Throughout my life I’ve made endless half-arsed attempts at manifesting things. I remember Geri Halliwell explaining to me that she just wrote a wish list and stuck it inside the back of a photo frame and then a few years later after Spice Girl fame she found the list and ‘bingo’ it had all come true. So I did just that and several years later “BINGO”! Nothing had come true for me. So then I’m thinking, how many people write a wish list saying ‘I want to be a famous’ and it just doesn’t happen? Most teenagers I’m sure to be honest. The fact that it happened for Geri was not a magical wish list it was sheer bloody minded determination and a genius head for ideas. Working with Geri taught me that she is a clever and very determined individual. She had excellent ideas and she pushed them out into the world to make them succeed. 

When I grow up I want to be a merman swimming in the sea.

Yet even after the failure to create my wishes I still believed I was able to manifest anything I wanted. The only problem with me was I never quite knew what exactly it was I wanted to manifest. As a teenager after my voice broke I discovered this phenomenal Helden Tenor voice and I fancied the idea of becoming the Enfant Terrible of the Opera world but to be honest I went off that notion as most operas are too bloody long and the performers too snobbish and boring. Perhaps shit loads of cash then to buy a fine house? But if I had made a massive fortune I would likely now be dead from a drug overdose. What do I want to do? Be left alone to walk dogs in nature and watch shite on the telly? Work! I must find a vocation. Not a vocation a vacation. Just travel the world forever. Arrrrgggh!!!!!!

Dessert life. Desert life. Or deserted life?

What I needed to focus my thoughts and to begin manifesting my dreams into reality was to totally destroy my entire life. To reach 50 and find myself without money, friends, hope, a lover, my dogs, a house, work, self-respect and any will to live. It’s amazing how reaching the very lowest point in life can provide you with intuition and survival skills you didn’t know you had.

Remember when you were so Great they named streets after you? No!

Manifesting is a troublesome game though. I have begged and wished and pleaded and dreamed of getting out of my quagmire of loathsome self-hatred but just keep finding myself lying in the mud over and over again sinking further and further into hell. With not a single hand reaching out to lift me back up. And this went on for years and that’s a tough lesson to learn over and over but also to get back up from yet I did.

Arrrggghhh!!!!!

How? Well it’s a long story but here we need to focus on the techniques I’ve been using rather than the details of the tale. So we will begin with the first steps I made and these were slow and difficult and yielded very little at the time or so I thought but they were all steps on the way. 

When I was Karmically stuck.

The question of Karmic Banking – live openly, kindly and be fair always and seek only good deeds with others.

When I realised that my ex didn’t love me and neglected to tell me I was so distraught. Even though I was totally broken, I never wished that he might suffer. Not for a single moment. I believe that there is no ‘Eye for an Eye’ karmic levelling. I imagine karma offers only kindness. After all there are exceptionally cruel people out there who live treasured lives. I believe that if you have acted in good faith and with a kind heart then the Universe deposits credits for you in the bank of karma that you may withdraw later when someone wrongs you. In the past cruel things inflicted on me made me fill with hatred because I couldn’t and still cannot comprehend why people act with cruelty. But being angry wipes out the good Karma credits. This time because I still love my ex so completely I was able to learn the lesson of wishing him joy in his future without me.

Feeling ropey.

Waking Up to the Destructive Forces Within

So now I could see that patterns and bad habits were choking me more than the loss of the most special person I’ve ever known. I was spiralling out of control and had become totally self-destructive. I didn’t care to live. I moved into a house to keep an eye on some older teenagers. Seeing them reminded me of myself when young. The innocence and their desire to grow and mature and their hopes and dreams for the future were fodder for my jaded head. Rather than becoming maudlin about things I started to notice my bad habits that had started when I was a teenager. Including my depression at being constantly bullied for being gay and having to fight back with my fists (not proud but I silenced the bullies). So suddenly I thought “Fuck You” I’ll pick myself back up and carry on. But to do this I needed to bust those bad habits and become something new.

Preparing to export a new me.

Sacrifices to Change the Tune.

When I get emotionally stressed to the point of suicidal thoughts I tend to force restrictions on myself to challenge my brain with a new disciplined thought regime. It helps to take the focus from the trauma. So to help forget my ex I started removing dairy and eggs from my diet. Something I’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t say no to “cheese”. However cheese was a favourite pleasure with my loverman and I didn’t want to think about him so I thought I’d give up the cheese eating. And I managed it. But this was just the start. To release the other bad habits I would need to go into rehab, oh except I have no money. Bugger.

My world was upside down

Seeking Natural Cycles

With the constant head trauma of being alone I couldn’t sleep at all. My sleep patterns were busted and I needed a solution fast before my face aged 20 years from no sleep as well as all the crying I was doing. So the obvious solution was to go to bed early so that when dawn broke I’d be ready to wake up alongside it. I needed to find natural cycles. So that’s what I did. In bed by 9pm. I soon discovered myself following the sea tides and the phases of the moon too. Best of all about getting up early was watching the sunrise most mornings. It was majestic and so good for my head.

Moon over the castle. I see it everywhere I go.

Offerings to the Cosmos

I still wasn’t sleeping well but at least I was basking in the glory of the natural world and the enormity of the Cosmos. It was time I learned to make peace with my tragic new plight and time to make some deals with the creative forces that drive the Universe. I started to chat to the moon and mark its magical progress through the sky by offering to give up comforting bad habits. First I stopped puffing weed and then a month later gave up tobacco too. I was also losing tons of weight in the process rather than piling on the weight because I gave my habits away willingly. Then to my complete surprise I began craving healthier and healthier foods that normally I hate. The only problem being that with salads, chewing them with so few teeth is difficult but I decided to manifest them being fixed and having a smile again. I’m still working on that one though.

Eating fruit! What the hell! It’s a very soft pear though

Time then to start making offerings to the natural world. When you offer things to Gaia or whatever name you give the natural forces in the Cosmos it must be something precious to you. Something you adore or things that take time to create. I was baking foods with what few pennies I had left and offering them to the sea. I gave some of my dinners to the White Crows (heron gulls) and to the God force Oceanus I gave my beloved crutch, tobacco. I saved money to buy more things I could purchase or bake to offer to the cosmic forces. I spoke with Vivienne the Goddess of the moon and asked for assistance in lifting me from my trauma. And I kept doing this. Over and over again creating a thought pattern of belief. You can’t just ask once. I would go to sleep while imagining myself as a totally change person. I saw myself doing things I never believed I could achieve and I thanked the natural forces for granting me the chance to do these things. But it didn’t happen over night. It was slow and fraught with difficulties all along the way, especially the poverty. I had no money and each time I thought I was turning a corner the Universe would challenge me with a massive bill for something unforeseen. I was still struggling but I kept paddling towards success in my dreams.

Dreams are tumbling from my head

Letting Go of the Emotions

Allowing all my unstable emotions to be released felt at times like an impossible task and if I’m fully honest I still have the bad pattern blue prints in my head and it takes very little to open those wounds back up. I’ve been shoring up the access to these scars as much as possible. The trauma of damaging repetitive thought patterns is a tough one to remove as the brain loves the comfort of the thoughts even though they are traumatic. It’s the marathon of the psychological therapy trying to reset the neurological pathways. Sad emotions that are trapped ultimately cause illnesses not just in the mind. It is imperative to learn to let them go. Engaging with the world when really you want to curl up and die is excessively hard but must be continually attempted.

Getting out and about even in the rain looking like a knobhead

Marking Time and Nature

So the key to making this successful is to reconnect with the outside world. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live near the magnificence of the sea the natural world is all around us and it can be the tiniest plants or the flight of birds that can help to lift the mind back from the abyss of urban despair. I’m not saying that living alongside nature means you won’t suffer with depression because depression is part of who I am. Without the extremes of emotion I would be so much less creative but I am finally learning to manage it. Living with a lover and waiting for years for them to say ‘I love you” is crippling and I should have walked away years earlier but loving someone as totally as I did made me stupid and ultimately made the humiliation of his loving someone else completely destructive but I guess I manifested that too so that I might learn to never accept less than total love and loyalty in the future. So I forgive him his actions but I will never be able to look into his beautiful eyes again as they will open such wounds that I have struggled to close.

The tiniest daisies I’ve ever seen. Wonderful nature.

Being Thankful for any suffering and the things you don’t have yet

I have had to learn to thank the Universe for the harsh lessons of pain and humiliation that I have gone through. I have had to learn that losing everything you hold dear allows change. The hardest part through all of this was not giving up. I truly wanted to just go to bed and never wake up. I can only talk about this now because I have survived that desire but it went on for months and months. It cost me the few friends I had too because they couldn’t accept that I felt that way after splitting up with a lover. It was the “get over it” attitude that was like being wounded even more when all I wanted was a hug or a kind word of support. Mental health hurts so fucking much that friendships matter. But becoming Billy-No-Mates allowed me to seek out new friends and to be a new person with them. Time for a little self loving and some team me.

Team Me. Shirt by David at ShopHouse

I would thank the Cosmos but especially the Moon and the Sea for a host of wonderful dreams that were just that, dreams. But I was determined to make my dreams real just like Geri Halliwell did and it began with the sudden idea that I wanted to rent a studio I visited on the seafront. The building was a shop, run by Roma the kind and beautiful mother of a new and now very special friend Hollie. Roma was moving to a new premises and I thought I needed to earn some money so I asked Roma about the space and the lease and she connected me with the owner. Sadly he said it was going to someone else but I decided that I wanted it so much that I would manifest it regardless. So I set about doing just that. I thanked the owner for telling me it was going to someone else but told him that the building wanted me so I looked forward to hearing from him again soon.

Manifesting my new address

I went to the beach in front of the studio for the lunar eclipse to tell the moon that I require the building for sound healing and writing. I took my wonderful magic wand that came with me to Stonehenge that had been made for me by David Another of my new friends from Shop House Hastings. I cast spells using made up phrases and wishes and thanked the moon for hearing me and assisting me. To show the moon was listening to me it instantly manifested something else I had been trying to find but had no luck with so far, a yoga teacher. At 4am on a cold beach I met yoga teacher extraordinaire Lisa Powell and two of her friends and we all howled at the moon and made eclipse wishes.

Manifesting my studio during the lunar eclipse

Writing and Planning 

You need to be very specific if you want to successfully manifest something. For weeks I visited the building everyday and secretly chalked my new sound logo on the building in hidden places. I walked the area and chalked my logo in the surrounding streets. I made business cards and letter heads with my name and my address. I created everything that would be needed on my computer to start running the business from the building. And though everyone kept asking me what I was going to do if I didn’t get it I simply replied that I was getting it as the Universe was on my side. I refused to listen to any doubts. I continually thanked the universe, the sea the moon and the building itself for choosing me.

My business card I designed to manifest the studio.

Synchronicities show when you choose your flow

And so it begins. Once you release yourself from the torturous patterns that hang heavy around your soul you can begin to flow in harmony with the world around you. Little tiny new patterns emerge like the buds of spring. This blossoming of synchronicities all around you grows stronger. So many times that I visited my my studio wonderful moments connected to healing or singing happened. People would stop and ask about the building and I would say I’m moving in even though it wasn’t confirmed. Then they started to paint it for the woman who believed she was moving in and I kept telling people they were painting it for me.

What a difference some paint makes. My studio all smart just as I manifested it.

And the synchronicities kept coming. I met a woman who knew all the teachers from Guildhall and the Royal College of Music who had taught me. Names I hadn’t heard spoken aloud for decades. 

Guildhall & Barbican

Abundance is Everywhere

To successfully manifest anything you have to understand that the Cosmos is infinite and that there are riches in abundance but you have to learn to tap into that source. But to do that you must learn to focus your desire and belief as being something you cannot be shaken from by anyone or anything. I say anything as the Universe loves to play tricks to test your resolve. Sometimes the Universe will offer you something you desire but in a way that you didn’t intend. You can either accept that and be thankful or you can challenge the universe to go away and come back with a better solution. This is also a test. Manifesting solutions must come without ties. If the Cosmos offers gifts to you they are just that, gifts. They are delivered without any strings attached. I’m generous to others not so that they feel obliged to be generous back. I offer gifts and help to others because I love to be kind and helpful. I do this so that my life only impacts positively on others. I am hoping to live my life with the Universe smiling on me and me smiling back at everyone with my new teeth. I am learning to drown in the abundant nature of the Cosmos and it is will to drench me for asking. Here I was being given a quick lesson in being careful what I asked for.

I try to see abundance all around me and I try to let that abundance rain down and soak everyone around me in it. It is to be shared freely not to be selfishly kept to one side for a rainy day. Celebrate the wonders of life and give freely to others. Do not place value on giving joy or love to anyone. Be open and be honest. I am discovering a whole new world of happy friendships out there based on mutual kindness and wonderful new relationships are being created that never cease to fill me with joy and wonder. Roma and I see each other almost everyday now and we share therapists and healers between our two spaces. New friends are so wonderful.

Happy and joyful but not smiling until I can get those teeth sorted. Manifesting them though.

I made a deal with the universe, the moon and the sea that I would Sound Heal the entire world if need be as long as they held my hand and took me for a beautiful walk through the next 50 years of my life and so far the journey has been marvellous. The latest incredible manifestation I asked for was after I met Debi Angel a gorgeous local artist. Her business card found its way into my tarot deck next to the Nine of Cups, the Wish Card. I then saw some art she was working on and fell in love and secretly wanted to own a piece myself. So after getting my studio I decided to boldly ask her if she might hang some of her art on my walls that could be sold to clients. She not only said yes but she is also creating a new piece that will have my studio in it. But that’s not all that has manifested from that idea. Today Debi gifted me with a beautiful water colour of Marine Court and the beach. I am so unbelievably touched by this incredible gesture. I am the custodian of a piece of her art. What wonderful kind people you meet when you trust in the Universe to only deliver you happiness.

My very own piece of heaven. An original water colour from Debi Angel


7 Replies to “putting the pieces back by manifesting a new me

    1. thank for reading and replying. It’s so good to receive feedback as I explore life

  1. hey Russell, I went looking for this from hearing you say you had written about your depression and travails, what a truly amazing story of manifestation and release / rebirth, and you’ve written it all so beautifully, bravo, chapeau! XX

  2. Thank you for this post. Slowly coming out of the maze of despair with very little words but what I am able to say is that I am very grateful for having read this at the right time. Bless your soul, Russel.

      1. Thank you for sharing such tender pieces of your story. I can identify with the emotional extremes, profound life changes, and tangles around the soul – emotional recovery is real. I also relate to communicating with the Silver Night Queen – the moon, and the earth. As I was reading I heard myself ask me if I am as bold, brave and free as you. Russell , thank you for this beautiful gift.

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