What Are You Seeking? (Why I'm no longer manifesting)

I left Toronto when things were going well. I'd made a nice life for myself. I enjoyed the city and felt comfortable in it. I earned a living doing something I loved, had a good community, friends since childhood. I lived in a nice neighborhood and enjoyed the places I'd walk daily. The coffee shops, the health food store around the corner. 

I'd run out the door every morning from my home to beautiful parks and trails. I invested well, and even bought a house for my siblings and I to share. You could say that it was the perfect time to turn everything upside down. I made a trip to LA for New Years, and while I was there, I thought here. 

Here is where I want to be. Here I will come to make a beautiful life for myself. 

When I returned home I decided that I would dedicate everything I had to making my dream a reality. Everything. And it was from precisely that moment that I started to experience a level of overwhelm that I never had before. 

In order to pull it off I had to have a one-track mind. One in which all of my actions, thoughts, and behaviours were oriented toward this goal. I spent money differently in preparation to start my life anew, sacrificed sleep so that I could stay up after work on set to prepare my visa application - some eight hundred pages, and showed up differently, exhausted and irritable, with loved ones. 

Even when I received a response from the USCIS with a seeming rejection of my visa application, I doubled down, invested further resources, hired a new lawyer, gave up my place in Toronto and stood in the belief that God would 'move mountains for me.'

I believed in God then, but it was not a reciprocal relationship. I would go to him to ask for things, but was not open to what he asked of me in return. At that point, I had basically put him in the place of a crystal I used to get the things I wanted. I took bible verses out of context, like "I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me." And used that to accomplish my goals. 

I became really into manifesting and talked about it with my friends on set. All throughout the arduous visa process I listened to books like, "Hustle, Believe, Receive," which only added to my anxiety in those months before I left. It was a continuous reminder that the more relentlessly obsessed I was, the closer I could get to anything I wanted in life. 

Even the word hustle makes me anxious now. 

When I arrived in LA it didn't take long for me to realize that hustle was what the city was built on. Hustle and a dose of delusion, set in the midst of beautiful mountain vistas, eternal sunshine and Erewhon grocery stores. It was rife with a combination of sheer determination and new age spirituality, tarot cards, crystals and dream catchers. 

Just as I had seen the stereotype about Los Angeles played out in SNL skits, on my very first day of work at Smashbox studios, the wardrobe assistant asked me the time and location I was born so that she could read my birth chart. 

She told me the sun rising and moon rising and everything else she could about me. What kind of year I was going to have based on the astral configuration. Hardships, setbacks, breakthroughs. All of it was so enticing, because it sounded so specifically accurate. 

After all, it seemed foolish not to believe that the earth had some kind of celestial order, and that there was something more at play beyond what we could physically see. It's not that I don't believe in spirituality, I do think it is quite real. But the question I now have is where does all of it lead, if not directed toward God? 

I remember when I booked my first movie, and found that members of my team were taking their do-and-go clients before coming to work on set, and doing music videos on the weekends. I was shocked. I was thinking, guys, we have a job. It was nothing like what I'd witnessed before in Toronto. 

And then the way that some of the artists in Local 706, who were much to my senior, started texting me to offer themselves as my assistant on my next show when they learned that I was working. 

It didn't matter how many awards they'd won or what iconic movies they'd worked on, everyone got back into the ring again each time to fight for the next job. And it went from disturbing to worse when soon after virtually all production halted for the longest film industry strikes in history.

The timing was impeccable. The studios were all planked by picketers for months, and I stayed there, alone, foolishly wanting to remain in case I got the call. The sunshine started to become painfully offensive over the next six months. 

It did not dawn on me then that leaving was an option. Out of stubbornness, I was going to be the one who stuck it out for when it all came back. It's a similar story for many that work in the film industry, who would rather sit in agony for months on end and complain of being unemployed, even as no one was forcing us to choose that for ourselves. 

I was transfixed on entirely the wrong thing, inspired by a quotation for as long as I could remember by Leonardo Da Vinci, who said, "He who is fixed to a star, does not change his mind." Remember that even Lucifer was once the bright morning star. 

There was a moment early in childhood when I distinctly remember creating a rich fantasy for myself as a means to cope with the darkness around me. I thought that if I could get away and move to a faraway place and achieve a level of success for myself then none of it could get to me. 

It did, of course, follow me all the way there. I wasn't able to leave it behind simply by pulling 'a geographic' as I found it was called in the recovery community. In LA I found myself in the rooms with my fellow adult-children-of-alcoholics, where I made the discovery about when it was I started to make achieving my goals my entire personality. 

Visitors to the meetings said that they were excited to come to LA because they heard there was a great recovery community there. That was quite funny to me. Yes, indeed we were a robust community, of those who had come from all over the world in hopes to achieve some version of love through accolades and fame. 

When simply being in LA didn't of itself provide me the complete and utter fulfillment I imagined it would, I sought new ways to bring the situation back into my control. I broke out the candles for a candle magic ceremony. I am not kidding. They were gifted to me in earnest by a colleague at wrap. 

I lit the green candle and did a little spell for prosperity, and while I was at it, lit a red one for love. Naturally, if there wasn't any work to be had, then finding a husband was going to be the next best way to solve all of my life's problems. 

I spent my time trying to will it all into being. I listened to David Ghiyam and to Joe Dispenza, who said that the way to achieve things in the physical world was to 'do the work' on the mat in meditation. I did love meditations and took out a book called "Calling in the One."

I was even counselled by a well-meaning Christian who implied that because I was a child of God, none of these set backs I was experiencing should apply to me. That I had super-natural favor, and 'the believer's authority.'

Some of this was comforting in the moment but it did not change all of the uncertainty and instability I was experiencing, so I started to look for signs. A prophetic word from God to bring peace and assurance. It could come in the form of angel numbers, premonitions, dates I would receive about a job coming, or who I would get married to. 

All of this was like practicing a form of divination, trying to obtain future knowledge that wasn't meant for me, and it kept me obsessing. Rather than taking in the reality of the situation, I was somewhere else.  

It's true that God had given signs to people in the bible, but I've come to the now obvious conclusion that these were people who had oriented their lives in an entirely different way from me. They had dedicated their lives to God and were devoted to doing God's will. 

When work eventually did pick up I had the opportunity to spend time in intimate proximity with my idols. I saw up close what life was like for those who had sacrificed at the altar of Hollywood. Who gave up having families, meaningful friendships, pastimes even, or peace of mind. And it did not seem like the oscars on the shelves offered any consolation. 

I was fortunately so bereft that I started going to church as often as I could. Even joined a life group in the hopes that I might meet someone there. But a funny thing can happen to a person when they spend their time that way, learning about scripture and surrounding themself with Christian community. It started to seep in.

At bible study I discovered the significance of the 'mountain' that Jesus referred to in Matthew 21 when he proclaimed that a strong faith could pick it up and throw it into the sea. He was pointing to the temple mount, where the Sanhedrin high court was located which had ordered to have him killed. 

The obstacle, which could be removed by faith, was about Jesus' death and resurrection. Not me having my visa application approved so that I could move to the US and become a famous makeup artist. 

And when St.Paul wrote that he could do all things through Christ who strengthened him, he had at that time endured Roman floggings, been multiple times shipwrecked at sea, bitten by a venomous snake, was imprisoned, and was later martyred for proclaiming the gospel. 

What was it that allowed him to endure and even delight in those things? His belief that Jesus was God and that knowing him was worth more than anything he could gain in this world. 

And where did that leave me? With the humbling realization that maybe God was actually not conspiring to give me everything I hoped and dreamed of for egotistical gain. No more than a loving father would give an immature child everything they demanded.

I'd let a weird combination of prosperity gospel and new age spirituality convince me that if I focused hard enough on my dreams, God would bless them. But what if true belief in God was realizing that he actually loved me so much more than that?

Eventually I started to entertain the idea that going back to Toronto was indeed an option. But not this time with the "if I move to Toronto - everything will be perfect." It wasn't a decision I was going to make in intoxicated frenzy. I would wait until the time was right, and in the meantime, enjoy the place I was in.

I exhaled. I let go of my grip and had fun. I made more friends, took in that dreamy landscape, soaked up the opportunities, and in all of it I thanked him. I didn't need to know how the rest of my life was going to unfold. If a door was to be opened, I didn't want it to be because I pryed and manipulated my way in. 

In the final months before I left, I was reading a book called "Pray, Decide, Don't Worry." In a section written by Jackie Angel, she described vocation as the calling that was most life-giving for ourselves and for others. When it was put that way, I knew that it wasn't being in LA. 

And shortly after, while sitting in in front of the Eucharist, I brought the question to God. And I heard him say, in the most gentle, loving voice, "be a good sister."

When I went back to Toronto, it was in a much different fashion than the way I came. Not in a hurry, not as if my life depended on it, not with the belief that this was going to be the missing piece. I had begun to get a glimpse of real treasure, and knew that it was not anything to be found in this world. 

In the gospel of John, the first time Jesus spoke he said the words, what are you seeking?

In response, all that his first two disciples wanted to know was where he was staying. So Jesus invited them to come and see. They were looking for a destination, but were invited into relationship. After spending time with Jesus, one of the two of them named Andrew went to get his brother and said, "We have found the Messiah," and invited him to follow too. 

I don't think it's wrong to want to make the most out of life or to work toward accomplishing a goal. Most of my desires could have been healthy ones if they were ordered correctly, that is, not put ahead of my relationship with God. 

The verse that I am trying to live by now is Matthew 6:33

Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these will be added unto you.