I have a strange relationship with 'woo woo'. I'm someone who is able to hold two opposing ideas in my head at the same time and they don't cancel eachother out: I take the bits that I feel apply to me and use it in a way that I see fits. I think it's stupid to totally dismiss anything just because you don't understand it, and if 37 years on this planet has taught me anything it's that this world is a very weird place and for all our advancements we still know very little about anything.
Tarot cards are a prime example of my Orwellian 'doublethink'. I recently had a discussion with two people - both men, about using Tarot cards. One of them looked at me like I'd just sprouted green antennae, the other one bought his own pack to try and absolutely loves them. The funny thing is that the skeptical first guy meditates, believes in energy and is generally quite open minded. The guy who bought the cards is as bricks-and-morter 'down-to-earth' anti hippy-bullshit as you can get. I found this fascinating. For me I don't see Tarot cards as woo-woo or even spiritual. I use them as a tool for self-reflection and they have ALWAYS helped me find clarity when I'm stuck with something. I find the fact they focus on different areas of our being: mind, heart, energy, physical realm, and different areas within those categories immensely helpful in getting me to see a problem from multiple angles and coming up with a solution that I would never have considered on my own. Tarot never lies. Maybe there is something mystical in it. Maybe not. I don't know. I'm smart enough to admit that I don't know. I don't need to know either. Knowing won't make it any more or any less useful to me. Personally I feel they are a bit like horoscopes in that they are generic enough to apply to everyone. I don't see that as problematic, because everyones problems have elements in common, and if something resonates with you and helps you understand yourself and your approach to life better then there's nothing bad in it.
Another example of my 'doublethink' is that I have a collection of crystals. Not because I believe that they'll ease my heartache or cure my period pain, but because I think they're pretty. But at the same time I recognise that crystals, minerals and gems are used in radios and watches, scientific and medical equipment and if they work with energy in that way and we are energy then maybe there is something in it. See what I mean? Two opposing views at once. Neither is more valid than the other.
Ok but what about manifesting?
This is something I'm just consciously and tentatively trying out. I do believe in energy - scientifically we know that everything in the world is made of atoms and molecules that vibrate. Energy never disappears it just tranforms. I have noticed several instances in my life where things seem to happen mysteriously, and I've seen some things on some science videos recently that have brought all of it bubbling up into my mind this week to see what I may be able to achieve if I approach manifesting intentionally.
First the science. Two things I've seen lately that have made me sit up and pay attention.
The first one was a man with a 440Hz tuning fork (TFA) on a table. A ball was suspended by a string so that it rested against one side of this tuning fork. The man took out another three tuning forks (TFB), held them close by the original and hit each one in turn. Two of them did nothing. One of them made the ball next to TFA start bouncing. The two that did nothing were pitched at a higher and lower frequency than the original tuning fork. The one that made the ball bounce was also 440Hz. So vibrational matches cause things to happen. Wix won't let me embed youtube shorts, but here's the link in case you'd like to watch this for yourself
Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist conducted an experiment where people projected their emotions onto water and he discovered that different emotions created changes in the mollecular structure of water. Water has a memory, and its state can be changed. Here's a video a random youtuber made experimenting on rice
Our hearts have an electromagnetic field that can be detected up to 3 feet away from our bodies. This electromagnetic frequency is stronger than that of our brain.
So that tells me a couple of things: That as we are 80% water, the thoughts we think and the thoughts we are exposed to change the composition of our bodies. Quantum Mechanics have found that thoughts have frequencies. Frequencies attract things on a similar frequency. And our frequency can be detected outside our own bodies and therefore have an impact, even if it is just subtle, on the things around us. This isn't just me being all woo-woo, this is science.
If we have gloomy thoughts, our energy dips, and our entire day feels like it goes down the toilet. Which means we get more gloomy, have less energy, have more crap hitting us and we feel more blah. If we have lots of happy thoughts we feel like we are on top of the world, everything feels like it's coming up roses and more good things seem to happen and this perpetuates more energy, more good things. If we're in a good mood an are around a gloomy gus we feel ourselves getting drained too, and the opposite is also true - if we're in a funk and spend time listening to cheery music or being around a positive friend, our mood and our energy lifts too. I've seen this pattern repeat in myself so many times!!!
I've also had experiences where 'what we think about we bring about' feels absolutely true to me, and how when my energy is high things click into place, and how the opposite also works. I'll give you a few of examples of this.
When I first moved to London, I didn't know anyone and was incredibly lonely. I'd just started at a new job but to me it's important for my mental health that my work life and personal life are in separate buckets. I don't want workmates to become real life friends unless they are incredibly special people. Plus nothing bores me more than everyone doing the same thing I do and just sitting around talking about work. So I wrote about my dream day in my journal. My dream day was sitting at a bench at the burger place in chelsea market on a beautiful early summer day laughing and talking with a bunch of friends I haven't met yet. I visualised it absolutely vividly - I could feel the sun on my skin, and how happy I was with these new friends. I shut my journal and forgot about it. A year later almost to the day guess where I was?. Yep. I was at chelsea market on a beautiful sunny day, sitting at a table with my new friends eating a burger. It wasn't til I was on the bus home that I suddenly remembered about my journal entry and said 'holy shit!' so loudly that the guy next to me edged away like I was a crazy person.
I had been struggling with Etsy sales for a while and was feeling pretty down about it - I had spent so long building things and trying to learn how pinterest and stuff worked and I felt like I was getting nowhere. I'd made about 3 sales in as many months. I'd set Etsy up to try and generate an income to help fund my drama school fees. I took a gamble, and signed up to a summer school at the drama school I will be applying to - it was a week long. It was full on and I was absolutely knackered and loved every second of it. Every morning I woke up with a bit more energy than the day before and I could feel my mood lifting and my energy really shifting to feel more like myself than I'd felt in years. I was having the time of my life. Every evening when I went home I quickly checked my emails on the train home. That week, without any effort, without any pushing, or needing or hoping or wanting or running any sales or ads, I'd made at least one sale a day. One day I'd made 3 sales by lunchtime.
In life generally, as soon as I start feeling good in myself, good things start showing up. As soon as I am excited about embarking on a new venture and am absolutely adamant I have no interest in or time for love, I end up with a boyfriend. Without fail.
Now here's an example of it working the other way around. In my mid 20s I was in a great relationship. The guy worshipped the ground I walked on, he built me up, encouraged me, made me feel invincible, beautiful, loved etc. Every time he came home after a night out with his friends he wrapped me up in his arms and told me how lucky he was to have me and how he couldn't wait to come home and snuggle up to me. I just landed my first job as a designer and everyone was so proud of me and I felt like I was finally doing the adulting thing right and being a success and ticking the boxes I should. And then he started talking about marriage, and told all his friends he was going to propose. And I started to feel like it was too good to be true. And then I started questioning if I deserved it, deserved him, deserved my job, deserved to be living in such a beautiful home in such a lovely area. He was so much better looking than me, I wasn't this, I wasn't that....'holy shit can this really be happening to me? ME, the acne ridden nerd in school who had salt poured into her hair every lunch time and kraft cheese squares smeared onto her jumper by mean girls'. I started feeling fat and ugly and insecure and needing validation and reassurance that I was loved (which is ridiculous considering the guy had said he was going to marry me - what more assurance could you need??) And guess what happened? Yeah, I lost it all. My job went stale so I handed in my notice, and within 4 weeks I went from thinking I was imminently about to be a fiancee to being single and moving back in with my parents without a word of warning. And the kicker? As he was breaking up with me, totally out of the blue with no word of warning and no fights beforehand - I had a voice in my head saying 'see? You knew it was too good to be true. This was always going to happen'. And I remember that voice vividly to this day.
What you think about you bring about. Thoughts are powerful things. I've noticed that the last couple of months I've gone from being on top, excited about the future and applying to drama school to feeling like the wind has been taken out of my sails somewhat, and I'm not sure why but I've been on a bit of a downward spiral since the end of November. Maybe it's the winter blues, maybe it's something else - I don't know. My best guy friend (tarot guy) called me up the other day and said 'don't give me any of your bullshit, what's going on with you cos your voice is different'. (Voices are vibrations/frequencies too #justsayin).
I'm still not totally sure how I feel about 'manifesting' because to be totally honest saying stuff to myself like 'money flows to me in avalanches of abundance, I am adored, I am this I am that' blah blah blah feels a bit delulu. HOWEVER Scripting feels a bit more in my comfort zone - that feels like when I wrote about and visualised that day at the burger place so I can get behind that. Either way, I do firmly believe that getting control of your thoughts can only propel you in the right direction and my GAHD I've been having so many negative ones lately which I didn't even realise. I think I'm a pretty positive person generally - I'm smiley and cheerful and optimistic but having actually consciously spent time noticing my thoughts the past 48 hours I realise I have Frasier from Dad's Army living rent free in my head yelling toxic negativity like he has tourettes. Every time I have a nice positive thought he's elbowing his way in with a 'but' or a 'you're kidding yourself' and 'this wont' happen' or some other totally unnecessarily mean and negative comment that I really don't need and that's really messing with my vibe and my confidence and self esteem. He needs to be muzzled and evicted.
I am not ok with my thoughts doing this to me. And so many of them slip by so fast that they think they'll go unnoticed but I'm catching those suckers and challenging them. I remembered seeing a show called 'whitechapel' where the main character has invasive thoughts and a therapist slipped a rubber band over his wrist and said 'this is a thought stopper - every time you have an unwanted thought, ping it hard'. It seems drastic, but sometimes I think to really slam the brakes on something you need to go in hard so I've been wearing a hairtie on my wrist and lets just say the last 48 hours it's had way more use than I was expecting. I may have had some welts. Every time I catch myself I challenge the thought and correct it and replace it with something better. It's made me get a handle on those thoughts pretty quickly too I'll tell you that for nothing, and I am definitely feeling a little better as a result already. It's going to be an ongoing project for a while but hopefully positive thoughts will become habitual before long.
And finally, again on the the theme of Manifesting, because what are blogs for if to not shamelessly plug shit, I've made a manifesting journal in case any of you want to try it, and it's available in my Etsy shop.
