Imbolc is a time for drawing the seeds of possibility out from the deep dreamworld of winter darkness, into the earth of everyday life where they can be planted in the ground to grow. A time of radical affirmation: acknowledging the daily details of the life I have manifested up to now.

Writing with radical affirmation and Ganesha mantra this week has given me a radically fresh perspective on manifestation. Here’s an extract from my journalling:

“Attempting every day to heave the entire universe into new forms – in denial of the ground upon which I’m already standing – is exhausting. Be here. Now. The only place from which true change can grow. Shift my vibrational pattern, increase my frequency, heighten my resonance. From here. Now. Then change will come easily of itself and the right doors will open. Shift and align with higher vibrations from the firm ground upon which I stand – ground to grow – and grow from here. The doors will open, and the changes that you need – those that are already resonating with your higher vibration – will move into place effortlessly.”

I started to verbalise my manifestations with a new understanding. Instead of stating my ‘I Am’ statements as though they were something I was yearning for, I began speaking them as affirmations of what is radically true already, here and now. This is a subtle but profound shift. Although grammatically stated in the present, I was still approaching my mantras as something to be achieved in the future, something I wanted to change about my life, something – essentially – that I still lacked.

Working with Ganesha mantra and the principle of radical affirmation, I began to shift my perception. To radically affirm the reality of my present I had to understand that everything I’m experiencing now is the life I’ve created through my past decisions, verbalisations and affirmations – both conscious and unconscious – and its interplay with material reality. All the things I’ve brought into my life – both positive and negative – are present because, in some way either consciously or unconsciously, I’ve manifested them.

Acknowledging that power and potential, celebrating the life I’m making, has empowered me to view my reality differently. Instead of denying my present circumstances because they don’t fit with my ideal intentions, I radically affirm the reality of the life I’m living here and now. Its challenges arise as doorways to step through to deeper growth. It’s obstacles are opportunities to rise above. It’s limitations are the interactions between my imagination and the material reality of the world in which I live.

It’s because I don’t live, create & manifest in isolation, or in a vacuum. I’m constantly co-creating the conditions of my world with everyone and everything around me. So what I create will be flavoured, shaped and inflected by the desires and realities of everyone and everything else that is. When I bring my dreams into the world, I have to allow them to meet with the world. And to take the limited forms that they can take in material reality, in infinite relation with everything else that is.

With Ganesha mantra and radical affirmation all is accepted and celebrated.

To make my affirmation radical, I affirm the reality that it already is.

The foundation of this shift in understanding, for me, is in verbalising my affirmations not simply as if they were already true, but with the radical recognition of all the ways in which they are already true in my life as it is. Celebrating the fruits of everything – both conscious and unconscious – that’s brought me to the here and now. From here, I affirm my future potential and acknowledge that – in order to be manifested in the material world of my life – my dreams and visions will have to take form in the physical world, so they’ll be shaped by their possibilities and their limitations – they are inseparable aspects of one another. The limitations, obstacles and challenges I meet with are the barriers I must acknowledge and overcome to grow. Through this growth, I raise my vibration and my external circumstances shift with ease.

This Imbolc, as we move out of the darkness, it’s time to ground our dreams in material reality – sowing the seeds we’ve carried with us from the dreamworld and radically affirming the reality of the ground from which we grow.