Hello!
If you missed them, please go and read:
In this series.
This week we’re going to look even deeper at the idea of ‘manifestation’ and why our spiritual influencers are confusing the issue. This is deep so let’s be ready!
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Was It Manifestation? Or Access?
Along with this, many of our influencers/self help gurus aren’t seeing where their own access, wealth and privilege is what gave them the ability to pursue their passions and to make money while doing so. They aren’t seeing that the safety nets of having gotten an education, being able to pursue passions and the LEARNING process that goes along with that without having to constantly scrounge to make ends meet, being able to try and fail at things and not risk ruining their entire lives, being in circles in society where people have disposable income to spend on non-essential items, being able to market to people via ‘looking good’, being able bodied, being supported by family or spouses and on and on are the REAL reason they were able to ‘work hard’ and manifest their dream jobs and all the cash that’s going along with that.
They aren’t seeing that if they are TEACHING abundance/how to find your purpose so you can make a lot of money - that of COURSE they’re going to be making a lot of money - not because they know how to run a business, not because they know how to help people find their purpose and not because they have some special practice that is enabling the universe to flow through them - but because they are selling a dream EVERYONE wants to believe is true and possible for them, and thus people will buy their products and services with little to no evidence that their products will be of actual help.
They are selling a thing everyone wants to believe is real, and thus all they have to do is look the part and they’re likely going to have success. This is NOT the same thing as helping people actually discover their passion, nor is it the same thing as actually helping them effectively market and manage a business. A business that isn’t selling a fantasy that everyone wants to be true.
They aren’t seeing that the world THEY live in, isn’t the world EVERYONE lives in. They aren’t seeing that selling that they can teach you how to manifest abundance isn’t the same as having a real business. They aren’t seeing all the ways in which they had help, support and safety where others don’t.
They are not seeing where their OWN problems in life aren’t rooted in not living their passion/not being high vibes enough. They aren’t seeing their own trauma from existing in a system that doesn’t value human life. They aren’t seeing that they are oftentimes perpetuating the very same toxic ideas and structures that are making everyone so unhappy in the first place.
They aren’t seeing that the answers to the pains caused by toxic capitalism isn’t more capitalism.
They aren’t seeing that more people hoarding more wealth isn’t going to make our work a better place.
They aren’t seeing that selling MORE of ourselves to the system isn’t the answer to fulfillment.
They aren’t seeing that there are SO MANY other aspects of our humanity that are being fully erased by our system - and that THIS is usually what’s causing us our pain.
They aren’t seeing the exploitation required for them to ‘manifest’ abundance.
Along with all of this, so many of our influencers don’t have any credentials for selling what they’re selling or doing what they're doing. Many of them have little to no experience with what they’re claiming to be able to teach/do for people.
Most of our influencers instead rely upon their own personal experience as their credential.
Now again, this isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of people out there who have learned truly valuable things via the school of life. It’s not to say that experience isn’t a valuable and legitimate source of information - in fact I am 100% all about learning from real life and getting a deep, nuanced perspective of things via living THROUGH things vs. just studying theory.
However.
When all a person has is their own experience, and when they are using that experience as their main marketing material - again we start to see the lines between the human being and what the human being is selling/doing for work starting to blur to a degree that there’s almost no separation.
Again, this doesn’t have to mean that they have some sort of formal, institutionalized education. Many people have studied ‘in the field’ for years, really learning what OTHER PEOPLE are going through/are like and have done a lot of reading/learning from other sources - and this counts! People who have really taken the TIME to become an expert at something are equally qualified - and the results they get from their work will be there to prove that.
But again, this is different from literally having only yourself as your example. When you assume that your perspective is the universal perspective, and when you are ONLY drawing from your own life and how you interpret that life - this is a red flag.
This is where most of our influencers come from.
They are teaching from their N1 experience - and that’s helpful to a degree but it’s not expertise, and it leads to a very sticky situation for their own personal lives as well as a sticky situation for the people they are trying to help.
This leads to a WHOLE lot of general advice that isn’t general, and a lot of shame, guilt and self blame when we don’t get the promised results.
What’s more, this making YOURSELF your product means that our influencers and self help gurus are often caught in a situation where they have to deny and erase their own humanity.
Because we still live in a world where people want PERFECT solutions to problems.
Where they want an easy to follow, step by step guide for how to get out of pain and into success - and they want it to be perfect and permanent. They want it to be whole and complete.
People want heaven. They want a clear path from pain to transcendence.
Which means, if you are selling what you’re selling via your own life story - you then have to come across like you’ve achieved this level of transcended perfection in order to have a chance at successfully selling whatever solutions you’re selling to the world.
If you and your experience are the spokesmodel for your product - you then must prove that you have found the perfect answer and that you’re living that perfect answer all the time - otherwise you won’t have a compelling enough story to really make money in our economy.
AND.
You also have to have perpetually NEW, shiny, better, improved, upgraded products to sell. This is partially because of the way our systems are set up - in order for those who own the means of production to continue generating ever expanding profits, they NEED us to be continually BUYING and PRODUCING. We can’t ever find ‘enough.’ We can’t ever land somewhere and stay there. There always needs to be a new trend, a new flashy item to buy, a new level to reach in society, a new goal, a new - anything - which means our gurus, self help experts and spirituality coaches can’t ever ACTUALLY sell us a perfect solution.
Because if they did, they would likely put themselves out of business.
If you’re not continually keeping up with trends, pumping out new products, pitching that you have new information - people are going to get bored of you and walk away.
At the same time, we have to remember that TRUE growth, TRUE healing, TRUE change comes from small, incremental changes, implementation of daily habits and a whole lot of TIME and PATIENCE. Most of the time what most of us actually NEED in terms of fixing our real problems and finding lives that feel better is either systemic reform so that we’re not being perpetually crushed under the weight of our systems that NEED us to feel perpetually crushed OR we need to check OUT of the never ending ‘not enough’ cycles where we’re constantly indoctrinated into trying to fix ourselves so that we can check INTO what we actually want and need, what’s sustainable for us and we need tools for how to actually LIVE this way.
Which means that the influencer who is a part of the system (which we all are to a degree) can’t actually sell what they are promising. They can’t sell a perfect solution and they can’t sell something complete because a) that doesn’t exist, b) real progress is slow and not flashy/particularly easy to sell in our instant gratification world and c) because THEY need to be perpetually coming out with something new to stay relevant.
This is why most of our spiritual gurus and self help influencers constantly cycle between their deep, painful vulnerable shares about their struggles followed by the sales pitch of the thing that changed their lives, followed by some silence, then more vulnerable shares, then new products and services and so on and so forth.
Everyone is being duped in our system and the influencers who are selling us fake solutions and quick fixes are just as much victims to the system as anyone else.
Most of the time, these people are spending more of their lives making it LOOK LIKE they are where they say they are, making it APPEAR that they’re experiencing what they say they’re experiencing and trying to CONVINCE people that what they have and what they’re doing is WORKING - than they are actually DOING the thing they are promoting. They aren’t taking the time to do the work. They aren’t being quiet enough to actually focus. They aren’t going through a personal transformation because they HAVE to stay on the surface of things to stay RELEVANT. And thus, again, they don’t even really know if what they’re selling is good long term, they don’t really know the results of what they are selling and they don’t know if what they are doing just LOOKS good - because all they have is a surface level relationship with it.
There’s no time in our market economy to invest in something and see what happens over time. There’s no time to grow incrementally. There’s no time to have setbacks, to learn from them and to stay the course.
It’s all about what gives me immediate results, right now - and everything else is just thrown away.
Most of our influencers end up being revealed as not having been honest about what they were experiencing because again, in order to be promoting yourself, in order to be selling something - there’s no time for you to actually be DOING it. There’s no time for you to be quite for a while to see if you get LONG TERM results. The only thing available is to jump on whatever is new and trending, put your own little spin on it, package it up and sell it via your curated image.
That’s not real growth or real leadership.
The Privilege Problem
Finally, most of these people occupy places in society where the solutions to THEIR problems aren’t actually accessible and reasonable for *most* people.
Most of our influencers and gurus are living lives where the things that ACTUALLY took them from the pain they were in to the pleasure they’re experiencing were all things that exist behind a paywall, that exist because they had time freedom and flexibility and exist because they had access.
A lot of the time what has given our influencers and self help gurus the great lives their living, is money. Sometimes it’s not that they have actually discovered a process that works, a tool that changes lives, an energetic shift that allowed them to exist in a new reality - but rather they found a way to SELL something and in that selling they placed themselves in a position where they then had access to healthcare, food security, upwards mobility, time freedom and all the other things a reasonable amount of money will give you - and THIS is what ACTUALLY made their lives feel better.
Much of the time we are seeing people in the self help space talk about the power of just ‘shifting your focus’ and harnessing your willpower. Working hard. Taking time out for yourself and resting. Manifesting through this or that energetic technique. We see a lot of influencers talk about the ‘inner game’ that they believe to be the thing that set them free and gave them the ability to live these amazing lives. Many of them genuinely believe their own transformations were just a result of their working hard and doing all the right things, some spiritual shift, a manifestation technique and so on.
They believe this because they don’t see themselves in context.
They are living in space and places in society where working hard WAS all they had to do. Where they had safety-nets that allowed them to try things, fail and not destroy their own lives. They had help. They had investment from their community. They had access to people who gave them legs up. They were conventionally attractive and were able to ‘look the part’ well enough.
They really see that what happened was their own working hard/shifting something as being the ONLY reason they achieved their success - because all the other things that supported and helped them were just ‘a given’ for them - but this isn’t the case for MOST PEOPLE.
We have to be mindful of where our gurus are coming from, and the context in which THEY are existing.
I have seen SO many abundance coaches teaching that they can teach anyone how to manifest abundance through their marketing strategy, their sexual practices, their polarity work - when the reality is the reason THEY are abundant is because they are selling that they can teach YOU to be abundant! They don’t actually have a track record of having a successful, legitimate business. They don’t have a track record of actually having nothing and working their way up. Rather, they got successful by selling success - and that doesn’t translate to anyone else who is selling or trying to be abundant in any other way.
I have seen SO many people who believe that it was simply their work ethic and willingness to get up early and do hard things that got them to where they were - when in reality they had financial support from friends and family, relative safety and a whole lot of societal help in being ABLE to have the time to work on the goals they had - they had time freedom and able bodies enough to be able to pursue working hard because they didn’t have the obstacles in their way that other people have.
I’ve seen many people selling transcended health who are young, had always been able bodied, who have great genetics and again, access to the time and resources necessary to exercise, rest well, eat well and so on - selling that they can teach ANYONE to look like them.
I’ve seen people sharing that their success in love was just a matter of shifting their mindset or doing a healing of some sort. People who claim that they manifested wealth via thinking.
Essentially, a lot of people are selling that YOU HAVE ULTIMATE CONTROL over your entire life, and that anything you want you can have, if you just fix/change/align yourself enough - they preach that the ONLY obstacle anyone could face in this life is an internal one - and that they can teach you the secrets to overcoming these obstacles.
They preach this ultimate empowerment while ALSO teaching that in order to gain the freedom you want, you have to hire THEM to teach you the SPECIAL THING/sell you the SPECIAL PRODUCT. They feed right into our dual and contradicting desire to feel like we have ultimate power AND like we have found the ultimate guru-teacher-provider who has the perfect answers for us - who we just have to follow.
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Alright, let’s take one final break here, and come back next week for our practical breakdown on how to interact with the self help world so that we can get whatever benefits/truth are there, without getting caught up in the harm/nonsense that’s also a big part of what we see.
<3
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