Manifestation is so confusing because it is a bad concept. To see what is really going on, we have to look at it through the lens of concepts that actually make sense.
Manifestation is really willpower: creation through determination and desire rather than intelligence. A chess player calculates within the rules of the game, while a homesteader ignores reality and imposes his vision on the land. Of course, strong chess players have tremendous fighting spirit, and homesteading requires a great deal of knowledge. But willpower feels different. It isn't truly stupid, but maintaining your vision over long periods of time in the face of resistance requires a sort of intentional blindness. If you stopped to replan everything from the beginning every time some trivial problem arose, or fully engage with every doubt, you would never get anything done. If affirmations or a vision board help you plow through nervous, negative thoughts they can dramatically increase your happiness and productivity!
Manifestation is not manifestation. No one likes willpower because willpower is hard, while manifestation sounds easy. But in reality, all work requires overcoming resistance, overcoming resistance easily requires mastery, and mastery requires practice. Creation only seems effortless for the master because he has invested years slowly perfecting every aspect of his craft. Manifestation inverts this process: the more you focus on the goal, the less you enjoy the process, the less skill you develop, and the more you are flooded by precisely the nervous, negative thoughts manifestation is supposed to overcome!
Manifestation is rent seeking. Because manifestation is about creating effortlessly, and manifesters foolishly believe that the rules do not apply to them, they are virtually guaranteed to choose methods that appear to work well in the short term but fail catastrophically later. Rent seeking is at the top of this list, because the most obvious way to overcome resistance with little effort is to coerce or deceive other people into doing things for you. The problem is that it is ipso facto the system of control that is valuable, not the rent seeker who nominally sits at the top. The more rent your system generates, the more powerful the sharks it will attract. They will set the most cunning traps for you, and mercilessly apply maximum force to your weakest points. Soon it requires far more effort to defend your 'free' lunch than it would to just make the sandwich yourself. The deeper you wade into the Game of Thrones, the more cruel you must become just to avoid condemning yourself and your family to poverty, torture, and death. By the time the agony becomes unbearable and you finally throw yourself at the feet of the Lord you will have done so much damage that just helping Him clean up feels like a brutal penance.
Manifestation requires family. Working with people who we love, who love us, is always far more effective, efficient, and enjoyable than doing everything by ourselves. When you are part of a high quality team, willpower becomes easy, and you will eventually achieve all of your material goals. Eventually family itself becomes our greatest source of joy, and this joy is continuous rather than being dependent on the inevitable ups and downs of material life. On the other hand, if you stubbornly attach yourself to material goals, then your family will eventually reject you, and all of your material works will fail as well anyway.
Manifestation is actually prayer: when supernatural results do occur, they come from God and His Angels - your Heavenly family. If God approves of your vision, He will help you. If He does not, He will ignore you - or even actively thwart your plans! Do people seriously think that the Lord of Hosts is such an absolute moron, such a pathetic simp, that He will make anyone rich who 'makes a contract with the Universe' and 'claims their wealth' by retweeting a picture of cash? The vast majority of people who claim they are 'co-creating with God' are not giving Him the slightest input on anything, and their only shield is His own vast humility and patience. But even these have limits, as God has no intention of being the Omelas Child. Your success with prayer will increase dramatically if you add 'and if You do not approve, please help me understand why' before setting your heart on something.
Christianity is the manifestation of family. Although family is the best thing in the Universe, it is still not perfect. Brothers fight. Sisters gossip. Husbands forget anniversaries. Wives run out of gas on the interstate. Baristas are snobby. Entrepreneurs compete with you. All families are continously dying, and can only survive through constant healing. Eternal life as part of God's Family requires nothing more or less than doing your part to overcome these constant flubbles.
And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?’ So he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And He said to him, ‘You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.’ But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Then Jesus answered and said: ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.' So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?’ And he said, ‘He who showed mercy on him.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’
But what is our part? The lawyer's question is actually extremely pertinent, while Jesus' answer seems foolishly self-destructive. Anyone who tried to live out this parable literally would soon find themselves bankrupt and unable to help anyone at all, while the people he 'helped' would soon become too weak to stand on their own. So how does it work? The problem is that most people do not know when they are creating negative energy or how much work is required to clean it up. How can they possibly know what is fair? Jesus is attempting to confuse his followers into trying love, service, and forgiveness against their own logic and reason, at which point they find it is much less degrading than they feared and works far better than they expected. The more they confront friction and negative energy head on, the easier it gets. When they succeed, they make great friends and recruit loyal servants. When they fail, they learn when violence is truly necessary. Soon they no longer need to be confused into love and service; they enjoy being fountains of positive energy, they understand Justice, and all they must do to be personally successful is demand to be fairly paid. Conversely, Satanists live in a continual intellectual fog created by their own narcissism. They blunder through life miserably, constantly flogged by the consequences of their own selfish actions in ways they do not understand.
Christianity is God's favorite religion. Just compare: Muslims are told they must pray five times per day and obey a long list of rules without question. Hindus are told they must offer complicated ritual sacrifices to obtain God's assistance. The Jews ‘who struggle with God’ must do both. Buddhists get no help at all. Satanists not only get no help, they are punished severely after death. Christians are merely told to love God and their neighbor and pray for help when they need it because that is all God really wants. If you do your best, He will do the rest. He thinks of us as part of Himself, so whenever you love your neighbor you are loving God as well, and vice versa. All religions are merely different crutches to help you accomplish this. Jesus may be God's favorite path, but some people need more structure:
Do they desire a way other than Allah’s—knowing that all those in the heavens and the earth submit to His Will, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they will ˹all˺ be returned? Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord—we make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we ˹fully˺ submit.” Whoever seeks a way other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them, and in the Hereafter they will be among the losers.
To prevent scholars from unifying the world's religions and 'fixing' His system, God deliberately inserted small errors into the Holy Books to make them incompatible. The problem is that in order to actually work, all religions must be stronger than the logic and reason of their practitioners, so priests of different religions are guaranteed to argue endlessly when they meet. This does not bother God; it keeps them humble, and it seldom leads to violence, although they will not actively prevent wars as effectively as usual. Eventually God expects us to cast aside all crutches and stand on our own.
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah - not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.
Manifestation is fraudulent. Creating effortlessly with affirmations or vision boards just sounds cool. Everyone wants to believe they can do it! As soon as they start, they begin noticing things when it works, and not noticing when it doesn't. And thus we come full circle: manifesters find they can indeed manifest their wealth, by gaslighting fools who want quick and easy success into gaslighting themselves about manifestation! It works beautifully until the ponzi inevitably collapses. And this is why everything is so murky, because if it were explained clearly, no one would pay these frauds any heed.