#174: The Feeling of Completion

The Feeling of Completion

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have assumed the wish fulfilled. You have felt yourself to be the man or woman you desire to be. And now you wait. You wait for the world to confirm what you have done within. You look for the sign, the evidence, the thing itself before you will permit yourself to feel that your prayer has been answered. But I tell you, the prayer is answered the moment you feel complete. Completion is not the appearance of the manifestation in the outer world. Completion is the inward knowing that nothing more is required of you, that the creative act is finished, that the end has been accepted and the means are no longer your concern.

This feeling of completion is the mark of successful prayer. It is the point at which you have truly become one with your desire in consciousness. Before this feeling possesses you, you are still the seeker. You are still the one who hopes, who wonders, who questions whether the assumption has taken. But when the feeling of completion comes, you are no longer seeking. You are no longer hoping. You have entered the rest that follows the finished work. You have ceased from all inner labor concerning that particular desire, and in that cessation the world begins to conform to what you have already become.

Many pray and assume and feel the wish fulfilled for a little while, only to return to the old feeling of lack the moment the senses deny what they have done. They touch the completed state and then draw back from it. They say within themselves, “It felt real for a moment, but now it is gone.” In that very return they have denied the completion. They have treated the feeling as a passing mood rather than as the permanent acceptance of the end. But the feeling of completion, once truly established, does not come and go with the evidence of the senses. It remains. It becomes the dominant mood from which you live. And from that mood the world is compelled to change.

What is this feeling? It is not excitement. It is not the thrill of anticipation. It is a quiet, deep, unshakable certainty that the thing is already yours. It is the inner relief that comes when a long and weary search is ended. It is the peace that follows the acceptance of a gift you no longer need to earn or deserve or struggle for. You do not feel that something wonderful is going to happen. You feel that something wonderful has already happened, and that all that remains is for the world to catch up with what is already true in you. This is the feeling you must cultivate until it becomes natural, until it requires no effort to maintain, until you can rest in it as easily as you rest in the knowledge that you are.

When you feel complete, you have agreed with your desire. The awareness of being and the thing desired have become one. This agreement is the only creative act there is. It is the moment of conception. It is the spiritual marriage in which two become one flesh. And from this union the child, which is the manifestation, is born. But the birth in the outer world is not the completion. The completion was the union itself. The birth is but the inevitable consequence of what has already taken place within. Therefore you do not wait for the birth to feel complete. You feel complete because the union has occurred, and you rest in the knowledge that the birth must follow.

This is why the signs follow and never precede. The sign is the manifestation. It cannot come before the feeling of completion because the feeling of completion is the cause, and the manifestation is the effect. To look to the effect for the feeling of completion is to reverse the order of creation. It is to ask the shadow to prove the substance. But when you have the substance—the feeling that the thing is done—the shadow must appear. It has no choice, for consciousness is the only reality, and things are but the out-picturing of states of consciousness.

You may say that you have assumed and felt the wish fulfilled, yet nothing has changed. I ask you, have you felt complete? Or have you felt the wish fulfilled and then continued to feel the need for it to appear? These are not the same. To feel the wish fulfilled while still feeling that something more is required is not to feel complete. It is to feel the end and then to deny the end by continuing to desire its confirmation. But when you feel complete, desire ceases. The hunger is gone. The thirst is quenched. You do not look for the thing because you know it is already yours. This cessation of desire is the proof that the assumption has been accepted. For as long as you desire, you have not yet become one with the thing desired.

The feeling of completion is the Sabbath of the soul. In the story of creation the world was made in six days, and on the seventh day the creator rested. This is not a tale of ancient time. It is a revelation of the inner process. The six days are the days of labor in which you assume, you feel, you persist. But when the feeling of completion possesses you, you enter the seventh day. You rest. You cease from all further effort concerning that desire. You know that your work is finished. And in this rest the manifestation appears, for the finished state must objectify itself. You cannot rest while you are still striving. You cannot rest while you are still hoping. Rest comes only when you have accepted the end as true, and acceptance is felt as completion.

Tonight you can enter this rest. As you lie upon your bed, take the desire that troubles you and feel yourself into its completion. Do not see the process. Do not imagine the steps that might lead to its fulfillment. See only the end. Feel only the end. Feel the quiet joy of one who has received. Feel the deep peace of one who no longer needs to struggle. Feel the certainty that all is well, that nothing is lacking, that the thing desired is already yours. And when this feeling is established, when you can say within yourself, “It is done,” turn from it and sleep. In sleep the state is fertilized, and in the days that follow the world will bear witness to what you have accepted as true.

Do not question the manner of its coming. The ways of consciousness are past finding out. When you have felt complete, the bridge of incidents is built for you. Events arrange themselves. People appear. Circumstances change. All without your conscious planning, all without your anxious effort. For you have done the only thing you can do. You have assumed the end and felt it complete. The rest is not your concern. The rest belongs to the law that always brings the invisible into visible form.

This feeling transforms your sense of self. Before you felt complete you were the man who lacked, the woman who needed, the one who was still becoming. After you feel complete you are the man who has, the woman who is, the one who has already become. This change in the feeling of self is everything, for your world is forever reflecting your consciousness of being. When you feel yourself complete in regard to any desire, you have changed the self you are conscious of being, and the world must in time reflect that changed self. It cannot do otherwise.

You will be tempted to return to the old state. The senses will show you the empty place. The old doubts will rise and say, “Nothing has happened. You were mistaken.” In those moments you must remember what you have felt. You must return to the feeling of completion and rest there again. You do not argue with the doubt. You do not fight the evidence. You simply refuse to accept the evidence as the final word. The final word is the word you have spoken in consciousness when you felt complete. That word cannot return to you void. It must accomplish that whereunto it was sent.

The feeling of completion is the faith that is the substance of the thing hoped for. It is the evidence of the thing not seen. When you feel complete you have the substance, though the thing is not yet visible. And because you have the substance, the thing must appear. It is the only logical outcome of what you have done within. Men who do not understand this continue to pray for the thing while refusing to feel complete without the thing. They ask life to give them what they will not first give themselves in consciousness. But you who have heard this truth can do differently. You can feel complete now. You can accept the end now. You can rest now. And in your resting the world will be compelled to give you the confirmation of what you have already accepted.

There is a naturalness to this feeling when it is deep enough. You do not strain to maintain it. You do not watch yourself to see if you are still complete. You simply live from it. You rise in the morning as one who has already received. You go about your affairs as one for whom the matter is settled. You speak to others from the completed state. You see the world through the eyes of one who lacks nothing. This naturalness is the proof that the state has been truly assumed. For what is natural requires no effort. What is assumed with effort is not yet complete.

You are the awareness of being. And to be aware of being complete is to be complete. There is no separation between the awareness and that of which it is aware when the feeling is established. When you are aware of completion, completion is. This is the great secret. This is the truth that sets you free from the endless cycle of desire and disappointment. For in the feeling of completion desire ends, and where desire ends, fulfillment begins.

Do not wait for some future day when the thing shall appear and then permit yourself to feel complete. That day may never come if you wait for it to grant you the feeling. The feeling must come first. The feeling is the cause. The appearance is the effect. When you understand this order, you will never again look to the world for permission to feel complete. You will look only within. You will ask yourself only whether you have accepted the end. And if you have not, you will return to the inner work until the feeling of completion is yours. Then you will rest, and the world will do what it must do to confirm what you have become.

This is the simplicity of the law. It seems too simple to those who believe that great things require great effort. But to those who are willing to feel rather than to strive, it is the open door. The door is the feeling of completion. Through that door all things pass from the invisible into the visible. You stand before the door this night. You can open it by simply feeling that your desire is already fulfilled and that nothing more is required. Open it now. Feel the completion now. Rest in it now. And know that in this feeling you have done all that can be done, and all that remains is for the world to bear witness to what is already true in you.

You who have felt this truth even for a moment have touched the secret of creation. You have known what it means to say within yourself, “It is finished,” and to mean it. You have known the peace that passes understanding, the peace that comes when the inner work is done and the outer work is left to the law. Carry this feeling with you. Return to it whenever the old state tries to reassert itself. Let it become the ground upon which you stand. For when the feeling of completion is established, you are no longer at the mercy of appearances. You are the master of appearances. You are the one who has assumed the end, felt it complete, and entered the rest that is the beginning of all fulfillment.

The feeling of completion is not something you will have when your desire is realized. It is something you have when your desire is accepted. And acceptance is felt as the quiet certainty that nothing more is required. This night, accept. This night, feel complete. This night, rest. For in your resting the world is already changing, though you may not yet see the change. The change has begun in the only place where change can begin—in the feeling from which you live. And from that feeling all things must come to pass.