Flashes of promise – that’s how the change of season is manifesting in the Azores. More rainbows than full-on sun. But swathes of bright yellow oxalis waving from the hedgerows all month; and last week my heart did a double flip over two luminous purple magnolia trees in full bloom – a month ahead of their UK siblings – in our UNESCO World Heritage capital city of Angra do Heroismo. I ponder the pathetic fallacy for my psychic state – can I infer, Getting there, Rosie?!

You may recall, January’s ruminations led me to the question of locus of control – does it reside within, or outside of us? – and where I sit on this. I concluded, ‘Both’. Proposed balancing a twelve-step-programme-worthy Higher Power, together with random circumstances – ‘shit happens’ – on the one hand; and personal agency, meaning my effective choices and actions, on the other. But the blog’s leaning, if there was any message to be derived from events, was to urge me to increase my sense of personal agency – my thinking and doing.

Simultaneously, a writer friend in California emailed to ask me to engage in a challenge with her. For her private reasons, she wanted to put to work in her own life the practice set out in a book by James R Doty MD – a neuroscientist and professor who founded and directed The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University School of Medicine, of which the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. I was impressed with the author’s credentials – what, I queried my potential partner in this exercise, was the title? Back came her message: ‘Mind Magic, The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything.’

Oh.

I have been about as suspicious of ‘manifesting’ in secular culture as I am of the ‘prosperity gospel’ in some church circles. I don’t, I hasten to add, equate the two. I’ve known people try to ‘manifest’ all sorts of successes, not just riches, and not only their own dreams either – one dear friend set herself to ‘manifest’ Novak Djokovic winning the 2026 Australian Open Men’s Final, which would have given him the standalone record for the number of Grand Slam titles. I wouldn’t call it an ‘outcome’, but the fact is the great athlete is still in pursuit of his goal. I’m also not criticising everyone clever or lucky enough to be wealthy – money can do so much good in compassionate, generous hands. My caution is whether both attempts to swing the future in the desired direction, irrespective of the moral merits of the cause, involve an element of philosophical arm-twisting and manipulation. Perhaps all prayer does too, though by definition it is up to the Higher Power to choose how to answer. But probably we all come with mixed motives.

So it took me a couple of weeks to coax myself – for the sake of my friend who is so loyal and supportive to me, I wanting to reciprocate – to download Mind Magic on my Kindle, and look into what it actually was about. What I found there surprised and intrigued me.

The mind behind the book and I were not initially on the same page. Was I bothered by his using the f-word to describe the lack of care and concern the universe possesses toward us, our needs and wants? – not a jot! I just disagreed, believing the Divine does have a f*** to give, and is deeply interested. But reading further, how this is a scientific model of the neuroplasticity of the brain – and science and my theology being compatible – I became enthusiastic about what he was offering … How we embed vision for our lives in our subconscious mind so that we then behave with the focus and intention that will, over time, through habit and orientation, realise – ‘manifest’ – our goals. As part of the process, we become sensitised to connect with external opportunities, resulting in a higher incidence of synchronicity, which feeds into our success. Notably, the more the vision benefits others rather than being purely selfish, the surer the manifestation.

I started to try out his practice over a few weeks and so far I have found myself forming better, as the author would say, ‘tiny habits’, already manifesting a healthier, more productive life. Small steps: walking in imperfect weather; and writing daily – with a steady hope of sharing a worthwhile worldview through my fiction with a keen readership, in the fulness of time.

From my experience, clever MD and professor though he be, I’d say James R Doty is mistaken when he asserts that faith in a Higher Power drains energy from what he terms our ‘inner power’. But, he’s right in this: We are responsible for making the best of ourselves.

I’m grateful to him for showing me the way.