Manifestation Basics: "Desire Fulfilled" Is A Non-State

Part Nine

Have you ever had the experience of being sick with a head cold, desperately sucking in air through your stuffed up nose, then thinking, “man, I can’t believe I took for granted how amazing it is to just breathe easily?” Usually, on the day you wake up feeling better, you bask in the joy of not being congested for a second or two, then return to life as normal.

This raises an interesting question – what does it feel like to be “well?” If you’re juxtaposing wellness against the feeling of being sick, you might describe “health” as pleasant, relaxed, energetic, etc. But when you’re actually feeling healthy and have been for a while? It kind of feels like… well, it doesn’t really feel like anything. 

This is the case because “wellness” or “health” are non-states. We experience them passively and only notice them when they’re clouded by some kind of active physical discomfort or disease. Even the word disease (maybe better written as dis-ease) implies that “ease” is our natural condition. When we’re sick, it’s because the passive ease we feel is interrupted by an active feeling of dis-ease.

Before we move on to why this matters for manifestation, I want to throw out one more quick example. Have you ever had a bad headache and popped an Advil or Tylenol? You’re hurting, you take your meds, then you go about your day. After a little while, you realize your headache is gone. But the moment you realize your headache is gone isn’t the same moment your headache went away. You get the sense that your headache has been gone for some time, but you’re just now noticing it. And this is the same principle at play – you can’t notice your “lack” of a headache by itself. It’s only when you remember having had a headache earlier, or remember taking your tylenol, that it even registers your headache is no longer present.

So, back to manifestation.

The “state” or “knowing” of your desire fulfilled is a non-state; much in the same way that not having a headache is a non-state.

Think of something you have right now that you really truly enjoy – maybe a relationship, maybe a nice car, maybe a favorite restaurant down the street. When you’re enjoying any of these things, does your enjoyment have any active quality to it? And I’m not asking is the experience pleasant, or relaxing, or do you feel happy when you engage with it – remember, being healthy “feels good” but in a passive way. You don’t notice not having a headache 99% of the time when you don’t have a headache – even though it does “feel good” to not have a headache. And if you inspect your enjoyed experience, I think you’ll find it has a similar quality. There’s just a sense of passive “ease” that comes with enjoyment – you don’t actually notice it unless you’re comparing it to a state of dis-ease.

This realization should set off alarm bells in your head. When you actually have the object of your desire, you settle into a feeling of pleasant, peaceful ease. Which means, “desires” by their very nature are a form of “dis-ease.” 

Don’t get thrown by my use of the word dis-ease. Culturally “disease” has negative connotations, but “dis-ease” is a totally neutral descriptor. If I drop a rock in a placid pool of water, it’ll create dis-ease – in the form of ripples – meaning the natural “still” status of the water is somehow being interrupted or interfered with.

Here’s why I’m going on about all this – the “state” of desire fulfilled (or as we’ve recently redefined it, the non-state) is your natural condition. You are the placid pool of water and your desires are the ripples traveling on the surface. It’s easy to treat your current state of lack and your desired state of having the thing you want as equals – as flip sides of the coin – but they aren’t really. The ripples aren’t “equal” to the stillness of the water. “Desire fulfilled” isn’t equal to “lack.” Lack is an interruption of your natural state of consciousness.

This should recontextualize how you think about SATS or about changing beliefs in a general sense. When you “change your beliefs” really what you’re doing is alleviating dis-eased beliefs. I’m not swapping one unpleasant state of knowing or feeling for another equal but different, more comfortable state of feeling. I’m just letting the ripples in the water dissipate until the surface returns to its natural placid state.

When I do SATS, I’m not visualizing as a means of entering into an equal but different state of feeling/knowing; the visualization is a means of alleviating the dis-ease that I’ve been carrying around with me all the time – that’s why it feels so pleasant or peaceful to visualize. It’s like walking around with a boulder on your back all day then closing your eyes and dropping the weight – even though your natural state is one of not shouldering the boulder, it feels pleasant by comparison. 

This understanding is at the root of “letting go” of your desires, revision, and Neville’s descriptions of “naturalness.” When I “let go” my desires, I return to my inherent, fulfilled state of consciousness, and thus my desires can manifest. When I revise past experiences, I’m going back and “pruning” or pulling the weeds that have overgrown the inherently neat and tidy garden of my consciousness. And when your “state” or “feeling” takes on a naturalness, that’s just another way of saying you’ve allowed the ripples that are your feelings of lack and desire to dissipate, and as a result you’ve returned to your inherent, placid state – you’ve returned to your natural condition.

I am such a huge advocate of the “get only by releasing” technique for this reason. People interpret “releasing” their desires to be somehow contradictory to what Neville taught, when it’s just a recontextualization. When you see that your negative feelings are the only “active” states to be dealt with, and that any SATS or visualization in just a means of alleviating the negative feelings so you can return to your natural state of ease or “desire fulfilled,” it becomes apparent that all there is to be done is to “release” your garbage and you'll get what you want.

Manifestation isn’t the process of merging from one less desirable road onto another more desirable one; it’s the process of removing the roadblocks on your current road that by its nature leads to all your desires. You’re born on a highway to heaven – no need to change states or beliefs, all you have to do is be mindful of obstacles on your path and clear them away so you can keep on racing along. 

All this in mind, today’s exercise is just to think things over – try and recontextualize how you approach your desires and the non-state of desire fulfilled – and then keep working to get by releasing. SATS or any other visualization techniques can play an awesome role in this – as you do your exercises, be very aware of any negative feelings/thoughts/beliefs that arise in regard to your desired experience. Don’t repress, just allow them up and try to release them. Once no negativity arises upon your thinking of your desired experience, that’s an indication that you’re living in the naturalness of your desire fulfilled. You’ve weeded out any dis-ease that’s been keeping you from manifesting. At that point, when dis-ease ceases to arise, there is no difference between your normal, waking state of consciousness and the “state” you enter upon visualizing. You’ll be right where you need to be.

As always, good luck.