Well, today I finished reading James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. I started off liking the book more than how I ended up liking it.
The general thrust of Mind Magic is hard to argue with. The human mind is like an iceberg: the conscious tip, which we're aware of, is much smaller than the subconscious bulk, which we aren't aware of.
Yet thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and such mostly bubble up from the subconscious rather than our conscious awareness. We all are familiar with thoughts that appear unbidden and depart without a conscious goodbye. Emotions, even more so.
Still, the conscious aspect of us is important, obviously. Leaving aside the question of whether we have free will (Doty says it doesn't really matter if we do), every experience, whether it be conscious or subconscious, has an impact on us.
This means that we can influence how the subconscious operates through our conscious thoughts, visualizations, intentions, and goals. In this way our mind can become attuned to facilitating what we want to have happen.
In my first post about the book, I shared a passage from the introduction that summarized the Mind Magic approach.
There is much confusion about manifestation in popular culture, so before I go any further, here is what I mean by the term: manifesting is defining an intention such that it gets embedded into our subconscious, which functions below the level of consciousness. By doing so, we activate brain networks associated with goal orientation that make an intention important, salient, or noteworthy.
In practice, this means that regardless of whether or not that intention is present on a conscious level, brain mechanisms that remain focused on the goal are activated around the clock. Our inner intention now guides our life. By using our inner power to tap the vast resources of our own brain, we gradually decrease the impact of our external environment and begin living from our deepest intentions.
In fact, the first step in successfully manifesting is to separate yourself from the belief that there is an external source for solving your problems and that this external source is what is manifesting in your life. If you want to live a rich, meaningful, and prosperous life, you do not have to appease any power beyond yourself.
I really liked what Doty said here, including how he began his book.
THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU.
It may not sound like it, but this is good news. The universe doesn't give a fuck about you, not because you are not worthy or are out of alignment with the cosmos or have been put under a curse for ten generations. No, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you because it has no fucks to give.
Many of us are taught to spend our lives hoping for something outside of ourselves to fix our problems and make us whole: a winning lottery ticket, a wise guide who knows all the answers, a guru, a guardian angel, or some magical being, force, energy, or genie sitting out there in the universe who will make everything work out for us. For years I longed to believe this, too.
I thought there was a stern cosmic parent tracking all our actions and deciding if we were worthy to receive our dream house or to meet our soulmate or to be cured of cancer. As a neuroscientist and physician, I know today that we have no proof of such a force or being but we have a great deal of scientific evidence of the power of our own minds to produce changes in our lives that may at first appear impossible. This is the practice of manifestation.
However, I got the feeling after reading the final chapters that either Doty decided to alter the message of the universe not giving a fuck about us, or an editor of his publisher advised he do this, since manifesting is a trendy topic and likely most of those interested in this subject believe that, as in The Secret, the universe actually does bring us what we desire if we approach the "I do give a fuck about you" universe in the correct way.
The best example of this in Mind Magic is in the final chapter before the conclusion, "Step Six: Release Expectations and Open to Magic."
Doty describes the tale of Lynne Twist, an executive for the Hunger Project, who took a trip to Guatemala and "had an extraordinary experience, led by a shaman in the mountains" that led her to feel she should "devote her energies to the project of protecting the Sacred Headwaters and its Indigenous people."
Soon after, Doty says, Twist received a gift.
"It sounds terrible," she says, "but the gift I received from the universe was malaria." In fact, there were two strains of it at once, one from India and the other from Ethiopia.
For many months she couldn't do her Hunger Project job. When she got better, she realized that she didn't need to go back to that job.
As Lynne describes it, the mystical power of the rainforest and the power of the Indigenous people's voices drew her toward them, and the seduction of the natural world became almost an obsession... "I believe the circumstances of my illness arranged themselves to ensure this huge life pivot or reallocation of who I am and what I was about."
Doty says:
This is indeed a subtle practice, because part of the power of the manifesting techniques is to ground our intention in highly specific and emotionally coded visualizations. However, we have to remember that the high level of detail in our visualizations is for classifying our intention as important within the subconscious, not for actually exerting influence on our external world.
In other words, holding a powerfully imagined and emotionally resonant vision of our intention in our minds allows our subconscious to guide our activity, but the results of that activity come from the world around us and what it needs... The reality is that we rarely need to know exactly how our intention will be realized or how we will reach our destination. We only need to look for the next right step.
Now, I readily admit that these passages are much less objectionable than the craziness of The Secret, which did indeed claim that thoughts alone can change the objective circumstances of one's life. All I'm pointing out is that Doty is skating on the edge of the universe responding to our intentions, though he doesn't quite go that far.
I did end up with quite a few question marks penned in the margin of that final chapter. Also, in the Conclusion, where Doty writes:
In my life, I have experienced the power of manifesting in ways that I cannot explain. When I first began the practice, I devoted all my energy and attention and heart to making sure my family's rent was paid so that we would not be evicted from our apartment. Out of the blue, a man who owed my father for a job showed up at our door and handed me an envelope full of money -- enough to pay our rent with plenty left over for food.
I remember the excitement and joy I felt as I rushed as fast as I could on my bike, with tears in my eyes, to share the news with Ruth. That was my first taste of the true power of the practice. From a neuroscience point of view, I cannot say how I influenced the situation, but the wonder I felt laid the foundation for my belief in manifesting.
Since then, I have had countless similar experiences that may defy scientific logic but nonetheless speak to the inner power of setting an intention in the heart and mind.
To me it isn't a good sign when an author uses the phrase "that may deny scientific logic" in a book whose subtitle says "the neuroscience of manifestation." But I liked the final paragraph of the book, though it seems to be somewhat at odds with what Doty said above.
Lying back and taking in the beauty, abundance, and connection in my life, I remember the good news: it is the realization that the universe isn't separate from you but that you are the universe, and it is only you who can give a fuck. It is only you that can harness the power within yourself. And that is the real magic.
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