Sunday, December 29, 2013

Speaking in the prophetic tense



Various personal development courses I’ve been on and books I’ve read draw the distinction between two quite separate uses of language: descriptive and creative.
Descriptive language describes the world as we see it: “There’s a car. It’s red.”

Creative language describes the world as we would like it to be, and in the act of declaring it, brings it into being.

Not so many people are fully conscious of the second type of language; still fewer are adept at using it. Sometimes people express scorn or are even offended, referring to creative language as lying, when in fact it simply describes something that doesn’t yet exist. It's only a matter of timing.

It occurred to me that we could simplify understanding if we recognised a new language structure – I’ll call it the prophetic tense – to define when we are using language to create. It’s not the same as the future tense, exactly, although at times it has aspects in common.

Think about it, though, the varying degree of power in statements such as: “I’ll do it this afternoon” – how much faith we put in this depends on our view of the speaker, their tone of voice, the importance of the thing, and to a large extent, our experience of our own integrity. In some instances we take it as absolute fact, relying on it and planning around it. In others, the response is more: "Yeah, right."

I, personally, take my word very seriously, partly because I was born that way, and partly because I know its power relies on my deep unconscious belief in it. If I habitually said things and then didn’t stand by them, then when I used the prophetic tense, I wouldn’t, in a weird way, believe myself. And my sense is that it’s the intensity with which I believe myself when I say I’ll do something, or describe something I see in the future, that makes it so likely to become true.

I'm not saying I'm perfect

I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m acutely aware of the times I’ve failed. Sometimes this has been in one-off instances - some of them big ones, of enormous importance to me, indelibly imprinted on my memory. Some of these I am still working to salvage.

Other times it has happened when I have been stretching myself, perhaps extending my business, taking on larger, more challenging projects, or perhaps moving countries, when logistic detail proliferates. In times of stretch, sometimes things slip through the cracks. I have missed appointments, and forgotten things. I don’t like it, but I’ve learned to be a bit kinder to myself about it: apologise, put plans in place to make it less likely to happen again and get over it.

Other times are more complex – or perhaps, actually less complex – the times when I’ve avoided raw truth for reasons I don’t myself quite understand. My sense is that sometimes this is because of a gap of perception and understanding: the other person is not ready for what I have to say; but at other times, it is simply integrity failure – lying, in black and white terms. Hmmm. Like I said, I’m not perfect…

Coming back to the central point, being true to my word is very important to me, because that is what gives my voice power; that is what tells friends, family, colleagues and clients that they can trust me; and that is what brings my prophetic speaking to life.

How does the prophetic tense work?

So how does it work? Well, in my experience, one of two ways. I may be speaking in traditional future tense: “the books will be published on the 27th”; “I’ll be over to see you the week after next”. Or I may be speaking in the present tense, describing something that is real and vivid before my eyes as I speak, a lived vision, or something I draw up in my imagination as the words form. My experience is that, given time, these things almost always come to pass.

Recognising the use of the prophetic tense is a subtle art, to start with, although it becomes unmistakeable after you’ve been looking for it and spotting it for a while. The voice changes, gets slower, stronger. There’s a profound sense of absolute truth.

Sometimes I use it intentionally, switch into it, deliberately create the future; and sometimes it overtakes me, in a conversation, speaking to someone about things that are important to one or the other of us, or both. It comes from deep inside me, from that place I know as Truth. 

And sometimes, I hear it in someone else. It sends shivers up my spine, raises goosebumps. I stop short, take notice, remember. And in a cool moment, a minute or so later, I play back to them what they’ve said. Very often they themselves haven’t realised the significance of the moment.

It’s a miracle when that happens. Big things get acknowledged and planned, not in the to-do list, something-more-to-fill-my-day-with way, but from a deep place of inspiration. It’s magical, miraculous.

Here, I think, lies the deepest power of the human race.



The following is an excerpt from my novel, Law of Attraction, which describes a moment where the prophetic tense is used.





I came back home overflowing with energy. I was booked to go back to Auckland in a fortnight, but in the meantime, I made an offer on the house  on the corner and sat down to brainstorm.

Three weeks later I stood in the living room of my new venture, keys still in my hand. Doors were open wide out to the veranda and I could see trees, lawn, and the occasional car going past. I looked around, imagining how it would be, visualising the furniture, the colours, cool neutrals over this awful brown. I love this moment, when everything is possible, where I begin to create the future with my imagination.

Maria came running in. “Mum, Mum, I found a swing!”

I held out my hands. “Come here, Babe, let me tell you what I see.”

- excerpt from Law of Attraction by Jennifer Manson

Monday, December 16, 2013

The Everyday Miracle of Sunrise



There’s a magical moment when you’ve started driving before dawn, after the moon, if there is one, has set, when the first light touches the east. It’s not enough to light your way just yet, it’s just there, a promise of things to come.

I’m always a sucker for a good metaphor, so this morning, as I drove towards Calais to the Eurotunnel, for my next trip to England, I reflected on those moments in life when we know something has changed, but nothing is really different in the world yet. The most obvious example is the start of falling in love; and a shift in business can happen in the same way. In this excerpt from Slow Time, we see both things happening at the same time:


“This is my brother,” Viv said. I felt my eyelashes flutter downwards in a way they never had before, shying from the yellow-green eyes, the faint smile.
“Caroline’s been talking about you non-stop.” He shook the hand I offered. It was a moment after he let it go that it began its slow fall back to my side. My mouth swerved upwards into a half smile and back again, not quite making it. I couldn’t think of an answer. “I’m interested in what you’re doing. I’ve just finished a development along Lake Wakatipu, an eco-hotel.  Tell me about your project.”
Dan was a good audience, and I found my thoughts coming into focus as they poured into his ear. He asked astute questions, and in thinking through the answers, my plans developed, I became more and more animated. This could become addictive.
At the start I had avoided his eyes, turning my gaze from spot to spot on the spotless ceiling so I could create the visions in my head. Further into the conversation I found my eyes on his face, on his lips as he spoke, finding something there that reflected me back to myself, but altered, improved.
“What about your development. How did it start?” And now I could really watch him, see his passion. It was like watching the sky on Guy Fawkes night.

There are other moments, too, other beginnings. If you look back through life, you will probably find lots of them: the moment you read the advertisement for a job that you later got and loved; filling out the application form for university; buying a ticket to travel. Nothing has changed, and everything has.

For me, it was the moment of deciding to publish my first book; the moment of being invited to do a television interview, nervous days before I was sitting outside the studio, waiting; putting an offer on the house, and on the three apartments we have owned over time; the moment of saying yes, in theory we could move to France. Nothing changes, and everything does.

My guess is, life offers us many of these moments - it’s up to us to accept them, or not. I'll be keeping a closer eye out from now on...

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Lived Visions


Does anyone else get these lived visions? This is the first one I remember, when, in real life, I was considering buying this hotel and renovating it as a hotel for writers. I was standing outside it and I felt the present moment fall away, replaced by another moment, another future, architecture forming around me to take me away from that day, month and year, to another, an undetermined lifetime away.




"There was an edgy feeling to the streets here, cafés and nightclubs and night-time noise. The wide cobbled front of the hotel seemed vulnerable. I wouldn’t be completely comfortable behind these windows in the early hours of the morning. I put my foot on the low steps and ascended.

"I turned, for a moment feeling the proximity of the street, but then the traffic sounds receded, becoming a reverberating echo, like I remembered from the glassed in courtyards of the Louvre. What if this were an atrium, visually open to the street but enclosed? The verandas would stay pristine, original, but instead of looking into the street they would look in to a double height glass room. It would be fabulous! I could see it: a café at one end, reception in the middle, comfortable chairs beyond. 

"My mind circled back to my drawing. What had I written? I took the book out of my bag. The Old Occidental Writers’ Hotel. Wow! That was it. And then I could see it, shelves and shelves and shelves of books, the perfect mood and décor. The skin on my arms prickled and goose bumps raised, my pulse beat low in my belly." 
 - excerpt from The Old Occidental Writers' Hotel, pp 39-40



That experience was so compelling I wrote it into a book, based a story around it, grew it from that moment. This one didn't happen in my linear-time reality. I wrote the book, lived the thought experiment in words on paper, and found that creative outlet sufficient - and then an earthquake took the hotel, anyway, so that future, even if realised, would have been short-lived.

I'm a little more used to them now, those moments of current reality receding, showing me something - I'm never clear what - a direction, an idea, a possibility. I come out of them dazed, somehow refreshed, always in a thoughtful frame of mind. They show me something important, I think, something that I haven't quite acknowledged yet with my conscious mind. In the past they've caused confusion, because they'd get mixed up with reality, and I'd fight to have the two fall into line. Now I'm beginning to wonder what they are, how I should use them, and possibly, what else it might be useful to know.

They are fed like intuition, from somewhere deep. I sense they are guides, a vivid shorthand of what I should look for, what I should aim for, in my search for destiny, my destined future. So what now? What is the next step? How do I follow into something that seems a quantum leap away?

As I ask these questions, I feel the answer brewing... "Just close your eyes, and take that leap, of faith..."

Jennifer Manson is the author of six inspiring novels and one non-fiction title Easy - Stories from an effortlessly created life, available from Amazon and all major book and e-book websites.