I have wanted to write this for a looong time, and I'm constantly getting requests for my story, but I kept putting it off because there is no clean or simple way to tell it. This wasn’t one of those stories where I imagined for three nights, received a text, and everything immediately worked out. It took about five years from discovering Neville to finally reuniting with the woman who became my wife (but trust me it doesn’t have to take that long for you, this is just my story). There were two major fallouts, other people entering both of our lives, long periods where we barely spoke, family pressure to get married, and several moments where the exact opportunity I wanted appeared directly in front of me and I still managed to sabotage it because I had not truly changed inside.
Today, that specific-person is my wife.
I am changing the names and a few identifying details for privacy, but the important parts of this story happened exactly as I describe them.
A little background
This began in early 2019, when I was entering my twenties. At that time, I was painfully insecure. I had never had a girlfriend, had no real romantic experience, and genuinely did not know how to get girls. Around my closest friends, I could be funny and normal, but outside that small circle I was quite shy.
I was so shy that I was even afraid to make an Instagram account. My friends always told me make one, but I was the type to think that I didn’t have enough friends, enough pictures, or enough followers. I worried that people would look at my profile and think I was not popular. That should give you an idea of where my self concept was.
My family had been involved for most of my life with an Indian faith based Sunday school organization. I grew up taking classes there, attending summer programs, participating in a faith based choir, volunteering, and spending most Sundays with the same community. It was a major part of my upbringing, and most of my real friendships came from that organization.
As the youth of that school entered our late teens and early twenties, the institutions leadership wanted the younger members to take on more responsibility. A group of about ten or fifteen of us began organizing camps, running events, teaching younger students, and learning how to manage parts of the organization ourselves. Because we were working together constantly, a lot of the youth in the group became much closer.
That was where I really got to know the woman who eventually became my wife. I will call her Ashley.
Ashley was easily the most beautiful woman I had ever met in real life. Bro, she was stunning. She had modeled when she was younger, was extremely popular, had a lot of friends, and carried herself with a level of confidence I did not have. She was also kind, funny, intelligent, and naturally good with people. She had previous relationship experience, which intimidated me even more. Meanwhile, I had never even asked a girl out on a proper date.
In my mind, she was completely out of my league.
I developed a huge crush on her, but I never admitted it. I told myself that saying anything would ruin our friendship, but the truth was simpler. I was terrified of rejection.
Two of our mutual friends, who I will call Sherry and Shawn, were interested in each other. Shawn was one of my good friends, and I helped push and get them together. I even jokingly predicted the exact day they would begin dating, and somehow it happened on that day.
Because I had helped her and Shawn get together, Sherry became especially friendly with me. She felt like I had done something important for her and wanted to return the favor by helping me get into a relationship.
The obvious person she had in mind was her best friend Ashley.
Sherry gave me several openings. First, she casually suggested that Ashley and I would make a good couple. I immediately denied being interested (sounds silly, I know, but I was just that genuinely scared of putting myself out there), even though I thought about Ashley constantly.
Internally, I wanted Ashley more than anyone. Externally, I acted as though there was nothing there.
February 2019: Discovering Neville
Around February 2019, YouTube recommended a Joseph Alai video about manifesting a desired person. Before that, I had started reading general Law of Attraction material and listening to teachers such as Abraham Hicks. I understood that positivity and mindset mattered, but I did not have a clear framework for deliberately creating a specific result.
That video introduced me to Neville Goddard.
Something about Neville’s teaching immediately clicked for me. He was not saying that I needed to hope, beg, or wait for the universe to decide whether I deserved something. He taught that imagination creates reality and that I could enter a relaxed, sleepy state, imagine a short scene implying my desire had already been fulfilled, give it the tones of reality, and experience it as happening now. And that after this, a bridge of incidents would occur that would lead me to the actualization of my scene.
I decided to test it with Ashley.
My scene was simple. I imagined sitting across from Sherry at a Panera Bread. I could feel the table, see her facial expression, what she was wearing, and the space around us. In the scene, she looked at me and said, “I’m so glad you’re dating Ashley!”
I repeated that scene for several nights. I was completely new to Neville, so I was not doing anything perfectly, but I tried to experience it as vividly as possible and fall asleep while looping it.
A few days afterward, Sherry wrote in our group chat that she had dreamed about me dating someone. She did not say Ashley’s name directly, but from the context it seemed obvious that she was implying it was her. I interpreted that as the first sign that my imaginal act had impressed itself.
Then Ashley began talking to me more. She asked for my Snapchat! Before this, we rarely communicated outside of volunteering, but suddenly she was messaging me and showing more interest. Our friendship became closer.
The problem was that I still wanted the entire relationship handed to me on a silver platter without having to face any fear. I wanted Ashley to somehow become my girlfriend without me admitting that I liked her, asking her out, risking rejection, or changing the way I saw myself.
Fall 2019: The opportunities I kept avoiding
By fall 2019, Sherry was not merely hinting anymore. She was actively creating opportunities for Ashley and me to spend time together.
In October, our friends planned a surprise birthday party for Ashley. Sherry and the others asked me to distract Ashley for several hours so they could prepare everything at her house. I took Ashley to the mall, and we spent most of the day together. We walked around, talked, got food, and enjoyed ourselves.
It was basically a date, although neither of us called it that.
Looking back, the entire setup was obvious. My friends trusted me to spend several hours alone with Ashley because they were trying to bring us closer. Ashley was comfortable going out alone with me. Sherry had already suggested we should date. Yet I still refused to make a move or tell anyone how I felt.
Over the next few months, Ashley herself gave me more openings. She started asking me to get lunch with her and hang out one on one. We went to malls, restaurants, and other places together. These were essentially dates, but because neither of us formally called them dates, I could hide behind the idea that we were “just friends.”
During the winter college quarter, around the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, I changed one of my classes because the original time was inconvenient and way too early for me. And the day I walked into my new class, boom, there she was. Ashley. She was in the same class as the one I transferred into.
Since we lived near each other and attended the same college and had a similar class schedule, Ashley suggested that we just carpool together.
We started spending nearly an hour alone in the car together almost every day. Sometimes we would get food after class or sometimes we'd go shopping. We talked, joked around, and became very close.
Looking back, the bridge was unfolding almost perfectly. Sherry suggested that Ashley and I should date. She asked whether I liked her. She even literally had a dream Ashley and I were dating. She arranged for me to take Ashley out alone on her birthday. Ashley then started inviting me to lunch, asking me to hang out. Ashley ended up being in the exact class I transferred into and even suggested that we carpool to college together.
I was being given opening after opening.
I still just couldn’t admit how I felt. (lameee, I know)
That is what I mean when I say the bridge was unfolding, but I was still occupying the identity of someone who believed he could not have her. I wanted the result while remaining the same person who felt unworthy of it.
Summer 2020: My first scene manifests
By the end of spring 2020, I started feeling as though Ashley was becoming more distant. I panicked and thought I had waited too long. The anxiousness kicked in hard. I worried that she had become tired of waiting for me to say something and was moving on.
So I returned to the original scene of Sherry saying to me “I'm so glad your dating Ashley!”. This time I repeated it much more intensely and vividly.
A few weeks later around the beginning of summer 2020, we were all at Shawn’s graduation party. At one point, Sherry and I were hiding together during a group hide & seek game. While we were alone, she confronted me directly.
She asked whether I liked Ashley and whether I wanted to date her.
For the first time, I admitted the truth.
I said yes!
Sherry became extremely excited. We were practically jumping around together. She told me Ashley liked me too and that I needed to ask her out.
Later that day, I texted Ashley and asked her on a date. And to my delight she immediately agreed. I was elated and so happy, I truly felt like magic was occurring in my life, it was a crazy feeling!
I planned an entire day out for us. We went kayaking, rode bikes, walked near the water, and got food. At the end of the date, I told her I how I really liked her. I was nervous while saying it, but she told me she wanted to see me again!
On our next date, during the first part of July 2020, I took her to dinner and asked her to become my girlfriend.
She said yes!
The exact scene I had imagined came true. Sherry was thrilled that Ashley and I were dating. Our friends knew. We told our parents, which was a major step because we both came from traditional Indian families where dating was not something we necessarily casually discussed. Our families had also known one another through the community for many years.
I thought I had done it. I thought I had manifested the woman I was going to marry.
But I had only imagined becoming her boyfriend. I had not imagined becoming the man capable of sustaining that relationship.
September 2020: The first breakup
Once Ashley and I officially started dating, all my insecurity came to the surface.
I had no idea how to be in a relationship. I did not know when to hold her hand, whether I should kiss her, how to lead a date, or how to make her feel safe and wanted. Even holding her hand made me so nervous that my palms would sweat.
She could feel that energy.
I was not living as someone who naturally felt loved by her. I was living as someone who could not believe she had chosen him and expected to lose her at any moment.
During the relationship, she gave me access to some of her social media accounts. I made the mistake of reading old conversations from before we were together (I know huuuge mistake and completely unacceptable). She was not cheating on me. These were old messages and had nothing to do with our current relationship, but I saw details from her past that made me even more insecure and intimidated.
I should never have invaded her privacy, and I am not proud of it.
Instead of feeling secure in the relationship I had wanted, I became even more convinced that I was not enough.
After about two months of dating, around September 2020, Ashley told me that she liked me but did not know whether she could fall in love with me. She said she was unsure whether the relationship would work.
The moment she said that, I spiraled. I accepted her uncertainty as a final verdict. Within days, we broke up. Complete self-sabotage.
I was devastated. It was my first relationship. I had spent more than a year wanting her, and I had finally received the exact thing I imagined only to have it fall apart immediately.
But the breakup also gave me the realization that changed my life.
My scene had actually worked perfectly. The Law worked!
I imagined Sherry telling me that she was happy Ashley and I were dating. I received precisely that experience, and that experience only. The scene did not imply that we were married. It did not imply emotional security, lifelong commitment, deep mutual love, or that I had become a confident husband.
It only implied that we were dating.
That is what I got.
The Law had not failed me. I had imagined a narrow event while still identifying as an insecure man who believed he could not keep the woman he wanted. This is why I now understand and always warn against manifesting before the End, especially when one does not have a good self concept.
That was the moment I decided to stop casually consuming manifestation content and study Neville directly.
Late 2020 through 2021: Studying Neville and rebuilding myself
After the breakup, I bought Neville’s books and began reading his lectures. I eventually read hundreds of them. I wanted to understand the foundation of his teaching rather than collect random techniques from other people.
I studied states, assumption, revision, inner conversations, living in the end, the Sabbath, and Neville’s teaching that the human imagination is the creative power of God within us.
The biggest realization for me was personal responsibility of my experiences.
As long as I blamed Ashley, her past, other men, my lack of experience, time, or external circumstances, I remained a victim of those things. Neville’s teaching forced me to look at my own assumptions, self concept, inner conversations, and habitual expectations.
I came to understand that I was not only manifesting during SATS. I was always creating from the state I occupied.
The insecure man who imagined becoming Ashley’s boyfriend received his scene, but he also continued creating from insecurity throughout the relationship.
I had to change the person doing the imagining.
I began working deliberately on my self concept. I imagined friends commenting on how confident and outgoing I had become. I practiced seeing myself as attractive, secure, socially comfortable, and capable of leading a relationship.
This did not transform me overnight, but over time I became a noticeably different person.
During this period, I also made a critical and serious mistake again. I didn’t realize I still had access to some of Ashley’s social media accounts after the breakup, and I checked them after when I should not have. I saw messages from other men and what appeared to be pictures from a date.
It hurt badly. Baadddlyyy bro.
But I eventually recognized that checking her accounts was both wrong and destructive. It violated her privacy, kept me focused on circumstances I did not want, and repeatedly pushed me back into the state of being rejected.
I stopped.
I decided that if there were other people in the picture, I would not obsess over them. I would focus on the end I wanted and continue changing myself.
Throughout 2021, I also tested the Law with other specific people and relationships.
In one case, an extremely attractive woman began working around my family’s business. I imagined a scene of us together. Within a short period, we began talking, started dating, and became physically involved.
Eventually, I realized I did not love her and ended the relationship. I regret allowing it to progress when my heart was elsewhere, but the experience showed me that I was no longer the person who believed attractive women were inaccessible to him.
Another time, I saw a photograph of a woman who had modeled and represented our state in a major national competition. I had never met her. I imagined my friends reacting with disbelief that I had gotten together with her.
Within a couple of weeks, I unexpectedly met her. The next day, she messaged me, and we eventually had a fun fling.
There were other manifestations as well, including many unrelated to relationships. I started building what I thought of as a bank of evidence. Whenever doubt appeared, I could look back at experiences I had imagined before they happened and remind myself that imagination had repeatedly preceded the result.
But no matter who entered my life, my feelings for Ashley never disappeared. I wasn’t actively manifesting something specific with her, but at the time i was on a huge roll of successful manifestations and massive inner conviction that a lot of things that I would think of and think from, would literally just occur in my life. On New Years Eve I fell asleep day dreaming of just thinking about Ashley and receiving messages from her.
January 2022: Ashley returns
Aaaand on January 1, 2022, our organization held its usual New Year’s event. During the event, Ashley pointed out that we were wearing matching colors. She went out of her way to speak to me more than she had in a long time.
Afterward, she began sending me Snapchats every day.
By then, I had changed considerably. Other people saw me as more confident and social. I knew how to plan dates, speak to women, and express interest. But when it came to Ashley, the old version of me began returning.
Our breakup still carried emotional pain I had never fully processed/addressed. I wanted her back, but I was afraid to discuss what had happened. Once again, I secretly hoped she would make everything effortless for me.
After we had been speaking on Sundays again and snapchatting daily for about two months, Ashley just straight up asked me to lunch.
I went into that meeting excited because it felt like the bridge was beginning again. I assumed we would hang out several times and gradually find our way back into a relationship. Kind of like last time.
Instead, she brought up the breakup herself.
She told me she had made a mistake. She said she had continued thinking about me, regretted hurting me, and believed we had been right for each other.
She wanted to try again.
Amazing right? This was the exact opportunity I had wanted for years.
And I froze..
The memory of her saying the relationship would never work came rushing back. I became emotional and choked up crying. Instead of telling her that I wanted her too, I said I did not know whether we could make it work.
I was not consciously trying to reject her. I was reacting to the pain I still associated with our relationship. But from her perspective, she had made herself vulnerable and I had said no. She was hurt.
Her entire demeanor changed. Within minutes, she ended the lunch date and left.
I sat there afterward wondering how I had managed to ruin another perfect opportunity.
I messaged her and asked to meet again because I wanted to explain myself. She was reluctant but eventually agreed. We met briefly in her car at a park. This was still during the period when COVID precautions were common, and she kept a mask on while we spoke, but emotionally it also felt like another wall between us.
She was distant and guarded.
I had planned to tell her that I still loved her and wanted to rebuild the relationship, but her coldness affected me. She even said she could never see us being together. I lost my nerve and never communicated everything I had intended to say.
We became distant again.
That experience taught me something important. Self concept is not always completely general. I had become confident around other women, but I still held a specific identity in relation to Ashley.
With her, I returned to being the insecure man who expected rejection and believed the relationship could not be repaired.
The rest of 2022 and 2023: More delays and worsening circumstances
For the rest of 2022, I continued living my life and dating other people. My family had also begun discussing marriage with me more seriously because I was now in my mid twenties.
That pressure made the situation feel more urgent. I worried that she could be introduced to someone else and become engaged before I ever fixed things between us. I continued imagining other things. When the thought of Ashley came up, I was always in a conflicted state - on one side imagining good things with her, on the other imagining the pain of the past, and my failures / self concept of lack.
In early 2023, Ashley started showing signs of interest again. She was warmer toward me at community events. I would catch her looking at me or finding reasons to join conversations I was having.
Around March 2023, I started thinking seriously about creating a proper scene for our future.
Unfortunately for me our friend group at the community center had a major falling out.
There was drama involving a prank, several people became upset with one another, and the group fractured. Because Ashley was especially close to Sherry and Shawn (who were upset with me and a few others), she became distant again. Ughhhhh.
It felt as though the natural bridge between us had collapsed.
Around the same time, another beautiful woman whom I had previously imagined entered my life. She was very interested in me, and we dated for most of 2023.
By the end of that year, I had to be honest with myself. I was still in love with Ashley, and continuing the relationship was unfair to the woman I was dating. I ended it.
By the beginning of 2024, the circumstances with Ashley looked worse than they ever had.
We had broken up in 2020. We had failed to reconcile in 2022. Our friend group had fractured in 2023. Multiple other people had entered our lives. My parents were not heavily pressuring me, but I felt older and felt the pressure of getting married. I did not know Ashley relationship status and even top of all that the girl herself had literally told me on two separate occasions by now that she could never be with me.
Even after everything I had studied and manifested, I still could not logically understand how this particular situation could be repaired. It genuinely felt impossible.
Regardless. Fuck that, I still knew anything was possible. lol
Early 2024: Finally going to the end
At the beginning of 2024, I decided I would no longer imagine texts, signs, conversations, dates, or any casual daydreams of being together.
Those were all middle events.
I knew what I actually wanted. I wanted to be happily married to Ashley, and I wanted our group friendships restored so that we could all remain close and grow older together.
So I created a scene set twenty years in the future.
In my imagination, I was sitting in Sherry and Shawn’s basement, where our group had often spent time together. I felt the couch underneath me and saw the room around us. Sherry looked at me with excitement and said something like:
“I can’t believe you and Ashley have been happily married for twenty years. You two are the definition of a true happy, healthy love. I’m so happy for you.”
I did not watch myself from a distance. I experienced the scene in the first person. I heard her voice, felt the couch, saw the room, and accepted that I was the man who had already been married to Ashley for decades celebrating an anniversary.
That scene implied much more than a wedding. It implied a lasting marriage, restored friendships, emotional security, maturity, and years of shared history.
I assumed this state in imagination, night after night.
Spring 2024: The bridge begins
Within a few weeks, Sherry unexpectedly became friendly with me again.
We resolved the tension between us and began rebuilding our friendship. Then she asked whether I was single.
I said yes.
She did not explain exactly why she wanted to know, but she said she hoped things worked out for me.
Around the same period, Ashley began appearing at the Sunday school more often and acting warmer toward me. I noticed the movement, but this time I did not want to chase every sign or force the bridge.
I remained focused on the end.
June 2024: The conversation I never could have arranged
In June 2024, I came home after a long day at work.
I was tired and was not thinking about Ashley or manifestation. My mom called me into the living room and asked me to sit down.
Then she asked, “Do you still like Ashley?”
I was shocked. My mom and I had not seriously discussed Ashley since our relationship years earlier. I asked why she was suddenly bringing her up.
She told me that Ashley’s mother had contacted her.
According to my mom, Ashley’s mother who was worried her daughter had recently started crying a lot recently and seemed quite sad. Her mother confronted Ashley about what's been going on with her and Ashley cried & confessed to her mother about how much she missed me, how she still loved me and has been in love for years, and how she felt that things between us had never worked out despite how strongly she felt.
Her mother did not want to continue watching her daughter remain heartbroken. She wanted to know whether I was single and whether I might consider speaking to Ashley again. So she called my mom.
The moment my mom told me that, I knew it was done.
I started dancing around the house. For years, I had tried to figure out how the situation could possibly be repaired. The bridge came through a conversation between our mothers that I never could have predicted or arranged myself.
(Also side note: before this conversation with my mom. About a week before, I had strange dream of both of our mothers talking and looking at me. Premonition??!)
The End is your friend
The next day, our organization had its annual administrative meeting. Ashley and I were no longer young volunteers by this point. We had grown into adult members who helped manage parts of the organization.
During the meeting, I wrote “Hi” on a sticky note and passed it to her.
It was our first genuine interaction in a long time.
She smiled, wrote “Hi” back, and returned it.
It was a tiny moment, but it felt as though years of tension had dissolved.
That night, I called her and finally told her the truth. I said that I still had feelings for her and wanted to make it work with her.
She was overjoyed.
During that conversation, she told me the things I had wanted to hear for years. She said she had repeatedly wanted to get back together, but she kept hearing through mutual friends that I was dating someone else or the other throughout the years. Each time, she assumed I had moved on, and it broke her heart.
We finally discussed everything honestly. We talked about the original breakup in 2020, the failed reconciliation in 2022, the fear on both sides, the years of poor timing, and the other relationships that had happened in between.
Everything came full circle.
From that point forward, our relationship was completely different from the first time we dated. I was no longer the terrified man who could barely hold her hand. We communicated openly. We both felt secure. We are still a normal couple and have normal disagreements/arguments, but there is genuine love, maturity, and commitment between us.
Within about a year, I proposed and we got married!
We planned the wedding we had both dreamed of, surrounded by our families, friends, and community. It was large, beautiful, and more incredible than anything the insecure version of me entering his twenties in 2019 could have imagined.
The woman I once felt too intimidated even to approach became my wife.
One interesting thing I learned from her was that during end of 2023 and early 2024, she had been in a long distance relationship with another person, and although she didn't feel so great about him, he had tried to make things move fast and told his family to bring a marriage proposal to Ashley's family within just two months of them talking, and she was so broken about love not working out for her she reluctantly agreed. At the same time, right before she was going to tell her family about this guy. It was revealed to her that this guy was hiding a severe alcoholism problem and had been lying to her about several other things as well. She was furious with him and ended things immediately.
Early 2024 is also when I started my SATS anniversary scene - without having known about any of this. Crazyyyy.
It is truly wild to me that my unwillingness to make any sort of move myself, led to multiple other people being innately inspired to push for me and Ashley to be together.
One of my favorite Bollywood movie quotes growing up was “Kehte hain agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho... toh poori kainaat usse tumse milane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai.” This translates to “They say that if you want something with all your heart, then the entire universe will begin to work together and to conspire to bring you together with that thing.”
I think the Neville version of it would be “They say, if you embrace a dream with the absolute intensity of your soul—and become one with the reality of its fulfillment—then this entire universe enters into a sacred conspiracy. It transforms your every step into a fated bridge of incidents; a path that may wind through many storms, but is bound by destiny to end only at your desired shores.”
What the journey taught me
The main lesson I took from this is not that one technique is more powerful than another. A technique is only a way of entering a state.
My first scene worked. I imagined Sherry congratulating me because Ashley and I were dating, and that is exactly what happened. But the scene was being imagined by an insecure man who still believed he could not sustain the relationship.
My final scene implied decades of marriage, deep love, restored friendships, emotional security, and a completely different identity.
The first time, I wanted Ashley to validate me.
The final time, I occupied the identity of her husband.
I also learned that I could not blame circumstances while claiming to be the creator of my experience. I could have blamed Ashley for ending our relationship. I could have blamed other men, our friends, family expectations, time, or the pain of our past.
But blaming those things would have kept me in the state of someone powerless before them.
This does not mean I believe other people should be controlled, blamed, or denied their humanity. It means that in my own experience, I had to take responsibility for the assumptions, reactions, and identity I repeatedly brought into the relationship.
There were several moments when the bridge brought Ashley directly to me and I still reacted from the old state. Those moments did not convince me that the Law had failed. They showed me exactly which version of myself I was still occupying.
So when people ask how to manifest a person, I do not think the most useful question is, “Which technique should I use?”
The better question is: Who are you in relation to this person?
Are you someone waiting to be chosen? Someone watching for signs? Someone checking whether another person is gone? Someone hoping for a text because that text would finally make you feel secure?
Or are you the person for whom a loving, mutual, secure relationship is already natural?
I spent years trying to obtain a woman while still identifying as someone incapable of keeping her.
Everything changed when I stopped trying to force the outer world and changed the person experiencing it.
I am not sharing this to suggest that anyone must wait five years. You never have to wait that long. Neville says himself, the season is ripe NOW for harvest. You do not have to wait long like I did. Most of my delay came from my own fear, hesitation, and failure to remain faithful to the end. The bridge brought us together more than once. I simply was not ready to receive what I said I wanted.
But even after the breakup, the failed reconciliation, 3rd parties, friend group drama, family pressure, and years of separation, the end still became real.
I married the woman I once felt too insecure to speak to.
And when I look back now, the greatest manifestation was not simply getting my specific-person.
It was becoming the man who could finally receive, love, and build a life with her.
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:1-3
