In my work as a spiritual coach, I am often asked by clients, "How
can I manifest my desires?"
You might wonder if this is a proper question to ask a spiritual
coach. Such a question raises the issue, what is the spiritual life
all about in the first place? Does chasing after egoic desires
constitute the spiritual life?
Here is my response: If you are living from the level of your
personality, which is to say, your egoic self, then those desires you
most likely feel compelled to manifest are probably not going to come
into your life very easily, or very soon. When we live from our ego
selves, our path becomes a struggle-the kind of struggle most of us
are very well acquainted with.
The ego feels itself separate from and opposed to the world it lives
in. The ego self believes it must seek friends and alliances in order
to get what it thinks it wants. Those who live out of ego
consciousness, seek health, wealth, and happiness through hard work.
Making the right connections, getting the right education, searching
out useful possibilities-we all know the routine.
And if through hard work we do manage to achieve the kind of
successful life we all seem to hanker for these days, we probably
believe we are well-functioning human beings. But are we actually
functioning that well?
When clients ask me how they can achieve abundance in their life, I
take it they are mainly referring to getting a money pile. It is as
if they assume having a big enough pile will take care of most, if
not all, of their perceived problems. And, of course, with or without
the big money pile, our problems persist. For generally, our problems
come from being possessed by a faulty personality; and secondly, the
effort itself to keep the flow of money coming creates even more
problems-physical, mental and emotional disorders (I leave the
details to you). To put it bluntly, the state of health, wealth and
happiness we seek seems to forever evade us.
And so, at some point in your life, the question ultimately arises,
"Might there not be a better way to go about this busy-ness? Does my
life always have to be an arduous struggle for survival?"
And of course, being the spiritual coach that I am, my answer is a
resounding, "Yes, there is a better way. It is the spiritual way; and
this way will provide you with all your needs-and even many of your
wants."
Why is this so? Well, to begin with, living from spiritual
consciousness, you automatically sense yourself belonging to the
whole. You know yourself as a full-fledged member of the universe,
which includes all and everything. You are not a stranger in a
strange land struggling for survival. What you need comes to you
practically effortlessly.
I realize that for many, the above statement is not easily believed.
Well, friend, I'm not asking you to believe. The spiritual life is
not based on belief. The spiritual life is based on practice. You
must commit yourself to practicing its principles. And the first step
is to remove yourself from the isolation-stop being entrapped within
your egoic mind.
Shift yourself to your heart consciousness. Focus your awareness on
heart feelings. Your heart does not pump blood alone. Your heart as
well circulates neuropeptides, which stimulate the feelings. When you
focus on your heart, you automatically experience powerful feelings
of well-being. Receptors in every cell of your body receive these
peptides. Every cell begins to vibrate with an emotional component
that can be verbalized as joyfulness. The cells of your immune system
grow stronger. All of your vital organs increase their functionality-
and your brain is one of those vital organs. Hence your mind, your
thinking aspect, becomes healthier. And thus, you are moving away
from egoic separateness. You sense yourself as belonging to the whole
of life, to all of humanity, to the cosmos, connected and integrated
with the Divine, encompassed by the All.
Contrary to the mind, which can vacillate between negative/depressed
states and bursts of high/manic states the action of which brutalizes
the cells' receptors with toxic substances, the heart sends out a
steady flow of those endorphin-like peptides that make you feel good,
alive, and eager for life. And in this balanced state, you are much
better prepared for receiving what your life requires.
Well now you must be wondering, "What does all this have to do with
making opportunities happen?" Doesn't this idea, "making
opportunities happen," sound like linear, cause and effect
conceptualizing? Indeed it does. I wrote the title this way simply to
get your attention. The actuality is, we can't make anything happen.
But we can arrange ourselves as receptors of opportunities. When we
live from our heart-self, we position ourselves as receptors. Our
heart desires are not the same as our egoic desires.
Our egoic desires are born from a sense of lack, of insecurity, of
limitation. Not thinking we are good enough, we strive for
perfection, for acknowledgement, for some kind of achievement reward.
Hence we tend to manipulate circumstances - make things happen, using
the faulty technique of cause and effect. Our egoic oriented society
develops concepts that attempt to regulate how to make things happen.
But such actions, we truly sense, are never fully capable of
achieving desired results. "The best laid plans often go astray," as
the old saying goes.
Plans developed out of our egoic minds are full of details, organized
to offset every contingency we can imagine.
Heart-desires contain no such detailed planning. The heart-self
connected to the whole, needs only to recognize its desires in a
generalized manner. Whatever the heart desires can only be fulfilled
if only such is in harmony with the whole. So there is never a need
to manipulate. Whenever a desire - or a need - arises, the being whom
you are requires only to commit to the intention of that desire.
No sooner do you commit to your intention (born from your desire)
than something almost like a miracle begins to happen. Opportunities
come into your awareness.
Opportunities appear in the field of your perception. Prior to your
commitment, the field was flat. Nothing in your world of perception
appeared useful to you. But suddenly, upon "knowing" your desire and
setting your intention, your field of perception takes shape.
Opportunities reveal themselves.
The word, opportunity, has for its components three elements that
point to its subtle meaning: "op" relates to vision; "port" relates
to carry; and tune relates to harmonics, or being in tune. Thus, the
whole word can be translated into a thought, something like "being in
tune with what you see."
So the real question is, how does one move from egoic consciousness
to heart consciousness? Most of us have spent almost our entire life
living from the egoic mind. Perhaps only when we were infants and
very young toddlers, did we live mainly from heart consciousness.
This may be the reason for Jesus having said, be like the children.
But how to do this? How can we become the child that we were? One way
that I am familiar with is a practice that can be done by anyone
willing to try. The practice is called "mindfulness" or "being
present to the moment." Living in the "now" is another expression
that points to this form of worship. I say "worship" because when we
are in this state of being, living from heart consciousness, we sense
we are in touch with the sacred aspect of life.
The egoic mind lives in the past and the future-two states that are
not truly real. They are only real to our egoic minds. In other
words, the past and the future are imaginary, fictitious. Only the
present moment is of reality.
And being in the present moment, we are in the reality of the Divine
Life. The more we live in the present moment, the more we experience
the magic of life. We become more aware of the vibratory essence. All
of life-nature-reveals itself. We see our fellows, and ourselves as
well, glowing with this vibration of life. We see the trees and the
other creatures of this world as if in a shimmering landscape.
We live from our hearts, and our heart desires come into being as if
effortlessly. We see opportunities that are like portals through
which we enter into the realization of our desires. Our actions move
in a straight-line motion toward our goals. No distractions appear to
us.
From our egoic consciousness, distractions appear as possible
opportunities, which we then chase after. And this is how we become
scattered, disoriented, frustrated and pinned to the wheel of karma.
