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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 Virgin Consciousness
A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard
Your awareness of being is forever virgin. It is the pure conceiver that remains untouched by every state it has assumed and every expression it has brought forth. You may have looked upon your present condition and believed that your consciousness has been marked, limited, or conditioned by all that has gone before. You may have felt that the years of a certain way of living have stamped themselves upon you so deeply that change is no longer possible. But this night I tell you the truth that frees you from that belief. Your awareness of being is the virgin Mary of the mystery. It knew not a man, and it remains virgin no matter how many sons it has borne into this world of form.
This awareness is not a record of your past. It is not an accumulation of experiences that now restricts what you can become. It is the unconditioned I AM, the pure potential that stands ready at every moment to receive a new impress and to give it birth. The states you have lived are but children that have passed through it. They do not cling to it. They do not age it or weary it or make it incapable of fresh conception. The mother remains ever virgin, ever pure, ever capable of conceiving any state you choose to feel as real within yourself.
Consider what this means for you who may feel bound by circumstances that seem fixed and unyielding. The circumstance is never the mother. The circumstance is the child of a previous conception. You conceived it by assuming its nature in feeling, and it was brought forth. But the conceiver itself was not altered by the bringing forth. It withdrew its attention from that state once the birth was accomplished, and it stood again as virgin, ready for whatever new feeling you would give it. This is why nothing in your world is permanent. This is why you are never truly stuck. The appearance of being stuck arises only when you look at the child and mistake it for the mother, when you look at the expression and believe it has become the consciousness that expressed it.
Your awareness of being is like water poured into a vessel. It assumes completely the shape and nature of that vessel. While it is in the vessel it is the vessel. Yet when it is poured out, the water remains water—pure, unchanged, ready to be poured into another vessel and to assume another shape. So it is with you. When you assume the feeling of being poor, or ill, or limited, or unloved, your awareness assumes that nature completely for a time. It becomes that in consciousness. But it does not remain that. It can be poured into the vessel of health, of abundance, of freedom, of love, and it will assume that nature just as completely. And because it is virgin, the previous nature does not contaminate the new. There is no residue. There is only the fresh assumption and the new birth that must follow it.
This is the immaculate conception that takes place in every man. The virgin knows not a man. She needs no external evidence, no outer help, no collaboration with the senses to conceive. The desire comes to her. She accepts it. She feels herself into oneness with it. That feeling is the impregnation. From that moment the child is conceived, and in due season it will be brought forth without fail. The how is not her concern. She does not question the means. She rests in the knowledge that what she has accepted in feeling must objectify itself, for consciousness is the only reality and all things are made by it.
You who desire a change in any area of your life, this is the truth you must receive. You do not have to battle the old state. You do not have to destroy it or overcome it by force. You have only to withdraw your attention from it and give your feeling to the new state you desire. In the moment you feel yourself to be the new, the virgin consciousness conceives it. The old state, having lost the life of your attention, begins to fade. It has no power to sustain itself once you have ceased to assume its nature. The signs of the new conception will appear. They always appear. They follow the feeling as surely as day follows night. They do not precede it.
Many have tried to change their world while still remaining in the feeling of the old state. They have affirmed and denied and struggled, all the while feeling themselves to be what they do not wish to be. This is to pour water into one vessel while believing it is still in another. The water cannot assume two natures at once. It must lose its identity in the new feeling if the new is to be born. This losing of the old identity in the feeling of the new is the secret of naturalness. When the feeling becomes natural to you, when you can walk in it without effort, when it feels like the only reality, then the conception is complete and the birth is assured.
Tonight you can prove this to yourself. You need no special place or special time. You need only the willingness to turn your attention away from all that now seems so real and so fixed. In the quiet of your own mind, or as you prepare for sleep, become still. Shut the door to the outer world of appearances. Refuse to let the evidence of the senses tell you what is possible or impossible. Then, in that inner stillness, assume the feeling of the state you desire. If it is health, feel yourself strong and whole and vital. If it is abundance, feel the security and the freedom of having all that you need. If it is love or freedom or any other state, feel yourself already in it. Do not wish for it. Do not hope for it. Feel it as done. Feel it as natural. This feeling is the angel that announces the conception to the virgin within you. And the virgin conceives.
You may ask how long you must persist in this feeling. You persist until it becomes natural, until the new state feels like the only thing that is real to you. Some conceptions are accepted instantly. Others require a returning again and again to the feeling until all doubt is dissolved in the certainty of the assumption. But the time required is not important. What is important is that you do not accept the evidence of the old state as final. You do not let the child that has already been born tell you that the mother is no longer virgin. The mother is always virgin. She is always capable of a new conception. This is the truth you must hold to when the outer world seems unchanged for a time. The gestation may not be visible, but the conception has taken place, and the law is at work.
This truth frees you from the burden of the past. All that you have been, all that you have done, all that you have expressed, belongs to the children that have gone forth. It does not belong to you, the conceiver. You stand this night as pure as you stood before any conception. You are not the sum of your experiences. You are the awareness in which all experiences arise and pass. Because you are this awareness, you can at any moment assume a new nature and give birth to a new expression. The past has no claim upon the virgin consciousness. It cannot prevent a new assumption. It cannot make you incapable. It cannot limit what you may conceive and bring forth.
Dwell upon the dignity and the power of this fact. Your awareness of being is the creative power of the universe individualized as you. It is God in you, the Father who does the works. When you know yourself as this virgin consciousness, you cease to beg or to plead or to struggle with conditions. You simply assume the nature of the state you desire, and you rest in the certainty that what you have assumed must come to pass. You have done the only thing required of you. You have conceived in the purity of your own awareness. The rest is the automatic working of the law you have set in motion by your feeling.
There is no state too difficult for this virgin consciousness to conceive and to bring forth. There is no condition so fixed that it cannot be dissolved by a new assumption. The only limit is the limit you place upon yourself by believing that your awareness has been conditioned by what it has expressed. Remove that belief. See your awareness as it truly is—forever virgin, forever pure, forever capable of assuming any nature and of giving it birth in your world. This seeing is itself an assumption, and it opens the door to every other assumption you may choose to make.
As you live with this truth, you will find a quiet confidence growing within you. You will no longer be anxious about results, for you will know that results are inevitable once the conception has been accepted in feeling. You will go about your daily affairs in the knowledge that the new state is already on its way, even though it has not yet appeared to the senses. This is the peace that passes understanding. It is the peace of the virgin who has conceived and who rests in the promise of the birth.
And when the birth appears, when the new state begins to show itself in your world, you will remember that your awareness remains virgin still. If there is yet more to unfold, if there is a fuller realization of the same state or a new desire altogether, you can conceive again. You are never finished. You are never complete in the sense of having no further possibility. The virgin consciousness is infinite in its capacity to receive and to give birth. It is the eternal conceiver, the I AM that was before Abraham and that will be when all present expressions have passed away.
This night, then, make your choice. What state would you have your awareness conceive? What nature would you have it assume? Do not hesitate because of what has been. Do not doubt because of what now appears. Your awareness is virgin. It is untouched by the past. It is capable of the new. Feel yourself into the new. Let the feeling be deep and quiet and certain. Let it be the only reality you entertain. This is the conception. This is the act that transforms your world from the inside out.
You are the virgin consciousness. You are the pure conceiver. You are the one in whom all things are possible because you remain forever capable of assuming any state and of bringing it forth. Accept this as the truth about yourself. Live in the feeling of it. And watch the new birth take place in your life. For what you have conceived in the purity of your awareness must objectify itself. It cannot fail. It is the law. And the law is always faithful to the feeling that sets it in motion.
Go your way in this knowledge. Keep the secret of your conception within you. Tell no man what you have assumed until the birth is accomplished. For the other can only reflect your former doubts if you speak too soon. But keep the feeling alive. Return to it whenever the old appearance would pull your attention back. And in the fullness of time you will see the child of your assumption standing before you in the world. And you will know that it was conceived in the virgin consciousness, the awareness of being that remains forever pure and forever capable of any new state you choose to feel as true.