I explained to someone:

Yeah, I basically agree that the “Dispenza current” and classical Buddhist paths are very different landscapes – I’d just tweak how you’re understanding the Buddhist side. They both talk about the realization of Presence and its benefits, but I’d say Buddhism takes it much further: it goes into much deeper insight and leads to liberation from all suffering and cyclic existence, while Dispenza/Neville/other manifestation teachings mostly focus on “tapping the Source” for immediate worldly benefits and “powers” in this life.

What you’re calling the “non-dual analytical model” isn’t meant to end in dry conceptual deconstruction. The analysis (no-self, emptiness, etc.) is a skillful means to see through a false solid self and world – not to erase aliveness. Once reification is released, what shows up is an open, lucid, self-knowing, spontaneous display of pristine consciousness. In Dzogchen terms, primordial purity (emptiness) and spontaneous presence (radiant appearance) are two inseparable aspects of the same self-luminous display.

Simultaneous with the realization of anatman (no-self) is the realization of the radiance of everything. When everything is realized as the radiant display of this empty, self-luminous awareness, everything around comes alive… chairs, rocks, ground, sky, etc. Everything is imbued with a sensuous quality of magical perfection and purity, with a lustre, brilliance, vividness and wondrous, scintillating vitality. There’s a gapless intimacy – everything feels like one’s own body feels right now, without the slightest distance. Naturally so, because it is the direct experiencing of one’s nature.

When insight into emptiness is not clear or complete, there’s a tendency to reify even that Clarity into some substantial ground behind everything – a subtle reference point or “Source” that becomes a new identity and fixation, rather than release and spontaneous presence.

Buddhism actually has huge “creation/expansion” channels: the bodhisattva path (vast heart and capacity), tantra/deity yoga (very creative embodiment and visualization grounded in emptiness), and Dzogchen/Mahamudra (all appearances as self-radiant play). The main difference from Dispenza isn’t “no creation vs creation”, but what is taken as real: Dispenza tends to strengthen a solid creator-self signalling a real field, whereas Buddhadharma sees both “self” and “field” as dependently arisen and empty – manifestation then becomes “magic without a magician”, a spontaneous, alive, spirited expression without an agent, perceiver or controller.

Dispenza and Neville do put a strong emphasis on “manifesting” desired outcomes in this life. That isn’t the main focus of Buddhism, which sees liberation from suffering and cyclic rebirth as far more crucial, but manifestation is still within Buddhism.

If you’re curious how this looks in actual practice and “manifestation” (including some pretty wild Tārā stuff), I wrote about it here from my experience, especially relating it to Tārā practice:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2024/02/tara-and-manifestation.html

Also worth reading this comment from krodha (Kyle Dixon), who has the same anattā / twofold-emptiness realization and comes from the Dzogchen side rather than New Age LOA:

"krodha replied:

A lot of people in this thread saying the law of attraction is incompatible, but my root teacher, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu used to say that if you were really able to access the samādhi of an ārya then in that state you can actually have things happen in your favor. Essentially saying you can manipulate the course of things at your whim. He said you can win the lottery for example if you’re really in that state."

So for me it’s not “Buddhism = only negation” vs “Dispenza = creation.” In the non-substantialist Buddhist view, deconstruction clears the confusion, and creation/expansion are just how this empty-luminous display naturally expresses itself when you’re not reifying a little controller or experiencer in the middle.

The realization of anatman is not dissociation or disengagement, but the opposite: it leads to gapless intimacy with everything in life. My teacher John Tan, who is himself a very successful businessman (none of whose wealth comes from teaching; he refuses to monetize dharma), put it like this:

“When anatta matures, one is fully and completely integrated into whatever arises till there is no difference and no distinction.

When sound arises, fully and completely embraced with sound yet non-attached. Similarly, in life we must be fully engaged yet non-attached.” – John Tan / Thusness

“Actually there is no forcing. All the 4 aspects in I AMness are fully expressed in anatta as I told you. If aliveness is everywhere, how is one not to engage… it is a natural tendency to explore in various arenas and enjoy business, family, spiritual practices... I am involved in finance, business, society, nature, spirituality, yoga... I don't find it efforting… You just don't have to boast about this and that and be non-dual and open.” – John Tan / Thusness (2019)

From my side, liberation from saṃsāra and full awakening as a Buddha – so that one can actually guide beings out of suffering – is more crucial than any temporary material benefits we gain in this life (which ends in a few decades at most, a tiny speck compared to aeons of rebirths). As John wrote back in 2006:

“Life is like a passing cloud, when it comes to an end, a hundred years is like yesterday, like a snap of a finger. If it is only about one life, it really doesn’t matter whether we are enlightened. The insight that the Blessed One has is not just about one life; countless lives we suffered, life after life, unending… Such is suffering.

It is not about logic or science and there is really no point arguing in this scientific age. Take steps in practice and experience the truth of Buddha’s words. Of the 3 dharma seals, the truth of ‘suffering’ to me is most difficult to experience in depth.

May all take Buddha’s words seriously.”

And another awakened friend, Sim Pern Chong, who recalls many of his past lives, shared that when past-life impressions open up (through “words of power” practice), seeing repeated patterns of killing, being killed, wars, demonic lives, etc., naturally creates a deep motivation to end compulsive rebirth. Once you actually see this, the priority shifts: the main thing is to end saṃsāra, not just optimize one more human life.