What is Manifestation?

People get lost or confused in trying to tackle the topic of manifestation, because it’s chock full of a lot of buzzwords and pop psychology, rationalization and no real look at the process. Is this your experience of manifesting?

Things manifest whether we consciously choose them or not. All things, events, meetings, goals, insights. They are all part of the same process. Manifestation is sort of like science, really. We live in a sea of potential. The process of manifestation is just that potential being actualized, and the potential is there and available to us well before the event actually manifests.

An example of a common manifestation. You are working a job you don’t like. You worry about it because you need the job, but you are also aware that it’s affecting you badly. It isn’t that it’s too hard, and rationally you know you can keep the job. But what actually happens? Unless there is some serious work to prevent it on your part, you loose the job. It’s really pretty predictable, but even in the situation where you don’t, the amount of energy it takes to keep that job so ill suited to you is like you are arm wrestling with yourself.

Doing jobs we don’t like – far away from our way of living. That’s the way of concensus thinking, but we are not victims of a process. We have influence. The process has to be understood to be made to serve us instead of ruling us.

We are drawing things to us. But an area where people get a bit confused is that you aren’t acting on an external object.

If you feel passionately about rocks, and thought often about what they meant to you, then events would surface that would put you in contact with rocks. All of existence has an “internal” element. It is available to your consciousness because it has an “internal” element. For example, your chair. When somebody was first designing the chair, there was no chair. There wasn’t even the building supplies, just the designers idea. Ideas are in that energy. Ideas and form are one.

This is an example of manifestation, and it wasn’t on purpose. I had been out of the romantic scene for quite a while and hadn’t any serious intent of getting back in. My failed marriage had really hurt me. But without thinking, something eventually arose in me and I began to feel a yearning for companionship. The type I didn’t find with my ex wife. At first I dismissed the idea, but the yearning didn’t go away. So I sort of started humouring myself and indulging in “what if” thoughts. Again, not really trying to “make it happen” so to speak. Eventually this became a habit, but not once did I deliberately approach anyone or ask for a date. But I began meeting people and even though I was resistant to forming relationships with them, they formed anyway as they might “naturally” do. The process took on a life of its own. I didn’t will anything to happen. It wasn’t a deliberate act of manifestation on my part, but it was a manifestation of something inside of me in the external world.

What was happening inside me was the growing yearning, the being ready. The fact of my own nature that wouldn’t be denied, strong desire, need. When I began the “what if” scenario, I was beginning a manifestation process. It is possible to not want something and also want it, but in that case deeper truth wins out. Just my thoughts on their own were resistant to it. I didn’t start allowing the thoughts until the urge over powered them.

Typically, we aren’t creatures of merely one desire, and inner conflict does make things harder for us. An idea by itself is just an idea. You need to feel the urge.

How To Manifest

When you are happy, do you do hostile things? Our behaviour corresponds to our state, and our behaviour creates our consequences. I have a struggle. I tend to be defensive. So often though I am trying to be polite, I insight reactions in others. They don’t respond to my intention. They respond to my state. You attract what you are.

I may have an encounter with someone, and it would perhaps be upsetting to me because of how I think about relating. Someone else, having the same encounter with the same person, may be unphased, even amused. Enjoy what upset me. Neither of us are wrong.

You attract things you think are real. So, if you feel the bad is more real, you will create the realistic thing. Thus the issue brought up about the job you don’t like. You can choose to see reality differently. You choose your behaviour when you choose your view. You can and do choose your reality. Someone could choose to see me as hostile. When they do, it doesn’t matter what I do for as long as they choose to view me that way. They have chosen their behaviour. Behaviour is dictated by what you have decided is truth.

It tends to work against us more than for us. We see the world and ourselves dimly, and we see that as real. Man’s greatest fear isn’t that they are powerless, but that they are powerful without measure. It is the power of the observer. It shows up in science and in our lives. There is a way you fooled yourself into where you are now. No amount of will put you there, and no amount of will gets you out.

Can you name anything that has absolutely no good in it? Hail? Hail is water and life needs it. A gun? Guns can save lives. Hopefully police use them that way. Weapons of Genocide? Weapons of genocide make people think. Viruses? Viruses are a part of the human genome. Often alter, create immunities and positive evolution. Alcohol? Alcohol is sterile, can clean wounds and is a bi-product of human metabolism. Dust? Dust is the earth itself and all our food ultimately comes from it. Aids? Aids is changing and making us understand life and ourselves more. Hunters? Hunters can cull out of control populations sparing the population a painful death by starvation. Asteroids? Asteroids allowed this planet to cool thus letting life start here at all. What’s good about being mugged and killed? You don’t suffer after and the criminal leaves a evidence trail.

But humanity is a special case, nature doesn’t deviate. It doesn’t plan how to defeat itself or how to hurt us. The process of manifestation exists even without us. We are a part of it. Resenting evil is evil. You can’t cure hate by hating people.

If we look at everything as good, will we attract good? It isn’t easy, and I haven’t claimed it is, but it is possible. Look deeply in yourself. Start where all that is ‘you’ starts from. You cannot act lowly and see truth in yourself. You can’t act hatefully and see love in yourself. And ultimately, manifestation isn’t a doing, it’s a way of engaging the world in a knowing manner.

We are never at the mercy of our lives. We have a hand in them the whole time. And always, we can put an old life aside. Right now, the life I have I can leave just because I choose to. Is that the best choice? I guess it is dependant on how I see it.

Does manifestation work with material things? What are material things but factors that have arisen in our lives based on choices we have made? We aren’t describing something unrealistic, and it’s really very present and for lack of seeing it clearly we sabotage ourselves. Your focus determines your reality. Think what you think on purpose. Think it because you realize the truth. Think with conviction. If you think differently and think to yourself at the same time ‘this is a lie‘, then you actually strengthen your old thinking. Repetition doesn’t matter. It’s the same process that brought you where you are now. You believe your experience supports your thinking.

If you see a truth. Even the truth of a problem. Then you can make new decisions. Thinking is behaviour. Action is behaviour. When any potential becomes real that is behaviour. You can suspend your doubts. When you meditate, you suspend doubts. You can approach change with what in Zen is called beginners mind and in that state you are at your most powerful. You don’t trip yourself. There is a way. Respect your process and the process of the world which isn’t separate from you. There are many ways in the world but for you there is only one and for me there is only one. There is a personal path.

There is something that transcends the individual. Approaching your thought with the attention to take charge of it. Changing the point of view. But that isn’t changing one thing, that is changing a lot. We do all need the change. No adherence to ideas that your inner nature denies. Don’t cling to what doesn’t support you.

You don’t have to find what is there on its own. Meditation can help, as can calm reflection. You don’t have to be Buddhist or any other faith. Just be open. Don’t fight with the world or yourself. Nature balances, if allowed. Animals find what they need, plants do, humanity has needs, spiritual and physical and there is nothing that keeps us from them.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.