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Manifesting is Just Answered Prayer

If you grew up in church like I did, words like manifesting, vibration and energy might seem unfamiliar at best and forbidden territory at worst. But if, like me, you’re also a mom working from home, figuring out how to help support your family with a lot of hope but limited resources – you might be wondering if this manifesting thing can help you accomplish your goals, maybe without compromising your faith.

Our generation is stuck in this middle ground between the church tradition we inherited and the results that we see others getting, seemingly far outside the bounds of what is for us familiar territory.

I’m right there with you. I grew up in church, memorizing scripture as a Bible quizzer. I went to a mainstream charismatic university, and even got a masters degree in Biblical Literature.

Growing up in church I read the scripture and then looked at the way everyone in church lived their lives and in my spirit for a long time sat pressing questions, “Where is the power and presence? Where are the miracles and answers to prayer?” It seemed to me that none of the adults truly lived as if God’s word was true. Church had become habit and tradition, lacking an abiding power and presence of God in a real, material way.

After 20+ years of searching and wondering, I’ve begun to find the answer. The simple version is that the real substance of power and change lies with our own thoughts and emotions. The long answer would explore two things I think. The first is how we as collective believers lost the heritage of an experiential practice, a way of living and perceiving our daily lives that was holistic and embraced the personal power of the individual.

The second is that in some ways we are simply seeing the next stage in our spiritual and physical evolution. As civilization has progressed, the role of fear in our daily lives has changed, opening the way for a new experience of love and fulfillment, that can expand much greater in our minds and experiences now that we are not in a daily battle simply for survival.

I have come to believe that there is indeed one God, one divine presence, who is in all of creation, whose presence sustains us, and who has been graciously revealing himself to us throughout history and across cultures, in ways that humanity in each time and place could understand. He has continually met us at who we are, where we are.

Thousands of years ago men and women looked at the cosmic elements of the sun and stars, and at the expansive and sometimes merciless elements of the weather and imagined a pantheon of gods immersed in their own story.

Then God revealed himself as one God, a good, loving God. All of the ancient religions had a multitude of gods, and all of the modern religions, in their essence, come down to one divine presence. Part of the Abraham story was a revelation to men that God did not desire human sacrifice, a practice early men adopted out of fear of the natural elements.

In the Hebrew scriptures of the Jewish people we see a progressive revelation, as over time greater truth is revealed to them. In exile they learn from other nations and add spirits to their understanding. Then Jesus comes bringing an entirely new revelation of spiritual truth, ending the tradition of sacrifice and introducing the concept of a personal relationship with the divine, an experience aided by spirit and focused on teachings centered around love as the ultimate truth.

So what does this have to do with manifesting? I’m getting there, promise.

Christianity has a long history with a wide range of experience. Throughout much of church history, and in a multitude of ways, the ego of humanity has interfered with God’s divine purpose. We now have so much history of different ways of interpreting scripture that many have become disillusioned and the experience of Christianity has frequently fallen into a simple practice of religion.

Which is why I, and I’m sure many of you, have had this life-long question, and what I see now in our generation is a new revelation of God to his people, that is the same truth, but revealed in fresh language so that we can hear it anew, and receive the truth in our hearts, without it getting stuck in our minds because of the mental baggage associated with some words, terms or ideas.

The heart of authentic religion and true spirituality, the revelation from God to us is twofold 1) the relationship that we can individually have with the divine, and 2) the power and freedom that we are each meant to walk in as divine creations and daughters of the Most High.

As a young adult I knew scripture so well I couldn’t hear it anymore, and even knowing the original traditions and context, I struggled to apply it to the modern world I saw. But when I began to study the spiritual teachers God has given us today, people like Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Gabrielle Bernstein, and so many others, new terms like manifesting, vibration and energy opened my eyes to see what God was saying in the scriptures that I’ve known from my childhood.

We are each called to embrace our own journey of changing our minds from fear to love, and aligning our lives with the true self God created us to be, and our own intuitive knowledge of the divine that is in us and also in everything, all of creation.

As we embrace that journey and those truths, and we align our thoughts with truth and love, when we then set our intention to create the life we desire, the divine nature that is in everything aids us in bringing that to us which we ask for.

Manifesting is a new word for the ancient truth that God is good, and is in us and all things, and will assist us when we align ourselves with love.

When we set an intention to create a certain reality in our lives, and we have the true thoughts and emotions around it of faith and gratitude, and we are aligned with a mission of love and God’s purpose, that is a heartfelt prayer to God, and when that thing comes to fruition in our lives it is answered prayer and today we often hear people use the word manifesting to describe the experience, referring to the way their desire became real in its material form.

Jesus said “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.” (Matt 7:7-8)

A Letter to a Blogger with a Mission

Letters, Self Care, Spirituality

I’m dedicating this post to an incredible lady I met yesterday. You know who you are.

Dear friend,

I’m writing to encourage you to undertake the endeavor which you explained to me at length during our first meeting yesterday.

You have a beautiful vision, and a gift lying dormant inside of you. Do not let your age, or your health, or your schedule stop you.

Because people need your message. A message of hope, of joy, of personal triumph in the midst of pain.

I do not understand, and can never fully know, what your audience experiences day to day. But you can, you do. You know, you’ve been there. You’ve lived it and conquered it, and continue to in the midst of daily trials to take ownership of yourself, to exert your joy, to decide how you will look at life.

You see the light shining through the clouds, the flower in the rainstorm.

Thinking about how to encourage you makes me wish I was a poet. How do I describe the feeling I feel as I think about your mission and the effect that I see you will have on people?

You are a leader. So lead. But not as others lead, as you would lead if you freed yourself to follow your dreams and meet the needs that you see.

You are surrounded by an invisible tribe of comrades, allies, friends and fans. As you open that place and begin to voice your message, they will appear, drawn to the light of your words, your voice, the light that is your life.

I beg of you, start writing. Sit down and ask yourself, ask your heart, “What do I truly wish to say?” and then don’t think, don’t second guess, don’t analyze. Just write.

Every day.

When someone like you, who is beginning to awaken, feels the urgency of life, feels the call to serve and to lead, when you choose to answer, to take ownership of your gift, to begin to put pen and words to paper – miracles start to happen.

As you write from your heart, you’ll see words that you know were not meant for you alone. So you’ll put them out there to the world. And you my friend, you have a unique bond with your audience. When you write from your heart, and write the encouragement, the uplifting message that they need, you will paid immediately in joyful gratitude by your readers.

Because here is someone who understands what they are going through. You know it, you live it. And yet you do not let it conquer you. You are in charge of your life, and your thoughts and your emotions.

You choose to interpret your life and give it meaning, and as you focus on all that is good, and express joy and gratitude, as you write and live and share from that place, you will not only inspire others.

You will free them. You will free them to see their life differently, to consider a different perspective on their life story. Your inner strength and force of will to find the good will release in them the inner power and strength of will to choose to see life differently.

And what is the power of changing how we see our own life story?

I am prepared to argue that it is everything.

Everything stems from what you believe about yourself, what you tell yourself about your life.

So go dear friend, and write.

Share practical tips and wisdom as well, never discount the impact of a small idea that helps them sleep better, or eat better, or do any small but significant life activity.

Share the practical stuff, the fun stuff, even the silly, lighthearted stuff, follow your heart and look to your own personality for ideas and content, in order to make it truly yours. Nothing is off topic if it brings your own heart joy to share it.

But always come back to your core message of hope and light. Determine in your heart that you will take time regularly, to slow down, to meditate, and then to share deeply from your soul the message that you know is the core of your mission.

When you do that, you will impart freedom to your readers, and truly liberate them to change their story, to find the courage to embark on their own mission, their own creative journey.

Write, dear friend, write.

If you want to know what inspired this style of writing for me, go read something by Steven Pressfield. If in doubt, start with Do the Work.

Has Anyone Asked You How You Want to Feel?

Books, Spirituality

Last week I finished reading The Desire Map, by Danielle LaPorte. It rocked my world. Her premise is that identifying your core desired feelings, and then using them to guide you will help you find the life that you truly want.

A few pages into the book I knew I had found the next piece that I needed. And yet several days after finishing it I am still a bit stumped by the question, “how do I want to feel?” Equally hard is “what do I want?”

Between years of school being the dutiful student, and then subsequent to that years of being the dutiful mother, I know feel that I have doubly suppressed my feelings, my desire and my identity.

And so I am both intrigued and perplexed.

In talking about desire, she speaks to the inherent balance necessary: “Want it with all your heart. But don’t get attached to getting it.”

Useful and yet confusing at the same time. But I suspect current balance for me will be found by adding a healthy dose of desire and self awareness.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of journaling, asking myself all the questions in her book, and then pondering, “who am I?”, “what do I love?”, and “what is truly unique to me?”

“How do I want to feel?”

My first list included words like respected, connected, challenged and inspired. Then she said to avoid words that imply dependence on external factors. So I switched to words that imply feelings I can choose to generate and that are more innately empowering.

I want to feel constant growth, wise, inspired, beautiful, strong, connected.

Then a few days later after mulling it over, I had a new list.

I want to feel healthy, curious, joyful.

That feels better.

I have not figured this out. I have not revolutionized my goal-setting or my to-do list. But I am thinking a bit differently about my attitude toward decisions and goals.

And I’m going to keep this in mind. While I don’t completely subscribe to everything she says, I think Danielle has a really valuable contribution here, and is right when she says that “our productivity- and results-obsessed society pathologizes feelings.”

She says that when we truly live in awareness of our core desired feelings, that we are able to be creative instead of reactive. And when she speaks of overcoming “the conditioning that has dampened our awareness of our core desired feelings” that takes me back to everything I’ve recently shared with you about my reflections on public school and my realization that life is not a classroom.

So I’m not there yet, but I’m collecting pieces to a special puzzle in order to answer the question of how we should live life, and I know core desired feelings is an important piece. In skimming the book again, I just see tons of great quotes that I highlighted. I’d love to share them all with you. Here are a few. If this has piqued your interest, pick up her book.

“As hardwired achievement-bots, many of us subscribe to systems of success that actually become blockages to our instincts.” – Danielle LaPorte

“Small deliberate actions inspired by your true desires create a life you love.” – Danielle LaPorte

So this is not a new message exactly. I see references all the time to the idea that moms need to do better with self-care.

This is a different approach, and I want to challenge you to try it with me.

Get in touch with why you’ve set the goals you’ve set, and why you’re making the decisions you’re making.

What do you really want out of each of those things? How do you want to feel?

Let me know if this gives you any inspiration, I’d love to hear about it.