Vision and Manifestation

Fulfilling a vision: a long and winding road

I use the word manifestation to mean the ability to bring a vision or idea to fruition. My success at achieving this with several ambitious projects continues to surprise me. There’s no simple formula to share, but this is my best attempt to explain what I do. It’s important to add that I’ve also launched some initiatives which have gone nowhere, despite all my best efforts! This description draws mainly on big projects that I’ve initiated, but I use a version of this for small projects, like creating a weekend retreat, also for relationships, and to see how I can best contribute to projects where I’m not the leader.

Nature has a large but often invisible influence in manifestation as I’ve experienced it. Much of my learning about this topic, and co-creativity generally, came from spending time at the Findhorn Foundation, an ecovillage and spiritual community in Scotland. Starting from one rented caravan, what they have manifested is amazing, and dialogue with Nature played a vital role. Although the Foundation has contracted in recent years, the ecovillage and community continue: it’s an inspiring story.

Magdalen Environmental Trust, which Alan founded

Listen for guidance and follow it: I spend a fair bit of time in a receptive state, usually in Nature, where insights can reach me most easily. I need to do this by deliberate choice, because by temperament I’m a self-driving person who likes to make things happen. The big project visions usually arise when I’m not looking for them. My approach is simply to live with these ideas for weeks or longer, and see if they persist. Often they seem alarmingly ambitious, as well as exciting, and one of my responses is a prayer to say, ‘If you really want me to take this on, you need to show me the people and resources to do it with.’

One of my tests of whether to act on a big vision is to watch for synchronicities: if help shows up, often from unexpected sources, I take it as a sign to keep going. I believe that a real willingness to act on the guidance you receive is vital if you want to continue receiving like this.

Carry the vision, but reshape the form: when a big idea shows up, it’s usually a broad vision, and part of my role is to evolve the form it takes. For example, Magdalen Farm is a 130-acre farm with residential facilities and numerous sub-projects. It started as a powerful but vague image, like a Turner watercolour sunrise. I understood this as a catalytic project involving Nature contact for young people: it took several months of exploring real-life possibilities and listening for more guidance before it evolved into the form we manifested.

This reshaping is a classic co-creative process. You could call my role the vision holder: this involves carrying the dream, trying to discern its essence and explore the form it is calling for. Keeping the sense that you’re in service to some bigger concept which is coming through you is vital. If your ego or will tries to take charge, you’ll lose the original inspiration. As a vision holder, you also need to stay open to a sense that the vision itself needs to be reshaped, or even that you should drop it completely. Sometimes I’ve carried an inspiring idea around for a few weeks, and then felt I was just meant to lay it to rest: a bit like an interesting house guest who passes briefly through your life. For more on co-creativity, see here.

Keep the vision animated: in order to reach fulfilment, a vision needs its vitality and magnetism maintained. A vision community can help (see more on this below) but if a vision has come through you, you need to keep animating it. One of the main ways I do this is in daily meditation: spending some time connecting with the vision, and bringing it to life: for example, imagining its fulfilled form as vividly as I can. For a workshop group, I help to manifest participants by picturing the group in a session, with the number of people I’m aiming for, and feeling the atmosphere of the workshop.

Tim Smit’s book Eden is a gripping account of how he manifested a huge, pioneering idea against all the odds. He writes passionately about the Tinkerbell Effect: in Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and all the fairies can only live if children believe in them. You have to keep affirming your faith in the (apparently) impossible dream, and the more people do this, the better.

Gather a vision community: this is another idea I picked up at Findhorn. You need one or a few vision holders, and around them it’s desirable to form a vision community. This is a group of people who help to animate the vision, who may bring in some of the insights or contacts it needs, and who support the vision at crunch times. For example, if there’s a major decision to take, or a crisis meeting, ask the members of the vision community to tune in, pray, visualise an outcome that serves the highest good of the situation. They could act as an occasional advisory group, or could just focus on ‘holding the vision’.

Be alert for subtle intuitions: manifesting something significant probably requires you to defy logic, and go beyond what looks possible: where will you get the insights to do this? I’ve found it’s essential to keep listening for whispers, for intuitions which may look silly at first. My rule of thumb is that when an idea pops up for the third time, I take it seriously, however much my logic dismisses it.

Keep service to your clients as a guiding focus: in a challenging situation, our ego, or our negative habits, can dominate our reactions, and that’s true for other people involved too. From the outset, maintain a strong sense of who you are trying to serve, and how: this should keep you anchored in real life, and also provides a point of reference when strong personalities start to disagree. Over the years, I’ve realised that many conflicts apparently about the facts really arose from strong personalities needing to be heard, wanting an impact. Having a higher purpose can offset this: and ensuring people feel their views are witnessed helps too!

Learn and grow through setbacks: annealing is a process of strengthening metal by heating and cooling it. Setbacks can have a similar function for human activities. If you’re a vision holder or leader, try to accept challenges as a way of testing the project and showing where it needs strengthening.

This is probably hardest if the setback is an attack on your leadership, or even on your vision. Biting criticism of leaders is common in our times, and I still find it very upsetting. The approaches in Chapter 3 have helped: composting the emotions, and giving some time to assess where my limitations are the issue, and where I need to change. This is also where a vision community can give you both perspectives and support.

Maintain yourself as a clear channel: my guess is that someone who’s heavily into drink, drugs or other distractions will struggle to sustain a vision or hear the subtle messages. Look after your own wellbeing, keep exercising to burn off stress, and get whatever emotional support you need.

This is an adapted excerpt from Chapter Four of Alan’s book Natural Happiness: see more at www.naturalhappiness.net/books.