Excerpt from "Everything I Needed to Know I learned From My Six-Month-Old"

I almost didn’t write that part down, but then I figured, why not? Cory’s list had a lot to do
with booking more roles in TV shows and commercials, in addition to the multimillion-dollar home. When we exchanged lists, we found ourselves laughing about a lot of it. Most of it. But beneath the laughter was the unspoken understanding that these things represented something much deeper and more fundamental: freedom. They represented the ability to create without restriction.

Developing a mind-set of freedom is a completely internal job. We were both aware that. And, at the same time, some- times you need to jump-start yourself. We needed to change our way of thinking in order to see our circumstances, and outcomes, in a new light. As the old saying goes, if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you always got. We both wanted to get some new energy moving through our lives.

By the time the class was set to start, even I was excited. The baby nursed happily—and quietly, thank God—as Kathryn Alice gave the opening remarks. There were a hundred people on the call, all wanting to manifest homes, cars, jobs, husbands, wives, babies, or careers. We began by setting intentions, knowing and declaring exactly what we wanted. Then we learned about the art of allowing these things to unfold in our lives without offering the unconscious resistance that so often denies the very things we desire.

Hmmm.... Boldly declaring exactly what you wanted. That sounded like Kingston to me. Allowing what you want to show up without resistance. Kingston again.

I smiled, thinking that my baby was a master manifester, adept at creating the ideal conditions under which he wanted to live. I looked at him lying in my arms—snug, dry, fat, happy—nursing contentedly without a care in the world. Everything that he needed was provided for him without a moment of worry or thought on his part as to how it would show up. From his perspective, he simply needed something and it appeared. What’s more, he fully expected the appearance of every good thing that allowed him to exist in a world in safety and love.

Could it be true that we all had that same power within us to consciously create that which we most desired or needed to experience for our growth and development? Where, I wondered, had that ability gone? If I’d had it, what happened to it?

In short, nothing.

Creativity was an inherent aspect of my being. I was constantly creating, I realized. Every star, every grain of sand, and every cell of our bodies, exists within the same field of constant creation. Each individual life appears for a season, then moves on to create a new path for something else to appear. Even as leaves fall from a tree, more will unfurl from the same branch to take its place. And when the tree dies, some other life is nurtured in its death, whether it’s an animal that finds a home in the hollowed-out log, or new shoots sprouting up in the sudden shafts of sunlight that can now spread across the forest floor. There is creativity everywhere. If I was part of that constant creation, if I was a generator of reality, rather than merely a consumer of other people’s thoughts about reality, that required me to take responsibility for what I was creating.

I finally got the meaning behind the saying I am 100 percent responsible for my reality. I’d never quite believed that before. Maybe 85 percent or even 90 percent, but totally responsible? Too many other people had done too many things wrong for me to feel comfortable owning that one. But it was true, nonetheless.

Certainly, I wasn’t responsible for what others did. But life required that I take responsibility for my response to what happened in my world, as well as what I allowed others to do in my presence. Whether I chose to embrace a growth mind-set, taking challenges as opportunities to go deeper, or allowed myself to be stunted, the bottom line was that it was all my choice.

I had the choice of creating more of what I wanted in my experience, and less of what I didn’t want. Kingston did it every day. He molded the world around him. It astounded me that this tiny boy nursing at my breast, who wasn’t even mobile yet, who couldn’t crawl, walk, or run, who couldn’t hold a conversation or a job, was shaping every aspect of his life in the ways that best suited his growth and development. He was completely dependent, but he was still, in essence, freer than either Cory or myself. It was amazing. It was all about consciousness.

For so long, I’d been creating largely from an unconscious space. My creations were an amalgam of thoughts, fears, worries, and desires, all jumbled up and set loose on the blowing wind. Could I create more accurately? Could I create like Kingston, with tremendous focus and economy, and achieve the results that I really wanted to achieve? This had absolutely nothing to do with the houses and cars and clothing that we had been joking about. No, this was about was purpose, freedom, and creativity. Mastery, I guess.

Conscious creation requires a high degree of self-mastery and awareness along with nonjudgment and compassion. Those are the qualities that I was really looking to experience in my life. I told myself, as I watched the baby drift off to sleep so peacefully, that if I did nothing else, I would open my life to embodying those qualities. That intention might manifest as anything: a novel or another baby or more meditation or more travel. It might look like a willingness to step out of my comfort zone and into uncertainty (because, Lord knows, a comfort zone isn’t always comfortable; all that phrase really means is that you’re yoked to something familiar, whether you actually like it or not). Whatever it looked like, I was willing to answer to that deeper call.

Kuwana Haulsey is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Red Moon (Villard) and Angel of Harlem (One World/Ballantine).  As a 2007 Penn/Faulkner Foundation honoree, Kuwana was named one of three New Voices in American Literature. That year, Angel of Harlem was chosen as one of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age. The Black- board Bestsellers organization awarded Angel of Harlem the Medal of Courage, a prize created specifically to honor the book.  The Red Moon was chosen as a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year. It also won a finalist prize at the Hurston- Wright Legacy Awards.  In addition to writing novels, Kuwana is an editor and freelance journalist. She has written features and cover stories for publications such as the Washington Post, Ebony magazine, the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Uptown magazine, and Odyssey Couleur magazine. An editor of the biography Hal Jackson: The House That Jack Built, Kuwana was part of the team that brought the legendary story of broadcast pioneer Hal Jackson to life. Published by HarperCollins, the book is exhibited at the Smith- sonian Institute. Kuwana lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

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ISBN 978-1-936740-53-6
5 1/2 x 7 1/4, 320 pages

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