Why manifest the future when the present is right here?

An update of the Ideal Scene concept –

For years at the Reiki centre a calendar highlight was the end of year “Ideal Scene” Reiki gathering. We would gather, share Reiki, create a really potent energy for manifesting, and then write our Ideal Scene for the following year. It was dated a year ahead, so if it was 20th December 2023, you would write the date one year ahead, 20th December 2024 and then write a letter to yourself, or to a loved one, describing all the amazing things that had happened in the year. It’s a fun way to manifest as it creates an energy of “already happening” or an energetic vibrational match as Abrahams Hicks would say.

A slight issue for me is that over the course of 2023 I have let go of the idea that I, as a personal identity, have any free will whatsoever. It’s kind of funny really. I’m not moved to take down any of my previous posts or delete blogs or YouTube of my previous belief systems – they may well still serve lots of people, just as it served me, to believe and strive and manifest. There is a certain fun and innocence to the raising of vibration to match what you want. And let’s face it, it can be fun to try to manifest and achieve your goals.

So, what am I really saying here?

This is just an edge I find myself playing with because as I am landing into a more and more sensitive barometer of what is aligned, and what isn’t, I am finding it harder and harder to believe that I am navigating, authoring, manifesting, controlling anything at all in my life. I am testing it more thoroughly too. Do I even make decisions? Decisions seem to happen, the body gets up, the body walks about, thoughts happen, and I believe them or I don’t. When I believe them, my body activates (and not in a good way). Have you ever been really honest with yourself and asked if all this striving and trying to manifest, and trying to have only good things happen to you is nothing but stressful? What if you just left everything alone and let it all unfold without all the extra layering of goals and striving, trying and manifesting?

For me it has resulted in less interactions, less classes, less income, less everything really. So I’m not going to lie – everything you worry about happening – spending a lot more time doing nothing – is exactly what happens. But another thing, and to me a better thing, also happens. I can stare at a plant in my living room and be filled with love and awe. I can lounge in my overstuffed armchair and really rest, no thoughts racing around, a deep peace resonating all through my cells, silence and contentment infusing every space. It’s kind of weird. Everything I thought I would get by manifesting lots of good things, I have achieved by stopping and just letting everything rest exactly as it wants to.

I still hold down my job, still write blogs and YouTube, on the surface not much has changed. I still rant about things and get over-excited. I still stress about things and get anxious. This is an edge I’m playing with, an exploration, so there’s still plenty of see-sawing back into the grasping and the trying to achieve, and the thinking I really need to do something more. But honestly, the scales are tipping. I don’t see the fun in the striving and the future dreaming anymore. It’s much more fun to look at what’s right here, now. The amazing vibrancy of what’s in my living room – the joy I get from the second hand lamp I bought recently. My Aloe Vera plant that is girl bossing her way into exuberant excellence. The magpies outside my window picking at the roof tiles. It’s all right here - fascinating, alive, intimate, bursting with vibrational frequency. That’s the vibrational match right there. Not in a future promise if you vibrate just right, dream just right, create the just right vision board. That ends up stressful, tight, constricting – watch where your mind takes you, constantly searching for some future nirvana when the immediacy of life is right here, right now.

Your mind will tell you the hear and now is boring, it will try to entice you over and over again into dreaming and over-thinking. I know, my mind keeps trying that on me too. And sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it doesn't. But the more you look at the present moment, the more you will see the beauty and perfection of everything just as it is, right now.

So, for those of you looking for nirvana, why not write all the reasons why you don’t think you have it now, and take a look at all those limiting beliefs? Byron Katie does some excellent videos on these. And I know the idea of no authorship, no free will, no control will freak most people out. But what if you just stopped striving quite so hard in trying to control outcome, and relaxed a little more into the present moment? How would that feel in your body? More or less relaxed and in flow? It’s definitely worth a little experimentation and playfulness.