Since I stepped onto the mat in 2011, I’d heard the word manifestation thrown around a lot in the yoga community. But it wasn’t until 2018 that I had the capacity to start looking into it properly. I found some YouTube videos that explained it in a way that resonated with me, and down the rabbit hole I went.
The first idea I absorbed was that manifestation is happening all the time, whether we are or aren’t choosing outcomes consciously. This excited me as someone who had recently emerged from a victim mindset and was slowly understanding personal power. Secondly, I learned that what comes into our lives mirrors the energy we’re existing in. Like attracts like, and our brains filter in more of what we are focused on. So if I was feeling lack and thinking about lack, I would keep finding more of it.
I was six months post-nervous breakdown and post-break up. I’d moved to Sydney to start again and was slowly, trepidatiously, getting back on my feet. I’d lost a lot in the previous year. I’d been without a home, car, job, even a pair of shoes at one point, and sometimes resorted to showing up at friends' houses hoping for food. This low point hit after a lifetime lost in a tailspin, so by 2018, I was drawn to the possibility of having some control over what came next. I decided to give intentional manifestation a go.
Every morning, I’d wake to the roar of the hume highway in Regents Park, sit straight up in bed, smile and repeat:
“Good morning universe, thank you for this day! I am so grateful! Money, wealth, prosperity, joy and safety floods my life! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Then I’d put on India Arie’s ‘I Am Light’ and stare at the sun, filling every cell in my body with gratitude for the new day. I was committed!
It had been two weeks of this dedicated attitude alignment when I got a random call from a dude who said he was an accountant on the Gold Coast. He wanted a receipt number for an Optus payment I’d made mid-2017. I was so confused.
“I’m not even with Optus. Why would I have made a payment to them?”
And then I remembered: my ex had manipulated me into paying her $2,000 overdue phone bill out of my 2017 tax return. My insides started to boil. I was reminded of the control she’d had over me. I felt gullible all over again. I hung up.
With shaking hands and nerves alight, I called my bank. They told me that although the money had left my account, it might never have gone through. I put in a request to have it investigated and was told that if, in fact, it hadn’t been received at the other end, it could be returned to me within one to three days.
The next morning, I woke up to $2,000 in my account. It had just been floating in the ether, ready for me to claim it.
It was so weird that a painful & triggering phone call led me to money I thought was long gone. That experience was a hugely impactful lesson in setting an intention, letting go of how or when it might happen, and staying open throughout.
We talk about equanimity a lot in our meditation classes at Zenly, and it was this experience that taught me to observe what is unfolding without being too attached, to maintain an equal, measured, and trusting response. I learned that I can’t see all of the cogs that are turning over time and space, that the universe is on her own timeline. My job is pretty simple: focus on gratitude and feeling good, and be open to the surprises!
