RantingWomen.com Women’s Blog

I was watching “The Secret,” yet again, with my mother last night. Each time I delve into the Law of Attraction, I am struck by something different. Last night as we watched, I was thinking about how my efforts at “manifesting” have had mixed results, and I was trying to figure out why.

What is holding me back in certain areas is fear. Of this I am certain; and fear of SUCCESS is the biggest culprit! How can this be? Why am I afraid of success? What’s the reward for failure or mediocrity, and why does the idea of “off-the-charts” success make me reserve just a little of myself when I visualize my future?

I think I’ve “shrinked” myself into an analysis.

Let me explain: My friend, Gerry, called a few weeks ago to tell me he had “manifested a magpie.” Yep. A magpie. Ugly black bird. Why a magpie? Who wants a magpie?

He explained that he has been thinking of magpies for a few months, throughout the time he spent in Louisiana this spring. Wherever he went, he saw wild birds on his property. I have been known to raise a baby bird or two, and I had just taken up beekeeping at the time… this somehow led Gerry to think that it would be cool to have a magpie for a pet. He’s heard that they are great talkers. I’m still a bit at a loss… after all, they own a parrot. Why the magpie?

Maybe it was just a passing fling, this urge to have a magpie. He said it just stuck with him, this mental image of his friendly feathered buddy on his shoulder, talking and talking. Still… he had never even seen a magpie nest. An impossible little dream! How to catch one? How to FIND one?

Powerful man, my friend, Gerry. He arrived back home in Colorado in May; and, lo and behold… a magpie nest - from that “field of infinite possibilities” presented itself, right outside the door of his house. It was a SIGN. It was PROOF. He had conjured this with the power of his mind. Fellow Aries like me, he never looked back. He headed straight for a ladder, snatched a featherless baby, and took it as his own, into the house…

Three days later, I asked him, “How’s the magpie?”

“Oh. The magpie. I put it back.”

“You’re kidding!” I said. “But Gerry, you MANIFESTED it! Why would you put it back?”

“Well,” he said, “I didn’t want it after all. I felt guilty, keeping it in the house, trying to guess how to feed it and care for it, and all the while, its mother was right outside. It was wrong to want it.”

Hm… maybe so.

I laughed and told him to be careful what he manifests from now on. I told myself the same thing. I can’t seem to decide what I want… and the universe is withholding until I decide.

I want my husband to be cured of cancer. I want his miracle more than any other possibility that exists. I hold the picture of his x-rayed lungs in my mind’s eye. I visualize the tumor shrinking, becoming ethereal and smoky - vanishing without a trace. I picture the news conference where he explains to CNN that he cured himself with the power of intention. I see this as if it is happening right now.

And then, out of nowhere, comes another thing from the “field of infinite possibility.” I can’t help it. I didn’t conjure it, but it comes. I see myself crying, alone, without him. I see all of my short-comings blown up in vivid colors before me. I see myself not knowing when to change the oil in the car. I see myself kicking the lawn mower - no idea how to start it. I am knee-high in Louisiana grass after a rain. I see my king size bed. I see a small lump that is me in the middle of it, and a wide open space where he belongs…

I am breaking the rules. I am thinking of the things I DON’T want, and the universe doesn’t know the difference. It will deliver whatever I see…

So I visualize myself starting the mower with ease, changing the oil on a circled calendar day. I see a futon bed, with no empty space -there’s only enough room for me…

And as these months stretch out, these days and hours pass in illness, I pray for a miracle, envision a cure - and get mental magpies - the things I don’t want - interrupting my manifestations. When I try to correct them, I have guilt. How dare I dream to be okay without him? How dare I consider that possibility? Why does it come to my mind’s eye when I want so much to believe?

So, I am blocking all visions for now. I am putting The Secret on hold. I dare not dream of his cure, for it is a 1/1000 chance that he will live past six months. I dare not dream that I will be helpless, and I dare not dream that I will NOT be helpless. I don’t want any magpies at all. I want status-quo, for just as long as it will hold.

Anne Pierson, Editor of RantingWomen, Magpie deflector, and grieving widow of a living man, manifesting nothing but sadness today.

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