The Connection of True Passion and Manifesting
I’m mostly known as an astrologer which is something undoubtedly intertwined with my life’s purpose, but deep down my life-long passion has always been writing and playing music. When I say life-long, I mean there’s a VHS tape in existence somewhere of me as a toddler with a curly blonde mullet, pretending to play a spatula singing “Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus.
As I got a little older and developed my own taste in music, I fell in love with pop punk and got my first guitar when I was about 10. I spent so much of my time learning every last Blink-182 song; hanging out in my room playing along with it and fantasizing about being on stage in front of a huge crowd. Very typical for a young Pisces (Ironically I have the same birthday as Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus) but this part of the story will become much more relevant so try to stay with me.
Like almost all musicians, I played in a few terrible bands in my early teenage years until high school when I met my friend Nate and started writing songs with him. We formed a trio with one of his life long friends named Jon and chemistry we had playing together was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was an incredible, magical bond we felt playing together; as if nothing else in the world mattered to us. The duality of it was that we all suffered with the childhood programming of “you’re unlikely to succeed with a hobby, better play it safe with a ‘real job’, be realistic, etc”.
That belief being embedded into our consciousness kept us bitter and cynical. The one thing that gave us true joy was framed as an unproductive waste of time. We still persisted with it, but simultaneously we also developed very severe drug addictions trying to cope with that perception of our reality that we held. We started playing local shows and absolutely crushing it, but when it came down to us fully pursuing it there was no way to pull it off. How the fuck could we afford to go on tour when we need $400 worth of opioids everyday between the three of us to even function?
I ended up getting clean in 2012 and one of the biggest struggles I had was trying to continue making music. Nate and Jon were still using and every time I tried playing with another band, it just wasn’t the same. I couldn’t seem to find that chemistry anywhere else and I gave it up eventually. My life was pretty dull and seemed hollow until I got into astrology and realized I had a gift with it that I could utilize for helping people. Spending most of my time delivering pizza wasn’t exactly feeding my soul so I decided to take a chance on making astrology my job.
At first, this was an EPIC “failure”. I was in my Saturn return, living with my parents, broke as fuck, doing readings and other odd jobs just trying to keep up with the minimal necessary financial demands that I couldn’t eliminate. I was even starting to have health issues from stress but I was determined not to back track on creating a meaningful life. I knew how to manifest things through emotions but it was hard to manifest money while battling the thought of having $10 to my name and a car payment due in 3 days. I had to bypass that anxiety somehow if I wanted to manifest money. After all, it wasn’t money that I wanted; it was the feeling of purpose, joy, and freedom that I really wanted.
I started meditating every day and when my thoughts were centered, I went back to the memories of playing music with Nate and Jon. Deeply fantasizing on feeling that magical bond and immense joy that I would experience when we played. I loved it so much I would actually get chills and tears by generating the feeling within myself. At this point, Jon had been clean for a while and Nate was still in and out of active addiction. This is where the story gets intense. Stay with me. I promise I’m going somewhere with all of this.
I saw a video of Quirky Cosmo (shout out to her, super dope human, check her out) doing an interview with The Peace Dealer on YouTube talking about energetic healing. She was doing free calls at the time, so I scheduled one with her looking for insight on dealing with my health issues that were coming up. It was the morning after a lunar eclipse in Cancer and just before the call with her was scheduled, I got a call from Jon. I had a strong gut wrenching feeling before I even answered… he told me that Nate had committed suicide.
Needless to say, the call with Quirky Cosmo turned into something entirely different than I originally intended and it helped me process the shock I was in. I have a lot of gratitude for those divinely timed connections. Back to the main plot of this story though; that experience pushed me deeper into reminiscing on those feelings of playing back then. The fact that Nate was gone added a whole new level of intensity that I felt with it.
A day came shortly after when I got a call from my friend Rob. We had talked about playing music together before but I never really put much thought into it. He asked if I wanted to play bass for him and a few other guys doing 90s cover songs and get paid a little for doing. It wasn’t exactly my perfect cup of tea but hey, I love playing and wanted money however I could get it without sacrificing my soul. I wasn’t about to slap the universe in the fucking face by turning down that opportunity.
When we met up for rehearsal, the second guitarist didn’t show up. It ended up being me, Rob and the drummer, Stefan. We practiced the cover songs some but then we started playing around with original songs that Rob had written. It started to really sink in. I started experiencing that same feeling I would get when I played with Nate and Jon. Adding even more to the profoundly synchronistic experience, I noticed that Rob had the same Vans checkerboard guitar strap Nate always had, and Stefan had the drum set that Jon had.
We started working on an album and also playing local shows under the name Through the Motions. Coming back full circle to the beginning of this entire story, one of the first shows that we played was a Tribute to Warped Tour 25th Anniversary Show and we were playing Blink-182 songs. There I was, on stage at a packed out venue playing Blink-182 songs; exactly as little 10 year old me was imagining and feeling it in my room. I really started grasping the full concept and effectiveness of co-creating reality through my imagination and emotions.
We released our album “Escape Route” at the end of 2019 and it quickly got up to 50,000 streams on Spotify despite the fact that we had no idea how to promote it (Through the Motions *cough* Spotify, go stream it now *cough*). Everything flowed effortlessly until we were getting ready for a Summer tour in 2020… which didn’t happen for obvious reasons. However, that’s when my astrology career started moving in a major way which is what I thought I was trying to do in the first place. We’re finally getting back to having the space as a band to get things up to speed again.
There is no epic ending to the story because it’s still unfolding but I wanted to share my experience in reality co-creation; the practice of utilizing your own passions for manifesting by generating the feelings you get from doing what you truly love. Let that be your biggest inspiration for living and if anyone ever tries to make you believe your dreams are a waste of time, let them know they can fuck right off. That thing that you enjoy, the thing that gives you that feeling in your heart, it’s there for a reason - no matter how it looks to anyone else. As for me, I’ll be continuing to work on the process. I’ll see you all on the other side.
- Colbe Barrett
Click the link below to book a consultation with me:
https://www.clearsightconsulting.net/colbebarrett
Also check out Through the Motions on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3stZubpiBRWHNY2ow9zAPr?si=Rm2WbRtuSNWTLqts8mJ1Zw&context=spotify%3Aal