How is Manifestation Meant to Work?

So, I just heard an interesting bit of audio from Dolores Cannon. I’ll include the video below in case you want to check it out for yourself. Essentially, she talks about the power we have in manifestation. As I’ve mentioned before, we have the power to create our own realities. If we sat down and looked at it, there are many things within our control. I find it most helpful to make a list. What can I control right now that will help me be the person I want to be, or live the life I want?

Cannon says we have to tell ourselves that things are in our reality. It is the difference between “I want this to be the case” and “this is the case.” We have to be very specific with the reality we desire and the goals we are achieving. Cannon seems to suggest that putting this into the universe will automatically make it so in due course. I’m not saying that’s definitely what she meant but that’s how it came across to me. If that is the case, I have to disagree with her slightly.

I didn’t know what art to include for this post, so here’s a picture I created on the Fluid Lite app.

I think you still have to put the work in, at least to some degree. I don’t think you can create the reality you want effortlessly. For example, I couldn’t say that I am making a living off my writing and then never have written anything. I doubt the universe would reward me then. My personal philosophy dictates it is up to you to do what’s in your power to make your reality happen. You can then leave things outside of your control to the universe.

I will fully admit that perhaps I’m wrong, and this is not how manifestation works. Either way, I really want to hear your thoughts on this! Let me know what you think of manifestation. How has it worked for you or not worked? I’m still rather new to most of these practices so I am eager to learn in anyway I can!

This is the audio I was taking about!

Painting a Vampire (VIDEO)

I’m going to be honest, when I sat down with my paintbrush today, I had no idea what I was going to paint. I just kind of started going. I’m really glad with how it all turned out! And yes, I am also on TikTok in case you were wondering how the video was edited together. Let me know your thoughts!

The full final product!

My Room

Familiar four walls,
A safe haven with prison bars,
Let me out!
I can’t leave today…
Lacking the strength to
Cross the threshold.
Leave me alone,
But please don’t leave me.

Familiar four walls,
Purple,
My favorite.
Ridiculous vibrance,
Stop mocking me!
I love you,
No, please, I didn’t mean to yell.

Familiar four walls,
Adorned with dreamcatchers and symbols of peace,
Screaming into my pillow,
With senseless, burning tears,
Namaste.

Familiar four walls,
Clothes strewn about,
Plans half finished,
Abandoned, on the floor,
Maybe I’ll pick you up again,
Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the strength.

Dangerous Love

You are a walking lucid dream,
Somewhere between planes of existence,
You shift.
You strut through these different dimensions
With the swagger of someone
Who Belongs.
You can alter my reality
With a glance.
You are horribly beautiful,
The plume cloud of an explosion,
A neon, radioactive glow,
Like a moth to a flame,
Right?
Still, knowing,
I dance down the path
To my destruction.
Because, even if I’m dismantled,
I would be glad to know,
It was by your hand.

Stuck in A Writing Slump? Let Your Mind Wander!

Do you ever just let your mind wander? Where does it take you? And why there?

I’m sure some of you have noticed by now that I’m obsessed with forests. I use nature imagery in a lot of my writing and it feels unconscious. It’s especially odd considering I’m not an outdoorsy person, though I am trying to become one. Despite my efforts to venture out more, I’ve never trekked through the depths of a forest or anything like that. So, why am I so drawn to the imagery of it?

Well, the forest represents a lot of things: being in the wild, perhaps confronting the unexpected, natural beauty, the fear of being lost, just to name a few representations! In order to improve my writing, I find it helpful to let my mind wander. If I want to get away from the forest, what can an image of the sea tell me? Or two people talking at a dinner table? Whatever you can visualize, ask why this particular image and what can it tell you? Keep asking yourself questions about the scene. What does it mean in the context of the story I want to tell? Before long, you’ll have a fully-fleshed-out moment in your mind that you can build from.

For example, when I was in high school, I wrote a short story for class about a girl who had recently lost her dad. When I sat down to write it, I didn’t have the whole story ready in my head. Perhaps that’s just how my mind works but I first saw an image of a young girl crying on her bed. Actually, not just crying, near inconsolable. I thought the image was very detailed from the start so I went down a list of questions. Why this scene and what can it tell us? This scene is important because it shows the emotional impact of an event on the character. She’s crying very hard. What would cause her to cry like this? Oh, well, perhaps she lost a loved one. Why is she alone at a time like this? She’s locked everybody out. In fact, that can be her character flaw, she doesn’t let people in. Before long, I was diving into character personalities.

While I don’t recommend this for an ending, dreams are an important source for inspiration.

I think a lot of writers are too hard on themselves. I’ve seen some focus so heavily on their blocks that they don’t give their minds freedom to just think of something random. Let thoughts pass through. Who knows? Maybe your subconscious is trying to communicate something to you. Maybe your next great idea is already in your head.

My Tentacle Monster

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the days I’m really down, I can visualize what is wrong without necessarily having the words for it. Today, I’m going to try to describe it.

It’s like these long, shadowy tentacles breaking through my chest. It feels like they’re breaking the bones in my chest and extending far beyond me. That’s the feeling I get right before I start to cry. When I’m feeling irritable, they come out again. I can practically see them grabbing the person or thing I’m angry at in their clutches. It feels like a dark force is overpowering me. I know that, a majority of time, my response to certain situations is overblown. I tell myself to stop yelling, stop screaming but it’s as if I’ve taken a backseat in my own head.

I don’t always know when the tentacle monster will rear his winding arms. It could be over some minor comment or sometimes he’s with me from the moment I wake up; I know those days in particular are going to be hard. Just when I think I’ve kept him at away for good, (two or three weeks will pass with no sign of him) he’ll burst right through me again, back with a vengeance. He might stay with me for days or weeks after that.

I try to explain all this to family and some friends but a lot of the time, I don’t feel understood. They counter that I could get out of these emotional slumps with a good bit of willpower. I try to get rid of this beast whenever I feel him. Trust me, I do not want to feel this way. However, most of the time, it feels like he’s using one tentacle to hold me underwater. I feel apathetic, exhausted and the anger just keeps swelling to no avail.

The last few days, I’ve had some bad run-ins with this shadowy figure but I keep going anyway. After all, he can’t hold me under forever.

The Oak

Formidable, you stand.
Weathering the storms,
Taking their hand.

As many days stretch to countless nights,
Father Time tries to cut you down,
You always win the fights.

The foe thinks you stand alone, but it is not true.
For you have your greatest love
Standing beside you.

Their love is mightier than any sword!
When the darkness gathers,
You have the future to look toward.

A future brighter than the moon!
When you are alone,
You hum this tune:

“You are my love, the greatest of my life!
When we’re together,
We can handle any strife.

For you’ll always have me,
And I’ll always have you.

Like the great Oak Tree,
Together, we stand true.”

Wakefulness

I feel like I’m floating,
In the space between sleep and wakefulness
Slipping just below the surface,
The weight of sleep rests heavy
On my face.
A welcome pressure,
Still, sleep alludes me,
Children chasing each other in a game of tag.

I wait patiently to greet my friend,
Wondering aimlessly,
Around this twisted forest of thought.
Frustration grows
Like fire in my eyes.
Tranquility lost,
I want to burn this maze down,
But, as time passes
The trees grow taller,
The air grows thicker,
And I
Continue to wander.

Raw

Do you ever feel
Like you are walking around
With open wounds
Bleeding?
But they are the cuts
No one can see,
The blood forms
As tears in your eyes,
Streaming endlessly,
You want to curl up,
You want to bury your head
In your hands,
But you are just tired…
You remain still,
Paralyzed, really.

You are exposed,
Naked while clothed,
The light is too bright.
Silence, felt loudly,
It’s all too much.
You wanted real!
You wanted raw!
But the raw “you”
Is frozen in nausea and fear.
Untethered, Disconnected,
Authentic.

Our First Trip Together

Okay everyone, time to vent some of my fears to you. “But Julie, isn’t that what you always do?”, I hear you asking. Okay…maybe.

Anyway, my fiancé and I are going to Orlando, FL at the end of the month and I’m very excited, but also a bit anxious. So, you know, still on brand. We haven’t traveled together before and we are both very stubborn in our ways of problem-solving. He thinks I never listen to his solutions and I think he never listens to mine. We end up fighting and making a scene before one of us is adequately able to explain our position to another. “How are you guys going to make a marriage work?”, is another question I’m hearing. Well, that’s a big reason why we are going on this trip alone.

Of course I had an old plane wing photo ready to use.

A summary of our life before we jump in: He recently moved in with me at my mom’s house. We eventually want to get our own place but for now, the three of us are managing together. Being that I have Cerebral Palsy and often have trouble navigating or doing things by myself, like cooking, I need my fiancé’s help with certain tasks.

For example, a couple weeks ago, I was making dinner and I asked for his help getting some potatoes out of the oven. He said he wasn’t even going to check on them because there was no way they were done yet. Hence the back and forth argument. Since I needed his help, I couldn’t just override his concerns and check the potatoes myself and I was frustrated for relying on him. Eventually, I brought my mom into the fray and she agreed to check on the potatoes. This small instance reveals the larger dynamic in our relationship.

This trip will remove the third party element. We are going to be forced to navigate situations on our own. That is a scary concept. While I’ve been working on my own independence, so I can become less frustratingly reliant, I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t put much work into uprooting our problems as a team.

There is a whole system we’ll have to go through, navigating the airport, making sure my walker and equipment get checked, navigating the parks (we are both terrible at directions so I am legitimately concerned that we are going to get lost) and other logistical elements. I’m worried that we’ll just end up exploding into a series of unproductive arguments and neither of us will have a good time. I know we have to listen to each other, but despite whatever language tricks we use, often neither of us feels heard.

It’s a difficult thing to confront for sure but this trip is something we have to do to figure out how we are going to work in the future. In truth, this will be my first trip without a parent, someone whose judgements and suggestions I just went along with. We’ll have to learn to hear and trust each other’s opinions. A lot of that learning will be done on the fly, too! But that’s how we tend to handle things.

I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this! If you want, feel free to drop a comment below!