#138: The Creative Silence

The Creative Silence

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have tried the words. You have repeated the affirmations. You have declared what you want to be and to have, sometimes with great feeling, sometimes with the weary repetition of one who hopes that repetition itself will work a miracle. And still the world remains unchanged, or changes so slowly that you wonder whether the principle you have been taught is true at all. The fault is not in the principle. The fault is in the instrument you have been using. Words are not the creative power. Feeling is the creative power, and feeling is most creative when it is silent, still, and certain.

The assumption that brings your desire to pass is not the assumption you make with your lips. It is the assumption you make in the secret place of your own consciousness, where no word is spoken and no argument is entertained. There, in that creative silence, you simply feel yourself to be the one you desire to be. You feel it as a quiet fact. You feel it as something already accomplished. You do not shout it. You do not argue for it. You rest in it. And because you rest in it, because you do not divide your consciousness with contradictory words, the assumption has its full creative power.

You are told to go within and shut the door. This is not a poetic suggestion; it is the first law of effective assumption. The door you shut is the door of the senses and the door of words. When the door is shut, the outer world with all its evidence against your desire is excluded. The inner arguments that have been repeating themselves in your mind are excluded. In that quiet, you are alone with your desire. And in that aloneness you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. This feeling needs no words to sustain it. In fact, words would only weaken it, for words belong to the realm of effort and argument, while the creative act belongs to the realm of silent feeling.

Why is the wordless assumption the most powerful? Because words are the servants of the conscious mind, and the conscious mind is forever reasoning from appearances. When you say, “I am wealthy,” the mind that says it is usually the mind that sees poverty. The words become a battleground. One part of you affirms; another part denies. The denial is often stronger because it is supported by the evidence of the senses. But when you drop the words altogether and simply feel yourself to be wealthy, there is no battle. There is only the quiet acceptance of a state. The subconscious, which knows nothing of words and everything of feeling, receives the assumption without contradiction and begins to objectify it.

This feeling is still. It is not the excited, hopeful, tomorrow-it-will-happen feeling that so many mistake for faith. It is the quiet, unshakable certainty that the thing is so now. You know it as you know you are now in your own room, though your eyes may be closed. There is no strain in this knowing. There is no effort to believe. There is only the natural rest of consciousness in a state it has assumed. This stillness is the Sabbath of the soul. It is the rest from all labor to make something happen, because you know it has already happened in consciousness, and what has happened in consciousness must happen in your world.

You see, consciousness does not create by arguing with itself. It creates by assumption. When the assumption is made in silence, it is pure. It is undivided. It carries the whole weight of your being. When the assumption is made with words, it is usually divided. Part of you is trying to believe; part of you is remembering the reasons why it cannot be. The creative power responds to the stronger feeling, and the stronger feeling is usually the one supported by appearances. But in the creative silence you withdraw your attention from appearances altogether. You give your whole consciousness to the desired state. And the whole, undivided consciousness is irresistible.

This is why those who have learned to assume in silence often see results that seem miraculous to those who still rely on words. The silent one does not announce his intention. He does not try to convince others or even himself with phrases. He simply changes his feeling in secret, and the world begins to rearrange itself around the new feeling. The change is not forced. It is not coaxed. It is the natural consequence of a change in the only place where change is creative—in consciousness itself.

Consider what happens when you are faced with a problem that words cannot solve. You have argued with it. You have affirmed against it. You have declared that it is not real. And the problem remains, or even grows stronger, because your attention, even in denial, is still upon it. But when you turn from the problem in silence and assume the feeling of its solution, something entirely different occurs. You are no longer feeding the problem with your attention. You are feeding the solution with your feeling. The problem, starved of attention, begins to fade. The solution, nourished by feeling, begins to appear. This is not a battle of words; it is a transfer of consciousness. And consciousness transferred in silence is consciousness transferred completely.

The certainty of which I speak is not a loud certainty. It does not need to assert itself. It simply is. You feel yourself to be the healthy one, and the feeling carries its own authority. You feel yourself to be the one who is loved, and the feeling needs no proof. You feel yourself to be the one who has the means to do what you want to do, and the feeling itself is the proof. This certainty is felt in the body as a quiet relaxation, as though a burden you did not know you were carrying has been set down. It is felt in the mind as a cessation of arguing, as though the mind has finally agreed to be still. It is felt in the soul as a deep, wordless yes.

Many of you have experienced moments of this certainty without recognizing their creative power. You have had days when you felt, without any outer reason, that everything was well. You walked in a quiet confidence that needed no explanation. And on those days, things arranged themselves more harmoniously than usual. What happened on those days was that you unconsciously assumed a state of well-being in silence and rested in it. The creative silence was at work, though you did not name it. Now you are being asked to do consciously what you have occasionally done unconsciously—to enter the silence deliberately, to assume deliberately the feeling of the fulfilled desire, and to rest in that feeling with the same quiet certainty that once came of itself.

The way into this silence is simple, though it requires practice because you are accustomed to noise. You begin by defining clearly what you desire. You do not need many words for this; a single clear image or a single clear statement is enough. Then you let the image or the statement fade, and you turn your attention to the feeling that would be yours if the desire were already fulfilled. You do not try to see the desire fulfilled in the outer world. You feel yourself to be the one in whom it is fulfilled. You feel the naturalness of it. You feel the relief of it. You feel the quiet joy of it. And you continue in this feeling until it becomes the dominant feeling of your consciousness.

At first this may seem difficult, because the mind will try to intrude with its questions and its doubts. “How will it happen?” “What if it does not happen?” “What will people say?” These are the words of the outer man, and they have no place in the creative silence. When they arise, you do not argue with them. You simply return to the feeling. You ignore the words and feel again the quiet certainty. Each time you do this, the feeling grows stronger and the words grow weaker. Eventually the mind learns that its words are not wanted in this place, and it becomes still. Then the assumption stands alone, and the creative power, which has been waiting for this undivided attention, begins its work.

You will find that this practice changes more than your outer world. It changes you. You discover that you are not the one who is always trying to become something. You are the one who can assume any state and rest in it. You are the one in whom the creative power dwells. This discovery is not made with words. It is made in the silence when you realize that the feeling you have assumed has begun to feel natural, as though it has always been true of you. In that moment you know yourself differently. You know yourself as the creative silence itself—the still, certain awareness in which all things begin and end.

Do not be concerned if the outer world does not immediately reflect your assumption. Signs follow; they do not precede. The assumption is made in the invisible, and the visible must catch up. Your part is to remain faithful to the silent feeling. Do not look for evidence. Do not check to see if anything has changed. Simply return, again and again, to the creative silence and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The checking, the looking for signs, these are movements away from the assumption. They introduce division. But when you remain in the feeling without questioning, without looking, the assumption remains pure, and purity of assumption is what creates.

There will be days when the old state reasserts itself strongly. The senses will bring evidence that contradicts your assumption. Old fears will rise. Old patterns of thought will demand attention. On these days you do not fight. You simply withdraw once more into the silence. You shut the door again. You feel again the certain feeling that the desire is fulfilled. You do not use words to push the old state away; you use feeling to occupy the new state so completely that the old state has no room. This is not repression. This is replacement. And replacement made in silence is replacement made permanently.

As you continue in this practice, you will notice that you need the silence less and less as a special exercise and more and more as a way of living. You will find yourself assuming the desired state in the midst of activity, without withdrawing to a quiet room. A moment of quiet feeling in the midst of noise, a silent return to the certainty that it is so, and you have renewed the creative act. The world may be loud around you, but within you there is the still, wordless conviction. And it is this inner stillness, maintained in the midst of outer noise, that eventually molds the outer world into its likeness.

You are not asked to become something you are not. You are asked to assume the feeling of something you desire to be and to rest in that feeling until it becomes your natural state. This resting is done in silence. It is done without words. It is done with certainty. And when it is done, the creative power, which is your own awareness of being, does the rest. It brings the invisible assumption into visible form. It finds the ways that you, as man, know not of. It opens doors you did not know existed. It arranges circumstances you could not have planned. All this it does because you have given it the one thing it needs—an undivided assumption made in the creative silence.

So tonight, when you are alone, do not fill the time with words. Define your desire. Then let the words go. Feel yourself to be the one who has it. Feel the quiet certainty of it. Rest in that feeling. Let it be the last state of consciousness you entertain before you sleep. And in the days that follow, whenever you remember, return to the same silence and the same feeling. Do not strain. Do not argue. Simply feel, and be still in the certainty that what you have felt in secret is already on its way to being seen openly.

This is the creative silence. This is the assumption that cannot fail. This is the way the stuck places in your life are dissolved—not by fighting them with words, but by assuming their solution in the still, certain feeling of consciousness. You are that consciousness. You are the silence in which the assumption is made. You are the certainty that makes it creative. And because you are these things, your world must conform to the silent assumption you have made of yourself.

You do not become free by speaking of freedom. You become free by feeling yourself to be free in the creative silence, and by resting there until freedom is no longer something you affirm but something you are. In that resting, in that silent certainty, the old chains fall away of themselves, and you walk out of the prison you never really occupied except in consciousness. This is the promise. This is the power. This is the creative silence that is forever at your command.