My Wake Up Story

Well it’s a long story short, but just like you - I was living my best life, or so it kinda felt. I had friends I loved, a husband I loved, two children I adored, and I really did get to do anything I wanted to do - it just turned out, I was really, very good at lying to myself… and my bet is, so are you

I have had many lives so far in these 40 little years of mine; moved from teaching English and Art in High Schools to starting my own fashion label, just as I dreamed - moved from Sydney inner West to living right by the sea and the mountains, just as I dreamed - Married a man who loves to make me laugh and dance, just as I dreamed - had two kids, a daughter and a son who are full of joy and play, just as I dreamed - and yet… something was missing, or better yet, someone…

Me!

You see, it took quite a while and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it turns out I didn’t have to - every question I thought I was asking was actually being asked of me - where the Hell are you Manal? You have the life you dreamed of and yet, I can’t quite feel you Here? Where are you running off to? What are you so afraid of? Are you ever going to Be Here to feel it all? You’re missing it !

And so, the Waking Up began - slowly, but surely, I began to feel all the ways I have been creating escape routes from my own life; My Own Perfect Life - a feeling I don’t know or like, see ya! A moment I don’t quite trust, I’m outta here!

Eventually, I couldn’t help but see how terrified I was to actually feel myself in my own life - and this was a huge shock for me, because as far as I was concerned, I was as brave as they come! I could do and feel anything - well, turns out that wasn’t quite true for me. I was curating the feelings and moments I was most comfortable with, setting a very specific temperature setting on my life and not allowing any other setting to exist. What this meant was that, I was living in such distrust of myself that everyone and everything around me had to bend and shapeshift just to keep me comfortable, because there was no way in Hell I was going to bend any other way.

That was until, I woke up - just enough - to be aware - just enough, that I was participating in my own drunken slumber. Now, I’m scared of many things it turns out, but the one thing I am definitely not scared of is myself. If I was the bad guy of my own life; the wicked witch who spiked my own apple to keep me asleep from my own Charming Life, the mirror’s skewered perception making me look ugly, the voices of all those I love laughing and mocking me - if that was all just me - well, I could take me on, and I would… and Lord Almighty did I!

And now, there really is very little that scares me. After meeting the scariest parts of myself, I have decided that I am not someone to fear, but simply someone to love -

From this shift in story, I really am living an entirely new life because you see, nothing actually threatens me except me. I have a very new relationship with myself, because I have met My True Self - and the one thing that My True Self will not tolerate, is any attempt to lie to myself about what I am and what I am not- and that has made every difference in the world about what it is I can actually do, be and feel - in fact, it is the only lie that has and will ever stop you from living in your very own Dreaming

If you want to make a short story long and follow my full journey, head over to the blog where I invite you into where all the magic happens - inside!

Why Wake Up?

A great question, and the simplest answer is - because it is happening anyway.

I like to remind myself often that everything is equal parts easy/hard. You can really spend stupid amounts of time comparing and analysing your potential options and routes through it, from moment to moment - and it is a sweet thought that we believe we can actually mitigate the easy/hard levels of our own lives. How long do we deliberate between two or more alternatives, carefully selecting the option we believe will be easier or lend itself to be more favourable for us, only to find that a whole load of unforeseen circumstances turned everything over on its head - and something that was meant to be so simple, ended up having a shitload of challenges and ‘hard’ surprisingly come along for the ride.

Essentially, it is in your best interest to practise letting go of the desire to make things ‘easier’ and accept that you will be given the exact level of easy/hard you want, on a Higher Level. There is a You that is orchestrating all of this for you, be grateful you’re even allowed to see this much behind the scenes and don’t allow yourself to fool yourself into thinking that you can actually make things easier or harder - focus on choosing the human experience you want - and accept that the route you get taken on and through, is the route you custom built for yourself.

So, the question remains Why Wake Up? Because it is You that you are talking to anyway, always. So it is in your best interest to start listening deeply to Your Self. What do you want? What don’t you want? What excites you? What scares you? All the questions you may have about yourself, start to listen to your own life with the wonder that you just might be answering yourself. Listen to the answers and most importantly, pay attention to your reaction to these answers. They are the signposts for how you truly feel about yourself and that my friends, is the whole point of Waking Up (or so I have found so far). I don’t know too much more than that, but that truly is the first real step in waking up… How do I actually feel about myself? Once we can answer this question honestly and deeply, we can move on to the next part of Lucid Dreaming.. wherever on Heaven, Hell or Earth that may be…

A New Story

We have a lot to show up for during these times, a whole lot of stories and characters and plot lines and side plot lines and surprise plot twists and all the rest of it. To tell stories is part of the privilege of being Human. So what happens when you discover that you weren’t very good at telling stories? Or perhaps more accurately, that we were never even taught that we were telling stories, let alone how to tell a good one?

When you begin waking up to the stories of your life so far, and witness them as hidden parameters and limitations for your own potential characters, you begin to take your stories a little more seriously. And so, if you pay attention, you can begin to hear the stories of creation all around you. Everyone adding their lines or scenes or verses - a symphony of one big hella story coming together - and perhaps you are happy witnessing the story unfold and you feel sure enough, no I’m not getting involved in this - this isn’t about me. I’m going to stay very far away from this story… I’m going to disconnect and just watch from way back here, in the nosebleed section. I don’t want to get on the stage, I don’t want to write myself in… I think I’ll just write myself out of this one…

Well, I have certainly tried that… the thing is, there is a You that is ultimately Boss of You - and they will not allow you to write yourself out of your own story. If you are Here, alive today, living in these grand times, You are Part of The Story - and you will have to participate. So you either allow life itself to drag you onto the stage to deliver your performance - or, you spend some time, some deep and true time with yourself and truly try and remember, what on Earth did I come here to do? What is my part in this story?

And then, my God - do it!

I speak from the comfort of a writer’s chair, with cups of tea and cosy slippers on - I speak as someone who has desperately attempted staying off the stage, as someone who consistently tries to write herself out of her own story - I can admit to that. Yet, I will not let myself get away with it. And so, everyday, I begin with my stories - what are they writing me up as? These stories in my mind? These stories burried so deeply in my own imaginatuion… do they trust me enough to reveal themselves to me? Will I ever trust myself enough with the True Story of Manal? or will I have to keep catching myself out?

You see, something happens when we begin paying attention to our own stories instead of the stories of others. I spent a life of dissecting other people’s stories and calling them out on their bullshit plotlines and overly complicated character twists - yet, here I was, avoiding the nightmare I had written up about myself. It was only a matter of time before I sat with all the pages of my own storytelling and realised the bluntly obvious truth - I can write a much better story for me.

And so, before I reach for another juicy plot twist or surprise new character to spice things up - before I introduce yet another challenge for our hero in the making, I might just play with the idea of daring to be uninteresting for a chapter or so… what if she didn’t have to rise above anything anymore? What if she didn’t have to prove herself as anything anymore? What if she knows already everyone she is meant to know and love, and no other interesting mysterious characters need to swoop in to save or destroy the day! What if there are no plot twists, no challenges, no new characters, nothing exciting or interesting that happens next… could I handle that? Could I live in a drastically uninteresting world? Could I find that fascinating? Could I meet my boredom head on and find the wonder in all the almighty details I have been missing… like making cups of tea for myself, watching children play, listening to good music, making delicious meals for myself and people I love to feed? What if, the next story I write is so uninteresting, it catapults me into a whole new level of Happy Place?

What if I gave myself no choice but to feel what it is like to Be Me - without any nonsense around me? Without anything to react to or from? Just a simple, quiet time to Be Manal. And perhaps this is me inviting you to do the same? To dare to be bored with yourself and your life and not change it - don’t make it interesting… let’s just see what happens next?

How to Stay Awake

Well, turns out I accidentally wrote a book about it - accidentally being a stretch of the imagination. Writing Lucid Dreams felt more like exhaling rather than writing - the words spilled out of me, for lack of a better description.

When I finished the book, I revisited the pages after a few months and was struck by the magic that I had written myself a step by step guide as to what was about to happen to me in the years to follow. Everytime I revisited the pages of this book, I was deeper in the messaging - As though a future more ‘awake’ version of me was in the desperate attempt of waking little old me up, from a very deeeep slumber. This is what becomes refreshingly clear to you once you start to truly awaken, with trust; everything is conspiring for you to wake up- Nothing else matters right now beyond waking up to a Lucid Dream state and under no circumstances, falling back to sleep!

It was years in the making and still, I am wobbly at times in my Lucid Dreaming, but the book has served as a trusted guide, messages from a more awaken state - from a state where all is well and all that needed to be seen, felt and believed has already been.

When I try to understand this phenomenon, there are of course many explanations, but all are an attempt of me understanding the mystery - which I have learned many times over, really should remain as Sacred Mystery. So I focus intently on my only directive at this early point in my Lucid Dreaming - Stay Here and do not, under any circumstances, accept any invitations back to sleep state.

And what do I mean by this? Simply, there will be many old and comforting beliefs, feelings, stories and characters who will want to bring you back into a slumber- a place that will feel and sound safer for you to be- there is a volume and a temperature in your being that startles you once you are in your Lucid Dreaming - and there is a real emergency feeling within you, to go back to the old feelings and ecosystem, where it felt warmer, quieter, more familiar and of course, safer - but rest assured, these are false alarms and one of the most important things to remember when you wake up is - find your support network, because you really cannot do this alone, and that is all part of the design! The whole point of waking up, is that we finally and truly come back together again - and not to connect through our wounds or pain points, and not to connect over saviour stories, and not to connect over any unmet needs, but to truly connect in Loving Awareness.