#121: Time, Times, and Half a Time

Time, Times, and Half a Time

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

The question that troubles the heart of man is ever the same. How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? How long must the desire remain unfulfilled? How long must the present condition endure before the promise appears? Men look to the clock and the calendar for the answer and grow weary in their looking. They count the days and measure the months and believe that time itself stands between them and their good. But the answer was given in words that seem mysterious only to the outer mind. It shall be for a time, times, and an half. These words do not speak of the time that passes on the face of a clock. They speak of the time that is measured in consciousness alone. They reveal the true nature of psychological time and the way in which every desire is brought to fulfillment.

A time is the single, living imaginal act in which you feel yourself to be the one who has already received what you desire. It is not a idle thought or a hopeful picture. It is a definite, sensory experience. You see what you would see if the wish were already fulfilled. You hear what you would hear. You touch, you move, you speak as the one who possesses the desire. This single act is a time. It is the beginning of the end of the wonders, for in that act the desire has already entered consciousness as a living reality.

Yet one act, however vivid, is rarely enough. The mind, long trained in the ways of the outer world, returns to its former state. Therefore the act must be repeated. This is the times. You perform the imaginal act and, when the mind wanders, you bring it back. You perform it again, and again, and again. Each return is not a new beginning but a deepening of the same act. Each repetition adds weight to the feeling. What was at first an effort becomes easier. What was easier becomes natural. What was natural becomes inevitable. The tones of reality begin to sound within the act. The imagined scene no longer feels like imagination. It feels like memory. It feels like something that has already happened. This is the work of the times. This is the persistence that transforms a mere thought into a fixed state of consciousness.

And then comes the half. As you continue the repetition, there comes the moment when the outer world grows dim and the feeling of the act fills the whole of your awareness. Sleep approaches. You do not fight it. You do not try to hold the act with effort. You simply take the feeling with you into the deep. You fall asleep in the assumption that the desire is already fulfilled. This half is the moment of surrender. It is the point at which conscious effort gives way to the deeper work of consciousness itself. In that half the seed is planted beyond the reach of doubt. The work is finished. The outer world must now bring forth what has been completed within.

You see, then, that the how long is never determined by any power outside yourself. It is determined solely by whether you are willing to give your desire its full measure of inner time. If you perform the act once and then forget it, you have given it only a fragment of a time. The wonders cannot end. If you repeat it a few times but never feel it as natural, never lose yourself in it, never take it into sleep, you have given it times without the half. The wonders still tarry. But when you persist until the act feels real, until it is the most natural thing in your world, until you can fall asleep in the feeling that it is already so, then you have given the desire its full time, its full times, and its full half. And the wonders must end.

This is the secret of psychological time. Outer time is only the shadow cast by inner activity. Men wait upon the shadow and believe they are at the mercy of time. The wise man works in the substance. He knows that when the inner act is completed to the full measure, the shadow must conform. He does not ask how the fulfillment will come. He does not concern himself with the interval between the desire and its visible appearance. He simply gives the desire its time, times, and half, and rests in the quiet certainty that the end has already come in consciousness.

Consider what this means for you who have waited long. The waiting you have known was not the true waiting. The true waiting is the persistent dwelling in the feeling of the fulfilled desire. Every time you turn from the evidence of the senses and return to the imaginal act, you add to the times. Every time you feel, even for a moment, the joy or the peace or the relief of the fulfilled state, you deepen the time. Every night when you fall asleep in that feeling, you complete the half. Do this, and you will discover that the thing you desired was never far away. It was only waiting for you to give it its full reality in the only place where reality is first established—in consciousness.

The error of men is that they believe they must endure a certain period of outer time before their good can appear. They believe time is something that happens to them. But time is something you create by the activity of your own imagination. You create the time of fulfillment by the persistence and the depth of your assumption. You shorten or lengthen the interval by the quality of your inner acts. A time, times, and an half is the full and perfect measure. It is the complete work. When it is done, there is nothing more for you to do outwardly. The same power that gave you the desire will now give it form. It is law. It is certain.

In giving your desire its full inner time you are not merely changing conditions. You are changing yourself. You are rising from the state of the one who lacks to the state of the one who possesses. The repetition is the ladder of ascent. Each return to the imaginal act is a step upward in consciousness. When you have repeated it enough, you stand upon a new level. You are no longer the old self looking at an unfulfilled desire. You are the self of the fulfilled desire looking out upon a world that must now reflect your new state. The same facts that once seemed like barriers now appear as the necessary steps to the visible fulfillment. This change of self is the true end of the wonders. The outer event is only the echo of the inner change.

Do not, therefore, measure your progress by the signs you see or fail to see in the outer world. The signs follow. They do not precede. While you are still giving the desire its time, times, and half, the outer world may remain unchanged or even appear to move in the opposite direction. This is not failure. This is the old state resisting the new. It is the evidence that the inner work is still in progress. Persist. Return to the act. Repeat it. Feel it. Fall asleep in it. The resistance of the outer is powerless against the completed inner act. When the full measure has been given, the resistance crumbles and the new state stands revealed.

You are always assuming. The only question is whether you assume the state of the fulfilled desire or the state of the unfulfilled desire. To assume the fulfilled state once is to begin a time. To return to it again and again is to add the times. To lose yourself in it and fall asleep in it is to complete the half. This is the whole of the work. This is the whole of the waiting that is not waiting at all but the active creation of fulfillment. When you understand this, you cease to be the victim of time. You become the master of time. You determine, by the persistence of your own consciousness, the moment when the wonders shall end.

The peace that comes with this understanding is profound. You no longer look anxiously at the calendar. You no longer count the days since you began your work. You know that the true interval is not measured in days but in the depth of your feeling and the faithfulness of your repetition. Some desires require only one vivid act and one night of sleep in the feeling. Others require many acts, many returns, many nights of carrying the feeling into sleep. But all are fulfilled by the same law. All require that you give them their full measure of inner time. There is no partial fulfillment. There is only the completed act or the incomplete act. Complete it, and the desire stands before you as an accomplished fact.

Tonight you can begin this work or continue it. Take the desire that has been with you. Construct the simple, living imaginal act that implies its fulfillment. Feel it. See it. Hear it. Do it inwardly. Then repeat it. When the mind strays to the old state, bring it back gently but firmly. Repeat the act until the feeling of reality grows unmistakable. Let the tones of reality sound within you. And when sleep comes, take the feeling with you. Fall asleep in the assumption that the desire is already yours. This is the half. This is the completion. In the morning you will rise not as one who still waits, but as one in whom the wonders have already begun to end.

You do not need to force the outer events into place. You do not need to plan the way. The way is not your concern. Your concern was only to give the desire its full inner time. Having done so, you can rest. The power that moves the world is the same power that moves through your assumption. It will bring the fulfillment without your anxious planning. It will open doors you did not know existed. It will arrange circumstances you could not have contrived. All that is required of you is that you complete the inner work and remain faithful to the new state.

This is the understanding of psychological time and fulfillment. Time is not your enemy. Time is the servant of your assumption when you know how to use it inwardly. Fulfillment is not a distant event that may or may not come. Fulfillment is the inevitable result of a completed inner act. Give your desire a time. Give it times. Give it the half. And you will find that the end of the wonders is not something you wait for in the outer world. It is something you have already brought to pass in consciousness. The outer world has no choice but to reflect what has been completed within.

You are free. You are the operant power. You are the one who determines when the wonders shall end. You determine it not by pleading or by anxious watching, but by the simple, quiet, persistent feeling of the wish fulfilled. Do the act. Repeat the act. Fall asleep in the act. This is a time, times, and an half. And when this is done, the wonders of your life come to their appointed end. They must come to their end. For you have given your desire its full reality in the only place where reality is first created—in you. The world without can only echo what you have already established within. The echo may be delayed, but it cannot be denied. Complete the inner time, and the fulfillment stands before you as surely as the day follows the completed night.