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An Excerpt from Kickass Recovery:
From Your First Year Clean to the Life of Your Dreams,
by Billy Manas

The idea of projecting a positive vibe is not just a goody-goody way of going through life. I’m not trying to alarm you, but I have seen firsthand how a lack of gratitude led to someone losing their life. This was a man I knew and cared for very deeply. I showed up one night at one of my favorite meetings, and he was chosen to share his story with the group (what 12 steppers refer to as qualify) because he had just gotten his ninety-day key tag. During the qualification, he explained how, a few months before, he had stopped doing service, stopped attending meetings, stopped calling his sponsor, and, finally, after ten years of sobriety, relapsed.

Think about the progression that led to the relapse. A definite lack of gratitude existed there. The only time a person will stop doing all the crucial steps to keep themselves safe is when they stop appreciating how important and lifesaving the steps are. They are no longer grateful for the freedom those things have given them.

I could hear it in his voice when we went out for coffee after the meeting. He was saying everything he thought I wanted to hear, but there was an emptiness inside him that I could feel viscerally. He was being swallowed up by a bad set of circumstances and allowing those circumstances to control his life. Something in my gut was telling me it wasn’t going to end well for him.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Someone suffers a romantic breakup, and the reality of their partner moving on to someone else makes the idea of getting high really tempting. The pain is so great that a person might begin to tell themselves they don’t care if they die. Unfortunately, with the drugs we have going around these days, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It was really sad when I had to come to terms with the fact that this friend, whom I was sitting face-to-face with months earlier, finally overdosed and died. It was the same story you read about every day: a hot bag laced with fentanyl. The cliché “Grateful addicts don’t use” used to just go through me as a weightless platitude I heard from time to time in meetings. Now it strikes me in a much different way. Now I think of my friend who lost touch with gratitude and is no longer with us as a result.

Gratitude in Advance
In addition to gratitude helping to keep us existing in a high-frequency state, receiving all the good life has to offer and assisting in the process of avoiding jails, institutions, and death, it can also help us achieve our wildest dreams. When I was deep in the process of breaking on through to the other side — that is to say, trying to get an agent and a book deal — I was working with a life coach and learning how to set intentions and manifest those intentions by practicing what I call “gratitude in advance.”

It all began innocently enough. First, I realized in the dead of winter when gigs were not very plentiful that I needed to try to raise an extra $200 a week for the next month. So I set an intention. If you’ve never done this, it requires many of the steps we have spoken about thus far. We make a decision to do something, we take a definite action, and we have faith that it will come to pass.

Part of the last step — the faith process — included my being thankful for, in this particular case, the extra $200 per week that I manifested. Yes, you heard me right. I was grateful for something before I received it. Hence the expression gratitude in advance. I am telling you this story because, of course, I did wind up manifesting that $200 per week for that entire month. And then I used gratitude in advance to manifest a fancy New York City literary agent. And then, finally, a book deal.

You can do the same thing. If there’s something you want to set an intention for, the steps are fairly simple: decide that you are going to get the thing, take an action toward its attainment, and begin to burst at the seams with gratitude in the all-knowing certainty that it is on its way to you. Before you know it, it will arrive.

Billy Manas, author of Kickass Recovery, is a regularly featured columnist for Elephant Journal, a contributor to Good Men Project and The Fix, a published poet, a working musician, a full-time truck driver and a dad to three daughters. His journey from Adderall-chewing, methadone-swilling, pot-smoking maniac to speaker/author with over nine years of sustained recovery is, as is so often the case, fraught with excitement and a few valuable anecdotes. These anecdotes have found their way into his many talks at jails, detoxes, rehabs, and his new “Kickass Recovery” workshop. www.BillyManas.com

Excerpted from the book Kickass Recovery. Copyright © 2020 by Billy Manas. Printed with permission from New World Library.

In 1999, I lost a very important person in my life. We were high school sweethearts and soon to be married when he died in a forest fire he was helping to put out. I was left with nothing; he had been my life for seven years, and then was taken away. I've gone on with my life because I've had to, but held on to his memory and love. Ever since his death, I have found white and black feathers in odd places. At every sad point in my life, a feather appears, and every time I think of him I somehow know that everything will be okay. I've always hoped these feathers represent his love for me. Is it really him, or is it just coincidence? My birthdate: 7/27/80. His was 10/21/79. Thank you very much.

- Viv

Dreamchaser:

Viv, I am sorry for your pain. Death ROCKS for those doing it. It is horrible for those left behind. Thank you so much for asking this question because people so often brush these things off as "coincidences."

YES! Feathers are gifts from the Otherworld. There are stories in every country and language of the world about finding feathers in places associated with one who has passed over. Put "finding feathers" in a search engine, and see how many stories you come up with that sound just like yours. Birds that are your animal guides or totems can also drop them. Finding feathers is a VERY common spiritual occurrence.

A few important points to recognize when finding a feather are where it was found, what type of bird it came from, and what it could mean to/ for you. For example, a dove is the bird of peace, so finding a dove feather would mean that there is peace around you. Seagulls teach us about proper diet. You can find your own message depending on what type of bird the feather came from.

Here's a great exercise from a book called Animal Speak by Ted Andrews. He writes:

"1. Choose a day on which the air is perfectly still. Take any feather, go outside and sit under a tree.

2. Allow yourself to relax and just breathe deeply.

3. Then slowly raise the feather above your head with both hands, and then lower it to just in front of your mouth.

4. Now slowly and gently blow upon the feather. As you do, move it with your hand as if it is being carried by your breath.

5. To enhance the effect, whistle a soft childhood tune that you remember upon your feather. If you have a penny whistle or a flute, tie the feather to it and play the tune.

In just a few minutes, the air spirits and archetypal forces linked to that feather will become active. The tree leaves will rustle. You may see some leaves or dust swirl upon the ground. You will feel a breeze begin to pick up. Bird activity around you will increase.

This is a simple exercise, but it is one that helps awaken a realization of the force of air. It provides for you a quick confirmation that feathers are wonderful tools to connect with those forces and spiritual beings that work with them."

Viv - you can connect to your love. He left the feathers and he is trying to say, "HEY, I AM HERE!" So try this exercise and see if you can feel his energy all around you in the wind. For those readers who have feathers dropped by birds, go out and feel the bird's power and use the bird's traits as tools in your own life. Get to know your totem bird.

I wish you expanding knowledge.

*****

Astrea:

One of the things that always strikes me when I read for Leos is how much sorrow they often bear so young. I am so sorry for your loss. Leos seem to have more grief early in life than anyone else in the Zodiac. It's just one of those astrological things.

Fortunately, Leos also have more resilience. I don't know if your coping mechanism is better because it HAS to be, or if it's better because it is tested at such a tender age, but it's true: Leos will overcome things that many of us just couldn't. You should be proud of yourself for being able to move on with your life, no matter how sad you are at losing the person you loved the most in the world. He was very sad to leave you too.

One WONDERFUL thing about Leos is your ability to recognize a SIGN when you see one! You are absolutely not imagining that your friend is leaving those black and white feathers for you to find. When you need to feel that he is close to you, that you aren't all alone in this big, scary world, those feathers will turn up. I'm sure he leaves them in places you would least expect to find them, so that they will make more of an impression on you. I see that he also has kept his sense of humor, and finds fun places to leave them for you when you're happy, not only when you're sad or upset about something! He'll always let you know his opinion on things, and he'll continue to leave feathers for you for the rest of your life.

He leaves them for you when he knows that you're facing some difficulty or hurt, and also when he is trying to get you to pay attention to something important. What he's trying to show you now is that this man you've recently met meets his approval. I know you didn't mention him in your question, but your friend tells me you've been wondering if this guy can be your partner for this lifetime, and he assures me that he can be THE one. He doesn't want you to miss this chance to find new happiness, and he is NOT ONE BIT JEALOUS; he's glad that you can be with someone nice until you see each other again.

He watches over you all that he can, and he'll be glad when you're reunited again, but he wants you to live your life with joy. Death can never separate two people who love each other like you two do, but he wants you to love someone else now, someone who can be with you while you're here. I'm so glad he was able to find something you would recognize as coming DIRECTLY from him. You couldn't know it better if you had arranged it before he died.

Those feathers he leaves for you are plucked from his wings.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.