Who was Neville Goddard? – And how did he come to learn the Law of Acceptance?
A short history excursion into the life of Neville Goddard brings us to the basics about the Law of Acceptance – that is, right into the heart of manifesting. The background on Neville Goddard is important to understand and place everything. It is a preparation to the techniques that make learning how to manifest effectively in the first place.
The bridge of events to the mystery!
Neville Lancelot Goddard was born on February 19, 1905 in the then British Protectorate of Barbados in the town of St. Michael – to an Anglican family of nine sons and one daughter. A 1950s gossip column described the young Neville Goddard as enormously wealthy. His family owned an entire island in the West Indies, it said.
The truth was much more modest: Neville Goddard described his own English home as happy but ordinary. Among his brothers, as in many families, there was a constant scramble for clothes and seconds at the dinner table.
At age 17, He came to New York City to study theater, a move that led to a successful career as a vaudeville dancer and Broadway actor. He toured America and England with dance troupes. But he lived hand-to-mouth in the theater, supplementing his income with jobs as an elevator operator and shipping clerk.
Neville-Goddard-and-the-Law-of-Acceptance
Neville Lancelot Goddard
When young actor Neville was exposed to a tantalizing assortment of spiritual ideas, ambition for the stage seemed to fade – beginning with self-proclaimed spiritual groups that sparked interest in him about the power of the mind and metaphysics, then later with the help of a life-changing mentor.
Abdullah – Neville Goddard’s mentor!
He later talks about this same mentor and his experiences studying about the Law of Acceptance with him in his books and lectures. It revolves around a rabbi who called himself Abdullah – also known as Arnold Josiah Ford. There was something fateful about their first meeting in about 1931, according to Neville Goddard.
With that, his interest in esoteric interpretations of the Bible deepened and he delved deeper and deeper into the subject of spirituality, the law of acceptance and the legislations of our so-called reality. Abdullah, who was of Ethiopian descent, lectured on spiritual Christianity and taught both Neville Goddard and Joseph Murphy.
He initially went to see him only under protest to a friend’s constant urging, saying, “I remember the first night I met Abdullah. I had deliberately delayed attending one of his meetings because a man whose judgment I did not trust had insisted on my presence.”
At the end of the meeting, Abdullah approached Neville Goddard and said, “Neville, you are six months late!” Startled, Neville Goddard wondered how he knew his name when Abdullah said, “The brothers told me you would be here six months ago.” Then he added, “I will stay until you have received all I have to give you. Then I will leave.”
From this acquaintance, He studied Hebrew, Kabbalah and the hidden symbolic meaning of the Holy Scriptures with Abdullah for about 5 years. This provided him with a fundamental knowledge of manifesting with the Law of Assumption.
