The Cracked Plate

Are any of these situations famiilar?

• You are asking for a new job and you get offered voluntary work.
• You want to work in TV and a film crew spends a day shooting in your street.
• You want your own horse and you find a stray dog in the street.
• You want a good relationship and you get chatted up by someone who’s married.
• You want a new dinner service – and you are given a cracked plate.

It’s very easy to get mad about the Universe’s seeming non-comprehension of what you want but stop before you do. Get grateful instead. “The Cracked Plate Syndrome” is a very clear message that you’re on your way but something still needs a little more (or maybe a little less!) attention.

It’s actually a wonderful thing when something borderline to your desire shows up in your life. No, you don’t have to accept what’s come as the final answer but you do need to acknowledge it as a step in the right direction.

I first came across “The Cracked Plate Syndrome” in Catherine Ponder’s Bible of creating abundance, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity (De Vors). Catherine teaches that the cracked plate is a clear sign from the Universe that the dinner service you want is on its way. All you have to do is check the signals you’re putting out and start giving thanks that what you want is already yours and moving closer.

Checking the signals you’re putting out is important. Sometimes you’re not quite asking clearly. For example, asking the Universe for full healing for a sick person or pet could (to the Universe) mean taking them home to Heaven. Asking for full physical wellness for that animal is closer to the mark.

I once asked for love with a kind, funny loving man like my former boss (who was a cutie). Guess what? I started being asked out by married men. I’d forgotten the all-important stipulation of a single kind, funny, loving man. My boss was married so the Universe thought that was the complete package that I wanted. Remember, Universal Law is very literal.

Don’t panic; you don’t have to fret frantically over the exact wording for your desire – that’s exactly what the Cracked Plate Syndrome is for: to help you hone your request and clarify your desire.

However if you’re constantly getting cracked plates, it could be that you are actually asking for something that can’t come to you either because your energy simply isn’t aligned to it yet — or it’s something that wouldn’t do you any good if it did come.

And leading on from that, it may be that the cracked plate is what you do want after all.

For example: I want to do more interfaith work so I Googled ‘Interfaith teacher’ and came up with a Fellowship in the Interfaith Department at Cambridge University. Now, in the academic world I would appear not to have a cat’s hope in hell when it comes to being accepted as a Fellow at one of the UK’s top universities; I simply don’t have the academic qualifications.

Several of my friends thought I was crazy (and said so) but, within a week, I’d been offered lecturing work at Stafford University, a former polytechnic. So the Universe had marked my request and come up with the nearest cracked plate available. And I’m very grateful for it!

If you’re in any doubt about what you actually do want or whether what the Universe is offering you is the cracked plate or the Full Monty, the simplest answer is to get vaguer!

Every day give thanks for everything you have appreciated in the last 24 hours from stroking a pet, through having a cup of tea to not being run over by a bus. And then tell the Universe that you want to wake up happy tomorrow and to receive a wonderful, amazing and delightful surprise.

That makes it so much easier for you to create a life full of happiness – and the perfect dinner service. Because you may have been asking for white plates with an ivy pattern and the simple truth is that you are plain plate with a silver edging kind of person; you just don’t know it yet.

Asking for a lovely surprise frees up all parties in the Ask and Allow equation. You get what the Universe knows you will love and the Universe doesn’t get its hands tied in a knot.

Trust your Higher Self to know best. Trust the Universe to deliver. Just get happy; that’s really all it takes and if by the Law of Attraction you see a physical cracked plate in the next week, I bet you’ll laugh out loud.