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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.

I have been dating my boyfriend for six years now, and we've been engaged for three years. My family and our friends keep asking us when we're getting married, and if it was up to me, it would have happened a long time ago. My boyfriend, however, seems to be nervous about it, and always finds some way to not get locked into a specific date. I'm 29 now, and 30 is right around the corner. I'm wondering what's really going on with him, and if I'm being a fool. Am I wasting my youth (and my best childbearing years) on this guy? I am ready to walk away if he is never going to really get married, because if he can't give me all of his heart, what's the point? We are happy together - he just seems to be afraid of taking this final step. When I try to talk to him about it, he assures me there is nothing going on, that he's just busy, or this or that or the other thing. Do you have a spell or some other spiritual tool I can use to break free of this stagnation and move forward one way or another? Thanks, I love your column!

- Andrea

Dreamchaser:

First, why do you think that you do not have all his heart right now? Does one have to be married to give someone all of their heart?

He loves you. You yourself said things are fine. You two have a GOOD relationship. He proposed because you were pushing to get married and he felt if he did not propose, you would walk. He does not want to lose you, but he also does not want to get married.

There are some people in this world (and I am one of them) who do not believe in marriage. Marriage is an antiquated, old-fashioned, outdated ideal. Women do not need a man for financial security, and men do not need a woman to take care of the house anymore. Our roles have changed greatly in the last 100 years.

Your man is afraid of marriage. He has seen friends who had great relationships get married and then have their relationships fall apart. He does not want to lose you. He is afraid if you two get married, your relationship will implode as well. I want to say for the record that people like me who do not believe in marriage can ABSOLUTELY believe in love and monogamy. Just because I don't want to marry a man doesn't mean I don't want to love, honor, support and care for him.

Your man is the same way. He loves and supports you, but he's really afraid of stepping into something he considers relationship doom.

If you want to get married to bear children, it's time you dump this man and move on to find someone who is on the same page, because your man is not ready to do this any time soon. His actions have shown that.

There is nothing that you can do with a spell or spiritual tool because you cannot mess with someone else's free will. That would not only be wrong, it would bring you bad karma.

It is his choice to remain the way he is. If you started dropping spells on him, would you really have him? You would have a husband who was a husband because you forced it. Is that what you really want? Or do you want a man who wants to marry you and chooses it of his own free will?

Only you can say if this is a waste; no one else can make that determination for you. In my opinion, however, real love is never a waste.

I pray that all your dreams come true.

2158

Astrea:

Magic is not supposed to be used to interfere with someone else's free will, but to your credit, you don't say that's what you're seeking. What a good girl you are!

You're asking for something to help you MOVE FORWARD, and there are tons of spells and rituals that can be applied to your situation.

Here is one that has been "road tested" by quite a few people I know well. They all say that if nothing else, it helps them focus on a new kind of goal.

This spell is for when we have outgrown a long-standing relationship with another person and wish to move on without hurting his or her feelings. This approach prevents the guilt-trips, emotional blackmail, button pushing, and other manipulative energies that surround breakups.

To start, carve your boyfriend's name on a white candle with a pin, and then hold the candle in your right hand. Think of all the positive qualities that you know he possesses. Anoint the candle with patchouli oil before putting it in a holder.

Next, carve your name into a pink candle. Hold that candle in your LEFT hand, and think of all the positive things about you and the great things you've experienced in your relationship with him over the past six years.

Trace two pentagrams (stars) with salt around each candle holder. The holders should sit in the spaces in the middle of the stars. Visualize your boyfriend shifting his focus to a joyful new interest, thus relinquishing his dependence and reliance upon you. Light his white candle and say:

"Candle light, by your might, assist in my plight. Free me from emotional fetter, past bonds now scatter. Unchained, I am free forever."

Next, light your pink candle and say: "Candle light, by your might, assist in his plight. Free him from emotional fetter, past bonds now scatter. Unchained, he is free forever." If you can get him to participate in this spell with you, it will be all the more powerful.

Note: I have also found that when a couple does this together, sometimes it has the OPPOSITE effect you might expect, and their love and commitment are renewed and stronger than ever. The idea of being apart scares them into finally getting their act together!

Good luck!

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.