In this article I want to answer a common question that comes up when someone begins to use the Law of Assumption.

How long will I have to wait for my manifestation in the 3D? And can I speed it up?

There are plenty of idiots on the internet (especially on Reddit) who will tell you that manifestation should be quick, and if it isn’t, you’re not ‘manifesting’ right.

This is what Neville Goddard had to say about how long manifestations can take:

“For the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens and it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.”

In this quote, from his 1968 lecture ‘An Inner Conviction’, he is saying that every manifestation arrives when it is time. He recommends patience and he uses an analogy from nature (ripening and flowering).

When you set an intention to experience something in the 3D, you are planting a seed. You should keep watering that seed. You do not dig it up to check if it is germinating yet, or get frustrated and toss it in the trash because it’s not sprouted after 2 days.

Nature doesn’t create a plant or a tree overnight, and our manifesting is the same. You may be holding the vision of your desire in the 4D (aka in your mind and imagination) but this has its own process and timeline to be reflected in your 3D reality. 

The reason why there is a time lapse between what you are holding in your mind, and your 3D reality, is because if every thought you had manifested instantly, your life would be a bit scary and absolute chaos. The time lapse is necessary so that we can have time to get consistent about what it is that we want to see in the 3D, and neutralise negative manifestations, too.

Plus, in order to manifest something in the 3D, we have to become someone who has that 3D desire. It’s actually your self-concept and your identity that primarily manifest your world so your identity needs to change to accommodate your new desire.

To give an example, if you wish to manifest a new love relationship, you need to be a loved (and loving) partner now in your imagination. You can’t bring this into your reality unless you already ARE it in your identity, to some extent. 

This doesn’t usually happen overnight.

If you started from a really bad place in your life, manifesting your desired reality is like turning a big ship around. For example, if you’re someone who has a disease and has been ill for years, you can’t expect to change that in one week.

I don’t want to put limiting beliefs into anyone’s mind with this article, because all of this is generalisation — our reality can change in an instant, but most commonly when a situation has been ongoing for years, it doesn’t change overnight.

For this reason, persistence and patience are needed. We need to hold our desired reality in our consciousness and keep returning to it as often as possible, until it materialises in 3D. We need to patiently work on becoming the person who has our desire. 

Quick manifesting may not always be in your best interests

Something else to bear in mind is that quick manifesting isn’t always a good thing.

I’ll give you an example from my own life.

I decided I wanted a new romance and I wanted it fast. 

So I went to work manifesting it. I put a lot of energy into this process. I was not working and had several days to myself, so I set my intention, connected with the wish fulfilled and returned to it by visualising it for a few minutes, at least every hour while I was awake. I’d never put so much focus on manifesting like this before and it was an intense and trippy process. By the end of the 2nd day, I was in a different reality and I felt like I had this new relationship already. I was so convinced of my new reality that I was kind of expecting him (whoever he was) to just knock on my door. 

On the 4th day of using this process, he showed up in my life and we started dating.

The problem was that I was still running an old story about men and what they were like. I had a particular belief about men, that I’d held for years and years based on past experience. This belief was so strong that I was talking about this aspect of “what men are like” with friends, in the weeks and days before I started consciously manifesting this new relationship.

Of course that showed up in this relationship in a way I wasn’t enjoying.

So if you manifest something in 4 days, it may not be exactly what you want, because you haven’t had time to become the new person and address any limiting beliefs you still have. In my case, the version of Anna that was in a happy romantic relationship with a man needed to be someone who does not have a belief about men that was toxic. Even if men had consistently appeared to be that way in my reality in the past, that was no longer what I wanted to see in my life and so that belief had to go.

(As an aside, I saw this turn of events as part of the larger bridge of incidents, taking me towards my ultimate goal of a happy relationship, by showing me what I needed to work on next.)

But it also illustrates quite well what can sometimes happen when we decide we must have what we want now. 

Holding on to your manifestation

Something else that can occur when we rush our manifesting, is that we get our wonderful manifestation, but we cannot keep it, simply because our self-concept and identity isn’t in alignment with the manifestation. 

This is sometimes what happens when people win the lottery — according to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 70% of lottery winners lose all their money and one third go bankrupt following their lottery win. The reason this happens is because lottery winners’ identities often aren’t going to match that of someone who manages their money well. 

This is what can also happen when manifesting a new relationship. You may be able to manifest an amazing partner, but if your self-concept isn’t up to scratch, your insecurities will kick in and you will lose them.

This is why it is sometimes a good thing that our manifestations take a while to reflect in the 3D…so that we can have time to BECOME and change our self-concept. That way, we get exactly what we want, and keep it. 

So make sure to persist, and be patient! Once you set your intention for something to manifest, the bridge of incidents will take you on a journey to become who you need to become. So, be receptive to the feedback life is giving you and take its cues. 

(And if you’re interested in changing your self-concept, check out this article I wrote. Your self-concept is EVERYTHING when it comes to manifesting.)

Take your focus off the 3D

Finally, I want to introduce a different way of looking at the manifesting process which may help, if you are impatient and asking this question about how long will your manifestation take.

If you are reading this article, it’s because you want something and you want it to materialise in the 3D. I get it. That’s why I love reality creation, too.

But in order to get what you want, you have to take your focus off the 3D. You have to move your focus to the 4D — the reality behind your eyes; in your mind. Your imagination needs to be king. You need to live your desired reality in your imagination until you take on a new identity. You need to be deluded and con yourself, even. You need to stop caring about what the 3D reality is showing you, because you know that your 3D world is just a transient shadow and it was cast by you probably around several weeks ago, based on what you were thinking and the person you were being at that time. 

This is how you get stuff in the 3D. You stop caring about the 3D and instead enjoy your desire in your mind. 

You cannot get something in the 3D until you give it to yourself.

So, take your focus off ‘where is it?’ Stop checking the 3D. Asking when it is going to come and getting frustrated is a surefire way to delay your manifestation. 

Go straight to the 4D, where you have it now and live from that place. Know with conviction that the 3D will reflect this at some point. That is how you manifest. 

And if you’re just starting out and you’d like a process for manifesting using the Law of Assumption, here it is:

1. Set an intention
2. Align with that intention by using techniques such as SATS and affirmations (or another technique), until you get to a place where you can easily access the state of the wish fulfilled, and live from it
3. Keep your mental diet aligned with your desire
4. Elevate your self concept if it needs work
5. Eliminate importance
6. Ignore the 3D
7. Persist

And if you really want to speed up your manifestation?

Frederick Dobson, in his amazing book Parallel Universes of Self says:

“It is how you react to the old reality which determines how long it will take for your new reality to be reflected ‘out there'”. Fighting what you don’t want is the same thing as agreeing to a reality.”

So, let’s say that you have a health condition that you’re working on eliminating from your 3D reality. If the symptoms of this condition are upsetting you, it’s going to take a long time for your 3D reality to change. But if you are indifferent to the symptoms, because you know they are just the 3D reflection of the thoughts and stories you were running in your mind in the past, your reality can change much faster.

Cultivate indifference to the aspects of your 3D that you are not currently wanting to see, and this is how you speed up your manifestation.

Also remember to keep an impeccable mental diet. Your thoughts and inner conversations (so, what you’re saying to yourself in your mind) have to be aligned with your desire to get your manifestation quickly. If you want to manifest fast, stop with the thoughts that you wouldn’t be having, if you already had your desire. Make it your task to notice your thoughts and interrupt them if they are negative by saying “stop”. A poor mental diet is often why our desires take an unnecessarily long time to arrive.

If you have time, you can also do what I did to manifest a new relationship, and do SATS and return to the state of the wish fulfilled every waking hour. I don’t necessarily recommend this if you’ve just set your intention, because it’s very full on and you may or may not be ready for your manifestation. You may not be giving your self-concept enough time to adjust to your desire.

Instead I recommend letting life organically take you on a process of ‘becoming’ – the bridge of incidents will be set in motion for this to occur as soon as you set your intention.

Further Resources:

• You can find the next article in this Law of Assumption series here: Why You Shouldn’t Tell Anyone about What You’re Manifesting

And you can find Neville Goddard’s books on the Law of Assumption here: Neville Goddard: The Complete Reader