If you’re looking for perfection, Portugal might not be for you. But then again, where would you find it? Humans know, deep down, that “nothing’s perfect”, and it’s an endearing feature of our species that keeps us searching for the ideal, whilst knowing it doesn’t exist, except as an attractive abstraction.
This country finds itself, for many, and seemingly more and more, a projection screen of such archetypal perfection. For those clearly keen to leave an obviously imperfect reality, today I will encourage them to reorientate their thought processes.
Whilst not perfect, Portugal still remains a delightful backdrop for me and mine, even if the light in “delight” seems conspicuously absent so far this year. And, despite the apparently constant rain, the disagreeable wind, and personal challenges that you may have read about in this column regarding sudden disruptions to our electricity and water supplies, as well as trying to set up businesses against all the administrative odds, we remain grateful and largely joyous. Perversely so, you might be forgiven for thinking.
Oddly, this is a conclusion I have come to laying stricken with man-flu, or something similarly life-threatening, over the last day or three, having had a chance to not only analyse the “Casa Munson Domestic Happiness Index”, but also reflecting on the nature of happiness itself. Now I’ll take any man’s self-pitying male flu misery and raise it.
When I go down with this kind of bug, I treat it like a shamanic journey, seeing what the fever and any hallucinations can reveal to me; assuming that what doesn’t kill me (albeit a close call, obviously) will make me stronger – physically, mentally and spiritually.
On this most recent heroic adventure, my sickbed-based vision quest took me, as I fell asleep, from the prophetic and rousing words of William Blake, no less, and through fitful sleeplessness knee-deep into the ideas of an unknown-to-me metaphysical author from the 20th century, Neville Goddard.
Now, I feel quite well-versed with who and what might be seen as ‘new agey’, mind-body-spirit type speakers and teachers, from this century and the last, but Goddard had evaded me until my semi-conscious, trance-like internet searching served him up to me.
More ‘Law of Assumption’ than attraction, Neville gifted the world, through an extraordinary career in lecture halls and on television between the 1930s and 70s, with the idea that “whatever you assume as true becomes your reality”. Furthermore, saying of the law, that “you can manifest anything by thinking and feeling as if you already had it”. Imagine that, imagining that you had something, you actually have it (you might want to read that again).
And stranger too, to think that I might be here in Portugal because my earlier thought processes had delivered me to this place, if Goddard’s assertions are true (which I think they are).
Let me rewind then, in real time, to what my thought process was back in 2007 when Portugal first showed up on my radar, and as we ‘reverse engineer’ my journey to Portugal, to test the ‘Law of Assumption’ more robustly.
The first thing I recall was wanting to be away from the UK, which is clearly an easy test for Portugal to pass, as this is NOT the UK, even if there are some Algarve enclaves that might have you thinking otherwise! What’s spooky, and not just plain prosaic, is that my heart was set on peace, tranquility, a sense of community, better weather and a hospitable, life-affirming way of being, when framing my migration.
Now, I have never really thought about it in this way, but I have to say my ‘manifestation’ skills were spot on, even if that assumptive process would take a whole 10 years to realise. But manifest it did, and here I am enjoying those qualities, which – as it turns out – need to be more than a mere shopping or checklist if your dream is to become a reality.
Goddard was known to promote three techniques to basically ‘turbo-charge’ the Law of Assumption for best success, namely ‘revisioning’, ‘scripting’ and perhaps most apt to mention here ‘thinking from the end’. “What Goddard means by this,” Kyle Greenfield at the thejoywithin.org website tells us, one of many that showcase the enduring and engaging legacy of the great man, “is that in order to gain control of your circumstances, you must first become crystal clear about what it is that you want to be, do, or have manifest in your life”.
“This means that you have to project yourself forward into the idea that you want to accomplish,” he continues. “Once you are clear in this aim, you can begin to identify with what it would feel like to achieve that aim. The goal of ‘thinking from the end’ is not simply to identify a list of desired qualities, but to be able to identify with those qualities, and to begin to embody the feeling that accomplishing your aim would instill within you.”
May I therefore suggest then, alongside your other more tangible preparations for a successful journey to, and happy life in, Portugal, that you not only list the features of the life you aspire to here, but FEEL them too? And not only feel them, but feel them deeply and often? This mental technology, brought brilliantly to me courtesy of a man-flu attack, is some serious food for thought, and for some – who it inspires – a reminder of the profound power of our thoughts and their quality.
For example, those seeking perfection in Portugal, whilst thinking only of escape, persecution and conflict, might well end up ‘attracting’ such energies here, ironically soon complaining how imperfect it is. And, for the somewhat skeptical of the theories shared here, consider the worst thing that could happen if you decide to invest your attention, like I did, into notions of peace, tranquillity and a more beautiful way of life. Tempting, right?
Nothing and nowhere, as I mentioned before, is perfect. But if Neville Goddard is right, Portugal will be a perfect match to the deepest feelings you have about being here. That’s a thought worth thinking about. And then feeling your way into …
