I sat on the porch enjoying the play of the hundred shades of green, feeling the warmth of the air, . . June. How beautifully June.

Due to a minor incident earlier in the day, I found myself thinking about the passive-aggressive spectrum I travel from time to time. I noticed that it’s a long gentle slope from the peak of my passivity to the red line where my aggression begins. It takes a lot to rile me. How sharply my aggression builds once that red line is crossed varies from situation to situation. I stay alert to the energies at play and strive to respond appropriately with as much wisdom and grace as I can muster.

Aggression is a mighty force. Bridled, it serves as a tool. Strive to be its master, so that it may serve you well, acting in accord with your truest aims and sense of direction.

It’s not easy, though, I must warn you, to develop even a modicum of skill in handling our potentially self-destructive tendencies, It’s one of those “not for sissies” games. Nevertheless, if skill is what you truly want, rest assured that life will present you with endless opportunities to practice, at whatever level you need,

When it comes to aggression–which can be expressed as everything from mild sarcasm to monstrous revenge or rage–It’s a tough course. It’s not in the nature of aggression to succumb to restraint. You have to tame it, using whatever tricks of the trade you’ve acquired over the years. Sometimes you have to invent or discover new ones. For me, it’s been a highly instructive and rather bumpy road.

But it’s been well-worth the effort. Rewards always more than compensate for the losses along the way. All exercises in self-mastery are like that, in my experience. Not only do you gain skill in controlling another aspect of self-expression, but you get added benefits along the way. Sometimes it takes a bit of living to see that, but it’s true.

One of the prizes I got for working to shape and direct aggression, for instance, is a far greater amount of patience than I had before. And patience is a beautiful reward. It gives you a place to rest for a while, to breathe easily and take in a wider view. It lets you return to your center again, to a welcoming acceptance of what is.

You can design your own self-mastery practice, by the way. All you have to do is notice some part of yourself that causes you more pain than pleasure and decide to work with it. That means paying attention to it so you can learn what triggers it, then noticing when that negative part of you is being triggered, then noticing that you can actually chose not to respond in your usual way.

One trick that helps is to play”The If-Then Game” with yourself. Before the next triggering event comes along, ask yourself, “What if such and such happens? What could I do instead of my habitual response?” Then imagine some alternatives. Do a little brain-storming, letting yourself come up with all the ideas your mind can create, even silly or outrageous ones. Dismiss no alternative; your conscience will sort out possibilities that are within the bounds of your principles. Your goal is just open the door to a whole, big bunch of possible alternatives. So let your imagination soar. Play out the alternatives you come up with in your mind.

Next week, I think I’ll retell the story of the black raspberry thief. It’s a great example of the way unexpected rewards show up when you put a good alternative into action.

Meanwhile, I’ll wish you a week where you suddenly notice places where you’re sliding into the mud of habitual negativity. “Oh, look! I was going there!” See what simply noticing does.

Smiling at you. Big-time.

Warmly,
Susan

_{Image by Josch13 from Pixabay}

Back in the middle of the last century, writings about the amazing powers of the subconscious mind were all the rage. It was, as I understood it, this vast, shapeless, inner world that held more or less clear impressions of everything you ever experienced or learned. Not only that, but it somehow filed everything in organized, wholly cross-referenced files. And that gave it the power to find–or lead you to find–the answers to any questions or puzzles you presented to it. That’s what made it amazing.

But the part of the subconscious that holds all your personal experiences was only one layer of it. There was another, deeper layer below it that held the experiences of everybody everywhere who ever lived, back through eons of time. At their edges, the personal subconscious and the collective subconscious intermingled, and you could, with proper discipline, guidance and effort, travel into the depths of the collective to access even more data. Some people were able to dive even deeper than the collective. But that’s another story, for another time.

What got me to thinking about this was a simple question a friend asked me this morning. “Have you started on your Sunday Letter yet?” I told him I hadn’t, but that I could tell that the Boys in the Back Room were kicking around an idea. I depend on them. And they never disappoint, although I sometimes have to knock pretty loudly on their door before they slip their notions to me.

The Boys in the Back Room is a compartment I built in my personal subconscious. Up until I realized I could do that, I thought of the subconscious mind as a vast, maybe bottomless, ever-swirling bowl of soup. “The Cosmic Soup,” I called it. When you wanted to know something, you’d bait a line with your question, drop it into the soup and wait until something tugged on your line. That process was called “Fishing in the Cosmic Soup.”

Then one day I was walking by local trout stream and it dawned on me that different bodies of water held different kinds of fish. Maybe the Cosmic Soup was the same way. So I swam around in it for a while and found this sun-dappled pool that was bubbling with ideas. It was surrounded by some kind of transparent energy field, and I knocked on its outer edges and a laughing young fellow appeared, opening a kind of door. Behind him was a big, bright room filled with school desks and a riotous, laughing crew of boys and girls, maybe in their late teens, early 20’s, turning somersaults and throwing balls of crumpled paper at each other.

The guy at the door told me they were my Creatives. They fabricated my ideas and dreams. I could call them, he said, the Boys in the Back Room—“boys,” in this case, being a word like “guys” that referred in a casual, friendly kind of way to both genders. They were right next door to the Research Clan, he said, who aided them immensely in their creations. (The Research Clan, by the way, is the group that helps you figure out where you left your car keys, among other things. They travel freely through the huge data bases of the entire subconscious in search of answers and report to many other inner pools besides that of the Boys in the Back Room. But that, too, is another story.)

It was this whole experience that showed me why Positive Affirmative Questions work. And that’s really what the Boys suggested that I write about today. Here it is in a nutshell, since I’ve rambled for quite a while already: Instead of using affirmations to reprogram a behavior or install a different one, you turn the affirmation into a question. For instance, instead of saying, “I am eating healthy, nutritious foods now,” you ask yourself, “Why am I so drawn to eating healthy, nutritious foods now?” Then the Researches go to collect data and collaborate with the Boys in the Back Room who fabricate ways for you to discover that you are, amazingly, drawn to nutritious foods.

While they’re searching, the negative part of you that knows you’re still stuffing Oreos in there might say something nasty to you, like “You’re not eating good stuff, fool.” Just tell it that it’s not up to speed on things and trust that the Boys will be back any second now with reams of ways to nudge you into hankering for a crisp, juicy apple or a maybe a piece of salmon, fresh off the grill.

Instead of saying “I no longer spend money impulsively,” you ask yourself, “Why am I managing my money so wisely now?” Then see what happens the next time you’re out shopping or leafing through an inviting catalog that came in the mail.

That’s the gist of it. “Why am I feeling so motivated today?” Why am I getting so many good ideas about this thing I want to do?” “Why am I feeling so peaceful today?” Play with it.

Wishing you a week of happy discoveries.

Warmly,
Susan

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.com