I've encountered many things that defied the laws of physics (as we know them, I should add). I’ve also done some things that defied the laws of physics. 

You may have heard the story of the bumblebee whose tiny little wings are way too small for its weight, so it shouldn’t be able to fly. But because no one has told the bumblebee that it can’t fly, it does fly anyway.

Here’s something very weird I experienced as a child (and amazingly, my ex-husband told me he had the exact same experience when he was little).

I was maybe five or six years old and had just learned to swim. One time, I was practicing to swim under water… so I swam and swam and swam and swam… until I realized I was actually breathing! Under water!

The second that realization hit home, I started choking and came up to the surface gasping for air. After that, I was never able to repeat the experience.

My ex-husband says he had the exact same experience. I would really like to hear if other people have had it too, most likely as a young child.

I’m convinced that the whole point of Jesus’s teachings in the New Testament was to show people that they, too, could perform miracles the way he could. He (rather unsuccessfully) tried to teach the disciples and scolded them that if only they had “the faith of a mustard seed,” they would be able to move mountains.

He clearly says in the Bible, “ I tell you for certain that if you have faith in me, you will do the same things I am doing. You will do even greater things, now that I am going back to the Father.”

Problem is, people were too pig-headed to understand what he was saying. So instead of emulating him, they worshipped him… and now everyone thinks that miracles happened 2,000 years ago but no more.

That is totally incorrect. Our minds are incredibly powerful if we can only believe they are. What we consider to be our “reality” is much less solid than we think it is.

Back in Sedona, I had ample time to hone my ability to visualize, focus, and concentrate. For a while, I worked part-time in a small jewelry store. I was all by myself there, so there was nobody to step in for me when I wanted to go outside and have a cigarette.

I was only allowed to smoke when no customers were in the store, so I used my focus to make sure that was the case. (Sorry, Fred and Steve!)

Whenever I wanted a smoke, I’d visualize a gray fog obfuscating the store entrance so that tourists would pass by without noticing it. When I was finished with my cigarette, I’d remove the fog.

It worked every time, even in peak tourist season when the town was crowded and tourists would swarm into every store on the street. As soon as I removed the fog, the tourists would suddenly “see” the store and pour in.

Another time, I was taking a cross-country trip with my then-boyfriend (and future husband), K. It was winter and we had no heat in the car. In Sedona, that was no big deal; in Ohio, it was.

We were huddling in the car dressed in parkas, hats, and mittens; I was covered with an additional blanket, and it was still ice cold. A jug of drinking water we had in the car was frozen solid. But the worst was that our windshield was covered with ice, with no way to remove it, so K. was driving more or less blind.

I focused on a spot on the windshield that was eye-level for him and willed it to thaw, become ice-free so that K. was going to be able to drive. And it worked. The entire windshield stayed covered with a thick layer of ice, except for that one small spot that miraculously thawed and stayed open as long as I concentrated on it.
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I don’t often talk about these things because people think I’m crazy when I do, but I am convinced everyone could do stuff like this if they were just able to believe they could.

Someone on Quora asked me what my "go-to story" was when talking about the paranormal. I had to chuckle a bit because it's more like dozens of go-to stories, although there are a fair number of supernatural stories in there too (for the difference, check out this article).

​Here's what I told her...

It depends on what the question is. If you ask about playing with Ouija boards, I’ll probably tell my cautionary tale how I slapped a makeshift “Ouija board” togetherand attracted an evil spirit that kept haunting me for weeks.

If you ask me about poltergeists, I’ll relate the story how seven years after the first haunting, I was harassed by a poltergeist-type entity.

If you ask me about paranormal experiences with animals, I’ll tell you about my invisible cat, Guinevere, or my spiritual experience with a seven-foot-long iguana named Big Jim.

If you ask me about demons, I might tell you about the time when I saw someone’s face shift and be superimposed by another, and that “person” suggested to make a pact. That is a much longer story, though, which you can read here.

If you ask about temptation by the “Dark Side,” I might tell you about my harrowing experience with the madman in Flagstaff where I almost got killed and ended up among a bunch of satanists.

If you ask about Shadow People and the Hat Man, I’ll point you here.

Or I might talk about the snobbish medium who bit off more than she could chew and was chased out of an old hotel by terrifying spirits. The next day after that event, I saw a nasty little demon-type thing clinging to the back of her neck. When I suggested she might need a cleansing, she freaked out on me… so for all I know, she’s still running around with that thing attached to her.

If you ask me about encounters with the Divine, I might talk about my Tarot reading where I encountered Mother Mary.

If you want to know about angels, I’ll send you here.

Or the time that Spirit gave me a wonderful little nudge to say, “I’m with you; there’s nothing to be afraid of.” You can read that here.

Or if you ask about ghosts, I’ll probably tell you about the ghost in the jewelry store I saw twice and who looked like a regular person… after which I’ve been wondering if everyone I pass on the street is actually really human. Some more ghost talk here.

Or if you ask about dimension shifts, I have stories to tell about that too. One example is the story about a “glitch in the matrix” that I witnessed.

If you ask about fairies, elementals, “miniature wormholes,” mystical places, UFOs, aliens, past lives, and a dozen things more, yes, I’ll have personal stories about those too.

I expect at some point they’re all going to be on Quora or on my blog… or I’ll put them all together in a book.

Someone asked me on Quora: "Where do you put your attention when you manifest? I believe in manifesting, and I have manifested, but I don't know what I'm doing. "

I was about to give a simple answer, but then felt compelled to go deeper. So here it goes.

If you really want to “know what you’re doing,” you need to come from a higher level of knowledge and insight. 

There are several levels to manifestation.

• You can approach manifestation from a low-level point of view, as in “I want to be a millionaire,” or “I want a free vacation on Maui.” This is going for the most basic Law of Attraction-type practice. This is where most people are stuck.

 

• Or you can come from a slightly more enlightened point of view, as in “I want to manifest for myself, but I also care about and want to do good for other people, the environment, society as a whole, etc.”

 

• And then there’s the spiritual view where you go beyond basic wants and desires; where you realize that “he who dies with the most toys” does not win and that the only important thing is your spiritual development, your soul evolution. This insight will make you want to manifest accordingly, and very different things than on Level 1. 

 

• The final level is where you realize that you are one part of the Creator and that there is no separation. You are not separate from God, and you are not separate from your fellow men, animals, plants, the world as a whole. All is one, all just is. 

At that stage, manifestation becomes effortless. At the same time, desires mostly vanish because you realize that everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be. This stage is hard to reach, though, and even harder to maintain unless you’re a hermit monk or something.

If you have a day job, a mortgage, a wife/husband and the statistical two and a half kids, it’s way too easy to get bogged down by after-school activities, paying the bills, and staying on top of your workload.

Don’t feel bad; we’re all in the same boat here… just do your best and keep working on it.

Here are some tips how to raise your level of awareness when manifesting:

For example, I’m a firm believer in putting the Creator back in the creation. I’ve met powerful Native American medicine men, and they all said, “I’m not the one who’s doing the healing, the Great Spirit is.”

So I feel we should also give Spirit/God give credit for our manifestations. That includes gratitude (for blessings provided and for blessings to be provided) and the humility to recognize that we’re not all-powerful and that we don’t always know what’s best for us.

You want to cultivate this attitude of “I’m aligning my will with God’s will/the Divine Plan, and so I create in harmony with the Creator.”

Then add to this the attitude that separation is an illusion and that oneness is the reality. If you have a hard time believing that, there are some great videos out there that you can watch. I recently found two TED Talks about how the brain/mind is actually creating our “reality” and that the objects you believeyou see around you are not at all what you think they are. 
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Here’s my favorite one by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is?

If you visit the link above, you’ll see more of this sort in the sidebar. Super-interesting stuff.

Now, with your new-found attitude that you are working in alignment with the Creator and that everything is one and not separate at all, you go and visualize.

Visualize the outcome, not the way to get there. Leave that up to the Creator; He/She/It will take care of it. Make your visualization so vivid—including deep emotion and all five senses—that it feels completely real to you.

Feel such deep gratitude for having your desire come true that you could (and maybe will) cry as you are visualizing.

Repeat at least once a day for a set time frame. I like to do it for 21 days because that happens to be the time that affirmations take to become fully embedded in the subconscious.

After that, leave it alone and don’t think about it anymore. That’s the “letting go” part where you put the built-up energy out into the universe and let Spirit do His job.

For very complex manifestations, I often write manifestation lists… but they should complement, not replace the visualization.

Yes, unfortunately that’s the case. This is why I dislike The Secret (and similar books) so much: It makes it look like “the Universe” is some kind of brainless automaton—a sort of cosmic vending machine or a big Amazon warehouse in the sky—that will mail you anything you want if you just push the right buttons to order.

This encourages people to give in to their basest urges. It promotes unfettered greed, materialism, and a self-absorbed “Me, me, me” attitude.

I call The Secret the “Atlas Shrugged of manifestation.” Just like Ayn Rand’s tome, it’s all about self-interest, the death of altruism, and a stone-cold stance toward people who don’t have it as good as you (because it’s obviously their own damn fault).

The Secret also tells you that you are God and have unlimited powers. Sure, it says that you should practice gratitude… but then conveniently omits the step where we ask, “To whom?”

If you’re supposed to say thank you, doesn’t that imply that there would be a “you” to address it to? And if there’s no “you,” then why bother? It just doesn’t make any sense.

In contrast, I’m an advocate for “Sustainable Manifestation.” By that, I mean manifestation that is not just good for your wallet, but for your spiritual development.

It also includes putting the Creator back into the creation, giving Him the credit and gratitude He deserves for providing for us and guiding us.

(FYI, I’m saying “Him” because of my Christian background, but when I write, I often replace “Creator” with “God” or “Great Spirit,” “(Holy) Spirit,” etc.)

​Making Spirit part of the equation also keeps us humble and saves us from the God complex that The Secret has instilled in so many people. Surrender can be a big part of manifesting, and if you believe in a Supreme Being, you will find that part much easier.

So there are many reasons to keep the Creator in the creation… not the least being the health of your own soul.

Like all magic, the “Law of Attraction” can go both ways. And yes, manifestation is nothing but using our God-given magic (or “spark of the divine,” if you will) to turn our intentions into reality.

There really is no Law of Attraction (defined as “You attract what you think of—positive thoughts attract positive things, and negative thoughts attract negative things”).

It’s not completely false, but it’s also not completely correct—otherwise people with mental conditions like phobias, hypochondria, depression, OCD, and so on should have objectively horrific lives, which is clearly not the case.

I’m also not a fan of New Age gurus trying to explain the LOA in (pseudo)scientific terms like quantum physics, string theory, the multiverse theory, etc. It’s very tempting, and admittedly, I’ve done it myself.

The reason it’s tempting is that it looks like these very complex physical theories overlap beautifully with ancient metaphysical insights and principles… and they may very well do so.

HOWEVER, and this is a big one, unless you have a PhD in quantum physics, you will probably get some or all aspects of this wrong as you’re trying to explain it—which opens the entire LOA community up to endless ridicule.

It’s just way too easy for scientifically educated skeptics to debunk whatever you say. In other words, you’re not doing us any favors.

Then how do you explain manifestation? Very simple: It’s a magical act (in the sense of true magic, not stage magic). You focus your intention, add imagination, emotion, and faith… and voila! the object of your intention materializes in your reality.

There’s black magic and there’s white magic, as well as a gray zone in between.

To get the best outcome and make sure you’re not accidentally selling your soul in the process and harming yourself and others, I believe you should also keep the Creator in the creation, let Him guide you and give Him the appropriate credit. (I’m saying “Him” because that’s my background, but feel free to replace that with “Her” if that’s what you believe.)

Taylor Ellwood makes the problem with the “Law of Attraction” very plain in his book, Manifesting Wealth:

The second problem is the focus on the law of attraction as espoused most recently by such new agey claptrap as The Secret.

[…] While it would be nice to believe that thinking about wealth alone could attract positive results, the truth is that the law of attraction is a pipe dream. After all, how do you explain the vast amount of hunger, poverty, or the economic recession? Are all of those people simply thinking they are poor and causing their own misfortune? The answer is no. The idea that thought alone can generate negative consequences makes dangerous assumptions that further increase the gap between the haves and the have nots.

This isn’t to say that thinking positively doesn’t have any value. It does have value and can be useful for helping you be more creative, as well as finding solutions in negative situations. But thinking positively doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a multimillionaire or that you’ll never deal with negative situations.

I’m all for calling a spade a spade. So let’s call manifestation what it is.