#86: The State of Freedom

The State of Freedom

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have long believed that freedom must be won by changing the conditions round about you, by breaking the chains that seem to bind you from without, by removing the obstacles that appear to stand between you and the life you desire. But this night I bring you a truth that will set you free if you will receive it: Freedom is not an escape from conditions. It is a shift in the very identity you claim as your own. The conditions that seem to imprison you are not the cause of your bondage; they are the faithful out-picturing of the identity you have assumed. Change the identity, and the conditions must change, for they have no power to exist apart from the assumption that sustains them.

Consciousness is the only reality. All that you see, all that you touch, all that you experience as fixed and unyielding is but the projection of the state of consciousness you now entertain. You are not bound by your circumstances. You are bound by the conception of yourself that says you are bound by your circumstances. The prison was never erected in the outer world. It was erected first in the inner world of your own feeling of being. The moment you cease to feel yourself as the bound one and begin to feel yourself as the free one, the prison of conditions loses its substance and begins to dissolve.

To be free, you do not fight the conditions. Fighting a condition is but the confession that the condition is real and has power over you. You simply withdraw your attention from the evidence of bondage and place it upon the feeling of being free. Attention is the sap of life that keeps alive the things of your world. What you attend to, you sustain. What you withdraw attention from, you permit to die. Therefore, if you would see the bars of your prison fall away, take your attention from the bars and give it to the feeling of freedom. Feel yourself to be free. Feel it with the same quiet certainty with which you once felt yourself to be bound. Persist in this feeling, and the old conditions, starved of the attention that gave them life, will fade from your world, while new conditions, the natural fruit of freedom, will appear in their stead.

This shift in identity is the new birth spoken of in the ancient records. You must be born again. To be born again is not to change your outer garment or to alter your surface behavior. It is to change the inner man, the man of assumption, the man who feels himself to be this or that. You must die to the old identity—the identity of the limited, the restricted, the one who cannot break free—and be born into the new identity, the identity of the free, the unrestricted, the one for whom all things are possible. This dying and this birth take place in the secret place of consciousness, where no eye sees but where every manifestation is first fashioned. It is not a work of violent effort. It is the effortless work of assumption. You assume the feeling of the new birth, and in the very act of assuming, you are born anew.

What is the feeling of being in the state of freedom? It is a feeling of lightness, of natural ease, of quiet certainty. It is the feeling that you are not at the mercy of events but that events are at the service of your assumption. The free man does not strive to be free. He simply knows himself to be free, and this knowledge is itself his freedom. He moves through his world with the dignity of one who cannot be bound, for he has assumed the very nature of freedom. This feeling is not something you must strain to manufacture. It is the natural feeling of the I AM when it remembers itself as boundless. When you say within yourself, “I am free,” and feel the truth of those words, you are not adding something foreign to yourself. You are revealing what has always been true of the awareness that you are.

You may protest that your conditions are too real, too pressing, too long established to be changed by a mere shift in feeling. But I tell you, the conditions are real only because you have assumed them to be real. They have no life of their own. They live by the life you give them through your attention and your feeling of being bound by them. Withdraw that feeling, assume the opposite feeling, and the conditions must rearrange themselves to match the new assumption. This is not denial of the evidence. It is the exercise of a higher law—the law that consciousness is the sole reality and that the outer world is forever the shadow cast by the inner state.

Let us dwell again upon this eternal fact, for it is the key to everything: You are always assuming. You cannot cease from assuming. The only question is what you are assuming. If you assume yourself to be the prisoner of conditions, then conditions will hold you prisoner, and the world will present the evidence of your assumption. If you assume yourself to be free, then you are free, and the world must present the evidence of that assumption. There is no other law operating in your life. There is no other power. The assumption is the bridge. Cross it by feeling yourself to be what you desire to be, and the crossing itself is the fulfillment.

The ancient story of the prodigal son reveals this truth in living form. When the son found himself in the far country, feeding upon the husks that the swine did eat, he came to himself. He did not remain in that state, complaining of his lot or blaming others for his fall. He said within himself, “I will arise and go to my father.” He changed his state. He left the consciousness of lack and returned to the consciousness of sonship, where bread enough and to spare had always awaited him. In the same way, you must come to yourself. You must recognize that you have created the far country of your bondage by your assumption of limitation. Now you must make the decision to arise and return to the state of freedom. Your father—your own awareness of being—has never abandoned you. The freedom you seek has always been yours. It is only your assumption that has veiled it from your sight.

To assume the state of freedom is to declare within yourself, “I am free,” and to feel the living truth of that declaration. These words are not empty. When they are felt, they are creative. They are the I AM asserting its own nature. The I AM is freedom itself—boundless, unrestricted, eternal. When you feel “I am free,” you are not petitioning some power outside yourself. You are exercising the creative power that is yourself. You are the operant power. No man, no condition, no circumstance can take this power from you, for it is your very being.

Do not ask how this freedom will appear in your world. The how is not your concern. The ways of consciousness are past finding out by the reasoning mind. Your only task is to assume the feeling and to persist in it. The bridge of incidents will appear. People will move, circumstances will alter, opportunities will open—not because you have schemed or struggled, but because you have assumed the state from which such things naturally flow. The assumption compels the expression. This is the law of reversibility. The outer is changed by the changing of the inner. The condition is dissolved by the assumption of its opposite. No chain is so strong, no prison so secure, that it cannot be broken by the assumption of freedom. For the assumption of freedom is the assumption of God, and God—your own wonderful human imagination—cannot be withstood.

When you live in the state of freedom, your reactions to life undergo a profound change. Where once you reacted to the appearance of limitation with fear, frustration, or despair, you now react from the quiet certainty of one who knows himself to be free. You do not ignore the conditions of your world. You simply see them as the old out-picturing that is already passing away. You remain faithful to the new assumption, and in your faithfulness the old dissolves of its own accord. This is not the denial of a coward. It is the exercise of the higher law of assumption. You do not fight the evidence. You transcend it by assuming a greater reality—the reality of your own free consciousness.

The state of freedom is not a state in which no problems appear. It is a state in which you know that no problem has power over you. Problems may still arise, but they arise as grasshoppers before the giant of your assumption. You see them in their true proportion. You deal with them from the high place of freedom rather than from the low place of bondage. From the state of freedom, solutions appear naturally and without strain. From the state of bondage, problems multiply and bind you more tightly. The shift in identity is therefore everything. It is the difference between the life of struggle and the life of quiet mastery.

Tonight you can begin this shift. As you prepare for sleep, take a few quiet moments. Close the door to the outer evidence. Assume the feeling of being free. Do not struggle to manufacture the feeling. Simply assume it as you would assume the feeling of being warm on a cold night. Let the feeling of freedom fill your consciousness. Let it be the last awareness you entertain as sleep comes upon you. In that sleep the assumption sinks into the deep of yourself and there it gestates, to be brought forth in the waking world as the conditions of freedom. This is the secret known to all who have transformed their lives. This is the art of true prayer. Prayer is not the begging of a God afar off. It is the assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Assume freedom tonight, and you have prayed the only prayer that is ever answered.

In the days that follow, when the old conditions seem to contradict your assumption, do not waver. Return again and again to the feeling of freedom. Each time you do so, you strengthen the new identity and weaken the old. The old state dies from lack of attention. The new state lives and grows strong by the attention you give it. This is the changeless law. You need not fight the doubts that will arise. Doubts are but the voice of the old state seeking to regain its throne. Persist in the new feeling, and the doubts will perish from neglect. The assumption will become your natural state, and from that natural state the outer world will be compelled to conform.

You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked to believe in yourself—in your own capacity to assume and to persist in the assumption. All things are possible to him that believeth, and belief is simply the assumption of the feeling of the thing desired as already true. Believe in your freedom. Assume it. Feel it. And in the feeling, know that you are already free. The state of freedom is your natural state. It is the state you occupied before you assumed the limitations that now seem so real. It is the state to which you are called to return—not by effort, not by struggle, but by the simple, dignified act of assumption.

This night the choice is placed before you. You can continue to assume the identity of the bound one and continue to out-picture bondage. Or you can assume the identity of the free one and begin to out-picture freedom. The power is yours. The law is simple. The result is certain. Assume the state of freedom, persist in it, and you will walk free in a world that bears witness to your assumption. The conditions will change because you have changed in consciousness. The prison doors will open because you have assumed the feeling of the open door. This is the truth that sets men free. This is the state of freedom. Occupy it now, and be free.