Meditation and Manifesting in Everyday Life
Meditation and manifesting are two of my passions. In this blog I will be describing spiritual manifesting in everyday life, this is different from tasking or goal setting. While tasking and goal setting are both necessary and helpful, spiritual manifesting is a different form of creating. I describe it as a deep state of inner alignment where time and space dissolve and the seeming impossible appears. Sounds like hoopla, until you experience it for yourself.
If you’re like me, your mind may immediately go to big manifesting examples like Swami Veda who became fluent in Italian in a matter of days, or Joan of Arc who received a vision that she was supposed to lead the French army in battle to defeat the British during the mid-1400s. These are mighty examples that have made spiritual history, but they aren’t experiential or seemingly relevant in everyday modern life. So I ask:
How does manifesting look in everyday life? Here are four ways we manifest in everyday life...and meditation helps:
1) Clarity (see, hear, know, feel) – We all have intuition. Some people are naturally gifted with intuition and some people need to spend more time honing their intuitive senses. Either way, spiritual manifesting involves the intuitive sense of clear vision, hearing, knowing or feeling. In my case it most commonly comes through hearing or clairaudience and in dreams. For example, 20 years ago, I heard through a dream that I was supposed to “get up and go apply for a job at the hospital.” I was between jobs and quite stressed because I was pregnant and didn’t think anyone would want to hire me. Not only was the perfect job posted, as though specifically made for me, but it was a temporary position for a maternity leave. I both got the job and furthered my career in traditional health care for another 14 years.
2) Synchronicity arrives and you experience a meaningful coincidence. It’s one thing to hear a message through a dream, it’s quite another for that message to materialize on the physical plane or in everyday life. In my health care example above, the posting was tailor-made for me and I got the job. It wasn’t really a meaningful “coincidence,” because I heard an internal message which I trusted and acted upon, but like more typical synchronicity, it had a non-linear arrival that was significant and meaningful to me.
Here are two personal examples of “typical” synchronicities:
a) I had an extra pair of blue light glasses which I loaned out to a friend and then forgot to whom. Weeks later my son needed a pair of blue light glasses and I searched all over the house looking for the extra pair I forgot I had loaned out. I felt genuinely disappointed that I couldn’t find the glasses. That evening I received a phone call from my friend saying he was in the area and was wondering if he could drop off the glasses. Unplanned, perfect timing, meaningful coincidence = a typical synchronicity.
b) A few months back I was on a call with a spiritual author who brought up the Enneagram. She was the third person that week to bring it up so I figured there was something I was meant to learn or understand about it. I told her that “it was on my bucket list” and would “check it out more deeply when I had the time.” After our call, I went for a long walk in the river valley and decided to cut up a steep bank on the way back. Midway up I stopped to ‘look around’ and saw in the forest that someone had made a shape out of sticks. It was two overlaid triangles surrounded by a circle. I said to myself, “hmmm, I’ve always wondered what that shape means.” Another voice responded, “it’s the number nine.” Interesting I thought. When I got home I googled Enneagram and the first thing to pop up was, “Greek for number nine.” Another timely and meaningful coincidence or ‘synchronicity.’ If you want to become skillful at manifesting in everyday life, watch for synchronicities.
3) You are connected to your heart’s desire. Somewhere along the manifesting chain of events it becomes important to align with your heart’s desire. This allows the distinction between achieving a goal and receiving a gift. The distinction between head and heart is sometimes a very fine line. It may even be a line we don’t understand yet or perceive. In many instances, there is overlap and intertwining. Ultimately it is the difference between the motivation of fear and the motivation of love.
In my health care example above I wasn’t aware of my heart’s desire. I wasn’t on a spiritual path then and I only knew I was depressed because my life wasn’t going in any direction of my choosing. At that time, jobs were physically posted on posting boards and paper resumes handed in, in person. From a head perspective, I could have been sifting through the classified ads in the newspaper searching for a job at the hospital, found it, applied and got the same job... but I wasn’t job searching at all, I was napping on a Friday afternoon and was gifted a job tailor-made for me through a spiritual or dream experience. My head was not aligned with my heart, yet despite this disconnect I was open enough to receive a spiritual message and act on it. It was indeed my heart’s desire to work in health care. When the head and the heart align, there is always magic. To become skillful at manifesting in everyday life cultivate a daily practice of asking “what is my heart’s desire?” Then remember to stay open to receiving the answer. Ask. Receive. Create.
4) Stay open to receiving and being led by spiritual messages. We all want to be in charge of our lives and preferably most of the time. Yet, for the majority of people, life doesn’t work out this way. If you look at your life right now, is it exactly as you imagine it should be? Do you love your career? Your health is great? Are all relationships flourishing?... Life isn’t linear or machine-like, it is organic and nature-like. It grows in spirals and patterns that are rounded, circular and flowing. Do you understand the patterns that repeat in your life? How to transform what is to what could be? I could have easily said “no” to the message from my dream. In saying no I simply would have stayed going in whatever direction I was in. I likely would have made my life harder but who knows? We are gifted with free will and don’t have to listen to dreams, heart’s desire, internal messages or anything spiritual at all. But if you objectively look at life you will see it flows like a river, into eddies, around turns and bends, sometimes fast, other times slow. When you are open to receiving and being led you are able to flow with the river of life, rather than trying to paddle upstream. If you want to become skillful at manifesting in everyday life, learn how to receive spiritual messages.
40 Days
Sometimes in daily manifesting, there are big events, like selling a house (that’s another story), landing a big job or seeing your future life partner or child before actually meeting them, but most often manifesting is made up of smaller events that add up over time. Watch for these smaller non-linear signs and symbols in everyday life and if you want to become more skilled at manifesting I encourage you to try it as a practice for 40 days.
Forty is a spiritually significant number in many religions such as Christianity, Islam, Hebrew and Jewish. There are 40 days of lent modeled after Jesus’s 40-days fasting in the desert. The great flood lasted for 40 days. The Hebrew people lived outside the promised lands for 40 years. In the Islam faith, the soul is separated from the body during death and can be visited on the seventh and 40th days. The prophet Ilyas spent 40 days in the wilderness before God appeared to him in a cave on Mount Horeb. It is believed in Eastern Orthodox religions that the soul completes many obstacles as it passes through the aerial realm (home to evil spirits) for 40 days. There is much to be said about the significance of 40 days both in spiritual traditions and in neuro-biological rewiring.
Here’s a 40-day manifesting practice I use:
At the end of your day, reflect on the events of the day.
Write down any synchronicities, heartfelt desires or non-linear messages, nuances, curiosities received.
Practice asking, “what is my heart’s desire?”.
Ask to receive or be led in your meditation practice then watch for signs and symbols off the mat.
