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Can We Manifest Desired Behaviors In Other People? Once we accept the radical idea that we have full choice and the ability to make our lives into absolutely anything we want, this brings up the ultimate paradox, which is: If everyone else has this power too, then we can’t control anyone. This is where our confidence in the process often breaks down; no matter how hard we try, those other people don’t yield to our desires in quite the way that the rest of reality seems willing to.
We can imagine and undertake the process of creating more money or better health, or a nice apartment or a new car, or any one of an infinite variety of things that might please us. We can see our way through to having the life of our dreams, right down to the last nitty-gritty detail. We can even see our way to imagining the perfect partner or business colleague or friend or family member—as long as we don’t already have one.
Isn’t it easy to imagine the perfect person to have in our life? In whatever relationship category you find yourself lacking—lover, child, business partner, close friend—take a moment to imagine the perfect person to fill that category. It’s easy to see exactly what you’d like, imagining all the details of personality, emotion and situation. If only we could just bring that perfect example of whom we want to life! When we turn to the places where the roles are already filled by real people, however, isn’t it a lot harder to imagine how we could ever turn those imperfect examples into the companions of our dreams? Why can’t we just make them be more attentive, more compassionate, more intuitive, happier, generous, etc. etc. etc.? You can add to the infinite list of qualities we’d like to see in the people around us. But how do we get from the happy vision to the reality, when we know that just as I am the only one in charge of my reality, so is each other person solely responsible for theirs? There are three ways to approach this topic: control; choose; or create. Control: to exercise restraining or directing influence over; to have power over ~ (Webster’s Dictionary) We can see right off that this is not a word that describes our relationships with other people. It seems to me that it doesn’t even really describe the relationship I have with reality. Control is an ego word. It implies a force that is exerted against something outside itself, against some other. But reality as I am coming to know it doesn’t involve that kind of separation between me and the outside world. My health/money/stuff isn’t separate from me in a way that would let me control it. Choose: to select freely and after consideration ~ (Webster’s Dictionary) This gets closer. This seems to be what the practices of conscious creation are all about: looking at everything that is available in the world, and then choosing what best pleases and satisfies me. Choice implies free will, but it is different from control in that it doesn’t have that sense of reaching out from the self and attempting to exert dominance. It implies drawing something in to the self. The trouble I have run into with Choose is just that there are things in my reality still that I didn’t choose. Nope. No way. Sorry. Friends would say to me: But you know you chose this, about any situation that made me unhappy. Choice implies conscious awareness of what you are getting and a decision to pursue a course with full awareness and acceptance of the consequences. This did not seem to describe the process I was finding. There was something there, all right, between me and the difficult bits; but it wasn’t choice. Create: to bring into existence; to produce through imaginative skill; to produce or bring about by a course of action ~ (Webster’s Dictionary) Can you see where we are going now? Create implies nothing at all about what’s already out there. In creation, we are bringing about a whole new reality. There isn’t something already out there that we are trying to manipulate (control) and there isn’t a wide array of things out there that we are trying to pick among (choose); there is only the field of probabilities, the quantum void, the state of non-local intelligence. In Creation, we project out of our own nature and energy and that projection takes on material form. You can imagine anything you want – and with a perfect belief behind it, it would be manifested. Your nature is to create, you can’t not do it. Your power is something that you can’t lose, give up, have stolen, turn off, abdicate or wear out. It is unlimited and continuous—that’s why your reality continues from moment to moment, relentlessly, without a break. You are creating every moment. Creating. Making new out of nothing. Producing through imaginative skill. It is here, in that inner process, that all the power lies. It is here, in the imaginative skill we each have, that our access to the immense diversity of experience resides. Not out there in the already manifested world, but in here in the spiritual power of the Self. If you want to change reality, or create something new, ignore what’s “out there”; that is just a result of previous imaginings, yesterday’s creation. To bring something new into being requires a new creative act, not some fiddling around with the leftovers from yesterday. So, what about relationships? What about relationships? Have you noticed that quite often there are those who absolutely admire and adore people that you find intolerable? There are several of these situations in my life. How can you possibly not see what they are really like? That’s what I imagine asking the admirers of my difficult acquaintances. How can it be that the people I find so hard to get along with are so well-liked by everyone else? And how can it be that people I just love get a bad rap from the outside world? What kind of reality is this, anyway? Try to describe who you really are. Go ahead. Try. Child, parent, lover, business person, baseball player, gardener, volunteer coordinator, dreamer, ice cream lover, reader… does this do it? Does this sum you up? What about memories, your favorite color, how you laugh in the wrong places at the movies, that cough that shows you are nervous, the way you ride the clutch at the light, your knack with dogs, that you dislike crying babies, are addicted to raspberry sorbet… Can I list enough things to sum up who you are? Isn’t the totality of you so immense that there is no way to describe you, no way to bring the wholeness and diversity of your being under the umbrella of words? All of us are so immense in our natures and capacities. We are vast lakes of reflective water, and each attribute and characteristic, experience and memory, desire and creation is like a pebble dropped on the surface, creating endless intersecting waves that form a beautifully complex pattern of ripples. Our moments of living are like focusing on one point of that pattern of waves. In each moment we collapse that immense wave-like aspect of our nature, that spread-all-over-the-place enormity of ourselves, down into the one specific person we need to be right now in this moment in order to deal with, receive and respond to our latest split second creation. It’s big stuff we’re doing, living. And now maybe we begin to get a glimpse of how relationships fit in. We can’t control another person. We can’t just choose the “right” person and be set up for life. How disappointing is it, when Mr. Right shows those other facets of his character! Didn’t I choose well? I want to ask. Did I pick the wrong one? If we look at all of us as those endless and endlessly changing patterns of ripples on the lake, being focused into materiality in each moment and then refocused and refocused as we adjust our desires and our understanding of what is possible, we can begin to see a way through the paradox of relationship. If each and every one of us is so immense, and if reality is not about control or choice, but about creation anew in each moment—then how we deal with the paradox is to understand that what we are creating out of our own energy is going to be attracted to, reflected in, and materialized as that aspect of the other person that best resonates with what we are giving out. So no, you can’t control anyone else (the happy corollary to that is that no one else can control you). You can’t make someone love you if he doesn’t. You can’t make someone be kind, generous, happy—nothing. You. Can’t. Make. Them. But! You can create within yourself what you desire to see. Out of the vastness of your nature you can focus on those intersecting waves of probability and materialize into reality the exact experience that you desire. This might bring out of the person you are already with, those elements of his or her nature. Or it might attract to you someone else entirely. But if you visualize it on the inside, it will be reflected on the outside. Somehow. Our problem is being stuck on some aspect of reality as we know it. No, no, it has to be this person!! How well do I know how that feels. But if we can learn to detach from the outside and create what we desire on the inside, we’re going to see it out there. That’s the only way. We have to let go of preconceived notions of what we “have to have”. We have to be willing to live on the edge of uncertainty. And then, in its own time and form, what we wish and wait for appears. Inevitably. By Margie Waters
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