Saturday, January 13, 2007

The Manifesting Skeptic

This post is for all the skeptics who read the last post on "Manifesting Through Intention" and say to themselves, "Oh, brother, what a bunch of new-age garbage. You're telling me I create my own reality with my thoughts?"

Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you.

Don't believe me? Then I challenge you to a little experiment. Tomorrow morning, when you get up, I want you to take ten minutes, sit down in a quiet place, close your eyes and repeat to yourself over and over, "My life sucks....My life sucks....My life sucks...." over and over for only for ten minutes! No more! I want you to do that every day for a week. One week. Just ten minutes out of twenty-four hours. That's all. Every day, for one week.

Don't believe our thoughts manifest who we are? Oh, sure, you could fake it, and come back and say, 'You were wrong, Gary, it didn't change me at all." But will you? Should you?

Don't want to do it? Why take a chance, you say? Exactly! You know we are what we think we are, and if you can lie to yourself everyday, and it might affect you negatively, why would you do it?

So what if you chose something you really wanted, like happiness, or health, or abundance...or even love....and you got really clear on what you wanted and why, and you sat down for ten minutes a day, and said to the universe: "Health, Happiness, Abundance, Love....Health, Happiness, Abundance, Love....?"

If lying to yourself in a negative manner creates negativity, what do you think lying (if you have to) to your self in a positive manner will do for you? Is there any question which path is best?

After Anyaa and I had been seeing each other for a couple of months, she said she wanted me to come out to North Carolina to spend New Years with her. After initially saying yes, I had to recant and say "no" because of the time off, travel, expense, and general lack of resources. We both knew I'd need $1,000 to do it.

After we had worked through the disappointment, Anyaa challenged me to write myself a check from the universe for $1,000 and post it over my computer where I could see it everyday. She did the same thing. Within a week, I had $400 come my way I hadn't expected. She then had $500 she hadn't expected, and a few weeks later I received another $1000 dollars from an unexpected source.

I immediately bought her a plane ticket for New Years, and she didn't even have to spend her money! Soon after I got a nice bonus from work. Wow! I had cashed that check from the universe....twice!

What do you suppose would have happened if I'd just said, "I can't," and let it go at that?

I don't know. Why don't you go sit for ten minutes a week and say to yourself. "My life sucks....My life sucks....My life sucks...."

See the T-Shirt at the iBoutique

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

G'day Gazza. First, huge congratulations and my strongest wishes for continued growth and increasing closeness to you and Anyaa. With Vivian and I getting together a year ago, I know just how magical finding someone who meets you and who you can meet is. And how precious such a partner is as... a-hem ... our life experience extends. :-)
My reservations on the metaphor of manifestation are ummmm something along the lines of my reservations about the inner orientation of folks who claim a personal and conversational relationship with their god. Our little egos are just SO anxious to find evidence of their universal significance that resisting their attempts at self-inflation under the influence of that sort of encouragement can become a lot of very hard and very constant work.
I prefer the old Ben Hogan cliche of "the more I practice the luckier I get" as it still makes me responsible for doing all the good stuff: clean, positive mind, wise action-speech-thought-livelihood-mindfulness-...
but doesn't carry any implication of a special relationship between me and the universe/god/God/FSM/Spirit, with all the paranoid baggage that is so often tucked in its shadow.
To me, the essence of what you're describing in your intentional process of change is the transcendence of the unhealthy stuff that little you was manifesting, and its replacement/renovation as aspects of a being who is happily able to interact with the rest of the universe on its own terms.
One other cliche that I've run across recently and whose truth I've perversely had to relearn several times over the past 30 years: In order to be personally capable of a full relationship, we have to be personally capable of fully living with NO relationship.

Gary Stamper said...

Hi Simon. Thanks for your splendid commentary. I love that we all have these different perspectives and that we are able to hold these multiple viewpoints. My sense is that there's shadow tucked within everything, so it doesn't matter if it's God, Spirit, the Universe, or Ben Hogan. The shadow pervades everything. Even relationship! I was definitely okay by myself, and now I'm even richer!