Disclaimer: there are certainly alot of different situations where the following may and may not apply, and nothing herein is meant to broadly generalize or imply these perspectives apply to all people at all times. Discernment in nuances are essential always. 🧠
I dunno if it was “The Secret” movie/book that really started bring “manifestation” to the forefront of many people’s awareness, though it was surely a catalyst of some sort marking the concept’s popularity. And here, nearly a decade a later, the whole “manifestation” thing seems popular as ever in many circles (especially in those of “life coaches” and the subculture of twenty-something internet presences playing out the same programs of a decade ago selling people all sorts of formulas and strategies catering to the desires for all one’s dreams to come true quickly and easily (or with ball-breaking hustle macho egos feed off as gaining some sense of grandeur proving themselves with).
Yet, nearly every time I hear someone talking about “manifestation” - whether one of the abundant sketchy “coaches” regurgitating sleazy marketing scripts or those of significantly more substance - the contemplation of what they’re saying and attempts to integrate and act upon it most often lead back to this same question: at what point does subscribing to all these outer “authorities’” advice on how to “manifest” xyz come to equate to merely adherence to yet another belief system ending up in self-deception and delusion?
Having been immersed in all those worlds throughout my twenties and early thirties, i feel like I’ve pretty much seen & heard it all by this point. After a while, it doesn’t matter how many variations there are presenting themselves as something groundbreakingly life-changing - they’re mostly all just reconfigurations of the same basics, repackaged with different sugar-coatings and glitter to draw in the newer generations that haven’t been exposed to it before. As tiring as it’s sorta gotten seeing the same old same old again & again, I’ve been plugged into enough different networks and sources that it still often hits my radar. And perhaps easily distractible with my open head center (Human Design), I still give it consideration from time to time. After all, things in my life aren’t quite as perfect as all the sales pitches I bought into a decade or two ago implied they would be, so why not double down. Ha.
Of course, I’ve changed over the course of a couple decades of life experience - which has included a range of both small and significantly larger “successes” that could be categorized as “manifestations” if I were to desire to. Yet, much of that change has transformed my whole outlook on the concept itself, and I’m rather hesitant to at this point - seeing the likelihood that many of those “successes/manifestations” were probably not the result of any willful intent to manipulate the universe into fulfilling my ego’s desires as the whole cultural paradigm of “manifestation” kinda positions things, but rather may have just been my life path. Like, an acorn doesn’t need to set on any conscious course of taking specific willful action to “manifest” a destiny as an oak tree; it’s not gonna end up a dandelion if it fails to act upon the dogmatic teachings of “Law Of Attraction” gurus. With wisdom comes the acknowledgement that there definitely is some sorta “blueprint” to our lives - and our minds & ego have no hesitancy to taking more credit for things happening in our lives than is actually deserved. Thus, many of the things I once wanted not the direct product of “manifesting” it, but rather because it was the correct timing to experience them, irregardless of whether I’d been consciously trying to bring them about or not.
Anyways… every once and a while (probably more frequently than I’d like to admit), something about “manifesting” pops into my field and I give it some thought: what would I like/choose to ‘manifest’ if this could really work flawlessly at this point in my life? Have I gotten so cynical that I doubt it could work for me now? And, what exactly are the boundaries on how far this might actually be pushed?
Like, all the typical things most people would wanna “manifest,” I’m kinda feeling over. Money (and the rest of the material stuff it buys)… I’m content with the blessings I’ve received, have enough confidence in the seeds planted that know my needs will be taken care of, and aren’t really concerned with getting/having “more” at any faster pace than the universe is providing. Relationship… whether it’s grief or trauma from my ‘last,’ I can’t even process the possibility and can’t access anywhere near enough desire to even begin claiming to want to “manifest” anything in that department. (And trust enough in the “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans” wisdom that IF there’s a ‘new’ woman to enter my life, it’ll happen when it will, not cuz I’m trying to force it to on my timeline.) Business or career “success…” meh. Maybe I’ve got too complacent in the comfort zone of hermitude to reconnect to the same ambitions for grand accomplishments I once had; or maybe my values have just changed, I really don’t give that many fucks anymore, and am enjoying staying low-key and doing what I’m doing for the time being more than I admit to myself. Etc, etc, etc.
The things I would choose if there were some magical genie that could grant any wish… well, this is where it gets to feel delusional, were I to truly believe it’d be possible using any sort of “manifestation” technique…
It’s one thing to set an intention to get money, material things, certain relationships, or whatever version of “success” floats your boat - which may end up a direct byproduct of specific action you take. But it’s a whole other realm when the focus turns to stuff of a far more impersonal nature such as the abolition of the entire military-industrial-pharmaceutical-corporate-political tyrannical power structures behind the global multi-dimensional wars on humanity and the modern legal slavery systems enabling them (including the fraudulent worldwide income tax scam which many on this platform are likely well-familiar with by now).
Yeah.
It’s easy to sit around and “manifest” a plentiful harvest when the seeds are already planted and weather is going well in the summer, but quite another to think it’s within our lane to bring down the entire global architecture of intricately interconnected systems that’ve infiltrated nearly every aspect of life & industry in every country in the world.
(Like I’d said at the start… context.)
Granted, IF the gurus say there are “no limits” and you can truly manifest anything you want… okay, let’s play with that. And, the outcome of the collapse of all these anti-life institutional structures may be in the field of awareness - so is it that my/our focus in that direction in the quantum field of possibilities might actually be attuning to the frequency where those outcomes are inevitable, and thus actually sorta in fact “manifesting” them? Or, are we merely at the point in our planetary evolution where these events are naturally, inevitably taking place, our desires aligning with them because it is time, and there actually being no direct causation whatsoever that has anything to do with what most people consider “manifesting” at all?
Surely, there are levels to this.
At some levels, perhaps the former is accurate - and in this case, not just a matter of personal preference & ‘manifestation,’ but a collective phenomenon where enough people worldwide are “waking up” and shifting into a higher order of awareness that calls forth a myriad of change on so many dimensions the mind can’t fathom that end up in mass-scale transformation of societal systems. But then again, at another, perhaps really more correlation rather than causation - not so much any glitzy “manifestation” as simply evolutionary cause & effect. Now extract that same outlook back from the macrocosmic planetary picture to the microcosmic individual one…
Is it really “manifestation” to experience any specific unfolding in our life if it is simply time for it in our personal evolution? Is it really “manifesting a soul mate” if you were soul contracted to meet at a specific time & place? Is it really “manifesting a chiseled body” if you’ve consistently put the work in at the gym for months on end? Or in either case - or any other ones switching out details while keeping principles the same - is it even really helpful to attribute the outcomes to some personal ‘power’ of “manifestation” whether it actually was just a simple matter of fate or basic, mechanical action-and-consequency?
And assuming - in the container of this context, for the point of exploring this particular viewpoint - the latter be the objectively factual case: does it not essentially become a matter of self-deception and delusion to remove ourselves from those facts through the process of adopting belief to explain things via a fantasy-storyline?
(That’s not to say such delusion/deception may necessarily be a ‘bad/negative’ thing. Perhaps there are times where “the ends justify the means” so long as no harm is caused. Undoubtedly, there might be certain phases at points in all our lives to engage in these dynamics that does serve us - even if arguments might be made that there could also come points where higher degrees of “empowerment” only become accessible once transcending belief for consciousness.)
Yet, say I want to “manifest” a “soul mate,” “twin flame,” “Holy Beloved,” or “Divine Counterpart…” so I’m gonna sit there day after day * believing it” is going to happen, doing whatever prescribed protocol… am I essentially just gaslighting myself? First, into the “belief system” that there is one particular woman that fits all the various fantasies that’ve been sold going by these different names, and secondly to be investing a huge amount of time and energy into this conceptual fantasy as though it’s an inevitability in my life when it might actually not be…?
*Where are the lines drawn between detached “getting into the feeling of it to draw it in” or some shit and self-delusion into a storyline that appeals to the mind yet might actually have no basis in reality and potentially backfire when some woman shows up and I enter the relationship with my conditioned projections of a “dream partner” rather than actual living human being and act surprised when things don’t go as planned because reality doesn’t conform to expectations established from the influence of programmed fantasies?
Surely, there may be some who take offence at these suggestions, clinging to and defending beliefs instilled/implanted/programmed into their minds which they’ve adapted into a sense of self-identity and a worldview bringing comfort through their capacity to ease the uncertainty of facing aspects of life we don’t have control over - whose egos revel in the idea of having magical powers to morph life to every desire, activated by gurus’ sales pitches on social media.
And then again, maybe I’ve got some things wrong here.
Perhaps my “cynicism” has clouded perception (not entirely unfathomable in the “midlife crisis” Neptune-square-Neptune transit, especially considering a natal Neptune-opposition-Mercury - with tendencies towards clouded thinking - that makes a t-square), and it’s my own mind & ego projecting colourations on the definition of “manifestation” and ran off with it too far overthinking, justifying their own beliefs in rationalization of staying “stuck” rather than humbling myself to whatever simple protocols I’ve dismissed, slowing down, and implementing them towards “manifesting” increased peace, satisfaction, and happiness in my own life.
Or hell… maybe I’ve “manifested” my own “purgatory,” having unconsciously deluded & deceived myself into a sub-par life experience - the inner world and its richness or darkness being equally as if not more important than all the outer material things many might avert attention to in discussions of “manifestation.”
Maybe I need some guru to give me some magic formula or meditation to get 100% clear on “what I want to manifest” so can use their other formulas correctly to ‘get’ it. Or maybe “the answers are within…” and I’ve just been gaslighting myself to think i don’t already know - that the whole “manifestation” thing simply isn’t for me at this time no matter how aggressively others pitch it as a one-size-fits-all approach for everyone to get whatever they want (as though the billions of people living day-to-day are to blame for their own plights and could surely rise to kings were they only exposed to the “Law Of Attraction.”) Maybe I have manifested what I needed - including some degree of self-awareness and acknowledgement of truths that go against the grain of cultural platitudes abundantly propagated through the intersection of new-age philosophy and capitalism - and am simply at a different level/frequency/realm of the game now where its less about “manifesting what I want” and more about surrender to life’s organic unfoldment without attempting to intervene according to directives of the ego’s desires.
And we could surely go back & forth all day with these yin-yang polarities… neither of which are right nor wrong, but each holding merit, lessons, and truth from/in certain vantage points through which to extract, integrate, and alchemize.
(Oh, all the codes weaved herein. ☯️🧬 )
Or some shit. What do I know.
To each their own.
Go “manifest” the Lambo and hot girlfriend if you want and tell yourself it was the Divine magical powers of “Law Of Attraction” at work. Or perhaps just work to earn the money/crypto to buy them. 😜