Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Neville Goddard (1905-1972) offered a compelling explanation of the human condition and an intriguing and empowering path of self-discovery. Join your host Ed to explore from the ground up this most essential mystery: the human imagination.
[edited for clarity]
This is episode 23. How to Maintain an Assumption
Assumptions are important because they harden into fact. That's the advice we get from Neville.
1. Assumptions can be held more or less consciously or just unconsciously.
2. Somewhere in the background of the mind, observing closely moment by moment at different parts of the day, we can find that certain assumptions are operating against us -- certain self concepts. This is why I was talking about exercising vigilance over thoughts, emotions, and whatever is occurring, as sort of an undercurrent in your thinking. This is the sort of thing that doesn't come to light easily.
But let's take that phenomenon and turn it to our advantage by trying to cultivate an assumption. It's not necessarily dwelt on in a deliberate way, with the exact words being pronounced, but it's simply residing in the background of the mind.
3. So then the challenge becomes, how do we create a feeling tone that is beneficial, that is aligned with our objective and maintain that?
First of all, an underlying assumption that is beneficial is going to be the result of doing affirmations. It's going to be the result of doing a meditation session or an exercise to deliberately affirm one thing or another. The assumption kind of lingers as a residual effect.
Then the difficulty becomes there are so many things that we're trying to affirm and to manifest to bring into our daily lives, on different scales could be on a personal scale or on a much larger societal scale. So then you've got the difficulty of maintaining these various assumptions in your mind all at the same time.
But let's stay on the topic of trying to manifest one specific thing, trying to maintain an assumption that is connected with one specific objective or aim. Neville gives the advice that every desire of man is associated with one specific vibration or feeling. And for that reason, if you have an important immediate goal, you may wish to just focus on one thing at a time, and to call that feeling to mind in a very intense way. And then you know that it represents the feeling of the wish fulfilled. And it's the one aim that you have in mind -- you know exactly what you're after. It fills your mind with this unmistakable atmosphere.
4. Then we have the difficulty of having several goals, several aims that are concurrent. The difficulty is they could be of different scales, different types, something immediate, something on a personal level, or much broader on a societal scale. And yet these things are important, and all occurring simultaneously. You want to think of them all at once. Well, how is it that several affirmations that we want to include in one phrase could possibly be understood clearly? What's the solution to that?
5. There is a solution that comes to mind -- the advice of Robert A. Russell, author that I quoted before. He takes a biblical reference. I'll give you the full quote:
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”
6. Now, just by chance, it seems Neville gives exactly the same advice. This is how he sets it up. He says that what we take ourselves to be subconsciously is displayed on the outside. So that's the curious thing. When people look at us, they can see what we can't see -- they can see how we subconsciously think about ourselves. That's why we say, oh, that person is an open book. You can tell how their psychology is operating. They have a lovely charisma about them because that is the subconscious assumption that they're holding about themselves. So if that is the case, then Neville advises simply say to yourself, “I am Christ.” Here's the quote from Neville. It's from Prayer, The Art of Believing, Chapter Seven:
“Our subconscious assumptions continually externalize themselves that others may consciously see us as we subconsciously see ourselves and tell us by their actions what we have subconsciously assumed of ourselves to be. Therefore, let us assume the feeling ‘I am Christ’. “
Now, that assumption, deliberately pronounced to oneself, is going to have different effects, depending on your background, on your associations. Let's say you are sufficiently freed up in yourself to allow the idea that “I am Christ.” So you're not under the stricture that says, I could not possibly blaspheme in that way. No, you're taking a more progressive view that Christ is the expression, in the form of a character, of the human imagination, the very creative principle itself. So if you say “I am Christ”, then according to Neville's instruction, this should encapsulate a whole series of qualities and characteristics that are all bound up in one central assumption.
7. That means necessarily that all of the various goals that you have, whether on a personal scale, or on a broader social scale, are bound up and included in that one underlying assumption. You're wishing the ultimate good for yourself, for everyone, by simply encapsulating the whole idea in that one simple phrase, “I am Christ”. But if those specific words don't suit your individual ideas about religion, then you simply replace those words with something that has an equal magnitude, equal grace and power, something like, “I am the creative source”, “I am the universe”-- something like that. Perhaps something more inventive that would be more emotionally charged, and less of a cliche.
So now we've addressed the idea of a feeling tone, an underlying assumption that is residing in the background of the mind: a) in the sense of the lingering effect of a deliberate exercise in affirmation, especially for a single purpose, a single aim, and b) in the sense of multiple aims, all subsumed within one grand assumption “I am Christ”;
“I am the creative power”; “I am the universe.”
Now the thing about the subconscious mind is that, having gone through this exercise deliberately, to include various details in your thinking, the subconscious will not quibble. It will understand that that's exactly what you intend. And for that reason, this sort of assumption can be maintained by thinking of a visual symbol, either one that is pre-existing, or one that you create yourself.
8. Now, the great benefit of maintaining an assumption by following these various instructions is that there's no downside. There's no possible detriment to holding an assumption that is really worthwhile -- noble, something beneficial -- and entraining that within the mind, to make that the backdrop, the foundation of your thinking, without necessarily being pronounced in literal words. That's an improvement of your level of being.
Now you have something to draw upon when you are faced with situations that are unacceptable. You call to mind your assumption, your feeling tone, in the subsuming phrase. This is a technique that you can draw upon at odd moments, when it's difficult sometimes to think... what should I be thinking about? What should I be trying to imagine and assume at this specific moment? When you're just waking up, or when you catch yourself at odd moments during the day, or when you're so busy and distracted with various things that you can't seem to collect your thoughts very well... well, you've got this shorthand --this feeling tone, that you simply switch on like a light switch. If you've worked on it sufficiently, if you have deliberately infused it with all the various elements of the assumption -- it's feeling, content, significant, magnitude -- in the symbol, in the phrase that you're using. Then it's enough just to draw upon that phrase, that symbol called to mind. Immediately your subconscious will understand.
Something that is uncomplicated, direct and straightforward is the most effective.
9. Certain disciplines of the mind that we discussed in episode five are especially pertinent here. How about thankfulness, gratitude? It really would repay us to study what this feeling of gratitude is all about. It's not pronouncing the words, it's entering into the deep feeling of gratitude. Another discipline of mind that can be used in conjunction with assumptions is the one of Judas. You remember the way Neville interprets that -- it's a positive thing. It has to do with dying to the old aspect of oneself, to throw off the old man.
10. Well, after you leave off speaking the affirmation, you try to lay down, as a foundation in the mind, the assumption -- in an unspoken way, as a backdrop. It all seems a little bit vague. But then all of the techniques that we're discussing, including in the last episode, they are all ways to sort of go around, circumambulate, the essential goal. You can't approach the essential goal directly because it's not rational, it's something kind of mysterious.
All we can do is kind of go around it, and try to come near to it in different ways. But as Nicoll says, once you are in the moment, when you are illumined by a specific idea directly, then you understand that idea, as well as other things that you simply won't see once you are outside of that direct illumination.
11. That's why ideas are likened to birds. They may visit the mind -- different types will come and grace the mind for a time, and then move away again. If you think back to what was called the Golden Age, there are some references in various authors talking about the way mankind used to be. Back in the mythical golden age, human society, the mind of man, functioned in a way more proper to its intended form. In other words, self remembering, self consciousness is the normal state of man, something that people used to do quite naturally. They didn't have to learn it. Somehow, we forgot it, and we have to recapture it.
In learning how to draw in and live by unspoken assumptions, that reside in the background of the mind, then perhaps we're moving closer to this golden age, a way of being that is more proper to man than what we've become.
With regard to the external world and everything going on in the world of Caesar, can you say that we are necessarily going through a time that is qualitatively worse than previous times in history? I don't think so. I think just the forms have changed.
I read an article where there was extraordinary despair expressed at all the various forms of evil that seemed to be expressing on all sides, in different facets of life. And yet I think there are many periods in the past -- pick up any book of history -- when you would not have wanted to be in those circumstances that were murderous. So again, it's just the forms of the insanity that make it seem novel, with advances in technology, and therefore supposedly we're going through something extraordinarily unique. But Nicoll is careful to point out -- he pointed this out to his friend Kenneth Walker -- that humanity simply goes around in circles. The level of being does not change. It's the same lessons having to be learned over and over again, while these so-called advances in technology also happened in the past. According to a lot of evidence, we can't replicate today what's observed in megalithic sites.
12. As we go along in this podcast series, maybe one way to think about it is to say that we set out a certain number of techniques, methods and concepts. Maybe 10% of those will be used. The ones that you do remember and use individually are going to be different from the ones that someone else will remember and use. It's all a matter of individual experimentation and discovery. But the common thread that should be connecting all of our efforts is an increasing refinement and subtle quality to your practice and your understanding.
I'm hoping that in today's episode, in considering how to make an assumption permanent and effective, that you found these suggestions useful.