The three skills for manifestation might irritate you because you had them as a baby, but no longer. Yet, knowledge is power – the power to seize the promise of imagination.
The promise of imagination is making the future turn out better for the influence you can have on it’s direction, pace or both. It’s knowing you made a difference, and of course, you can.
I didn’t used to think that way. There were excuses I had for why I was small and insignificant. There were reasons I was given and adopted unquestioningly. Yet, I couldn’t help but notice the evidence stacking up. It might add up to a conclusion that I have more power than I think.
For if it’s all my fault, I had more power than I thought, because I didn’t reach that same conclusion in my root cause analysis.
Finally, the day comes when you realize that you manifest the future in a dance with everyone else who is doing it, but that most people don’t even hear the music.
I shook my head and laughed, “But I practically failed music!”
Yep, I practically failed typing too, and here I am never looking, never falling behind the flow of words like my pen tends to, but keeping up in real time with this voice of reason that fills the white space.
The Required Skills for Manifestation
As far as I know it, there are two skills for manifestation. One is to feel, deeply, completely and fully. The second is to aim, clearly, consistently, and without hesitation.
As far as the skills for manifestation goes, I stumbled upon success as a kid in grade two, asking for divine intervention. By adulthood, with a background in science, I was no longer wondering if successes were random coincidences, or otherwise outside of my control, and I doubled down on whatever part I could play or whatever power I could tap.
This simple perspective makes all the difference: It’s possible, and I’m in.
Are you in the game, or an observer? Do you have agency, or is everything in someone else’s hands? As a child, sure, everything is in someone else’s hands. But then you grow up and take your own growth under your own wing.
Atrophied from disuse, but can be strengthened again, with intention and practice, the three skills for manifestations are your ability to feel, surrender, and desire.
Deeply, personally, and without shame. To feel, let go, and want. With quiet, contained confidence, in fact. You get to aim, not play air traffic controller. Who knows how it’s going to arrive? Not you. You just feel the surety that it will.
The Inability to Feel
Being walled off is to be human in this technological, fast-paced world. If you don’t have old memories that still elicit strong emotions, then you are enlightened. Lighter for you are no longer carrying old wounds.
Old wounds you may not even remember. I wrote about my red shoes, and the trauma I endured at the time. I shared the complete absence of red shoes from my extensive collection to illustrate the science of how fear creeps in and redirects our choices without our conscious awareness.
Fear, not danger, guides our decisions unless we consciously intervene. Fear is not flying after the attacks on the World Trade Center, but the real danger is driving. Listen to CBC’s Terry O’Reilly explain this phenomenon on his podcast, if you are interested in more information about this reality.
We feel and think with emotions, despite school taking us out of our bodies and into our minds, and more, into the left brain of it, with our highest value placed on maths, sciences, and coding over the arts, according to Sir Ken Robinson.
As an engineer, I knew how to live in my left brain. I aimed to balance it out with a side gig painting. My manager asked me if there would come a day when I’d resign to become an artist. With one show under my belt, I laid any fear to rest. I had no desire to repeat the experience of random people picking apart your products right in front of you, because they have no idea it’s you, and maybe they think they are doing you a favour – feedback, they call it. Misuse of their most powerful tool, I call it.
As a retired person, if there’s one thing I’ll never miss, it’s feedback.
The Inability to Surrender
Misuse is when there are good intentions. It does get worse. As they say, good intentions lead to hell. It’s hard enough to change when I want to, and my priorities and direction are clearer than anyone on the outside.
What do you do with those good intentions? Recognize that they are driven by a core need to intervene, to change you into something that’s more comfortable or easier for them. Turn it back on yourself, and what do you need to change, for yourself?
Surrender to the way other people are, for you cannot change anything but yourself.
When you accept people for how they are, naturally, they usually don’t disappoint – they only disappoint when they try to be different and fail, so don’t expect any deviations from what’s natural, and you’ll be fine.
That is, leave people alone and focus on yourself. It’s difficult to do, as I learned from having spent twenty years thinking that I could make things better and solve the problems in the way of my vision of future happiness.
But I realized, it was my future happiness, and mine alone. Finally, I realized all the happiness was in the past and the future. I was waiting to be happy again, and the past wasn’t coming back. It never does. The future was a fantasy.
When I accepted people for how they are, and not how I imagined they could be, surrender finally yielded a pivotal change.
I could finally let go without anger, without tears, without unrealistic hopes of getting back together again in the future. We are on different paths. I surrender to the fact that you are going your way and I’ll go mine.
The Inability to Desire
I learned that I needed to redirect my source of meaning and purpose to something that would yield noticeable progress, material progress, in the real world. Not emotional healing work that only the people closest to you would notice (new people simply don’t leave thinking “There’s something wrong with her.”) Not financial progress that doesn’t and shouldn’t matter to anyone else.
With my house comes what I’ve started calling, “My Studio.” It’s a two-story 12’ x 20’ finished and heated outbuilding, lacking only plumbing.
I’m going to fill it with all my creative supplies and see what happens. This time, there will not be future sales in mind – there might not even be future eyes. There won’t be anyone to comment, criticize, or otherwise tear me down for their own enjoyment. Only my own enjoyment. Play. Fun. What were these things?
When I was a kid, I remember that I could only get what I wanted if it was an acceptable thing to want. To get what I wanted, I tried many tricks. Finally, there was a musical cassette I wanted and John asked, “Are you sure that’s what you want?” He shook he head in disgust and asked again. When I received that El deBarge tape, I played it over and over, a mantra to tell myself that I am allowed to get what I want, even if I have bad taste. No one gets to validate my desires, or replace them with their own.
Today, I belt The Saturdays’ song Higher:
“So when I speak, listen, this is my decision and you keep on messing up the words. So when I speak listen, ‘cause you keep on pushing like I need permission to be heard.”
Yeah, baby. I know what I want, and I don’t need permission. I’ve got the skills for manifestation.
Getting Abundantly Clear
Things happen when you align your head, heart and gut with a version of what’s perfect, what’s timeless, what’s without associated tags – you know the tags.
Tags are the conditions you attach. The money you’ll need to have because you added up the budget and that’s the matter of fact. Really? Like you know how the world works?
What if it’s not? What if instead a grant is announced and suddenly you no longer need to be the source of that $25,000 item, but the universe moved in and provided. Did you leave room? I did.
Nail down the details, but don’t hem Him in. Who wants to be treated as a robot? I detested showing up for that manager and quit as soon as I could. I’ll keep my skills for manifestation to myself, thank you.
Who wants to be treated as if they are on the hook for a wild Hail Mary solution, and are simply expected to deliver? I found that experience to be akin to being used and remembered the hiring manager saying, “I know how we’ll use you.”
They always tell you in advance, don’t they? If you haven’t yet started to listen and pay attention to the voice of reason from the universe, don’t be surprised when it comes out of the mouths of those people around you. Where else would it come from? Thin air?
Getting abundantly clear means recognizing if you’ve put any barriers, limiting conditions, or contradictory requirements in the way. Expecting people or reality to be different is a barrier. Expecting yourself to be different is a contradictory requirement, but one you can start to move the needle on with evidence of your new behaviour.
Get right, get honest, and get real, and prepare for the promise of imagination to manifest a better future for you now that you have the insight to claim your skills for manifestation.
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