Feeling Guilty for Manifesting Abundance

I set out this year with three intentions: Dream delusional big Receive Abundance Flow in YinI start almost every morning with my morning routine, which consists of coffee, journaling, reading, and meditative movement. When I was journaling today, I couldn’t remember the three intentions of the year. I had to find my previous journal to reference. And I rewrote it in my current journal to see how it resonated.It sat funny.Tiffany’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It’s weird to manifest abundance in a world with such forced scarcity. Writing this, grief is surfacing.Intellectually I know that true abundance is not extractive or exploitative - while also knowing there is no 100% ethical consumption in this timeline at least for most of us. But we aren’t here to intellectually talk ourselves out of feelings. The word seems like it’s “guilty,” but I’m not convinced it’s the right word. As an Asian femme who has a history of colonial trauma, I believe in my soul that I should have stability and abundance along with all folks of color - and white people. We all should fundamentally have access to everything we need and more. However, the whole system is set up against folks of the global majority as we know.Also, “manifest” is a weird word, because it’s been wildly misused and abused by the white spiritual world. Although I do think that healing from assumptions that are taught from a colonial place while dismantling the system one brick at a time…is essentially manifesting. It’s the internal AND the external work.Thinking about dreaming big also makes me feel grief. Who am I to be afforded to dream big and have the possibility of it materializing? When I am witness whole lineages being murdered…children being starved to death…mothers wailing at their children under rubble. Who am I?Liberatory imagination challenges me. Can my dreaming, my manifesting, my call in be more than my individual life? Can it be bigger like my intentions are for 2024? Can it hold the dream of safety and abundance for Palestine, Chicago, DRC, Sudan, the list goes on? Can it be that big? Or is there a limit where that dream starts to ring empty?What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?The audacity to dream and build big. Bigger than the constructs and imagination of the colonizer. Bigger than what I will see in this lifetime. There’s this tiktok where someone was talking about this bridge that was made out of live tree roots. They explained that it took generations of people to have it reach across the river. That focus and imagination is so beautiful.Tiffany’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to LIBERATORY IMAGINATION at tiffanywongart.substack.com/subscribe