THE NONLINEAR PATH 15: Do The Homework
How To Manifest What You Want In Life
Struggling to create the life we want is part of the shared human condition. The key word is struggle and the key element is learning to let go of that struggle. Like tug-of-war, we can learn to release the rope and instead do the work to create what we thought we were holding onto.
It’s simple, but not easy. There are three clear steps that I learned from my martial arts teacher. They work as well for life as they do for fighting. Each is simple, but we can stall out or stumble at any step. They are:
Set your intention
Release it with love
Do the homework
Setting your intention is the simple act of saying what you want. Verbalizing it to yourself, the universe, and other people, or writing it down, making a clear statement, creates a direction for energy to flow. It’s like pointing your camera to take a picture, plotting your trip on a map, or looking where you are about to throw a ball, or a kick.
We often stop ourselves here before we even start by not allowing ourselves to put into words what it is we really want. Many of us are so good at self-denial that we don’t even know what we want. We haven’t allowed ourselves to really want anything.
This is often the most difficult step, but it is the most important.
Once you’ve set your intention, you release it with love. Visualize holding a raven with an important message a la Game Of Thrones. The raven holds your intention in the form of the message tied to its leg and you release the bird to flight to deliver your message.
The idea of doing so with love indicates a giving in, a trust in the process, a belief that this can work. It is a form of faith, a release of doubt. In this step, we can fall prey to wanting control, which leads to gripping and holding on. Our ego wants to take over, but here we give in to a power greater than ourselves, whatever that may be.
The release of doubt is key to properly taking the final step of doing the homework. Once you’ve set your intention and released the doubt you have to then do the work to make it happen: make the choices and take the actions you can to make your intention manifest into reality.
This may include telling more people about your intention so that they, too, may set intentions for you and take steps to help you.
Doing the homework is the step in which we take responsibility for our intention, where we become accountable for our path. How serious are we about manifesting what we want? This is the place where faith meets reality.
You can have the best intention and pray all you want but without the homework it’s just a nice idea.
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