The 90% Rule

 

Why Imagination is the Architect of Your Future

Let me say this about change: it is about 90% will. The part that feels so incredibly hard—the execution—is actually the smallest part. You must begin with desire, and desire can only be activated through creative imagining. If you cannot imagine yourself living the future you desire, you simply won’t have it.

 

I thank God for Neville Goddard and William Blake. Both of these great teachers knew that the Imagination and "The Christ Within" were two ways to describe one thing. No matter what terminology you prefer, it is the mechanism by which your future unfolds.

 

I am a work in progress, but I know this truth to be foundational for the future I am building.

 

Goddard often mentioned a specific thought exercise: he suggested we imagine how our friends and family would react if we came into our “fortune.” Don’t let the word confuse you—it simply means your “Desired Future,” and it is nearly synonymous with luck. In any event, Goddard said, “Imagine what your friends would say if it were true.”

 

It’s a powerful practice. And it isn't just about friends; it’s about how the whole world treats you. If you are a singer who desires to perform on a stage, have you not witnessed this desire in children? Have you seen them standing before a mirror, clutching a hairbrush as if it were a microphone? Have you watched a child cup their hands to mimic the roar of an excited crowd? These are perfect examples of the Goddard Challenge: “What would it be like if it were true?” Children know this exercise well.

 

A few years ago, I read Counterclockwise by Ellen Langer, known as the "Mother of Mindfulness." She was fully aware of this secret. She encouraged elderly people to surround themselves with pictures from their younger, happier days, taking their minds back to that time and giving them the imaginative space to change their current reality. She is now 79, and she looks 65.

 

This isn’t a single practice; it is a lifestyle. As Jesus said, “Such is the kingdom of heaven,” referring to children.

 

For some time now, I have held the view that when Paul explained his position on Love—mentioning that he had “put away childish things”—he was expressing regret, not instruction. I have never once heard a preacher suggest this. But to be childish is to experience the miraculous.

 

I wonder if you caught that: To be childish is to experience the miraculous.

 

It is unfortunate that we have come to view "childishness" as a flaw. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to be as a child. Before the age of seven, children possess such powerful imaginations that they can become the characters they pretend to be. I’ve gotten into arguments with them over it. When my friend’s daughter was five, she told me she was Alice from Alice in Wonderland. I asked, “So you like to pretend you are Alice?” She corrected me sharply: “No, I am Alice.”

 

Two decades later, my grandson informed me he was Harry Potter. I made the same mistake, asking if he was pretending. “No, Gaga,” he said. “I am Harry Potter.”

 

This is the exact kind of "childish thing" Paul was referring to. When we forget how to imagine properly, we enter an internal tug-of-war. Consider what Paul wrote in Romans 7:15: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”

 

Paul was brilliant. Goddard often treated his writings as symbolic messages. He noted that "Saul" means “You asked for it,” and "Paul" means “Little.” You can apply this to almost any name in the Bible and find the same consistency. Paul becomes a central figure in the New Testament narrative because of his famous conversion. If you pull your lens back, the story is incredible: he was a devout man who wanted no part of the Christian movement, but after being struck by a light bright enough to blind him, he changed his entire course. During this conversion, his name shifted from “You asked for it” to “You are a child.”

 

If I had been there, I might have been foolish enough to ask, “Oh, so you are pretending to be Christ?”

 

Paul would surely answer, “I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ.”

 

We miss this so often. Paul is teaching us to reprogram our minds. Imagine as a child imagines. If Christ is your own wonderful human imagination—as Goddard taught—then the very thing that strengthens you to do all things is your imagination. Rephrased, we might say: “I can do all things by way of my imagination.”

 

This is not new, but it is rarely practiced in a way that actually changes things. The great roadblock is the Golden Rule. It becomes a hurdle if you imagine yourself achieving something that adversely affects another self. I believe this is why we rarely hear stories of people "manifesting" a lottery win; most people have an image of themselves winning, but they overlook the thousands who have to lose. Christ consciousness does not operate against the principle of Loving One Another.

 

Keep this in mind: LOA represents two inseparable truths:

 

Law of Attraction

 

Love One Another

 

If you can hold both in your mind, you will set the future you desire into motion.

 

There is one more thing to remember—a big one: The means should not be touched. You must "think from the end."

 

“There is no stopping the man who can think from the end. Nothing can stop him. He creates the means and grows his way out of limitation into ever greater and greater mansions of the Lord... Knowing that every desire is ripe grain to him who knows how to think from the end, he is indifferent to mere reasonable probability and confident that through continuous imagination his assumptions will harden into fact.” — Neville Goddard, Awakened Imagination 

 

If you forget this while you’re "playing," you’ll destroy the signal on your navigation device. My wife and I once drove down an unmarked road in Vermont, and the GPS voice chirped, “I don’t know where you are.”

 

Don't let that happen to your life. Enter the address you seek, but don’t force your life-story to recalculate so often that the destination disappears.

 

SELAH