In Part One, we took a look at the phenomena of belief and the propagation of fake certainty through platitudinal memes in context of the popular memes, “you can’t mess up what’s meant for you” and/or “what’s meant for you can’t pass you by.” As shiny & alluring as these motivational quotes have gotten, passed around social media, we (hopefully) had some fun breaking down some of the contradictions in/with them and may concur that alot of the time people regurgitate fuzzy-sounding ideas bordering on hopium, none of us really fucking know and are lying to ourselves when pretending like such oversimplified cliches actually objectively represent the complex realities of Truth…
Herein, we’re going to carry on looking at another - and the paradox of / contradiction between them…
”Manifestation.”
Good God, if we only had a dollar for every self-appointed “life coach,” “spiritual guru,” “influencer,” and straight-up sheister latching onto the concept and regurgitating “Law Of Attraction” formulas, promising the “secrets” to making the universe your bitch for a measly $997. Ha.
Tough to say whether it was the hit movie/book, “The Secret,” that catapulted the “manifestation” phenomenon into mainstream marketing arsenals, though hot damn has it ever taken offffffff. Granted, it’s probably also safe to say that the few who’ve actually gotten “results” with all the supposed “formulas” to “attract anything/everything you want” are those selling the courses, programs, and seminars. After all, hopium is one helluva drug. But lest I degress too far into cynical skepticism.
Just as with the “meant for you” beliefs/paradigms packaged into bite-sized memes for easy ingestion and a quick-fix of ideological ego appeasement, we’ve witnessed millions hop on the “manifestation” train - propagating scripted narratives through countless social media posts & videos as though they’re “experts,” speaking with a sense of certainty… that wreaks of the “fake* it until you make it approach.* Note the emphasis on “fake.”
Sure, people “manifest” things all the time. Or so we might tell ourselves. Yes, there are incidences where some may “get into vibrational alignment” with their desires, signalling the universe like an energetic wish list to Santa, and “miracles” happen. No doubt, “God works in mysterious ways,” and “magic” can/does exist at times. Though, there’s also the Neptunian tendency to radically over-romanticize things sometimes. Guaranteed, there are “influencers” acting like know-it-alls about manifestation, using their own experience as reference… while leaving out the part that they’re a trust-fund baby and their six-figures came from daddy. Guaranteed, there are times things show up in our lives not because we “followed some magic manifestation protocol,” but simply put in the work to reap the rewards, exercised some basic action to cause an effect, or happened to randomly be in the “right” place at the “right” time. Chika can tell herself & everyone she “manifested” a college degree… or just humbly admit she showed up to class and did the work every day for four years.
This isn’t to shit on “manifestation” as a whole, but rather to shine light on the fact that (perhaps like with anything else, as humans tend to do) there has occurred alot of amplification & distortion of the concept… and much of it with capitalistic motivations as many have (successfully) attempted cashing in on it(s transmutation into hopium). But charlatan dynamics aside, back to our track… even as others have latched on to the “manifestation” trend without profit-incentives, there are still many who parrot rhetoric common in the spaces - whether they be of the more materialistic side of the spectrum or the new-agey “spiritual” - with an appearance of certainty arising not from direct awareness/consciousness, but the influence of belief. And to state the obvious, just because one believes something does not mean it is actually true.
The interesting (and somewhat funny) paradox we come to here though: bringing head-to-head these beliefs in/of “manifestation” with that of the “meant for you” outlook - both of which often tend to be propagated by the same people…
Let’s say for the sake of this experiment that all the memes about “what’s meant for you” is legit… you “can’t fuck it up” and it “can’t pass you by…”
Is this compatible with “you can manifest anything/everything you want?” No.
First off, if it’s “meant for you,” are you even really “manifesting” it - or is it a predetermined given? Like, if one wants to believe in their manifestation superpowers, they could either exercise them or not… and if something is “meant for you,” then its sort of irrelevant whether you do or don’t - it’s gonna show up irregardless… thus not necessarily a direct effect of your manifestation superpowers. And if the outcome was dependent upon intentional “manifestation,” then not exercising whatever strategy the Lambo-driving guru took your $4997 in exchange for would mean no manifested results for you… but if it’s “meant for you” and “you can’t fuck it up,” then it’s gonna show up anyways - while slacking off and disobeying your guru’s 100% certain formula would make no difference, disproving the manifestation theory.
(Yeah, that’s a bit of a mindfuck. And yes, it probably could be worded differently for greater clarity, though I humbly confess to not be as great a genius as my ego would like to think. And sure, one could dig further to tear apart the logical argument, bringing in “correlation does not equal causation” and getting into refined specifics of each opposing ‘theory;’ though for the sake of sanity, we won’t.)
Let’s use a tangible example: crypto wealth…
Some of us got here early and did relatively well. Were we “meant for” it? Maybe. Maybe not. Who the fuck knows. Straight honesty. Now, did we “manifest” it? Some might say yes, drawing “evidence” to support confirmation biases of the belief. Others might look at it simply through the lense of “luck = preparation meets opportunity.” For myself, it was not just a matter of “right time @ right place” as an early adopter on Steemit, but over a decade of serious time & energy invested into knowledge & skills to make something of the opportunity when it came… hardly fitting the image of quick, easy, effortless “manifestation” pitched by gurus…
And either way, whether a culmination of 10,000 hours of work put in before any results or “dumb/beginner’s luck,” we all just happened to arrive at that “right place, right time,” surfing that wave of the crypto trend…
The surfer does not “manifest” a wave. He merely learns to read them, acquires the skills to paddle out & ride, positions himself accordingly when conditions are good, and drops in.
”Meant to be? Who knows. Surely, there are surfers who’ve rode some epic waves that’ve felt they were of Divinely-ordained fate. Though still, the surfer does not “manifest” the wave. (No matter how mindfuckery an ego might undertake to craft an extensive narrative to make it seem/sound so.)
Sure enough, there are a few reading this now wondering why I insist on shitting on the positivity parade, judging me as “negative” or some shit. If that’s the case, I’ve not yet been understood. Yes, we’re exploring some critiques here… for the purpose of reaching clarity.
Why tear apart ideas propagated abundantly that “seem” to be “positive,” such as that of “manifesting” or “what’s meant for you can/is xyz”…? To dig into details of where there time & place may be - and where it is not. To clear away the fluff, misconception, cognitive bias & logical fallacies that distort what value awaits distillation & extraction in/from them and the whole ecosystems of interconnected information & psychological dynamics of which they’re part.
In our modern technology-propelled society, we’ve (d)evolved to cultures of ‘attention-economies’ with ever-decreasing attention spans, gravitating towards increasingly shorter-form content - which has come with both its upsides & down; the meme has become an art form unto itself - masters of their creation able to condense immense amounts of knowledge/wisdom into but an image & few words, transmitting concepts encompassing far greater degrees of complexity & sophistication than would be logically expected of such ‘simple’ content… while on the flip side, also often facilitating drastic oversimplification, overgeneralization, watering/dumbing down ideas for the lowest common denominator’s mass consumption - all of which have slowly but surely served to enforce the development of habitual laziness & sloppiness in both thinking & communication. Yes, the exaltation of the meme - through which countless “inspirational/motivational” ideas travel from mind to mind via social media these days - has been fantastic… while also destructive to individual intellectual capacity and the integrity of our collective/societal/cultural intelligence. Yin & yang, yet again. And lest I degress to far, yet again…
So here we are, 2024, billions practically addicted to internet platforms upon which charlatans convert “spiritual laws” into fodder for marketing hopium - promises of “manifesting everything we want” exchanged for exorbitant fees, haphazardly mixed in with messages imparting benefic pre-fated blessings we can’t “mess up” - in the midst of war, degradation of societal/cultural values, increasing amounts of disease, and all sorts of madness… *was this all “meant to be” for us? Perhaps it is all part of our evolutionary program, and we are but passengers on the ride, no matter how much we’d like to believe we can “manifest anything/everything we want.” If so, how malleable is this predestined fate, exactly?And let’s not fool ourselves with a sugar-coated thought-terminating cliché of an answer that only serves confirmation bias.
If we are going to be putting into action some actual “principles of manifestation” with intent to level-up in our lives, we gotta get real…
As in, doing away with the bullshit cluttering “teachings” with distorted ideas as well as the contradictory assumptions & beliefs within ourselves that establish conditions disabling the effective function of the actual working principles. To abandon false certainty, clearing space for the acknowledgement of our unknowns - opening through the portal of humility to receive Truths that the hubris of fixation into a frequency of inaccurate belief would have closed the doors of perception to.
While the ego might want the universe to act like a magic genie granting us whatever we desire, I’ll propose here: if we are truly “meant for” anything in this lifetime, and at least part of it is for growth & evolution, it is probably not to act like an entitled child demanding God to be our personal Santa Claus without conditions, but rather *learn to harmoniously align ourselves with and move masterfully through these realms - not merely seeking to manipulate reality to conform to our wants, but fulfill more of that inherent ‘potential,’ becoming what we were “meant to be,” and doing what “manifestation” we have to do maturely - with the utmost respect for what limitations & boundaries actually do exist (for ‘our own good’ and that of others).
Like, as great “positive thinking” and imagination are… head out of the clouds, with at least one foot on the ground, people;
As previously discussed in “The Anything you Want Fvckery”, it may be time to level up in our collective maturity and wisdom to slow down romanticizing “manifestation” and over confidently feeding the egregors pushed by those with capitalistic intentions & hopium-fuelled campaigns for the sake of harnessing the power/empowerment only accesible through clarity & mature objectivity.
Perhaps within this scope & context of coming to grips with the fact there are in fact limitations we have to work within and the universe is not a hybrid of magic genie & Santa Claus whose purpose is to appease any & all our egoic desires, we’d benefit to add in the distinctions in awareness of how there may in fact be certain pre-fated things “meant to be…” and/or not.
And that if we really wanna notch up both our intelligence and capacity to “manifest” “better” outcomes, there might just exist a requirement to break out of the realm of belief altogether - no matter how conditioned we’ve been to think it is essential - to move beyond the dualistic black-or-white thinking of “this right/wrong, that good/bad,” and refine our discernment to the subtleties & nuances of these various concepts, dynamics, and perceptions to unlock/activate “higher” consciousness (of where each element & component serves its essential time & place in the mechanics of this game, to be worked with conscientiously & diligently once learning the arts & sciences of their alchemy - which take significantly more time & energy invested into than feel-good, biased soundbytes & memes).
(“Mouthful,” yep. Put that in your DMT pipe & smoke it. Ha.)
Concluding on that note for now, we’ll have one more instalment on this to come, exploring the full-spectrum of potentialities between the “manifestation” and “meant for you” truth/falsehoods - either short-circuiting your belief-based brain or (potentially) cracking open perception & awareness to new dimensions beyond what we’ve known & thought before…