More From Neville

I've been continuing my reading this last week of the works of Neville Goddard. This afternoon I came upon a passage that really seems to put his method on how to manifest into a nutshell. So here it is from his book Out Of This World (he suggests doing this just as you're going to sleep)...

"The first step in changing the future is desire; that is: define your objective-know definitely what you want. Secondly: construct an event which you believe you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire-an event which implies fulfillment of your desire-something that will have the action of self predominant. Thirdly: immobilize the physical body and induce a condition akin to sleep-lie on a bed or relax in a chair and imagine that you are sleepy; then, with eyelids closed and your attention focused on the action you intend to experience in imagination-mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action-imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action here and now. You must always participate in the imaginary action, not merely stand back and look on, but you must feel that you are actually performing the action so that the imaginary sensation is real to you."

"It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which follows the fulfillment of your desire; and, also, you must feel yourself into the action until it has all the vividness and distinctness of reality. For example: suppose you desired promotion in office. Being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination, immobilize the physical body, and induce a state akin to sleep-a drowsy state-but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts-a state in which you are attentive without effort. Now, imagine that a friend is standing before you. Put your imaginary hand into his. First feel it to be solid and real, then carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the action. Do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, make elsewhere here, and the future now. The future event is a reality now in a dimensionally larger world; and, oddly enough, now in a dimensionally larger world, is equivalent to here in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life. The difference between feeling yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure."

"Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action, to condense the idea which is to be the object of our meditation into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, the attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to our attention."

Neville suggests doing this right as you're going to bed for the night, and continue to imagine your chosen short scene over and over until you drift off to sleep. Also, you will most likely need to do this night after night, until you reach the feeling of it becoming an actuality. He gives various examples of success stories in his books, some manifested their desire after only a few nights, others took several weeks of nightly imagining.

Neville and His Imaginal Activity

I've recently been reading two of Neville Goddard's books, Power of Awareness published in 1952 and The Law and The Promise published in 1961. He was part of the New Thought Movement, which first began developing in the late 19th century. His work is sort of a mystical look at Law of Attraction. I've been a huge fan of Abraham-Hicks for a long time, and this has given me a new--or older, depending on how you look at it--twist on these ideas. Neville explains what he calls imaginal activity as experiencing in your imagination what you would experience in reality had you achieved your goal.

Often Neville uses Bible verses to support his ideas. Now if you're not into Christianity--and I'm not--before you go off running and screaming, this is a very different interpretation of these Bible passages. Its one that I've never encountered before--a mystical, metaphysical, symbolic interpretation. If you're a fundamentalist or conservative Christian, you can go off running and screaming, because you won't like this at all!

Here are some of Neville's main points...

You are Consciousness, and Consciousness is the only reality

Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes--in the physical world--other than his own state of consciousness

Imagination is the instrument by which you create your world

You make your future dream a present fact by assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled

Neville suggests engaging in imaginal activity every night as you're going off to sleep.

Here are some passages from his books...

Assert the supremacy of your Imaginal acts over facts and put all things in subjection to them. Hold fast to your ideal in your imagination. Nothing can take it from you but your failure to persist in imagining the ideal realized.

The world in which we live is a world of imagination. In fact, life itself is an activity of imagining.

Events happen because comparatively stable imaginal activities created them, and they continue in being only as long as they receive such support.

The man who is aware of what he is imaging knows what he is creating.

An awakened Imagination works with a purpose.

Do not bow before the dictate of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without.

To attempt to change circumstances before you change your imaginal activity, is to struggle against the very nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an imaginal change. Everything you do, unaccompanied by an imaginal change, is but a futile readjustment of surfaces.

A note about the art featured on this post. I've been painting and drawing my whole life, but the idea for this painting came about in a new way for me. It was about 20 years ago, and I was deep in meditation, when images started popping up spontaneously in my mind's eye. I saw a woman in the sky. She was dreaming, and the earth was her dream. This watercolor was my attempt at putting down what I saw in a painting.