#106: The Foundation Stone

The Foundation Stone

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

What is the one thing upon which your entire world rests? It is not the conditions that surround you. It is not the opinions of others. It is not the history you have lived or the circumstances you now face. The foundation upon which every manifestation in your life is erected is your own self-concept, the silent, inner conviction of what you are. This is the stone that was laid in the beginning, and upon it all things are built. Change this stone and the building must change. Leave it unchanged and no amount of effort spent upon the outer walls will alter the structure.

You are forever out-picturing that which you are conscious of being. This is not a theory to be believed or disbelieved. It is the law of your own being. Whatever you have accepted in the depth of yourself as true of you has become the foundation, and the world you see is simply the visible expression of that foundation. The man who is conscious of being poor builds his world upon the stone of poverty, and all his efforts to escape poverty are but attempts to decorate a building whose foundation remains untouched. The man who is conscious of being sick builds upon the stone of illness, and his search for health is the search for relief while the cause continues to operate. The man who is conscious of being a failure builds upon that stone, and success eludes him because he has not changed the foundation upon which success must rest.

The question that determines your life is the question addressed to you by your own awareness: “Whom do you say that I AM?” Your answer to this question is the foundation stone you have laid. If your answer is “I am limited, I am weak, I am unworthy, I am bound by my past,” then that answer has become the stone, and your world rises in exact correspondence with it. The outer is never the cause. It is always the effect, the shadow cast by the inner conviction. You cannot see a world that does not correspond to the self you have accepted. This is why men remain in the same conditions year after year, praying for change while clinging to the very self-concept that makes change impossible.

Consciousness is the only reality. The world of form is the out-picturing of consciousness. When you understand this, you cease to war against conditions and begin to examine the foundation upon which those conditions rest. You discover that the foundation is not in the bank account, not in the body, not in the relationship, not in the job. The foundation is in the feeling of “I AM” that you carry with you wherever you go. This feeling is the stone. It is the rock. Upon this rock your world is built, and the gates of hell—the old conditions, the old fears, the old limitations—cannot prevail against a foundation that has been changed.

Many have sought to change their world by changing everything except themselves. They have moved from city to city, from job to job, from relationship to relationship, always hoping that the new place or the new person will bring the change they desire. But the self-concept travels with them. The same stone is carried into every new situation, and the same building rises again. This is the reason for the endless repetition of patterns in human experience. The foundation was never altered. Only the decoration of the walls was attempted. And decoration without a change of foundation is futility.

When you truly grasp that your self-concept is the foundation stone, you cease to ask how the change will come. You know that the how is not your concern. The how belongs to the law itself. Your only concern is the stone you lay. When you rise in consciousness to the point where you feel yourself to be the man you wish to be, you have laid a new foundation. The old stone has been replaced. The old building must crumble, for it has lost its support. A new building, in harmony with the new foundation, begins to appear. This is not magic. It is law. It is the simple, changeless fact that consciousness eternally solidifies itself in the things round about you.

Consider what it means to be conscious of being. Before you are conscious of being rich or poor, healthy or sick, loved or unloved, you are first conscious of being. This pure awareness of being is the conceiver. Then you become conscious of being this or that. The particular quality you accept as true of yourself is the conception, the son bearing witness of the father. The conceiver is always greater than the conception, yet the conception cannot appear without the conceiver’s acceptance. When you change what you are conscious of being, you change the conception, and the world, which is the expression of that conception, changes with it.

This is why the prophets and the mystics of old spoke of the “I AM” as the name of God. “I AM hath sent me unto you.” The awareness of being is the sender. It sends you into expression as that which you have accepted yourself to be. There is no other sender. There is no other cause. When you say “I am poor,” you are sending yourself into the expression of poverty. When you say “I am rich,” you are sending yourself into the expression of riches. The words are not the important thing. It is the feeling, the inner conviction, the settled acceptance that matters. That feeling is the foundation stone.

You cannot serve two foundations. You cannot claim yourself to be one thing in the depth of your soul and expect to live as another. The foundation you have accepted will assert itself. It will out-picture itself. It will draw to itself everything necessary to make the building correspond to the stone. This is why the man who secretly feels himself to be a failure, even while he affirms success with his lips, continues to fail. His lips are building upon one stone while his heart is building upon another. The heart always wins, for the foundation is in the heart, in the feeling, in the conviction of self.

The world you now see is the perfect expression of the foundation you have laid. There is no injustice in it. There is no accident in it. There is only perfect correspondence. If you are dissatisfied with the building, you must be willing to examine the stone. Most men are unwilling to do this. They prefer to blame the building, to blame other men, to blame God, to blame fate. But the building is innocent. It has no power to be other than what the foundation permits. When you accept this, you accept responsibility—not the heavy burden of blame, but the glorious freedom of creation. You are free to lay a new stone. You are free to become conscious of being the self you truly desire to express.

What does it mean to lay a new foundation stone? It means to rise in consciousness to the naturalness of being that which you wish to be. It means to feel, if only for a moment, that the thing desired is already so. This feeling need not be loud or emotional. It is a quiet, certain acceptance. It is the moment when you cease to long for the thing and begin to live from the consciousness of already having it. In that moment the old stone is abandoned and the new stone is laid. The building may not yet be visible to your eyes, but the foundation has been changed, and the law will not be mocked. The new building must rise.

This rising is not a process of time. It is a change of consciousness, and consciousness knows no time. The moment the foundation is laid, the process of out-picturing begins. You may not see the evidence at once. The old building still stands in your sight. But the old building now stands upon a foundation that no longer supports it. Its days are numbered. The new building is already rising in the invisible, and in due season it will appear in the visible. This is the bridge of incidents that always appears when a new foundation has been laid. You do not construct the bridge. You do not plan the incidents. You simply remain faithful to the new stone, and the way is made.

The man who has laid the new foundation no longer struggles with the old conditions. He does not fight the building that is passing away. He does not argue with appearances. He knows that appearances are the out-picturing of a foundation that has already been superseded. He rests in the certainty that the new foundation will bring forth its own building. This rest is not passivity. It is the active faith that knows the law is at work. It is the peace that comes when a man realizes he has done the only thing he can do—the only thing that matters. He has changed the foundation.

You are always laying a foundation. There is no moment when you are not building upon some stone. The question is not whether you will build, but what stone you will use. Every assumption, every inner conviction, every feeling of “I am this” or “I am that” is a stone being laid. Most of these stones are laid unconsciously. You accept the suggestions of the world, the opinions of others, the evidence of the senses, and you build upon them without realizing that you are building at all. Then you wonder why your life is as it is. But when you awaken to the fact that you are the builder, you awaken to the fact that you can choose the stone.

The stone you choose tonight will determine the building you inhabit tomorrow. This is not a threat. It is a promise. It is the promise that you are not at the mercy of a world you did not create. You are the creator of the world you inhabit, and you create it by the foundation you lay. Tonight, before you close your eyes, you can lay a new stone. You can, in the silence of your own soul, feel yourself to be the man you wish to be. You can accept it as true. You can rest upon it. And in that rest the old foundation is abandoned and the new is established.

The old self-concept does not die easily. It will present itself again and again, clothed in the garments of the old building. It will say, “Look at the evidence. Look at the circumstances. Look at the past.” But you who have laid the new foundation need not answer these arguments. You need not fight them. You need only remain faithful to the new stone. The arguments of the old foundation have power only over those who still build upon it. They have no power over the man who has moved to a new foundation. He sees the old arguments as the shadows of a building that is already condemned.

This is the freedom that comes when you understand the foundation stone. You are no longer the victim of your world. You are the master of it, not by force, not by manipulation, but by the simple act of laying the right foundation. The world has no choice but to correspond to the stone you have laid. It cannot do otherwise. It is the faithful servant of your self-concept. When you change the master, the servant must obey.

So you see, the entire question of manifestation reduces itself to this one thing: What is the self you are conscious of being? That is the foundation. That is the stone. Upon that stone your life is built, stone by stone, day by day, experience by experience. There is no other way. There is no other law. There is no other foundation that can be laid.

Tonight you stand at the threshold of a new foundation. You can, if you will, lay it now. You can, in this moment, cease to be conscious of being the limited self you have accepted until now, and become conscious of being the fulfilled self you desire. This is not imagination in the sense of daydreaming. This is the creative act itself. This is the laying of the foundation stone. And when it is laid, all things are possible to you, for you have built upon the rock, and the rock is your own changed consciousness of being.

The old world will pass away. It must pass away. It has no life apart from the foundation that supported it. The new world will appear. It must appear. It has no choice but to appear when the foundation that gives it life has been laid. This is the law. This is the promise. This is the foundation stone upon which you are invited to build tonight.

You are free. You have always been free. The only bondage was the bondage of an unchanged foundation. The only limitation was the limitation of an unexamined self-concept. When you examine it and find it unworthy of the life you desire, you are free to lay another. And in the laying of that other, you are reborn. The old man dies. The new man lives. And the world, which is but the new man pushed out, rises to bear witness to the stone you have laid.

This is the great secret. This is the pearl of great price. This is the foundation stone that was rejected by the builders of this world, the builders who build upon everything except their own self-concept. But you who have heard it tonight need not reject it. You can receive it. You can lay it. You can rest upon it. And in your resting, the building will rise, and you will know, as you have never known before, that consciousness is the only reality, and that your self-concept is the foundation upon which all things stand.

Go now, and lay your stone well. For upon it your world will rest, and it will be a world worthy of the self you have chosen to be.