The cosmic kitchen

Why clarity matters in intention setting

This article is divided into three related parts: 1. Louise Hay’s cosmic kitchen 2. Snapshot: a personal perspective 3. The zodiac connection

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Louise Hay’s cosmic kitchen

The first time I heard the term Cosmic Kitchen, I was listening to Louise Hay on YouTube. She was talking about the manifestation process, and how important it is to be clear in your intention-setting.

Clarity, it seems, is a difficult concept for some people to grasp.

In her example, she talked about ordering from a menu in a restaurant.

Picture it:

You are seated at a table with a large menu in your hands. A waiter is patiently waiting for you to make your selection.

“I’ll start with soup,” you say.

“We have a soup of the day,” he mentions, realizing how vague your choice is. “Tuscan bean soup with chicken.” He points to the menu and continues: “We also have three other soups, including beef-barley, potato-leek and tortilla.”

You look down at the menu and can’t decide. But the waiter is patient, so eventually you tell him to bring you the soup of the day.

He departs and returns with the requested Tuscan soup. You breathe in the lovely scent but simultaneously wish you had ordered the tortilla soup.

Intention setting is kind of like this for me. I set an intention or a goal, outline my steps for achieving it, begin tackling the steps and then I come up with ten variations of what could be better, sometimes deviating far off my chosen path.

This is confusing not just for me, but for the universe (or spirit or god or higher power or energy source). It’s also confusing to the people in my orbit. My dithering and overthinking, my inability to make a decision and be happy with it, is frustrating for them (but also for me).

I’m aware (and trying to change).

But I digress…

Louise Hay was an incredibly talented spiritual teacher whose primary focus was to explain in simple language that we are in charge of our thoughts. She was an avid believer of the Law of Attraction and she made a huge impression on me with her affirmations and explanations. She explained the intention-setting process better than anyone else I’ve come across.

When she started talking about the Cosmic Kitchen, I was really impressed by her example. It resonated deeply and personally. (The following is what I remember from her audio tapes, slightly embellished for the sake of story telling.)

“When you make your choice and tell it to the waiter, he will deliver your message to the chef in the kitchen who will begin to cook and prepare your food,” she said. “Imagine your steak already sizzling on the grill, the garlicky mashed potatoes getting their final sprinkling of fresh-snipped chives, the green beans just about ready to toss in a butter glaze when suddenly, the waiter appears.

“She changed her mind,” he informs the chef. “She now wants the stuffed sole with broccoli and wild rice.”

According to Louise Hay, this is what happens when you try to manifest a desired outcome without setting clear intentions followed by taking solution-focused actions.

I’ve heard other examples outside of the menu selection in a restaurant. Picture a man who wants a new car. He begins declaring his wish by saying “I want a new car”.

As far as the higher power in the Law of Attraction universe is concerned, this is not a clear statement. It will ponder how to make this desired wish happen with the vague description declared in ‘new car’.

“What kind of a car does he want?” the universe/god/source ask itself. “What’s the make, the model, the colour? What type of features does he desire? When does he want the new car?” The universe/god/source begins to look at all the new cars and picks some at random, then sends them to sit on driveways in the man’s neighbourhood or parks them in local parking lot where the chance of the man seeing them is high.

Inevitably, the man will notice all these new cars in his orbit and wonder why he is suddenly surrounded by these shiny new vehicles everywhere he goes.

“I must really want a new car,” he thinks, intensifying his wish without clarification.

But the new car doesn’t come. Partly, this has to do with the lack of action taken. New cars don’t materialize out of thin air without targeted action.

There’s another step.

Louise Hay once again reminds us of the Cosmic Kitchen.

“You need to be clear about what you want,” she affirms. “State your intention clearly, and then take action toward these intentions.”

“I want a new car” is too vague.

A clearer statement might sound something like this.

“I want a steel-blue four-door Honda Accord's LX with seat warmers and a screen to plug in my phone. I want to be able to pay for this car in full, and I want this car by the end of this year.”

I realize this sounds too simplistic, but it doesn’t take away from the main message. Setting clear intentions in work-related projects, relationship concerns, parenting dilemmas or anything else require the same clarity as well as targeted focus.

By this time I want to have XYZ book written, rather than I want to finish my book.

By this time, I want to earn $ABC or better from project DEF, rather than I want to earn more money.

Alongside, you must also take action to make these things happen. Simply sitting at home waiting for new cars to fall from the sky, books to write themselves, income to increase out of thin air isn’t going to happen.

But the first step is crucial, or so I’m led to believe:

Intention-setting with clarity has to be clear for outcomes to be manifested in the 3D.

This, my friends, is what I have been learning about through the pandemic years. I’ll tell you about how this journey is going for me in another newsletter another time.

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Snapshot: a personal perspective

A woman I know is separated from her husband. The separation is not yet legal, but might be in a few months.

The husband desires for his wife to come back home, but the woman is not ready. She is looking for clear signs from him that he has changed, is taking responsibility for the problems he caused while simultaneously staying on course with her own healing.

Their views about what to do next, as the end of the first year of separation is approaching, is conflicted.

The woman has several children, all of whom except one are 18 years old or older. The youngest is a tween and still a minor.

Meanwhile, the husband is celebrating a milestone birthday in the coming weeks and desires to have a party.

Some weeks ago, while the youngest child stayed with her mom over the weekend, the party came up in conversation.

“Dad is wondering what you’re doing to plan the party,” the tween told her mom.

The mom was surprised. She messaged me and said she didn’t know what to do with this information.

“We’re far apart in every way, have no common ground at all, and he wants me to throw him a party?” she typed into her app, incredulous.

I felt bad for the tween, knowing this is a confusing time for her. Will her parents get back together? She knows this is what her dad desires, yet she also knows her mom is adamantly opposed to a reunion at this time.

Over the weeks, the story about the milestone birthday shifted. It became clear somehow that the mom would not plan and throw a party for her estranged husband. At one point, one of the adult kids contacted her mom and asked what the status was regarding her presence at the party which was now being planned by someone else.

My friend was stumped again. On the one hand, she desires to be present for her kids - especially for the benefit of her youngest - by showing a united front at least as far as the parenting part of the equation is concerned. On the other hand, she has less than no desire to be present at a family party where she expects to be judged, blamed, and maybe even shunned by various extended family and friends for disrupting a Christian household by leaving her marriage.

The adult kids consulted with each other and explained to their mom that attending their father’s party would confuse the youngest sibling more, not less.

“You are not clear with your intentions,” they said, referencing my friend’s dithering about doing what is best for everyone concerned. The kids feel, as a collective, that showing up at the party would be received as mixed signals by the youngest child and possible elevate misplaced hope by their father that a reunion is underway.

For my friend, a reunion at this time is impossible and very likely counter-effective in terms of her own progress with her healing and processing of her marriage’s deterioration.

There is no right or wrong answer here. What my friend ends up choosing to do with the party dilemma remains up in the air, although I get the feeling there is little chance she will make an appearance, particularly because she has now heard the observations and recommendations from her oldest daughters.

As I lend her an ear and whatever emotional support she needs, I find myself relating to her situation: the dithering and overthinking sounds - and feels - very familiar to me.

In an interesting coincidence, we are both Libras.

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The zodiac connection

Up until the pandemic years, I never really put a lot of stock into the zodiac sign’s relevance to my personality or character traits. During the many lockdown months however I’ve had a lot of time to read and educate myself with all things to do with spiritual awakening. In the interest of keeping this article short(ish) I won’t get into it all now, except to say the need to balance both my external environment and my internal state of mind has always played a part in my life.

Libra is symbolized by measuring scales.

These tarot cards are part of my collection and depict Justice, the Major Arcana card associated with the zodiac sign of Libra.

I tend to think that early Libras (late September into very early October) are more influenced by the character traits of Virgo (the sign immediately before Libra) and represented by the tarot card The Hermit), whereas those born in the middle of October (me) exhibit a more pronounced Libra characteristic. The late October birthday babies might merge a little with Scorpio characteristics… but that’s nothing scientific or evidence-based, just my own interpretation.

If you’re interested in zodiac sign explanations, I use cafeastrology, but there are many good sources on the internet.

The point is, this dithering and not making clear decisions is something I have become increasingly aware of in recent years, yet for reasons which I’m still struggling to understand have not resolved yet.

With my zodiac sun sign being a Libra, also known as an air sign - thoughts, intellect - I acknowledge and accept that my need to (over?) think to ensure all decisions make everyone happy and life is in a state of equilibrium is simply a part of me. Keeping those scales in perfect harmony is how I wish my life to be, and I’m constantly tweaking each side with thoughts and logic to make this happen. As a result, I sometimes appear indecisive, hesitant or even overly focused on external factors such a clean and beautiful living spaces which might drive some of my family a little bit batty.

Interesting side note: three out of four of us are Libras so don’t ask me why the two other Libras are mess-makers so opposite to me. It may have something to do with other placements in their natal chart, such as their moon at their time of birth.

But I digress.

This is all in fun and games, and I like it when the zodiac character traits appear spot on for me. Which doesn’t explain why I am still unable to state clearly and with focused attention exactly what I want. Does my new car really have to be that colour I think to myself as I ponder my focused, clear intention to manifest a new car, and lo, the universe is confused and I remain car-less.

It’s fun to think of it in these terms, isn’t it?

I leave you with these questions before signing off:

• What is it about making a decision that is so scary for some people?

• What is the underlying fear that prevents people like myself to state clearly I want this without feeling that but maybe I want that instead would have been the better choice?

I feel a tarot reading coming on… I may ask my trusty tarot cards to help me gain clarity. Stay tuned and check out my tarot channel if you’re interested.

The travels through the spiritual awakening continues.

Thank you for reading my article.

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know! You can leave a comment here.

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A few updates

As mentioned, I started a tarot channel on YouTube as an experiment and find myself enjoying the process. My content is very different from the standard online tarot readers out there, but I’m in a state of evolution so who knows where this path will lead me. If you’d like to check out some of my content on that channel called @ClaudetteTarotSpirituality, click the link or the button below.

Related content about my channel and some personal anecdotes can be found on my blog at writerofwordsetc.ca/blog.

A donation to sustain my free content is always welcome at BuyMeACoffee. Thank you for your support!

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