My interest in the personal power of co-creation began as a child in Sunday school with stories of miracles by the Nazarene who said, according to the King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.), “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father (John 14:12).”
Similar promises were made, like these listed by a double amputee war veteran in Chapter 5 from his online book, Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?:
- Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. [Matthew 7:7-8]
- Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Matthew 11:24]
- For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. [Matthew 17:20]
- Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. [Matthew 18:19-20]
- I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer. [Matthew 21:21-22]
- Believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. [Mark 11:24]
- “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. [John 14:12-14]
To reiterate, “Nothing will be impossible to you” (Matthew 17:20). So naturally, faced with such promises, the veteran asked a lot of preachers why his prayers were not answered. The responses he got reminded me of the “Tap Dance” by Richard Gere’s lawyer character in the courtroom scene of the musical, Chicago, and later when he sang “Razzle-Dazzle:”
I agree with you that it is unfair to amputees, and I agree with you that it contradicts what Jesus teaches in the Bible, but God has his reasons. It is not part of God’s plan to help amputees by regenerating their lost limbs.
Like that veteran, I put those promises to the test. Mine happened in my garage one afternoon when I was twelve and had just learned that my father had died while I was listening to Valentine’s Day song dedications on the radio at my new girlfriend’s house. I got the same response the veteran did: “Razzle-Dazzle.” When I was twelve I started reading Ernest Holmes, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in an attempt to discover some other perspective than that shouted at me from the Baptist pulpit which began to sound more and more like a tap dance.
In college, philosophical discussions and other exposures to the amazing array of beliefs from all over the world only made me more curious about man’s relationship with The Creator–especially, are we “supposed” to have powers if we have faith, as I had learned we would as a child? Then I saw a guru on television produce a rose in his hand and my belief system shifted.
Whether or not I believed that the guru “spontaneously manifested a rose onstage” is not the issue. What is the issue is that I suddenly perceived the role of the beloved Nazarene differently. Besides modeling love and forgiveness, besides demonstrating that we do not, in fact, die, but merely change forms, I believe that he also came to teach us that we each have the ability to create as long as we have “the faith of a mustard seed.”
Since then, over the past forty years, I’ve read books, listened to CD programs and New Thought ministers that expound on the topic of what I’m calling “Conscious Creation” (a.k.a. “manifesting,” The Law of Attraction, co-creation, “Deliberate Creation”) and have decided it’s time to share what I’ve learned and experienced, and hopefully to generate a forum where you’ll share yours.
By no means am I offering myself as an expert, because I still cannot “consciously manifest a rose in my hand.” Next time I’ll explore general how-to’s; later, we’ll look at the challenges that go along with Conscious Creation.
FYI: This series was posted in 2011, the year I began this blog. If you read articles in my series called “The Irony of Life”, you know that I was able to manifest everything I wanted. But now I’m looking at three giant things to manifest so I thought it appropriate to review what I had learned about manifesting.
Till next time,
Please be kind to everyone you meet, for we all have our hidden sorrows. ~Tzaddi
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