other reading

Part of me feels bad for reading so much, and part of me loves it. Since this conflict doesn't bother me too much, or I'm in denial, let me go ahead and share what I read, while I make sure to expose the above fault (talk about disassociation).

I just read Rue Hass' article, at her site IntuitiveMentoring.com. She writes about the usual ending in fairy tales, when two perfect people get married, "and they lived happily ever after". So why doesn't it work in real life? My relative, by the way, told me that we should read it like this "they lived happily. After two days, they got divorced".

But Rue reads it differently: "they lived happily, ever after". In other words, they didn't suddenly turn to the relationship to give them the happiness. They each saw as their responsibility and ability to create their own independent happiness. They kept it up their entire lives. They found Happiness During Marriage, as opposed to Happines From Marriage.

That was very profound.

We see so much potential happiness in marriage, and yet, when we look for it, it often doesn't seem to be there. Why not? Is this:

• because we looked for it?
• because it's not in marriage, it's in us?
• because the more we need or expect a feeling, the less we have it?

Think about love, or happiness, or peace. Does wishing for it make it happen? Or does wishing for it drive it away? Or fear - if you wish to dissolve it, does it just go?

Law of Attraction specialists tell us that wishing for love when you don't have it means that you are focused on what you don't have, so you attract more of that lack. And fearing something means your attention is on that which you fear, so you're likely to attract more of that fear. Seems like you can't win!

On the other hand, what other solutions are there, if you want peaceful feelings and you don't have them?

• Do the opposite to trick your brain, eg wish for hate and war.
• Be grateful for the tiny amounts of love or happiness you already have.
• Blame someone else, or try to fix them.
• Get depressed or passive aggressive.
• Get bored with the love or happiness until they come by themselves.
• Get jealous of people who have them.
• Let go of negative feelings like anger and depression, and the natural positive ones will bubble to the top.
• Deal with all your Traumatic and traumatic memories.
• Mix with high energy people.
• Ignore all the sadder or needier or colder people in your life.
• Release your vows to be sad
• Recognize that not having nice feelings might represent a safe comfort zone for you.

All of the above are interesting ideas for contemplation, but my mind is still thinking about the tips I have mentioned in my previous few points - that we need bigger solutions than the individual. The solution will involve the past and the future, ourselves and our friends and family, our dreams and hopes and beliefs and fears, and lots of what we don't yet know! If you or I knew the answers, we wouldn't still be looking for them! But at the same time, my answers won't fit your situation, and yours won't be good enough for me. Sure we can share ideas and advice, but ultimately we can each find our own solution!

In previous posts I wrote about Question Tapping. In one post, I described how questions should be asked in a certain order: Why, What and then How. The truth is that since then, I've experimented, and found that I don't want to be limited to tapping in a certain order or with certain words. But I do still like the idea of tapping with a question at the end.

So here's my new twist: Use Setups with any kind of query at the end: "even though I have this problem, I wonder why I have it?" "ET ... I wonder if there's anything to do about it?" "ET ... is there any way I could change it?" and all sorts of other questions that you can think of. Particularly maybe add a bit about identity "ET... I wonder if it's important to my identity to keep this problem" and safety "ET ... perhaps it's safer for me to keep this problem".

And then tap on all the points using all the ideas that spring to your mind of what might be contributing reasons. For example:

• "Could it be connected to X?"
• "Is it because of that thing that happened?"
• "Is that the way they've been brought up? I wonder what happened before that"
• "Is it because I'm scared of something?"
• "Could I possibly seek advice from someone who is more knowledgeable than me in this matter?"

You see, when we do EFT with intuition, we often jump at the first suggestion or association that comes to mind, and tap on that thing. And usualy we get results. But if we don't tap on ALL the associations, aren't we letting ourselves in for a re-currence of the behavior, or pain? If it's a really big thing, why can't we accept that there are likely to be multiple roots?

Finally, using this method, we don't have to solve aspects one at a time. Often, we can just throw questions into the air. I wonder if in some ways this opens us to better resolution.

I've found that the results are a gradual satisfaction and calming takes place. True the results aren't sudden and finished, but perhaps they are on their way to a more complete conclusion.

I hope so. What do you think?