My inner conversation is actually determining the entire thing
But now let me share with you a story I know well, the story of my father.
He was born a very poor white man in the Island of Barbados. My mother was born poor. She had nothing; he had nothing. And they proceeded to have children. Twelve children were born; two died at birth. Ten survived. He had nothing. How he got hold of this, I do not know, but the first time he heard me speak in New York City was a Sunday morning, and when we went back to the apartment, he said,
"You know, everything you said this morning is true. But why do you tell the people to close their eyes? Don't close your eyes. Keep them partly shut. You can control your imagination and you can control your attention better if the eyes are not completely closed. When you see me in the morning after breakfast reclining in my chair, you might think that I am just sleeping it off – because he's a heavy drinker. "You might think I'm simply sleeping it off. I am not sleeping off anything. I am doing my day's work then!
I bring before my mind's eye the men that I want to deal with that day, and I control the conversation. I tell them exactly what I want to tell them, as though it were true. I let them tell me – confirm that it is true, and then when I am completely satisfied with my inner conversation, then I go to town. And it works that way."
Now, he started behind the 8-ball. He had himself, my mother, my grandmother, and the ten of us to feed, plus a few servants. It was not easy. But when he died in 1959, he could leave his ten children – because my mother preceded him by many years, and he never remarried.
She died in '41, and he said, "No, I've been so blissfully happy with your Mother, I could not ever get married again," so he remained single until he died at the age of 85. But when he died, that poor man could leave a family of ten independently wealthy – each, not just collectively. He gave it to each individually as a block of stock in the company, just to the ten of us. In 1951 it was then equal to an independent income for each of us. It has tripled since he gave it to us when he died in 1959, under the control of my brother Victor, who practices the same thing.
Victor doesn't smoke and he doesn't drink, but he sits alone, and in his room he, too, is carrying on his little inner conversations – premises of desires fulfilled. And he can completely control that imagination of his. He can completely control the inner conversation, and things work just as he has determined them. He never goes to church. He's a religious man in the true sense of the word. He gives generously to charity and to all people – you would never know how many people he helps in the Island because he doesn't publicize it. That works for him because he has found out inner conversations will do it.
So then, we are told, "To him who orders his conversations aright, I will show the salvation of God!" (Psalm 50:23) Then we are told how to do it: "Put off your old nature which belongs to your former conversations." (Ephesians 4:22) And you know how, day after day, there are certain people who will run the same thing like a record, and do it over and over and over and when you meet them, they start just where they left off the last time that you talked with them. They tell the same story over and over and over. "How rotten she is to me!" or "How rotten he is to me!"
And after one solid year when you return to the City, they take up just where they left off before! And they wonder, "Why are these things happening to me?" Well, here in the greatest book in the world we are told why. For, if my conversation determines my nature – my nature is that principle upon which I depend for the sameness of forms in transmitted life – how can I change the form when the form is dependent upon my inner conversation?
So, my inner conversation is actually determining the entire thing, but man thinks it was only some external being called God whose word could not return to him void; that it had to prosper in the thing for which it was sent, (See Isaiah 55:11) because he has divorced himself from God. God's name forever and forever and forever is I AM. He said, "That is my name forever, and by that name I shall be known throughout all generations.
Well, before you were given the name John or Mary, you had God's name. God's name is I AM. That should precede the name you now use as John, for should I ask you, "What is your name?" before you say, "John," you are going to say, "I am," and you are going to say, "I am John."
So you preceded the little mask called John and declared that I am. Well, that's God's name! So, that is the One spoken of in Scripture Whose word cannot return void, but must accomplish that which He purposed. It must prosper in the thing for which He sent it.
ORDER YOUR CONVERSATIONS ARIGHT
Lecture #451 – Neville Timeless