#139: The True Meaning of Repentance

The True Meaning of Repentance

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have heard it said that to repent is to feel sorrow for your sins, to grieve over what you have done or left undone, to punish yourself with remorse and to carry the heavy burden of guilt through the days and nights of your life. But I tell you this is not repentance. This is not the change that was meant when it was declared, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This feeling of guilt, this dwelling upon the old and painful scene, this keeping alive in your consciousness the very thing you say you wish were not so, is the very opposite of repentance. It is the old man clinging to his old world, and while he clings he cannot enter the new.

Repentance is a radical change of consciousness. It is a change of mind so complete that the former state is no longer recognized as real. It is not a little alteration of opinion; it is a turning around, a complete reversal of the direction in which your attention moves. Where once your attention was fixed upon the evidence of the senses and the memory of failure, now it is fixed upon the revised scene, the ideal that ought to have been, the state you desire to occupy. This is repentance. It is not an act of the will in the outer world. It is an act of the inner man, the man of imagination, the only man there really is.

When you repent you do not look back upon your past with sorrow and say, “If only I had not done this or that.” You look upon it with the eyes of the new man and see it as it should have been. You relive the scene in your imagination, not as it appeared in the flesh, but as you wish it had appeared. You hear the words that should have been spoken. You see the actions that should have been performed. You feel the dignity, the peace, the success, the love that should have been felt. And you persist in this revised scene until it feels natural, until the old scene loses its power to move you, until the new feeling has taken possession of you. This is repentance. This is the change of mind that transforms a man.

The kingdom of heaven is not a place to which you go after death. It is a state of consciousness you enter when you repent. It is at hand the moment you change your mind about yourself and your world. The time is fulfilled when you cease to argue with the old and begin to live from the new. You do not repent by beating your breast and crying out your unworthiness. You repent by quietly withdrawing your attention from the unrevised day and giving it wholly to the revised day. You do not repent by telling yourself how bad you have been. You repent by assuming the consciousness of the man who has always been what you now desire to be.

There are those who believe that repentance must be accompanied by a sense of sin, a deep feeling of shame. But shame is not repentance. Shame is the reinforcement of the old state. It is the mind saying to itself, “This is what I am, and I cannot escape it.” Repentance says, “This is not what I am. I have changed my mind. I am another.” When the prodigal son came to himself he did not sit in the far country and weep over his wasted years. He rose up and returned to his father’s house. That rising up, that return in consciousness, was his repentance. He changed his mind about who he was. He ceased to identify himself with the swine and the husks and identified himself once more with the son who had always possessed the robe, the ring, and the fatted calf. This is what it means to repent.

You cannot repent and remain the same man. Repentance is the death of the old man and the birth of the new. It is not improvement of the old. It is the putting off of the old entirely. The old man is the consciousness that produced the unwanted condition. As long as you remain in that consciousness you will continue to out-picture it. You may weep over it, you may pray over it, you may confess it a thousand times, but it will not change until you change your mind. The pruning shears of revision cut away the dead wood of the old assumptions. They do not patch the old tree. They cut it back so that new growth may appear. This is repentance.

When you revise a scene in your imagination you are not pretending. You are not playing a game. You are performing the most practical act a man can perform. You are changing the cause, and the effect must follow. The outer world is only the out-picturing of inner movement. Change the inner movement and the outer picture changes. This is not imagination in the sense of idle fancy. This is imagination in the service of truth. You are seeing truly when you see the revised scene. You are seeing what really is when you see the ideal. The so-called real that the senses report is the lie. It is the shadow cast by the old consciousness. When you repent you turn from the shadow and look toward the light. You see the thing as it ought to be, as it is in the mind of God, which is your own awareness when it is turned in the right direction.

Do not ask how the revised scene will come to pass. That is not your concern. Your concern is only to repent, to change your mind, to feel the new scene as natural. The how is not your responsibility. Life has ways that you, as man, know not of. When you have truly repented, when the new feeling has become natural to you, the bridge of incidents will appear. People will move, circumstances will change, events will rearrange themselves to bring about the fulfillment of the revised scene. But you do not look for these things. You do not wait for them. You simply live in the consciousness of the revised scene until it feels like the only reality.

There are those who say, “But the past is fixed. What has happened has happened.” I tell you the past is not fixed. The past lives only in your consciousness. It has no other existence. As long as you keep it alive by your attention to the old scene, it remains. When you withdraw your attention from it and give your attention to the revised scene, the old past dies and a new past is born. This is not fantasy. This is the law of consciousness. Man and his past are one continuous structure. Change the structure in consciousness and you change the past. You repeal the old and establish the new. This is what revision accomplishes. This is what repentance accomplishes.

You may have a memory that haunts you, a scene in which you acted from a state you now regret. You see yourself saying words you wish had never been spoken, doing things you wish had never been done. This memory has power over you because you have not repented. You have not changed your mind about it. You still see it as it appeared in the flesh. Repentance is to see it differently. You go back to that scene in imagination and you change it. You hear yourself speak the words that should have been spoken. You see yourself perform the act that should have been performed. You feel the dignity you should have felt, the love you should have expressed, the wisdom you should have shown. You do this until the old scene has no more power to move you. You do this until the new scene feels real. Then you have repented. Then you are free.

This freedom is not a future freedom. It is a present freedom. When you have changed your mind the burden lifts immediately. The sense of guilt departs because guilt was only the old consciousness asserting itself. When the old consciousness is no longer fed by your attention it dies of its own accord. You do not have to fight it. You do not have to overcome it by effort. You simply starve it by withdrawing your attention and giving your attention to the new. This is the gentle way. This is the way of repentance.

You will find that as you practice this inner change your whole world begins to change. The people who seemed to be against you will change their attitude or drop out of your life. The conditions that seemed fixed will loosen and dissolve. The opportunities you thought were closed will open. Not because you have forced anything in the outer world, but because you have changed the inner world. The outer always follows the inner. It can do no other. This is the great secret. This is what it means to repent and believe the gospel. The gospel is the good news that the kingdom is within you and that you enter it by a change of mind.

Do not think that because you have revised one scene your work is done. Repentance is not a single act. It is a way of living. Every day brings its scenes that need revision. Every day you are given the opportunity to change your mind about something. Do not let the day pass without revising it. Do not go to sleep with the unrevised day still active in your consciousness. Take the scenes that disturbed you, the words that hurt you, the actions that seemed to go wrong, and revise them. See them as they ought to have been. Feel them as you wish you had felt them. Do this faithfully and you will find that your life takes on a new harmony. The discords are turned into music. The rough places are made plain. This is the art of living. This is the spirit of Jesus made practical in you.

You may wonder whether such a change is possible for you. You may say, “I have tried to change and I have failed. The old habits are too strong.” But I tell you that the old habits are strong only because you have kept them alive by your attention. When you give your attention to the new, the old loses its strength. It is not a question of fighting the old. It is a question of ignoring it. You ignore it by refusing to think from it. You refuse to think from it by thinking from the revised scene. This is not difficult when you understand that you are not asked to believe something that is not true. You are asked to believe something that is true but not yet seen. The revised scene is the truth. The old scene was the lie. When you give your faith to the truth the lie dissolves.

The measure of your repentance is the measure of your freedom. If you repent only a little you are freed only a little. If you repent completely you are freed completely. Do not be satisfied with partial revision. Do not revise a scene halfway and then return to the old feeling. Persist until the new feeling is natural. Persist until you can think of the scene without any sense of regret or guilt. When you can do this you have truly repented. The old man has died in that area of your life and the new man has taken his place.

This change of mind is not something you do for others. It is something you do for yourself. Yet because there is only one man, when you change yourself you change the world. Everyone is yourself pushed out. When you revise your attitude toward another you are revising your own consciousness, and that other must change or drop away. You do not revise another. You revise yourself. You change your mind about him. You see him as he ought to be seen, as the ideal that is buried within him. When you do this you have repented of your former judgment of him, and he is freed to express the new.

The same is true of your own past self. You may have judged yourself harshly. You may have condemned yourself for years. This condemnation is not repentance. It is the old man judging the old man. Repentance is to withdraw the condemnation and to see yourself as you ought to be seen. It is to revise every scene in which you fell short and to see yourself as the man or woman you now know yourself to be. When you do this the past is redeemed. It no longer binds you. It becomes part of the new story, the story of your awakening.

You are not asked to do this in a day. You are asked to begin. Tonight, when you lie down to sleep, take one scene, only one, that has troubled you. It may be from today or from years ago. It does not matter. Go back to it in imagination. See it differently. Hear it differently. Feel it differently. Do not argue with the old scene. Do not try to justify it or explain it. Simply replace it with the revised scene. Dwell upon the revised scene until you feel at home in it. Then fall asleep in the consciousness of it. Do this night after night with the scenes that need revision, and you will find that your whole life is being revised. The outer circumstances will rearrange themselves to match the inner change. This is the promise. This is the gospel. Repent and believe it.

The kingdom of heaven is not something you earn by good behavior in the outer world. It is something you enter by a change of mind in the inner world. You enter it every time you revise a scene and feel the new feeling as natural. You enter it every time you forgive yourself or another by seeing the ideal instead of the appearance. You enter it every time you turn from the evidence of the senses and give your attention to the unseen reality of the revised scene. This is not escape from life. This is the true living of life. This is the life that is hid with Christ in God, the life that is lived from the consciousness of the ideal.

Do not wait for some special occasion to repent. Do not wait until you have made some great mistake. Repent daily. Revise daily. Keep the pruning shears active. Cut away the dead wood of old assumptions, old judgments, old regrets. Make room for the new growth. The new growth is the consciousness of the man you were created to be. It is the consciousness that knows itself to be one with the Father, one with the source of all good. When this consciousness becomes natural to you, you will find that all things are possible to you. Not because you have acquired some new power, but because you have returned to the consciousness that was always yours.

This is the true meaning of repentance. It is not sorrow. It is not guilt. It is not the punishment of the old man. It is the rising of the new man. It is the change of mind that brings the kingdom of heaven from a future hope to a present reality. It is the gentle turning of attention from the shadow to the light. It is the quiet assumption of the state you desire to occupy. It is the living from that state until the old state has no more claim upon you.

You stand tonight at the threshold of this change. You need not wait. You need not prepare yourself by long effort. You need only to change your mind. Take the scene that binds you, revise it, feel the new feeling, and persist until it is natural. Do this and you will know what it means to repent. You will know what it means to be born again. You will know what it means to walk in newness of life. The old things will have passed away and all things will have become new. This is the promise. This is the truth. This is repentance.