More than Just Sex (28 page)

You know that the only thing you can control is you, and even then there are only some parts of ‘you’ over which you
have complete control. By controlling what we can on the inside, we can influence things on the outside.

Think of it this way: if I want to have wildlife in my garden, I have two choices. One is to build a big cage and fill it with wildlife then spend all my time trying to stop them from escaping. This is both tiring and ultimately pointless. If you put anything in a cage it will spend its time trying to escape, as you would and so will she. The other choice is to create an environment where wildlife wants to hang out – an environment that attracts them. The garden doesn’t ‘do’ anything to attract the wildlife; just being there is enough. The garden doesn’t work hard to attract things to it. You put the effort into its creation and then… it just ‘is’, and the wildlife you want is naturally attracted to it.

The same is true with your life – both your love life and beyond. If you want to attract good things into your life, and enjoy them for some time, you have to create an environment where this is not just possible but inevitable. (If you think inevitable is too strong, try keeping blackbirds away from your raspberries.)

It may feel a little odd at first when the things you want start to show up in your life. You’ll be forgiven for thinking, ‘Oh, that was lucky’ or ‘What a cool coincidence’, but it’s not luck and not a coincidence, it’s the way it can be for you. Stay open, stay you and externalize all that you are on the inside, and the rest is inevitable.

Anything that’s stopping you is just ‘small-head’ scarcity thinking, and we know exactly what to do with that… Navigate by your true identity and inner wisdom, and don’t get f*cked over by your fear ever again.

Someone once described inner wisdom as being like a soft flute playing. The trouble is that it’s playing right behind the Salvation Army brass band of your small-head thoughts, and until you can shut the band up you’ll seldom hear the flute. Sure, you might catch little moments of it when the tuba player stops for breath, but if you’re seeking the sort of clarity that guides you to good relationship choices, listening to your true voice is where it’s at every time.

Any time you give meaning to something about which you haven’t got absolute concrete proof, you are very likely just making it up. Now, think about this…

If you are in your head making stuff up and she is in her head doing the same, then who is the relationship between? Is it between the two of you or between you and the limiting crappy thoughts in your heads and emotion talking to emotion?

Remember, just because you
think it
doesn’t make
it
real. We touched earlier on those pesky thoughts in your mind, only then they were the ones that stopped you from walking confidently up to the cute girl and saying ‘hi’. Or they might be the thoughts that played tricks on you when you wondered who else she might be with. But those are not the only times when engaging in your thoughts can trip you up in the pursuit of happiness. Don’t give meaning to meaningless thoughts. You need to shut them up, or at least stop engaging with them, so that you can properly hear your inner knowing.

NAVIGATING BY YOUR INNER COMPASS

When it comes to making decisions we have two very powerful tools although most people only pay attention to one of them. We have the ‘map’ of everything we have absorbed: it’s logical, it’s everything we have learned laid out in the way that makes most sense to us, so we can easily check in and make our choices. But think about it, a logical map has so many limitations. It only shows what you are looking for, what you know is there already AND it only allows you to plot routes that you have already experienced. What if you want to get from A to B and you want to do it in a completely different way, your way? Or what if you want to go somewhere about which you don’t have any previous experience? Even if you animate the map and call it a sat nav, then what happens when they build a new road like this one? It’s not in your database of references so you need something else. There can be a new bypass to exactly where you want to go but if your Man Nav doesn’t even know it’s there you can’t find a route to get onto it.

In other words, if you want to have a different relationship then doing what you’ve always done is not the answer… You need a different way of navigating. You don’t need a map of learned experience; you need a compass. And the good news is that the compass is your inner knowing and intuition, and is already within you.

You already know the way; all you have to do is listen to the guidance that’s inside you. A compass won’t give you the same level of detail as a map, but it will give you a consistent and reliable pointer in the right direction.

It’s almost like a sixth sense; the guidance I am talking about comes right from the core of your being, the small voice within. People often just call it a gut feeling or a hunch. It’s this compass that I have learned to navigate by and to trust above everything else.

Please don’t get me wrong; it’s not always been like this for me. In fact, had I read what I’ve just written a few years ago I would probably have rubbished it immediately and suggested a straitjacket might be appropriate! But that was before I learned to know better, and to trust what I had only previously experienced fleetingly when my ‘small-head’ thinking Tuba player paused for breath.

So how do you do it? How do you tune in to your inner knowing? Simple – ask and then shut up!

ASK AND THEN SHUT UP

Find a quiet place, close your eyes, relax and then just ask the question to which you want the answer. Then shut the f*ck up and listen. You’ll hear it all right – even if it’s not what you’re expecting or wanting to hear, you’ll get an answer anyway. It might take a little while at first but then a really cool thing happens: the more you get used to tuning in to that inner sense of knowing, the more you come to trust it and the more clearly you can hear what’s been there all along.

Homework

I suggest, as an exercise, that the next time you’re listening to music, put on one of your favourite tracks (something
you know well) and then, first of all, listen for anything you’ve never heard before. It will really help your ability to turn your sensory acuity all the way up so you begin to notice and take in more of the information that has been there all along.

It is a lot like that with your intuition. You might not even notice it is there at the moment, but when you do you’ll never be able to not notice it ever again. In the same way, once you have an awareness of your inner knowing, you’ll always be able to tune into it whenever you want.

If in doubt, ask on the inside, then shut up and listen! On the inside… you already know what to do.

Of course logic has its place and doesn’t just fall by the wayside, remember I said that the magic comes when you blend what you’ve ‘learned’ with what you ‘know’. It is this balance that you need to practise and familiarize yourself with. You have learned what you have learned and, even if you can’t recall everything you’ve absorbed over the years, you have been shaped by it just the same, and like it or not you’re the person you are because of having absorbed all of that information and those experiences.

WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT IT?

But to hear your inner knowing you really do have to sort out those ‘SHiT’ (Small Head is Thinking) thoughts. So what I’d like you to do, at least for the rest of the day, is to allow yourself to become aware of your thoughts, and to treat them as just
thoughts
, not as a call to action or a
statement of fact or anything other than stories that the little storyteller in your head is making up for you. Sure, they might be true, but they may just be complete nonsense. You don’t need to decide which, yet! They are just stories, just thoughts and you don’t need to do anything with them except know they are not real.

What you are in effect doing is dissociating yourself – and your feelings – from the randomness of your thinking and allowing your inner compass to be heard. You are making each thought a
nominalization
– a ‘thing’ – and it’s much, much easier to disengage with a ‘thing’ than with a thought that is presented as a fact.

Sure, the thought may be true but it is just as likely that it isn’t. This is all about giving you the freedom and choice to decide for yourself. Break the habit of reacting to your thinking, and you’ll automatically stop yourself from being pulled this way and that by any of the myriad thoughts that we all have each day.

Can you imagine the freedom you are going to enjoy when you can just let them go and be able to choose exactly how YOU want to be at any given moment? When you’ll be able to listen to your own wisdom instead of the clutter of your thoughts?

Don’t let your thoughts f*ck you up.

Headwork

Find a quiet place and close your eyes – you’ll remember that this is not the time for your ‘to do’ list; this is your time
– your time just to allow thoughts to come into your mind, acknowledge them for what they are, ‘just thoughts’, and then let them go.

So, with your eyes closed, allow thoughts to come to mind, and acknowledge each one as a thought about a thing: ‘Ah, there’s a thought about work’, rather than ‘Oh no, I forgot to do that, argh! I MUST do it tomorrow’. It is just a thought about work. Acknowledge it and then let it go. This is not the time for doing anything and your thoughts don’t mean anything. They are just thoughts, so let them go… When the inside and the outside are not lined up, the resulting state of flux can only ever be temporary before your subconscious mind finds a way to put things back in order, one way or another, and that is fight or flight, f*ck or get f*cked.

Listen to others on the outside for sure, but it’s more important to listen to your wisdom and the voice of your true identity on the inside because that is the only way you’ll know what ‘you’ want to do. Never give energy or pay attention to the ‘small-head’ thoughts – they’re not real, remember.

Ignorance is bliss and enlightenment is bliss but, unfortunately, most of us live in the crappy bit in the middle. Not for you now though… think about it this way.

If thoughts create feelings, then feelings must be a really good indicator of the quality of your thinking. While you may not be consciously aware of your thoughts, you are always aware of your feelings. Sometimes you feel down or angry and you don’t know why. That’s because
the thought, which conflicted with your true self, triggered a subconscious feeling on that occasion, and you weren’t aware of it. But you are definitely aware of your feelings, so how about doing it this way: how about looking at your feelings as a barometer of the quality of your thinking? Bad feelings mean there
must
be bad thoughts and good feelings mean there
must
be good thoughts, whether you’re consciously aware of them or not.

The next time you are feeling bad, how about just detaching out of the situation with the ‘just a thought’ exercise, and realizing that if you are feeling bad you must be thinking bad thoughts. Given that your thoughts are not real, then you must be able to feel better.

It’s funny, but often you don’t actually have to do anything to change it. Just shining the light of awareness on your thoughts is often enough. It’s a bit like sitting in the cinema and getting really into the movie – you’re laughing at the funny parts and feeling the grip of fear in your stomach when the screen goes dark and ‘that’ cello starts… but then a mobile phone rings or someone has a coughing fit. It breaks your state. You’re jolted out of the movie and back into the reality of the cinema, and when you become aware that you are watching a movie instead of being absorbed in it, the spell is broken. Nothing else has changed, but the spell is broken. It’s the same with your thinking. When you stop being absorbed in your thoughts and notice them just as thoughts, the experience is very different, as I’m sure you can imagine.

The more desperate you are to resolve a thought, the more you need to let go of it. Panic and desperation are
just the feelings of worry and fear turned all the way up! The more desperate you feel, the poorer the quality of your thinking.