Louisa Simpson

I am fascinated by the concept of manifesting our dream life. I often read about it and listen to either audiobooks or YouTube videos on the subject because I believe it to be a possibility, I just don’t think a lot of what is said about it is helpful or truly gets to the point. So I find it frustrating very often. But I listened to something yesterday that had a really different perspective on the subject, one that was really interesting and in turn, changed my perspective.

If you listen to Abraham Hicks, you will know that the concept that knowing what you don’t want helps you to understand what you do want, that the contrast helps you decipher your true desires. This is a point in Abraham Hicks because to manifest intentionally, you need to know what it is you do want which for many people is much easier said than done. When asked the question of what we want, so many of us are actually unsure or don’t really know. The first answer that comes to you will be your ego mind’s view of what you want, your monkey mind if you like. It won’t be necessarily something you are aligned with in your subconscious and your soul. And without that alignment, you will not get far. No, the first answer to the question isn’t necessarily the right one but figuring out what you truly want is so important.

So, why do I mention Abraham Hicks? Because the video I listened to yesterday spoke of NOT thinking about what you want from the basis of what you don’t want. Because your subconscious will focus more upon what you don’t want as that is largely driven by your subconscious thoughts and beliefs. So rather than bringing to you what you do want, you will more likely bring more of what you don’t. This really struck a chord with me. It made a kind of sense. Because I thought about what I want to bring into my life and, because it is based on contrast, it is based on lack. I don’t have it, so I want it. And we all know we can’t manifest from a position of lack. It made a really brutal kind of sense to me, almost profound. It led me to thinking – how about looking at life completely differently, through a different lens. Forget where I am here and now, but simply focus on where I want to be. Forget any lack or limitations or constraints, remove those from my mind, and just think about where I would like to be. It was interesting because an image popped into my head and immediately I got…oh, you can’t do that because of x, y and z. Straight away the subconscious and conscious minds were in there, picking apart the vision of what had come to me. All the things that block us all when we are manifesting came at me, full throttle which was a lesson in and of itself.

Which was another point raised in the YouTube video – you will not manifest your true heart’s desire until you deal with limiting beliefs. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear this usually my heart sinks. There are limiting beliefs I have had for decades that I have struggled to overcome. They feel like whack-a-mole, as soon as you’ve dealt with one aspect of a limiting belief, thinking you’ve dealt with the whole thing, up pops another one and the process starts again. Sometimes, this living consciously gig is hard. Knowing all those negative internal thoughts, knowing you have limiting beliefs, knowing that there is work to do on you because of past traumas…oh, it’s tough. BUT. The light at the end of the tunnel for those living consciously is the life of our dreams, because we will all get there. I know we will, in fact as I typed this, I had this really strong and deep sense of knowing that we will get there. I can honestly say right in this moment that I am fundamentally happy living consciously than I ever was living unconsciously. So, for anyone reading this who is feeling on the verge of giving up – please don’t, because it’s at that point you achieve your greatest victory. Now that was channelled, I knew I had to say that both for myself and anyone else needing to hear it. Postscript – I know it was channelled because as I am reading this back before posting, I am seeing words missing because I couldn’t type fast enough for the message!

So, basically, the video I listened to yesterday really changed my view and approach to considering what I want from life. To come at it not from the position of what I don’t want is, at first, a bit daunting. Because it removes the set of training wheels if you like. But, when I think about it, going from the contrast position is not fulfilling your true potential, is it? It’s just saying ‘I don’t like this so I will pick the opposite’ but what if the opposite is less than who you can truly be? What if there is something more something bigger that you are here to do but by settling for the opposite of what you don’t want, you are limiting yourself. It’s like thinking ‘I want £1m so I will play the lottery’ because your ego mind is jumping in and saying that this is the only way to get your hands on £1m. But it isn’t. The fact is, your ego mind doesn’t have the imagination to consider how to get that £1m so it goes for something it knows has the potential of paying out £1m. But, in so doing, you are limiting your soul. You are limiting the universe. And you are limiting what you receive. What if you said ‘universe, I would really appreciate £1m, please, thank you’ and just leave it at that. In trusting and believing that you can have that £1m, in having faith in the process, what will happen is the universe basically says, via your soul, ‘why limit yourself to £1m, here’s the opportunity to have £1m paid to you every year if you follow this avenue’. And then the inspired actions start to be whispered to you, the synchronicities start to happen, you start to meet the people who can help you along the way, you start having necessary information and advice fall into your path. By not putting the how’s or the why’s onto the thing, you are giving yourself (via your soul) the potential to achieve so much more than anything your conscious and subconscious minds can dream up. It’s the same with what you want in the first place. If you’re not doing it as the opposite of what you don’t want, but from the space of what your heart and soul wants then the world really is your oyster. You will achieve beyond your wildest dreams. So, it’s about figuring out what you truly want. How do you do that?

One way to find it is to meditate. To clear your mind, focus on your breathing and posit the question to yourself ‘what do I truly want?’ and let your soul flow. Perhaps it is to set the intention before you go to sleep of being given some guidance of what you truly want, what the universe’s plan for you is. Maybe it is in free writing where you write through what the egoic mind is saying until the soul starts to guide the pen. The egoic mind will likely keep you small, keep you in your comfort zone fundamentally. The soul will inspire you to soar to dizzying new heights. And the reality is, if that is what the soul is encouraging you to do, you are more than capable of achieving it. That is the point to hang onto here. Whatever your soul and the universe is inspiring you to do, you have the opportunity, the ability and the worthiness to do it because in all likelihood, it is what you came here to do anyway. The only thing holding you back is you. Which brings me to those Negative Nelly voices. The ones that say ‘you can’t do this because of that’, and often that is connected to the people in your lives. The thing I often hear is ‘you can’t do this because of Henry’s (my son) education’ and I have always allowed that to hold me back. Because I have seen it through the prism of the orthodox route of education, being in a bricks and mortar establishment where he is force-fed information with the sole intention of it being regurgitated in an exam. And no one cares what happens to that information after the exam, including the school. That is not teaching our children to learn, it is just teaching them to remember. And our education system is, in my view, failing our children. Possibly deliberately. But that’s a discussion for another time. As I said to someone the other day, just because that’s the way we have always done it does not make it the right way. So, we are looking at his education very differently now. I always worried about his friendships until I realised that he engages with his friends in a completely different way to the ones I did, and I was measuring a lot of it on how I used to operate in the technology confines of my childhood. Confines my son certainly doesn’t have. So, what I’m trying to say is, don’t allow yourself to be constrained in your thoughts. There is always another way to do things that will likely be the best way if you’re asking your soul and the universe for the map.

Those Negative Nelly thoughts, though, are deeper and more insidious than identifying how your ties and responsibilities to those you love constrain you. They’re just the tip of the iceberg but can usually be relied upon to stop you in your tracks. Underneath that is the huge expanse of ice under the water which are your true limiting beliefs. Those things that have been generated since your childhood and repeated so much we accept them as facts rather than simply beliefs. I remember my favourite teacher (an earlier blog) Professor Burleigh correcting me when I said ‘I believe’ in my dissertation. He said that a belief without empirical evidence to support it is not even an opinion, it’s just a collection of words in effect. It’s the evidence that gives your belief some measure of truth, of the potential for it to be a fact or at least well informed if the opposing evidence is also brought to life, considered and contradicted. With our limiting beliefs, one way of repudiating them is to shine the light of evidence onto them. Yes, there will be some evidence of how they are ‘fact’ because you have been playing them often enough that the story has played out in real life and you shouldn’t ignore that. But if you also task yourself with looking at the contrary evidence to your belief, give it time and you will start to realise that there is significant evidence, far more evidence, that shows it is in fact, not true. The dear old Reticular Activating System (RAS) in the brain will have filtered out that evidence initially because it doesn’t support the belief system the RAS works from, but in the depths of your psyche the counter-evidence will be stored and eventually the RAS will have to filter it in if you keep on asking the question. Keep on compiling the evidence that shows how your limiting belief is just that. A belief, not a fact. And it’s power over you starts to be eroded.

This is not an overnight thing. The subconscious mind will fight back, and fight back hard because you are introducing something that is not conducive to survival: uncertainty. The mind hates uncertainty because its sole job is to keep us safe, to keep us alive and to perpetuate the species. At its most fundamental level, that is the brain’s job. Part of doing that job is to create the security of certainty and avoid uncertainty. Given the brain seeks pleasure and avoids pain, it finds the pleasure in the certainty of the pattern the limiting beliefs holds us in so will resist any attempts to change that. No matter how damaging that pattern is to us in our lives. Because the other aspect to the subconscious mind is that it does not recognise negativity. It just delivers, pretty perfectly, that which we focus upon. And if we are focused upon our limiting beliefs, albeit subconsciously, it will deliver that outcome very happily. It is certainty. But by challenging those limiting beliefs, we are introducing uncertainty and the prospect of danger as a consequence. At a conscious level we know we aren’t introducing danger, our soul (which has no limiting beliefs) knows we aren’t introducing danger but the most basic element of us will do all it has to, to resist uncertainty. This is where fear comes from, the uncertainty brought about by something ‘other’ and the mind resists it. Sometimes to an extreme level (think racism). What we have to do in this scenario is make the uncomfortable (uncertainty), comfortable. This is another repetitive task. It is to keep on repeating, almost like an affirmation, that which you want. To focus on and visualise how your dream outcome looks and feels. Immerse yourself in that dream outcome, think about what it sounds like, feels like to touch, what emotions it elicits…really engage all the five senses. Do this repeatedly, at least once a day every day for as long as it takes. Fight through the Negative Nelly voices that will become increasingly loud as the survival instinct kicks in. Recognise it for what it is, a defence mechanism with what it is saying not the truth, and keep going. Because in so doing, slowly but surely you will shift the subconscious mind from seeing this as a threat to seeing it as the truth. It will the reprogramme the RAS to start to see the opportunities to bring this into fruition and your subconscious and your soul will become aligned.

The other aspect of the YouTube video was this gnarly issue of trying to manifest from a position of lack. If what you are trying to manifest is the opposite of what you don’t want, you’re still coming from a subconscious position of lack. Because if it’s the opposite of what you know you don’t want, then you know at some level you lack it. Therefore, your ability to manifest it is seriously curtailed. That’s why it is best to try to manifest from a whole different perspective, the one that is driven by your heart and soul. Because if you’re just doing it from the opposite of what you don’t want, it isn’t necessarily the case that your soul will be in alignment with what you think you do want. Often from that perspective, the only thing that is in alignment with your wish is your conscious mind. And it is very difficult to manifest significant change from your conscious mind.

This is just the tip of the manifesting iceberg. There is the Neville Goddard position of acting as if you have already achieved that which you are trying to manifest, which aligns in my mind to Quantum Jumping and the theories emerging from quantum physics. So the subject isn’t linear but multi-faceted and complex, and can’t be reduced simply to the Law of Attraction (hence why so many people end up disillusioned).

Anything about manifesting, though, has to start from the fundamental point of what is it you really want. And the more I think about this, the more I think we have to come at that from an open mind rather than the contrast of what we don’t want.