Since the 2006 release of the film and book The Secret, followed by the 2020 pandemic social media manifestation craze, manifestation has become a mainstream concept. There are so many people teaching about manifestation, so many people talking about it. So many people posting about their manifestation journeys online. But there is something really important that nobody is talking about when it comes to manifestation. A tiny little detail that isn’t tiny at all. This little detail is what we will be talking about today.  

The idea that has been propagated is that manifestation is really, really simple. That it is as simple as “think a positive thought where you are completely in the experience of already having the thing you desire. And then, it will appear or happen.” As if the conscious mind were a device that simply orders what it wants from a compliant universe. The reality of manifestation is not this “kindergarten”. Here is what nobody tells you about manifestation.

1. The conscious mind is NOT the only player in the picture of manifestation. It is not the only thing dictating your vibration. Subconscious processes are too. In fact, the subconscious mind is what rules your mind. Conscious focus rules an embarrassingly low percentage of your daily mental activity. What does this mean? You can consciously focus on having wealth for 20 minutes a day. However, if your subconscious mind holds a core belief like "money is root of all evil", your subconscious will win out and you will not manifest wealth. On top of this, your mind creates an internal model of the world based on past experiences, not present conscious wishes. It projects what it expects to see onto reality. This predictive processing mechanism tends to be far, far stronger than conscious focus. Contrary to what people whose primary coping mechanism is to avoid all things they deem negative and to cling to a pure positive mindset tend to espouse, the integration of the subconscious is critical work if what you are interested in is manifestation.     
2. When you are manifesting, on an energetic level, you are essentially declaring “I am that!”. Not just “I want that”. You are saying “I choose to be what is a perfect match to (fill in the blank)”. For example, if what you want is a compatible partner, you are energetically saying “I chose to be what is a perfect match to a compatible relationship”. In this time-space reality, there is no way to experience it otherwise. What happens that second, is that the snags need to be worked through. All the things preventing you from that thing you are wanting. Not just one snag, all the snags. And relative to certain things you desire, there can be a lot of them! All the things (all the layers) that are not that, and that are oppositional to that which you want. Manifesting is going to bring you face to face with what in your life and what within you is not congruent with that thing you want. But guess what? Working through these layers of incongruence is one of the most important things you can be doing with your life. Consciously setting an intention like this, transmitting what you want, and then working through each layer of incongruence is the design of not only your personal expansion, but universal expansion with it. And as you transmute each layer, you come closer and closer and closer, you get more and more and more of what you want. This process is an integral part of the purpose we have for incarnating into this life experience in the first place. 
3. Manifestation is not a passive process. Actively changing your perceptions, your decisions, your behaviors, and your actions is a critical part of manifestation. Putting yourself in the mental space of already having what you want is a powerful initial step. But just focusing on what you want alone will not bring it magically into physical existence. What brings it into existence is your thoughts, perceptions, decisions, behaviors and actions being in alignment with it. A mind being focused on the desired outcome drives intentional behavior. This intentional, aligned behavior aligns all the layers of the being with that outcome, thus bringing it to fruition. This means you’ve got to change your behavior if you want the manifestation to occur. You also have to take actions if you want the manifestation to occur. Nothing passive about it.   
4. Manifestation is out of the comfort zone. And it implies a great deal of discomfort. A very important part of manifestation is to consciously choose consequences. We have to understand the costs and benefits of staying exactly where we are and as we are and not making changes. And to the opposite, we need to understand the true costs and benefits of making the necessary changes to align with what we want. We will need to let go of a great many things that we truly believe are currently working for us. We will also need to face any fear that stands in the way, which will initially feel like a loss of safety to us. We will need to unlearn things, see truths that are very painful to accept, heal past trauma, confront blind spots, take risks, step into the unknown, feel the groundlessness of letting go of our identity, feel the disorientation of stepping out of our old reality and into a totally new one, change our patterns despite immense pressure to fall back into them and the list goes on. 

So you can understand this better, here is an example. April has been doing manifestation exercises to manifest owning her own salon. She has been working out of other people’s salons for the last ten years and she is desperate to open her own so she can express herself creatively, make really good money without being limited to only what she can make in a day styling and cutting hair, use the products she believes in and elevate industry standards to be environmentally sound. But in this process of manifestation, things occur that make April all too aware that she has lots of layers of incongruence in the way. Just to give you two examples of many, the adaptive strategy that she employs to stay socially safe is to people please and placate others. Rather than manifesting the salon owning experience she wanted, the first thing that happened was that she got an offer from the owner of the current salon she worked for to take on the task of overseeing their newly opened location in a mall. April thought, hmmm… maybe this is a good sign that I’m headed in the right direction. She took the position, seeing it as a stepping stone. When an opportunity came to rent a place of her own and strike out, she spoke about it with two of her coworkers. Word got back to her boss and her boss called her really upset. April was so afraid of a conflict with her boss that she denied everything, told her boss it was just salon politics and triangulation and then went above and beyond to be the best employee, letting the opportunity pass her by. And as if this wasn’t bad enough, she decided to open a side business doing wedding hair. But, being a people pleaser, she set prices based on what friends, family and demanding clients wanted to pay, rather than what the business required to cover overhead and make a profit, so she actually lost money. April wasn't willing to do what was needed to actually fully line up with what she was wanting. But rather than see this, April started to think maybe this manifestation stuff is just a bunch of BS and just 'isn't for me.'    

In order to actually open the salon, she will have to stop her people pleasing, placating behaviors. She will have to face her fears and yes, even traumas that fuel the behavior. She will have to change her perception about disapproval. She will have to choose the consequences of upsetting her boss and being poorly talked about by others and she will need to mitigate a great deal of conflict and social upheaval in her life. She will need to set and keep boundaries that do not please others. She is going to have to actually take the action of striking out on her own, opening a business, seeking employees etc. 

The second layer of incongruence of many is that April has a split. One part of her wants to own a successful salon. Another part of her swoons at the idea of a man walking into her life and providing for her so she can have kids and be a homemaker. April follows trad wives obsessively on Instagram. She is envious of them. When she attends a weekly group for female entrepreneurs, she muscles up the persona of a hard-hitting business woman. But she got home and had second doubts about all of it. She sat down and watched the movie The Longest Ride with a carton of ice-cream and the pain started to flood up from within. These were two distinctly different lifepaths. She could do some version of both. However, if she did this, she would be overwhelmed and she would end up doing less of both. Basically, she would be limiting her maximum potential in both of them. Every time she goes to align with owning a salon, the part of her that wants this specific 1950s feminine experience and home life activates and she puts more energy into doom scrolling than she puts into taking the steps to become an entrepreneur. In order to move into alignment with her manifestation, she now has to do an existential deep dive into what she really wants in general. She has to re-examine her priorities and values. She has to figure out the WHY behind both desires. She may end up having to amend the vision of what she wants to manifest. She needs to do very serious integration work, so this zero-sum game doesn’t exist inside of her.  

None of this should discourage you from manifestation work. What it should do, is to better prepare you for how it really works. The really good news is that when you get that this is how it works, you are not surprised by what is or isn’t manifesting. You are able to be so much more of a conscious and active participant in the process of manifestation. You can awaken more and more as this process highlights exactly where your subconscious programming (fears, doubts, or limiting beliefs) contradicts your conscious desires, allowing you to address them directly. You can use this process to define yourself and amend the desired future more and more. And you can extract all the plethora of things that you are meant to extract from the process itself, all things you would miss out on entirely if manifestation did work the way that you have been led to believe. 

Because we are on this subject, you may benefit by a guided meditation that I created called the Why You're Not Getting What You Want Meditation. This meditative experience leads you through the process of becoming aware of what your subconscious commitment is. Subconscious commitments often oppose conscious commitments; making the things that you want and are deeply committed to, difficult or impossible to attain. But becoming aware of your subconscious commitment, puts you in the empowered position to choose as well as to align your energy and actions with what you really want.