The Manifestation Trap Nobody Warns You About

There's something that I've noticed recently in my own inner work journey that I would like to share because I want to keep things really real and honest with you guys as I evolve and as things change for me, how that's impacting my processes and how I view manifestation and how reality even works. So I've kind of developed this awareness that a lot of the reality creation material that we see online, including some of my own, is very empowering on the one hand, but at a certain point you get capped within a certain level of consciousness if you continue to just operate from the paradigm of trying to get what you want in reality. So there's kind of a scale, let's say. Let me get on the whiteboard. So I'm seeing transformation kind of happen across these different phases. Phase 1, this is being like the lowest state. This is usually the starting point for a lot of people, is that victim mentality, that victim mindset where— I've been there, I was there for a really long time— you feel like the world is out to get you, everything is against you, nothing is working out in your favor, everything is just so overwhelming. And you're externalizing blame and you feel really at the root of this is you feel powerless. You have a sense of helplessness, powerlessness, and it just feels like you're at the whim of the world. You're at the whim of people around you, of your challenges, and there's nothing you can do to really change that because you feel like genuinely you feel like a victim. So that's like the first phase. And then you rise out of that phase and you move into self-servitude. So the journey from victim to being in that energy of self-help, self-servitude, it's actually very, very empowering. You go from feeling totally powerless, not doing anything because you genuinely believe that it's pointless, to realizing that you do actually have power and control over your circumstances and that you can make changes happen. So you begin to fall head over heels in love with the world of self-help, self-development, manifestation, reality creation, because you're learning all of a sudden, wow, your paradigm is opening up, your consciousness is shifting. You're like, wait a minute, I am not my past, I get to define my future, and I do play an integral role in how things are unfolding around me. And this is the space, this is like the the energy, the predominant energy of the manifestation space. And it is a very empowering place to be when you're coming from the place of the victim, because all of a sudden you realize, if I change my beliefs, my results might change. If I change my actions, my results might change. And you will start to actually see changes in your life, and you'll start to realize and wake up to the power of your energy. So down here, you're asleep to the power of your energy. You get to here and you start to realize, wow, my energy is very powerful. It is affecting things around me. And so I am playing a causal factor in what I call my life. And then we move on to phase 3, which is what I'm going to call self-transcendence. I need to look up how to spell that. Guys, if I spelled that wrong, don't come at me, okay? So this is kind of a level beyond just materializing things into your reality. This is where you're more concerned with surrendering to the big picture, surrendering to your mission, and serving the people or the causes that you feel that you're supposed to serve. So it becomes less and less, funny enough, about you as you move up along the scale. And this could go hand in hand with the map of consciousness. Hawkins' Map of Consciousness, Dr. David R. Hawkins. As you're moving up out of states like shame, grief, guilt, and you're moving into kind of a place of self-empowerment, you still can get stuck in the realm of desire. You know, the desire is very much still a very limited state of consciousness. And this is the big trap that I see in the manifestation space. And it's one thing that I really just want to emphasize and single out in this video because I do mention it in most of my manifestation tutorial type videos, but it's really, really important. A lot of people are getting into manifestation because they're trying to control their reality. They're trying to get what they want in reality because they do not trust the big picture. They do not trust that good things can unfold. They do not trust the divine. They do not trust themselves. And so it's actually a fear-based way of approaching reality and approaching your life and how you're thinking about creation. Because when you're so hyperfocused on what you want and you're clinging to it so badly, you're basically saying that you're not okay with what is. And that puts you in a resistant, low state of consciousness, which will never actually align you with miracles and that harmonious energy of the universe flowing through you and to you, into your life, into your being, and into everything around you. So if here you're powerless, here you're focused on getting what I want, and then here you're just focused on servitude and surrender. Okay, now, getting what I want, moving from powerless to getting what I want, that's a really important step. And I'm not trying to shame anyone here because this honestly is the journey that I've been on. You have to go from— if you're really, really down, you feel like you're so helpless and you can't do anything, you need to take kind of the next phase and the next step, which you need to realize that you do actually have power. So you have to kind of go through this phase. Sometimes some people skip it, but most people need to go through this phase of waking up to their power and actually realizing that they can manifest changes in the reality. They can manifest a more stable job. They can manifest you know, a more aligned career, they can manifest more aligned relationship, etc., etc. But once you operate within Phase 2 for a little while, you're— unless it's your soul's path, a lot of people are not actually supposed to stay there focusing on what I want, what I want, what I want. As you begin to wake up to your power and you start to actually feel more sovereign and feel more empowered, the natural next phase is to actually expand beyond what you want. And this is something that I've been grappling with. Like, back when I first started doing this work myself, I had really clear, strong desires that I wanted, and they felt like aligned desires, which we can talk about in a minute. You kind of have ego desires and soul-level desires. But back when I was, you know, before I manifested anything really into my reality, I, I was very clear on what I wanted. You know, I wanted to have a YouTube channel, I wanted to live in a certain place, I wanted to have a certain partner. And now that all of those things have materialized for me and I've co-created them with the Divine, now for the past few months, I have a loose kind of vision. I have these feelings and ideas about what's supposed to come next, but I don't feel that same level of I want, I need, I need to get this, I want this. And for a long time, I was kind of curious as to why, where is that gone? Where is that? Focus that I used to have on my own personal goals kind of gone. And then I realized that this is quite normal actually. And it feels a lot better and a lot more aligned now for me to just surrender constantly, surrender what I think is best, surrender what I want because my needs are met, right? This is the thing. Even if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you can't go and go into self-transcendence where you're serving a bigger mission and serving the world until you have first served yourself, until you've met your own needs, until you are financially stable, until you're safe, until you feel like, you know, you know who you are a little bit more, you know your power a little bit more. So it's a really, really natural cycle and a natural phase to go through because down here you can't help yourself. You move into only being able to help yourself. And then you're able to actually help others. And so the spiritual path and the expansion of your consciousness is just a continuous journey of surrender. I'm reading Letting Go by David Hawkins, Dr. David Hawkins, at the moment, and he speaks about the practice of surrendering your emotions. It's very similar to how I would have taught it as well in my content, but, you know, the more you just surrender everything, all the thoughts that you don't need, all the emotions that come up when, when they come to the surface, you just focus on feeling them and letting them go without resisting them. And the more you surrender your preferences, your expectations, what you think you want, the more and more you are going to kind of fall away from the ego persona because it's the ego persona that wants. It's the ego persona that resists. It's the ego persona that judges. And oftentimes the ego is wanting particular things, particular outcomes, as a form of self-soothing, as a form of meeting the emotional needs of a repressed aspect of the self that might be a little bit insecure or might feel like they have something to prove, or might be trying to get something that they never got in childhood. And that's all very well and good. But it's all coming from ego. And so transcending the ego, reaching a higher level of consciousness, if that's your bag, if that's what you're trying to do, a big, big part of that is realizing that sometimes the things that you want might be coming from the part of you that is actually blocking you from ascending to your next level. Let's think about like the highest, the highest levels of consciousness, right? That, what does that look like? There's no element of forcing, there's no element of wanting things so badly that you sacrifice your being in the present moment and your enjoyment of the present moment. There's no trying to control, there's no fear of safety. So really this whole journey is just you going down this meandering path to remember the fact that you are a co-creator in this universe. That you are actually perfectly safe, that all of these things that have happened to you, these wounds that have arisen, these false perceptions, these thoughts that you have identified with, they're not actually the truth of who you are. And, you know, there is an infinite, vast, loving presence within you and around you at all times. So this is just a journey of reconnecting to that. And a lot of the things that you might desire while you're in this phase 2 they might be coming from a false belief that, you know, you're not enough or that you're inadequate. You might be running around doing certain things because you're feeling a lot of fear, you're feeling a lack of safety. And as you ascend in your awareness and you do healing work and you let go more and more of the parts of you that aren't really you, you'll find that your desires naturally change because you don't have those same things to soothe. But I actually, like, I wanna hone in on something 'cause there's something, there's a reason I'm speaking about this today. I didn't plan this. I have these here 'cause a community member asked a question and it's connected to this. But you essentially, when you are in phase 2 for a while, you actually might find at first when you manifest things, you're like, wow, this is amazing. You might find that you're not actually very happy. Okay, this is like, I'm trying to get to the core of this issue. What this video is really gonna help you with. If you're manifesting things in your reality, and you still feel unfulfilled, you still feel dissatisfied, you still feel unhappy, it may be because you're using manifestation as a tool to try to control things because you're still feeling a lot of fear and a lack of trust. And actually, it might be time to just actually fully surrender because you're not supposed to stay in this phase chasing things to give you feelings, only to realize again and again that things can't give you feelings. Perpetually, forever, without, you know, stopping and smelling the roses and actually getting present to your life and enjoying now. You're not supposed to keep wanting things so much that it causes you to sacrifice your enjoyment of what you already have. So there's a lot of layers to surrender, but, you know, as you're transcending from here to here, the surrender is letting go of of needing to get what you want and allowing yourself to receive what you need. Because life will show you where you need to heal. Life will show you where you need to maybe face a fear or face something head-on. Life is schooling you constantly on your triggers, on your resistances, on your judgments, everything.. And sometimes we're so caught up and we're so busy thinking, like, I want this to change, I want that to change. We're just so strongly actually in resistance to what's in front of us right now that we can't pick up on the lessons that life is actually trying to teach us. So the deepest layer of surrender, and that allows you to kind of get into this phase where you're transcending yourself, is accepting every single thing that is happening in your life right now unconditionally, unconditionally, and having reverence and humility for the fact that there's probably a reason that's bigger than you that this is happening. Whatever it is, no matter how awful— I know this is terrible— no matter how awful or how horrible it is, whatever it is you're dealing with, there's usually always a reason. Whatever you're feeling, surrender to it. Whatever you're thinking, surrender to it. Stop fighting with yourself. Stop fighting with your life. Stop fighting with your path. This is your path. You see, the trap of staying hyperfocused on just constantly getting what you want and deciding that you're going to be unhappy or you're going to rob yourself of how you wish to feel unless you get what you want is, you know, if that's your macro way of thinking, that's also going to be your micro way of thinking. That is how you're going to approach your days. And so you're going to live your life basically in resistance to everything that is not perfectly aligned with your highest expectations of what it could be. And you are gonna be let down because life is just gonna throw stuff at you as it does. It's going to do that. Things are gonna happen. Someone's gonna pull out in front of you. They're gonna cut you off. They're not gonna use their indicator. This stuff is going to happen. And you will continue to limit your fulfillment, your expansion, and your happiness if you keep saying, I'm only going to be happy, I'm only gonna be satisfied, I'm only gonna be, feeling joyous and in love with life when everything goes the way that I want it to go. And you're never going to be happy. You're never going to truly reach that higher state, that bliss of beingness that is actually available to you. If you could just look at life and instead of saying, as long as everything goes the way that I want it to go today, I'll be happy. You say, no matter what happens today, I choose to be happy. It's called being okay no matter what. That's a deep spiritual practice. And when you're down here in the victim phase, you can't get there. And that's okay. You're not supposed to get there yet. When you first move into phase 2, you need to learn your power. You need to learn that you can make changes happen. You need to kind of realize that you are safe. You can look after yourself. Okay, amazing. But then you've got to get to a point of humility where you're like, okay, I can be okay no matter what. Why? Because at the end of the day, we're going to die anyway. What are you trying to do by controlling everything, by making everything just so? It's trying to do the role of the Divine rather than just trusting the Divine, trusting that things are going to unfold the way that they need to unfold. Knowing that anyway, all you're playing is this temporary game. And when you close your eyes and you disincarnate, you get to go back home to like your soul family, to where you came from. And that's it. Your consciousness lives on. It's not the end of the world. So why are you trying to make everything to be a certain way when you could just relax and enjoy the journey? You know, about 8 months ago, I had an idea. To do with my business, and I was gonna launch this offer, and I was trying to work on this thing for months. I spoke to a consultant about it. I made the page for it. I had loads of Google Docs full of information about it. I was writing stuff down. In fact, there's probably pages in this book about it. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I was brainstorming names, all of this stuff. And for some strange reason, I was like, I want this, I want this, I want this. I want, you know, it's going to be a kind of a more advanced version of what I've done before. I want the identity that comes with this. I want the credibility it's going to give me, whatever I wanted from it. I feel like I just wanted this thing. I was like, why can't I just do it?, and I had so much resistance to doing it. No matter how many times I circle back to it, it just wasn't getting off the ground for whatever reason. And eventually I realized that I was resisting how I was feeling truly about this thing. And I sat with how I felt about it, and I actually didn't really like how it felt. It felt when I finally stopped resisting how I was truly feeling about it. And when I finally stopped trying to control and just say, I want this thing because it sounds good, it feels like the natural next best step. Everyone is telling me it's a good idea. When I stopped looking at it from that lens of just like, I've said this is what I want and this is what I'm going to do, and I just let it go and surrendered it, it completely vanished from my awareness, it vanished from my priorities. And over time I began to realize like, that thing, if it was truly meant to be created by me in this lifetime, it would have come back to me. It would've found its way to me. And now when I look back on this thing, it was like a kind of a group program thing that I was gonna do. The way that I was thinking about doing that, the whole branding, the packaging, the messaging, everything, for me now, it actually would've felt really misaligned and it would've blocked me from doing things now that are more aligned. So sometimes we can get really mad at ourselves for procrastinating or for not feeling like doing a thing. So we're in resistance to ourselves. We're trying to just knuckle down and get something done when actually you might be feeling resistance because what you're doing is actually out of alignment and trying to control and get what you want in that situation is actually not going to benefit you and it's not going to benefit the greater good. I'm going to read out the question that my community member asked on the call because he asked this question and I, I answered his question on the call, but I still felt like there was more to be answered. So I'm actually going to send him this after this video. I was like, there was more that I wanted to answer with that that just didn't come through, or I didn't have time to go into it fully. But the question was how to let go of the need for control. This person was struggling with the desire to control and do inner work as a control mechanism so that they can have what they want happen in their reality, essentially, which that's a very deep level of awareness. This person is ready to transcend the self. They're at that threshold to even be able to notice that you're doing inner work and that you're doing manifestation work as a way to just control your reality because you're scared of what will happen if you don't control your reality. Takes a lot of awareness to even see that in yourself. So essentially, there is an element of truth to his statement. It is true that when you manage yourself more, when you control your beliefs, when you control your thoughts, when you control your emotions, the results that you get as a byproduct in your reality will change and will correspond with that. But how things happen, when things happen, where you'll end up, like the way the path is going to look, how other people are going to respond, all of that is not within your control. So the truth is you can only control, at the end of the day, your reaction, your responses, your actions, and your focus in each moment. And when you use manifestation from a place of lack of trust, first of all, you're probably not going to be that good of a manifester because As we know, surrender is one of the steps of the creative process because it's not a solo creative process, it's a co-creative process. And the reason for that is, and the reason I almost always mention it when I'm talking about manifestation, is because trying to control the how keeps you in the wrong energy to actually correspond with the how unfolding in the way that it needs to. When you are trying to use your logic and your old conditioning and your linear way of thinking to figure out the path to a desired reality that you have not yet experienced, you are always going to limit limit yourself because you have a very finite, limited view of what's possible from your logic. It's only based on what you've actually experienced before. And if you're trying to experience something new, the path to that new thing is going to be outside the bounds of your logical awareness. Therefore, trying to figure out how always confines you and limits you, and the path is never going to look like the way that your logic thinks it's going to look. Okay, so you have to that's where the surrender comes in. You align with something that feels meaningful to you. You set your intentions, you set your focus, you shift your energy, you do your shadow work, you do all of that. But then when it comes to the how, you stop looking for it, you stop fighting for it, you stop resisting your life right now until you get that thing, because that takes you out of the energetic state of already having that thing. And you trust and surrender to the divine, to the infinite intelligence that's at play all around you. You trust and surrender to the fact that this potential already exists and you are simply aligning with it. You're not creating it out of thin air. So that's the part where you need to have humility, right? But as well as that, controlling signals a lack of trust. Trying to control everything in your life, trying to control the way that something's going to happen, trying to control other people, trying to, you know, and By the way, when I say control, resistance is a form of control. Resistance is a form of control. Resisting your life right now, resisting whatever's coming up, whatever season you're in, that is also a form of control because you're trying to change something and say, I don't like it this way, I want it to be this way. But what you don't realize is you might be resisting things unfolding in the best way possible, even though they may not seem like the best way possible to you and your limited awareness. So needing to control and being in resistance to surrender, it signals a lack of trust in the divine, in yourself, in the universe. And it also signals a fear that you won't get what you want, that things won't go how you want them to go, which is all coming from a place of self-protection, which is coming from the ego. That is a constrictive state to be in. That is a state that disconnects you from God, from the divine. So the full creative energy of the universe cannot pass to you and through you and into your life while you're in that state because you are not in energetic resonance with it because you are in a more constrictive or destructive state. When you fully surrender, when you fully release control. And that's not to say, by the way, that you become a pushover and you just let people walk all over you and disrespect your boundaries, and that you never use your masculine will to ever set a goal or set an intention. No, that's not saying that. But when you surrender the stuff that you need to surrender, like the ways how, like the things that are happening right now in front of you, when you let go and surrender to those things, you're then signaling trust, you're signaling faith. You switch from fearing that things won't go the way that you want them to go to knowing, knowing that things are going to unfold the way that they should unfold. So in that moment, you're rising above the ego, above that protection mechanism, trying to force things to be a particular way. You're letting things be as they are. That is an expansive, expanded state to be in. You are more connected to the divine, more connected to God, more connected to the harmonious energies of the universe, and therefore the full creative power of the universe can pass to you and through you and start working miracles in your life. So control, resistance, fighting your life, that's all under the umbrella of fear, which is a very destructive vibration. And you cannot be in energetic resonance and a match to love, to creation, to the harmonious frequencies of the universe when you're operating from that state. So what is my point? What am I going to leave you with? Surrender is a shortcut to spiritual growth. And if you notice that you're not feeling very high vibe, you're not feeling great, you're forcing yourself to say affirmations, you're forcing yourself to get more productive, you're forcing yourself to make another vision board, Stop forcing, stop forcing, surrender. Look at how you're going about your day-to-day life. Are you fighting with life? Are you fighting with your circumstances? Are you fighting with yourself? Are you in resistance to how you're feeling constantly? If that's the case, then you're missing out on one of the most spiritual things that you could do, one of the greatest spiritual growth opportunities that you could ever have, which is surrendering moment to moment, day to day. Come out of resistance to your life. Come out of resistance to yourself. Come out of resistance to your feelings. Okay, you fell out with your friend. Okay, you don't feel motivated right now. Okay, you are a little bit annoyed. Okay, your car did break down. Okay. How can you be okay today no matter what happens? A big component of this is realizing that maybe you've been getting your sense of identity from the world still, despite all your spiritual work, from things being okay, from things being the way that you want them. And the switch from Phase 2 to Phase 3 is getting your identity from within, getting your identity from the Divine, not from external reality. And when you're identifying from within that's when you get to say, I know I'm okay, I know I'm safe, I know I'm protected, I know I have nothing to fear. And so nothing external to me can really change that. I wanna give you a little challenge. I wanna give you a challenge for the next week. Whatever comes up, whatever you feel, just don't resist it. Just accept. And one thing you can say to yourself to help you accept is you can repeat 3 times, "It's okay." No matter how not okay something feels, you just repeat 3 times, "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay." I invite you to try that for a week and notice how different you feel. Notice how much easier your life feels. Notice how much lighter you feel. And weirdly enough, The more you release control, the more you release resistance, the more in control you feel of yourself. That is the paradox. I love you all so much. I hope this video helped. I'm sending you all a big hug. Have an amazing week, and I will see you guys next week.