Almost everyone exploring conscious manifestation wants to believe their outcome is guaranteed. But, when it doesn’t happen as expected, there are a few more ins and outs that you can explore.
To get a better grasp of manifestation’s intricacies, it’s useful to take a look at five core ideas and the role they each play in understanding manifestation from a larger point of view.
But first, I’d like to offer the possibility that the question of whether or not you can guarantee the manifestation of your heart’s desire may not be the best question to ask.
What if there were another question that could lead you to greater clarity and understanding? What if that question were something like, “Who is actually responsible for creating your future?”
Actually, we’ve all heard the answer to that question many times. YOU are in control of your future.
Better yourself and change your life. You want money, go out and work hard and long. You want to be slender and fit, watch what you eat and work out. You want to be liked, learn to listen and let others know you think well of them. You want a career, go to school and learn a skill. You want to be happy, be positive. You want to ‘awaken’, meditate.
On the negative side, it sounds more like – “Quit complaining. You made your bed. Now you have to lie in it.’
If, based on your past experience, you have a skeptical response to these edicts, please read on anyway. The whole point of this series is to help you poke and prod the manifestation concept so it releases a few more of its hidden complexities.
If you buy into the idea that you create your future, it means you have more power than you thought. And at the same time, it means your past which was once your future was also your creation.
The good news is if you did it once, albeit unconsciously, you can do it now consciously. The bad news is that it requires a bit more awareness and presence than you might have originally thought.
The salient point here is that manifestation (or creativity) is apparently a process that unfolds whether you are conscious of what you’re doing or not.
MANIFESTATION MADE SIMPLE
As a Behavioral Change Specialist, you learn that anything you want in the future has to be imagined and purposefully placed on your mental timeline in the future when you want it to appear.
I
f you don’t intercede in this way, consciously and purposefully creating your future as you want it, then the unconscious mind has no choice but to project the situations of the past out into the future.
Your energy usually goes to those situations you worry about happening again, or for the first time – like poverty, illness, losing your job, abandonment, disaster, abuse, aging, and so on. This is why it is so important to become aware of what you’re thinking and feeling.
The assumption is that you are creating your future by the way you are imagining it.
This imagined future will then, theoretically, pull forth this particular possibility out of the field of infinite possibilities. Of course, you have to suspend your disbelief in this idea and imagine as if this field of infinite possibilities really does exist; and that it is the amount of energy you are giving that future with your attention and emotion that pulls it into a reality.
THE FIVE NOTIONS THAT HOLD IT ALL TOGETHER
Now – those 5 notions I mentioned earlier. I think you’ll agree that manifestation rests on the process of 1) cause and effect (also called karma). When looking from a larger perspective, it also makes use of the notion of 2) reincarnation. And both of these ideas require the notion of 3) time. And of course, 4) accountability is at the root of conscious manifestation because you are responsible for what you’re creating. And because this takes effort, the need for 5) motivation arises – some reason to answer the question of ‘Why bother?’
These five little gems are totally intertwined with your ability to make sense of the success or failure of your efforts.
#1: CAUSE & EFFECT
Our notion of cause and effect reflects the ancient notion of karma. Hit a nail on the head and the consequence is that it goes through the wood.
But cause and effect also encompasses the notions of ‘You reap what you sow’ and ‘What goes around comes around’. The problem is most of us have not contemplated very deeply just what this means.
Another example: When you step on the gas pedal (cause), the car picks up speed (effect). Likewise, If it rains (cause), you get wet (effect).
But here’s the thing. You can stop yourself from getting wet if you’ve prepared for rain with an umbrella, raincoat, boots, or you just have the sense to run for cover fast! We can’t stop the rain. But we can control how we relate to it when it starts pouring.
We don’t usually consider the fact that we often engage in an action in order to change the effect of the cause. Instead of getting wet, you did something to help you stay dry. And in so doing, you created a new response to the rain, and that response sets in motion a new effect, such as rain is no longer an experience that you hate and avoid.
If you haven’t saved any money for retirement, you can change the effect of those circumstances by changing the way you spend and save your money. You can start putting money away like you never did before, and spend less on lavish vacations and expensive wines.
In this way, you create a new response to the financial hole and that response sets in motion a new effect. Money starts showing up in your bank account or retirement savings; and you’re the one who made that happen.
Part of conscious manifestation is realizing you are engaging in an action that is designed to change the effect of past actions as well as show up in your future.
But what about those events that just ‘happen’ for no observable reason at all? Enter the notion of reincarnation.
#2: REINCARNATION
This notion refers to a real
ity that embraces multiple lifetimes. If every single action you make creates a consequence, regardless of your intention, apparently there is not enough time in a single lifetime to reap all of them; and since they are yours to reap, multiple lifetimes are required.
Of course, if you don’t buy into this notion, you may miss how it is intricately connected to consciously working with cause and effect, or conscious manifestation. This means you will probably just keep on unconsciously and unintentionally creating more unpleasant consequences.
And if cause and effect is true, then you will have to be the one to experience those effects because you are the one who created them. So the notion of reincarnation can help you exercise a somewhat plausible or at least useful explanation for those things that ‘just happen’ or ‘simply show up’ in your journey.
This notion can get you cracking to shift your attitude away from complaining, victim hood, and blame, and change the way you’re perceiving the situation. As someone once said to me, ‘If you created the situation, then you’re capable of changing it.’
#3: TIME
Ok. So what about time? It seems obvious that for an effect to happen as the result of a cause (for you to get the results you want from your effort to consciously manifest), there has to be this thing called time.
And time can be a sticky wicket.
Like Einstein said, a minute can seem like an hour when you’ve just been stung by a bee, but having your lover sit on your lap for an hour can seem like a minute. It is indeed relative.
Whether time is illusory or not, is another topic of discussion. But more importantly, time is required for any cause-effect process to happen.
It’s wise to explore time a bit more deeply because time is only our friend and ally when we learn how to:
• Live in time
• Respect the limits set by time
• Manage time
And if you remember Part 2 of this series (The Anatomy Of Failure To Manifest Your Heart’s Desire), in order to purposefully and consciously manifest your desire, you also have to learn how to:
• Move about in time
#4: ACCOUNTABILITY
Whatever we do in life reaps a consequence, sometimes good and sometimes bad.
But make no mistake, looking through the lens of karma (or cause and effect) every action sets something into motion. If it takes us toward our goal, we call it good. If it takes us away from our goal, we call it bad.
But regardless of the consequence, karma says you are responsible for setting it in motion, and thus accountable for the effect or consequence.
As I said earlier, if you are the creator of your life, then you are the creator of your future which eventually becomes your past. So from this perspective, you also created your past.
If this is true, it seems reasonable to start paying attention to what you’re thinking and feeling. And if you really develop the knack for doing this, it can truly change the way you relate to your life and all that happens within it.
When you worry, aren’t you thinking certain thoughts and then putting them out there in the future and imaging what you don’t want to happen actually happening in your imagination? This would be an example of setting into motion an outcome you don’t want to show up in your future.
Well thought out actions include surveying all possible consequences. But even when this is done, we usually end up hoping, wishing, or praying for the outcome we want to happen. Or we just go brain-dead and pretend that eating too much food every day won’t mean extra pounds; or spending all our money on trips and extravagant meals out won’t mean less money for retirement.
But what if being accountable for your life – how you create it and how you live it – is the goal of this entire process? Why would we want to be accountable for everything that happens in our lives? To constantly monitor our thoughts and emotions? That sounds like a rather daunting goal.
#5: MOTIVATION
In order to even come near this kind of thinking, we have to find a pretty strong reason for doing so. There has to be a very compelling outcome that makes us want to engage in this game of conscious manifestation.
Well, most folks who seriously inquire into these notions engage in the conscious manifestation game because they want to learn.
Whether they’re enamored with personal growth, transformation, or a mystical meeting with the Divine, they perceive their journey from birth to death as a training school.
Obviously, there is a lot to learn when traveling through any foreign country. And curiously enough, our emotions and minds are often like an unexplored land, filled with unseen sights, unfamiliar sounds, and tastes unfamiliar to the palate.
So whether you’re motivated to learn from all of this, or you’re just playing to win the prize you’re going after, conscious manifestation may not grant you what you desire right now. But from the learning perspective, it will grant you the opportunity to learn what you’re missing and apparently need to know.
When your learning is received, the door opens to yet a deeper understanding of what your journey and life itself is all about. Life is very abundant and it seems there is always more to explore and learn.
SO WHAT’S THE CONCLUSION ABOUT MANIFESTING YOUR HEART’S DESIRE?
Suffice it to say that from this point of view, your outcome is indeed guaranteed. The moment you have sufficient energy behind your desire, you have set in motion a process which will draw that outcome to you.
The glitch is that it may not come when you want it, and it may not even show up in this lifetime. And you may not even be aware of what you’re creating.
If the majority of your energy in a day goes to thoughts and emotions worrying that you might get what you don’t want, what do you think is going to show up, given that all of the above is accurate?
IS A DIFFERENT FRAMEWORK NEEDED?
When you put karma, reincarnation, time, accountability and motivation to play the game all together under the roof of conscious manifestation, it calls for a framework quite different from mere success or failure.
After a while, people finally end up asking, ‘What is the point of all this?’ When you finding yourself asking this question, you’ve entered the realm of inquiry and are seeking answers to existential questions.
So all in all, it appears to be a complicated issue. But when you learn how to navigate your own power to create the world in which you live, all sorts of new possibilities begin to appear.
Being accountable equals being responsible for how you relate to everything that comes your way. More specifically, it refers to whether or not you have taken charge of your mind and emotions instead of them being in charge of you.
Expanding consciousness is not a simple affair – and of course, it most certainly is. That’s why I’m such a paradox hound. Beginning to understand life from the paradoxical viewpoint can release a lot of stress.
It can also increase your ability to be present and positive. And it can open you to discovering even more of life’s mysteries. And some of these mysteries may currently rest inside that very experience you definitely find yourself not wanting to have.
I hope this has provoked some interesting food for thought and exploration. Please feel free to comment. I always love to hear from you.
Much love,
Ragini
*Main Article From Waking Up To What Is Newsletter, Volume 13, July 2014
All images from www.morguefile.com
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