In this article I’m going to cover:

• How to do the Neville Goddard revision technique
• How it works
• And who can benefit from it.

I am someone who has revised over 100 memories from my childhood and it has changed my life. I think that this technique is fantastic and I am excited to share what I have learned about how to do it.

If you don’t want the preliminary info and just want to skip straight to the revision instructions, click on the link just below:

• How to Do Neville Goddard’s Revision technique

Otherwise, read on…

What Is Revision?

Neville Goddard talked about the revision technique in his 1954 lecture ‘The Pruning Shears of Revision’. He recommended that his students revise their day on a nightly basis by re-imagining any events that were unfavourable, and essentially re-writing them so that the events were what they wanted to experience.

This is what revision is: it’s re-imagining the past not how it was, but how you wanted it to be.

How Does Revision Work?

To understand how revision really works we need to understand how we create our reality here in the 3D.

Here’s how it goes: first of all, you receive vital life force from Source or Infinite Intelligence (of which your soul is a part). This life force passes through your subconscious mind and then your subconscious mind conditions that life force with whatever it contains — which is mostly your beliefs, assumptions, and self-concept.

That conditioned life force is projected out into the quantum field, and your 3D reality re-arranges itself to match whatever you are projecting. So your current 3D reality is a perfect reflection of your subconscious mind and its beliefs, self-concept and assumptions.

Consciously manifesting a new outcome is all about changing what your subconscious mind holds within it, so that you can manifest something new.

We normally do this through visualisations/SATS, affirmations and other techniques. Manifesting is all about successfully impressing the subconscious mind (often through these techniques) with what you want to see in your life.

Do you know what impresses the subconscious mind most powerfully? More powerfully than any affirmation or any visualisation?

Negative events from the past, and especially ones that occurred during the time when you were forming your self-concept and beliefs (so, from the first 20 or so years of life.)

Negative events from our formative years are powerfully impressed onto the subconscious mind, and result in limiting beliefs that can be tricky to change later on. These beliefs sit in our subconscious mind and we manifest according to them.

Therefore, if you truly want to experience something different in your 3D reality, you may need to not only ‘insert’ a new story into your subconscious mind, with affirmations and SATS, but you may need to also ‘take out’ the old story, using revision.

Revision is the missing link for many conscious creators who are failing to create what they want.

If you are fighting an uphill battle to forget the old story and shed the ‘old self’, you probably need to revise.

If you say affirmations and use SATS but the past still looms large and you struggle to stay positive, you may need to revise.

Neville Goddard said that revision is the most powerful technique for manifesting, and he also said that if you take only one thing from his work, it should be revision.

Below I provide detailed instructions on how to revise your past.

Here’s how to revise an unfavourable memory from your past

1. Take your past memory that you want to rewrite and write it down at the top of a piece of paper. Ask yourself, how did you feel during this event/interaction? Write that out.

2. How did you want to feel? It’s usually the opposite, so write that out.

3. Then come up with a revised scenario with the person involved that would make you feel that opposite. Write out a detailed scene on paper of how you wanted it to go.

As an example, let’s say someone is revising being hit by a caregiver in childhood. In that memory, they felt unsafe and unprotected. The opposite of this is feeling safe and protected. To achieve this, they could revise that that caregiver instead protected them in a similar situation where someone threatened violence. Maybe they had a nanny or a babysitter who threatened to spank them if they didn’t behave but the caregiver stepped in and fiercely protected them, by firing that babysitter and telling the babysitter “this is non-violent household, therefore you no longer work here”. Or alternatively, they could revise that the caregiver tells them after a fight with a sibling that “we never use violence in this household.”

4. Revision is SATS, but for the past, so once you have your scene, get yourself into a meditative state. Do a few minutes of mindfulness meditation at least before you revise, where you focus on your breath for several minutes.

5. Then play out your scene in imagination, in detail. Do it from the first person perspective and try to add as many details as possible

6. Loop it between 3-7 times, or until you feel a sense of emotion and the scene takes on tones of reality. For example, if you are revising the time a caregiver hit you in childhood, until you feel safe and protected. Once you feel the emotion you want to feel, you’re done

7. Then this is not 100% necessary but at the end I like to either burn or shred the paper with the details of the old memory

The old memory should now fade into the background once you’ve done it and seem “less real”. If it still troubles you, it usually means that you haven’t revised it in a way that convinces your subconscious and you may need to come up with another scenario, or that you simply didn’t loop it enough.

My Experiences with Revision

I first came across revision watching some videos by YouTuber Missy Renee (who is one of the few LOA YouTubers I think is worth listening to) She talked about how she had manifested the life of her dreams — she was in a happy relationship, had the home of her dreams and had a successful business.

But earlier in her life it had been a different story. She grew up in a dysfunctional family and her childhood really affected her, especially in the area of romantic relationships. She had been in a good relationship with her now partner but ruined the relationship because of all her insecurities which came from things that happened to her in childhood. She also said she suffered from addictions and mental health issues.

She said she revised 200+ memories from her long term past and this is what completely changed the trajectory of her life in terms of what she was manifesting.

My ears really pricked up when I heard this.

I also came from a dysfunctional family and it had affected me in many areas of life, particularly romantic relationships. I often felt like manifesting a better future was an uphill battle — it was definitely a battle I could fight, but I was ‘brute forcing’ it with mental diet, affirmations, and visualisations. These did actually work, but I felt like I was fighting against a force that was perhaps more powerful (aka the past) and it seemed to repeat in a couple of ways, in spite of all my good work.

Revision appeared to offer a way to completely move beyond the past so I grabbed it with both hands.

I revised 100+ memories from my childhood. I listed out all of the memories from my life that I wanted to revise and then I started with revising those memories that were from the first 17 years of my life.

I revised them all over a period of 2.5 weeks (which admittedly was way too fast, and I don’t recommend this.)

The effects of the revision were amazing. I felt like I was in a different reality afterwards and I was. My health improved. My finances suddenly became even more abundant than they were before. An avalanche of good luck events occurred just in the space of one month. Certain positive habits that I’d struggled to keep up on a daily basis suddenly became easy to do.

It was as if I had all this good luck in escrow and the revision made it so that I could receive it. I felt more empowered. I could also drop the affirmations and mental diet that I was doing to manifest, because I didn’t need those things anymore. I had already become the ‘new self’ with the help of revision, so saying affirmations was no longer something I needed to stay on track with my manifestation, but instead something I sometimes did just for a nice boost of positive energy. My thoughts naturally aligned themselves with my desired reality and no mental diet was needed after the revision.

Note that I have done many healing modalities over the last 12 years, and nothing I’ve done in the past compares to the results that came from revision. I want to qualify that by saying that the other modalities I’ve done (EMDR, therapy, cord cutting) have helped me a lot in the past and I still recommend them, but revision has a power that surpasses the other measures I’ve taken, at least for my particular situation…it’s also possible that one of the reasons revision worked so well for me was partly because of the previous work I’d done.

I feel like I have become the person I would have been, had those events in childhood never happened. I don’t know if the revision changed the past, but it certainly has changed me.

A psychic in my circle who didn’t know I had just done a lot of revision said to me afterwards “Woah, what have you done to your aura! You have just released a ton of karma through forgiveness and now you’re free.”

This was just some more external validation (which I didn’t really need, because I already knew on the inside) that I really was in a new reality.

I still have revision that I’d like to do (I’m only about 40% complete on all the memories from my life) but I’ve done enough to understand why Neville Goddard said that if you only take one thing from his work, it should be revision.

The fact is, revision changes you and your subconscious mind. The past doesn’t stay in the past. It often impresses your subconscious mind with its unfavourable outcome and then goes out into the future. It takes huge conscious effort to stop the past repeating itself.

Why not make it easier on yourself and revise?

Revision essentially pulls the negative memory, and the limiting beliefs associated with that memory, out at its roots. Saying positive affirmations when you have negative past memories and limiting beliefs is like mowing a lawn with weeds on it. You can mow over the weed and it disappears for a while. This is what affirmations will do. But revision pulls the weed out at its root so you no longer need to keep mowing it. So, if you do feel ready for revision, this could be one way of manifesting your desired reality without having to work as hard for it over the long term.

The people who could not manifest the life they wanted

I recently listened to YouTuber Brian Scott of ‘Reality Revolution’ read an essay written by a man called Israel Regardie, who was an occultist and student of Neville Goddard’s in the 1940s. Israel Regardie said that when Neville gave lectures teaching people how to use the Law of Assumption, there was always a small disgruntled group of people among his students who could not get the Law to work for them at all.

They would become frustrated and angry with Neville, and call him a fraud.

I believe that these people were probably the ones who needed to revise their long-term past.

They were trying to manifest certain things, but their past was overriding their efforts because their subconscious mind had been so impressed with past negative events.

(This is what happened for me when I tried to use the Law of Attraction/the Secret when I discovered it 15 years ago. I just couldn’t get it to work for me.) 

The fact is, Neville Goddard came from a loving family and had a pleasant childhood growing up in Barbados. He said that his mother instilled a sense of self-worth in him. So, therefore Neville likely had a high self-concept. This is probably one of the reasons conscious manifesting came easy to him.

Some of his students likely didn’t enjoy a loving childhood or a high sense of self-worth. That may have been why they couldn’t get the law to work in their favour.

Based on my own experiences with revision, I suspect revising their long-term past would have been the missing link for some of them. (However, Neville didn’t start lecturing about revision and how to do it until later in his career as a Law of Assumption teacher, so I imagine some of these people missed out on the opportunity to revise.) 

Here are some ideas on how to use revision to consciously manifest more of what you want

• Take the ACEs quiz for childhood trauma and then revise any ACEs that came up for you
• For better finances, revise your childhood so that you grew up wealthy — Missy Renee talked about revising her childhood (she grew up in poverty) to one of abundance. She said that after she did this, her poor family became very wealthy, in actual 3D reality
• For better health, revise any childhood illnesses
• If you are struggling with your health and you experienced childhood trauma or abuse/neglect in childhood, revise those events. Studies show that having experienced a lot of childhood trauma is associated with poor health later in life. By revising you can remove the effect those traumas are having on your health
• If you have a health problem, revise the diagnosis and imagine the doctor telling you they made a mistake and you don’t have the illness
• If you are struggling with money, revise any events where you struggled with money in the past, for example any bankruptcies or a bad credit score
• To manifest an ex back or a new relationship, revise any past relationships that went wrong, and take a look at the childhood events that may have screwed up your love life in the past. Events from childhood often repeat. For example, if you were betrayed in childhood and had an untrustworthy caregiver, you will often choose an untrustworthy partner. If your caregiver was violent, you will often end up with a violent partner. If your caregiver or a sibling rejected you and turned away from your attempts to connect, you will often experience rejection in romantic relationships.

If you know you had a rough childhood but you lack clarity about the events that negatively affected you, therapy may be helpful for you before you revise.

If you’re going to revise lots of memories from your long term past, revising chronologically is better

I wrote out a list of memories I wanted to revise, then put each one on a separate paper. Then I ordered them chronologically and revised them in order. I’m a professional intuitive and my Spirit Guides told me to do it this way. Their reasoning was that if you revise earlier stuff first, it ‘loosens’ the later memories in your subconscious mind.

Here are some of the disadvantages of revision, that you should bear in mind when using this technique

1. Revision can be hard and tiring, and it is stressful going over difficult past memories

Many people do not want to revisit the past. I get it – I was the same. I found revision somewhat stressful and painful, emotionally speaking.

Therefore, you shouldn’t do revision if you’re going through some really bad stuff in your life and you’re not emotionally stable. You definitely shouldn’t do it if you’re in crisis. It requires inner resources and is best done when you’re in a stable situation.

If you choose to do a lot of revision, you should also pace yourself.

Don’t do what I did and revise 100 memories in 2-3 weeks. That’s way too much and resulted in negative short-term consequences for me, such as complete emotional exhaustion. You need time to integrate the shifts that come with revision so I personally would restrict revision to a few memories per day.

Dr Joe Dispenza says that the body is the subconscious mind — it reflects perfectly what is in your subconscious. Your body actually needs time to integrate the new story of your past memory once you’ve revised it. So make sure you pace yourself to give your body time to catch up. If you do too much revision in a short period of time, you could find that you develop temporary physical symptoms while your body struggles to integrate the work you’re doing.

Using yoga or body-based healing modalities (such as massage therapy or Craniosacral therapy) after revising can also be really helpful to help integrate the revised story into your body.

2. Revision is an advanced technique

Not everyone who needs to revise is ready for it for these reasons:

Firstly, it requires some level of belief — if you’re new to the LOA and not sure you believe in it, you’re not ready for revision. You need to test the Law instead and prove to yourself that it exists, then come back to revision once you feel more confident that you have the ability to change your past.

Secondly, in order to revise effectively, you need experience in getting into a meditative state and visualising — if you have no experience of SATS, you should do at least 3 weeks of SATS before using revision.

3. You may need to do a fair amount of it to create change in a significant life pattern

This technique can require quite a bit of work…

…As an example, let’s say that you are always rejected in romantic relationships (maybe your partners have all ended up leaving you or cheating on you.) If you want to use revision to change this pattern, I don’t believe it will help to just revise the last time a partner left you. For this scenario, I’d make a list of all rejections and include:

• All the times you were rejected in childhood or adolescence by caregivers, siblings or peers (because for this to still be happening in your adult life, you can absolutely be sure that someone taught you in your formative years that you are “second best”.)
• All the times you were rejected by potential partners
• All the times you were rejected (left, cheated on, etc) by partners

Then I’d revise the lot, starting with the earlier memories.

I don’t believe we can always see change in a life pattern from just revising one past scenario. Instead, I believe we often need to go right back to the root and then making a comprehensive list of everything that stemmed from that – and revise it all. It may take some time, but in my experience, it is so worth it.

And if you don’t have the time/energy to revise everything, go back to the root cause (the earliest memories or memory) and revise those. That will yield the biggest benefits, in my experience. I’ve only completed 40% of the revision I would like to do (I have around 250 memories), but my guides told me I’ve already experienced 80% of the total benefits that I can experience from revision because I’ve revised the memories from the first 17 years of my life (aka the root causes). So, this means that revising the earliest memories is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck, energetically speaking.

Just one more tip for revising:

Make sure that the new memory you choose to over-write the old one, is realistic enough

Personally, when I was revising my 100+ memories, one of the main themes I saw for revision that didn’t work, was that I sometimes used unrealistic memories.

I’ll give you an example. When I was 17 I went to Switzerland to work in a hotel during the summer, to help me to learn French. The hotel was a bit isolated and the woman who owned and ran it was a bully. I spent 2 awful months there, and I felt isolated and was bullied by this woman.

First of all, I revised this memory so that the woman was a really good person. But the memory wouldn’t stick at all and the revision didn’t work. My subconscious mind just wouldn’t accept that she was a nice person. I looped it so many times, but it didn’t work.

In the end, I had to revise it so that she was horrible but I left and went home on the day I realised that. In the memory, I saw myself leaving with a sense of respect for myself and feeling empowered. That was what I needed. My subconscious mind accepted this memory with no problems and I only had to loop it a few times.

So, when revising a memory, if it’s not working, check that your memory is realistic enough. If your revised memory takes place in an ideal world where everyone is wonderful and everything is great, the subconscious mind may not be convinced enough for the revision to stick. So, sometimes instead of making the revised memory 100% ideal, you may need to just make it good enough, so that any harm that did happen to you, no longer happened in the revised memory.

Does revision change the past?

I believe there is no past, just as there is no future. Time is a clever illusion. You are not moving through life in a linear fashion, as you think you are. Instead you are moving through a variety of states and it’s all happening at once.

Therefore, the past only exists in your memory. You change it, and you change you, when you revise. Studies show that we alter our memories every time we bring them to mind anyway. Why not alter them in your favour?

Further Resources for Revision:

• Neville Goddard’s 1954 lecture transcript: ‘The Pruning Shears of Revision’
• Brian Scott of ‘Reality Revolution’ reading Neville’s lecture ‘The Pruning Shears of Revision’ (with discussion)
• Missy Renee’s video on Revision #1
• Missy Renee’s video on Revision #2

And finally, let’s look at what Neville said about revision in his book, the Law and the Promise:

“Nothing stands between you and the fulfillment of your dreams but facts — and facts are the creations of imagining. If you change your imagining, you will change the facts.

Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable — a dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself, it is living — it is part of the living age.

He cannot leave behind him the mistakes of the past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists, and it gives — and still gives — its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time, I call revision — and revision results in repeal.

Changing your life means changing the past.

The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past.

The past and the present form the whole structure of man; they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future.

Live nobly — so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall. Should you fail to do so, remember, the first act of correction or cure is always — “revise.”