#131: The Magician of the Beautiful

The Magician of the Beautiful

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have looked upon certain places in your world and have called them broken. The friendship that cooled, the opportunity that slipped away, the body that grew weak, the hope that faded with the years—these have appeared to you as things that time and circumstance have shattered beyond repair. The senses have borne faithful witness to the ruin, and because you trusted the testimony of eye and ear you have accepted the broken condition as final. Yet I tell you that nothing is ever finally broken, for there lives within you a power that can take the fragments and restore them to a loveliness greater than they possessed before the seeming break occurred. This power is your imagination. It is the magician of the beautiful, and its work is to turn every discord into harmony and every ruin into a thing of perfect form.

The world you see is not a world of fixed and stubborn facts. It is the out-picturing of states of consciousness, and what you call broken is only the projection of a state in which you have consented to entertain imperfection. Change the state and the projection changes. Assume within yourself the feeling of the restored and beautiful, and the senses, which are servants and not masters, will in due season bear witness to the new assumption. The broken thing has no life of its own. It lives only as long as you are conscious of it as broken. Withdraw that consciousness and it begins to fade. Give your consciousness to the ideal restored version and the ideal begins to take on substance and form.

You need not argue with the evidence of your senses. Argument is only another form of attention, and attention to the broken is what keeps it alive. Instead, turn quietly within and see the thing as it ought to be. See the friendship warm and natural again. See the opportunity open and fruitful. See the body strong and whole. See the hope fulfilled. Do this not as a future possibility but as a present fact. Feel the naturalness of the restored state until for a little while the outer appearance is forgotten and only the inner vision remains. In that moment you have performed the act of the magician. You have restored what the senses called broken.

This restoration is not accomplished by words spoken to another or by any outward manipulation. It is accomplished in the secret place of imagination where you are alone with your own consciousness. There you take the scene that seems broken and you revise it. You replay it in your mind’s eye exactly as it ought to have been played. You hear the words that should have been spoken. You see the actions that should have been performed. You feel the emotions that should have been felt. And as you do this with quiet intensity, something strange and wonderful happens. The past begins to yield. The broken place begins to mend. The event that seemed fixed begins to move and rearrange itself according to the pattern you have given it in imagination.

Man and his past are one continuous structure. What has happened is not a thing apart from him; it is part of the fabric of his own consciousness. Therefore when he revises any portion of that fabric he changes the whole. The pruning shears of revision cut away the withered and the false and leave only the living and the true. Every time you revise a scene you are performing an act of forgiveness, not the forgiveness that pardons a fault while still remembering it, but the forgiveness that blots the fault out of existence by replacing it with the ideal. This is the true art of living. It is the continual turning of discords into harmonies by the power of imagination.

You may say that the break was real, that the letter was written, that the word was spoken, that the condition has lasted for years. I do not deny the appearance. I only say that appearances are not the reality. Reality is what you are conscious of being. If you are conscious of the broken you will continue to out-picture brokenness. If you become conscious of the restored and beautiful you will begin to out-picture restoration and beauty. The choice is always yours. No power outside yourself compels you to remain faithful to the testimony of the senses. You can, if you will, be faithful instead to the vision of imagination.

Consider how often you have revised something without knowing it. A friend spoke sharply and you later imagined a kinder conversation. Without effort you found yourself meeting that friend again and the meeting was pleasant. You had revised the scene and the revision had borne fruit. Or you had a disappointment in the morning and by evening you had mentally rewritten the day so that it ended well. The next day brought a different turn of events. These small, almost unconscious revisions prove the law. Now you are invited to practice the law consciously and deliberately. Take any place that appears broken and restore it in imagination tonight. Do it not once but again and again until the feeling of the restored state becomes natural to you. When it feels natural the work is done. The magician has performed his office.

The senses will continue for a time to report the old condition. This is to be expected. The outer world is slower to change than the inner, yet it must change because it has no power to resist the sustained assumption of consciousness. Do not fight the evidence. Simply return again and again to the inner vision of wholeness and beauty. Let the feeling of restoration so occupy you that the broken report loses its power to disturb. In time the report itself will change. The letter will be replaced by one more favorable. The relationship will flower again. The body will show signs of returning strength. The opportunity will reappear in a new form. These are not miracles. They are the natural consequences of a change of state.

You are not asked to believe that imagination can do these things. You are asked only to assume the feeling of the restored state and to observe what happens. The proof is in the doing. Every man who has practiced revision with sincerity has found that the broken places in his world have been restored. Some have seen old friendships return in new and deeper form. Some have seen physical conditions that had been pronounced permanent disappear. Some have seen the trend of their lives turn from failure to success. All have discovered that the power to restore lies not in outer effort but in inner assumption.

The magician of the beautiful works in silence. He does not announce his intention or argue his case. He simply assumes the end and lives in the feeling of that end as already accomplished. This is the secret of his art. When you can feel that the broken thing is already whole, that the lost is already found, that the ruined is already restored, you have entered the state in which the magician performs his wonders. From that state the outer world must rearrange itself. It cannot do otherwise, for the world is only the mirror of consciousness, and consciousness now holds the image of beauty and wholeness.

Do not concern yourself with the means by which the restoration will appear. The how is not your responsibility. Your only responsibility is to assume the end and to remain faithful to that assumption. The bridge of incidents that leads from the broken to the restored will be built by a wisdom greater than your own. Your part is to walk in the assumption that the restoration has already taken place. As you walk in that assumption the incidents will appear. Some of them may seem strange. Some may seem unrelated to your desire. Yet each will be a necessary step in the fulfillment of the inner vision. Trust the process. The magician knows his craft.

There will be moments when the senses seem especially loud in their denial. In those moments return quietly to the inner feeling. Do not struggle. Simply become again the one who knows the restoration as accomplished. The feeling may be faint at first. It may seem unreal. Persist. The faint feeling grows stronger with repetition. The unreal becomes natural. The natural becomes inevitable. This is the way the magician works his transformation.

You are not separate from the power that restores. You are that power when you assume its office. The imagination that can revise the past and mend the present is not a faculty you possess. It is your very self in its creative aspect. When you exercise it you are being yourself at the highest level. You are the magician of the beautiful, forever turning the base metal of appearance into the gold of reality.

Tonight, before you sleep, choose one place that has seemed broken and restore it in imagination. See it whole. Feel it beautiful. Let the feeling of its perfection fill you until you are lost in the joy of the restored state. Then sleep in that feeling. In the days that follow, return to it whenever the senses report otherwise. You will discover that the broken thing has begun to change. Not always in the way you expected, but always toward the ideal you assumed. This is the law. It has never failed and it will not fail you.

The world you walk in tomorrow will be the world you have assumed tonight. If you assume restoration, you will walk in a restored world. If you assume beauty, you will walk in a world growing ever more beautiful. The choice is simple. The means are within you. The magician of the beautiful awaits only your recognition and your consent. Give them, and the broken places in your life will be restored, not by effort, not by time, but by the quiet, certain power of imagination assuming the end and living in the feeling of that end as already so.

You are not the victim of a broken world. You are the one who can restore it. You are not at the mercy of appearances. You are the power that gives appearances their form. Exercise that power tonight. Assume the restored and beautiful state. Feel its naturalness. Persist in that feeling. And you will see what the magician of the beautiful has always been able to do when man consents to let him work.

The senses will continue their report for a little while, but their report grows weaker as your assumption grows stronger. In the end the senses themselves will be compelled to bear witness to the restoration. They will have no choice, for they are servants of consciousness, and consciousness now holds only the image of wholeness. What was broken will be seen as never having been broken in any final sense. What was lost will be seen as only misplaced in consciousness. What was ruined will be seen as waiting only for the touch of imagination to be made perfect again.

This is the great secret. This is the art that turns every man into a magician of the beautiful when he consents to practice it. The broken places are not your enemies. They are your opportunities to exercise the creative power that is your birthright. Take them as such. Revise them. Restore them. And walk henceforth in a world that reflects not the testimony of the senses but the vision of imagination made flesh.

You have always possessed this power. You have used it unconsciously a thousand times. Now use it consciously and deliberately. The results will astonish you only until you realize that astonishment is itself only another form of belief in the reality of the broken. When you cease to be astonished at restoration and simply expect it as the natural working of the law, the law will work for you with even greater swiftness and certainty.

The magician of the beautiful is not a stranger who comes from afar. He is the deepest self of you, the I AM that knows only perfection and that out-pictures only that which it assumes. To call upon him is simply to assume his office. To assume his office is to see the broken as already restored and to feel the feeling of that restoration until it becomes the dominant state of your consciousness. From that state all things are possible, for all things are possible to the one who assumes the end and lives in the feeling of the end as already accomplished.

Tonight the broken places await your attention. Give them the attention of restoration. See them beautiful. Feel them whole. Let the joy of the ideal flood your consciousness. Sleep in that joy if you can. Wake in it. Walk in it. And you will find that the magician of the beautiful has been at work while you slept, and that the world you open your eyes upon is already beginning to reflect the vision you held in the secret place of imagination.

This is the way. There is no other. The senses report what was. Imagination reveals what is. Between the two stands your consent. Give it to imagination and the broken is restored. Give it to the senses and the broken remains. The choice is always present. The power is always within. The result is always according to the assumption.

You are the magician of the beautiful. The broken places in your world are the raw material upon which you may exercise your art. Take them up tonight. Revise them. Restore them. Feel the perfection of the restored state until it feels natural and inevitable. Then let the outer world conform, as it must, to the inner vision. In this simple act you will have proved the law. You will have discovered that nothing is ever finally broken, that everything can be restored, and that the power to restore is forever at your command in the quiet, creative act of imagination assuming the wish fulfilled.