Manifesting
My earliest memories of manifesting is of my 8 yr-old self, standing high up on the verandah, in the tightly packed neighborhood in Lalmatia, Dhaka in 1997.
She watched the colors change in a sky that wrapped around all that the eye could take in. Sometimes playful, sometimes mysterious, sometimes wistful.
She recalled her mother’s words, ‘Anyone who asks with pure intentions will never be denied. Since you are young, all your intentions are [mostly] pure. So if you want anything, ask [God/the universe] and you will have it.’
I stood there focusing in on the wide expanse of the sky and said “Ok. I will try this. I would really really really like a magic drawing board. I love drawing, its my favorite pass time. I could use those magic drawing boards over and over since they erase immediately when I lift up the top.” I imagined it clearly and in my vivid imagination I was sketching away furiously on this device and erasing it instantly.
In a week the corner store in the neighborhood began carrying this product. My cousin was in town and she asked me what she could get for me — I told her that was what I wanted and in a couple weeks it was in my hands.
I tried it again, this time with a specific type of chapstick — my rich friends all had chapsticks and it seemed so fun; they came in different flavors and even had a tint or sometimes a little glitter. This time my aunt brought it for me as a gift.
Then I did it for a walkman — my most effective early day manifestation — once again it was my Aunt who ushered this to me. It was a slim purple fancy walkman — a rare possession for a girl of modest means.
With enough of these — it became clear that while the desire that led to the manifestation would be potent and thrilling even with a dash of magical quality — the physical manifestation never quite had the same quality — it was a thing — it was here and I guess I had it. I would quickly lose interest and finally the thing itself amongst all of the other stuff.
As I moved, became a young adult I knew that I did not want live the life of my dreams — the idea bored me to no end. If I already knew how my life would shape up why would I want to live it? It would be as fun assembling IKEA furniture and God knows I had done a lot of that. I wanted to live an adventurous life; and that meant not knowing what would happen, falling into despair and rising up again — having great achievements and losses. I soon started to live this life — this adventurous unknowable path — but sadly I forgot that it was exactly what I had wanted; it was all my making. In the hard times, self doubt and betrayal from the world engulfed me and in good times I barely knew that I should be celebrating fearing the next storm that would come at me in no time. I felt tossed around as if in a storm all through my 20s.
In my 30s now, and I am unlearning all the crap of my 20s. The crap that I gathered about knowing anything at all, and thinking that I knew all that there was to know.
I am unlearning all the theories and frameworks of control arising from fear and self doubt.
I am unlearning the hierarchies that have been imprinted and the morality that acts as judge jury and executioner in our minds.
I am unlearning the mechanistic, contrived, automated way of living.
What we perhaps do not understand is that everything around us is already our manifestation — we only experience the outside world within our being — and that experience is a 100% our making.
Sadly, for many, this has been unconscious manifestation — some good; some bad — but all done in a compulsive state of being thrown around in a storm, rarely enjoying the moment and always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Manifestation means to give form in the physical world to that which is within you. If we are tormented by monsters of the past and ghosts of the future during 99.8% of conscious hours then that will be what we experience. The 0.2% of the positive affirmations and meditation does little for the whole.
Yet that 0.2% has been the path to the 1% 10% 33% 50% — and then we start to experience magic.
As we relearn clarity and simplicity, we find joy — unfettered, uncomplicated joy — the “pure intentions” that my mother used as a caveat before making one’s mark. So beautiful can every moment be that one wishes for nothing more. Manifesting towards goals without joy is what has created lifelessness in our creations — the roads and the public transport and the buildings and the trinkets.
As we find the joyful dance of our life to the rhythm of the universe — the manifestations will be alive, beautiful and nurturing.
