Neville Goddard Your Faith Is Your Fortune Chapter 21

DANIEL IN THE LIONS’ DEN

Thy God whom thou servest continually; He will deliver thee. – Daniel 6:16

The story of Daniel is the story of every man. It is recorded that Daniel, while locked in the lions’ den, turned his back upon the hungry beasts; and with his vision turned toward the light coming from above, he prayed to the one and only God. The lions, who were purposely starved for the feast, remained powerless to hurt the prophet. Daniel’s faith in God was so great that it finally brought about his freedom and his appointment to a high office in the government of his country [Daniel 6:13-28]. This story was written for you to instruct you in the art of freeing yourself from any problem or prison in the world.

Most of us on finding ourselves in the lions’ den would be concerned only with the lions, we would not be thinking of any other problem in the whole wide world but that of lions; yet we are told that Daniel turned his back upon them and looked toward the light that was God. If we could follow the example of Daniel while threatened with any dire disaster such as lions, poverty or sickness, if, like Daniel, we could remove our attention to the light that is God, our solutions would be similarly simple.

For example, if you were imprisoned, no man would need to tell you that what you should desire is freedom. Freedom or rather the desire to be free would be automatic. The same would be true if you found yourself sick or in debt or in any other predicament. Lions represent seemingly unsoluble situations of a threatening nature. Every problem automatically produces its solution in the form of a desire to be free from the problem. Therefore, turn your back upon your problem and focus your attention upon the desired solution by already feeling yourself to be that which you desire. Continue in this belief, and you will find that your prison wall will disappear as you begin to express that which you have become conscious of being.

I have seen people, apparently hopelessly in debt, apply this principle, and, in but a very short time, debts that were mountainous were removed. I have also seen those whom doctors had given up as uncurable apply this principle and, in an incredibly short time, their so-called incurable disease vanished and left no scar. Look upon your desires as the spoken words of God and every word of prophecy of that which you are capable of being. Do not question whether you are worthy or unworthy to realize these desires. Accept them as they come to you. Give thanks for them as though they were gifts. Feel happy and grateful for having received such wonderful gifts. Then go your way in peace. Such simple acceptance of your desires is like the dropping of fertile seed into an ever-prepared soil. When you drop your desire in consciousness as a seed, confident that it shall appear in its full-blown potential, you have done all that is expected of you. To be worried or concerned about the manner of their unfoldment is to hold these fertile seeds in a mental grasp and, therefore, to prevent them from really maturing to full harvest.

Don’t be anxious or concerned as to results. Results will follow just as surely as day follows night. Have faith in this planting until the evidence is manifest to you that it is so. Your confidence in this procedure will pay great rewards. You wait but a little while in the consciousness of the thing desired; then suddenly, and when you least expect it, the thing felt becomes your expression. Life is no respecter of persons and destroys nothing; it continues to keep alive that which man is conscious of being. Things will disappear only as man changes his 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 conscious of being. The heavenly state you seek will be found only in consciousness for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
Your consciousness is the only living reality, the eternal head of creation. That which you are conscious of being is the temporal body that you wear. To turn your attention from that which you are aware of being is to decapitate that body; but, just as a chicken or snake continues to jump and throb for a while after its head has been removed, likewise qualities and conditions appear to live for a while after your attention has been taken from them.

Man, not knowing this law of consciousness, constantly gives thought to his previous habitual conditions and, through being attentive to them, places upon these dead bodies the eternal head of creation; thereby he reanimates and re-resurrects them. You must leave these dead bodies alone and let the dead bury the dead [Matthew 8:22, Luke 9:60]. Man, having put his hand to the plough (that is, after assuming the consciousness of the quality desired), by looking back, can only defeat his fitness for the Kingdom of Heaven [Luke 9:62]. As the will of heaven is ever done on earth, you are today in the heaven that you have established within yourself, for here on this very earth your heaven reveals itself. The Kingdom of Heaven really is at hand. Now is the accepted time. So create a new heaven, enter into a new state of consciousness and a new earth will appear.