Manifestation Is Real, But It Is Not Magic: What The Law Of Attraction Can And Cannot Do
We need to have a very honest conversation about the law of attraction and manifestation.
For years, people have been talking about it as if it is a cosmic wish list: write it down, visualise it, feel good for five minutes and wait for the universe to deliver. On one hand, it is beautiful that these conversations have become mainstream. On the other, a lot of people are quietly thinking, “I am doing all the things, so why is it not working for me?”
Let us strip it right back and look at what manifestation actually is, what it is not, and what it genuinely can and cannot do for your life.
So, What Actually Is The Law Of Attraction?
Listen to the full conversation in Episode 129 of The Salarah K Starre Podcast: “Manifestation: What Is It? What It Can And Can’t Do?”
In simple terms: like energy attracts like energy.
You might have heard phrases like “thoughts become things” or “what you think about will come about.” That is the law of attraction in a nutshell. There is also a deeper, scientific side to it. Books like Lynne McTaggart’s The Field explore how quantum physics points to an energetic field that responds to intention and focus. So this is not just fluffy, woo-woo wishful thinking. There is a tangible energetic basis to it.
But here is where many people get stuck.
Most people stop at the idea that law of attraction is just about thinking positively. They do not realise that:
Your emotional patterns
Your nervous system regulation
Your subconscious beliefs
Your behavioural patterns
Your expectations of life
are constantly broadcasting a signal out into the universe.
You are transmitting all the time, even when you are not “doing” any manifesting technique at all.
You do not see it, in the same way you do not see Wi-Fi or radio signals, but that does not mean it is not there. Your inner world is always sending out information and life is responding to that broadcast.
What Is Manifestation Then?
If the law of attraction is the principle, manifestation is the result.
Manifestation is simply your internal world becoming visible in your external reality. It is the “effect” that follows the “cause” of your energy, beliefs, patterns and nervous system state.
Yes, you can wish for more money, a loving relationship, better health and peace in your life. Vision boards and cosmic wishlists are fun and they do have a place. But the energy you are coming from will always shape the outcome.
If you are asking for love from a place of:
Fear of abandonment
Desperation
“No one ever chooses me”
then that emotional frequency is part of your broadcast.
If you are asking for more money from a place of:
Panic about lack
Unworthiness
“It is always hard for me”
then that, too, is part of the broadcast.
Manifestation is not just about what you are consciously asking for. It is about the energy you are being while you are asking.
Why Your Emotional Body Matters More Than Your Thoughts
If you’d rather listen than read, tune into Episode 129 of The Salarah K Starre Podcast, “Manifestation: What Is It? What It Can And Can’t Do?”, where I unpack all of this in real time and guide you through it step by step.
Thoughts are powerful. What you repeatedly think about absolutely influences what you create.
But your emotional body is often even louder.
If, on a subconscious level, you are carrying heaviness, overwhelm, fear, shame or a deep sense of “I am not good enough,” that emotional imprint is quietly leading the way. Many of those patterns were formed when you were younger, watching how your caregivers handled love, money, arguments, stress and responsibility. You picked up beliefs at home, at school, at church, in community. Most of it you did not consciously choose.
So now, as an adult, you may be saying:
“I want success.”
“I want healthy love.”
“I want abundance.”
Yet your nervous system might be saying:
“This is unfamiliar.”
“Success did not look safe when I was growing up.”
“When things went well, something bad always followed.”
To your system, unfamiliar often equals unsafe, even when it is something “good.”
Which means you can end up subconsciously protecting yourself from the very things you say you want.
The Iceberg: Why Manifesting From Your Conscious Mind Is Not Enough
Imagine your mind like an iceberg.
The part above the water is your conscious mind: the bit that journals, visualises, writes intentions, creates vision boards and says affirmations. This is the part of you that dreams, plans and says “yes” to a better life.
Under the water is the rest of the iceberg:
Your nervous system
Your emotional memory
Your unprocessed wounds
Your deep, hidden beliefs about what is safe
This is where your lifelong conditioning lives. Every time you felt rejected, abandoned, not good enough or too much. Every time you watched chaos in your home or saw someone burn out from success or struggle with money or love.
You might be consciously saying, “I am ready for more,” yet deeper down, a part of you is saying a very firm “no.”
And your nervous system will usually win.
This is why you can do “all the right things,” experience a breakthrough, then suddenly find yourself back where you started or accidentally sabotaging the good that arrived.
What Manifestation Can Do For You
When you approach it with depth and honesty, the law of attraction can be one of the most powerful tools for transformation.
Used consciously, it can:
1. Transform The Way You Think
Once you realise that what you focus on expands, you naturally start to shift your attention. Instead of constantly scanning for what is wrong, you begin to look for what is working, what is possible and what you would love to experience more of.
This is not forced positivity. It is conscious redirection.
2. Change How You Feel And Act
Your feelings influence your behaviour. When you deliberately choose thoughts and perspectives that create more peace, hope and empowerment, your way of responding to life changes. You take different actions. You set different boundaries. You choose differently for yourself.
3. Bring Subconscious Blocks Into The Light
The law of attraction is brilliant at highlighting what is unhealed.
If you keep manifesting the same type of partner, boss, financial situation or emotional state, that repetition is data. It is pointing you towards patterns, wounds and beliefs that are ready to be worked with. Modalities like inner child work and parts work (such as Internal Family Systems) can help you go to the root and reparent the parts of you that are scared or stuck.
4. Help You Create Emotional Safety
Over time, as you heal, you start to feel safer in your own body. Success, love, visibility and abundance stop feeling like threats. Your nervous system learns that it is okay to receive and okay to keep good things.
This is where visualisations of your future self, playful “acting as if” and stepping into your next-level energy become really powerful. Not to bypass your pain, but to familiarise your system with what you are calling in.
Your body starts to recognise:
“This is allowed.”
“This is safe.”
“This is normal for me now.”
And when your body relaxes, your energy becomes more coherent, more stable and naturally more magnetic.
5. Improve Your Relationships
As you regulate your nervous system and heal old wounds, your relationship with yourself softens. You no longer chase chaos or confuse intensity with love in the same way. You stop replaying old attachment patterns.
From there, your relationships with others naturally begin to change. You are more anchored, more discerning and more open to healthy connection rather than survival-based attachment.
6. Expand Your Sense Of What Is Possible
When you are stuck in survival mode, your perception narrows. You only see the same old options, the same old cycles.
As your emotional set point shifts, you start to see opportunities that were always there, but you could not recognise them. The lens you view the world through changes. Not because the world suddenly flipped, but because you did.
What Manifestation Cannot Do
This is where some of the earlier teachings around the law of attraction have done people a disservice.
Manifestation cannot:
Override trauma you have not acknowledged
Replace grief you have never allowed yourself to feel
Create healthy love if your nervous system only recognises chaos and is still protecting you from real intimacy
Bring true health if your life is built on people pleasing, over-giving or constant self-abandonment
Deliver abundance if your choices are still driven by a need for validation or by deep unworthiness
It cannot hand you a brand new reality while you keep making choices from your old one.
The law of attraction does not bypass the fact that you are a human being with a history, with nervous system responses, with real life challenges and lessons.
It does not erase your past. What it can do is help you extract meaning and wisdom from it, so that you grow through what you have lived, rather than being defined by it.
And it definitely does not single-handedly regulate your nervous system. That part needs your participation: your healing, your support systems, your practices, your boundaries, your willingness to feel and process.
Your Nervous System: The Gatekeeper Of Your Good
Think of your nervous system as the gatekeeper of your manifestations.
If your body does not feel safe, it is very difficult to expand.
When you are stuck in survival mode, you often unconsciously recreate what feels familiar, even if that familiarity is painful. To an overwhelmed system, even success can feel like a threat because it is new, unpredictable and untested.
This is where many people accidentally create “fear-based manifestations” or pre-emptively strike their own happiness. They prepare for disappointment before anything has even gone wrong. They push away what they desire or choose people and situations that confirm their fears.
Not because they are failing. Because they are fiercely protecting themselves.
The work is not to shame that. The work is to bring compassion and support to that part of you, while gently introducing a new experience: a successful, fulfilling, safe life that your nervous system can begin to recognise as normal.
Becoming An Active Participant In Your Manifestation
So if manifestation is real but not magic, what does your role actually look like?
It looks like:
Getting curious about your patterns and cycles
Noticing where you tend to sabotage or shrink
Acknowledging the parts of you that are scared and doing deeper healing work
Building emotional safety in your body, so that good things feel allowed
Using tools like journalling, future self visualisations and affirmations from a place of creativity and joy, not panic
Creating the life you desire is not about controlling every outcome. Control is rooted in fear. Being in control is rooted in trust, stability and conscious choice.
You do not need to bypass your pain or pretend to be “happy clappy” when you are not. You are not here to join the Pollyanna club and deny your humanity.
You are here to become a conscious participant in your life: to understand what is running the show inside you and to choose, moment by moment, to update that.
When who you are being, in other words the energy you are emitting, really matches what you are asking for, your outer world starts to reflect that. The life you once kept on a vision board becomes a lived, embodied reality.
That is the real power of the law of attraction.
Not that it grants wishes, but that it mirrors your healing, your alignment and your courage to become who you truly are.
Want To Go Deeper?
If this resonates, there are a few ways you can continue this journey with me:
Listen to the full podcast episode that inspired this blog on The Salarah K Starre Podcast.
Explore my free and donation-based meditations and visualisations on Insight Timer to start regulating your nervous system and connecting with your future self energy.
If you feel ready to go deeper into this work and explore one to one manifestation coaching with me, you can visit salarahstarre.com and reach out.
You are simply being invited to update the programming and step into the version of you who can actually hold the life you are calling in.
