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Question: is it best to remove any and all doubt when doing the manifesting? Does doubt sully the pure communication, or should one acknowledge doubt so as shrug to say, “screw it, I am in your hands.” I am asking about the optimal attitude for one to take with your technique.
The answer depends on how you do manifesting. So, let’s discuss how manifesting works, and explore some techniques.
Manifesting is fundamentally about sending instructions to ethereal software. The software then acts on those instructions to influence events. The main technique in manifesting is the method for sending your instructions. And, depending on which method you use, your doubts might affect the results you get, or might not.
Today, I’m going to explain how doubt affects manifesting in a normal, default technique. Tomorrow, we’ll take a detour and explore an alternate hypothesis — that maybe doubt doesn’t affect manifesting at all. Friday, we’ll return to magick techniques and discuss the method I use for manifesting, which I know from experience works regardless of doubt.
How Manifesting Works
Here’s Yvonne’s manifesting technique, from her blog:
[…] simply fuse our emotions with energy, then give the whole bundle form according to one’s intention. This is the simplest kind of New Age magick. First you get into the spiritual body (use the theta wave if you meditate), fuse your thought/intent with emotion (visualize it) then, pow – push that puppy out!
You can get fancier, with runes and candles and chants. That’s where most mages seem to focus: On the physical actions and conscious thoughts you have as you send out your intent. But regardless of those actions and thoughts, most of the magical action involves two things:
- Which ethereal software you use, since different software will influence events in different ways.
- How the ethereal software reads the instructions from your thoughts.
Once the ethereal software has your instructions, it handles the details. There is actually a lot you can do to influence how it does that, ranging from changing your phrasing, to changing your settings and preferences stored in the ethereal software, to using different ethereal software. But if you’re interested in doubt, you really want to focus on how the ethereal software reads your thoughts.
By default, most software will connect to your mind, read all of your thoughts, and try to figure out what you want. If you’re conflicted, or doubtful, or angry, or any number of other things that would influence how you, in this moment, would act on your intent, chances are* the ethereal software will pick that up, and include it as part of the magick you were asking for. Whether you just send your intent or add runes or rituals, the ethereal software will read your mind in essentially the same way.
*Saying “Chances are” = “This is speculation.” It’s possible that some software is programmed to distinguish between conscious and unconscious desires, and filter out unintended instructions.
Ona on A Little Death blog has a great description of how this might work:
Say, for example, that you want to find an apartment. Your will, cleanly stated, is to have a great apartment for a great price in the right location. If you try to do a magickal working for this purpose though, it is often the case that that your simple will is colored by endless thoughts such as: “I hope this works. I really wish I could find an apartment soon. I want to have an apartment in this neighborhood.” Hoping and wishing become part of the magickal intention and the result ends up being that indeed, you wish, you hope and you want, but no apartment comes into your hands.
This problem isn’t inherent to manifesting, though. It’s caused by relying on the ethereal software to handle 100% of the communication, which requires it to sort through all the different ideas in your mind to figure out what you really want. If, instead, you handle some of the magical communication yourself, you can select the thoughts that go to the ethereal software, and ensure that it only acts on the instructions you intend. We’ll discuss that Friday.
Other posts in this series:- Making Manifesting Work For You (April 3, 2012)
- Conclusion: Does Doubt Affect Manifesting? (April 4, 2012)
- How Doubt Affects Manifesting (March 28, 2012)
- Could Doubt be an Excuse? (March 30, 2012)
- Advanced Ideas in Communication (March 31, 2012)
I’ve wanted to refrain from asking, in hopes that I can pick it up as I go along. I know the phenomenon you’re talking about from a visceral sense by what you’re describing. However, what is your specific word-for-word definition of “Ethereal Software”? I know that you use that term because of the nature of your vocation, just as I apply Magik to the nature of mine. However, I also know that some of your terminology are actually metaphors, as you have pointed out to me in the past. I have a different explanation behind Ethereal Software, but I think it would help me understand better if you would give a word-for-word definition.
Really good question. I thought I’d defined it, but looking for that post, I can’t find it. I’ll put something together soon.
Edit: My answer is here https://magickofthought.com/2012/03/what-is-ethereal-software/
Also, check out this post: https://magickofthought.com/2011/10/does-egrigore-equal-system/
That post was from before the renaming, so where I say “system,” mentally replace it with “ethereal software.”
The thing is, doubt does effect manifestation. It shows up in my own experiments and those of every other magician I’ve ever spoken with on the subject, with the possible exception of you. That’s one of the things that makes me somewhat skeptical about your “ethereal software” model, because I agree that the way you formulate it implies that doubt should be a non-factor.
Now as for your explanation that the ethereal software can read your mental state and somehow incorporates it into your magick regardless of your stated intent, doesn’t that fly completely in the face of your idea that you should program ethereal software with words? If the software is reading your mind anyway and incorporating your thoughts into whatever it’s manifesting, it would seem to me that the precision of your language would be pointless in terms of the end result. Or am I missing something in your explanation?
Very cool. I didn’t actually have data on doubt affecting manifestation, so I’m glad to know it does.
You’re getting much closer to understanding my model. There are still some pieces missing, which probably means I haven’t explained them well yet. Hopefully this series will help.
One thing to clarify now: Before, when I talked about communicating in words, I was simplifying what I actually do, and based on your comments, I think I oversimplified it. I’ll try to remedy that later in this series, too.
And please, keep asking questions, it’s really helpful to see what I need to explain in this series.
I don’t want to manifest outcomes; I want to manifest processes.
The new ager says, “I want the universe to give me $1000.”
I don’t like that kind of manifesting!
I would rather do more of the heavy lifting, and ask “What must I do to earn $1000?” or “What services would best create enough value to bring me $1000?”
I think that most ideas on manifesting are too outcome driven, and do not focus enough on process.
In other words, manifest the process that will achieve your outcome instead of begging for a specific outcome.
This is the model I’m working off of.
I think that model of manifesting is pretty common. It’s what I do, and several readers have said it’s what they do, too. Mostly, I use manifesting to guide me through making good decisions. Especially if you’re working with subtle effects, making slightly better business decisions is probably one of the highest payoffs available.