Not in the way manifesting teachings promise. Therapeutic Shamanism agrees that the future is open and that our choices matter, but much of what happens is shaped by other people, by collective human choices and by things nobody controls, and many of our own choices are made unconsciously. Plans for the future have to be ethical and realistic; wishing for what is unrealistic is magical thinking, and no true GuideGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this will help with it.
What is manifesting? #
Manifesting, often linked with what is called the Law of Attraction, is the popular idea that by focusing clearly on what we want, and thinking and feeling positively about it, we can bring it into our lives. The psychologist Gabriele Oettingen finds the notion that simply imagining our wishes coming true will help us attain them “everywhere these days”. Best-selling books such as Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006) spread the message widely, and she sums up what such books teach as the belief that “we can make good things happen just by thinking positively”.1 This answer describes the idea in order to explain why Therapeutic Shamanism does not teach it.
Doesn’t shamanism also say we can choose our future? #
Yes, but in a very different sense. Shamanism is essentially a multiverse model: the future is not set, there are countless possible futures, and our decisions shape which one we step into.2 That much might sound close to manifesting. The differences lie in everything around it.
First, much is not ours to choose. Some things nobody controls, such as the laws of physics, the moon, the sea or spiders. Others are made by collective human choices, such as tennis, Sweden, child poverty and Monsanto, over which one person has little real say.2
Second, many of the choices that are ours are not made consciously. They are made by our habits, the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves and the scripts we live by. That is why habits are so hard to change.2 So much of the decision-making behind our choices happens below awareness, shaped by old hurts, patterns and inherited burdens, that the work is not to wish harder but to heal the past, so that our choices become more conscious. See Can we change the past?
Will Guides help us get what we want? #
Not if it is unethical, and not if it is unrealistic. Both the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer are places of impeccable ethics, and true Lower-World Guides will not help anyone use shamanism to harm or manipulate. If they seem to, then either they are not really Lower-World Guides, or the person is not really listening to them and is deluding themselves with their own wishful thinking and fantasies.3
The same holds for plans and wishes about the future. They need to be ethical, and they need to be realistic; otherwise it is magical thinking, and no true Guides will help. It also matters which part of us is doing the wanting. Guides are much more disposed to help with plans based on our Soul and Spirit than with plans driven by the desires, and inherited burdens, of the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer ego. See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
Is manifesting a form of magical thinking? #
Wishing for what is unrealistic is magical thinking, and no true Guide will help with it. Magical thinking belongs to the child, along with an inflated sense of our own power and importance, and mistaking that kind of wishful thinking for true spirituality is what is known as the pre-trans fallacy. See What are the pre-personal, personal and transpersonal, and what is the pre-trans fallacy?
The healthy alternative is the stance of the true Adult, who is willing to see things as they are rather than as they would like them to be, and takes responsibility for their own choices, actions and feelings.4 With the things we cannot control, we still have response-ability, in that we can choose how to respond. See What does it mean to become a True Adult?
What does research say about positive thinking? #
That it is more complicated than manifesting allows. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich, in her book Bright-Sided (2009), mounted a fierce critique of what she called “the mass delusion that is positive thinking”, arguing for seeing things as they are, even when we would rather not.5
Gabriele Oettingen, a psychologist who has studied the question experimentally for over twenty years, found something more nuanced. In her first study, of women on a weight-loss programme, those who expected to succeed, judging from their past experience, lost considerably more weight than those who did not; but those who indulged in the most positive fantasies about slimming down lost less than those whose fantasies were more negative. Her explanation is that positive fantasy lets the mind feel as if the goal has already been reached, so energy for pursuing it drops. She does not dismiss dreaming, though: she describes how fantasies can sustain people through captivity, illness and long waiting, and suggests pairing a wish with an honest look at the inner obstacles in the way, which helps people pursue wishes that are attainable and let go of ones that are not.6 See What is shamanic goal-setting?
