The law of attraction and manifesting teachings you can find online are culturally appropriated.
At this point, we have over 150 years of appropriations of appropriations, dovetailing with the “make 6 figures in 3 days” online coaching industry, moving further and further away from the original teachings.
VISIONING is an ancestral practice. It’s a very human way of relating to yourself and your life to listen to the spirits for a vision of what to do with your life and asking for courage and support to enact the vision.
VISIONING is a two way relationship. And that’s where the law of attraction and manifesting teachings fail.
When you culturally appropriate, you take a teaching or wisdom and remove it from it’s cultural context and put it into an entirely different cultural context while also cherry picking which part of the teaching you are working with, and leaving out essential elements. Appropriation leaves out essential elements because it doesn’t understand that it’s appropriating and believes it’s culture-less perspective on the teaching is right and the stuff it leaves out wasn’t relevant.
VISIONING is LISTENING for the calling and then building up the courage to act on it.
It means dreaming DEEPER. Going beyond what you want on a surface level and trying to understand what your soul wants for you. It means growing into who you really ARE.
The only book that I can recommend about this is The Native Creative Process: A Collaborative Discourse between Douglas Cardinal and Jeannette Armstrong with photographs by Greg Young-Ing. It’s not easy to find but if you live in Winnipeg, Canada - it’s in the public library.
The real teachings about intention, as all Indigenous (not colonial) teachings, happen within a living relationship with all of creation.
Within a recognition that ALL LIFE IS SACRED. Within a culture where we take care of each other.
Another book I can recommend is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Which is not about intention or law of attraction, but it can teach you a lot about Indigenous relationships to the earth. In colonial culture we’ve accepted as truth that humans have a negative impact on the earth. As though we can’t help but destroy! In this book she shares how Indigenous ways of living actually HELP THE LAND. That the land - all the plants, waters and living things on it - DID BETTER with proper human stewardship. That our real role as humans is to care for creation, not try to profit from it as much as possible and destroy everything in the process.
Can you see how the way intention is used, in law of attraction teachings, is similar to how we treat the earth?
Individualistic and selfish. It’s only about what I want. It’s the idea that the universe should capitulate to my desires, and WILL capitulate as long as I hold the right thoughts.
Can you see a way to use intention that is within a context of…. ALL life is sacred.
Can you see a way to use intention while revering the mystery of life? Can you see a way to use intention while honouring the fact that you don’t control the universe?
This is what I have been doing in my work.
This is why I have a whole membership for making your dreams happen, with hundreds of resources, and I don’t focus on creative visualization or manifesting practices. There is ONE meditation on creative visualization in the membership and I hardly ever mention it.
Instead, I encourage the Dream Lab as a regular practice because that is where you develop a TWO WAY relationship with the soul of your dream, which is connected to your own soul which is connected to everything.
Or Hello Day as a way to help you connect to yourself - your gifts, medicine and power, so instead of sitting here waiting for the universe to deliver your dreams via the law of attraction, you are growing your ability to CREATE your dreams.
And THAT work is going to get messy.
So then I encourage you to really BE IN the mess! BE WITH the thoughts and feelings that come up, even when that seems like it’s taking you AWAY from what you want. I encourage you to NOT “stay positive” and “stay focused” and “fake it till you make it” because when you do that, you are missing the PROCESS. Which is so far from linear.
You start with whatever dream you have. If it matters to you - there will be magic there.
Your dream is your own soul calling you, showing you your path. THIS IS ALWAYS TRUE.
AND
Sometimes the dream you start with is a dream that gets you to a place where you can hear the next dream. And that one is the CALLING. Or closer to it.
AND
This is soul work! Not linear! So as you dream and move towards callings, your potential grows. So the dream grows along with you. There is no “destination” to get it.
Dreaming is a way of living more attuned to soul and creativity.
Answering a calling is about LISTENING to the universe, not trying to control it. So I work with intention more as support for my process, and not as THE VEHICLE through which my dreams will happen.
This is why the monthly New Moon Intention Setting ritual is set up the way it is. To use intention to support us is doing the things we feel called to do. And to heal and grow through the ways that we engage with our dreams. To summon the courage to create the things we are here to create.
When I started this work, I was a New Thought practitioner.
Which is to say I attended years of classes from one of the original appropriators. I was told that I was being taught “the kernel of truth act was within all of the world’s great wisdom traditions”. I was in that world.
I did not set out to do my work differently because I understood how colonized my training was. I started to learn about colonialism in 2015 when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report came out in Canada, and I had started doing this work around 2008 and it was my full time work by 2011.
I set out to do my work differently from what I was taught because I wanted people to get better results.
Of course these law of attraction teachings don’t work consistently enough to build a life on. For many people they don’t work at all and the only answer given to that is to tell those people that they are doing it wrong. 
“Just be positive” “Stop giving into the fears” “Fake it till you make it”
I wanted my creative dreams to support my life in a grounded and stable way and I wanted to offer better tools for my clients - so I had to find a better way.
I never want to tell anyone “you are failing with your dreams because you are doing it wrong” I want to say “Oh shit I’m sorry this is so hard. You’re not doing anything wrong! This part is just hard. But worth it. So let’s find some softer ways to engage with it”
Now, over 15 years in, and with a better understanding of cultural appropriation and colonialism/imperialism and how they relate to extractive capitalism and how all of this relates to our relationships with ourselves and the world… here is my advice about how to make your dreams happen:
GET YOURSELF INTO THE PROCESS AND THEN STAY IN THE PROCESS.
LET IT BE A MESS WHEN IT’S A MESS.
KEEP LISTENING. MEDITATE + JOURNAL MORE.
My Creative Dream Alchemy class is FREE and HELPFUL. It’s a 20 minute video class explaining what I mean about how the process of pursing a dream is ALCHEMICAL as opposed to linear. And it’s a guided meditation that helps you GET INTO THE PROCESS and a guided journal for figuring out how to apply all of this to your life and your dreams.
This is the one I link to at the top of all of the emails I send. If you're not signed up for my emails, get the free class here.
I created the Creative Dream Incubator because I believe that creative people having more support for creating their vision and pursuing their dreams MAKES THE WORLD BETTER.
Creative people create CULTURE. And we need a better culture to carry us through these times and into a better future for everyone.
I'd love to work with you and your dreams! Join the Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership here.
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