Dark Matter - A Masterclass in Manifestation

“No world can be perfect; but we have to choose to make our life as great as it can be.” — Amanda Lucas

Dec 04, 2024

On the face of it, Dark Matter is a show about a man who is plucked from his family by an alternate version of himself and spends the rest of the series trying to get back home. But as with any well-written show, it is layered with meaning and has all the components of a binge-worthy series. Great characterization, meaningful conversation, a plot worthy of the viewer’s attention, and a satisfying ending.

But, the story of Dr. Jason Dessen is more than just another hero’s journey, and Dark Matter more than just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi show. Look closer and you’ll find that Dark Matter is a masterclass in the art and science of manifestation.

At the beginning of the show, we meet Dr. Jason Dessen, a high school physics teacher who lives with his wife Daniela, and son Charlie in Chicago. This character is an everyman in every sense of the word and leads a classic middle-class existence. However, one day something happens that disrupts his routine and changes the trajectory of his life forever.

As he's walking home one night, he is held at gunpoint and abducted by a masked man who takes him to an abandoned building and forces him to remove his clothes, surrender his phone, and then injects him with an unknown substance which gradually renders him unconscious.

When he awakens, Jason finds himself in a lab facility where he meets a psychiatrist named Amanda Lucas and the CEO of a company called Velocity Labs, Leighton Vance — both of whom are delighted that he has "returned".

Of course, Jason has no idea who these people are, and after a bit of interrogation, he escapes the lab and goes to his house, where he expects to see his wife and son. Instead, he meets the psychiatrist Amanda again who insists that they live together. The house looks completely different from what he remembers and there’s no sign of his wife Daniela or his son Charlie. Meanwhile, Jason's abductor is revealed to be an alternate version of himself, who enters his house and seduces Daniela.

I won’t go over the rest of the plot as I don’t want to completely spoil it for those of you who haven't watched the show. Suffice it to say, OG Jason, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, realizes that he’s not in Kansas anymore. As in, the Chicago he finds himself in is not the Chicago he knows and the only way to get back home is through a metal box created by the impostor Jason which is the same box that that Jason used to travel to OG Jason’s reality and hijack his life.

If all of this sounds confusing, you’re not alone. It can be a lot to wrap your mind around but luckily, our main focus is going to be on the device that impostor Jason creates in order to tunnel through parallel realities. Before we proceed, I feel it’s important to point out that when I say “imposter Jason” I’m referring to the Jason that did the abducting, while OG Jason is the original Jason that got abducted.

Okay, now, as mentioned, impostor Jason abducts OG Jason and then chucks him into a box that turns out to be a parallel reality travel device. Now, OG Jason, being a fairly intelligent person, slowly catches on to what’s happening and realizes that he’s in a parallel reality. However, he soon finds out that his life is in danger and with the help of impostor Jason’s girlfriend Amanda, he manages to escape into the parallel reality device with her.

Another important plot point is that they bring with them a couple dozen “ampoules” of a special serum that alters your consciousness once you’re in the box so you can travel through different realities without experiencing something called “decoherence”.

Once inside the box, OG Jason and Amanda set out to return to Jason’s original world. But, doing this is not as simple as they thought. You see, in theory, this is how the parallel reality travel device should work:

First you inject yourself with the serum.
Then you enter the box and wait for a corridor to appear — that’s when you know that it’s working.
On either side of this corridor is an infinite number of doors, each one leading to a different alternate reality. In order to get back to OG Jason’s world, all they had to do was to imagine it.

Essentially, the serum and the box combined enable people to be put in superposition, where they can exist in multiple states at once and choose from multiple outcomes (or in this case, realities).

The problem is, it’s difficult to focus an untrained mind on just one thought, especially if you’ve never done it before. For example, before opening their first door, OG Jason affirms to himself that he’s feeling safe, happy and warm, but when he opens the door, waves of unruly ocean water come through and it’s so bad they almost drown to death.

Lesson #1: Thoughts + Emotion = Intention

Now this brings us to the first manifestation lesson that Dark Matter teaches us; that it takes more than just focused thought to manifest or experience your preferred reality. You need focused thought and emotion and action.

Now, Amanda asks OG Jason, “how were you actually feeling when you opened the door?” and he replies, “I was feeling overwhelmed.” So even though he was trying to convince himself that he’s happy, warm and safe, his actual state was that of being overwhelmed and the box reflected that back to him.

Now, Amanda’s like, “you can’t lie to this thing. It knows.” And Jason realizes that ‘you always have to be honest inside the box, especially with yourself.’

So, the box is essentially a reality generation machine that you cannot cheat because it reflects your state of being and delivers you a parallel reality based on that state. This is eerily similar to the algorithm of our own reality, wouldn’t you say?

Lesson #2: It All Intrudes (Shadow Work)

“Fear, stray thoughts, subconscious desire — it all intrudes.” — this is what another traveler named Blair says to our two intrepid travelers and it’s something that anyone who has tried to consciously manifest realizes sooner or later. And this is where the idea of shadow work comes in.

Shadow work is essentially the process of bringing to light all of the unconscious motivations that “secretly” drive you.

“It’s all about keeping your thoughts and your subconscious intentions aligned.”

OG Jason and Amanda do their own bit of shadow work by unpacking their experiences after each trip. They basically try to figure out why they experienced what they just experienced and why they would seek out an incorrect parallel reality like that. As in, why does it seem like their biggest fears are so much more magnetic than their deepest desires?

On a surface level, it doesn’t make sense why they’d keep attracting what they know consciously they don’t like. But as Amanda puts it, “the subconscious marches to the beat of its own drum.” and that’s one of the things they learn from the box, which again, can be applied to our own reality.

“When you write something down, it’s almost impossible not to put your full attention to it. You can’t write one thing and think another. Instead of just thinking of the world you wanna see, you’re just gonna write it down.” This is what Amanda says to Jason as they start doing shadow work.

“How do we learn to control the box (reality) if we don’t explore where it takes us?”

Lesson #3: Choices Shape Destiny

It’s interesting too, how every event in our lives, shapes who we are. More than just the personality but our character, and our perspective. For example, on the surface, the two Jasons were the same in that they followed the same path until a pivotal point where he had to make a life-altering decision. In Jason’s story, that choice was to pick between marrying the love of his life and raising a family or following the academic path and devoting his life to science and discovery. As he put it, he could either choose between his wife and a cold sterile lab for the rest of his life.

The Jason who chose the cold sterile lab turned out to be a self-centered, narcissistic, materialistic, and transactional jerk with intimacy issues. While the Jason that chose family turned out to be a measured, compassionate, thoughtful, and responsible version that had the wherewithal to carry a marriage. Still, when the imposter Jason interloped into the life of OG Jason, he thought he could just seamlessly step into this version’s shoes and that would be it. But in reality, it only took a short amount of time before his traits—the traits he had picked up by living a self-centered life—showed up. And pretty soon, he could no longer fool this “instant family” that he just got.

For instance, he “forgot” the fact that he and Daniela had lost a child and had developed a yearly ritual dedicated to his memory. And when that was revealed he treated it with a carelessness that the original Jason would never have because he actually experienced the loss and it shaped the man he would become. It’s part of what gives him this depth of compassion, empathy, and feeling. Without those crucial formative experiences and memories, imposter Jason struggles to connect with his wife on this one crucial event.

For me, this shows how the experiences we go through as a result of the choices we make, ultimately shape our character and drive our choices. Which brings us to something else that Amanda said:

“How do we learn to control the box (aka “reality”) if we don’t explore where it takes us?”

At the end of the day, we’re just different versions of the same self, exploring itself from different perspectives. As I like to say, reality (you) is like a multifaceted diamond with an infinite number of possibilities and mirrors. And every choice you make leads to a series of events that must be experienced to be truly appreciated.

Lesson #4: Emotional Regulation

Another underrated manifestation lesson that this show explores is that of emotional regulation. For instance, I love how they use sleep as a method of self-regulation in between trips to improve their ability to focus and effectively manifest or transport themselves to the reality that they really want to experience.

It lends credence to what Abraham Hicks is always saying which is, if you’re already going down a track you don’t like, it’s best to take a nap instead of swimming upstream. Sleep, in a way, allows you to press the “reset” button.

Lesson #5: Be Careful What You Wish For

Another quagmire that this show addresses is; what happens when you get everything you want?

I think after some time of living life on easy street, you crave novelty. And this is part of what drove imposter Jason to seek out ever more elaborate and unique experiences until his curiosity compelled him to interlope into the life of an alternate version of himself. Granted, a part of him has always wondered “what if?” when it comes to him and Daniela. But instead of doing the difficult work of admitting that he was wrong to choose the sterile lab and that he regrets his decision, he decides to take the easy route, which in this case is to construct an elaborate machine so he could take over the life of a version of himself that did make the difficult choice of giving up his career in exchange for a family. I mean, it looks like this man will do anything but admit regret.

However, once he gets what he thought he wanted, it quickly dawns on him that he is not meant to be living OG Jason’s life after all, that he was wrong to want to take over another’s life, and that he should make peace with his own choices and take them to their full conclusion.

Lesson #6: Destiny and Soul Groups

Dark Matter also tackles the idea of destiny, or how much of our lives are predetermined. The story of Jason’s life almost always consists of the same characters— Daniela, Blaire, Leighton, and Ryan. Somehow these people always end up playing a role in his life and are a part of his “multiverse” and each of them is a variation of the other.

For example, in OG Jason’s universe, Leighton is an old college buddy who is currently living off of daddy’s inheritance, whereas, imposter Jason’s Leighton is an ambitious businessman who is passionate about creating a legacy for himself. Again, the difference between these two is that the former Leighton was raised by his parents, whereas the latter was raised by his grandfather, showing a stark contrast in circumstance and rearing that leads to two very different characters.

Nevertheless, Leighton is a character that all the Jasons have in common because it’s someone they both met while they were in college. It’s just that the circumstances of their lives cause them to turn out very differently.

Anyway, this ties in nicely to an idea I came across years ago — the idea of soul groups. The basic premise is that a soul group is a family of souls that you resonate with closely. And I’m basing my description of soul groups on a book called The Celestine Prophecy by James Redflied. According to this book, “each individual soul is part of a larger "Soul Group", which shares a mission of helping the evolution of the cosmos.

Now sometimes, a soul from a given Group incarnates itself, choosing the conditions of its life according to its needs, while the other souls observe. However, at other times, three, four, or even five souls from a given group might incarnate at the same time in order to fulfill a certain mission, which in the case of Jason Dessen’s life would be to make this groundbreaking discovery about parallel reality travel.

Because one thing all the Jasons have in common is their love and passion for physics. They all started out as this brilliant physics major who had an idea to create a device that defies space and time. One of them pursued the idea and the other did not. And that’s when this split happens, creating two distinct realities.

There’s a creator on YouTube that talks about this as well, she says, “every time you make a decision, there is another version of you that is created every time you choose a new path. Through time you make many decisions and many choices and every time you do this you’re splitting yourself in different pathways constantly and creating more and more versions of you.”1

This is essentially what we’re seeing happen with Jason in Dark Matter. When he makes a new choice, a new version of himself is created that follows through with that choice, however, they both still have the same constellation of people in their orbit just with different degrees of engagement.

So in OG Jason’s world, he hasn’t seen Leighton since their college days, even though they were best friends in college. Contrast this with imposter Jason who is still not only best friends with Leighton but is business partners with him. This shows us that these core people are part of a soul group that shares an intense bond that transcends space and time. They have familiar configurations for the purposes of working together and supporting each other’s efforts.

Anyway, that brings us to the end of our exploration of Dark Matter and it has been an absolute joy unpacking this mind-bending series with its exciting philosophical concepts, many of which can actually have real-life applications.

But, what’s your read on this series? Have you seen it? I’d like to hear your thoughts below. :)

https://www.youtube.com/@officialthealchemist

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