#147: The Divine Refusal

The Divine Refusal

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have chosen your end. Within yourself you have risen to the feeling of the state you would embody. You have accepted this feeling as the truth of your being. You have made it your dwelling place in consciousness. And now the world rises to test you. It offers suggestions that your end is not yet so. It presents appearances that seem to deny what you have assumed. It sends thoughts, words, and circumstances that invite you to abandon your chosen state and return to the old. These are not facts. These are suggestions. And the divine refusal is your answer to every one of them.

The man who has chosen his end must learn to refuse. He must learn to close the door of his consciousness upon everything that contradicts the state he has assumed. For the door that remains open to the old suggestions will never remain closed to the fulfillment of the new. You cannot hold two states at once. You cannot assume wealth and accept the suggestion of lack. You cannot assume health and entertain the suggestion of illness. You cannot assume love and receive the suggestion of loneliness. One state must be refused if the other is to be maintained. This is the law. It is not harsh. It is exact.

A suggestion is an invitation to assume a state other than your chosen one. When the senses report limitation, they are inviting you to assume the state of one who is limited. When memory brings the past before you, it is inviting you to assume once more the state you have left. When another speaks from his own fear, he is inviting you to share that fear and assume its state. Every suggestion is such an invitation. The divine refusal is the calm, certain declination of every invitation that would lead you from your end.

You do not fight the suggestion. You do not argue with it. Argument gives it life. Struggle gives it importance. You simply refuse it. You turn your attention from it as one turns from a road that leads nowhere. You return to the feeling of your chosen end. In this turning, in this return, the suggestion loses its power. It has no power of its own. Its only power was the power you gave it by accepting it. When you refuse it, you withdraw that power. The suggestion withers for lack of your attention. It dies because you have refused to keep it alive.

This is why consciousness is the only reality. What you accept in consciousness becomes the substance of your world. What you refuse in consciousness withers and passes away. You are the one who accepts or refuses. You are the gate through which every state must enter or be denied entrance. Most men do not know this. They believe the suggestion is stronger than they are. They believe the appearance is final. They accept every invitation the world extends and wonder why they remain where they are. But you who have heard this truth know that you stand above every suggestion. You know that you possess the divine right to refuse.

Feel the quiet dignity of this refusal. It is not the tense rejection of one who fears. It is the royal refusal of one who knows his own realm. You have chosen your realm in consciousness. You have felt its reality. Now you walk as one who cannot be dethroned by any appearance. A circumstance arises that seems to contradict your end. You refuse it. You feel instead the security, the peace, the fulfillment of your chosen state. A thought of doubt arises from within. You refuse it. You remain in the certainty of what you have assumed. A word comes from another that would pull you into his state. You refuse it. You keep your consciousness pure, fixed upon your end alone.

Do not imagine that this refusal must be performed with effort. At first it may require watchfulness. You must recognize the suggestion when it comes and refuse it before it takes root. But as you persist, the watchfulness becomes natural. The refusal becomes the automatic response of the man you have become. You no longer debate with suggestions. You no longer consider them. You simply know them for what they are — invitations to a lower state — and you refuse them. You have changed your identity. You are no longer the man who accepts every suggestion as true. You are the man who refuses every suggestion that denies his chosen end.

As this identity becomes established, the suggestions lose their force. They come, but they find no response in you. They knock, but the door is shut. They call, but you do not hear. Eventually they come less often and with less conviction. For you have trained your consciousness to reject them. The habit of acceptance is broken. The habit of refusal is fixed. And in this new habit you discover a freedom you had not known before. You are free from the tyranny of appearances. You are free from the pull of the old state. You are free to remain where you have chosen to be, regardless of what the world presents.

This freedom is not the absence of suggestions. The world will always offer suggestions. That is its nature. It is the mirror that reflects back whatever state you are willing to assume. Freedom is the power to refuse every state but the one you have chosen. When you exercise this power, the mirror begins to change. It begins to reflect the state you have protected by your refusal. Circumstances that once denied your end begin to confirm it. People who once seemed to oppose you begin to cooperate or fade from your world. The body that once spoke of limitation begins to express the health you have assumed. All this happens not because you have struggled with the outer, but because you have refused to accept the outer as the cause. You have made consciousness the cause. You have refused every suggestion that would make it otherwise.

The refusal must be complete. There is no room for partial acceptance. You cannot refuse most suggestions and accept one. That one accepted suggestion opens the door to the old state, and the old state rushes in to claim what belongs to it. The law is sensitive. It registers every acceptance and every refusal with perfect precision. It gives you exactly what you have accepted and withholds exactly what you have refused. Therefore be exact. When a suggestion appears, refuse it at once. Do not wait. Do not ponder its plausibility. Do not measure it against the evidence of the senses. Simply refuse it. Return to your chosen end. In this instant refusal your assumption remains intact and your end remains secure.

This refusal is the secret of persistence. Persistence is not the holding on through strain. Persistence is the quiet refusal to accept anything less than the fulfillment of your assumption. Many persist in their wanting. They persist in their longing. But they do not persist in their refusal of the opposite. And so their wanting continues while their fulfillment is delayed. When you add to your assumption the divine refusal of every contradicting suggestion, your persistence becomes effortless. You are not holding on. You are simply not letting go. You are not fighting. You are standing. And standing is all that is required.

For in the standing, the end you have chosen takes on the substance of reality. It clothes itself in the garments of the world. It appears as fact where once it was only feeling. This is the law. It cannot be broken. The interval between assumption and fulfillment is shortened by the completeness of your refusal. For time is the measure of your lingering acceptance of the old suggestions. When you refuse those suggestions utterly, time has nothing left to measure. The end appears without delay because you have refused the consciousness that produces delay.

You will find that as you refuse the suggestions of the old state, the old state itself begins to dissolve. The circumstances that seemed so solid lose their solidity. The problems that seemed so real lose their reality. The contradictions that seemed so final lose their finality. All this happens because you have refused to give them the substance of your attention. Your attention is the sap that keeps alive the things of your world. When you withdraw it from the contradicting suggestion, the suggestion dies. When you give it only to your chosen end, your end lives and grows and fills your world.

This is the great reversal. Most men try to change the outer while remaining in the consciousness of the outer. They accept the state of lack and then try to overcome it by action in that state. They accept the state of illness and then try to treat it while remaining in that state. They never refuse the state itself. But you who understand the divine refusal do not accept the state. You refuse it at its root. You refuse the consciousness of lack, of illness, of limitation. And when the consciousness is refused, the effects have no choice but to vanish. They vanish because you have withdrawn from them the only power they had — your acceptance.

So you see that the refusal is not a negative act. It is the most positive act in the world. It is the affirmation of your chosen end in the face of every denial. It is the declaration that you are what you have assumed, regardless of what appears. It is the quiet insistence of consciousness that says, “I AM that which I have chosen to be, and nothing else shall I accept.” In this insistence you are affirming the great I AM that you are. You are refusing to be the poor man, the sick man, the lonely man. You are insisting upon being the I AM that is rich, whole, and fulfilled. And this insistence, this refusal to be anything else, is the divine refusal that shapes your world.

As you live in this refusal, you will come to know a peace that passes understanding. It is the peace of one who has refused every suggestion that would disturb his peace. It is the peace of the Sabbath, the rest that comes when you have ceased from laboring in the old consciousness. You have entered into your rest. You have refused to accept the suggestions that would pull you out of it. And in this rest your chosen end unfolds itself without strain and without interference. The suggestions still come, but they find you unmoved. You remain in your rest. You remain in your assumption. And the world, which must reflect the state you are willing to maintain, begins to reflect the peace you have chosen.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, take your chosen end with you into the silence. Feel it as the only reality you are willing to accept. And as you feel it, refuse every memory of the day that contradicts it. Refuse every anticipation of tomorrow that brings fear. Refuse every thought that says it cannot be. Refuse them quietly, firmly, without struggle. Refuse them as one who knows they have no claim upon him. And in this refusal, fall asleep. Fall asleep in the consciousness of your end. For the man who falls asleep having refused all else wakes to find that the suggestions have lost their power and that his world has begun to move toward the fulfillment of his assumption.

Carry this refusal with you through the day. Let it be the atmosphere in which you move. Let it be the shield that no suggestion can pierce. For you are not at the mercy of the world. You are the master of what you will accept. You are the one who decides what will be out-pictured in your world. And when you decide with the firmness of the divine refusal, your decision is law. It must come to pass.

You are what you have chosen to be. You remain what you have chosen to be as long as you refuse to be anything else. This is the eternal fact. This is the divine refusal. Live it, and your world will bear witness to it. There is no other way. There is no other power. There is only this: the quiet, unshakable refusal of every suggestion that contradicts your chosen end, and the certain fulfillment that follows.