Manifesting:
IMAGINE what you want. ALLOW IT. Relax into it. Bask in its coming...

Vision Questing
in the Zion Wilderness..
under the Grand Alignment.....

medicine and magic for manifesting...

This article is about manifesting your truest desires. The laboratory for these teachings was my recent nine-day Vision Quest in the wilderness canyons of Zion National Park under the skies of the Taurus grand alignment. You can take it as an adventure story. Then again, my hope is that it holds medicine and magic for your manifesting.

So come with me -- three days into the Vision Quest and liquid fast. Inside the medicine wheel shaded by a gnarled cottonwood tree, I am meditatively walking the labyrinth I have sketched in the red canyon sands just south of Zion). With the gurgling of a small creek tumbling nearby, I am hungry, drinking a gallon of water a day, naked, and swatting the flies. My guard is slipping. Creeping in is the growing realization of every aspect of my life out of integrity. I have unwittingly stumbled into the fourth step of the Twelve Step Program - a fearless moral inventory. Except that I am not "doing" this moral inventory.. Rather, it is "doing" me: it is in my face. And I am not feeling "fearless." I am feeling anxious about seeing all of these places where I have been cheating life. So begins the medicine.

Listening To Spirit

For several months prior, I had been inwardly listening to Spirit (or my higher self, or my intuition, or whatever you want to call it), relentlessly urging me to extract myself from my routine, and submit myself to Its medicine. Yet when I originally scheduled this nine-day Vision Quest for late April and early May 2000, I had no (conscious) idea of the powerful convergence of Easter week (the Christic Initiations), Uranus gone wild (the urge to change), and the grand alignment in Taurus (the call to a higher path). These powerful planetary energies may have boosted this Vision Quest into the most powerful - and life altering - of all the Vision Quests I have done over thirty years. It was strong medicine.

Medicine is the right word, for in the Native American tradition, medicine means that which has to be taken to heal and also that which leads to magical powers. I got both on my Vision Quest, and I propose that you will too - should you decide to surrender yourself to this most ancient of rites of passage to re-connect with Spirit.

I had scheduled the Vision Quest without really knowing my specific purpose. Over the years, I have learned to trust the prompts of Spirit as to when to take a Vision Quest. It is almost as if Spirit knows that a Vision Quest is the best way to talk to me - the only way really, given my "busy schedule" in my "real" life.

During Vision Quests, Spirit has an open door to show us those aspects of ourselves interfering with manifesting our mission, and to provide paradigm-breaking inspirations about our life. One of the primordial powers of a Vision Quest is that it is inspiration-based. This means that everything you experience will come organically from within you, as pure inspiration from Spirit. No other teacher need apply.

Sure enough, right on cue, right before the scheduled Vision Quest, my specific purpose was handed to me. I received two gut-wrenching rejections - one from a conference at which I proposed to present and the other from a $10,000 essay contest I would surely win. These rejections surfaced my old wound "I can't have what I want." My personal variation on this limiting belief was "I'm not chosen." As I arrived in Zion, the Rolling Stone song was burdening my heart: "I can't get no satisfaction." Surely you have been there too.

Getting More Than I Bargained For: The Medicine in Manifesting

I assured myself that I would just go into the Zion wilderness, do a little cosmic surgery on these limiting beliefs, and come back renewed and frisky. I brashly anticipated that I would just positively nuke these yucky beliefs with all my belief-killer spiritual tools - the creation handling procedure (Avatar), the age regression technique (Sanaya Roman), the affirmation "Forgiveness gives me everything I want" (ACIM), positive vibration (Abraham-Hicks), and shamanic, body, and sound work. Ta-da!

What I didn't bargain for was the small print at the bottom of the contract. It read something like this: in order to fully release these limiting beliefs, you must own the grain of truth in them, you must embrace that they are your creations, and you need to learn from them. Otherwise, the limiting beliefs will graciously return to again "serve" you.

So enter with me again - the first three days into the Vision Quest. I am meditatively walking the medicine wheel, shaded by that gnarled cottonwood tree. I am hungry, and flashing before me is every place that my life is out of integrity. To my horror, I am given the following "medicine" to swallow: I had slowly withdrawn from my life, stopped giving my best efforts to my career, cheated my Beloved by not paying my fair shares of expenses, lost the courage to take risks, beat back my dreams (because they were too painful to summon and not get), and halted trying to manifest anything of significance. I was at a spiritual dead-end. In all of these ways, I was out of integrity.

What was also shown to me was an essential realization. I understood profoundly why "I can't get what I want." The cosmos was not being cruel; it was being profoundly fair: my manifesting power had ebbed away as I had stopped giving my best. I was no longer giving to life.

By the fifth day, I am still forced to dance with my demons. I keep reminding myself that Odysseus had to face many trials on his homecoming. I was facing my own internal Witches, Cyclops, and Sirens. I used the image of the Buddha - sitting serenely - as the tempter Mara tried to break him; only I wasn't feeling very serene. But I was determined not to break down into the self-loathing and self-hatred tempting me. This was especially difficult when I realized that with my recent lack of integrity, I did not respect myself. My lack of self -respect was a knock-me-to-my-knees blow.

It is the sixth day now, and I prayed that this moral inventory be done. I have sat through the worst, haven't I? But wait, there is yet another specter. Suddenly revealed to me are all of my fears that I have hidden, disguised, and disowned. Until that moment of revelation, I sincerely believed that I was fearless. I had egotistically prided myself on being fearless. But here my hidden fears came, another wave of medicine, like sobbing comes in waves. I had to face that I was afraid to come clean with my Beloved, afraid to take risks, afraid to give my gift.

This was almost too much for me to bear. By this time I was exhausted dancing with my demons. I wanted out. The initiation was too intense. I can't do this anymore. Weary as I was, I was determined to take my medicine. I prayed a lot. I was resolute to own that the lack of integrity and the fear was me - this was my life. I wasn't proud of it, I didn't respect myself for it, but it was (personally and intimately speaking) me. This was my creation.

This was the medicine, in its guise as "needing to take this medicine to heal my sacred wound."

The Breakthrough: The Magic in Manifesting

And in that sustained commitment to owning my personal shadow of cheating life and of fears, the transpersonal was finally able to break through.

And what broke through were inspirations and connections that took me way beyond the personal crisis I had been facing. I was shown ways to step forward onto a higher path (work with my life as energy), amends to make (come clean with my Beloved), entirely new, powerful ways to work with my internal resistances (the "gift" of resistances!), risks to take (whole workshops to give), gifts to give (resume my psychotherapy practice).

I was shown how to break out of my self-imposed prison. The door swung wide in front of me, and my part in this magnificent co-creation was to walk through, step by step. And these were the magical powers that come with the medicine. Having taken the sacred medicine for my wound, the medicine could now work in its guise as magical powers.

I have submitted to enough Vision Quests to know the key is in the integration work that follows at home. I have never failed to receive more than I bargained for during a Vision Quest, and I have never failed to experience the hard work of attempting to honor the higher path I have been shown once I am home again.

So this time I wanted to be prepared for this integration work. Throughout the nine days, I tracked all the ways Spirit showed me to integrate this initiation. I even had a whole section of my journal entitled "Integration At Home." I came to think of this as the weaving of the worlds (the alternate reality I was experiencing on the Vision Quest and the more mundane reality of my normal life). One example of this integration: immediately upon returning home, my Beloved and I spent a short three day weekend trip together in which I was able to leisurely share with her (and review for myself) everything I had written in my journals. This time together also allowed us to synchronize our visions, work through shadow material that came up, and feel forward movement together. Another example of the integration: writing this to share with you (and getting it deeper myself).

Summary:

Here, in summary form for you, are some of the teachings I received about manifesting, medicine, and magic:

Spirit will urge you to take a retreat or Vision Quest. When Spirit does this, honor this urge (contact me for help, support, suggestions, and assistance, if you like, at 800-394-5809). ¨ Schedule such an initiation at an astrologically auspicious time (to gain the additional power of "as above, so below").
Take a specific purpose into the Vision Quest, but be prepared to go deeper than you can even imagine.
Spirit will administer to you exactly the medicine your sacred wound needs.
Be willing to face the music, take the medicine, own your stuff.
Open to receive new ways to re-new your Life and purpose.
Know that you will receive powerful inspirations for manifesting what you truly want.
Track, and commit to, the integration work required to bring this Light back into matter.
Enter the whole process as a co-creator, and seek the unification of the personal with the transpersonal.
You will receive the medicine to heal you, and the magic to move you into manifesting on a whole new level of power.
The entire process will come organically from within you, as pure inspiration from your best teacher, Spirit.
I will state unequivocally that a Vision Quest is the most powerful way I know to face your sacred wound, take your sacred medicine, and get to your power of manifesting.
I will state unequivocally that a Vision Quest is the most powerful way I know to hatch a new life in the cave of your heart.
Your desire to manifest is itself the primordial urge of the cosmos (the Unifying Field) ever seeking more life for 15 billion years now and still going strong.