They say that “LinkedIn is where you tell lies to yourself, Facebook is where you tell half-lies to your friends, and Twitter is where you tell the Gods-honest truth to total strangers.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all told a few lies here and there. As a cub, I was fascinated with this lying thing. It probably starts with doing something bad and wanting to blame it on somebody else.
Once you get the hang of it, it can become a kind of game. I tested Mama and Papa Bear to see if they could tell I was lying. (They usually could.) I soon found that I could do even better by telling the truth in such a way that others thought I was lying.
Stealing Smokes
Take smoking for instance. When I was a youngster, the family went on vaction to visit friends in Raleigh, North Carolina, and while we were there we toured the cigarette factory, and took home some free samples. Brother and Sister Bear and I expressed some interest in those free cigarettes, and Mama Bear obliged, perhaps convinced it would be such an unpleasant experience for us that we would never smoke again. So there we were sitting around the coffee table and lighting up the Raleighs, presumably for the first time.
Actually this was not the first time Tame Bear had ever smoked a cigarette. So when I didn’t cough my lungs out, Mama Bear asked had I ever smoked cigarettes before? And I explained… actually yes I had. You know old man Pritchard down the alley, how he burns leaves in the wire basket beside his driveway? Yeah, he smokes too, and me and the Kenny boys would go there later when he wasn’t around and pick up the half-smoked cigarettes and try smoking them.
“Oh really!” said Mama Bear. “And how did you light them? Did you have matches?” (Now I know that we kids were not to be messing with matches, and I was never tempted to play with them. But I had used a magnifying glass to burn holes in leaves and make smoke.)
“No, I didn’t have matches,” I said. “We lit the cigarettes with my magnifying glass.”
“Oh come on, really?” asked Mama Bear. And I replied, “Yep, that’s right.” But here I will admit I said it with just the right sort of, oh I don’t know, inflection or something to make it sound like I might just be telling a lie.
And it made Mama Bear laugh, which was kinda surprising, because I realized I got her. She thought I was telling a tall tale, even though every bit of it was true. But she also stubbed out the cigarettes and told us not to smoke any more.
Manifesting Reality
So that was an interesting discovery — you could tell the truth in a way that made people think you were lying. You can also lie to yourself quite believably. I was fascinated by that Bible story where Jesus turns water into wine. I really wanted to do that. I tried for the longest time to do that, really believed I could do that. But eventually I had to admit to myself it wasn’t possible. Not for me, and maybe not for Jesus either. (Later on, Mama Bear helped me turn Welch’s grape juice into wine, with the help of some bakers yeast… but that’s another story.)
Eventually we all — hopefully — learn that lying is not all that useful and can actually cause some harm to others and is generally a bad thing to do. But as a grown up, I still do a kind of lying to myself occasionally. You see, I’ve a bit of an interest in this Law of Attraction manifestation thing. That’s where you want something, but don’t know how to get it, so you ask God for it, and don’t worry about how you’re gonna get it or how it’s gonna happen, you just believe it will come to you, one way or another. You believe so much that you really think it’s coming, or the thing is actually already here, and you can feel it, or smell it or taste it… You convince yourself of something that is not — at the present moment anyway — actually true. And the interesting thing is, as long as you’re not trying to perform a miracle or something, what you wish for and hope for and believe you already have, does sometimes manifest itself in your life. It’s happened enough that I’m a believer, though I’d still like to figure out exactly how it works.
Infinite Possibilities
That’s the simple version of manifesting new things in one’s life. In practical terms there is a lot more, shall we say, nuance. The real master at this, and someone who I consider a mentor, is Mike Dooley. I love Mike Dooley because he is so inspiring in this regard. If you’d like to check him out, click that flashing green link next to this story, the one that says “Mike Dooley – Infinite Possibilities.”
When it comes to wanting more for ourselves in this life, it’s good to dream, and to imagine your dreams coming true, and believing they can. Go ahead and imagine having, or doing, or being. Go ahead, lie a little to yourself and feel with all your senses what it’s like to already have what you really want. And if you don’t quite believe it yourself, just wait and see… maybe you were telling yourself the truth!
Tags: Facebook, manifesting, stories, truth, Twitter
When it comes to manifesting i think it was Dr. Wayne Dyer that i heard once say, Fake it until you make it.