I’m going to tell you a story about manifesting.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a man named Abraham who worked for his father. His brother also worked for their father. What was the family business? Making idols. Not a bad business – you could sell 10 or 15 on a good day, especially if there hadn’t been any rain, or if there had been too much rain – and the molds were already made so it was just a work of reproducing over and over and over again the most bought, popular models and re-stocking the shelves.
One day Abraham’s father left, putting Abraham in charge of the store. Abraham stepped to the front of the store where he met the customers. That didn’t go too well because, instead of selling idols, each person who came to Abraham with their story of why they need to bring this or that into their lives, or why they need this or that to leave their lives, Abraham answered by telling them they don’t need a lifeless, day-old idol when they can look inside and answer their own challenges. Woops! Not exactly a money-making strategy when your family is in the business of manufacturing and selling idols!
What happened?
Abraham went to the front of the store. He went to the FRONT! That is to say, in the pause of the absence of his father, Abraham stepped OUT, away from his family and out into the world beyond it. He stepped OUT of the family line of reproducing that which had been stuck in the same mold (what father says and does son then says and does and son then says and does and then son says and does … ). In other words, he stepped OUT of the family patterns. That mold of the family that once reacted to the too much rain or the too little rain in the seasons of our lives and created ideas like “it’s our lot in life to be poor” or “never speak up, it’s too dangerous” or “because of uncle so-and-so our family has that anger streak”. That mold that just manufactured the same old thing over and over and over and over ….
Abraham went to the FRONT of the store wherein he could see a different perspective. What did he see? He saw BEHIND him his family’s business of making idols. Of putting patterns in place, setting them in stone, and raising them up as something to be worshipped, as in “permanent”. Behind him as in all of his upbringing – all he had as his formative material. And he saw in FRONT of him the outside world and all the myriad other possibilities beyond that formative material, beyond the 4 walls of idol-making. And he stepped OUT from being behind his father, to being in front – which is to say recognizing his own vision, seeing the truth. Idols don’t work.
At this moment in the story he is still in the store – in the door between all that was behind him – that room full of idols that represented all the family support, the family opportunities, the family job and all the material comfort that brings, as well as the security of the constancy of the family patterns, as well as the “stuckness” of the family patterns – and all that was before him – his own ideas, new lands, new space, possibilities.
I told you this is a story about manifesting. And herein lies the question : How do we move from the doorway to the outside? How do we go from straddling the fence of knowing our own inner truth to actually acknowledging and manifesting that truth, when at our backs are the counsels of our family (no don’t do this, yes do that), the old ideas (don’t get too big for your britches, Mr.), and the patterns we have taken on for ourselves (yeah, my brother is really the creative one in the family)? How do we step out into the world of infinite possibility? How do we acknowledge the Me?
Abraham smashed the family idols. Having seen his Greater, Inner Truth – the bigger possibilities of the Abraham as his own person, not following his brother who was following their father who was following … – Abraham could no longer sell or “buy into”, his family’s business of repeating the same, couched-in-fears, non-true idols again and again. He couldn’t buy into it, nor could he continue it. There was nothing to do but smash these idols – break them down, bust out of the mold.
Idols are something we follow blindly. They are nice little pets, sort of like a pet rock. They don’t ask much of us, they just sit there on the shelf reminding us of where we are and keeping us from getting too far away lest they gather dust and need to be cleaned off and re-examined.
Like furniture, idols give us something to rest our eyes on. We rest our eyes on them until they become background and we no longer register that we see them anymore. Like the couch we know is in the room and we sit on every day but we have to really think about, if asked, does it have 3 cushions or 4? Idols become our background operating system, our OS X – they just quietly go about unseen by us determining which programs we get to open or not, and which rules it applies to every document we create. Fortunately, we can break the idols, we can rewrite the OS X.
Like OS X, if we want to change the rules and patterns that have been determining our lives we have to go layers and levels down to find where that rule got checked in the system preferences. With the idols, we have to see them anew – really see and recognize them – and take them down off on the shelf (out of their place of high importance) and smash them. After that, we are free to see what lies beyond, that which is on the other side of repeating, the whole big wide world that awaits us. And there, we can manifest the true dream of Self.
So here is a little exercise you can try. Sit comfortably, arms and legs uncrossed, in a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes, breathe out slowly three times, counting backwards from 3 to 1, one number at each exhale. See the number 1 tall, clear, and very bright. Then, imagine you have a baseball bat and before you are idols of your family. Look at and recognize each idol and know the pattern it represents in your family. Breathe out one time, and then bust the idols. When you’ve done it, what do you see that lies beyond? Breathe out, and open your eyes.
As with all of my blogs, if you have any questions, email me!
Happy dreaming!
Bonnie
