#152: The End Is a Present Reality

The End Is a Present Reality

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have been taught, and you have believed, that the thing you desire lies in the future. That it is something yet to be achieved, something that will come to pass if you persist, if you work, if you wait long enough. But I tell you, this belief is the very thing that holds your desire at a distance. The end is not in the future. The end is a present reality. The fulfilled desire exists now as a state of consciousness which you may enter at this very moment, and in entering it you find that all things arrange themselves to bear witness to your entrance.

Creation is finished. There is nothing that can be added to it and nothing that can be taken from it. All that you can possibly desire, all that you can imagine as lovely, all that you can feel as the solution to your problem, already exists. It is not waiting to be created. It is waiting to be recognized, to be felt as real, to be entered as a state of being. You do not create your desire; you simply cease to be absent from it. You return to that which already is.

When you look upon your world and see lack, or delay, or frustration, you are looking upon the contents of a state of consciousness from which you have not yet departed. The state in which your desire is fulfilled is as present and as real as the state in which it seems unfulfilled. The difference is not in the thing itself. The difference is in you—in where you place your awareness, in what you are willing to feel as true of yourself now.

You are always assuming. You cannot help assuming. Every moment of your day you are feeling yourself to be this or that, and the world without is forever reflecting the state you have assumed within. The question is not whether you assume. The question is whether you assume the end or continue to assume the problem. To assume the end is to feel the wish fulfilled. It is to let the feeling of having it now fill your mind and your body until it seems the most natural thing in the world. When this feeling becomes natural to you, you have entered the end. And the end, being entered, begins at once to weave the necessary means for its own expression in your world.

Do not ask how it will come about. The how is not your concern. The experience of the end itself wills the means. When you truly feel the thing as done, a way is opened that no man could have devised. Incidents will appear, people will move, circumstances will change, all without your conscious planning, all because you have assumed the end and have remained faithful to that assumption. The bridge of incidents is not something you construct. It is something that is constructed for you the moment you live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

You may test this tonight. As you prepare for sleep, do not fall asleep in the feeling of your problem. Do not review the day’s frustrations or rehearse tomorrow’s anxieties. Instead, assume the feeling of the end. Feel the relief of having what you desire. Feel the quiet joy of it. Feel the naturalness of it as though it were already so. If you do this with sincerity, if you let the feeling fill you until you are lost in it, you will have entered the state. And in the morning you will rise with a different sense of yourself, and your world will begin to reflect that change.

The end is not something you reach by effort. It is something you enter by assumption. Effort belongs to the old state, the state of not having. In the end there is no effort, for you are already that which you formerly desired to be. You do not strain to be what you already are. You simply rest in the feeling of it. This rest is the Sabbath of which the scriptures speak—the rest that remains for the people of God. It is the rest of knowing that the work is finished, that what you have assumed is already so.

Many will tell you that you must do this or that, that you must take this step or follow that method. But I tell you there is only one thing you must do, and it is not an outer doing. You must change your state. You must rise in consciousness to the level of the fulfilled desire and dwell there. All else follows. For consciousness is the only reality, and your world is forever out-picturing the state of consciousness in which you live.

When you enter the end, you discover that you are not the victim of circumstances. You are the author of them. The circumstances that once seemed to oppose you are seen to be the necessary steps that lead to the fulfillment of your assumption. What appeared as delay is recognized as the perfect timing of the bridge that was willed by the end itself. Nothing is against you when you live from the end. All things serve the state you have assumed.

You may feel, at first, that it is too simple. You may feel that something so great as the fulfillment of your desire could not be brought about by so simple an act as assuming its feeling. But I tell you, the great truths are always simple. The complicated ways of the world belong to the state of not having. In the state of having, all is simple, all is natural, all is effortless. The feeling of the wish fulfilled carries within itself the power of its own expression. You need not add to it. You need only to feel it and to persist in feeling it.

As you walk the streets, as you sit at your desk, as you go about the ordinary business of your day, you can live in the end. You do not need to withdraw from life. You simply carry within you the feeling that it is done. This feeling does not deny the present world. It transforms your relationship to it. You move through the same streets, yet you move as one who already possesses what he formerly sought. And because you move differently within, the world without begins to arrange itself differently around you.

The doubts will come. They always come when you begin to live in a new state. They are the voices of the old state trying to pull you back. Do not argue with them. Do not fight them. Simply return to the feeling of the end. The end is more real than any doubt. The end is the creative power. The doubt is but a shadow cast by the old assumption. When you persist in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, the shadow fades and the substance of your desire appears.

You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked to believe in the reality of the state you desire to occupy. You are asked to feel yourself to be the one who has it now. This is not self-deception. This is the recognition of what already is. For creation is finished, and all states exist. You are free to choose which state you will occupy, which state you will make real in your experience by assuming its feeling.

Consider what it means to live in the end. It means that you no longer hope for your desire. You know it as already yours. It means that you no longer pray for it as something future. You thank the Father within for having given it to you now. It means that you no longer look to the world for evidence. You look to your own consciousness, and there you see the fulfilled desire as a present fact. And because you see it there, the world must in time reflect it.

The golden string of which the poet spoke is this very feeling of the end. You are given the end. You need only to wind it into a ball by dwelling in the feeling, by returning to it again and again, by making it the dominant mood of your life. As you wind it, as you persist in it, it leads you in at heaven’s gate. It leads you into the realization of that which you have assumed. The gate is not in some distant place. The gate is the moment you accept the end as now.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot live in the feeling of the problem and expect to enter the feeling of the solution. You must choose. And having chosen the end, you must be faithful to it. Faith is not belief in something unseen. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not yet seen by the outer eye. It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled made so real, so natural, that it becomes the only reality you know.

When you live in the end, time loses its power over you. You are no longer anxious about when it will come, for you know that it is already here in consciousness, and that which is here in consciousness must appear. The interval of time between the assumption and its fulfillment is not your concern. Your concern is only to assume and to persist. The interval will take care of itself, and it will be shorter or longer according to the naturalness of your assumption. The more natural the feeling of the end becomes to you, the more quickly the bridge of incidents appears.

You are not asked to understand how it works. You are asked only to do it. The understanding comes after the doing. When you have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled and have seen your world rearrange itself in harmony with that assumption, then you will know. But the knowing is the result, not the cause. The cause is the assumption itself, the entrance into the end as a present reality.

Many have found this too simple and have turned away, seeking more complicated paths. But those who have dared to test it have found it to be the truth that sets them free. They have discovered that the world is not the cause of their experience. Their state of consciousness is the cause, and by changing the state they change the world. They have found that the end is not something they must achieve. It is something they must accept as already so.

Tonight, as you close your eyes, do not ask yourself whether it is possible. Ask yourself only whether you are willing to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. If you are willing, then do it. Feel it. Let it fill you. Let it become the last feeling of your waking day and the first feeling of your new day. And as you persist in this feeling, you will discover that the end is indeed a present reality. You will discover that what you have assumed has already been given you, and that the world without is but the shadow of the state within.

You are not the man or woman you were when you began to listen. Something has changed. You have heard that the end is now, and in hearing it you have already begun to enter it. The feeling of the wish fulfilled is stirring within you. It is more real than the doubts that may still linger. It is the creative power that is even now at work, weaving the means for its own expression. Trust it. Dwell in it. And know that in this moment you have assumed the end, and the end is a present reality.

You need not wait for some future day to be free. You need not wait for circumstances to change before you feel the joy of fulfillment. You may feel it now. You may enter the state now. And in entering it you will find that the world you thought was fixed and unyielding begins to yield, begins to rearrange, begins to bear witness to the reality of the end you have assumed. This is not imagination in the sense of idle fancy. This is imagination in the sense of the divine creative power within you, the power that is God, the power that is your own awareness of being.

When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are not pretending. You are recognizing what is already true in the realm of consciousness, and consciousness is the only reality. The outer world is but the mirror of this inner reality. Change the inner state, and the mirror must reflect the change. This is law. This is not something that may happen. It is something that must happen, for there is no other cause in the world but consciousness.

You stand at the threshold of a new life, not because something outside you has changed, but because you have discovered that you may change the state from which you view your life. The end you desire is not far off. It is not separated from you by time or space or effort. It is separated from you only by your refusal to feel it as real now. Remove that refusal. Assume the feeling. Enter the state. And discover for yourself that the end is a present reality.

As you go your way, carry this feeling with you. Do not let the old state reclaim you by default. Return again and again to the feeling of the end until it becomes the dominant mood of your life. And when it does, you will look back upon this night and know that something eternal took place within you. You will know that you heard the truth, that you acted upon it, and that the world without was compelled to confirm the reality of the end you entered within.

The fulfilled desire exists now. It is not a promise for tomorrow. It is a present fact in consciousness. You have but to feel it, to dwell in it, to live from it, and it will appear. This is the simple truth that has been given you. Accept it. Test it. Prove it in your own experience. And as you do, you will find that you are no longer the victim of a world you did not make. You are the maker of your world by the state of consciousness you choose to occupy. Choose the end. Enter it now. And know that in this choice you have found the freedom that was always yours—the freedom to be what you desire to be, the freedom to live in the reality of the fulfilled desire, the freedom that comes when you know that the end is a present reality.

You are that which you have assumed yourself to be. And you are free to assume the end at any moment. The moment you do, the world begins to change, not because you have forced it, but because you have changed the cause of which the world is the effect. This is the great secret. This is the golden string. Wind it into a ball by persistent assumption, and it will lead you in at heaven’s gate. The gate is open now. The end is here. Enter it, and be free.

The feeling of the wish fulfilled is the key that unlocks every door. It is the light that reveals the path. It is the power that arranges all things in harmony with itself. You need not know the way. You need only to feel the end as now, and the way will appear. It always appears when the assumption is accepted as reality. This is not something you must struggle to believe. It is something you must dare to feel. And in the feeling, belief becomes unnecessary, for you know. You know because you have experienced the creative power of assumption, and you have seen its fruits appear in your world.

Carry this knowing with you. Let it be the atmosphere in which you live. And as the days pass, you will find that what once seemed impossible has become natural, what once seemed distant has become present, and what once seemed to belong to the future has revealed itself as the present reality you entered when you assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled. This is the truth. This is the law. This is the way. And it is yours to use from this moment forward.

You are not asked to understand it with the intellect. You are asked to prove it with your life. Assume the end. Live in the feeling of it. Persist until it becomes the only reality you know. And when it does, you will look upon your world and say, with quiet certainty, “It is finished.” For the end you assumed has expressed itself, and you stand in the midst of the fulfilled desire, knowing that it was always here, waiting only for you to enter it as a present reality.

This night, this moment, is the moment of your freedom. The end is not tomorrow. The end is now. Feel it. Enter it. And let the world bear witness to the reality of your assumption. For in doing so, you will have discovered the greatest truth of all: that you are the operant power, that consciousness is the only reality, and that the fulfilled desire exists now as a state you may enter. Enter it, and be at peace. Enter it, and be free. Enter it, and know that all things are possible to him who assumes the end as present reality.

The golden string is in your hand. The end is given you. Wind it into a ball by the simple act of feeling the wish fulfilled, and it will lead you in at heaven’s gate. The gate is not in some far-off place. It is the very feeling you assume. Assume it now. Persist in it. And discover that you have always been free, that the end has always been present, and that your only task was to enter the state and let it express itself as your world.

You have heard the truth. Now go and prove it. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and watch the end unfold as a present reality in your experience. This is the promise. This is the law. This is the way. And it cannot fail, for it is rooted in the changeless nature of consciousness itself. Consciousness is reality. Assume the end, and the end is yours now.

Go your way in peace, carrying within you the feeling that it is done. And as you do, the world will rise up to meet you as the fulfilled desire you have assumed. This is not hope. This is knowledge. This is the certain outcome of assuming the end as a present reality. You are that which you feel yourself to be. Feel yourself to be the one who has it now, and it is so.

The end is a present reality. Enter it tonight. Enter it now. And know that in this entrance you have found the kingdom, the power, and the glory that was always yours. It is finished. It is done. It is now. And you are free.