#184: The Secret of Self-Permission

The Secret of Self-Permission

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You desire many things and they remain unrealized, not because power is absent from you, but because you have withheld from yourself the inner permission to possess them. This withholding is quiet, often unnoticed, yet it is the precise reason the desire hangs suspended between heaven and earth. You have felt the urge, you have acknowledged the rightness of the thing, yet somewhere in the depth of your consciousness you have said no to it. You have said, “Not for me,” or “I am not the one,” or “There must be some reason why this cannot be mine.” That inner no is the denial of permission, and until it is replaced by an inner yes the desire cannot embody itself.

Permission is not something granted by another. It is a state of consciousness you assume. It is the feeling, quiet and settled, that it is right and natural for you to be the one who has and who is the fulfilled desire. This feeling does not argue with appearances. It does not measure itself against the past or against the evidence of the senses. It simply consents. It opens the door that you yourself have kept closed. The moment consent is given, the desire is no longer an alien thing knocking for entrance; it is your own, already alive within you, already growing toward visibility.

You have been taught that you must believe, and belief is necessary, yet belief without permission remains incomplete. You may believe a thing is possible for others, or possible in some abstract way, yet if you have not permitted it for yourself the belief has no root. The permission is the soil. When the soil is prepared by the feeling that the desire is rightfully yours, the belief takes root and the thing appears. Without that preparation all effort is effort from the denied state, and effort from the denied state can only prolong the denial.

The desire that comes to you is not foreign to your being. It is your own awareness seeking a fuller expression of itself. When you withhold permission you are refusing your own urge to expand. You are telling the deeper self that you are not ready to live more abundantly, more freely, more lovingly. Yet the deeper self knows no such unreadiness. It knows only that whatever you can conceive is already possible to the awareness that conceived it. The permission is simply the recognition of this fact. It is the ceasing of the argument against your own good.

Look at any area of your life where you feel stuck. In that area you will find that permission has been withheld. You have permitted the limitation to remain by giving it your feeling, your attention, your consent. You have said yes to the problem by feeling it as fixed and real. To reverse the condition you withdraw that yes from the problem and give it to the solution. You permit yourself to be free of the limitation by feeling that freedom as natural and right for you. The permission given to freedom is the withdrawal of permission from bondage, and bondage, having lost its consent, must fade.

This transfer of consent is not a battle. It is a simple act of allowing. You stop feeding the old state with your feeling and you begin to feed the new state with your feeling. Consciousness, being the only reality, out-pictures whatever state you have permitted to live within you. Change the permission and the out-picturing changes. There is no other mechanism, and there is no need for another mechanism. The power has always been in your own consent.

You may feel that you must earn the right to your desire, that you must become worthy of it. But life does not measure worthiness as man measures it. Life gives to every man that which he first gives to himself in consciousness. When you withhold permission you are declaring yourself unworthy in the very act of withholding. When you grant permission you are declaring yourself worthy by the act of granting. The declaration is not made in words; it is made in the feeling that the desire belongs to you and that you belong to it.

The feeling of permission is the feeling of naturalness. When a thing is truly permitted it ceases to feel like something you must struggle to attain. It feels like something you already are. The fever of wanting subsides. The anxious watching for results gives way to quiet expectation. You move through your days with the calm knowledge that what you have permitted is already on its way, and the way is not your concern. The awareness that permitted the desire knows the way and will open every necessary door.

Many have discovered that when they finally ceased to deny themselves their good, the good appeared without the elaborate efforts they had previously made. They did not give up the desire; they gave up the inner no. They permitted what they had previously forbidden, and the permission itself was sufficient to set the creative power in motion. The elaborate efforts had been made from the state of one who still withheld consent. When consent was given, effort changed its character. It became the natural expression of the permitted state rather than the anxious striving of the denied state.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot permit abundance and at the same time permit lack. You cannot permit health and at the same time permit illness. The permission given to one state is the denial of its opposite. Therefore choose. Choose what you will permit to live in your consciousness. Be single in your choice. Do not waver between yes and no, between permission and denial. Let your permission be a settled thing, a foundation upon which you stand. Then the appearances that contradict the permission will break against that foundation and fall back powerless.

The permission of which we speak is the permission of the inner man, the awareness of being. The outer man may still see the old evidence, but the inner man has already permitted the new. The outer man may still feel the weight of former limitations, but the inner man has permitted freedom. There is no real conflict. The outer must in time conform to the inner, because the inner is cause and the outer is effect. Cause the permission and the effect follows as surely as night follows day.

When you permit yourself to be the fulfilled one, you are not becoming something foreign to your nature. You are allowing what was always potential in your awareness to express through you. The wealth you desire is not created by your permission; it is revealed by it. The love you seek is not manufactured by your consent; it is uncovered by it. The freedom you long for is not bestowed by some external power; it is released by the withdrawal of your own denial. All good is already within the awareness that you are. Permission simply removes the veil you have placed over it.

The doubts that arise when you begin to permit are not to be feared or fought. They are the echoes of the old denial. They have no independent life. They live only as long as you give them your attention and your feeling. When you return to the feeling of permission the doubts lose their nourishment. They wither from neglect. You do not argue with them. You simply occupy the new state so completely that the old doubts have no place in which to dwell. Light does not argue with darkness; it simply is, and darkness disappears.

As you persist in the permission the desire itself changes in feeling. What once seemed distant and conditional becomes near and natural. The desire loses its desperate quality and assumes the quiet certainty of something already possessed. This change in feeling is the sign that permission has been truly granted. The two have agreed—you and your desire—and the agreement is the foundation upon which the visible thing is built.

You will discover that living in permission brings a continuous sense of relief. The burden you carried was the burden of your own denial. When the denial is withdrawn the burden is lifted. You no longer feel the weight of “I cannot” or “I should not.” You feel the lightness of “It is right. It is mine. It is already so.” This lightness is not imaginary. It is the actual release of tension that occurs when consciousness ceases to resist its own good. In that release the creative power, which is your own awareness, moves without hindrance.

The scriptures speak of being absent from the body and present with the Lord. The body in this sense is your former conception of yourself, the conception that withheld permission. The Lord is your awareness of being. To be absent from the body is to withdraw your feeling from the old denied state. To be present with the Lord is to dwell in the permission you have granted. In that dwelling the new conception is born, and the new conception is the fulfilled desire.

You are not asked to pretend that something is so when you do not yet feel it. You are asked only to cease pretending that the denial is true. You have pretended long enough that you are unworthy, that you are incapable, that the good thing is not for you. Cease the pretense. Permit the truth that your desire has revealed to you. Permit yourself to be the one the desire has called you to be. The permission is not an act of will in the ordinary sense. It is an act of allowing, a ceasing to stand in your own way.

Tonight, in the quietness that belongs to you alone, take one desire that has lingered. Do not argue with it. Do not condition it with reasons or memories. Simply feel that it is right for you to have it. Feel the consent rising. Feel the yes replacing the no. Feel the naturalness of being the one who already embodies the fulfilled desire. If the feeling is faint at first, do not be discouraged. Even a faint consent is the beginning of permission. As you rest in it the consent grows. The state feeds itself. What begins as a whisper becomes a settled knowing, and the settled knowing fills your consciousness and overflows into your world.

In this permission the old self dies. The self that said no to its own good is no longer fed. The new self, the self that permits, is born. And with this birth your world is born anew. For your world is always the faithful child of the permissions you have given or withheld. Change the permissions and the child changes its countenance. This is the changeless law made simple. This is the secret made plain for you to use.

You do not lack power. You do not lack the creative capacity. You lack only the permission you have withheld from yourself. Grant it now. Grant it without reservation. Grant it to every desire that has come to you as a true urge from within. For the awareness of being places no limits upon the permissions it may extend, and it will honor every permission you give with the faithfulness of an obedient servant.

In the granting of this permission you discover who you really are. You are not the denied one. You are not the unworthy one. You are the awareness that can be anything it permits itself to be. You are free to permit abundance, freedom, love, health, beauty, all that your heart has conceived as good. Permit generously. Permit without measure. For the measure you give to yourself is the measure that returns to you pressed down and running over.

This is the secret of self-permission. It has always been with you, waiting for your recognition. Now you recognize it. Now you use it. Now you permit the life you were meant to live, and in the permitting the life appears. The old way ends here. The new way begins with your consent. Grant it, and be free.