Sometimes that’s the question for me.  Am I giving out of true heart, or do I have alternative motives beneath the surface: like looking good, or trying to get someone to fix themselves with my “generosity”.  It happens.  Sometimes without me knowing it.  “I just want to help,” is such a deceiving statement.

I’m trying to help because YOU SHOULD FIX YOURSELF!!  Or, I’m trying to help so I look like the rescuer that I am–saint that I am–codependent fixer and manipulator that I can be.

It’s hard to recognize motives when for generations maybe, they’ve been dressed up in the goody-two-shoes with frills and gloves and nodding cooing helpfulness.  “Detached loving” is a peculiar statement.  However, it’s a new theory of how to love.  Not unlike “tough love” in some ways.

How do I detach and love?  Ask questions: “Would you like a suggestion?”  “What are you looking for?”  “How do you see that happening?”  Perhaps is always better than: “What can I do to help?”  For me it is an open question that sets me up on the battlefield of fixer and victim, martyr and rescued.  Tit-for-tat just never seems to work but goes off in endless arguments of who did what for what reason and why it didn’t work and blame and shame.

Just don’t want to go there.

So today it is a breath-by-breath focus on compassionate listening.  Calm consideration.  Lots of time to meditate on ideas before choices are grabbed like the last cherry on the tree.  I allow the cherry to fall into my hands.  I allow the easy right next action to saunter up to me like my cat awaiting a rub at the ears.

I never need to ask the Divine for guidance if I am sitting in Her lap purring.