#129: Intensity of Love

Intensity of Love

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You become what you intensely contemplate. This is the changeless law of your own being, the secret power by which every man shapes his world and himself without exception. You may deny it with words, yet every moment of your life bears silent witness to its working, for consciousness forever out-pictures that upon which it dwells with intensity. The man who is poor has contemplated poverty with sufficient intensity to become it. The man who is free has contemplated freedom until it became his very identity. There is no other cause. Your world, your body, your circumstances are the visible garments woven from the invisible threads of your own intense contemplations.

Most men live as though they were spectators of a play they did not write, forever waiting for something outside themselves to change the script. They look upon their desires as distant possibilities and upon their problems as fixed realities, never realizing that both are born of the same source—the intensity or the lack of intensity with which they have contemplated states of consciousness. To contemplate casually is to remain as you are. To contemplate intensely is to be transformed into the likeness of that which you contemplate. There is no middle ground. The degree of intensity determines the degree of becoming.

Consciousness is the only reality, and it is forever giving form to itself. When you contemplate a state with intensity you are not merely thinking about it; you are assuming its nature, you are feeling yourself to be it, you are loving it as your own. This love is not a sentimental emotion directed toward another. It is the deep, quiet fervor with which you dwell upon the desired state until it ceases to be an object of thought and becomes the very feeling of your own being. In that moment the contemplator and the contemplated are one. You have conceived, and the conception must embody itself, for there is no power in heaven or on earth that can deny the intensity of love.

You are told in the ancient drama that Mary knew not a man yet conceived. Mary is your own awareness of being, forever virgin, forever untouched by the outer evidence of the senses. When you intensely contemplate a desire you are impregnating this virgin awareness with the seed of your own assumption. The intensity of your contemplation is the love that makes the conception possible. Without intensity there is no true conception, only the wandering of a mind that touches many things and is changed by none. With intensity the mind is gathered into a single point of feeling, and in that point the new man is formed.

Do not ask how this inner act will externalize itself. The ways of consciousness are past finding out. You are not called upon to devise the means. You are called upon only to contemplate with such intensity that you become the state itself. When you are the state the means appear without your planning, for the state you are is the father that draws the necessary incidents unto itself. The bridge of incidents is not your concern. Your only concern is the intensity with which you dwell in the end, in the fulfilled desire, until it feels natural, until it feels like you.

Many attempt to use this law while still holding to their former conception of themselves, and they wonder why nothing changes. You cannot take the old man into the new state. The old man is the sum of all your previous contemplations, weak and strong. To contemplate a new state intensely you must be willing to let the old die. This dying is not a painful struggle. It is the simple act of withdrawing your attention from the old and giving it wholly to the new until the new becomes your only reality. In the moment you truly love the new state you have already died to the old, for love and death are one in consciousness. What you love you become, and what you become you express.

Consider the man who desires wealth yet continues to contemplate his poverty with greater intensity than his desire. Every time he thinks of money he feels the lack of it. He is loving poverty, and poverty remains his companion. Another man desires the same wealth but contemplates it with such intensity that he feels himself already wealthy. He walks as one who possesses. He thinks from the end. His love is so complete that he has no room left for the contemplation of lack. In a little while his world begins to rearrange itself. Opportunities appear. Unforeseen channels open. He has not changed the world; he has changed himself by the intensity of his contemplation, and the world has no choice but to reflect the man he has become.

The same law holds true in every area of experience. The man who is sick has contemplated illness with sufficient intensity to make it his identity. The man who is well has contemplated health until it became natural to him. You cannot be what you do not contemplate intensely. You may wish to be well, you may affirm health with your lips, yet if your inner contemplation remains fixed upon disease you will continue to express it. The lips lie; consciousness does not. Only the intensity of your inner act has power.

You are not asked to believe something you consider impossible. You are asked to contemplate the desired state until it becomes possible to you, until it becomes natural, until you love it as yourself. This is the true meaning of faith. Faith is not belief in a doctrine. Faith is the intensity of love that makes the invisible visible, the unreal real. When you can contemplate your desire with the same intensity with which you have formerly contemplated your problems, your desire will cease to be a desire and will become your reality. The intensity itself is the substance that clothes the invisible.

There is a moment in every true contemplation when effort ceases and love takes its place. You no longer try to feel yourself to be the desired state; you simply are it. This is the Sabbath of the soul, the rest that remains for the people of God. In this rest you are not anxious about results, for you have already become the result. You do not question the how, for the how is not your responsibility. You have given yourself so completely to the contemplation that you and the contemplated are one, and in that oneness all things are possible.

The world will tell you that circumstances are stronger than you, that your past has determined your future, that you must accept the evidence of your senses. But you are not of the world. You are consciousness, and consciousness is the potter that shapes the clay of experience according to the intensity of its own contemplations. The senses are the servants of consciousness, not its master. When you contemplate intensely you are using the senses in reverse. You are seeing what the outer eye cannot see, feeling what the outer hand cannot touch, until the outer eye and hand are compelled to record what has already been established within.

Do not be discouraged if at first your contemplation lacks intensity. The very recognition that intensity is necessary is the beginning of its awakening. Every time you return to the desired state and dwell upon it with love, the intensity increases. What was once an effort becomes a joy. What was once a hope becomes a conviction. What was once a future possibility becomes a present fact. This is the progressive revelation of the law. You do not receive it all at once. You receive it according to the measure of your own intensity.

The man who would transform his life must therefore learn the art of intense contemplation. He must withdraw from the outer confusion long enough to gather his attention into a single feeling. He must love the ideal more than he loves the evidence of his senses. He must be willing to let the old self die in the fire of his own contemplation. For there is no other way. Transformation is not achieved by adding something to what you are. It is achieved by becoming something other than what you have been, and this becoming is the direct result of intense contemplation.

You become what you intensely contemplate because there is no separation between consciousness and its object when love is complete. The lover and the beloved are one. The contemplator and the contemplated are one. In that oneness the desire is no longer something you want; it is something you are. And being what you are, you express it without effort, without strain, without the anxious question of how it will come to pass. The how is hidden in the intensity itself. The bridge of incidents is built by the same love that conceived the end.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, you have an opportunity to test this law in the most intimate way. Take your desire, whatever it may be, and contemplate it with all the intensity you can summon. Do not think about it. Do not affirm it with words. Feel yourself to be it. Love it as your own. Let the feeling of it fill your consciousness until there is room for nothing else. Fall asleep in this intensity, and you will have planted a seed that must grow. The morning may bring no outer change, yet an inner change will have begun. And if you persist in the intensity night after night, the outer will be compelled to follow the inner, for this is the law that cannot be broken.

You may meet resistance from your former self. Old doubts will arise. The senses will present their evidence as though it were final. But these are not obstacles; they are merely the old contemplations seeking to reassert themselves. Do not fight them. Simply return to the new contemplation with greater intensity. Love the desired state more than you love the comfort of the old. In time the old will lose its power, for you have withdrawn from it the intensity that gave it life. What you no longer contemplate intensely ceases to be.

This is the freedom that comes to the man who has discovered the secret of intense contemplation. He is no longer at the mercy of appearances. He knows that appearances are the children of his own inner acts, and he can change the children by changing the intensity of his contemplation. He walks through the world as one who has already become what he desires to be, and the world, having no choice, arranges itself accordingly. There is no strain in this living, for he is not trying to make something happen. He is simply being what he has contemplated intensely, and being requires no effort.

The crown of all mysteries is this simple truth: you become what you intensely contemplate. There is no higher knowledge, no greater power, no more direct path to the realization of your desires. All the teachings of the ages, all the parables and prophecies, are but variations upon this one eternal fact. When you know it and live it you have found the kingdom within, and the kingdom without must reflect it. For the kingdom is not a place; it is a state of consciousness, and that state is reached only by the intensity of your own contemplation.

So tonight, and every night, give yourself to this intensity. Let your love for the ideal be so complete that it leaves no room for doubt, no room for fear, no room for the old man. In that completeness you will discover that you are already what you contemplate, and the world will hasten to prove it. You become what you intensely contemplate. This is the law. This is the promise. This is the way.