What is the frequency or level of Consciousness present in us?
Are we coming from the Ego or Presence?
We touched on this earlier, but because of its importance, it is worth diving deeper. From my own experience, I can say that the question: “Why is this not working” showed up frequently for me. When I lived in Ireland in 2015, I stumbled upon the Meditation CD from Wayne Dyer called “Meditations for Manifesting.” In it, Dr. Dyer introduces us to an ancient technique called Japa. Summarizing the main elements aside from what we already discussed, we feel the energy rise from the Root Chakra to the Third-Eye Chakra. This energy, which is often referred to as Kundalini Energy, increases in its vibration the higher it comes, passing through all the other Chakras. In the Throat Chakra, we add the sound vibration by forming an “ahh” sound. So while we use our imagination to experience what we intend to manifest, we simultaneously stay connected to the rising energy in the body. That in itself sounds like an easy enough task, were there not the issue of each Chakra being either an amplifier or a bottleneck for the energy that is rising. Additionally my experience shows that holding an image of what we intend to manifest is often “diluted” by losing myself in thoughts that lead away into multiple directions.
In a way, each Chakra needs to be open to let the energy pass. So in a person that is considered to have attained Siddhi-Consciousness or Enlightenment, this manifestation technique wouldn’t even be necessary. On the opposite side of the spectrum is a person who is completely caught up in their thinking mind. It is often accompanied by suppressed pain and trauma stored in the body. So even if I am doing all that Wayne Dyer explains in the CD, if the energy reaches the Third Eye, it might take a long time, if ever, for me to manifest. In an analogy, the energy rising might be able to light up a single LED for a Christmas tree but not power a car battery, let alone provide a city block with electricity.
Coming back to:” Why is this not working for me?” The first question is almost answered because we might have to do some work on ourselves. This might involve letting go of past trauma, integrating disassociations, getting in touch and finding peace with our emotions on a regular basis, and establishing self-love and confidence in truly understanding who we are beyond form. I just mentioned a couple of things that might be related to the lower Chakras.
So you see, there are a lot of areas that might need our attention before the energy can easily rise to the Third-Eye Chakra.
This is one point of view. The other is that manifesting our heart’s desire when coming from an Ego position is a lot like; I want, I need, give me, etc. In this state, we rarely come from a place of benevolence, looking to expand and enhance Consciousness and for others to benefit from it as well. Is someone else better off now that I live in the big villa or own the Maserati that I imagine owning? This can be a dicey or hairsplitting topic because we may even want to share our wealth with others, want to be healthy to spend more time with loved ones or intend to bring about positive change in the world. So this is not an on-or-off position.
In combination with the energy present in us, it constitutes an energy field or potential, and depending on the level of Consciousness or presence in us, it can take some time for our manifestation to materialize.
Side note: I am telling the following story from the point of view of my experience as it was. The attentive reader might notice there are quite a few things I did that I explicitly mentioned to avoid and look out for. So those have been my learnings, and I hope it helps you to realize that I didn’t arrive at these conclusions via express download.
As I mentioned before, the years after my Vision Quest presented a few challenges. Apart from applying the Japa-technique to be making music at major electronic music festivals, I kept using it to imagine I would receive 50.000€. To be honest, I can’t even remember why it was that number. I only remember I had amassed a lot of debt to pay rent in Oslo, buy music equipment, and basic necessities like food. At some point, the situation was no longer feasible, and I decided to move to Ireland instead because I was offered a job in Cork. So there I sat in my apartment, having been disgorged by Oslo, a city I loved so much yet could no longer afford to stay. I started Japa Meditations for Manifesting and worked my butt off to manifest 50.000€. I am not saying this was well done; I just had no clue and wanted the money so bad that I could return to Norway and pick up where I had left.
The money didn’t come, surprise, and because of my coping mechanisms and having chosen one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had, I moved back to Germany a year later. The debt spiral kept escalating, and I kept doing Japa to no avail. Remarkably, I kept on doing it even though I didn’t see it working, but it made me feel better to form the sounds and to go through the affirmations that Dr. Dyer presented. At that point, I had lost all hope that this would work for me. In other tapes of Wayne Dyer, some people sent letters to him, showering him with gratitude for the technique because their whole lives had changed after a couple of years. That added fuel to the fire of the narrative, “I must be doing this the wrong way.”
Even though my “request” for the money showed up from time to time, most of my attention was occupied with imagining playing my music at Fusion Festival and Burning Man. At the time, I was organizing a music festival myself, and I was in the process of producing my first 90-minute set.
So I kept producing in the evenings and nights and had my hands full with meetings, tasks, and work for the festival. This time was insane, but because our collective and all the people involved had been a wonderful family, we pulled through and materialized the festival. All the while, I kept my meditation rituals. When the festival started, we can look at it positively or negatively.
The pessimistic filter would say I played in front of 10 people while the heaviest rain was pouring down. It was in the afternoon of the first official day of the festival, and people were slowly arriving on the grounds. Almost nobody had seen me play, and my imagined fame and fortune disintegrated like a bubble.
Looking at it from a more positive standpoint, I opened up the festival that my heart, blood, and tears had gone into; I played the main stage with a sound system that can be likened to a Ferrari in sports cars terms. Many people had been out of view, covered by tents, our Bar Buildings, and the Communal Kitchen. All that aside, I still remember the feeling I had when I fade-in the bass track at the beginning of the set. Adding one more element to this part of the story, when people ask me if I had the chance to revisit an experience in my life, I always say I would love to experience this festival one more time. It has been the most beautiful, loving, and magical event I have encountered in my life, and I was blessed enough to play one of my very first sets there. I kid you not; this might not have been Burning Man, but it was something much more valuable in hindsight. I only didn’t see it until many years later.
This is why this story doesn’t end here. I was still under the impression that Japa wasn’t working for me. In February 2018, I flew back to Hawaii. Inspired by the Pacific Ocean and the Sunrises I was fortunate to observe, I vowed to do Japa every morning and kept that vow except for minor interruptions to this day.
Fast Forward to the year 2021. After the Covid-Hiatus that got imposed on the world, keeping me from returning to Hawaii, I booked my tickets to Kona. My money situation had changed in the meantime but only because of the generosity of the lender and not because I had made any progress on repayments. I had planned to save money in my job, but that had not gone too well because I still worked on minimum wages.
Now we come to the part of the story everyone has been waiting for, or maybe it is just me who is waiting with disbelief for the climax of such stories where the miracle happens. Through an early inheritance the moneys I had imagined to receive for such a long time showed up. Tadda!
Yet it took me a similar amount of time to connect it back to my meditation for manifesting.
Bringing it back to where we started, what has my story to do with the question of whether we are coming from a state of Ego or Presence? My spiritual journey has led me through many challenges, especially with money. As self-created as these struggles had been, money had taught me valuable lessons. It was when I started to surrender and accept that money is not the root of all evil but one of the most prominent teachers in my life. In a way, if we allow it, our external experiences and challenges are helping us to chisel away the excess of who we aren’t, helping the light to shine through us and let go of ego-identification.
As difficult as it might be to acknowledge, my meditations for manifesting had very egocentric goals. Fame as a Musician, standing on large stages, and receiving recognition and appreciation for my music [replace the word music with “self”].
Receiving money so that I could live in a city that might have had a different purpose than the one I wanted to accept.
So in all those ways, I wonder if I am coming from an ego perspective or if I am aligned with my highest Self in bringing my light into this world.
With all the twists and turns in this chapter, the bottom line is this: Keep on keeping on with your manifestation practice. Even if we come from a self-centered place, we are always guided. By incrementally raising the frequency, we are subtly shifting, often only noticing when we are looking in the rearview mirror. Even if it is not what we saw in our imagination, we get the feeling that it had been the right thing or teaching.
A beautiful realization for everyone is seeing that life is not happening to us but for us. One of Albert Einstein’s famous quotes is: “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”