Manifesting & its limitations

I recorded a podcast with the utterly wonderful Syreeta of Moments of Sense and Style, and now of the newly launched podcast This is Leaven. We talked about hope. I talked a bit about the role of hope in executive functioning, goal directed behaviour and problem-solving because that’s the sort of thing I think about, but she’ll probably cut that bit out. What she really wanted to hear about was seeds, and how seeds can represent hope in the most elemental way. 

Not for the first time, I talked about how sowing seeds is an investment in the future, a sign that says, I put down roots in the place and I will be here when the autumn comes and it is time for harvest. I believe in this ground and my relationship with it. I belong here. I have a hope that this is secure and rooted. We are no longer a hunter-gather species. We are growers.

I am going to assume that because you are here, you have some investment in me. Financially if not emotionally. And so I want to tell you the story of my why. The why of GAF and the why of Gather. They why I get up in the morning, life purpose thing.

Someone once described my cottage as like a cloak that I wear around me. When we gutted out all the awful botched, pre-rental, woodchip wallpaper, stripped the beams, pulled up the carpets and limed the walls, this house became an extension of me. I inhabit it as if we have been together of old (these cottages have an affinity with women, and they resist men) and I grow in its land as if we will be together forever. 

But once upon a time, my cottage was cleaved in two. For greed or for necessity, I don’t know why. One perfect cottage became two, restrictive, restricted, stilted cottages. If you look carefully at the thatch, you can see a line that runs down from the roof’s apex, because thatch is over different houses. The line runs straight down between the two windows. My obsession and my compulsion, almost my every waking thought for over five years now, has been reunification. At moments, it has seemed tantalisingly close. So close. Hope has risen and been dashed too many times than I care to mention. I have tried everything I can think of. I have leaned on the walls and willed the cottage to help me. I have a floor plan of the two cottages together on the fridge so it still feels real and possible. When Rob MacKenzie drew the field plan for the book (latest news is that it is out on October 21), I asked him to include the whole building, not just my slice of the cottages. I have saved every single penny I could over the last five years and I have put every single one in premium bonds with a wish and a prayer. I have worked like a dog and I have built a business. 

I have done sensible things too obviously. I got a mortgage arranged when it looked like it was really going to happen. I have had an offer considered and accepted, but the cottage remains not mine and it showing absolutely no signs of being relinquished. No signs at all. 

I was reduced to manifesting. I saw a thing about a formula for manifesting for people for whom manifesting hadn’t worked. What harm, I thought, and downloaded a distressingly pastel coloured pdf. I decluttered my negative beliefs and I was incredibly specific about what I was asking the universe for. Exchanged and completed on 3 by the time the stamp duty holiday expired. (There’s no reason not to be pragmatic, even when engaging with the cosmos.) I sat in my studio and I looked back at the apex of the thatch which marks the point that the cottages were divided. I pictured them coming together like a wound healing. I saw, not a jagged arrangement of rooms, but a whole. Gestalt. And I feel whole too. 

And as I walked down the path, my neighbour leaned out of his back door. He peered through the espalier pear that I planted in a container to give us some sense of privacy in the courtyard. Christ, I thought. This works even quicker than I ever imagined possible. My heart was in my mouth. 

Grace, he said. 

Yes? I said. 

Is January too early to sow seeds? 

Absolutely, I said. Nothing til March. 

Oh right, he said. And he turned back into his/my kitchen. And my heart sank. If he is planning to sow seeds here, he sees his future here. He is going nowhere. 

The moral of the story is that the idea of manifestation is seductive, but essentially meaningless. And that you should not be sowing any seeds until March. It is too cold. 

Jobs for January here.