In 1933, Neville Goddard was being mentored in the Law of Assumption by his teacher, the legendary Abdullah (who was an Ethiopian Rabbi and Jewish mystic.)

A native of Barbados, by that point, Neville had been in the US for 12 years and he had been a dancer working on Broadway. The Great Depression was underway and Neville had been laid off, since some people in NYC were homeless and hungry, and most had no money to pay to see a show.

He had been living in a basement on 75th street. He had a burning desire to escape the misery and cold of NYC, and to return to Barbados and be among his family for Christmas but he had no money to do so.

He told his mentor of his wish to return and lamented that he had no money. Abdullah’s reply was “You are in Barbados”. He instructed Neville to imagine he was walking the streets of Barbados as he walked the New York City streets, and to hear the sounds of Barbados and feel the warm temperatures as he fell asleep. Essentially, he told him to ‘live in the end’ of being in Barbados.

Neville did this for some time and nothing happened in the external world.

Several days before the last ship for the year was set to sail to Barbados from New York, and with his goal of being in Barbados seemingly still far away, Neville went to visit Abdullah and told him that nothing had happened. He said that Abdullah got up and left the room, and slammed his study door on Neville, saying something along the lines of “I can’t talk to you about this, because you are in Barbados.”

Within a few days, Neville was on his way home to Barbados because his brother Victor had sent him a ticket to return home for Christmas, out of the blue after 12 years of being overseas.

Through this experience, Neville learned an important lesson about manifesting, which was that one should not ask where one’s manifestation is.

Doing this is living in the assumption that one does not have what one desires. It’s an admission of a lack of faith and a statement on the part of the person who is making it, that they are not in fact ‘living in the end’. It constitutes being a seeker because you are not having what you want, instead you are seeking it.

Seekers don’t find

Only those who have already found (on the inside) what they seek, will find what they desire in the external world.

So, in this article I’m going to talk about how you can avoid being a seeker and why I think this is a very important part of conscious manifesting that hardly anyone talks about.

How to avoid being a seeker

If you are learning about conscious manifesting, there are going to be two phases to your journey. The first phase is where you gather information and learn about how to use the Law in your favour. Neville Goddard called this ‘being a hearer of the word’.

As part of this phase, maybe you read Neville Goddard’s books or listen to his lectures.

Maybe you’ve read some of my articles on the topic.

Maybe you’ve watched YouTube videos on the Law of Assumption.

Maybe you have browsed Law of Assumption/Neville Goddard subs on Reddit.

Once you’ve studied the Law to some degree, to avoid being a seeker you need to take your search offline and just start applying what you know. You need to build your faith by putting it into practice. This is the second phase and it is what Neville called being a ‘doer of the word’.

He also said, don’t just be a hearer of the word — be a doer. In other words, stop talking about it and researching it, and just put the Law into practice.

The online Law of Assumption communities I’ve come across are packed with ‘hearers’ of the word. This is OK, especially if those people are in their learning phase, but it seems some of those people are not. Some people are leaving comments on YouTube videos complaining that they’ve been using the Law for a long time and nothing is happening. Or they are talking about situations they want to change and focusing on what they do not want to see in their reality.

This is not how you use the Law in your favour.

How you use the Law in your favour is that you spend a certain amount of time learning about the Law and then you come up with a daily practice (comprised of techniques) that you do until you find you’re living in the end naturally and you no longer need the techniques. If during this time you go online to moan about why your manifestation isn’t here yet, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

For this reason, I’m not a fan of getting Law of Assumption teachings off YouTube in a long term way…

…And once you’ve learned enough about the Law, I think you should stay away from them and any other content that may put you into the role and identity of “person who is learning to consciously manifest.”

YouTube channels don’t foster the independence that is necessary for being a successful conscious manifester, and this is built into their business model.

Most LOA channels are set up to make money and sustain a business. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but you should think carefully about what stage of your process you are in (hearing or doing?) and whether the channel owner’s goals align with the stage you’re in. Most of these channel owners encourage comments (and these comments are probably going to be about where you are in your manifestation process) because it means more traffic to their videos. They offer ongoing support in the form of coaching. What do you think would have happened if Abdullah had not slammed the door on Neville and instead offered him coaching to talk about what isn’t happening? Or if YouTube had existed then and Neville had been holed up in his basement feverishly consuming content and writing comments complaining about how he tried so hard to be in Barbados but it just didn’t work out. Would Neville have made it to Barbados that Christmas? Perhaps not. Neville was almost there with his manifestation and Abdullah knew it, so he refused to talk about it.

But this is not how most LOA coaches and content creators approach it. They will support you in talking about how you don’t have what you want for as long as they earn money that way. (I don’t believe this is done on purpose, but if you are in the ‘doing’ stage of your journey, it is a mismatch between the creator’s goals and the consumer’s that is naturally baked in to the business model.)

Whenever I have watched YouTube videos on the Law of Assumption, I find the energy of them is very different to listening to a Neville Goddard lecture. There is the energy of neediness or lack that is built into much of the YouTube content.

I believe that this energy is there because the coach is in daily contact with many clients who are living in neediness and lack. They are trying to coach those clients out of a place of lack. They are making videos to help people come out of lack and into living in the end.

And if you scroll down and read the comments, you can often find the same lack energy in those.

Most LOA YouTube videos take me out of an abundance mindset and into a lack one. I start thinking “what could I be missing?”.

But I don’t get the same sense of lack when I listen to Neville or read his work. Instead, I feel a sense of conviction from him. He transmits the energy of confidence in his lectures and books, to the point that it’s almost an activation for those who read or listen to his work.

In my opinion, this same energy isn’t present in most other modern New Thought teachings.

And so my sense about it is that once you are using the Law, you need to limit talking about being in the process of manifesting and you need to exercise caution around the manifesting communities that you are a part of, otherwise you may find that you are perpetually being someone who is in the process of manifesting, which creates more of being that person.

Hardly anyone talks about this because doing what Abdullah did and slamming the door on people when they are getting close to their manifestation is not a viable business model for a Law of Assumption coach, and it can feel kind of unsupportive and mean, too.

However, at some point in their journey I do think conscious creators should be encouraged to go their own way on a path of independent conscious creation. Using the Law of Assumption is a solitary path. It requires putting the Law into practice and the building of faith on this path through persistence, which leads to success. No-one can build that faith for you.

There is no try

You can be a hearer of the word or you can be a doer.

Note that there is no being a ‘tryer’. You’re either doing it or you’re not.

Many people in manifesting communities are being tryers. They’re trying to manifest but they are doubting and that’s why they need videos, support and a place to talk about why their manifestation isn’t here. Instead they need to go off and test the law repeatedly, on their own solitary journey.

Know where you are in your process. If you only found out about the Law in the last year or two, you may still be a hearer of the word. But if you know it’s time to be a doer of the word, switch to doing and stop being a hearer.

At this point, once you’ve got your plan and your daily practice, all there is to do is to follow it until your subconscious mind is impressed.

At this point, there is no need to be a part of a community of other (maybe unsuccessful) conscious creators. Nor is there any need to chronically consume information to make sure you’re ‘doing it right’. If you’d like to consume information though, I think it should be Neville’s books and lectures because in them he transmits the energy of something rather special.

What would you be doing if you had your manifestation?

Another way to avoid being a seeker is to ask yourself what would you be doing if you had your manifestation? And what you would stop doing if you had your manifestation? Do those things, or stop doing those things.

Cynthia Stafford (who manifested $12.8m on the lottery in 2007) said that she interviewed financial advisors to help her to look after the money before she won. She was that convinced that she was going to win.

Obviously there may be limits to this and only you can judge for yourself what those are — for example, if you take medication for an illness, you probably aren’t going to come off that suddenly. Instead you keep living in the end and wait for evidence in the 3D that it’s time to come off.

But the things you can do, you should do. And the things you can stop doing, you should stop doing.

At some point, that may include no longer consuming LOA content chronically and chatting on LOA forums. To do that long term is to be a seeker, and seekers, by definition, do not find.