#115: Fishing in Consciousness

Fishing in Consciousness

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have fished long and you have fished in vain. Night after night you have let down your nets into the shallow, troubled waters that lie round about you. You have cast them with effort and with planning. You have strained to reach this person and that circumstance. You have tried to make things happen by the strength of your will and by the cleverness of your mind. And still the nets come up empty or nearly so. A little success here, a little relief there, but never the full, abundant catch that would set you free from the persistent feeling of want. You have blamed the sea. You have blamed your own lack of skill. You have blamed the times in which you live. Yet the sea was never empty. The fish you sought were always present. The fault lay only in the side upon which you cast and in the depth at which you fished.

The right side is not a direction in space. It is a direction in consciousness. It is the deep, the formless, the living depth of your own awareness where every desire already swims as a living reality. The shallow waters are the surface of sense, the place where problems appear solid and fixed, where the unwanted seems permanent and you feel yourself small before it. In the shallows you see only the reflection of what you have formerly believed yourself to be. In the deep you see nothing with the outer eye, yet you feel everything with the quiet certainty of being. To launch out into the deep is to withdraw your attention completely from all that now seems so real and threatening and to place it upon the simple, pure feeling of being itself.

You begin by deciding what it is you truly wish to catch. Not a vague hope, not a half-formed wish, but a definite state of consciousness whose possession would satisfy your desire. This decision is the fish. Once the decision is clear, you turn your back upon every evidence of the opposite. You do not fight the problem. You do not argue with the limitation. You simply withdraw your attention from it as one withdraws from a barren shore and puts out to sea. As you withdraw, you begin to declare within yourself, quietly but with feeling, “I AM.” You do not add descriptions. You do not say “I am this or that.” You rest in the bare awareness that you are. You continue in this feeling of pure being until you sense a loosening, a slipping of the anchor that has held you fast to your problems. You feel yourself moving, expanding, rising into a larger room of yourself. This expansion is the unmistakable signal that you have left the shallows and are now in the deep blue waters where the great manifestations of life have their home.

Do not be afraid of the growing sensation. You are not losing yourself. You are finding the greater self that has always been yours. Your former limitations die only as you move away from them in consciousness, for they have no life save the life you give them by your continued attention. In this expanded state you discover yourself to be a mighty, rhythmical power, deep and living as the ocean. Here there are no reefs of impossibility. Here your desire is not something you must create or attract from afar. It is native to these waters. It is already swimming toward the net the moment you cast it aright.

Now you cast upon the right side by assuming the nature of the state desired. You feel yourself to be it. If the fish you seek is health, you feel “I AM healthy.” If freedom, you feel “I AM free.” If abundance or love or any other expression, you feel “I AM” that state. You do not hope for it. You do not long for it. You assume it as a present fact within the deep of yourself. You continue in this feeling, returning to it whenever the mind wanders, until the feeling becomes natural, until it feels like home, until the conviction is born that it is so. When this conviction comes, when all argument of the senses is silenced and you know with a quiet, unshakable certainty that you are that which you have felt yourself to be, you have hooked the fish. The joy that then fills your entire being is the joy of contact with living reality. You have made the connection in the only place where connection can be made—in consciousness.

The fish must still be played and finally brought to shore. You return to the world of the senses, but you return carrying the conviction with you. You do not drop it the moment the outer world presses upon you. You maintain the inner feeling even as you move through the necessary interval of time in which the state objectifies itself. In this interval a secret thrill sustains you. You know that what you have felt in the deep must appear, for consciousness is the only reality and things are but the shadow of states of consciousness. You do not look anxiously for signs. You do not wonder how it will come. You simply remain faithful to the feeling. And in a moment when you think not, while you are occupied with the ordinary affairs of the day, the fish is landed. The embodiment appears. The state you assumed in the deep becomes the living fact of your world. The nets are full.

This is why effort so often fails. Effort keeps you in the shallows. It keeps your attention anchored to the very condition you wish to change. You think about the desire, you affirm it, you even strain toward it, yet your consciousness remains in the old state. You never feel the expansion. You never launch into the deep by the simple act of withdrawing attention from the unwanted and resting in the feeling of pure being until the new state can be assumed naturally. You never hook the fish because you never enter the waters where the fish live. You remain on the surface, beating the waters with effort and fear, and wonder why the sea seems empty.

But the sea is never empty when you cast aright. Your desire is not something foreign that you must import into your world. It is the expression of your own infinite nature seeking to come forth. When you fish in consciousness you are not imposing your will upon life. You are cooperating with life. You are letting the deep bring forth what it already contains. The more you practice this inner casting, the more natural it becomes. At first the expansion may feel strange. The assumption of the new state may seem like pretending. But as you persist, the strangeness passes. You begin to feel at home in the deep. You begin to trust the waters. You discover that the states you assume there are not inventions but revelations of what has always been true of you. You are not making yourself into something you are not. You are remembering yourself as you truly are—awareness itself, the conceiver in whom all conceptions live.

When you have hooked the fish in consciousness you enter a kind of rest. You do not strive any longer with the outer. You have performed the only act required of you—the inner act of assumption. The outer is now in the hands of a power greater than your planning. This is the true Sabbath. You rest from your own labors because you have entered the state that wills its own fulfillment. The interval becomes a time of quiet expectation rather than anxious watching. You go about your affairs with the inner smile of one who knows the end is already secured. This rest is not idleness. It is the most potent activity in the world, for it is consciousness established in the desired state, and consciousness never fails to objectify what it contains.

You may wonder how long the interval will be. No man knows. The fisherman does not know how long it will take the fish to tire and be brought to the boat. He knows only that if he keeps the line taut, if he does not release the conviction, the landing is certain. So it is with you. Keep the line of your attention fixed upon the feeling of the state. When the senses present the old picture, you do not argue with it. You simply remember that you have already hooked the fish in the deep and that the play is only the testing of your faith. The landing is as certain as the sequence of night and day, for consciousness is faithful to its own states.

In this practice a new relationship to yourself is born. You are no longer the helpless one waiting for life to change. You are the fisherman who goes consciously into the depths of his own being and brings forth whatsoever he desires. The old feeling of personal impotence fades. The old belief that some are favored and some are not loses its power over you. You see that what men call luck is only the working of a law they have not yet discovered. You see that every man is fishing, whether he knows it or not, and that those who fish in the deep upon the right side never return empty-handed. Your desire is not an imposition upon life. It is life seeking fuller expression through the man you appear to be. When you fish in consciousness you are allowing that expression. You are removing the barriers you yourself have placed between you and the fulfillment that has always been yours.

The more you cast in this manner, the more you prove to yourself that the waters are friendly. You discover that the sea of consciousness gives to every man the catch that corresponds exactly to the side upon which he casts and the depth in which he fishes. Cast always on the right side. Fish always in the deep. Withdraw attention from the problem. Feel yourself to be by the simple declaration “I AM.” Assume the nature of the desired state until conviction is born. Maintain that conviction through the interval. And the manifestation will appear without your help, for the world is compelled to reflect the state of consciousness from which it is viewed.

Tonight, when you close your eyes, do not take the old nets with you. Leave the struggle and the strain upon the shore. Decide the one state whose possession would satisfy your desire. Turn completely from every picture that denies it. Begin with the feeling “I AM.” Let the expansion come. Then cast on the right side by feeling yourself to be the living embodiment of your desire. Remain in that feeling until it is natural, until it is you. Rise in the morning carrying the conviction with you through the day. And you will find, as surely as night follows day, that the thing felt in the deep has become the thing seen in your world. The nets will be full. You will not return empty-handed.

You are not a limited being struggling in a hostile sea. You are awareness itself, the living consciousness in which all things live and move and have their being. Your desire is the fish native to your own depths. When you launch out by taking your attention from the old and placing it upon the feeling of the new, you are not reaching for something afar off. You are simply remembering what you truly are. You are remembering the power that is your awareness of being. Cast inward. Fish in consciousness. And the abundant life that has always awaited your cast will be yours, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.