#128: The Perfect State

The Perfect State

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have looked upon your world and found it imperfect. You have seen lack where you desired abundance, conflict where you desired peace, limitation where you desired freedom. And in your seeing you have believed the imperfect to be real and fixed. Yet the truth is that nothing is fixed save the state of consciousness from which you view it. There is a perfect state, a state of consciousness in which all things are already perfect, and it is to this state that you are invited to rise and there abide until it becomes your natural dwelling place.

Contemplate perfection until you are one with it. This is not a command to achieve something by effort or to wait upon time. It is the simple, direct way of union. You contemplate perfection by giving it your attention, your feeling, your acceptance, until the old imperfect conception of yourself and your world dies and the new is born in its place. When you are one with the perfect state you no longer see imperfection, for you have become of too pure eyes to behold iniquity. All things appear to you as they truly are—expressions of the one perfect consciousness.

The world you see is always the perfect likeness of the state you occupy. If you occupy a state of imperfection, the world must reflect imperfection to you. If you rise to the perfect state and dwell there, the world must reflect perfection. There is no other law. Consciousness forever objectifies its content, and it does so without effort, without struggle, without the help or hindrance of another. Your world is not something apart from you to be battled or persuaded. It is yourself pushed out, the perfect personification of that which you are conscious of being.

Many seek to change conditions while remaining in the same imperfect state of consciousness. They struggle with effects and wonder why the struggle is endless. They do not know that the perfect state cannot be reached by fighting the imperfect. The imperfect dissolves of itself when you withdraw your attention from it and contemplate perfection instead. What you contemplate you become. What you become, the world must express.

To contemplate perfection is to feel yourself into the state where all things are already finished. It is to assume the feeling of the perfect and to persist in that feeling until it feels natural. Naturalness is the test. When it feels natural to be perfect, when it feels natural that your desires are already fulfilled, when it feels natural that there is nothing to be changed because all is already perfect, then you are one with the state. The outer will then rush to confirm what the inner has already accepted as finished.

You are told to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. This is not a distant goal for the future. It is a present possibility because the perfect state is already within you. It is your true nature, temporarily veiled by an imperfect conception of yourself. When you contemplate perfection you are not creating something new. You are remembering what you have always been. You are returning to your Father’s house, the house of perfect consciousness.

Dwell upon this truth until it possesses you. In the quiet moments of the day, close your eyes and feel yourself to be in the perfect state. Do not argue with appearances. Do not wonder how perfection will come to pass. Simply feel the naturalness of it. Feel that all things are already as they should be. Feel that you are already the one you desire to be. Feel that your world is already the perfect expression of your perfect consciousness. Let this feeling fill you. Let it become the dominant mood of your mind.

As you persist in this contemplation, something wonderful happens within you. The imperfect conception begins to fade. The old fears, the old doubts, the old sense of limitation lose their power because you are no longer feeding them with your attention. In their place rises a quiet certainty, a peaceful assurance that all is well. This is the Sabbath state, the state of rest in the finished work. You are no longer striving. You are simply being what you have contemplated.

The perfect state is not a state of excitement or strain. It is a state of quiet fulfillment. It is the feeling that “it is finished.” When this feeling possesses you, you know without doubt that the thing is done. You do not look for signs. You do not question the how. You rest in the knowledge that consciousness has already objectified its perfect content and that the world must now conform.

You may ask what happens to the problems that seem so real. They dissolve. They were never real in themselves. They were only the out-picturing of an imperfect state. When you rise out of that state into the perfect state, the problems have no foundation and they disappear as mist before the sun. You do not fight them. You simply cease to be the one to whom they can happen.

This is the great secret. There is no one to change but self. You do not change another. You do not change the world. You change your conception of yourself by contemplating perfection until you are one with it. When you are changed, the world changes because the world is yourself pushed out. Those who seemed to hinder you become helpers. Conditions that seemed fixed become fluid. The impossible becomes natural.

Contemplate perfection in relation to your body. Feel it to be perfect now. Do not see the body as it appears to the senses. See it as it is in the perfect state—whole, harmonious, radiant with life. Persist in this feeling until it feels natural. The body will then reflect the perfection you have assumed.

Contemplate perfection in relation to your affairs. Feel them to be already ordered, already successful, already expressing the harmony of the perfect state. Do not try to force circumstances. Simply occupy the state in which circumstances must arrange themselves perfectly. The bridge of incidents will appear, but you do not concern yourself with the bridge. You concern yourself only with the perfect state.

Contemplate perfection in relation to your relationships. Feel them to be already perfect expressions of love and understanding. Do not try to change another. Rise to the perfect state in which the other can only reflect the perfection you have assumed. The perfect state knows no condemnation. It beholds all things as pure because it is itself pure.

As you practice this contemplation, you will discover that the perfect state is not something you enter and leave. It is a state you can abide in permanently. The old imperfect state loses its attraction because it no longer feels natural. The perfect state becomes your home, the place where you live and move and have your being.

You will find that this abiding changes your entire sense of self. You no longer think of yourself as a limited being struggling to become perfect. You know yourself to be the perfect consciousness itself, temporarily wearing the garment of an imperfect conception. When the garment is worn out by disuse, only the perfect remains.

The world will resist this teaching at first because it has always believed that perfection must be earned by effort or achieved in time. But you are not of the world when you occupy the perfect state. You are in the world but not of it. You move through the same circumstances as before, yet you see them differently because you see from a different state. What appeared as imperfection now appears as the perfect means to a perfect end, or it simply disappears because it has no correspondence in your new consciousness.

Do not be discouraged if the old state returns from time to time. This is natural. The imperfect conception has been your dwelling place for a long time. It will try to reassert itself. But you have the power to return instantly to the perfect state by contemplating perfection again. Each time you return, the imperfect state loses a little more of its power. Eventually it will have no power at all.

The perfect state is not a state of isolation. It is a state of perfect relationship with all. When you are one with perfection you are one with all that is perfect, and all that is perfect is one with you. There is no separation. The perfect state is the state of love, for love is the recognition of perfection in all.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, contemplate perfection. Let the feeling of the perfect state be the last feeling of your waking mind. Feel yourself to be already perfect. Feel your world to be already perfect. Feel that all things are finished. Fall asleep in this feeling. When you sleep in the perfect state, you sleep in the finished work. The subconscious, which accepts the dominant feeling, will then proceed to objectify that perfection in your waking world.

You may not see the change immediately. The signs follow; they do not precede. But the change is inevitable. Consciousness is faithful. It never fails to objectify its content. When your content is perfection, your world must become the perfect expression of that content.

There is nothing you need do but contemplate perfection until you are one with it. No outer effort is required. No persuading of others is necessary. No battling with conditions is called for. The perfect state does all the work when you give it your attention and your feeling.

You are not asked to believe something you do not understand. You are asked to test the principle. Contemplate perfection for a single day and see what happens in your consciousness. You will find a quietness, a certainty, a sense of rightness that you have not known before. This is the beginning of union. Persist in it. Let it deepen. Let it become the permanent state from which you view all things.

When you are one with the perfect state, you will understand the words “It is finished.” You will know that the work is done, not because you have done it, but because you have become the state in which the work is already complete. From this state all things flow effortlessly into perfect expression.

This is the secret of the ages. This is the way the mystics and the prophets walked. They did not fight the world. They contemplated the perfect state until they were one with it, and the world was transformed before their eyes.

You stand today at the same threshold. The perfect state is not far off. It is closer than breathing. It is your own awareness when that awareness is lifted above the imperfect conception. Contemplate perfection. Dwell in it. Become one with it. And you will discover that you have always been the perfect state made visible, temporarily mistaken about your own identity.

The world waits for you to remember. It waits for you to contemplate perfection until there is no other state in your consciousness. When that moment comes, and it will come if you persist, you will look upon your world and see only perfection, for you will be seeing with the eyes of the perfect state itself.

This is the promise. This is the way. Contemplate perfection until you are one with it, and all things will be added unto you. For in the perfect state there is nothing lacking, nothing broken, nothing imperfect. There is only the finished work, and you are that finished work made visible.

You are the perfect state. Contemplate it until this truth is no longer a statement but your living, breathing reality. Then you will know what it means to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. You will know it not as a goal, but as your present and eternal nature. And the world will know it through you.