Have The Relationship You Want

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

Hi – just a very quick post to thank you all – to say how absolutely lovely the energy is on here. Can you feel it?

Everything’s soft and deep – and it’s so relaxing to read through the comments – it’s like every comment of yours is a gem – so helpful – peaceful, even.

I can feel the insights and the dedication to yourselves and each other and to getting what you want, and especially the support and love. Love to you all, Rori

This fabulous letter is from Pamela Tames, who has a great site http://SeasonedSex.com – and to me – it just speaks so powerfully about how we all go to our “Default” position when we don’t feel comfortable – and how getting aware of what that is for each of us, and using my Tools to experiment with different ways to go “Off Default” – no matter WHAT you think of the results when you first try exploring and experiencing something new – is the way to go here:

I Am My Heart from Pamela Tames:

I spend a lot of time blogging about sexiness. Deep down though I know the more important question is how to do relationships well. Which is why I’m such a Rori Raye devotee. Recently something she wrote in her email newsletter bridged the themes of sexiness and relationships and taught me an important lesson in being myself.

It started with my birthday dinner about a month ago. Half a dozen girlfriends got together at a restaurant including my best friend, Susan. Susan is a professional mom, which means she rarely gets out. This was the first time she was meeting my other friends.

For whatever reason, the group didn’t mesh. I kept thinking our energies would all come together and flow with conversation and laughter but at the last minute, the group kept unraveling. Susan and I left last, walking to our cars arm in arm.

“I’m sorry,”I said, “That didn’t go the way I thought it would. My friends are so different.”

“You didn’t seem yourself,” said Susan. She went on to explain how I seemed to be trying to hard to keep my friends in shock and awe with my sexual adventurer act.

“It’s like you’re afraid to let people see the real you, “Susan summed up. “The real you I know and love.”

I gave her a big hug and thought how lucky I was to have such a loving, honest friend. I’d always struggled with being authentic. I knew she had a point. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been comfortable all night. I had jumped my favorite facade–sexy vixen (albeit now middle-aged).

Flash forward to a Rori Raye’s email newsletter. I’m reading about how to attract men. Towards the end she writes about the heart. I suddenly got it.

It was like the word, “heart,” exploded to life and jumped out of my computer.

The heart is like a magnet with great powers of attraction. My habit of hiding behind masks (or who I thought I should be) was having the effect of blocking my heart’s power. It was as though my heart was hidden behind a lead veil. Nothing got in and nothing got out. As a result, most of my decisions were made in my head, out of fear and insecurity.

Of course, I’ve read all the stuff about the heart and how so many of us live in our heads, our mausoleums of useless ideas. Reading Rori that day, it all just clicked.  I saw how it’s just a choice, as easy as saying I’ll have the bacon and eggs today, not the pancakes. I’ll feel love, not fear.

Cut to the relationship. I’d been in on-again, off- again mode with my boyfriend of over a year. We’d have the same fight, yell the same things, wear each other down, and storm off in our separate directions. All this heart stuff had happened after our last break up, which lasted a month. And then somehow, we got back together.

This time the relationship felt lighter, easier, and freer. I wasn’t torturing him with made up rules in my head and lists of do’s and don’ts. I was just enjoying him, who he was. I was just feeling, not thinking.

I turned to him and massaged his neck as we sat side by side at a Sushi counter.

“You’re like a different person to me,”I said in a whisper. “You’ve transformed into a wonderful man.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

“Do I seem different to you, too?” I asked curiously.

“Yes,”he said without hesitation. “I feel love. I feel accepted.”

“You didn’t feel that before?”I said.

“No,”he said looking me in the eyes. “I knew it but I didn’t feel it. Feeling it changes everything.”

“I am so glad,”I said beaming. “I feel so happy just being me.”

Thank you, Rori, for showing me the most important relationship is the one with my heart.

***First, Thank You, Pamela, for this gorgeous letter, and for opening up this discussion – I’m going to work a lot with this concept of our DEFAULT POSITION. The emotional and reactive place we go to whenever we feel triggered and uncomfortable.

I know that mine is to first feel sad and a sense of loss and fear and insecurity – then I jump to anger and vengeance and an “I-don’t-care-about-you” independence, then I work my way through to a general feeling of love and okayness for myself and everyone else who was there when I got triggered, or whose consistent behavior is finally triggering me. (My husband, of course, because he’s the one who’s always there…).

So – let’s talk about this.  What is YOUR Default Position? What do you GO TO, a part of your personality that feels “safe” to you – when you’re feeling Triggered and uncomfortable?  – and we’ll work together through all your comments and answers.

Love, Rori , and Thank You again, Pamela