How Do You Feel?

Neville Goddard (1905-1972) was one of the great early New Thought writers.  He basically said what everyone else said, but especially in the book The Neville Reader, focused on the importance of feelings in our daily life, and our affirmative prayer (spiritual mind treatment).

If you were with me on Sunday, you remember I quoted from the book, using the example of the mustard seed.  You’ve read in the New Testament about faith as a grain of mustard seed, and if you are like me, interpreted the story as having to do with the size of one’s faith.  But consider a new thought.

Neville wrote, “A mustard seed is conscious of being a mustard seed and a mustard seed alone.  It is not aware of any other seed in the world.  It is sealed in the conviction that it is a mustard seed.  You too must lose yourself in the consciousness of being only the thing desired.  You abide within this sealed state until it bursts itself and reveals your conscious claim.  Faith is feeling or living in the consciousness of being the thing desired.”

Think about “being the thing desired.”  If we are looking for love, we must recognize and affirm that we are the essence and experience of Spirit, expressing as love.  If we want greater abundance, we must recognize and affirm that we are the abundance of the Universe.

So it is with everything in nature, fully present in the moment expressing what it really is.  The mustard seed is not worried if it is growing bigger than the scrub oak across the street, of if there will be enough water next month.

In our prayer work, that really is all we are doing—remembering the truth of who we are.  But after we say “and so it is,” (or “amen,”) how long does it take us to slide back into fear, regret and resentment?