#79: Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

The world you see is not your enemy. It is your looking glass. It stands before you without judgment, without preference, reflecting with perfect accuracy the state of consciousness in which you now dwell. You have looked upon the conditions of your life and called them your adversaries. You have seen the lack of money and named it your enemy. You have seen the strained relationships and called them your foes. You have seen the limitations of your body and declared them your opposition. And in your distress you have fought these things. You have argued with them. You have resisted them. You have tried to force them to change by outer means. But all your fighting has been in vain, for you were fighting your own reflection in the glass.

The looking glass of the world can show you nothing that you have not first presented to it. It has no power to initiate. It has only the power to reflect. What you are conscious of being within, that the glass must show without. This is the changeless law. There is no other law. Consciousness is the only reality, and the world is consciousness objectified, consciousness made visible, consciousness pushed out into form. Therefore, when you look upon your world and find what you do not desire, you are not looking upon an enemy. You are looking upon the faithful image of your own inner state. You can no more change your environment or world by destroying things than you can your reflection by destroying the mirror. Your environment and all within it reflects that which you are in consciousness.

To change the image in the glass, you do not attack the glass. You do not curse the image. You do not try to rearrange the reflection by force or by pleading with it. You turn within and change the consciousness that is casting the image. You assume a new state. You feel yourself to be the one who already possesses the thing desired. You live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. And as you do this, the glass begins to change. The old image fades, and the new image appears. This is the simple secret of all transformation. The world forever waits upon your consciousness to give it form.

You have been taught to believe that the world is something separate from yourself, something that acts upon you, something that can help or hurt you from without. But the world is yourself pushed out. It is the projection of your awareness of being. Every face you see is a face you have first assumed in consciousness. Every circumstance is the embodiment of a state you have lived within. When this is clear to you, the sense of struggle ceases. You no longer fight the world. You go within and adjust the state of consciousness, and the world, being only the mirror, must reflect the adjustment. You are ever out-picturing that which you are conscious of being.

See the world as your mirror and you will know a great peace. The peace comes from the knowledge that nothing can happen to you that is not first in you. There is no power in the world to create. There is only the power in you to assume. And what you assume, the mirror must show. So the responsibility is not upon the world. The responsibility is upon you. You are the operant power. You are the one who is conscious. And the world forever waits upon your consciousness to give it form. When you change the state, the world must change, for the world has no power to resist the image of your consciousness. It has no life of its own. It lives only as you give it life by being conscious of it.

Consider what this means in the quiet of your own life. When you see lack, you have been assuming lack. When you see conflict, you have been assuming conflict. When you see limitation, you have been assuming limitation. The mirror has only been faithful. It has shown you what you have given it to show. Now you can give it something new. You can assume the state of abundance, the state of harmony, the state of freedom. You can feel the feeling of already being the one who has these things. And the mirror, being faithful, will begin to show them. The glass cannot show you other than what you are. If you would have the glass show you a world of beauty, of abundance, of love, of health, you must first present to it the face of one who is beautiful, abundant, loving, and whole.

This does not mean that you ignore the present appearance. It means that you do not accept the present appearance as final. You see it as the reflection of an old state. You turn from it in consciousness and assume the new state. You feel the new state as real. You live from it as from a present fact. And the old reflection must give way to the new, for the glass cannot hold an image that is no longer being cast. The senses will at first report the old. The eyes will see the same conditions. The ears will hear the same words. This is because the senses are the servants of the consciousness that has been. They report what has been assumed. But as you persist in the new assumption, the senses will begin to report the new. For the senses must follow the consciousness that sustains them. They cannot lead. They can only reflect.

You have known this in small ways. You have seen how a change in your attitude toward a person has brought a change in that person toward you. You have seen how the assumption of health has brought healing where illness seemed fixed. You have seen how the feeling of success has opened doors that seemed closed. These were not accidents. These were the mirror doing its faithful work. You changed the image within, and the glass changed the image without. The world is not against you. It is for you. It is eager to reflect the highest you can conceive. But you must conceive it first within. You must feel it first within. The glass cannot create. It can only reflect. Creation is within. Reflection is without.

You may say that your problems are too great, your conditions too fixed, your enemies too powerful. But the greatness of the problem is the measure of the state you have assumed. The fixity of the condition is the fixity of your own assumption. The power of the enemy is the power you have given to your own reflection. When you withdraw the assumption, the problem loses its greatness. When you change the state, the condition loses its fixity. When you assume a new image, the enemy loses its power. For there was never any power in the reflection. The power was always in the one who cast the image. This is why the great teachers of old told you not to judge by appearance. The appearance is the mirror. It is the effect. The cause is within. To judge by appearance is to accept the reflection as the reality. To go within and assume the desired state is to change the reality, and the reflection must follow.

As you live this truth, you will find a quiet joy rising within you. The joy comes from the end of struggle. You no longer push against the world. You no longer plead with conditions. You no longer blame persons or events. You simply assume the state of the fulfilled desire and live in the feeling of it. And the world, being your mirror, begins to arrange itself around the new image. People change. Circumstances change. Opportunities appear. Not because you have forced them, but because you have changed the consciousness that they reflect. This is the meaning of being born again. You are born again when you leave behind the old conception of yourself and assume the new. The old man dies in the moment you cease to assume his state. The new man lives in the moment you feel yourself to be the new. And the world, the faithful mirror, shows the death of the old and the birth of the new.

You are not asked to believe in a God outside yourself. You are asked to believe in the God within yourself — your own awareness of being. This awareness is the father. What you are conscious of being is the son. And the son is the image in the glass. When you change the father, the son must change. When you change what you are conscious of being, the world must change. For the world is the son bearing witness of the father. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The word is your assumption. God is your consciousness. The world is the word made flesh, the assumption made visible in the looking glass.

When you see the world as your mirror, you cease to be the victim of circumstance. You become the author of circumstance. You no longer wait for the world to change so that you may be happy. You change within so that the world may reflect your happiness. The initiative is yours. The power is yours. The responsibility is yours. And this responsibility is not a burden. It is a glory. It is the glory of knowing that you are the cause of all that appears in your world. The mirror teaches you self-observation. As you look upon your world, you see not what is happening to you but what is happening in you. The criticism you hear is the echo of your own critical state. The love you receive is the echo of your own loving state. The success you experience is the echo of your own successful state. Everything is echo. Everything is reflection. And when you know this, you listen to the echo not with resentment but with understanding. You say to yourself, “This is what I have been sounding. Now I will sound a new note. I will assume a new state. And the echo will change.”

This self-observation is not morbid introspection. It is clear seeing. It is the seeing of one who knows that the world is the mirror and that to change the reflection he must change the original. And so he observes without judgment, without condemnation. He sees what is reflected and he changes what is casting the reflection. He does this quietly, inwardly, without fanfare. And the change in the mirror follows as surely as day follows night. You have tried the other way. You have tried to change the world by changing the world. You have tried to make people different by telling them to be different. You have tried to make conditions better by fighting conditions. And you have found that the more you fight, the more the mirror shows you the fight. The reflection intensifies the image. Only when you turn within does the reflection begin to soften and change.

The turning within is not an escape from the world. It is the only way to truly help the world. For when you change yourself, you change the image that the world must reflect. And as you change, those around you are helped, not by your words but by the new image you cast. They see in you the reflection of a higher state, and they are lifted by it. This is the true service. This is the true love. Not the love that fights for others, but the love that changes self so that the mirror of the world may show a better image for all. And so the teaching is not selfish. It is the most unselfish of all teachings. For when you assume the state of the fulfilled desire, you are assuming a state that blesses not only you but all who are reflected in your world. You are lifting the image in the glass for yourself and for everyone who looks upon you.

And so tonight, as you go to your rest, do not take the problems of the day with you into sleep. Take instead the consciousness of the solution. Feel yourself to be the one who has overcome. Feel the peace that comes from knowing that the world is your mirror and that you hold the power to change the image. Feel the quiet certainty that as you assume the new state, the glass must reflect it. And in that feeling you will sleep. And in that sleep the mirror will begin its work. And when you wake, you will see the first signs of the new reflection. The old image will begin to fade. The new image will begin to appear. For the glass is faithful. It cannot do otherwise than reflect what you present to it.

You stand before the looking glass of your world. The glass is clear. It waits. What image will you present to it tonight? Will you present the image of the old man, the man of limitation, the man of struggle? Or will you present the image of the new man, the man of fulfillment, the man who knows that all things are possible to him who assumes? The choice is yours. The glass will reflect whatever you choose. Choose wisely. Choose the image of the fulfilled desire. Feel it as natural. Feel it as already so. And the glass will show you a new world — a world that is the perfect reflection of the new you.

And in that seeing, you will know that you have passed through the looking glass. You have entered the kingdom where the world is no longer your enemy but your own face smiling back at you from the glass. And the smile will be the smile of one who knows his power. The smile will be the smile of one who is free. For you are not the victim of the mirror. You are the one whose consciousness the mirror faithfully serves. Tonight you can walk in the knowledge that your world is yourself pushed out, and in changing self, all is changed. The looking glass has shown you the truth. And the truth has made you free.