Why Manifestation Fails
You are the reason you don't have what you want.
I used to listen to Esther Hicks and Abraham obsessively when I was young. When I first discovered her work, I met someone who gave me a huge bag of tapes (alignment…yes!). I know I'm outing my age. We used tapes back then. That's how long ago this was. I listened to those tapes constantly - by myself, with my husband, with my best friends and coworkers. We were all obsessed.
Esther’s work was a huge awakening to my Catholic brain that I could actually choose what I brought into my life through something other than prayer. At the time, a group of us were trying to manifest winning the lottery. None of us really ever wanted to work normal jobs. We believed our ticket out of the social norm was for just one of us to win enough money that we could buy land and live there together. Fortunately, life moved on and that jackpot never came in. Or did it?
Fast forward to now. My best friends have an uncle who supported them building their dream house on a huge piece of property without having to take out a mortgage or pay money for anything beyond their natural pool. They have a very successful Etsy business where they sell dried flower arrangements grown in their greenhouse. They work when they choose to, but not when they have to. They farm. The homeschooled their kids. They live off the land. They have everything they need and enough of what they want to be fulfilled and happy.
My husband and I fully own our house in Italy. Our overhead is minimal. We get to choose the projects that we want do on the farm we are building. I spend more time out of my comfort zone than in it (which for me is a life goal). At 48 years old, both my husband and I are living a semi-retired life and embracing the dolce vita with all of who we are. We work when we choose to. We remark to each other on a regular basis how amazing our life is. We are living a life beyond our our dreams.
Years later, I reflect on what all of us we believed happiness was made up of when we were young. Then I think about the impact the unknown had on our lives as we grew up. All of us literally won the jackpot. That rigid idea of winning money never happened to any of us. We are all relatively poor, in theory. Yet by aligning ourselves with what we wanted, we built a life that is rich in so much more than just cash. Our lives have something better that we never imagined when we were young - fulfillment and possibility.
Some of you know my love of poetry. I believe that reading poetry can help us think outside of the realm of our rational mind into a deeper message. This poem represents what I am talking about in many fewer words than I am using. Feel free to let it resonate through you or skip it and read on…
The problem with manifestation as a technique is fixation. People manifest with tunnel vision. One word equals one result. Period. No room for anything else. This isn’t the way the universe works folks. If it did, you wouldn’t need to manifest. You’d already have everything you want. Fixation is a result of fantasy without curiosity.
Manifestation that occurs through bypass and fantasy does not bring us what we want. Our wants, desires, or perceived needs are often too big and directed to be effective. We are not willing to manifest in a way that embraces the unknown. It’s like telling the universe that you only want it to rain on your vegetable garden and no where else. That kind of calculated manifestation doesn't work. True, some results may trickle in at first. Yet the grand desired result hits a plateau pretty quickly and stops working. The plateau is a result of how we narrow desire too specifically. The plateau relates to an inability to metabolize what's real and be open to unknown gifts.
You have something that you want in life that you don't know how to bring in. Everyone does. This is part of being alive. You have what you have and you of course have what you don't have. Manifestation tends to be attractive to us specifically through the current of “Don't Have.” That current is exactly what makes it so hard to manifest something physically. Regularly focusing on what is real in life and letting it be enough is a step too easy to forget when we are in the curren to of “Don’t Have.” To take in fully what we do have even when it is imperfect creates a better base for manifesting what we want. Seeing the good in what we have and allowing that to be the center of our focus is a better practice towards manifestation than living in fantasized grandiosity and “If Only” thoughts.
Esther Hicks and Abraham talk about this concept when they reference “the smiley face on the gas tank.” They say that not being able to be with what is true creates an inability to manifest. This means embracing not just what we want, but also what we have, and the negative as well. All together, we form the platform to manifest with a true vibration of attraction instead of a pretend one.
Avoidance of our imperfect reality is why manifestation so often doesn’t work or plateaus before we fully realize our desires.
To manifest, most of us have learned to do some sort of process to vision (journaling, a vision board, affirmations). Then we change our thoughts to “be positive”. We use these tools to focus our desire. This works. Part of what we're visioning comes in. Then the manifestation stops or it has come in and we don’t feel like it came to us quite right. We get frustrated on the fact that whatever we wanted didn’t happen. Something stopped working. We hyper focus on what stopped. Rarely do we want to take the process a step further. Going further involves embodying the good enough current of what has come to us a non-fanciful way. This would involve feeling our own tension and resistance to what we want. It would mean allowing manifestation to change US, not just our lives.
Rarely do we want to embody the change that a manifestation will inevitably bring into our lives.
Embodying the current we're trying to manifest often involves taking responsibility for our shadow and negativity. Manifestation is meant to make us more alive. Rarely do we want to be present in this process. It’s uncomfortable. It’s emotional. Embodying manifestation of any sort changes us. This is not fantasy. It’s transformation.
Conflicting Currents Within Desire
Manifestation involves being able to embody the current of what you desire. Currents are complex. When is the last time you stepped into a natural body of water and only felt a current going one way? If you are paying attention, never. Currents exist in your body in all sorts of different ways - physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sensationally. Currents flow up, down, and through. They swirl. They eddy. They mix. They clash.
The same is all true with the currents we have around everything in life… including manifestion. When we want something we have to be able to feel the full extent of both our desire and our resistance in our bodies. If we only focus on the positive, we're missing something. If we are only focusing on the fantastical positive then we are going to be inevitably disappointed with the imperfect real that does manifest. Dissatisfaction is a direct result of not being able to embody all of the currents of something that we want.
An example. I consider myself happily married. But the current of my marriage is not just happiness and love. My marriage has fights, resentments, missed opportunities, misunderstandings. It has compromise stuck points, tabled discussions, and unmet needs. My marriage also has connection, joy, fun, friendship, eros. This one word or concept - “marriage” - has currents in it that go through my body, my life, and my desires in all sorts of different directions.
Someone who is trying to manifest a life partner by manifesting only one aspect of a partner and residing in that expectation and fantasy is never going to find fulfillment. A life partner changes us. We change for them. The unexpected is what is so beautiful about having someone else around us all the time. Being stagnant in a partnership is a red flag. Lack of change is missing a vital current of alive relating. This is just one example of many to show how complex the currents of manifestation flow in our beings.
The unknown is a necessary part of every manifestation. The unknown is not always…satisfactory.
Embodied fulfillment can only feel satisfaction when we can find solace in the fact that nothing is truly perfect. That's why I always write about the imperfectly perfect. Accepting the imperfectly perfect is a key component to a satisfied life. In imperfection we find authenticity. In imperfection we find reality. People who really feel fulfilled and have embodied happiness understand that life isn't just about achieving an ideal. You can want something and simultaneously feel the embodied current in your body that tenses against having what you want or the current related to the unknown nature of what you are asking for. You're more likely to create what you want and notice what comes to you when you can feel tension.
Years ago, I invented a style of meditation for manifestation that used sacred geometry as its basis. I spent many years teaching people how to use this meditation to manifest what they wanted in life. The problem is that there's no room for the negative in sacred geometry. When we create from sacred geometry, we're creating from pure light, the origin of life. When a person uses sacred geometry to manifest, their darkness around what they are asking for has to come into the light. This means negative emotions, limiting beliefs, negative pleasure roles, and shadow that are getting in the away of the manifested desire become clear.
I honestly stopped teaching this method of meditation because I had some clients go a little crazy. They couldn't handle what was coming up in their lives as a result of regularly practicing the meditation. I myself used it at one point to kickstart my own and my husband's professional lives. Honestly, what followed was a bit traumatic. Within three months we were selling our house and moving across the country. I had to be willing to be open to this change. This involved not just action steps to make my move, but also the changes in my experience of my body and my life. The unfolding of manifestation sustained change over months. I absolutely had to be OK with the unknown becoming known. The end result was awesome. But the journey? Oh man. Intense. I needed to take a break from my own sacred geometry meditation practice for a few years after that. Nowadays, when I teach people this meditation method, I ask them to start very very small. Then we work our way up. (Just so you know, the meditation at the end of my post this week is a sample of this style.)
Attachments To Words
No matter how much you might want to bypass the truth of this statement… words have power.
WORDS HAVE POWER.
They do. They have power over our bodies and inside our brain. They have specific connotations that affect our thoughts and emotions. They have attachments and expectations. Often when we're trying to manifest something, it's the word(s) that we are using to describe what we want that gets in the way. We use words that are charged. They are often negatively charged. Yet we don't want feel that negative charge. It’s this mind fuck of avoiding reality while convincing ourselves we are being real with ourselves. Words form the basis of the tendency to hyper fixate. A life partner. A fulfilling job. Optimal health. A cure to a disease. Abundance. Prosperity. Riches. A new job. A home. So many words. So many connotations.
The word you use to describe what you want to manifest is often the reason that the manifestation doesn't move forward.
I always recommend to people who want to manifest something in their lives to pick a different word than the word they think they want and see how it goes. The word we pick first is usually the word we have the most charge around. Either we pick the word with the most lack of fulfillment attached to it or the word with the most expectation and idealization attached to it. Either way the first word we pick is too big. It's absolutely not going to be easy to manifest because of our beliefs and images around the word itself. To effectively manifest means starting with a word that is less charged and less idealized. It’s like learning how to meet our core internal needs. We have to start small and build ourselves up to the final outcome.
You are never ever ever ever too old to play (or to learn how to play!). Finding the word to connect to the manifestation of what you want that has the least charge involves embracing play.
All of us have a current of self sabotage in our system. Many of us don't want to look at that current in a way that owns it as a transformational truth. Knowing this fact about our collective human reality, it's a good idea to not trust the second word that comes to you around a manifestation either! You might start with prosperity and move to the word abundance. Both those words are probably equally charged, too big, idealized, or have too much attachment and expectation. A less charged word (such as settled, coherent, able to choose, secure, connected, free) creates a less charged ground for you to start manifesting. As you get clearer on what you can and can’t easily manifest, you have a basis to look deeper into how you are getting in your own way. By simplifying desire you can get clearer on your own current of self sabotage and negative images.
Identifying how you resist what you want is part of finding all the currents that eddy and swirl around a manifestation. All the words that have a connection to what you want to manifest have their own complex currents. By settling into less charged words and the way they reside in your body and psyche, you can begin to disentangle what words you have ease around and those that you do not.
Most of the time, we are kind of codependent with the word we want to manifest. Disentangling from that codependency is the same process as it is to disconnect from a person. First try to find all the different currents that represent the desire you want to manifest. Use words to find these currents. For example, abundance or prosperity is a huge current with a lot of want attached to it. Words around abundance might involve money, career, safety, security, home, choice, freedom, creativity, family, food, or belonging. These words incorporate a sense of physical abundance.
Without understanding all the conflicting and uniting currents inside ourselves that represent these other concepts and all the different charges we have to all of these words, manifestation is inevitably going to be ineffective. We hit a plateau. What we are working towards doesn't go anywhere. Or…what we want becomes an unobtainable obsession. We exist in what we don’t have instead of what we have.
Try by starting to feel the size of the current that represents what you think you want. Feel its complexity. Then use words to describe all that this desire represents. As you do this, separate the currents to start to make everything workable. Now start to try to manifest one word a time and notice what the universe provides. Some words and the concept around those words might manifest quickly. Still other words might leave you feeling kind of neutral or bleh. Other words might feel like wishing into the void of a deep dark well. The words that create neutral and void are the words that either require more simplification or a dive into your negative and shadow self.
If you had no internal blocks to what you are trying to manifest, you’d already have manifested it.
You'll know when a word is workable because you'll actually feel your life settle into it. You'll start to notice the current of what you are trying to manifest in your life as happening and not idealizing. It's going to happen in your body. It's going to start to feel good. It might first perhaps feel good and then even start to feel bad. From the process of getting what you want, you might have more internal realizations about your realizations than if your desire is consistently unmet. If you stay on task, you’re going to be able to sustain sensation and embrace the physical manifestation of what is coming to you. Simplifying into more words to represent what you want to manifest creates an open state of mind. It is the opposite of tunnel vision.
Willing Participation
A lot of times I have noticed that when people want something in their lives they want it to come to them without any work or effort on their part beyond easy. They might embrace thinking positive and making a vision board. From there, the universe is just supposed to respond, right? Isn’t that the secret? Wanting what we want to come to us without any reciprocity is a sign that we are manifesting from child consciousness. When we want to take or absorb without being fully engaged in adult reality, we need to acknowledge that there is deep unconscious towards what we want.
The current of what you want to manifest is going to have to go towards you, through you, and away from you to fully embracing it’s truth.
If you want to feel more support in your life, for example, you have to support yourself, other people, the divine, and nature itself. I keep thinking as I write this about a lover who just lays down and doesn't give any feedback about their own pleasure. They just take what you have to give without response. How not alive and not fun is that for the person who's giving pleasure? A blank slate in this case is really boring and not alive. Unfortunately I feel like a lot of people when they're trying to manifest something go at it like that unresponsive lover, just wanting with zero feedback. Is that too harsh?
When I want to feel more abundance, I don't just notice abundance. I don't hyper focus on the abundance I do have in an attempt to convince myself that I have enough. I don’t band aid my reality when I feel dissatisfied. I get curious. I look within. I also immerse myself in utilizing whatever abundance I have to give back on every level of my being. I give abundance to the Earth energetically and physically. I give abundance to humanity. I give abundance to myself. I connect with the internal and external abundance of nature. I give abundance to spirit. I don't just pull energy into myself. I get in the flow, the current, of abundance. I feel it all around me. I embrace abundance with as much of my being I can. I notice where it goes right and where it doesn’t. Then I hone in on all the subtleties to get clear on how I need to expand my acceptance of flow.
For me, the word abundance isn't charged anymore. This is because when I get into the current, I feel huge and connected. This connection to flow is what'has enabled me to have such an amazing and full life. Not to say my that I have no shadow and unconscious in reference to abundance. I have limiting beliefs. I have negative pleasure roles. They just aren't as strong of a current in the midst of that greater current of abundance. There’s deeper alignment between the big words and the smaller words. This has taken years of self transformation around what for me was once a huge block.
Another way that you can actually gauge if you're open to what you're trying to manifest is whether or not you're ready to work towards it. Work often involves being uncomfortable and making uncomfortable decisions. Work means changing an aspect of the self and letting the ego die a bit. Work usually requires feeling uncomfortable emotions. Ask yourself how willing you are to meet yourself as you are instead of as an image, ideal, or story. Consider whether or not you are willing to be changed by what you want in unknown and unexpected ways.
If you want to just lay there and have life happen to you, you should probably simplify what you're asking for. If you expect manifesting what you want to be sunshine and daisies, you are in fantasy and setting yourself up for failure. If you're willing to make action steps to access more of yourself and your desire and to let the negative well up as information, you're more likely to be able to receive.
Manifestation involves embracing the negative. It’s part of the process. The negative shows you how you are blocked. Without being able to learn from the negative, manifestation will not be fulfilling.
Notice Notice Notice
…or…
GET OUT OF YOUR OWN TUNNEL VISION!
It seems to be human nature to notice what we manifest with a really closed mind. We might be asking for a significant change in our lives but rarely do we notice the little changes that are building us up to the big change we want. It’s sad because the little changes are what we need to be able to embrace to eventually be ready for what we want. By obsessing through tunnel vision we are self sabotaging. We are acting like little toddlers who are only going to be satisfied with life as we want it. This isn’t how to adult. It’s how to stay untransformed.
An example. You might be wanting to change careers or jobs. Maybe there's too much stress or a lack of appreciation at work or simply a desire to enjoy work more. All of a sudden you want to jump out of everything that is known and hard into something that is perfect and great. You might jump careers or jump companies.
Does it work? What you are moving away from or avoiding comes with you or at least some version of it does. If all you do is make a big shift without noticing what's present, everything you hated follows you. Only when you can slow down and see the nuances of what is available to you in your shift can you actually make a change. By noticing the exact ways what you want is already present in your life before you make a change, you will be more appreciative of what you have. You will make more grounded decisions. The tendency to avoid or escape means you are going to go right back into your old patterns. This creates a lateral jump, not an effective transformation.
Pause before you jump into anything new. Notice what is real in the life you have. This means looking at what is right and good right now. This means seeing how what you desire is coming in from exactly where you are at. Get clear on what's working and what is not working without any change, with what is. Find interest in all the nuanced ways what you currently have going on is actually good.
I think I need to clarify when I talk about this. It’s not about forcing yourself to believe that what you have is good. That's the smiley face on the gas tank concept. It's about really feeling how the body reacts to what is good in your life as it is in relation to what you want. If you can’t feel good about what you have in your life as an embodied experience, you are going to turn on what you manifest and make it into your comfortable norm. If you are looking outside yourself or your life for satisfaction, you are going to repeat the pattern again and again.
Only by noticing how what you want in your life is already there and getting curious about how your body reacts to it (and your emotions, and your thoughts, etc) can you make the changes necessary to manifest with clarity.
The body feels good when your physical reality is being metabolized. There are physical sensations that are pleasurable that happen when your physical reality is the way you want to be. Maybe you feel more relaxed. Maybe you feel more creative. Maybe you feel bigger or in flow. Those are all sensations of positive manifestation.
Metabolized positive manifestation creates positive sensation in the body. Positive manifestation creates positive emotions. You need to be able to notice that those are happening instead of hyper fixating on what's wrong, what's not good enough, and what's negative.
The unknown is always going to play itself out in manifestation. If you are manifesting from a place of desired known, something needs to change about your capacity to notice the unknown. It's imperative if you want to be able to embody a manifestation that you have some sort of understanding in your being about how you relate to the unknown.
I'm not talking about having this great friendship or this great relationship to the unknown. I'm talking about knowing how you personally work with the unknown in your body. If you feel tension around the unknown, and you know the body sensation of your tension as a result of the unknown then that tension is going to tell you that you're resisting something coming in. You're resisting something unknown happening. The tension will point you towards needing to look deeper or simplify your desire.
Here is to you manifesting your heart’s desires and growing into who you are meant to be. Shedding your light on the world means we are all closer to our truth.
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