Month: July 2009

People keep asking me about manifesting and recently people starting asking me about Vision Boards, so here goes!

The vision board works on the principle of programming the reticular activating system with constant or regular stimulation. The reticular activating system is roughly the size of a finger running between the medulla oblongata and the mesencephalon at the brain stem. The job of the reticular activating system is to sort and evaluate all incoming data. Every day you see, smell and hear millions of things and the reticular activating system filters it so you (probably) don’t go insane. Apparently the brain can handle up to 100 trillion bits of information at any given time!!!  The more input you receive running along similar lines the higher the reticular activating system tags the information and the more importance it has.

To Quote Tristan Loo: “A simple way to conceptualize the reticular activating system is to think of it like a radio. You are surrounded by radio waves from various stations and your portable radio can pick up those channels, but only one at a time. You have to tune your radio to a specific frequency of your favorite radio station in order to receive it properly. Your reticular activating system is not much different in this regard. Imagine you are in a meeting room talking to several people and out in the distant corner of the room you hear your name. All your focus gets diverted in the direction that you heard your name because that bit of information is tagged by the reticular activating system as important to you. Your reticular activating system is responsible for having the ability to sleep through the noise of traffic outside your room, but waking up suddenly at the smallest cry from your infant child. Another example of the reticular activating system at work is when you go and buy a brand new car and then suddenly you notice many more people around your city have that exact same car.“

The reticular activating system can’t distinguish between a real event and imaginary reality, however, and we exploit this weakness to program it to seek out stimuli in our environment that resonate with our goals. Some people prefer to visualise what they want and others find it more beneficial to create a vision board. A vision board programs the reticular activating system to pay attention to certain things in your environment that are in frequency with your goal or vision, in much the same way as you are able to pick up your name being mentioned in a conversation on the other side of a room while talking to others. This selective attention filter makes you aware of daily things that can help you achieve your goal and it’s your job to take action on those opportunities when they present themselves.

How to make and use a Vision Board

Your personal vision board is only limited by the extent of your own creativity. Some of my students have produced simple vision boards and others have made vision boards that could probably sell at an art show for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Having artistic ability is not a prerequisite for creating a functional vision board however and the procedures I’ve outlined below can be used by anyone.

The general elements that a well-designed vision board should include are:

• Visual. Your subconscious mind works in pictures and images, so make your vision board as visual as possible with as many pictures as you can. You can supplement your pictures with words and phrases to increase the emotional response you get from it.
• Emotional. Each picture on your vision board should evoke a positive emotional response from you. The mere sight of your vision board should make you happy and fuel your passion to achieve it every time you look at it.
• Strategically-placed. Your vision board should be strategically placed in a location that gives you maximum exposure to it. You need to constantly bath your subconscious mind with it’s energy in order to manifest your desires quicker than you hope.
• Personal. Negative feelings, self-doubt, and criticism can damage the delicate energy that your vision board emits. If you fear criticism or justification of your vision board from others, then place it in a private location so it can only be seen by yourself.

Supplies Needed

• Foam core board (recommended) or poster board
• A large assortment of magazines. You want to make sure that these are in color. You can go to various businesses or hospitals to ask for their old issues.
• Glue / Tape / Prestick / Pins
• Scissors / NT Cutter
• (Optional) Color inkjet or laser printer
• (Optional) Avery stick on labels.
• (Optional) Internet access

Step 1—Compile your pictures. Start by going through your magazines and compiling all the pictures that you can find that are relevant to your goal. Don’t evaluate the pictures or start pasting them onto your board. Just stack them into a pile. If you are internet saavy, then a much quicker method that I do myself is to use an internet search engine to find good pictures that I can use for my board. You can either print the pictures out on paper and then glue it to the board, or print the pictures out onto a self-adhesive label so that it becomes a sticker. This is the preferred method because it is takes much less time to do and you can pinpoint your pictures using very good technology at your hands. Make sure that each image that you put on your board resonates with your heart and makes you excited at the mere look of it. It’s also important when selecting pictures to include anything that is congruent with your goal, such as any changes in your life that might result from obtaining your goal. So if your goal is to have a six figure income, then select pictures of a lifestyle that is congruent with your six figure income. Asking yourself the following questions might help you design a congruent vision board:

• What would you do differently when you realize your goal?
• Where would you travel?
• Where would you live?
• What would you wear?
• What things would you own?
• What kind of vehicle would you drive?
• What would you do for work?…Or would you work?
• Who would you help?

Step 2—Sort and Cut. Go through your pile of pictures and select the ones that impact you the most emotionally. Cut the extraneous material away from the image.

Step 3—Arrange and glue. Start arranging your pictures creatively on your board. Don’t worry about being artistic—that’s not the point. The point is that your board should resonate with your emotions. Arrange your pictures in a way that gives you an emotional connection to your vision board. After you are satisfied with the arrangement, glue all your pictures in place. Additionally, you might want to add writing or drawing on your vision board if you feel that it would better resonate with your emotions. A feature unique to my vision boards is that I also put two labels on the bottom of board that read: “Date created: [today’s date]” and “Date Manifested: [blank]” This lets me know how long my vision has been gestating since its creation and also every time I look at my vision board, not only am I emotionally charged with the pictures, but I also feel an overwhelming sense to see it manifested to completion.

Step 4—Strategic positioning. The most important part of having a vision board is having it in a strategic location that gives you as much visual exposure to it throughout the day. For most of us, this is in the office, but if that is not possible or appropriate, then try your living room or your bedroom. Some people I know mount their vision boards on the ceiling above their bed so that it is the first thing they see when they wake up and the last thing they see when they go to sleep. If you are sensitive to what others might say of your vision board, then be sure to keep it in a safe area where only you will see it. Negative criticism or justification of your dreams can kill the energy that your vision board releases. As Brian Tracy states, “What they don’t know, can’t hurt you.”

Step 5— Update your vision board. Your vision board has to inspire you. It has to charge you with renewed passion everytime you look at it and over time and as you progress closer towards your vision, you might find that some of the images or pictures on your vision board don’t really carry as much emotional impact on you as they did before. When this happens, you’ll want to update your vision board with new fresh images that do inspire you. You’re vision board is not a finished piece of art after its initial creation. It’s a dynamic piece of art that shifts and changes as your vision shifts and changes. Therefore, if you find your level of passion that your vision board gives you is growing weaker, then update it to bring fresh new emotions to it.

Examples of Vision Boards

Many of you may have heard me say: ‘Thoughts become things’ (Something Mike Dooley always says at the end of his TUT messages ). But really, thoughts DO become things.

How many times have you manifested your worst nightmare? Why did that happen? Where did you go wrong? When you look back at it, you may find that you’ve been worrying about something bad happening over a period of time (sometimes even five minutes is enough time to manifest something you don’t want).

We’ve all read books like You Can Heal Your Life, watched The Secret, as well as What the Bleep Do We know (I hope! And if you haven’t read the books, or watched the DVDs, then get cracking!) It’s the same message over and over again. It doesn’t matter if it was written 30 years ago (You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise L. Hay or Ask and It Is Given, by Esther Hicks) or if is something more recent like The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (information taken from Esther Hicks and repackaged). Thoughts Become Things aka, The Law Attraction. The Law of Attraction is information that has been around for much longer than even Louise Hay, Esther Hickes or Rhonda Byrne. It is natural law – as old as the universe. You’ll be able to find information about the Law of Attraction dating back to the early 1900’s! Click here for more information.

I would also like to bring your attention to something else that we received early in the 1900‘s, nearly 100 years ago. The Gokai, known in the West as the Five Reiki Precepts, were taught by the founder of Reiki, Mikao Usui to his students as guidelines on their journey of spiritual development.

The Reiki Precepts, translated from Japanese into English, read as follows:

The secret of inviting happiness through many blessings
The spiritual medicine for all illness

NOW (lit.jp “Just for Today”)
I am gentle and calm (lit.jp “Do not anger”)
I trust (lit.jp “Do not worry”)
I am humble and appreciative (lit.jp “Be grateful”)
I am focused on my spiritual development (lit.jp “Work hard on your buddhist spiritual practice”) [ed. note: generally mis-translated as ‘Be honest in your work’ or ‘Work hard’]
I am kind to myself and others (lit.jp “Be kind and compassionate to others”)

Do gassho (palms together in front of the chest, in a praying position) every morning and evening. Keep [the precepts] in your mind and recite [three times – for best results recite the precepts out aloud].

The introduction of the precepts tells us of a secret way of life that will cure / prevent all illness. Really? How? (Here is that reference to a secret again.)

Just for today brings your focus into the NOW. Although not named as one of the five precepts, it is just as important as the five listed precepts. Just for today teaches us the importance of living in the NOW – and not in the past, or the future. It is at this very moment that we are living and breathing. We have nothing more than the present moment. Nothing is more valuable than this very moment. (Recently ‘repackaged’ by Eckhart Tolle, ‘The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment’ and ‘Practising the Power of Now’)

The first precept says; Do not anger, but why should we not get angry? We all get angry from time to time. Personally I believe it is good to vent your anger when you do get angry, but it is essential to find a creative way to release this kind of emotion. This release can take place by doing something creative, talking to the person who offended you, doing some exercise, or even sending Reiki to the problem. With regards to the precepts, I believe that they are delving much deeper than simply surface anger. I believe the precepts are focusing on anger and resentment over prolonged periods of time without any form of release.

Remember that ‘thoughts become things’ (you’re going to get sick of me saying it.)

Louise Hay says in You Can Heal Your Life: “ACCIDENTS are no accident. Like everything else in our lives, we create them. It’s not that we necessarily say, ‘I want to have an accident,’ but we do have the mental thought patterns that can attract an accident to us… Accidents are expressions of anger… We get so mad we want to hit people, and instead, we get hit…”

It’s also been said that what you send out (in the form of thought patterns – both positive and negative), comes back to you multiplied.

She goes on to write; “I knew I had to clear the patterns of resentment I had been holding since childhood. It was imperative for me to let go of the blame. Yes, I had a very difficult childhood with a lot of abuse — mental, physical, and sexual. But that was many years ago, and it was no excuse for the way I was treating myself now. I was literally eating my body away with cancerous growth because I had not forgiven.”

Going through the list of illnesses in You Can Heal Your Life, you can see how many of them are related to anger and resentment:

Addison’s Dis-ease, Alzheimer’s Dis-ease, Animal Bites (accident?), Anorectal Bleeding (Hematochezia), Anal Abscesses, Bell’s Palsy (paralysis), Bleeding, Boils (Furuncle), Burns, Cancer, Candida, Carpal-Tunnel Syndrome, Cellulite, Conjunctivitis (pink eye), Depression, Dry Eye, Dysentery, Dysmenorrhoea, Earache, Fever, Halitosis (Bad Breath), Haemorrhoids, Hepatitis, Hirsutism, Huntington’s Dis-ease, Infection, Keratitis, Kidney Stones, Leucorrhoea, Lockjaw, Mastoïditis, Mononucleosis…

… And the list goes on and on.

One of the big ones on the list is CANCER. I ask you today to look closely at your life and see what is making you angry or resentful. Please don’t keep your anger and resentment bottled up inside you! Don’t sit brooding on it 24/7! By doing so you are wasting precious energy and using it in the wrong way… to make yourself sick. Rather acknowledge your anger and release it by sending Reiki, love and light to the issue.

The next precept given to us is: Do not worry. I think this is a big one that many people struggle with. What do we normally worry about? We worry about the past… and worry about the future… Of course we cannot worry about the present, because it is happening NOW… Mmm, let’s look back at our hidden precept introducing the five precepts; Just for today. Here is the reminder again about living in the NOW. If you live your life according to Just for today, you won’t spend any valuable time worrying about anything. Also, if you live in the NOW you are likely to skip this precept as superfluous, as a person who never worries and lives in the now moment.

Worry is probably one of the worst things we can do (after keeping in anger and resentment for prolonged periods of time). Remember that thoughts become things. When you worry about money, you end up not having any money. When you worry about being late for a meeting, you end up being late for the meeting. You worry about losing something – and you put it in that very special place, only to find that you lost it, because you can’t remember where that very special place is. But just stop and think about it… what would happen if you had to constantly worry about being robbed, raped, and attacked, etc?

I have lived in Cape Town most of my life. When I went to college I used to take the train. People kept telling me that it was dangerous and I started worrying about it… thinking about it… feeding fear, that wasn’t mine to begin with. One day I decided to take all my work home to sort out my portfolio (I was studying graphic design at the time). I had with me my entire 2-year portfolio, back-up discs of my computer work and everything else I thought I might need… I was mugged that day and my entire portfolio was lost. I was mugged another three times in a space of a few months before I realised that I was creating it myself by feeding my fear by worrying about it. I moved to Johannesburg after the fourth mugging, armed with the knowledge that I create what I worry about. I safely lived in Johannesburg for six years… never robbed, never mugged and never hijacked although my friends kept reporting these incidents happening to them.

The next precept is very important (I think it should have been the second precept, after Just for today / NOW). Be humble and grateful. Humans are funny things. We like to look at what we don’t have… what we want… where we want to go… what doesn’t work in our lives… etc. How often do we remember to be really grateful for what we have? How often do we thank God, our Angels, our Guides, our Higher Self or whatever we want to call the higher power, for what we have or FOR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO RECEIVE? One of the greatest masters; Jesus, started every single prayer with ‘I THANK YOU FOR WHAT I’M ABOUT TO RECEIVE’ or something running along those lines. What a great lesson to learn here. Starting every affirmation off with a simple THANK YOU. You’ll be amazed to see what this will do for you and how your life can change for the better.

Focus on your spiritual development. This next precept is mostly mistranslated as WORK HARD or EARN AN HONEST LIVING. What? Work yourself to the bone? Work yourself sick? Go sit in the corporate / commercial world and drain all your energy? I thought the precepts are there to help us to have a healthier life!? Both translations are right to some degree, but I didn’t feel that either of the two fit in with the rest of the precepts. Luckily for me, kanji (Chinese and Japanese characters used for writing) are not too foreign a concept for me to understand as I am studying Mandarin and I have Chinese and Japanese dictionaries. Japanese and Chinese have different kanji (characters / words) to describe different kinds of work. The kanji used to describe ‘work’ in the precepts implies that of spiritual work, such as prayer, meditation and spiritual development, etc. This little bit of insight makes the world of difference in the advice that is given to us through the Reiki Precepts.

Focusing on spiritual development will definitely help us to be healthier and to live good lives. Focusing on spiritual development will teach us and empower us with all the tools we need to be able to skip over quite a few precepts. But, don’t forget the tests. To quote Caroline Myss, “Whenever you become empowered, you will be tested.”

Finally we are told to Be compassionate to ourselves and others. If we look at the original text in Japanese, it says that you should be compassionate to others. In Western terms, this excludes us from the equation. This is the reason for me translating it to compassion for yourself and others, so as to remind us not to forget to be kind, loving or compassionate to ourselves. So many of us forget to love ourselves as we love others.

Now I am going to ask you to go a little further in your thinking. It’s here I am asking to push forward the boundaries in your mind. I would like to explore the premise of ‘we are all one’ as spoken of in the quantum approach. This is not a very easy concept for everyone to accept. Not that the concept is too big to accept, but because each and every one of us would therefore have to admit, as a result of this premise, that we are also one with the ‘negative’ elements of our society, such as the rapists, murderers and any other ‘evil’ people of the world. Our job as lightworkers is to send light and love into the world and to everyone in it. We should not pass judgement on others as it is not our place to judge, no matter who they are. Our love needs to be unconditional – to all the people of the world, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, without prejudge, or without reserving our light for only a precious few (who we deem worthy).

Everyone is deserving of the light. That is our role on earth at this time – to send light to all. We have to remember the notion of sacred contracts. (Much can be said about sacred contracts, but it is probably best to refer you to Sacred Contractsby Caroline Myss and Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, to get a better understanding (as it will take up few extra pages in this blog). An extreme example of this is in the case of a molested child, where the molester inflicts abuse on the child in order for the child (and the person performing this ‘evil’ act) to experience it, to learn from it and to grow. Rape, murder and all the other atrocious crimes that happen in the world are also part of the sacred contracts of our lives. This might be a very difficult pill to swallow – exceedingly so – but it is necessary to think this through. Once accepted, we will be less prone to judge others because of their actions and it will bring us closer to understanding God in everything.

Also, as we change our own personal vibration through our spiritual development, the vibration of our Earth is changing with or without us. As soon as a critical mass is reached and we pass through the threshold of Separate Consciousness to Universal Consciousness (Consciousness of ‘we are all one’), the dark energies of the world will have two options… Join the light or fall off the planet (quite literally).

If you have read any books by Dr. Brian Weiss and Michael Newton, you will also realise the overwhelming evidence for the notion of past lives and reincarnation. If you take this into consideration, who can honestly say without a doubt that they have only had pious past lives and that they have only been ‘good’ people? We have all been the murderer, the rapist, the priest, the nun, the ‘evil’ person, the beggar, the ‘weak’, the ‘powerful’, etc. Who are we to judge others, when we ourselves have done those very same deeds, albeit in another lifetime? Or lived similar lives? We simply cannot judge. We have to approach those people with love and understanding of their sacred contracts. This is not to say that we are to condone their actions. It is simply not our place to judge them. Our anger toward them is also pointless. It makes all our work towards spiritual growth and development for nothing – and completely invalidates the precept of Do not anger.

Everything is linked – and we need to think carefully before we think and act on our emotions or our egos, which hold us back – and which prevent us from seeing the light (literally and figuratively speaking).

Again, it is our job as lightworkers to send love out into the world. Why is this our task? What is the point of sending love and light out through Reiki and other methods? It is so that our planet can reach a critical mass where more and more people live in the light and become ‘en-lightened’. At this point, the darker, denser energies will leave our planet or turn to the light.

But I’ve been side tracked! This blog entry is supposed to be about manifestation and where we go wrong when we manifest our deepest fears, because we are not consciously taking responsibility for our thought patterns and affirmations, or in other words, we are not living in the NOW.

Time and time again I remind people that thoughts become things. I am starting to feel like a broken record. But at the same time I probably need to keep hearing it too. We are all human after all and we are all working on this simultaneously.

A person tells me that she has a deep-seated fear that her child will be stolen, molested and killed. My immediate reaction is (you guessed it): ‘Thoughts become things.’ But really now, if this is something that is on your mind constantly and something you are ‘feeding’ thoughts (from your mental world / body) and emotions (from your emotional world / body), it is only a matter of time before it will manifest in your physical world. And when it happens, the person will most likely say: ‘See, I told you this was going to happen!’ or ‘I hate all the ‘evil’ people out in this world and they all deserve to die!’ or ‘Why did this happen? My child does not deserve this! I am a lightworker… Why is God punishing us like this?’ This is not taking responsibility in the role she took in creating this scenario.

Another person tells me that he is worried about not having enough money. My reaction is the same: ‘Thoughts become things.’ If you keep thinking about it and putting emotion behind it (i.e. WORRY about lack of money) then it’s only a matter of time before this manifests in your physical world and then you WON’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY. Again the reaction would be: ‘See, I don’t have money!’ or ‘What am I doing wrong? I just never have enough money? Why do other people always have lots of money?’ This kind of talk just enforces this continuous negative manifestation. Manifestation really does work like magic! You get exactly what you ask for… no more and no less!

Yet another person tells me that she is scared of never meeting Mr. Right and that she wants a boyfriend. I’ll spare you my ‘thoughts become things’ story (whoops, too late!). But seriously, ‘scared of never meeting Mr. Right’?! There is your first thought that you keep feeding with thoughts and emotions (i.e. Worry and fear)… Fear is the opposite of Love, worry is the opposite of faith and for some strange reason it has stronger manifestation power… or so it seems. Fearing that she will never meet the right guy sets the stage for her not meeting the right guy… The next thing is that she ‘wants a boyfriend’. The word ‘want’ always puts what she truly wants to manifest just beyond reach. The word implies a ‘desire to have’, but this is not ‘having’ in the present moment (HAVE). This is just another negative affirmation… by enforcing this through thought and emotion, she will attract situations into her life where she will always WANT a boyfriend and never HAVE a boyfriend.

How do we fix this? And what does all this have to do with Reiki anyway? Number one… it has a lot to do with Reiki, because Reiki can help. Number two… change your thoughts! Because, THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS!

Using Reiki to help you with manifestation

There are many techniques that you can use to help speed up your positive manifestations. Level 1 practitioners can use Nentatsu Ho (students who have not been taught the traditional Japanese techniques can contact me directly for instruction of this technique, or will have to wait patiently until I post the technique on the blog… in the near future) to enforce affirmations. Level 1 practitioners will have to work only with affirmations and creative visualisation, until such time as they learn new techniques in Level 2.

Affirmations should always be positive and should always be said in the NOW / present tense… Oh, and don’t forget to say THANK YOU!

Some examples of affirmations are:

• I appreciate the limitless, overflowing Source of my abundance.
• I AM always in the right place at the right time.
• All is well in my world.
• I AM the powerful creator of my reality.
• I love myself, I accept myself and I approve of myself. [My favourite affirmation of all time!]

I AM is also a very powerful phrase to use for affirmations.

Level 2 practitioners can make use of the first symbol to help with manifesting things. Simply visualise what you would like to manifest and recite your relevant affirmation (if you have one), draw Symbol One (CKR aka the Focus / Power Symbol), chant the mantra three times, draw Symbol One a second time and chant the mantra three times. The important thing to remember is to keep the intent while you do this. Level 2 practitioners can also make use of the affirmations technique alongside Nentatsu Ho… Level 2 practitioners also have the ‘upgraded version’ of Nentatsu Ho in the form of Seiheki Chiryo Ho.

Level 3 practitioners have all the techniques listed thus far and they can make use of the crystal grid. Personally I reserve the crystal grid for serious events and I don’t use this technique to manifest things left, right and centre. You’ll see me hauling out the crystals to pack a grid for serious illness, big events like the Tsunami, 9/11, the UK bombings and the War in Afghanistan. However, the crystal grid is a technique that you learned and it is another tool that you can use without judgement.

At the end of the day, it boils down to an attitude adjustment. By thinking negative things we are going against our grain and then we actually CREATE NEGATIVE THINGS in our world, instead of ridding our environment of negative things. Keep your thoughts positive. Bless the energies you don’t agree with (the rapists, criminals, murderers and people who don’t see your point of view, etc.) Simply surround them with love and light and send them to the Universe. You’ll be amazed to see how things change for you and the world around you. Fear will be replaced with love. Anger will be replaced with acceptance. Worry will be replaced with feelings of gratitude, comfort and safety.

It’s all in the mind… thoughts become things. Let this be your mantra, just for today…