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The Neville Goddard Podcast is dedicated to bringing Neville's timeless ideas into a modern, immersive format you can return to again and again. This is a modern faithful interpretation of Neville Goddard's most powerful teachings.
The State of Worthiness
A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard
Many men live their lives in the shadow of a single belief. They believe they are not worthy of the good they desire. They look upon their present world and they say within themselves that they have not earned the right to anything better. Because this belief is assumed in consciousness, it becomes the law of their expression. Their world faithfully out-pictures the state of unworthiness they have accepted as true of themselves. Yet this belief is not the truth of them. It is only a state, and every state can be left for another. The state of worthiness is as near to you as your own awareness of being, for it is a state of that awareness.
You are conscious of being. This consciousness, this awareness of being, is the only reality. It is the one and only God. When you feel unworthy, you have assumed a state that is foreign to this awareness. You have identified yourself with a limited conception, a condemned conception, and your world has no choice but to reflect the limitation. The feeling of unworthiness is not your nature. It is a garment you have put on, and you can put it off. The state of worthiness is the feeling that you are already the one to whom your desire belongs. It is the quiet conviction that the thing you seek is already yours because you are worthy to possess it now.
This feeling is not something you earn by becoming a better person in the eyes of the world. It is not achieved by years of self-improvement or by balancing some invisible scale of merit. Worthiness is assumed in the same way any state is assumed. You take your attention from the evidence of unworthiness and you place it upon the feeling of being worthy. You feel it to be natural. You feel it to be already so. This feeling is the creative act. For consciousness creates reality according to the state assumed, and the state of worthiness is the state in which the desire is already accepted as fulfilled.
You have been taught that you must earn your good. You have been taught that you must first become worthy before you can receive. This teaching is the very chain that binds you. Life does not give to the one who has earned in the eyes of man. Life gives to the one who has assumed in consciousness. The assumption of worthiness is the only earning required. When you assume it, you have ceased to beg and have begun to claim. Prayer is claiming, not petitioning. To claim is to feel yourself already in possession, and the feeling of worthiness is the very heart of that claim.
Grace is sufficient. These words are not a promise for some future time when you have finally made yourself deserving. They are a statement of what is always true. Grace is the state of worthiness assumed. When you feel worthy, you have accepted grace. You have stopped believing that you must pay for your good with suffering or with endless self-denial. You have accepted that the good is yours by right of consciousness. This acceptance is the thanksgiving that precedes the visible gift. You give thanks by feeling worthy now, not after the manifestation appears.
There is no condemnation in the state of worthiness. You do not look back upon your past and say that because of what you did or failed to do you are now unworthy. You do not look at your present circumstances and say that because of what you are you cannot have what you desire. You look only to the state you have assumed. You rest in the knowledge that consciousness does not condemn; it only expresses what is assumed. When you assume worthiness, condemnation falls away of itself. The old state dies from lack of attention, and the new state lives by the attention you give it.
The feeling of worthiness is a quiet thing. It is not loud assertion or arrogant declaration. It is the natural sense that you are the one to whom the desire belongs. It is the feeling that the desire is already fulfilled in you because you are worthy of it. When this feeling becomes natural, your entire relationship to life changes. Where before you approached your desires with a sense of hoping against hope, you now approach them with the calm certainty of one who knows he is worthy. Life, being no respecter of persons but only of states, gives you the evidence of your assumption.
You do not have to become worthy. You are worthy when you assume that you are. The awareness of being which is your true self does not know unworthiness. It knows only itself, and in knowing itself it knows that all things are possible to it. When you say within yourself that you are unworthy, you have denied your true identity and assumed a false one. To return to your true identity is to assume the state of worthiness. It is to know that you are, and that what you are conscious of being you must express.
The desires that move within you are not accidents. They are fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be. If you desire a greater expression, it is because the capacity for it already lives within your consciousness. But the capacity remains dormant until you assume the state of one who is worthy of it. The desire itself is the promise of fulfillment. The fulfillment comes only to the one who feels worthy of receiving it. You do not ask yourself whether you are worthy. You assume that you are worthy, and you let the feeling possess you.
This assumption is a change of consciousness. You have changed states many times. You have assumed health when ill and felt the difference. You have assumed wealth when poor and felt the relief of it. Now you assume worthiness with the same directness. You feel it to be natural. You dwell in it until it becomes the dominant state of your consciousness. As you persist, your world begins to change. Those who once seemed to withhold your good now seem to offer it. Circumstances that once blocked your way dissolve. For the world is your consciousness out-pictured, and when consciousness changes, the world must follow.
You do not change others. You do not change conditions by direct effort. You change yourself by assuming the state of worthiness, and all else changes with you. The old feeling of unworthiness may return. The senses may present evidence that seems to deny your assumption. In those moments you do not argue. You simply return to the feeling of worthiness. You ignore the evidence of the senses and persist in the assumption. The assumption, persisted in, will harden into fact, and the evidence will change to conform to it.
The state of worthiness is the state in which you know you are one with the source of all good. It is the state in which you no longer feel separated from your desire by any sense of unworthiness. You are the desire fulfilled in consciousness, and therefore you are worthy of it. This knowledge frees you from all striving. You no longer try to make yourself worthy. You simply are worthy, and you rest in that being. In the quiet of your own mind you can enter this state at any moment. You need not wait for conditions to improve or for a time when you feel better about yourself. You enter it now by assuming it now.
You feel the naturalness of being worthy. You let the conviction fill your consciousness until it crowds out every contrary thought. This is the only work required. When the state is assumed, the manifestation follows. You are worthy because you are. This is the simple truth. Not because you have done great things or avoided great sins, but because the awareness of being which is you is inherently worthy of all its expressions. When you know this, you cease to condemn yourself. You cease to measure yourself against any standard set by the world. You stand in the knowledge that you are, and that what you assume yourself to be, you express.
Let this knowledge possess you tonight. As you prepare to sleep, feel yourself to be worthy of all that you desire. Do not argue with the feeling. Do not qualify it with conditions. Simply feel it. Let it be the last conscious awareness as you drift into sleep. In this way you impress the state upon the depths of yourself, and those depths bring forth the evidence. In the days that follow, whenever the old state threatens to return, you remember that you have assumed a new state. You return to the feeling. You do not fight the old feeling. You simply feel worthy again. Each time you do this, the new state grows stronger. Each time you persist, the old state loses its power.
Eventually the state of worthiness becomes your natural state. You move through your days without the burden of proving yourself. You speak with quiet authority, not because you are trying to convince anyone, but because you know who you are. You act with decision, not because you must earn something, but because the action is the natural expression of the state assumed. Others may not understand the change, but they will feel it. They will treat you differently because you are different in consciousness.
The state of worthiness transforms desire itself. When you felt unworthy, desire was a source of pain. It reminded you of what you did not have and did not deserve. When you feel worthy, desire is a source of joy. It is the promise of fulfillment already accepted in consciousness. You desire, and you know the desire is already yours. You no longer chase. You attract. For the state of worthiness is a magnet that draws to itself all that belongs to it.
You are worthy of the life you desire. This is not a statement to be believed or disbelieved. It is a statement of what is true when you assume it. The truth is not in the words. The truth is in the feeling. Feel yourself to be worthy, and you have found the truth that sets you free. Freedom is not freedom from outer conditions first. Freedom is freedom from the state of unworthiness that creates the conditions. When the inner state changes, the outer conditions follow.
You were never unworthy. You only believed yourself to be. What you believe yourself to be, you express. Change the belief by changing the state, and you change the expression. This is the changeless law. The awareness of being is the only reality, and what it assumes itself to be, it becomes. Assume worthiness, and you assume the kingdom. For the kingdom is the state of consciousness in which you know yourself to be worthy of all good. Enter this kingdom now by feeling worthy now, and you will find that the good you desire has been waiting for you, waiting only for you to feel worthy of receiving it.
Tonight you have heard the truth. Worthiness is a state. It is not a moral achievement. It is not a prize to be won. It is the natural feeling of the awareness of being when it is not limited by false conceptions of itself. Assume this state. Dwell in it. Persist in it. And the world will bear witness to the worthiness you have claimed as your own. You are worthy. This is the word that goes forth from your consciousness. And this word does not return void. It accomplishes that whereunto it is sent. It brings into your world the full expression of the state assumed. It brings the transformation of your life from limitation to freedom. You are worthy. Assume it now, and it is so.