#88: Renunciation

Renunciation

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Man is forever attempting to improve his world while clinging to the very consciousness that produced the world he now finds intolerable. He believes that to be acceptable to his God he must renounce his desires, that he must turn away from the things he wants and resign himself to the conditions he has. But this is not the renunciation that sets a man free. The renunciation of which the wise have spoken is not the denial of desire. It is the denial of the old consciousness, the old awareness of being that stands between the desire and its fulfillment.

You have been taught that renunciation means giving up the good things of this world. You have been told that the spiritual man must turn his back upon ambition, upon comfort, upon the fulfillment of his heart’s longing. This teaching has kept many in bondage, for it has made them believe that God is pleased with their resignation and their poverty of spirit. But God, your awareness of being, is not pleased with your limitation. He is forever seeking to express Himself through you in ever greater measure. The desire you feel is not your enemy. It is the evidence that your Father within is moving to enlarge your life. What must be renounced is not the desire. What must be renounced is the consciousness of being the man who has not yet realized that desire.

This old consciousness is the garment you have worn too long. It is the conception of yourself as limited, as unworthy, as incapable, as bound by conditions. Because you have worn this garment, you have out-pictured it in every detail of your world. Your world is the mirror of your consciousness. If the reflection is unwanted, the image in the mirror must be changed. But the image cannot be changed while you continue to wear the old garment. The old must be cast off before the new can be put on. You cannot patch the new upon the old. You cannot take the consciousness of fulfillment into the old consciousness of lack and expect harmony. One must go.

Renunciation, therefore, is the quiet inner act of taking off that old garment. It is not a dramatic gesture made before the world. It is not the announcement that you have given up this or that. It is the simple, secret withdrawal of your awareness from all that you have been conscious of being that is contrary to your desire. You cease to feed the old state with your attention and your feeling. What you no longer feed must die. Consciousness lives only as it is fed by attention and feeling. Withdraw the food and the old state withers from lack of sustenance.

The desire itself needs no renunciation. The desire is the promise. It is the voice of your awareness of being calling you to a higher conception of yourself. When you feel the urge to be something greater, to have something more harmonious, to express a larger life, you are hearing the call of your Father. To turn away from that call in the name of spirituality is to turn away from God Himself. The Father does not ask you to give up your desire. He asks you to give up the belief that you are separate from its fulfillment. He asks you to renounce the “I” that says “I have not” while the desire burns within you.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot remain conscious of being the old limited self and at the same time become conscious of being the new fulfilled self. One must die. The one that must die is the old, for the new is the truth of what you are. The old is but a mistaken identity you have accepted. When you renounce it, you are not losing your life. You are losing the false sense of life that has kept you in want. You are returning to the consciousness that is your natural inheritance.

Consider what it means to be conscious of being. Before you are conscious of being rich or poor, healthy or sick, loved or unloved, you are simply conscious of being. This pure awareness of being is the Father. When you add to it the feeling of being poor, you have given birth to the son called poverty. When you add to it the feeling of being sick, you have given birth to the son called illness. These sons are not sent by God to punish you. They are the natural offspring of the consciousness you have maintained. To renounce the old consciousness is to refuse to give birth to these unwanted sons any longer. It is to return to the pure awareness of being and then to clothe it with the feeling of the fulfilled desire.

This renunciation is done without struggle. You do not fight the old consciousness. You do not argue with it or try to overcome it by force. You simply cease to be it. You take your attention away from every evidence that supports the old state and you place your attention upon the feeling of already being what you desire to be. As you do this, the old state loses its power. It dies, not because you killed it, but because you no longer give it life. The new state grows in strength because you feed it with your feeling and your attention.

Many have tried to change their world while still wearing the old garment. They have affirmed and struggled and worked upon the outer, yet the inner cause remained unchanged. They have renounced their desires in despair, believing that God required their resignation. But resignation is not renunciation. Resignation is the acceptance of the old consciousness as final. Renunciation is the refusal to accept the old consciousness as final. It is the bold inner act of rising to a new conception of yourself and remaining faithful to that new conception.

The Scriptures tell you that except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. To be born again is to die to the old man and to rise in the new. The death is the renunciation. It is not the death of the body. It is the death of the old conception of yourself. When that old conception dies, the new conception is born, and the kingdom, which is the state of fulfilled desire, becomes your natural dwelling place.

You may wonder how long this renunciation must continue. It continues until the new consciousness feels completely natural. When you think from the fulfilled state without effort, when the feeling of already being what you desire to be is the dominant feeling of your life, the renunciation is complete. The old has been put off. The new has been put on. The mirror of your world must now reflect the new image, for consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are conscious of being.

Do not be disturbed if the old consciousness returns in the beginning. It has been your habitual state. It will not surrender its place without protest. But you have renounced it. You do not enter into conversation with it. You simply return, again and again, to the feeling of the new state. Each time you return, you weaken the old and strengthen the new. Persistence in this inner work will bring the day when the old no longer rises to trouble you. You will have died to it completely.

This dying is not morbid. It is the most joyful release you can know. For in releasing the old consciousness you release the burden of the old world. You no longer carry the weight of lack, of illness, of failure, of loneliness. You have laid it down. You have taken off the garment that was too small for you. You stand free in the new consciousness, and the world begins to arrange itself around the new man you have become.

The outer things you once thought you must struggle to attain now come to you without struggle. Not because you have commanded them in the old way, but because you are now the man to whom such things naturally belong. Your world is the out-picturing of your consciousness. Change the consciousness and the out-picturing changes. The change in the outer is not the result of your effort to change it. It is the result of your renunciation of the consciousness that produced the old out-picturing.

Tonight you can practice this renunciation. As you prepare for sleep, review all that you have been conscious of being during the day that is not in harmony with your desire. Do not condemn it. Do not fight it. Simply release it. Withdraw your awareness from it. Turn to the pure feeling of being and then clothe that feeling with the consciousness of already being the one you desire to be. Let this new consciousness be the last you know before you sleep. In sleep the old man dies. In awakening you rise in the new man. Do this faithfully and you will discover that the renunciation has been accepted. The old garment has been cast off. The new has taken its place.

As you walk in this new consciousness, you will find that the old evidences lose their power to move you. The empty purse no longer fills you with fear, for you are no longer conscious of being the man who has an empty purse. The aching body no longer fills you with despair, for you are no longer conscious of being the man who has an aching body. The broken relationship no longer fills you with grief, for you are no longer conscious of being the man who has a broken relationship. You have renounced these conceptions of yourself. You have died to them. You live now in the new conception, and the old must pass away.

This is the renunciation that the prophets knew. This is the renunciation that Jesus practiced when he rose in consciousness above the limitations of the man called Jesus and became conscious of being the Son of God. He did not renounce his desire to heal, to bless, to redeem. He renounced the consciousness of being the limited son of man. In that renunciation he found his true identity, and his world bore witness to it.

You are called to the same renunciation. You are called to give up the old consciousness, not the desire. The desire is the gift of God. It is the evidence that you are ready for a larger life. The old consciousness is the thief that has kept you from enjoying that gift. Renounce the thief and the gift is yours.

There is no loss in this renunciation. There is only gain. You lose nothing that is real. You lose only the illusion that you were ever separate from your good. You lose only the belief that your desire was too great for you. You lose only the consciousness that made you feel small and unworthy and bound. When these are gone, you stand revealed as the awareness of being that you truly are, and all things are possible to you.

So tonight, begin the work. Renounce the old consciousness. Release the garment that has grown too tight. Rise in awareness to the feeling of already being the one you desire to be. Let this feeling be your dwelling place. Let it be the state from which you think and act and live. As you do this, the old will die of its own accord, and the new will live. Your desire will no longer be a hope deferred. It will be the natural expression of the consciousness you have chosen to maintain.

This is the secret. This is the way. Give up the old consciousness, not the desire. In this renunciation you will find your freedom, and your world will bear witness to the new man you have become.