Glitter Joyride Podcast

When you've ghosted the Divine

This week I was talking with an old friend, I’ll call her Nima, when she said something heartbreaking. She is a pro domme and regards her work as a vocation; she helps her clients reach states of devotional surrender they struggle to access in their daily lives. She was telling me about a session she had, in which her client was on their knees, bowing in front of her, sobbing with gratitude and relief at being held in her love. She used the word “worshipped.” Her client was worshipping. Nima is soulful, deep. Hanging out with her is grounding, and I always feel better after we do. She says the real things and looks beyond the superficial towards deeper realities. So it surprised me when she told me that she feels cut off from her spiritual practice. In the time I’ve known her, she has consistently been in a relationship with the Divine. She said, “I am embodying the Goddess for my clients, and they are getting the benefit of that relationship, of that surrender. Why can’t I feel my own connection with Her?” She told me that without feeling that connection, she feels a bit fake, like she’s pretending for the sake of her paycheck. Ouch. I asked her about her practice. She replied, “I stopped practicing last year.” So my next question is, “What happened around the time you stopped?” “My dad was sick, and I was caring for him, and life was hectic. I just never started back up.” She’s crying by now, and my heart goes out to my sweet friend. “Do you want to start again?” “I feel like I betrayed myself, and I don’t know how.” And there it is; the self-betrayal that gets many of us, including me and Nima, when we fall off our practice. It’s a real relationship between the Divine and us, and we all know what happens when one person ghosts. I could relate deeply to Nima’s tale of woe. When I moved back seven years ago, I was overwhelmed and didn’t call a beloved friend. Then I started to feel guilty about not calling. I became avoidant because I felt guilty, and before you knew it, seven years had passed. The longer it went on, the more impossible it felt to pick up the phone. Eventually, the window closed, and I never did. Shame. Shame about neglect, about abandoning ourselves, our relationship, our practice. It sucks. Starting again alone is hard precisely because the shame is in the way. That’s what and who my new offering is for. I’m holding a practice container this spring: Six Weeks of Showing Up. If you feel far away from your practice and don’t know how to find your way back, if you fell off and the longer it goes the worse it feels: I got you. We’ll figure it out together. Only 6 spots left. We start next Thursday, April 30. Registration closes Tuesday, April 28. Join me and come home to the relationship you love beyond everything. https://pavinimoray.kit.com/products/six-weeks-of-showing-up [https://pavinimoray.kit.com/products/six-weeks-of-showing-up] Get full access to Glitter Joyride at pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

"I Threw His Boots Into the Snow!"

What does it mean if you feel contempt in your relationship? (I’ll share a new free resource at the end) I recently heard the phrase “Normal Marital Hatred” in my RLT training. When I heard this I thought, “Yep, I know that feeling.” I’ve written elsewhere about my two marriages, but in the story I’m going to tell you, I am 29. I’ve been married for four years. We have a small home we’ve built together. It is a shoes-off house. There are two steps leading up to the front door of the house. My then-husband has a habit of leaving his shoes in the middle of the steps. So that I either have to move them, or step over them. I arrive home first from work. And on this particular day, I’ve had it. My students were a pain in the butt, my lessons didn’t work, and my boss was micro-managing. I just wanted to come home, have a nice dinner, and chill. I’m entering the house, and as usual, his boots are in the way, but in my urgency to enter, I don’t see them. I trip, and fall through the threshold. A swoosh of rage rushes through me. Why can’t he put his f*****g shoes on the f*****g shoe rack that is RIGHT NEXT TO THE DOOR??? Instead of responding as an adult, I react from my adaptive child. I pick up his boots and throw them into the snow-covered yard, in two different directions. After, I’m standing in my kitchen fuming. What an inconsiderate a*****e. He doesn’t think of anyone else but himself. Selfish. Entitled. What I didn’t know at the time is that I was stewing in my Core Negative Image of my partner. I remember thinking, ‘Ah, this must be marriage then. You just hate your partner, and keep going.’ At the time, it seemed clear that this was just the trajectory of relationships. And truly, the married people I knew all seemed to hate their partners, even if just a little bit. My then-husband came home puzzled and annoyed that I’d thrown his boots in the yard. He didn’t stop leaving them on the steps. I didn’t have the tools to explain what I needed (consideration) and what I was asking for (please put them on the shoe rack.) And so the contempt trajectory continued, until it reached its obvious conclusion: divorce. Fast forward 25 years. My current partner and I were going through a challenging season. When I started to feel contempt, my lips would turn down. I didn’t want to look at him. I felt gross inside. Something in me went “Uh oh. Oh no.” I recognized the feelings. I got quiet, and sought what was beneath that feeling. What I found surprised me: deep yearning for mutual cherishing. I yearned to cherish, and be cherished. There was an ache, like something had gone missing from the place it had always been. Like the empty socket of a tooth that was pulled, that your tongue worries. The goodwill and warm positive regard I had felt for years was just... gone. Where was my love for my partner? I couldn’t feel it. I felt grief, and deep concern. This time, instead of accepting contempt as a normal phase of a relationship, I challenged myself: maybe this was a warning sign. Not something to wait out. A huge problem with contempt and resentment is that you are the one holding them. The poison is in you, slowly eroding the love and care you used to have. And to be honest, they are fairly come by. You don’t start hating your person in a vacuum. There is a backlog of unrepaired wounds. The triggers have gotten grooved. They are too predictable, and you know too well the path the fight will take. But you are the one living with the unmetabolized pain. It’s hurting you and your good life. (I’m imagining standing on a pulpit preaching about the value of love and relationship) But there is a way back from contempt! It starts with deciding you love yourself too much to live with it. Surprised? So now what? Decisions, decisions. * Is the relationship salvageable? * Will you keep on keeping on, misery intact? * Will you leave? And take your own b******t with you, even as you escape theirs? When I felt contempt in my current marriage, I knew exactly where that road led. So I got my ass into therapy with a Relational Life Therapist who could help me clean up what was on my side of the street. (I’m the one who hurls boots, remember?) I have recovered my warm positive regard for my partner. I do not feel contempt anymore. I work regularly to replace my core negative image of my partner with a better version. My marriage now feels like the marriage I want to be in. Feeling contempt was the warning sign that made me take action instead of sitting passively and letting things unfold. Here’s the counterintuitive good news: if you hate them, it means you still care. There is still room to do the work. My Relational Life Therapy teacher, Terry Real, says it’s possible to live a contempt-free life. I believe him, because I’m living it. If any of this landed for you, I made something specifically for you. It’s called The Contempt Audit: A self-assessment for when you’re done pretending you don’t hate your partner a little. Free PDF guide and audio recording, if you’re sitting with feelings you haven’t quite named. https://www.pavinimoray.com/thecontemptaudit.html [https://www.pavinimoray.com/thecontemptaudit.html] Get full access to Glitter Joyride at pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Relationship Miracles Happen

Last summer I wrote about the kitchen table relationship rebuild process [https://open.substack.com/pub/pavinimoray/p/kitchen-table-relationship-rebuild?r=1n6z4e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true] Ari and I were in. At that time, I thought we were on the upswing. Turns out, we weren’t. Soon after that piece, we had a family crisis that cracked us open, and we were right back where we’d been. That’s the thing about dynamics They can look like they’ve shifted, until a crisis comes along and those old patterns flare right back up. Later, he told me that he had considered consulting an attorney at the time. On my end, in a tragic conversation with a friend, I said, pretty quietly, “Something has to change.” And I meant it with my whole heart. What I needed After that happened, and before I went to India to give my marriage some breathing room, I took time apart to reflect on what I needed. Out of his presence, it became clear: I needed my very beloved partner to do his f*****g work. I needed him to heal trauma. He was pushing for couples therapy, which I was down for, but I knew deeply that he had to work on himself first. It actually was a him problem, rippling out into an us problem. Trauma will do that. I used to call it #traumafail when our wounds got in the way of being able to relate. The code word We had a code word: if things ever got really bad, we could pull it out, and the other person would listen. I told him I thought he needed intensive, possibly in-patient, trauma healing work. He was terribly angry at being called out, even as he said he would do it. That’s the thing about truth: it can land like an accusation even when it’s spoken from love. I held my ground and tried to hold him too, from a distance, knowing I might be wrong, knowing I might lose him either way. But lo and behold, he actually listened. The morning everything changed I’ll never forget the morning he came downstairs and said that he had signed up for a year-long coaching container in Organic Intelligence, developed by Steve Hoskinson, a former lead teacher for Somatic Experiencing. And then he signed up for a week-long in-person trauma intensive in Oklahoma. I left for India, and didn’t see him for over four months, while he did all that. When we reunited in January, I was shocked by the change in my partner. More capacity was the least of it. His presence, openheartedness, and willingness to repair after several years of dissociation and disconnection were astounding. It’s not an overstatement to say I was gobsmacked. We are now in RLT couples therapy together with an extremely competent therapist, and are building on the work he did alone. The irony It’s ironic that after 15 years of working with couples, my own marriage needed such a major overhaul. But it did, and we did. Every day is different. I’m tracking my marriage happiness daily. My goal is for us to average 80% happiness this year. But truly, most days have been 85-90% relational joy. The flow of love, of Eros, of care, trust, and support have all increased exponentially. When we say good morning, I hurl myself into his arms. I adore Ari. All of the irritation, the cranky little judgmental thoughts that had become so much a part of my everyday life have gone silent. Frequently, I am moved to tears by his beauty and his healing. Miracles happen. Why I’m telling you this Alongside this, I’ve been training in Relational Life Therapy and using it with my clients. If we can learn to be truly relational with the person we love most, maybe we can learn to do it everywhere. What surprised me most, after 15 years of sitting with couples, is that it doesn’t have to be loud to be fatal. My first marriage ended in fire. This one almost ended in silence. And in some ways, the silence is harder, because there’s nothing obvious to point at. I wrote more about that here. [https://pavinimoray.kit.com/posts/we-loved-each-other-we-were-still-headed-for-divorce] If any of this is landing for you and your partner, I’d love to talk. A free call is thirty minutes, no commitment, just a conversation about where you are and whether this work might help. Book a free call [https://pavini.as.me/schedule/1775a2db/] Get full access to Glitter Joyride at pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Is Anyone Else Not Able to Keep It Together?

“Excuse me.” At first, the woman’s voice cuts through the 3-table dining area of a local restaurant, and it’s easy to ignore. My family and I are downing our veggie burgers, having a pleasant conversation about nothing, enjoying the treat of fries and sweet tea. “Excuse me!” It comes again, louder and edgier. I am seated parallel to her, so have to turn my head to see her. It’s not clear who she is speaking to, and I don’t want to take a risk of whatever she’s saying being something intrusive. There is a younger woman sitting across the small bistro table from her, bright red in the face. She looks to be about the same age as my daughter. The patrons at the other table are also strategically involved in looking at their phones. The third time, though, that she interrupts the room, it’s a question we can’t ignore. “I just need to know: is anyone else here not able to keep it together? We just came from the No Kings protest, and I just can’t.” The younger woman has become even pinker, eyes cast down at her plate. “Is it just me?” The woman is the embodiment of the word “beseech.” “Is it just me who can’t fill out the 12 page medicare form, show up at the protest, deal with my property taxes. I mean, it’s not Kate’s fault (she gesticulates to the woman across from her), but I just can’t.” Her pain is palpable, and it hangs in the room. “It’s not just you,” the African American man at the next table says gently. A beat. My partner speaks up, “You’re not alone.” The edge goes out of the room. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbles, and it’s clear she’s embarrassed about losing it in public. I try to make eye contact with Kate as they pick up to leave, to let her know I see her, but her eyes are on the floor. She looks humiliated. The story I make up is “Why can’t my mom just play along, like everyone else?” My daughter looks at me after they leave, questions in her eyes. But I can’t remember ever seeing someone who looks together unravel like that publicly. Another beat. “She’s just saying what we are all feeling,” I say to my own child. My partner nods. “Yes, but her kid…” I know she’s grateful it wasn’t me who broke the rules. She feels compassion for the young woman. I do too, but mine includes the older woman. The man at the other table hasn’t spoken again; I want to to something, but he’s back in phone land, and what would I say that doesn’t land as insipid? He met the pain of that white woman with humanity I could feel from across the room. She stays with me for days. I’m recently back from India, and struggling with the desensitization required to live an okay life in the US. This means trading feeling, vulnerability, and authenticity for, well, having it look okay on the outside. She named what many if not all of us are experiencing: disconnection from land, from lifeways woven of belonging, connection and celebration. We are disconnected the full cycle of our food. We are living under an oppressive regime and facing so much personal, familial, cultural, political and environmental devastation the word ‘polycrisis’ needed to be coined, the impact of which lives in our bodies. I don’t dare speak these truths out loud, in public. I can’t, because if I do, I won’t hold be holding it together. I can’t be here in the US and cry every day about my loss of feeling, the disappearing of the sensitivity I feel in India to magick, to Spirit, to others intentions. I also can’t name that, because as someone with intersecting privilege and oppression, my training has taught me to uphold the lie: pride on the outside. See, I can do it. I can hold it together and not lose my mind or my social graces under this kind of pressure, but I don’t like who I become and what I lose when I do. There’s a passage early in Spell of the Sensuous [https://www.pavinimoray.com/spellofsensuous.html] where David Abram tracks what his body loses on reentry to the US after a year spent with shamans in Nepal and Southeast Asia. What started as a research journey becomes a deep dive into perception and animism. Upon his return, he felt it physically, particularly in his chest and abdomen, as though he were being cut off from vital sources of nourishment. His senses that had become attuned to ravens and wind and the smell of yak-dung fires drying on stone walls went quiet on him. There, the air was a thick and richly textured presence, filled with invisible but nonetheless tactile, olfactory, and audible influences. In the United States, however, the air seemed thin and void of substance or influence. It was not, here, a sensuous medium—the felt matrix of our breath and the breath of the other animals and plants and soils—but was merely an absence, and indeed was constantly referred to in everyday discourse as mere empty space. (The full passage is too long to include, but I highly recommend you read the book’s introduction in full here [https://www.pavinimoray.com/spellofsensuous.html] for the sheer beauty.) I keep returning to his contrast of breathing life to breathing… nothing, because it names something I recognize. Until I lived in India, the absence of belonging, not feeling part of community, or of truly feeling woven in deep interdependence with others felt completely normal. This absent experience is, for many North Americans, the air we breathe. Absence. We sense on some level that our life-ways are out of whack, but it’s hard to name it, except theoretically, because we’ve not lived differently. In my heart, I think most of us feel this absence, but we feel powerless. It’s hard to name something invisible, absence, as a presence. A presence that fills our entire lives. But. That presence is loneliness. Loneliness is an emotion, and also an architecture in your body. Held low, an ache and a grief, a dull pressure that registers behind your sternum. Your heartspace is hollow with want. You feel a pull of wanting connection and the deep ache of grief at not having it. The skin, I feel it there too. The hunger for touch, the air cold. My breath gets shorter, my lungs feel leaden, less capacity for the deep inhale it takes to sustain joy. There is a bracing, a suspended animation, a waiting. Time moves differently when we’re lonely and not distracting ourselves from it. Dating apps, chocolate, wine, Grindr, Netflix, doomscrolling: we always seeking the feeling of connection, of being met and held in warm regard. Warm regard. None of those fixes can ever provide being held in warm regard. Look, friend, we both need to matter, and know we matter. We need to experience someone’s eyes lighting up when we enter a room. We need the check-ins, the thoughtful gestures. We need to matter. And in the presence of absence, we cannot matter. We don’t matter to the systems and structures and organizations that hold us. And we don’t quite know how to matter to each other anymore, in times where there is always another person to hook up with when you discard the last. We don’t name it, the presence of absence, because we feel helpless and powerless to do anything about it. Ironically, even though she broke the rules of white middle-class social interaction, her longing moved me. “Please, tell me I’m not alone.” “You are not alone,” my sweet partner answered. You are not alone. If this landed in your body, not just your mind, you might be ready for the kind of work we do together. I work with couples and individuals who are done performing ‘okay.’ Learn more about working with me: https://www.pavinimoray.com/workwithme.html [https://www.pavinimoray.com/workwithme.html] David Abram Spell of the Sensuous Excerpt: https://www.pavinimoray.com/spellofsensuous.html [https://www.pavinimoray.com/spellofsensuous.html] Get full access to Glitter Joyride at pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Why You Keep Falling Away From Your Spiritual Practice

After I sent out the post last week talking about getting serious about spiritual discipline (which you can read here [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/p/the-candle-i-didnt-light-for-months?r=1n6z4e]), I received this message: (permission to reprint granted by author) “Pavini, while I appreciate the sentiment, you made it sound so easy, like boom, after 20 years you just woke up and could practice consistently because you care about the state of your soul. I do care about the state of my soul, so that’s not my issue. It’s not hard for me to meditate, but I don’t have a teacher, and I don’t know if I’m making any progress. It feels like I keep showing up, but nothing is really happening.” They were right. I bet other people noticed that omission and were unconvinced by how easy I made it sound. So let me say it plainly: I have had many experiences of not practicing, and not all of them are due to resistance. Here are four other distinct reasons I’ve watched people fall away from all kinds of practice, including myself. 1. Imposter syndrome. I was sitting in a spiritual circle recently when someone shared that they feel like an imposter when they sit at their altar. That they don’t feel worthy. This one is sneaky because it can masquerade as humility. As in, ‘Who am I to ask for this? Who am I to take up space at the altar of something so vast?’ The practice is right there staring at you, but you can’t cross the threshold because some part of you believes you haven’t earned it. 2. The Gap. When I was training in Aikido, this goblin showed up every class: I’m never gonna get this. It is taking too long. It is soo hard. When starting anything new, there is a gap between where you are and where you long to be, and from that starting point, there is a long learning curve ahead. Fear and impatience turn up together. Failing again and again as you learn a new thing sucks. “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” -- Stephen McCranie Yes, it’s true that the practice is challenging, but the Gap is even more challenging to face, and can be enough to turn you from your discipline. 3. Comparing yourself to others. The second Aikido goblin: Everyone else is so much better than me. I’d look around at people whose bodies already knew things mine was still fumbling toward. The clean throws. The graceful take-downs. I’d be sore after each class, but honestly, it was my ego that hurt more than my body. After a year, I gave up, because I couldn’t take the ego pain. That was ten years ago, which, as it turns out, is how long it takes to get skillful at Aikido. If I’d been able to hack the comparing mind, I could have been good by now. Here’s the thing I learned: Ten years is going to pass regardless of whether or not you practice Comparing to others who are better at the thing than you, either because of talent or time already invested is going to take you out, every time. 4. Not knowing if it’s working. This is the one the reader named, and I don’t want to skip past it. You show up. You sit. You light the candle or say the prayer or move through the sequence. And then... what? Nothing seems to happen. No visions, no clarity, no obvious sign that any of it is being received by the Divine, or that it’s working. This particular ache, sincere effort meeting apparent silence, is one of the loneliest places on a spiritual path. It’s also, in my experience, one of the most fertile. But knowing that intellectually doesn’t make the silence less disorienting, and it’s exactly what I want to work with in the teaching. In my next post, I’m going to explore a few more blocks to your spiritual practice in preparation for the live teaching on April 9. [https://preview.kit-mail3.com/click/dpheh0hzhm/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXZpbmltb3JheS5raXQuY29tL3Byb2R1Y3RzL2J1aWxkaW5nLXRoZS1tdXNjbGUtb2Ytc3Bpcml0dWFsLWRpc2NpcGxpbmU=] In the meantime, if any of these four have been living in your body while you read, that’s good to bring with you to class. How to Build the Muscle of Spiritual Discipline [https://preview.kit-mail3.com/click/dpheh0hzhm/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXZpbmltb3JheS5raXQuY29tL3Byb2R1Y3RzL2J1aWxkaW5nLXRoZS1tdXNjbGUtb2Ytc3Bpcml0dWFsLWRpc2NpcGxpbmU=] https://preview.kit-mail3.com/click/dpheh0hzhm/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYXZpbmltb3JheS5raXQuY29tL3Byb2R1Y3RzL2J1aWxkaW5nLXRoZS1tdXNjbGUtb2Ytc3Bpcml0dWFsLWRpc2NpcGxpbmU= In this 90-minute live teaching, you’ll learn how to: * Identify and work with the top obstacles that block your practice * Clarify the purpose and function of your practice so it actually supports your spiritual goals * Build a rhythm, environment, and daily habits that make practice sustainable * Show up even when motivation is low, without guilt or burnout Thursday, April 9, 2026 | 7 PM EDT, 4 PM PDT | All faiths and levels | Pay what you can If any of this lands, if you long for a consistent connection with the Divine, come do the deeper work with me on April 9.https://pavinimoray.kit.com/products/building-the-muscle-of-spiritual-discipline [https://pavinimoray.kit.com/products/building-the-muscle-of-spiritual-discipline] Get full access to Glitter Joyride at pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe [https://pavinimoray.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]