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The Challenges of Manifestation
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One of the most popular self-help fads is the concept of “manifesting.” When Roxie Nafousi released Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life (2022) at the beginning of the year, it immediately became a worldwide best seller. Several notable people have been sighted holding copies while they were out and about, and it has been on the Sunday Times best selling list for weeks.
Nafousi’s book, however, follows in a long line of other self-help tomes that promote the “law of attraction.” According to this principle, our mental attitudes are the primary determinant of our experiences in life, whether they be positive or negative, prosperous or impoverished, unhealthy or healthy, or harmful or nurturing.
The Challenges of Manifestation
The Challenges of Manifestation
Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006) and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (1937) are the most well-known examples of the law of attraction self-help genre (1937). These books expand on the notion of mental self-regulation that has been advocated by many schools of thought, including the Stoics and cognitive behavioural therapists. They support a philosophy of “mind over matter,” which holds that mental processes are more powerful than physical ones, able to affect not just our emotions but also the physical world.
There is some evidence that having a positive mentality and attitude may lead to more achievement, less health and relationship difficulties, and overall better results in life compared to a negative mindset and outlook. Martin Seligman, often called the “father of positive psychology,” has written extensively on this subject. According to Seligman, pessimism and what he calls “learned helplessness” are to blame for a wide range of negative outcomes, including poor health, a shortened lifespan, fewer accomplishments, and more disasters. There is a large body of literature on the efficacy of mentally rehearsing one’s success in reaching one’s goals.
Those who support manifestation, on the other hand, assert considerably more radical assertions. Their works often rely on questionable esoteric notions that are said to be grounded in quantum physics (although no solid evidence has ever been provided to bolster these claims).
This practise of helping oneself goes back to the late 19th century. In the United States, a group of people called for a “mental cure,” which was where the practise first appeared. All illness, according to this school of thought, begins in the mind. A healthy mind is a healing mind. One of the first proponents of this theory was the American clockmaker Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866). According to Quimby, every illness is nothing more than an illusion brought to life in the shape of somatic complaints. It’s easy to get well once we realise the source of our illness is solely psychological.
Church of Christ, Scientist, established by Mary Baker Eddy, is the largest mind-healing group (1821–1910). Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875), Eddy’s alternative bible, has sold over 9 million copies since it was first published. Christian Scientists, like Quimby, believe that prayer can heal any ailment. In Eddy’s theology, the material world is seen as an illusion and the spiritual realm is where true truth resides. This is a reiteration of an ancient mystical belief. Disease, therefore, is nothing more than an intellectual blunder, the result of putting too much stock in matter and the senses when we shouldn’t. Hardcore Christian Scientists strongly disagree with the use of any kind of medicine or surgery. Numerous sect members and their children have tragically perished due to the group’s attitude to healthcare.
William James (1842-1910), a philosopher and psychologist, was also very interested in the concept of the psychological roots of illness. According to his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), the mind-cure movement is a “optimistic system of existence.”
The leaders of this church have always had an innate confidence in the life-saving potential of positive mental attitudes, such as bravery, hope, and trust, and an equal and opposite disdain for negative mental attitudes like doubt, dread, anxiety, and other anxiously cautious states of mind.
The principles of the “mind-cure” movement are obviously the basis for optimistic thinking. An American pastor named Norman Vincent Peale popularised the concept of positive thinking in his book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). It has a lot of sway, but it also causes a lot of debate.
Prentice Mulford (1834-1892) was another influential “mind cure” theorist who outlined the concepts of the “law of attraction.” Mulford writes in Thoughts are Things (1889) that one’s state of mind has a direct effect on the results one experiences. In his book Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, William Walker Atkinson makes similar findings (1906). Napoleon Hill was the first self-help writer to incorporate the spiritual concept of the law of attraction with purely material goals. Turns out, this dish is a moneymaker. In 1937, Hill released Think and Grow Rich!, which would become a phenomenal success. A new genre of self-help books devoted to material success was largely inspired by it.
Hill’s message is straightforward: anybody can achieve financial success if they really want it. If we concentrate intensely on ideas of money and prosperity, the universe will mysteriously respond with our subconscious and send endless riches our way. Manifesting the will to do so is all that is required for monetary success. Therefore, “like magnets, our ideas draw to us the forces, the people, and the situations of life that accord with the nature of our dominant thinking.” We may easily become multimillionaires if we “magnetise our brains” and focus on making money.
It’s not hard to imagine that a message like this would have been a welcome relief for those dealing with the economic effects of the Great Depression. This questionable message, however, has retained its appeal throughout time. The concept is used again in Byrne’s The Secret. Her “secret,” as you may have surmised, is the principle of attraction. Over and over, the ideas of this legislation are restated. A frequency may be assigned to our thoughts. By radiating this frequency out into space, we attract other objects that vibrate at the same frequency. Many people have reported miraculous improvements in their lives after reading The Secret, including receiving unexpected financial gifts and promotions at work. This book claims its readers can effortlessly amass $10 million because “The Secret can give you everything you desire.” Therefore, “You are the most powerful magnet in the whole cosmos!” … Whatever you put your mind to becomes real.
Most of us are probably going to be sceptical of these radical claims of instant success. Worse still, the victim-blaming ideologies of Byrne and her fellow mind-over-matter authors. In the end, they place the blame for their tribulations on on the shoulders of the victims. Cancer, rape, automobile accidents, and acts of violence are all examples of this. Byrne, for instance, takes it as fact that all of life’s disasters are due to our inability to think positively and to broadcast our cheery desires for luxury products loudly enough into space. The six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust are brought into sharp focus by B
yrne and the numerous money-making gurus who contributed to her book. The Jews, it seems, ended themselves “in the wrong place at the wrong moment” due to their “thoughts of dread, alienation, and impotence.” “Nothing can come into your experience until you call it via persistent thoughts,” The Secret’s teachers say firmly. This is obviously very unsettling information, and I am astonished that these sneaky, unsupportable assertions have not received greater backlash.
Then why do we all love Think and Grow Rich!, The Secret, and now Nafousi’s Manifest? It’s lovely to be told that you can become wealthy without working, and that if you just think about money hard enough, a $10 million check will start showing up in your mailbox. Books that advocate the less appealing, but arguably more mature, message that all permanent self-improvement needs work, tenacity, and time.
To be sure, I believe that the widespread appeal of these publications stems from more than simply the need for a fast resolution to a problem. It’s also crucial that we never stop trying to give ourselves more control. We can’t help but want to be all-powerful and invincible, and to have complete control over our material surroundings, and the magical thinking espoused by intellectuals in the mind-cure tradition helps us justify this desire. It appeals to our primal fear of exposure and helplessness and our innate need to feel in charge of our lives.
Books like this promote an escapist kind of mind magic. They provide us the opportunity to imagine other realities in which we live happily ever after as affluent, attractive, and socially at ease fairy tale characters. Hill’s book was released during the Great Depression, and Byrne’s came out right before the financial crisis, so the timing of their reception by the public is instructive. Despite the atrocities of the Ukraine conflict and the lingering consequences of the COVID virus, 2022 saw the rise to fame of Nafousi’s book.
The issue, as I see it, is that although these novels may give us a brief sense of optimism and even giddy anticipation, the harsh light of reality will eventually shine through. If the anticipated wealth does not materialise, we will experience negative emotions rather than positive ones. By that time, not a single one of our issues will have been fixed. And we won’t have picked up any fresh information about ourselves or insights that may lead to actual growth and development. In addition, there is a penalty to overestimating the extent to which we can change our minds and underestimating the importance of the economic and social institutions in which we are entrenched. When our plans go through, we tend to beat ourselves up emotionally.
Summary
Roxie Nafousi’s Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life (2022) has become a worldwide best seller. According to the “manifesting” theory, our mental attitudes are the primary determinant of our experiences in life. There is some evidence that having a positive attitude leads to more achievement and less health problems. Christian Scientists are the largest mind-healing group (1821–1910). A healthy mind is a healing mind.
Hardcore Christian Scientists believe that prayer can heal any ailment. The material world is seen as an illusion and the spiritual realm is where true truth resides. Prentice Mulford (1834-1892) was another influential “mind cure” theorist. He wrote that one’s state of mind has a direct effect on the results one experiences. Napoleon Hill was the first self-help writer to incorporate the law of attraction with purely material goals.
The Secret and Think and Grow Rich!’s authors place blame for our tribulations on on the shoulders of the victims, rather than on their own efforts at self-improvement. Hill and Byrne’s novels were released at the height of the Great Depression and the onset of the financial crisis respectively. Despite the atrocities of the Ukraine conflict, 2022 saw the rise to fame of Nafousi’s book. The harsh light of reality will eventually shine through in all its harshness.
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