I sat down to write this blog and found that it was exactly a year ago to the day that I wrote part 2 of this series, Manifesting Destiny - Part 2 - Intention (2/17/2007). My delay has to do with a perplexing question rattling in the back of my mind for the past year. I've always been intrigued by paradox and when I encounter one, I turn into Rainman, wondering "who's on first?" (that's the man's name! no, who's on first?). The paradox is this: I've always had a sense that the concept of free will and destiny are both correct. How could that be? How could you say that something was your "meant to be" destiny and at the same time say that you chose it? My title is silly! "Manifesting Destiny" is like telling the dog to sit after he has already sat, then saying "good dog!" How much of this can we choose when we exist in such a web of interlocking wills?
I listened to the book, "The Secret" on audio on my way to Indianapolis last year. Following the book's recommendation, I decided to try to manifest something small and easy, a paperclip. I thought of a paperclip, I felt how it would feel in my hand, and believed that one would show up. When I arrived in Indy, I told my sister about this and asked her how long she thought it would take me to manifest a paperclip. She just rolled her eyes. Well, the next morning, I walked out of the hotel, and in downtown Indianapolis laying in the middle of the sidewalk there was a pile of paperclips. I was excited! I took a picture! I picked them up and made them into a long necklace of 23 paperclips (no, I didn't wear it!). I ran into the hotel and I found my sister, held out my hand and said, "look what I just found!" She just said, "you dumbass, why didn't you ask for a million dollars?" Ha, ha! That's all funny, but her question is my conundrum. Asking for what is not meant to be defies the laws of the universe. If I ask for a million dollars and one of my lessons here requires me to live in squalor, then living in squalor it will be. I'm not being a pessimist, I'm not saying that we cannot get what we want. I'm saying that what we manifest has to be within the confines of our personal destiny.
This is how I have come to think of it. Life is like a river, and we each have a boat. Mine is a kayak. We are not all on the same river. I know people who travel quaintly down the Little Miami. I happen to be raging down the Upper Yok. The river is destiny, it's your path. The choices that are available and the lessons to be learned are different on the Little Miami than those on the Upper Yok. "Free will" is partly our ability to travel upstream if we choose. It's our ability to steer clear of the rocks or to pull up on the shore for a spell, or to take a detour. There are many opportunities that we can choose to partake or pass by. "Fate" puts other boats (people) in our path. Some travel along-side for a lifetime, others bump into us and go their way, but all are important.
I have learned recently that life moves along most smoothly when I'm not trying to manipulate my circumstances, to let things happen, or "flow". I think the greatest challenge for us is to let things happen in their own time. One morning in Sedona, I woke up to a picture of a turkey timer in my head, the kind that you stick in a turkey to determine when it's done. I thought, "I'm ready [for this change]". This gave me an insight into the concept of time. The day before, I was in a bookstore and opened up to a page in the middle. I was reading that "true north" is where north actually is, but "magnetic north" constantly fluctuates. A compass is a gauge that measures "magnetic north" and navigators have to take into account that it doesn't exactly coincide with "true north". When I saw the turkey timer, I thought, that's "true time". Meaning, things happen as they are ready to, not because of the clock or the calendar. If the buzzer goes off, but the timer hasn't popped, which do you believe? People operate on true time, when they are ready.
Time is just an illusion. The angels aren't peering over the clouds saying, "I wonder what Lory is doing today?" Over there, there is no today, no time. Time exists to prevent everything from happening at once. Everything cannot happen at once because we are not ready. When we are ready, everything will happen at once and we will have no need for this. I believe the story of The Garden of Eden is a story of how we became "self-aware". We were suddenly "naked", or rather, we suddenly became aware that being naked was a problem. But being naked is symbolic to being vulnerable. Perhaps when we "evolved" into these self-aware beings, we "forgot" that we are really all one with each other and with God, a spiritual "devolution". We ate of the "forbidden fruit", which was our wanting of the knowledge of good and evil. Me against you. Us against them. But I am you, we are them. When will we learn?
Wasn't it that day in the garden that we were given the "gift" of free will? When God said, "okay, dude (and dudeette), you're on your own (more or less)." Many people, and I myself believe, that we agreed to this life we are living before we were born. Our personalities and abilities were determined by the exact place and time of our birth, and the situations we find ourselves in are there to guide us toward our life lessons. I have always tried to manage my life so that bad things wouldn't happen. But my new approach is to put it out there, and let go of it. A prayer! Who knew? Do I believe in manifestation? Absolutely, within the context of my destiny. That would sound to some as though I don't fully believe, but if I chose my own destiny, that is ultimate "free will". So my new mantra is this: It was as it was, it is what it is, I am who I am, and it will be exactly as it should be.
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