Category Archives: Manifestation

Courting the Unseen

Summer Newlings © Alexander Jansson

“As humans we inhabit a very narrow range of reality. It is as though we walk this Earth with blinders on, never seeing the incredible depth and beauty of all the levels of reality that surround us.” – Naisha Ahsian

Ever since a troop of fairies flew into my novel, I’ve been determined to see one. They’ve appeared in my dreams and I’ve experienced almost-sightings in my garden, but my quest has gone largely unfulfilled.

In his book, Power Animals, Dr. Stephen Farmer suggests that dragonflies are messengers from the elemental world. In a dream, a single dragonfly morphed into an entire flight of winged creatures and arranged themselves in a circle. As I watched this transformation, I sensed their energy and felt their longing to be recognized.

My dream led to a another encounter with a dragonfly, this time in my garden. As I was contemplating a new location for a lavender plant that had been languishing in the shade, a red dragonfly landed on a poppy seed head right in front of me. She sat motionless as I admired her four stubby wings, her bright red body and her big compound eyes. She darted to another seed head and back a few times before twirling up and away. I’d never seen a red dragonfly in my garden before, and while other species flitted through, I’d never seen one sit for more than a second. I took this as a sign that my longing to see fairies was being acknowledged.

Another day in the garden, I was puttering about when I noticed a fluttering of leaves in my butterfly bush. This would hardly seem worthy of attention, but there was no wind, not even the slightest breeze. As I walked over to investigate, something else caught my eye in the banana tree. Whatever is was, it moved. And I felt it watching me, peeking up over a banana leaf. Something, something was in that tree. But before I could move in to get a closer look, it withdrew and faded out of sight.

As I waited impatiently for a real sighting, I queried my friends and learned that several had actually seen these magical beings. Tom (not his real name) who lives in rural Nova Scotia sees 4- to 6-inch tall fire fairies cavorting at the edge of the flames when he burns brush in the fall. Fran (not her real name either) saw what she assumed was a fairy sitting on a stump at the edge of a hiking trail in New Hampshire. This entity was a foot high and all black: black wings, long black hair and black fur covering its little body. And my friend, Steve, saw two tiny beings floating above him as he reached for his bedside lamp one night. Holding hands, wings outstretched, they had munchkin faces lit with big smiles. They watched him intently for a moment or two and then vanished.

These accounts made me more determined than ever to see a fairy. When I read Meeting Fairies by Robert Ogilvie Crombie (ROC), I was encouraged. A scientist, writer, musician, mythologist, psychologist, historian, esotericist, and mentor to the Findhorn community in Scotland, ROC not only saw supernatural beings, but communicated with them.

One day as he sat resting on a bench in the Royal Botanical Garden in Edinburgh, he saw a three foot tall figure with pointed chin and ears and little horns on his forehead, shaggy legs and cloven hooves dancing around a tree about twenty yards away. Realizing the creature was a faun, ROC tried talking himself out of this sighting, but it was no use. The creature danced over, sat down, said, “Hallo”, and then asked ROC if he could see him. After ROC assured him that he could, the faun introduced himself as Kurmos and the two had an enlightening conversation. Kurmos explained that his job was to help the growth of the trees in the garden and told ROC that many nature spirits have all but given up on humans because they don’t believe they’re wanted.

A little over a month later while walking home at night, ROC encountered another faun, the great god Pan. He was only a little taller than ROC, but the next time he saw him, he appeared as a twenty-five foot tall figure with great horns on his forehead, cloven hooves and fine silky hair on his human legs. Through Pan, ROC was introduced to a myriad of nature spirits: elementals, nymphs, dryads, other fauns, eleves, gnomes and fairies. Some were but a fraction of an inch in height, others three or four feet tall.

According to ROC, what we see when we encounter these supernatural beings is determined by our expectations that have been created by myths and legends. Although they have the ability to assume any form they choose, these entities are essentially light bodies or vortexes of energy. But to carry out their work with the plant world, they need etheric bodies and they adopt specific forms and characteristic behaviors to best accomplish their agendas.

After his conversations with Pan, ROC understood that Kurmos had appeared to prepare him for his meetings with him. And after determining that ROC believed in him and wasn’t afraid of him, Pan chose to impress ROC with his extraordinary size and power because he wanted to enlist him to foster a reconciliation between humans and nature.

So why haven’t I been able to see these beings? ROC understood that he wasn’t seeing Kurmos and Pan with his physical sight. And his communication with them occurred telepathically by means of thought transference. Maybe if I release my expectations and keep my heart, mind, eyes and ears open, just maybe I’ll see a fairy or something very much like it.

P.S. I don’t know if this counts, but a very large, not particularly attractive fairy has been sitting in a giant oak tree waiting patiently for me to start my next book.

In the Eyes of the Beholder

Baby Steps

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Onward and Upwards – © Angi Sullins & Silas Toball

“All the lost souls tell themselves to do the logical, practical thing and then they’ll get to do the thing they love later. It almost never happens. You have to tell the universe that you’re here to do it NOW, that you’re committed and that you’re going to make it happen and make it successful. And then every step you take has to be in that direction.”– Sue Frederick

After nearly two years of writing and researching and rewriting and editing, my novel is finished. This, I am told, is the easy part. Now the real fun begins: building a platform and getting it published. Then there’s the marketing, something that was traditionally done by the publisher but now falls heavily on the shoulders of the author unless you’re a big name like Danielle Steele or James Patterson.

But help may be on the way. Just before I finished my final edit, an email from Balboa Press popped into my inbox announcing a fiction writing competition. The grand-prize winner will be awarded a publishing contract with Hay House for the launch of their new fiction imprint, and the second- and third-place winners will receive self-publishing packages from Balboa Press. I scrambled to meet the deadline, sent in my manuscript, and last week I was informed that my book was selected as one of the 30 finalists. As you can imagine, I am very much hoping (and visualizing and praying and asking all my friends, relatives and even the most casual acquaintances to do the same) that my book will be selected for the Hay House contract.

This doesn’t mean I can sit back and wait until July 16th when the winners will be announced. I need to press forward, develop content and begin building my brand which involves creating a stunning website, producing a trailer for my book, and engaging in social media in a more productive way just for starters. And while I’m doing all of that, I need to begin the process of acquiring a literary agent in case my wish for a contract is not granted. Oh, and I need to begin writing my next book because this one is the first in a trilogy. I am overwhelmed to say the very least.

While my giant to-do list seems daunting, I know it’s doable. Before I began writing my book, I consulted Sue Frederick, an intuitive career coach. I was ready to close my photography repping business of 15 years and move on to the next thing, but I couldn’t quite bring it into focus. Sue saw me writing books, producing CDs, and conducting workshops that would inspire people to connect with their personal power, in short, building an empire like that of spiritual activist, author, and lecturer, Marianne Williamson.

WHAT? ME? I had yet to connect with my own personal power, so how could I possibly do this? Just the thought of putting myself forward as a paragon of spiritual wisdom, not to mention standing on a stage and speaking in front of a group–any group at all–nearly sent me into a panic.

When I recovered sufficiently to express my concerns, Sue assured me that there was nothing to fear. All I had to do was set my goal and begin to make my way toward it by taking baby steps. She even set out an ambitious plan which included submitting articles to holistic periodicals, getting certified as a life coach, and setting up a coaching business, all before beginning work on what she saw as a memoir/self-help book.

Shortly after my consultation with Sue, I took an online coaching course, but as much as I loved the idea of helping people, I couldn’t get myself to hang out my shingle. So instead, I turned my focus to the memoir and began organizing all the material I’d gathered since I started this blog. But I didn’t feel ready to take this on.

As I thrashed about trying to get myself to take the next baby step, an extraordinary thing happened: Another book began coming through–a mystical coming-of-age story about a girl named Selene and her reunion with her seven missing soul parts. Actually, the characters had been trying to get my attention for months–they had been appearing in my dreams and following me around during the day-but while I acknowledged them, I made every effort to get them to step back while I continued on with the program Sue had laid out for me. But the scenes playing out in my mind were so provocative and the characters were so insistent, that I finally gave in. I’d fallen in love with them and felt compelled to give them life.

And now here I am exactly two years after my consult with Sue, standing on a different springboard, ready to take the plunge and embrace my destiny. Arriving at this point seems something like a miracle, and while I have no idea how everything will come together, I really do believe that Sue’s baby steps are key.

Dare to Dream

“So many of us are living limited lives not because we have to but because we think we have to.” – Dr. Bruce Lipton

Last December, my friend Mike told me that he was in Phase Three of his total makeover, or what has since become known as The Mikeover. He had completely revamped his wardrobe, dumped his old car and leased a new one, he was in the middle of finding new furnishings for his new condo and would soon be refurbishing his new office as the last act of his transformation.

WHAT? Who does this – especially in the midst of an economic downturn? I was intrigued. I had to know what prompted this great change. Did he wake up one morning, look around and say, “NOTHING IS WORKING – I HAVE TO START OVER”? It was a little like that, but as Mike said, “it all kind of snowballed organically”.

Over a year ago, our mutual friend Todd encouraged Mike to splurge on a pair of Gucci sunglasses. This may not seem like a big thing, but for Mike who grew up in a family of modest means with four siblings, this little luxury was the beginning of a shift in his perspective. Six months later Todd tempted him with a pair of Prada sunglasses (I know – what’s with the sunglasses already?) and that was it.

Mike’s wardrobe didn’t measure up to the glasses. And once he’d replaced it with ‘big boy clothes’, getting into and out of his 11-year-old Honda Civic hatchback just didn’t feel right. He’d had ‘New Car’ on his to do list for a few years, so this wasn’t an altogether random idea. So with his new Infiniti G37 coupe and his hot wardrobe, coming home to his ‘dump’ (his words, not mine) of an apartment didn’t feel right either. There were termites. There was an inconsiderate stomping, yelling upstairs neighbor. And he didn’t feel at home in his neighborhood. ‘New Apartment’ had been on Mike’s list, too, but it took the momentum of The Mikover to make it happen. Since then he’s moved into a condo in a swank building downtown San Francisco, filled it with ‘big boy’ furniture, and he’s having a house-warming party next weekend. YAY Mike!

With three phases complete, I was dying to know what impact all the changes had had on my friend. Did he feel different about himself? Were people responding to him differently? And here, in Mike’s words, is the answer:

“I feel like I’ve grown up. I shifted from ‘good enough’ to having the things I really want and know work for me. I feel as if I’m living externally the stylish part of life for the first time ever, and it feels gratifying and good – especially knowing that I didn’t have to pay through the nose for it. I never thought I could afford designer clothes, great furniture, etc., but Todd showed me that having great stuff doesn’t necessarily mean having to spend a lot of money. I feel like I deserve it and that I earned it. And I am immensely grateful for it every day.”

Mike’s story has me thinking about my mother. She, too, lived modestly, but sometimes she entertained fantasies about a life of luxury . “If only I had a million dollars,” she used to say. Then she would do – what? Go on a cruise? Buy a new car? She was never able to tell me what she’d do if someone handed her a big check, but the implication was that if this would occur, she would be happy at last.

Like my mother, many people believe that they have to ‘HAVE’ something in order to ‘DO’ something and then they will ‘BE’ successful and/or happy. But it doesn’t work that way.

In her article, Become the Change, Colette Baron Reid says that to manifest the life we want, we must align our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs with the experience we want to create. In other words, imagine yourself being the person you want to be, take action toward your goal, and you will create what you want.

And in Conversations with God, Book 3, God/Neale Donald Walsch says, “Live the grandest version of the greatest vision you ever had about Who You Are. Begin the living of it by declaring it.”

That’s what Mike did.

Extraordinary Occurrences in Ordinary Reality

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A few weeks after I returned from Greece, I found a box of books in front of my house. Now this in itself isn’t unusual; people dump clothes, food (remember the artichokes?), computers, furniture and all manner of unmentionables on the sidewalks in my neighborhood on a daily basis. But this box was directly in front of my house. And inside I found the following: seven of Carlos Castaneda’s twelve books; the I ndividual Reference File of Extracts From the Edgar Cayce Readings; The Art & Practice of Caballa Magic; The Magic of Incense, Oils & Brews: A Guide to their Preparation and Use; Beyond Hypnosis: A Program for Developing Your Psychic & Healing Powers; and Communion: A True Story (in which award-winning author Whitley Strieber describes his abduction by aliens).

What are the chances? Shaminism . . . Psychic readings . . . Magic . . . Aliens . . . It was as if the Universe had gathered up all the knowledge I was meant to absorb at this moment in time and placed it in my hands. At least that was my first thought. But after reading up on Castaneda and looking over each of the other books, I’m not so sure.

Years ago, I read two or three of Castaneda’s books about his training in traditional shamanism with don Juan Matus, an old Yaqui Indian. At the time, I was vaguely aware that there were questions about the authenticity of his experiences, but I had no idea the extent of the controversy nor that don Juan probably didn’t exist.

In 1973 after the publication of his first three books, Time published an article, Don Juan and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which called attention to inconsistencies in Castaneda’s background. And in an exhaustive article that appeared on salon.com in 2007, The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda, Robert Marshall calls Castaneda ” . . . the 20th century’s most successful literary trickster . . . ” and exposes a lifestyle that can only be described as a cult.

Shortly after the Time article appeared, Castanda disappeared from public view. Inspired by L. Rob Hubbard’s Scientology, he developed a movement he called Tensegrity, a kind of “Kung Fu Sorcery” supposedly based on a group of movements passed down by Toltec shamans. Three main female devotees known as ‘the Witches’ who were required to break off all ties with family and friends, were used to recruit new members – specifically “women with a combination of brains, beauty and vulnerability” – into the ‘family’. After Castaneda passed into the great unknown ten years later, the remains of one of the Witches was found in the desert and the other two disappeared but were presumed to have committed suicide.

Despite criticism of Castaneda’s writings, he’s been acknowledged by such luminaries as George Lucas and Deepak Chopra for inviting readers to examine the nature of reality and for opening the doors to perception. And even after academia discredited Castaneda, his editor, Michael Korda, insisted on the authenticity of his experiences, and Simon & Schuster still classify his books as nonfiction.

In his article Shamanic Personal Transformation, shamanistic practitioner Hank Wesselman talks about the trap of equating ‘ideas’ about the nature of reality with true, face-to-face encounters with transpersonal forces in the deep psychic and subtle realms. He also points out the importance of intention. ” . . . as you do journey work and start to enter into relationship with transpersonal forces . . . are you seeking connection to ‘get something’ material? Or are you doing work from a place of service for the highest good for yourself, those around you and those you are connecting with?”

I can’t help but question Castaneda’s actual experiences in the realms of nonordinary reality. Were they nothing more than imaginings fueled by psychotropic drugs? According to author Amy Wallace, one of Castaneda’s numerous lovers, “He became more and more hypnotized by his own reveries. I firmly believe Carlos brainwashed himself.”

And what of his intentions? It seems clear that his editor and publisher were intent on one thing only, and that was to keep the money machine going. And if, as Wallace contends, Castaneda had lost touch with reality we can assume he also lost his ability to control it.

So I’m left wondering about the reappearance of Castaneda in my life. As one who has always been a tad too trusting, for the first time in my life I’m looking at things with a more critical eye. You might even say I’m becoming a bit of a skeptic. And it’s with this new perspective that I intend to revisit Edgar Cayce and to examine the other offerings from my mysterious benefactor.

Breathing in the Moon

in search of enlightenment