The Power Of Awareness
| Chapter 21 |
FREE WILL
THE QUESTION is often asked, "What should be done between the assumption of the wish fulfilled and its realization?"
Nothing. It is a delusion that, other than assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you can do anything to aid the realization of your desire.
You think that you can do something, you want to do something; but actually you can do nothing. The illusion of the free will to do is but ignorance of the law of assumption upon which all action is based.
Everything happens automatically.
All that befalls you, all that is done by you – happens.
Your assumptions, conscious or unconscious, direct all thought and action to their fulfillment.
To understand the law of assumption, to be convinced of its truth, means getting rid of all the illusions about free will to act. Free will actually means freedom to select any idea you desire.
By assuming the idea already to be a fact, it is converted into reality. Beyond that, free will ends, and everything happens in harmony with the concept assumed.
I can of Mine Own Self do nothing...
because I seek not Mine Own Will,
but the Will of the Father which hath sent Me.
[John 5:30]
In this quotation, the Father obviously refers to God. In an earlier chapter, God is defined as I AM.
Since creation is finished, the Father is never in a position of saying "I will be". In other words, everything exists, and the infinite I AM consciousness can speak only in the present tense.
Not My Will, but Thine be done. [Luke 22:42]
"I will be" is a confession that "I am not". The Father's Will is always "I AM".
Until you realize that YOU are the Father (there is only one I AM, and your infinite self is that I AM), your will is always "I will be".
In the law of assumption, your consciousness of being is the Father's will. The mere wish without this consciousness is the "my will". This great quotation, so little understood, is a perfect statement of the law of assumption.
It is impossible to do anything. You must be in order to do.
If you had a different concept of yourself, everything would be different.
You are what you are, so everything is as it is.
The events which you observe are determined by the concept you have of yourself.
If you change your concept of yourself, the events ahead of you in time are altered, but, thus altered, they form again a deterministic sequence starting from the moment of this changed concept. You are a being with powers of intervention, which enable you, by a change of consciousness, to alter the course of observed events – in fact, to change your future.
Deny the evidence of the senses, and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
Inasmuch as your assumption is creative and forms an atmosphere, your assumption, if it be a noble one, increases your assurance and helps you to reach a higher level of being.
If, on the other hand, your assumption be an unlovely one, it hinders you and makes your downward way swifter. Just as the lovely assumptions create a harmonious atmosphere, so the hard and bitter feelings create a hard and bitter atmosphere.
Whatsoever things are pure, just, lovely, of good report, think on these things. [Approx., Philippians 4:8]
This means to make your assumptions the highest, noblest, happiest concepts. There is no better time to start than now. The present moment is always the most opportune in which to eliminate all unlovely assumptions and to concentrate only on the good.
As well as yourself, claim for others their Divine inheritance.
See only their good and the good in them. Stir the highest in others to confidence and self-assertion by your sincere assumption of their good, and you will be their prophet and their healer, for an inevitable fulfillment awaits all sustained assumptions.
You win by assumption what you can never win by force.
An assumption is a certain motion of consciousness. This motion, like all motion, exercises an influence on the surrounding substance causing it to take the shape of, echo, and reflect the assumption. A change of fortune is a new direction and outlook, merely a change in arrangement of the same mind substance – consciousness.
If you would change your life, you must begin at the very source with your own basic concept of self.
Outer change, becoming part of organizations, political bodies, religious bodies, is not enough. The cause goes deeper. The essential change must take place in yourself, in your own concept of self.
You must assume that you are what you want to be and continue therein, for the reality of your assumption has its being in complete independence of objective fact and will clothe itself in flesh if you persist in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
When you know that assumptions, if persisted in, harden into facts, then events which seem to the uninitiated mere accidents will be understood by you to be the logical and inevitable effects of your assumption.
The important thing to bear in mind is that you have infinite free will in choosing your assumptions, but no power to determine conditions and events.
You can create nothing, but your assumption determines what portion of creation you will experience.
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