“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.”

— Attributed to Henry Ford

Introduction

The Mutuality of Thoughts and Reality

Thought creates reality, and reality influences thought.

This is the natural result of the law of cause and effect and the law of connectivity, where everything that sentient beings perform in the cosmos ricochets back into themselves.

I call it the law of manifestation, where every emotion, thought, intention, or belief that we have actualizes as an action in the physical plane, which then affects us.

Thoughts are the language of the spirit, but actions are the language of the physical realm.

When we harbor a spiteful thought or emotion of anger, wrath, resentment, or jealousy, that can become manifested in the physical reality.

They can become actions embroiled in deep hatred, justifying many acts of violence and even massacres against an entire people.

When these effects take form, they affect the whole. These destructive habits influence society as a whole, perpetuating the cycle of hatred and anger.

Hence, many wars and conflicts may continue. Many fear-based institutions that perpetuate ignorance, suffering, dogma, and division, such as racism or caste systems, continue.

These then return to people’s minds, reinforcing the tendency and resulting in collective negative karma.

Breaking the Cycle

To break the cycle, one needs only to introspect and uncover why it continues.

It could stem from ignorance or the ego. When the soul is young and naïve, it mindlessly accepts indoctrination or yields to the body’s instincts, with little self-awareness.

But once the soul replaces it with higher consciousness, the cycle may break and be replaced with something more positive and expansive.

A soul that harbors loving feelings towards others may express them through altruistic acts. This may involve compassionate listening, charitable deeds, or alms to the poor and troubled.

When enough people act in ways rooted in love, peace, harmony, tolerance, and authenticity, individual actions become collective. It manifests as institutions or policies that positively affect the whole.

When such fruitful karmas return to the soul, they reinforce the positive habits of love and peace, completing the cycle.

Earth’s civilizations can then become whole and healthy again.

This is a powerful incentive for entire countries to revamp their policies to favor equality or social welfare, benefiting the whole rather than the few.

This law highlights the manifestation of intelligent beings and shows how much power we all have.

Tetris as an Analogy

The law of manifestation is easy to illustrate using Tetris.

Imagine yourself harboring initial arrogance and ignorance as a beginner Tetris player.

You genuinely believe yourself to be a high-level player when you are merely beginning. Thus, you deliberately play without acknowledging your inadequacies.

Your arrogance then leads you to manifest poor gameplay habits, such as the following.

Just a brief introduction to non-Tetris players: in Tetris, you do not want too many unfilled and deep holes. This is the mistake the player makes below:

Diagram Set 9-1
1	2

Terrible stacking with 2 needed I pieces to fill the left and right holes.

The I pieces never arrive. As a result, the player is forced to place incoming pieces dirtily.

Here, the beginner player stacks riskily, creating many piece dependencies.

Piece dependencies mean you need specific pieces to fill certain parts.

Here, the left and right sides of the field in step 1 need vertical I pieces to fill.

Because the I pieces never arrive, the player is forced to place pieces dirtily in step 2. Note how the L (orange) piece covers the leftmost hole. This is a mistake.

Here is another example. Pay attention to the two upside-down J-shaped cavities in step 1:

Diagram Set 9-2
1	2

Terrible stacking with 2 upside-down J-shaped cavities. The player must fill them with 2 J pieces.

However, the J pieces never arrive. The player stacks all incoming pieces unevenly.

The player creates two J dependencies (i.e., it needs two Js), resulting in the same dangerous effect: the field becomes uneven and overstacked in some areas.

For non-Tetris players, this is a very bad situation. If I see players stacking this way, I know they will likely lose soon.

This dangerous cycle continues, leading to the karmic effect of many lost games until the player is frustrated enough to confess their arrogance. They then become humble.

Hence, upon acknowledging their ignorance, the player breaks the negative cycle by switching their strategy like this:

The following example offers an alternative to the last diagram set’s step 1:

Diagram Set 9-3
1	2

Fill the 2-piece dependencies with J pieces.

This makes stacking follow-ups safer and smoother.

Here, the player fills the J-piece dependencies first, resulting in safer and proper aftermath stacking.

Noticed how step 2’s stack is no longer unevenly stacked?

For the non-Tetris player, this shape is excellent: it lets you defend and stack incoming pieces more easily and quickly.

Hence, the breakthrough comes when the player no longer stacks dangerously with many piece dependencies.

This then continues the new, positive cycle, leading to the fruits of positive karma, including increased win rates.

Ultimately, the player’s arrogance is dispelled, replaced by humility and an eagerness to learn. This then accelerates their Tetris progress.

Hence, our inner state manifests as actions in Tetris, returning to us as effects. This is the same in life.

Personal Applications

Cultivating Self-Awareness to Manifest Positively

As with all cycles, they can be positive or negative.

Here is how to break out of a negative karmic cycle, using a concrete example:

A person is prone to binge eating to cope with her lack of self-image and fear of being judged negatively by others.
She continues this cycle, becoming obese and negatively affecting her self-image.
She sees an existential therapist, who helps her realize, through introspection, that there are two aspects of her: the external self, shaped by cultural validation, and her true spiritual self, which is simply who she is.
The therapist helps her realize that the former, external self is an artificially constructed self that has no precedence in spirit. This allows her to stop identifying with this false personality.
She trains herself not to care about being judged by others.
Hence, she no longer binge eats as much because the triggering causes have been reduced.
This then breaks her cycle, and she loses weight, improving her self-image.
This creates a positive reinforcement cycle, in which praise from others makes her want to lose weight even more.

Hence, the cycle is broken by increased self-awareness through introspection.

The person can then manifest positively. Her positive attitude and thoughts influence her actions, which return as constructive rewards.

This is why self-awareness is so vital. Many problems have a psychological root that can only be resolved by facing what is within.

Without doing so, any treatment will address only the symptoms, not the root cause.

Social and Global Applications

Cultivating Collective Self-Awareness to Manifest Positively

Social and global cycles are much harder to resolve.

However, they follow the same pattern: they begin with deep self-reflection and heightened self- and social awareness.

Here is an example to illustrate:

A food delivery corporation offers its services in 200 countries, delivering food to customers’ homes faster than any competitor.
However, the management desires to make more profits for its own sake, out of greed.
The managers then reduce wages or comfortable working conditions and prevent trade unionization.
Because it is a monopoly, it continues to raise prices, leading to inflation.
People around the world increasingly complain about this, but the cycle continues.
One day, the upper management had had enough of these complaints. The board replaces the CEO with someone more humanistic.
This person then decides that the company should move towards caring for others, in an act of pure altruism.
He dismantles the way the company treats workers by providing them with more benefits and wages, better working conditions, and the right to form trade unions.
He then lowers prices and makes the company more accountable by delivering higher-quality products.
Over many decades, his country sees that this system works and adopts it for many corporations, becoming a socialist nation.
The country now reaps the rewards of a fairer, more beneficial system that leads to greater wealth equality and greater fulfillment in workers’ lives.
This inspires more leaders in other industries to do the same.
Soon, this spreads institutionally across the entire country and the globe.

Hence, a single visionary with the right mindset can drive significant improvements in the social system. It all begins with a simple thought at the individual level, which is materialized at the global scale and returns to us as positive effects.