#72: Awakening in the New Man

Awakening in the New Man

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Can you rise in the morning as the new man? Most decidedly you can. You wake each morning and without a second thought you assume again the identity of the man you were the night before. You assume his worries, his lacks, his illnesses, his failures, and so the day begins exactly where the old day ended. The same consciousness produces the same world. Yet this is not the only possibility open to you. You can rise in the morning as the assumed identity. You can open your eyes and in the first moment of pure awareness claim for yourself the identity you truly desire to express. Not the identity of the seeker, but the identity of the one who has already received. Not the identity of the limited, but the identity of the fulfilled. This is the simple, majestic act that changes the entire course of the day and, in time, the entire course of your life.

The awareness of being is always present when you wake. That awareness is the I AM, the father, the only reality. What you do with that awareness in the first moments of the morning determines what the day will bring forth. If you permit the old impressions to rush in and attach themselves to that I AM, you rise as the old man and the old man’s world appears around you. But if you take that same pure awareness and feel it as the new identity, if you quietly and feelingly say within yourself “I am” and then rest in the feeling of being the man who is already what you desire to be, you rise as the new man. The new man’s world must then begin to take shape, for consciousness is the only reality and you are always out-picturing what you are conscious of being.

Do not imagine this requires effort or strain. Assumption is not a struggle. It is the quiet acceptance of a new conception of yourself. It is the feeling that this new identity is natural, that it is already so, that it could not be otherwise. When you can feel that naturalness, even for a little while before you leave your bed, you have performed the great inner act. You have been born again in consciousness. You have left behind the old conception and assumed the nature of the new birth. And the father, which is your own awareness raised to this higher level, immediately begins to draw to you everything necessary to clothe that assumption with form.

The morning is the sacred time for this work because the mind has not yet been filled with the evidence of the senses. The day still lies before you like an open field. The old man has not yet had time to reassert his full claim. In that brief interval between sleep and activity you are free to choose the identity you will wear. Choose wisely. Choose the identity that brings fulfillment, the identity that makes you the man your heart has always longed to be. Feel yourself to be that one. Do not argue with the senses. Do not try to make the feeling come. Simply assume it is already true and rest in the feeling until it seems the most natural thing in the world.

As you move through the day the old identity will attempt to return. The senses will present the old conditions. The mind will recall the old problems. But you have already risen as the new man. You do not fight these impressions. You do not give them your attention. You simply return, again and again, to the feeling you assumed upon waking. Each time you return you strengthen the new identity. Each time you return you weaken the power of the old. In time the new man becomes the dominant state of consciousness. The old man fades because he is no longer fed. And one day you discover you have awakened permanently in the new man. The transformation is complete, not because the world changed first, but because you changed in consciousness and the world had no choice but to follow.

Consciousness is the resurrecting power. It resurrects whatever you are conscious of being. When you rise in the morning as the assumed identity you are resurrecting the new man. You are giving life to the conception you desire to express. And because you have given it life in consciousness, it must appear in form. The ways in which it appears are not your concern. The how is not your responsibility. Your only responsibility is to assume the identity and to feel its naturalness. The infinite intelligence that you are in your inmost being will find the way. It always finds the way when the assumption is faithfully kept.

You do not need to wait for conditions to improve before you assume the new identity. That is to reverse the order of creation. The assumption comes first. The conditions follow. Assume the identity of the fulfilled man while the senses still show lack, and the lack must give way. Assume the identity of the healthy man while the body still shows symptoms, and the symptoms must yield. Assume the identity of the free man while circumstances still seem to bind you, and the bonds must loosen. This is the law. There is no other. You are ever drawing into your world that which you are conscious of being. Change the consciousness you assume upon rising, and the world you experience must change with it.

Many believe they must first see the evidence before they can assume the new identity. This is to put the cart before the horse. The evidence appears after the assumption, never before. Signs follow, they do not precede. When you rise in the morning as the assumed identity you are planting the seed. The harvest will come in its own time and in its own way. Your part is only to keep the seed alive by remaining faithful to the feeling. Do not dig it up each day to see if it is growing. Do not question the how. Simply persist in the assumption and the manifestation will take care of itself.

The new man is not some distant, future self. He is the self you assume now, in the quiet of the morning, when you first become aware that you are awake. He is already present in consciousness as a possibility. By assuming him you give him life. By living from him throughout the day you give him form. By persisting in him you make him permanent. There is no other way to change your expression in life. You cannot change the outer world by fighting it. You change it only by changing the identity you assume in consciousness. And the morning offers you this opportunity fresh each day.

Feel what it means to rise as the new man. It is a feeling of expansion, of lightness, of quiet certainty. The old identity feels contracted, heavy, burdened by problems it must solve. The new identity feels free, already at rest in the fulfillment of desire. There is no anxiety in it, no striving, no sense of something yet to be done. There is only the calm knowing that “this is I.” When you can touch that feeling, even briefly, before you rise from your bed, you have touched the power that creates worlds. For the feeling is the assumption, and the assumption is the cause of all that appears.

Throughout the day, whenever the old man attempts to reassert himself, remember the morning assumption. Return to it. Feel again the naturalness of being the new man. Do not argue with appearances. Do not try to reason the old conditions away. Simply remain faithful to what you assumed when you first awoke. Faith here is not belief in something outside yourself. It is loyalty to the new conception of yourself. It is the persistent feeling that “I am already that which I desire to be.” As you keep that feeling alive, the world begins to rearrange itself around it. Opportunities appear that were invisible before. People respond differently. Circumstances that seemed fixed begin to move. All because you are now conscious of being the new man and are therefore out-picturing him.

This is not something you do once and then forget. It is something you do every morning. Every morning is a new creation. Every morning offers you the chance to assume the identity that will shape the hours ahead. As you practice this faithfully, the days begin to flow together in a new pattern. The old pattern of limitation and frustration gives way to a new pattern of fulfillment and expansion. You do not force the change. You simply assume the new identity and live from it. The change follows naturally, as effect follows cause.

The I AM within you is forever saying “I am.” What you attach to those two words determines your experience. In the morning you can attach the old limitations or you can attach the new fulfillment. You can say feelingly “I am limited, I am sick, I am poor” or you can say feelingly “I am fulfilled, I am well, I am free.” The I AM is the same in both cases. Only the assumption differs. And the assumption is what is expressed. Choose therefore, each morning, the assumption that brings you joy. Choose the assumption that makes you the man you were meant to be. Rise in that assumption and the day will bear witness to it.

There is no one to change but self. The world is not your enemy. It is your own consciousness out-pictured. When you rise as the new man you are changing self. You are changing the only thing that can ever be changed. And as self changes, the world must reflect that change. This is the great secret hidden in plain sight. It is not hidden because it is difficult. It is hidden because it is so simple that men overlook it in their search for something more complicated. The simple act of rising in the morning as the assumed identity contains within it the power to transform your entire life.

Do not concern yourself with whether you are worthy of the new identity. Worthiness is not the question. The desire itself is the proof that the new identity is possible for you. Your desires are fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be. When you desire something greater, it is because a greater conception is seeking expression. Assume that greater conception upon waking. Feel yourself to be the man in whom that desire is already fulfilled. Then you have given the desire its proper nourishment. You have clothed it in the only substance that can bring it forth—consciousness.

As you persist in this morning assumption, you will discover a quiet joy beginning to permeate your days. It is not the excited joy of something hoped for in the future. It is the deep, settled joy of something already possessed in consciousness. You move through your hours no longer as a man struggling to become, but as a man who already is. And because you already are, the world treats you as the one you have assumed yourself to be. This is the effortless way. This is the way that asks nothing of you except faithfulness to the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

The old man will tell you that conditions are too real, that the evidence is too strong, that it is foolish to assume what the senses deny. But the old man has always been a liar where your true identity is concerned. He does not know that things have no reality other than the consciousness that sustains them. When you withdraw consciousness from the old identity and place it in the new, the old things lose their vitality. They wither because they are no longer fed. The new things, fed by your assumption, grow and take their rightful place. This is not wishful thinking. This is the law of consciousness in operation.

So each morning, when you first become aware that you are awake, pause. Do not hurry into the old routine. Linger for a moment in the feeling of being the new man. Feel the naturalness of it. Feel the certainty of it. Feel the relief that comes with knowing you no longer have to earn or struggle for what is already yours in consciousness. Then rise and carry that feeling with you into the day. Return to it whenever the old man knocks. Persist in it until persistence is no longer necessary, until the new man is simply who you are.

This is awakening in the new man. This is the daily resurrection of the self you desire to express. It requires no special place, no special teacher, no special time beyond the first moments of your waking. It requires only that you assume the identity and feel it real. As you do, the father within you, your own awareness raised to the level of the assumption, will draw all things necessary to make the outer world correspond to the inner state. You will look back one day and marvel that so great a change could have come from so simple an act. Yet it is always so. The greatest transformations begin with the quiet assumption faithfully kept.

You are free to begin tomorrow morning. When you wake, you need not wake as the old man. You can wake as the new. You can rise in the morning as the assumed identity. And in that rising the old story ends and the new story begins. Consciousness is the only reality. What you assume yourself to be, you express. Rise therefore as the new man, and let the world bear witness to the change you have wrought in yourself. This is the truth that sets you free. This is the simple, eternal principle by which men have always transformed their lives. Assume it now. Feel it now. Rise in it tomorrow. And know that all things are already made new in the consciousness you have claimed as your own.