The Forbidden Alignment: What the Buddha and Neville Goddard Secretly Agree On

How a 2,600-year-old Buddhist truth and a modern manifestation secret point to the exact same method for finding peace and realizing your goals.

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First published on Medium

I (Sophia) was having a crisis of faith, and I bet you’ve felt it too.

On one hand, I am a devoted student of the Buddha’s path. My mornings begin with taking refuge. I am convinced his teachings on the end of suffering are the ultimate truth. The Dhamma is my compass.

On the other hand, I was diving deep into the work of Neville Goddard. His teachings on the power of imagination to shape reality were producing tangible results. But a quiet, persistent voice in my heart kept whispering:

“Are you being led astray? Is this desire for manifestation pulling you away from the freedom from desire?”

It felt like I was trying to serve two masters. One promised enlightenment; the other promised the world. The cognitive dissonance was a low-grade hum of spiritual anxiety.

This morning, a line from Neville’s The Power of Awareness (affiliate link to book) made me ponder:

“There is only one substance. This substance is consciousness. It is your imagination which forms this substance into concepts. Which concepts are then manifested as conditions, circumstances, and physical objects.”

I brought it to Cristof, whose understanding of the Buddha’s teachings is profound. “This,” I said, “reminds me of Dependent Origination.”

What happened next wasn’t just an intellectual exercise. It was the key that unlocked the door between my two worlds. The relief was immediate and physical — a literal weight lifted from my chest. We realized we hadn’t found a contradiction; we had found the secret bridge.

And it all hinges on one powerful, misunderstood link: craving.

The Meeting Point of Two Giants

For those unfamiliar, the Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination is a practical map of how the mind works and suffering arises. It’s a twelve-link chain, and a crucial part of it goes like this:

Consciousness leads to…

Body-Mind (Name & Form) which leads to…

The Six Senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch… and the mind as the sixth sense, the one that imagines) that allow for…

Contact between a sense and an object (including a thought or mental image), leading to…

Feeling (the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral experience from that contact; not to be confused with emotion), turning into…

Craving (the “I like this, I want more” or “I hate this, I want it gone” reaction).

This craving is the engine of suffering. It’s what makes us cling, grasp, and ultimately feel pain when reality doesn’t match our wants.

Now, let’s look at Neville through this lens.

Neville says the one substance is Consciousness.

Your Imagination (the sixth sense) forms this consciousness into concepts. This is the Contact with a mental object.

Next, the Feeling of that concept arises. Neville calls this the “feeling of the wish fulfilled.”

And here is where the magic happens. Where the two teachings don’t just align — they complete each other.

The Hack Isn’t Getting; It’s Stopping

The common mistake in manifestation is to feel the “wish fulfilled” with the desperate energy of craving for the 3D world to confirm it. We feel the feeling in order to get the thing. This, according to the Buddha’s map, directly fuels the chain of suffering.

But what Neville actually taught — and what we so often miss — is that the feeling of the wish fulfilled is an end in itself.

When you successfully generate the feeling that your desire is already fulfilled, what happens?

Relief. Satisfaction. Peace.

The thirst is quenched. The hunger is satiated. In that moment of genuine, embodied feeling, the craving stops.

You have, using Neville’s technique, actively broken the Buddha’s chain of suffering before it could create more suffering.

You are no longer “manifesting from lack.” You are “manifesting from satiation.” You have your desire realized in the only place it has ever truly existed: in your consciousness. The 3D manifestation becomes a secondary confirmation, a natural echo, not the source of your happiness. You can enjoy it when it appears, and you are equally at peace if it hasn’t yet, because your state of fulfillment is internal and untouchable.

This is the ultimate freedom. It’s not the absence of desire; it’s the absence of craving. The Buddha provided the comprehensive map to end suffering — the Noble Eightfold Path. What Neville Goddard offers is a powerful, precise tool for navigating one of the most difficult parts of that map: dissolving the craving of a specific desire before it takes root.

Your 2-Minute Practice to Dissolve Craving

This isn’t just philosophy. It’s a tool you can apply daily to keep desires from turning into craving. Here’s how you can use it today.

1. Identify the “Why” Behind the “What”: Pick a desire. Let’s say it’s “$10,000 a month.” Now, ask: ”What feeling would having that give me?” Is it security? Freedom? Validation? A sense of being capable and successful?

2. Step Into the Feeling, Not the Vision: Close your eyes. For just two minutes, forget the money. Forget the bank statement. Instead, generate the core feeling itself.
    → Feel the shoulders-drop relief of security.
    → Feel the deep-breath expansiveness of freedom.
    → Feel the chest-out confidence of being capable.

3. Rest in the Relief: Linger in this feeling. Let it feel real and true right now. As Neville said, you must feel it so real that you experience a sense of relief, as if the thing is done. The moment you feel that relief, the craving for the external object vanishes. You have what you actually wanted all along.

It’s like the child who, unable to have a cat, imagines petting one so vividly they feel the joy and purring. They aren’t desperate for the physical cat in that moment; they are satiated by the feeling of love and joy. That feeling is the true goal.

Walking the Path, Aligned

This realization was our liberation from spiritual conflict. We no longer have to choose between the path to enlightenment and the tools for a well-lived life. They are two languages describing the same truth: consciousness is primary, and freedom is found not in getting what you want, but in no longer being enslaved by the wanting itself.

You can be a powerful creator of your own reality and a peaceful Buddha-in-training. In fact, one is the surest path to the other.

Ready to make this shift with a supportive community?

This synthesis of mind, manifesting, and identity is what we live and breathe in our free Skool community, Shift Your Identity (SYI). It’s a place where we move beyond theory and into practice.

Inside SYI, you get:

• A supportive community to share your journey and successes.

• Live Q&A calls where we dive deeper into these alignments.

• Practical teachings on identity shifting to make these states a permanent part of your being.

Stop feeling the conflict and start experiencing the alignment.

Click here to join our free Shift Your Identity (SYI) community.

I “Tricked” Myself Into Winning 3 Prizes in a Single Raffle

Here’s the simple identity shift I used — rooted in Neville Goddard’s teachings — that you can apply to manifest anything.

Photo by Jake Ingle on Unsplash

First published on Medium

I (Cristof) sat on a hard gym bench, watching my chances of winning a raffle slip away.

The first prize was called. Not my number.
The second. Not my number.
The third and fourth. Nothing.

My shoulders began to slump. A familiar, apologetic story started playing in my mind: “It’s okay, you never win these things anyway. Just be happy for the others. Don’t get your hopes up.”

I was, in that moment, perfectly embodying the identity of Someone Who Doesn’t Win.

And the universe was complying.

But I’ve been doing this inner work for a while. I recognized the old story as it was happening. This wasn’t who I am anymore. So, right there in the noisy gym, I initiated a deliberate identity shift. I decided to step out of “Someone Who Doesn’t Win” and into “A Winner.”

I sat up straight. I put a genuine smile on my face. I started applauding the other winners with sincere joy, as if I were a champion who knew my turn was coming. I didn’t just act like a winner; I felt like one. I allowed myself to feel the satisfaction and excitement of having already won.

The very next drawing? My number was called.

I won a gift card. I was thrilled, but an old pattern emerged. When my number was called again in the next round, I felt a pang of hesitation. “Should I really be this happy? People might think I’m greedy.” The old identity was fighting to pull me back.

I consciously reaffirmed my new state. “I have shifted. I am a winner. Winners get to celebrate.” I stood up, raised my arms, and joyfully accepted my second prize.

By the end of the night, I had won three times.

Now, in the grand scheme, a few ice cream gift cards are trivial. But the lesson was profound: Your external world is nothing more than a lagging indicator of your internal identity. When I identified as a loser, I got loss. The moment I shifted to identifying as a winner, I started winning. It worked immediately.

This experience cemented a truth I knew from Neville Goddard. In his book, The Power of Awareness (affiliate link to book), he taught that:

“The truth that sets you free is that you can experience in imagination what you desire to experience in reality. And by maintaining this experience in imagination, your desire will become an actuality.”

But it was just yesterday that the final piece clicked into place. We were relaxing at home and watching the movie Coach Carter (affiliate link to movie). Samuel L. Jackson, as the coach, tells his team:

“The losing stops now. Starting today, you will play like winners, act like winners, and most importantly, you will be winners… winning in here is the key to winning out there.”

It hit me. That’s it. That’s the entire philosophy in one powerful, cinematic statement.

Most people hear that and think “in here” means the basketball court. But I finally saw it with perfect clarity.

“Winning in here” isn’t about a court. It’s about the inner court of your mind. It’s the identity you assume before the external result shows up. My gym story was a tiny, perfect example of winning in here (my mind) to win out there (the raffle).

The Simple Method for Shifting Your Identity

We spend so much time rearranging the furniture in a burning house — trying to fix external circumstances without addressing the internal fire of our own self-concept. The real work is within. If you want to create a lasting change, start by consciously shifting your identity. Here’s the practical, two-step method, that Sophia explains like this:

Step 1: Get Absurdly Clear on What You Want & Who You Must Be to Have It

You can’t build a house without a blueprint. Most people are vague. “I want more money.” “I want a better relationship.” This is useless to your subconscious mind.

Get specific. “I want to earn $10,000 per month from my creative work, with ease and joy.”

Now, here’s the crucial pivot most people miss: What is the identity of the person who already has that?

The person earning $10k/month with ease isn’t frantic or desperate. They are confident, focused, and see themselves as a high-value creator. They are a winner in their field.

Your desire isn’t just for the thing; it’s for the state of being that the thing implies. Define that state. Is it “a winner,” “a bestselling author,” “a magnetic partner,” “a debt-free person”?

Step 2: Make Your Future Dream a Present Fact Through Feeling

This is where you move from theory to practice. You must “assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled,” as Neville says.

The word “assumption” is key. The dictionary gives two definitions that are perfectly aligned for our purpose:

1. A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.

2. The action of taking on power or responsibility.

You must accept as true, without any proof from the 3D world, that you are already that person. And in doing so, you take on the power and responsibility of that new identity.

How do you do this? In your imagination.

Let’s say your desire is to be a bestselling author. Don’t just visualize holding the book. That’s a step, but it’s not the pinnacle.

Instead, enter a scene that would imply your desire is fulfilled. Imagine reading a heartfelt email from a reader, telling you how your book changed their life. Feel the warmth in your chest. See the words on the screen. Hear your own grateful, happy sigh. Live in that feeling.

Do this not as a daydream of the future, but as a reliving of a present fact. This isn’t “someday.” This is now.

As Neville puts it:

“By desiring to be other than what you are, you can create an ideal of the person you want to be and assume that you are already that person. If this assumption is persisted in until it becomes your dominant feeling, the attainment of your ideal is inevitable.”

Your only job is to persist. When the old reality (the “losing streak”) shows up, ignore it. It’s just echo. When doubt creeps in, gently return to the feeling of your wish fulfilled.

Stop trying to build a new you from the outside in. It’s exhausting. Instead, make the shift. Decide who you are now, and let your outer world catch up to that truth. “Win in here,” and watch, almost as a passive observer, as your reality has no choice but to reflect your new identity back to you.

Ready to make your shift? This is exactly what we explore in our free Skool community, Shift Your Identity (SYI). It’s a space where we dive deeper into these principles, support each other’s journeys, and practice the art of conscious creation together. If this article resonated with you, you already belong. Click here to join our free SYI community today.