#177: The Consciousness of Arrival

The Consciousness of Arrival

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have lived as one forever on the way. Your attention has been given to the road ahead, to the distance still to be covered, to the fulfillment that always seems to lie just beyond the next turn. This consciousness of traveling has shaped your days and your nights. It has kept you in a state of movement even when your body was still. But this night the revelation comes that the journey you have been making is not in the world of things. It is in consciousness. And the end of every journey is reached only when you arrive in consciousness.

The consciousness of arrival is the state in which you feel yourself to be already at the end of your seeking. It is not a hope that one day you will arrive. It is not a belief that circumstances will one day permit you to rest. It is the quiet, living feeling that you have come to the place you desired to reach. This feeling is the creative reality. For what you feel yourself to be in consciousness, you express in the world. The world does not give you arrival. Your arrival in consciousness compels the world to record it.

When you arrive in consciousness you cease to measure your life by what has not yet appeared. You rest in what is. The feeling is one of deep relief, as though a long burden has been lifted from your shoulders. The mind grows still. The breath moves more freely. There is no longer the subtle tension of one who must yet become. There is only the naturalness of one who is. This naturalness is the sign that the new state has been accepted. It is not something you force. It is something you permit by turning your attention away from the old consciousness of traveling and resting in the feeling of having arrived.

This turning is the inner act. It is done in secret. No one sees it. No one can do it for you. You simply withdraw your attention from the appearance of not having arrived and give it to the feeling that you have arrived. At first the feeling may seem strange, because you have been so long accustomed to the traveler’s consciousness. But as you persist in returning to it, the feeling grows in strength and in naturalness. One day you discover that you no longer need to return to it, for you have not left it.

The psychology of arrival is the psychology of identity. The traveler is one who is conscious of being on the way to himself. The arrived one is conscious of being himself. This is the great shift. You cease to be the self that must yet become and become the self that is. In this new identity all action changes its quality. You no longer act in order to arrive. You act because you have arrived. The action carries the certainty of the fulfilled state. It is effortless because it springs from rest rather than from striving.

In the consciousness of arrival time loses its power to torment you. You no longer wait for the right moment, for the right person, for the right condition. The right moment is now. The right condition is the consciousness you have assumed. Waiting belongs to the traveler. The arrived one possesses. He does not look to tomorrow for what he already feels himself to be today. This freedom from waiting is one of the first fruits of arrival. It brings a quiet that the traveler never knows.

You will notice that your perception of the world changes as you live in the consciousness of arrival. Things that once seemed to block your path no longer appear as obstacles. They are seen as part of the scene in which you have already arrived. People who once seemed indifferent or opposed are seen in a new light. Their attitude toward you is the reflection of your former consciousness of traveling. As that consciousness is replaced by the consciousness of arrival, their attitude changes without your having to change them. They are not changed by you. They are changed by the change in you.

The consciousness of arrival does not deny the outer world. It simply refuses to be determined by it. You do not close your eyes to what appears. You see it, but you see it from the new state. From the state of arrival the same appearance is no longer a threat. It is a confirmation in the process of becoming visible. The bridge of incidents that leads from the inner feeling to the outer fact is not your concern. Your only concern is to remain in the feeling of arrival. The bridge builds itself.

At night, when you prepare for sleep, the consciousness of arrival becomes your dwelling place. You do not take the problems of the day or the hopes for tomorrow into the deep. You take the feeling that you have arrived. You feel the day as ended in fulfillment. You feel yourself as one who rests in his own house. In this feeling you fall asleep. The deeper mind, which accepts whatever consciousness is presented to it with feeling, receives the impression of arrival. In the morning you rise in a world that has begun, however imperceptibly, to record that arrival.

During the day the old traveler consciousness will attempt to reassert itself. It will point to appearances that seem to contradict your inner feeling. It will remind you of what has not yet changed. But these reminders have power only if you give them your attention. When they arise you do not argue with them. You do not try to convince them. You simply return your attention to the feeling of arrival. You feel again the relief, the peace, the naturalness of having come to the end of your seeking. Each time you do this the new state gains ground. The old state loses its hold.

There is no effort in this return. It is the easiest thing in the world when you understand that you are not trying to make something happen. You are simply being what you have chosen to be in consciousness. The traveler makes things happen. The arrived one lets things happen from the state of having happened. This letting is not passivity. It is the highest form of action, for it is action that proceeds from being rather than from becoming.

The consciousness of arrival brings with it a new relationship to desire. The traveler desires with urgency because he feels the lack. The arrived one desires with quiet certainty because he feels the possession. The desire itself changes its nature. It is no longer a cry from emptiness. It is the gentle pressure of an already fulfilled state seeking fuller expression. In this way desire becomes creative rather than competitive. It does not compete with what is. It unfolds what is.

You will find that decisions become simpler in the consciousness of arrival. The traveler weighs and measures and fears to choose wrongly. The arrived one chooses from the feeling of rightness that belongs to the fulfilled state. He does not ask whether the choice will lead him to his goal. He knows that he is already at his goal, and therefore every choice made from that state leads to the expression of that state. There is no longer the anxiety of possible error. There is only the quiet movement of one who is already where he belongs.

The body itself responds to the consciousness of arrival. The traveler carries tension in his shoulders, in his jaw, in the very way he moves through space. The arrived one moves with a different rhythm. His movements are economical because they are not charged with the effort to reach somewhere. His face loses the subtle strain of one who is always approaching. Even his voice changes its tone. It becomes the voice of one who speaks from rest rather than from restlessness. These outer changes are not produced by trying to produce them. They are the natural consequences of a changed inner state.

In the consciousness of arrival you discover that you have never truly been absent from your desire. You have only been absent from the consciousness of it. The desire was always there, waiting for you to become conscious of being it. When you arrive in consciousness you do not bring something new into being. You simply become aware of what has always been true of you in the deeper sense. This awareness is the awakening. It is not the acquisition of something you lacked. It is the recognition of something you are.

The world will test your arrival. It will present appearances that seem to say you have not arrived. These tests are not punishments. They are opportunities to confirm the new state. Each time you remain unmoved in the feeling of arrival while the appearance contradicts it, the new state becomes more firmly established. The appearance then has no choice but to conform. For the appearance has no power of its own. It is only the shadow of the consciousness that perceives it.

You do not arrive by reaching a certain point in time or a certain condition in the world. You arrive by reaching a certain point in consciousness. That point is the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It is the feeling that what you formerly sought is now your own. This feeling is not dependent on evidence. It precedes evidence. It creates evidence. When it is held with quiet persistence it becomes the dominant state, and the dominant state must express itself.

The consciousness of arrival is not a special state reserved for special people. It is the natural state of the one who has ceased to oppose his own desire. Every man has the capacity to assume it. Every man has the right to rest in it. The only requirement is the willingness to turn from the old traveler’s consciousness and to feel, if only for a moment, the peace of having arrived. That moment, if persisted in, becomes a lifetime.

As you live in this consciousness you will notice that your attention is no longer divided. The traveler’s attention is forever split between where he is and where he wants to be. The arrived one’s attention is whole. He is where he wants to be. This wholeness of attention is the secret of power. What you give your whole attention to in consciousness must appear in your world. When your whole attention rests in the feeling of arrival, arrival is what appears.

There is a profound simplicity in all of this. You do not need to understand the mechanics of how the feeling will externalize itself. You need only to feel the feeling. The mechanics are not your concern. They belong to the deeper mind that accepts the feeling and builds the bridge. Your concern is to remain faithful to the feeling of arrival. Faithfulness here means simply returning to the feeling whenever you notice you have left it. This returning is not a burden. It is a joy. For each return brings you closer to the naturalness of the new state.

The arrived one does not look back upon the road he has traveled with regret or with pride. He does not look forward to a future arrival with hope or with anxiety. He looks upon the present with the eyes of one who is already at home. This present is not a point in time. It is a state of consciousness. In this state the past is redeemed and the future is already contained. There is no longer any separation between what has been and what will be. There is only what is, and what is, is good.

You can begin this very night. As you lie down, let the last feeling of the day be the feeling that you have arrived. Do not concern yourself with how long it will take for the outer world to record this arrival. Concern yourself only with the feeling itself. Let it be as real to you as the bed on which you lie. Let it be as natural as your own name. In this feeling sleep comes easily, for there is nothing left to strive for. In the morning you wake in the same feeling, and the day begins from a different place.

The consciousness of arrival is not something you visit and then leave. It is a state in which you learn to live. At first it may seem that you move in and out of it. But as you persist, the time spent in the old traveler’s consciousness grows shorter. The time spent in the new state grows longer. One day you find that the traveler’s consciousness has lost its appeal. You no longer desire to travel. You desire only to rest in what you are. This is the end of seeking. This is the beginning of being.

I tell you that you are already the one you have been seeking to become. You have only to become conscious of it. The consciousness of arrival is the becoming conscious. It is the awakening to what has always been true. When this awakening is complete, you will look back upon the long road of your traveling and wonder why you ever believed you were absent from your own fulfillment. You were never absent. You were only asleep to your arrival.

Tonight you can wake from that sleep. You can assume the consciousness of one who has arrived. You can feel the peace that belongs to the fulfilled. You can rest in it. And in that resting you will discover that the world has no choice but to record what you have assumed in consciousness. For consciousness is the only reality, and what you are conscious of being, you must express.

You are no longer the traveler. You are the arrived. This is your true identity. All that you formerly sought now seeks you, because you have become conscious of being the one in whom all seeking ends. Feel this. Rest in this. And let the world bear witness to your arrival.