How Tantric Sex Helped Me Manifest My Dream House
The Secret Technique They Left Out of 'The Secret'
It’s January 2000. For six months, the only substances that have entered my body are red wine, black coffee and smoke. My three troubled little boys (5, 6 and 8) have finally fallen asleep, and I’m lighting a spliff to sever the neural connections that spark me from one self-hating thought to the next. In my mental cell, where the walls are embedded with razors, cannabis is my padded jacket. Stoned, I’m unable to beat myself up. It’s a step-up from the £2 bottle of red, which led me to wake up on the living room floor with a headache and unexplained bruises.
I’m in the thick of a court battle with my abusive ex-husband, who is trying to prove me mentally unstable. He has a point. But that’s not surprising, after the gaslighting, death threats, and relentless lies rendered to sworn truths in affidavits. And to add to all that, I’m in unrequited love with a freshly married man.
You don’t have to look outside of this flat to see a total failure. Alone, broke, emotionally wrecked, and all dreams of being a writer in the dustbin. Three “handful” kids, and nobody’s “one special person”. But everything is about to change.
My yearning is as strong as neat whisky. I am asking so hard for a different life, my anguish is practically gouging it into the walls. Though I’m oblivious to this fact, I have completed the necessary instigating step of powerful creation. A new life is about to unfold. And all it will take to begin is this shift: giving up.
A lot of garbage has been written about manifestation
But let me say, though plenty in the Bible is nonsense concocted by primitive patriarchs and not the Word of God, some of it is true. Manifestation is simply the practical application of something well-known for millennia: “Ask, and it shall be given.”1
In 2006, The Secret set thousands rushing to their mirrors to recite affirmations like “I weigh 120 lbs!” or “I have a Ferrari in my garage!” a dozen times a day, until the lies they were telling grew sour on their tongues. Hope shrivelled like the cactus on my windowsill, and they stayed overweight and driving a beaten-up Honda. Backlash followed. This stuff is hokum!
The way most people did it, yes, it’s nonsense. Repeating patent falsehoods isn’t going to get you anywhere but Frustrationville. Visualising yourself as a prizewinning author and not actually bothering to write a book is a laughable dead-end. Telling yourself, “I have a kind, patient and loyal lover who values me for who I am” while you sweep the crumbs and the cat off your empty single duvet is only going to make you cry.
However, manifestation is a real phenomenon. My entire life has been constructed through it. And, whether you recognise it or not, so has yours. We get what we focus on, whether we want it or not. You’ve heard of a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” right? You’ve seen jealous husbands drive their loyal wives into another man’s arms. It’s not what we say into the mirror that matters; it’s what we expect and believe.
That’s why those raw affirmations can never work. Saying things you don’t believe is like breaking eggs into a pan, dropping in chopped onion and mushrooms, grating in cheese, but never turning on the heat. You can affirm it all you like, but it’s never going to turn into an omelette.
You know there’s no Ferrari in your garage, and what’s more, you can see no possible way of ever getting one. That affirmation is just too much of a stretch for a person who's broke (though it might work, if you’re close, a Porsche owner). You can put it on a Post-It on your mirror, but your disbelief scratches out the words. It’s like tipping that pan of raw egg and veg straight into the bin.
We are all of us genuises at manifesting crap we don’t want.
Let’s try something.
Rate yourself on the Pessimism to Optimism scale, -10 full pessimism to +10 full optimism. Go on, actually do it! Write down the number.
Rate your life on a similar scale -10 total crap to + 10 utter bliss. Uh-huh?
I’m betting those numbers near as damn match. Now you might think that the state of your life causes your outlook, but I can tell you, it’s the other way around. As a scientist by training, I have tested this hypothesis and found it to be true: when you nudge your set-point mood up the scale, your life will respond.
You may have already conducted similar experiments without realising. That time you fell mutually in love with someone wonderful, and other things you’d been hoping for just dropped into your lap. That time when one disaster made you fearful and anxious, and then misery after misery seemed to pile up in …. threes we say, right? Things come in threes? Is that how long it takes for us to say No, enough, I better shift what I’m thinking? It’s that or go allllll the way down, as I’ve done, more than once.
So how do you shift gears and manifest something you long for? How do you get that omelette cooking? Where’s the control for the heat?
If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you’ll know I’m no bullshitter. But this one? Yeah, I know it takes some suspension of disbelief. But go with me. Because in 2001, five years before The Secret came out,
I manifested a house.
