The dark side of manifesting your dreams

If you have been at all aware of popular thinking about wealth over the past 20 years or so, you have probably come across the phenomenon of manifesting. Apparently it’s very popular on TikTok at the moment; it was beloved of the New Age teachers long before that.

'To manifest something means to make your dreams, goals, and aspirations a reality by believing you can achieve them' says one popular website. It is based on a so-called 'law of attraction', positing that if you think about something often enough, hard enough and positively enough, you can make it happen by the power of your thought alone. It focuses your 'energy' to affect future events out there in the universe.

This might sound familiar to Christians, even if you don’t frequent manifesting circles yourself. That’s because it’s very similar to a prosperity gospel, which teaches the same thing, just with a gullible god as the mechanism. If you have enough faith, if you pray hard enough, give enough money, God will give you the things you want.

It's pure magical thinking, and as psychologists and philosophers point out, that is dangerous. Laura D'Olimpio of Birmingham University writes that it has 'a dark side.' It encourages people to have totally unrealistic goals, setting them up for failure and disappointment. It also ignores the way that reality actually works. It downplays logic and encourages victim-blaming; perhaps the reason you don’t have lots of money is because of the current economy, not because you failed to manifest well enough. Conversely, perhaps the reason other people achieved good exam results is because they studied well. Or perhaps the reason you have a great job is because you had a privileged upbringing.

If we don’t face reality as it actually happens, we will not have the proper reaction to it; whether patience, effort or thankfulness. What’s more, research suggests that those who believe in an 'internal locus of control' are more likely to succeed than those who trust in manifesting.

Believing in your ability to achieve a goal can be beneficial. Believing that your belief will achieve the goal is not.

It was surprising, then, that I found a normally quite sensible and academic publication advocating ‘magical thinking’ ('In praise of magical thinking'). Part of what the author is talking about is more indigenous or traditional knowledge (of herbs etc.) than manifesting. But she then turns to hope, and how it can be maintained in a world that seems to be getting worse all the time.

The author writes: 'Sometimes hope itself feels like magical thinking. And maybe it is. And maybe magical thinking is precisely what has sustained us through hundreds of thousands of years of drought, epidemics, climate shifts, migration, floods, enslavement, war.'

It is human to long for a better life. We were created for a better world, and our very souls cry out against the wrongness of this fallen one. That is why we will naturally turn to magical thinking; and in the absence of any other hope, it is perhaps not surprising that even educated writers will long for it.

But the answer is not to embrace illogic, but to embrace Christ. He is God’s answer to this painful world. He is our hope, and he points us to a kingdom that is not of this world.

That has direct consequences for us now. On the one hand, we will have different goals; the fame and fortune and possessions that are the object of manifesting will no longer be our goals; for the blessed people, Christ tells us, are the poor, the persecuted, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness rather than earthly wealth.

And, knowing where true wealth lies, we can have joy now, for the hope and positivity that we need in the face of suffering is based on something sure and real. We rejoice now, even when things are bad; even because things are bad.

Don’t trust in magic, however it’s recommended to you. Trust in Christ. That’s the key to a better world, now and always.