#33: Dare to Assume

Dare to Assume

A Lecture in the Voice & Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have lived as though the outer world must first prove itself before you can believe. You have waited for conditions to improve, for circumstances to shift, for evidence to appear. And while you wait, the very thing you desire remains beyond your reach. But I tell you tonight: the kingdom is not coming from without. It is already within you. The power to change your world does not lie in altering the facts you see. It lies in daring to assume the consciousness of the thing desired—right now, this very moment.

Man has always decreed that which appears in his world. Not one thing has ever come into being except he first became conscious of it. This you may deny, but you cannot disprove it. Decreeing is never done with words alone. It is done in consciousness. Every man is conscious of being exactly what he has decreed himself to be. The poor man is conscious of poverty. The sick man is conscious of illness. The imprisoned man is conscious of chains. They are not victims of fate; they are victims of their own unexamined assumptions. Yet the same law that binds them can free them the instant they dare to reverse the assumption.

Consciousness is God. Your awareness of being is the one and only reality. All things live only as long as you are aware of being them. Therefore, to realize your desire you must dare to assume the nature of the thing desired. You must feel yourself to be that which you want to be. Not hope for it. Not pray for it. Not wish for it. Assume it. Become it in consciousness. For the awareness of being is the door through which all manifestations enter the world of form.

You do not command things to appear by loud affirmations or vain repetition. Such efforts are more often than not confirmations of the opposite. The command is given in the silence of your own being. You simply become conscious of being the desired state. The dumb man is conscious of being dumb. The blind man is conscious of being blind. Change that consciousness and the outer expression must change, for man is forever out-picturing that which he is conscious of being.

Look upon the Bible not as history but as the great psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of every man. When Moses declared, “I AM hath sent me unto you,” he revealed the secret. God is your own awareness of being. When David sang, “Be still and know that I AM God,” he pointed to the same truth. When Jesus said, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life,” he spoke not of a man but of the awareness of being itself. Claim this identity as your own and you will transform the barren deserts of your present world into the promised land.

You, the reader, the listener tonight—you must give up all former beliefs in a God apart from yourself. Claim God as your awareness of being. Then dare to assume that you are already that which you desire to be. Rise in consciousness to the naturalness of the thing desired. Feel its reality so completely that the outer world is compelled to reflect it. For “I and my Father are one.” Your awareness of being is the Father. The thing you are conscious of being is the son bearing witness of the Father. They are one, yet the Father—the awareness—is greater.

In the beginning was the Word—the desire swimming in your consciousness, seeking embodiment. That Word must be made flesh. It must be fixed, nailed, united with your awareness. The awareness becomes aware of being the thing desired, thereby giving life to the conception. Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established. The agreement is never between two persons. It is between your awareness of being and the state desired. You are now conscious of being. Say to yourself, without words, “I AM.” Then dare to add the quality you seek: I AM healthy. I AM wealthy. I AM free. Feel it until the two have agreed. The moment the feeling “I AM that” is attained, the agreement is made, and the child—the manifestation—is born.

Leave behind all that is now your present limitation. Take your attention away from the problem, the lack, the obstacle. Dwell upon just being. Declare yourself to be, faceless and formless, until you are lost in the deep of yourself. Then, within that formless awareness, give form to the new conception by feeling yourself to be the thing desired. In this deep all things are divinely possible. Everything you can conceive of being is, to you, a natural attainment.

The invitation of Scripture is to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The body is your former conception of yourself. The Lord is your awareness of being. You must be born again. Except you leave behind your present conception and assume the nature of the new birth, you will continue to out-picture your present limitations. The only way to change your expression of life is to change your consciousness. For consciousness is the reality that solidifies itself in everything round about you. Your world in every detail is your consciousness out-pictured. You cannot change the reflection by breaking the mirror.

Therefore dare to revalue yourself. Man has placed far too little value upon himself. You were first in your own sight a grasshopper, and therefore you appeared as a grasshopper to the giants of circumstance. But revalue yourself. Feel yourself to be the giant, the center of power. Dwarf the former giants and make of them grasshoppers. All the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing before the awareness that you are.

Awareness is the good shepherd. What you are aware of being are the sheep that follow you. So good a shepherd is your awareness that it has never lost one sheep you have been conscious of being. I AM is the open door. Your awareness of being is lord and shepherd of your life. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” You can never be in want of that which you are aware of being.

Dare, therefore, to become aware of being great, loving, wealthy, healthy—everything you admire. It is as easy to possess the consciousness of these qualities as to possess their opposites. Your world is what it is because of your present consciousness. Not the other way around. Change the consciousness and the world must change.

Paul called this principle foolishness to the wisdom of this world and a stumbling block to those who look for signs. Yet it remains the only power that ever operated. Man has worshipped the images of his own making so long that at first this revelation seems blasphemous. It spells death to all previous beliefs in a God apart from himself. But when you know that “I and my Father are one, yet my Father is greater than I,” you will stand upon the rock that cannot be shaken.

Before you can transform your world you must lay the foundation: “I AM the Lord.” Your awareness of being is God. Establish this so firmly that no argument or suggestion of others can move it. Then every urge and desire that springs within you will find expression. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” The “I” knocking is the urge. The door is your consciousness. To open it is to become one with the urge by feeling yourself to be the thing desired. To feel it impossible is to shut the door. To rise in consciousness to the naturalness of the thing felt is to swing the door wide open and invite the manifestation in.

Jesus found all things impossible to Jesus as man. But he discovered his Father to be the state of consciousness of the thing desired. He left the Jesus consciousness behind and rose to that state and stood upon it until he became one with it. As he made himself one with it, he became it in expression. Men are but garments that the impersonal being “I AM” dwells in. Each garment has limitations. To transcend them you take your attention away from the present limitation and merge yourself in the feeling of being that which you desire.

Just how this desire will embody itself, no man knows. Its ways are past finding out. Do not speculate as to the how. Speculation is proof that you have not yet attained the naturalness of the state. When you have truly assumed the consciousness, doubt vanishes. You simply know.

You are told, “He who lacks wisdom, let him ask of God.” But ask without doubting. Only upon the rock of faith can anything be established. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. When you come into the joy of thanksgiving so that you actually feel grateful for having received that which is not yet apparent to the senses, you have definitely become one in consciousness with the thing desired. God is not mocked. You are ever receiving that which you are aware of being.

This rising in consciousness is the spiritual marriage. Two shall agree upon being one, and their likeness is established on earth. “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” The injunction is first person, present tense. You must be in the nature of the thing asked for before you can receive it.

To get into that nature easily, general amnesty is necessary. Free every man in the world from blame. For law is never violated. Every man’s conception of himself is his reward. Life makes no mistakes. It always gives man that which man first gives himself. Therefore release all condemnation. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus—that is, in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire.

Tithing is necessary, but not as the world teaches. You tithe with God by claiming yourself to be the quality you desire to express. Give to the only God—your awareness of being—the claim of being wealthy, loving, wise. Do not speculate how these qualities will express themselves. Life has a way you, as man, know not of. But the day you claim them to the point of conviction, your claims will be honored.

There is nothing covered that shall not be uncovered. That which is spoken in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetops. Your secret convictions of yourself—the claims no man knows of—when really believed, will be shouted from the housetops in your world. For your convictions are the words of the God within you, and they cannot return void.

You are at this very moment calling out of the infinite that which you are now conscious of being. Not one word or conviction will fail to find you. “I AM the vine and ye are the branches.” Consciousness is the vine. The qualities you are conscious of being are the branches you feed and keep alive. Just as a branch has no life except it be rooted in the vine, so things have no life except you be conscious of them. Take your attention from them and they wither and die.

To dissolve any problem that now seems real, remove your attention from it. Become indifferent. Begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution. Feel it to the point where it is natural. The very second you do, the prison bars dissolve, the debt vanishes, the disease disappears. Your answer to “Whom do you say that I AM?” ever determines your expression. As long as you are conscious of being imprisoned or poor or sick, so long will you out-picture those conditions.

When man realizes that he is now that which he is seeking and dares to claim it, he will have the proof of his claim. “Whom seek ye?” And the voice answers, “I AM he.” Your savior is not a man called Jesus. Your savior is the state itself—health for the sick, wealth for the poor, freedom for the bound. Claim “I AM he.” Claim yourself to be the thing desired. Claim it in consciousness, not in words, and consciousness will reward you with your claim.

You shall find me when you feel after me. Feel after that quality in consciousness until you feel yourself to be it. When you lose yourself in the feeling of being it, the quality will embody itself in your world. You are healed from your problem when you touch the solution of it. The day you touch this being within you—feeling yourself to be cured—virtues will come out of your very self and solidify themselves in your world as healings.

Have the faith of God. He made himself one with God and found it not robbery to do the works of God. Go you and do likewise. Believe your awareness—your consciousness of being—to be God. Claim for yourself all the attributes you have heretofore given to an external God, and you will begin to express these claims.

For I am not a God afar off. I am nearer than your hands and feet—nearer than your very breathing. I AM your awareness of being. I AM that in which all that you shall ever be aware of being shall begin and end.

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. The Lord is your consciousness. Except that which you seek is first established in your consciousness, you will labor in vain to find it. All things must begin and end in consciousness.

Put not your trust in men, for men but reflect the being that you are. No manifestation comes unto you except the Father within you draws it, and I and my Father are one.

“I AM” comes not to destroy but to fulfill. It destroys nothing but ever fills full the molds or conceptions one has of oneself. It is impossible for the poor man to find wealth while he remains poor in consciousness. Signs follow; they do not precede. To kick and complain against the limitations of poverty while remaining poor in consciousness is to play the fool’s game. Changes cannot take place from that level, for life is constantly out-picturing all levels.

Realize that you yourself brought about this condition, and make the decision within yourself to rise to a higher level. There was no condemnation when the prodigal claimed his inheritance. Others will condemn you only as long as you continue in that for which you condemn yourself. Happy is the man that condemneth himself not in that which he alloweth. For to life nothing is condemned. All is expressed.

Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor, strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself. The measurements of right and wrong belong to man alone. To life there is nothing right or wrong. Your desires contain within themselves the plan of self-expression. So leave all judgments out of the picture and rise in consciousness to the level of your desire. Make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now.

Have faith in this unseen claim until the conviction is born within you that it is so. Your confidence in this claim will pay great rewards. Just a little while and he—the thing desired—will come. But without faith it is impossible to realize anything.

Don’t be anxious or concerned as to results. They will follow just as surely as day follows night. Look upon your desires—all of them—as the spoken words of God, and every word a promise. Do not condition your desire. Just accept it as it comes to you. Give thanks for it to the point that you are grateful for having already received it. Then go about your way in peace.

Such acceptance is like dropping fertile seed into prepared soil. Drop the thing desired in consciousness, confident that it shall appear, and you have done all that is expected of you. To worry about the how is to hold the seed in a mental grasp and never drop it into the soil of confidence.

The reason men condition their desires is because they judge after the appearance of being and see things as real, forgetting that the only reality is the consciousness backing them. To see things as real is to deny that all things are possible to God.

No man desires to kill another. What he desires is to be freed from such a one. But because he does not believe that the desire to be free contains within itself the power of freedom, he conditions the desire and sees the only way as destruction. Thus man distorts the gifts of God through lack of faith.

Problems are the mountains that can be removed if one has but the faith of a grain of mustard seed. Approach your problem not as the old lady who quoted the scripture and then rushed to the window the next morning to see if the mountain had moved—knowing it would still be there. That is how most men approach their problems. They know they are still going to confront them. And because life destroys nothing, it continues to keep alive that which man is conscious of being.

Things will disappear only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it remains a fact: consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness. The heavenly state you are seeking will be found only in consciousness.

Therefore tonight, dare to assume. Dare to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Assume it so completely that you live and move and have your being in it. Walk in it as though it were true. Sleep in it. Awaken in it. Let no man or circumstance shake you from it. Persist in this assumption until it hardens into fact.

You are the operant power. You and you alone determine what shall appear in your world. The awareness of being as God is the one and only reality. Dare to claim it. Dare to assume the consciousness of the thing desired. And as you dare, so shall it be.

You have heard the truth tonight. Now go within and apply it. Assume. Feel. Become. And watch your world reshape itself in harmony with the assumption you have dared to make. For the Lord is your shepherd. You shall not want. You are the Lord. And tonight you have dared to assume.

Dare—and live.