We are in a co-creative relationship with the universe, connected to an infinite supply.
Next up in my course author-interview series is a conversation with Gay Hendricks, Ph.D. He has been in the personal transformation industry for over 45 years, and his years of experience and training really show through in his work. A few years ago, Gay and his wife, Katie, had me over for lunch (we live nearby), and I can tell you that they are just the loveliest people. Currently, Gay has a course with us called Attracting Genuine Abundance, which has been taken by over 8,000 DailyOM readers so far. Clearly many people are interested in what he has to say, so let's get right into it!
Madisyn Taylor: I thought it was really good insight when you had a lightbulb moment in your life and realized you were a genius at manifesting what you don't want. How is it that so many of us get it reversed?
Gay Hendricks: Under the stress of coping with the circumstances of our early lives, we develop two sets of intentions: conscious and unconscious. We also develop two distinct personalities. Personality #1 is largely positive and focused on getting recognition in healthy ways. Personality #2 develops as a subconscious means of dealing with pain, such as when our more positive personality fails to produce positive results. Personality #2's solutions produce results, but usually they're results we don't consciously want. When we're in the grip of personality #2, we do things that produce more pain, such as giving up, blaming others, getting sick, having accidents, and getting in trouble with authority figures.
From these two different personalities come two different sets of intentions: conscious and unconscious. The conscious intentions emerge from personality #1, which is bent on creating positive results through actions that attract positive recognition. The unconscious intentions are a product of personality #2, which is focused on the short-term solution of warding off pain at the sacrifice of long-term solutions that prevent the pain from occurring in the first place.
For example, you might have a conscious intention to go to the store for bean sprouts, but also be driven by an unconscious intention to punish yourself by getting a two-pound chocolate bar and bingeing until you feel miserable. When we are not aware of our unconscious intentions, they run our lives. The whole process of psychological and spiritual growth involves a slow awakening to how and why we create painful results when our conscious intentions were so lofty. Once we begin to acknowledge our unconscious intentions and see where they come from, our conscious intentions gain more strength.
In the course, I share a longer version of the story and its implications, but I want to mention the life-changing moment 40-some years ago when I realized the distinction between conscious and unconscious intentions. I was in an audience of about 4,000 people paying rapt attention to an 80-year-old man who sat on a bare stage in a straight-back wooden chair. It was the Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti, and although I'd heard many of his lectures, something he said in this one changed my life forever.
Krishnamurti said that people didn't need to go to therapy or record their dreams to see their unconscious. All we had to do was observe the negative results we produced in our lives; that was our unconscious in 3-D. The solution was to claim, acknowledge, and own our unconscious intentions. How this looks in real life goes like this: "Hmmm, I had the intention of buying bean sprouts, but I actually purchased and ate a two-pound chocolate bar. Now I feel miserable. Hmmm, where and why would I have developed the unconscious intention to feel miserable?" It is in these moments of unflinching self-reflection that ancient patterns are brought to light and released.
MT: I also really loved the idea of thinking of ourselves as manufacturers and distributors rather than consumers. Please explain what you mean by that.
GH: If we perceive ourselves as consumers of love or abundance or positive energy, we automatically disempower ourselves. The consumer has a need that must be fulfilled by someone or something external. For example, my wife, Katie, and I have done many couples-counseling sessions in which it became obvious that one person was the giver and the other was the taker. One person was taking 100 percent responsibility for the relationship, the other was taking 0 percent. We take on these roles unconsciously, and it almost always comes as a shock to couples when they realize how they have created an unequal relationship.
Stepping out of the consumer role and into the producer role means that you are now connected to an infinite supply. Producers of love can make as much love as they like; the consumer must depend on the supply coming from somewhere else. This issue is ultimately a metaphysical consideration: Are we in a co-creative relationship with the universe, or do we think of ourselves as somehow different from or even at odds with the universe?
MT: Why is recognizing unconscious patterns so important? Do most people find it difficult to drop this habit?
GH: Unless we cultivate the awareness of our unconscious patterns, we're condemned to repeating them mindlessly, producing the same unwanted results. It often comes as a surprise to people when they realize that an ancient unconscious pattern of their own is actually creating the painful circumstances they complain about the most. Before we wake up to our own unconscious patterns, we often make the mistake of thinking we're unlucky or blaming other people for our repeated misfortunes. To give an extreme example, a man in his 30s once told me in his first session that he had been left by more than a dozen women since his high-school sweetheart abruptly dumped him when he was a teenager. In an innocent tone of voice, he said, "I'm beginning to wonder if it has something to do with me." Indeed, it did. It turned out that his mother had left his father when my client was only six months old. Without realizing it consciously, he had repeated this early-childhood pattern from his teens into his 30s. Fortunately, once he had acknowledged his unconscious intention to be abandoned by women, he was able to create a successful, long-term relationship.
MT: In the course you teach that anything left incomplete in your life drains your energy. What does this have to do with attracting abundance?
GH: This is an extremely important point: Incompletions eat up the very energy that could be used to make big leaps forward in your life. Incompletion takes many forms—things we start and leave unfinished, significant truths we fail to communicate, agreements we break and don't rectify. Each time we leave something incomplete, it's like leaving a pair of socks on the floor. Incompletions tend to proliferate, and after a while we can accumulate so many piles of socks on the floor that we have to navigate around them to get through the room. That's how incompletions slow down the process of attracting abundance. You get so busy trying to fix incompletions from the past that you don't have time or energy to focus on what you want to create now.
MT: Tell me about some feedback you have received from people that have taken your course.
GH: Probably the most typical response is some version of "Before I took the course, I never really understood how manifestation works. You made it so simple and clear that I finally got it." Another piece of very satisfying feedback I get is when people tell me of some specific result they've created, such a new job they've dreamed up or a relationship breakthrough where a couple has amplified their money supply by applying a principle in the course.
MT: What can your students expect in terms of homework?
GH: The homework is actually fun as well as being liberating. It takes very little time but produces big results. The homework gives you an immediate way to apply the lessons in your daily life. The processes are all drawn from the most valuable exercises from my "live" classes over many years.
MT: Why should somebody take your course? How will it change their life?
GH: The course makes simple and clear a subject that is often thought to be extremely complicated. The process of creating abundance—whether it's abundance of money, abundance of love, or any other type of abundance you wish to create—applies to many areas of life. If you can learn the essential rules of creating more positive results in your life, you have a tool of ultimate value. I think everyone deserves to have access to that tool.
I want to thank Gay for taking time to chat with me. As I read through his course I was very impressed by the quality and depth of his work and will be applying the principles to my own life. Often when we think of manifesting, we think of manifesting money or material objects, but these principals can apply to our entire life across the board.
I hope you enjoyed this interview, and I'll be back with a new interview soon.
Be well,
Madisyn Taylor
Cofounder, Editor-in-Chief
DailyOM
