#109: Crucifixion and Resurrection

Crucifixion and Resurrection

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have sought to change your world while still clinging to the conception of yourself that produced the world you now experience. You have prayed for resurrection, for the lifting up of your condition, while you continued to feed and sustain the very state from which you desired to be delivered. This cannot be. There is no resurrection without a crucifixion, and the crucifixion of which I speak is not an event in history but the dying of an old conception of yourself within your own consciousness. Until that old self dies, the new cannot rise, for two opposing states cannot occupy the same awareness at the same time.

Your present conception of yourself is the cross upon which your awareness of being is nailed. That conception is the form to which you have bound yourself, and it is this binding that keeps you where you are. The world you see about you is not the cause of your condition; it is the faithful expression of the self you have accepted as real. As long as you remain conscious of being that limited self, the cross holds you fast and the old story continues to unfold. You cannot improve the old self into something new. Improvement is still the old self wearing a different garment. What is required is not improvement but death—the complete withdrawal of your attention and feeling from the former conception so that it no longer lives in you.

When you truly die to the old state, you do not argue with it, you do not fight it, you do not try to make it better. You simply cease to be conscious of being it. You turn your awareness away from all that belongs to the former man and you rise in feeling to the new. This rising is the resurrection. It is the moment in which your awareness of being agrees with the new conception you have chosen. Two have crossed. Your I AM and the thing desired have joined, and in that joining the old is left behind as a garment that no longer fits. The nail that fixes the new state upon the cross is feeling. When you feel yourself to be the fulfilled one, the agreement is sealed and the crucifixion of the old is accomplished. From that moment the resurrection begins its quiet work.

You have been taught that resurrection follows crucifixion, yet few have understood that the resurrection is not something that happens to you after a period of waiting. It is the inevitable consequence of the inner marriage. When consciousness is wedded to the new state through feeling, the child of that union—the visible expression—must appear. The world of form is the witness that the marriage has taken place. Therefore, do not look to the world for proof before you have performed the inner act. The proof follows the feeling; it does not precede it. You are told that I AM the resurrection and the life. This means that your awareness of being, when it rises to the new conception, becomes the power that resurrects that conception into visible form. There is no other power. There is no other way.

Consider what it means to die to the old state. It means that tonight, as you enter the silence, you release every feeling that belongs to the self you no longer wish to be. You do not take the old worries, the old disappointments, the old limitations into the new awareness with you. You leave them behind as one who has crossed over. The old self may still appear in your world for a little while, for the expression of a former state does not vanish instantly when its cause is removed. But as you persist in the new feeling, the old expressions lose their sustenance. They wither because the attention that kept them alive has been withdrawn. This is the true meaning of dying daily. It is not a morbid dwelling upon death but the daily practice of releasing the former conception so that the new may live.

The resurrection you seek is not the improvement of your present condition. It is the rising of a new man in consciousness—a man who was never limited, never poor, never sick, never bound. This new man is not created by effort. He is revealed when the old man is crucified. You do not make yourself into something you are not. You simply cease to be what you were conscious of being and you assume the nature of what you desire to be until it becomes natural to you. When it is natural, you have risen. The old has died and the new stands in its place.

Many have tried to force the resurrection by affirming and denying, by struggling and striving. All such efforts are the old self attempting to save itself. The old self cannot be saved; it must be left behind. The moment you try to improve or change the old conception, you are still feeding it with your attention. The only way out is through the cross—through the complete surrender of the former identity. When you do this, you discover that you have not lost yourself. You have found your true self, the self that was always there beneath the garments of limitation you once wore.

The world will resist this teaching at first because it appears too simple, too direct. The senses will show you the old condition still present and will whisper that nothing has changed. This is the evidence of the old man who is even now dying. Do not argue with the senses. Do not try to convince them. Simply remain faithful to the new feeling. The senses are the servants of whatever state you are conscious of being. When you have truly risen, they will serve the new state as faithfully as they once served the old. They have no power to create; they only reflect what is already established in consciousness.

You ask how long this process takes. There is no time in consciousness. The crucifixion is completed the moment the agreement is made between your awareness and the new state. The resurrection may appear gradually in the world of form, but in consciousness it is instantaneous. The interval between the inner act and the outer expression is the interval required for the old to fade and the new to take its place in the visible world. During this interval you are sustained by the knowledge that the work is finished. You do not wait in anxiety. You rest in the certainty that what you have felt yourself to be must appear, for consciousness always expresses its likeness.

This is why the story of the cross is told as a drama that takes place in the spring, when nature herself rises from her winter sleep. The sun appears to cross the equator and is said to be crucified, and immediately life begins to rise on every side. The same drama is enacted in you whenever you cross over from an old conception to a new one. The old winter of limitation ends, and the new spring of fulfillment begins. But this is not a seasonal event. It can take place at any moment you choose to perform the inner act. The power that resurrects is not in the calendar; it is in your awareness of being.

When you have crucified the old state, you discover a strange and wonderful thing. You do not have to make the new state appear. It appears of its own accord because it is now your natural expression. You move through your day no longer as one who is trying to become something, but as one who already is. The effort falls away. The struggle ceases. You simply are the fulfilled self, and the world rearranges itself around that new center. This is the effortless way. It is the way of resurrection rather than the way of struggle.

You have been taught that you must wait upon the Lord, and this is true. But the Lord you wait upon is your own awareness when it has risen to the new conception. When you have died to the old and risen in feeling to the new, you are waiting upon yourself—the self that is now one with the desired state. And this self does not delay. It moves with the certainty of one who knows that all things are possible to consciousness. The former doubts and fears belonged to the old man who has been crucified. They have no place in the resurrected consciousness.

Some will say that this teaching is too mystical, that it has nothing to do with the practical affairs of life. Yet there is nothing more practical. Every condition you now experience is the direct result of a former mystical marriage between your awareness and some conception you accepted as true. You are always performing this inner act, whether you know it or not. The only question is whether you will continue to marry your awareness to states of limitation or whether you will crucify those states and rise to states of freedom and fulfillment. The power is the same in both cases. The choice is yours.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, perform the act consciously. Close the door to the outer world. Release every feeling that belongs to the old self. Feel yourself to be the one you desire to be. Do not argue with the evidence of the senses. Do not wonder how it will come to pass. Simply feel the naturalness of the new state until it fills your awareness completely. In that moment the old is crucified and the new is resurrected. You have crossed over. You have died to what you were and have risen as what you are. And because you have done this in consciousness, the world must in time bear witness to the resurrection you have accomplished.

This is the great secret hidden in the story of the cross. It was never meant to be an event outside of you. It was meant to reveal what takes place in consciousness whenever a man leaves behind his former conception of himself and rises to a new one. You are the awareness that can be crucified upon any conception and can rise from any cross. You are the resurrection and the life. When you have understood this and have put it into practice, you will know what it means to be free. You will know what it means to have left the old man behind and to walk as the new man in a world that can only reflect the state you have chosen to be.

The old self dies hard only because you have fed it so long with your attention. When you withdraw that attention and give it wholly to the new, the old loses its power and fades. There is no violence in this dying. It is as gentle as the setting of the sun. And the resurrection is as natural as the dawn that follows. You do not have to make the sun rise. You have only to wait in the certainty that it will rise when the night is over. In the same way, you do not have to make your new state appear. You have only to remain faithful to the feeling of it, and the resurrection will take care of itself.

You are not asked to believe something that is not true. You are asked to believe something that is truer than anything the senses have shown you. You are asked to believe that you are now the fulfilled self you desire to be. When this belief becomes feeling, the crucifixion is complete and the resurrection is assured. All that remains is for you to live from that risen state and to let the old expressions pass away without regret. They served their purpose. They taught you what you no longer wish to be. Now they can go, and you can go forward as the new man, free, fulfilled, and at peace.

This is the message of the cross and the empty tomb. The tomb is empty because the old self is no longer there. The risen one has left it behind. You are that risen one when you have performed the inner act. You are the resurrection and the life. Crucify the old tonight. Rise as the fulfilled self. And know that all things are made new in you and in your world.