#195: The Power of Mental Residency

The Power of Mental Residency

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You may think your life is fixed by the place you occupy in this outer world, by the walls that surround you, by the conditions that press upon you from every side. But I tell you the true place you occupy is not made of brick or stone or any outward circumstance. The true place you occupy is a state of consciousness, a mental residence in which your awareness lives and moves and has its being. Just as a man who dwells in one house experiences one kind of life and a man who dwells in another house experiences a different kind of life, so you, by the state in which your consciousness resides, experience the particular world that belongs to that state. The state is your home. Everything you see, everything you meet, everything that comes to you is the natural furnishing of the mental house in which you live.

You are always living somewhere mentally. There is never a moment when you are without a residence in consciousness. If your days are filled with strain and your nights with anxiety, it is because you are dwelling in a state whose very atmosphere is strain and anxiety. If you find yourself surrounded by limitation, by the constant sense that there is not enough, it is because that is the state you have made your home. The state does not come to you from without. You go to the state by the feeling you entertain, and once you have entered it and remained there, the world rearranges itself to match the feeling of the house you have chosen.

This is not a matter of changing your physical location or forcing outer conditions to improve while you still live in the old feeling. The outer conditions are never the cause. They are the faithful reflection of the state you occupy. You cannot rearrange the furniture of your life while remaining in the same mental residence and expect a different experience. The house determines the life lived within it. Change the house, move to a new state, and the life lived within it changes of itself. This is the law, and it is changeless.

What is a state? It is a level of consciousness, a particular feeling about yourself and about the world, a settled assumption from which you view all things. When you reside in a state of lack, lack is not something that happens to you; it is the natural air you breathe. Every thought you think, every reaction you have, every expectation you hold is colored by the state. When you reside in a state of freedom and security, the same events that once frightened you now appear as opportunities, because you meet them from a different house. The event has not changed; the state from which you regard it has changed, and therefore the meaning and the outcome change.

You cannot serve two states at once. You cannot keep one foot in the old residence and the other in the new and expect to enjoy the advantages of the new. To move is to leave the old completely. You leave it by withdrawing your attention from the feelings and assumptions that belong to it. You do not fight those feelings. You do not argue with them. You simply turn away from them and fix your attention in the feeling of the new state. The moment your feeling is established in the new, you have moved. The old residence may still stand, but you are no longer living there.

How do you enter the new state? You enter it by assuming the feeling of already living there. You do not hope to live there one day. You do not long for it as something far off. You feel yourself to be at home in it now. You feel the naturalness of it. You feel the ease, the relief, the quiet satisfaction that belongs to one who has found his rightful place. This feeling is the key. Words without feeling are empty. Feeling without words is sufficient. When the feeling of the new state becomes natural to you, when you no longer have to make an effort to maintain it, you have taken up residence there, and the world begins to reflect the change.

You may ask how long it takes for the outer world to conform. I tell you the outer world conforms as quickly as you are willing to live in the new state without wavering. The moment you waver, the moment you return in feeling to the old residence, you delay the manifestation. But when you persist in the new feeling, when you refuse to be drawn back by appearances that still speak of the old state, the bridge of incidents appears. Means are provided. Conditions change. Not because you have forced them, but because you have changed the cause of which they are the effect. The signs follow the state; they do not precede it.

In the ancient records it is written that in the Father’s house there are many mansions. These mansions are not distant places prepared for some future time. They are the infinite states of consciousness in which you may dwell here and now. There is a mansion of health and a mansion of illness. There is a mansion of abundance and a mansion of restriction. There is a mansion of love fulfilled and a mansion of loneliness. Consciousness itself is the Father’s house, and you are free to choose which mansion you will make your own. The choice is not made by wishing or by petition. It is made by feeling yourself to be the occupant of the chosen state and by remaining there until it becomes your permanent home.

When you have moved mentally, you will discover that your reactions to life have changed. The same person who once irritated you now leaves you unmoved, because you no longer live in the state that made irritation natural. The same financial pressure that once caused panic now appears as a problem already solved, because you meet it from a state in which solutions are natural. You do not pretend that the pressure does not exist. You simply see it from the new residence, and therefore you see its true proportion and its inevitable dissolution. This change of reaction is the certain sign that you have truly moved.

The old state will call to you. It will present its familiar feelings, its familiar arguments, its familiar evidence. These calls are not to be feared. They are simply the voice of the house you have left, and they lose their power the moment you refuse to answer them with your attention. You do not resist them. You do not fight them. You simply remain where you now live. You return to the feeling of the new state. You feel again the naturalness of your new home. Each time you do this, the old state grows weaker in its hold upon you, and the new state grows stronger until it is the only place that feels real.

This is the power of mental residency. It is not a power you must go out and acquire. It is a power you are already exercising every moment of your life. The only difference between the one who seems bound by circumstances and the one who moves freely through life is the difference in the states they have chosen to occupy. Both are exercising the same power. One exercises it unconsciously by remaining in a state that produces bondage. The other exercises it consciously by moving to a state that produces freedom. The power itself is the same. The choice of residence makes the difference.

You who feel stuck in any area of your life are not stuck by any outer force. You are stuck because you have been living in a state whose nature is to produce the experience of being stuck. The moment you move to a state whose nature is movement and fulfillment, the stuckness loses its reality. It was never a thing in itself. It was only the reflection of the state you occupied. When the state is changed, the reflection must change. There is no other way.

Tonight, before you surrender to sleep, examine the state in which you have been living. See it clearly. Feel its quality. Then deliberately choose a better state, a higher mansion, a more glorious residence. Do not argue with the old. Do not try to improve the old while still living in it. Simply turn your attention to the new and feel yourself to be already living there. Feel the relief of having moved. Feel the quiet joy of being at home in a state that corresponds to your desire. Let that feeling fill your mind. Let it become the dominant feeling as you enter sleep. In that feeling you have sealed your new residence. You have told consciousness where you now live.

When you wake in the morning, wake in the new state. Carry it with you into the day. When the old feelings arise, and they will arise, do not be disturbed. They are only the echo of the house you have left. Gently return to the feeling of the new state. Feel again that you live there. Do this as often as necessary, and you will find that the new state becomes easier to maintain until it becomes your natural home. Then the old is no longer a temptation, for you have outgrown it.

You are not required to understand how the outer world will conform to your new residence. That is not your concern. Your concern is only to live in the new state until it feels natural. The how is the business of consciousness itself, and consciousness has ways you, as man, know not of. When you have truly assumed the state and persisted in it, the means appear, the incidents arrange themselves, the conditions change, all without your conscious planning. This is the effortless way. This is the way that requires no struggle against the old, only the quiet occupation of the new.

The more you practice this, the more you will realize that you have always had this power. You have always been free to choose your mental residence. The limitations you have known were not imposed upon you by any external authority. They were the natural consequences of the states you chose to occupy, often without knowing you were choosing. Now that you know, you can choose differently. You can choose consciously. You can choose a state that blesses you instead of a state that limits you. And in that choice you exercise the creative power that is your true nature.

Consciousness is the only reality. The states within consciousness are the many mansions. You are the awareness that can move from mansion to mansion at will. There is no power that can prevent your move except the power of your own attention fixed upon the old. Withdraw that attention. Place it in the new. Feel the new until it is natural. And the move is accomplished. The world you see will then be the world of your chosen residence, furnished according to your feeling, and peopled by the expressions of the state you have made your home.

This night you can move. You do not need permission from any outer condition. You do not need to wait until circumstances improve. You move now, in consciousness, by the simple act of feeling yourself to be living in the state you desire. That feeling is the occupancy. That feeling is the deed of residence. That feeling, persisted in, is the establishment of your new and permanent home. And from that home all things will come to you in their appointed time, not as strangers, but as the natural furnishings of the state in which you now dwell.

You are free. You have always been free. The only bondage was the ignorance of your freedom to choose your mental residence. Now that ignorance is removed. You know where you live mentally, and you know you can live elsewhere if you will. Exercise that freedom tonight. Choose your mansion. Feel yourself at home in it. And let the power of consciousness, which is your own awareness of being, bring forth the world that belongs to the state you have chosen. This is the power of mental residency. Use it, and prove its truth in the transformation of your own experience.