In Which I “Manifest” Rambling Thoughts About The Dangers of Manifesting

Don’t do it. Don’t manifest.

Being so ill (well, not that ill, but ill enough that I didn’t really want to read anything), and being spared the trouble of scrolling through Facebook yesterday, I took the obvious step of watching everything on youtube that there is about manifesting. Well, maybe not everything, but way more than I would normally ever be able to bear. There is nothing like not being able to breathe and not being able to think, to magically turn Youtube into a sinkhole of wisdom and fascination. On the whole, there are a lot of charming likable people talking about how to manifest, and why it’s the best thing ever, even though it has a dark side. I don’t really want to go and cut in every link because that would take me hours. If you google anything about manifesting, it all will come to you as if you just called it in–[that’s just a little joke].

But then I landed on two Christians who had dabbled with manifesting and had dire warnings about it. I loved both their videos–here is one, and here is the other. They were both so personable and insightful. Being so much in a stupor, I hadn’t really noticed how manifesting is not really about reaching a higher spiritual frequency, though that is what everyone says, it’s really about getting the stuff you want, whatever that might be. Usually, it is more money and a relationship, maybe even health, but it never goes further than that. But, as those two Christians so helpfully point out, and this is indeed the critical issue, you shouldn’t have everything you want. That is one of the larger disappointments of the Christian message–that what you want is hugely “problematical.” What you want is so deeply self-referential and foolish that it necessarily leads you straight into idolatry and eternal ruin. As the first video person points out, you are literally taking God off his throne when you manifest, and putting yourself in his place. The impatience of your desire should show you that it is a spiritual issue, that you want something that God knows you shouldn’t have right now. Made me wonder if Little Nas X “literally” manifested that awful video and song he did about Satan because it surely does sound like it.

So anyway, attempting to flesh out the idolatry bit, I watched a lot of clips of famous celebrities talking about how they manifested their fame, usually just by saying they wanted it, not by doing anything to align their energy frequencies with anything, which seems to me to be spectacularly unfair. As in, they aren’t admitting that it was a combination of talent and going out and “doing the work” that brought them to their place of exultation. It was that they all had great vision boards and were therefore able to “call in” millions of dollars and such like. This is like the Christian who just says, “Oh I prayed and God made me into a mega-church pastor” without mentioning that along with the “prayer” (if that’s what it was) he also went to seminary (hopefully, but maybe not), assembled a team of experts to figure out where to put the mega-church, got an insta account, and starting buying sermons on Docent. Was that really all God? I mean, I pray a lot, and God has given me a lot of nice things for which I can take no credit (like children), but it would be disingenuous to say, by contrast, that I’m such an awesome blogger because I prayed and God just made me one. Au contraire, it was an admixture of hard slog writing, pride, confession and repentance, and Matt being Facebook friends with everyone important in the Anglican world. That is not “calling it in.” That is something much more complicated and difficult to sort out.

Anyway, on the matter of the celebrity, not a single one paused to consider the goodness of their own fame, nor any of the consequences of being someone who draws a lot of people after them, nor of being to indulge themselves in whatever way they see fit at the moment. The fact of being famous is a moral good. If there is a dark side, it’s not that dark. Not so dark that anyone would turn away from it to the light.

They sit in front of vast adoring audiences who clap and cheer and everyone is so delighted and amazed and yet one can’t help feel how empty and pathetic it all is. And how disingenuous. For all the people sitting in the cheap seats can manifest all the livelong day and not very many of them are going to become Oprah or JLo. Not very many of them are actually going to make a million dollars. Not many will lose those fifty or a hundred pounds and actually run that marathon. Not many of them will make it to the big screen. That, splains the manifesting community, is their own faults for they have not dreamed big enough nor removed all the blocks nor called it all in in the way they have been taught. If they had done the work the thing they wanted would have come. It couldn’t possibly be because most of them can’t act and none of them can sing. In this way, the celebrity is the secular prosperity guru of the age. If you had had enough faith, you wouldn’t have died. That you did was your own fault. Be like me who did succeed…

And yet all of them will die, so that’s too bad. What is it that St. Paul says? Not many of you were wise, not many of you were even influencers, not many of you were able to log onto Facebook yesterday, not many of you were able to manifest a singing career, but God chose those what is foolish and weak to bring to nothing the things of this world. And now, if you will excuse me, I have to stagger into the day.

Photo by Daniel Herron on Unsplash