There seems to be a strange correlation between people who think they are manifesting things and the extent to which they lie about how happy they are.
First off, let me expose myself for the new age skeptic I am.
I cringe whenever I hear someone use the word “manifest” unless they are talking about the comprehensive details of a ship and its cargo.
I don’t think crystals have healing powers and I think the concept of God is a spiritual placebo for accessing deeper parts of ourselves.
That being said, I’m surrounded by a lot of people using the word “manifest”, so I’ve noticed a few things.
Manifesting Helps Us Escape Reality
The people I know who call themselves powerful manifesters are also the people I consider the most full of shit.
Whether it’s repeating affirmations or making vision boards, they are constantly trying to paint over their current experience of life with a more positive one.
It’s almost as if for them, the Universe is some sort of cosmic Santa Claus that will put them on his naughty list if they have anything but happy and abundant thoughts.
I’m not saying that having positive thoughts or seeing the glass half-full is a bad thing, but I am suggesting that many manifesters sadly slide down the slipperly slope of self-delusion.
Manifesting Often Negates Gratitude
Esther Hicks seems to have the entire cosmos figured out, and it makes me want to puke.
Maybe you don’t know who Esther Hicks is, but maybe you know someone like her. They seem to have an explanation for how they attracted or matched the vibration of everything that’s currently in their life. Isn’t that a bit cocky?
Does she really have the whole universe figured out?
If you have access to this website you are living a privileged existence. You’re reading this blog, instead of wondering where you’re next meal will come from, living in a one room house with your entire family and working all day just to survive.
Out of the 7 billion people on this planet, you basically won the human lottery.
And yet we try and take credit for that and attribute the success to our vibration, as if we somehow divinely orchestrated everything to go just the way it’s worked out.
In doing that, we miss the chance to be grateful.
When we remember how fortunate we are, instead of explaining it away with new age spirituality, we get to have the most wonderful feeling in the world — gratitude.
Gratitude is possible when we quit thinking we deserve everything and just be thankful for what we have.
Manifesting Promotes a Façade of Happiness
It’s hard enough living in a world where most of what we know about our friends looks like a highlight reel, leaving us to compare their life to our normal ups and downs.
When we live and speak to others as though our life is worry-free, other people have the tendency to compare themselves to us and suffer.
Although we ultimately can’t control how others perceive us, being honest and vulnerable when speaking about our life helps promote a world of transparency and connection.
We want to tell the truth about our life.
Underneath the efforts to raise our vibration and attract things into our life is the part of us that wants to feel intimately connected to other humans, and isn’t that what we really want?
At the end of the day, I don’t even care of manifesting “works” or not, because if it comes at the expense of me feeling connected to people I say it’s not worth it.
My relationships will always be more important than my vision board.