Understanding Manifesting (Part II)

(Continues from Understanding Manifesting - Part I Below)

     I want to reinforce the groundwork of my ‘exploration’. My first memory in life, I ‘woke up’ drawing a whale at around the age of four. I had always thought of myself as an artist – the vision of being a professional artist had been engrained in me my entire life. I could see the goal and mentally experience the goal – all of the requisites of ‘manifestation’. Year after year, I would achieve juried shows, art awards and other recognition from grade school, through high school, college and beyond. But these achievements cost money. For example, getting into a prestigious juried show means you have to spend money to make a piece. Actually it is lots and lots of work of which you select one or two. Then there is entry fee with no guarantee of getting in. If you get in, you have to get the work there and back – the larger the work the more cumbersome that is. Odds are against a work winning a cash prize or being sold. This is similar, I imagine, in sports like tennis or golf, where for many of the competitors you are paying and paying to be in play.
     When I stumbled on Napoleon Hill, it was an audio CD. Listening, I started to realize that my whole life structure was built around an idea that I could not actually make a living from art. It was very subtle to me (although not to a trained observer). I had in my mind a ‘model’ that I would do ‘real’ work and this income would allow me to keep making art. I’m not just talking about having one job – I’m talking about doing all kinds of things like getting involved in real estate, pursuing other degrees to enhance my salary – in essence, a lot of activity other than going straight at the process of being a professional artist. I kept doing one job after another to be able to afford creating art. This was exhausting, distracting and counterproductive. One key idea I learned from listening to the Napoleon Hill tapes was the concept ‘faith.’ I had not heard it explained quite so well. Faith, as I now began to understand, believes that if you give yourself to your passion you cannot fail. That the universe is in fact ‘designed’ to provide every tool one needs to achieve whatever one commits to and believes, positive or negative. When I finished listening, I remember looking interior to my own thought processes and realizing there was the obstacle. I thought in my mind that I would abandon all other pursuits and ‘give’ myself to my art completely. This process was so abrupt and immediate as to be unbelievable in retrospect. That very day, I received a small, non-descript e-mail posting ‘firehouse looking to honor four men lost on 9/11.’ I read that posting, and the image of this project in its completion poured into my mind. When I replied I had little idea that this ‘manifestation’ process would lead to the deepest, most sustained pain I had ever experienced. That it would shatter my previous understanding of the world and myself. In this process I began to see that ‘manifesting’ didn’t really mean creating a laundry list of all the things I think would thrill and then they would appear. Rather, manifesting, at least for me, began to mean participating in the process of discovery and allowing things to come into my life. It was then that true ‘miracles’ began to occur. [To be continued…]