As we begin a new year with new resolutions, topping many lists is the intention to manifest “true love.” As aware and sophisticated as we are, it’s the next logical step for us to take on the journey toward creating a happy and fulfilled life. One thing that always helps in moving toward goals is creating a plan of action. But how can we do that with something as seemingly elusive as love?
Recently I was flipping through some of my old journals when I came across a forgotten entry from February, 1999. It read: This morning, I am going to write down my dreams, to clarify and support them to come to pass this coming year…. I see a beautiful engagement ring on my finger. It is reflecting a deep, rooted love between my husband-to-be and myself. He is my perfect mate. I like myself when I am with him. I feel supported and nurtured by our relationship. He is open to having children. I feel protected by him—loved, respected, held up—I love and am loved deeply and completely. I also see being pregnant with my husband’s baby. My breasts and belly are swollen. He kisses my bare belly in bed. We are happy to bring this baby into the world. Thank you, God!
When I read this, I did a double take. I rechecked the date at least three times before I finally believed that I’d written it a full six weeks before I met the man I eventually married and had a child with the following year. At the time I wrote it I was 41, had never been married and had no prospects for a life partner. That’s the power of standing inside a vision.
Years ago, Shakti Gawain, author of Creative Visualization, codified the practice of using imagination to help us manifest what we want in our lives. When we visualize, we create a mental picture of what we want and allow our hearts to feel the feelings that would accompany the having of it. It is both a mental and an emotional process.
Yet visualization can sometimes be limited by an inability to see where it is we’d like to go, inhibited by such obstacles as low self-esteem or a lack of role modeling. A refinement of the process, a practice called “visioning,” can help us overcome our stumbling blocks, by having us lean in to listen for those possibilities that exist outside and beyond who we’ve known ourselves to be.
Before that fateful February morning where I glimpsed a new possibility for the fulfillment of love in my life, I’d thought of myself as someone who was basically alone on her path. I was really stretching to imagine a scenario that had little to do with my sense of self, what my life actually looked like, or what was even predictable or logical, given my current circumstances. Yet by visioning the fulfillment of love, I was altering my consciousness to expand enough to receive my deepest desires. Emotionally, I was trying this “possible” life on for size.
A vision always requires us to adjust ourselves in some way to accommodate receiving that vision. To begin relating to ourselves and our lives according to the future we’re committed to creating, as opposed to the past. Michael Beckwith of Agape put it beautifully when he said, “Pain pushes until vision pulls.” Rather than needing pain to push us to grow, we strive to meet that vision head on by beginning to show up in ways that are consistent with the person we’d need to be in order to have the fulfillment of that vision in our lives.
There is a vision calling you and it begins with your desire—for a loving and trustworthy partner who will walk through life with you, has your back, makes you laugh and warms your feet at night when it’s cold; for a like-minded partner who is your best friend and cheerleader, fills your life with inspiration and purpose and provides comfort and strength when things get hard. Rather than wish, hope and pray for love, you can co-create the fulfillment of this possibility in your life by taking a stand to have 2015 be your year to call in happy, healthy love.
Katherine Woodward Thomas, M.A. MFT is author of the national bestseller, Calling in “The One,” will be speaking in L.A. at the 2/6–8 Conscious Life Expo. Click here for a free Calling in “The One” visioning meditation download.
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This article is a part of the December/January 2014-15 issue of Whole Life Times.