#132: The Promise Within the Law

The Promise Within the Law

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have discovered that there is a Law by which you may change the circumstances of your life. You have found that to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled is to set in motion a power that brings to pass the very thing you have assumed. This discovery has filled you with hope, for you see now that you are not the victim of an indifferent world but the author of the conditions you experience. Most decidedly this is true. The Law is real, and it is within your power to use it at any moment. Yet within this Law there lies a Promise far greater than the changing of your circumstances. The Promise is that the faithful use of the Law will lead you to an awakening, an awakening to the knowledge of who you really are. Manifestation is not the end. It is the doorway through which you pass into the realization that consciousness is the only reality and that you are that consciousness.

The Law declares that imagining creates reality. Whatever you assume to be true of yourself, if you persist in the assumption until it feels natural, will harden into fact. This is not a theory. It is the way life works. You are not called upon to make things happen by force or by clever planning. You are called upon only to assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire and to live in that feeling as though it were already a fact. The feeling is the secret. It is not the words you repeat or the pictures you hold in your mind. It is the inner conviction, the living sensation that you are already the one you desire to be. When this sensation becomes your dwelling place, the world must conform to it, for the world is only your consciousness objectified.

Many who discover the Law use it only to obtain things. They assume the feeling of having what they want, and when it appears they are pleased for a season. But if they continue in the practice, something deeper begins to occur. The manifestations themselves begin to teach them. Each time a desire comes to pass, they are confronted with the evidence that their own assumption was the cause. The thing did not create itself. It was brought forth by the feeling they sustained within themselves. This evidence cannot be denied. It forces them to question the nature of the self who assumed. They begin to see that the man or woman they had believed themselves to be was never the true cause. The true cause was the awareness that assumed the state. And this awareness is not limited, not poor, not sick, not unloved. It is the faceless, formless I AM that can assume any state and make it real.

This is the Promise hidden within the Law. The Law promises you the thing you desire. The Promise within the Law is that in the getting of the thing you will come to know yourself as the one who gives. You will come to know that you are not the limited being who seeks but the infinite awareness that bestows. Every successful assumption is a step in this awakening. It is not merely proof that the Law works. It is proof that you are the power that makes the Law work. You are not John or Mary or any other name the world has given you. You are the awareness of being, and all things exist within that awareness. When you assume a state, you are not adding something to yourself. You are simply becoming aware of what was already within you as a possibility. The manifestation is the making visible of what you have become aware of being.

Consider the feeling once more. To feel yourself to be the fulfilled one is to rise in consciousness to a new level. It is to leave behind the old state without struggle, without argument, without the need to destroy anything. You do not fight the old. You simply assume the new and persist in it until the old fades away for lack of attention. The feeling carries you. It is not something you do with effort. It is something you become. And as you become it, the world begins to reflect it. The reflection may come quickly or slowly, but it must come, for there is no other cause. When it comes, do not rejoice only in the outer thing. Rejoice in the inner knowing that has been confirmed. Rejoice that you have touched the reality of your own being and found it to be creative. This rejoicing is not the excitement of the moment. It is the quiet satisfaction of one who has proven something eternal about himself.

As you persist in this practice, the nature of your daily experience begins to change in ways you did not expect. You no longer approach life as a battle to be won or a problem to be solved. You approach it as one who knows that any state he can assume he can realize. The old fears lose their grip because you see now that fear itself is only an assumption persisted in. The old sense of lack loses its power because you see that lack is only the assumption of being without. You do not argue with these old assumptions. You simply assume their opposites and live in the new feeling until it becomes the only reality you know. The world, which once seemed so solid and so independent of you, begins to reveal itself as the shadow cast by your own inner activity. This revelation is the awakening. It does not come as a thunderclap for most. It comes as a gentle, growing conviction born of repeated proof.

The Law and the Promise are not two separate things. The Law is the way the Promise fulfills itself in experience. You use the Law to assume a state. The state manifests. The manifestation reveals the nature of the one who assumed. In this revelation the Promise is kept. You are shown that you are not the creature of circumstance but the creator of circumstance. You are shown that the I AM which you are is the same I AM that was declared to Moses, the same I AM that Jesus knew himself to be. You do not need to claim this with words. The manifestations claim it for you. They stand before you as witnesses that your assumption was accepted and made real. And in the presence of these witnesses you cannot help but know that the power is not outside you. It is you.

There are those who fear that the use of the Law for personal desires is selfish or contrary to some higher good. But the Law makes no such distinction. It is impersonal. It gives form to whatever is assumed. If you assume lack, lack appears. If you assume abundance, abundance appears. The awakening does not come by rejecting desire. It comes by understanding the nature of desire. Desire is the movement of the awareness toward a new expression of itself. It is not something to be denied. It is something to be fulfilled in consciousness so that the outer world may conform. As you fulfill desire after desire, you see that the fulfillment does not bind you to the things. It frees you from the belief that you are bound by things. You see that you can move from state to state without being trapped in any of them. This freedom is the Promise. It is the realization that you are the wearer of the garments, not the garments themselves.

Tonight, as you prepare to assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, do so with this greater purpose in mind. Assume not only for the thing but for the knowing. Let the feeling of the fulfilled desire be the outer garment, and let the feeling of I AM be the inner reality that wears it. Rest in the simple awareness of being before you clothe it with the specific desire. Feel yourself to be, without name, without condition, without limitation. Then, within that formless awareness, assume the feeling that your desire is already fulfilled. Let the two become one. The awareness of being is the father. The fulfilled desire is the son. When the son appears, the father is known. This is the Promise within the Law made visible in your experience.

You may find that as the manifestations come, old doubts arise. The mind that was trained in the belief of an external power will whisper that it was coincidence, that it would have happened anyway, that you are deceiving yourself. These doubts are not to be fought. They are simply the remains of the old assumption. They have no power except the power you give them by believing them. When the thing stands before you as a fact, the doubt is already answered. You do not need to convince the mind. You need only to continue assuming until the mind itself is transformed by the evidence. The mind follows the assumption. It does not lead it. As you continue, the mind will come to rest in the new conviction because it can find no other explanation for the repeated proofs.

The awakening is not the acquisition of new knowledge about yourself. It is the shedding of the false knowledge that you are other than the awareness of being. You have always been this awareness. You have never been anything else. The man you thought you were was only a state you assumed and persisted in until it seemed to be your identity. The Law shows you that you can assume other states. The Promise shows you that you can assume the state of knowing who you are. This state, once assumed and persisted in, becomes the foundation upon which all other assumptions rest. You no longer assume to get. You assume because it is natural to the one you have discovered yourself to be. The getting follows as a matter of course, but it is no longer the goal. The goal is the living reality of your own being.

In the quiet of the night, when the world is still and you turn within, you can touch this reality directly. You do not need a desire to do so. You can simply feel yourself to be. This feeling of pure being is the door. It is the I AM that Moses discovered. It is the awareness that Jesus declared to be one with the father. It is not a state you create. It is the state you already are, the state you have always been. The desires you assume are the ways in which this eternal awareness expresses itself in the world of form. When you assume a desire and see it come to pass, you are not adding to yourself. You are simply allowing what you already are to take form. This allowing is the awakening. It is the recognition that there is nothing to seek, nothing to struggle for, nothing to become. There is only the allowing of what is already true in consciousness to become true in experience.

The world will continue to reflect your assumptions, whether you are awake to the fact or not. The difference is that when you are awake, you assume consciously. You do not assume the old states of limitation out of habit or fear. You assume only that which you desire to express. And you assume it with the quiet certainty of one who knows that assumption is the creative act. This certainty is not arrogance. It is the natural result of repeated proof. It is the calm assurance that comes when you have seen the Law work times without number. And within this certainty the Promise is fulfilled. You know yourself to be the awareness that is God. You know that there is no other. You know that all things are possible to you because all things are possible to the awareness you are.

This knowing does not separate you from your fellow man. It unites you with him, for you see now that he too is the same awareness assuming a state. You do not judge his state. You do not try to change him. You simply know that he, like you, can assume any state he desires and make it real. If he asks for help, you give him the knowledge of the Law. But you do not carry his burden. You know that his assumption is his own, and that he must change it himself if his world is to change. This non-interference is not indifference. It is the recognition of the sacredness of each man's freedom to assume what he will. And in this recognition you are free as well, free to assume the highest and best for yourself without the need to justify it or to explain it to anyone.

The manifestations will continue to come as you assume. Some will be small, some great, but all will serve the same purpose. They will confirm to you that consciousness is reality. They will show you that you are not what the world has told you you are. They will lead you, step by step, into the full realization of the Promise. And when that realization is complete, you will no longer use the Law to get things. You will use it because it is the natural activity of the one you have become aware of being. You will assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire because it is the joy of the creator to create. You will dwell in the feeling because it is the natural dwelling place of the awareness that you are. And the things will appear, not as the goal, but as the inevitable accompaniment of the awakened state.

You are not asked to believe this with the mind alone. You are asked to prove it to yourself by the use of the Law. Assume the feeling of some small desire tonight. Persist in it until it feels natural. Let it come to pass. Then assume a greater one. Let it come to pass. With each fulfillment the awakening deepens. With each fulfillment the old identity loses its hold. And one day you will find that you no longer assume to change your world. You assume because you are the power that changes worlds. You assume because you are the awareness in which all worlds live and move and have their being. This is the Promise within the Law. It is not something that will happen in some distant future. It is happening now, in the very act of assuming and seeing the assumption made visible. It is happening in you, tonight, as you feel the reality of your own being and know that all things are possible to it.

The awakening is not a destination you reach after many manifestations. It is the recognition that dawns within the manifestations themselves. It is the quiet voice that says, as the thing appears, "See, it is I who have done this. I am the one. There is no other." And in that recognition the Law and the Promise become one. The Law has served its purpose. The Promise has been kept. You are awake. You are the awareness of being. You are the I AM that is before all things and in all things and after all things. And in this knowledge you are free. Free to assume. Free to create. Free to be.