Who Do You Actually Believe In?

The Question That Shifts Everything

Many people say they believe in God. Usually they mean something far away, an authority somewhere above the clouds to whom they turn in difficult hours. And then they wait. They pray, they hope, they ask. Often nothing happens.

This isn’t because no one is listening. It’s because the question is posed wrongly. Not: do you believe in God? But: do you believe in yourself?

At first this sounds like a motivational slogan. But it isn’t. It’s a very concrete description of how experience arises. What you inwardly hold to be true about yourself is what asserts itself in your life. Not what you wish for. Not what you pray for. But what you actually hold to be true.

Why Asking Rarely Works

Imagine someone who has no money and wishes for nothing more fervently than prosperity. He thinks about wealth every day. But he thinks about it out of the feeling of lack. He feels the empty wallet, the bills, the worry. His whole sense of things says: I am poor.

That is exactly what then gets confirmed. Not as punishment, but because you always express what you believe yourself to be, not what you would like to have. Anyone who experiences himself as poor while asking for wealth only reinforces the very state out of which he is asking.

That is the difference between begging and claiming. Begging means: I don’t have it, please give it to me. Claiming means: I take on the feeling of already being it. The first path holds the lack in place. The second dissolves it.

Can You Believe You Are Rich When You Have No Money?

This is the real test. Not whether you are rich. But whether you are capable of taking on the feeling of prosperity, even though your senses report the opposite.

Can you hold onto it all day long? Can you fall asleep evening after evening as though your wish were already fulfilled? Not as someone who watches from the outside and hopes, but as someone who already inhabits it inwardly?

This is hard work, precisely because the outer evidence speaks against it. Your surroundings will constantly tell you that you are mistaken. The art lies in not taking the outer signs as the final word. The signs follow the inner state; they do not precede it. First comes the conviction, then the circumstances.

A State, Not a Trick

By this I don’t mean forcing anything, no grim repeating of sentences in front of the mirror. It’s about a state into which you place yourself. This succeeds most easily in the quiet moments, just before falling asleep, when the body grows still and the noise of the day falls away.

In this stillness you can imagine how it would feel if what you desired were already here. Not as an image you observe, but as an experience you are inside of. How does the ground feel beneath your feet when the worry is gone? What do people say to you? How do you move through the day?

If you do this often enough, until it feels natural, it stops being a wish. It becomes part of what you take for granted. And what you take for granted presses into your life.

Don’t Ask About the Way

A common mistake is constantly calculating how what you desire is supposed to arrive. Where should the money come from? What opportunity would have to present itself? These questions hold you in the lack, because they assume that you yourself have to plan the way.

You don’t need to know the way. Your task is the state, not the route. The paths by which things fulfill themselves are often ones you could never have thought up. Leave them alone. Your work ends the moment you have taken on the inner certainty.

And Then the One Behind It All

When you fulfill a wish in this way, you will at first think it was luck. The second time you’ll grow puzzled. The third time you’ll begin to sense that something reliable is at work here.

And at some point you discover the one who made all of this possible. It is not a stranger in the distance. It is the consciousness within you, the same consciousness that gives every wish its beginning and calls it into being. This is what is meant when it’s said that the true goal of your life is to find God, the cause of all life.

You don’t find him by looking upward. You find him by discovering that the creative power you sought outside is closer than your own breath. To believe in it means to believe in yourself. And that is no arrogance. It is the beginning of everything.

What You Can Begin With Today

Choose an area in which you desire something. Ask yourself honestly: out of what feeling am I thinking about it? Out of lack or out of fulfillment?

Then practice in the evening, just before falling asleep, taking on the feeling that it has already happened. Not strained, but calm, until it feels familiar. Don’t watch to see whether it works. Simply dwell in it.

You will notice that something shifts within you first, long before anything shows itself outwardly. That is precisely the sign that you are on the right path.