#122: Wise as Serpents

Wise as Serpents

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have been told to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These words are not a pleasant moral saying to be passed over lightly. They contain the secret of using your imagination with that subtilty and intelligence which alone can free you from the old skin of your present environment and clothe you with the new. The serpent is regarded as wise because it knows how to shed its skin when it has outgrown it and how to grow a new skin in its place. It does not cling to the old out of sentiment or fear. It lets the old go and assumes the new. You are called to do the same with your imagination. You are to use it, not sentimentally as a weak escape from the facts of your life or as a vague consolation in your present state, but intelligently as the power to shed what is and to assume what you desire to be.

Your environment is the skin you have grown around your present conception of yourself. It is the solidified form of your state of consciousness. As long as you remain in the same state you will continue to wear the same skin, no matter how much you may long for change or feel about your situation. Sentiment will not free you. Only the intelligent use of imagination can do that. The wise one knows that to change the skin he must change the state. He withdraws his attention from the old environment and, with deliberate precision, constructs in his mind a representation of the fulfilled desire. He makes it as life-like as possible. He sees what he would see, hears what he would hear, and does what he would do if the desire were already realized. He repeats this act until the scene takes on the tones of reality and feels natural to him.

This feeling of naturalness is the sign that the place has been prepared. It is not a sentimental feeling of hope or longing. It is the quiet conviction that comes when you have actually lived in the state in imagination. When this naturalness is attained you have shed the old skin in consciousness and grown the new. The spiritual body, which is your imagination, has gone before and prepared the environment for your outer or physical self. Now you may open your physical eyes and return to your former state, knowing that where you have been in imagination, there you shall be in the body also.

The how of this realization is not your concern. The wise serpent does not speculate on the mechanics of shedding its skin. It simply does what it knows to do and the new skin appears. In the same way you do not question how the bridge of incidents will form to lead you from your present condition to the fulfilled desire. You know that the law is changeless and that signs always follow the assumption. They never precede it. To speculate on the how is to show that you have not yet reached the point of naturalness in the assumed state. It is to use imagination in a sentimental rather than an intelligent manner.

Many use their imagination sentimentally. They dream of the things they want but continue to feel the lack of them. They hope for better conditions but remain convinced of the old. Their imagination serves to console them in their present limitation rather than to lift them out of it. They feel the emotion of desire but do not assume the state of the fulfilled desire. Such use is not wise. It is the mark of one who has not yet learned that consciousness is the only reality and that what is assumed in consciousness must objectify itself in the world.

The intelligent use is altogether different. It is the deliberate assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You rise in consciousness to the naturalness of being the one you desire to be. You live in that state in your inner world until it becomes your outer world. This requires no sentimentality, only the intelligent persistence in the assumed state. You do not ask if it is possible. You do not wonder if you are worthy. You simply assume the state and remain faithful to it until it feels natural. Then you know it is done.

There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The natural body is interlocked with your present environment. The spiritual body, your imagination, is not thus interlocked. It can withdraw from the outer man of sense and dwell in the desired state. When it remains faithful to the vision it builds for you a new environment in which to live. This is what is meant when you are told that you go to prepare a place for yourself. The place is prepared in imagination by your living in it until it feels real. Then the place is ready and you will come again to receive yourself into it.

This use of imagination is not the compensation of the escapist. It is the only living. It is the way to the more abundant life. The unimaginative man who will not lose his life on one level that he may find it on a higher level remains bound to his present skin. He is like one who refuses to shed the old and so cannot grow. The wise one, like the serpent, knows when the old has been outgrown and lets it go without regret or sentiment. He assumes the new with quiet intelligence and lets the world conform.

Your life expresses one thing only: your state of consciousness. When you assume a state through imagination and remain faithful to it, that state begins to clothe itself in form. It solidifies around you as the new skin. But you must wait patiently in the one invisible state until it takes on objective form. You must not go from state to state in a restless or sentimental manner. Patience is necessary, but patience is easy after you have once succeeded in shedding the old and growing the new. Understanding is the secret of patience. When you understand that your imagination is the creative power you wait with quiet certainty for the outer to bear witness to the inner.

To see the world not with but through the eye is to use imagination intelligently. You imagine what you want to see and remain faithful to your vision. Your imagination makes for itself a corresponding form in which to live. All things are made by imagination’s power. Nothing begins except in the imagination of man. From within out is the law of the universe. The wise one looks within to the state he desires and lets the without conform to it.

Tonight you can put this into practice. Choose one desire. Construct a simple scene which implies its fulfillment. Enter that scene in imagination. Live it until it feels natural. Then release it and fall asleep in the conviction that it is done. During the day do not sentimentalize over it. Do not wonder how it will come to pass. Be wise as the serpent. You have shed the old in consciousness. The new will appear. The bridge of incidents will form without your planning or speculating.

When you lie down at night, instead of reviewing the day with sentiment or worrying about tomorrow, you construct the scene of your fulfilled desire. You enter it with all the vividness you can command. You feel the joy of it, not as a passing emotion, but as the natural feeling of one who is already living it. You repeat it until it seems more real than the outer world. Then you sleep in the assumption that it is so. In the morning you wake in the old environment, but you know the place has been prepared. You go about your day without anxiety, without speculation, knowing that the law is at work bringing the invisible into visible form.

This intelligent use does not interfere with your daily duties. It enhances them. You perform your tasks with greater ease because you are no longer bound by the old skin. You are living from the new state in consciousness, and the outer world begins to reflect it. The people you meet, the incidents you encounter, all play their parts in leading you to the fulfillment you have assumed. You do not force them. You do not plan them. You simply remain faithful to the state and let the law do its work.

The harmlessness of the dove belongs to this wisdom. You use imagination only for good, only to fulfill desires that bless yourself and others. You do not use it to imagine evil of another or to harm. The wise one knows that what he does in imagination he does to himself, for every man is himself pushed out. He uses the power to clothe and feed the Christ within, which is awakened human imagination. He sheds the old skin of resentment, of fear, of limitation, and grows the new skin of love, of confidence, of fulfilled desire.

The boundless possibilities open to you as you become wise as serpents are beyond measure. You will select the ideal conditions you want to experience and the ideal environment you want to live in. You will experience these states in imagination until they have sensory vividness. You will externalize them as surely as the serpent externalizes its skin. After you have outgrown them you will cast them off as easily as the snake throws her enamelled skin. The more abundant life is found in this endless dying and resurrection, this shedding and growing, forever and ever.

God desired form, so He became man. It is not enough for you to recognize His spirit at work in creation. You must see His work in form and say that it is good, even as you outgrow one form after another. The more abundant life cannot be saved through death and resurrection alone. You must die to the old state to live in the new. The wise as serpents know this and do it without sentimentality. They let the old go and assume the new with quiet intelligence.

The creative power in you sleeps and needs to be awakened. You awaken it by using your imagination intelligently, by assuming the state you desire and remaining faithful to it. You rise from the sleep that tells you the outer world is the cause of your conditions. You rise from the dead past and create a new environment by the wise use of this power. You discover that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God, your imagination, dwells in you. You lift yourself from the bar of the senses where you have lain stranded and move into the boundless possibilities of the more abundant life.

When you use imagination intelligently you select the ideal conditions you want to experience. You experience them in imagination until they feel natural. You externalize them. You outgrow them and assume still higher states. This is the way the creative power in you finds expression. This is the way you move from glory to glory. Do not let the evidence of the senses dissuade you. The wise one knows that the senses are the old skin. He does not consult them when assuming the new state. He assumes the state in spite of the evidence and remains faithful until the evidence changes. This is intelligence. This is wisdom. This is the way.

You are the one who must be wise as the serpent. No one can do it for you. You must assume the state. You must remain faithful. You must let the old go and grow the new. When you do this you will find that your world transforms itself around you without your taking thought as to how. The incidents will appear. The people will play their parts. The things will come. And you will know that it is done.

In this moment you are that awareness which, being wise as the serpent, sheds the old and puts on the new, and your world conforms. You are the one who prepares the place and who comes again to receive yourself into it. You are the one who uses imagination intelligently, not sentimentally, and who therefore walks in the widening chambers of delight forever and ever.