#69: The Imaginal Act

The Imaginal Act

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You sit here tonight perhaps heavy with the sense that nothing changes, that the same old walls hem you in, that the same disappointments repeat themselves like an echo you cannot silence. The world tells you to work harder, to plan longer, to push against the outer picture. Yet I tell you this: the outer picture is only the shadow. The reality is fashioned in the quiet workshop of your imagination, and the master key is one single, potent act—the imaginal act. Build one short scene that implies the fulfillment of your desire, and enter it until it feels natural. That is the entire secret. Nothing more is needed.

Man has always decreed that which appears in his world. He decrees it not with loud words or frantic effort but by becoming conscious of being the thing desired. The imaginal act is the living embodiment of that truth. You do not struggle to make something happen. You build one brief, vivid scene which, if it were taking place in the outer world right now, would mean your wish is already fulfilled. You see it, you hear it, you feel it, and you accept its reality so completely that the feeling of fulfillment becomes your natural state. In that moment you have moved from the consciousness of lack into the consciousness of possession, and the world must follow.

This is no idle daydream. Imagination is the very activity of God within you. When you construct that one short scene you are not hoping for a future event; you are occupying the state where the event is already an accomplished fact. The scene must be short—perhaps five or ten seconds of clear, sensory impression. It must imply the end result, never the process. You do not imagine the long road or the obstacles overcome. You go straight to the fulfillment itself. A friend smiles and congratulates you. You feel the warmth of an embrace that says the relationship is healed. You stand in the new home and run your hand along the wall, sensing its solidity. You hear the words that would be spoken only after the desire has flowered into fact. One scene, simple, natural, alive with the feeling of completion.

Enter that scene fully. Do not stand outside looking in. Step into it as the central actor. Make it so real that for those moments the outer room, the outer body, the outer troubles fade. Feel the joy, the relief, the gratitude that belong to the fulfilled state. Let the emotion rise naturally until the scene takes on the tones of reality. When it feels natural, when it feels like you, when you can rest in it without strain, the impress has been made upon the only creative power there is—your own consciousness. Consciousness is the only reality. Everything you see, everything you touch, everything you experience is the outpicturing of what you are conscious of being. By dwelling in the imaginal scene you have changed what you are conscious of being, and therefore you have changed what must appear.

You may wonder why one short scene is enough. Because creation is finished. All states already exist. Your task is not to create the thing but to select the state in which the thing is natural and to occupy that state through imagination. The imaginal act is the bridge. You build the scene that belongs to the desired state, you live in it, you become it, and the outer world rearranges itself with perfect precision to match your new dwelling place in consciousness. No force is required. No intermediary is necessary. The power moves of its own accord once the impress is made.

Tonight, before sleep, choose your desire—whatever it may be. It matters not how impossible it seems to the reasoning mind. The principle is the same. Construct one short scene that implies its fulfillment. Make it as concrete as an actual experience. See the faces, hear the voices, feel the emotions, touch the objects that belong to the fulfilled moment. Then enter it. Do not merely think about it. Be in it. Feel yourself there now. Let the feeling of the wish fulfilled flood you until the scene feels completely natural, until you can say within yourself, “This is so,” without the slightest effort. Fall asleep in that scene. Let it be the last impression upon your mind as you drift into the deep. In sleep the impress is driven deep into the subconscious, and the work is accomplished with no further labor on your part.

You need not repeat long visualizations. You need not struggle with belief. The imaginal act itself is the belief made alive. When you have entered the scene and felt its reality, you have believed. And according to your belief it is done unto you. The scene you build tonight is the word spoken in the beginning. “Let there be,” and there was. Your “let there be” is the vivid, felt reality of the short scene. The manifestation follows as surely as day follows night. You do not have to persuade yourself or coax the outer world. You simply remain faithful to the imaginal act.

Many will tell you that imagination is unreal, that only the solid outer facts matter. Yet the solid outer facts are the frozen imaginings of yesterday. What you are living now was once an imaginal scene in someone’s consciousness—perhaps your own. Change the scene and you change the facts. The world you see is plastic. It is forever molding itself to the pattern you hold in imagination. When you build one short scene implying fulfillment and dwell in it with feeling, you are remolding your world at its source.

Dwell upon this until it becomes your own conviction. The imaginal act is not a technique among many. It is the fundamental activity of life itself. Every moment you are imagining something. Most people imagine the continuation of their problems. They relive the old scenes of limitation and therefore recreate them. But you can stop. You can build a new scene, one short scene that implies the opposite—the desire fulfilled. And by becoming conscious of that new scene you withdraw your power from the old and give it to the new. The old must dissolve. The new must appear. There is no other law.

Let the scene become your secret place. Return to it often. Each time you enter it, it grows more natural, more alive, more saturated with the feeling of reality. You will notice a quiet certainty beginning to possess you. The outer senses may still shout the old story, but you will hear them as one who has already moved beyond them. You will walk through your day carrying the invisible knowledge that the thing is finished. That quiet knowledge is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not yet seen by mortal eyes. It is the imaginal act bearing fruit.

You are not at the mercy of conditions. Conditions are at the mercy of your imaginal act. When you build the one short scene that implies fulfillment, you have exercised the only true authority there is—the authority of consciousness. Everything else rearranges itself obediently around that authority. People appear who never would have appeared. Circumstances shift in ways you could not have planned. Doors open, obstacles dissolve, and the perfect unfolding takes place because you first fulfilled the desire in the only place it can ever be fulfilled—in imagination.

This is the pearl of great price. Not many find it because it seems too simple. They look for complexity, for effort, for some outer ritual. But the kingdom is within. The imaginal act is the door. Build one short scene implying fulfillment, enter it, feel it natural, and you have opened that door. The glory of God—your own wonderful human imagination—moves through that open door and clothes itself in the form of your desire.

Do not be impatient. The outer world is slow only because your inner acceptance is incomplete. Return to the scene. Make it more real. Let the feeling of fulfillment deepen until it becomes your normal mood. When the mood is natural, when you can carry it through the day without forcing it, the manifestation is near. You will awaken one morning and discover that the thing you imagined has become the thing you see. And you will know, beyond any doubt, that it was not chance. It was the imaginal act made visible.

You are the operant power. You have always been. The world is your imaginal creation, and it obeys you when you speak in the language of imagination. That language is the short scene lived in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Speak it tonight. Speak it with quiet power. Speak it with the dignity of one who knows he is creating. And then rest. Rest in the certainty that what you have imagined must come forth.

The imaginal act liberates you from the prison of the senses. It lifts you above the evidence of the outer world and sets you in the place where all things are possible. One short scene. One felt reality. That is all. Yet in that all is contained the fullness of life. Health, wealth, harmony, success, love—whatever the heart truly desires—becomes yours when you dare to build the scene that implies it is already yours and dare to live in that implication until it feels true.

Tonight the choice is yours. You can go to sleep in the old scene of limitation or you can build the new scene of fulfillment and fall asleep in its embrace. The night will do the rest. Imagination works while you rest. It never sleeps. It is forever creating according to the impress you give it. Give it the impress of fulfillment tonight. Give it one short, vivid, natural scene that implies your desire is already accomplished. Then sleep as one who has already received.

As you do this, a new identity will awaken within you. You will begin to feel yourself to be the author of your life rather than its victim. The world will grow more malleable in your sight. You will walk through it with the quiet majesty of one who knows the secret. And the secret is this: the imaginal act is the creative act. Build one short scene implying fulfillment, enter it, feel it real, and the world must conform.

This is the gospel of imagination. This is the good news that sets men free. You are not bound by the past. You are not limited by the present. You are the imaginal power of God clothed in flesh, and you can, this very night, reshape your tomorrow by reshaping your inner scene today. One short scene. One felt fulfillment. That is the bridge between the world that is and the world that ought to be.

Go home and do it. Do not discuss it. Do not argue about it. Simply build the scene in the privacy of your own consciousness. Live in it until it possesses you. And then, in the deep stillness of the night, let it sink into the very foundation of your being. When you rise tomorrow you will be carrying a new conviction, a silent knowledge that the thing is done. And step by step, in its own perfect way, the outer world will bear witness to the truth you first established in imagination.

You are the light of your world. You are the imaginer of your experience. By the imaginal act you have the power to say to any mountain of difficulty, “Be thou removed,” and it is removed. The mountain is only a state of consciousness. Change the state through one short scene lived in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and the mountain dissolves into the plain of fulfillment.

This is the truth that has been hidden since the foundation of the world. It is the truth that makes you free. Claim it tonight. Use it tonight. Live it tonight. Build one short scene that implies your desire is already fulfilled. Enter it with feeling. Sleep in its reality. And awaken to the glory of a world remade by your own divine imagination.

The imaginal act is your salvation. It is your creative birthright. It is the open door that no man can shut. Walk through it now, in this moment, and the promise will be kept. You are the God of your own world, and the world you create in imagination must become the world you live in fact. One short scene. One living, breathing, felt reality. That is all. Yet that is everything.

Sleep in the fulfillment tonight, my friend. And when you wake, walk in the quiet certainty that what you have imagined is already on its way. For the law cannot fail. Consciousness is the only reality, and you have just impressed upon it the pattern of fulfillment. The rest is inevitable. The rest is the grace of God expressing itself through the majestic simplicity of your imaginal act.