exactly what I need

This is exactly what I need to have happen right now. That's what this psychologist tells himself when something in his life goes awry. In his own example, it was the waiting room toilet overflowing with bad stuff, seeping beyond the tiny bathroom into where a family was waiting for their therapy session.

Okay, it was only an individual therapy session. I added the family bit. Because that's an even more interesting picture, isn't it? What a mess that would be, with the whole, already kind of stressed out family not sure what to do, while the therapist tries to maintain unconditional positive regard for everyone, including the schmuck that clogged his toilet. I wonder which families "make progress" after that adventure, and which families are moved that much closer to throwing in the towel. It'd be a good sign, wouldn't it? To be in a family that drove home kind of happy about being grossed out together.

Anyway: "This is exactly what I need to have happen right now." Telling yourself that shifts the mind from resistant mode into accepting mode, is the idea.

I've tried it several times, and it actually has helped a bit, especially for things like butternut squash soup spilling in the fridge. With larger things -- like feeling at sea in my life, which I sort of have for the past few weeks -- it's a little trickier. The very nature of feeling "at sea" involves forgetting big truths like you are always exactly where you are in order to learn exactly what you are supposed to learn.

This sea's waters are not rough or threatening. Hardly. I'm just bobbing along thinking a paddle would be really, really handy. But even if I had a paddle, I'm not quite sure which way to shore, it's so foggy.

There are long moments when I can hang onto the idea that bobbing along in the fog is exactly what I need to do right now. This bobbing is precisely what I need to help me tune in to my heart, my intuition, my...truth.

And then there are much longer moments when I have just been feeling fogged in. I'm not sure where I want to move in my work, in my writing, in my use of this evaporative thing called time.

My questions are gigantic, and they're magnified by the fog.

What am I meant to want, and what do I think I'm supposed to want? And then what do I actually want?

See that? Where you had to read those questions a second time? That's the fog I'm talking about. And I'm not done! There is no done to this.

When do I feel most alive? If I figure that out, am I supposed to move towards it? How?
Why do I need to move at all? Why can't I just enjoy bobbing? 
Where is the knot that fastens the leash on my peace of mind, and how did it get there? How do I untie it?
How am I meant to live?

When I try to listen to my intuition as closely as I can, it stops talking. Intuition might be like the blind spot right in the center of the eye, where there aren't any rods or cones, and the optic nerve goes toward the brain. If you look straight at something and don't move your eyes, it disappears. I know it doesn't seem like that, but it's true and I don't have time to go into the science of it, people!

Maybe intuition works like the blind spot. When you are at sea, you have to sit side by side with your intuition, not directly in front of it, in order to hear its whispered directions toward shore.