#63: Define Your Aim

Define Your Aim

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You drift because you have not yet defined your aim. You feel the restlessness, the sense that life moves without clear direction, that circumstances repeat themselves in patterns you did not consciously choose. This is not fate. This is the absence of a definite aim. The moment you clearly name the person you have chosen to be, everything begins to rearrange itself around that single, sovereign decision.

Man is forever decreeing that which appears in his world, yet most never pause to declare with clarity the being they intend to embody. You do not command things into existence by scattered wishes or vague hopes. You command by becoming conscious of being the very thing desired. The first and most essential step is to define your aim — to name, with absolute precision, the person you have chosen to be.

Look at your life as it now appears. Whatever you are experiencing is the outpicturing of the person you have been conscious of being. If you are dissatisfied, the remedy is not to struggle against the outer picture but to withdraw your attention from it entirely and turn inward to name a new person. Clearly name him. Give him definite characteristics. See him not as a distant ideal but as your own present reality. This naming is not a light exercise of the intellect. It is the most sacred act in the universe of consciousness, for consciousness is God, and the person you name is the son bearing witness of the father.

When you clearly name the person you have chosen to be, you have performed the supreme act of identification. Sin, in its deepest meaning, is simply missing the mark — failing to achieve one’s aim. To forgive yourself for every apparent failure is to identify yourself with the aim instead of with the missing. The moment you name the person you intend to be and feel yourself to be that person now, you have forgiven the past entirely. The old man with all his limitations is put off. The new man, created in the image of your clear aim, is put on.

Most people never reach this point because they have never truly defined their aim. They entertain many desires, yet they have not selected one central state and named themselves as that state. They speak of wanting health or wealth or harmony, but they have not named the person who is already healthy, already wealthy, already harmonious. Until you name that person and claim “I am he,” you remain in the wilderness of drifting.

The power lies in the clear naming. When you say within yourself, with full acceptance, “I am that person,” you have entered the state. You do not pray to become it. You do not hope to become it. You name it and you are it. Consciousness is the only reality. Whatever you are conscious of being is the person you are expressing. Therefore, define your aim with such clarity that there is no room for doubt in your own mind. Name the person. Feel the qualities of that person as your own natural qualities. Rest in the quiet certainty that this is now your true identity.

You may ask how this naming changes the outer world. It changes nothing by force. It changes everything by identity. The world is a mirror of the consciousness you accept as true. When you clearly name the person you have chosen to be and remain faithful to that naming in your inner world, the outer world must conform. It has no choice. It is compelled to reflect the state with which you have identified yourself. This is not a theory to be debated. It is a fact to be lived.

Tonight, take a definite aim. Do not be vague. Do not say, “I want things to improve.” Name the person. If your aim is freedom from financial limitation, name the person who moves through life with ease and abundance, who knows no lack. Feel the naturalness of that person’s walk, the confidence in his bearing, the quiet joy of his daily experience. Claim it as your own. Say within yourself, “I am that person now.” Let no argument of the senses persuade you otherwise. The senses report yesterday’s consciousness. You are naming today’s — and tomorrow’s will obey.

The secret of this practice is the clear, unwavering naming. Many attempt to change their lives while still identifying with the old person. They speak of their problems, they rehearse their limitations, they carry the memory of past failures. But the person you have chosen to be has no such memory. He is free. He is already the fulfillment of the aim. When you clearly name him and occupy his state, the old self dissolves because you have withdrawn your consciousness from it.

You are always identifying with something. The question is whether you will identify with a vaguely felt desire or with a clearly named person. The first leads to drifting. The second leads to mastery. When you have clearly named the person you have chosen to be, your inner speech begins to change of its own accord. You no longer converse with yourself from the standpoint of lack or struggle. You converse from the standpoint of fulfillment. Your inner conversations become the natural conversations of the person you have named. And because inner speech is the cause of future action, your outer world rearranges itself to match the new inner speech.

This is the true meaning of thinking from the end. The end is the person you have clearly named. You do not think about him. You think from him. You view the world from his consciousness. You look out upon your circumstances as that person would look upon them. In this way the end is not a future event. It is your present identity. The future becomes the present the moment you clearly name the person and occupy his state.

Do not concern yourself with how the outer change will come. That is not your responsibility. Your responsibility is the clear naming and the faithful identification. When you have named the person you have chosen to be and feel yourself to be that person, the bridge of incidents will form of itself. The necessary conditions, the right people, the perfect opportunities will appear because consciousness is always objectifying itself. You do not have to coerce the world. You simply have to be the person you have named.

Many fail because they name the person once and then return to their former identification. They visit the state but do not dwell in it. Yet the secret is habitual occupancy. The person you clearly name must become your constant consciousness. You return to that naming again and again until it feels natural, until it feels like the only truth about you. In the beginning it may seem like an effort. But as you persist in the clear naming, the effort disappears and the naturalness appears. Then the outer world cannot help but reflect the new identity.

You are the operant power. Nothing outside of you has the power to define you unless you give it that power by your identification. When you clearly name the person you have chosen to be, you withdraw all power from the old limitations. You have declared your aim, and that declaration is creative. It is the word that goes forth and does not return void. It accomplishes that for which it was sent — the embodiment of the person you have named.

Feel the majesty of this truth. You are not a victim of circumstance. You are the one who names the circumstance by naming the person who experiences it. The world is plastic to your clear aim. It is molded by the consciousness you accept as true. Therefore, define your aim tonight with absolute clarity. Name the person. Do not be timid in your naming. Do not hold back. Claim the highest, the noblest, the most fulfilled person you can imagine, and know that in the act of clear naming and faithful identification, that person is now you.

In the silence of your own being, stand in the presence of the one you have named. Feel his thoughts as your thoughts. Feel his emotions as your emotions. Feel his certainty as your certainty. This is not make-believe. This is the most real act you can ever perform, for imagination is the very life of God in man. When you clearly name the person and embody his state, you are exercising the divine power that creates all things.

Let no one tell you that this is difficult. It is the simplest thing in the world once you accept it. The difficulty lies only in the old habit of identifying with the former person. Break that habit by the clear, repeated naming of the new. Each time you return to the naming, you deepen the identification. Each time you feel yourself to be that person, you impress the state more deeply upon consciousness. And consciousness, being the only reality, must externalize the impression.

You have come here tonight seeking a way out of limitation. The way is before you. It is not in changing others. It is not in struggling with conditions. It is in clearly naming the person you have chosen to be and living in that name. Do this tonight. Before you close your eyes in sleep, define your aim with precision. Name the person. Assume the feeling of that person. Fall asleep in that assumption. Let that be the last conscious act of your day and the first of your morning. In this way the new person becomes your natural identity.

The world will try to persuade you otherwise. It will show you the old picture and ask you to accept it as real. Do not argue with it. Simply return to the clear naming. “I am that person now.” Let that be your answer to every appearance. In time, the appearances will change because they have no life except the life you give them by your consciousness. When you withdraw consciousness from the old person and give it wholly to the new, the old must dissolve and the new must appear.

This is the law. This is the promise. You are forever becoming what you are conscious of being. Therefore, be conscious of being the person you have clearly named. Let there be no vagueness in your aim. Let there be no hesitation in your identification. The person you have chosen to be is waiting only for your acceptance. Name him tonight. Claim him tonight. Live as him tonight. And you will discover, as you have always been meant to discover, that the world is yourself pushed out.

You are not the product of your circumstances. Your circumstances are the product of the person you have been conscious of being. Change the person by clearly naming the one you choose to be, and the circumstances must change in exact correspondence. This is not hope. This is not belief in a future event. This is present fact in the only place fact can ever exist — in consciousness.

Go now into the silence of your own being and define your aim. Name the person you have chosen to be. Feel the quiet power of that naming. Rest in it. Abide in it. Let it become the very foundation of your awareness. In this clear naming and faithful identification lies the secret of all transformation. There is no other way. There never has been. There never will be.

The person you have named is already complete. He lacks nothing. He is already the fulfillment of every desire that prompted the naming. When you clearly name him and become one with him in consciousness, you have done the one thing necessary. All else follows as surely as day follows night. Your world will rearrange itself. Your relationships will reflect the new identity. Your body, your environment, your entire experience will become the natural outpicturing of the person you have chosen to be.

This is the glory of man — that he can name himself anew and become what he names. This is the freedom that no outer condition can take away. This is the power that lies within you at this very moment. Use it tonight. Define your aim. Clearly name the person you have chosen to be. And know, with unshakable certainty, that in that naming and in that identification, the new life is already born.

You are that person now. You have always been the operant power. Tonight you have remembered. Tonight you have claimed. Tonight you have become. And because you have clearly named the person you have chosen to be, the world you walk in tomorrow will be the world of that person — abundant, free, harmonious, and filled with the living evidence of your clear aim.

Rest in this truth. Abide in this naming. It is done. The aim is defined. The person is named. And you are he.