#192: The Inner Position

The Inner Position

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You are always occupying an inner position in relation to life. This position is not marked by any outward sign. It is the stance your consciousness takes toward all that appears. From this position you behold your circumstances, you feel your relation to them, and you unknowingly determine what those circumstances shall be. The world you experience is always the world seen from the position you now hold within yourself. Change that position and the world you experience must change with it, for the outer is forever faithful to the inner stance.

Most men believe their experience is caused by conditions outside themselves. They look upon lack, upon limitation, upon the resistance of others, and they conclude that these things are the authors of their distress. So they set about to change the conditions. They strive, they plan, they labor, they plead, all the while remaining in the same inner position from which the unwanted conditions first appeared. And because the position remains unchanged, their efforts only deepen the impression of that position. The world continues to reflect back to them the very stance they have taken. They do not see that the position itself is the cause, and that no amount of effort expended from a false position can ever produce a true result.

The position you occupy is your feeling of what you are in relation to life. It is the silent assumption you make about yourself before you ever speak a word or lift a hand. If you occupy the position of one who is separate from his good, separation is what you experience. If you occupy the position of one who is already in possession, possession becomes natural and inevitable. The position is not a thought about the thing; it is the living feeling of yourself in relation to the thing. It is the “I am” as it stands before the desire or before the problem. From that standing place all seeing proceeds, and all experience follows.

You cannot occupy the position of lack and know abundance. You cannot remain in the position of illness and express health. You cannot stand in the place of one who is opposed by life and expect life to befriend you. The position determines the view, and the view determines the experience. This is why men labor for years in the same conditions and find no lasting change. They have never moved from the inner place where those conditions are seen as real and inevitable. They have never risen to the position from which the desired is already so.

To change your experience you must change your position. There is no other way. The movement is not outer; it is inner. It is the simple act of rising in consciousness from one feeling of “I am” to another. You leave the old stance and assume the new. You cease to feel yourself in the old relation to life and you begin to feel yourself in the new. This rising is done in secret. No one sees it. Yet when it is done, the whole world begins to rearrange itself around the new position. What seemed fixed and unyielding from below becomes pliant and cooperative from above.

Consider what it means to occupy a position. When you stand upon a high hill, the valley looks small and the obstacles that seemed so large when you walked among them are now seen in their proper proportion. You did not remove the obstacles by fighting them in the valley. You rose above them. The same is true of your inner position. From the position of one who lacks, every need appears as a mountain. From the position of one who possesses, the need is already met and the mountain is no longer seen as an obstacle but as part of the landscape that has already been traversed. The change is not in the landscape; it is in the place from which the landscape is viewed.

Your present position is revealed by your reactions to life. If you react with fear, with resentment, with a sense of helplessness, you are occupying a position in which these feelings are natural. If you react with quiet certainty, with a sense of already being the one you desire to be, you have moved to a new position. The reaction is not the cause of the position; it is the sure sign of the position already occupied. Change the position and the reactions change of themselves. You do not fight the old reactions. You simply cease to stand where they are natural and you stand instead where only the new reactions are natural.

The world is not moved by your outer efforts while you remain in the old position. The world is transformed when you occupy the position from which the transformation is already accomplished. This is the meaning of the words, “Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” To be born again is to leave the old position, the old feeling of “I am,” and to assume the new. It is to die to the conception of yourself that keeps you in bondage and to live to the conception that sets you free. This birth is not of the flesh. It is of consciousness. It is the inner rising that every man must accomplish for himself.

When you occupy a new position, you do not see the same world you saw before. The same people, the same events, the same facts are there, yet they appear differently because you are no longer looking at them from the old place. What was an enemy is now seen as one who is playing a part in the fulfillment of your desire. What was a closed door is now seen as the very means by which the desire will come. What was lack is now seen as the evidence that abundance is already on its way. The facts have not changed; your position has changed, and therefore the meaning of the facts has changed.

You are free to choose the position you will occupy. No man is bound to any position forever. The power that moves you from one position to another is your own awareness of being. You can, at any moment, assume the feeling of the position you desire. You can feel yourself to be the one who is already in the state you long for. You can make that feeling so natural that it becomes your resting place, the place to which you return again and again until it is established as your permanent position. Once it is established, the world must conform, for the world is only the shadow cast by the position occupied.

Do not concern yourself with the means by which the change will appear. From the old position the means seem impossible. From the new position the means are already contained within the position itself. Consciousness, from the new stance, knows its own way. It draws to itself the events, the people, the circumstances that correspond to the position held. Your work is not to make the thing happen. Your work is to occupy the position from which the thing is already so. When the position is truly occupied, the thing is compelled to appear.

Tonight, before you sleep, you can examine the position you have been occupying. You can see clearly the feeling of “I am” that has governed your days. Then, deliberately, you can rise to a new position. You can assume the feeling of already being the one you wish to be. You can feel the naturalness of it. You can rest in it. As you fall asleep in this new position, you seal it upon your consciousness. And when you wake, you wake in the new position. The day that follows will bear witness to the position you have chosen to occupy.

The old position will tempt you to return. Old reactions will rise and try to pull you back. But you are not compelled to obey them. You can remain in the new position. You can refuse to see life from the old place. Every time the old feeling presents itself, you can quietly assume the new feeling again. In this way the new position becomes established, and the old one fades away for lack of attention. What you do not feed with your consciousness dies of itself.

This inner movement is the only true action. All outer action that proceeds from an unchanged position is but the shadow of action, empty of power to transform. But the inner rising, the simple assumption of a new stance, is creative. It is the act that God performs when He speaks the word. It is the act that every man performs, consciously or unconsciously, every moment of his life. Now you perform it consciously. You choose the position. You occupy it. You remain there until it becomes your nature.

The position you occupy is your faith made visible. Faith is not a belief in something outside yourself. Faith is the substance of the position you hold within. When you occupy the position of the fulfilled, faith is already there. When you occupy the position of the free, freedom is already your experience. You do not need more faith. You need only to move to the position where the thing desired is natural, and faith appears of itself.

You cannot serve two positions. You cannot hold to the old feeling of lack and at the same time expect the new feeling of abundance to govern your world. You must choose. You must decide which position you will make your home. And when the choice is made, you must be faithful to it. Faithfulness to the new position is the bridge that carries you from the old experience to the new. It is the quiet persistence in feeling yourself to be what you desire to be, regardless of the evidence of the senses.

The senses will always report from the old position until the new position is firmly established. This is why men grow discouraged. They look at the outer evidence while still standing in the old place, and they conclude that nothing has changed. But the outer evidence is slow to change because it is the last to reflect the inner movement. The position changes first. Then the meaning of the evidence changes. Then the evidence itself changes. Do not judge by the evidence while you are still in the process of moving. Judge only by the position you have assumed, and remain faithful to it.

When the new position is truly occupied, you will feel a great stillness within. The struggle ceases. The anxiety falls away. You no longer feel that you must make something happen. You feel that it is already happening, or rather that it has already happened in the only place that matters—in consciousness. From this stillness the outer changes proceed naturally, without effort, without strain. The world begins to cooperate with you because you are no longer opposing it from a false position. You are moving with it from the position of one who is already at one with his desire.

This is the secret of all transformation. This is the inner act that the world calls a miracle when it sees the outer result. But you know it is not a miracle. It is the natural consequence of a changed position. It is the world obeying its own law—the law that the outer must always conform to the inner stance. You have used this law unconsciously all your life. Now you use it consciously. You choose the position. You occupy it with feeling. You remain there. And the world reshapes itself around you.

You are not asked to believe in something you do not understand. You are asked only to assume a new position in consciousness and to observe what happens. The experiment is simple. The result is certain. For consciousness is the only reality, and the position you occupy in consciousness is the only determinant of your experience. Change the position and you change your world. This is the truth that sets men free.

Tonight you can begin. You can leave the old position where you have stood so long. You can rise to the position where your desire is already fulfilled. You can feel the quiet joy of one who has already received. You can fall asleep in this feeling. And when you wake, you will wake in a new world, for you will wake in a new position. The old things will pass away, not because you have fought them, but because you no longer stand where they can be seen. The new things will appear, not because you have forced them, but because you now stand where they are natural and inevitable.

This is the inner position. This is the place from which all true change proceeds. Occupy it, and you will discover that you are not the slave of circumstance but the master of it. You are the one who stands within, and from your standing place the world is forever made new.