Manifestation: Step One
Along with a new series of the It’s Probably Me Podcast, I decided to write down the step by step guide on how to manifest too. Everyone has their preference for learning and absorbing information, so why not offer them all?
Manifestation has long been one of my favourite yoga adjacent topics. It’s not exactly yoga, in fact, if used for nefarious deeds, it could be considered the absolute opposite. But I’m going to assume you’re up for using the power of manifestation for good, as you are reading a Substack article a that’s based around yoga and self awareness.
Yoga and manifestation have a huge crossover, so many of the yoga sutras (yoga guidelines for an easier life) show up in manifestation, more than what I’ll list today, but the 3 below will come up a lot over our manifestation journey.
Awareness (meditation):
Without self awareness manifesting anything will be incredibly challenging. Our thoughts and actions, beliefs and words hold huge amounts of power over the reality we live in. If you’re unaware of the thoughts you have on a daily basis, the habits you hold onto or the words you speak, then changing them will be almost impossible. We meditate to create more awareness of self, it’s the simplest and quickest way to start to notice the difference between you and your thoughts.
It’d be like trying to get off a roundabout when you can’t see any exits. The awareness that you’re going around and around in circles will be the first step. Then acknowledging you have a choice to take an exit is what create the ability to do so. When you take the exit, that’s when things start to change.
Surrender (Iswara-Pranidhana):
The understanding or belief that there is something bigger than you as a single entity. That we are in fact all connected via energy and naming that energy.
eg. Energy, Higher power, the Universe, or God. Whatever isn’t going to give you the ick and feels right for you.
Trying to manifest without this is err, perhaps not impossible. But you’ll start to marvel at the power of the human mind, and likely start to believe that there must be something bigger than just you, or at the very least, that we must all be connected.
Non Attachment: (Aparigraha)
There’s a lot of non attachment in manifestation, because if you hold on to the hows and the details things start to go wrong. If you’re attached to one path as the right course of action, you believe that ‘your way’ is the only right way. You close your mind down to the many opportunities and potential paths you could take instead.
Control or attachment is the opposite of manifestation in a way. Control is trying to make the world fit your ideals, whereas if you release that control, the anxiety of things not fitting your expectation fall away. A sense of ease and peace replace it, and then the magic of your mind will show you the path you need to take.
These are just 3 of the yoga concepts that make manifestation possible, but self study (swadyaya), truthfulness (satya) and moderation (brahmacharya) will come up a lot too.
So with all this, manifesting is a fantastic way to help you feel the impact yoga can have on day to day life. Because if you get serious about it, you’ll accidentally get serious about self study and the deep rooted beliefs you have about whatever you’re drawn to manifest.
It’s fascinating!
The Definition of Manifestation:
“ To will (something) into being by the exercise of mental powers or through force of belief.”
It’s all done through the power of your own thought, and our thoughts fundamentally create our lived experience. How we think about any topic will usually show up in our day to day life.
If you think about how much you’re stuck in the job you have due to one reason or another, you will proceed to feel stuck. You will also end up believing that this is a hard truth.
Your language then changes: “I can’t leave.” or “I have to work” or “there are no other jobs available”.
Once that language takes hold too, you have started to create an even stronger belief that what you’re thinking and saying and feeling is true.
“You are stuck in your job and you have no other option other than to keep working there… For. All. Of. Time.”
A dreary outlook, especially if you don’t like the job. I don’t think many humans like the idea or sensation of feeling stuck or trapped.
These kind of beliefs can creep up on you slowly. One monthly you’re feeling very neutral about work, with no real beliefs or thoughts about it. But then the next month you’re hit with an unexpected bill that’s going to take a while to clear. Suddenly your working is imperative, your choice (even if you’d not really considered it before) to change jobs, or retrain, suddenly feels impossible.
The thoughts and feelings around being stuck start to emerge, then take root. And even if further down the line, when you don’t have that financial pressure, you may still repeat the same stories. “I have to work”, “I have to stay here,” “it’s the only job where I’ll earn enough” etc etc. Unless you challenge what you repeatedly think, say and do.
So your thoughts create a reality.
You may be reading this thinking, well that is the reality in this situation! Is it?
What if there were other jobs out there offering more money, and that financial burden could’ve been paid off even faster? What if there was the option to make more money with a side hustle for a few months? What if, what if, what if?
The moment we fixate on one outcome and one path forward, is the moment we become blinkered to all other possibility.
The human brain loves to find what proves it right. A supporting theory that bolsters our beliefs.
So through no conscious awareness, we won’t add any credence to conversations we may hear about people finding new work or opportunities. But we will fixate and give energy to anything we hear about it being a shit job market at the moment, or that no one has any money.
It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Thinking back to our dictionary definition of manifesting, we can now confirm that we do in fact have mental powers.
And if we have mental powers enough to make us feel stuck, to obscure how we hear conversations, and to cause us to change our beliefs about the world around us. We must be able to use our mental powers for ‘good’ right?
Triggered?
What people hate at this point is the fact that I’m asking them to challenge truths that have essentially be the backbone of conversations, choices and maybe even their life.
Thats a bitter pill to swallow. Because once you acknowledge you have a choice in some matters that have seemed like hard and fast rules, it’s like you ‘suffered’ for no reason at all.
And I am not mitigating anyones suffering, I’ve been through this myself many times. The bad mood that follows is essential, but we can only work with what we know, if we don’t know something then how on earth can we change it?
We move forward with that compassion we practice, grateful that we are now aware of the beliefs we hold, so that we can actively make a choices moving forward.
“Once you’re aware of a habit, it’s a choice”
Ugh! isn’t that just a kick in the crotch (please don’t mistake ‘habit’ for addiction, thats a whole other kettle of fish that we are not talking about today).
So what do we do now?