In both The MM Matermind and Compasses, we’ve just completed four weeks of focussing on Noes – and wow, it has been so incredibly powerful.
And for some people, also very painful.
I have found this so often to be the case with the Will work with The Marion Method, including in my own journey.
Growing up in the Disconnected Domination Culture (DDC), the DDC does all it can to disconnect us from our noes, which essentially is our true power, together.
This is because that is required in order for the domination part of the DDC to be kept in place!
This is also why the process of reconnecting with our noes and our power together is also often a big and long which which also invites us to reconnect with lots of painful feelings on the way.
In this article, I’m sharing about some of the ways that many of us become disconnected from our noes and our true power together in the DDC, and I’ll also offer some of the MM maps and practices that invite and support us to reconnect with our noes.
WHY NOES AND YESES ARE SUCH A CORE PART OF THE MARION METHOD
In The Marion Method, we are each unique Souls of Love, Will, and Consciousness.
“Love” includes our deep interconnectedness with all of life.
“Will” includes both our uniqueness and our true power, together.
Our noes are intimately related with our Will and our power.
Disconnecting from our noes and yeses is part of DDC conditioning.
Reconnecting with our noes and yeses is one of the main ways we reconnect with who we really are, our Soul. In that process, our noes become more and more attuned, nuanced, and clear. This supports our personality, relationships, and experiences to be more and more in harmony with who we really are. It’s also part of creating a new cultural paradigm, together.
SLUG WISDOM
We each have what I call “slug wisdom” ~ a deep inner wisdom and knowing about our noes and yeses.
The name “slug wisdom” came some years ago, when I was contemplating noes and yeses, and slugs kept appearing before me. I watched them, intrigued, and saw how they immediately moved away from what they had a no for, and towards what they had a yes for. Their exquisite sensitivity and expression of their noes and yeses led me to the term “slug wisdom.”
And in fact, all wild creatures are deeply connected with their noes and their yeses.
It’s only with domestication that animals, including the human animal in the DDC, lose connection with that exquisitely sensitive innate wisdom.
HOMECOMING TO OUR SOUL AND HOW THE DDC WORKS AGAINST THAT PROCESS
I’m reiterating that in The MM, our noes and yeses are some of the most clear and direct routes home to our Soul.
And, of course, that means that the Disconnected Domination Culture works very hard to disconnect us from our noes and yeses as babies and children, so that by the time we are adults, most of us are much less connected with both our noes and yeses, and thus to who we really are, and to our innate compass home to our Soul.
In this document, I’m focussing on our noes (last month, I wrote one about our yeses).
OUR NOES AT DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENTAL PHASES
I invite you to think about that slug, moving back when it has a no to something.
Now, I invite us to look at the developmental process of humans and our noes.
We know from prenatal psychology that babies in utero have been seen to move away from, or even push away, amniocentesis needles.
As newborns, babies can express their noes by turning their eyes away, and turning their head away.
They can also express feelings that indicate that they have a no for something.
As they gain increasing ability to consciously choose what their bodies do, they have more and more ability to move away from what they have a no for, unless they have physical restrictions, like the bars of a cot.
As they become more mobile, their language also develops, and their need for choice, agency, and autonomy comes with them often wanting to say “NO” a lot.
As their cognition develops, they often want to make more of their own choices, with another stage of that happening as they move out of early childhood, and again in their teenage years.
In each of these, the no is an expression of themselves – what they, as a unique being, do NOT want.
Their no is in service of their yes to themselves and to their callings and Life.
MAPPING THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF OUR NOES
We might categorise these noes into approximate groups:
~ starting with our noes honouring our biological survival needs, and our needs for safety (we move away from things that might be dangerous to us, and the feeling of disgust is one of the earliest feelings that indicates we have a no);
~ to feelings such as outrage and rage, which tell us we have a big no for something;
~ to feelings such as annoyance, which often indicate a smaller no;
~ to feelings such as frustration, which will often tell us we want to do something that we’re not yet able to do, or that we are being prevented from doing;
~ to feelings that often tell us that our no has been not heard or honoured, such as in the case of overwhelm;
~ and, as we increasingly internalise the ‘should’s’ and ‘have to’s’ of the DDC and coerce ourselves, exhaustion and resentment are signs that we are now overriding our own noes.
In other words, first of all, as babies and children, in the DDC other people override our noes, and over time, we learn to override our own noes.
Noes are so important – when we have a true no for something, it tells us important information about our feelings, needs, and values.
HOW THE DDC DISCONNECTS US FROM OUR INNATE POWER
The Disconnected Domination Cultural beliefs about babies, children, and parenting are one of the primary ways that we become disconnected from the innate wisdom of our noes.
There are four key ways in which our relationship with our Noes is affected, growing up in the DDC (with Noes and true power being intimately connected):
1: Our noes are not heard;
2: We experience needing to choose between saying no, and having our needs for safety, belonging, or love met;
3: We learn that we need to choose between these needs, e.g. between safety and belonging;
4: We internalise these ways of being, which means we learn to coerce ourselves to do things that we would actually have a no for. This can mean acting from the guilt we feel after hitting ourselves with guilt sticks, or frequently overriding our noes (which in the DDC is often called “people-pleasing”) and often feeling scared, exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, or resentful.
THE DDC AND OUR NOES
The Disconnected Domination Culture, by definition, is about creating disconnection and domination.
Disconnection is the first act of the DDC.
The more that people are disconnected from themselves, from each other, from a sense of community of other humans and other-than-humans, the easier it is to dominate them ~ in other words, to get them to do what the DDC wants.
Then comes domination, which is why the DDC does all it can to disconnect us from our noes, and from our experience and power and safety to say no when we have a no, or to be unwilling to act if we have a no.
DISCONNECTION FROM OUR NOES IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD
Growing up in the DDC, most of us had painful experiences when we expressed our noes in the form of the expressions in the development section above – we turned away when we were offered food that our body had a no for, we expressed frustration or outrage, or said no – and many, many times, we would have been coerced, judged, shamed, or punished.
The DDC cultural conditioning of our parents might have meant that when we expressed our noes in all those forms, they believed (because they’d learnt or been told in their own DDC conditioning) that the best thing for children was to be “made” to do what was “good” for us.
This is how DDC conditioning is passed down. The child who felt outraged when being hurt or punished by a parent can easily become a parent who acts in the same way towards their own child.
Since most of us have huge amounts of unexpressed Will-energy from all of those unheard noes, by the time we are adults, those feelings can bubble up in the form of powerlessness, rage, or resentment towards our children, which may then mean we use power-over them.
So, whether through conditioned thoughts that “this is the way children should be responded to” or from painful unexpressed feelings related to powerlessness from our own childhoods, the DDC relationship to power often is passed down from generation to generation.
OUR FEELINGS AS CLUES ABOUT POWER AND POWERLESSNESS
This is why, as adults, our feelings communicate to us about our relationship with our noes, and responding lovingly to them is one of the ways we return home to ourselves, in the befriending and listening process.
Again, feelings which indicate we have a no can include:
Disgust;
Frustration;
Outrage.
Feelings which indicate that we haven’t listened to our no, or have overridden it in some way, include:
Exhaustion;
Overwhelm;
Resentment.
We might have ignored our no without even being aware of it, simply because we learnt very early on that saying no meant that we weren’t safe, or that our needs for love and connection wouldn’t be met. That could happen, for example, if we were punished or shamed when we said no to our parents.
Or, the no might come to conscious awareness, and our internalised DDC thoughts tell us that we “have to” do that thing, and so we override that no. That can often happen when we’ve many times experienced as children being told to “be nice”, such as if a grandparent or stranger wants to hug us. We might then go on to frequently do things to contribute to others at the cost of our own other needs, such as for safety, or rest.
Often, these Will-related feelings get bigger and bigger when we’re doing the Will-work, and situations will often become larger and larger, as we increasingly realise the huge cost of overriding our noes.
For example, in a friendship or relationship, we might be coercing ourselves to be loving, because it was never safe for us as a child to express our noes. Our resentment may build and build, as the unexpressed will-related feelings accumulate more and more.
Or, we may find that the external situations get louder and louder, whilst we’re in the learning process. The cost of not saying no might keep increasing, whether financially, emotionally, or physically, until the will-related feelings get so huge, that we are simply not willing to keep overriding those noes any more.
FROM NOT-WANTING TO NOT-WILLINGNESS
This is where we move from not-wanting, to being not-willing for something.
And there’s a HUGE difference between these two states.
We can experience not enjoying something over and over again, often until our frustration becomes rage, or our tiredness becomes exhaustion, or our resentment and blame simply become our unwillingness to put up with this any more.
Many of us need to experience this over and over again until we simply become unwilling for that thing to continue.
That is our clear no.
And just as wanting something is very different from being willing for it, so the energy of not wanting something is completely different from not being willing for it any longer.
And there’s language that goes with that, too.
For example,
We might start with:
I don’t want this ->
Then we might move to our thoughts, and to how we’ve learnt to say no in the DDC, which is via thoughts (which are actually judgments):
It’s not okay ->
To increasingly actually feeling the power move through our bodies as we say:
I am not willing for this.
How do you feel in your sensations and posture when you say each of these?
I don’t want this
It’s not okay
I am not willing for this.
This is core to The Marion Method work – being deeply compassionate with ourselves as we understand why it was so important for us to ignore or override our noes, to feel scared when we think of saying no, to increasingly feeling bigger and bigger Will-related feelings, and eventually realising and experiencing this: As children in the DDC, our noes often meant our needs for safety weren’t met. But as adults in the DDC, the no of our not-willingness is often what actually meets our needs for safety the most.
This journey is often accompanied by us having big Will-related feelings from the past show up in smaller no situations.
For example, we might feel outrage in response to something small in the present.
This is part of the process, as all of the unexpressed Will-related feelings and all the pent-up energy of our disgust, frustration, and rage, starts pouring out.
The more we have The MM practices to support us, the more easily we will come to our true Neo Noes.
NEO NOES
I came to the Neo No many years ago, when rewatching The Matrix.
I’m going to name two themes which might help you connect with painful feelings. I invite you to listen in to your yeses and noes about whether you want to read this next part. If you have a no, I so welcome you no, and I invite you to skip forwards to the next section called “power, love, no”.
There’s a whole process that the movie shows.
First, Neo dies, after being shot in the heart with a bullet by the agent, and Trinity brings him back to life again by expressing her love for him.
This is central, because, like the Taoists knew, Love and Will are intimately related, just as the yin/yang symbol showed.
And often, in reconnecting with our Noes, we need a lot of love, particularly for the younger parts, who were hurt when we said no. Our heart was hurt by the bullets of the DDC, and needs love for healing to happen.
Once Neo comes to life, Trinity says, “Now, get up!”
This is movement, action, in service of Love – which is what we are invited to return to – using Will in service of Love.
He gets up, and the holes in his t-shirt are still showing where the bullet wounds were. He openly shows where he was hurt, and where Love returned him to life.
The agents see him, and start shooting at him again.
But this time, he simply says “No”.
And then he puts his hand up.
The bullets stop before arriving at the no of his hand, and as he takes hold of one of them to look at it, they fall to the floor.
In the background we hear: “How?” and “He is the one”.
He then sees the machine code – the green lines… and then effortlessly (“wu-wei” – effortless action) fights the agent, with one hand placed behind his back.
Then, he runs towards the agent, and becomes one with him, after which the agent explodes, leaving only Neo.
When the other agents see that, they run.
And that is the energy of the Neo No.
The “No” that he says, without rage, without aggression, is simply a no.
This is simply an unwillingness, and it is incredibly powerful, in the way the Taoists speak of power.
This is true power, not the power that we’ve been told is powerful in the DDC, which is simply hard, stiff, power-over.
This is simply an “I am not willing for this”.
This is the no that is true power.
POWER, CHOICE, NO
Earlier on this year, one of the participants in one of my Marion Method immersions about true power, together, asked me the definition of true power from an MM perspective.
In that moment, I replied: “It’s the ability to choose”.
This is part of why reclaiming our noes, alongside our yeses, is so deeply important.
Because, if we are not free to say no when we have a no, we are not free to choose.
Just as, if we are not free to say yes when we have a yes, we are also not free to choose.
Reclaiming our noes, supporting our younger parts to be safe, be loved, and belong whilst we say no, and relearning to trust our slug wisdom, is central to reconnecting with our Soul, which is not only where our uniqueness lies, it’s also where we are most interconnected.
Choice is central to our journey home to our Soul, and the freedom to say no is essential to choice.
FEAR
Twenty to thirty years ago, I used to often hear the adage that fear is the opposite of love.
Nowadays, I see how much fear is related to will.
Our noes are what keep us safe.
As children, it was the role of our parents to keep us safe, and part of that safety and protection was to express their noes to the people and things that would harm us.
But for most of us, not only did they not protect us and keep us safe, but their own DDC conditioning and younger parts meant that they were the ones that we needed protection from, at least at times.
As we reclaim our noes, we often experience a very different relationship with fear, as our Inner Loving Presences protect the younger parts of us in the ways we weren’t protected the first time around.
THE MM MAPS AND COMPASSES THAT CAN BE HELPFUL ON THIS JOURNEY OF RECLAIMING OUR NOES
To make true choices, and to be deeply connected with our Noes, there are a few different elements:
~ To tend to the younger parts of us, for whom our needs for safety, belonging, or love, were not met if we were deeply connected with our noes, and expressed them in our feelings, words or actions. This can often be in connection with our Inner Loving Presences, such as our Inner Loving Father or the Soul version of our father, especially if he steps in and says things like, “No, I am not willing.” As we tend to them, those parts of us now know how to be both deeply connected with our yeses AND experience those vital needs being met;
~ To hear reparative phrases from our Inner Loving Presences, again, such as our Inner Loving Father, saying things like:
“I love you when you say no, including to me;
I welcome your no;
I’m here to support you saying no when you feel a no;
I see how powerful your no is;
I see how powerful you are.”
~ To experience our Will-related feelings as communications to us about our noes and our power, and increasingly welcome them as wise, and know how to express them in ways that meet our needs and those of others for safety. That often means receiving outer loving support and compassion when we’re feeling and expressing those feelings, so we can gradually internalise that.
~ To understand the three types of feelings, and what each type of feeling is communicating to us in terms of our noes. For example, to understand when the anger we’re feeling has a quality of blame and is a thoughts-feeling, when the powerlessness we’re feeling is a healing-feeling from the past that needs to be lovingly heard, and when the outrage we’re feeling in the present is simply a clear no to something that’s happening, and is a needs-feeling, so we can ask ourselves if we are not willing for whatever that is.
~ As we increasingly welcome will-related feelings from the past, and more and more experience being safe in the present, we come more and more of the experience of a clear Neo No.
~ The language, and really choosing to connect with our noes, and to increasingly move from “I don’t want this” or “this is not okay” to “I am not willing for this.” (And feeling the difference in our bodies and our relationships and experienced when we do so).
~ Through experience of the painful cost of unheard noes, we increasingly experience our slug wisdom noes to become more and more nuanced, so that in more and more situations, we hear our noes, listen to them, trust them, and act from them. In that experience, we experience more and more clarity, safety, energy, and true power.
YOUR NOES
I wonder how you feel and what you think when you read this.
I invite you to listen in to your noes and yes in terms of what resonated with you in what you read.
I wonder what reparative statements the younger parts of you might want to hear about your noes and your will-related feelings, particularly from your Inner Loving Parents and your Inner Loving Father or the Soul Version of your father, if you’re already familiar with those elements of The MM work.
How is your relationship to feelings such as disgust, frustration, annoyance, resentment, exhaustion, and outrage?
How do you know when you have a no to something?
How do you differentiate between when you don’t want something and when you are not willing for something?
Thank you for reading this! I’m going to record a podcast on it too!
So so much love to you,
Marion
21st October 2026