Manifesto: How To Get What You Want Without Trying

(or Universal Dinner Man, if you really want to be anal about it)

Manifesting the life you want is a dance you do with the Tao. That’s the point of it. It is, to be crude about it, a spiritual experience. You see it’s not the things, situations and events you manifest that bring you spiritual satisfaction, it’s watching the Tao in action as those things, situations and events spring into existence before your very eyes – that’s the blessing, that’s the point (if there is one).

But what is this Tao you dance with? The Tao, the Great Spirit, the Ineffable Suchness, generating, permeating, animating, connecting and informing the entirety of all creation, is actually something you can’t describe in words. It’s simply far too big to fit within words no matter how well-configured or chosen, even for such a loquacious chap as I. But you can trigger the realization of it – after all, it’s at the existential core of each and every one of us – by playing silly games. Traditionally, the Taoists of ancient times called it the mother of both existence and non-existence – note mother, not father. This alludes to its nurturing nature. But obviously the Tao is not really a woman, nor is it a man for that matter. This indicates that ancient Taoists were just as inclined to play silly games as post-modern ones, in which case come with me all the way into silliness here and picture this.

you’ve got nothing to lose and in fact everything in the entire world to gain.

You’re standing in line in the school canteen, Oliver Twist-style, your empty plate in your hands, shuffling along as kids do, looking down at the floor or at the dodgy haircut of the person in front of you. All of a sudden you find yourself at the front of the queue, and looking up you’re startled and gratified to see that the dinner lady, far from the dowdy archetype, is actually a voluptuous, sensuous, full-lipped, sex-goddess of a woman wearing silk underwear, suspenders, stockings and heels beneath her apron (or perhaps a firm-muscled sex-god, depending on your preference), who smiles at you bountifully and says, ‘Yes? And what would you like, young woman (or man)?’ Her body language, facial expression and vocal tone suggest you can ask for anything – anything in the whole wide world – and she’ll heap it on your plate.

‘I want everything,’ you hear yourself say, ‘not just purity or peace of mind, Dinner Lady, but absolutely everything.’

And rather than calling you a greedy little git, she smiles even more munificently than before and says, ‘You got it kid, but dance with me first!’ because she loves it when you ask for everything – it’s her nature to give, to generate – it’s what she’s here for. And she loves a good dance. And that’s why we love the Universal Dinner Lady so much.

As I said, it’s silly, and I wouldn’t want you, or me, to get stuck on it as a metaphor forever, but for now it’s a good working proposition – not that a proper Taoist would indulge in such personifications, preferring the Tao to remain the formless, uncarved block of undifferentiated absoluteness it is. But for improper erstwhile Taoists like you or me, and for the sake of gaining some basic understanding of the nature of manifesting what you want, I suggest we indulge ourselves. And you know why? Because …

the Universal Dinner Lady loves it when you ask for everything – it’s her nature to give.

you create your own reality and can create it any old way you like

It’s true. You can create a reality ruled by a scary ogre or one generated by someone as gorgeous and sexy as our beloved Universal Dinner Lady. It’s all about models and which ones you use. All the great metaphysical systems and all the great religions are, when stripped of all superfluous dressing and emotion, merely models you’ve chosen, consciously or unconsciously, to adopt. Once adopted, models take on a power of their own, which then rule your life.

(A funny thought just struck me. Imagine a hundred years from now some well-meaning idiot finding this manuscript and starting a new religion based on worshipping our Universal Dinner Lady. By the altar stands the priestess or priest wearing a pinafore, silk underwear, stockings and suspenders, and dolloping mashed potatoes and mushy peas onto the plates of the devotees who come up for their weekly sacrament. I like it as an idea – it’s got legs.)

But time is money and money is time, or so they say, so back to the plot. Your mind, when harnessed, is all-powerful and the way it describes reality to you is the way you’ll believe it to be. Not only that – and here’s the metaphysical twist that distinguishes this from a get-rich-quick book – the way you believe it to be is precisely the way it will play itself out on the stage of your world.

In other words, believe your world to be a hostile place where you have to fight for every scrap and morsel and that’s the reality you’ll have. You’ll (unconsciously) transmit signals through body language, facial expression, vocal sound and sentence structure to everyone you meet, that say, ‘Beat me, beat me!’ Which is fine if you’re into that sort of thing and you like suffering.

However, if you don’t like suffering unnecessarily and want to enjoy yourself while you’re on the planet, you’re perfectly at liberty to believe your world a friendly, loving place where you need but ask and you will receive. And it will be so. It’s really as simple as that.

There are actually no rules save the ones you make up. No restrictions other than the ones you invent. The world conforms to the beliefs you hold about it.

the world

The world is a concept. What do you mean by ‘the world’ when you say it? Whatever it is, you can be sure it’s different, subtly or grossly, from what anyone else means when they say it. Yes, there will be common reference points – the planet’s more or less round and it hurts when you bang your head, for example – we all agree on that – but beyond the basics, everyone’s walking around with an entirely different concept of reality. Indeed, that’s the fun of being here. We’ve tried it the other way – the way of forcing everyone to believe the same concept, but the history of divisions even in any single religion, not to mention divisions between the religions themselves, is proof enough that life doesn’t work that way.

believe your world to be a hostile place where you have to fight for every scrap and morsel and that’s the reality you’ll have.

It’s impossible to make people conform fully to an ideology because each of us, no matter how indoctrinated we are, invents our own reality. And as I say, that’s the beauty of being here – the sharing of different ideas, views and gifts – it’s what makes ‘the world’ go round.

So there’s no objective reality, no ‘the world’ from a single point of view, only subjective reality, each of us living in our own worlds and coming together to share them. Then it’s all down to whether you play nicely or not. Whether you share your world with love or defend it with fear and hatred.

And you’re free to change your concept of the world as often or as radically as you like. For the purposes of this manifesto, however, I propose – should you be in earnest about getting what you want – that we conceive things along the lines of the Taoist schema, as follows.

everyone’s walking around with an entirely different concept of reality. and you’re free to change your concept of the world as often or as radically as you like.

wu wei

Wu wei (pronounced woo way) describes the process of our Universal Dinner Lady putting the proverbial food on your plate as soon as she’s had a good twirl on the floor with you. Literally, it means the art of causing things you want to manifest of themselves without straining in any way. This doesn’t imply laziness at all – you’ll still have to work your arse off – that’s the dance, but hard work never killed anyone. What kills people is the strain.

In fact our Universal Dinner Lady won’t want to dance with you at all if you’re straining in the Great Ballroom of Life – she’ll find herself a more relaxed, gracious and nimble-footed partner until you’ve learned to ease off a bit.

So the first step is to relax.

hard work never killed anyone. what kills people is the strain.

relax

Do you know how to relax? Do you know where to start? The answer lies in your body. Relax your body and your mind relaxes on its own. This is not to suggest collapsing on the floor, though – this is about relaxing every nerve and sinew as you dance. To achieve this most effectively, pay attention to the following tension build-up points, for by mentally releasing the tension accrued at these points, the whole body, and hence the mind, will relax.

Relax your solar plexus – the upper abdominal area, that houses your diaphragm; the muscle that makes your lungs work. Because this is where you process your emotions, it tends to become stuck and rigid through the inevitable residual build-up of emotional toxins and unprocessed pain and trauma we all accrue, which in turn causes blocking in the breathing pattern. As breathing freely is the major key to relaxing, it pays to remain mindful at all times of keeping this area relaxed enough to feel the sun shining in it all the time, even on the darkest day – hence solar plexus.

We describe controlling, rigid people as anal or tight-arsed for this very reason. The fear of the messy, chaotic underbelly of life that leads a person to feel the compulsion to attempt to control reality, to batten down the hatches, naturally causes the anal sphincter muscles to contract and remain in a permanent state of contraction. As well as being unhealthy for the bowels, because the tension is transmitted throughout the intestines and stomach, this also causes the entire pelvic region to grow rigid. When your hips are stiff it’s impossible to dance well and Dinner Lady (or Dinner Man) will be leading you off the dancefloor in no time. So let go of the tension here and feel your hips relax; and as your hips relax, notice that release spread up through your belly and back and down your thighs all the way to your toes.

relax your body and your mind relaxes on its own.

Relax the back of your neck. Being stiff in the back of the neck and shoulder girdle also arises from trying to control life with your brain, hence why we also describe controlling people as stiffnecked. When you allow the back of your neck to soften and lengthen, your whole shoulder girdle and upper back relaxes and the blood flows to your brain better, which brightens up your thoughts and increases the sharpness of sensory input through eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

Relax your face. Because your face is the part of you that literally faces the world most, it accrues tension without you noticing – all those smiles held for too long, all those frowns – and that tension uses up precious energy that should be flowing throughout your body instead. Just allow all the expression to dissolve from your features; allow yourself to look like a simpleton and you’ll feel the tension drain from the brain, through your throat and down the front of your body.

relax your anal sphincter muscles. rude to mention it in polite company perhaps, but important.

Finally, relax your chest. One of the finest compliments you can pay someone is to call them open-hearted and full of love. Everyone loves people like that, no less so our Universal Dinner Lady. You may think open-heartedness is something you’re either born with or not but that’s not true. Open-heartedness simply comes from having a relaxed chest. Not only that, the reduced pressure on the blood vessels connected to the heart and lungs helps you live longer so you have more time to perfect your moves on the dancefloor and hence manifest more. So let go of the tension in your chest now and feel the release radiate down your arms into your hands to generally make you more dextrous and hence able to handle life more effectively.

Obviously doing it just this once, though a fine and beneficial experience, is not going to be that useful in the long-term. To gain any long-term benefit, long-term enough to get some serious dancing done, you will need to continue repeating the practice pretty much all the time from now on till you die, while you work, rest or play.

one of the finest compliments you can pay someone is to call them open-hearted and full of love. everyone loves people like that.

What you may or may not have noticed then was the flow of awareness from solar plexus, down to the groin, up the back to the back of the neck, over the head to the face and down through the throat and chest. This route is known as the ‘microcosmic orbit’ or loop. Moving your mind round it in an upward direction along the spine, over the head and in a downward direction down the midline of the front of the body, which in turn causes your energy to move likewise, is one of the most powerful metaphysical tools at your disposal. It is this, in fact, that is …

the internal revolution

If you go deep enough into meditation or altered mind-states and you know what to look out for, you’ll notice, at the deepest level of your being, a flow of what the Taoists call ‘prenatal energy’ in constant motion up the back of your spine, over your head and down the midline of the front of your body. It is this flow that causes all the constituent parts of the self to hold together in a meaningful enough shape for you to recognize yourself as a discrete entity, from the most profound to the most superficial level of being. At the superficial end of the scale, all you need do to recognize yourself as an entity is to look in the mirror, but the force that holds you together in one piece in order that you may position yourself in front of the mirror in the first place is this ‘prenatal energy’. Even when you drop your body and die, say the Taoists, it will still be this flow that will hold you together in spirit form enough to recognize yourself – though of course this may be merely conjecture and does it matter anyway? However, what does matter is the huge significance of this fundamental force, which when consciously joined with lends you the manifesting power of the golden immortals (gods).

As soon as you learn to join your consciousness with it, you can manifest anything you want with ease. It would be tempting to waffle on about it for pages but it will be far more useful, from both our points of view, to get you started doing it immediately and subsequently to explain how to use it specifically for manifesting what you want. That way you can see how it works for yourself and it ceases to be merely an intellectual consideration. So, if that’s OK with you, seat yourself comfortably so your weight is fairly evenly distributed between both buttocks and your spinal column is pretty much perpendicular to the horizontal. Run a scan over the aforementioned relaxation trigger points, starting with your solar plexus, allowing your breathing to settle into a smooth, even pattern. Relax your anal sphincter muscles and pelvis, lengthen and release the back of your neck, relax your face, your throat and chest, and feel your limbs soften all the way to your fingers and toes.

Now, as you inhale, visualize, imagine; visualize yourself imagining; imagine yourself visualizing; or simply feel the breath float up your spine from between your legs, through the back of your neck and up to the crown of your head. Now exhale and feel the breath float back down the front through your face, throat, chest, solar plexus, lower abdomen and pubic bone, to end up between your legs, ready to rise up the spine again.

If at first you find it hard to get your mind round the loop in time with the breath, simply move your awareness slowly round the loop while breathing naturally. Remember, this is only a device to join your consciousness with the prenatal flow that is occuring anyway. You’re not trying to instigate something that wasn’t already there, but be patient, because it can take anything from three seconds to three decades before the conscious link-up occurs. Not that that matters, because as soon as you start actively circulating your awareness round the loop, your enhanced manifesting power is activated, the full effect and significance of which will be shortly explained. But first, a few (thousand) more words on the basics of visualization and what-have-you.

practise awareness of this internal revolution all the time now, while doing whatever else you do.

Meantime, practise awareness of this internal revolution all the time now, while doing whatever else you do during the day and night, whether at work, rest or play, and you’ll notice within days how your body, mind and spirit feel stronger already.

Now, before going any further along this path of getting what you want the wu wei way, it behoves me to ask you this question in order that you may ask it of yourself (of course) …

what on earth do you want?

It’s a strange thing. You walk around all day, every day, with an internal dialogue running in your head – a more or less uninterrupted conversation with yourself about what you want – yet as soon as someone – maybe an angel, maybe a barefoot doctor – asks you what you want, you go, ‘hmmm…’ and get all confused as a thousand images whirl kaleidoscopically around your forebrain. So, to make it simple, allow me to humbly present the basic common denominators at the root of all human desire, not necessarily, but probably, in order of importance: