Last night I had a vivid dream where Rachelle and I were students in a spirituality seminar. The theme was about embodying your higher self. We were the only two people who showed up for it, waiting for the instructor to arrive. I realized that I showed up in my pajamas, and I thought to myself, Well that makes sense because my higher self surely likes pajamas. I don’t recall any part of the dream where I deliberately dressed that way, and my clothing morphed into a different outfit later in the dream, but that’s the nature of dreams. In a dream the flow of events can be very fluid and flexible.

Physical reality can behave like that as well sometimes, especially because physicality is a bit of an illusion. I was listening to an audiobook last night that said that if we could remove all of the empty space from our human bodies (inside our atoms and molecules), then all of humanity could be compressed down to the size of one sugar cube. Our nature is more energy-based than truly physical, and energy is very flexible.

So why does it seem like we’re so solid, and why does our waking reality apparently change so slowly, relative to how quickly we can make changes in our thoughts or dreams? One answer is that the energy patterns support that sense of solidity, like energetic ice crystals. Stable patterns create a seemingly stable physical reality.

Be Water, My Friend

If we want to change those energy patterns, one way to do that is to shift their frequency first. Make the patterns less solid and more fluid. So instead of solid ice, transform those patterns be more like water instead. Remember Bruce Lee’s advice: “Be water, my friend.”

Ok, sure. But how?

One simple way to do this is to literally eat more water, as in raw, water-rich fruits and vegetables. Through many years of experimentation with raw foods, I’ve noticed that it’s way easier to shift my experience of reality when I eat raw versus cooked foods. Sometimes the change can be very dramatic.

If I want to stabilize my reality and lock it down, eating more cooked and processed foods is a reliable way to do that. Life changes more slowly when I eat that way.

If I want to have a more fluid experience and make sweeping changes or open myself to fresh possibilities, I know it’s wise to start by lightening up my diet and eating more raw foods, if not entirely raw. I’ve written previously about how it’s easier to manifest intentions when eating raw, like those intentions somehow become a lot more powerful. The energy patterns of raw foods are very different from those of cooked foods, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I just know that when I want to amp up my manifesting game, raw foods make a huge and obvious difference.

Sometimes it’s nice to stabilize reality and lock it down into a more icy mode, so I can slow down the rate of change. I don’t always like the shifts of being in water-mode for too long, which can feel like being tossed around in the currents.

This month I’m doing a 30-day challenge of drinking a quart of fresh juice each day, and I got a new juicer a week ago to make that easier. I know from experience that this can be good for my physical energy and detox, but this time I also want to test how it affects my ability to manifest different kinds of intentions and to make bigger shifts in my reality. I’m not having juice exclusively like I did for 30 days back in 2008, but I do want to see if having juice each day makes a difference. I expect that it will. I’ve been doing this for about a week already, and I perceive some interesting shifts happening. It feels like life is taking on a more fluid quality and that it’s not as solid as it was before. Shifts are happening in areas that were previously more fixed and solid.

You might be wondering: Can I just drink more water to get the same effects? In my experience, no. Drinking more water doesn’t seem to make much difference. Even when water fasting for 40 days straight, I don’t think it amped up the flow of my life nearly as much as eating raw foods, and water fasting didn’t feel particularly spiritual to me. Maybe there are some extra benefits in the energy signatures of plants that we aren’t getting with water alone.

The Simulation Perspective

Another way to make reality more fluid is to practice the subjective perspective. Remember that we could be living in a simulation. This perspective reminds me that more is possible because the Simulator can always create changes.

It’s also crucial to release the grip on the objective perspective if we want more fluidity and flow in life. Thinking of reality as physical and objective is a great way to slow life down to a crawl and to lose the ability to participate in directing the flow as powerfully. When I slide into that mindset, it feels like I have to self-power all the changes I want to make, and that’s just exhausting after a while. It’s 100x easier to create changes with reality’s cooperation.

If you want more help with this perspective, the Submersion course is a 60-day deep dive into the subjective mode of relating to reality, and there’s also a free three-part intro to subjective reality to get you started.

I’m leaning towards going through Submersion myself this Fall, so I can do a concentrated deep dive into practicing the exercises every day. If other people are interested, perhaps we could make this a more social experience – do the exercises together and share our results. We could even do some group intention experiments along the way, much like we did with the fun and transformational Million Dollar Experiment. We never included a social layer with Submersion like we did with more recent courses like Amplify and Guild. I think I’m up for hosting a social version of the course if there’s enough interest – just let me know via my contact form if this appeals to you. Maybe we could have weekly calls as we go through the course together.

Release Ice People; Embrace Water People

That leads into yet another way to make life’s energy more fluid, which is to connect with other people who want to experience more flow and flexibility – and to invest less time and energy in people and experiences that are very fixed and solid.

So less time with ice people. More time with water people. It’s up to you whether you want to be around gassy people. 💨

Other people’s energy patterns can and do affect us. If you connect with scarcity-minded people often (online or offline), that is going to nudge your own energy patterns to shift towards scarcity as well.

One improvement I noticed when I dropped social media years ago was that I felt a lot freer, and life seemed to become more fluid and flexible. I think that’s because the people I’d interact with most often on social media were the biggest social media addicts, and that wasn’t a great influence. So consider that if you’re very active on social media, you might be encouraging addictive patterns in yourself by engaging so often with social media addicts.

Moreover, consider if you truly resonate with the overall energy pattens of the various services you use. While I enjoyed the ride of being active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while, the experience eventually felt too circular and repetitive, and I’m so glad that I deleted those accounts to let my own energy become more fluid once again. It was good to remind myself that more is possible, and I’m happier for it.

Setting Spiritual Intentions

Lastly, we can also shift energy patterns by setting different kinds of intentions. Instead of setting such objective and mundane intentions or goals, focus on more spiritual or energy-based intentions. Point your thoughts towards fresh possibilities.

This doesn’t require any belief. You can pick up and use spiritual frames as easily as putting on a pair of sunglasses. Then release those frames when you’re done. Holding fixed beliefs, even if you think they’re spiritual, just makes you icier, and it takes you away from being more fluid. So don’t try to believe anything. Just explore, test, and play.

We don’t really know how this reality works, but we can still explore what’s possible. Perhaps our biggest risk in life is leaving so much potential untapped because we didn’t explore enough.

Here are some spiritual intentions you can try for yourself. See what effect they have.

• Show me truths about reality that I haven’t noticed before.
• Show me aspects of reality that have been previously hidden from me.
• Bring other members of my soul family into my life now, and help me recognize them.
• Show me how reality really works.
• Lighten up my energy.
• Show me shortcuts.
• Show me what more is possible.
• Move me back into the flow of the possibility space.
• Show me a spiritual solution to this problem.
• Show me how powerfully I can manifest my desires.
• Help me release misalignments that have been keeping me stuck.
• Help me forgive.
• Help me let go of these burdens.
• Show me what peace feels like.
• Show me what abundance is really like.
• Move me into the flow of abundance, and help me release my attachment to scarcity for good.
• Show me what my life purpose can be.
• Help me find happiness.
• Help me find and experience love.
• Bring me someone to love and cherish.
• Help me have way more fun in life.
• Show me my next travel destination.
• Bring me an inspired idea with the energy to act on it.
• Let me be of service to someone today.

I often like to hold that last intention when writing new articles. It feels so good to write with the intention that someone out there might benefit.

Intentions to express caring for people, even people you don’t necessarily know, can be very powerful at shifting energy, especially if your icy patterns have been rooted in neediness or lack.

If you want to change your life, consider what kinds of intentions contributed to your recent experiences, and set intentions that are energetically different. Don’t keep the same goals. Don’t keep holding the same thoughts.

Intend Lightness, Fun, Flexibility, and Abundance

I got so stuck when I was in my 20s by focusing on individual success and achievement. At one point those patterns served me well, but eventually they just kept backfiring, and I had to go through a bankruptcy to finally break free of that energetic stuckness. Sometimes patterns that serve us well can betray us later on, so we can keep progressing.

Afterwards I began setting different kinds of intentions. I held intentions to be of service, to have a lot more fun in life, to move away from stress, and to enjoy being with people I liked. I elevated purposeful and enjoyable work ahead of struggle-based work. I made fun and happiness higher priorities than money.

I welcomed money into my life too, but only as a friend and ally, not as a source of stress or worry. I welcomed the flowing-water form of money, and I let go of the icy version of money. Consequently, money has been a good and reliable friend to me ever since – for 23+ years now. I wish I had understood in my 20s how easy this could be instead of making everything so difficult.

Intentions to serve others, to be generous, and to contribute are especially powerful because they contradict scarcity-mindedness. When you’re worried about meeting your own needs, it will seem like you don’t have the capacity to give to others. I sure felt that way too when I was broke. But focusing on my own needs just kept me broke, year after year. It was only when I explored intentions and actions that seemed ludicrously out of sync with my scarcity-based reality that I finally became more fluid and shifted. Within a year my life was radically transformed.

You can’t give much when you’re broke, right? So if you consistently give to others like you’re not broke, you can’t be broke. Those energy patterns are incompatible. This doesn’t mean giving what you don’t have, and it doesn’t mean giving in a way that makes you worried or stressed. It means giving what you feel is the best of yourself and in ways that feel good to you. I love to give insights and encouragement and to share from direct experience because that lands in the range of the best of what I have to give. It feels good to me, and other people have told me many times that they appreciate it. So that form of giving keeps me in a very fluid range.

At our best we are water creatures. Even biologically we’re essentially water apes. Remember this when you catch yourself mistakenly thinking that you’re an ice ape. Being an ice ape is cold and frustrating. Being a water ape is a lot more fun. Even so, the benefit of trying to be an ice ape for a while is that it helps us to profoundly appreciate all the wonders of being a water ape.

Be a water ape, my friend. 🌊🦧