Rachel, I love this question because it tells me something important about where you are right now. You’ve started to feel the pull of these ideas (that imagination creates reality) but the rational mind is pushing back hard. That tension? It’s actually a sign you’re taking this seriously, not a sign you’re doing it wrong.
Let me be honest with you the way I wish someone had been honest with me when I first wrestled with this.
What We’re Really Asking
When people ask me this (and I get some version of it almost every week) they’re usually not asking about defying gravity or growing a third arm. They’re asking about the thing that feels impossible to them. The healing that doctors said won’t happen. The reconciliation with someone who blocked them everywhere. The financial turnaround when they’re drowning in debt.
That’s the real question: can I have the thing that every piece of evidence in my current reality says I can’t have?
And the answer, according to every teacher I’ve studied and my own lived experience, is yes. But not in the way your rational mind wants it explained.
What Neville Actually Taught About This
Neville Goddard didn’t dance around this. He went straight at it:
“Nothing is impossible to the man who can will strongly enough. Is that not a saying common to all? Do you believe this? Surely, there is not a person in this world who has not at some time been surprised by the fulfillment of desires which seemed utterly beyond the range of possibility.”
– Neville Goddard, Chapter 1
He wasn’t speaking theoretically. Neville told the story of imagining himself in Barbados when he had no money, no ship passage, and no logical way to get there, and his imagination found the bridge of incidents to make it happen. The “how” wasn’t his job. The feeling of already being there was.
This is the part that trips people up. We think manifesting means we need to figure out the mechanism. We don’t. We need to occupy the state of the wish fulfilled.
The Difference Between “Impossible” and “I Don’t See How”
Here’s what shifted everything for me: I stopped using the word “impossible” and replaced it with “I don’t currently see a path to this.” Those are wildly different statements. One is a verdict. The other is just an admission that my current awareness is limited.
Joseph Murphy put it this way:
“The only thing that could keep your desire from being fulfilled would be for you to feel that your desire is impossible of fulfillment. As long as you do not accept it as an impossibility, your subconscious mind will find a way to bring it to pass.”
– Joseph Murphy, Chapter 5
Read that again. The only barrier is your acceptance of impossibility. Not the laws of physics. Not your bank account. Not someone else’s free will. Your own inner acceptance.
That doesn’t mean you’ll literally sprout wings. It means that when you drop the label “impossible” and simply dwell in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, your subconscious (which has access to far more information and pathways than your conscious mind) goes to work on it.
Why the “Impossible” Label Is the Actual Problem
I struggled with this exact thing for months. I had a desire I wanted so badly, but every time I sat down to do my SATS session, this little voice would say, “Come on, be realistic.” And that voice wasn’t protecting me. It was actively blocking me.
When you label something impossible, you’re not being rational, you’re making an assumption. And assumptions harden into facts. That’s Neville’s entire teaching in one sentence. The assumption of impossibility creates evidence of impossibility, which then reinforces the assumption. It’s a loop.
Breaking the loop doesn’t require you to believe in magic. It requires you to stop accepting the current arrangement of facts as permanent.
The Bridge of Incidents
One concept that helped me enormously is what Neville called the “bridge of incidents.” You don’t manifest the end result out of thin air. You manifest it through a series of events (some of which look like coincidences, lucky breaks, or even setbacks) that lead you to your desired outcome.
So when you imagine your “impossible” thing, you don’t need to know how it happens. You just need to know what it feels like when it’s done. Your subconscious builds the bridge. You walk across it.
A Practical Exercise for You
Tonight, I want you to try something specific. Don’t tackle your “impossible” desire head-on just yet. Start with something that feels only mildly unlikely. Something you’d rate a 6 out of 10 on the difficulty scale.
- Choose that mildly unlikely thing.
- Construct a short scene (no more than 10 seconds long) that would happen after this thing has already occurred. A friend congratulating you. A text confirming it. The feeling of it being done.
- As you fall asleep tonight, loop that scene. Feel it. Don’t visualize it like you’re watching a movie, be in it, hearing what you’d hear, touching what you’d touch.
- Do this for one week. Don’t check for results during the week. Just do the scene and let it go during the day.
When that mildly unlikely thing shows up (and it will) you’ll have something your rational mind can’t argue with. Your own experience. And from that foundation, you can reach for bigger things with genuine confidence instead of forced belief.
One More Thing
Rachel, the fact that you’re asking this question means some part of you already knows the answer. You’re not asking “does this work?”, you’re asking for permission to believe it works for the big stuff too.
You don’t need my permission. But if it helps: I’ve seen things come to pass in my own life and in the lives of people I work with that no reasonable person would have predicted. Not because we’re special, but because we stopped agreeing with the apparent impossibility and started agreeing with the wish fulfilled instead.
The world is far more flexible than we’ve been taught to believe. Test it and see.
