#9: The Game of Life – Playing from the End

The Game of Life – Playing from the End

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

The game of life is played from the end. Most men begin at the wrong starting point. They look upon the present condition, the facts that press upon them, the limitations that seem so solid, and from that place they struggle outward, hoping somehow to reach a better state. They argue with the evidence of their senses. They fight against what appears to be real. They plead for change. But the game was never meant to be played that way. The game of life is played on the playing field of the mind, and there is only one winning move: you must play from the end.

The rules of this game cannot be altered. They are fixed, eternal, and they operate with absolute precision whether you know them or not. The first rule is this: the game is played entirely within your own consciousness. The playing field is your mind. The moves you make are the assumptions you accept as true. There is no opponent standing against you. There is only the goal. And the goal is reached the moment you occupy the end in your own awareness.

What, then, is the aim of the game? It is the expansion of your awareness, the increase of your consciousness into greater and greater significance. You are here to become aware of yourself as the one you desire to be. Not to become it by struggle. Not to coax it into being. But to assume it now, to feel it now, to live in it now as though it were already accomplished. That assumption is the move that wins.

You want tangible results in your world. You want harmony where there is discord. You want abundance where there is lack. You want health where there is illness. You want freedom where there is restriction. Then hear this clearly: the only way to have it is to play from the end. You do not reach the end by starting from the present limitation. You start from the end itself. You think from the end. You feel from the end. You speak from the end. You move across the playing field by occupying, in imagination, the position you desire to occupy in fact.

Most of you have been playing from the wrong end for years. Your inner conversations betray you. You look at the bank balance and say within yourself, “I am limited.” You look at the body and say, “I am unwell.” You look at the relationships and say, “I am unloved.” You carry on these silent arguments with the facts, and the facts answer back. They confirm your words. They hold you in the very position you occupy. But the moment you reverse the play, the moment you dare to think from the end, the moment you say within yourself, “I am free,” “I am wealthy,” “I am whole,” “I am loved,” and you let that become the natural conversation of your mind, the outer world must rearrange itself to match the new position you have taken.

This is not a hope. This is not a theory. This is the law. Your inner speech is the track along which your life runs. What you say silently to yourself, what you feel as true of yourself in the quiet of your being, that is your present position on the field. Change that inner speech, and you change your position. Assume the end, and the end is yours.

Let me show you how this is done. Every night, when the outer world grows quiet and the senses are stilled, you have the perfect opportunity to make the winning move. Close your eyes. Withdraw your attention from the evidence of the senses. Forget what reason tells you is possible or impossible. Enter the silence of your own being and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Do not think about the end. Do not wish for the end. Do not pray for the end. Become it. Feel yourself to be the one you long to be. Let that feeling become so real, so natural, so vivid in your imagination that your inner conversations flow from it without effort.

You do not force words. You do not repeat empty affirmations. You simply rest in the assumption that you already are the desired state. What would you say to yourself if the desire were now fulfilled? What would your inner speech be if you were already the man or woman you want to be? You would not plead. You would not argue with the facts. You would speak as one who possesses it. You would feel the quiet satisfaction of having received. Fall asleep in that assumption. Sleep as one who has already received. Do this every night, and you will see the outer world reshape itself to conform to the inner speech you have established.

The facts you now see are not the cause of your condition. They are the result of former assumptions. They are the fruit of yesterday’s inner conversations. They have no power to continue once you change the conversation. They are shadows cast by your past play. Change the light of your awareness, and the shadows must change. Withdraw your attention from them. Starve them of your inner words. Feed the end instead. Play from the end, and the present must dissolve into the new.

You may say, “But the condition is still here. How can I ignore what my senses report?” You do not ignore it by pretending it is not there. You ignore it by refusing to give it your inner consent. You refuse to let it dictate your inner speech. You gently but firmly return your mind to the end. You occupy the end in imagination until it feels natural. Until it feels real. Until it feels like the only truth. The present condition is only the past playing itself out. It has no future unless you give it one by continuing to speak from it. Speak from the end, and the past must yield.

A change of attitude is a change of position on the playing field of life. When you assume the end, you move to a new place in consciousness. From that new place the whole world looks different. The same people, the same circumstances, the same conditions begin to reflect the new you. They have no choice. The game allows no other outcome. The rules are fixed. The field is your mind. The goal is the fulfillment of your assumption.

You have been given the most perfect instrument imaginable: your own wonderful human imagination. It is the playing field itself. It is the power that frames worlds. Use it consciously. Use it from the end. Do not let it run wild with fears and doubts and arguments against the facts. Bring it back, again and again, to the assumption of the wish fulfilled. Make that assumption the constant inner conversation. Let it become so natural that you no longer have to remind yourself. It simply is.

The man who masters this game walks in a different world. He is not at the mercy of conditions. He is not the victim of circumstance. He is the master of the field, because he has learned to play from the end. He knows that what he assumes to be true, what he feels to be true, what he speaks to himself as true, must become true in his outer world. He has discovered the secret. He has found the only rule that matters.

You may find at first that the old habits of thought try to pull you back. The old inner conversations will rise and try to reassert themselves. That is natural. Do not fight them. Do not condemn them. Simply notice them, and gently return to the end. Return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Each time you do this, you are making a new move on the field. Each time you do this, you are establishing a new position. Persist, and the old position will fade. The new position will become natural. The end will externalize itself.

This is how every desire is realized. Not by changing people or circumstances, but by changing your position on the field. Not by effort in the outer world, but by the inner act of assumption. The game is played in the mind. The moves are made in imagination. The victory is won before a single outer change appears. When the assumption is fixed, when the inner speech is consistent, when the feeling of the wish fulfilled is natural, the outer world must confirm it. It has no other choice.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, do not carry with you the burden of trying to make something happen. Do not plan or scheme or struggle. Decide what end you want, and this very night enter into the feeling of that end. Live in it. Talk from it. Sleep in it. Let your last conscious thought be the thought of one who already has it. Do this persistently, night after night, and you will find yourself moving across the field with effortless power. The goal will not come to you. You will not reach the goal. You will discover that you already are the goal. The end was always within you. You simply had to play from it.

The game of life is played from the end. This is the only way it is played. Play from the end, and the end is yours. There is no other way. There never has been. There never will be.

You are the player. You are the field. You are the goal. Assume it now. Live it now. And watch life itself confirm what you have known in your heart all along: that the kingdom of heaven is within, and when you play the game from the end, heaven externalizes itself as your world.

Go home tonight and play the game. Play it from the end. And when you do, you will know, beyond all doubt, that you have found the secret of life itself. The game is yours to win, and the winning move is always the same: assume the end. Occupy the end. Live from the end. And the end will be yours.