My lovely friend Elizabeth put a question on her blog for her readers to answer.
…instead of trying to outsmart the universe, I’m simply resting at its feet in devoted curiosity.
Later I read a fluff piece in Elle on manifesting. Gag me but the takeaway was essentially, we have to believe we’ve worthy in order to receive whatever we’re asking for. I’ve always wondered why these so-called champions of manifesting have yet to manifest world peace. Are optimal lifestyles, wardrobes, cars, partners and bodies more worthy of one’s belief than Love for all living beings? Answer me that Ms. Schovel Shinn.~
Do you believe in manifesting? What’s the difference between manifesting and prayer? Do you believe you’re worthy to have either requests fulfilled by whoever or whatever governs the universe?
Hope you’re staying well in the midst of all the madness. Recently discovered some delicious, gluten free bread. Toast and tea are always good medicine. xo
Well, I don’t believe in manifesting, and when I believed in God, I didn’t think God was a vending machine or a cosmic Santa either, I thought God was generally hands-off externally but willing to be relational – a friend and mentor who would be there with you on your road. I no longer believe in God because I now believe that my spiritual experiences were manufactured by my own brain in response to trauma, similarly to how you can manufacture them with psilocybin or how people with temporal lobe epilepsy or under oxygen deprivation can have profound experiences.
I wrote about that in detail a while back if anyone wants the link, it’s here. But even if only a product of the psyche, belief in a loving God helped my brain deal with and heal from trauma and was very helpful for navigating adolescence and early adulthood – while I think belief in a vengeful, narcissistic, manipulative God can be really destructive – and that’s the problem with a lot of fundamentalism, no matter the flavour: It’s probably a psychological projection of a subset of dysfunctional family dynamics, and it enshrines and perpetuates dysfunction.
As to the universe, I’m not anthropocentric enough, or New-Age enough, to see that as a personal vending machine either. And the idea of having some kind of believing in your own worthiness competition strikes me as being just as problematic as the old “I’m not worthy” – just in the opposite direction. The people who are excellent at believing in their own inherent worthiness, even against the external evidence, are the narcissists and sociopaths in this world, who believe the world and everyone in it owe them. Since these unhealthy personalities would be the supreme champions at manifesting, that would be an obscene universe were it true, but thankfully there’s no evidence that the narcissists get their ill-gotten gains from manifesting; tactics like plain old bullying and manipulation and being in the right social networks will do that for them, and obviously believing in their own rightness is of enormous help to them to justify anything. And then there’s Dunning-Kruger on top of it, for at least half these narcissists/sociopaths.
Here’s a good song that helped me come to terms when I stopped believing that there was an actual God looking out for us, and when I understood that lots of random things happen, that our pattern-recognition brains with their confirmation bias try to make into meaning.
Manifesting is a bit like the prosperity gospel for New Agers – if it ain’t happening, it’s all your own fault, you’re doing it wrong. So then, if randomly, a good thing happens, it encourages you to look at it as a reward for your excellent manifesting, like a prosperity gospel adherent sees their bank balance as a barometer of God’s being pleased with them (and none of that, of course, was in the actual gospels). And then, to look down your nose at the lesser manifesters / those whom God isn’t blessing financially, and tut-tut at them – kind of the way a lot of mainstream Americans tut-tut at the homeless.
So much more sane not to get into those kinds of psychological games. And if you think about it, in some ways it’s like children of dysfunctional families constantly trying to find out what it is that they can do, that can make their parents treat them better. If only I can be better at this or that, my Mommy or Daddy will love me and be nice to me and stop screaming at me and hitting me. The child thinks their parents’ behaviour is their fault, because that is less unbearable than thinking there is nothing they can do about it. They can’t change their parents, but if it’s their fault they can spend their childhoods trying to work out the magic formula for making things OK.
Another useful song, on the general topic:
I don’t think there’s that many useful songs on this difficult stuff, but these helped me come to terms with the shift in world view that was starting to happen for me from about my late 30s on. There’s peace in the acceptance that the world isn’t fair and that you can’t appease it by jumping through psychological hoops. And it cuts out toxic games of blame, of others or the self. Which is, of course, not to say that you can’t do anything to change your own life – or that other people can’t be very helpful in such a process. Yes, we’re responsible for our lives. Yes, we should work to overcome systemic injustices, and we should work towards emotional growth and intellectual development, and we should be kind, etc etc. Because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of anything else. And it’s great to think about what you want to achieve in your life, and to work towards those things, and give it a good shot – but also to remain flexible and open, because sometimes you do need a Plan B or C or D, and because you should be careful what you wish for, as well…
Complicated, but that’s OK.
And just in PS, because I had to write this twice because my computer crashed and I missed this bit the second time around: I dismounted the donkey, so to speak – but not at “the summit” – though definitely in a place from which there was a good view of the general lay of the land, which I didn’t have when I was lying at the bottom.
See Elizabeth’s post and the responses to it here.
Sue❤️ Today I wore one of my newest, cheeky favorite t-shirts. Emblazoned across my chest we’re the words: Manifest that Shit. I couldn’t resist buying it and wondered if it would result in manifesting actual poo, all my hopes and dreams or just chuckles from whomever read it, myself included.
This is such a fantastic point: “The people who are excellent at believing in their own inherent worthiness, even against the external evidence, are the narcissists and sociopaths in this world, who believe the world and everyone in it owe them. Since these unhealthy personalities would be the supreme champions at manifesting, that would be an obscene universe were it true, but thankfully there’s no evidence that the narcissists get their ill-gotten gains from manifesting; tactics like plain old bullying and manipulation and being in the right social networks will do that for them, and obviously believing in their own rightness is of enormous help to them to justify anything. And then there’s Dunning-Kruger on top of it, for at least half these narcissists/sociopaths.”
Mind blown. I’ve often wondered about the nuances between manifest-beliefs rooted in faithful worthiness versus the pathological and essentially, fear based drivers behind the so-called success of narcissists. Narcissistic gurus, like Chopra, are often the ones telling us how easy it is to align with our vortex and turn the universe into a ‘cosmic vending machine’. They fail to mention their own privileges or how they lied, cheated or otherwise stole their way into ‘success’ or achievement.
I’ve spent most of my life blaming myself, within the context of past trauma, for failing to actualize the highest expression of my self, as defined by those who contribute, either directly or indirectly, to systemic oppression. Like, if I just harder to fully heal from past hurts, my ‘good’ life would materialize and I’d stop marrying assholes. When I consider the amount of work I’ve done to transform a mountain of nightmares into a postcard-worthy scenic vista…isn’t that enough?
Am I enough yet? Aren’t we enough now?
Well, cheers for the reanimation xo
Dear Elizabeth
I hope the shirt has some positive effect even through making people laugh, yourself included. 😀 (Ha! Is that shirt a drug-free laxative? 💩) We could all use a natural surge of feel-good biochemistry.
Re: “I’ve spent most of my life blaming myself, within the context of past trauma, for failing to actualize the highest expression of my self, as defined by those who contribute, either directly or indirectly, to systemic oppression. Like, if I just harder to fully heal from past hurts, my ‘good’ life would materialize and I’d stop marrying assholes. When I consider the amount of work I’ve done to transform a mountain of nightmares into a postcard-worthy scenic vista…isn’t that enough?
Am I enough yet? Aren’t we enough now?”
Yeah, that’s the negative side of how I see the idea of “manifesting” used and why I said what I said. Because there’s different things that hold people back:
1) Systemic problems hold back lots of people who were never in the power elite or connected to it in the first place – and those are not the fault of the people who are ordinary everyday citizens; that’s systemic oppression and people with systemic power leveraging that power in the favour of their own ilk and to the detriment of ordinary citizens. This is both about inherited wealth (i.e. usually an unfair share of the resources, when you consider that less than 10% of the people in the US now own more than 95% of the material wealth while the majority of ordinary people struggle to get by) and about the advantages that buys for education, health, nutrition, good shelter, rest, recreation etc, not to mention the in-crowd networking and favourable rule-making that keeps the cream of the wealth and opportunities mostly within that elite.
2) Childhood trauma holds people back through no fault of their own. Yes if you get serious about work on it you can overcome it better than if you don’t, but think how much energy and time and resources you’d save if you didn’t have to deal with the fallout of all this shit in the first place. And then there’s ongoing social trauma via bullying and other abuse and discrimination in schools, workplaces and other institutions. Mostly ditto. (I’m not saying that dealing with these things doesn’t produce some really worthwhile outcomes like greater understanding and empathy and gratitude etc, but it does that generally at the expense of investing your time in activities that directly provide you with food, shelter, health security etc.)
Those are the two big ones for the average person in lots of countries, including the US and Australia, which aren’t social democracies and therefore don’t do very much to address these problems, preferring to victim-blame.
Beyond that, yes, you can make personal choices that are more helpful than others and it can make an enormous difference, but none of those entirely remove having to start from behind economically, socially and emotionally,
If you’re asking me, and this is just my opinion, the sort of part-truth to what people call “manifesting” but isn’t really “manifesting” is that:
1) Working towards a goal is more helpful than giving up
2) Continuing to work towards goals and learning from stumbles and failures is part of resilience (but can be taken to an unhealthy excess too)
3) Confidence and a working optimism are helpful – and those can often be created by placebo, like is involved in religion, “manifesting” etc – if you believe it’s going to go well, there’s a greater chance it will. If you believe you are loved by someone or something, even if you don’t have a friend or ally on the planet, you’ll do better than if you feel alone. Also, in teaching, when you start and if you’re a bit shy etc, you can sometimes “fake it till you make it” by play-acting a confident person, pretending you’re on a stage, “What would a good teacher do?” and then eventually incorporate the qualities and skills you’re practicing into your standard repertoire, and grow into them.
4) Dunning-Kruger: People who produce excellent things tend to underestimate the quality of their work, which allows the people who don’t even realise they’re way off good quality work to pretend to themselves and others that they’re the best, should lead the nation etc. So what us high achievers in multiple areas have to realise is that we can’t undervalue our own contributions or sell ourselves short, but that takes time and you have to become aware of it. The average Joes will have an easier time believing in the brilliance of their own work than the perfectionists will – until you learn to look more objectively and without the self-flagellation etc.
But I’d not personally call those things “manifesting”, just commonsense and useful psychology. No woo-woo, no blaming yourself if a particular goal ends up not happening despite your best healthy efforts (and they should be healthy efforts, and look at Olympians: I think many of those are obsessive, rather than healthy and balanced).
Just thinking out loud here, and lovely to do that collaboratively with you, by putting heads together on curly topics. I’m sure that my ruminations will spark off more ideas from you, just as yours did and do for me. Two brains like this, better than one!
♥ Sue