Neville Goddard’s Revision Technique
In this article, I am going to discuss Neville Goddard’s revision technique, how it has changed my life, how to do it, and some troubleshooting tips from personal experience.
What is revision?
Revision involves mentally rewriting past negative or unwanted experiences in your imagination, which changes their emotional impact and reshapes your present and future timelines by impressing a new, desired outcome onto your subconscious mind. In my experience, as someone who experienced extensive trauma (particularly between the age of 0-14) revision has been critical to successful manifestation. Neville Goddard emphasized the importance of revision in his lecture, “The Pruning Shears of Revision” during which he basically states if you take nothing else from his work, take revision. Revision used alone would still create significant changes.
Why is revision important?
According to the law of assumption, you manifest what you believe and assume to be true. The past greatly influences your beliefs and we respond to present events based on what has happened in the past. An example of this is someone who experienced abandonment and neglect from their parents while growing up, and now during their present relationships, they expect their partner to abandon them. By revising an event and imagining it the way you would have preferred the event to go, you alter the landscape of your subconscious mind and ultimately your present and future timelines as well.
How has revision helped me?
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I have done quite a bit of healing work and experienced extensive trauma during childhood and as a teenager. Many healing modalities were helpful, but I found that even after doing a lot of healing work, I would still replay painful events in my head throughout the day. This had become so habitual, it was pretty much an automatic behavior and it was happening frequently throughout the day. When I revised the painful events to what I would have preferred to have happen, this significantly reduced (if not stopped all together) the rehashing of these painful events in my mind. It freed up my energy to focus on other things (like manifestation) and I experienced much more peace of mind. I have done revision both by myself, and during Somatic Mindful Guided Imagery sessions.
How do you do revision?
The subconscious mind is more easily impressed when in a relaxed or drowsy state, so I would recommend getting into a meditative state first.
Prior to doing this, I would make a list of the events you want to revise. For each event, write down how you felt during the event. Then, write down how you wanted to feel instead (it’s usually the opposite of how you felt during the original event). Next, construct a scene that evokes the feeling you wanted to experience instead.
If you have trouble with this, you can always try what is called the “copy and paste” method, where you recall a memory during which you experienced the feeling you’re trying to evoke, immerse yourself in the details of this memory until you are feeling the desired emotion, and then “insert” the new scene you constructed. Loop this new scene a minimum of three times, until it feels as though it actually happened. Once the scene feels real, you are finished.
Revision tips
The new scene needs to be accepted by your subconscious, otherwise it will not impress. Just to give an example: my subconscious mind would not accept new memories of people who were extremely abusive as being kind and gentle, so I had to revise the events with these people to memories where the trauma did not occur at all and these people were not in my life (i.e. growing up in a completely different area from the place I grew up in, etc.).
A brief but important clarification about revision: if this is your first time recalling or becoming aware of painful past experiences, revision may not be the appropriate starting point. In those cases, support from a qualified mental health professional is recommended before engaging in this practice.
Troubleshooting
If you are finding the new memory isn’t sticking, it could be that:
•Your subconscious mind did not accept the new memory and you need to construct a scene that is more believable to your subconscious
•You did not loop the new scene enough times
•You need to keep ‘conditioning’ the new memory when the old memories pop up
*One thing people struggle with when it comes to revision is the belief that you’re trying to convince your mind that something else happened instead, when it really didn’t. With revision, it’s not that we are trying to convince our minds that something didn’t happen, it’s that we’re using our imagination to create an outcome we would have preferred to have happen and experiencing that internally instead. The subconscious mind is non-selective and it does not know the difference between a lived event or an imagined event, and so, when you imagine an event as having gone the way you would have preferred it to go, it becomes a lived experience within your biology and this will be given expression outwardly in your 3D reality. Instead of trying to convince yourself that something didn’t really happen, try replacing it with the thought of, “wouldn’t it have been nice if this had happened instead…” and imagining the new scene.
