#164: The Crown of Confidence

The Crown of Confidence

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have sought confidence in every place but the one place where it truly lives. You have looked for it in the approval of others, in the changing circumstances of your world, in the accumulation of evidence that your desire might one day be fulfilled. Yet all the while the confidence you long for is not a thing to be acquired from without. It is the natural and inevitable sign that you have already accepted the state you desire within the silent depths of your own consciousness. When that acceptance has taken place, confidence does not need to be coaxed or constructed. It rises of its own accord, quiet, certain, and majestic, like a crown that appears upon the head of one who has been inwardly lifted and established in a higher level of being.

This is the crown of confidence. It rests only upon the man or woman who has ceased to argue with his desire and has instead accepted it as already his own. The world calls this confidence many names. It speaks of self-assurance, of faith in oneself, of courage in the face of appearances. But these are only the outer garments. The living reality is something far simpler and far more profound. It is the atmosphere that belongs exclusively to the accepted state, just as the light belongs to the sun or the fragrance to the rose. When you have truly accepted a state, this confidence is its natural crown. It does not argue. It does not plead. It simply knows, and in that knowing all striving comes to an end.

Man forever tries to feel confident about the very things he has not yet accepted. He repeats affirmations. He reasons with himself. He looks for signs in the outer world. He struggles to believe that what he desires will one day be his. All such effort is but the clearest evidence that acceptance has not yet occurred. For when acceptance is complete, the struggle ceases of itself. The need to convince the mind disappears. In its place there comes this strange and wonderful quietness, this certainty that asks for no further proof, that rests in the unseen as though it were already seen, and that moves through the affairs of the day as one who is already in possession.

You cannot force this confidence into being by any act of will. You cannot summon it by repetition or by looking for it directly. It is not a reward for effort. It is the very air of the state you have accepted. Just as you do not have to remind yourself to breathe when you are in your own home, so you do not have to remind yourself to be confident when you have truly accepted your desire as already fulfilled. The confidence appears because it belongs there. It is the sign that the inner work is done, that the assumption has passed from a mere visit in imagination into a permanent residence in consciousness.

To accept a state is not to think about it, nor to picture it occasionally, nor even to affirm with fervor that it is so. To accept is to feel yourself into the very being of it until the former state loses its grip upon you and this new state becomes your natural dwelling place. In that moment of true acceptance the old doubts, the old anxieties, the old questions of how and when and whether you are worthy, fall away without being driven out. They simply find no room in the new atmosphere you now inhabit. And in the space they leave, this quiet confidence takes its throne. It is not loud. It does not need to prove itself to others or even to yourself. It is the calm dignity of one who has already received.

Many have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled and yet have wondered why the outer results delay. They have felt it intensely for a time and then returned to their former restlessness. The reason is simple. They assumed, but they did not accept. Assumption is the lifting of the mind to the new state, the first noble act of imagination. Acceptance is the completion of that act, the moment when the state is no longer something you visit but something you live from as your permanent identity. Only when this acceptance has taken place does the crown of confidence appear. Until then you may feel moments of hope, moments of excitement, even moments of temporary certainty, but the true crown, the unshakable quiet confidence, will be absent. And its absence is the sure sign that acceptance is not yet complete.

How then do you know when you have accepted? You know by this very sign. If anxiety still clings to the edges of your mind, if you still feel the secret need to check the outer world for reassurance, if you still find yourself wondering whether it will really come to pass, then the state has not yet been fully received. But when you can rest in the feeling of already being what you desire, when the mind no longer runs forward into tomorrow to fetch its fulfillment, when you can move through your daily tasks without that hidden fear that all your inner work may come to nothing, then you have accepted. And with that acceptance the crown appears of its own accord.

This confidence transforms your entire relationship to the world, though it does so without effort or struggle. It changes the way you walk and the way you speak. It changes the way you meet those appearances that seem to deny your desire. Where before you would have reacted with doubt or with a renewed determination to make something happen, now you react with the calm of one who already knows the end. The world, which is forever the out-picturing of your inner state, begins to rearrange itself around this new center you have established. Incidents that once would have caused alarm now pass without moving you, or they are seen as the very means by which the accepted state is being brought into visible form. You do not force these incidents into being. You do not even look for them. They come of themselves because consciousness, having accepted the state, must objectify it in the world of form.

The interval of time that seems to stand between the inner acceptance and the outer realization loses its power to disturb you. When acceptance is complete, you are no longer living in the future, anxiously awaiting something that has not yet happened. You are living in the present, in the state already accepted, and the outer world is compelled to catch up with what you have already become. This is why those who have truly accepted their desire often find that things arrange themselves with a speed that astonishes them. The speed was not created by anxious watching. It was created by the quiet confidence that crowned their acceptance and freed them from the burden of making it happen.

You may wonder what you are to do in the days or weeks while this confidence is growing. The answer is always the same. You are to persist in the assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled until that feeling becomes your accepted and natural state. Do not strain to feel confident. Do not watch anxiously for the crown to appear. Simply return, again and again, to the feeling that it is already so. Feel its naturalness. Feel yourself to be the one who has received. And as you do, you will notice that something subtle but profound begins to shift within you. The old tension softens. The questions that once tormented the mind grow faint. And one day, without any dramatic announcement, you will discover that you are no longer hoping. You are no longer trying. You are simply being the state. And in that being, the crown of confidence has taken its place.

This is the highest use of consciousness. It is the assumption that has become acceptance, the inner act that lifts you above the level of the man who strives and doubts into the level of the man who knows. On this level there is no need to ask how the thing will come. There is no need to plead with life or to bargain for more time. There is only the quiet certainty that what has been accepted in consciousness must appear in form, for consciousness is the only reality and it forever out-pictures what it has accepted as true of itself.

Do not be discouraged if at first the confidence seems slow to appear. Many assume for a season and then return to their former state because they have not yet accepted. They have visited the new state in moments of feeling, but they have not taken up their permanent residence there. The crown appears only to those who have made the state their home. Therefore persist, but persist gently. Return to the feeling whenever you notice you have wandered. Do not condemn yourself when the old state reasserts itself. Simply return. Every time you return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are strengthening the foundation upon which acceptance can rest. Every time you refuse to be moved by the outer denial, you are making room for the crown to appear.

The world will test this inner work. Appearances will rise that seem to shout that your acceptance is in vain. These tests are not punishments sent from without. They are the old state attempting to reclaim its throne. When you meet them, not with renewed anxiety, but with the quiet confidence that has already begun to dawn, they lose their power to move you. They pass. And each time they pass without shaking your inner certainty, your acceptance deepens and the crown settles more securely upon you.

You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked only to accept a new state of consciousness as your own. And when you do, the confidence that belongs to that state will crown you. It will not be a confidence in your personal power to make things happen, for you will have discovered that personal power, as the world understands it, is an illusion. It will be the confidence of one who has surrendered to the law, who has yielded to the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and who now rests in the knowledge that the law cannot fail to objectify what has been accepted.

In this confidence there is a profound freedom. You are free from the burden of making things happen by your own effort. You are free from the anxiety of wondering whether you are worthy or whether the time is right. You are free to live your life as the person you have accepted yourself to be, knowing that the outer world is already on its way to confirming what you have already become in consciousness. This freedom is not carelessness. It is the freedom of the one who has been inwardly crowned and who therefore moves through his world with the quiet dignity of one who knows the end is already secured.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Do not do it as a technique designed to get something from life. Do it as the natural expression of one who has decided to accept a higher state of being as his own. Feel the reality of it. Feel its naturalness. Carry it with you into sleep. And if acceptance comes, the crown of confidence will rest upon you. You may not feel it tonight. You may not feel it tomorrow. But if you persist in the assumption until it becomes your accepted state, the day will come when you wake to find that the old anxiety has gone and in its place there is this quiet, unshakable certainty. That is the crown. It is not something you put on. It is something that appears when you have accepted.

The crown of confidence is not given to the one who has the most perfect mental pictures or the most eloquent words. It is given to the one who has accepted. And acceptance is complete when the feeling of the wish fulfilled has become as natural as the feeling of being yourself. When that happens, you no longer look for signs in the outer world. You no longer count the days or measure the progress. You simply live from the state, and the confidence that is its natural atmosphere surrounds you and goes before you, preparing the way without your conscious direction.

This is the great secret hidden in plain sight. Not that you must first become confident in order to receive your desire, but that when you have truly accepted your desire as already fulfilled in consciousness, confidence is the crown that appears of its own accord. Seek not the crown. Seek only the acceptance. And the crown will seek you and find you.

You are the operant power. You are the one who assumes and who either accepts or refuses to accept. When acceptance is complete, the crown of confidence rests upon your brow, not as something you have earned by struggle, but as something that belongs to the state you have made your own. Wear it in quiet dignity. Move through your world as one already crowned. And watch as the outer world begins to reflect the confidence that now crowns your inner being.

For consciousness is the only reality, and what it has accepted must be out-pictured. The crown of confidence is the felt sign that the acceptance has taken place. It is the end of all striving and the beginning of true rest. It is the assurance that all is well because you have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled and have not wavered until that feeling became your natural and permanent state. Tonight the crown awaits you. Assume the state. Persist in the feeling. And let acceptance do its perfect work. When the crown appears, you will know that you have accepted, and the whole world will know it too, for it will begin to mirror the quiet certainty that now rests upon you. This is the law. This is the promise. And this is the crown that belongs to the one who accepts.