#107: The I’M-Pression

The I’M-Pression

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have been schooled to believe that the thing you desire lies before you in time, that by effort, by struggle, by patient waiting you shall one day possess it. Yet this very belief is the confession that robs you of your desire. For whenever you say within yourself, “I shall be free,” “I shall be well,” “I shall be secure,” you are at that moment impressing upon your creative depth the conviction that you are not free, not well, not secure. And that impression, being received by the only creative power there is, your own awareness of being, is faithfully reproduced in your world.

The secret of all creation is the I’M-Pression. It is not the impression of what you hope to become; it is the impression of what you are. To be impressed is to be I’m-pressed—first person, present tense. All that appears in your world is the result of the impressions you have made and continue to make upon yourself. Your awareness, which men call God, is no respecter of persons. It does not judge the nature of the impression; it simply receives it and magnifies it. Whether the impression be one of health or sickness, wealth or poverty, freedom or bondage, it receives it without question and sustains it without murmur. Your I AM is the vine; the qualities you claim for yourself are the branches that live only as long as you feed them with your attention.

When you look upon your desire and say, “I shall have it one day,” you are seeing the desire as something that is not. You are confessing emptiness. But when you turn from the evidence of the senses and quietly claim, “I AM that which I desire,” you are impressing upon the creative depth the living reality of the thing itself. You are calling those things which be not as though they were. And because your awareness is God, and God is the fullness of all things, the impression is received as fact and is made visible. Signs follow; they never precede. The evidence appears after the impression has been made, never before.

Consider the nature of this creative depth. It is your own awareness of being, the I AM that sent Moses, the I AM that Jesus declared himself to be. It is not a god afar off; it is nearer than your hands and feet, nearer than your breathing. It is the eternal now. There is no past for it to remember and no future for it to anticipate. It knows only the present impression. Therefore your tomorrows are simply the expressions of today’s impressions. If today you impress yourself with “I AM poor,” tomorrow will confirm it. If today you impress yourself with “I AM free,” tomorrow will bear witness to it. There is no other law.

The desire that rises within you is not something you must struggle to attain; it is the savior already given. Before you have time to frame the words of your prayer, the solution stands before you in the form of the desire itself. The blind man automatically desires sight; the prisoner automatically desires freedom; the poor man automatically desires wealth. These desires are not your enemies; they are the spoken words of God telling you what you are to claim now. The savior knocks at the door of consciousness. You open that door the moment you claim, “I AM he.” You let the savior in when you allow the thing desired to press itself upon you until you feel its nowness, until you can say with conviction, “It is finished.”

Many pray for the thing they desire and then look for it to appear in the future. Such prayer is the confession of unbelief. It is the impression of lack. True prayer is the present claim. It is the feeling, “I AM already that which I desire to be.” When this feeling is attained, the creative depth is impressed, and the expression must follow. You do not command the how. You do not speculate upon the ways and means. You simply make the impression and leave the manner of its expression to the wisdom of the depth itself. Its ways are past finding out. It knows how to bring forth the oak from the acorn, the child from the womb, the circumstance from the state. Your only responsibility is to be impressed with the end.

The widow was asked what she had in her house. She answered, “Three drops of oil.” The prophet did not tell her to wait for oil to come; he told her to borrow empty vessels and to pour out that which she already had. As she poured, the oil increased. She had claimed the little as the all. She had impressed herself with substance present, not substance to come. And the creative depth magnified her claim. So it is with you. Whatever you possess in consciousness, however small it may seem, claim it as the evidence of the greater thing. Do not despise the day of small beginnings. The three drops, claimed as the fullness, become the gusher. Your awareness magnifies all that it is conscious of being.

To see yourself as becoming anything is to know that you are not that thing. The man who says, “I am becoming healthy,” is still impressed with sickness. The man who says, “I am becoming wealthy,” is still impressed with poverty. The impression must be total. It must be “I AM healthy,” “I AM wealthy,” “I AM free.” This is not a lie told to the self; it is the truth told to the creative depth. For in the depth there is no time. There is only the eternal now in which every claim is instantly received and instantly expressed. When you stand upon the claim “I AM,” you are standing upon the rock. The waves of doubt may beat against it, but they cannot move it. The winds of appearance may howl, but they cannot shake it. For you have impressed the only power there is, and that power is faithful.

The old habit of the mind is to look outward and to judge after the appearance. The senses report lack, and you are tempted to believe them. But the senses are only the out-picturing of former impressions. They have no life of their own. They are the branches; the life is in the vine. Change the impression in the vine and the branches must change. You cannot change the branches by arguing with them. You change them by changing the impression that feeds them. Turn your attention from the appearance and dwell in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Let that feeling press itself upon you until it becomes natural, until you are I’m-pressed with its reality. Then the appearance must conform.

This is the meaning of the words, “Take no thought for the morrow.” The morrow is not your concern. Your concern is the impression you are making now. The morrow will take care of itself because it is born of the impression. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” means that the present impression is all that matters. If the present impression is one of lack, the day will be evil. If the present impression is one of fulfillment, the day will be good. You do not fight the evil; you replace the impression that produces it. You do not wrestle with the problem; you impress the solution. The problem dies of itself when it is no longer fed.

Every man is impressed with something. The question is not whether you will make an impression, but what impression you will make. The hungry man is impressed with hunger. The sick man is impressed with sickness. The free man is impressed with freedom. You cannot avoid the law; you can only choose the nature of the impression. Choose, therefore, the impression of the fulfilled desire. Choose it deliberately, quietly, and with the certainty that the creative depth will honor it. For it has no choice but to honor every impression made upon it. It is your servant, and it serves without question.

When you retire at night, do not take the problems of the day with you into the silence. Take instead the fulfilled desire. Feel it. Touch it in imagination. Hear the words you would hear if it were true. See the scene you would see. And do not rise from that impression until you have felt the conviction, “It is finished.” Then sleep in the consciousness of the impression made. In the morning you may awaken to the same outer appearance, but the impression has been received, and the expression is already on its way. Persist in the impression and the appearance must yield. It has no power to resist the creative depth once the depth has been impressed.

The I’M-Pression is not a technique to be used occasionally; it is the way you live. It is the constant claim of your true identity. You are not the man who desires health; you are the man who is health. You are not the man who seeks wealth; you are the man who is wealth. You are not the man who longs for freedom; you are the man who is free. This is not arrogance; it is the simple recognition of what you have always been in the creative depth. The outer man may seem to contradict it, but the outer man is only the expression of yesterday’s impression. Today’s impression will write a new chapter.

You stand this night at the door of a new possibility. The savior of every problem you have ever known is already with you. It is your desire. It is your awareness of what you would like to be. Open the door by the present claim. Let the thing desired press itself upon you until you are I’m-pressed with its nowness. Say within yourself, quietly but with feeling, “I AM he.” Say it until the feeling comes, until the conviction settles, until the creative depth receives the impression as fact. Then rest in the knowledge that the thing is done. For in the realm of the I AM there is no time between the impression and the expression. There is only the eternal now in which all things are possible to him that believes.

The man who knows this walks through the world no longer as a beggar but as a king. He does not plead with life; he impresses life. He does not wait for circumstances to change; he changes the impression that produces circumstances. He does not look for signs; he knows that signs follow. And because he knows, he is at peace. The peace is not the peace of the world; it is the peace of the man who has impressed the creative depth with the fulfilled desire and has heard within himself the words, “It is finished.”

This is the I’M-Pression. It is the secret that was hidden from the foundation of the world and is now revealed to you. It is not something you must achieve; it is something you must be. Be impressed with the end, and the end will appear. Be impressed with health, and health will appear. Be impressed with freedom, and freedom will appear. Be impressed with the knowledge that you are already the man you long to be, and the world will bear witness to your claim. For your awareness is God, and God is faithful. He cannot deny himself. He can only express that with which he is impressed. And you are the one who makes the impression.

So tonight, as you close your eyes upon the world, close them also upon every former impression of lack, of limitation, of becoming. Open them instead upon the single, luminous claim: “I AM.” Let that claim gather to itself the substance of your desire. Let it press upon you until you feel its weight, its reality, its nowness. Let it become the only impression in your consciousness. And when it has become natural to you, when you can rest in it without effort, you will have done all that is required of you. The creative depth will do the rest. It will magnify your claim. It will bring it to pass. And you will discover, perhaps for the first time, that the thing you sought was never in the future. It was always in the present, waiting only for the impression that would clothe it in flesh.

You are the impression. You are the I AM that receives and sustains every claim. You are the creative depth made visible. Walk, therefore, as the man who is already what he desires to be. Speak as the man who is already what he desires to be. Feel as the man who is already what he desires to be. For in so doing you impress the only power there is, and that power cannot fail to respond. The response may be silent at first. The senses may report no change. But the impression has been made, and the expression is as certain as the rising of the sun. It must come. It cannot tarry. For the I’M-Pression is the law, and the law is ever faithful to the impression made upon it.

This night you may begin again. This night you may make the impression that will write a new history for you. Not by effort, not by struggle, but by the quiet, certain claim of “I AM.” Let the claim be total. Let it be felt. Let it be the only reality in your consciousness. Then sleep in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire, and awaken to a world that has already begun to conform to the new impression. For the world is not your master; it is your impression out-pictured. Change the impression and you change the world.

The I’M-Pression is the open secret of every fulfilled desire. It is the key that was always in your hand. Use it now. Use it tonight. Use it with the certainty that the creative depth is already receiving the impression and is even now at work bringing it to visible expression. And when the expression appears, as it surely will, you will know that you have not been heard for your much speaking, but because you impressed the Father with the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You impressed him with “I AM,” and he, being faithful, answered with the thing itself.

So be it.