#108: Circumcision of the Heart

Circumcision of the Heart

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have sought freedom, you have longed for a new expression in your world, yet the change you desire has not appeared because the heart remains uncircumcised. The beliefs you carry, the convictions you accept as true of yourself, these belong to the old man and must be cut away before the new man can stand revealed. This is the operation performed without hands, the circumcision of the heart, the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh. Until this is done you cannot know the new man who is Christ in you, for the old garments still cling and the old story still colors your feeling of who you are.

The old man is not someone else. He is the sum of every belief you have ever accepted as true: the belief in limitation, in lack, in the power of conditions, in the reality of the past, in the divisions of race and nation and family and creed. These are the adhesions that bind you to the old. They are the foreskin that hides the head of creation. You are first conscious of being, and then you become conscious of being this particular man with his particular history and his particular limitations. This consciousness of being man is the veil. The adhesions are all the feelings that adhere to this man and make him seem so real and so permanent. As long as you feel these as true of you, the new man cannot appear, for two states cannot occupy the same consciousness at the same time.

The new man is born only when the old is cut away. He does not come by growth or by gradual improvement. He appears when the knife of indifference has done its work and the veil of man has been removed. Indifference is the knife. It does not fight the old; it simply withdraws the feeling that gives the old its life. You look at the belief in poverty, or in ill health, or in failure, or in any limitation that has bound you, and you cease to feel it as yourself. You become indifferent to the claim. The claim may still appear in the world of sense, but it no longer finds a home in your consciousness. The tie is severed because feeling is the tie that binds, and when feeling is withdrawn the adhesion falls away of itself.

This cutting away begins with the outer adhesions. You have identified yourself with a nation, with a family, with a creed, with a past. You have felt these as part of your very being. The new man knows no such distinctions. In him there is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free, male nor female. He does not hate these things; he is simply indifferent to them as claims upon his identity. He sees all men as one grand brotherhood because he has cut away the feeling of separation that made distinctions seem important. When you can look upon the divisions of the world and feel no necessity to defend or to oppose them as part of yourself, the first part of the operation is accomplished. The adhesions of the world have been severed.

Yet even this is not enough. After the outer adhesions are cut there remains the last veil, the belief that you are man at all. You must go further. You must drop the consciousness of being this man, this body, this personality with its story, and know yourself as faceless, formless awareness. Let there be no “I am this man who has done these things or failed in these things.” Let there be only “I AM.” Feel yourself as pure being, without figure, without past, without the old garments. This is the true circumcision. The old man is the foreskin; the new man is the head of creation now revealed. When you stand in this faceless awareness you know that you are the new man, and beside this awareness there is no other God.

The new man does not carry the old beliefs. He does not know lack, for he is one with the source of all things. He does not know fear, for he knows himself as the awareness in which all things live. He does not strive to become, for he knows that he already is. All the struggles of the old man were the result of trying to live the new life while still wearing the old beliefs. The new man needs no struggle. He simply is, and because he is, the world that is his out-picturing must conform to his nature. The signs follow the circumcision; they do not precede it. When the heart is circumcised the old passes away and all things become new.

Feel this now in the depth of your soul. The beliefs that have troubled you for so long do not belong to the new man. They are the old man’s convictions, and the old man is to be put off. You cannot bring the new man into the house of the old beliefs. The house must first be emptied. The cutting away is the emptying. You empty your consciousness of every feeling that identifies you with the old story. You do this not by denial or by effort, but by the quiet assumption of the new. You assume the feeling of the new man, and in that assumption the old beliefs lose their nourishment and wither away.

The sensation of this operation is one of release. It is as though a weight you have carried for years is suddenly lifted. The old man was heavy with memory, with regret, with the burden of what he believed he could not do or be. The new man is light. He moves with the freedom of one who knows that all things are possible to awareness. He does not look back, for there is nothing in the old that he wishes to preserve. He does not look forward with anxiety, for he knows that the end he has assumed already exists and must appear. This lightness is the mark of the circumcised heart. It is the peace that passes understanding, the peace of one who has cut away all that does not belong to him.

You will know that the operation is taking place by the change in your reactions. The old man reacted to every appearance that contradicted his desire. The new man does not react. He remains unmoved in the feeling of the fulfilled desire, for he knows that the appearance is only the old man’s world passing away. When you can see the evidence of the senses and feel no disturbance, no necessity to change it by force, you have cut away another adhesion. The new man sees the world as the out-picturing of states, and he simply occupies the state that is natural to him. The old state dies because it is no longer fed by his feeling.

Tonight you can perform this circumcision upon yourself. As you prepare for sleep, lie down in the feeling of the new man. Review quietly the beliefs that have bound you to the old story. Do not fight them. Simply feel them as cut away, as no longer a part of your consciousness. Feel the freedom of the new man. Feel yourself as faceless awareness, pure I AM, without the old garments, without the old history, without the old limitations. Let this feeling be natural. Do not strain. The new man is natural. He is the you that was before any belief in limitation was accepted. Return to him tonight. Fall asleep in the consciousness of the new man, and in the night the old will pass away.

When you rise in the morning you will find that something has changed. Not because you forced a change, but because you have performed the operation. The old adhesions no longer hold you with the same power. The new man walks in you, and the world begins to reflect his nature. Opportunities appear that were not there before, not because you sought them, but because your consciousness no longer denies them. Relationships adjust themselves to the new feeling. The body responds to the new man’s health. All this happens without your taking thought, for the new man does not take thought. He simply is, and the world is compelled to bear witness to what he is.

Persist in this feeling. The operation is not a single act but a continuing revelation. Each time you catch yourself feeling the old beliefs, you perform the cut again by withdrawing your attention and returning to the new man. Indifference becomes easier with practice, for the new man has no interest in the old. The old man lived in a world of problems and solutions. The new man lives in a world of fulfilled desires. He does not solve problems; he outgrows them by occupying a higher state. The problems of the old man have no existence in the consciousness of the new.

This is the great mystery made simple. You do not become the new man by adding something to yourself. You become the new man by cutting away all that is not the new man. The new man is already within you as your unconditioned awareness of being. He has been hidden by the veil of the old man and by all the adhesions that adhered to that veil. When the veil is removed and the adhesions are severed, he stands revealed as the only you there is. You are not two men. You are one man, and the old is put off that the new may be known.

The new man has no need of the old beliefs. He does not believe in lack, for he knows himself as the source. He does not believe in time as a barrier, for he knows that the end is the beginning and that what he assumes already is. He does not believe in the power of others, for he knows that all men are himself pushed out and must reflect the state he occupies. These are not affirmations he repeats. They are the natural knowledge of one who has been circumcised in heart. The old man needed affirmations because he doubted. The new man knows, and his knowing is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

When this circumcision is complete you will not announce it to the world. The new man has no need to announce himself. He simply lives, and the world bears witness. You will find yourself moving through life with a quiet authority that needs no defense. You will find the old arguments, the old fears, the old struggles strangely foreign, as though they belonged to someone you once knew but no longer are. This is the freedom of the circumcised heart. It is the freedom of the new man who knows himself as Christ, the awareness of being that is God, and beside whom there is no other.

You are this new man now. The old beliefs were never truly yours; they were the adhesions of the old man who is to be put off. Cut them away tonight. Feel them severed. Feel yourself as the faceless awareness in which all things begin and end. Know that you are he, and that all that belongs to him is already yours. The operation is simple. It is done in secret, in the feeling of consciousness. No one sees it but you, and yet the whole world will see its results. For when the heart is circumcised the new man appears, and with him appears the new world that was always waiting for his coming.

This is the circumcision of the heart. This is the putting off of all that does not belong to the new man. Perform it tonight, and every night, until the old has completely passed away and only the new remains. Then you will know what it means to be born again, not of the flesh, but of the spirit. You will know yourself as the new man, and in that knowing you will find that all things are possible, for there is nothing that can withstand the consciousness of the new man who is Christ in you. The old has been cut away. The new stands revealed. And you are he.