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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 Divine Imprint
A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard
You have long imagined that the circumstances of your life are the cause of your feelings, that what happens to you writes upon your mind the feelings you entertain. But this is the great reversal of truth. The feeling you accept and dwell in is the cause, and the circumstances are its obedient effects. Every accepted feeling stamps itself upon the deeper mind, and the deeper mind, being creative and faithful, proceeds at once to fashion the outer world in the exact image and likeness of that stamp.
The deeper mind within you is not a passive recorder. It is the womb of all creation, the subjective reality out of which all objective appearances arise. It receives impressions only through the medium of feeling. Ideas alone, thoughts unaccompanied by feeling, never reach it. Only when an idea is enveloped in feeling does it become a stamp, a living impression that the deeper mind accepts as fact and must express.
You cannot impress this deeper mind by repeating words or by forming mental images that remain cold and intellectual. The stamp is made only when you feel the reality of the state. To feel yourself as already the person you desire to be, to feel the wish fulfilled, is to press the seal of that state into the deeper mind. Once stamped, the deeper mind contemplates that feeling as a fact existing within itself and immediately sets about to objectify it. It knows no other way. It is not selective in the sense of choosing between good and evil; it is selective only in that it reproduces exactly what has been felt and accepted.
This is why so many of your efforts seem to fail. You have thought the thought, you have pictured the end, you have even affirmed the desire, yet the deeper mind remained untouched because the feeling was absent or divided. You felt the old state more vividly than the new. The stamp of the old feeling remained dominant, and the deeper mind faithfully continued to out-picture the old pattern. The world does not respond to your wishes; it responds to your accepted feelings.
Consider how this law operates without ceasing. As you move through your day, every reaction, every mood, every settled conviction about yourself or another is a feeling offered to the deeper mind. The feeling of being limited, the feeling of being delayed, the feeling of being unloved—these are accepted and stamped. The deeper mind receives them without argument and begins at once to weave the outer circumstances that correspond. It does not ask whether the feeling is wise or unwise. It simply reproduces the likeness of what it has received.
The same law holds when you turn from appearances and assume the feeling of your desire fulfilled. The moment you truly feel yourself to be what you want to be, or to possess what you want to possess, that feeling becomes the new stamp. The deeper mind accepts it as fact. It does not require your help in finding the means. It does not need your anxious planning. Its ways are past finding out. It knows how to bring forth the exact likeness of the feeling you have given it. Your only responsibility is to give it the right stamp—to feel the end as already accomplished.
This is the secret of all creation. The conscious mind generates the idea; feeling carries the idea into the deeper mind; the deeper mind gives it form. Without the feeling, the idea remains barren. With the feeling, the idea becomes a command that the deeper mind must obey. You are therefore not the victim of a reluctant world. You are the one who stamps the deeper mind, and the world is compelled to reveal what you have stamped upon it.
Many have discovered this truth yet still live in contradiction. They rise in the morning and feel the old limitations. They go about their affairs accepting feelings of lack, of strain, of disappointment. Then at night they wonder why the new state has not appeared. But the deeper mind has been stamped all day long with the old feelings. It has received its instructions and is faithfully carrying them out. The stamp must be changed before the expression can change. You cannot stamp the deeper mind with poverty and expect it to bring forth wealth. You cannot stamp it with loneliness and expect it to bring forth love. The stamp determines the issue.
The feeling you accept need not be loud or dramatic. It is often the quiet, persistent feeling that does the deepest work. To feel, as you walk your street, that you are already the one you wish to be; to feel, in the midst of present appearances, the inner certainty of fulfillment—this is to stamp the deeper mind with power. The outer world may continue for a time to reflect the old stamp, for the deeper mind works silently and according to its own law of growth. But the new stamp has been made, and the old must yield. Signs follow; they do not precede. The changed feeling comes first; the changed circumstances follow.
This law explains why two men in identical outer conditions can live in entirely different worlds. One accepts the feeling of being imprisoned by his circumstances and stamps the deeper mind with bondage; his world confirms his feeling. The other, in the same circumstances, accepts the feeling of freedom and stamps the deeper mind with liberty; his world begins to rearrange itself to match the new stamp. The difference is not in the circumstances but in the feeling accepted and impressed.
You need not wait for special conditions in which to make the stamp. The deeper mind is always receptive to feeling. Whether you are alone or in a crowd, whether the day is ordinary or eventful, the feeling you entertain is at that moment being offered as a stamp. This is why self-observation is so vital. Watch the feelings you are accepting. Notice when you are feeling yourself to be less than you desire to be. Do not condemn the feeling; simply refuse to accept it as your stamp. Turn from it and assume the opposite feeling. Feel the wish fulfilled until it becomes natural to you. In that naturalness the stamp is truly made.
Sleep offers a special opportunity because in sleep the conscious mind releases its grip and the deeper mind receives the last waking feeling without resistance. As you prepare for sleep, the feeling that dominates your consciousness is the stamp you press into the deeper mind for the coming day. If you fall asleep in the feeling of your desire fulfilled, the deeper mind receives that stamp and works upon it while your conscious mind is still. If you fall asleep in the feeling of the old limitations, that stamp is renewed and the deeper mind continues to express it. Therefore, the last feeling before sleep is of great importance, not as a magical act but as the natural moment when the stamp is most readily received.
Prayer, too, when it is true prayer, is the assumption of the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It is not petition; it is acceptance. When you pray in the feeling that your desire is already granted, you are stamping the deeper mind with the fulfilled state. The deeper mind then finds the ways and means, for it has been given its pattern. The Father within you, which is your deeper mind, sees in secret what you have felt in secret and rewards you openly.
The world will always bear witness to the dominant stamp. If your feeling of the fulfilled desire is clear and sustained, it will eventually displace the older, weaker stamps. The deeper mind does not hold conflicting impressions with equal power; the dominant feeling rules. This is why persistence in the new feeling is necessary. You are not persuading an outside power; you are establishing a new stamp until it becomes the ruling impression. Once it rules, the expression follows as surely as night follows day.
You may ask how long the process requires. But time is not the measure. The measure is the clarity and acceptance of the feeling. When you truly feel yourself to be what you desire to be, the stamp is made in that instant. The outer world may take time to reflect the new stamp because the old expressions must unfold and dissolve, yet the creative act is finished the moment the feeling is accepted. The bridge of incidents that leads from the old to the new is not your concern. The deeper mind knows how to arrange every detail. Your concern is only the stamp—the feeling you accept and impress.
This truth liberates you from the tyranny of appearances. You no longer need to fight conditions or wrestle with circumstances. You simply change the feeling you are stamping upon the deeper mind. The conditions must conform, for they have no life except what the deeper mind gives them through your feeling. When you cease to accept the feeling of being stuck, the stamp of stuckness is withdrawn. When you accept the feeling of being free, the deeper mind receives the new stamp and begins to build the corresponding world.
The deeper mind is your servant, yet it is also your master in the sense that it faithfully executes what you give it. It does not originate your destiny; it reveals it. Your destiny is the continuous expression of the feelings you have accepted and stamped upon it. Change the stamp and you change the destiny. This is not a hope; it is a law. It operates whether you know it or not. Now that you know it, you can operate it consciously.
Feel, then, with quiet certainty. Do not strain or struggle to feel. Simply assume the feeling that would be yours were your desire already fulfilled and let that feeling fill your consciousness. In the moment you accept it as natural, the stamp is made. The deeper mind receives it. The world must respond. There is no other way, for consciousness is the only reality and feeling is the means by which consciousness stamps its creations upon the deeper mind.
You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked to believe in the power of your own accepted feeling. The deeper mind within you is God in action, forever reproducing the likeness of what you feel to be true. Stamp it with the divine image of your fulfilled desire, and rest in the knowledge that the stamp has been received and the expression is assured. This is the law. It is eternal, changeless, and always available to the one who will use it.
Tonight, as you prepare to sleep, accept the feeling of your desire fulfilled. Let it be the last stamp you press into the deeper mind. Know that it is received, that it is now fact in the subjective world, and that the objective world must in due time bear witness. You have stamped the deeper mind. The rest is not your burden. It is the faithful work of that deeper mind which never fails to express what it has received.
You are the one who stamps. Therefore stamp wisely, stamp feelingly, and stamp with the certainty that the deeper mind will bring forth the image of your stamp in all its perfection. This is the divine imprint. This is the secret of creation. This is the way the world is made new—not by changing others, not by altering circumstances first, but by changing the feeling you accept and impress upon the deeper mind within you.
And when this is understood and lived, you will find that you are no longer at the mercy of a world you did not make. You will know yourself as the maker, the one who stamps, the one in whose feeling the deeper mind finds its command. The stamp is yours to choose. Choose the feeling of the fulfilled desire, and the world will rise to meet it. This is the truth that sets you free.