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Introduction
“Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.”
― D.H. Lawrence
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi
“This is your world. You’re the creator.”
― Bob Ross
In life, we often decide for one reason or another that we want something. The goals we pursue are as varied as the stars in the sky — some people want money, some fame, some love, while others might just want to be smacked on the bottom and told they’re bad boys.
The variety of experiences available to us in life is truly infinite, but often we feel it is difficult to attain the experiences we desire. Sometimes it feels as if Life – this amorphous entity – is working against us. In a way, this is true. However, a more accurate view would be to turn that phrase around – often it is we who are working against Life.
Back in the days of our ancestors, most goals were related to survival – get a banana, find shelter from the rain, or flee a large predator. Except for the latter case (fleeing from the predator), most goals were relatively simple and didn’t involve the independent will of others. To get that banana, all our ancestors needed to do was figure out how to reach it. To find shelter from the rain, all they had to do was use their brains and search for likely places.
Modern society, however, has brought us together in more complex and interdependent ways. We now rarely get anything without the involvement of other people and we often do not even know them. The goals of today are more likely to be outside our control to a degree far greater than they were for our ancestors 10,000 years ago. Today’s goals often feel less like quests and more like requests – ask for that job, ask to be your girlfriend, ask to make the cut for your high school’s basketball team, and so on. In the highly interdependent World of Requests, life can feel forever out of control, leaving us distraught and disempowered.
Thankfully, however, there is a simple way to transform this World of Requests back into a World of Quests. That way I will describe below as Manifestation Teachings.
Principles of Manifestation
Before we discuss how to manifest, it is worthwhile to take a moment and describe some basic principles upon which the Manifestation Teachings depend. If you feel particularly impatient, jump down to the section called “The Teachings of Manifestation” to learn the three simple steps for manifesting any experience you desire.
First Principle - The Universe is energy and consciousness
“If you want to know the secrets of the Universe think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”
– Nikola Tesla
Manifestation works because the Universe is composed of energy and that energy is shaped by consciousness. When you decide you want to drink a hot tea, your consciousness generates an intention which vibrates the energy of the world around you, changing its frequency and moving your body toward the cupboard, taking out the tea (which is composed of energy), turn on the stove and heat water (yet more energy), until finally you have formed the Energy of your goal experience – a steaming hot cup of tea.
Life, then, is simply transmuting energy from one form into another. We do this all effortlessly, as it is our nature as creative beings. We usually don’t think in terms of energy. Nevertheless, this process is happening at all times across the Universe.
Second Principle - Energy attracts complimentary energy
The energy we embody attracts certain energies to us while repelling other energies at the same time. An aggressive or violent attitude attracts experiences of conflict while pushing away experiences of love and connection. Similarly, the energy of a desperate or clingy person often pushes away relationship partners, while attracting abusive or narcissistic partners. This is one hidden meaning of “the loveless never find love” in the first quote on this post. Until we begin to broadcast the energy of love, love cannot find us.
Using the previous example of making a cup of tea, the energy of desire for a cup of tea, in unison with the energy of going through the motions of making the tea, together result in attracting to us the experience of a hot cup of tea. This example may seem a bit contrived, but it illustrates how intentions and actions (guided by our consciousness) shape and guide the energies of the world.
The Teachings of Manifestation, put simply, are ways of learning to work with the flow of Life, instead of fighting against it. Why struggle to attain something, when we are often the very ones repelling it with our energy? Why not instead, transform our energy into the energy which will attract what we desire? Essentially, we learn to change ourselves instead of trying to force change on world around us, and Life responds to this by sending us infinite variations of that which we desire.
Third Principle - To receive an energy, energy must first be given
But it is not enough simply to desire something for it to appear in our lives. We must be willing to give something of ourselves to attract that experience into our lives. In the example of the tea, we must go through the efforts of making the tea in order to receive it. We must first change ourselves and our present situation, then life provides us with the experience we desire.
Modern society is so convenient that little energy is often required to receive an experience, and when we compound that by growing up with parents who take care of all our basic needs, it can be very difficult to not develop a feeling of entitlement, a feeling that we need not give anything to receive something in life. However, nothing diminishes the heart’s light more quickly than going against this law of the Universe – to receive energy, energy must first be given. At some point in the evolution of a conscious being, receiving things for no effort begins to feel empty and hollow; it is the effort to attain the goal which becomes the source of satisfaction and meaning in life.
And therein lies the secret of Manifestation Teachings. When we realize that achieving our goals is a logical consequence of our actions, the actions themselves begin to feel full of meaning and satisfaction because each moment they are bringing us closer to that which have set as our goal. When we find satisfaction in our efforts – sometimes even more than the attainment of our goals – we cease to have any difficulty motivating ourselves to work.
The Universe and Manifestation
Since we move through a world alive with so many beings, each having their own will (e.g. consciousness), it makes sense that we should consider the wills of others when we pursue our goals. However, for the vast majority of people in the present day, this is not the case; most people are preoccupied only with their own, self-centered interests and completely disregard the interests of other beings.
The result is one-sided action originating from selfishness, resulting in feeling we are fighting against a hostile world and being foiled time and again in our pursuits. We should first understand that this is how it should be – those who act only for their own benefit often swim against the current of Life, and thus, they must expend considerable effort to advance anywhere. Why should Life expend any special effort for us when we have chosen to swim against its current? All the pain and frustration that results is a reminder, sent to us from Life, that there is an easier way, but we must first set aside our self-centered thinking and widen our perspective. Flowing with Life’s current means opening ourselves to consideration of the desires of the other beings who populate this Universe with us, particularly those related to the goals we seek.
Flowing with Life’s current does not mean giving up all will and simply floating about wherever Life takes us. This complacency is no better than willfully resisting Life’s current since we end up feeling disengaged and disconnected from life. There is a third way, and that is to use the energy of Life’s current while still exerting our free will to guide our ship one direction or another down the current. We accept that the current of Life is forever out of our control, but we have the freedom to choose which experiences we desire and we go toward or away from them. We flow through Life, all the while deciding the path we will take through it.
This flowing with Life, Creation, or God is called different names in various teachings from all over the world – Wu wei (not-doing) in Taoist teachings, the Middle Way in Buddhist Teachings, Theosis in Eastern Christian theology, Sensus divinitatis in Calvinist Christian teachings, or fitrah in Islamic Sufi teachings.
The Teachings of Manifestation
So this all brings us to the question of how exactly do we do this “flowing with Life” to manifest the changes we want? The following are three steps to manifest any experience you desire in your life. Manifestation is not always easy, but it works and is the easiest path I have yet discovered for attaining goals.
Step 1: Define Your Goal
The first step begins with deciding what goal you want to achieve. To find a worthy goal you must know yourself and what brings you joy and happiness in the truest sense. Once you have decided on a worthy goal, define it clearly by writing down all the aspects of the goal that you can dream up. Use your imagination.
If the goal is to get a job, define exactly what kind of job you would like. What are all the relevant aspects? Try to see some examples of the job clearly in your mind’s eye. If the goal is to get a girlfriend, define every attribute you can imagine about her. The point here is to be as specific as possible without becoming so specific that Life can only produce one form to satisfy your parameters. You must give Life room to work with. If you become too restrictive in your goal, you cease to be manifesting and you are simply obsessing.
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is not to be too specific. You must work with Life, not try to force your will upon it. Forcing your will onto life runs counter to the Manifestation Teachings because Life often knows better than we do what is best for us. You may think the girl sitting next to you in History class is your dream girl, but only Life/God/the Universe truly knows what lies in her heart and yours and whether those energies are truly compatible. It might be that the quiet girl sitting behind her is actually the one you desire in your heart. Life knows this, if you only have the courage to trust it.
Step 2: Decide What Your Goal Wants or Requires
Now that you have a specific list of attributes of your goal, make a second list of all the attributes that your goal desires or that are necessary for your goal. If your goal is a certain kind of job, put yourself in the shoes of the company and imagine what their ideal candidate might look like. If you’re not sure, you may need to inquire or read job listings. If your goal is to delight customers with your new startup, imagine what kind of product your customers would want and need. If your goal is a lifetime partner, imagine his or her ideal partner. Be as specific as possible, again without becoming too restrictive. You’ll find it is easier here to not be too specific if you have not been too specific in the first step.
Step 3: Become That Which Your Goal Desires
Remember the Third Principle of Manifestation – in order to receive anything in Life, we must be willing to give something in return. In order to attain our greatest desire, we must become that which will attract our desire, the desire of our desire. This way, the attraction will work from both directions; you and your goal will be drawn towards each other as if by destiny.
If you want a job, but you do not satisfy the requirements, it will be much more difficult and, even if you are hired, you will find your work there tenuous at best. If you want a partner, and you are not the kind of person he or she wants, then the relationship will be short-lived or filled with unhappiness.
For this reason, you now take the list of qualities which lists the desires of your desire and you start working earnestly to embody those qualities, knowing that the stronger you grow in them, the faster your goal will come hurtling towards you. Since you desire the thing, chances are high you already embody many of the qualities that your desire wants too. If you want to work as a marine biologist, chances are high you feel a deep affinity for the ocean and ocean life. If you want a girl who is introverted, chances are high that you appreciate someone who has a deep and full inner world to share with you.
Putting It All Together
“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
― Steve Martin
By becoming the thing which your goal desires, you can be confident that Life will send you one manifestation of your goal after another. The closer you embody what your goal desires, the more frequently and more perfectly these manifestations will appear. In essence, through changing yourself, you change the energy surrounding you and Life responds by producing countless manifestations of your goal for you. Your goals are now looking for you.
If you desire a job, you will see that Life produces far more amazing and relevant opportunities than you ever could have imagined when you were focused on a single, specific job opportunity. If you desire a partner, you suddenly see that Life has brought someone surprising into your life who is far more amazing and suitable than you could have ever found by simply searching.
As an added benefit, once you begin to embody that which your goal desires, you develop an immunity to failure and rejection because each time an experience doesn’t work out, it is a success, not a failure. You do not cling to unsuccessful manifestation because you realize that the manifestation was not what you were truly searching for. So you can easily let it go with peace in your heart and permit Life to present you with a new opportunity. Regardless, you always know the action which you need to take next – continue to embody that which your goal desires and keep your eyes open for the next possibility.
Using your own persistence and hard work along with these three steps, you can learn to manifest any experience in life you desire. The key is to work with Life by embodying the list of qualities that will attract your goal. Each item on that list now becomes a quest for you. No longer must you request anything of the world, because that which you desire will be attracted to you.
The World of Requests has been transformed once again into a World of Quests.
Examples
Manifesting a Significant Other (Raku)
TBD
Manifesting a Career as a Writer (Raku)
TBD