The Sanskrit word for sun is sūrya. Sūrya Namaskāra A is "Sun Salutation A" and Sūrya Namaskāra B is "Sun Salutation B." If sūrya were a human being, she would be my friend Abbie. She has been many different people in her life: coach, stylist, Lululemon drone. But for me, Abbie is a ball of sunlight challenging me to think differently.
Two weeks ago, after my ankle had mostly healed and before my milkweed hunt ended in poison ivy welts, I went to one of Abbie's yoga classes in the city. Afterward, we went to the TG Farmer's Market and talked life and philosophy.
Abbie is really big on manifesting things... like just believing things into being. If you've read The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, you know all about manifesting things. If you haven't, don't. It's not all that great. (Srsly, how self-aggrandizing do you have to be to claim to have "revealed the great mystery of the universe"? And then a few chapters later claim that this mystery allows you to eat whatever you want without gaining a pound?) Nonetheless, since it was an international sensation, I read it. It was definitely thought-provoking. Is there such a thing as willing things into being?
The flip side of believing that you can manifest whatever you want is the corresponding belief that anything bad that happens (deportation, genocide, rape) is because someone was manifesting a fear of those things happening. And by living in fear, they attracted the worst-possible-outcome. That does not sit right with me at all.
My sister Lily really believes in manifesting things. I guess I could look at her life and see her point. A decade ago she was homeless, and now she lives in a house I couldn't afford in a million lifetimes. Lily says that rather than living in a state of yearning, you should live in a state of acknowledging that you already have what you want. So my friend Mitch should act like it's a done deal that she has a baby. And Nora should act on and believe in the fact that she already has a full-time, well-paying job. The Secret, Lily says, also means that if you keep telling yourself, "I wish I had a new car/house/job/child/sweetheart/etc," then you are manifesting the energy of NOT having those things, which will just keep you in a state of continued want. You have to instead be grateful that the new car/house/job/child/etc is already yours. Even if you can't see it yet.
Jen Sincero says basically the same thing in the much better book, You Are a Badass. She bought a car she could absolutely not afford because it was the car to the life she WANTED to afford. And then she created that life around the car. My financial wizard of a brother would howl in frustration at this lack of budgeting.
Like I said, I don't know how much of The Secret I buy, but I do think that there is too much evidence that we attract what we put out to deny it entirely. I don't know if it really matters if you phrase things incorrectly (here are the things I want and believe I will get vs here are the things I am grateful I already have, even though I can't see them). But any time in my life I've gotten to the point of being absolutely THROUGH with something, all my energies have gone into effecting change. So perhaps The Secret is just the desperation that forces you to create an alternate reality for yourself. Or maybe The Secret is just, like -- propelling the Self that is in a different multiverse into this one.
After yoga, Abbie told me, "Everyone always says, 'try harder.' You know, like, 'maybe you don't have what you want because you're not working hard enough for it!'? But what if that's not the answer? What if the answer, instead, is to 'try softer'? What would that look like? And you just kind of believe what you want is on its way to you?"
I thought about some of the things I've wanted in my life.
* It didn't really occur to me to leave Hazelwood until the rest of my Tribe did. Then I packed up 27 boxes of lesson plans and books and told everyone I was not coming back. I was so determined not to come back that it felt like I willed a different job into being at the 11th hour.
* I spent 10 years looking for a house to buy. Something always made things not work out. But then I got so freaking fed up that I finally announced to the universe, "I am buying a house this month. I don't care which house it is. I don't care if it is perfect or not. This is the month I buy a house." I willed this house into being after 10 years.
* I finally decided that I was done at FZ. It was perfect in its time because it was the resting place I needed, but it wasn't meant to be forever. I spent every day from January through June combing district hiring boards, writing resumes, mailing portfolios, getting interviews, and fielding rejections. And then I got my job. And yeah, it's been hard as hell. And it's a one-year contract. But it's here, now. And as guru Ram Dass says: "Be here now."
Now, look. Sometimes it takes a long time to manifest shit. Abbie said she started envisioning her partner in 2017. He didn't appear til 2020 or 2021. Then she didn't even recognize him at first, she thought they were just buddies hanging out (I remember this because she told me about it at the time). But for me, it feels like the things I've really wanted have materialized only when I've reached a breaking point. Maybe manifesting things is just another way of saying, "Get off your ass and make things happen. Get uncomfortable."
But also sometimes, life just surprises you.
Yesterday, I was trying to find trucker ballcaps featuring National Park badges online. I know this is a very specific niche, but I wanted to get two of these for Acadia. That's the last Sister Trip Lucy and I took before she had a baby and Sister Trips became a thing of the past. I'd found Joshua Tree and Grand Teton and Zion at TJ Maxx like a year ago. If you know anything about TJ Maxx, you know there's no rhyme or reason to what they carry. Nonetheless, this morning, when I was out trying to buy a lamp, I took a quick detour through men's hats. And there they were: a year after I'd found the last ones --
WHATTTTTTTTTT!?
At the end of yoga that day, Abbie had asked me, "How does it feel to know you're the alchemist of your own life? How wild is that!?"
I don't really think we can take all the credit for jobs that appear when we are wildly desperate or for baseball caps that materialize when we want them to. But what if there is magic in the universe, or something beyond our understanding? What if there is an alchemy that binds together energy and effort and longing and belief, and blends it with whatever is Mysterious and Unknown and Beyond Us?
In T.H. White's book, The Once and Future King, Merlyn puts the boy Arthur through a series of tasks, experiences in the animal kingdom meant to teach him the perils of various forms of government. Arthur's third animal experience is being a lowly ant, tiny enough to crawl through a keyhole. Arthur is extremely frustrated as an ant because he wants to ask his comrades about their beliefs and experiences, but he is stymied. The reason he can't communicate properly is because the ants don't have adjectives... they describe everything in their universe as "Done" (all things positive) or "Not-Done" (all things negative). An ant who was murdered by another ant from an opposing nest is "Not-Done." Similarly, an ant who fell off the ledge of the ant farm and tumbled to his doom is "Not-Done."
You can see why it would be impossible for Arthur to ask anyone in the ant kingdom about his feelings on a subject as complex as, say, Liberty.
Merlyn fortunately whisks Arthur back to the medieval world right before the ants go to battle with their neighbors, but the story stayed with me for the next 2 decades.
We are living in a world of ants where everything is Done or Not-Done because that is the extent of our ant-consciousness and our ant-vocabulary. But out there somewhere is a Consciousness that exists on this whole other mind-boggling level. Out there is a great mystery that we only catch glimpses of, sometimes through a lesson or a friend or an experience if we're looking and listening being here now.
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