#97: Personal Impotence

Personal Impotence

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have tried, perhaps for many years, to change the circumstances of your life by the strength of your personal will. You have labored to overcome conditions that seemed fixed and unyielding. You have argued with facts, wrestled with appearances, and strained to make things be other than they are. And in all this striving you have met only frustration and the deepening conviction that some things lie beyond your power to alter. This conviction, though it appears at first to be a confession of weakness, is in truth the beginning of your liberation. For the great secret is that you are personally impotent. You cannot change the law by which your world is ordered. You can only conform to it.

This law is the law of assumption. It is as fixed and changeless as the law that governs the magnet. Just as you cannot create magnetism itself, nor decree that it shall operate in a manner different from its nature, but can only arrange the conditions under which its power becomes visible, so it is with the law of your own consciousness. You cannot make the law that assumption hardens into fact. You cannot command that it shall work otherwise for you than for any other man. You can only yield yourself to it, surrender to its working, and by your conformity permit it to display in your world the state you have assumed.

Since creation is finished, it is impossible to force anything into being. All that you could ever desire already exists in the infinite consciousness as a present reality. What appears as new or as change is but the coming into visibility of that which was already present though unseen. Therefore every attempt to force a condition into existence by personal effort is not only useless; it is a denial of the finished creation. It is the finite self trying to do what the law alone can accomplish when the personal self ceases to interfere.

The scripture records the words, “I can of mine own self do nothing.” These are not the words of one man alone. They are the eternal confession of every man who identifies himself with the personal self. The name you bear, the history you remember, the form that walks this earth—this self of John Smith or Mary Brown can of itself do nothing. It is impotent before the law. All its planning, all its anxious striving to compel the world to obey its wishes, ends in nothing because it is not the doer. The doer is the law itself. You become the instrument through which the law expresses its power only when you have first confessed your personal impotence and yielded to its operation.

To conform to the law is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It is to identify yourself willingly with the state you desire, not as one who hopes or strives or waits upon uncertain time, but as one who has already become it in consciousness. This identification is not an act of the personal will forcing itself upon reality. It is the quiet surrender of the personal self to the greater reality of the law. You yield your doubts, your fears, your belief in limitation, and you rest in the feeling that the thing desired is already yours. In that yielding you are consumed as the victim of the wish fulfilled, and from that consummation you rise as one who knows the law and lives by it.

Many hear of this law and attempt to use it while still clinging to their belief in personal power. They affirm with effort, they visualize with strain, they command with the voice of the self that can do nothing. And because they have not surrendered, because they have not made the confession of impotence, their efforts remain efforts and bear no fruit. The law is not mocked. It cannot be used by the one who still believes himself to be the user. It can only be obeyed by the one who has relinquished the belief in his own personal causation.

Consider again the magnet. If you take a bar of iron and will with all your might that it become magnetic, your will changes nothing. But if you conform to the law—if you stroke the iron repeatedly with a magnet or pass an electric current through it according to the known method—the iron yields its former nature and displays the property of magnetism. It does not create the law of magnetism. It does not alter the law. It simply conforms, and by its conformity it becomes the instrument through which the invisible power becomes visible. So it is with you. You do not create the power that transforms your world. You do not change the law that your assumption will be expressed. You only yield your personal self, with all its beliefs in lack and separation, and you assume the nature of the fulfilled desire. In that assumption you have conformed, and the law, needing no assistance from you, performs its perfect work.

This confession of impotence is not a cry of despair. It is the most liberating realization that can ever come to man. For as long as you believe that you, the personal self, must discover the way, must overcome the obstacle, must compel the desired change by your own effort, you remain bound to the very impotence you long to escape. But when you acknowledge that of yourself you can do nothing, you are free to turn from the personal self and rest in the law. You are free to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled without the burden of wondering how it will come to pass. The how is not your concern. The law has ways that you, as personal self, know not of. Your only concern is to conform by living in the feeling of the end.

To live this truth tonight is to retire from the day’s labor and, in the quiet of your own mind, make the confession with simplicity and dignity: “I can of mine own self do nothing.” Having made this confession, you do not sink into helplessness. You rise into the assumption. You feel yourself to be the one who already possesses that which yesterday you sought. You do not try to make it so. You simply yield to the feeling that it is so. This yielding is the conformity. This rest in the wish fulfilled is the surrender that permits the law to operate without the interference of your personal doubt or anxious effort.

As you persist in this feeling you will discover that the circumstances which once seemed immovable begin to rearrange themselves. Not because you have forced them, but because you have ceased to oppose the law by your belief in personal causation. The world, which is always the out-picturing of your assumptions, must reflect the new assumption you have willingly embraced. And because this assumption was made not in the strength of the personal self but in surrender to the law, it carries within itself the certainty of fulfillment.

There will come moments when the old habits of personal striving return. You will be tempted to wonder whether the feeling is deep enough, whether you have done enough, whether the law will truly respond. In such moments return to the confession. Remember that you are personally impotent. Remember that your part is not to make the law work but to let it work by your conformity. The moment you begin to strive again you have denied the impotence and have attempted once more to become the doer. Return to the feeling. Yield once more. Let the personal self grow quiet, and let the assumption live in you as the only reality you acknowledge.

This is the path of one who has become the prophet of the law of assumption. First the confession of impotence, then the willing identification with the desired state, then the patient persistence in the feeling until the law has done its work. You do not watch the signs for proof. You rest in the knowledge that the law is changeless and that your conformity has set it in motion. The signs will appear, for the law is faithful. But your concern is not with the signs. Your concern is with the inner conformity, the quiet yielding, the living as though it were already so.

In this way the man who once felt himself the victim of circumstances discovers that he is master, not by virtue of personal power, but by virtue of his acknowledged powerlessness before the law and his willingness to conform to it. He no longer labors to change his world. He labors only to maintain the feeling of the wish fulfilled. And in that maintenance he finds that the world changes of itself, without his interference, without his anxious thought, without his weary effort. For the law, which he can neither create nor alter, does all the work when he has ceased to stand in its way.

The words “I can of mine own self do nothing” become the foundation of your practice. Let them silence every argument of the personal self that it must find a way, that it must overcome by struggle, that it must earn by effort the things it desires. The personal self earns nothing. It receives only as it conforms. And the highest conformity is the assumption of the wish fulfilled in the spirit of surrender, knowing that of itself it can do nothing, yet in this very knowing it becomes the open channel through which the infinite law expresses its limitless power.

As you walk this path you will find that your former struggles grow dim in memory. The things you once fought so hard to achieve now appear in your world with a quiet inevitability that surprises even you. And when others ask how it was done, you will have no personal answer. You will know only that you yielded, that you confessed your impotence, that you assumed the feeling and let the law do its perfect work. This is the secret of mastery: not the mastery of the law by the personal self, but the mastery of the personal self by the law through the simple act of conformity.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, make this confession your last conscious act. Say within yourself, with the dignity of truth, “I can of mine own self do nothing.” Then, without effort, without strain, assume the feeling that your desire is already fulfilled. Rest in that feeling. Yield to it completely. Let it possess you. In this yielding you have conformed to the law, and the law, which cannot fail, will bring to pass that which you have assumed. This is not your work. It is the work of the law made possible by your surrender. And in your acknowledged personal impotence you will discover the only true power there is—the power that comes when man ceases to interfere and allows the changeless law to express itself through him.

To be consumed as the victim of the wish fulfilled means that for a time the personal self is lost in the feeling. There is no longer a separate one who is trying to become something. There is only the feeling itself living in and as your consciousness. In this state there is no room for doubt, for the personal doubter has been surrendered. There is no room for anxiety about the how, for the one who asks how has been yielded. There is only the quiet, certain knowledge that it is done. And from this state you rise, not as the same personal self who entered it, but as one who has been transformed by his conformity to the law. You rise as the one who knows that assumption creates reality because he has lived the law and seen it prove itself faithful.

This transformation is not dramatic in the way the world counts drama. It is the quiet revolution of consciousness. The man who yesterday was anxious and striving is today at peace, not because his outer world has yet changed, but because he has changed his relationship to the law. He no longer stands outside the law, demanding that it serve his personal will. He stands within the law, having yielded his will to its greater working. And because he has taken this inner position, the outer world must in time reflect the new assumption he has embraced in faith.

Faith here is not belief in the personal self’s ability to achieve. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for because it is the confident yielding to the law that guarantees fulfillment. When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are not expressing faith in yourself as the personal self. You are expressing faith in the law by conforming to it. This is why the assumption, made in the spirit of personal impotence, carries such power. It is not tainted by the belief in personal causation. It is pure conformity, and pure conformity lets the law operate without hindrance.

If you find yourself returning again and again to the feeling of impotence as a sense of defeat, remember that the impotence confessed is not the impotence of your true self. It is the impotence of the personal, limited self. Your true self is one with the infinite consciousness in which creation is finished. By confessing the impotence of the personal, you free the true self to assume its rightful place as the operant power. The “I” that says “I can of mine own self do nothing” is the personal “I.” The “I” that assumes the wish fulfilled is the greater “I AM” which knows no limitation. In the confession you silence the smaller self. In the assumption you awaken the greater self. And between the two lies the perfect conformity that transforms your world.

The law does not ask you to become something you are not. It asks only that you yield the belief that you are the personal doer and assume the feeling of that which you desire to be. This yielding is not passivity. It is the most active conformity possible, for in it you align yourself with the creative power of the universe. The man who has made this surrender no longer wastes his energy in fruitless struggle against the law. He rests in the knowledge that the law is on his side when he conforms to it, and against him only when he opposes it by believing in his personal power to change it.

Creation is finished. The ideal you seek already exists. Your only task is to assume the feeling of its reality and to persist in that assumption until it becomes your experience. This persistence is not the persistence of the personal will. It is the persistence of the surrendered self resting in the feeling. It is the quiet refusal to return to the belief in personal causation. And because it is quiet, because it is surrendered, it is irresistible.

You cannot change the law. You can only conform to it. And the conformation that sets you free is the willing assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled, made in the full knowledge that of yourself, as personal self, you can do nothing. In this knowledge is your peace. In this conformity is your power. In this surrender is your victory. For when man confesses his personal impotence and yields to the law, the law, which is no respecter of persons, rewards him with the fulfillment of his assumption. This is the eternal promise. This is the changeless truth. And this is the way that stands open before you tonight.