Feeling Is The Secret

Feeling Is the Secret

A New York rooming house, a frozen November, and the Barbados summer

Autumn 1933. A young man sits in an unheated New York rooming house. His bank balance is zero. His wallet empty. "I had not a penny, literally," he later writes. His name is Neville Goddard. He came from Barbados, sailed to America at nine to dance, and now at twenty-eight, deep in the Depression, he wants only one thing: to go home to his father's house for Christmas.

The fare is more than he could earn in a year. Steamship ticket, train, food. He has nothing. He goes to his teacher. Not to some esoteric guru, but to an Ethiopian-born Black New York rabbi named Abdullah. Abdullah does not find him work. He does not give him money. He says one sentence: "Do not think of going to Barbados. Think from there. Sleep tonight as though you were already lying in your father's house in Barbados."

Neville goes home. He lies down on the cold bed and every night, as he falls asleep, tries to feel the warmth of the Caribbean night, the smell of the ocean, his father's voice from the next room. Not "I wish I were there." But that he is there. Not as hope. As fact. A month later a letter arrives from his older brother in Barbados. He felt a strange urge. He wants the whole family together for Christmas. He encloses a steamship ticket. Two days later Neville is on the boat.

According to Neville Goddard, this was not a lucky coincidence. This is how it works. Feeling is the secret. Not thought, not will, not hard work, but feeling. And if that is true, everything you have known about how to change your life is upside down.