Opening
There are moments when a kind of quiet worry runs underneath everything, a sense of being on your own with the decisions that matter. Cindi Buckley offers a different starting point.
When we learn to trust the guidance available to us, fear loosens its grip and connection becomes something we can choose rather than chase.
The idea
Cindi Buckley is the author of Love Awakens You and a lifelong student of gentle spiritual practice. Her framework begins with a simple distinction. Much of what we say, do, and think is shaped by fear, and fear is so familiar that we rarely notice it operating.
Her book helps readers recognise the difference between love and fear, and trust what she calls loving guidance, which is available but must be invited. You ask, then you listen, and you never know how your words will land. It is not your job to manage the outcome.
She said:
“When you learn to connect to those, your life becomes easier, happier and, the big thing is, you will feel less loneliness.”
Expectation, she argued, is the quiet killer of intuition, because a fixed picture closes the door on what could not have been predicted.
Her view on manifestation sharpened the point. A request that comes from ego delivers the ego version. I asked whether intention could be brought to human connection the same way, and she affirmed it. Ask for help, stay open rather than fixed, and the synchronicities become hard to argue with.
She left me with two portable tools. A saying she teaches everyone, I am always safe and protected, said in sadness and in happiness because it lifts the first and reinforces the second.
And a slow deep breath with a hand below the belly button, repeated three or four times whenever the day demands it.
What I took from it
I sat with this one for a long time. I moved to Canada from the UK in 2021 and have moved a great deal besides, and I know the particular tiredness of making every connection from scratch. Cindi’s invitation to replace expectation with openness felt like permission.
In the ecovillage where we ate around 13 community meals a week, the connections that lasted were the ones I did not try to script. Cindi’s distinction between love and fear has followed me into how I notice my own signals before I notice anyone else’s.
Three things to try this week
- Name one outcome you are quietly demanding from a relationship this week, write it on paper, and consciously set it down for a day. Notice what you reach for instead when the demand returns. Keep the paper nearby and add a tick each time you catch the demand resurfacing.
- Ask one genuine question before a conversation today and let the answer arrive without shaping it. Resist the urge to fill the pause that follows. One question is enough. Let the conversation go where it takes you both.
- Try one slow breath with a hand below your belly button before your next message, call, or meeting. Breathe in through the nose, pause, then release through nose and mouth, and notice what shifts. Use it again before anything difficult, and note what changes in how you speak.
Watch and go deeper
The conversation with Cindi is embedded below. Watch it for her mediation from the book and the stories behind these ideas. Explore her work at cindibuckley.com.
Explore Cindi Buckley’s website.
New conversations land on the Rediscovering Connection channel most weeks, and you can subscribe at the Rediscovering Connection channel.
Close
Cindi’s teaching reframes how we meet ourselves before we meet anyone else, and that meeting sets the terms for every other connection we attempt. The steadier we become inside, the easier it is to reach out, and one guided choice this week is enough to begin.
Explore the research, then sit with the question this article closes on.