You Die At Your Most Sacred Altar

People have lots of different questions about manifestation, and often, they have to do with the minutia of certain techniques or understandings. Really, though, there’s only a single question you need to ask when you’re struggling to manifest something, and you’ll be led directly to the heart of your issue:

What object or experience am I reading meaning into?

In other words, what object/experience have I decided is meaningful? If I desire a new car, I may have decided having a nice car means something about me being a successful and impressive person. If I want to win the romantic approval of some specific person, I may have decided that it’s meaningful to be loved by a person I find attractive. If I want to live a more luxurious life, I may have decided being comfortable and content is meaningful — it can be that simple.

And, you may be saying, “Of course, that’s obvious. And (in the case of something like being living comfortably and free of strife) it certainly is better to be comfortable than to be uncomfortable, and thus this experience is meaningful.”

But it’s important to recognize that whenever you vest meaning into an object or experience, you also vest an equal and opposite amount of meaning into the absence of that object or experience. So, if it means something good to be loved by a person you find attractive, then (by definition) not being loved by someone you find attractive must mean something bad. If having a nice car means you’re successful and impressive, then not having a nice car must mean you’re a loser. And on and on.

Again, this may seem obvious, and it may not be clear why there’s anything wrong with this process. After all, why shouldn’t it mean something good for a good thing to happen and something bad for a bad thing to happen? But, when you start to play this meaning game, you’re unknowingly imprisoning yourself.

The second you ascribe meaning to anything, you’re placing yourself at the mercy of that thing. Even if you acquire the meaningful object or experience, that’s still not enough — you have to maintain possession of the object or experience eternally, or else the meaning is lost, and you fall back down to unhappiness again. If you need a nice car to feel successful, then you need to have a nice car forever to continue feeling successful. And, so long as other people exist who have nicer cars (no matter how nice yours might be), that means that other people are more successful than you. And if being successful is good, then it must be bad to be less successful than others.

See how it never ends?

When we release, we release the meaning we ascribe to things. We let go not of desire, but of the urge to vest meaning in objects and experiences. When we’ve let go of this meaning, desire fades away as a side effect.

This idea sends people into a tizzy. We tend not to want to release the meaning we’ve ascribed to certain objects or experiences because our egos are shielded by the meaning we’ve imposed on our lives.

If I let go of the idea that having nicer things means I’m impressive and successful, then any smidgen of success or impressiveness I feel as a result of the nice things I already have falls away. If my crush not liking me means I’m not good enough, then letting go of that meaning makes it impossible to strive towards feeling good enough by acquiring said experience.

When you see this clearly, you start to see that releasing isn’t difficult at all; you just don’t want to let go of the meaning you’ve ascribed to things!

Let me ask you this, though — is it really necessary for experiences to mean something for them to be positive? Do I have to be on a tightrope 1000ft above the ground for it to mean something that I walked from point A to point B? Or can I just walk that distance on stable ground and arrive at the same destination without all the stress?

Real freedom is freedom from meaning. When you’ve let go of all meaning, suffering is an impossibility. When being successful, being liked by others, or even having a healthy body ceases to mean anything, then you are completely and totally free from all limitations. Nothing can ever occur to make you suffer. You can be broke, hated, and sick but still totally at peace and happy.

And isn’t that what true enlightenment looks like? Not the ability to feel great when things are great, but the ability to feel great no matter how terrible your circumstances are?

You always die at your most sacred altar. Whatever things mean the most to you, and whatever meaning you really, really, really don’t want to let go of, is what keeps you bound. These most meaningful things are what keep you tied up in suffering. And, when you’re willing to let go of that meaning, you’ll be free, and you’ll be happy.

I know I’ve been making it seem like this is a topic separate from conscious creation, but it is also the key to manifestation. Does anyone feel it’s difficult to manifest something that they’ve ascribed no meaning to? Is there any anxiety or struggle associated with wanting to find a penny or getting to enjoy a single sunny day?

No, of course, there isn’t. Meaning is what sews doubt and what makes you obsess over the fear of not having the thing you want to manifest. Because to not have a meaningful thing means something bad.

So, when we want to manifest something that we’ve decided is meaningful, we’ve put ourselves in a paradoxical situation: Every second we aren’t experiencing that meaningful thing, that must mean we’re in a bad place. And it’s impossible to live as if we’re in a good place when we’ve already decided that not having our desired experience means something terrible.

If you let go of the meaning you’ve vested in the experience you want to manifest, it’ll no longer mean what you want it to mean when your manifestation occurs, but it also won’t mean anything bad to be in your current situation and it’ll be very easy to step into the state of havingness.

So, ask yourself: where am I imposing meaning on my life? And am I willing to let go of that meaning? Because, when you do, manifestation will become effortless.

As always, good luck.