I know, I know, claiming to know the secret to manifesting is a bit punchy, but I back myself on what I’ve discovered.

For a long time I’ve been seeking to understand manifesting and how it fits into my life. Like many of us, the idea of attracting what I want is appealing, yet I’ve struggled to find the truth in it which has blocked me from accepting it.

On the one side there is the law of attraction culture that has rocketed through the spiritual and new age community, inspiring us all with the knowledge that thoughts create things.

This way of understanding allows us to see the world as our playground and the universe as an infinite larder of abundance. It is about receiving joy and pleasure.

On the other side there is the understanding that we are souls, reincarnating on this earth to learn lessons, clear karma and to serve. It is a slightly harsher way of looking at our lives, one that involves working on ourselves internally, rather than expanding externally.

It is a path of service over selfishness and responsibility, driven by the soul’s overwhelming urge to evolve.

Yet, neither of the two ways of thinking feels like home to me. I believe we can be both give and receive in this world. They are not mutually exclusive. We can be both playing and delighting on this planet as well as growing and evolving in our cycles of reincarnation.

What I’ve discovered in the past few weeks is my own unique formula for manifesting that I like to call; living in alignment.

Understanding manifesting and the law of attraction

For a long time, manifesting seemed like a dirty word to me. It seemed so surface-level and self-serving, even slightly ignorant of the other powerful spiritual laws that govern the energy of our world.

When we take one law and apply it to our life it’s like making a cake with one ingredient. To understand the whole picture we need all the ingredients to create magic in our lives, which is why the law of attraction feels so soulless and empty to me; it’s only a fraction of a much bigger picture.

When people speak about manifesting it can feel so transactional, lacking the love and spirit of what I feel to be the real essence of this god force or divine consciousness. The way it’s spoken about is the way we humans speak about most things; we want to know what we can get from it. It’s all so clinical.

The art of manifesting and using the law of attracting to get what we want also goes against my understanding that we have bigger fish to fry in this lifetime than attracting things into our lives.

I believe we are here to evolve, so that we leave this planet in a more expansive state than when we arrived, so to live a life with this attitude of wanting and needing more in order to be fulfilled seems to oppose all the core values I have around selflessness and service.

Yet, at the same time, sometimes we are so focused on understanding our soul mission and dedicating our lives to reaching our potential and serving the world with our gifts that we struggle with receiving.

This is a huge trap the spiritual community falls into. We don’t believe we need, or sometimes deserve, help in our lives and feel like we have to do it all ourselves. We can also be a little martyrish too, which only leads to feelings of resentment that stem from burying our desires.

We also tend to misguidedly believe that to want something is greedy and, if we were ‘real spiritual seekers’, we would be immune to material goods and a need for wealth.

The thing is, money is a currency of god, and it is supposed to flow in and out of our lives. When we block that flow by stopping giving, which is greed, or stopping receiving, which is martyrdom, then the flow is blocked.

Money is not the root of all evil, it only becomes so when you wander from the path and use it as your guide in this life above all other things.

Being in service and wanting abundance are not mutually exclusive, we can have both and we are not any less spiritual for having dreams and desires, and knowing we deserve to receive them.

Alighting on the power of co-creation

So, after weeks of discovery, I’ve finally landed on the beautiful middle ground that I’ve been seeking to understand.

The secret to manifesting is about aligning with the force of love that some call god, some call the universe and what I like to call, the divine. The art of manifesting is about aligning with this force and using it for both creation and pleasure as well as expansion and growth.

It is not some force that we need to control and neither is it a force that controls us. It is not about making demands, and neither is it about surrendering ourselves completely.

There is a beautiful balance that must be adhered to. It is a balance between action and non-action and between giving and receiving.

In its essence, what I’m speaking of here is conscious co-creation. It is living in alignment. It is about recognising and allowing what our soul craves. It needs to evolve and be of service in this world, yet it also needs to experience the exquisite joy and pleasure the gift of life on earth grants us.

It is in this divine state that we can truly receive. What some may call manifesting, I call falling into alignment. So, how do we find this beautiful point of balance?

The first part of the formula is knowing

We need to know what we want for ourselves, using our imagination, hope and desire. This is the fun part of co-creation where we can be limitless in expressing all of our deepest desires.

We also need to know the underlying truth of our existence and the world we live in. If we don’t know the spiritual laws or have a belief in a higher power, feeling alone and powerless in a world that’s out to get us, we cannot co-create, we can only try and force the outcomes we want on our own. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn’t

We only need to recognise that we are sparks of the divine, creators in our birthright, here to keep the progress of expansion through our creativity and harnessing the power that lives in and all around us.

The last important thing we need to know is our worth. If we do not feel worthy of receiving good in our lives, it won’t ever arrive. This is why healing the self-esteem wound is so important, undoing any false subconscious beliefs which are keeping us from knowing we are worthy of whatever we desire.

The second part of the formula is releasing

This is the middle of the sandwich where we need to release all resistance to our lives right now and land in full acceptance of the perfectness of our life right at this moment. Resistance causes such huge stagnation and needs to be released.

This is hard to do but if we keep treating the present moment like a means to an end or an obstacle that’s in the way of our dreams, we will never get past it. Our future is built from our present so if you’re pushing the present away, you’re pushing the future away. When we accept that the present moment is perfect, we can relax.

We also need to release all attachment to what we want, what some call Aparigraha. Lack and longing only pulls us away from life, away from gratitude and away from realising the perfection of life, and all of its lessons, right now.

Lastly, we need to release all fear around getting, or not getting, what we most desire, and land back in trust. When we fall into ‘what ifs’ and future fears, we aren’t in an energy of trust and patience, which are so needed when co-creating.

The third part of the formula is alignment

Lastly, we only need to align with his divine creative force. I call this being in a state of grace.

Part of being in this state is living through our core values; being generous, kind, compassionate and loving. Another part is feeling great gratitude for all the good in our lives. When we’re so focused on what we don’t have, it becomes very easy to be blinded to what we do have.

The power of gratitude is magnified when we use it on all timelines; past gratitude for everything that’s made us who we are, present gratitude for all the good in our lives, even if it’s the smallest silver linings, and future gratitude for what we are about to receive.

Trust is the final part of this divine formula. The ultimate test is having faith in the evidence of things not yet seen. When we co-create we have to place our trust in a higher power. Our minds might want to control, seeking evidence and logic, but when we let that go and fall into a place of trust, the magic of co-creation can actually begin.

Here’s the secret to manifesting

I believe we are here to create and play in this beautiful playground of a world as much as we are here to evolve and expand. We are, after all, a physical vessel for consciousness to express itself through, surely it wants to have a little fun too?

The irony of manifesting is that the less we do the less resistance we create. When we get out of the way and let the greater power do the heavy lifting for us, everything falls into place. When we land in a place of trust and faith that everything is always working out perfectly for us, it does.

This is the secret to manifesting. It’s arriving in a place of understanding who you are and what you deserve as your birth right as a human being on this planet.

We all have the capability to align our lives with the spiritual laws that govern this world. We also all have the capacity to rewrite the deep subconscious programming of unworthiness and lack that limits our self-love.

Only then, once we understand who we are, what we are capable of, and the the force of love that is always with us, can we consciously co-create in this world.

Want to receive the latest blog posts straight to your inbox? Sign up for my newsletter and you’ll also receive your FREE ‘Discover Your Fear Saboteur’ guide, the ultimate guide to identifying the fear sabotaging your potential!

Carry on exploring