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Though the posts here are thoughtful, interesting, and even enlightening, I'm having a whole lot of trouble with the thread's basic premise. Let me paraphrase it just to clarify my understanding of the OP:
Be positive, be happy, and anything you want will magically find its way to you -- as long as you don't actually "want" it. Is that close enough? Does it sound as absurd to you as it does to me when read that way? It should.
Now I hope you'll bear with me a moment while I explain:
Yes, Omnis, the lifestyle you outline, with Shadowofwind's caveats in place, is a good one, and would be most rewarding on a personal basis -- but those rewards are no more or less than what's available to you regardless of the exercise of your desires. Yes, if you live happily -- in a truly honest and harmless way -- you'll likely be happy; you'll even find the folks around you are happier too. But you won't suddenly manifest the root of your desires (and trust me, some of our desires would be most impressive and dangerous if ever manifest) -- you'll simply improve the ambiance of your life. You're likely already spooling up your objections and explanations, but when you do, could you include in them a note about how, exactly, this manifestation works, and what force suddenly senses your happy smile and chooses to fulfill your dreamy desires?
Seriously. I'm not being skeptical, here. This concept -- put essentially nothing into a pot, wait a while, and that pot will be full to the brim with whatever you desired -- simply does not make sense when viewed from any actual condition of human experience. I'd love to see it be real -- and God knows I've spent years trying to make it so, with my only reward being that I remembered during all that time to work hard, be good to people, and pay actual dues in life (from which I've benefited well enough, I suppose) -- but no matter how tightly I squint, or how broadly I smile, the world continues to spin as blindly as ever, heedless of my desires.
So if you can explain to me how this works, in a way that transcends cop-outs like "If you don't know then you can't know," I'd most appreciate it. Also, before you guys get all condescending on my ass, keep in mind while you're responding that I've been practicing this stuff for longer than I'll bet most of you have been alive. Among much else, I've read the Masonic Handbook (even witnessed rituals), the Golden Dawn, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, The Secret, even Seth Speaks, Peale's The power of Positive Thinking, and everything Richard Bach ever wrote; everything you discuss above is covered by those works in some form or another, so this is nothing new to me literally. All this reading doesn't even include the uncounted hours I've spent in the dream world exploring to some fairly amazing depths the concepts of manifestation they, and you, describe. As I said above, I have also been testing the claims of the treatises for many years (in and out of dreams) and, though living the OP's lifestyle can make things more pleasant, the only way I have ever found desires to be manifest, whether I'm thinking about them or not, is by putting real work, energy, sacrifice, and discipline into their "manifestation." Nothing else has ever worked. There is no free lunch. If there is, I haven't found it ... and God knows I've looked! ... tell me, if you can, where I went wrong.
One quick BTW, if you're still reading: Groups like the Freemasons, Rosecrucians, theosophists, romantics, etc, tended to be founded by fairly rich and powerful people who already had the means to get whatever they want. They also, because of their wealth and power, had enough time on their hands to invent their happy little cults to codify, and perhaps justify, the good fortune they already experienced. In other words, the progenitors of all this stuff already had their "good life" manifest, no doubt by hard work, inheritance, misdeeds, or whatever, but likely not through some mystical happiness payback. Their mystical magical "work" was more an excuse for rare good fortune in a very sad world than path for everyman.
You also seem to have completely misrepresented the Buddhist (real or not, whatever that means) view of things: They have no plan to "manifest" anything. In their quest for awareness, enlightenment, and a way off the Wheel after death they might share some of the steps you list (as do most religions), but they are by no means looking to fulfill their personal worldly desires, be they dreamt, imagined, or well thought out. The best in their business lived in caves, for God's sake! Cut the guys some slack. The only other true similarity here is that many Buddhist sects -- particular of the Zen variety -- are phenomenally narcissistic by any measure.
So be happy; spread those grins, find joy in nothing. All that will certainly make your life better, as long as you heed Shadowofwind's warnings. And yes, you will make other people happy because that's what being nice to people does -- nothing special there either. And, of course, if we all behaved this way, the world would indeed be a better place, but as a result of our own plain-old-up-front-mundane-human actions. There is nothing metaphysical in a well-heeled smile.