r/NevilleGoddardCritics

Hi everyone! Recently joined this community and I feel so seen to be honest. I feel less alone in how much my mental health has declined due to this “law”. I found out about manifesting , subliminal and law of attraction in 2018 when I was 16 years old. One thing that I was trying to manifest did actually happen and so therefore I believed it worked, even though I now realise it was coincidental. In 2024, my “sitiationship” broke up with me and that shattered me. I looked up how to manifest a specific person back and found law of assumption. I “scripted” a whole apology and him getting back with me and it happened. He came back for around 2 months then left me again. The year afterwards , I spent psychotically affirming, listening to subliminal, scripting, paying coaches… buying courses. Everything. It’s now been almost two years since he left, and I can see it happened for a reason and I’m much better off now but I can’t believe how much time I wasted on this shit. 8 years really.. 16-23.
At the end of last year, my elderly dog became sick. I didn’t panic, I had seen a video that said you can REVISE your dogs age and I believed it. I committed and said that my dog was a pup and healthy and stuck to the belief. Imagine my shock when I woke up a few weeks later to find out he was dead. I blamed myself, thought I didn’t manifest “properly” or “good enough”. I then started to try revise his death. Jump to a few months later, my grandpa gets diagnosed with cancer. We were very close. Again, I meditate, script, manifest, try all the techniques and try desperately to reach out to coaches for help. A lot of them said they didn’t feel comfortable helping with this type of situation and focus on SP etc. most of them didn’t even reply. I was desperate to make sure my grandpa would be ok. Anyway, he got worse and worse and passed away in may. I don’t think I even fully accepted it until I seen his body, all due to this stupid “law”. The months following since have been full of intrusive thoughts, being terrified of my own thoughts and “manifesting” someone or myself to be sick, terrified of manifesting bad things due to my grief. When I first found out about law of assumption, I was a happy person. Positive, outgoing and happy. Now, 2 years later from finding the first law of assumption video I seen on TikTok, I’m a shell of myself. I’m withdrawn, on medication, struggling with suicidal thoughts due to the sheer fear of manifesting them and this community and finding it has really grounded me. It’s been a comfort reading everyone else’s stories and experiences and realising I’m not alone, and I was not at fault for “manifesting wrong” or not “living in the end”.

Time to get my life back on track and distance myself from this delusional community. Wish I never came across it. It’ll take time and I’m going to go back to therapy but thanks to this community I finally feel like I have some hope for my life.
Thank you all 🙏

Long story short I was into Neville’s teaching for quite sometime, what snapped me out of it is just bit of investigation into his stories, none was verified by anybody only his words that supported it. The most and biggest evidence that really did for me was his famous ladder experiment, it was his only test to new comers and doubters, nothing else, not a money test, career or sp test, because he knew those would not work at all, even this experiment is not even getting a ladder but to climb one. His ladder experiment is about making people do something and not get or have something, the whole ladder experiment only proves ideomotor action, discovered in 1833 by Michele Eugene Chevreul and the whole doing it before sleep is Autosuggestion early 1900 by Emilie Coue and formalised in 1910. I feel embarrassed believing that this is real, when Neville simply fooled me and many with a physiological trick.

Hello, I just joined this amazing subreddit and I want to talk about why I’m leaving these spaces.

I found out about subliminals back in 2018. My initial thought was “oh my gosh this is so cool, all I gotta do is listen to this thing and results?!”I was very insecure about myself during this time too. As I keep researching about the audios I saw that I gotten myself into a deep rabbit hole. It’s like I was dopamine seeking everytime I saw a new subliminal posted then I would make hundreds of playlists just to forget about them. When I listened to subliminals not gonna lie I was delusional as fuck 😭. There were instances where I thought results. In reality I was putting effort into my life?? Then with physical results I was just tricking myself. This is how I began to get skeptical. Mind you this was still in the early days since I am a person who questions early on despite believing. I started to realize that it wasn’t the subliminals it was me putting effort. So I stopped using subliminals for a LONG time.

Around 2019-2023 is when I got into manifesting and shifting. Oh lord this shit was crazy 💀. I lowkey forgot how I got into shifting but I just remember seeing YouTube videos of it of course. I never got into shifttok or whatever it’s called. I’m one of those people who overindulge when I am interested in something and that’s exactly what I did with shifting. I was on amino like crazy seeing all these different methods getting excited try them every night, just to wake up in the same old reality. I got very frustrated. I ventured into other shifting communities like Reddit and tumblr. Let me tell yall on tumblr them people are SUPER DELUSIONAL AND CULTISH! Like everyone else shifting I found my mental health going down and I start neglecting life. One night I just dropped it cause I said was tired.

A year or so passed (we’re in 2024-now) and I’m still on Reddit just not on those communities. I end up seeing a some loa, shifting, and subliminal post. Randomly my old skepticism awakened again and I’m like “wait this shit still exists?” So out of curiosity I was reading more of the post and I saw so many contradictions. I should’ve mentioned this earlier in the paragraph but I never believed in the 3-D bullshit. It never sat right with me and it was just like you’re waiting for something to just pop up. My thing is if manifestation is possible why can’t everybody do it? If manifestation is so easy and is instant why aren’t people manifesting instantly? If the power is within you, why the fuck do you have to do so many damn methods? And most importantly, why is there so many contradictions? When I joined the subReddit, (which was today) I realized the toxicity of the communities. I already knew something wasn’t right but seeing the post from here really highlighted the dangers of these “self-help” groups. That is why I’m leaving them because it’s full of delusions and it’ll just keep you stagant in life, wasting years.

All they do is think about sps and money (me included when I was deep in it). It’s such a selfish mindset, “no one is real just me, everyone is me pushed out”, like I fear you’re not that special. I love going on manifesting lives and asking questions these coaches don’t wanna answer.

I had went on this really popular girls live (she’s a witch and a manifestor), and I asked her why she doesn’t manifest world peace? She said it’s not her business. She manifests things for herself, she doesn’t know what others want. I was shocked, I have never heard anyone be that self centered in my life. Also, her so called sp ended up being like beyond terrible, I won’t put her business out there since it’s not my place (she’s explained it on live but yk). But people were asking if she manifested the things he did, and she got mad and cussed everyone out and ended the live.

Idk man that community is sad asf thank goodness I was able to get out. My friend is still in it, she bought the Neville book, and she’s so delusional it blows my mind. Her “sps” last name is a biblical word, and everytime the book said it, she said it was a sign. And the book ends with his first name misspelled😭I had to distance myself from her sometimes, but I get scared for her because she doesn’t want to hear anything negative about manifesting

I can't even laugh at it anymore. I genuinely feel like a good chunk of people are going through a somewhat equivalent of spiritual psychosis, if not that exactly.

I even have a cousin who is not only a believer of loa, but she's also on the Tumblr side of it. As someone who has also believed in this at some point, if you know anything about Tumblr LOA you'll know how doomed and deluded it is. A billion times worse than reddit. And nobody dares to question because you know, you'll get scolded by a bunch of teenagers for "not sticking to your story". I've tried to question her, but I know damn well as a veteran, that if I try further I'll only come across as cynical and annoying, and not actually change her views.

I don't even think any of it is working for her (of course it won't), and all she's doing is coping by looking at these manifestations and shifting blogs and reading those tarot/pick a pile readings that tell her that her manifestations are around the corner. It'll be funny in retrospect, but as of now concerning as someone who cares for her.

new to reddit posting so bear w me, just wanted to share my experience ;;

i got into subs and NG 3 months back, and really wanted to manifest an sp. so i did all the popular methods (LOA, subs, affirmations), and basically saw him drift further cuz i heard "detachment and isolation works better" so i ghosted him (i dont know what i was thinking.) i would robotic affirm and try assuming i "had" him, omg thinking about it im so embarassed. felt like i was crazy, what got me further into this was i tried manifesting my grades, and i did well for a math test (my teach was so proud cuz i constantly failed ;boosted my trust in LOA) but now i realised it was because i was only good at that topic.

TT anyways, these few weeks i snapped out of it, realized it was going to lead me to solipsism and delusion. esp with people kept saying "you are source". tbh, the moment that made me realise was when i noticed i was scrolling through success stories and everyone was telling everyone to persist. that was my first warning. i then posted a question on how i should continue manifesting for my sp which i reposted to r/ nevillegoddardsp (cuz reddit suggested me too, ik, kinda dumb lul) and the mods rejected my post and just asked me to read up on NG and instill his learnings cuz "i was clearly doing something wrong" which felt so culty. anyways, its been difficult to break free from thinking this way, but js trying to actually live my life and have fun ^^

imo the only thing i got from this was just think confidently and you'll feel confident. Overall, this whole process just made me so mentally drained and done with thinking lmfao. now seeing my notebooks with the scripting and 369 methods make me cringe.

When I look at r/manifestation, everyone there is so weird and deluded it's actually funny.

If I was still deluded I would be like “any movement is good movement” “this is the bridge of events, he loves me and only me❤️”

Says she was making £10,000/mth and bought her house and can’t afford her lifestyle anymore.

First let me start off by saying I do believe in LOA and it has worked for me in the past. Not 100% but more than enough for me to believe in it, even if I struggle in some places.

That being said. The main NG sub (which I won’t tag here) has some of the worst mod abuse I’ve seen on Reddit.

For starters, I had a huge success with a small manifestation experiment that manifested into something 40x fold. Something $4 turned out to come to me in $180+. Mods deleted it because it wasn’t considered big enough of a success story. Other members loved my post and complained at the mods. Some reached out to me asking for a copy and paste so they could save it. But yeah, lesson learned. 40x a result is still not deemed good enough to be “successful”. Make it make sense.

Posted another thread about an SP manifestation that failed last winter. Got a ton of responses. Some good, some bad, and many confusing.

Well earlier this week I posted how I was still struggling 1.5 years in, and mods deleted it quickly. Asked why and I got a condescending essay accusing me about how deleting the last one wasted thousands and thousands of members hours who poured their support to me. Reminder about 25-45% were positive. Many were contradictory to NG teachings and some were straight up cyberbully abusive mocking me of my misery. Right, I wasted thousands of hours of trolls and condescending assholes.

I deleted the post due to security reasons, but I guess NG mods can’t even comprehend that’s a common reason people deleted their posts in the first place?

If the NG sub/community can’t even allow discussions to help struggling people, then what is the point of even having a community? To only showcase the positive successes while hiding the reality that not everyone will succeed? At this point I’m wondering if mods are part of some big network scam to make NG look shiny and perfect so that whoever are the coaches in the network can funnel more into their marketing channels.

I’ve personally spoke with a ex-NG mod who was 10000X more helpful. I could tell they stepped down because they too felt like the overall moderation was going to shit.

I’ve had some of my own discussion posts deleted simply because they challenged NG ideas too much. I don’t think these are bad things to bring up because how does one grow in understanding if they see contradictions in the teachings?

Mods will delete my posts, but not comments from delusional Trump supporters posting garbage like “I manifested Trump and ICE I’m glad they’re rounding up all these immigrants”. Like wtf?

Fuck NG mods.

I'm not trying to attack Neville or tell anyone that manifestation doesn't work, although it seems this sub is dedicated to that exact idea. I'm genuinely trying to understand how people distinguish manifestation actually causing an event from coincidence, psychology, changed behavior, probability, or confirmation bias.

(Writing this shit here cause i'd get crucified and circumcised if i posted an honest critique and question on the neville sub.

How can people be so sure that it was their exact thought that caused something?

I came here to criticize this whole idea and hopefully find some other perspectives, because in basically any other sub, this would probably get instantly deleted or I'd get banned for even trying to question it logically. I'm doing this because I genuinely want to understand this better and, honestly, for the sake of my mental health.

For example, I see a lot of SP success stories where someone says:

>

But how can we actually know that the assumption caused the other person's behavior?

How can we know that a simple thought or decision inside someone's head caused a completely different human being, with their own emotions, dreams, experiences and choices, to do something?

A lot of people would say:

>

That's a cool claim, but... how do you know that?

It genuinely amazes me how confidently people talk about this stuff when so much of it doesn't seem to have any actual evidence behind it. Sometimes it sounds like the kind of shit some random drunk guy on the street would tell you and everyone just decided to build an entire philosophy around it.

But I actually want to look at this fairly and figure out what could be happening.

For an SP situation, I can think of at least a few possibilities:

1. The assumption somehow directly influenced the other person's mind.
2. The assumption changed the manifester's behavior, which changed the relationship.
3. The other person independently changed their mind because of their own circumstances and feelings.
4. It was coincidence/probability.
5. A fucking combination of all of this.

What would actually distinguish #1 from the others?

I'm especially curious about “Everyone Is You Pushed Out.”

If another person has their own thoughts, preferences, experiences and decisions, what evidence do we have that my assumptions actually control their behavior rather than simply influencing how I interact with them?

And here's something I've always struggled with:

If everyone is you pushed out, then why does Tom Holland play a role in a new Spider-Man movie if I never assumed he would, or maybe didn't even know about him before? If everyone is literally being projected from my assumptions, how are there people, events, careers, movies, wars, inventions, etc. happening that I never even thought about?

And then there are stories like:

Someone visualizes a scene implying that their ex is with them again.

The next day, the ex messages them asking to meet.

And everyone goes:

>

Okay. That's cool.

Now show me the evidence that this is what actually happened.

Silence.

Because couldn't the ex have simply already been thinking about them? Couldn't they have missed them? Couldn't something in their own life have made them want to reconnect? Couldn't it just have been coincidence?

Now let's say the ex comes back 3 years later.

Was that because of the manifestation?

Or was it coincidence?

And let's take the opposite outcome.

The ex never comes back. They move on, get married and have kids with someone else.

What does the community say then?

>

>

>

>

>

>

At what point does the theory actually allow itself to be wrong?

And honestly, isn't it kind of... very, very bad to tell someone that they should continue imagining a life with a person who has completely moved on, has a partner, or even has an entire family?

Especially when you can always explain the lack of results by saying the person simply didn't believe or feel it real hard enough?

This brings me to another thing I'm struggling with:

>

How could we ever test that?

If success proves that the assumption worked, but failure can always be explained by some hidden belief that we supposedly had somewhere in our subconscious, doesn't that make the claim unfalsifiable?

And what about people who genuinely persist for months or even years and don't get what they wanted?

What makes their experience different?

I'm not asking for: “just believe.” or “you have limiting beliefs.”

I'm asking for specific reasoning, evidence, experiments, or personal experiences that actually distinguish Law of Assumption from normal psychological mechanisms, coincidence, probability, confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, etc.

If you believe it works, what actually convinced you that it was specifically manifestation rather than one of those explanations?

And if you've changed your mind about it, what made you change your mind?

I'm genuinely open to both sides. I just want to understand this properly rather than blindly believing it or blindly dismissing it.

Because I've spent a lot of time in my head with this stuff, and I don't want to end up completely disconnected from reality because I'm constantly trying to explain everything that happens as “my manifestation” or “my assumptions.”

So yeah. If you believe in this, convince me. If you don't, tell me why.

I am writing this becoz I finally need to be completely honest about the wreckage this philosophy left behind in my life. I didn’t just waste 7 yrs of my time chasing NG's concepts...I walked away with clinically diagnosed C-PTSD and OCD..

The Neville community pitches "The Law" as a beautiful gateway to freedom, but for me, it was a psychological prison sentence. When u r taught that "thoughts create reality" n "everyone is u pushed out" (EIYPO), ur brain interprets that as a terrifying burden of total responsibility.

I developed severe "Magical Thinking" OCD. Becoz I believed my thoughts could physically alter reality or harm people, I fell into a non-stop loop of mental compulsions. I spent hours "correcting" negative thoughts, forcing myself into SATS, and doing mental "revision" to neutralize bad moods. The hyper-vigilance was agonizing.

Living this way for 7 yrs is a form of chronic, self-inflicted trauma. I spent nearly a decade in a constant state of fight-or-flight, terrified of my own mind.

I completely dissociated from my actual life, ignored real physical and emotional warning signs, and blamed myself for every bad thing that happened n still i am doing that..

This isn't just "bullshit"—it is highly dangerous psychological gaslighting.

If u are in this group and u find yourself constantly checking ur thoughts, feeling intense guilt for being human, or feeling detached from reality, please stop.

ur mind is trying to survive an impossible ideology. Healing from this is hard, but admitting the damage it caused is the first real step.

I had been in that LoA bs for about 4 months, probably can see it in my past posts if I haven’t deleted them out of embarrassment lol. I was trying to manifest a person back (sad I know).

I’ve recently started to realize that these people aka the manifesting community are so toxic, selfish, and just overall self-centered. No offense, but they all seem broke and don’t have exciting lives. The money they make, is always from coaching people. Their success stories from other people sound so fake, like they wrote it or hired someone to.

I’ve asked a “coach” once if they could just manifest a million dollars so we can see it, genuinely asking so I could “believe “ more, and she went OFF on me. Sammy Ingram is a rude as hell, and her story doesn’t add up. This other coach, who I had actually really liked, ended up being a scammer and a known POS.

It just blows my mind that I was so gullible. I am usually a very logical person, so I’m disappointed in myself for thinking so selfishly. The “sp” I wanted, I just wanted them to come back to talk. And the manifestation community told me I wasn’t doing it right, but that’s all I really wanted. They said I wasn’t reaching far enough. No matter what I was always doing something wrong.

Now. I just hope they come back to talk one day, if they don’t, oh well. I know I’m stupid as hell for even trying this stuff, but I’m happy I’m coming back to my senses. The only thing i appreciate from the Loa community is realizing I’m very interested in consciousness and reality science.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I said “starting to snap out of it” because sometimes I still find myself saying things like “EIYPO” or “no one is real this is my reality” and it’s scary.

Exactly what the title says.

Just to give a little information, I found out about subliminals back in 2018 - when the rise of wanting to look like influencers came out (fatherkels, cindy kimberly, sahar.luna etc) I thought that if I looked like them I could become a model. That was one of my dreams.

Over the years I wanted things such as lighter hair, green eyes and lighter skin. But I never saw my skin get any lighter than what it already is. I was a firm believer though, I did all the methods known to mankind—365,water method, scripting, robotic affirming. I thought i wasn’t getting my desires because I wasn’t being serious enough about it. So I tried to be serious… and even that didn’t work.

I tried to manifest more income for my family that was struggling—more income for myself so I can buy whatever I want. I have yet and haven’t seen a change on that regard that involves “manifesting”.

Or when I bought two cc subs - I didn’t even get results. My features were already similar and all it takes is a little angle and pose to make yourself look somewhat like your desired person. I tried body subs and they didn’t work - I assumed it was because I wasn’t putting action so I started working out. Obviously I got changes but that’s because I was making a PHYSICAL EFFORT to change.

When my dad passed last year I thought about “revising “ his death. I feel like hearing the word revise–whether it comes to history or changes like your birth name put me in some sort of psychosis since 2022. But I realized all this time I just fucking wasted my time. I wasted my time trying to get the looks that I want, the dream job that I wanted.

Or when I tried manifesting for freckles this year because my delusional self bought a few of Opias subs and got zero results from them. I thought that I actually had freckles appearing but guess what… it’s a gene i’ve always had. I’ve only realized them on my face now because I’ve been in the sun a bit more.

I was 14? when I found them and now I’m 23. I do say I regret the time I found them until the time I finally dropped them like a month or two ago. I used to preach the law to my friend - i’m going to manifest this and that and it never happened. I still have a friend who thinks everything is working out in her favor… but it’s just her being lucky. Please stop wasting your time on subliminals or manifesting through just having it. Using SATS — or going to the law of attraction whatever the case may be. It genuinely doesn’t work. All you’re doing is wasting your life away wishing for a miracle when you can just… take the effort to work towards what you want. Even if it’s only one step at a time.

When you all talk about how destructive the LoA is, I never believed it fully until I landed myself in the ER, writing this post. I have addictive tendencies and severe depression so when I went on my next LoAss binge I ended up gambling away thousands of dollars because I assumed I would just make all the money I could want. Now I am in even more crippling debt and feeling crushed.

I now have aired out the truth to my loved ones without seeing their reactions but I am terrified. I am going to speak to a counselor soon but still, I don't know what to do.

I lost everything because of this stupid "law" and Neville has truly sown destruction among thousands or even hundreds of thousands.

I just saw a video of a young man talking about being diagnosed with ALS. And my heart just breaks for him. If i believed in this stuff i would just be affirming “there is a cure for ALS that is accessible to all people diagnosed with it.”

Why isn’t t anyone doing this. They say nothing is off limits. So no one has thought to manifest cures?

Huge believer, fully in it all day and night for years

Theoretically, I am a LOA pro, I could fabricate some success stories, fool some idiots in r/NevilleGoddard and do "coaching"

It's a long story to share, it's really a lot, I have been practicing it for far too long, but that's the end result... It ruined me and my life, I'm very open to share anything to explain how and why it was LOA and not "me blaming LOA for my failures"

It is a cult, I did get into it as a teenager, it fucks up your mind and your life

I have my own techniques, applied all techniques etc., I did register everything, daily, I have tens, hundreds of thousands of failed manifestations, it is obviously bullshit

I'm open to share anything, I just won't share the story here because people may not care

Do ex Loa believers believe it was pure psychosis like actually to have believed in in the past which is most or this sub was and is COMPLETE insanity .
It’s really hard for me to believe that I was one of those people at one point in my life and I think 90% of ex “manifestors” are mentally ill .
Or stepped into a brief moment of mental illness .
It’s not just a a cult it’s a psych disorder and s sign of one .
It’s very reminiscent of Borderline in fact I remeber listening to the tame impala song of that name and the melody calmed me down but the name of song haunted me . Because borderline pd , is classified as not having a secure self image, identity disturbance , splitting emotions, and severe fear of abandonment. Which let’s be real these mfs are like that a lot .
It’s very sad like truly dystopian to be in this state of my mind .
I’m not diagnosing anyone you don’t have to be borderline to be insane you can just have strong traits of it but the correlation is hard to ignore .

LOA cultists often say this to people who are trying to manifest by following the "methods" and inevitably fail.

But yet, at the same time, you NEVER hear them direct that same point towards Rhonda Byrne or Esther Hicks - the people who built their entire platforms on the EXPLICIT promise that you could get whatever you wanted, when you wanted, using thought and feeling alone, and made MILLIONS off of it.

Just thought it was funny how the blame shifting and the criticism only goes one way.