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.
Image created with the help of Canva AI
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.
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?
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.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.