The concept of believing in spirituality is often misunderstood. For instance, do you believe in the computer you are using? When you use something all the time and see it working, it is not a matter of belief, but knowing. So, where does belief fit in with spirituality and magick?
At Aziz Shamanism, I teach the basic tools of creation: desire, imagination and expectation, particularly in my various manifestation trainings. When people say you have to believe in the magick, what they are really talking about is expectation. So let’s have a look at that word:
- ‘Ex’ means beyond – like an exit is for going beyond the “it”; your present place.
- ‘Spect’ is about looking – e.g. perspective is your way of looking at something.
- So – to expect is to look beyond.
This requires you to look at all the details you can perceive, and with that information, project beyond to see where it is going. This is not blind faith or wishful thinking. Faith that is built through practice is not blind faith. I would never recommend blind faith: when it is asked of you, you can be sure you are being manipulated.
Faith in your spirituality, your gods, etc., is something that builds as you take time to build a relationship with your Higher Self, Gods, etc. The more you build this, the more you feel their presence, and the more you see their effects in your life. This is a form of knowing, not belief.
Belief is built on hope. It can be a great motivator when you haven’t yet built that real knowing, but by itself, it will not manifest what you want. That requires genuine expectation; substitutes for expectation won’t work.
Common Substitutes for Genuine Expectation
It is useful to recognise the common substitutes for expectation so you know where you are going wrong.
- Demands – When you say to someone, “ I expect you to do this” what you are really saying is “you better do it”.
- Manipulation – If you were to say, “ everybody else let me down, but I trust that you won’t”, what you are really doing is setting them up to feel guilty if they don’t do what you want.
People even try these manipulations with God; when they pray for something and say they expect a result. It’s like they are trying to shame God for being a lousy creator.
- Affirmations – You keep telling yourself something because you don’t really expect it. The less you expect something, the more affirmations you feel you have to make.
- Blind faith or wishful thinking.
None of these substitutes will help you manifest your desires. So how do we build genuine expectation? Does it mean that we have to see results before we can believe?
Why Expectation Is the Real Tool of Manifestation
That’s another trap. Expectation comes first, then what we expect manifests. The trick is to learn to see expectation as cause, not effect. You don’t expect because you have seen results: you see results because you expected them. When you start seeing it this way, it straight away changes the dynamic. You gain more control over and responsibility for your expectations, because you recognise it as your tool of creation. I explain about this in a lot more detail in my free Manifestation Masterclass, where you get to learn how raising expectation can affect your manifestation results.
Future Causality and Magickal Creation
This also requires us to accept future causality. Newton’s concept of cause and effect has been completely disproven, and too many spiritual teachers who should know better are still stuck in the same outdated paradigm, which is really not helping.
I will explain future causality in two stages.
- First, everything we do is motivated by the future we want or are presently accepting. The reason you get up in the morning isn’t to do with the past; it’s because you have to get to work an hour later. When we use the past to excuse our behaviour, it is just that; an excuse, which we need to create a desired outcome, which often includes manipulation. As an example, we may talk about our painful past to get sympathy, so people feel sorry for us, go easy on us, and give us attention. This necessarily creates more failure, as nobody will feel sorry for us if we are successful and happy. There is a simple choice in how we interact with the world: manipulate or co-create.
- Secondly, every experience we have is a double quantum wave between here and a future. If something doesn’t have a future, we can’t experience it. The past doesn’t come into the equation. With this idea in mind, we can start to understand how to build real expectation.
When we visualise something, we are setting up a future. That future then affects us through the double quantum wave. The feeling of already having that future thing starts to come back to us. From our present perspective, that becomes expectation; the feeling of this future that is going to happen. The more we nurture that future, the stronger the expectation grows, until it actually happens; i.e. the future has arrived.
So when you visualise what you want, take a moment to receive the wave coming back from the future. This is often missed because people are so focused on creating that they forget to receive.
Of course, the past will come up to reassert itself, as memories of past lack comes up as doubt. Just observe these past thoughts until they pass: don’t give any power to the past.
To release all the limitations of your past and work with future causality, you can take the Ultimate Healing Course or my Dragon Magick Course.
Building Faith Through Daily Spiritual Practice
It gets much easier if you are also building faith through spiritual practice. A simple method I recommend is to simply make some time for your Higher Self or deities every day. Don’t try to build the relationship too fast; like any relationship, it builds gradually and requires a bit of work. I give a lot of examples, meditations, recommendations and activities to help build a better rapport with your Higher Self and build more trust throughout my Magick: The Faerie and Dragon Path series.
Relax and take a few minutes to go into a meditative state. Visualise a place suitable for the meeting, such as a beautiful place in nature or a temple. Open your senses and get to know it well. Invite your Higher Self or deity to be with you there. Don’t worry about being able to see them or hear messages; just by spending time in their presence, they will raise your resonance so the contact gradually grows stronger.
If you practice these two simple things, you won’t believe any more, you will know, and you will have the genuine expectation that creates results.
FAQs
Is belief actually necessary for manifestation to work?
Its not so much belief, but expectation that makes it work. The difference is that people can believe that it can work, but don’t really feel it is going to work for them. You have to actually expect the result.
Why do affirmations fail even when repeated consistently?
The problem with affirmations is that you are trying to resist the negative feeling rather than release it. When you feel doubt, you want to keep affirming that it is going to work because you don’t really believe it. As the doubt tries to surface, you have to make more and more affirmations to fight it. This is like planting seeds without weeding the garden. The seeds get strangled. You have to release the negative feelings, then you don’t need affirmations.
What is expectation in advanced spiritual or magickal practice?
Expectation is the feeling that something is going to happen. This is there because you are already creating that future. When you receive the wave coming back from that future, you start to feel it happening. This is the key to success: expectation is receiving the quantum wave of the desired future.
