Controlling Your Imaginal Acts: Bridging the Gap Between Your Desires and Reality
“The world in which we live is a world of imagination, and man – through his imaginal activities – creates the realities and circumstances of life; this he does either knowingly or unknowingly.”
Neville’s most important contribution to conscious creation was to point out that your imaginal activities are the cause – and the only cause – of your life circumstances. Not your vibration, not your horoscope, but your imaginal acts.
Consequently, the people who are masters at realizing their desires all have one thing in common: most of their imaginal activities – conscious or unconscious – are aligned with what they want.
So how can you replicate their success? How can you use your imaginal activities to manifest your specific desires?
First of all, it is imperative that you understand the term imaginal activities in their entirety.
As discussed in my previous post, we can differentiate between two types of imaginal activities: 1) the deliberate imagining of the wish fulfilled (i.e. visualization) and 2) inner speech.
From Neville’s Control Your Inner Conversations lecture, we also know that our inner speech means our thoughts.
“Stop for one moment and ask yourself, what am I thinking now? You are carrying on a little tiny inner speech at every moment of time…Observe what you are actually doing on the inside, for that is what God sees; and what you are doing on the inside, you are doing in little tiny speech movements and they are crystallizing in the manifested world round about you.”
In essence, we entertain two types of thoughts/engage in two types of inner speech: 1) conversation/dialogue and 2) commentary/monologue.
The first type is when you conduct an imaginary conversation with another person.
The second type is when you internally comment on persons, things, events, and circumstances around you.
The process of taking control of your imaginal acts can be divided into three simple steps: awareness, replacement, and continuity. Breaking it down into these fundamental parts can help us understand how imaginal acts shapes our lives, and how to improve them.
These three words also give the acronym ARC. That is not a coincidence; once you go through them properly, you will definitely experience a character arc!
Step 1 – Awareness
The first step is to become aware of all of your imaginal acts concerning your desire. Are the majority of them in line with what you want? Your visualizations surely are but how about your thoughts – aka your mental diet – during the day?
The most common error when it comes to manifesting our specific desires is getting hyper-focused on the deliberate imagining of the wish fulfilled while neglecting to match our inner self-talk to our desired outcome.
And why is that a problem?
As the Imagination Creates Reality lecture explains it: “our inner conversations are just as creative as our deliberate imagining of the wish fulfilled. In fact, if they are of the opposite nature, they can negate what we have imagined.”
In practical terms:
“You must watch what you are saying internally to make sure that these conversations coincide with your wish fulfilled. If our desire is for a better job and we imagine ourselves being congratulated because we are gainfully employed in a wonderful position, we must also make our inner conversations conform to that end. We must be certain that we are not saying within ourselves something like, ‘That boss of mine doesn’t believe in promoting people;’ or ‘It would be difficult to find any job at my age, never mind a better one,’ or similar statements that would imply that we do not have that which we desire. We must persist in the feeling of our imaginal act by making our mental conversations conform to what we would say had we already realized our aim.”
To paraphrase the quote above, every time you engage in an imaginal activity regarding your desire, you 1) either give life force to your new reality or 2) perpetuate your current circumstances.
As Neville puts it in The Law and the Promise, “Imagination is both conservative and transformative. It is conservative when it builds its world from images supplied by memory and the evidence senses. It is creatively transformative when it imagines things as they ought to be, building its world out of the generous dreams of fancy.”
Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Amy is visualizing crystal clear skin. However, every time she sees herself in the mirror, she indulges in a berating self-monologue.
“My face looks so dull. Is that another pimple? Not again! When will my visualization finally work? Maybe I should cut out dairy from my diet to speed up the process!”
Ben is manifesting a million dollars. Every night, he imagines seeing his seven-figure bank account. But whenever he takes a look at his current balance, he entertains the following thoughts:
“Looks like I will need to borrow more money. Maybe Tim can give me some. There is no way I can pay my bills on time this month. I hate not having money. Cannot wait for my visualization to finally kick in!”
Both Amy and Ben keep alternating between imagining (via visualization) having what they want and imagining (via inner speech) that they don’t have what they want.
In essence, they oscillate between their new state and old state. They keep feeding both states with their imaginal acts. Now, the problem is that the old state always has a head start because that’s the one they kept entertaining so far, that’s the one they are experiencing in their day-to-day life.
In order to make their new state dominant, they must fuel it up with a lot more imaginal acts and simultaneously withdraw their precious attention from the old one.
Step 2 – Replacement
After we discovered our imaginal acts that do not conform to our desired end, we need to change them with ones that do.
Once again, for most people, this will mean a change in their mental diet.
“We abandon ourselves to negative inner talking, yet expect to retain command of life. Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past as man believes. They advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested words. My Word, said the prophet, shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in all the things whereto I sent it.” Neville Goddard – Mental Diets
So what is a mental diet?
When someone goes on a mental diet it means that he or she is committed to only entertaining thoughts that are in line with his or her desire. In other words, they only dwell on thoughts that imply that they already got what they wanted and discard every other thought that would suggest the opposite.
Thus, if someone affirms thrice a day for ten minutes but keeps dwelling on negative thoughts relating to the subject of his desire in between those three times that person is not on a mental diet. He is on an affirmation schedule. And while affirming at predetermined times could be extremely helpful, it won’t work as intended if it is coupled with a horrible mental diet.
Having a bad mental diet while affirming on a schedule is like making a cleaning crew clean your house in the morning and then letting in ten stray cats, five wet dogs, and three kids who played in the mud right after everything is spotless. Would a person in their right mind do such a thing? Of course not!
A person with common sense would make sure that the cats, dogs, and kids also went through some cleaning and grooming before letting them rush inside the house.
You need to do the same with the negative thoughts and ideas when they come to you. Turn them around or transform them into positive ones before you let them stay in your mind rent-free.
So how can you replace your negative thoughts that arise during the day? Is it really necessary to monitor them 24/7?
Fortunately, no. All you have to do is to follow your moods and your cues.
First of all, your thoughts create your moods and feelings. How you think about and interpret what happens to you and around you influences your feelings. Therefore, if you feel sad, depressed, anxious, icky, etc., rest assured that you were contemplating negative thoughts beforehand. As soon as you detect a change for the worse in your mood, examine your ongoing thoughts. If they are negative and relate to the subject of your desire, flip them to their opposite.
Secondly, most of your thoughts don’t just pop into your mind out of nowhere. They are usually preceded by a cue. The cue is what triggers your brain to initiate a thought. The cues that can trigger a thought relating to your desire come in a wide range of forms; a cue can be a person, a word, a place, an object, an event, etc.
For example, most people start to think about money and their financial situation when a bill arrives, when they take a look at their bank accounts, when they go shopping, when they pay their taxes, or when they go to purchase a lottery ticket.
Similarly, being a wedding guest, watching a romantic movie, reading about a break-up of a celebrity, and seeing engagement posts on social media usually trigger the average person’s thoughts about his or her own love life.
If you don’t know what your cues are, spend a couple of days observing your negative thoughts relating to the object of your desire. When did they kick in? What were you doing right beforehand? Did you read something in the news? Were you scrolling on social media? Did you listen to your co-worker complain about his financial situation for the fiftieth time? Or maybe you were reading a success story online?
Jot down every object, event, location, or person’s name that causes you to experience negative thoughts when it comes to your desire. These are the triggers you need to watch out for during the day. Whenever you encounter any of them, make sure that you immediately launch into a very positive inner monologue.
Going back to our initial examples, Amy’s cue is the mirror while Ben’s negative thoughts are triggered by looking at his bank account.
Accordingly, every time Amy finds herself in front of a mirror, she should respond to her reflection like this:
“My face looks so heavenly! Wow, it’s truly crystal clear. I love that no matter what I eat, my skin always stays perfect.”
And every time Ben checks his bank account, he should only entertain thoughts like this:
“Damn, my investments performed so well this year. I love having so much money! Cannot wait to buy my mom her new car today.”
Here, it is important to note that what truly matters is what you are saying internally and not what you are saying outwardly.
“Now he is not speaking of any outer speech, for you and I have had this experience, — I know I have many times. You have gone to a party, and many people you do not know, you meet them and the usual greetings: ‘Nice to know you’ ‘What a joy to know you,’ ‘Pleased to meet you’ and the usual clichés; and then you have drinks and your little hors d’oeuvre, and then the party breaks up and they all separate. And you hear someone say, ‘What a creep, What a bore’; yet they were so pleased to meet them: ‘What a joy to know you.’ The outer words did not conform whatsoever with what they were really thinking on the inside. And God sees, not the outer man; He sees the inner Man.” Neville Goddard – Control Your Inner Conversations
So don’t worry if someone asks you about your circumstances that relate to your desire. You can tell them your old story outwardly. Just make sure that internally you repeat your new story right after (or – if you can do it – simultaneously with) the encounter.
For example, if someone asks you about your employment status and you are currently manifesting your dream job, you don’t have to lie and tell them that you are already working there.
This sentiment is also illustrated in The Law and the Promise. In Chapter Two, we learn about a couple who manifests an apartment complex to be built on their corner lot. While they are still in the process of manifesting, a contractor asks them why there isn’t an apartment building on their property. Notice that the couple does not tell him to open his eyes better, there is actually a building there! No. They don’t make fools out of themselves. They answer him truthfully and tell him that they would like that very much but that they have no money to put into the project.
Bottom line, if someone specifically asks about your circumstances, you can answer them. It will not ruin your manifestation.
However, this does not mean that you should tell about your unwanted circumstances to everyone and their brother. Generally, when people do that, one of the two underlying thoughts drives their behavior: 1) they want someone to become their savior and solve their problem on the physical plane; or 2) they are collecting sympathy points. Both of those thoughts imply that they are not living in their desired end mentally.
Step 3 – Continuity
The third step is the most crucial one. That’s the one that seals the deal.
Imagine that you have a bathtub that you want to fill with warm water. You also know that if you just let the tap open, it would fill your tub in 7 minutes. So you open the hot water one and immediately leave the bathroom to grab some fresh towels. After two minutes, your 5-year-old kid wanders into the bathroom, closes the hot water tap, and opens the cold one. By the time you notice the prank, the bathtub is already filled with cold water. Now to make a warm bath, you first need to let the majority of the cold water down the drain and then start filling up the remaining space with hot water again. Instead of 7 minutes, your bath will be ready in 15. Annoying, isn’t it?
Yet, this is how a lot of people are trying to manifest their desires. They keep their imaginal acts aligned with what they want for two days and then go completely opposite for three. And most of them only notice that they let their mind (the undisciplined child) run the show after it’s already too late. They were so close to making the new state dominant but now they need to restart the manifesting process.
The manifesting community loves to throw around the word ‘persistence’ but persistence is only effective if it is continuous. As a matter of fact, according to the dictionary persistence means to continue in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
Now, if we look up the word “continuous” we find that it means forming an unbroken whole; without interruption.
Therefore, when someone says that they are persisting and persisting but nothing happens, they usually don’t persist in the true sense of the word. They don’t persist without interruption.
Instead, they are performing an intermittent-style manifestation routine; they keep repeating a pattern that cycles between periods of living in the end and living in hell mentally.
Let’s notice here that the very thought of “nothing happens” is a misaligned one – a statement that implies that we do not have that which we desire. Someone who is truly persisting would not entertain such thought, let alone complain about it in fifty different places online.
“Not knowing that consciousness is ever out-picturing itself in conditions round about you, like Lot’s wife, you continually look back upon your problem and again become hypnotized by its seeming naturalness.” Neville Goddard – Your Faith is Your Fortune, Chapter 9
True persistence means that you stick to your new story, your new imaginal acts more often than not.
Neville illustrates this principle beautifully in his lecture called Anything You Want:
“Born in the little island of Barbados, we kept ducks and chickens for our own consumption. If mother wanted a pair of ducks for a Sunday dinner, ten days prior she would tell one of her nine sons to put a brace of ducks aside. Now, our ducks were raised in the yard and fed on fish, which was cheap and plentiful – and not on corn, which had to be imported and was very expensive. We could buy a bucket of fish scraps for a penny, so we fed the chickens and ducks fish; consequently, they smelled of and tasted like fish.
But if they were separated ten days or two weeks before you wanted them for dinner, and stuffed with corn and food of that nature, the entire texture of their flesh changed. During that interval of time, however, they could not be given even a little bit of fish. They had to have a complete, radical change of diet.
If mother’s command was not remembered until perhaps four days before the meal everyone knew it, because when the birds were plucked and the heat began to express the birds, the entire neighborhood knew the Goddard’s were having fish for dinner, and no one could eat them. But if their diet was changed from fish to corn – and only corn for that interval of time – we had delicious ducks for dinner which tasted like ducks!
Now, although we are not ducks we do feed on ideas. Feed your mind a certain idea for one week and you will change its structure. Continue for two weeks and you will be well fed on lovely thoughts.”
Incidentally, this is why many people manifest their desires when they can truly detach. Why? Because being detached means that they stop engaging in imaginal activities – i.e. having thoughts/conducting inner speech – that would negate and overpower what they have deliberately imagined. And in the absence of contradictory imaginal activities, their desire can finally materialize in the outer world.
Similarly, this is why a lot of people can successfully manifest for others but not for themselves. It’s easy to see someone happy and healthy when you are not the one physically feeling unwell. You are not constantly reminded of the pain and sadness accompanying the sickness.
Now, detaching from desires that don’t cross our minds on a minute-to-minute basis is an easy feat. The problem with this “set it and forget it” method is that it cannot be applied realistically to our own biggest desires. Because how can I forget about something that’s right in front of me most of the time? How can I forget about the state of my finances when the bills keep coming in? Or how can I forget about my skin when I see it in the mirror every single day?
Obviously, “getting detached and just chill” is not a viable solution when it comes to manifesting life-changing desires.
Therefore, if you cannot stop thinking about your desire, then you need to learn how to control your imaginal acts relating to it.
“We could no more stop talking to ourselves than we could stop eating and drinking. All that we can do is control the nature and the direction of our inner conversations.” – Mental Diets lecture
Now, the good news is that you don’t have to do this perfectly. You don’t need to align 100 percent of your imaginal activities to manifest what you want. You are not fattening ducks for consumption.
You can let some imaginal activities slide; as long as the majority of them reinforce the fulfillment of your desire.
So don’t set yourself up for failure by aiming for perfection. A couple of imaginal acts – i.e. thoughts – that don’t coincide with your wish fulfilled will not halt your manifestation.
But do you know what does? When you let your mind have a field day with thousands of thoughts you don’t want to experience in your reality. When you let yourself spiral not for hours but for days on end.
Everyone has negative thoughts. But when successful manifesters do, they redirect them quickly. Thinking negative thoughts doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of them is fast. So don’t fall into the trap of the all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to manifesting.
At the end of the day, what truly matters is the sum of your imaginal activities relating to your desire. Were they predominantly negative or mainly positive?