#189: The State of Being Received

The State of Being Received

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have known the feeling of not being received. You have entered rooms, met persons, presented yourself or your work, and waited, sometimes with a quiet anxiety, for the sign that you were welcome. You watched faces, listened for tones, measured silences, all the while wondering whether you belonged in that place or with that person or in that circumstance. And sometimes the sign came and sometimes it did not, and your experience was colored by the presence or absence of that sign. This is the common condition of man when he has not yet discovered the state of being received. He waits upon the world to receive him, and the world, being only the mirror of his own consciousness, waits upon him to assume the state in which reception is natural.

There is a state, definite and fixed, in which you are received. It is not a state you earn by effort or win by charm or secure by favorable circumstances. It is a state you assume in consciousness. You feel yourself received. You feel the welcome as already accomplished. You feel your presence desired and your being accepted without condition and without proof. This feeling, when it becomes your dwelling place, changes every encounter, every situation, every relationship in your world. The change is not first in the outer scene. The change is first in you, and the scene, having no power to resist the state of its creator, conforms.

The state of being received is the feeling that you belong where you are, that you are expected even when no one knew you were coming, that your arrival completes rather than interrupts the scene. It is a feeling of ease, of quiet certainty, of relaxation in the very center of your being. Shoulders that were tense relax. Breath that was held flows freely. The subtle watchfulness that says “Am I acceptable?” ceases, and in its place comes the naturalness of one who knows he is already accepted. This is not pretense. It is not imagination in the idle sense. It is the assumption of a state, and assumption is the act that creates.

When you assume the state of being received you do not wait for evidence. You do not look to the faces of others to tell you whether you are welcome. You have already told yourself in feeling, and feeling is the secret. The outer world may for a time continue to reflect the old state, the state in which you doubted your reception. This is not failure. This is the interval in which the old state is fading and the new state is taking form. You do not argue with the interval. You do not try to force the evidence to change. You simply persist in the feeling of being received, and the interval closes because the law is faithful.

In every area of your life this state operates with the same precision. In what you call your personal relationships you no longer approach another with the hidden question of whether you will be received. You assume you are received, and the relationship, whatever its present appearance, begins to unfold from that assumption. The barriers you once erected by your anxiety dissolve. The other, being yourself pushed out, responds to the state you have assumed. You have not changed the other by persuasion or by demand. You have changed yourself, and the other, having no choice but to reflect the change, receives you.

In your business or your work the same law holds. You present your offering, your proposal, your service, not as one who hopes to be accepted but as one whose offering is already received. The anxiety that once accompanied every presentation gives way to the quiet certainty that what you bring is welcome. This certainty does not argue. It does not explain. It simply is. And because it is, the outer response conforms. Contracts are completed, doors open, opportunities appear, not because you forced them but because you assumed the state in which such completions are natural.

The state of being received transforms your entire sense of yourself. The self that once sought reception, that once measured its worth by the welcome it received or failed to receive, is left behind. In its place stands the self that knows it is received. This is not a boastful self. It is a quiet self, a natural self, a self that needs no proof because it rests in the assumption already made. To this self the world can only give what it has first given itself in consciousness. Rejection, when it appears, is seen as the echo of a former state, not as a fact of the present. You do not dwell upon it. You return at once to the feeling of reception, and the echo fades.

You may wonder how to enter this state when the senses report the opposite. The answer is simple. You enter it by feeling. You do not deny the evidence of the senses in argument. You simply ignore it in feeling. You close your eyes to what seems to be and you feel what you desire to be. You feel the warmth of welcome. You feel the ease of belonging. You feel the certainty that your presence is desired. This feeling may at first seem strange, as though you were assuming something untrue. That strangeness is only the measure of how far you have lived from the state. Persist, and the strangeness gives way to naturalness. The state becomes your home, and you wonder how you ever lived outside it.

The assumption of this state is the rising in consciousness of which the mystics speak. You rise from the state of one who must be received to the state of one who is received. In this rising you leave behind every argument for rejection. You leave behind the memory of past slights, the fear of future coldness, the habit of watching for signs. You stand in the simple feeling that you are received now, and this now is the only time there is. The past and the future lose their power because you have assumed the state that transcends both.

When you live in this state you discover that reception is not something that happens to you. It is something you are. The world does not decide whether to receive you. The world reflects whether you have received yourself in the state of reception. This is why two persons can enter the same room and have opposite experiences. One assumes he is received and is received. The other assumes he must earn reception and spends his time earning what was already his to assume. The difference is not in the room. The difference is in the state.

Persist in the assumption and you will find the world becoming more and more a world of open doors. Not because you have forced the doors but because you have assumed the state in which doors are open. Conversations that once required effort now flow. Silences that once felt awkward now feel companionable. Introductions that once made you anxious now feel natural. All this is the out-picturing of the state. You have not learned new techniques of social grace. You have assumed a state, and the state has taught you everything by making everything natural.

The state of being received is closely allied to the state of rest. When you assume you are received you rest from the labor of trying to be received. You rest from watching, from calculating, from adjusting yourself to win favor. This rest is the sabbath of consciousness. You keep the sabbath by assuming the end, by feeling the welcome as already accomplished, and by refusing to labor in the interval. The world, which cannot resist a sustained assumption, hurries to close the interval and to make visible what you have made real in feeling.

There is no limit to the areas in which this state may be assumed. You may assume it in the presence of strangers and find yourself received as though you were known. You may assume it in the presence of those who have formerly seemed distant and find the distance melting. You may assume it in circumstances that once filled you with dread and find the dread replaced by ease. The assumption does not depend upon the nature of the circumstance. It depends only upon your willingness to feel yourself received in spite of the circumstance.

The feeling of being received carries with it a quiet gratitude. Not the gratitude that says “Thank you for receiving me,” but the gratitude that says “Thank you that I am received.” This gratitude is not directed toward any person. It is the inner acknowledgment that the state is true, that the welcome is real, that the belonging is already accomplished. This gratitude deepens the state. It fills the mind with the sense of completion and leaves no room for the old anxiety to return.

When you have assumed this state and persisted in it, you will notice that you no longer explain yourself as much as you once did. You no longer feel the need to justify your presence or your offering. You are there. You are received. The explanation is unnecessary because the state itself explains everything by making everything natural. Others may ask you the secret of your ease, and you will have no answer in words, for the secret is not in words. It is in the state you have assumed and now embody.

The world you experience is always the world of your assumption. Change the assumption and you change the world. Assume the state of being received and the world must receive you. There is no other law. There is no other way. The evidence of the senses may delay, but it cannot deny. Delay is only the time required for the old state to lose its grip and the new state to take its place. You do not shorten the delay by anxiety. You shorten it by persistence in the feeling of reception.

Tonight you can begin. As you prepare for sleep, assume the state in which you are received in every area of your life. Feel yourself welcomed in your home, in your work, among your friends, in every place you will enter tomorrow. Do not construct scenes. Do not plan conversations. Simply feel the atmosphere of reception. Feel the ease, the belonging, the quiet certainty that you are desired and accepted wherever you go. Let this feeling be the last clear impression before sleep. Let it be the state in which you rest. In the morning you will rise in the same state, and the day will unfold from it as naturally as a flower unfolds from its bud.

As you persist day after day in this assumption, the state will become more and more your permanent dwelling place. The old habit of waiting to be received will fade. The old watchfulness will cease. You will move through your world as one who belongs, and the world will confirm your belonging at every turn. This confirmation is not the cause of your state. It is the effect. You assumed the state, and the confirmation followed. You will look back one day and marvel that you ever lived in the state of one who doubted his reception, for the state of being received will have become so natural that its opposite will seem like a strange dream from which you have awakened.

This is the great secret. You are not received because the world decides to receive you. You are received because you have assumed the state of being received, and the world, having no choice, reflects that state. Assume it now. Feel it now. Persist in it, and the reception you once sought will become the reception you simply are. The doors will open, the hearts will open, the way will open, not because you knocked, but because you assumed you were already inside. This is the state of being received, and it is yours the moment you feel it as true.