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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 Secret of Inner Fulfillment
A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard
You have sought fulfillment in the world of things and people, and you have been disappointed. You have believed that if only your circumstances would change, if only your desires would be realized in form, then you would know the feeling of fulfillment. But this belief is the very thing that keeps fulfillment from you. For the feeling must come first. The inner fulfillment must be established before the outer can appear. This is the secret. This is the law that cannot be broken.
The world is your own consciousness pushed out. Everything you see, everything you experience, is but the embodiment of what you are feeling and assuming in the depths of yourself. If you feel unfulfilled, you will see unfulfillment. If you feel fulfilled, you will see fulfillment. There is no other way. You cannot have the one without the other. The outer is always the faithful servant of the inner.
So the secret of inner fulfillment is simply this: you must feel yourself to be fulfilled now. Not tomorrow. Not when the thing comes. Now. In this moment. In the silence of your own mind. You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. This feeling is the creative act. This feeling is the true prayer. This feeling is the power that moves the world.
Many will say, "But how can I feel it when I do not have it?" And this is the question that reveals the error. You do not feel it because you have it. You have it because you feel it. The feeling is the cause. The having is the effect. When you reverse this order in your mind, you reverse the creative process. You make the effect the cause, and the cause the effect. And then you are forever waiting.
But when you assume the feeling first, you are working with the law and not against it. You are planting the seed in the only soil that can bring it to harvest. The soil is your own consciousness. And the seed is the feeling of fulfillment.
What does this feeling look like? It is not excitement. It is not a loud declaration. It is a quiet, deep, certain feeling that all is well. It is the feeling that nothing is lacking. It is the feeling that you are complete. It is the feeling that your desire, whatever it may be, is already yours in the only place that matters – in consciousness. When you touch this feeling, even for a moment, you have touched the secret. And if you dwell in it, if you make it your home, the outer world must conform.
This is what it means to seek first the kingdom. The kingdom is not outside you. It is the state of fulfilled consciousness. When you enter that state, when you live in that feeling, then all things are added. The things you thought you needed in order to be fulfilled come to you because you are already fulfilled. They come as confirmation, not as cause.
You see, the things of this world have no power to fulfill you. They have power only to reflect your fulfillment or your lack of it. A man may have all the things the world can give and still feel empty. Another may have little and feel complete. The difference is not in the things. The difference is in the feeling. The feeling is all.
So tonight, I ask you to try this. Not as an experiment, but as a new way of living. When you go to your bed, instead of falling asleep in the feeling of the day, with all its problems and lacks, fall asleep in the feeling of fulfillment. Assume that everything you have desired is now yours. Feel the peace of it. Feel the rightness of it. Feel the naturalness of it. Do not argue with the senses. The senses are only reporting the old state. You are assuming a new state. And the new state will, in time, become the report of the senses.
But you must persist. For the old feeling has been your companion for a long time. It will not leave without a struggle. It will return in the form of doubt, in the form of anxiety, in the form of the old familiar lack. When it returns, do not fight it. Simply return to the new feeling. Assume again. Feel again. For every time you do, the new feeling gains ground. And the old feeling loses its reality.
In this way, you are revising your consciousness. You are changing the image you hold of yourself. You are putting off the old man, the unfulfilled man, and putting on the new man, the fulfilled man. And this change of self is the only change that matters. All other changes follow from it.
You do not have to change the world. You do not have to change other people. You do not have to make anything happen. You have only to change yourself in feeling. And the world, being your own out-pictured consciousness, must change with you.
This is the freedom that comes with the secret. You are no longer at the mercy of conditions. You are no longer waiting for the world to give you what you want. You are giving to the world the feeling from which all things come. You are the operant power. You are the one who decides. And you decide by feeling.
Feel fulfilled, and you have decided for fulfillment. Feel unfulfilled, and you have decided for unfulfillment. There is no escaping this. It is the law. It is the way. It is the secret.
So let tonight be the night you begin in earnest. Let tonight be the night you assume the feeling and refuse to let it go. Let the feeling of inner fulfillment be the last thing you know before sleep claims you. And let it be the first thing you remember when you wake. Carry it with you. Live from it. Speak from it. Act from it. And watch as the world begins to reflect the new you.
For the world has no choice. It must reflect what you are in consciousness. And when you are fulfilled in consciousness, the world must show you fulfillment. This is the promise. This is the certainty. This is the secret of inner fulfillment.
You have been told that consciousness is the only reality. This means that what you feel yourself to be in the quiet of your own awareness is the only thing that is truly real. All else is shadow. All else is the reflection of this inner fact. When you feel fulfilled, you are standing upon the rock. When you feel unfulfilled, you are standing upon sand. And the house you build upon sand must fall, while the house you build upon the feeling of fulfillment stands forever.
The feeling of inner fulfillment is not something you create by effort. It is something you assume by relaxing into it. You relax the mind. You let go of the struggle to make things happen. You simply feel as though it were already so. In that simple act of feeling, the creative power is released. It needs no help from you. It knows its own way. It will draw to you the people, the events, the circumstances that correspond to the feeling you have assumed.
This is why you are told to shut the door. Shut the door to the outer world when you assume. Shut the door to the evidence of the senses. Shut the door to the opinions of others. In the secret place of your own consciousness, assume the feeling. And what is done in secret is rewarded openly. The open reward is the outer fulfillment. But the secret work is the inner feeling.
Many try to assume and then look for signs. They assume and then ask, "Has it begun to happen?" But this looking for signs is the denial of the assumption. If you have truly assumed the feeling of fulfillment, you have no need to look for signs. The sign is the feeling itself. The feeling is the evidence. The feeling is the substance of the thing hoped for. When you rest in the feeling, you are resting in the evidence. You are resting in the substance. And that which is substance must clothe itself in form.
The interval between the inner assumption and the outer realization may seem long to the outer man. But time is not what you think it is. In consciousness, the end is the beginning. When you assume the end, you have already begun. The interval is simply the time it takes for the feeling to solidify into form. It is the gestation period. But during this period, you do not wait in anxiety. You wait in the feeling. You live in the feeling. You sleep in the feeling. And while you do, the bridge of incidents is being built. You do not build it. It builds itself. Your only task is to remain faithful to the end you have assumed.
You may wonder what this feeling of fulfillment really is. It is the feeling that you are already the one you wish to be. It is the feeling that your desire is not something you are going to have; it is something you already are. It is the feeling of completion. It is the feeling of wholeness. It is the feeling that nothing can be added to you and nothing can be taken from you. This feeling may come to you in a moment of quiet. It may come when you least expect it. But when it comes, you know it. There is a certainty in it that no argument can shake. There is a peace in it that no appearance can disturb.
This is the feeling you must cultivate. Not for an hour a day, but as the very atmosphere in which you live. When you walk, walk in the feeling. When you speak, speak from the feeling. When you meet others, meet them from the feeling. For the feeling is you. And what you are in feeling, you are in fact.
The old feeling of unfulfillment has been your identity for so long that it feels natural. The new feeling of fulfillment may feel strange at first. It may feel like pretending. But it is not pretending. It is assuming. It is putting on the new garment. And the more you wear it, the more natural it becomes. Until one day you realize that the old feeling has no hold on you. You have outgrown it. You have died to it. And you live now in the new feeling, the fulfilled feeling.
This dying to the old and living to the new is the true meaning of resurrection. It is not a future event. It is a present act. Every time you turn from the feeling of lack and assume the feeling of fulfillment, you are resurrecting yourself. You are rising from the dead. You are putting on immortality. For the fulfilled state is the immortal state. It is the state that knows no lack, no loss, no separation.
You cannot serve two masters. You cannot feel unfulfilled and expect to experience fulfillment. The two feelings are mutually exclusive. One must die that the other may live. And the one that dies is the one you no longer entertain. You starve it by neglect. You feed the new feeling by dwelling in it. And the new feeling, being fed, grows. It becomes strong. It becomes your natural state.
When this happens, your whole world changes. Not because you have forced it to change, but because you have changed. The mirror can only reflect what is before it. When the image in consciousness is changed, the reflection is changed. This is inevitable. This is law. This is the secret of inner fulfillment made visible in your daily experience.
So you see, there is nothing to wait for. There is nothing to hope for. There is only something to assume. Assume the feeling of inner fulfillment. Assume it now. Assume it tonight. Assume it every time the old feeling returns. And the assumption, persisted in, will harden into fact. The feeling will become the fact. The inner will become the outer. And you will know, as you have always known in your heart, that fulfillment was never something to be found. It was something to be assumed. It was something to be felt. It was something to be lived from this very moment forward.
You are the fulfillment you seek. You are the peace you long for. You are the completion you desire. All that remains is for you to feel it. Feel it now. Feel it deeply. Feel it as the most natural thing in the world. And in that feeling, the secret is no longer a secret. It is your living reality. It is your world. It is you.