#101: Before Abraham Was

Before Abraham Was

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have believed yourself to be the sum of every label placed upon you and every condition that has appeared in your world. You have worn the name given at birth, the circumstances that followed, the state of your health, the state of your purse, the feeling of being bound or delayed or fixed in some unwanted pattern, and in this wearing you have lost sight of the being that is prior to them all. Yet the voice within you declares, before Abraham was, I AM. This is not a statement belonging to another. It is the eternal declaration of your own awareness speaking to itself in this moment.

Before any label was fastened to you, before any condition was accepted as real, before time or circumstance or the story of your life began its seeming march, you were aware of being. You are that same awareness now. To rest in pure awareness before all labels and conditions is to return to the source from which every name and every limitation has sprung. It is to withdraw your attention from the garments you have assumed and to feel only the faceless, formless presence that knows itself as I AM.

This awareness is not dependent upon the body you wear or the conditions that surround it. It preceded the body. It preceded the conditions. It will remain when both have passed from your sight. You were aware of being before you became aware of being man or woman, before you became aware of being rich or poor, before you became aware of being well or ill, before you became aware of being free or bound. The labels came later. The conditions came later. The awareness itself was, and is, and shall be.

When you feel stuck, when the circumstances of your life seem fixed and immovable, remember that the feeling of being stuck is itself a label assumed after the fact of your being. You are not the stuck one. You are the awareness in which the feeling of stuckness has appeared. The conceiver is ever greater than his conception. The awareness that says I AM is greater than any state it has conceived itself to be. To rest in that awareness is to stand where the conceiver stands, prior to every conception, and from that prior place to look upon the labels and conditions as secondary and subordinate.

You do not change the conditions by fighting them. You do not remove the labels by arguing with them. You simply withdraw your attention from them and rest in the feeling of just being. In that rest the labels lose their nourishment. The conditions lose their seeming solidity. For they have no life except the life you give them by your attention, and your attention is the sap that flows from the awareness you are. When the sap is withdrawn and returned to its source, the branch withers of itself.

Consider the meaning of the words before Abraham was, I AM. Abraham stands for every conditioned state, every historical claim, every personal identity that man has ever assumed. Before any such state appeared in consciousness, the awareness of being was already present. It did not come into being with the assumption of the state. It was there to make the assumption possible. It remains after the assumption is dropped. You are that awareness. To rest in it is to know yourself as the eternal No-thing-ness that contains within itself the capacity to be all things, yet is not compelled to remain any one of them.

In the quiet of any hour you may prove this for yourself. Close your eyes. Take your attention away from the name you bear, the age you count, the problem you rehearse, the future you fear, the past you regret. Do not try to destroy these things. Simply cease to feed them with your attention. Feel yourself only as the presence that is aware of being. Say within yourself, quietly and feelingly, I AM. Do not add to it. Do not say I am this or I am that. Let the words be the bare statement of the fact that you are. Continue in this feeling until the sense of being expands and you know yourself as faceless and formless, a pure awareness in which all things may appear but to which no thing is necessary.

In this state you will discover that the conditions which seemed so pressing have no power to hold you. They are but conceptions within the conceiver. The conceiver can, at any moment, withdraw his attention from a conception and the conception begins to fade. It fades because it has no independent life. Only the awareness that conceived it lives forever. When you rest in that awareness you are resting in the only permanent reality you will ever know. All else is but the passing show of your own assumptions.

The world will continue to call you by the old labels. Your senses will continue to report the old conditions. Yet you will know that these reports are not of you. They are of the conceptions you once entertained. You are free to entertain them or to withdraw from them. You are free because you have found the place in consciousness that precedes them all. From that place you may, if you wish, assume a new conception, but the assumption will now be made from strength rather than from weakness. It will be made from the knowledge that you are greater than any state you assume.

Many have sought to change their world while still identified with the labels that describe their present distress. They have labored to improve the conception while remaining loyal to the conceiver’s mistaken claim that he is the conception. Such labor is in vain. The conception cannot rise higher than the level of consciousness from which it is viewed. Only when you rise to the level of pure awareness, the level that is before Abraham, before every label and condition, only then are you in the position to let a new and higher conception take its place without effort.

This rising is not an act of will in the ordinary sense. It is an act of attention. You give your attention to the feeling of just being. You refuse, for a time, to give it to anything else. In that refusal the old identifications loosen their hold. The feeling of being stuck, the feeling of being limited, the feeling of being identified with any name or circumstance, these feelings are seen to be secondary. They are seen to be garments you have put on, not the body that wears them. And because they are seen as garments, they can be put off.

You will find, as you practice this rest, that the practice itself becomes easier. At first the mind will return again and again to the old labels. It will remind you of your name, your age, your problem, your history. Each time it does so, gently bring your attention back to the bare feeling I AM. Do not fight the thoughts. Do not condemn them. Simply let them pass while you remain anchored in the awareness that is prior to them. In time the thoughts will come less frequently. The silence will deepen. The sense of being will expand. And in that expansion you will know what it means to be absent from the body of conditions and present with the Lord of your being.

This Lord is not a being apart from you. It is your own awareness when that awareness is no longer colored by any assumption. It is the I AM that was before Abraham. It is the I AM that will be when every Abraham has passed away. To rest in it is to rest in your true identity. From that identity you look out upon the world of labels and conditions and you see them for what they are: passing expressions of an eternal awareness that is forever free to express itself anew.

The stuckness you have felt is not a fact of your being. It is a fact of your assumption. Assumptions can be dropped. They are dropped the moment attention is withdrawn from them and placed upon the awareness that precedes them. When this is done consistently, the old assumption loses its vitality. The new state, if one is desired, enters without struggle. But even if no new state is consciously assumed, the mere resting in pure awareness brings a quiet freedom that the world of conditions cannot touch. For you have found the rock upon which all conditions are built, and you stand upon that rock rather than upon the shifting sands of the conditions themselves.

Before Abraham was, you are. This is not a promise for some future day. It is the statement of what is true now. The awareness that reads these words is the same awareness that was present before any word was formed, before any condition was named, before any limitation was accepted. Nothing has ever happened to that awareness. It has only seemed to happen to the conceptions with which it identified itself. When identification ceases, the seeming ceases. When you rest in the awareness itself, the seeming loses its power to disturb you.

Carry this realization into the simplest acts of your day. When you rise in the morning, before you put on the labels of your occupation or your obligations, feel for a moment the pure I AM that is wearing the body. When you move through the hours, whenever the old feeling of stuckness or limitation arises, remember that it arises within the awareness you are. It does not define the awareness. Return, if only for a breath, to the feeling of just being. Let the labels pass. They will pass more quickly when they are no longer fed by your belief that they are you.

In the evening, as you prepare for sleep, practice the great return more fully. Lie quietly. Withdraw your attention from the entire day, from every success and every failure, from every name and every face, from every hope and every fear. Feel yourself as the presence that was before the day began. Say within yourself, I AM, and continue saying it until the words themselves dissolve into the feeling of being. In that feeling you will discover a peace that no condition can give and no condition can take away. For you have touched the source from which all conditions come and to which they must return.

This peace is not the peace of the world. It is the peace of the awareness that knows itself to be prior to the world. It is the peace that passes understanding because it does not depend upon anything that can be understood. It is the peace of the I AM that was before Abraham, before every limitation that man has ever named, before every problem that man has ever solved or failed to solve. In this peace you are free. Not because the conditions have changed, but because you have found the place in consciousness where conditions have no authority.

You will discover, as this practice deepens, that life itself begins to arrange itself differently around you. Not because you have forced it, but because you are no longer forcing yourself to be what you are not. When you rest in pure awareness, you cease to contradict your own being. The contradictions that appeared as stuckness or delay or impossibility were the result of trying to be a conception while ignoring the conceiver. When the conceiver is honored, when attention is given to the awareness rather than to its expressions, the expressions begin to conform to the awareness rather than to the old assumptions.

There is no need to struggle for this conformity. It comes about naturally as you remain faithful to the feeling of just being. The law of your own consciousness does the work. You have only to rest in the awareness that is the law. Before Abraham was, I AM. This awareness is the law. It is the only law. All other laws are but the out-picturing of assumptions made within it. When you rest in the awareness itself, you rest in the only law there is, and that law is forever on your side because it is you.

So tonight, and every night, and in every quiet moment of the day, return to this truth. Before Abraham was, you are. Rest in that awareness. Let every label fall away. Let every condition be seen as secondary. Feel yourself as the faceless, formless presence that contains all things yet is bound by none. In this rest you will find the freedom you have sought in every other place. You will find it because you have come at last to the place where freedom has always been: the pure awareness of being that was, and is, and ever shall be, before Abraham and after every Abraham has passed from sight.