The Less You Label the More You Manifest

This is going to be one of the more personal and controversial pieces I write; however, it’s an important one for me as I receive this question a lot.“In way of manifestation, why are people repressed and in poverty? Why do bad things happen to people?”Now I can only answer this based on my practice, life, theories and philosophies. And I support and honor anyone else’s opposing beliefs.To give my perspective on this, I have to go back to the beginning. I was born to an 18-year-old mother and 19-year-old father. By the time I was ten, I had lived in seven different apartments with my young, poor, single mother, and when I was with my dad, a trailer. If anyone knows anything about poverty, it’s incredibly democratic -- meaning that the friends I played with in my apartment complexes ranged from all ethnicities and different walks of life. The other caretakers that raised me, when my mother was working, were my Irish aunt who was married to my Iranian uncle who had immigrated to the US right before the revolution for education. This means that three days a week, I was immersed in a tight and beautiful Persian (Muslim) community where I was exposed to all the cultural beauty that comes with the Middle Eastern way of life. Five of those years, my father’s brother lived with my aunt and uncle. He was one of the first waves of homosexuals to contract AIDS in the late 80’s and early 90’s. “Don’t touch Guy’s scissors and never touch a needle he’s used,” was just a normal warning and day of life for us kids. Lastly, my grandparents also helped raise me. With them I felt the most safe, stable and loved.

Children are incredibly resilient and don’t develop labels, segregation or “difference” until society and/or their caretakers project it onto them.

I didn’t experience this until the paternal side of my family got “worried” that my first boyfriend, at ten, was African American and from a bad neighborhood. It was the first time I ever understood that society considered humans different based on color, culture and sexuality. It hit me with as hard of an impact as saying there’s no such thing as Santa. That beautiful abstract innocence of equality that only children can truly understand started disappearing then. My best friends were poor, Caucasian, Asian, Latino, Black, Persian, and every other color under the rainbow. And because I had moved so much when I was little -- with such a multicultured upbringing -- adapting to any culture, sexuality, gender or crowd was as normal as the sun rising.Growing up had its hardships. My uncle didn’t ultimately die of AIDS, he died of a drug overdose. My grandmother and safest caretaker starting getting dementia when I was eight and I was completely abandoned by her deteriorating brain by ten. I went to a predominantly wealthy elementary school simply because we could fake my aunt’s address as my own, and I was one of the rare poor kids. In junior high and high school I wasn’t so lucky. Adaptation and reality were real for me right out of the gate. To say that I grew up as a white privileged child in a bubble would be a gross misunderstanding.I’ve traveled to many second and third world countries, but it wasn’t until I was in Colombia three years ago that I began answering the above questions for myself. I met a very spiritual woman in Colombia where I had an in-depth conversation about those questions. That day, a man had pulled up in a Ferrari where we were having tacos in a poor village. He parked in an entitled way, and had a lot of machismo that turned me off. During the conversation with this woman, I asked, “He could feed and do so much for the people of this town rather than buying that ridiculous car. Why?” And like anyone who projects, she cleared things up for me gently, “He’s a very famous musician here in Colombia, and one of the biggest philanthropists for the poor, children and education. When you stop seeing the difference between a Ferrari and a car, you’ll have your answer.”I simmered on it for another year, and it was just as I was becoming more active in advising people through manifestation that it became very clear to me:

A collective consciousness and the limiting belief we’ve been programmed with confines us to what we materialize and manifest in our lives.

Simply put, if a child grows up in certain cultural beliefs and is programmed to believe that they are capable of only the rigidity of their current climate and situation, they will continue to manifest the exact same things. It’s cyclical. Especially if they never have any expanders that show them that they are capable of more. And then, if you throw low self-worth programming into the mix, you have your full recipe for why a cycle continues.Let’s take a personal example. My mother was raised in Los Angeles in an Irish family of five girls. Her father was an alcoholic and abusive and her mother, rigid and religious. As the youngest, she never received any proper love or safety. Being called a whore or a cunt was “normal.” Everyone was a drunk. My grandma had been raised in the exact same environment. Today my mother is 50, a homeowner, and makes over $80,000 a year. She only has to work two days in a row and spends her days off drinking whiskey -- beginning at 11am -- and watching TV until she passes out at 5pm. She doesn’t have any friends, because in true alcoholic form she has completely isolated herself. The two most important factors of all -- when it comes to manifestation -- is that she never had an Expander that showed her or told her that she could do something greater than what was programmed into her when she was little. She’s spent her whole life spiritual bypassing, band-aiding and quick fixing. She’s never actually healed or shifted the root of her beliefs or trauma; therefore, she continues to project and attract the exact same cycles into her life, which tend to be one shit storm after another. Let’s look at the facts on paper. She’s white, beautiful, makes good money -- she’s what society would “label” as privileged. But she’s a terrible manifestor.I’ve been intimately exposed to most walks of life -- culturally to socio-economically, and one thing I can say wholeheartedly is that manifestation is real. Belief-based perspective, shifting blocks, the expansion of the subconscious out of low self-worth, the shifting of limiting beliefs, and the passing of life lessons and tests is democratic to everyone! Everyone is capable of manifesting heart driven desires.If I tally up the statistics in my practice, I find that most trauma (such as sexual abuse), 90% of the time was also experienced by the mother and had unresolved healing and support around it. More than once, I’ve heard a client express that after finally getting the courage to tell her mother what had happened, the mother responded with, “It’s just what happens.”But it’s not just what happens. To say and believe this is to buy into a false collective consciousness to cope with a very painful, unwarranted and violating experience. This is why it’s so important to heal. Programming can go deep -- generations deep -- and if one is raised in a collective consciousness of poverty, inferiority or abusive beliefs while never seeing an expansion out of it, cycles can continue to manifest over and over in one way or another. Because of this I have no place for limiting labels in my life. Feminist, poverty, privileged, normal, wealthy, victim, leader, liberal, conservative, sexuality... all of it still suggests societal programmed boxes, personas and inferiority -- and, even worse, segregation. The last time I checked, the world doesn't need any more division. When we stop seeing the difference in the Ferraris (labels) and cars (humans), we’ll be at our fullest manifesting potential.

You don’t have to be the box you grew up in. You don’t have to be the box society puts you in.

I certainly am not. If I had stayed, I’d most likely be “white-trash,” “poor,” and potentially a “victim.” However, am I what society now deems “privileged?” I guess so. Though, with all odds against me (aside from “beauty” and “charisma”) I’ve done a lot of work to get here, and I’m one hell of a manifestor because of it. And I certainly don't put myself in that labeled, limiting box. I see where I am today as a state of being. Peace, abundance and my heart's desires. Labels are just another way to repress. They are just aspects in the shadow. I have no interest in their limits. And they certainly undermine the hard efforts humans from all walks of life have overcome to achieve their wildest dreams. Great manifestors elevate and anyone is capable. Things that will always continue to interest me are gender neutral, race neutral, sexuality neutral, class neutral points of perspective and conversation. I’ve met families in “poverty” that are far more “privileged” than those I know in “wealth.” That abstract, innocent, in-between energy is manifestation energy in motion. It’s un-bound and limitless. I don’t have a utopia-naive heart; I have a democratic heart. I have "wealthy" clients that can't get out of their own way to manifest making money because of the box they've been guilted into. I have "feminist" clients that can't manifest a partner because they have unresolved issues with their repressing father, and I have "poor" clients that can't seem to materialize more because they buy into what society has painted (labeled) what their limited box should look like. Identifying with labels, in my opinion, is a manifestation block within itself. So how does one tap into that energy? Question ego personas, question limiting beliefs, question your upbringing and the programming you received both at home and in society, unblock the judgments of yourself and others that are limiting you, and finally, expand into your heart’s desires.Herbalist and Manifestation Advisor, Lacy Phillips is the founder of Free & Native, a source of inspiration, musings, materials and thoughts advocating the unblocking of molds that foil your personal freedom and true native essence.