#187: The Assumption of Security

The Assumption of Security

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have sought security in the accumulation of possessions, in the promise of a position, in the protection of contracts and institutions, in the size of your savings or the favor of those who seem to hold power over your world. Yet all these are but the effects of a prior state of consciousness, and because you have looked for the cause among the effects you have remained insecure, anxious, forever adjusting yourself to conditions that shift like sand beneath your feet. The truth is not in the shifting sand. The truth is that security is not created by circumstances. Security is a state of consciousness which you assume, and when the assumption is accepted as true the circumstances are compelled to rearrange themselves in harmony with it.

You are not secure because you possess certain things. You possess certain things because you have first assumed the consciousness of security. The state is the cause. The visible evidence is the effect. This is the changeless law. Consciousness is the only reality, and whatever you are conscious of being you must externalize. There is no other way. The world forever out-pictures the state you have accepted as your own. If you are conscious of insecurity, the world will present you with the pictures of insecurity. If you rise in consciousness to the state of security, the world must present you with the pictures of security. There is no exception to this law, for the law is not outside you. The law is your own awareness of being, forever shaping itself into the likeness of your assumption.

To assume the state of security is not to hope for it, not to long for it, not to petition some power conceived of as other than yourself. It is to rise in consciousness until the feeling of security becomes natural to you. It is to feel yourself to be the one who is already safe, already provided for, already established upon a foundation that cannot be shaken. This feeling is not a passing mood. It is a living conviction, a present reality within you. You do not look at the evidence of the senses and then try to feel secure. You feel secure first, and the evidence of the senses is compelled to change. The assumption is the creative act. The manifestation is the inevitable result.

Consider what it means to be conscious of security. It is the inner sensation that all is well, that your needs are already met, that the awareness which is your true self has made full provision for every contingency before the contingency appears. It is the quiet, unshakable knowledge that you stand upon rock and not upon sand. This knowledge is not derived from the world. It is derived from the state you have assumed. When you assume security you do not deny the present appearance. You simply refuse to let the present appearance dictate your state. You acknowledge what the senses report, yet you know it is the out-picturing of a former assumption. You now assume a new state, and you persist in it until the new state becomes your settled conviction. Then the old pictures fade and new pictures appear in their place.

The prophets and the mystics knew this secret. They did not pray for safety. They assumed the consciousness of the safe one. They did not beg for provision. They claimed their awareness of being to be the Lord of hosts, and in that claim the hosts arranged themselves to serve them. You are called to the same realization. Your awareness of being is the creative power. Whatever you unite with this awareness in feeling must come to pass. Unite security with your awareness of being and security must appear. There is no other way, for there is no other creative power.

Many of you have tried to purchase security with effort and with fear. You have labored long hours, you have saved anxiously, you have insured yourselves against every imaginable loss, yet the feeling of insecurity remains. The reason is simple. You have not changed your state. You have changed the arrangement of effects while remaining in the same room of consciousness. The room itself must be changed. You must rise to that level of consciousness where security is not something you seek but something you are. From that level the old efforts are seen as unnecessary, for you have discovered that the source of security is not in the world but in the state you assume.

Do not ask how your security will be maintained. The how is not your concern. The how is the way of consciousness, and consciousness has ways that you as man know not of. Your only responsibility is to assume the state and to persist in the assumption until it becomes natural. When the feeling of security is natural to you, when you no longer have to make an effort to feel it because you are it, then the signs will follow. The appropriate position will appear, the necessary funds will be provided, the threatening condition will dissolve, not because you forced these things into being, but because they are the inevitable fruit of the tree you planted in consciousness.

There is a Sabbath in this principle. The Sabbath is the inner rest that comes when you have assumed the state and no longer labor to make it so. You have done the work. You have risen in consciousness. You have accepted the assumption as true. Now you rest. You go about your daily affairs in the quiet knowledge that the thing is done. You do not anxiously watch the outer signs. You do not argue with appearances. You rest in the assumption, and in that rest the creative power, which is your own awareness, brings forth the manifestation in its own way and in its own time. This is the true rest, the rest that is not idleness but the confident activity of one who knows the work is finished in consciousness.

You may say that your circumstances are too threatening, that the evidence of insecurity is too great to be denied. Yet this is the very moment to assume the opposite state. The threatening circumstances are the out-picturing of your former assumption of insecurity. They have no power to hold you in that state once you have assumed another. The giant of insecurity looms large only because you first saw yourself as small in your own sight. When you see yourself as secure, the giant shrinks. It loses its power to frighten you because you have moved to a level of consciousness where such threats cannot exist. You do not fight the giant. You simply assume the consciousness of the one who knows no giants, only the infinite provision of your own awareness.

The assumption of security transforms your entire sense of self. You cease to see yourself as a victim of conditions, a creature forever at the mercy of forces beyond your control. You see yourself as the center from which conditions proceed. You are the potter. The clay of the world takes the shape of your assumption. What a majestic realization this is! The security you have sought everywhere else is here, within you, as a state you can assume at any moment of the day or night. You do not become secure by acquiring more things. You become secure by assuming the consciousness of security, and the things follow as naturally as the shadow follows the form.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, do not take the problems and fears of the day into your rest. Take instead the assumption of security. Feel it. Dwell in it. Let the last feeling before sleep be the quiet conviction that you are perfectly safe, perfectly provided for, perfectly established in the good. Fall asleep in this feeling. Sleep is the door through which the assumption sinks into the deeper levels of your being and there clothes itself in form. When you wake, carry the feeling with you. Do not argue with the appearances of the new day. Do not try to make the world secure by anxious effort. Remain faithful to the state you have assumed, and the world will conform to it.

As you persist in this practice you will discover that the very conditions which once caused anxiety lose their power over you. Not because they have changed in themselves, but because you have changed. You have moved to a new level of consciousness, and from that level the old threats are seen in their true light as shadows cast by a former state. New conditions appear, new provisions are made, new assurances are given, not as accidents or as rewards for effort, but as the natural expression of the state you now occupy. The world is forever conforming itself to your assumption. There is no other law.

Security, when assumed, is not a passive feeling of safety from harm. It is an active, creative state. It is the consciousness that the infinite is forever expressing itself as you, and therefore all that the infinite is, you are. Order, harmony, abundance, peace—these are not things you acquire from the world. They are qualities inherent in the state of security. When you assume security you assume these qualities, and they flow outward into your world as naturally as fragrance flows from the rose. You do not need to know the channels through which provision will come. The consciousness of security is itself the source and the channel. It draws to itself everything necessary for its own expression. This is law, impersonal and changeless. It gives to every man exactly what he assumes himself to be.

Therefore begin this night to assume the state of security. Do not wait for circumstances to improve. Do not wait for some outer guarantee. The guarantee follows the assumption. Assume security now. Feel it now. Let it become the dominant mood of your consciousness. Walk in the feeling that you are the one who is secure. Speak from that feeling. Act from that feeling. And as you do, you will discover that you have always been secure, for security was never in the possessions or the positions or the protections of the world. Security was always in the state you were willing to assume. You are secure because you have assumed the consciousness of security. In that assumption the world is made new, and you walk as one who has found his home in the eternal.

You do not earn this security by merit. You do not achieve it by struggle. You simply assume it as the natural expression of your true self. The awareness of being which is God in you knows no insecurity. When you unite yourself in feeling with this awareness you partake of its nature. You become conscious of being secure because you have become conscious of being one with the source of all security. This is not blasphemy. This is the truth that sets men free. The son is forever one with the father. The conception is forever one with the conceiver. When you assume the state of security you are simply claiming your oneness with the creative power that is your own awareness of being.

Persist in this assumption even when the senses deny it. The denial of the senses is the old state trying to reassert itself. It has no power over the new assumption except the power you give it by your attention. Withdraw your attention from the denial. Return to the feeling of security. Feel it again and again until it becomes the dominant state. Then the denial fades of itself, for there is nothing in the new consciousness to support it. You have died to the old state and have risen in consciousness to the new. This is the true resurrection. It is not a future event. It is the present rising from the consciousness of insecurity to the consciousness of security.

The assumption of security does not isolate you from life. It unites you with life on a higher level. You still move among men and conditions, but you move as one who knows that all things are working together for good. You are not anxious about tomorrow because you have assumed the consciousness of the one for whom tomorrow is already provided. You are not fearful of loss because you have assumed the consciousness of the one who cannot lose what is truly his. You walk through the world with a quiet dignity, not because you have acquired power over others, but because you have discovered the source of all true power within yourself.

This is the assumption of security. This is the secret that delivers man from the tyranny of conditions. This is the truth that, when lived, transforms the wilderness of fear into the garden of peace. You are secure, not because the world has promised it, but because you have assumed the consciousness of security and have found it to be the only reality. In this assumption you have found your home. In this assumption you have found your rest. In this assumption you have found that which the world can neither give nor take away. You are secure because you have assumed the consciousness of security, and in that assumption all things are made new.