The Ladder Experiment is a method by Neville Goddard you can use to prove to yourself that manifestation works. It will give you real practical experience with it, and It will also show you how events magically appear, leading you step-by-step (no pun intended) to the imagined outcome. This is the short version:
- Neville Goddard’s “Ladder Experiment” is a great way to test manifesting and to prove to yourself that it is real.
- To do the Ladder Experiment, simply take some time each night to close your eyes and go into a relaxed mental state.
- From here, imagine that you are climbing a ladder. Feel that you are actually climbing it, moving your imaginary arms and legs from one step to the next.
- Do this every night for at least three days (or more). Doing this will cause you to end up in a real-world situation where you will climb a ladder.
If you’re skeptical about the reality of manifesting, The Ladder Experiment is a great way to convince yourself that it is real. As well as that, it’s a good way to get practice and familiarize yourself with the process by which you can intentionally manifest something.
What Is The Ladder Experiment?
The Ladder Experiment first consists of imagining that you’re climbing a ladder. This imaginal act needs to be as immersive as possible, and you need to really feel that you’re actually climbing a ladder.
The second part is to tell yourself that you will NOT climb a ladder. You need to genuinely mean this — make up your mind that you WILL NOT climb a ladder. Neville Goddard recommend to write down notes in different places, such as your wallet and your mirror saying, “I will NOT climb a ladder.”
But as you do this, every night for the next three days, imagine that you are climbing a ladder. Ideally, you should keep imagining this until doze off into sleep.
At some point, you will end up in a situation where you have climbed a ladder. You do not know how it will happen. Maybe an old lady will ask you to rescue her cat that has climbed up on her roof, or maybe you accidentally climb up a ladder without even thinking about it. The situation will appear on its own.
How To Do The Ladder Experiment Correctly
I will now give a quick step-by-step guide on how to do The Ladder Experiment.
- Go into a relaxed state of consciousness. You can either lie down or sit up. Preferably, do this in the evening as your mind is naturally preparing for sleep.
- In your imagination, picture a ladder in front of you. Put your arms on the sides of the ladder. Try to feel the sensation of touching the ladder as if it was really in front of you.
- Take your foot and place it on the first step. Then begin climbing. It’s important to feel like you’re actually climbing the ladder. Try to feel that it’s real, and get your senses involved.
You can either climb up and down the ladder or keep climbing up as if the ladder was infinite. - If you can fall asleep while imagining, that’s great! Do that. If not, just keep climbing until you have done it enough (around 10-15 minutes). There isn’t any harm in doing it longer than that, though. You might even find that longer sessions are really effective.
- Repeat this every night before bed or at some point throughout the day. Doing it at night is better because you are naturally closer to a relaxed state of consciousness.
In the original experiment, Neville told his audience to imagine for 3 days. You can do it longer if you don’t feel like that’s enough. - Tell yourself that you WILL NOT CLIMB A LADDER. Place notes that say “I will NOT climb a ladder” in different places, on your mirror, on a wall, in your wallet, and so on. You can also make it the home screen on your phone or the background on your computer. The idea is to constantly remind yourself that you will NOT climb ladder. It’s important to really mean it.
This is all you need to do. In due time you will likely end up in a situation where you have to, or accidentally, climb a ladder.
Why You Should Do The Ladder Experiment
Doing The Ladder Experiment is a great way to test and experiment with manifesting.
It is especially helpful if you’re skeptical or have a lot of doubt. Successfully doing The Ladder Experiment will be very convincing for you (if you don’t usually climb ladders). It will also help you understand and analyze how manifesting actually works. You will learn from your actual results as opposed to stuff you’ve merely read online – and this is far more convincing and valuable.
The benefit of doing The Ladder Experiment, instead of trying to manifest something you deeply desire, is that you will have fewer mental and emotional blockages. Being too attached to the outcome often makes it harder. For example, many people are very attached to money as it is obviously an important part of life. Most have a bad relationship with money. They may believe that it’s bad, that they don’t deserve it, or that it’s too hard to attain. These beliefs “block” money from actually manifesting in your life.
Since climbing a ladder isn’t really a big deal to you and likely wouldn’t be your wildest dream come true, you’re less attached to it, and it is, therefore, a lot easier to manifest.
Climbing a ladder is an arbitrary event. You could just as easily imagine some other random event. The idea is to pick something that wouldn’t be a big deal if it happened. Also, pick something that is relatively easy to imagine.
By successfully doing these types of experiments, you will gradually begin to believe that manifesting actually real. You will be less inclined to argue from the place of your old beliefs, which will help you manifest stuff faster in the future and enable you to pursue bigger and better goals.
Success Story With The Ladder Experiment
To make this more concrete, I will briefly explain how I successfully did the Ladder Experiment.
Before I first did this I already had a lot of success with manifesting, so believing it would happen wasn’t that difficult for me. Don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t manifest as fast for you.
For this experiment, I decided to set aside 15 minutes a day to imagine, and I simply just used my phone as an alarm.
Within these 15 minutes, I would first go into a meditative state (it took me probably 5-10 minutes), and then I would spend the remainder of the time imagining myself climbing up and down a metal ladder. Metal felt more real to me than wood, but apart from that, my imaginary ladder changed a lot. I say this because it’s not the specific imagery you use that is important, it’s the “idea” of climbing a ladder that matters. Throughout the day, I affirmed, “I will not climb a ladder.” I decided that if I got the opportunity to climb a ladder, I would not take it as it would be too easy. I wanted to do this experiment 10am for that reason I would not let myself climb a ladder if I had the opportunity to avoid it.
The first few days, I saw ladders everywhere. There were people climbing ladders, ladders in the supermarket, pictures of ladders, ladders randomly standing up buildings, and so on. I didn’t really think much of it, but I regarded them as synchronicities.
A couple of days later, I was over at a friend’s house. We were out in his garden flying with his new drone. Long story short, my friend “decided” to fly his drone into a tree, one of the big ones, unfortunately. The drone immediately got stuck between the branches. The moment the drone hit the tree, I already knew that it would have to be me who had to climb up and get it down. My friend was not particularly fond of heights, and his bad knee didn’t make it any safer. Still committed to my intention, I suggested that we keep trying to maneuver the drone out of the tree with the controller. Unfortunately, only a couple of seconds later, it began to rain aggressively, and the wind started to act up. Time was ticking if we didn’t want to get soaked and risk damaging the drone. With no other way to get the drone down, I ran to the house, got the ladder, placed it up the tree, climbed up, and grabbed the drone.
Again, I was already pretty good at manifesting back then, but I still couldn’t help but be a bit amazed at how it all came together and how a couple of unplanned happenings would coincide, almost forcing me to do the thing I had imagined. Things just happened on their own without my intervention.
Where Does The Ladder Experiment Come From?
The Ladder Experiment comes from a story told by a guy called Elmer O. Locker, who attended one of Neville Goddard’s meetings many decades ago (watch the original video here).
To prove to the audience that what he was saying was true, Neville told them to test it for themselves by doing this simple experiment.
He invited those who actually ended up climbing a ladder in the real world to attend his next meeting the following Sunday. In that second meeting, he told the attendees that since they could cause this event to occur through the use of their imagination, they could just as easily achieve anything they desired through the same process.
Why You Should Tell Yourself To NOT Climb a Ladder
Why would Neville Goddard tell you to affirm that you will NOT climb a ladder? Why not say, “I WILL climb a Ladder,” since that’s what you actually want to do?
Well, there are a few possible reasons why.
First, it’s important to know that focusing on NOT doing something still gives power to things we are focusing on NOT doing. This is the psychological law of reversed effort. When effort and imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins. Efforts going counter to an idea held in imagination only strengthen and solidify that idea even more.
Another reason could be that affirming not to climb a ladder would hinder any doubt from coming into play. For example, if he told us to say, “I WILL climb a ladder,” our minds might come up with all sorts of reasons and arguments as to why it couldn’t possibly happen. On the other hand, if we focus on not climbing a ladder, we are not antagonizing our current belief system. Because of that, focusing on NOT climbing a ladder is actually more effective.
A third possible reason is that Neville wanted to show that we are controlled by our imaginal acts. According to Neville, we cannot do things that do not concur with our imagination; to change things, we can only choose to imagine new things. Even though we are consciously attempting NOT to climb a ladder, we are also told to imagine climbing a ladder every night, and the end result is that we DO climb a ladder.
Final Thoughts
Not all people will succeed with manifesting immediately – even if it’s “small” manifestations like The Ladder Experiment.
It’s important to remember that you’re, in a sense, already manifesting everything in your life. What you need to learn is to direct the power to create desired outcomes of your own choice.
The key is to be persistent. It’s similar to learning any other skill. You just need to keep at it. Through trial and error, you’ll eventually get there.
Thanks for reading. I hope you found this article helpful!
