Cosmic Ordering: How to make your dreams come true

Cosmic Ordering
How To Make Your Dreams Come True
Jonathan Cainer

Be careful what you wish for…

Foreword

Once upon a time, and be sure ’twas a long time ago, there lived a poor woodman in a great forest, and every day of his life he went out to fell timber.

So one day he started out, and the good wife filled his wallet and slung his bottle on his back, that he might have meat and drink in the forest. He had marked out a huge old oak, which, thought he, would furnish many and many a good plank.

And when he was come to it, he took his axe in his hand and swung it round his head as though he were minded to fell the tree at one stroke. But he hadn’t given one blow, when what should he hear but the most pitiful entreating, and there stood before him a fairy who prayed and beseeched him to spare the tree.

He was dazed, as you may fancy, with wonderment and affright, and he couldn’t open his mouth to utter a word. But he found his tongue at last, and, ‘Well,’ said he, ‘I’ll e’en do as thou wishest.’

‘You’ve done better for yourself than you know,’ answered the fairy, ‘and to show I’m not ungrateful, I’ll grant you your next three wishes, be they what they may.’

And therewith the fairy was no more to be seen, and the woodman slung his wallet over his shoulder and his bottle at his side, and off he started home.

But the way was long, and the poor man was regularly dazed with the wonderful thing that had befallen him, and when he got home there was nothing in his noddle but the wish to sit down and rest. Maybe, too, ’twas a trick of the fairy’s. Who can tell?

Anyhow, down he sat by the blazing fire, and as he sat he waxed hungry, though it was a long way off suppertime yet.

‘Hasn’t thou naught for supper, dame?’ said he to his wife.

‘Nay, not for a couple of hours yet,’ said she.

‘Ah!’ groaned the woodman, ‘I wish I’d a good link of black pudding here before me.’

No sooner had he said the word, when clatter, clatter, rustle, rustle, what should come down the chimney but a link of the finest black pudding the heart of man could wish for.

If the woodman stared, the good wife stared three times as much. ‘What’s all this?’ says she.

Then all the morning’s work came back to the woodman, and he told his tale right out, from beginning to end, and as he told it the good wife glowered and glowered, and when he had made an end of it she burst out, ‘Thou bee’st but a fool, Jan, thou bee’st but a fool; and I wish the pudding were at thy nose, I do indeed.’

And before you could say Jack Robinson, there the good man sat and his nose was the longer for a noble link of black pudding.

He gave a pull, but it stuck, and she gave a pull, but it stuck, and they both pulled till they had nigh pulled the nose off, but it stuck and stuck.

‘What’s to be done now?’ said he.

‘Tisn’t so very unsightly,’ said she, looking hard at him.

Then the woodman saw that if he wished, he must need wish in a hurry; and wish he did, that the black pudding might come off his nose. Well! There it lay in a dish on the table, and if the good man and good wife didn’t ride in a golden coach, or dress in silk and satin, why, they had at least as fine a black pudding for their supper as the heart of man could desire.

Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, n.d.), pp. 107-9. First published 1894.

Variations on this tale can be found in the folklore of many lands. In some, it’s the wife who gets granted the wishes; in others, the husband requests (and is granted) a rather different kind of ‘sausage’. However, almost invariably, they all end with everyone going back to square one.

Despite this, our cultural heritage is rife with wish-granting witches, generous genies and lavish little people. Our cosmology involves a sky full of gods and goddesses, all bestowing various gifts and favours. Our religious traditions are similarly rich with the promise of a god who ‘listens to our prayers’ and who may sometimes grant our requests. And what would Christmas mean to anyone if it didn’t contain a Santa Claus? It’s the same all over the world. No child is born, in any country on this planet, who isn’t brought up to believe in entities, deities, fairies and angels. In our neck of the woods, it’s supposed to be a sign of sophistication to say you no longer accept the existence of such invisible protectors. The truth, however, is that deep down within us all, there’s a part of us that still has great, childlike faith in some of those mythical spirits.

This book is dedicated to all who are brave enough to admit this…and who actually call for the help of these spirits. It is a book about wishing, a book about asking…and a book about making the impossible possible. Above all else, though, it is a book about learning to be ‘careful what you wish for…’

But not so careful as to make no wish at all!

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 Meet your angel

CHAPTER 2 What can I do for you?

CHAPTER 3 How should you talk to me?

CHAPTER 4 Signs and signals

CHAPTER 5 The glory of doubt

CHAPTER 6 Positive thoughts, positive gestures

CHAPTER 7 Perspectives and priorities

CHAPTER 8 On human guardian angels

CHAPTER 9 Good ways to get help

CHAPTER 10 Requesting angelic intervention

Afterword

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

I nearly couldn’t write this book.

I wanted to. I felt I needed to. But when I actually sat down to do it, nothing came out. I spent several days staring at a computer screen, feeling ever less able to express myself. Every so often, I’d get up, go for a long walk and come back. Or I’d disappear into a quiet space and attempt a deep meditation. Nothing, though, seemed to help.

I knew I had plenty to say, but something was blocking it and I just couldn’t work out what it was. It certainly wasn’t a lack of personal experience. I have done quite a lot of cosmic ordering in my time.

I’ve successfully requested contracts, coincidences, offers, opportunities, insights and invitations. I’ve ‘wished into my life’ some wonderful people…and some great solutions to seemingly hopeless problems. I have (or at least I seem to have) summoned traffic jams to delay meetings that I did not want to hold and, when running late for meetings that I really did want to make, I have asked for (and apparently been granted) clear roads in the middle of rush hour. As for parking spaces? Why, I’ve called up cloaks of invisibility to cover cars left in tow-away zones. Once, I even manifested a house…The need was great, the situation was urgent and, whilst I tried to remain open to the idea of another solution, it seemed that what was sorely needed was a new home for a family in crisis. I cared, and I wanted to help…and, for various reasons to do with availability and suitability, the only possible solution involved a purchase, not a rental. Rentals can sometimes happen very quickly. Purchases happen at the speed of a stoned snail. Usually. This one, however, was all accomplished - from finding the property, to negotiating the loan, to helping the existing occupants move out, to completing all the legal red tape, to moving in the new residents - over four straight days. It took every last ounce of my willpower and my wishpower. I was mentally and physically exhausted for a long time afterwards. I now realise that I put more into it than I needed to. I could (and should) have let the universe take more of the strain. But it worked. Nearly six years later, the crisis is long past and the family are still living there.

And it showed me exactly what is possible when you ask the universe for help and then offer to do all that you possibly can from your side, to help the universe help you.

At that time, I had no idea that I was making what some people now call a cosmic order. I was just doing what I have been instinctively doing all my life. I was trying to reach outside my limited, physical self and make myself more ‘in tune’ with the energy that keeps this whole world turning. I was attempting to surf the sea of serendipity; to put myself in a place where a wave of opportunity was most likely to break…and then wait patiently whilst remaining ready with my board, so that when the chance came I could seize it, or follow in its wake.

I didn’t have a short, catchy name for this. I just used to say I was trusting that the world is, by and large, a benign and generous place…and that I was hoping to make it as easy as possible for the world to be that way towards me!

By then, I knew from experience that I could ask, within reason, for almost anything…and be in with some chance of getting it. And I had long learned, from much the same sort of experience, that it wasn’t always so smart to do this.

I was definitely getting ‘more enjoyable results’ by being open-minded and adaptable about what ought to be happening. My more specific requests to the universe were often granted, but it seemed to me, they often had a tendency to backfire.

I had, some decades previously, become so keenly aware of this phenomenon that I became inspired to seek out an explanation for it. ‘How does it all work?’ I had wanted to know. What are these goals and objectives that people set themselves so determinedly? Why does the universe sometimes offer us such spookily apposite and immediate assistance and sometimes show us such apparently callous indifference? And why, even when they have what they claim to want more than anything else in the world, do so many people still feel that their lives are empty - or as if something is somehow ‘missing’?

My quest for a half-convincing answer led me down many roads, literally and figuratively. I hitchhiked across America. I journeyed to the East. I studied psychology and (of course) astrology. In the process, I began to develop a lifelong fascination with eccentric philosophies. In much the same way as some people hoard books, records or china statuettes, I collected cosmic curiosities. Odd ideas. Unusual beliefs. Wacky, zany, offbeat and downright peculiar points of view.

Naturally enough, I explored magical practices and mystical insights. I researched Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Pagan, Moslem, Hindu and Sikh beliefs. I also tried to find out as much as I could about New Age cults and traditional sects. Although I couldn’t help developing my ‘favourites’, I tried to be eclectic. I still do.

I also tried to avoid being judgemental, although I was not and still am not wholly successful. I get along fine with any creed or culture that effectively accepts intrinsic merit in other creeds and cultures. But despite many years of consciously cultivating a wider world-view, I’m afraid I still can’t tolerate intolerance!

What’s more, I am still very much a traveller and not a man who has reached his destination. After over thirty years of seeking the answers to the questions I outlined above, I can happily put my hand on my heart and say, ‘I still don’t know.’

I am, however, enjoying the search for those answers as much as ever. And as that search has taken me up and down a lot of streets, and round in several circles, too, I have learned at least a little bit about what some people might call ‘spiritual territory’. Thus, when a philosophy called cosmic ordering recently caught the attention of the British media, I immediately knew what was going on. The name was new, but the process was the same one that I had been exploring in all those ways, for all those years.

Clearly, others recognised this, too - for I suddenly found myself being invited on to prestigious TV and radio programmes to talk about this new phenomenon. Somehow, even the more sceptical, casual observers of my daily newspaper column could tell that this was something I knew about, too.

In this regard, they were quite right. Whatever’s going on in the heavens, regardless of what else needs to be communicated, I am forever encouraging my readers to have faith in themselves…and to ask the universe for help.

Nonetheless, I had a problem with that phrase ‘cosmic ordering’. It is a clumsy, inelegant name for a deeply graceful process, and has the unfortunate effect of implying that our entire, amazing universe is just some kind of giant department store that does home deliveries.