#126: Moods

Moods

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have believed that your moods are the effects of the conditions round about you. You have said, “I am in this mood because of what has happened to me, because of the state of my affairs, because of what others have done or left undone.” But I tell you that this belief is the very chain that binds you. Your moods are not the results of your world. Your world is the result of your moods. A mood is a state of consciousness, and the state you occupy determines the world you see and the things that happen in it.

A mood is not a passing fancy or a fleeting thought. It is a sustained feeling, an imaginal activity in which you live. When you enter a mood you enter a state, and that state has its own laws, its own people, its own circumstances. The mood is the cause; all that you behold is the effect. Men have reversed the order. They look at the effect and call it the cause. They look at the world and say the world made them feel this way or that. But the world has no power to make you feel anything. The feeling you entertain is the power that makes the world what it is to you.

You can choose your mood as you choose the home in which you live. No one compels you to live in a house that is dark, damp, and full of discord. You may leave it and enter another. In the same way you may leave the mood of lack, of fear, of resentment, of hopelessness, and enter the mood of fulfillment, of peace, of confidence, of joy. The choice is yours. You are not the victim of moods; you are the one who chooses which mood you will occupy. And the mood you choose becomes the state in which you live, and the state in which you live becomes the world in which you move.

When you assume a mood you are really assuming a state of consciousness. You are saying to yourself, without words, “I am this.” And what you are in consciousness, you are in expression. The mood of the wish fulfilled is the mood in which you feel that what you desire is already so. It is not a mood of longing or of hoping. It is a mood of quiet certainty, a mood in which the thing desired is felt as present, as natural, as inevitable. When you wear this mood you are wearing the garment of the state in which your desire is already fulfilled.

Do not wait for the mood to descend upon you. Create it at will. You have the power to assume any mood you desire. You have the power to feel yourself into the state of the fulfilled wish. Begin by asking yourself how you would feel if your desire were already realized. Do not ask how it will come to pass. Ask only how it would feel. Then assume that feeling. Wear it. Live in it. Let it become as natural to you as the feeling of being yourself. For this is what you are doing: you are choosing to be yourself in a new state, and that new state will externalize itself as naturally as the old state externalized the conditions you knew before.

The mood you entertain is an imaginal activity, and imaginal activity is the cause of all manifestation. When you persist in a mood, that mood gains momentum. It becomes habitual. And a habitual mood becomes your character, your destiny. Be careful, therefore, what mood you choose to live in, for you will become fused with it, and the world will bear witness to your choice. But since you can create any mood at will, you need not be fused with any mood you do not desire. You may break the momentum of an old mood by the simple act of assuming a new one. The old mood will lose its power as you give your attention to the new.

There is no conflict between the mood you assume and the world of your senses when you understand that the mood is the cause and the senses only register the effect. When you feel yourself into the mood of fulfilled desire, you are not denying the evidence of your senses. You are simply giving your attention to a higher cause. The senses will, in time, conform to the mood you have assumed, for the mood is the potter and the visible world is the clay. The mood shapes the clay into its own likeness.

You meet people who seem to be intimates of your mood. You encounter circumstances that seem to confirm the mood you are in. This is not accident. A mood attracts its affinities. But the mood does more than attract; it creates the very conditions that sustain it. When you change the mood, you change the affinities. The people and events that belonged to the old mood fade away, and new ones appear that belong to the new mood. You do not have to seek them. They come to you because you are now living in the state that calls them forth.

Fall asleep in the mood you have chosen. Let the last feeling of the day be the feeling of the fulfilled wish. As you enter sleep, assume the mood that would be yours if all were as you desire it to be. In that mood you define the state in which you will move during the night and into the new day. Sleep is a door. The mood in which you pass through that door determines the state in which you awaken. Many a problem has been solved, many a desire realized, because the one who sought the solution or the realization fell asleep in the mood of the fulfilled desire.

Do not struggle with the old mood when it returns. Do not fight it. Simply return to the mood you have chosen. The old mood has no power over you except the power you give it by your attention. When you withdraw your attention from it and place your attention upon the new mood, the old one loses its momentum and fades. Persistence in the chosen mood is the only discipline required. There is no effort in this persistence. It is the gentle, quiet return to the feeling you have decided to live in.

The world you see is the out-picturing of the mood you have chosen to occupy. Change the mood and you change the world. This is not a hopeful philosophy. It is a law. It is as certain as the law that governs the rising of the sun. You cannot see the sun rise if you are facing west. You must turn and face the east. In the same way you cannot see the fulfillment of your desire if you are facing the mood of lack or fear. You must turn and face the mood of fulfillment. The turning is done in consciousness. It is done by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

You are free to choose the mood you will live in. This freedom is your birthright. No man, no circumstance, no past event can take it from you. You may have given your freedom away by believing that moods are effects, but you can reclaim it at any moment by assuming the mood you desire. The assumption is the act of reclamation. In that act you remember who you are: the operant power, the one who chooses the state and therefore chooses the world.

As you live in the chosen mood, you will discover that it becomes easier and easier to maintain. The state becomes natural to you. What once seemed strange and difficult becomes the only natural way of being. This is because you are fusing yourself with the state. You are becoming one with it. And when you are one with a state, you are that state in expression. The world around you then bears witness, not to what you were, but to what you have chosen to be.

The doubts that arise are the echoes of the old mood. They are not to be argued with or suppressed. They are to be ignored by the simple act of returning to the feeling of the fulfilled desire. Every time you return, you weaken the hold of the old mood and strengthen the new. In time the new mood becomes the only mood you know, and the doubts disappear because there is nothing in you to which they can attach themselves.

You do not have to understand how the mood will externalize itself. You do not have to plan the ways and means. The mood itself knows the way. It is an imaginal activity, and imaginal activity has ways that the reasoning mind knows not of. Your part is only to assume the mood and to live in it. The means will appear, the people will appear, the events will appear, all in perfect order, all in perfect timing, because the mood is the cause and the cause already contains the effect.

When you choose a home you do not spend your days worrying about how the furniture will be arranged or how the light will fall through the windows. You choose the home because it feels right to you, and then you live in it. The arrangement takes care of itself. In the same way, when you choose the mood of your fulfilled desire, you do not spend your days worrying about how it will come to pass. You choose the mood because it feels right, because it is the feeling you would have if the desire were already fulfilled, and then you live in it. The manifestation takes care of itself.

This is the secret of naturalness. When the mood is natural to you, when you feel at home in it, the world will feel natural in conforming to it. There will be no strain, no effort, no anxious watching for results. The results will come as naturally as the furniture finds its place in a new home. You will simply find yourself in the midst of the fulfilled desire, wondering perhaps how it all came about, but knowing with quiet certainty that it could not have been otherwise.

You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked to believe in the power of your own consciousness to assume any state it desires. You are asked to believe in your freedom to choose the mood in which you will live. This belief is not a creed. It is an act. The act is the assumption of the mood. In that act you prove the truth to yourself, and the proof is the transformation of your world.

The mood you choose today will determine the world you inhabit tomorrow. Choose wisely. Choose the mood that feels like home to the fulfilled desire. Live there. Sleep there. Move there. And the world will rearrange itself around you until it becomes the visible expression of the invisible mood you have chosen to occupy. This is not hope. This is law. And the law is ever faithful to the mood you assume.

You have always chosen your moods, though you may not have known it. You chose them by giving your attention to this or that feeling, by returning again and again to the same state of consciousness. Now you know that the choice is conscious. You may choose deliberately the mood you will live in. You may choose the mood of the wish fulfilled and live there as in your own home. And when you do, you will discover that you have always had the power, and that the power is simply the power to assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire and to persist in that assumption until the world bears witness.

This is the great secret. Moods are states. You choose the state. You live in the state. And the state becomes your world. There is no other way. There has never been another way. And now that you know, you are free to choose the mood that will be the home of your fulfilled desire. Choose it. Wear it. Live in it. And let the world conform.