The Ocean Of Creation

When it comes to manifestation, progress tends to occur not just as a result of brute-force practicing techniques; sweeping recontextualizations of reality (and how we view reality) lead to faster and more substantial successes. Basically, that’s a long way of saying we can learn to manifest more efficiently if we change how we think about the manifestation process.

Metaphor can be helpful here. And, one of my favorite manifestation metaphors is that of the ocean of creation.

Imagine a vast body of water with light glittering on its surface. If I asked you to change how the light moves on the surface, how could you go about that?

If you were a totally blank slate with no understanding of the interplay between water and light, your first instinct might be to try and deal with the light directly. But, what you’d quickly find is that it’s impossible to manipulate the light itself. So, you’d move on and begin trying to disrupt the surface of the water.

This strategy would have some effect. In disrupting the surface of the water, you’d be able to change how the light glitters on that surface. The problem is that your efforts would be isolated (the light would be impacted only in the immediate area where you were impacting the surface) and short-lived (once you stopped disrupting the surface, the light would return to its old pattern of movement).

So, what then could you try next?

If you wanted to change the way the light moves on the surface of the ocean, eventually, you’d conclude that change needs to be enacted much deeper than the surface itself. You’d realize that by plunging down into the depths of the water and changing the currents that cause it to move in the first place, you’d be able to reliably change the appearance of the surface in a way that’s wide-reaching and lasts.

In the ocean of creation, the glittering light is the physical world or “3D” reality, the upper surface of the water is the realm of mind (thoughts and actions), the deeper depths where the current runs is the realm of feeling, and the deepest, darkest, most motionless depths of the ocean is the realm of pure, unformed imagination (or God, or beingness, or whatever else you want to call it).

Because “life” as we know it plays out in the light dancing on the surface, we tend to get tunnel vision in our focus on the 3D. Even when we learn about manifestation, there’s a strong urge to view the 3D as something independent of (albeit related to) the water itself.

That isn’t actually the case. The light on the surface relies on the water for its existence. If there’s no water, there’s no glittering light.

The reverse isn’t true, though. If I shut the lights off, the water continues to ebb and flow in exactly the same way as it did when the light was on. And, when I turn the lights back on, the glittering on the surface will resume without a hiccup.

Here’s the point in all this:

People often say the 3D isn’t “real” or “doesn’t exist,” but that’s not quite true. The light glittering on the surface is very real; I can look at it and know for certain that it exists. What is true, though, is that the movement of the light depends on the movement of the water. So, despite the fact that the light is existent, if I want to change the light, I have to deal with the water itself and let the light change as a consequence.

The fastest way to change the light is to disrupt the surface — to go into the realm of the mind and change our thoughts and actions. Traditional self-help operates at this level. Manifestation, though, seeks to go a little bit deeper and change the currents of feeling.

We all probably understand this intellectually, but when it comes to actual execution, you have to constantly be aware of what level of experience you’re operating at. When you do SATS, the intricate details of what you’re visualizing are irrelevant if those details aren’t leading to a marked change in your deeper feelings. Visualization exercises that don’t create clear and permanent changes in feeling are just glorified self-help practices. And I’m not trying to say traditional self-help is useless, because it’s not — but, it’s worth acknowledging that changing thoughts and actions isn’t quite the same thing as manifestation.

At this point, you may be saying, “Great, but I kind of already knew that, and I’m not sure what practical purpose this understanding actually serves.”

What I’m suggesting you do is try to get in touch with your deeper sense of feeling without relying on the reference points from 3D reality. Imagine I asked you to get into your SATS scene of choice, but then I began “turning off” your senses one by one. First, I block your “inner ears” so that you can’t hear anything within the visualized scene; next, I blindfold your “inner eyes,” so you can’t see the visualized scene; then, I turn off all physical sensations within the visualization so your sense of touch disappears; and so on.

At the end of this process, all physical reference points will have been eliminated, but the feeling triggered by your SATS scene should remain. It’ll be an inexpressible sense of feeling—you won’t be able to think thoughts about it, describe it to someone else, or even understand anything about it intellectually—but nevertheless, it will continue to exist and be experienced by you.

This can be a trippy experience because your mind can’t go deeper down into the ocean of creation to this realm of feeling. At first, you’ll even be tempted to say, in the absence of seeing, hearing, touching, etc., that the feeling ceases to exist. But really investigate that temptation, and eventually, you’ll realize the world of pure feelings does exist, even if the thinking mind can’t access it.

The further down you plunge into the depths of the ocean of creation, the less the light penetrates. The mind is close enough to the surface that a lot of light bleeds through to it. But, when you get deep enough, the light fades away — you lose all reference to the 3D and are left with the currents of pure feeling. And that’s really the ultimate goal of SATS or any other technique — to use the mind as a tool to guide us down deeper into ourselves toward our pure feelings.

Operating at this deeper level of self takes some practice (because we’re so used to dealing in terms of the 3D), and it takes some bravery (when your entire life has been lived in the light of the surface, diving down to someplace darker is scary), but actions taken here breed incredible results. At the level of feelings, you don’t have to convince yourself that the 3D isn’t “real” — it just becomes clear that pure feeling is “more real” and that the 3D bends to the deeper motions of these “more real” feelings. And, by making little changes to pure feelings, you change the current of the entire ocean of creation — your thoughts, actions, and even the physical world that exists seemingly “outside” your control effortlessly begin to flow with the motion of the water.

As always, good luck.