S2 EP68 – The Art of Manifestation

Transcript

Have you been frustrated regarding being able to manifest your dreams? Have you tried following all the directions laid out by Law of Attraction experts but are still not able to manifest?  

We are co-creators with spirit, so we all have the ability to manifest what we want, but as we all know, this is often easier said than done.

We are told that it’s essential to think positively and visualize what we want, along with our excitement about it, and this is an important part of manifestation. We are also told that it’s essential to take consistent loving action toward manifesting our vision, and this is also very important, but what if this doesn’t work? Then what?

The secret to manifestation has to do with your intention. For example, Kyler, in his early 60s, had been on a spiritual path for many years. He had attended meditation retreats, had years of therapy, and read all the latest self-help books. Yet his life was stuck. His marriage of five years was heading for divorce and his business was going nowhere.

Kyler was deeply discouraged when he first consulted with me for Inner Bonding facilitation.

“Nothing has worked so far, so I really don’t have much faith that Inner Bonding is going to work for me either.”

Within the first couple of sessions, it become clear to me that all of Kyler’s work had been coming from his ego wounded self. He was deeply intent on having control and not being controlled. His behavior in his relationships with both his wife and his employees was righteous, judgmental – sometimes compliant on the one hand, and resistant on the other hand. He wanted control over how others felt about him, while also having control over not being controlled by others. He thought of himself as being a kind and caring loving adult, yet all his behavior was coming from his wounded self with his desire to control and not be controlled. Unconsciously, control and resistance were far more important to him than loving himself and sharing his love with others. It was his intent to control that was causing Kyler to be stuck.

There is a huge energetic difference between the intent to control and resist being controlled – coming from the wounded self – and an intent to learn about loving yourself and others – coming from the loving adult. No matter how often you try to think positively and visualize what you want, if your underlying intent is to control, you will end up stuck. It is also not enough to attempt to surrender control, as even this can be a form of control. If your goal is ultimately to have control over getting something externally, rather than to be loving to yourself and with others, you will end up feeling frustrated with your efforts.

On the other hand, when your intent is to learn with your higher guidance about what is loving to yourself and to others, you will learn to think and behave in ways that are deeply in alignment with your true self – your soul essence. When you are consistently intent on learning about love, you will not only find the peace and joy that are the natural results of living in alignment with your essence, you will also be able to manifest your dreams. Manifestation occurs when you are in alignment with love, but if your goal is control over manifestation, it will elude you.

So, if you feel stuck in your life and if you feel frustrated, sad, alone, angry, depressed, and anxious, look to your intent. The chances are that control and resistance are your priority, rather than learning about loving.

Our desire to manifest indicates that we have goals, which are important to have. But while I do have goals, if I attach my joy or worth to achieving the goals, I am limiting my ability to manifest. The reason is that when I attach my worth or joy to getting what I want, I am in my wounded self, and the frequency of my wounded self is too low to manifest. I manifest when I let go of attachment and surrender the outcome to spirit, which is NOT something my wounded self wants to do!

Our wounded self, by definition, is the part of us that wants control. Since surrender is the opposite of control, the last thing our wounded self wants is to surrender. If you go unconscious and allow your wounded self to be in charge of your intent, you are actually creating the very powerlessness that your wounded self wants to avoid, and which is certainly not in your highest good, especially during these challenging times.

We are most able to manifest when we have defined our own worth and are in the high frequency of love and joy. Joy is different than happiness; happiness comes from good things happening externally, while joy is a gift of spirit that fills our heart and soul when we are openhearted. While we are often happy when we get what we want, that happiness is generally short-lived, and we move on to wanting the next thing and the next thing. Joy, on the other hand, is available to us any time we are open to learning and loving ourselves and others, even in the midst of this pandemic.

By staying in our mind and trying to control the outcome so that we can achieve our goal, we shut the door to joy. The wounded self doesn’t believe that we can feel joyful just in being. To the wounded self, happiness is all about getting; getting love, approval, attention—and getting what we want regarding money and achievements. The wounded self does not understand the joy of giving to ourselves and others, the joy of being, the joy of deep connection with spirit.

While manifestation is never guaranteed, we have the best chance of moving ourselves toward manifesting our goals when we are in the high frequency of love and joy, rather than the low frequency of wanting, attachment, and control.

The challenge for many of us is that there is often a huge resistance to surrender and the resulting joy.

Not only does surrender feel scary to the wounded self, so does joy. Strange as it seems, the wounded self is invested in the wounded feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, aloneness, emptiness, and jealousy. In other words, the wounded self is invested in suffering. It might even be addicted to suffering as a form of control.

Do you believe that there is power in suffering? Do you believe that God will reward you for suffering? Are you ready to let go of this lie?

The Law of Attraction states that ‘like attracts like,” which means that like frequency attracts like frequency. It makes sense, then, that joy attracts joy, and that there is no joy without surrender to your higher guidance.

Learning to love yourself through your Inner Bonding practice is a powerful path to manifestation.

Ralph Waldo Emersonsaid that “Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.” 

If great hearts draw great events, and therefore support our ability to manifest, then what creates a great heart?

Some people seem to be born with great hearts, but even those people still need to learn to love themselves in order to fully express their great heart.

Whatever stage our heart is at when we are born, we all have the choice to focus on our soul’s journey, which is evolving our heart in our ability to love. This needs to start with learning to love yourself.

Today, given the turmoil on our planet, it’s so important to manifest a kinder and more loving planet. And there’s actually one thing each of us could do to have an impact on manifesting this. Change needs to come from within each of us, and the inner change that would create the most outer change is for each of us to develop a habit of asking this question with every action we take, within ourselves and with others:

“Is this action supportive of my highest good and the highest good of all, or is it self-serving, coming from fear, greed and a desire to control others?”

If each of us practices asking this question throughout each day – regarding our actions toward ourselves, toward others and toward our planet – imagine what we could manifest globally!

Asking yourself this question throughout the day can result in not only manifesting changes on our planet, it can also lead to manifesting your dreams. The fastest way to create a frequency high enough to manifest your dreams is to learn to love yourself and share your love with others.

In order you to co-create with spirit, your heart needs to be open. Spirit can co-create with us when our heart and mind are open to receiving the love and truth of Spirit, but when our heart and mind are closed, there is no way for us to receive the gifts of Spirit. Your frequency is high when your heart is open, and low when your heart is closed. Manifestation occurs for all of us when our frequency is high.

Loving yourself means staying present in your body with your feelings, in Step One of Inner Bonding. It means consciously moving into the intent to learn, in Step Two, about how you might be abandoning yourself that may be causing pain. It means exploring what your feelings are telling you and learning about the false beliefs behind any self-abandoning behavior, in Step Three. It means opening to learning with your higher self about what is true and what is loving to you in Step Four, and then taking the loving action in Step Five, and evaluating how you now feel in Step Six.

It means, asking before taking any action for yourself or others, the question which I will state again: “Is this action supportive of my highest good and the highest good of all, or is it self-serving, coming from fear, greed and a desire to control others?”

I hope you will practice these powerful Steps of Inner Bonding and develop the habit of asking this question with every action you take. This is what I do throughout the day – always asking my higher self about what is in my highest good and the highest good of all. I ask it with everything – how I spend my time, how I interact with others, how I treat my body and what I put in my body, and how I treat animals and the planet.

I invite you, in these challenging and tumultuous times, to join with me and many others in focusing on loving yourself and others. It’s time to expand our hearts and draw in great events for ourselves and for our planet!

As I said, manifestation is about frequency, and along with love and joy, appreciation and gratitude are choices we can make that lead to a high frequency. Appreciation is the opposite of self-judgment and judgment of others, and always lowers our frequency.

The key here is to be conscious enough to be in Step One of Inner Bonding all the time – staying tuned into your feelings. The moment you feel anxious, abandoned, stressed, fearful, depressed, angry, hurt, empty, or any other wounded painful feelings, notice what you are doing or telling yourself that is causing this feeling, and explore the false belief that is fueling these thoughts. Once you explore your false beliefs, then instead of indulging yourself in continuing to think a thought or behave in a way that is causing you to feel badly, open to learning about what is true and loving, and choose to think about something that you are thankful for, something that you appreciate, something that you love and are grateful for. Notice that the moment you move yourself into appreciating something, you feel much better. With practice, you can learn to instantly change your thought from one that causes stress to one that brings peace and joy, which raises your frequency and connects you with your spiritual guidance.

If you find that you are unable to stop thinking the stressful thoughts, then you need to continue through the Six Steps of Inner Bonding – opening to learning and exploring the good reasons you want to think a thought or behave in a way that is causing you to feel badly. You will discover that it is always because you are stuck in wanting to control something or avoid something, and you believe that thinking certain thoughts and taking certain actions will bring you the control you desire. When you become aware of your false beliefs regarding control, you will have an easier time letting go of the thoughts and behavior that are causing pain, and opening to love, gratitude and appreciation.

For example, let’s say that you are having the thought, “I’m not good enough,” and this thought is causing you to feel anxious and inadequate. If you are in Step One of Inner Bonding, you will be aware of your anxiety and immediately notice the thought that is causing it. You might be able to then think the thought, “I’m so pleased that I’m so aware of my feelings. I’m happy that I’m able to be conscious enough to stop thinking painful, untrue thoughts.”

However, if you can’t just change your thought to one of appreciation for yourself, then you can open to learning about why your wounded self wants to think the thought about not being good enough. You would say to your wounded self, “There must be a good reason that you want to tell yourself that you are not good enough. What is this about?” You would then go inside to the part of you that believes you are not good enough and allow this part to speak. It might say, “This is the way I can motivate myself to do better and then get what I want,” or it might say, “If I were good enough, perfect enough, then others would love me.” Both these statements are about control: “I can have control over outcomes if I push myself harder,” and “I can have control over how people feel about me by being perfect.”

By exploring the deeper level of the beliefs around control, you then have the opportunity to open to learning with Spirit about the truth – which is Step Four of Inner Bonding. Spirit might say, “Judgment doesn’t motivate you, it keeps you stuck,” or ” I am in charge of outcomes, not you,” or “How people feel about you is more about them than about you – you have no control over that,” or “Your goodness is exemplified by how much you helped your friend today.” Then you might be able to offer words of appreciation for yourself for having helped your friend today, or for letting go of outcomes, or for understanding your wounded self’s desire for control, instead of being in judgment of yourself.

Today and each day, notice the difference in how you feel when you are judging yourself or when you are appreciating yourself. You can choose either one, and this will determine your frequency. And notice how much easier it is to manifest what you want when you are offering words of appreciation rather than of judgment.

People have often asked me if it’s ever loving to be controlling, and the answer is yes, sometimes it is loving to yourself and to others. It depends on your intent, on which part of you is trying to control, and what you are trying to control.

When you are coming from the ego wounded part of yourself and your intent is to control others, to get them to do what you want them to do, you are being unloving to both yourself and to them. When you get angry, blaming, withdrawn, resistant or compliant, and when you lie, manipulate, threaten, or in any other way intimidate others, to get them to do what you want them to do, you are abandoning yourself and making others responsible for you in ways that are unkind to both yourself and to them.

When you abandon responsibility for your own feelings and needs, trying to get others to make you feel safe, secure, worthy and lovable, you are being unloving to yourself and others.

When you make the bottom line more important than kindness and caring, you are lacking integrity and harming your own soul and the souls of others.

All these ways of controlling are unloving.

So when is it loving to control? It’s loving to yourself to consciously control your own intent rather than automatically revert to the default setting of protecting against your pain by trying to control others.

It is loving to yourself to consciously control your thoughts and actions – to choose to think true thoughts and take loving actions in your own behalf.

Since the law of attraction states that like attracts like, I am often asked, “Is it controlling or loving to focus on what I want with excitement, faith and gratitude, like the law of attraction books say to do? Aren’t I trying to control the outcome of things when I do this? I’ve been told that trying to control outcomes is controlling and therefore unloving. I’m confused!”

Trying to control outcomes with thought, excitement, faith and gratitude is not in itself unloving. It is when, as I’ve previously said, you attach your happiness and worth to the outcome that it becomes unloving to yourself.

Focusing your thoughts on what you want with joy, faith and gratitude, is controlling, but there is nothing wrong with this kind of controlling behavior. It is not harming you or anyone else. Since it likely makes you feel wonderful to think about what you want with faith, joy and excitement, rather than what you don’t want, with fear and anxiety, then it is loving action – as long as you don’t make your worth and happiness dependent upon the outcome. This is one of the keys to manifestation – taking personal responsibility for yourself by thinking and behaving in ways that bring you joy.

You are manifesting what you want when you focus on what you want throughout the day, thinking thoughts that make you feel peaceful and joyful, choosing to be in faith and expressing gratitude for what you have and for what you want. The moment you go into fear or make your happiness, self-worth and wellbeing dependent on the outcome, you are no longer manifesting what you want – you are now manifesting what you don’t want.

So practice controlling what you can control – your own intent, thoughts and actions. This is what the Inner Bonding process is all about – becoming conscious of your thoughts and actions that make you feel anxious, fearful, empty, alone, angry, guilty, shamed or depressed, and choosing those thoughts and actions that make you feel safe, peaceful, fulfilled and joyful.

This is the path to manifesting your dreams, and I know from my personal experience and the experience of so many of my clients that this does result in manifesting what you want and what is in your highest good.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

Learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance with Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience with Dr. Margaret Paul.

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