How Asking for Too Little, Saving the World, and Wanting to do “God’s Will” can get in the way…

Wanting to bring something new into our lives or our business/work is what creates and changes the world.  We all do this constantly.

But—it is a challenge to be conscious and intentional about what we want.  I have been surprised to discover how difficult it is, for many of us, to actually know what we want, to be able to ask for it, and to create a clear intention that ignites the living manifestation engine of the cosmos on our own behalf.

SOME PROBLEMS THAT MIGHT COME UP

•            It is hard to ask for what you want.

•            What you are asking for is not what you really want.

•            You are asking for something someone else wants you to want.

•            It is hard to receive, and that is muddling your asking.

•            You are praying for a miracle…

Hmmm… maybe there is something that you should be doing to help?

We tend to manifest what we already know.  Or, we are thinking of what we need or want now— but if we could see forward in our lives we would realize that what might be useful later on could be something quite different.  Or, we ask for way too little.

Three ways we block what we want:

 1. “Who are you to want that?”

Lots of people have grown up in the shadow of this question.

When you want to manifest something new in your life, how you think about who you are is everything.  The first step to opening to something new is taking on the more fluid, flexible, expansive shape of who you will be when you have already learned how to embody what you want.

Some people find that even the initial act of focusing on what they want brings up a conflict inside.  It triggers an internal voice that says, “I can’t have what I want…I don’t deserve to get what I want…I won’t get what I want…This is too much for me to want…I am greedy for wanting this…”  For many of us, it seems, it is just not OK to want, at all.

2. The problem with saving the world…

So many of us spiritual types are deeply sensitive. We are naturally open to a spiritual world view. When we undertake a manifestation project, we naturally, unselfishly, want it to benefit the whole, and make everything better for everyone, in addition to ourselves.  We see in our hearts how good things could be, and we so deeply want to save the world to make it not only fit the vision we have, but to make it a safe place for us to be.

I totally understand this.  But I found in teaching the manifestation process that this feeling of needing to “save the world” can have a distorting effect.

I think the “save the world” impulse, while admirable, could show up also as part of the problem.  How is it that a person might feel good enough to save the world, but not good enough to save themselves?

Maybe “saving the world” becomes a substitute for saving and redeeming themselves, since “saving oneself” seems too scary and might uncover too many personal shadows and pains.

When I teach a manifestation class, I want to make sure that the experience of the class creates an active, generative, safe-feeling holding place for a person to open to and transform their shadowy places and their pains, so that finally they are free to feel good enough to “save themselves.”

3. We ask, “What is God’s Will for me?”

We often hear people say, “I want to manifest what is God’s will for me.”  Putting it this way implies that there is a path laid out for us, a specific path that God wants us to follow, as if we are only “good” as long as we keep to that path.  Sometimes people are over-responsive to another’s authority, thinking of God like a rule-making parent.

But actually, the universal capacity for Will is more like a chalice or a grail space.  It creates a holding space for something, and it adds energy to what it holds, making it possible for the contents to become fully what they are.

God’s will is like a crockpot.  You fill it with whatever you are cooking up, and the crockpot adds the holding space for the project, as well as the energy that allows all the ingredients to come together in a wholeness.

In a sense this is the way God holds the universe. There is nothing passive about it.  It is an active empowering of all of life, all of existence, all of beingness, to become.  To be what it is.  To unfold its potential.  To fulfill the essence and the pattern and the form that is behind its existence.

Basically God is continually manifesting.  And we are the results of that.  So in a sense, we could think of God’s will as this vast field that holds us in existence, but not in a passive way. It holds us in such a fashion that we are nurtured, and whatever soul seeds, whatever seeds of being are planted in us, have an opportunity to grow and flourish and produce their fruit. 

God in effect wants us to succeed.  Wants all of creation to succeed.  God’s will is not a trajectory, it is a holding that keeps open the flow and dynamic of life that enables the universe to unfold .

 The way I align myself with God’s will is by learning, myself, how to be a chalice, how to hold, how to be a field or source of nourishment and empowerment for what is immediately around me, or what is within the purview of my energy field, or my thinking or feeling.   ~David Spangler, www.lorian.org, from an online class

Most programs about abundance seem to build on our fears and feelings of lack.  I prefer to take the approach of learning to partner with what you want, in order to change your self and the world.  Then what you want naturally fits in, and is easier to invite into your life.

Of course it is God’s will for us to save the world!  But what that really means is to become a holding space for ourselves, a space in which we can grow and flourish and bear the fruit that we are meant to offer. This is the deeper meaning of consciously, lovingly, manifesting anything new into our lives.

Saving ourselves is knowing what we want, and being able to ask for it.
Saving ourselves is saving the world!