from here!

It brings back memories of my single days. When I used to get sick a lot. Flu. Tired. Yeast. Low-grade fever.

This was my way of saying “no.”

My own mother felt “stronger” than me (I’ll put it that way) when I was a girl, and the only way I knew how to be whoever I was instead of the extension of her I felt I was – the only way to get attention and have an excuse More…

I got this letter from Allana Pratt yesterday and loved it so much, I wanted you to see it.

OK. I’m dating this new man. I was feeling very crunchy, pissed off by his lack of being impeccably present, grounded or thinking positively. Grrrrr….

I was going through my normal reasoning of why this one won’t work either. I was NOT doing my feminine practices, not feeling my feelings, not telling the truth with kindness and honesty… I was pushing him away and being a bitch, CONVINCED it was him.

Then, bless him, he suggested we go for a vigorous hike to get the juices flowing, energy moving. I could feel the anger in me welling up, all prickly from the inside out, wanting to SCREAM!

We got back to my place and began to talk. I could feel under the anger was a huge welling up of tears and I took a breath and decided to show him my fears. I told him to please only say More…

I wanted to write this as sort of a companion piece to my “Love and Memory” post – it’s a small exercise to use along with other of my Tools that work differently – so if it seems contradictory to other Tools, it’s not….it’s just a different angle.  I’m all about seeing what works for YOU – and different things will work at different times.

The idea is to experiment – so let me know how this affects you…and be sure to Riff and Channel no matter what:

So many of us are held prisoner by memories stored deep in our subconscious minds. My wonderful friend Virginia Feingold Clark is an extraordinary hypnotherapist who’s been featured on Forbes.com, and who I deeply trust with my own subconscious.

Virginia told me that because the subconscious has no awareness of time, when we are reliving an experience in our mind, it’s as if it’s happening to us right now — body chemistry reactions and all.

She taught me one way (there are many) to get free from the tyranny of a painful memory: We simply replay it in our mind and change the outcome!

This is a technique that is especially powerful with hypnosis, but you can also do it on your own. The key is to relax deeply so you can access your deeper mind.

Here’s how Virginia says it would work, for example,  with the memory of a heartbreak:

1.  Sit or lie down with your eyes closed for about 20 minutes, then take yourself back to the memory and replay it — make it a vivid movie in your mind.

2. Go through it from the very beginning and change the action, the dialogue, the feelings – see and experience yourself handling the situation in a way that makes you feel good now.

What will happen is that by taking back the control you felt you lost, you’ll no longer identify yourself with being a victim.

You’ll feel freer – with much more confidence and a new ability to make decisions from a place of greater personal power.

I love this Tool – it gives going back and thinking about these old things an actual purpose (just make sure to not revisit it over and over, use my other Tools to walk yourself through the Tunnel, to Channel, and to stop the Train of Obsession if you feel like you’re on it)…and I love Virginia.

I get her to work with all my clients to take the edge off of anxiety, and make better so many other things, and you can see her on my Commitment Blueprint Program talking about her experience with her own marriage, and how “It’s Never Too Late To Marry.” You can find Virginia at www.ItsNeverTooLateToMarry.com.

Here’s a comment from Linda – (I just love dancing with my girl and boy energies – I used to struggle, and now I find it fun to make these choices to fall into “being” …and this comment is a great jumping off place…) – Linda says:

“I struggle with my “boy energy”. I have a man I want to show up on his door step… the results imaginary.  BUT…have come to the decision that I dont want a relationship that I have manipulated at all. I do want the one that he would initiate if that ever happens, that is what I want. For whatever reason, he is not able, willing, ready, or any combination of who knows what to be available for a relationship with me. That is too much thought into him and his stuff. Keeping my focus on me and what I feel is what I need to keep in from getting de-railed again. That is not productive energy.

If a man is not in front of you he is not real…. it sounds silly but it is true. It helps me when I get lost in thought wishing, hoping, dreaming… pining away for something that is not real only in my head.

Go back and read the post a few ago on the difference between girl and boy energy. It helped me discern what I was wrestling with. Doing, telling ,teaching directing is “boy” . For a take charge , keep things in order, and ducks in a row kinda woman that I am it is such a struggle to stop that and just “be”…

I hope it helps, please go read the post on the girl and boy energy. It was very helpful to me. If that man you were with wants to be your friend… in the words of Rori… Get your energy out of there…. it is hard but it can be done. Linda”

Thank you, Linda, for your lovely insights, and here’s my jump-off…

Linda, and all…I dance daily, sometimes hourly or minutely or even in bits of seconds, with my boy/girl energy.

It never stops, when you are a woman who likes being in charge and is good at it.

And that is me, just as it is with you and so many of us here.

What does happen, though, is you start to become more comfortable in girl energy, in being vulnerable, and you find throughout the day that you have many, many moments that are crossroads.  You have the choice to make — to go down the “take charge” route, or to give that up and go down the “feeling” route.

Once you start experiencing what happens when you’re just “being” – and it feels SO much better almost all of the time…your tension and stress just disappear in the experience – you just start letting go of the need to be in charge, and it just becomes easier to dance.  It becomes more fluid.  You fight yourself less.   You think about it less.

It’s like being in a bathtub or shower and deciding to enjoy the warm water instead of thinking about your day, or wondering how long the hot water will hold out.  Even that’s a skill you have to practice…and that’s what the Tools are for.

We skim the surface of life because that’s what we’re taught.

As you start to sink into the feelings – even the pain – instead of fighting them…you’ll see…it get’s easier to choose being over doing, and then…you have more energy for doing when it’s the choice you want to make!

Love, Rori

Hormones are intuitive. Even when they’re nicely balanced, it’s as though they speak from inside – tingling, sparking, soothing, spreading calm or unease. I can’t remember my thoughts from an hour ago, but I can remember everything I felt in the last forty years. It all comes back, like high-speed footage suddenly set free from a dark can, resurrected, ready to leap into this moment as if it belonged here.

I can’t decide for sure whether it belongs here or if I made it up in the first place.

I can’t tell what’s a story and what’s real. Perhaps everything is a story, and every story feels real.

It’s as though the moments of my life I remember (and I seem to remember the same ones over and over again, like on a loop) are guideposts I use to hang my reality on. They take on significance they may or may not rightfully possess. But why? I ask. (And why am I just now in my head, asking Why? – stuff for the next issue.)

And then I suddenly know why. Because they bring with them a feeling. It may be a yucchy feeling, a sad, dreadful feeling. Or a glorious, happy feeling. (But most often a yucchy one, because right after the glorious ones, the yucchy ones seem to follow.)

And I don’t know why, exactly, I’ve conjured up this or that particular memory with a particular feeling, except that, every time, it’s something I’ve seen before. It’s something I know, something familiar. As though dread, horribleness, sadness, loss is so familiar it’s comforting. And, I’ve noticed, when one comes I instantly tune out what’s right in front of me. I stop looking at my daughter. I stop seeing my husband. I see only the computer, the words on the page, and no heart at all, anywhere.

So that’s it. I can, if I want, create a continual stream of loss by allowing old losses to deprive me of what’s here now. And next year I can remember this moment as one that passed me by. And then, the next year, I can just pile them on, and continue forever, and never live my life at all!

I realize I don’t even know exactly what I was feeling then. My memory is colored by what happened after. I can’t always remember what happened. I remember walking through my father’s rose garden, smelling flowers, and then judging them – Miss America style – for beauty. I remember doing that, and it seems long ago and far away, but the feeling – that part feels like right now. See a rose, want to examine it to see how it measures up in comparison to….what? Another rose? And I feel that now as such a waste of time, and – I must have been lonely and I must’ve been so judgmental….and perhaps it wasn’t like that.

Perhaps I was totally in love with the contest of rose petals and blissfully, single-mindedly immersed in my occupation. Perhaps it wasn’t about judgment at all – it just looks like it from here. Perhaps it was about appreciating beauty, and deeply examining each petal in such detail I could be one. Perhaps it was my Zen experience. Zen and the Art of Examining Rose Petals.

What’s the memory, the memory of a feeling, that keeps infiltrating your mind and heart? What sends you backwards, away from wherever you are? What’s your tradition of longing – of unfinished dreams and hardly recognized wants? And how can you stop the old pictures, dressed with increasingly new interpretations, from interrupting you? Even while you’re reading this?

You can. And you don’t have to. Much of my work tells you to Stop. Stop talking, Stop thinking. Stop doing. Stopping gives you a moment to breathe, a moment to see what’s around you, a moment to feel. So let’s say you’re in the grip of something that’s wistful, that’s pleasant, or that’s plain misery-making. Instead of trying to Stop it, in order to be in the moment, try something else.

Try making it bigger.

Try just being with it, and with what’s right in front of you at the same time. We’re talking about just Being.

Let’s say you’re working on a project, and all of a sudden, your rotten last Saturday night date comes to mind, and then before you know it, you’re into the rotten date three months ago, and then you’re back to your rotten ex, and then you’re back to being a girl with no date for the prom.

The pictures (I adore a healing modality called Holodynamic Tracking…I won’t go too far with this now – but ask me) might be flooding in from other people’s lives, from your ancestors, from what you’ve seen on film, from the Big Bang. They may have absolutely no meaning for you now, except for the feeling they’re able to bring with them. Why fight them?

It’s as though those pictures and feelings and memories are stuck in a time warp. They take us back in our minds, and bring our hearts along with them. Sometimes it feels wonderful, and sometimes it feels awful.

Instead of taking yourself backward, try bringing them with you into the present! Incorporate them into who you are now. Let them grow up. Treat them with compassion, as if they are no longer you.

You can be who you want to be now, not who you think you were then. You can take yourself and all you’ve learned backwards, maturing the thoughts and pictures and feelings as you bring them forward into the life of this moment.

You can, like me, be, not judgmental and cold, but resourceful and focused. You can be, like me, not lonely and quiet, but curious and enchanted. You can be what you want. You can be what you say you are.

I am a lover of things and animals and people, of detail, of molecules, of what is. I am in my heart from the moment of my birth and before, and I get to start fresh every split second, no matter what.

You can be a child and a grownup, helpless and helpful, wicked and glorious and angelic. All at the same time. All the time. Even the time that seems like it came before. Every moment, you get to start over.

Love, Rori

I`m a workaholic. I have to admit it. I`m a doing-stuff junkie. I`m a do-it-yourselfer with a to-do list that would intimidate most CEO`s, and the will to barrel through it. I wake up excited to see my computer. Day after day.

So how does this fit with my idea of life balance? Left to my own devices, I`d start writing at 7am and quit only after falling asleep at my keyboard around 3am. I`d stagger through the day turning my imagination into words and deeds lived by a character in a book. I`m a lone wolf who wants more than anything to belong.

I`m a square peg in a round hole who`s fervently re-cutting the round hole into a square. It`s not bad. Actually, it`s sometimes pretty creative and satisfying. And sometimes it feels like I`m a head without a body. I forget to breathe. I forget to eat. So, how do I bring the life of my head into the life of my body, and the life of my soul into my thoughts?

I know I`m not alone.

Ahhhh. And this is my specialty. The What if dialogue, the Mantra, all my Tools to bring you from your head to your heart are all from me. And here I am, standing in the kitchen, held by my man like the picture I used to show in my workshops – the picture I call Surrender in which a gorgeous man wraps his hands and arms around a lovely, relaxed woman – and I`m looking out into my lush garden, and I`m thinking about…advertising. Whoa.

I realize this is pretty stupid, not to mention the opposite of everything I teach.  Here I`ve got a great man, we`re alone in my house, and I`m too busy thinking to feel.

Not, I think, because I`m afraid to feel, but because I just, damn it, want to think. I`m about to go with – Well, I`m just not in the mood, it`s okay, I`ll just be half here until my body kicks in – and then I toss out that idea. I breathe, I go into my imagination for romance, and then I suddenly realize I don`t have to.

I`m really here. I can feel the floor, I can feel my heart, I can feel the air, hear the dog bark, the cat purr, and still it`s a battle. My head battles my body. Think, feel, think, feel. The balloon of my energy gets batted back and forth – think, feel, imagine, feel, do, feel. Why am I at war with myself? And then I get it.

Doesn`t matter what`s going in my head. Not a word, not a thought, not a pulling, stiffening, rope-tying, limiting idea has any power at all over me. Feeling trumps thought. All the time, every time.

Okay, you say, humoring me, I believe it goes this way: Thoughts lead to feelings which lead to action, etc. This may be true. And yet, with me, trying to rearrange my thoughts is still thinking. So I`ll just cut to the chase. I`ll see if my feelings can squash my thoughts. Instead of romanticizing my way out, instead of imagining my way out (I`ll do my visioning, imagining, all my Rori Raye stuff when I practice, practice, practice alone), I`ll just feel my way out. I won`t even ask myself what I feel. I`ll just feel.

Now what? Okay, I turn my head to my man. I look in his eyes. I see blue like the sky. I look at the hairs poking a bit out of his chin. I look at his ear. All of a sudden I reach out and touch his cheek. Oooooh I feel. Stubbly I think. I remember smiling, the rest I forget.

I believe with my whole heart that What Is Right in Front of Me trumps what I think. I believe that when I`m cold, or hot, it comes before what`s on the menu. That anyone`s face is interesting enough to stop my judgment and inspire my curiosity.

That the feeling I wonder who you are? comes before the thought Are you what I want? And that the feeling I feel good, and warm, and safe, or confused and scared and uncomfortable comes before What is he thinking? and Do I look good enough?

So, I`m suggesting something new. Practice wonder. Practice curiosity.

When we`re actually out and about (as opposed to practicing the Tools at home alone) instead of imagining, instead of picturing putting ourselves in a safe or romantic place (just because we`ve managed to think ourselves into numbness way too much), sink down into What Is.

There`s a face in front of you. There`s a child in front of you, a dog, a cat, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, an old woman, a beautiful car. There`s a sunset – not the memory of the sunset you shared with someone who broke your heart, but the one right now. It has colors, and shapes. It`s a new memory.

This may sound woo-woo, and it`s anything but. It`s about sometimes getting out of the la-la land of our brains (no matter how attractive and obsessive our thoughts can get) by getting down into reality. We`re all afraid that reality is ugly. Actually, most of the time, it`s what our brains think of reality that can be ugly.

We all know people who are great at turning lemons into lemonade. What if what we often assume to be lemons simply aren`t lemons at all? There is much in life that brings pain. There`s much in life that brings joy. Instead of believing I will walk into pain and try to think it into joy, I choose to believe I will walk into joy and it will just simply…be…joy.

Trust yourself. If you are happy, be happy. If you are sad, be sad. Sooner or later, the feeling will lead to a thought, which will lead to another feeling, which will lead to another thought, which will lead to a feeling which will lead to action. Be curious.

Love, Rori