#92: Be Ye Doers

Be Ye Doers

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Many hear these words and find them beautiful. They agree that imagination creates reality. They see the logic of assumption. They feel a quickening when the truth is stated. Yet they remain as they were, moving through the same days, meeting the same conditions, expressing the same limited self. The scripture does not praise such hearing. It warns against it. Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

The word in this warning is your desire, your idea of what you would be. To hear only is to acknowledge the law, to admire its simplicity, to feel for a moment the relief it promises, and then to go your way unchanged. You look into the glass of imagination and see yourself as you would be if your desire were fulfilled. You see the face of the fulfilled one. Then you forget what manner of man you saw. You return to the old feeling, the old reactions, the old assumptions that have built your present world, and nothing is altered.

The one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues therein is not a forgetful hearer. He is a doer of the work. And this man is blessed in his deed. The perfect law of liberty is the law of assumption. It liberates you from every prison you have built by revealing that your world is forever the out-picturing of your own assumptions. To continue in this law is to persist in the assumption that your desire is already fulfilled. It is to keep the feeling of the wish fulfilled alive within you, not as a passing fancy but as the very tone and texture of your consciousness.

You deceive yourself when you believe that to know the law is to have used it. Knowledge without application leaves you exactly where you were. The most eloquent understanding of assumption, the most sincere admiration of its power, changes nothing until you assume. The law does not reward the scholar of assumption. It rewards the one who assumes and continues in the assumption. Without this doing, all your study remains a beautiful theory, a lamp you admire but do not light.

To be a doer is to rise in consciousness to the naturalness of being the thing desired. It is not to long for it, not to hope it will come, not even to believe it will come someday. It is to feel yourself to be it now. It is to think from the fulfilled state rather than about the fulfilled state. This shift from thinking about to thinking from is the doing the scripture demands. The hearer thinks about the law. The doer thinks from the assumption.

When you merely hear, you see your desire in the glass and then turn away. The vision fades because you have not continued in it. The old concept of yourself, the old feeling of “I am this limited one,” returns unchallenged and reclaims its throne. Your world, being the faithful mirror of your assumptions, continues to reflect the old face. You have seen the new, but you have not become the new. You have heard, but you have not done.

The doer, having seen himself in the glass, remains before that glass. He does not turn away. He occupies the feeling of the one he saw. He makes that feeling his home. He returns to it again and again until it becomes more natural than the old feeling he has left behind. This returning is persistence. This occupying is application. This is what it means to continue in the perfect law of liberty.

The feeling of the wish fulfilled is not a mood that comes and goes. It is a sustained assumption. It is the quiet, certain knowledge that “I am he.” When this feeling is kept alive, the old reactions lose their power. You no longer rise to meet the evidence of the senses with the old fear or the old resignation. You meet every appearance from the new assumption. The appearance may deny your assumption, but you continue. You do not argue with the appearance. You simply remain in the feeling of the fulfilled desire. This is the work. This is the deed in which you are blessed.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot continue in the old assumption and at the same time continue in the new. One must give way. The hearer tries to serve both. He keeps the old feeling as his dwelling place and visits the new feeling occasionally, like a guest. The doer moves into the new feeling and lives there. He lets the old feeling wither from lack of attention. What you attend to you feed. What you ignore you starve. The doer starves the old man by refusing to give him the attention of feeling.

The talent entrusted to you is the power to consciously determine your assumption. This power is given to every man. If it is not used, it atrophies. The limb not exercised loses its strength. The faculty not employed grows dim. Many who admire the law have allowed this talent to lie buried in the earth of passive hearing. They speak of assumption. They recommend it to others. They feel a certain pride in knowing it. Yet they do not use it for themselves. The talent remains unused, and their world remains unchanged. The good servant uses his talent and multiplies it. The one who hears and does not do buries it.

What you must strive after is being. In order to do, it is necessary to be. The end of all true desire is not to get something but to be something. When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are being the fulfilled one. This being is the doing. There is no other work required. The outer deed, the outer change, follows inevitably from this inner being. You do not force the outer. You simply persist in the inner, and the outer conforms.

The dynamic prevails over the static. The active over the passive. The one who is a doer moves with a quiet magnetism that the mere hearer does not possess. For the doer has identified himself with the creative power. He has ceased to be an onlooker and has become a participant. He no longer watches his desire from a distance. He enters into it. He lives from it. This entrance is the doing. This living from it is the continuation in the law.

You are not asked to believe something you do not understand. You are asked to assume something you already understand. The law is not hidden. It is not complicated. It is simply this: assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and continue in that assumption until it becomes your natural state. The one who does this is blessed in his deed. The blessing is not something added later. The blessing is the inevitable realization that follows the sustained assumption.

Consider what happens when you are a hearer only. You rise in the morning still identified with the old concept of yourself. You move through the day reacting from that old concept. You meet conditions that confirm the old concept. You retire at night still carrying the old feeling. The glass of imagination may have shown you something new during a moment of reading or listening, but you forgot. You did not continue. The old man was never dethroned. Your world, being obedient to your assumption, continues to give you the old.

Now consider what happens when you become a doer. You rise in the morning already assuming the feeling of the fulfilled desire. You carry that feeling with you through the day. You meet appearances from that feeling. You do not deny the appearances. You simply do not give them the power to dethrone your assumption. You return to the feeling again and again. At night you fall asleep in the assumption. You have not forgotten what manner of man you saw in the glass. You have continued in it. The world, being the mirror of assumption, begins to reflect the new face. Conditions change because you have changed in consciousness.

This change is not something you make happen by effort. It is something that happens because you have assumed and continued. The law is automatic. Assumptions, persisted in, harden into facts. This is not a promise to be believed. It is a law to be used. The hearer believes the law. The doer uses the law. Between these two lies the entire difference between the man who remains bound and the man who is set free.

You may say that you have tried. You have assumed for a time and then the old feeling returned. That is the experience of the forgetful hearer. He assumes and then forgets. He visits the new state and then returns to the old. The doer does not visit. He dwells. He makes the new feeling his permanent residence. When the old feeling attempts to return, he does not fight it. He simply returns to the assumption. He does not argue. He occupies. This quiet, persistent occupation is the work that brings the blessing.

The scripture says this man shall be blessed in his deed. The deed is the inner act of assumption and continuation. The blessing is the outer realization. One follows the other as surely as night follows day. There is no gap between the sustained assumption and its realization except the gap created by forgetting. When you continue, there is no gap. The realization appears in its own time and in its own way, but it appears.

You are not here to admire the law. You are not here to collect beautiful statements about assumption. You are here to use the law. Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Do not think about it. Think from it. Feel yourself to be the one who has it. Make that feeling as natural as you can. If doubts arise, do not argue with them. Simply return to the feeling. If the old concept reasserts itself, do not condemn yourself. Simply assume again. This returning is the continuation. This assuming is the doing.

As you persist in this doing, something within you begins to change. The old hearer, the one who knew much and lived little, grows weaker. The new doer, the one who assumes and continues, grows stronger. Your reactions change. Your responses to appearances change. Your feeling of yourself changes. And because your feeling of yourself is the cause of all things in your world, your world begins to change. Not because you forced it, but because you assumed and continued.

This is the great secret hidden in the simple command to be doers. The command is not a burden. It is a liberation. It frees you from the endless search for more knowledge, more techniques, more understanding. It tells you that what you already know is sufficient if you will but use it. The law is not waiting for you to become worthy. It is waiting for you to assume. It is not waiting for you to understand more. It is waiting for you to continue in what you already understand.

You stand tonight at the dividing line between the hearer and the doer. The hearer will close this book or end this hour and return to the old feeling. The doer will close this hour and assume the new feeling. The hearer will forget what manner of man he saw in the glass. The doer will continue before that glass until the image becomes his very self. The choice is not in some distant future. The choice is now, in the feeling you are willing to occupy and to continue in.

Be not content to hear. Be not content to admire. Be a doer. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Continue in that feeling until it becomes natural. Persist until the old man is forgotten and the new man stands revealed. Then you will know what it means to be blessed in your deed. For the deed is yours, and the blessing is the inevitable fulfillment that follows every sustained assumption.

You are not the limited one you have been assuming. You are the one you now assume yourself to be. Continue in this assumption. Do not forget. Do not turn away from the glass. Remain before it until the face you see there is the only face you know. This is the doing. This is the work. And in this work you are blessed, now and forever.