42. Receive Before You Release: The Manifestation Shift Nobody Talks About

This week on This Is Soul Therapy, we’re talking about a manifestation lesson I absolutely did not expect to receive… delivered through an ugly bathroom mirror and a Facebook Marketplace listing.

After weeks of trying to release something from my life with zero movement, the moment I intentionally received what I actually wanted… everything shifted.

In this episode we’re exploring a manifestation concept that completely challenged the advice I’ve been hearing for years: that sometimes you don’t release in order to receive — sometimes you receive in order to release.

We dive into the energetic relationship between action and surrender, masculine and feminine energy, and why waiting for things to naturally fall away might actually be keeping you stuck.

If you’ve been trying to call something in but feeling blocked, stagnant, frustrated, or like nothing is moving, this episode might help you identify what energy actually needs to shift.

We Cover:

•The surprising manifestation lesson hidden inside selling a mirror on Facebook Marketplace

•Why “receive to release” can sometimes unlock movement faster than letting go

•The balance between masculine and feminine energy in manifestation

•How over-identifying with spiritual frameworks can disconnect you from your own intuitive authority

•Why taking action can create the energetic displacement needed for change

•How to recognize when your life needs surrender… and when it needs momentum

•A guided Substack practice to help you identify where your manifestation energy is out of balance

This episode is for you if you’re exploring manifestation, spirituality, intuitive living, conscious creation, or you’re trying to understand why something in your life feels stuck despite doing all the “right” things.

Sometimes the shift isn’t releasing harder.

Sometimes it’s finally receiving what’s already trying to come in.

Transcript

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For the ones unraveling, reorienting, and remembering who they are, this is Soul Therapy. Here we explore the questions that tug at you. What season am I in? What is the universe trying to teach me? How do I support myself through change? We weave intuition, nervous system healing, creative energy, psychology, and the unseen into real grounded conversations. I'm your host, Jen Hully. Let's begin. Hello, welcome back to this is Soul Therapy. It's been a crazy week, and I remember after doing the first episode last week, I was like, what am I gonna talk about this week? And just went about my day-to-day and then had the most ridiculous experience where the universe like just brought me something, wrapped it up in a bow, and was like, here is a lesson delivered to you. And I was like, All right, I know what I'm gonna talk about. I feel like this podcast is really being co-created with spirit and working through my guides and the guides of everybody listening. And it's interesting because I'm the type of person who likes to plan things out. I really feel comfortable in like my masculine energy of like, get shit done, do this. Step one, step two, here we go. And no matter what I do, it seems like this podcast is just coming from somewhere else. It's coming from things that I can't plan. And so to back it up, I have this really weird thing happen to me this week that involves selling a mirror on Facebook Marketplace. And I know you might be like, what the hell does that have to do with spirituality, soul paths, intuition, whatever it does. Trust me. Here, there are so many messages hidden in our day-to-day. The problem is we like have blinders on and we're not paying attention. Like we're not in tune with ourselves, but we're not in tune with actually what we're going through. We're like on freaking autopilot and on our phones and on AI, and we're not tapped into this like wealth of knowledge and intelligence that we are just like steeping in. And so I've got this mirror that I was trying to sell. And it's not just like it happened over a week, it happened over about five weeks or so, like four to five weeks. This process of like trying to get rid of this ugly ass mirror in my house that would not budge. And I don't mean like physically not budge. I mean like I just wanted it sold. It was big. I was like, someone give me some money for this. Like, let's get it out of here. I want something new. And it wasn't releasing, it wasn't leaving. And until it was. That's all I'm gonna say as a teaser, is all of a sudden it wasn't releasing, then it was like poof, gone. And the way it left my hands and the way it left my energy sphere was just something you can't make up. And it had one of those moments where like it was so weird, and I was just frozen, silent, going, what the hell just happened? And I could hear so clearly my guide saying, sometimes you have to receive in order to release. And I was like, Come again? Because you've probably heard the opposite. You have to release in order to receive. I say this all the time. I have tons of content out there talking about the art of letting go and creating space in order to receive something new into our life. But what my guides wanted me to know and to share with you is that the opposite is true. That sometimes in order to release something, we have to be not just open and willing to receive the new, but we have to actively be going out there. My dog is barking. He's like, yes. I don't know if you heard that. He's like, yes, yes. Like, preach, preach! Louder for the people in the back. In order to release, we have to be, yes, open and willing to receive, but we need to actively be doing things to make the receiving and the getting it done happen. And it's this delicate balance, right, between waiting and acting, doing and you know, creating space. And it's everything exists, like the whole universe is constructed of these divine counterparts, up and down, in and out, slow and fast, masculine, feminine, like everything exists in relation to its complete counterpart, like its opposite energy. And you know, when we look at manifesting, which is the process of like having an idea and intention and bringing it into existence, there is this balance that has to exist between masculine and feminine energies. It has to be, you can't be all in one or all in the other. It has to be somewhere in the middle. Like that's where the flow state is created. And when we listen to, like, if you read a lot about manifesting or listen to podcasts, and you probably do if you're listening to this, when we hear about manifesting, we talk about manifesting, there's been this like this mindset or this thesis that has been just like circulating the drain of social media and you know, books and stuff about getting into your feminine and being in your feminine energy. And what's blocking your manifestations is actually that you're like doing too much or you're optimizing or you're overfunctioning. My ears ringing. This concept of like overfunctioning, and that's what's blocking your manifesting. You have to get back into your feminine energy, which is more passive receptive state, and then everything will be good, right? And I I bought into that idea heavily over the last year. I just, I don't know, you hear something like six, seven, eight times, you're like, hmm, maybe this is true. And let's be honest, it probably wasn't true for me because I wasn't having any problems manifesting stuff. I could like speak something, have it come into existence like within 48 hours. But I got this idea of how you have to be in your feminine and you have to be creating space and be more passive. That's where I kind of lost the plot. That belief got imprinted in my brain and it grabbed hold of my innate manifesting power, my innate magnetism, and like became a vice grip on it because your innate magnetism is going to be individualized to you. Or this balance of feminine and masculine energies push and pull, stop and go. And what happens when we we hear these protocols or we see these 10-step processes or we see these frameworks? It's like, how to activate your divine feminine so that you can receive $10,000 this week, or however someone's fucking packaging it up this week, right? When we shift into a state of like, oh, that's the answer, we're moving out of that internal authority of like what our own recipe for success is. And that's gonna change your flow. If you think of like your flow as a hose, a garden hose, right? And you can like pinch it, or you can put a knot in it, or you can like turn it around, or like it will disrupt the flow because your innate state needs to be whatever supports you. And so, yeah, I like drank the Kool-Aid and was like, Yes, divine feminine, I'm gonna do this. Side note, I at some point in the last 12 months, I was at an energy worker getting Reiki done. Because I was like having all these problems with like some health stuff and other things, and just like shit was not flowing. And she was like, You have no wind energy. I don't know what that means. And we, this is what was great about when intuition comes in and when messages from spirit come in. Like, quite often I get them. I'm like, hang on, let me look that up. Like, I was doing like an energy session for a group of women. Uh, I think I talked about this last week. I was at a party. I was just doing an impromptu energy healing, and stuff comes in, and I'm spitting it out and looking at someone being like, can somebody Google that? Because like it does you sometimes you don't know what you're talking about. And I mean, like, you don't know what you're talking about because the message isn't from you, it's coming through you. So she was saying, like, there's not enough wind. There's not enough wind. She keeps that's what I keep hearing. You don't have enough wind. And wind energy, it's categorized as like masculine energy in terms of like a metaphysical or astrological or traditional symbolism, like it's it's air and it's outward expansion, logic, action. It was wild because it came up. I was talking to her about something else. I was there for a different reason. And it's funny that this is like come full circle, and I'm like, this is a story from like over a year ago, but it it feeds into what we're talking about today, where she was like, You don't have enough wind. And I was like, Okay. But let's back up. So there's this ugly ass mirror in my house. Because you're probably like, what does this have to do with a mirror? But I have this mirror and it is so ugly. Like, I just, it's not my vibe. I don't like it. I don't like looking in it. It doesn't match my vibe, it doesn't match the vibe of the room, it doesn't match the vibe or the aesthetic that I'm trying to call in and create. But yet it's a mirror and it's functional, so it's up on the wall and I need it and it's in the bathroom and whatever, right? And I had it there for like a couple months. Excuse me. Ooh, that was a big burp. Spirit says hi. Gosh, I was doing a reading yesterday and I was like burping so much. Like, thank God it was someone that I mean, I always tell clients, like, if you've never worked with me, that stuff moves through and it's just energy moving. But she'd had a reading with me before and she was like, Oh, I remember. That's like good. So I don't have to give you the disclaimer about what's happening right now. But oh my gosh, I'm losing the plot today. So I've got this ugly ass mirror, it's in the bathroom, it's functional. I need it. You need a mirror in the bathroom, but every time I look at it, I'm just like, ugh. Like, I literally let out this like uh, like I just I don't like it. Which I'm a manifesting generator with a sacral authority, and so my decision-making process is supposed to be guided by like listening to the sounds that my body just makes. And so, like, I was literally going, ugh, every time I looked at this mirror, yet I was not removing it from the space because I didn't know what I wanted to put there, and I was like, Oh, I just I don't want to buy something. And anyways, one day I just snapped and I was like, get this shit out of my face, and I ripped it off the wall gently. I didn't break it, but I just I was like, get mirror, leave, like out damned mirror, and I ripped it off, and I had an empty space. I had like a negative space on the wall, I had this blank canvas, and all of a sudden I felt like I could breathe. I was like, okay, I can start to visualize some things. I can imagine what this mirror might look like or that mirror because the distraction and the heavy, oppressive energy of that mirror was gone. So it was like creating like a physical negative space, but also an energetic negative space. And suddenly, like, I had a little bit of inspiration. I was like, okay, I think I know what I want to do with this space. And, you know, I put the mirror in my basement and I just sort of left it there for a bit. And I decided like where I was going with the next the next one. Like I had an idea, I got some pictures, I was like, okay, I want a round mirror, I want it to be gold. It's got to be 30 to 31 inches. I want it to be this price point. I don't want to be driving around looking at forever. Like, I don't want to, I would just want it to kind of like land in my lap. And I started looking, so I was like, I'm just gonna look on Facebook Marketplace because you can pick up some cool shit there. And while I was on there, I was like, I'm gonna list this ugly ass mirror because like let's get rid of it. Let's save me the trip of having to haul it somewhere to donate it or whatever. Um, and let's just put it on Facebook Marketplace for like a really decent price. Somebody's gonna pick it up, right? I like put it up and I just sort of waited for my DMs to be flooded with people being like, is it available? Is it available? Is it available? Um, and instead, it was crickets. There was like nothing. And I was like, What? Like literally nobody wanted this mirror. And it was fine. I was like, whatever. It's down in the furnace room in the basement, out of sight, out of mind. I don't have to really deal with it. And I left it there for a couple weeks as I was like looking for this new one, going shopping, browsing Facebook Marketplace, going to different, you know, antique shops, also new places, like home sense, wherever, like just trying to connect with this ideal mirror that I needed. And um, nobody's buying the stupid old one. Like nobody, like nothing. I was like, nobody's even asked offering me like $2 for it. Like, that's usual. You get like a low ball, right? Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I even like dropped the price even more. I was like, let me make it like stupid cheap that someone's gonna snap it up. Nothing. It's like the mirror didn't exist in the universe, but I was like, whatever, it's fine. I did find a new mirror, and this was probably like four or five weeks after it had been off the wall and been listed. And I found exactly what I wanted, like at a price point that I had asked for. I got to the point where I was like, I know exactly what I want. And I was like, I only want to pay 40 bucks for it. I was like, I don't want to pay a hundred, like, that's dumb. Give me one for 40. And one listed for $40, the exact same size. It was like perfect. And I saw that and I was like, that's what I'm getting. And I messaged the woman selling it. I was like, I want to buy this. I will send you the money now. I can't pick it up for four days. And she's like, no problem. So I like jumped in, gave her the money. I was like, if she's a scammer, whatever, it's only 40 bucks. I'm not gonna die. And I left it. And then we we went through a long weekend and like nothing happened with my mirror that was in the basement, still, nobody's giving a shit about this thing. And um, it comes Tuesday after the long weekend, and I'm like, all right, first thing I do is I get up and I'm like, I'm going to get my damn mirror. I pick it up, put it in my car, I get home with it, and I immediately go to the bathroom to hang it up. And like, that's not what I normally do. I normally would put it on the floor in the bathroom and then look at it for three weeks and get annoyed by the fact that it was on the floor and then put it up. Like, that's just kind of how, kind of how I do DIY and like home projects I've learned. But something took possession of me and was like, put this thing on the wall. And I didn't even take my shoes off. I like had my purse still hanging on me, walked straight from the garage into the laundry room where like all my tools and crap are, grabbed the hammer, the screws, the anchors, went straight up, held it up, eyeballed it, rammed in the screw, hung it up, and I was like, perfect. Like it just went up, and I was so amazed at myself. First of all, I was like, patted myself on the shoulder because I was like, that was amazing that you you did that immediately. And so as I step back to kind of like look at this mirror and admire, like it looked pretty good in there. My phone in my pocket pinged, and I was like, who's texting me? And I pick it up and it's like, hi, is this still available? I'm local and I can pick up this mirror today. And I'm like, what? I shit you not. I get the mirror on the wall, I step back, it's 30 seconds later, and somebody's messaging me saying, like, hi, I'm around the corner, I can come get it. And I just like looked at my phone and I was like, Yeah, of course you can come get this. When are you thinking? And then 45 minutes later, I had cash in my hand, and this mirror was on its way to its new home with a new owner who was like standing in my driveway, gushing to me about how perfect and beautiful it was for her and her space. And it was one of those moments where I was like, That was really, really weird because the timing was so divine that you couldn't plan it to be any more intentional than that. It was as if by me putting this new mirror on the wall, the old mirror received notice that its time was up and now it was okay to leave. It's like I had to energetically fill that void that was on my wall. Because I had an empty wall with no mirror for weeks. And once I filled it with something that I had chosen intentionally and really, really loved and really wanted, the old one was like, I don't need to be here anymore. I remember it happening and I was like, what is this? That was wild. And that's when I heard so clearly in my head, you need to receive to release. And it made me think about all the things that we're trying to get rid of from our lives, and we're trying to like prune. You know, old jobs, repetitive cycles, maladaptive habits, stagnant relationships, like all these things that we want to shed and release, but they seem to be unable to leave. Like they just are not able to unstick or dissolve. They're like these cockroaches. You know, you know what I'm talking about. Like, it's like it's they're showing me like, I want to quit the gym. What was that? That was that TV show. Was it Friends? Where like he wanted to quit the gym and he couldn't quit the gym and he had to bring somebody along to help him quit the gym. And it's they're showing me this, I think, as a explanation of like sometimes we want to release something, but like it's so it's it's hard energetically, it is so sticky and it won't move. And I think there's two parts to that, right? Sometimes there's the dynamic of the thing that's trying to be released, that it's just a little complicated. But I also think it's because as people, we're like little energetic pack rats. We hoard things, we hoard dynamics, you know, we we stay in agreements and contracts and decisions in other areas of our life out of fear. Like we don't leave jobs that we find unfulfilling because we're afraid that we won't find something else that we like as much as that. And so then these other aspects of our life that we're trying to release aren't leaving because we're not showing up across the landscape of our life in the same energy. Oh, spirit says yes with that burp. It's almost as if like we get ready to release this thing, like, say a job, and we want to call in a new opportunity, but the releasing of the old job gets stalled out because the very need that you're trying to replace, like the need for a job, still exists, where it's like, I'm not gonna let you give up your job because there's there's a need for a job that's not filled, and it sort of creates this friction. It's almost like like manifesting in reverse, if you think about it. Like sometimes you have to just go out, get the damn thing you want, and then let the universe take care of the cleanup. An area where this happens a lot for me is buying houses. I never list my house for sale before I've bought something ever. I know people who are always like, sell first, buy later. And I'm like, absolutely not, because I want to find something to move into that I'm absolutely in love with and hooked in with conviction in my intention to be there. So that when I go and I buy that house, I go in firm, no conditions, even if people say it's crazy. But it's because I know that by going in like that, like that is going to create this almost like an energetic tidal wave that's gonna push out the current home and help the sale of it close. Because there isn't going to be a void. We're not going to be selling the house and creating open space. There's something already taking its place. It's almost like pushing a domino, and then the rest of them start to fall. You know, we talked a bit at the beginning about this dance between the masculine and the feminine energy with manifesting and how, you know, I manifest better and more consistently when I'm more in my masculine energy. Because I know in my life, when I get into phases where I'm really sitting back and I'm focusing only on healing and only on releasing and hoping and wishing and putting it out to the universe. You show me what you want me to do, you show me what my path is, like that kind of stuff. I get quickly disappointed. Things either stall out and nothing happens, which creates hella frustration for me, or stuff comes in that I don't want. And I'm like, no, thank you. But when I like shift my perspective and shift my action or the energy that I'm coming at a situation with, and I go into it with laser-like focus on what I want and that it's going to happen because I'm going to support it with the actions that make it happen. The universe removes the blocks and the slowdowns and the distractions that were getting in the way. It starts doing the shedding. I think this shows up for people in their lives too when they they make that change and they go and they do that. They they just they change their life in some way and they see like friendships start dissolving, or it's like all of a sudden, I made a change to do this, and this job fell apart.