#133: Awakened Imagination

Awakened Imagination

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Man decrees his world and continues to decree it, yet he believes the decree is accomplished by outer effort and outer change. He labors to rearrange conditions, to force events into a pattern that pleases him, and all the while the true creative power remains asleep within him. That power is his imagination, and until it is awakened he moves as one in a dream, forever shaping his experience by an activity he does not recognize and therefore cannot consciously direct. The world he sees is the faithful reproduction of imaginal activity, yet he insists the cause lies in the reproduction rather than in the activity itself. So he remains the servant of effects, struggling with shadows while the substance that casts the shadows lies neglected in his own soul.

Your imagination is the divine creative faculty. It is not a faculty among other faculties; it is the one faculty by which all things are made. In it the invisible becomes visible, the unformed takes form, and the desire that seems impossible to the reasoning mind is realized without effort of the outer man. When imagination sleeps, man lives from the evidence of his senses and calls that living. When imagination awakens, he discovers that the evidence of the senses is itself the result of prior imaginal activity and that he possesses the power to change the evidence by changing the activity. He ceases to ask how the thing desired will come to pass, for he knows the how is not his concern. His concern is only to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and to live in that feeling until it becomes the natural state of his consciousness.

To live from awakened imagination is to think from the end rather than of the end. It is to occupy the state of the fulfilled desire as though it were already the fact of experience. You do not look at the desire; you look out from it. You do not hope that circumstances will change; you feel yourself already in the changed circumstances. This feeling is not a mood that comes and goes; it is a sustained inner attitude, a living sensation of being the person who has what the outer man still lacks. In that sensation the outer man and all his problems lose their power to disturb you, for you have already risen above them in consciousness. The world you left behind when you assumed the new state begins to rearrange itself to match the state you now occupy. This is not magic; it is law. Imagination, awakened and consciously directed, is the law.

You are told that all things were made by one power and without that power nothing was made that was made. That power is your own wonderful human imagination. It is the I AM that forms all things, the creative word that goes forth and does not return void. When you awaken to this truth you no longer look upon imagination as a pleasant escape from reality. You see it as reality itself, the only reality, and the so-called solid world as the shadow cast by that reality. The outer world is the vegetable universe, a faint shadow of the real and eternal world of imagination. To live from the awakened faculty is to live in the real world and to let the shadow conform to it.

The natural man, the man of sense, looks upon his imagination with suspicion. He calls it unreal, impractical, the very opposite of fact. Yet it is the natural man who is asleep, and the imaginal man who is awake. The natural man sees a bud and stops there. Awakened imagination sees the full-blown rose already present in the bud and knows that the full blooming is inevitable once the inner activity is sustained. The natural man is impressed by the size of his problem and the length of time it has persisted. Awakened imagination is impressed only by the feeling of the fulfilled desire, and that feeling, persisted in, dissolves the problem and shortens the time. For time, like all outer things, is a shadow cast by inner activity. Change the activity and the shadow changes, often in ways that astonish the reasoning mind.

To live from this faculty consciously is to forgive sin in the only way sin can be forgiven. Sin is missing the mark, falling short of the ideal. Forgiveness is identification with the ideal. When you assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire you have identified yourself with your aim, and in that identification the past that seemed to contradict the aim loses its power. You do not argue with the past; you simply cease to live from it. You live from the new state, and the old state, having no sustainer, withers and drops away. This is the supreme work of awakened imagination, and it is a work you perform in secret, in the quiet of your own consciousness, where no man can see or hinder.

The world presents itself differently according to the state from which you view it. From the state of lack the world appears hostile or indifferent. From the state of fulfilled desire the same world appears friendly and cooperative. Nothing in the outer scene has changed; only the state from which you observe it has changed. Yet because the outer scene is the projection of the inner state, the outer scene must in time reflect the new observation. This is not a matter of positive thinking or of forcing yourself to believe something you do not feel. It is a matter of feeling itself. You assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and you persist in that feeling until it becomes your natural attitude toward life. Then you are living from awakened imagination, and your life becomes the inevitable fulfillment of that sustained feeling.

Doubts will arise. The evidence of the senses will seem to contradict the inner assumption. Old habits of thought will reassert themselves. At such moments you do not fight the doubt; you simply return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You do not argue with the senses; you withdraw your attention from their evidence and rest it upon the inner reality you have assumed. The assumption may seem false to the outer man, yet if persisted in it will harden into fact. Continuous imagination is sufficient for all things. Reasonable plans and outer actions cannot take the place of the sustained feeling. They may accompany it, but they can never substitute for it. The feeling is the substance; all else is shadow.

When you live from awakened imagination you discover that you are not the victim of a hostile world. You are the center of your own web of circumstances, and as you change the state from which you view the world the web rearranges itself. People who seemed fixed in opposition move into harmony. Circumstances that seemed permanent dissolve. Events that seemed impossible of fulfillment occur with a naturalness that makes you wonder why you ever doubted. This is not because you have manipulated anyone or anything. It is because you have changed the cause, and the effect must follow. The world is a revelation of the states with which imagination is fused. Fuse imagination with the fulfilled desire and the world reveals that fusion.

The abundant life promised is not a future state to be attained after death or after long effort. It is the life you experience when you awaken imagination and live from it consciously. You do not earn it by good works or by moral improvement. You enter it by assuming the feeling of already possessing it. The feeling itself is the entrance. Once inside that feeling you discover resources you did not know you possessed, capacities you had never exercised, and a quiet certainty that replaces the old anxiety. You move through the day no longer as one who must make things happen but as one to whom things happen in harmony with the inner assumption. This is the natural life of the awakened imagination.

Every man is free to choose the state he will occupy. All conceivable states exist as possibilities, awaiting occupancy. No amount of reasoning about a state will cause you to occupy it. Only the feeling of being in it will cause you to occupy it. Therefore the wise man does not spend his energy trying to make the outer world conform to his desire. He spends his energy assuming the feeling of the desire already fulfilled and lets the outer world conform to that feeling. This is not passivity; it is the highest activity of which the soul is capable. It is the activity of God in man, consciously exercised.

As you go about your daily affairs you carry with you the inner feeling of the fulfilled desire. You do not announce it to others; you do not argue for it; you simply live from it. In every situation you ask yourself, “How would I feel if the wish were already fulfilled?” and you feel that feeling. In every reaction to outer events you return to that feeling. Gradually the old reactions lose their force. The new feeling becomes habitual. When the feeling is truly natural, when you no longer have to make an effort to assume it, the outer world will have already begun to reflect it. The signs follow the assumption; they do not precede it. Therefore you do not look for signs. You look only to the inner feeling, and you persist in it.

The Real Man is a magnificent imagination. This self must be awakened. Until it is awakened you live as a natural organ subject to sense, tossed by every wind of outer circumstance. When it is awakened you discover that you are the ark of God, the divine body, the creative power itself. You no longer beg or petition some power outside yourself. You assume the feeling of already being what you desire to be, and in that assumption you exercise the only power there is. This is the mystery hid from the ages: Christ in you, your imagination, the hope of glory. To awaken imagination is to awaken Christ in yourself. To live from awakened imagination is to live as Christ, doing the works of Christ because you have become one with the power that does the works.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, you have the opportunity to live from this faculty in the most direct way. You withdraw your attention from the problems and limitations of the day. You assume, as best you can, the feeling that your wish is already fulfilled. You do not strain to see the fulfillment; you feel it. You feel the relief, the joy, the naturalness of being the person who has what you desire. You let that feeling fill your consciousness. If doubts arise you do not argue with them; you simply return to the feeling. As you fall asleep in that feeling you are committing yourself to the state desired, and the state, being occupied, will begin to project itself into your world. This is not a technique to be practiced mechanically. It is the natural act of the awakened imagination, the act by which the divine creative faculty consciously fashions experience.

In the days that follow you will be tempted to return to the old way of living, to let the evidence of the senses dictate your state. At such moments remember that the evidence is the shadow, not the substance. Return to the feeling that is the substance. Persist in it, and the shadow must change. There is no power in heaven or on earth that can prevent the fulfillment of a sustained assumption. The only power that can delay it is your own wavering, your own return to the feeling of the unfulfilled. Therefore remain faithful to the inner feeling. It is the way, the truth, and the life. It is your own wonderful human imagination, awakened and consciously directing the creation of your world.

You are not what you appear to be to the outer eye. You are the magnificent imagination that gives appearance to all things. When you know this and live from it, struggle ceases. You no longer try to become; you are. You no longer try to possess; you feel yourself already in possession. The world, which seemed so solid and so resistant, becomes fluid to your feeling and conforms to it with increasing rapidity. This is the life more abundant. This is the life you were meant to live. This is the life you enter when you awaken imagination and live from the divine creative faculty consciously. From this night forward, occupy that faculty. Feel its power as your own. Let it be the reality from which you view every circumstance, and you will discover that your world has no choice but to bear witness to your awakening. You and your Father are one, and your Father is your own wonderful human imagination, forever creating in the image of your sustained feeling.