79. Decolonizing Manifestation: Part 4 - The lifelong practice

Almost everything about manifestation gets taught on a short timeline. Manifest this by the end of the month, hit this number in 6 months, call in this person in the next year.

Of course, that's real and useful. AND you're not just going to be manifesting for a year — you're going to be doing it for a lifetime. And a lifetime contains a lot of evolution, upheaval, and sometimes, learning and heartbreak. 

What posture, premises and practices help you have a "strong manifestation game" for the course of a lifetime?

These are the things I wish someone had taught me when I was much younger.

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I’m Simone Grace Seol. Let me help you build community care, social responsibility, and spirituality into every part of your business.

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Transcript

Hello, everyone. You're listening to Liberatory Business, and I'm your host, Simone Seol. Thank you so much for being here.

So this is the fourth and last part of the series on decolonizing manifestation. In the beginning I said it was gonna be a three-parter, but now it's a four-parter, because my ideas just get out of control. So thank you for sticking around.

I really did want to add this fourth installment to the series, because there's something that doesn't get talked about enough — something that would have helped me a ton if I'd learned about it earlier in my life of spiritual pursuit and worldly pursuit. And that is what you really need to know in order to make sense of this as a lifelong practice.

Because a lot of it — and it makes sense — it's important that we know how to manifest something for tomorrow, or next week, or this year. So that stuff matters. But the thing is, we change so much over time, and life changes so much over time, and what we desire changes over time. I'm sure you can relate to feeling like, "Oh wow, I really ardently wanted this thing when I was this age, and I did everything to go after it. It felt so good to get it. But afterwards I realized that wasn't really the right thing for me. Or it wasn't meaningful for me. Or even if it was right and meaningful, it was good for that chapter of my life, and now I want something totally different." I bet all of us could relate to a story like that, right?

The fact of the matter is that this is a very dynamic process, and I think we need a different layer of wisdom in order to make sense of how to show up to the practice of manifesting over the course of a lifetime — where so many things happen, and we grow up so much, and a lot of that process involves being humbled by life, right?

So I just want to share some thoughts that I wish I could tell a much younger version of myself about manifestation as a lifelong practice.

Be prepared to be wrong about your desires

So the first one: just be prepared to be wrong about your desires sometimes. Whether it's in the form of you really wanting something and truly thinking it was the right thing, and it ended up not being the right thing for you. Or you really thought something was the path for you, and you gave it your all, and yet somehow, mysteriously, it didn't end up materializing.

And when we run into dead ends like this — when we run into what feels like a failure of manifestation — I think sometimes people can be in such a rush to put a positive spin on it, right? Like, "Oh well, I'm just being redirected to something better." And yeah, the story of this as a redirection makes sense, and it's helpful a lot of the time. But also, there are some things that can just stay with you as a heartbreak.

The important thing is, I don't think that means you did manifestation wrong, or that you were bad and did a bad job paying attention to what the universe is asking of you. I think being human on planet Earth means some heartbreak is part of what we're here to experience in life.

I think there are some losses, some disappointments, that we just get to grieve — and they're part of what teach us and what deepen us. They're part of what gives us maturity and wisdom. And I think sometimes we have to let that be, and take all of that as part of a richly lived life — as opposed to, "Well, my manifestation didn't work." So that's the first thing I wanna say.

You get better at this over time

And the second thing I wanna say is that if you zoom out on the timeline a little bit, you really do get better at hearing and sensing and intuiting.

Earlier in the series, I talked about the different ways you can tell whether something is just a conditioned fear or a genuine no. And sometimes in the body, those can feel like the same kind of response, and in the moment it can be genuinely hard to tell which is which. It can be hard to know. And for entirely understandable reasons, people want a perfect recipe, right? A perfect three-step process for knowing which is which. But I think with experience, we get better at it.

I am so much better at it at age 40 than I was at age 20, and I don't think I could have speed-tracked this process without just the sheer gift of having been alive on this planet for 20 more years.

I think the longer you're in relationship with yourself, in relationship with life, in relationship with your ancestors — we get better at telling. And I think one of the most badass decolonizing moves we can do, dare I say, is to grow into a different relationship with time. Respecting time as a teacher, and letting go of the urgency to have to figure everything out right now.

So that's the second thing. You'll get better at this over time.

Go to the most boring places

And the third thing that I really think doesn't get talked about enough is that manifestation over a lifetime does not just mean dramatic actions you take, or special esoteric techniques that you learn, right? Special magic tricks. It's the daily upkeep.

I think it's in the smallest, most undramatic, ordinary, mundane moments that truly shape the course of your life. It's not what kind of fancy setup you have at your ancestors' altar. It's a kind word you say to somebody. It's you deciding, "You know what? The person I'm becoming likes an organized room," and then waking up and taking two minutes to make your bed in the morning — something I'm working on right now, right?

Just taking two minutes to pause in the middle of your busy, busy day and appreciate: wow, I'm alive. That's pretty nice. I have a roof over my head. My loved ones are here and alive also. That's quite nice. I'm taking these two minutes to feel grateful.

Taking one moment in the middle of doing something busy and realizing, "Oh, I'm talking to myself in a really mean way. I'm going to proactively choose to catch myself at this moment and redirect, so that I'm talking to myself in a more compassionate way. I'm gonna be a little nicer to myself."

Picking up a piece of trash when you see it where there shouldn't be trash — making that place a little bit nicer for other people. Stuff like that, you know? One moment where you could be unkind, where you could snap at someone, and just deciding, "Okay, take a breath. I'm gonna chill out a little bit and try to choose kindness in this moment."

I truly, truly think that these — the most boring, ordinary, mundane moments, where we make a tiny bit of a different choice — that's where the biggest changes, the biggest shifts in possibility, come from.

And I also think every one of these small choices is so important, because that's how you tend the relationship, right? If you want to keep a long-term relationship alive, it's not about doing a big romantic gesture twice a year. It's about the tiniest choices — checking in with them, like, "How are you?" Bringing them coffee. Or not snapping at them when you really could. Why wouldn't it be the same thing with your ancestors — tending the relationship with them?

It all shows up in how you treat yourself, how you treat other people, the kind of time you take out of your day to pay attention and be a compassionate, helpful, supportive, kind, positive, generous locus of energy in the universe. These things matter a lot.

So that's something I wanna tell my younger self. You wanna manifest? Great. Go to the most boring places — the stuff that manifestation teachers won't teach you, because it's not sexy enough.

Call your mother, call your grandma, call your friend. Help a neighbor out. Go for a walk and move your body, 'cause it's a precious body your ancestors gave you. Give someone a genuine compliment. Drink a glass of water. Eat a serving of a vegetable. Practice something today for 10 minutes, so you can be 1% better at it than you were last week.

There's gonna be no medal, no fanfare, no trophy, no clouds parting and angels singing in the sky. And guess what? That's where the real magic is.

The importance of staying in prayer

The last thing I wanna talk about is prayer — the importance of staying in prayer, returning to prayer.

I did an episode on Asian prayer earlier in this podcast. But to clarify: when I say prayer, I don't necessarily mean it in a regimented, traditional religious way. It can be that, and that can be really powerful and meaningful. But one way I can think about prayer is that it's how you stay in conversation with the divine. It's how you keep the line open, right? Just speaking to them. Telling your ancestors what you're about to do, what's on your mind. Asking them for their blessings, asking them to move things on your behalf. Asking them for insight, guidance — all of that's great.

But the other part is also listening. Making yourself available to hear what they have to tell you, what they want for you, where they want you to go. One of my favorite prayers is to ask for help to get better at listening. Help me not miss the signs. Help me develop the discernment to properly hear what you're trying to tell me.

Gratitude is a posture, not a technique

And prayer always has to come back to gratitude, right? And I do think people talk about the importance of gratitude in conventional manifestation circles, and that's great. But the thing is, you can't look at prayer like it's a technique. It's not a way to get — like, "Oh, I'll input this gratitude, and the vending machine's gonna output what I want." That's not it.

I think gratitude is a posture of acknowledging what you've already been given. Everything your ancestors have poured into you — the fact that you're here at all, alive in this lifetime — is already such a gift. And one of the worst things, right — it's so annoying when you try to force gratitude when you're annoyed at life. Or you're disappointed, or you're mad or whatever, and someone says, "Be grateful," and you wanna punch them in the face. So it's not about manufacturing the feeling because it's good for manifestation. It's just shifting gears into a position where you can acknowledge what you've received.

I think gratitude is so powerful because it does a lot to quiet down our fears, our sense of scarcity. I think all the grabbing that we wanna do — like, "I need more, I want more" — comes from lack, from feeling like there's a hole we have to fill. And when we're operating from a sense of lack, it's really hard to hear your ancestors over that noise. If you have a strong gratitude game, I think it thins the fear so that the real signal can come through. When you start from, "Okay, I'm clocking everything I've already received — here are the receipts for everything I've already received," then it's hard to operate from a sense of lack.

What prayer looks like day to day

So what does a prayer actually look like day to day — a strong prayer game? I think it can be formal or casual. And there are some traditions where formalized prayer is really important. So for example, to my understanding, Islam has very formalized protocols that you should follow if you're a Muslim. I'm obviously not Muslim, but my ancestors also had very elaborate ways of formal prayer.

Most of my own prayer life is not that formal. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I go to temple and do temple prayer. Sometimes I go to my ancestors' graves and make offerings in a ritualistic way that Koreans do. And at home, I keep a very simple altar: incense, a candle, an offering of a bowl of clean water. Sometimes I cut up some nice fruit. That's the most basic setup.

And I do believe that when I light the candle, that flame connects me to my ancestors. It's like dialing them on the phone, right? The smoke that rises up from my incense stick gets their attention — like, "Oh, she's talking to us now. The phone rang." A bowl of clean water is the most basic, elementary — but real and substantive — simple offering to the spirits that we use in Korean ancestral tradition. It's what countless grandmothers and grandfathers before me did, and it's a practice I keep up. I wish I could say I do it every day, but I don't. I don't always remember. But as often as I can, I do.

And I'm sharing what I do obviously not as a prescription, but just — I don't know, it's nice to know what other people do, right? So these are the things I do in a relatively formal way. But it's not just that. At least my belief is, they can always hear you when you call upon them, when you call upon their name. Even if you don't know their names, then say, "All my ancestors who love me" — they're paying attention. The phone's rung, right?

Which ancestors you can call on

Something I maybe should have clarified earlier on, but whatever, I'm getting to it now: obviously any reasonable person can notice that not every person in your bloodline is necessarily able or willing to help you, right?

And look — every single one of us descends from a bunch of ancestors who were really awesome, loving, wonderful people, and some ancestors who were not necessarily the best people, who maybe did some bad things, or just weren't the kind of person you wanna call on. Every single one of us. Just in terms of how long human history is — all of us have ancestors who were murderers. All of us have ancestors who were saints, amazing, great people. All of us have ancestors who were just normal people. We all have all kinds of ancestors. And we're only calling upon those who are in good spiritual standing, who love us, and who have the capacity and the ability to help us from another dimension — the same way you would want to look upon and help out and love on your descendants when you've crossed over to the other world.

So here's who you can call upon. If you can picture someone in your lineage — maybe it's your late auntie, your late grandfather, whatever — if you know someone who, while they were alive, loved you and cared for you and would have tried to help you in whatever way they could if you needed it, that's an ancestor you can call on. Call their name if you can, if it feels appropriate, if you know their name. And if you can't, that's fine too. When I call on my ancestors at large, to me it's implicit that I'm calling on the ancestors who can and want to help me — and I know there are plenty of them. There are many I can name, and many more I can't, 'cause they were way before my time.

So in terms of calling on ancestors who can help you — I've heard other traditions call those the well ancestors, the ones that are well. The elevated ancestors. The good ancestors. Those are who you're calling on, and you can address them as a collective.

The simplest template for informal prayer

And then you just talk to them. I think here's the simplest template for informal prayer. Open the space — and how you open the space is, like I said, you can light a candle, light incense, or really just call their name, right? "I want to talk to you, ancestors," and then prepare a little quiet moment in your heart. That counts as opening the space.

And you can say something like, "Hey, what's up, ancestors? I'm just saying hello." You know how you call your grandma and you're like, "Hey Grandma, just wanted to say hi"? You don't have to have a reason to call them. Just wanting to say hi is enough, 'cause that's how you stay connected, right? So that's enough.

And you say, "I wanna thank you for..." — you can thank them for basic things. My go-to is always giving thanks for basic things: I'm safe. My body is well. My family is here. They're taken care of. We have a warm home. We have food on the table. Thank you, thank you, thank you, right? That's a complete prayer, and you can close a prayer that way. That's my favorite thing to do when I can't think of specific things to pray for. I just open the space, ring the spiritual phone — that is, by calling on them — and then give them thanks, and then close the prayer. That's it. That's a complete prayer.

Or, after giving gratitude, you can ask for things. You can just tell them things — ask them to be with you and hang out with you and protect you and bless you. Great little prayer session. I think if you want to have a wonderful, fruitful, joyful manifestation game your entire life, I cannot, cannot, cannot imagine doing it without prayer.

And all of my advice is just for people who wanna develop their prayer life but are like, "Oh well, I don't really belong to a religious... I don't know how." So if my suggestions were helpful, take that. If you're like, "Oh, I already know what I'm doing," then ignore what I said and just do what you were doing.

Closing

So we got to the end of the four-part series on manifestation, and I'm so grateful you stuck around to listen. I think manifestation is a beautiful, magical, joyful practice of taking part in your own making — taking part in the conversation with the forces that made you and want to continue to co-create with you. It's receiving and giving.

So I hope this frame of lifelong process — being in conversation, tending to the relationship — helps you approach manifestation with more steadiness and wisdom. I hope all of this helps you get more out of life. My prayer for you is that you manifest a life of beauty and meaning and abundance and joy beyond what your current self can even picture. May your ancestors show you the vision and the way. And I'll talk to you next time.