Let Life Happen
“Manifestation” as a practice and an art form is — or, at least, it seems that it is — something active. It’s something one does; it’s an action one takes.
We do not like the conditions of our lives, so we set out to change them via manifestation as an activity. Once again, manifestation becomes something we do.
This is an incorrect perspective and one that I’m partially responsible for perpetuating. For this, I must apologize.
You see, sometimes I feel I do you all a disservice in my teaching — that the more I write and the more I explain, the more questions and confusion I sew amongst readers. Now, the issue may just be that I’m not a very good teacher and cannot explain things clearly enough — but, truthfully, I don’t actually think that’s what’s going on. Here is what I feel is actually the problem:
The more we discuss methods of manifestation or dive into the philosophy of how and why manifestation works, the more we reinforce the belief that something is wrong and that it is our job to act and so make things right again. I reinforce in you the belief that action must be taken to remedy life’s unwillingness to set things right for you in the first place.
This could not be further from the truth — and again, I apologize if I’ve led you to believe it is true. Allow me now to set the record straight.
Life is infinitely more equipped to provide for you the things that you need than you are to provide those things for yourself.
Manifestation is not an action one takes; it is not something an individual does volitionally. Manifestation is something one lets happen.
Or, in other words, manifestation is the process of letting life happen.
Please excuse me now as I rant and rave raptorously for a little while…
All discomfort in life stems directly from the perceived separation between oneself and God/Beingness/The All/Etc. “The Fall of Man,” as it’s referred to in scripture, is not so much a fall as it is a “turning away;” man turns away from his oneness; man tricks himself into believing that beingness belongs to him when in reality, he belongs to beingness.
I know this all sounds nice and great, but also mostly meaningless — or at least immensely unactionable. But please listen because, truly, you do not understand.
Your beingness — the thing closest to you, at the root of your very self — is a thing of incomprehensible profundity. It is (in the Biblical sense) Awesome. It is awe-inspiring. If you can find it within yourself to undo the Fall, and to turn back toward your being, you will experience a state of bliss/joy/peace/love that isn’t even possible to describe. You will be eviscerated by the intensity of those emotions. It’ll make you shake and maybe even cry. Truly.
Part of the reason for this is that Beingness — pure beingness — is all-encompassing. It’s the universal antidote to every problem.
Beingness feels like the sturdiest strongest Father imaginable; it feels like the gentlest, most doting Mother; it feels like the most passionate lover; it feels like the most reliable and trustworthy friend; it feels like your own child, who you can direct all of your love into endlessly.
It feels like all of this simultaneously and constantly. Once again, beingness (or God, or whatever else you want to call it) is the universal antidote. In it, and with it, all debts are settled once and for all.
And Beingness is always with you. It is you, and you cannot escape it.
Why all our strife, then? Why all our sadness and our suffering?
Well, because we ignore the profundity of our own beingness — we forget all the things that it is eternally and constantly — and we go looking for those qualities out in the world. We look to worldly Fathers to be beacons of strength and stability. We look to worldly mothers to be gentle and dote on us. We look to worldly lovers to love us passionately. And so on and so on.
We go searching for salvation in the completely wrong direction. We deny that the treasure we seek is buried inside ourselves, at our core, in our beingness, and we hunt for it externally.
If you would only stop seeking outwardly and would just fall back into your Beingness, all problems would be solved. If you would just give up, give in, and sink down to your being, all safety, security, love, and abundance are waiting for you there. There is no worldly equivalent to what Beingness can provide.
At this point, manifestation can become what it always was and is meant to be — not an action or something one “does” but the simple reflection of the bliss/joy/love/peace that is inherent to one’s beingness. The world becomes the stage on which your love affair with beingness plays itself out. You don’t have to do anything; you don’t have to take any action; you only have to rest with your beingness and then watch as the world becomes a reflection of your inner love.
I’m going to leave us today with an excerpt from Meister Eckhart’s “Sermon Two,” which I constantly quote and am convinced is the most significant spiritual teaching that’s ever been spoken. If the term “God” as he uses it throws you off, simply replace it with “Beingness.”
As always, good luck.
“But our bliss lies not in our activity, but in being passive to God. For just as God is more excellent than creatures, by so much is God's work more excellent than mine. It was from His immeasurable love that God set our happiness in suffering/ for we undergo more than we act, and receive incomparably more than we give; and each gift that we receive prepares us to receive yet another gift, indeed a greater one, and every divine gift further increases our receptivity and the desire to receive something yet higher and greater.
Therefore, some teachers say that it is in this respect the soul is commensurate with God.
For just as God is boundless in giving, so too the soul is boundless in receiving or conceiving. And just as God is omnipotent to act, so too the soul is no less profound to suffer; and thus she is transformed with God and in God. God must act, and the soul must suffer.
He must know and love Himself in her; she must know with His knowledge and love with His love, and thus she is far more with what is His than with her own, and so too her bliss is more dependent on His action than on her own.”
— Meister Eckhart, Sermon Two
Excellent essay, thank you! How do you interpret "God must act and the soul must suffer"?