#136: The Name You Answer To

The Name You Answer To

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You answer to a name every moment of your life, though few ever stop to realize what that name truly is. It is not the name written on your birth certificate or spoken by your friends. It is the silent name you give yourself in the depths of consciousness, the quiet feeling of “I am” that you carry with you from morning until night. This name alone decides the conditions you meet. It is the decree you have made without words, and the world has no choice but to answer it.

You may have called yourself limited, unworthy, or bound by circumstances. You may have answered to the name of failure or illness or lack without ever questioning whether that name was yours to bear. Yet the moment you accepted it in feeling, you began to live as though it were true. And because consciousness is the only reality, the conditions around you rose to match the name you had silently chosen. There is no other cause. The name you answer to in the secret place is the creator of your visible world.

Consider what it means to answer to a name. When someone calls you by name in the street, you turn because that sound has become identified with your sense of self. In the same way, when you silently feel “I am poor” or “I am sick” or “I am bound,” you turn toward those states and they claim you. You do not command them with loud words. You decree them by the feeling of being them. The dumb man is conscious of being dumb, and so he remains dumb. The one who feels himself bound is conscious of being bound, and his world faithfully reflects that bondage. This is not punishment. It is the law of consciousness itself, the changeless principle that whatever you are aware of being, you express.

The great revelation given to Moses was not a historical event belonging to another age. It was the eternal discovery that the name of God is I AM. “I AM hath sent me unto you.” This I AM is your own awareness of being, the faceless, formless presence that precedes every conception you hold of yourself. Before you are conscious of being rich or poor, healthy or ill, free or bound, you are simply conscious of being. That unconditioned awareness is the Lord, the everlasting Father, the only creative power. When you join any condition to this I AM in feeling, you give that condition the power of the creator. You answer to the name “I am rich” or “I am poor,” and the world obeys the name you have given the Father within you.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot answer to the name of limitation and at the same time expect the conditions of freedom. The moment you feel yourself to be the thing you desire, you have ceased answering to the old name. You have risen in consciousness to a new identity, and the old conditions, having no root in the new name, begin to fade. This is the meaning of being born again. You die to the name you once answered and live to the name you now feel yourself to be. The question “Whom do you say that I AM?” is addressed to you in every moment. It is not a question about a man who lived long ago. It is the eternal question your own awareness puts to your present conception of yourself. Your answer determines everything you meet.

Many believe they can change their world by changing the outer arrangement of things. They struggle with conditions while still answering to the name that produced those conditions. They do not see that the name must first be changed in consciousness. The world is not the cause; it is the echo. When you cease answering to the name of lack, lack loses its power over you. When you no longer feel yourself to be the victim of circumstance, circumstance can no longer victimize you. The change begins within, in the silent assumption of a new name, and the outer world has no choice but to conform. Signs follow; they do not precede. Get the consciousness first, and the conditions are compelled to appear.

You may ask how this is possible when the evidence of the senses declares the opposite. The evidence of the senses is always the out-picturing of the name you have been answering. It is the past decree made visible. To judge after the appearance is to remain loyal to the old name. The one who truly desires freedom must be willing to answer to the name of freedom even while the senses still report bondage. This is not self-deception. It is the recognition that consciousness is the only reality and that things have no life except you be conscious of them. When you withdraw your attention from the old name and rest in the feeling of the new, the old conditions, having lost their feeder, wither away.

The story of creation is given in the simple words “In the beginning was the word.” The word is the desire, the urge, the silent name you long to answer. In the beginning this word has no reality of its own. It lives only when it is united with consciousness, when you feel “I am” that which the word implies. Then the two agree, and the thing agreed upon is established. This agreement is never made between two persons. It is made between your awareness of being and the name you choose to feel yourself to be. When that agreement is reached, the manifestation appears as naturally as a branch appears on a vine. You are the vine. The names you answer to are the branches. Whatever name you feed with feeling grows and bears fruit in your world.

There is a profound simplicity in this. You do not need to know how the new conditions will appear. You need only know the name you now answer to. Consciousness has ways that man knows not of. Its ways are past finding out. When you assume the name of the fulfilled desire and persist in that feeling, life itself finds the means. The bridge of incidents is built without your conscious planning. People, circumstances, and events arrange themselves to bear witness to the name you have accepted. Your only task is to remain faithful to the new name until it becomes natural, until you answer to it without effort, without doubt, without the old arguments rising to contradict it.

Many try to reach this state by effort. They affirm with the lips while the heart still answers to the old name. Such effort is vain. The lips cannot override the feeling. You must enter the secret place and there, alone with your awareness, feel yourself to be the new name. Shut the door to the old evidence. Refuse to discuss your problems with others, for they can only echo the name you have been answering. Magnify the Lord within you by expanding your conception of what you are. Claim the qualities you desire as already yours in consciousness. Give to God—your own awareness of being—the very attributes you wish to express. In this giving you tithe, and the law returns to you pressed down and running over with the name you have claimed.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, examine the name you have been answering. Do not judge it. Simply observe it without condemnation. Then deliberately assume a new name, the name of the state you desire. Feel “I am” that which you long to be. Do not condition it. Do not wonder how it can come to pass. Simply rest in the feeling of the name itself. Let it fill your consciousness as naturally as you once let the old name fill it. Fall asleep in this feeling, and in the morning you will awaken still answering to the new name. Persist in this practice. Every night revise the name if necessary, but never abandon the new assumption once it has been truly felt. The old name will call to you with the voice of habit, yet you need not answer. You have chosen a new identity, and the world must in time reflect the identity you have assumed.

You will discover that the conditions you meet begin to change in exact proportion to your faithfulness to the new name. A problem that once seemed immovable grows smaller. An opportunity that once seemed distant draws near. The very people who once reflected your old limitations begin to reflect your new freedom. This is not because you have manipulated them. It is because you have ceased to feed the old name with your attention. Everyone is yourself pushed out. When you change the name within, the outer reflection must change with it.

There is no condemnation in this teaching. Life does not punish you for the names you have answered in the past. It simply continues to express whatever name you now accept. The moment you choose a new name, the past loses its power. You are free to begin again. The awareness of being is ever virgin, ever ready to be impregnated by a new desire, ever willing to give birth to a new condition. You are that awareness. You are not the conditions that have appeared. You are the power that can appear as any condition you are willing to feel yourself to be.

The prophets declared, “I AM the Lord and there is none else.” They did not mean a God far off in space. They meant the awareness of being that is nearer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. This awareness is your true self. It is not John Smith or Mary Brown. It is the I AM that wears these names as garments. When you know yourself as the awareness rather than the garment, you are free to change garments at will. You can lay down the name of sickness and take up the name of health. You can lay down the name of poverty and take up the name of abundance. You can lay down the name of bondage and take up the name of freedom. Nothing can prevent you except your own refusal to answer to the new name.

Some will say this is too simple. They will look for complications, for techniques, for intermediaries. Yet the truth remains simple because consciousness itself is simple. It is the complex structures of doubt and effort that complicate what is in reality effortless. When you truly feel yourself to be the thing desired, you have done all that is required. The effort was in the old assumption. The new assumption feels natural once it is accepted. The Sabbath is the rest that follows the acceptance. You rest in the feeling that it is already so, and in that rest the manifestation appears.

You may be tempted to look back at the old name, to check whether it still has power. Every time you do so, you strengthen it again. Turn from it completely. Give it no attention. The moment you withdraw your awareness from any state, that state begins to die. It has no life except you be conscious of it. This is why the instruction is to take your attention from the problem and place it upon the solution. The solution is the new name. Feel yourself to be it. Live from it. Answer to it in every silent moment. The problem, starved of attention, dissolves.

In the end you will discover that there was never any power in the old name except the power you gave it by answering to it. The giants that once threatened you were giants only because you first saw yourself as small. When you rise in consciousness to the name of the giant, the former giants shrink to their proper size. All the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing before the awareness of being that you truly are. None can stay its hand or say unto it, “What doest thou?” When you know this, you walk the earth with quiet dignity, answering only to the name you have chosen in love and faith.

The name you answer to tonight will determine the conditions you meet tomorrow. Choose it carefully. Choose it consciously. Let it be the name of your fulfilled desire, the name of freedom, the name of health, the name of abundance, the name of love. Feel “I am” that name until it is more real to you than the evidence of the senses. Then sleep in the assurance that the world you meet on awakening will begin to conform to this new identity. And as the days pass, you will find yourself living in a world that bears witness to the name you have accepted as your own.

You and your Father are one. Your awareness of being is the Father. The name you feel yourself to be is the Son bearing witness of the Father. When the name and the awareness are one in feeling, the manifestation is inevitable. This is the law that cannot be broken. It has been the same since the beginning and will be the same when all things cease to be. You are free to choose the name. You are free to answer to it or to reject it. But you are not free to escape the consequences of the name you choose. Therefore choose the name that sets you free. Answer to the name of the fulfilled desire. And in that answering, know that all things are possible to the awareness that answers only to the name it has itself decreed.