#140: The Door of Awareness

The Door of Awareness

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have sought everywhere for the means to change your life. You have looked to time, to chance, to other people, to conditions that seem fixed and unyielding. You have wondered why some pass easily from one state to another while you remain bound by the same circumstances year after year. The answer lies not in the world you see but in the one door through which every state must pass before it can appear in your experience. That door is your own awareness of being. This I AM, this consciousness that you are, is the entrance. No state enters your world by any other way. What you are conscious of being, you express. What you would express, you must first let pass through this door by feeling yourself to be it.

The world you now see is the perfect record of what you have already admitted through this door. Every condition, every relationship, every circumstance is the out-picturing of some state you once felt yourself to be. There is no accident in your experience. There is no injustice. There is only the faithful working of consciousness expressing what it has been given. If lack appears, it is because lack was first accepted in consciousness. If limitation appears, it is because limitation was first felt as real. The door does not judge. It does not select. It simply admits what you feel to be true of yourself and gives it form.

To change what appears, you need not wrestle with the appearance. You need not argue with conditions or plead with powers you imagine to be outside yourself. You have only to close the door to the old state and open it to the new. This closing and opening is done in feeling. When you withdraw your attention from what is and place it upon what you desire to be, the old state is shut out and the new state is let in. The door swings on the hinge of your attention and your feeling. What you feel yourself to be passes through. What you refuse to feel passes away.

Many believe they must know the way before they can assume the state. They ask how the desired change can possibly come to pass. They look for signs before they have assumed. Yet the signs follow. They never precede. The door knows the way. Consciousness is the way. When you have felt yourself into the state, the how is no longer your concern. The I AM that you are has ways you as man know not of. Its ways are past finding out. Your only responsibility is to stand in the feeling of the fulfilled desire until that feeling becomes natural. When it feels natural, the door has done its perfect work. The state has entered. The expression is now inevitable.

Consider what this means in the quiet of your own being. You are not the man or woman you see in the mirror. You are the awareness that looks through the eyes. You are the I AM that assumes every state. Before you assume any particular state, you are simply aware of being. This bare awareness is the open door. From this formless presence you can move into any state you choose by feeling yourself to be it. The feeling clothes the bare I AM with the garment of the state. The state then expresses itself as naturally as the old state once did.

This is why it is said that you must be born again. The birth is the rising from the old assumption to the new. It is the leaving behind of the old conception of yourself and the assuming of a new conception. The old man is the old feeling. The new man is the new feeling. The I AM remains the same. It is the one who assumes. When you rise in consciousness, you are absent from the body of the old conception and present with the awareness that is your true identity. In this rising, all things become possible, for in the awareness of being all things are possible.

The feeling of the wish fulfilled is the key that turns the lock. It is not a strained effort. It is not a loud affirmation. It is the quiet, living sensation that what you desire is already so. You feel the relief of it. You feel the naturalness of it. You feel the peace of having it. In that feeling the door opens. The state passes through. And because consciousness is the only reality, the state must in time take form in your world. The interval between the assumption and the expression is simply the time required for the state to mature in you to the point where it feels completely natural.

Do not condition the state. Do not say within yourself that it is too good to be true or that it is impossible for one such as you. The door admits no such conditions. It admits only the feeling. When you feel yourself to be the one who has the desire fulfilled, you have met the only requirement. Life does not care what name you give yourself. It does not measure your worthiness. It simply expresses what you have assumed in consciousness. Your desires are fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be. Change the claim, and the desire changes with it.

If you are conscious of being poor, you cannot find wealth no matter how it surrounds you until you first let the state of wealth pass through the door. The state of poverty will continue to express itself until you withdraw your feeling from it. Indifference to the old state is the shutting of the door. Aliveness to the new state is the opening. In this simple act of turning your feeling from one to the other, you exercise the only power there is. All other powers are but expressions of this one.

The world may appear as a giant that threatens you. Conditions may seem immovable. Yet these giants are only the out-picturing of your own former assumptions. They have no life except the life you continue to give them by your attention. When you take your attention from them and place it upon the desired state, the giants shrink. They become as grasshoppers in your sight because you have ceased to feed them with your feeling. The door no longer admits them. They fade for lack of nourishment.

You are at this moment drawing into your world that which you are conscious of being. This is not a future possibility. It is the present fact. Every moment you are decreeing by your feeling. Every moment the door is open to something. The question is not whether you use the door. The question is what you are letting pass through it. Become conscious of this fact. Become conscious that you are the keeper of the door. Then you will no longer feel yourself at the mercy of conditions. You will know that you can, at any moment, close the door to what you no longer wish to express and open it to what you desire.

When you pray, enter into this awareness and shut the door. Shut out the evidence of the senses. Shut out the old assumptions. In the secret place of your own consciousness, feel the new state as real. Feel it as present. Feel it as natural. This is the true prayer. It is not a petition to something afar off. It is the recognition that you are already the one you desire to be. The father, which is your own awareness of being, sees in secret and rewards you openly. The open reward is the expression in your world of the state you have assumed in secret.

Do not look for the reward before you have assumed. Do not wait for the world to change before you change your consciousness. The world cannot change until you have let the new state pass through the door. The change in consciousness is first. The change in expression follows. This order is fixed. It cannot be reversed. Seek first the kingdom, which is the state of consciousness you desire, and all things shall be added unto you. The adding is automatic. It is the natural working of the door.

The doubts that arise when you begin to assume are the old state trying to re-enter. They have no power of themselves. They live only as long as you feel them. When a doubt appears, do not fight it. Do not argue with it. Simply return to the feeling of the desired state. Feel again the naturalness of being the one who has it. The door admits only what you feel. By refusing to feel the doubt, you keep the door closed to it. By continuing to feel the new state, you keep the door open to it. In time the old state loses its power to disturb you. It fades because it is no longer nourished.

This faithfulness to the assumption is not a burden. It is the easiest thing in the world once you have truly felt the naturalness of the state. The effort is only in the beginning, in rising from the old feeling to the new. Once you have risen, the maintenance of the state is effortless. It becomes your natural way of being. You think from the state rather than of the state. You live from the fulfilled desire rather than toward it. This is the rest that remains for the people of God. It is the Sabbath state in which all work is finished in consciousness and the expression follows without strain.

You will find that as you remain faithful to the new assumption, your world begins to arrange itself in harmony with it. You do not make the arrangements. You do not plan the ways. The door brings forth the ways. Opportunities appear that you could not have imagined. People change their attitudes toward you without your having to persuade them. Circumstances that once seemed to block you now open. All this happens because the state you have assumed is now expressing itself. The world is always the mirror of consciousness. Change the consciousness, and the mirror must change.

There is no limit to what you can let pass through this door. The I AM is limitless. You can assume the state of perfect health. You can assume the state of abundance. You can assume the state of freedom in every area of your life. You can assume the state of being loved and loving. Whatever you can feel as natural, you can let pass through the door. The magnitude of the state means nothing to the door. It admits the great and the small with equal ease. The only measurement is your feeling. If you can feel it, you can have it.

This is the authority given to you as man. This is the power that Jesus discovered and declared. He found the I AM to be the door. He found that by assuming the nature of the desired state he drew all things necessary unto him. He did not ask how. He did not wonder if it were possible. He simply rose in consciousness to the naturalness of the state and let it express. You are called to do the same. You are called to discover that the I AM within you is the door through which every good thing can pass.

Tonight, when you withdraw from the world and turn within, remember this door. Do not take your problems with you into the silence. Take instead the feeling of the solution. Feel "I AM" the one in whom all is well. Feel "I AM" the one who has the desire fulfilled. Let this feeling be the last you know before sleep. In that feeling you have passed through the door. The state has entered. While you sleep, the expression begins its journey into visibility. In the morning, carry the feeling with you. Whatever the day brings, do not let it shake your assumption. The old may linger for a little while, but it has no power over the new. Remain faithful to what you have let pass through the door, and the new will in time replace the old completely.

You are not the victim of your world. You are the creator of it through the door of your own awareness. This realization changes everything. It places the responsibility where it belongs—with you. It also places the power where it belongs—with you. You need no other. You need no special time or place. The door is always with you. It is your own consciousness. At any moment you can close it to the undesirable and open it to the desirable by a simple change of feeling.

This is the truth that sets you free. This is the way. This is the life. The I AM is the door, and no state comes to you except through this door. You have always used it. Now use it consciously. Assume the state you desire. Feel it as natural. Remain faithful to it. And watch as your world bears witness to what you have let pass through the door of your own being. In this you will find the peace that passes understanding and the joy that no man can take from you. For you will have found the one thing that cannot be taken—the awareness that you are the door through which all things enter expression.