H-band tells me he got his Subaru WRX, six years ago, through manifesting.
He explained: "I had been wanting that car, and I said, 'I will have that car.' I just wish I had been more specific about the circumstances."
Shortly thereafter he was hit by a truck while cycling. He bought a WRX with the settlement money.
This stands as H-band's proof of concept--that thinking about things, and declaring that you will have them are the first steps to getting them.
I must confess I've always been a manifester myself, though I never quite made the connection that I had created these outcomes. As a teenager I would ogle a boy and poof, I'd get a call out of the blue from him. I always assumed I would live in New York, so when the opportunity came through a friend to come live with her and work as a college intern at a New York City publishing house, I took it in stride. BlogHer has been a result of manifesting possibilities of teaming up with smart people and building a platform that bucked the standard of one-size-fits-most media. I have handwritten pages of material showing that at some point I had already imagined these things.
I've visualized throughout my life, though I never did it to get anything; I just have a VERY vivid imagination, and imagining these outcomes felt good. What scares me is when I stop visualizing, when my life becomes too complicated that the natural manifesting mechanism shuts off. When I become stressed to a point where negative energy fills my brain, and I can't focus on the positive.
My friend and coach Elisabeth suggested that I watch The Secret as a way of getting me back in touch with my positive imagery, to get me clear again on the importance of positive thinking to realizing outcomes.
I asked H-band to watch it with me, knowing that he has always been a proponent of manifesting, but that he also qualifies his desires by what makes sense, how much we currently have in our bank account, the number of hours in a day. Basically he and I have become entirely too reasonable.
H-band had huge resistance to watching the DVD, the same type of resistance some people have around self-help books, or personal development programs. I think this fear is common, especially among my friends, many of whom have a baseline knowledge of quantum physics, or the effect of energy on outcomes, and who question the commercialization of it.
"I don't need to see a cheesy video," H-band said.
"Do it anyway," I said.
The minute I pushed play the groans ensued. I'm not sure what situation is worse for personal development--when the books and tapes are clearly bootstrapped endeavors, or when they are slicker than Pink videos, and the actors in them can get SAG credit. Sure, there were too many special effects; sure, much of the language was overly simplified and annoyingly repetitive; and many of the examples of manifestation included a new bike, a new car, a new necklace and other purely material outcomes, which evoke get-rich-quick schemes. But not once did I feel that the message was not inspiring or useful.
The main point of the program was to define and explain the Law of Attraction, which backs that thoughts can become things, thoughts can dictate reality--in both positive and negative ways. Once you grasp this concept and understand how the Law of Attraction works, you can manifest desired outcomes.
I thought I was a master manifester and yet I was able to spot some areas where I could use practice:
Feeling good: This is supposed to be a key ingredient to manifesting, and yet feeling good is antithetic to what most Westerners with Protestant ethics feel must be present in order to deserve the car, the watch, the spouse. We have to WORK for these things, dammit!
Yet the point pounded into my head like a sledgehammer by The Secret is that all acts toward manifesting must feel good. Otherwise the environment in which they are made is tainted.
To use a concrete example: Many of us assume we have to work just short of killing ourselves in order to have material weath and career success. If we're not working 18 hours a day, or answering email ad-infinitum we're not doing what it takes to achieve our goals. Inversely, if we are enjoying what we do, or--God forbid--taking breaks and even doing other, pleasurable things, we will pay for our sins in unmanifested dreams.
The Secret--and the laws of quantum physics--say the opposite is true: By not being in a place of feeling good we create a spiral of negative thoughts and emotions, and as a result we call negative outcomes into our lives.
An even more concrete example: You want to build your own house, but you don't have the resources to do so yet. You figure, if I'm ever going to build this house I need money. So I'm going to work overtime and save every penny until I have enough to build this house.
So you do just that, working yourself into a joyless existence, working every waking hour, and foregoing anything deemed luxurious or pleasurable on your way to this goal--after all, you've rationalized, time and pleasure cost money.
In this process you've sucked out the original intention for wanting to build a house, which might have been to have a place to be with your family, or a space of your own creation, or a feeling of comfort and security. You forget the feelings that inspired the goal, and you lose the cord that would have pulled you closer to it. The energy around this outcome has dissolved and been replaced with feelings of frustration and self-neglect.
Being specific about what it is that you want: I always believed that beggers couldn't be choosers. With nothing to use as collateral, I couldn't ask for too much. But the universe doesn't negotiate that way, apparently. We actually can ask for whatever we want, but the caveat is that if we are not clear enough, we can get what we thought we wanted but really didn't. Witness H-band's WRX--he got the car and destroyed his leg in the process.
A friend of mine decided to set up a consulting practice, quitting her job and moving to a new apartment in order to create the space for this new life. She understood that while she may not have the funds she hoped to have to create her practice, she needed to build the environment to have it first; her outlay was an investment, not a silly expenditure.
She visualized an investor to help her build her practice. I wondered how she would find one, seeing as she had no previous experience in her line of work, but a few days after declaring her intention of finding one she left me a message: She found a funder who believed in what she was doing and was willing to provide an outlay to get her started.
A few weeks later I met this friend for dinner. The investor, it turns out, had restrictive preconditions on the funding he would provide, and she decided not to take the investment. Despite this negative turn of outcomes, she felt more confident about The Law of Attraction than ever.
"I realized that the investment would have negated my real desire behind funding, which was freedom," she said. She's now in the process of visualizing a no-strings-attached form of income while she grows her business.
Rectifying material and emotional wealth: As kids we were taught in Friday the 13th movies that lust was grounds for dying violently at the hand of psychopaths. Culturally we grew up with a similar dismay for wealth: Wanting outrageous amounts of money was unforgiveable.
This bias isn't totally without purpose: wanting wealth for wealth's sake alone is an empty wish. Money is useless without aligining it to some other purpose. The Secret makes very clear that wealth is worthless without an inner passion that money would fuel. Without that passion, money is like a big schwag bag full of cars and tchotchke's you don't want--a waste.
It's OK to want money, but even more important is to know why you want it. With this in mind I can manifest outcomes more specifically.
Not knowing how it will all happen: A biggie for me. I tend to obsess on the question of how, and yet by needing a prescribed course of action to outcomes I am limiting myself from the infinite possibilities. If you assume that only you can determine how to get from point A to point B, you, in effect, become a victim of your own hubris.
I practice open management in my work life--the concept is you can achieve more by having talented people--including your customers--figure out how something will get done. Likewise, you can enable the universe by not micromanaging it with your limited knowledge of what's possible.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Throughout the entire video, H-band fidgeted, insisted that he knew this stuff already, asked me how much more he had to endure before it was over. When the program completed he retired to our office. Some people, I figured, are so focused on the presentation they can't get over the message. When he came back out he held a bulletin board, with some images that he'd already cut out from magazines.
"This here," he said, "is our vision board. This is where we can post what we'd like to manifest."
"The Secret--and the laws of quantum physics--say the opposite is true: By not being in a place of feeling good we create a spiral of negative thoughts and emotions, and as a result we call negative outcomes into our lives."
Exactly! So many people misunderstood my papers as being about the nature of electromagnetic radiation and molecular matter. As I sit in The Great Beyond it warms my heart to see my work understood as New Age psychology. All those formulas in my work were really just code for my sensitive feelings.
XOXO,
Albert
Posted by: Albert Einstein | April 10, 2007 at 08:36 AM
Lol, nice message from Mr. Einstein above.
Interesting that you would post this - I went home two nights ago in a horrible mood to my fiance who told me to sit on the couch and that he was going to give me a 90-minute massage and we were going to watch a movie. The movie was "The Secret." The evening completely changed my outlook.
I've been feeling awful guilt at my job for the last couple of months. Since I got engaged, I have had so much fun planning the wedding that I know I want to become a wedding planner and I want to collect all kinds of photos for inspiration, read lots of how-to blog posts, etc. Problem is, I have been procrastinating at work by doing these things when I'm being paid to do my job. It's become a habit that wastes far too much time out of my workday and I feel unbelievably guilty for it but am having trouble breaking what has now become a habit. I'm also afraid of getting caught.
Fear and guilt are not helping me. But the desire to do the wedding planning, the belief in my ability to make the transition, those are good. I came out of the movie realizing I just need to overhaul my intentions. At work I need to feel positive about what I'm doing, so I need to do my job. Outside of work, I need to take actions that will bring me closer to my goal. Eventually I'll be able to leave my job and do wedding planning. I'll be able to manifest it.
I love the idea of a vision board, that's really cool. My fiance kind of had the same idea. He wrote himself a million dollar cheque and taped it to the ceiling above the bed so it's the first and last thing he sees each day (other than me, of course!) I think we can do better than that if we have a vision board.
Posted by: Laura | April 11, 2007 at 01:39 PM
I watched The Secret with a friend of mine and thought the video itself was a little too infomercial for my tastes, but the point behind it was good all the same. Once you put yourself in a particular mood, be it good or bad, it grows.
This notion was part of what inspired me to start On a lighter note... at http://sherrileigh.wordpress.com It never hurts to be reminded that life is still good.
Posted by: Sherri | April 12, 2007 at 02:20 PM
Hi Jory
Great post. Enjoyed it very much, especially on the point regarding money
I was recently exposed to The Secret DVD... 2 weeks ago to be exact... and I've to say it really open my eyes and mind. Very inspirational... and it started me on the path of Law of Attraction.
As Bob Proctor said in a report of an interview he had given, "Money magnifies what you already are.... and if you have more money you can do more good" which was quite correct and put my view on money in its proper perspective
BTW, I new to Blogosphere.. just started blogging though I know blogging has been on for quite some time.. ;)
Cheers
Janice
Posted by: Janice | May 06, 2007 at 11:35 AM
Hi Jory
Great post. Enjoyed it very much, especially on the point regarding money
I was recently exposed to The Secret DVD... 2 weeks ago to be exact... and I've to say it really open my eyes and mind. Very inspirational... and it started me on the path of Law of Attraction.
As Bob Proctor said in a report of an interview he had given, "Money magnifies what you already are.... and if you have more money you can do more good" which was quite correct and put my view on money in its proper perspective
BTW, I new to Blogosphere.. just started blogging though I know blogging has been on for quite some time.. ;)
Cheers
Janice
Posted by: Janice | May 06, 2007 at 11:36 AM