#118: The End of a Golden String

The End of a Golden String

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You hold in your hand the end of a golden string. It has always been there, placed in your consciousness the moment a desire stirred within you. This string is not a vague hope, nor is it one of many threads you must gather and twist together. It is one true imaginal act, one living feeling of the wish fulfilled, and it is given to you that you may wind it into a ball. If you will do this faithfully, without scattering your attention among many strings, it will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, built in Jerusalem’s wall.

The world tells you that you must try this and that, that you must use many methods, that you must wait upon time and circumstance. But the promise is not to the one who tries many things. The promise is to the one who takes the end of the one true string and winds it steadily until the ball is complete. Heaven’s gate is not far off in space. It is the entrance into the fulfilled state of consciousness, and the string is the way prepared for you to enter it.

What is this golden string? It is the imaginal act that implies your desire is already realized. It is not the desire itself, for desire is only the beginning. It is the feeling, the living sensation, the inner action that would be yours were the desire already fulfilled. If you desire freedom, the string is the feeling of moving unrestrained, of walking where you will without hindrance. If you desire health, the string is the feeling of strength and ease in the body, the naturalness of well-being. If you desire a particular state in your world, the string is the inner act of seeing and hearing and touching from within that state as though it were already so. This is the end of the golden string. It is given to you now. You do not have to create it. You have only to recognize it and begin to wind.

Many lose the string because they believe it must be long and complicated. They think one feeling is not enough, that they must add to it, qualify it, or replace it with another when the first seems slow to materialize. But the string is complete in itself. It contains within its slender length the whole journey and the arrival. To wind it into a ball is simply to take that one feeling and return to it, to live in it, to let it fill the mind and the heart again and again until it becomes the dominant tone of your consciousness. Each time you take the end and wind a little more of the string around the growing ball, you are not adding something new from without. You are unfolding what was already there, making more and more of the invisible visible within yourself.

You may ask how this one act can be sufficient when your problem seems so great, when the evidence of your senses is so contrary. The answer is that the string does not depend upon the evidence of the senses. The senses belong to the outer world, which is only the shadow cast by the inner drama. The string belongs to the inner world, the world of imagination, and it is there that the real work is done. When you wind the string, you are working in the only place where creation takes place. The outer world has no choice but to conform to the shape of the ball you are winding within.

To wind the string is to persist. It is to return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled whenever you become aware that you have dropped it. It is to perform the inner act over and over, not as a vain repetition, but as a living, growing conviction. At first the feeling may seem strange or effortful. That is only because you have been accustomed to living in the opposite feeling. But as you continue to wind, as you continue to choose the end of the string and wrap it around the ball, the feeling becomes more and more natural. It begins to take on the tones of reality. You find yourself thinking from the fulfilled state rather than thinking of it. This is the moment the string has been truly wound. The ball is becoming solid within you.

Do not be disturbed if, while you wind, the outer world seems to grow more contrary. This often happens. It is the old state resisting its own dissolution. The senses will show you the very opposite of what you are assuming. They will appear to prove that the string leads nowhere, that your imaginal act is foolishness. But this is the test of whether you have truly taken the end of the string or only looked at it. If you have truly taken it, you will not drop it because of appearances. You will wind more diligently. You will say within yourself, “This feeling is the string. I have it in my hand. I will wind it until the ball is complete, and I will not be turned aside by what I see or hear or touch outwardly.” In this persistence the string lengthens in power, and the path it reveals grows clearer.

The golden string does not ask you to know how the fulfillment will come. It does not require you to plan the bridge of incidents or to arrange the circumstances. These things are not your concern. The string knows its own way. As you wind it, the necessary events, the helpful people, the unexpected openings appear of themselves. They are drawn to the growing ball because the ball is now the dominant reality within you. You may not recognize them at first as the working of the string. You may even think they are coincidences or the result of your own cleverness. But as you continue to wind, you will see that everything that is happening is happening because you have remained faithful to the one imaginal act. The string is leading you, and you are following without knowing the how.

This is why the promise is given to one string and not to many. When you scatter your attention among many imaginal acts, you are holding many ends but winding none of them into a ball. Each string remains a loose thread, and loose threads do not lead anywhere. They tangle and break and leave you where you began. But when you choose the one true string, the one feeling that feels right and natural to your desire, and you give yourself to winding it, the whole of your consciousness begins to organize itself around that one act. Everything else falls into place or falls away. The single string gathers all things necessary to its own fulfillment.

You may wonder what the true string is for you in this moment. It is the imaginal act you can feel most naturally, the one that brings with it a quiet sense of rightness even if the outer world denies it. It may be a simple inner action: the feeling of signing a paper that means your freedom, the feeling of walking in a certain place with ease and joy, the feeling of hearing good news and accepting it as already so. It need not be elaborate. The simpler and more natural it is, the stronger the string. For the string is not measured by its complexity but by its truth to the fulfilled state. When you have found it, you will know it, for something within you will say, “This is the end. This is what I must wind.”

Tonight, before you sleep, take the end of your golden string. Do not argue with it. Do not qualify it. Simply take it and begin to wind. Feel the feeling that implies your desire is fulfilled. If your mind wanders, bring it back gently and wind again. If the feeling seems weak at first, do not despair. The very act of returning to it is the winding. Each return adds to the ball. Do this until you feel the conviction growing, until the feeling begins to wear the garment of reality, until you can rest in it as in something already accomplished. Then let sleep come upon you while still holding the string. In that state the winding continues in depths you do not consciously direct, and the ball grows even while you rest.

In the days that follow, whenever you remember, take the string again. Wind a little more. You do not have to set aside long periods. The winding can be done in moments, in the midst of activity, in the quiet of the night. What matters is not the length of time but the faithfulness of the act. Each time you choose the feeling of the fulfilled desire over the feeling of the problem, you wind the string. Each time you refuse to be turned aside by contradiction, you wind it further. Gradually the ball becomes the largest thing in your consciousness. The old state, which once seemed so solid, begins to lose its power. The new state, which once seemed so distant, begins to draw near.

You will find, as the ball grows, that your attitude toward your desire changes. You no longer feel you must make it happen. You feel instead that it is happening, that it is already so within you, and that the outer world is simply arranging itself to match what you have wound. This is the peace that comes when the string is being faithfully followed. It is not the peace of having seen the outer result. It is the peace of having entered the gate within. For the gate is entered not when the thing appears, but when the conviction is full, when the ball is wound and you know, without argument, that it is done.

The world may still show delay. Circumstances may still seem to contradict. But you who have wound the string know that these are only the last shadows of the old state dissolving. You do not fight them. You do not fear them. You simply continue to hold the end and wind. And one day, often when you least expect it, you will find yourself standing within the gate. The thing you desired will be there, not as something you have achieved by effort, but as something that was always contained within the string you followed. You will look back and see that every step, every apparent hindrance, every seeming delay was part of the path the string was leading you along.

This is the mystery hidden in the simple words: wind it into a ball. The ball is your sustained assumption. The gate is your own consciousness awakened to its own power. The wall of Jerusalem is the limit you once believed could not be passed, and now you pass it because you have followed the string to its end. You do not need many strings. You do not need many acts. One true imaginal act, faithfully wound, is enough to lead you into the fulfilled state. All the promises of Scripture, all the testimonies of those who have gone before, are summed up in this one principle: take the end of the golden string that is given you, wind it into a ball by living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and it will lead you in at Heaven’s gate.

You are not asked to believe in the string because others have found it true. You are asked to prove it for yourself by winding it. The proof is not in argument. The proof is in the winding. As you wind, you will see the world begin to rearrange itself around the growing ball. People will appear who have a part to play in the fulfillment. Events will occur that could not have been planned by the outer mind. Opportunities will open that you did not know existed. All of this happens because you have remained faithful to one thing: the end of the golden string and the steady winding of it into a ball.

Do not be concerned if at times the string seems to disappear from your hand. It has not disappeared. It has only slipped from your attention. The moment you remember, you have it again. Take it and wind. The ball does not unravel when you lose sight of it for a little while. It waits for you to return and continue. This is the patience that is born of understanding. You understand that the string is true, that the feeling you have chosen is the right one, and that the only requirement is that you wind it until the ball is complete. There is no other work for you to do.

When the ball is fully wound, you will not need to ask whether the fulfillment has come. You will know it has come because you will be living from within the fulfilled state. The outer things will simply confirm what you already know within. This is the end of the journey the string was given to make possible. You began with the end in your hand. You end with the end realized in your world. And between the beginning and the ending there was only one requirement: that you wind the string faithfully, without turning aside to other threads, until the ball was complete and the gate stood open before you.

You hold the end now. The desire that moves you is the sign that the string has been placed in your hand. Do not let it lie idle. Do not treat it as one possibility among many. Take it as the one true way prepared for you, and begin to wind. Wind it tonight. Wind it tomorrow. Wind it every time you remember that you are the one who was given the golden string and the power to make of it a ball that leads to the gate. In this simple, persistent act is all the wisdom you need, all the power you require, and the certain fulfillment of that which you have assumed. The string is in your hand. Wind it, and enter.