These are quotes from the works of Neville Lancelot Goddard (1905-1972).
Neville saw all the scriptures of the world as guidebooks to life - allegories that reveal the truth to those who realize that they are the origin story of our beingness and the key to who we are and where we are going. He spent his life pouring over scripture, determined to find what he could apply to his own life and ultimately the lives of those who heard him speak of his discovery.
Neville’s premise is that consciousness, that which we believe is true of ourselves and the world, is the only reality. Our conception of truth is mirrored in everything we see outside of ourselves. The movie of us that we see in the eyes of our friends, strangers, and loved ones is not a judgement. It is a revelation of what we belief about ourselves. It’s a heads-up. It’s as Neville called it - A Standing Order. A call to action that says if we don’t like what we see in the mirror, change our face. If we don’t like what’s happening in our lives, look within to what we believe is true.
“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.”
― Neville Goddard, Your Faith is Your Fortune
“An awakened imagination works with a purpose. It creates and conserves the desirable, and transforms or destroys the undesirable.”
“Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face. Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory.”
― Neville Goddard, Your Faith is Your Fortune (1941)
“Do not waste one moment in regret, for to think feelingly of the mistakes of the past is to re-infect yourself. Turn from appearances and assume the feeling that would be yours were you already the one you wish to be.”
– Neville Goddard, “Feeling is the Secret”
Feeling is the one and only medium through which ideas are conveyed to the subconscious. Therefore, the one who does not control his feeling may easily impress the subconscious with undesirable states. By control of feeling is not meant restraint or suppression of your feeling, but rather the disciplining of self to imagine and entertain only such feeling as contributes to your happiness. Control of your feeling is all important to a full and happy life.”
Neville Goddard, Feeling is the Secret
“You are free to choose the concept you will accept of yourself. Therefore, you possess the power of intervention, the power which enables you to alter the course of your future. The process of rising from your present concept to a higher concept of yourself is the means of all true progress. The higher concept is waiting for you to incarnate it in the world of experience.”
Neville Goddard, The Power of Awareness
“You know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other things, by analyzing it and defining it; whereas you can know a thing spiritually only by becoming it. You must be the thing itself and not merely talk about it or look at it.”
- Neville Goddard, The Power of Awareness
“Because of your belief in external things you think power into them by transferring the power that you are to the external thing. Realize you yourself are the power you have mistakenly given to outer conditions.”
“Man, not knowing that his world is his individual consciousness outpictured, vainly strives to conform to the opinion of others rather than to conform to the one and only opinion existent, namely, his own judgment of himself.”
“See no man as an authority. Why should you ask man for permission to express when you realize that your world, in its every detail, originated within you and is sustained by you as the only conceptional center?”
“Close your eyes and feel yourself to be faceless, formless and without figure. Approach this stillness as though it were the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. This attitude will assure your success.”
“Waste no time trying to change the outside; change the within or the impression; and the without or expression will take care of itself. When the truth of this statement dawns upon you, you will know that you have found the lost word or the key to every door.”
Now here is something to always bear in mind. You cannot put new wine in old bottles or new patches upon old garments. That is; you cannot take with you into the new consciousness any part of the old man.
All of your present beliefs, fears and limitations are weights that bind you to your present level of consciousness. If you would transcend this level you must leave behind all that is now your present self, or conception of yourself.
To do this you take your attention away from all that is now your problem or limitation and dwell upon just being. That is; you say silently but feeling to yourself, “I AM.” Do not condition this ‘awareness’ as yet. Just declare yourself to be, and continue to do so, until you are lost in the feeling of just being—faceless and formless.
When this expansion of consciousness is attained, then, within this formless deep of yourself give form to the new conception by feeling yourself to be that which you desire to be.”