#71: Fall Asleep in the Wish Fulfilled

Fall Asleep in the Wish Fulfilled

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You go to sleep every night carrying into that state either the fulfillment of your desire or the continuation of its denial. Most men and women end the day still identified with the one who lacks, still reviewing the evidence of the senses, still feeling the weight of the unfulfilled wish. They close their eyes in the consciousness of the problem and awaken to a day that faithfully reproduces the same pattern. Yet sleep is not merely the rest of the body. Sleep is the natural door into the subconscious, the creative depth that receives the last conscious feeling and gives it form in the waking hours. Whatever you have in consciousness as you drop off to sleep becomes the measure of your expression in the two-thirds of your life spent awake. This is not a theory to be argued. It is a law that operates without partiality, without exception, and without regard to your former beliefs about what is possible.

You are what you are conscious of being, and consciousness does not cease its creative work when the outer eyes close. On the contrary, in sleep the outer mind is stilled, its doubts and reasonings are suspended, and the subconscious, whose nature is sleep, receives the impression you have accepted as true. You never draw from the deep of yourself that which you merely want. You always draw that which you are. Therefore the one who falls asleep feeling the wish fulfilled draws the fulfillment. The one who falls asleep still feeling the lack draws more of the same lack. There is no other law. The subconscious does not argue with you. It does not weigh your reasons. It simply accepts the feeling you bring to it and proceeds to clothe that feeling with the conditions, events, and persons that correspond to it.

Tonight you have the opportunity to change the entire direction of your life by changing the state in which you enter sleep. You do not enter sleep as one who is trying to get the desire. You enter sleep as the person who already has it. Not as one who hopes it will come, not as one who is working toward it, but as one in whom the desire is already an accomplished fact. Feel the naturalness of that state. Feel the quiet satisfaction of one who has received. Feel the relief that comes when a long-standing problem is solved, when the longed-for change has taken place, when the wish is no longer a wish but a present reality. Let that feeling, rather than the feeling of the old state, be the last conscious impression as sleep claims you.

The feeling is not something you create by effort of will. It is something you assume. You assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled in the same way you assume the feeling of being awake when you rise in the morning. You do not argue with yourself about whether you are awake. You simply feel yourself to be awake. In the same simple, direct manner you feel yourself to be the one who has the desire. You do not condition the feeling with doubts about how it will come to pass. You do not permit the evidence of the senses to intrude upon the feeling. You turn from all that is seen and felt outwardly and rest in the consciousness that it is already so. As that feeling deepens and becomes natural, you allow sleep to come upon you while you are still in it.

Many of you will say that you cannot feel it because the outer facts contradict it. But the outer facts are only the out-picturing of what you have previously felt yourself to be. They have no power to prevent you from assuming a new feeling tonight. The outer world is not the cause. It is the effect. Tonight you are free to plant a new cause. You are free to assume the consciousness of the fulfilled desire and to carry that consciousness into sleep. When you do, the subconscious accepts it as fact and begins its silent work of bringing the outer world into correspondence with it. You do not have to see the how. You do not have to arrange the means. You only have to feel the end and fall asleep in the feeling of that end.

Sleep conceals the creative act while the objective world reveals it. In sleep you impress the subconscious. In the waking hours the impression is made visible. If you impress it with the feeling of lack, lack appears. If you impress it with the feeling of fulfillment, fulfillment appears. The law is as simple and as constant as that. There is no mystery about it once you accept the truth that consciousness is the only reality and that sleep is the time when that reality is most directly and powerfully impressed upon the creative depths within you.

You are told that the subconscious never sleeps. While your outer mind rests, the inner creative power continues its work according to the last feeling you gave it. This is why it is of such importance what state you are in when you lose consciousness at night. If you lose it in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, the subconscious takes that feeling as its command and builds accordingly. If you lose it in the feeling of the old man, the old problems, the old limitations, the subconscious takes those as its command and continues to build the same world you have always known. You cannot serve two masters in this matter. You cannot fall asleep in the consciousness of lack and expect to awaken in the consciousness of fulfillment. The state in which you sleep determines the state in which you live the following day.

Therefore make it your nightly practice to feel the wish fulfilled before you drop off to sleep. Do not wait until you are tired and the mind is scattered. Prepare for sleep consciously. Lie down, relax the body, close the eyes, and turn your attention inward. Do not review the day’s events. Do not rehearse the problems. Instead, assume the feeling that your desire is already realized. Feel it as you would feel it if it were true now. Let the feeling be one of naturalness, of quiet certainty, of having received. If at first the feeling seems strange or difficult to sustain, do not force it. Simply return to it gently. Remind yourself that you are not trying to make something happen. You are simply accepting as true what you desire to be true and allowing that acceptance to accompany you into sleep.

The wish fulfilled is not a future state. It is a present consciousness. When you feel yourself to be the one who has it, you are no longer looking forward to it. You are resting in it. That rest is what you carry into sleep. And in that rest the subconscious does its perfect work. You will find, as you persist in this practice, that the feeling becomes easier to assume. What seemed at first like imagination becomes conviction. What seemed like effort becomes natural. And as the feeling becomes natural, the outer world begins to reflect it without strain or struggle on your part.

You do not have to understand the mechanics by which the subconscious brings the desire to pass. You only have to give it the right impression. The how is not your concern. The feeling is your concern. When you fall asleep in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you have done all that is required of you. The creative power within you knows every way and every means. It will open doors you did not know existed. It will bring persons and circumstances into your world that correspond to the new consciousness you have assumed. All you are asked to do is to feel the end and sleep in the consciousness of that end.

This is the great secret that has been given to man throughout the ages in many forms. Sleep is the door into heaven. What you take into that door as a feeling you bring out as a condition. If you take in the feeling of fulfillment, you bring out the fulfilled desire. If you take in the feeling of lack, you bring out more lack. There is no escape from this law, but there is also no limit to what you may bring out once you learn to use the door consciously. Every night you stand before that door. Every night you choose what you will carry through it. Choose the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Choose it tonight. Choose it every night hereafter, and you will discover that life itself begins to arrange itself around your new assumption.

The old state will try to intrude. Memories of failure, doubts about the possibility, the evidence of the senses will all present themselves as reasons why you cannot feel the wish fulfilled. But none of these have any power over you unless you give them power by accepting them as true. You are free to turn from them. You are free to assume the opposite. You are free to feel the wish fulfilled even when the outer world shows no sign of it. And when you do, the outer world loses its power to dictate your consciousness. You become the master of your world rather than its victim.

As you lie in bed tonight, let the last conscious thought be not a thought at all but a feeling. Feel yourself to be the person who has what you desire. Feel the satisfaction of it. Feel the peace of it. Feel the naturalness of it. And as that feeling fills your consciousness, allow sleep to come. Do not concern yourself with whether you will remain in the feeling all night. The impression is made in the moment you accept it and carry it into unconsciousness. The subconscious receives it and works upon it. Your only task is to give the right impression at the right time, and the right time is the time just before sleep.

You will awaken in the morning with a new sense of yourself, even if the outer change has not yet appeared. You will move through the day from a different center. And because you move from a different center, the day itself will be different. Opportunities will appear that were not there before. People will respond to you differently. Circumstances that seemed fixed will begin to yield. All because you slept in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire rather than in the consciousness of the desire still unfulfilled.

This is not something you do once and forget. It is something you do night after night until the new state becomes your permanent state of consciousness. Then you no longer have to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled because you are the one in whom the wish is fulfilled. But until that permanent change takes place, you use sleep as the great transformer. You use it to impress the subconscious with the consciousness you desire to externalize. And because the subconscious is faithful, it will externalize whatever you impress upon it.

Fall asleep in the wish fulfilled. Enter sleep as the person who already has it. Feel the naturalness of that state and let it be the last feeling of the day. Do this tonight. Do it every night. And you will find that the world you awaken to is no longer the world you have always known. It is the world that corresponds to the consciousness in which you slept. Consciousness is the only reality. Sleep is the time when that reality is most powerfully and creatively impressed. Use it tonight as it was meant to be used. Fall asleep in the wish fulfilled, and let the morning bear witness to the truth you have accepted as your own.