#46: Stop Wanting, Start Being

Stop Wanting, Start Being

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have desired many things. You have longed for health, for abundance, for peace, for love, and yet they have seemed forever just beyond your reach. Night after night you have gone to sleep with the ache of wanting still burning within you. Morning after morning you have awakened to the same familiar sense of lack. Why does this happen? Because wanting is not the way of fulfillment. Wanting keeps you conscious of absence. Wanting fixes your attention upon the very condition you would leave behind. But desire fulfilled is never “I want.” Desire fulfilled is “I am.”

Hear this truth tonight with the quiet certainty that it is so. Your awareness of being is God. Your consciousness of being is the only reality. Nothing has ever appeared in your world except that which you have been conscious of being. You do not command things to appear by repeating words of desire. You do not persuade the universe by begging or hoping. You decree by being conscious of being the thing itself. The moment you become conscious of being healthy, you are healthy. The moment you become conscious of being wealthy, you are wealthy. The moment you become conscious of being at peace, you are at peace. This is the changeless principle upon which all creation rests.

Look within. Right now you are aware of being. That awareness, that simple knowing that you are, is the I AM of which Moses spoke when he declared, “I AM hath sent me unto you.” That same I AM is the door through which every desire must pass into expression. When you say within yourself, without words, “I am,” you are standing at the very threshold of creation. Most men stop there and add the shadow of limitation. They say, “I am sick,” or “I am poor,” or “I am alone,” and so they remain conscious of being sick, poor, and alone. But you need not add any shadow. You can stop at the pure awareness of being and then, from that formless depth, feel yourself to be the very thing you once desired. Feel it until the feeling becomes natural. Feel it until the consciousness of being that state is as real to you as your present sense of self. Then the outer world, which is nothing more than your consciousness out-pictured, must reflect the change.

You have been taught to want. The world has trained you to look upon your desires as distant goals, as things to be reached someday if you are fortunate or clever enough. But I tell you that desire fulfilled is not a future event. It is a present state of consciousness. The word, the urge, the longing, swims about in your mind seeking embodiment. It has no reality of its own. It lives only as long as you remain conscious of it as something apart from yourself. The instant you unite the word with God—your awareness of being—by feeling “I am that,” the two have agreed, and the thing desired is born. “Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established on earth.” The agreement is never between two persons. It is between your awareness of being and the nature of the thing desired. When you feel “I am healthy,” awareness and health have agreed, and health must appear.

Consider how simple, how majestically simple, this principle is. You are now conscious of being. That is the only reality you can never escape. You may forget your name, you may lose sight of your body, but you cannot cease to be aware that you are. That awareness is God. That awareness is the Father who does the works. When you rise in consciousness and claim, “I am the thing desired,” you are doing exactly what the prophets and the Christ taught. You are not petitioning an external God. You are not pleading with some distant power. You are recognizing yourself as the only power. You are the conceiver and the conception. You are greater than any state you assume, yet you remain one with it. Before you became conscious of being man, you were conscious of being. You remain the conceiver, forever greater than your conceptions, yet forever one with them.

This is why wanting keeps you bound. Wanting is the consciousness of separation. Wanting declares, “I am not yet that.” But being declares, “I am that now.” The difference is absolute. The man who wants health is conscious of illness. The man who is health is conscious only of health. The outer world cannot help but mirror the inner state. You are forever out-picturing exactly what you are conscious of being. There is no escape from this law. You may deny it, you may argue with it, but you cannot disprove it. Every detail of your life today is the perfect expression of your present consciousness of being. Change that consciousness and the details must change. There is no other way.

Tonight, in this very moment, you can stop wanting and start being. Withdraw your attention from the condition you dislike. Take it away from the sense of lack. Place it gently, firmly, upon the awareness of being the desired state. Do not force it. Do not strain. Simply feel yourself to be that which you would be. Let the feeling become natural. Dwell in it until the consciousness of being it is as effortless as your present sense of being yourself. You need not visualize in detail. You need not see pictures. The feeling of the wish fulfilled is enough. When you can say within yourself, with quiet conviction, “I am that,” without the slightest doubt or reservation, the work is done. The signs will follow. They always do. They never precede.

You may ask, “But how will it happen?” Do not concern yourself with the how. No man knows the way. Consciousness has ways past finding out. Your only responsibility is to reach the naturalness of being the thing desired. Once that naturalness is attained, the outer world rearranges itself with perfect ease. It has no choice. It is only the mirror reflecting your consciousness. You do not change the mirror by polishing its surface. You change the image by changing the one who stands before it. Change your consciousness of being and the reflection changes instantly.

This principle is not new. It is as old as eternity. It is the secret hidden in every page of scripture when read with the eyes of the spirit. “I am the way.” Not “I will be the way.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” Not “I hope to be.” “Before Abraham was, I am.” Always the present, always the now. The eternal I AM never speaks in the future tense. It knows nothing of “I shall be.” It knows only “I am.” When you claim anything in the future, you are denying the present reality of your own being. You are postponing your own Godhood. But when you dare to feel “I am that now,” you are aligning yourself with the only creative power in the universe.

Let this truth sink deeply into your being tonight. You are not a beggar pleading at the gates of heaven. You are the very gate. You are not a servant waiting for favors. You are the master who issues the command. The command is issued in the silence of your own consciousness by becoming conscious of being the fulfilled desire. Stop the restless wanting that has kept you circling in the same place for years. Stop the anxious hoping that has drained your strength. Enter the rest of being. “Be still and know that I am God.” Be still and know that your awareness of being is God. Be still and claim, with the quiet dignity of one who knows, “I am the health I once sought. I am the abundance I once desired. I am the peace I once prayed for.”

You may feel the old habit of wanting rise within you. It will try to pull your attention back to the appearance of lack. Do not fight it. Do not resist. Simply return your attention, gently but firmly, to the feeling of being the thing itself. Each time you do this, you are loosening the chains of the old man. Each time you do this, you are crucifying the consciousness of limitation and resurrecting the consciousness of fulfillment. The outer world may still show you the old picture for a little while. Pay it no attention. It is only the momentum of former states. It has no power once you have withdrawn your consciousness from it. Keep your attention fixed upon the new state until it feels natural, until it feels like home. Then you will see the evidence appear, not as something coming from afar, but as something that has always been true.

This is the new birth. This is what it means to be born again. Not a change of belief, but a change of being. You leave behind the old conception of yourself and assume the nature of the new. You die to the man who wants and you rise as the man who is. “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom.” The kingdom is the state of fulfilled desire. You enter it by being, not by wanting. Tonight, in the privacy of your own mind, you can be born again. Tonight you can leave the barren deserts of Egypt and enter the promised land of Canaan. All it requires is the courage to claim “I am that” and the persistence to remain in that claim until it becomes your natural consciousness.

You are the operant power. No one else can do this for you. No external force can grant you what you already possess in consciousness. The power is within you now. It has always been within you. You have only to recognize it. You have only to use it. Stop looking outside yourself for the answer. Stop waiting for conditions to improve. The condition is your consciousness. Improve that and all conditions improve. You are the light of your world. You are the resurrection and the life of your world. Claim it. Feel it. Live from it. And watch your world transform.

The beauty of this truth is its utter simplicity. There is nothing to learn, nothing to achieve, nothing to earn. You have only to be. You have only to become conscious of being the desired state. In that becoming, the entire drama of creation is fulfilled. The word becomes flesh. The desire becomes fact. The dream becomes waking reality. This is not theory. This is not philosophy. This is the living truth that has worked for every soul who has dared to apply it. It will work for you the moment you stop wanting and start being.

Tonight, before you close your eyes in sleep, do this one thing. Withdraw from the world of the senses. Enter the silence of your own being. Feel yourself to be the one you would be. Feel it deeply, naturally, joyfully. Let the feeling of “I am that” flood your entire consciousness. Carry that feeling into sleep. Sleep in that consciousness. Awaken in that consciousness. Tomorrow, and every tomorrow after, live from that consciousness. Do not look back. Do not question. Do not doubt. Simply be. In that being lies your complete freedom. In that being lies the fulfillment of every desire you have ever known.

You are not the victim of circumstances. You are the creator of circumstances. You are not at the mercy of the world. The world is at the mercy of your consciousness. Change your consciousness of being and you change the world. There is no other way. There never has been. There never will be. This is the eternal law.

Stop wanting. Start being. Right now. In this very moment. Feel it. Know it. Live it. And the kingdom, with all its glory, will be yours. For the kingdom is within you, and you are the kingdom. You are the I AM that has always been and will forever be. Claim it tonight, and tomorrow you will walk in the light of your own fulfilled desire.

You have heard the truth. Now live it. You are not a hopeful seeker anymore. You are the fulfillment itself. You are the answer to your own prayer. Rest in that knowledge. Rest in the majestic certainty that your awareness of being is God, and God is finished. All that remains is for you to be what you have claimed to be. Be it now. Be it completely. Be it with the quiet power that knows no opposition.

This is the end of wanting and the beginning of being. This is the day of your salvation. This is the moment when heaven and earth become one in your consciousness. Walk in that oneness. Live in that oneness. And every desire of your heart will be made manifest, not because you wanted it, but because you are it.

You are the light. You are the way. You are the resurrection and the life. You are the I AM. Let that be enough. Let that be everything. For in that simple, profound realization, all things are added unto you. Stop wanting. Start being. And you will never want again.