The
Modern Occultist
Interview #8
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Trevor Emdon is a teacher and trainer whose work centers on what he calls effortless manifesting—the understanding that reality is generated from the inside out,
and that letting go is not a technique but a recognition. Drawing on the Three Principles, the work of
Michael Neill, and decades of lived experience, he speaks with characteristic
British wit and philosophical precision about the nature of consciousness, the
limits of control, and the synchronicities that quietly reshape a life. He
spoke with Modern Occultist from his home in the U.K.
MODERN OCCULTIST
How
would you describe what you do—specifically with manifestation?
TREVOR
EMDON
I've
never thought about giving myself a label. I have done coaching, but I guess
teacher or trainer comes closest. Teacher of effortless manifesting, really.
Effortless manifesting.
MO
What
differentiates your approach from some of the manifestation figures who have
taken prominence in recent years?
TE
Rather
than compare myself with other teachers, let me compare my teaching with other
schools of thought. I began my journey like everybody else—reading, attending
courses with teachers I believed knew things I didn't. I have no beef with any
of them. As far as I know, all of them were coming from a good place and meant
what they were trying to impart very sincerely. What I eventually came to was a fundamental disagreement with the
teachings themselves. As far as I can see, many teachings around manifesting or
magic share a common premise: if I do this ritual, something that wasn't in my
reality will appear. That's the appeal of it—the laws of regular physics won't
apply. But my fundamental disagreement with that became, and remains, this:
there's little old us, and there's a big old something out there—a god, or
gods, or whatever the law of attraction calls 'the universe'—and if little old
us can somehow communicate in the right way to the big old something, our
wishes get granted. I came to see that and think: hang on, I don't think that's
right. Why would this thing, whatever it is, only grant my wishes if I
visualize strongly enough, or repeat an incantation often enough? Why is it so
demanding and so difficult to communicate with? It drove me crazy for quite a
lot of years.
MO
That's
a beautiful way of describing microcosm and macrocosm. Do you think there's a
necessary acknowledgment of a higher power in order to harness manifestation
for yourself?
TE
Not
as a step—more as a guiding principle. Michael Neill tells a story about being
in a room with a priest, a rabbi, and an atheist. They were debating the
existence of God, and eventually they all turned to him and said: “Michael,
what do you think?” He thought for a moment and said, “Well, all I know is
we're not running the show.” And to me, that says it all. I do not know how to grow my own fingernails. I have
no clue. My heart beats, my blood circulates, my liver cells replace themselves—thank
you, whatever is running the show, you can handle all that, as well as spinning
planets and creating galaxies. One of the things that blows my mind is the law
of entropy—"Everything put together falls apart,” as Paul Simon said. But
nobody can explain how it got together in the first place. So when it comes to
manifesting, once you accept “I'm not running the show,” you reach a place
where you don't have to control anything. You just have to want it. And the
universe—or whatever we're going to label the big old something—will take care
of it. That's it.
MO
What
is the most commonly asked question from your clients and commenters?
TE
How
do I let go? Because we—especially in modern, Westernized culture—have this
fundamental idea that we must control everything. But as soon as you ask “how,”
you expect a method in response. “How do I fix a leaking tap?” You go on
YouTube and find a “Do A, do B, do C.” But “how do I let go?”—to really answer
it is, as Michael Neill puts it, like trying to explain something by pointing
at fire with ice. The closer you get to the truth, the less you've got to point
with. I've been recording a YouTube video and I've opened it with a haiku I
came across as a teenager, when I was interested in Zen. I must have been 16 or
17, and I read this poem and I thought: how stupid. The poem is—"sitting
quietly, doing nothing, the grass grows by itself.” My teenage mind thought,
well, duh, where's the wisdom in that? But now I see that little poem as
containing the entire essence of manifestation. Nobody stands in front of a
blade of grass saying “get bigger, grow faster.” It will do it by itself. The
same is true of anything you want to manifest. It will do it in its own time.
You cannot make the grass grow faster. And it doesn't need your help.
MO
You
encountered that poem at 16 or 17 and it didn't resonate yet. Do you think time
and experience show the truth of even the simplest observation?
TE
Sometimes
I think I'm slow on the uptake. So many light bulbs have gone on for me over
the years—"oh, I didn't really see that before.” Michael Neill has a
mentor, a woman called Mavis Karn. She's written a book called It's That
Simple, which you can read in an hour and a half but will keep for a lifetime.
She's in her mid-to-late eighties now, an extraordinary life—taught a lot of
this in prisons. Someone once asked her how she felt about discovering what
she'd discovered at her age, and she said: 'It depends what thoughts I'm
thinking.' I think that's really the only answer I can give you as well.
Could I have seen it at 16 or 17? I lost my mum
when I was nine. I lost a sister when I was seven. There was a doubly bereaved
dad, a baby brother, and a stepmother who was, let's say, very difficult, who
mercifully left when I was 13. Heading into adolescence with that big hole in
my life, the whole search was: how do I get to be happy? I made it. I got
there. But it took three and a half, nearly four decades for it all to fall
into place. There are things I would never have seen that I can see now, had it
not been for the journey life took me on.
MO
Can
you share how you came to understand what reality actually is?
TE
I
was introduced to the idea by Jill Edwards, who wrote Living Magically
in the early nineties and eventually became my metaphysics teacher. The phrase
I remember is: we are creating our reality with our thoughts and beliefs. It
wasn't until I came across the Three Principles many years later that I
understood what my fundamental misunderstanding had been—what the heck is
reality? And I believe this is something graspable at any age. The only reality
is what we have inside our own heads. Nothing is coming to us from outside.
It's not happening to us. Here's an
example graspable by anyone over about ten. You both go to see a movie. When
it's over, one of you says: I was completely absorbed, loved it from start to
finish. The other says: I struggled to stay awake. But it's the same movie,
frame for frame. The experience of the movie is inside each of your heads. We
all look at everything through our own lens. When you understand that—like when
the optician changes the lenses in front of your eyes—we can do that with
what's inside our heads. That's where the power is. And that's why you don't
have to appeal to the big old something out there. We're already connected to
it in here.
MO
What
would you tell someone whose situation—money, health, relationships—is
extremely difficult? Can you manifest under duress?
TE
There's
no such thing as a situation. There's only what you're seeing in your head. “Under
duress” is your thinking. I remember coming across a book called How to Be
Happy by a Dr. John Pepper. In it there was a story about a woman who lived
on a park bench in Central Park, sleeping in a bin liner. When asked about her
life, she said: “I have everything I need. I have a place I call home. I have
friends I talk to every day. I have animals that come to me.” I don't want that
life. But it was the first hint I had that it depends entirely on how you look
at it. There's no such thing as a situation—only how you see experience.
MO
Can
you share a few success stories from your own experience?
TE
I
do get very nice messages and private emails from people saying I've really
inspired them or made a real difference—but they rarely go into detail, and I
don't feel I have the right to ask. Of my
own stories: a couple of years ago, on a Thursday evening, I was winding down
at my computer when an email came in from a marketer I've followed for years—Jason
Fladlien, very top-notch. I always have mixed feelings when his emails arrive
because whatever he's offering, I'm going to want it, and it's always expensive.
So I opened it, clicked through, watched a video over an hour long. He was
offering a course. I assumed it would be four figures. It was $499. Good value—but
I didn't have a spare $499. And then what
happened was game-changing. I caught myself thinking, as a knee-jerk reaction:
I can't afford that. And because I caught it, I thought—I don't have to believe
that thought. The offer was open for three days. I thought: what if I could
make the money? Not visualize money appearing in my account—I understand it
differently now. I just needed an idea. I gave myself thirty minutes Friday
morning, no scrunched-up-face effortful thinking, just: let's see what occurs
to me. I put it out at ten o'clock that
morning. By seven that evening I'd done everything I could do. That night my
wife—she's a chef—got home and I was checking my phone. One sale came in: $97.
That's nice. Not enough, but let's see. I went to bed. By the end of Saturday
I'd exceeded $500. By Monday I'd made over $1,200. I bought the course. Because if I'd believed my reality was 'I can't afford
it,' that would have been game over. But I caught the thought. We're not living
in a reality that comes at us from outside. We're living from the inside out—which
is exactly why Michael Neill's book is called The Inside-Out Revolution.
MO
What
is one book, film, or teacher you would recommend for someone just getting into
manifestation?
TE
I
want to say Michael Neill, but you won't find the word 'manifestation' or 'law
of attraction' in any of his books—that's not what he teaches. What he points
to, better than anyone I've come across, is the nature of reality. And once you
understand the nature of reality, it doesn't matter what you call the big old
something or how you think it works. You can just let go and things unfold in
their own way. Start with The Inside-Out Revolution. It explains it
best, and it's very easy to read. He also has one called Super Coach,
but start with The Inside-Out Revolution.
MO
Is
there a daily practice you would recommend for someone who wants to take
control of their life?
TE
Not
as a technique—because the problem with techniques is you immediately start
wondering: am I doing it right? Am I doing it enough? But as something to
practice: noticing. It's a superpower. Notice that you can observe your
thoughts. You are not your thoughts. You are not your experiences. You are the
observer. Once you get that step of separation, you get to see and experience
that you are pure awareness—aware of thoughts, aware of having a personality,
aware of being. That's where the lens in front of your experience can change.
MO
Would
you say effortless manifestation is similar to an umbrella affirmation like “everything
always works out for me?”
TE
No—because
as soon as you do it that way, you've turned it into a technique. “I must
remember to think that. I forgot, so I've done it wrong.” And I wouldn't even
agree with the content, because things always work out for me implies they work
out the way I think I want them to. And they don't. Sometimes it does rain on
your picnic. People you love die. Pets die. A
milestone book for me was When Bad Things Happen to Good People by
Harold Kushner. I was about thirty, twenty pages in before he casually
mentioned he was a rabbi—had I seen that on the cover, I would not have bought
the book, because religion had never done it for me. But he was essentially
saying the God in the Bible is not a God he likes. Malicious, punishes people
with locusts and plagues. He said if his father behaved like that, he'd want to
leave home. And I kept reading. And eventually he said: suppose you're driving
home and stop at a red light, and you can see your street, and there's smoke
rising from a building there. Something's on fire. You can't move. He said,
there's no use praying 'don't let it be my house'—because if it is your house,
the flames will not suddenly shift to the house next door. But what you can say
is: give me the resources I need to cope. Now if you want an umbrella
affirmation—I'd take that. Because you will get the resources you need to cope
with whatever happens. You just have to listen.
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