#125: The Law and the Promise

The Law and the Promise

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have discovered the Law and you have used it. You have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled and you have watched conditions change in your world. Yet you remain the same man, still restless, still searching, still conscious of being the one who needs the change. The circumstances have altered, but the identity from which they sprang has not. This is why the wheel turns again and the same hunger returns in a new form. There is the Law, and there is the Promise. The Law creates conditions. The Promise reveals identity. Until these two are seen in their true relation, man uses the servant as though it were the master and remains forever the prisoner of his own creation.

The Law is the law of assumption. It is the unchanging principle that consciousness is the only reality and that your world is forever out-picturing the state of consciousness in which you dwell. You are conscious of being, and that which you are conscious of being you express. There is no other way. Whether you know it or not, you are always decreeing. The dumb man is decreeing his dumbness by being conscious of being dumb. The poor man is decreeing his poverty by being conscious of being poor. The sick man is decreeing his sickness by being conscious of being sick. And the man who knows he is free, healthy, and wealthy is decreeing those states by the same law. The Law does not care what you assume. It only cares that you assume, and it faithfully solidifies your assumption in the conditions round about you.

You can use this Law to change any condition. You can assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and persist in that feeling until the bridge of incidents appears and the desire is realized. The Law will not fail you. It cannot fail, for it is your own wonderful human imagination in action, and imagination is the creative power of God in man. But if you use the Law only to improve the conditions while you remain the same self, you are merely changing the furniture in the prison house. The prisoner is still there. The man who needed the change is still the man, and in time the new conditions will reflect the old identity once more. This is the story of every man who knows only the Law.

The Promise is altogether different. The Promise does not create conditions. The Promise reveals who you are. It is the word of God to man that man shall become God. It is the promise that you shall be born from above, that the child shall be formed in you, that you shall rise from the dead, that you shall ascend unto your father. The father is your own awareness of being raised to a higher level. The Promise is not a technique for getting things. It is the revelation that you are the source of all things, the I AM that is God individualized as you. When the Promise is realized, you no longer see yourself as the man who uses the Law to obtain health or wealth or love or success. You see yourself as the one who is health, who is wealth, who is love, who is success, because you have discovered that your awareness of being is the conceiver and all conditions are its conceptions.

The Law fashions the garment. The Promise reveals the one who wears the garment. You can weave a more beautiful garment with the Law. You can assume the feeling of being well when you are sick, and the Law will create the conditions of health. You can assume the feeling of being wealthy when you are poor, and the Law will create the conditions of wealth. But if the wearer of the garment remains the old man, the old identity, the old conception of self, the garment will in time grow shabby again. The conditions will revert or take a new form of the same limitation, because the center from which they are projected has not changed. The Law is faithful to the assumption. It is the assumption that must change if the expression is to change permanently.

When you live only by the Law, you are still the man who decrees. You are still the one who stands apart from the thing desired and tries to bring it to pass. You are still conscious of being the self that needs the change. The feeling of the wish fulfilled is assumed, but it is assumed by the old man. The new conditions appear, yet the old man remains, and the old man will presently assume another state in harmony with his unchanged identity. This is why so many who have used the Law successfully find themselves back in want or in a new form of the old trouble. They changed the conditions but not the self.

The Promise changes the self. It is the realization that you are not the man at all. You are the awareness of being in which the man appears. You are the conceiver, not the conception. You are the I AM, not the name you have given yourself. When this is felt, the old man dies. The old identity is cut away. This is the circumcision of the heart of which the scriptures speak. It is not a physical act. It is the inner act of feeling yourself to be the New Man, the one of whom the Promise was made. In that feeling the crucifixion takes place. The self you thought you were is nailed to the cross of your own awareness, and the New Man rises. And when the New Man rises, the Law, which is always present and always faithful, creates conditions worthy of the New Man without effort, without struggle, without the anxious how.

You do not receive the Promise by doing anything to the conditions. You receive it by doing something to yourself. You feel yourself to be the one who is already the fulfillment. You do not feel yourself to be the man who will one day be free or healthy or wealthy. You feel yourself to be the free one, the healthy one, the wealthy one, now. Not as a future state to be attained, but as an eternal identity that is already yours. You feel the stillness of one who knows he is God in man. You feel the certainty of one who knows that all things are possible to him because he is the one in whom all things are possible. This feeling is the substance of the Promise. It is the evidence of things not seen by the outer eye but known by the inner sense.

The Law requires persistence. You must dwell in the assumption of the desired state until it becomes natural, until the feeling of the wish fulfilled fills your mind and crowds out every other idea. The Promise requires only acceptance. You accept that your awareness of being is God and that God is not in need of anything. From that acceptance the assumptions change of themselves. You no longer assume the state of one who needs. You assume the state of one who is. And from that state the Law creates a world in which being is natural and effortless. The Sabbath is entered. The work is finished. The conditions appear, not because you labored to make them appear, but because they are the natural out-picturing of the identity you have accepted.

Tonight, as you lie upon your bed, do not only assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled for the conditions you desire in the world of Caesar. Go deeper. Assume the feeling of being the one of whom the Promise was made. Feel yourself to be the New Man. Feel yourself to be the awakened one. Feel yourself to be the I AM raised to the level where all things are possible and all things are already so. Do not argue with the evidence of your senses. Do not question how the conditions will change. The how is not your concern. The being is your joy. In the silence of your own wonderful consciousness, feel the majesty of being the Promise fulfilled. Let the old identity die in that feeling. Let the New Man rise. And as you fall asleep in that feeling, the Law will create the conditions that are in harmony with the identity you have accepted.

You will discover that the doubts which arose so easily when you used only the Law no longer trouble you. The man who knows who he is does not doubt. He does not wonder whether the thing will come to pass. He knows that the thing is already his because he is the source from which all things proceed. The interval of time between the assumption and its realization is no longer a period of anxious waiting. It is the period in which the old identity dies and the new identity is established. It is the period of the crucifixion and the resurrection. It is the period in which the Law is silently fashioning the world to match the new self.

The conditions of your life are forever the children of your assumptions. Change the assumption and the conditions must change. But the identity from which the assumptions spring is the child of your acceptance of the Promise. Accept the Promise and the assumptions change without effort. You no longer assume lack. You assume abundance. You no longer assume sickness. You assume health. You no longer assume the state of one who is becoming. You assume the state of one who is. And the Law, faithful as always, solidifies the new assumptions in new conditions.

This is the order. The Promise first. The Law second. Identity first. Conditions second. When you reverse the order and put the Law first, you remain the old man improving his prison. When you put the Promise first, you become the New Man and the prison dissolves of itself. The Law does not have to be coaxed or persuaded. It is automatic. It is the servant of identity. Give it the identity revealed by the Promise and it will create a world in which that identity is natural and effortless.

You are not the man who imagines. You are the Imagination itself. You are not the one who assumes a state. You are the awareness that assumes. When this is felt, the Promise is no longer something to be waited for in the future. It is something that is realized now. The child is born. The resurrection has taken place. You have ascended unto your father. And from this high place the Law creates the conditions that bear witness to the identity you have accepted.

Dwell upon this truth until it becomes your feeling. Let the words "I AM" expand in your consciousness until they fill the whole of your being. Feel yourself to be faceless, formless awareness, the conceiver of all conceptions, the source of all conditions. In that feeling the old man dies. In that feeling the New Man rises. In that feeling the Law becomes your willing servant, creating conditions worthy of the one you have discovered yourself to be.

The Law creates conditions. The Promise reveals identity. When identity is revealed, conditions take care of themselves. This is the great secret. This is the order that cannot be reversed without loss. This is the truth that sets you free from the wheel of recurring conditions and establishes you in the freedom of the New Man. Tonight you can feel it. Tonight you can accept it. Tonight you can die to the old and rise as the one of whom the Promise was made. And in the morning the world will bear witness to the identity you have assumed, for the Law is faithful and the Promise is sure.