#26: Your Self-Concept Is Your Destiny

Your Self-Concept Is Your Destiny

A Lecture in the Voice & Spirit of Neville Goddard

You feel the weight of your circumstances tonight. You look out upon your world and it seems fixed, stubborn, unyielding. Yet I declare to you with the quiet certainty that has never failed: your self-concept is your destiny. What you believe yourself to be, you must eventually meet as fact, experience, and relationship. Your life is forever the out-picturing of your conviction of yourself. Nothing has ever appeared in your world except what you have first been conscious of being. This is the changeless principle.

Man has always decreed that which has appeared in his world, and he shall continue to do so as long as he is conscious of being man. Not one thing has ever appeared in man’s world but what man decreed that it should. And this decreeing is not done by loud words or vain repetition. Decreeing is done in consciousness. Every man is conscious of being that which he has decreed himself to be. The dumb man, without uttering a single word, is conscious of being dumb, and therefore he remains dumb. You, right now, are conscious of being exactly what you appear to be in this world. That is your present self-concept, and it is shaping every detail of your experience.

You are ever out-picturing that which you are conscious of being. This is the truth that sets you free, for you are always self-imprisoned or self-freed according to the concept you hold of yourself. Your conviction of yourself—your quiet, deep-seated opinion of yourself—will determine your entire expression in life. The world you see is not something imposed upon you from without. It is the magnified mirror of that which you are conscious of being. Change nothing on the outside until you first change the conception you hold of yourself, and the outside must rearrange itself in perfect obedience.

You and your conception of yourself are one. Yet you are greater than any conception you will ever hold of yourself, for you are first conscious of being, and then you become conscious of being this or that. Before you were conscious of being limited, poor, ill, or unloved, you were simply conscious of being. That pure awareness is the Father. The thing you are now conscious of being is the son bearing witness of the Father. The conceiver is ever greater than his conceptions, yet remains one with them. Your present self-concept is the garment you wear, but you are not the garment. You are the wearer.

To remain in your present limitations while hoping for something better is to serve two masters, and you cannot. As long as you are conscious of being imprisoned by circumstances, diseased in body, or restricted in any way, so long will you continue to out-picture those very conditions. Your world is a perfect likeness of your conception of yourself. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, not because life plays favorites, but because consciousness magnifies all that it is conscious of being. You cannot express what you are not conscious of being. You cannot serve two masters. Your master is always that state of consciousness with which you are identified.

Look at your life tonight. Every detail of it—your relationships, your health, your supply, your opportunities—is faithfully reflecting the concept you hold of yourself. You do not have to analyze the outer picture to know what that concept is. The outer picture is telling you plainly. It is the visible confirmation of your invisible self-concept. The world is the mirror, and you are the image it reflects. Stop trying to change the reflection while leaving the image untouched. Change the image—change the conception you hold of yourself—and the reflection must change.

How do you change it? Not by struggling with the old concept, not by fighting the evidence of your senses. You change it by taking your attention completely away from the present conception of yourself and dwelling in the feeling of being the new self you would like to be. You must become conscious of being that which you desire to express. You must feel yourself to be it now, in this very moment, until the feeling takes on the tones of reality. Then you have planted the seed in the only soil that can bring it forth.

You are at this very moment drawing into your world that which you are now conscious of being. Therefore, if you are dissatisfied with your present expression of life, the only way to change it is to take your attention away from that which seems so real to you and rise in consciousness to that which you desire to be. You must be born again. Except you leave behind your present conception of yourself and assume the nature of the new birth, you will continue to out-picture your present limitations. To be absent from the body of your present self-concept and to be present with the Lord—your awareness of being—is the one requirement.

Tonight, in the privacy of your own mind, withdraw your attention from all that now seems so real, so fixed, so unchangeable. Let go of the old man entirely. Do not even argue with him. Simply drop him. Then, in the silence of your awareness, claim for yourself the new concept. Feel yourself to be the man or woman you want to be. Feel it naturally, feel it convincingly, until the new concept becomes your natural feeling of self. Do not force it. Do not strain. Simply relax into the feeling of being that which you desire to be. Rest in it. Dwell in it. Make it your home. When you fall asleep this night, let your last waking consciousness be filled with the new self-concept. Let that be the seed you drop into the ground of your subconscious. It will grow and bear fruit in due season.

You may ask, “But what of the evidence of my senses? What of the facts that stare me in the face?” I tell you, those facts are the out-picturing of your former concept of yourself. They have no power of themselves. They live only as long as you remain conscious of being the old self. Withdraw your consciousness from them and they will dissolve as surely as snow before the sun. Things have no reality other than in consciousness. Get the new consciousness first, and the new facts are compelled to appear. The signs always follow; they never precede.

You are now conscious of being. That is your true self—faceless, formless awareness. From that pure awareness you clothe yourself in conceptions. You become conscious of being this or that. And whatever you become conscious of being, you express. Therefore, choose this night a new concept of yourself. Claim it. Feel it. Live in it. You are the operant power. No one else can do it for you. Your awareness of being is the Lord of your life, and it has never failed to externalize that which it is conscious of being.

Persist in this new feeling of self. Do not waver when the old pictures try to return. Do not look back. Do not measure your progress by the outer world at first. The outer world takes time to rearrange itself after the inner change. But the inner change is instant the moment you become natural in the new feeling. Stay faithful to the new self-concept. Walk in it as though it were already so. Speak from it. Act from it in your imagination. And you will discover, as surely as you are here tonight, that your world will begin to reflect the new you.

Your conception of yourself is the measuring rod by which you measure the entire world. Change that conception, revalue yourself, and you will automatically change your world. Man has played the losing game too long by trying to change the world while holding the same old concept of himself. It cannot be done. The world is only the objectified form of your self-concept. It has no independent existence. It lives and moves and has its being in your consciousness. Therefore, to transform your world, transform your self-concept.

You are greater than any conception you will ever hold of yourself. Your unconditioned awareness of being is the Father, and it is forever greater than the conditioned state you now wear. Yet you and your Father are one. You are one with your present conception of yourself, but you are greater than that conception. Rise, therefore, in consciousness to a higher concept. Become conscious of being the freer, the nobler, the more abundant self. And that self will clothe itself in new garments of experience.

This is not theory. This is law. Consciousness is the only reality. Everything you see, everything you experience, is consciousness made visible. Your self-concept is the mold into which the formless takes form. Break the old mold tonight. Cast it aside. Form a new one in the silence of your own awareness. Feel yourself to be the desired self so completely that the old self fades from your consciousness like a forgotten dream. Then the new self must appear in your world, for you cannot be conscious of being something and not express it.

You are at this moment calling out of the infinite all that you are now conscious of being. Not one conviction will fail to find you. Your awareness magnifies everything it is conscious of being. Therefore, be conscious only of that which is lovely, that which is noble, that which is true of your new self. Let no other thought enter. Guard the door of your mind. Keep it fixed on the new concept until it becomes natural—until it feels like you.

Tonight, before you close your eyes in sleep, ask yourself: “Whom do I say that I am?” Answer that question in the new way. Answer it with the feeling of the new self. Let that be your last conscious thought. Then sleep in that conviction. In the morning, awaken in the same feeling. Carry it through the day. Whenever the old concept tries to assert itself, gently return to the new feeling of self. Do this faithfully, and you will see the outer world reshape itself in harmony with the new inner you.

Your life follows your conviction of yourself. What you believe yourself to be, you must eventually meet as fact, experience, and relationship. There is no escape from this law. But there is glorious freedom in it, for you are the one who decides what that conviction shall be. You are the author of your own destiny. You write it in the language of consciousness, and the world reads it in the language of form.

Tonight you stand at the threshold of a new life. Leave the old conception behind as easily as you would remove an old garment. Put on the new self by becoming conscious of being it. Feel it. Know it. Live in it. And the world that once reflected limitation will now reflect the freedom, the abundance, the joy, the wholeness that you have claimed as your true self.

You are the Lord of your world. Your awareness of being is the God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Claim your inheritance. Claim the new self-concept. Walk in it this night. And you will discover, as every man who has ever walked this way has discovered, that your self-concept is indeed your destiny—and that you alone determine what that destiny shall be.

Go now, and be conscious only of the new and glorious self you have chosen to be. The world must conform. It has no choice. For consciousness is the only reality, and you are that consciousness. What you are conscious of being, you shall express. This is the truth that has always been, is now, and ever shall be.

You are free. You have always been free. Tonight you remember who you really are. And in that remembering, your entire world is reborn.