What Does Manifestation Really Look Like?

The ultimate battle between mind and soul.

Oh, man. Manifestation. What a freaking buzzword these days, huh? It’s like everyone is talking about it. It makes sense, though. Humans love control, we love getting exactly what we want when we want it. And this concept of manifestation can seem like another way to ensure our lives look the way we want them to look.

I see videos on Youtube with people talking about how they manifested their house, their car, or their vacation to the Maldives. If that’s true, lovely. But mostly, I question it and wonder what they think manifestation really is. Because, in my experience, manifestation isn’t writing things down and praying they come true. It isn’t visualizing something that then comes to pass. It isn’t even maintaining a positive outlook, although all of this might play a part in creating the lives we want.

To me, manifestation is much more complex and it’s centered around what we don’t do, more than any actions we might take. It’s in the surrender of control that we most powerfully manifest.

What Does it Mean to Manifest Something?

Manifestation, as a spiritual concept, is the same as the Law of Attraction, which was most recently popularized by the publishing of Esther Hicks’ (Abraham-Hicks) The Law of Attraction. However, like most spiritual concepts, it has a history far beyond that. The Law of Attraction can be traced back to the New Thought movement of the early 19th century.

It’s basically about the power of positive thinking. LOA says that everything is energy, and like energy attracts like energy. Therefore your thoughts create your reality. If you have positive thoughts, you draw positive experiences. If you have negative thoughts, you draw negative experiences. If you control your mind, you control your life. Simple.

Now, let’s complicate it, as you all know I so love to do. Merriam-Webster defines something made manifest as:

1: readily perceived by the senses and especially by the sense of sight

2: easily understood or recognized by the mind

We’ll come back around to the second definition because it’s key in what I’ve come to realize manifestation is in its purest form, but for now, let’s stick to the first. It’s making something visible in our reality.

This is the piece most people are talking about when they say they manifested their car or their home. They’re saying they’ve brought something tangible into their reality (which, they have) through the power of positive thinking (which, I highly doubt).

Now, I do firmly believe that our minds are powerful tools that shape our reality. Perspective is an easy example. If you look at a difficult moment as an immovable obstacle to your goal, of course, it’s being perceived as negative, so you will experience it as negative. If you see the exact same difficulty as an exciting challenge to overcome, it’s suddenly not so heavy, and you may experience it as neutral, or maybe even a positive contribution to your personal development.

In this way, alone, your mindset has transformed your life experience from negative to positive. You’re “seeing” things differently.

How I Think LOA Comes Into Play

Do I also ascribe to the metaphysical aspects of LOA that say our energy is affected by our thoughts? Absolutely. I can feel that in my emotional and etheric (or energetic) bodies.

When I’m stuck in anxious thoughts, that colors my mood and the way I move through the world. My mind is a trap and it feels like the world is too. My chest gets tight and I might feel energetically wired, then energetically drained.

Does this, in turn, determine what my life looks like? In some sense, yes.

In those moments, I’m closed off and shut down. I’m energetically defensive — too tired or too concerned with protecting myself to receive new experiences. So, there may be things trying to come into my life that I won’t make room for. Coming out of those anxious thoughts, my own mind traps, does free me to open myself up to new experiences.

Taking that a step further, imagining myself happy certainly mentally prepares me to be happy, right? If I can see it in my mind's eye, I can more easily go after it in the real world and create it for myself — it becomes a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

How LOA Breaks Down

But our thoughts and emotions are ever-changing. That’s what they do. They don’t stay the same and they’re not meant to. Part of experiencing life is moving through highs and lows.

Originally, LOA was packaged along with a set of other concepts and belief systems that had to do with spirituality and the metaphysical. Law of Attraction wasn’t meant to be a panacea or a quick path to a dream life. It’s a great piece of the puzzle, but it isn’t the whole picture, and I think many people buy into it like it is.

When we do, it breaks down quickly. If we go around trying to maintain a positive mental state all of the time, we inevitably bury our true thoughts and emotions. This doesn’t get rid of those thoughts, they simply continue to percolate in our subconscious and control us from there. Remember that 95% of our brain activity — the choices we make, habits and patterns, etc. — is unconscious already. This just makes that worse.

Now, instead of being aware of thoughts and emotions that are painful and contribute to us creating painful experiences in our own lives — which would enable us to clear them out consciously — we’ve become less aware of them in efforts to manifest positive experiences. I guarantee you, this will not work long term.

It’s like building a shiny pizza shop on top of a waste dump. You’re putting off fumes you don’t want and convincing yourself everybody wants a slice anyway because you fixed the shop up nice. No. Your food still smells like trash, bruh.

Here’s a tip for free: If it feels easy, you’re doing it wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying everything has to be hard, but the kinds of shifts you have to make in your mind for it to consistently present you with different unconscious thoughts is work. It’s not a list of things you want, a prayer every morning, or a “love and light” bumper sticker. It is deep self-inquiry, deep healing. It takes time and effort to re-program the mind.

So no, most likely you didn’t manifest your car, you just bought a car.

Manifestation In Its Truest Form

So, let’s talk about the second definition above: “easily understood or recognized by the mind”. Here is where true manifestation comes in. When we’re manifesting we’re not just dealing with things that we can’t physically see. We’re talking about things that we can’t even fathom. Our minds can’t compute.

There’s an element of ephemerality to this thing. It’s something we might intuitively feel is for us, but in trying to wrap our heads around experiencing it, our minds struggle. There’s a block. It’s not just a want, it’s an intuitive desire. It’s something our soul is calling out for and something life wants to give us, but our minds constantly put up barriers to.

For many people, this can show up as financial blocks, because money is a primary expression of abundance in this world, but for some, it shows up as blocks to building their own business or finding loving partnerships. For me, it’s been a combination of all three.

Whatever it is, it creates tension, a grinding discomfort, a flare-up of anxiety in the mind when we think about pursuing it or having it. A lot of the time, that means we haven’t thought about it all that much. We may actually think we don’t want it; as in, we’ve convinced ourselves we want to be single forever when our soul’s desire is a partnership. Or we’ve convinced ourselves we want that sweet corner office and a 401K when we really want to make shoes.

It presents a conflict between our mind, which wants to ensure our safety and protect us from crushing disappointment (remember, we’re unable to imagine having this, so our mind is convinced that if we even try, we will fail), and our soul, which really wants us to move toward the experience.

So, the process of manifestation is really about shifting our mind’s response from HUH WHAT HOW NO to yeah, sure okay, so that we can stop blocking our soul’s desire, which life is already prepared to give us.

That’s the funniest part. It’s not about actively telling The Universe what you want. You’ve been living from your ego-mind for the past however many years. You don’t know what your soul wants.

That car? That house? Your soul doesn’t care about those things.

No, what your soul desires is the thing that terrifies you, the thing you can’t even fathom with your mind. That is the level of abundance life is trying to bring you.

If there comes a time in your journey when you’re tapped into your soul enough that you recognize your soul’s desire, you better believe your mind will fight you tooth and nail to not go down that path. Mine has.

At its most powerful, manifestation is more about getting out of our own way, not listening to our overactive minds that run on a need for safety and control, and instead allowing our soul to take the wheel.

It doesn’t feel like getting exactly what we want when we want it. It feels like a freefall into an endless abyss. It feels waking up every day in a mild panic, afraid that you’re making the wrong call, and having to remind yourself that you’re living for something bigger now.

It’s surrender to a life you could never have scripted for yourself, and it just so happens to be the life beyond your wildest dreams.

❤

If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to comment below! I’m always happy to engage in discussion.