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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 Inner Marriage
A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard
You have long believed that the changes you seek must come from without. You have labored, you have planned, you have entreated powers you thought existed outside your own being. Yet the very condition you desire, the very experience you long to know, waits only upon a marriage that takes place within you. This marriage is not between persons. It is the union of your desire with your consciousness, and from that union alone is experience born.
Your desire is the word. It is the urge that has risen from the depths of your own soul. It is not something you created by effort of will. It is the promise of life itself, seeking embodiment. Your consciousness, your awareness of being, is the only God there is. It is the I AM that Moses discovered, the awareness that declared itself to be the great I AM before all worlds. When this desire, this word, is taken into your consciousness and made one with it in feeling, the marriage is consummated. The word is then with God, and the word is God. What was formerly a hope, a longing, a wish, becomes a living reality in consciousness, and that reality must objectify itself in your world.
This is the mystery hidden from the foundation of the world, yet it is the simplest thing in life. You are the virgin Mary of the story. Your awareness of being is ever virgin. It remains untouched, no matter how many desires it has conceived and brought forth. Right now you may look upon yourself as this virgin awareness. You may take your desire and impregnate yourself with it. You make your awareness of being your husband and conceive the child, the manifestation, of the Lord. For thy maker is thine husband. The Lord of hosts is his name. You need no outer evidence to justify this act. You need no man to make it possible. You knew not a man, yet you conceived. Your senses may deny the possibility. Your present world may show no sign of it. Yet when you discover that your awareness of being is God, you take this awareness as husband and you conceive.
The command given to Mary is given to you. Go, tell no man. Do not discuss what you have conceived with another. The other can only return to you the echo of your own present fears. Secrecy is the first law of this marriage. Keep the conception hidden in the secret place of your own mind. Let no outer voice enter to disturb the union you have made. The second command is to magnify the Lord. You have identified the Lord as your awareness of being. To magnify the Lord is to revalue yourself, to expand your conception of yourself until the new state feels natural. You dwell upon the feeling of being the thing desired until it ceases to be something you want and becomes something you are. When this naturalness is attained, you give birth. The child is delivered without strain, without effort, for it was already alive within you.
This union is the agreement of which it is written: Two shall agree as touching anything and it shall be established on earth. The agreement is never between two people. It is between your awareness and the state desired. When you feel yourself to be the embodiment of your desire, though every sense contradicts it, the two have agreed. Health and your awareness have agreed. Wealth and your awareness have agreed. Freedom and your awareness have agreed. The agreement results in the birth of the child, the thing agreed upon. You cannot remain conscious of being the man who lacks and expect to bring forth the child of abundance. You must leave the old conception behind as you would leave an old garment. You take your attention from all that now binds you to your present level and you rise in consciousness to the naturalness of the desired state. This is the birth from above. Except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, the state where all things are possible to him who believes.
In this rising you do not question the how. No manifestation knows the manner of its appearing. Consciousness is the way. The I AM is the way. The signs always follow. They never precede. You get the consciousness of the thing first, and the thing is compelled to appear. You seek first the kingdom, the consciousness of the desired state, and all things are added unto you. When the marriage is complete, thanksgiving arises of itself. You do not thank an external God for a future gift. You thank the father because you have received. You feel grateful for the thing desired as though it were already yours in the outer world. This inner gratitude is the proof that the conviction has been established, that the two have become one. Your awareness is not mocked. You are ever receiving that which you are aware of being. When you give thanks for that which the senses have not yet confirmed, you have already accepted it, and faith, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, now clothes your desire with form.
You may wonder how long the interval will be between the marriage and the birth. Time is not measured here by outer clocks. The interval is the time required for the new state to become natural to you. Some conceive and the birth follows quickly. Others carry the child longer in consciousness. But the birth is inevitable once the marriage has taken place. Life is faithful to the consciousness from which it springs. In your daily experience the old facts may seem to persist. The old doubts may arise. But you have left the old man behind. You have put off the former garment. You walk now as the new man, the one who is one with his desire. When the old world calls to you with its contradictions, you remember the inner marriage. You remember that the word is with God, that the desire is already embodied in consciousness. You do not react to the outer appearance. You persist in the inner feeling. And the outer must conform, for consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness.
This marriage is not something you do once and forget. You are always marrying in consciousness. You are always uniting your awareness with some state, and that state is ever being born in your world. The only question is whether you will unite with the desire that calls to you from within or with the doubts and fears suggested by the outer. Choose the desire. Make it your husband. Conceive it in the secret place. Let the joy of possession fill you. Let the certainty of it possess you. Then go your way in peace. The child is conceived. The birth will follow in its own time and in its own way. You need not lift a finger to bring it to pass. The one whose ways are past finding out will bring it forth.
You have placed too little value upon yourself. You have seen yourself as grasshopper in your own sight, and therefore you have been grasshopper to the giants of your world. But when you revalue yourself, when you feel yourself to be the giant, the center of power, the former giants become as grasshoppers before you. All the inhabitants of the earth are as nothing before the awareness of being that knows itself to be God. This awareness doeth according to its will among the armies of heaven and among all the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay its hand or say unto it, What doest thou? Awake to the power that you are. Not as the limited man you have believed yourself to be, but as the faceless, formless awareness that is the only God. Take your desire, whatever it may be, and in the secret of your own soul perform the marriage. Feel yourself to be one with it. Let the relief of it fill you. Let the naturalness of it possess you. Dwell there until the feeling is established, until the two have agreed, until the marriage is complete.
Then rise and go about your business. Do not look back. Do not question the how. The child is conceived. The evidence must follow the consciousness. You are not the man who is seeking. You are the one who has found. You are not the one who lacks. You are the one who possesses. For you have become one with your desire in consciousness, and what you are one with in consciousness you must express in your world. The poor man remains poor only because he has not yet performed this marriage with wealth. The sick man remains sick only because he has not yet performed this marriage with health. The confined man remains confined only because he has not yet performed this marriage with freedom. When the marriage is performed, the old state passes away and the new is born.
Before Abraham was, I AM. Before your desire was formulated in words, consciousness is. But when desire is taken into consciousness and they become one, a new world is framed for you. The old passes away. All things become new. You are the potter. Your consciousness is the clay. You fashion your world by what you marry within yourself. Do not speculate as to the manner of the embodiment. Speculation is proof that you have not yet attained the naturalness of being the thing desired. You are still filled with doubts. But when you have truly married your desire, when you have become one with it in feeling, you ask not how. You know that the thing is done. You rest in the conviction. And the conviction itself is the substance that brings forth the form.
This inner marriage is the spiritual marriage. It is the rising in consciousness where two agree and their likeness is established on earth. It is the moment when you know that you have received, and thanksgiving flows without effort. It is the moment when you can say, Thank you, father, not as a magical formula, but as the natural expression of one who has conceived and knows the child is alive within. You are always the conceiver. Before you are conscious of being this or that, you are conscious of being. Then you become conscious of being man, or poor, or sick, or confined. Yet you remain the conceiver, greater than your conception. So now take a new conception. Take your desire as the son you will bring forth. Make your awareness the father. Unite them in feeling. And the son will bear witness of the father in your world.
You cannot put new wine into old bottles. You cannot take your former beliefs, your former doubts, your former limitations into the new consciousness. You must leave them behind. You take your attention from all that is now your problem and you dwell upon just being. Then within this formless deep of yourself you give form to the new conception by feeling yourself to be the thing desired. You will find within this deep all things to be divinely possible. Everything you can conceive of being is, within this present formless awareness, a most natural attainment.
The invitation given you is to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The body is your former conception of yourself. The Lord is your awareness of being. When you leave behind the former conception and assume the nature of the new, you enter the kingdom. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot take your attention from one state and place it upon another without dying to the one and living to the other. The question, Whom do you say that I AM, is the eternal question addressed to yourself by yourself. Your conviction of yourself determines your expression in life. When you believe in God, believe also in me. The me within you is this God. Praying is recognizing yourself to be that which you now desire. It is not petitioning a God that does not exist. It is claiming yourself to be the thing desired until the claim is established to the point of conviction. Then you begin to draw unto yourself the evidence of your claim.
Do not question the how of these things appearing. No man knows that way. Consciousness is the way through which things appear. The signs always follow. They never precede. Things have no reality other than in consciousness. Therefore get the consciousness first and the thing is compelled to appear. You are told, Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all things shall be added unto you. Get first the consciousness of the things you are seeking and leave the things alone. This is what is meant by, Ye shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass. Apply this and you will know what it is to prove me and see.
The story of Mary is the story of every man. Mary is the awareness of being that ever remains virgin, no matter how many desires it gives birth to. Right now look upon yourself as this virgin Mary, being impregnated by yourself through the medium of desire, becoming one with your desire to the point of embodying or giving birth to your desire. Your ideal is this conception. The first command is, Go, tell no man. The second is, Magnify the Lord. Magnify the Lord by revaluing or expanding your present conception of yourself to the point where this revaluation becomes natural. When this naturalness is attained you give birth by becoming that which you are one with in consciousness.
Just how this desire or newly attained consciousness will embody itself, no man knows. For I AM, or the newly attained consciousness, has ways that ye know not of. Its ways are past finding out. Do not speculate as to the how. Speculation is proof that you have not attained to the naturalness of being the thing desired and so are filled with doubts. You are told, He who lacks wisdom let him ask of God, that gives to all liberally, and upbraideth not. But let him ask not doubting, for he who doubts is as a wave of the sea that is tossed and battered by the winds. And let not such a one think that he shall receive anything from the Lord. You can see why this statement is made. Only upon the rock of faith can anything be established. If you have not the consciousness of the thing, you have not the cause or foundation upon which the thing is erected. A proof of this established consciousness is given you in the words, Thank you, father. When you come into the joy of thanksgiving so that you actually feel grateful for having received that which is not yet apparent to the senses, you have definitely become one in consciousness with the thing for which you gave thanks.
God, your awareness, is not mocked. You are ever receiving that which you are aware of being, and no man gives thanks for something which he has not received. Thank you, father, is not a magical formula. You need never utter the words aloud. In applying this principle, as you rise in consciousness to the point where you are really grateful and happy for having received the thing desired, you automatically rejoice and give thanks inwardly. You have already accepted the gift which was but a desire before you rose in consciousness, and your faith is now the substance that shall clothe your desire.
This rising in consciousness is the spiritual marriage where two shall agree upon being one, and their likeness or image is established on earth. For whatsoever ye ask in my name the same give I unto you. Whatsoever is quite a large measure. It is the unconditional. It does not state if society deems it right or wrong that you should ask it. It rests with you. Do you really want it? Do you desire it? That is all that is necessary. Life will give it to you if you ask in his name. His name is not a name that you pronounce with the lips. Name means nature. So when you ask in the nature of a thing, results ever follow. To ask in the name is to rise in consciousness and become one in nature with the thing desired. Rise in consciousness to the nature of the thing, and you will become that thing in expression.
Therefore, what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall receive them. Praying is recognition. The injunction to believe that ye receive is first person, present tense. This means that you must be in the nature of the things asked for before you can receive them. To get into the nature easily, general amnesty is necessary. We are told, Forgive if ye have aught against any, that your father also, which is in heaven, may forgive you. But if ye forgive not, neither will your father forgive you. This may seem to be some personal God who is pleased or displeased with your actions, but this is not the case. Consciousness being God, if you hold in consciousness anything against man, you are binding that condition in your world. But to release man from all condemnation is to free yourself so that you may rise to any level necessary. There is therefore no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, a very good practice before you enter into your meditation is first to free every man in the world from blame. For law is never violated, and you can rest confidently in the knowledge that every man’s conception of himself is going to be his reward. So you do not have to bother yourself about seeing whether or not man gets what you consider he should get. For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself. This brings us to that much abused statement of the Bible on tithing. Teachers of all kinds have enslaved man with this affair of tithing. But remember, I AM the Lord. Your awareness of being is the God that you give to and that you ever give in this manner. Therefore when you claim yourself to be anything, you have given that claim or quality to God. And your awareness of being, which is no respecter of persons, will return to you pressed down, shaken together, and running over with that quality or attribute which you claim for yourself.
Awareness of being is nothing that you could ever name. To claim God to be rich, to be great, to be love, to be all wise, is to define that which cannot be defined. For God is nothing that could ever be named. Tithing is necessary and you do tithe with God. But from now on give to the only God, and see to it that you give him the quality that you desire as man to express by claiming yourself to be the great, the wealthy, the loving, the all wise. Do not speculate as to how you shall express these qualities or claims, for life has a way that you as man know not of. Its ways are past finding out. But I assure you, the day you claim these qualities to the point of conviction, your claims will be honored.
There is nothing covered that shall not be uncovered. That which is spoken in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetops. That is, your secret convictions of yourself, these secret claims that no man knows of, when really believed, will be shouted from the housetops in your world. For your convictions of yourself are the words of the God within you, which words are spirit and cannot return unto you void but must accomplish whereunto they are sent. You are at this moment calling out of the infinite that which you are now conscious of being. And not one word or conviction will fail to find you.
I AM the vine and ye are the branches. Consciousness is the vine, and those qualities which you are now conscious of being are as branches that you feed and keep alive. Just as a branch has no life except it be rooted in the vine, so likewise things have no life except you be conscious of them. Just as a branch withers and dies if the sap of the vine ceases to flow towards it, so do things in your world pass away if you take your attention from them, because your attention is as the sap of life that keeps alive and sustains the things of your world.
To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you, all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent, and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem. For instance, if you were imprisoned, no man would have to tell you that you should desire freedom. Freedom, or rather the desire of freedom, would be automatic. So why look behind the four walls of your prison bars? Take your attention from being imprisoned and begin to feel yourself to be free. Feel it to the point where it is natural. The very second you do so, those prison bars will dissolve. Apply this same principle to any problem.
Your answer to, Whom do you say that I AM, ever determines your expression. As long as you are conscious of being imprisoned or diseased or poor, so long will you continue to out-picture or express these conditions. When man realizes that he is now that which he is seeking and begins to claim that he is, he will have the proof of his claim. This cue is given you in words, Whom seek ye? And they answered, Jesus. And the voice said, I am he. Jesus here means salvation or savior. You are seeking to be salvaged from that which is not your problem. I am he that will save you. If you are hungry, your savior is food. If you are poor, your savior is riches. If you are imprisoned, your savior is freedom. If you are diseased, it will not be a man called Jesus who will save you, but health will become your savior. Therefore, claim, I am he. In other words, claim yourself to be the thing desired. Claim it in consciousness, not in words, and consciousness will reward you with your claim.
You are told, You shall find me when you feel after me. Well, feel after that quality in consciousness until you feel yourself to be it. When you lose yourself in the feeling of being it, the quality will embody itself in your world. You are healed from your problem when you touch the solution of it. Who has touched me? For I perceive virtue is gone out of me. Yes, the day you touch this being within you, feeling yourself to be cured or healed, virtues will come out of your very self and solidify themselves in your world as healings.
It is said, You believe in God. Believe also in me for I am he. Have the faith of God. He made himself one with God and found it not robbery to do the works of God. Go, you, and do likewise. Yes, begin to believe your awareness, your consciousness of being, to be God. Claim for yourself all the attributes that you have heretofore given an external God, and you will begin to express these claims. For I am not a God afar off. I am nearer than your hands and feet, nearer than your very breathing. I AM your awareness of being. I AM that in which all that I shall ever be aware of being shall begin and end. For before the world was I AM, and when the world shall cease to be, I AM. Before Abraham was, I AM. This I AM is your awareness.
Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it. The Lord being your consciousness. Except that which you seek is first established in your consciousness, you will labor in vain to find it. All things must begin and end in consciousness. So blessed indeed is the man that trusteth in himself, for man’s faith in God will ever be measured by his confidence in himself. You believe in a God, believe also in me.
Put not your trust in men, for men but reflect the being that you are and can only bring to you or do unto you that which you have first done unto yourself. No man taketh away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. No matter what happens to man in this world, it is never an accident. It occurs under the guidance of an exact and changeless law. No man, manifestation, comes unto me except the father within me draw him, and I and my father are one. Believe this truth and you will be free. Man has always blamed others for that which he is and will continue to do so until he finds himself as cause of all.
I AM comes not to destroy but to fulfill. I AM, the awareness within you, destroys nothing but ever fills full the molds or conception one has of one’s self. It is impossible for the poor man to find wealth in this world no matter how he is surrounded with it until he first claims himself to be wealthy. For signs follow, they do not precede. To constantly kick and complain against the limitations of poverty while remaining poor in consciousness is to play the fool’s game. Changes cannot take place from that level of consciousness, for life is constantly out-picturing all levels. Follow the example of the prodigal son. Realize that you yourself brought about this condition of waste and lack, and make the decision within yourself to rise to a higher level where the fatted calf, the ring, and the robe await your claim.
There was no condemnation of the prodigal when he had the courage to claim this inheritance as his own. Others will condemn us only as long as we continue in that for which we condemn ourselves. So, Happy is the man that condemneth himself not in that which he alloweth. For to life nothing is condemned. All is expressed.
Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor, strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself. The measurements of right and wrong belong to man alone. To life there is nothing right or wrong. As Paul stated in his letters to the Romans, I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Stop asking yourself whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire. You, as man, did not create the desire. Your desires are ever fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be.
When a man is hungry, without thinking, he automatically desires food. When imprisoned, he automatically desires freedom and so forth. Your desires contain within themselves the plan of self-expression. So leave all judgments out of the picture and rise in consciousness to the level of your desire and make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now. For, My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness.
Have faith in this unseen claim until the conviction is born within you that it is so. Your confidence in this claim will pay great rewards. Just a little while and he, the thing desired, will come. But without faith it is impossible to realize anything. Through faith the worlds were framed because faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not yet seen.
Don’t be anxious or concerned as to results. They will follow just as surely as day follows night. Look upon your desires, all of them, as the spoken words of God, and every word or desire a promise. The reason most of us fail to realize our desires is because we are constantly conditioning them. Do not condition your desire. Just accept it as it comes to you. Give thanks for it to the point that you are grateful for having already received it. Then go about your way in peace.
Such acceptance of your desire is like dropping seed, fertile seed, into prepared soil. For when you can drop the thing desired in consciousness, confident that it shall appear, you have done all that is expected of you. But to be worried or concerned about the how of your desire maturing is to hold these fertile seeds in a mental grasp, and therefore never to have dropped them in the soil of confidence.
The reason men condition their desires is because they constantly judge after the appearance of being and see the things as real, forgetting that the only reality is the consciousness backing them. To see things as real is to deny that all things are possible to God. The man who is imprisoned and sees his four walls as real is automatically denying the urge or promise of God within him of freedom.
A question often asked when this statement is made is: If one’s desire is a gift of God, how can you say that if one desires to kill a man that such a desire is good and therefore God sent? In answer to this let me say that no man desires to kill another. What he does desire is to be freed from such a one. But because he does not believe that the desire to be free from such a one contains within itself the powers of freedom, he conditions that desire and sees the only way to express such freedom is to destroy the man, forgetting that the life wrapped within the desire has ways that he, as man, knows not of. Its ways are past finding out. Thus man distorts the gifts of God through his lack of faith.
Problems are the mountains spoken of that can be removed if one has but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed. Men approach their problem as did the old lady who on attending service heard the priest say, If you had but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed you would say unto yonder mountain be thou removed and it shall be removed and nothing is impossible to you. That night as she said her prayers, she quoted this part of the scriptures and retired to bed in what she thought was faith. On arising in the morning, she rushed to the window and exclaimed, I knew that old mountain would still be there! For this is how man approaches his problem. He knows that they are still going to confront him. And because life is no respecter of persons and destroys nothing, it continues to keep alive that which he is conscious of being.
Things will disappear only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it still remains a fact that consciousness is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in consciousness. So the heavenly state you are seeking will be found only in consciousness, for the kingdom of heaven is within you.
Tonight you can consummate this inner marriage. You can take the desire that has been calling to you and in the secret place of your own consciousness unite it with your awareness of being. Feel yourself to be one with it. Let the joy of it fill you. Let the certainty of it possess you. Dwell there until the feeling is natural, until the two have agreed, until the marriage is complete. Then go your way in peace, knowing that the child is conceived and the birth must follow. For you have performed the inner marriage, and from this night forward your world will bear witness to the union you have made.
You are not separate from the power that creates. You are that power when you know yourself to be your awareness of being. And when you take your desire into this awareness and make them one, you have done the only thing required of you. The rest is not your concern. The ways are past finding out. But the child will come. And when it appears, you will know that it came from the sacred marriage performed within you, the marriage of desire and consciousness that gives birth to experience.
This is the truth. This is the gospel. This is the good news that sets men free. Go now and prove it in your own life. For the I AM within you is faithful, and it will not fail to bring to pass that which you have conceived in love and in faith.