Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Feel Deeply
Move an assumption from idle thought into deep, embodied feeling so that the wish is emotionally appropriated and ‘set in motion.’
Ask: how would I feel if this were already true? Bring the hope close enough to touch, then smother yourself in that feeling — present tense, now. Sustain it until it’s real to you, then let it go. What you feel deeply matters more than what you think.
What it is
A technique that shifts the emphasis from thinking about a desire to feeling it in depth. Neville’s core claim: “what you feel deeply is more vital than what you think.” You can think about how wonderful something would be for years and never move; but when you “smother yourself in feeling” — bringing the hope so close it feels objective — you have appropriated it and “set your desire in motion.” It is for desires that have stalled at the level of wishful thinking.
The Method
- Name how you would feel if it were already true. Neville: “How would you feel if your desire were true?” Locate the specific emotion of the fulfilled wish.
- Bring the hope so close it feels objective. “Bring your hope so close that you can feel what it would be like if it were objective to you.” Don’t keep it at arm’s length as an idea.
- Smother yourself in the feeling / clothe yourself in it. “Clothe yourself in that feeling.” Neville calls it “smothering yourself in feeling” — saturating, not lightly touching. He frames it as “the subjective appropriation of an objective hope.”
- Feel it now, not someday. “If every day you would feel how wonderful it is now, it will become true.” The feeling is present-tense.
- Catch it and sustain it, then release. “Catch the feeling and sustain it. Persist in your assumption.” Once felt deeply you “have sent it on its way and cannot take it back” — so you let it fulfil its destiny.
Source & Lineage
Quotations come from Neville Goddard’s lecture “Feel Deeply,” delivered 30 May 1969. It restates the thesis of his booklet Feeling Is the Secret — that feeling, not thought, is the creative power — and uses the biblical figures of blind Isaac and Esau as allegory for appropriating an unseen hope by feel.
It is closely related to “Catch the Mood” and “Indulge the Feeling of Satisfaction.”
Common refinements
Staying in the head. Repeating “I have it” as a thought without the corresponding feeling misses the entire point.
- Future-tense feeling. Feeling how wonderful it would be keeps it away; feel how wonderful it is, now.
- Touching the feeling lightly. Neville’s verbs are strong — “smother,” “clothe.” Go in deeply, then stop.
- Clinging. Once felt deeply, release it; re-grasping signals it isn’t yet yours.