The "Manifestation" to Human Design Pipeline

I burnt my lists forever.

In the years leading up to discovering Human Design — and during the first year or so of my experiment — I was heavily steeped in the world of manifestation. I was writing lists, passing tests, reprogramming my childhood trauma through self-guided meditations, clearing “blocks” which were getting in the way of what I desired. I was standing up for myself, cultivating self-worth, and getting clear on my “authentic code”, signalling to the universe I was ready to receive abundance and leave my “scarcity mindset” behind. Yes, I am indeed talking about the world of Lacy Phillips and her mega company To Be Magnetic.

Prior to finding her work in 2018, which was called Free and Native at the time, I was already into the esoteric world, spending money on crystals and psychic readings alike. On the weekend, I was obliterating myself getting blackout drunk, but surely it was balanced out by my vegan lifestyle and commitment to meditating every morning.

My mother was always into alternative healing and the mediumship world. I am very grateful for that — she even had my birth chart done when I was a child. She took a tarot course (and various other miscellaneous courses during my early childhood, like the beauty course she took to become a salon lady where she waxed my school principal in my living room) and used to pull cards as a “party trick” at her girlfriend’s birthdays. Until she eventually realized, the cards never lied, and it was no trick.

All this to say, I’ve been primed for this path ever since I was young. Perhaps I am only into Human Design because of her influence on me as a child. I don’t know — we all pick up so much in childhood which influences our interests and what we are drawn to later in life.

But this is turning into a side tangent. Back to Manifestation.

I had heard of the “Law of Attraction” prior to finding Lacy’s work, although I had never read ‘The Secret’ myself. Given it came out in 2006, it likely reached more of the Gen X/older Millennial cohort. Yet, we can still see the impact of how it’s bled into culture today, paired in hand with the booming (and still growing) spirituality and self-help industry. Even the word “manifestation” itself is now used so casually in conversation amongst my Gen Z peers like it’s some kind of good luck charm — “dw, I’m manifesting it babes!”

There is something deeply seductive about the concept of manifestation. Perhaps it appeals most to those of us who feel like we lack the self-discipline to hustle into getting what we want out of life (or know from experience it doesn’t really work). So we turn to the “spiritual”, to the “mystical”, to believing and trusting in a higher power — neutrally described as The Universe™ — to take care of us and deliver us the perfect life.

And then along came Lacy. What appealed to me about Lacy’s work was that she was tearing down the old rhetoric of “think positive” and “make your vision boards” and instead, was focused on rewiring your “subconscious beliefs”. It was neuroscience baby. This wasn’t woo-woo; it was practical, at least more so than any form of spirituality and manifestation I had encountered prior. She had created her own manifestation system and sold it to us in a perfectly packaged formula — she transmitted to the tribe her freaky-genius insights through efficiently explaining how it worked, empowering us to find our own meaning and purpose in life (follow the pings!), ultimately, to have the experiences and fantasies our soul desired.

Basically, I am keynoting her chart.

Feb 15, 1985, 16:00, Merced, California. How did I calculate this chart you may ask?! Lacy has shared her astrology birth chart placements online, plus her bday is publicly available. When you know someone’s rising sign, you can narrow their chart into an even shorter time window. The time frame to check her chart is 15:23 to 17:13. You’re welcome.

As a Projector, she totally mastered the system of Manifestation. As a 3/6, she tore down what didn’t work from her first 30 years and based on that experience, role modelled something new to the collective based on her discoveries. She started Free and Native around her Saturn Return, and the business blew up over the next several years, “success” literally banging into her as a third line. Many of us who found Lacy in the early days were attracted to her for the very reason she was the brand. But as she stepped back and transitioned into her second phase of life on the roof as a sixth line, she became less involved as a central facing part of the business. In 2019, she came out with the new slick black and white aesthetic and rebrand of To Be Magnetic. Whilst personally, I was disappointed, I continued along in devotion to her work for some time afterwards.  

I was the heaviest into her work during 2018 and 2019. When I get obsessed with something, I go fucking deep. As someone who had never done traditional talk therapy — I did a short stint at the end of 2018, even telling my therapist about her work who disapproved of me diving into my “shadow” — Lacy’s work was the first time I looked at my childhood trauma. Thankfully, I have not experienced Trauma with a capital T in my life — just the mini traumas (lower case t) that happen inevitably throughout childhood due to being young and impressionable. Her work consisted of journaling exercises and what she called “Deep Imaginings” — which were self-hypnosis meditation tracks — to get to the root memory of a current trigger, in order to heal it for good. Once you healed this trauma, you would be closer to manifesting the thing you wanted because there were less blocks and limiting beliefs obstructing you from your desires.  

Boy, did I have all this baggage I never knew existed before! And now I had reasons for it. Oh dear lord, don’t give a girl reasons for her trauma. It was an endless bucket of worms where it seemed that the more I dug for reasons, the more I found. Any time I would experience the slightest trigger or change in my emotions, immediately I would try to reprogram that shit away. I was strangely always excited to discover one of these core memories or blocks; I felt in control, like I was doing something to change, heal, and fix me, on an “energetic” level. My logic was the more blocks I cleared, the more likely my life would be great! Everything was going to pan out exactly how I wanted, my list finally manifesting into reality.

Wrong. So obviously plain wrong.

I was doing more work on myself than I had ever done before. I was doing the work, as they call it. And yet, to be brutally frank, I never manifested a damn thing I had written down on a list. I still have countless journals back home which are filled with all my triggers and realizations from my deep imaginings and crafted lists and authentic codes and uplevelling exercises and more. What a waste. I was traveling in Europe in 2019 and used up so much space writing about all this manifestation work, where I should’ve just been writing about my experiences living abroad for the first time in my early 20s.

I guess there were some things I manifested, although never anything I put on a list. I was freakishly good at finding the exact pair of mom jeans or brand-new Doc Martins at the thrift store. I seemed to get something I wanted at the exact moment I stopped caring if I wanted it at all, which is still a thing for me today. As soon as I stop caring about being alone, I meet someone new. As soon as I stop caring about doing sessions, someone will book with me. Someone literally gifted me their bike the other day when I had been thinking about getting one for months. It came the moment I stopped caring about having one at all.

So, there is something to manifestation. But I don’t believe we have any control over it, whatsoever. I don’t believe we get the things our mind desires just because we want them. I have a theory that the people obsessed with manifestation the most are everyone besides Manifestors in Human Design, who are technically the only Type who can “manifest” with a motor connected to the throat. (MG’s also have a flavour of this, but still need to respond first). Isn’t it ironic an entire manifestation system came from a Projector? I think it’s because we realize we have no inbuilt capacity to manifest on our own. Manifestation for every other Type is a symbiosis with life, in meeting the right people, or entering into the right opportunities, which provide the energy to manifest (in a way, it is very mystical). But it’s important to note — the Manifestor doesn’t manifest what their mind desires either, even if they can manifest on their own accord.

The true gift of Human Design is realizing we have no idea what is possible for us, nor what is correct for us, until it literally shows up in our lives. Life does deliver exactly what we need at the moment we need it, but not in the way the mind wants. Mental and strategic concepts of manifestation are a limitation which can cloud your perception of seeing what’s correct for you. Because when the mind is hell bent on making something happen, it cannot be open to recognizing what it never could have imagined on its own. Yes, Strategy and Authority are a limitation too, but a limitation that opens us up to possibility, and more importantly, provides a way to navigate this world of endless choices and information. God knows we need it.

The self-help industry, whilst very appealing and containing (microscopic) seeds of truth, working on yourself endlessly, forever, is ultimately a trap. To be honest, I never think about my trauma from childhood anymore. I don’t automatically correlate every emotion or trigger that arises with a “core” childhood memory. So many of my “problems” have just naturally disappeared through the deconditioning process. I also think it’s very damaging to someone who is emotionally defined to associate every nuance in my wave with a reason, when so often it’s just chemistry passing through.

If we cannot change the past and we cannot predict with certainty the future, all we have left is the now: this is what Human Design deals with. It deals with surviving in the now, making decisions based on your present reality, not some imagined fantasy. The body can only exist in the now. The mind is flexible in its ability to travel back and forth in time because it’s based in duality.

Popular concepts of Manifestation, like Lacy’s, assert we have control over the outcome of our lives. If we did, wouldn’t we have all manifested our dream life by now? Wouldn’t we all be financially abundant? Surely global wars wouldn’t exist. It fails to take into account the luck and chance of the lives we are born into — born in a certain country, into a certain socio-economic demographic, surrounded by certain people, embodying your own specific design. Like c’mon, there is so much we don’t get to choose about our lives. I don’t know anyone who has lived their life from birth to death with everything panning out like their mind imagined. You get derailed. You take detours. You take scenic routes. You take hidden paths. Life happens. Then life happens again.

But I have to give credit where credit is due — Lacy’s work introduced many people to Human Design. I know a number of Human Design influencers who first found it through her and her podcast. In a way, I think Lacy and maybe more broadly, manifestation, is the gateway drug to Human Design. I mean, this system is still considered part of the New Age space. And yes, maybe it is bastardized when used in conjunction with manifestation or the business world. But her work also met me where I was at during that time: it was my pre-deconditioning era, where I was beginning to clear out the people from my life who didn’t belong there (aka, I was honouring my authority). It was, in a way, preparing me for what was to come.

I think manifestation can be a helpful framework for seeing the magic in life unfolding. But I also think it can be a distraction from seeing what’s right in front of us, lending itself to mental fuckery. I am thankful I no longer see my life as dependent on passing a series of tests by the Universe, or constantly working on my triggers or emotional pain points. I’m tired of working on myself; I’m too lazy to care. So I burnt my lists and threw them in the trash. Good riddance. I could use the journal space.

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On that note, I leave you with this fabulous meme:

— Chiara 💫