What Are We Really Manifesting?

New day, same bad habits.

Manifestation—a word we’ve discussed often on Conspirituality. The idea that your thoughts dictate reality has been a definitive feature of American spirituality for centuries, predating the late 19th-century push into Theosophy.

Even the concept of Manifest Destiny oozes metaphysical longing: a fever dream that our special nature transcends the needs and desires of everyone else. Embedded in this ideology is the notion that we can will ourselves to greatness while exploiting an abundance of resources.

The problem with abundance: it always runs out.

As expected, with America opening back up (though a surge of variants could dampen our enthusiasm), my social media feeds are flooded with expectable fare from wellness influencers, all of them agreeing that it’s time to manifest the life you’ve always wanted. I knew the onslaught was coming and I’m not disappointed.

Well, to be clear, I am disappointed about how few lessons we seem to have learned this past year. In some ways, it’s understandable—a lot of people have had to dig into savings or dig further into credit holes. Life is not easy for many of us right now. But that doesn’t mean we have to return to unhelpful gimmickry in order to monetize attention. 

I recently came across this video by Sah D’Simone, a “radical spiritual guide,” as Deepak Chopra calls him. Listen to what he has to say about difficulties around money. 

sahdsimone

A post shared by @sahdsimone

Sah is charismatic; his videos are funny. While I’m not sure the Buddha “didn’t teach suffering, only joy,” as he claims—a rather poor revision when you count yourself as a teacher of Tantric Buddhism—his brand generally seems uplifting.

Regardless, Sah’s take on money is common in the spiritual community: you deserve abundance, your thoughts dictate how much money you make, you’re responsible for your own financial well-being. Of course, none of this is true. Numerous systemic social conditions block a lot of people from simply getting by, much less achieving “abundance.”

Note too Sah’s anodyne messaging around responsibility: there’s no actual advice. Being “responsible” around money makes no sense without guidance as to what that entails. Aspiring spiritual teachers are really good at making generic sentiments with no real-world weight behind them. Sadly, such a take on money is common in a sector of the population that believes thinking creates reality—that if you’re not rich, it’s a failure of your imagination.

What most people will likely take away from Sah’s clip is “the more money I make, the more good I can do.” This refrain is everywhere yet rarely plays out in real life. In his forthcoming book, The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It, literary and social critic Will Storr investigates what happens when young lawyers leave school to join a firm. The following paragraph is not limited to law, as it happens to almost every human in similar circumstances.

“It is very difficult for a young lawyer immersed in this culture day after day to maintain the values she had as a law student. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, young lawyers change. They begin to admire things they did not admire before, be ashamed of things they were not ashamed of before, find it impossible to live without things they lived without before. Somewhere, somehow, a lawyer changes from a person who gets intense pleasure from being able to buy her first car stereo to a person enraged over a $400,000 bonus.”

Spiritual aspirants are no different. This is a social feature rooted in biology. Some can transcend worldly desires, though it’s unlikely you’ll see them monetizing their abilities on TikTok. Humility and social media do not make good bedfellows.

There was a short time, like a month, during the pandemic when we saw the real-world impact of our lack of mobility. Our carbon footprint down, ecosystems quickly rebounded. 

As recent months have proved, such a trend was not destined to last. We’ve roared back to old bad habits with a vengeance—with our disregard for the environment and a return to demanding “abundance” with all those karma points we’ve been collecting.

Abundance actually manifests 115 degrees in Portland and 118 degrees in Siberia; it even hit 118 in the Arctic Circle. Here’s the issue: we don’t think of “basics” like travel, indoor climate control, refrigeration, and wireless technology as “abundance.” A few generations ago they became reality and humans adjusted to them as normal, just like the young lawyer acclimating to the firm, just like the spiritual acolyte moving up the ranks and manifesting previously unknown wealth.

Once you grow accustomed to more, however, the likelihood of “doing good” becomes a relic, just as the notion of abandoning air conditioning and smartphones today seems preposterous. And yet it’s really our imagination that’s failing.

The paradox of the spiritual quest: always another level to achieve, always further pursuits, a deeper layer of enlightenment around the corner. Enough is never enough. Contentment is fleeting; abundance is forever.

Until it isn’t. Unfortunately for us, the planet is growing tired of our abundance. It doesn’t have much more to give. When it’s done, there won’t be any sweet consolations on Instagram telling us everything will be alright.

We’re running out of time to “forgive” ourselves of greedy behaviors because we’re so deep in them we don’t even recognize the greed. In some strange way, we have become what we dreamed. Still, we demand more, because we’ll never actually be satisfied with what’s right in front of us.