Several months ago I read Jed McKenna’s “Spiritual Warfare” and was intrigued by the sections concerning Manifestation. There has been so much written about this subject as The Law of Attraction and The Secret, that I was grateful to see it addressed in depth by someone coming at it from a different direction, actually the only direction. What follows is a radical edit followed by a further edit of that radical edit.Central ... is the element of trust, of patience, of non-meddling(,)... no ego making demands and insisting on ways and means, so events unfold in ways ego could never imagine or achieve.
(snip)
That's what the whole thing really is—life...—a free-flowing. dynamic, creative process.... Your whole life becomes a creative process, a nuanced allowing, an imperceptible tendency toward rightness and away from not-rightness, as refined and subtle as your mechanism of balance.
(snip)
(T)here are a bunch of books (that) promise ways of manifesting your desires, getting everything you want, but that's really the least of it, more like a pleasant side-effect.
(snip)
Everyone has some direct experience..., where they sense that there's more to life than meets the eye, that there's something going on that they don't see.
(snip)
Manifestation is the visible part ... (L)ittle successes ... aren't the exception, they're the rule, and when they don't come as requested. it just means you didn't understand the rule. But you can.
(snip)
Understanding it conceptually doesn't matter much.... Practical application is what matters.... The rest takes care of itself through natural processes of experimentation and observation and play, just like you developed your balance as a toddler. You weren't born with a finely-tuned balance mechanism: it developed over time as you got up and started using it.
(snip)
Your thoughts and emotions determine your dreamstate reality. That's where you start. From there it's just a matter of simplifying the equation and eventually seeing that your thoughts and emotions are your dreamstate. It's all just consciousness, you are just consciousness. There is nothing else. Once that goes from thought-level concept to full-immersion awareness, you naturally merge with the currents instead of being tossed about by them.
~Jed McKenna from 'Spiritual Warfare' xtremely edited for this posting
A FURTHER EDIT of the RADICAL EDIT:
Central is the element of trust and patience: no ego making demands. Your whole life becomes a creative process, a nuanced allowing, a tendency toward rightness. Getting everything you want is the least of it.
Understanding it conceptually doesn't matter much. Practical application is what matters. The rest takes care of itself through natural processes of experimentation and observation and play.
Your thoughts and emotions are your dreamstate. It's all just consciousness, you are just consciousness. There is nothing else. Once that goes from thought-level concept to full-immersion awareness, you naturally merge with the currents.
II
Before getting to the 2nd part of McKenna’s Manifestation, I’d like to highlight something from the first. It’s not just that your thoughts and emotions determine your dream state; they are your dream state.We think miracles happen and prayers are answered only when it's something good: when it's in line with our hopes and desires which... are always fear-based. We don't acknowledge the same forces equally at work when the results are not in line with our hopes and desires. We're very selective in our perceptions. Good luck, bad luck, it's all the same: the ebb and flow of tides, it just gets interpreted differently.
Again, what follows is a radical edit, followed by an even further distillation.
An ego-clad, fear-based being might use prayer or divination or manifestation to get the things they want... Once freed from egoic constraints. however. all such fear-driven wanting disappears and desire becomes very organic and non-specific. My prayer. if I were to utter one, might be for whatever's best, or that I should proceed without error, something like that.
The Integrated State is seamless: it's without all these artificial boundaries and distinctions. such as one entity asking for something and another granting it. I want what's best and I trust the universe, not my little brain, to be the judge of what's best and how best to make it happen.
When your eyes are open, you see everything and belief becomes irrelevant and forgotten... My point is that what people see in these occasional glimpses, by all these various names and explanations, is this ocean of being working in tireless, errorless perfection. That's what the dreamstate is, that's what we are, that's what consciousness is. You are nothing but consciousness, everything that tells you more than that is like a built-up crust of hard-packed emotional energy that has formed around you like a shell.
All true growth and development is first and foremost a process of chopping away this crust. Ego sends us searching in the direction of learning, of becoming more and adding on to ourselves, but everything we claim to seek lies in the opposite direction: of unlearning, of letting go, of reducing. We think the goal is to become someone. but the universe can only be ours when we become no one.
~Jed McKenna from 'Spiritual Warfare' xtremely edited for this posting
A FURTHER EDIT of the RADICAL EDIT:
Good luck, bad luck, it's all the same. An ego-clad, fear-based being might use prayer or divination or manifestation to get the things they want. My prayer. if I were to utter one, might be for whatever's best, or that I should proceed without error.
The Integrated State is seamless: it's without all these artificial boundaries and distinctions. such as one entity asking for something and another granting it. I want what's best and I trust the universe, not my little brain, to be the judge of what's best and how best to make it happen.
What people see in these occasional glimpses, by all these various names and explanations, is this ocean of being working in tireless, errorless perfection. We think the goal is to become someone. but the universe can only be ours when we become no one.
III
Here's the third and last part of McKenna's Manifestation Manifesto, followed by a distillation of the radical edit.It's not so much that someone ... can have what they want, but that their wants and needs are in natural harmony with their dreamstate circumstances. In other words. it's not that I can have anything I want, ...it's also that I wouldn't want anything I couldn't have. ...The difference between authentic and inauthentic desire is central to all this, but most people are completely cut off from their authentic desires.
The way it really works is more of a seamless unfolding. It's not something you can improve, only impede. The only way you can make it work better is to remove ego from the equation.
As soon as you start imposing your beliefs on the process, it necessarily begins to degrade. Even to impose your beliefs about time and space on the process, or your beliefs about causality and duality, is to diminish it. As soon as you start asserting your beliefs, you start closing it down to your level instead of opening yourself up.
And since. furthermore, this process is really about conscious being, about who and what and where we are, developing a progressively deeper understanding of the process is synonymous with actual progress and growth.
What we're talking about when we say manifestation is the true creative process wherein authentic desires become reality. Once you understand the desire part, then the becoming part takes care of itself.
It's about taking control of your life and that means one thing: releasing it. Unconditional surrender. That's something to be done consciously and with clear intent, ...losing your life to find it.
Unlike prayer, manifestation is a first and only resort. Once we understand what it really is and how it really works, it naturally becomes our sole mode of operating in the world: not just in getting what we want, but in knowing how to want and what to want: in knowing what to do and why to do it. Instead of a desperate plea for something we want, manifestation becomes our way of moving through life, of interfacing with the universe.
But manifestation isn't specific. Its not just about getting what you want, it's about everything you do and how you do it and who you are and how you move through the world. It's about shaping the dreamstate and moving within it in this seamless confluence of self and not-self. Its the erasing of the line between dreamer and dream. You're not just manifesting a car or new shoes, you're manifesting yourself, and all the rest follows naturally and effortlessly from that.
~Jed McKenna from 'Spiritual Warfare' xtremely edited for this posting
It's not that I can have anything I want, ...it's also that I wouldn't want anything I couldn't have. ...The difference between authentic and inauthentic desire is central to all this. As soon as you start asserting your beliefs, you start closing it down to your level instead of opening yourself up.
Developing a progressively deeper understanding of the process is synonymous with actual progress and growth. It's about taking control of your life and that means one thing: releasing it. Unconditional surrender...losing your life to find it.
Once we understand what it really is and how it really works, it naturally becomes our sole mode of operating in the world: not just in getting what we want, but in knowing how to want and what to want: in knowing what to do and why to do it.
It's about shaping the dreamstate and moving within it in this seamless confluence of self and not-self. Its the erasing of the line between dreamer and dream. You're not just manifesting a car or new shoes, you're manifesting yourself, and all the rest follows naturally and effortlessly from that.
