Written by Kate • October 19, 2017 •
Like many of us, I was introduced to the ideas of manifesting and co-creation through watching The Secret, learning about  Abraham-Hicks, and reading Mike Dooley (Thoughts Become Things). It makes a lot of sense to me, that our thoughts become things, that where are attention goes, so energy flows. It just clicked with me. So I was able to use it more consciously in my life for a lot of things (but, of course, not everything -which is another story). And here’s the thing. It appears I can manifest with the best of them. But I would not say that my life any better for it. As I write in my detail below, I have moved away from directly trying to manifest things and situations in my life and into surrendering to the mystery instead.
Examples of Manifestation
So that you know I’m not a talking head about manifesting, I’ll list a few of the things I have manifested in my life. As you’ll see, I say this without pride or a personal sense of accomplishment.
A Life of Travel
While at undergrad, I decided I wanted to live in another country. It took a few years but I was able to easily make it happen and ended up living in Paris my senior year. It definitely was a fork in the road for me and cemented my love of travel. From there, I joined Peace Corps and lived in West Africa for two years. I then found a job in international development where I traveled much of the time but realized I prefer to travel for pleasure. And I’ve kept at it. Just this year, I spent six weeks in Bali and a month in Italy (all with our 2 year old twins). It’s simply who I am (for now). I am a person who loves travel and I travels a lot.
New Jobs
Throughout my early career, as I cast around for what I wanted to “do” with my career/life, I was still unsure of what I wanted out of my work life. At one particular job, after having seen the Secret and understanding more about manifestation, I asked “the Universe” for a new job and even wrote out a resignation letter with a specific date (which was about 4 months into the future) and saved it onto my computer. While putting out my resume and searching for the new job without a lot of effort on my part, I then got the offer for a job I thought I wanted and submitted that original resignation letter, having to only change the date from my original resignation later by about 3 weeks. I was amazed that it had worked. But because I had asked for a job but hadn’t been specific that it was in a warm and supporting environment or that it feed my soul work or anything else that was supportive, I got what I asked for and disliked this “job”. So I put out into the Universe new resignation letters a few more times so as to get new and “better” jobs. My intentions each worked within a month of the date I used on the new resignation letters for each new job.
A House in the Country
In 2008, as my 93 year old grandmother had another stroke and her DNR was implemented, I flew out to be with my grandma and family as my grandma passed. I stayed with a cousin (Hi Robin!) during that week. As I laid in my bed in her guest room, deer and a flock of wild turkeys passed by my open sliding glass door. Something in me zinged. I told Dion, my partner, then, “I want this”. He couldn’t believe it because I was such a city girl up until that very moment. It took me about a year to line everything, including changing Dion’s mind about moving out of the city into the Virginia exurbs, but several months later, we had packed up and were out in Purcellville on 3 acres. We’ve now settled another 10 miles west in Round Hill, VA on 6 acres. Wild turkeys, deer, and foxes are nearly daily occurrences here. I have the same view here as I did from my cousin’s guest room.
Becoming a Mom
I had two pregnancies each end at six weeks. I kept trying but it never happened naturally again for me. And then, while in India (love to travel!) with two new friends I met at an Ayurvedic retreat, they asked me why I never had kids. They were kind. It was genuine and caring inquiry. And I lost it- just cried and cried and cried. It was at that moment that I realized there was more here than I realized and I focused on the reality of truly trying to get pregnant or let it go. For many of the years prior to my trip to India, I hoped I’d get pregnant but avoided actually feeling my feelings. It was all too painful. But after that conversation in India, by sitting with the idea of living the rest of my life without kids, I realized I didn’t want to let the idea of being a mother go.
I didn’t want to bring children into the world unless it was the right decision. I was 45 and I was scared to do the “wrong” thing. For one of the first times in my life, I asked the Divine to only allow me to get pregnant and have children if it was in my highest good and their highest good. Please don’t let this happen if it’s not the right thing for the child(ren) or for me. We went in for fertility treatment. First try, it worked. It was not quite two years later from the chat with my friends in India that I gave birth to the most magnificent set of twins.
As a side note, while in India, the three of were discussing children and our desires for having a child. One of those friends gave birth a month after me, with her due date just 4 days after mine (if my twins had been a singleton like hers) and the other friend gave birth almost exactly one year later than us. Wondrous timing.
Astonishing Manifestations
The previous manifestations may seem like average changes, that with applied will and effort, it would be easy to manifest these types of life events. But the following is a partial list of astonishing manifestations that just could not have been planned and definitely meant that wheels were turning behind that scenes at a much higher level than I could ever imagine.
Work at Home Job Offer
I had been able to manifest new jobs seemingly whenever I needed to. But because job after job was never satisfied for long, I started to realize that I needed to more specific about what I was looking for in a job. At my second to last job, I had become increasingly unhappy with the commute, the job, and the work environment. It was so toxic, and senior management was actively encouraging gossip, back biting, and criticizing colleagues and peers in closed meetings. After two years, Ijust wanted out.
At the time, I truly thought that what I needed was more time to devote to building my own business and I needed a job that allowed me to work at home so that I could free up the two+ hours I was using to commute to my soul sucking job every day. (I laugh now at how narrow my request was. Why didn’t I ask for help with creating my business? Or the money to help me launch a business so I didn’t have to work? But no, I focused solely on working at home as my vision for what I needed next. Baby steps.) I didn’t know how I was going to get a work-from-home job but I again wrote up my resignation letter and included a date. But this time, I wrote about how the opportunity to work at home was more than I could pass up and it was an exciting next step. Because I couldn’t figure out how to even begin looking for a job at home, I simply wrote the resignation letter, dated it, saved it, and kept on visualizing about working from hoping an idea would come to me about what to do next.
A month or so later, I got a call from an ex-colleague who had gone on to work at another organization. I hadn’t seen her in a while and she certainly didn’t know about my visualizations or desire for a job working from home. She then proceeded to tell me that she knew of a small business that was in search of someone with my talents but the job was in another state. So I would have to work from home. I was absolutely astounded and amazed. She couldn’t have known I wanted to work from home or even that I was looking a new job.
I met with the owner of the business and handed in my original resignation letter and only had to change the date by about two weeks. I never actually looked for the job and made no effort to secure a new job other than visualizing it with all my heart.
Additional Income
As I mentioned earlier, I enjoy traveling. I also want to give back so early in my career I got a job doing international aid work for a USAID contractor. I started traveling to Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. It was great and it was lonely. Over time, through not paying attention to my finances and by taking several trips and buying lots art from the places I was visiting, I had amassed a large debt on my credit cards, $5,000. I had no idea how I’d pay it off.
I started noticing that every time I planned a visit to see my family in either California or Indiana, a trip for work came up. (I know there is a larger point to the work trips coming up for the exact timeframe as my intended visit to my family but that is a different story. This is the story about the boost to my income.) I realized that if I took a trip and didn’t buy any “souvenirs” and ate locally, I would be able to save my per diem and start to pay down my credit card debt. To test my theory, I started to tentatively plan a trip to visit my brother. I emailed him to see if he was available for a specific weekend and truly made plans to visit him by looking at airfare, flight times, and car rentals. Boom, the next day an urgent trip to Mali came up and I had to stay there for over a month. I ate well but on the cheap because I love local food and can eat it without worries (thank you, Peace Corps Benin!). I came home, submitted my expenses and I had over $2,000 to put toward my credit card debt.
I wanted to fully pay off the credit card so I decided to use this quirk again. I then planned a trip to see my parents and did the same thing with checking their availability, flights, etc. Immediately, another urgent work trip came up that I could not have predicted and definitely did not know about-Â but my presence was absolutely required. This trip was equally as long as the trip to Mali so I was able to submit my expenses at the end of it, and voila, the credit card debt was paid off.
I have many other examples of these types of astonishing manifestations: Manifestations that occur that I in no way orchestrated other than putting it out there about what I wanted. It’s real and it happened to me so very many times.
The Next Level of Manifesting
As I say, it appears I can manifest my ass off. But is my life any better for it?
I’ve gotten the house, the jobs, the kids, the money. Once I got the job(s), it was exactly the wrong thing. I hated them. And sure I got the money but I didn’t feel abundant and supported. And now that I have the kids, the big wonderful house in the country is too far out. I felt like I kept asking for the “wrong” things and few of the things I asked for actually helped me feel happy. What is a manifesting, co-creator to do when many of the things we’ve asked for have turned to ashes in our hands?
Surrendering to the Divine
In working with Tosha Silver and others, I realize there is a better way. We are creating large parts of our life, consciously and unconsciously. (And I believe some part of our life is about fate and destiny and not at all in our control. I don’t believe Syrian children chose to be born into a hellish conflict situation. But there are parts of our life that we can co-create and we’re doing it all the time). I see now that all of my machinations, all of my rational step by step ideas of how to get to some future state of happiness, fulfillment, wealth, family life, and more have never taken into account the astonishing and miraculous ways the Divine can make things happen. And the Divine Beloved, as I call her, can do it without my worrying, stress, and willing something into reality.
The Divine Beloved takes care of the things that need to be done on her side and I’ll be shown what next steps are for me to take. I see that the Divine has her things to do and I have mine.
For me, that means wanting what I want. I’m human. I have my desires and dreams. But I now offer them to the Divine Beloved and surrender them over. For large parts of my life, I only want what’s in my highest good and the highest good of all. (And yes, I really want a million+dollars as my highest good but only truly if it’s my highest good. I don’t want to hurt others in getting my desires fulfilled and I don’t want anyone diminished in the act of manifesting). And when I wake up to where I am grasping desperately to certain situations or aspects of my life, I surrender that part over to the Divine Beloved.
Every morning before my prayers and meditation session, I ask the Divine Beloved to give to me and to take from me all that I need to be fully surrendered. And I mean everything, if that’s what it takes. It was scary at first but I see that losing what needs to go is the best thing for me. And getting what I need to have is also the best thing for me.
I want the magic and the mystery of the Divine’s in my life. I want to feel the happiness of being present in my life and stepping into the flow rather than desperately clinging to certain circumstance or status. Every day I surrender. And every day, life is that much sweeter even in the midst of painful lessons.
Some Resources
Tosha Silver is all about surrendering to the Divine Beloved. She’s done amazing work on this. David Hawkins’ Letting Go is also a great resource. And much of Steve Pavlina’s work is pretty amazing too.
How About You?
Do you have an astonishing manifestation story of your own? I love hearing about how the Divine works in our lives.
So many of us are caught up in what is lacking in our lives and we despair. Typically it’s about money, weight, relationship, and career. And we think it’s an external circumstance, something over which we have little to no control. 