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Consciousness and Manifestation


Tyger

Paranormal Adept
This thread has a direct connection to the 'Consciousness and Magic' thread - hence there will often be cross references between the two. There is also a connection, though less overt connection, to the 'Consciousness and the Paranormal' thread. There is less likely to be overt cross references to the latter thread though that thread has laid important groundwork at the intellectual level and there is important material over there. :)

Five years ago when I came on this site I often got into discussions about the esoteric and occult, since 'the paranormal' is an interest. More often than not there would be disagreements based on divergent paradigms.

Fundamental to a 'magical' world view is that the world, the universe, creation - the whole - is imbued with consciousness. There is a difference between being alive and being conscious. Not everything is alive, but everything is conscious. Prove it! - my compadres in debate might demand of such an occult/magical assertion. 'Woo' detectors started flashing ;) for such posters moored in the materialist scientific world view. Understandably so imo. My answer was never satisfactory - because I always had to direct them to the human being as the reference point. This was not helpful, and was even suspicious. Why?
 
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In a nutshell, prior to the 1600's it was an accepted given that - to use their terminology at the time - creation was infused with 'God'. The universe - whatever it might be - the objective 'out there' - was 'the God Transcendent'. Creation (Everything) was conscious. Rocks were conscious - not alive - but conscious. Plants, animals and humankind were conscious - and alive - welcome to 'the God Immanent' - the God Within working outward - meeting 'Its' Self' in the outward world of the God Transcendent. All was connected.

In Medieval thinking, and prior (in all systems of philosophy across the world) God was the a priori condition. One can translate that to mean that 'the spiritual' was existent before the physical. The spiritual is the causal realm - however, we 'know' the spiritual via the physical realm into which we have penetrated far.

Here I am wandering close to an edge: take this as an interesting story. In order to be able to exist in the lower physical realm divine spirit had to create 'bodies' (sheaths) in order to be able to navigate the lower regions of physicality. Like a ship that must be built before the human can cross the sea, so the spirit needed a 'vehicle' (body/sheath) to enter the lower regions - when that body was fashioned by God/Spirit/Human then the human could begin their exploration of the physical. This is a very simple rendering of occult meta history.

Hence the human is a gestalt between the spirit and the physical - being here changes/transforms the physical realm through the activity of the human, and by all this activity culture and civilization are the spin-off manifestations. Just as all the physical we see is the furthest penetration of the spirit into matter - and thereby 'dead' or the past - so too is culture and civilization the final push-out of human activity and is all the past (though we experience it perforce with acute immediacy).

We are the creators of all we see but we get 'caught' in the immediacy of the past creations - and this is where the manifestation work comes in. Abraham-Hicks is a current teacher of manifestation who is taking this work to a very sophisticated level.
 
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In the 1600's there was a shift - where the universe becomes seen as, viewed as, a machine - a soulless machine devoid of consciousness - to the advanced thinkers of the day. Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' comes out of this surge towards the split of human experience away from a connection to 'God', 'Source', 'Creation' (with the imaginal thinking that embraced, knew and understood that) into a mechanistic world view where the human viewer is somehow now cut-off from source - lonely, remote, critical. [It is in this mode that suicide out of personal angst becomes historically possible - thinking of this kind did not exist before. With it's side effect of the critical faculty inappropriately applied - thinking of this kind gives birth to self-destructive tendencies.] Materialistic Science was then born.

NOTE: This aspect of the mind - or intellect as it currently manifests - is important to consider, so I will make a slight divergence into occult 'physiology'. The developing intellect - as it starts to take place in childhood and progresses through adulthood - is a progressive experience of increasing isolation and loneliness in a certain kind of way. The more advanced the intellect the more pronounced is the critical faculty. Correctly applied the critical faculty is a capacity that assures success when higher psychic faculties start unfolding. However, incorrectly applied - in the emotional realm, for one example - and the havoc wreaked upon an individual's well-being is considerable - to the point of self destruction.

Our 20's are filled with life and feelings rushing towards us with choices and relationships coming at us left and right. This alters as we enter the cooler regions of intellectual development in our late 20's into our 30's. Occultly, at age 35 we are the furthest from 'spirit' - we are at the deepest point of incarnation into the physical. In our 40's we can be surrounded by our family, our beloved beside us, yet the experience of loneliness and discontent can be profound. Often a person will attempt to re-connect with their 20's when the passion so freely flowed ('second adolescence') but this is a mistake because this is the maturation of the intellect that requires communion with spirit not physical procreation, etc. - however, it's no less difficult a transit knowing that. Better transited the more aware one is, of course.

Manifestation is key to what we find around ourselves - and is central to our feeling life which at this point (if we are to become conscious creators) we must now actively command. Chances are good that we have already had inklings of being creators of our circumstances all along. [This is an occult exercise - command of the feeling life - that must be mastered before the spiritual world can be accessed 'psychically' - else one is liable to become 'englamoured' - struck by the 'fairy light' and forever lost - to use some ancient terminology. ;) ]
 
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As Sheldrake points out in his summery of this important historical moment in the 1600's - materialist science, looking at its 'created' soulless machine of nature, proceeded but did so taking with it some religious stuff from out of the ensouled world view - namely the idea of source, of immutable and enduring 'laws' - and thus materialist science proceeded with an assumption that was never 'proven': that the universe is a 'lawful' universe, and like a machine it functions according to laws that materialist science can and will discover - cause and effect in a linear fashion (this is an assumption that has its limitations). There are problems with this view - especially when the proponent does not recognize the underlying assumption - and worse: denies possibilities because 'materialist science' has not yet 'discovered' something is a 'reality'. What this means is that human exploration got locked in to a very limited range. Science is currently bursting at the seams with the scale of anomalies this mechanistic view necessitates. Too many caveats are required.

This brings me to the Science of Manifestation, which has been around for a long, long time. When I was challenged to 'prove it!' back in the day on this forum, my suggesting that knowledge of this kind involved the inner capacity of the scientist, was greeted with howls and the rolley-eye - it sounded like a dodge to a mind convinced of a machine-like natural world independent of the human being. Stating outright that one can access this knowledge but only if one transforms oneself was not persuasive. In fact it suggested something shifty afoot. :);)

Pointing to occult exercises where the human being is transformed is resisted in the current philosophical and 'politically religious' climate - especially where authority still drives the discourse regarding what is acceptable and what is not. Yet self transformation is the absolute key to understanding the universe.

Recently I suddenly saw a more agreeable entre to this whole topic. Rather than pointing to occult exercises - one could point to 'the art of manifestation'. It is the most immediately accessible process to transformation - and has a long and storied list of proponents at varying levels of depth - from Dale Carnegie to Neville Goddard, from Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science) to the New Thought Movement in the 20th century. It's a vast subject actually - that leads to many transformations of great joy.

"Everyone is a manifestor. Each of us creates our reality. Whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. However, not all of us are doing it consciously."

The transformation comes as we become conscious of how the human being creates - how we ourselves are creating at every moment.
This thread will be devoted to that exploration. :)
 
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Key to this manifestation business is feeling. Neville Goddard speaks of this matter in 1944 -

"Every feeling makes a subconscious impression and, unless it is counteracted by a more powerful feeling of an opposite nature, must be expressed. The dominant of two feelings is the one expressed. I am healthy is a stronger feeling than I will be healthy. To feel I will be is to confess I am not. I am is stronger than I am not. What you feel you are always dominates what you feel you would like to be; therefore, to be realized, the wish must be felt as a state that is rather than a state that is not."​

Wayne Dyer: "The words I am strong are simply cerebral abstractions. The feeling of I am strong is a sensation - and as Neville sums up: 'Sensation precedes manifestation and is the foundation upon which all manifestation rests.' "

Neville Goddard: "A change of feeling is a change of destiny."

What for so long appeared to be wishy-washy hoping - a peddler's 'magic potion' of voodoo wordage to waylay the unwary - turns out to not only have experiential verification for those who pay attention, but is coming to be joined by science in support of the power of mind over the physical. Keep in mind that this paradigm posits that we are always creating, just not consciously most of the time - though we all have moments (if we really consider) of having brought something or a condition into manifestation.

We all know about the placebo effect in medicine. What is claimed is 'nothing' did the cure when in fact the mind (via a belief) did the cure. The placebo effect is coming to be seen as a legitimate medical stance: what one leads the patient to believe will happen winds up happening. This is manifestation in its simplest form though the way this is actually effected is mysterious (to science) - except that it seems to be connected to 'belief' coupled with a feeling of confidence that it is so. Getting to the bottom of the placebo effect will be science peeking under the skirts of the real universe and how it works. Nikola Tesla: "The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence."
 
When I first came on this forum 5 years ago I was drawn to the 'paranormal' threads - and in discussions it was evident that there was a strong bias among posters towards the materialist scientific modality. I have always found such a bias cumbersome, but that is not to say I do not subscribe to the scientific method - I do.

In the course of discussions on paranormal matters 'The Secret' was mentioned and pretty much hectored. Not having read the book or seen the film I had nothing to say, though about manifestation I could have said much. I still have not viewed the film btw - nor have I read that particular book. FYI.

Manifestation is not an abra-ca-dabra kind of 'poof!' and it's here - at least not at this stage for the 99.9% of the world. However, there is a paradigm shift occurring - it is evident in the sciences - and among those who have begun to grasp the power of the mind and ourselves as actual creators of our reality. This is a significant shift. To understand it in all its variety and depth requires a careful approach - not just abstract, but rooted in actual personal experience. [I would strongly recommend Michael Pollen's recent book: 'How To Change Your Mind' where he goes into the genuinely consciousness altering impact on society and science of LSD and other reality altering drugs - fascinating piece of history put into context.] This is key to the re-mergence of the 'spiritual' as relevant to human knowledge.

There are aspects to ufo experiences that can be explained via manifestation - but to understand such a comment one must grasp what is meant by manifestation and must have some level of conscious working knowledge of it - which we all have, or can develop. This is not a skill-set reserved for doctoral candidates or high priestesses in the temple mysteries (not anymore). ;) It is an area that requires - and it cannot be said strongly enough - every ounce of our trained, critical and careful intellects. [We should all aim to be Vulcans. ;) ]

The following book (from 1912) is rumored to have been what inspired Bill Gates to leave Harvard and start Microsoft.


The Master Key System
by Mr. Charles F. Hannel

Amazon Review: "The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel was originally published in 1912, over a century ago. One would think that the material in it has been superseded by more contemporary stuff, but to conclude such would be an error of magnitude. The Master Key System is a brilliant presentation about life, the power of positive and creative thinking, and moreover, and possibly most importantly, that with training and discipline, ANYONE can control their circumstances and make their dreams come true.

"We've all heard about the the law of attraction, or how like-attracts-like, or that positive thinking can get us to our dreams - and there are dozens, maybe hundreds of motivational speakers and disciplines which have popped up on the world's radar in the last few decades alone, all of which pitch the very same philosophical and spiritual truths which Haanel detailed in his book over 100 years ago.

"The book is written like an instructional manual, in 24 parts, with lessons to be done in order to gain practical skills with the material. This is a book which could easily be lost to us if not put in the spotlight where it belongs along with other classics, because it is at the very bedrock of many of the most modern and contemporary movements, and even possibly, religious practices which are in vogue today. Some might contend that Haanel was not the only one in the New Thought Movement of his time who propagated these concepts, and that may well be true, but one cannot deny the truth of what he has so carefully elucidated in this terribly simple rendering of a philosophical and spiritual classic.

"I end this review with this quotation from his book: 'All thought is a form of energy, a rate of vibration, but a thought of the Truth is the highest rate of vibration known and consequently destroys every form of error in exactly the same way that light destroys darkness; no form of error can exist when the "Truth" appears, so that your entire mental work consists in coming into an understanding of the Truth. This will enable you to overcome every form of lack, limitation or disease of any kind.' "
 
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Esther Hicks is 'bringing through' a consortium of individualities (since 1985) that go by the moniker Abraham. A pretty seamless presentation of a way of seeing 'manifestation'. I have a thread where I have posted some of the Abraham-Hicks sessions: Abraham Hicks

This has resonance - now - with what is emerging in science, regarding the influence of the mind.

LINK: Coming to Grips with the Implications of Quantum Mechanics

Abraham Hicks is giving 'the lived experience'. Here's an example of the philosophy -

Abraham Hicks: Get Control of your Thoughts and Your Life Will Be Changed Forever
 
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@Constance I have done the transfer of all relevant text to this one thread. Here it all is. Where it might dove tail with the 'Consciousness and the Paranormal' thread let me know. :)
 
@Constance I have done the transfer of all relevant text to this one thread. Here it all is. Where it might dove tail with the 'Consciousness and the Paranormal' thread let me know. :)

Thank you Tyger. I've been out of pocket the last day or two but will read this thread today and will mention any posts in it, ideas developed in it, that dovetail with subjects we've pursued in C&P. ")
 
There have been innumerable people who have propounded manifestation - spanning the whole of the 20th century - and before (though less obviously so then). I do not necessarily accept 'hook line and sinker' any one proponent's position of manifestation - though I definitely believe it is operative based on personal experience. [I think this is the unique aspect of this idea because unlike most 'scientific theories' this is a psychological proposition that can be tested by anyone without personal risk. :) ]

I have found Neville Goddard the most charismatic (and persuasive - for him what he spoke was 100% true and there is nothing more compelling than the person who speaks from personal experience). Abraham-Hicks (via Esther Hicks) is likely the most delightful to listen to (great sense of humor) with an on-going developing sophistication based on the questions presented by each person. Jane Roberts' The Seth Material is seminal work in mid-century 20th century, influencing countless people, among whom was Jerry Hicks (husband of Esther Hicks). But Dale Carnegie's work is right in keeping with manifestation. It's really everywhere, threaded through most philosophies going back to Sophocles.

But what really fascinates me is how science research is now power skating into this 'paradigm' (for lack of a word - I'll use that word) in support of the manifestation 'paradigm'. I really do believe we are entering a new phase of human development - and Abraham Hicks is the clearest proponent, introducing many interesting ideas to ponder.

There are so many out there that see manifestation as a 'woo' concept' when it is clearly an accurate description of what is taking place, especially psychologically (imo). Its full scope and mechanism can be debated, of course, but the phenomenon itself is worth a look-see. I have lots of questions myself and will be attending an Abraham-Hicks day seminar in August to witness a session first hand. ;)

"Your 'reality' is different than the 'reality' of any other being, it is dependent on the mind. The universe is made up of energy and empty space, which are all that atoms are made up of, nothing else. When you look at a healthy blade of grass, you see 1 shade of green, because it is not important to you. A grasshopper can see over 200 shades of green in the same blade. Our individual filters shape our reality.

"In quantum physics, perception (observation) actually does affect the physical location of subatomic particles. Perception and reality are intertwined."
 
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An historical quote: "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." ~ Buddha
 
An historical quote: "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." ~ Buddha

Have read this thread with interest now, @Tyger, and responding to this last quotation from the Buddha is good place to express how your thread's main direction is related to questions and issues we've explored in the 'Consciousness and Paranormal' thread. There our primary goal has been to follow developments in understanding what consciousness is and does that have been realized in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies still forging forward after thirty years. At many points in that thread we have focused on ontological questions, as we are doing again there at present. The core question in that discussion is: what can we learn about the nature of 'reality' as we experience it in our time and place that might reveal the meaning/significance of consciousness in the universe/cosmos as a whole -- that is, can we think our way to comprehending 'What-Is' in Being as an integrated Whole by understanding how 'what-is' in our world, the world of our own being, becomes experienced and known?

In the phenomenological approach I follow it is necessary to explore how consciousness arises in life, in lived being on the planet we inhabit, since what we can claim to 'know' about the local world and ourselves as present in it arises out of the grounds of our being-here. So, in phenomenology, ontology must address the primordial 'awareness' that evolves into protoconsciousness and consciousness in the evolution of species of life. And that awareness must be recognized to be 'bi-polar', consisting of both objective and subjective poles of the being of 'what-is' in the experience of lived being.

I am drawn to the insights of Buddhism that lead to profound respect for the boundaries that exist between the self and the other, lead to the gentleness of Buddhists felt and expressed toward the smallest of creatures. It is an impulse like that which Heidegger expressed in the phrase he focused on in his later writings: "Let Being Be," recognizing the vast disparity that exists between what we personally or culturally want our being and our world's being to be, what we want to bring about out of the vast but mute processes in Being that have brought about the circumstances within which we must live, within which we attempt to make our way justly, morally, in the physicality of 'what-is' here and now in our time and place.

Because I have not read enough of the Buddhist texts and teachings, I no doubt do not have a sufficient understanding of the concept of 'Maya', the notion that all that we see and sense in our existence is an illusion. But it seems to me that it is a leap in essential logic to believe that our lived experiences are illusions, that the local world in which we live in the present is 'unreal' and that somehow we are or should become capable of changing it by an act of the mind. For the suffering we experience and see others experiencing, as well as the satisfactions and joys we likewise experience in being-here and recognize others to experience, can't be swept away without denying the experiential grounds out of which our thinking itself arises. As I see it, the growth and development -- the evolution -- of awareness, consciousness, and mind in the history of our own species is evidence for me that life and its capabilities to sense and gradually understand the nature of being -- of our being and the being of the things that are in the world we exist in -- plainly signify that what we feel and what we think constitute, within a physical mileau, 'what-is' for us and for all aware beings, and what we must call 'reality'.

So I cannot agree that any of us, much less all of us, can and should pursue attempts to deny the complex reality in which we have our existence such as I sense in the ideas and methods propagated by the 'Abrahams' as expressed in the last video you linked. I can understand why many people would hope to persuade themselves that they can individually erase the reality that belongs to all of us, for better and for worse, by an act of personal, mental, will. But I don't think that doing so is productive for the work we humans are obliged to do {'appropriated by Being' to do, as Heidegger expressed it} in the worlds in which we must find ways to exist beneficently among and with one another, to do no harm to others. As Camus wrote, "the only mistake is to cause suffering."

No doubt consciousness as we experience it here and now requires a balancing act given all the inconsistencies, conflicts, and interpersonal outrages we see expressed in our current world and the incoherence that results for us in attempting to 'make sense' of the world and ourselves. We can't control most of what happens in our own lives, much less in the world at large, and so efforts to stabilize one's emotions and mind are necessary. But we can't change the world, reality as what-is in our experience, by a personally willed fiat. Our situation requires us "to be / in the difficulty of what it is to be," as Wallace Stevens expressed it.
 
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continuing . . . So I think we are called upon to absorb all of it. And I think the resources we have for doing so and sustaining our balance in this existence are present in all of us at deep levels, in the personal subconscious and the collective unconscious, in what we know intrinsically at these deep levels and must strive to understand..

Apropos of which, these two prose statements from Wallace Stevens:

"All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence."

"What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality."
 
@Tyger, I posted my above comments to the C&P thread as well, and added this:

"Coming back to the statement by Buddha, I began to wonder whether I'd misread it. Reading it again . . .

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world."

"We are what we think" suggests a parallel with 'higher-order thinking' in one school of consciousness studies, but I think more is, must be, intended in the Buddha's statement since his teachings required that we go deeper into our minds through practices of meditation. Thus, what he intended to say with his following statement --

"With our thoughts we make the world."

needs to be understood at depths less accessible than the level of ordinary waking consciousness, in which we are always already enmeshed in the dominant ideas and practices of the particular world in which we find ourselves existing. I think Steve is the one here who can best help us to understand the Buddha's statements.
 
Thoughts become things. It is in fact the only way the built-environment comes into existence - by thoughts being thought (ideas being spun). Are those acceptable statements? (The next question will be how do those thoughts become things - and we will get to that).

Look around at the built-environment - everything one sees was once a thought - from the cars you see, to the roads you see, to the store you see - even the economic system that determines that there will be a store, let alone a building there that will be a store that will have a sign that will have a pot of (red!) geraniums on it's doorstep.

When we are born we come into an already existent built-environment, a past that is the present. That is a given. We come into a present that has been made up of all past thoughts people have thought. People around us - when we are babies and then toddlers and then children - are thinking thoughts that are either maintaining a past system (religious, economic, political), a physical condition (out houses, spittoons, farming methods) or changing those things by increments or by leaps and bounds. One could say that culture alters through the transition of an idea/thought so that I can show you a picture of New York City in 1900 with all horses and carriages and one automobile - 20 years later the picture of the same location will show all automobiles and one horse and carriage.

The above may seem self-evident but generally it is not so considered. Rather the motive force behind those changes get ascribed to - not thought themselves - but to something we think up to explain what we experience (be it God or a theory of history and cultural transmission). We think a thought that ascribes conditions around us to outside forces to which we are bound - and then can determine our actions. The key point, however, is not what we are thinking, but that we are generating thoughts.

The second question that is really a question in tandem with the first assertion comes naturally: How do thoughts become things? This is key to the entire discussion. In this we are coming up against long held beliefs substanded by experience: hard work, grit, sweat of one's brow (luck!) - and when none of that gets the job done, then we have the thought systems of religion with the promise that rewards will come later in an after-life. I am reminded of the Medieval argument between the Kepler and Copernican systems: no matter how correct Copernicus was, the Kepler system endured long after the Copernican system was accepted fact because the Kepler system described the seen and experienced universe of every man and woman who looked up at the sky. Similar dilemma with the idea that thoughts manifest things.

How do thoughts become things? One has to entertain a new paradigm to understand.
 
Have read this thread with interest now, @Tyger, and responding to this last quotation from the Buddha is good place to express how your thread's main direction is related to questions and issues we've explored in the 'Consciousness and Paranormal' thread. There our primary goal has been to follow developments in understanding what consciousness is and does that have been realized in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies still forging forward after thirty years.
So you have been considering the history of people's thoughts, as you understand them. Is that a fair summary?
At many points in that thread we have focused on ontological questions, as we are doing again there at present. The core question in that discussion is: what can we learn about the nature of 'reality' as we experience it in our time and place that might reveal the meaning/significance of consciousness in the universe/cosmos as a whole -- that is, can we think our way to comprehending 'What-Is' in Being as an integrated Whole by understanding how 'what-is' in our world, the world of our own being, becomes experienced and known?
Interesting. Not far off from the manifestation paradigm.
In the phenomenological approach I follow it is necessary to explore how consciousness arises in life, in lived being on the planet we inhabit, since what we can claim to 'know' about the local world and ourselves as present in it arises out of the grounds of our being-here. So, in phenomenology, ontology must address the primordial 'awareness' that evolves into protoconsciousness and consciousness in the evolution of species of life. And that awareness must be recognized to be 'bi-polar', consisting of both objective and subjective poles of the being of 'what-is' in the experience of lived being.
I would suggest that learning about the paradigm of manifestation - which is an immediate activity and experience that every human being is doing at every moment of their existence - is a good entre to all you summarize here.
I am drawn to the insights of Buddhism that lead to profound respect for the boundaries that exist between the self and the other, lead to the gentleness of Buddhists felt and expressed toward the smallest of creatures. It is an impulse like that which Heidegger expressed in the phrase he focused on in his later writings: "Let Being Be," recognizing the vast disparity that exists between what we personally or culturally want our being and our world's being to be, what we want to bring about out of the vast but mute processes in Being that have brought about the circumstances within which we must live, within which we attempt to make our way justly, morally, in the physicality of 'what-is' here and now in our time and place.
Manifestation goes to the core of what you have here stated.
Because I have not read enough of the Buddhist texts and teachings, I no doubt do not have a sufficient understanding of the concept of 'Maya', the notion that all that we see and sense in our existence is an illusion.
One must be clear what is meant by 'illusion'. To our 5 lower physical senses this world is not illusory in the way we would declare a mirage is illusory. The physical world exists but it is an illusion to believe we are limited by the physical. The ancient Indians saw the spiritual word in/behind the physical - hence they knew the physical was an illusion because they could see past the physical to the realm of causes or source.

I think we sometimes equate this word illusion with make-believe, a puff of smoke looking like the face of a dog, say. Not so. 'Maya' is there but it is an illusion in a way that manifestation makes clear. We can manipulate an illusion and we do every day of our lives.
But it seems to me that it is a leap in essential logic to believe that our lived experiences are illusions
Again, using the word illusion to mean non-existent. That's not the essential meaning of the term.
that the local world in which we live in the present is 'unreal'
Just using your words - 'unreal' only in the sense that the present as we see it is all the past and has naught to do with what is 'really' happening.
and that somehow we are or should become capable of changing it by an act of the mind.
We do not change the past (though that can get tricky - what is meant by that when it is suggested ;) ). The 'act of mind' you reference is thinking. Thinking is both receiving and producing thoughts. (Received thoughts are different from produced thoughts - consider: where do thoughts come from? how do they originate? why this thought over that thought?). Thoughts are key - but the absolute essential motive force to effect manifestation is feeling. The subject is vast and profound, but nearly universally acknowledged and practiced around the world in various ways.
For the suffering we experience and see others experiencing, as well as the satisfactions and joys we likewise experience in being-here and recognize others to experience, can't be swept away without denying the experiential grounds out of which our thinking itself arises.
Essential point: are all thoughts the same? Is the inspired thinking of a Tesla or an Einstein, the same as the practical thoughts emanating from a child placing their hand on a hot stove for the first time? The way your sentence is phrased I almost see a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma: do thoughts arise from experience solely?
As I see it, the growth and development -- the evolution -- of awareness, consciousness, and mind in the history of our own species is evidence for me that life and its capabilities to sense and gradually understand the nature of being -- of our being and the being of the things that are in the world we exist in -- plainly signify that what we feel and what we think constitute, within a physical mileau, 'what-is' for us and for all aware beings, and what we must call 'reality'.
I don't disagree.
So I cannot agree that any of us, much less all of us, can and should pursue attempts to deny the complex reality in which we have our existence such as I sense in the ideas and methods propagated by the 'Abrahams' as expressed in the last video you linked.
This is the crux, of course. But we are daily creating this 'complex reality'. We can create another reality. We can change the conditions of our existence - except we are chained by the 'illusion' that this 'complex reality' is not subject to change. But it is, and people are routinely demonstrating that it is so.
I can understand why many people would hope to persuade themselves that they can individually erase the reality that belongs to all of us, for better and for worse, by an act of personal, mental, will.
It is what anyone who undergoes psychoanalysis is doing. It's also not about 'erasing' - it's about accepting that we have the power to create that reality - and that creation has a method to it that involves learning about ourselves at a depth we have not here-to-fore, except perhaps those few who have done so across cultures.
But I don't think that doing so is productive for the work we humans are obliged to do {'appropriated by Being' to do, as Heidegger expressed it} in the worlds in which we must find ways to exist beneficently among and with one another, to do no harm to others. As Camus wrote, "the only mistake is to cause suffering."
This paradigm requires rigorous internal work. It either is so or it is not so. If it is not so no harm done - one moves on - after having gained considerable insight. But when it does work, human suffering in the world is definitely lessened and there is one more light shining in the darkness. Fact is what is being spoken in all manifestation work are the essential elements (on what is called The Probationary Path) that must be mastered before any real access to the spiritual world can be gained - at least in a healthy manner. Prior to any ability to command the lower sheaths (lower mind and feeling realm) one risks delusion and madness.
No doubt consciousness as we experience it here and now requires a balancing act given all the inconsistencies, conflicts, and interpersonal outrages we see expressed in our current world and the incoherence that results for us in attempting to 'make sense' of the world and ourselves. We can't control most of what happens in our own lives, much less in the world at large, and so efforts to stabilize one's emotions and mind are necessary. But we can't change the world, reality as what-is in our experience, by a personally willed fiat. Our situation requires us "to be / in the difficulty of what it is to be," as Wallace Stevens expressed it.
Interesting. Aren't you contradicting yourself here?

You have some givens that I do not share -

I do control what happens in my own life - what don't you control?

I can change the world - so many do, how can you deny this?

Reality is what I create - it is 'what-is' in our experience when one is referencing the past, but not this moment out into the future.

I agree that reality is a personally willed fiat - if I understand correctly what you mean by this phrase 'personally willed fiat'.
 
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continuing . . . So I think we are called upon to absorb all of it. And I think the resources we have for doing so and sustaining our balance in this existence are present in all of us at deep levels, in the personal subconscious and the collective unconscious, in what we know intrinsically at these deep levels and must strive to understand..
Manifestation is something which goes very deep. As one sees it demonstrated, we see that we do indeed determine/create our own reality and a great deal starts to be understood. JMO of course. :) ButI say this based on the lived-experience of how much I have manifested into my life.
Apropos of which, these two prose statements from Wallace Stevens:
"All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence." "What our eyes behold may well be the text of life but one's meditations on the text and the disclosures of these meditations are no less a part of the structure of reality."
As I indicated in post#15 all this is just the thoughts of the past. We - each of us - either give away our power and go along with what others have left before us, or we create anew.
 
Lots of questions, @Tyger. ;) I can handle only a few of them, this one at the moment:

do thoughts arise from experience solely?

You mean in life as we live it in our time? No, we also think according to, and within, that which has already been framed in descriptions and explanations of the environing world, which dominate interpretation in the time/space/place we are born into. And we find in written human history and philosophy a competition of interpretations of what is real, what is significant or meaningful, and how human life should be conducted.

But thinking itself, the production of ideas about or labels for the things that have concerned our species in sequential historical situations, and the production within these of 'world pictures'/notions of reality -- i.e., of what can be called 'real' -- have all depended upon, could not have developed in the absence of, lived experience first in the natural world [and always as part of it] and then successions of cultural worlds succeeding one another in the development of what you call the "built-world" we inherit. Thinking is always thinking about something, and has been achieved in our species {and perhaps in several others on earth and doubtless others elsewhere} out of the ground, the basis, of pre-reflective 'worldly' experience. Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues in developing Affective Neuroscience trace behavior back as far as possible in evolution and have focused on a core set of emotions that affect behavior and adaptation all the way up to our species. I think you would find his work interesting.
 
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Manifestation is something which goes very deep. As one sees it demonstrated, we see that we do indeed determine/create our own reality and a great deal starts to be understood. ButI say this based on the lived-experience of how much I have manifested into my life.

It would be helpful if you would give examples, from your own experience and others', of what is meant by 'manifestation.'
 
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