No Thanks, I’ve Manifested Enough

When Your Soul Has Had Enough of Smiling

You know the type. The productivity bros, the girlboss spirituality influencers, the apps that track your mood like it’s your blood sugar. They all speak the same glossy language: hack your mindset, manifest your dreams, tap into abundance. I tried to join the cult of constant improvement. For a while, I genuinely thought the problem was me. Like maybe I wasn’t visualizing hard enough, or maybe my gratitude journal was too repetitive, or perhaps the algorithm knew I hadn’t been “high-vibe” enough and was punishing me with sponsored posts about money blocks and $888 courses from people with suspiciously straight teeth.

But then something cracked. The spiritual math wasn’t mathing. In 2025, the gospel of “you can create anything you want if you align your vibration” is beginning to unravel on a planet increasingly marked by ecological collapse, social upheaval, and religious and spiritual scandal. The idea, popularized by works such as The Secret, promotes the notion that reality bends to our mindset. With the right thoughts, we can attract perfect partners, abundant wealth, and endless health (as if those things will actually give our happiness staying power).

We will set aside for a moment the ethical quagmire of applying this worldview to a grieving parent or a war refugee. But even in less extreme cases, affirmations eventually ring hollow, full moon rituals lose their sparkle, and every so-called “breakthrough” loops back into that haunting ache of: Isn’t there something more to life than ______? It’s normal. Things (especially desires) run their course.

So I did something radical: I stopped trying to make the darkness behave. And wouldn’t you know it — that is precisely when Soul showed up. Not as a gentle muse, but as a pissed-off roommate throwing my crystals across the room, shouting: “You can’t good vibes your way out of earth-school!”

And look, I get it. Some of this stuff works for a while. You set a goal. You meet it. You feel good! You post a photo and a quote to share your joy. But you move on. And you should! Because we’re not craving more metrics for our joy. We’re craving the raw, weird, honest, unfiltered stuff. We’re craving Soul.

Depth Psychology Ruined My Life (In the Best Way)

I didn’t mean to go looking for Jung. He found me, like a goblin librarian with wild eyebrows, whispering from the back of a dream. “Psst, you’re not supposed to be happy all the time. That’s not the point.”

At first, I resisted. Because the point was to be happy, right? To fix the broken parts, heal, raise my frequency, light a sage bundle, and transcend the whims of unpleasant emotions so I could stay focused on manifesting the life I was meant for.

A disclaimer: if this path still feels empowering to you, great! Ride that train til it glides over the cliff into the depths of your be-ing. Just know that when that time comes, don’t waste time blaming yourself for not being rich, or healed, or partnered, or eternally peaceful. It’s normal for this shiny worldview to start to feel like a trap. Because real life is not a curated feed — it’s messy, sacred, heartbreaking, wild. It does not bow to our vision boards.

Because Depth Psychology doesn’t care about your to-do list. It doesn’t care about your morning routine or your perfectly aligned crystal grid. Depth Psychology is the friend who shows up with whiskey and a shovel and says, “I smell a mine, let’s go dig!”

It changes the question from “How can I feel better?” to “What is Soul asking of me?” Instead of trying to rise above the chaos, it walks you into it. It loves your grief. It listens to your dreams. It invites your shadow to sit down and have a drink.

It doesn’t optimize your time management chart. It mythologizes it.

The Ego’s Last Stand

Here’s a hot take: most of what we call manifesting is just ego maintenance. “You create your own reality,” it whispers. “You’re just one mindset shift away from the dream life.” I hate to break it to you, but your small, scared self (your ego) is just doing yoga in expensive leggings in your mind.

To be clear, many of the practices that arise from this movement can lead to healthy habit development or be an important entry point for personal development. At best, visualization and affirmation practices can serve as counterweights to long-held internalized negativity. But they will not prevent suffering, nor will they bring wholeness. You will never be finished writing new affirmations, arrive at the perfect morning routine, or bypass the underworld with light alone. And no, misaligning your vibration isn’t why the Powerball went to someone else.

The heroic psychology of “be your best self” may sound empowering at face value, but it rests on a fatal misunderstanding: that the ego should be steering the ship at all. This is why it eventually fails us. It keeps us future-oriented, endlessly chasing a shinier version of self, instead of surrendering to the deep, tangled truth of who we already are (who we always have been). The desire to serve mutates into the desire to be seen. Vision calcifies into mission. Purpose becomes performance. The ego is clever; it knows the language of transformation and can sell it back to us with a polished aesthetic and a monetized ritual. But that’s not Soul. It’s still ego — it just quotes Rumi now.

Descent Is Not a Glitch

When things fall apart, when we think we did it wrong, when the dream dies, we assume we’re broken and in need of healing. When the world fails us, it feels uncomfortable. But when magic fails us, it feels like betrayal. Especially if that magic has saved us in the past.

But maybe that’s the invitation. Maybe the descent is part of the design.

More and more people are calling out the spiritual bypassing rampant in the positive psychology and self-help world. And they’re right to. We cannot send the unloved, unmet, unintegrated parts of ourselves to live with Harry Potter in the closet under the stairs simply because we can’t bear to hold them. They just hang out there, lifting weights, getting stronger and stronger every day until the first chance to escape during a psychic storm presents itself.

Even the term shadow work has been co-opted by influencers and mindset coaches to mean something one can manage consciously, check off a list, or turn into content. They fail to mention that there is no transcendence without a humiliating fall from our throne (I mean, why are we still surprised when yet another scandal befalls the humans we cast in our savior roles)? The work of becoming whole cannot be done by climbing higher. It must be done by going deeper. It’s not about curating a better version of yourself to parade around on the world’s stage. It’s about tearing the whole performance down. Trauma, grief, doubt, and shadow are not detours on the path — they are the path. They are not obstacles to heal, they are intimate companions for the journey.

Soul Will Not Be Branded

We can push back on “positive vibes only” culture in meaningful ways , while still honoring the human longing for happiness. But to do so, the shadow needs to be invited to the seance. We can affirm the power of intention in the psyche while also warning that the ego cannot will the unconscious, or the cosmos, into submission. Real transformation does not happen through domination. Are you plugged into a larger cosmic purpose? Absolutely. But it is a living system, not a vending machine.

In other words, sure, you can manifest the life you want. But only from your entire being: shadow, complexes, neuroses, bad breath, and doom-scrolling addiction. Not just the pretty parts you like to post on social media.

Once you stop trying to manifest your way out of your own humanity, you realize that the goal isn’t to rise, but to root. Maybe you don’t need a better version of yourself. You probably just need a deeper conversation with what’s already there. Basically, you need to listen more! Soul is speaking. Just stop rattling off your to-do list to her all the time, and you might hear her whispering.

So go ahead…

Light the candle. But let it flicker.
Set the intention. But let it unravel.
Write the mantra. But don’t be afraid when it echoes back with a question.

Soul isn’t a product you can brand. It’s a presence. Sometimes, the most sacred thing you can do… is stop pretending you know where any of this is going. And just live it.

And here’s the truth you won’t see on Instagram: there are no life hacks for this. No shortcuts, no morning routines that will tame the soul into a productivity tool.

Soul don’t give a damn about your five-year plan.

Day by day, if you stay awake — if you pay fierce, aching attention to the small ruptures of beauty that stop you in your tracks, the songs that split you open, the smell of rain that undoes you, the stranger’s laugh that cracks something open in you, the ugly cry you didn’t plan on having when that cat on the sidewalk finally lets you pet it — you will catch glimpses. Soul will find you. Most often, it will be in times of deep suffering. It wrecks your plans. It wrecks you, if you’re lucky.

Soul shows up when it wants, how it wants. And then, just as suddenly, it will slip away.

Because Soul doesn’t stay put long. Count on it.

Thanks for walking a little deeper with me.
I’m Lori — artist, writer, soul guide, and sometimes accidental heretic.
If you’re craving soul over sparkle and shadow over slogans, you can find more at

 📖 Rewilding Soul on Substack (Emails with teeth — shadowy, sacred, subversive)

 🎥 sermonsfromthebeach on TikTok (Mini mythic rants for the spiritually feral)

🖤🎵 Depth Pop for the Soul-Curious Not for manifesting your ex back — this is music for when you’re descending on purpose.