The universe isn’t working in your favor, actually

I’m a numbers person. Always have been. And it saves me sometimes when my intuition is clouded.

It saved me when I was in an MLM and realized that my success within that structure would always rely upon a certain number of people existing at the bottom of the pyramid. I couldn’t ignore the numbers that told me how statistically unlikely it was for me to experience any real, material success in that industry. I couldn’t ignore the numbers when I sat down and drew out where and how the money was actually flowing in that industry.

Being a numbers person can also be quite a disillusioned experience. Back when I was still mired in what I affectionately refer to as the Manifestation Industrial Complex, I always found myself bumping up against the cognitive dissonance which occurred when I thought about what it would mean if the universe was always working in everyone’s favor. Mathematically, that just didn’t make sense. Some things that are in one person’s favor are directly in opposition to another’s, and there seems to be a disproportionate amount of suffering in the world compared to the number of people living the lifestyle of “ease and abundance” which I was promised by the law of attraction, The Secret, and other voices from that particular school of thought.

This was before I quite understood what capitalism is and how it functions, so I hadn’t explicitly pieced it together that the luxuries of the lifestyle I was aiming for are almost always built upon a system of colonialism, extraction, exploitation, and the pursuit of endless profit. I didn’t need to understand capitalism to figure that part out—I had numbers, and that includes astrology.

In astrology, the technical concept of the day sect and the night sect refers to the time of day indicated in any given chart, but on a more abstract level, this can be extrapolated into two forms of consciousness—solar and lunar—which reflect a particular duality within our shared reality. Stay with me here. Solar consciousness emphasizes things like oneness and rigidity and visibility and facts, while the other side of the coin, lunar consciousness, refers to the opposite: multiplicity, flexibility, felt experience, and emotions.

Capitalism is a form of solar consciousness. It dominates our shared reality, and thus creates an imbalance. Since the structures of the day sect are focused on funneling resources upward to one centralized source—whether they be money, knowledge, power, or something else—this suits capitalism well. Its essential shape is a triangle.

Lunar consciousness, on the other hand, doesn’t funnel resources in any particular direction, but rather circulates them—its essential shape is, obviously, a circle. In a balanced society, both of these types of consciousness feed off of one another. They’re a duality, not a binary; each one contains at least some of the other.

However, like I said, we don’t live in a balanced society. Our shared reality is dominated by captalism, a pyramid-shaped structure that suits solar consciousness, and thus we ourselves become dominated by solar consciousness. One natural consequence of this, in my opinion, is a school of thought which emerges to promise its subscribers a sense of control within, and daresay even a stake in, a system that is mathematically rigged for them to lose.

The numbers don’t ever lie. It is simply not possible for every person with a vision board and a gratitude journal to manifest their dream life. The world simply cannot support that many coffee shop-book store-plant apothecary owners.

If there’s a way to squeeze in a Mad Men reference, I’m gonna do it every time

This isn’t me shitting on your dream life; this is the inextricable truth of capitalism: the solar few siphon resources and labor from the lunar many, and they give back nothing in return. The very existence of an elite class relies upon an even more numerous servant class to, obviously, serve them. Mathematically speaking, you are vastly more likely to be born into the lunar many (read: anyone who’s not part of the uber-rich ruling class) and remain there until you die than you are likely to ever grace the other side of a million dollars.

Now, I also understand that not everyone’s dream life is to open a cottagecore coffee shop, just like not everyone’s dream life includes luxuries like designer purses or first class trips or private jets, like mine did way back when (I still have the Pinterest boards to prove it). So, let’s get back to my original point:

The universe is not working in your favor. I would even venture to say that it’s actively working against you, against all of us, at all times. It’s no secret that your mere existence is a mathematical miracle, but that isn’t a sign that you are special and chosen and protected by the universe no matter what—quite the opposite, in fact: it’s a sign that you exist in spite of the astronomical odds stacked against you.

Maybe I’ll just say the quiet part out loud here, which is that the idea of the universe as a benevolent and loving force that’s only got your best interests at heart is smacking a little too close to the all-loving (and all-punishing) daddy figure in the form of the patriarchal Christian god which, ironically, many high-ranking members of the Manifestation Industrial Complex were attempting to escape when they fell right into the arms of Abraham-Hicks.

I can’t claim that the nature of the universe is hostile or even indifferent; I’m simply saying that there may not even be a true nature to our universe, it may be a purely randomized simulation for all we know, but what we can safely rely upon are numbers, and the numbers say you and I shouldn’t exist. Furthermore, if you weren’t born into the uber-rich ruling class, then your existence under capitalism is founded on coercion.

Against your will, when you were born and became an adult under a capitalist system, you agreed that your survival was conditional: produce or die. Which isn’t really agreement, but coercion and violence. That is the central message from the ruling class (and their simps): if you do not produce enough labor or value then you do not deserve access to the essentials of life.

If this is the dominant structure of our shared reality, how can it be true that everything is always working out in your favor? Furthermore, if we accept that the universe simply cannot work in everyone’s favor all the time, then who gets to reap the benefits of the law of attraction? Who gets to skip to the front of the line, and why? What qualifies them?

Their thoughts? Their intentions? Their gratitude?

Yeah, this is all getting a bit too puritanical for me.

There’s plenty to be said about the ways much of the MIC is just repackaged prosperity gospel or a trauma response to capitalism in the form of magical thinking, and it’s all been said by others already so I won’t rehash it here. But what if you stopped imagining the universe as your benefactor? What if you released the idea that you are anything but a digit in a series of calculations? If that was true, it wouldn’t make your existence any less of a miracle, but it could help you develop tolerance.

You already know that everything does not work out in your favor, because you have proof. You’ve already lived through things that didn’t go your way. So why draw strength from something that’s patently and provably false? The universe is not working in your favor, and that’s a good thing. It means you don’t have to perform goodness in order to receive proof of miracles—you already are one. So start acting like it.