Welcome to the Teachings of Neville Goddard: SERIES I - Foundation of Conscious Creation (week 7)

Lesson 7 – The Bubble: Sanctuary of Abundance

“Where Are You Staying?” Lecture, February 26, 1965

“So, where are you staying? Well, I will tell you where you are staying. That state of consciousness to which you most often return constitutes your dwelling place. You can watch it. Morning, noon and night you keep moving psychologically back to a certain state.”

“So, I find I do not like this state any longer, and if I don’t like this state, there are unnumbered states. What would you like now to experience? You name it. Having named it, then I must enter that state.”

God's Dwelling Place — Lecture, May 8, 1969

“The job you desire exists. The home of your dreams exists. The man or woman who is perfect for you exists.”

“You can move into any state, for all states are already completed.”

The Power of Awareness — Lecture

“He can go into any mansion and there abide.”

“So I begin to think from it. As I begin to think from it, all former states vanish”

I opened my eyes from contemplation on what it’s like to interpret life as does Neville, and I thought of a Bubble. Our personal worlds are made up of imagination. What we have created mentally and emotionally through our imagination is what we experience. That Bubble we create for ourselves is our Sanctuary, and within that Sanctuary we have access to everything we desire. How does it get populated with our desires, with exactly what we need? By the master switch, the tool unveiled to us by Neville, and others who preceded him. 

I watched Formula 1 this morning. The teams were in Singapore, and even though the actual race was at night, the temperatures were still high and the humidity was at around 70%. They have cooling suits and a drink tube in the cockpit, but historically there have been stories of difficulty functioning in the heat and what a task it is to maintain lucidity and drive under the already challenging conditions – up to 200 miles per hour on curves and straights, surrounded by 20 or so other drivers. Their incredible reflexes, their world-class skills, the cars are their Bubble, with everything they need to perform and excel.

One excellent way that we can master this gift of Imagination that Neville spent his life revealing to us is to learn about the tools that others have used on this same journey.

Her book came out in 1921 — Your Invisible Power. Her name was Genevieve Behrend. She was widowed while still young and had a stipulated income that provided for her daily needs. She was free to travel, to party and to live the life she wanted.

But it wasn’t enough. Friends, travel, entertainment – they left her sad and lonely. A mystic told her she would travel to find the way to the life she desired and upon finding it she would talk and write about it. That left a fire within her burning for the life he described. In a bookshop she found a book called The Edinburgh Lectures by Thomas Troward. It was a very difficult read and she sought another, maybe one that would be easier for her to grasp. The next Troward book was The Dore Lectures, and in it she found a quote that formed the basis of her life. “My mind is a center of divine operation”.

Thomas Troward — The Doré Lectures on Mental Science (1909), Chapter 1, “Entering into the Spirit of It.”

“My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in the past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth.

Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner with me; consequently, in my own special world, of which I am the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.”

Behrend made those words her meditation, and determined to go to Europe to study with Troward personally. She had money for daily things but staying on a protracted journey would require more serious finances. She decided that she needed $20,000 to cover all expenses.

$20,000 in the 1920s would be the equivalent of $335,000 today. A single woman at the beginning of the century. But she knew what she wanted, and if Troward’s words were true, she would find the way. Genevieve used visualization and saw herself counting out 20-1,000 dollar bills morning and night. She also lived and breathed Troward’s words, until getting him to take her as his personal pupil was all she could think of.

By her account it took her 6 weeks to get the money, and she and a traveling companion left for Europe after writing many letters to Troward, whom she found did not take pupils . . . 

Let us consider our lives. Do we employ that much dedication to reach the goal of our desires? Like we discussed last lesson, Genevieve was determined to have her goal, as determined as we saw Neville being with his use of the Imagination to reach ultimate freedom.

Again, from Neville’s lecture God's Dwelling Place — May 8, 1969

“Why stand we here trembling all around calling on God for help and not ourselves in whom God dwells?”

God does not dwell in us as something other than ourselves, for God actually became as we are, that one day we may be as He is.

I tell you: you are the Being who became man, the Being Blake refers to as God. You, human imagination, did not begin in your mother’s womb and will not end in the grave. As a pre-existing Being, you emptied yourself of memory for a divine purpose. Tonight I will try to touch on that purpose.

Everything you can think of is present, now. You cannot conceive of something that is not already worked
out in detail; but it is a shadow if you do not dwell in it. It is just a possibility, but when you enter that shadow it seems the only substance.

I have seen a world in my imagination that is not like this. Prior to my entrance it was a mere possibility, an image, but when I entered that world and allowed my consciousness to follow vision, it was more real than this room is now.

At the moment I am in this room and it is real. When I depart, this will become a memory image, and wherever I am at that moment will be more real than this room or any part of my world. My home was real when I left it and will be real when I enter it again, but now it is a memory image. This room has reality to me because I am in it.

I tell you: everything exists and can be just as real as this room. The job you desire exists. The home of your dreams exists. The man or woman who is perfect for you exists. You cannot conceive of a state that is not already worked out in detail, waiting for someone to occupy. As a desire it is only a dream, a mere image, but when the state is entered, it is the only reality.

In order to come into this world you had to completely empty yourself of your creative power, your wisdom, and glory. The day will come when, having gone through the gamut, God in you (who is your very self) will rise in you. Then your memory will return and the divine name Jesus will be conferred upon you. And when this name is heard (in you) every knee shall bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, because you will know you are God.

You have always been God, but in order to take on your garment of limitation you had to become limited. You could not pretend you were man; you had to take upon yourself this cross called man, with all of its weaknesses and limitations.” (end of quote)

And so, that is the Bubble within which we live and move and have our being. We create a unique life and we live in it, all the while having our perfect divine nature existing simultaneously within us. If where we live in consciousness does not nourish us, we can begin now to create that Sanctuary where we find life a daily joy.

What makes us feel joy? Opening the door to see fields of flowers, a sky full of wispy white clouds, the faces of our dear friends beaming back at us, the knowingness that anything and everything we desire and require is already ours? How can it be toil, a struggle, out of our grasp if it already exists?

Our work is to embody that life. We are reclaiming the mastery that was always ours. We are undertaking the great work that leads us onwards to a life everlasting. A life that is more wonderful that we can now imagine. It requires that we take our eyes from a world of lack and place our gaze firmly within our Sanctuary where all things exist and therefore all things are possible, that place of “expansion and fuller expression”.

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And now, let us go into the Silence . . . 

Rosechalice