#80: Attitudes Build Worlds

Attitudes Build Worlds A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard Man believes his attitude is born of the world he sees. He looks upon the circumstances that surround him, the behavior of others toward him, the fortune or misfortune that has come his way, and he says within himself that these things have made him what he is. He believes his attitude is the natural response to what life has done to him. But I tell you, it is the other way around. Your persistent attitude is your dwelling place, and from this dwelling place your world is forever being built. You do not live in your house alone. You live in an attitude. The attitude you return to day after day, the feeling toward yourself that you consent to as permanent, the concept of yourself that you have made habitual—this is the inner place where you dwell. And because consciousness is the only reality, this attitude you have made your home fashions the form and scenery of everything that appears around you. The world you walk through is not the cause of your attitude. It is the inevitable out-picturing of the attitude in which you have chosen to live. Consider what it means to dwell somewhere. When you dwell in a place you do not merely visit it. You furnish it with your presence. You see from its windows. You think within its walls. You feel the very air of it as natural to you. So it is with your persistent attitude. When you dwell in the attitude that you are limited, that life is against you, that others are more fortunate than you, you have furnished that attitude with your consciousness and you see the world through its windows. Everything that happens to you is seen and interpreted from that inner dwelling. And because you dwell there, the world obliges by building itself in the image of that dwelling. Your attitude toward yourself is the most important attitude of all, for it is the one you live in most constantly. When you consent to the feeling that you are unworthy, or that you are not enough, or that success is for others but not for you, you are dwelling in that feeling. You have made it your home. And from that home the world you experience must be built. It cannot be otherwise, for there is no other cause. The arrangement of your mind, the attitude you persistently hold, determines the arrangement of your world. You reveal where you dwell by your reactions to the day. Watch yourself as you move through the hours. When something unpleasant occurs, what is your immediate response? Is it the response of one who dwells in confidence, or is it the response of one who dwells in fear? Your reactions are not caused by the event. The event is caused by the place in consciousness from which you react. The man who dwells in the attitude of security meets the same seeming threats that the man who dwells in insecurity meets, yet he meets them from a different dwelling and therefore the threats dissolve or are turned to good. The difference is not in the circumstances. The difference is in the attitude that has been made the dwelling place. Everything depends upon your attitude toward yourself. That which you will not affirm as true of yourself cannot awaken in your world. You may desire wealth, you may desire love, you may desire health, yet if you persist in dwelling in the attitude that these things are not natural to you, they cannot appear. The attitude is the necessary condition. It is the soil in which the desire must be planted if it is to bear fruit. You cannot plant the seed of your desire in the attitude of its impossibility and expect it to grow. The persistent attitude is the dwelling place, and only what is natural to that dwelling can appear. When you decide to change your world you must first decide to change your dwelling place. You must rise out of the attitude you have made your home and assume another. This is not a matter of forcing yourself to think differently for a moment. It is a matter of making the new attitude the place where you live. You must furnish it with your feeling. You must see from its windows until what you see from there becomes more natural than what you saw from the old dwelling. When this is done the old world begins to lose its power over you, not because you have fought it, but because you no longer dwell in the attitude that supported it. The world has no power to resist the state you occupy. It is not independent. It is the shadow cast by the attitude in which you dwell. When you change the attitude you have made persistent, the shadow must change. There is no other law. Men search for ways to change their circumstances while remaining in the same attitude, and they wonder why nothing changes. They do not understand that they are asking the shadow to move while they remain standing in the same place. The shadow moves only when the one who casts it moves. Your persistent attitude is the light. Your world is the shadow. Move the light and the shadow must follow. You cannot dwell in two attitudes at once. You cannot live in the feeling of lack and at the same time dwell in the feeling of abundance. One attitude will always dominate. The one you return to most naturally, the one you consent to without effort, is the one that is building your world. This is why persistence in the new attitude is necessary. A single assumption, no matter how intense, will not change the dwelling place if you immediately return to the old attitude the moment the feeling fades. The dwelling place is built by what you persistently assume, by what you live in. When you assume a new attitude toward yourself you are not pretending. You are moving. You are leaving one room in consciousness and entering another. At first the new room may feel strange. The old attitudes will call to you. The old reactions will rise and demand that you return to the familiar dwelling. But if you persist, if you continue to live in the new attitude, to think from it, to feel from it, the strangeness passes. What was once new becomes natural. And when it becomes natural the world begins to reflect it without effort, for you are now dwelling in the attitude from which such a world must come. Your attitude toward others is also a revelation of where you dwell. When you persist in seeing others as limited, as unfriendly, as obstacles, you are dwelling in that attitude toward yourself. For there is only one I AM, and what you see in another is what you have first seen in yourself. The persistent attitude you hold toward your neighbor is the attitude you hold toward yourself pushed out. Change the attitude in which you dwell and the neighbor must change, for he has no life independent of your consciousness of him. The man who dwells in the attitude of love does not love because others are lovable. He loves because love is the air of the dwelling in which he lives. From that dwelling he sees a world in which love is natural. The man who dwells in the attitude of criticism sees a world full of things to criticize. He does not create the faults by his criticism. He sees the faults because he dwells in the attitude that makes them visible. Change the dwelling place and the things seen from it must change. There is no effort in the true sense when you live in an attitude. Effort belongs to the man who is trying to visit a new attitude while his home remains in the old one. He struggles because he is divided. He goes to the new feeling for a little while and then returns home to the old. But the one who has made the new attitude his dwelling place does not struggle. He lives there. He thinks from there. He feels from there. And because he lives there the world he encounters is built by that living. The senses will always report the old world for a time. This is natural. The senses are the reporters of what has already been built. They cannot report what has not yet been constructed. When you change your dwelling place the senses continue for a while to report the old neighborhood. But if you persist in the new attitude the building of the new world begins. The old reports grow weaker. The new conditions appear. And one day you realize that what the senses now report is in harmony with the attitude in which you have been living. Do not ask how the change will come. The how is not your concern. Your concern is only the attitude in which you dwell. The how belongs to the law that operates from the dwelling place you have chosen. When you live in the attitude that all things are possible to you, the how reveals itself in ways you could not have imagined. When you live in the attitude that you are secure, the means of security appear from quarters you had never considered. The law is exact. It builds from the attitude. It cannot build otherwise. You are free to choose your dwelling place. No one can prevent you from assuming a new attitude toward yourself. No circumstance has the power to keep you in an attitude you no longer consent to. The only prison is the attitude you have made habitual. When you decide that the attitude of limitation is no longer your home, you are free to rise and dwell elsewhere. The key is in your hand. It is the power to assume and to persist in the assumption until it becomes the natural place where you live. Every morning when you wake you choose again the attitude in which you will dwell that day. Every night when you prepare for sleep you choose the attitude that will work while you sleep. These choices are not small. They are the building of your world. The persistent attitude is the one that is chosen most often, the one that is returned to without thought. Make the attitude you desire the one that is most natural to you and your world must conform. There is no one to change but self. There is no world to change but the world that is built from your dwelling place. When you understand this you cease to struggle with conditions. You go instead to the attitude. You examine where you are living in consciousness. You ask yourself what attitude toward yourself you have made persistent. And if it is not the attitude from which the life you desire can come, you rise and choose another dwelling. The change may seem slow at first. This is because you are moving from a place where you have lived long. The old furniture of thought is still there. The old views from the windows are still familiar. But every time you return to the new attitude, every time you refuse to dwell in the old one, the new dwelling becomes more completely furnished. The old one grows less attractive. And one day you realize you have moved. The world you now see is not the world you saw before, because the place from which you see has changed. This is the great secret. Your persistent attitude is your dwelling place. Your world is the expression of that dwelling. Change the attitude you have made your home and you change the world you live in. There is no other way. There is no other cause. Consciousness is the only reality, and your attitude is the particular arrangement of consciousness in which you have chosen to live. Dwell wisely. Dwell persistently. And the world will build itself around you in the image of your dwelling. You are not at the mercy of conditions. You are not the victim of a world you did not make. You are the dweller in an attitude, and the attitude is yours to choose. Choose the one that is worthy of you. Choose the one in which you would gladly live forever. Persist in it until it becomes the only place you know. And from that place a world worthy of your dwelling will rise to meet you. This is the law. This is the promise. This is the way your world is built.