#155: The False Authority of Facts

The False Authority of Facts

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have given to the facts of your life an authority they do not possess. You have looked upon the conditions that surround you, the circumstances that seem to bind you, the evidence your senses bring each day, and you have bowed before them as though they were the final word. You have said in your heart that because the fact appears, it must remain, and because it remains, you must remain as you are. But the awakened man knows that the fact is not the final word. The fact is the effect. It is the out-picturing of consciousness. It has no creative power over the man who has found his identity as consciousness itself.

The fact lives only as long as you give it life. It is sustained only by your attention to it and your belief in its independence. When you withdraw your attention from the fact and place it upon the consciousness of the state you desire, the fact begins to lose its vitality. It begins to fade. It begins to dissolve. For it has no life of its own. It is a dead thing, a shadow cast by the light of assumption, and when the light is changed the shadow must change with it. This is law, changeless and eternal. It does not depend upon your understanding of how it works. It works whether you understand it or not. It works because consciousness is the only reality and the fact is but its manifestation.

You are not at the mercy of the facts that now appear in your world. Those facts are the children of your former assumptions. They were born of the states of consciousness you formerly occupied, and they linger only as long as you continue to give them life by your belief in their reality and your attention to their presence. The moment you turn your back upon them in consciousness, the moment you assume the feeling of already being the man who is free of them, that moment the process of their dissolution begins. The fact does not resist. It cannot resist. It has no will of its own. It can only reflect the image placed before it, and when you place before it the image of yourself already in the desired state, it must eventually reflect that image.

This is the great secret. This is the truth that frees a man from the tyranny of appearances. The world you see is your consciousness made visible. Every fact in it is a fact of your own making. You decreed it in consciousness by being conscious of being the one to whom such a fact could happen. You may not have used words. You decreed it by feeling yourself into the state that naturally produces such facts. And now the fact stands before you, and you tremble before it, not knowing that it is your own child, your own creation, your own consciousness objectified. The false authority of facts is the authority you yourself have given them when you treated them as though they were independent of you.

When you see this clearly, you cease to fight facts. You cease to argue with them. You cease to try to destroy them by force or by will power. You simply change the consciousness that gave them birth. You assume the feeling of already being the one who is free of the fact, who is possessed of the opposite state. And in that assumption the fact loses its seeming solidity. It becomes fluid. It begins to dissolve. It may linger for a time, casting its shadow, but its power is gone. The cause has been changed, and the effect must follow. You do not need to know how this will happen. You do not need to plan the incidents that will bridge the old fact and the new. The law itself will provide the bridge. The same law that built the old fact will build the incidents that lead to its dissolution and the appearance of the new fact. Your part is only to assume the new state and to remain faithful to it.

The assumption is not a idle wish or a vague hope. It is a living act. It is the feeling of already being what you desire to be. It is the inner conviction that the thing is so now, regardless of what the senses report. When this feeling is attained, the work is done. The fact may still appear for a little while, but its days are numbered. It is already dead at its root, though it may continue to cast its shadow for a time. But the shadow must fade when the light that cast it is changed. You can test this law tonight. As you lie upon your bed, take your attention away from all the facts that have troubled you. Do not try to change them. Do not fight them. Simply assume that you are already the man or woman you long to be. Feel the naturalness of that state. Feel the relief, the joy, the peace that comes with being it. Do not ask how it will come to pass. Do not wonder when. Simply rest in the assumption as in a bed prepared for you. And as you fall asleep in that state, you will have done all that is required of you. The facts will begin to rearrange themselves while you sleep, for consciousness never sleeps, and the law is ever at work.

In the days that follow, when the old facts rise up to challenge your new assumption, do not be disturbed. Do not argue with them. Do not try to explain them away. Simply return to the assumption. Remind yourself that the fact is the effect and you are the cause. The cause is greater than the effect. The effect cannot dictate to the cause. Persist in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and the facts will grow weary of appearing, for they will no longer be fed by your attention. They will dissolve as naturally as mist before the rising sun. This is not a matter of denying the fact with the lips while secretly fearing it in the heart. Such denial is but a confession of its power. The true denial is the assumption of the opposite state. You do not argue with the fact. You ignore it by becoming conscious of being the one who is already free of it.

The feeling of naturalness is the key. When you assume a state and it feels natural to you, as though it were always so, the work is done. The fact may still appear, but it is now an orphan. It has no father in consciousness to sustain it. It will linger a little while, but it will fade. And in its place will appear the facts that are natural to the new state, the facts that bear witness to the consciousness you now occupy. This naturalness is not something you force. It is something you allow. You allow yourself to feel as though you were already the man who has what you desire. You allow yourself to rest in that feeling as the most obvious and natural thing in the world. And when this resting is attained, the fact loses its power to disturb. It becomes irrelevant. It becomes a thing of the past, even while it still appears.

The anxious watching is the greatest obstacle. When you assume a state and then watch the fact to see if it has changed, you are dividing your attention. You are giving life to the old fact by your attention to it, and you are weakening the new state by your doubt. The awakened man does not watch the fact. He assumes the state and lets the fact take care of itself. He knows that the fact will change when it is ready, and that his watching cannot hasten it and can only delay it by disturbing his own consciousness. So you see, the false authority of facts is maintained by man's own attention to them. When he withdraws his attention, the authority collapses. The fact cannot maintain itself. It requires the life of consciousness to appear real. When that life is withdrawn, the fact becomes what it truly is: a shadow without substance, an appearance without reality, an effect without a cause to sustain it.

This withdrawal of attention is not a denial in the usual sense. It is a turning of the eyes to what is desired. It is a giving of attention to the consciousness of the fulfilled desire. It is a living in the end. And when this is done with feeling, with conviction, with the naturalness of one who knows it is so, the fact must obey. It has no choice. It is the servant of consciousness, and when the master changes his command, the servant must change his service. The persistence required is not a gritting of teeth. It is a gentle returning. It is a quiet reminding of yourself that you are already the one you desire to be. It is a coming back to the feeling of naturalness. And each time you come back, the feeling grows stronger. Each time you come back, the old fact loses more of its power. Eventually, the new feeling is so strong that the old fact cannot appear in its presence. It is crowded out by the living reality of the assumption.

The interval between the assumption and the visible change is not empty. It is filled with the activity of consciousness projecting the new state into form. You do not see this activity. You do not need to see it. You only need to trust it. For the law is perfect, and it will not fail to bring forth the fruit of the seed you have planted in consciousness. Many men fail because they plant the seed and then dig it up to see if it is growing. They assume the state and then look at the fact to see if it has changed. And when they see that the fact has not yet changed, they lose faith. They return to the old consciousness. And the old fact is fed again, and the new state withers for lack of attention. But the awakened man does not dig up his seed. He plants it in consciousness by assumption and leaves it there. He does not look at the fact to see if the seed is growing. He knows that the seed is growing in the invisible, and that in due time it will break through into the visible.

This is the discipline. This is the faithfulness required. Not a faithfulness to the fact, but a faithfulness to the assumption. Not a watching of the effect, but a living in the cause. When this discipline is practiced, the fact loses its power to disturb. It becomes what it truly is: a passing shadow, a temporary appearance, a thing without authority over the man who knows the truth. And as you practice this, you will find that the facts change more quickly. You will find that the interval between assumption and realization grows shorter. You will find that you can assume a state and see the corresponding facts appear with greater ease. For the law is always the same. It is your consciousness of it that changes. As you become more conscious of the law, you become more skillful in its use. You become more natural in your assumption. You become more certain in your persistence. And the facts obey more readily.

The man who has not yet awakened continues to give power to the fact. He continues to say, "I am this because the fact says I am this." He does not know that the fact says only what he has first said in consciousness. He does not know that he can change the saying and the fact must change its saying. He remains in the prison of his own making, not knowing that the door is open and that he need only assume the consciousness of freedom to walk out. But you, who have heard this truth, can no longer plead ignorance. You know that the fact is not your master. You know that you can, this very night, assume a new state and begin the process of changing every fact that does not conform to that state. You know that the power is not in the fact but in you. You know that the authority is not in the appearance but in the consciousness that projects the appearance.

Dwell on this knowledge. Let it sink into your feeling. Let it become the ground upon which you stand. From this ground, no fact can shake you. From this ground, you look upon the facts of your life with a new eye. You see them as passing shadows, as temporary reflections, as servants that will rearrange themselves when you command them by your assumption. The command is not given with words. It is given with feeling. It is given with the inner act of assuming the state as real now. It is given with the quiet certainty that what you have assumed must come to pass because consciousness is the only reality and you have planted the seed in consciousness.

This certainty is not loud. It is not boastful. It is the quiet knowing of the man who has seen through the illusion of fact's authority. It is the knowing that allows him to rest while the facts do their work of conforming. It is the knowing that makes him master of his world rather than its victim. And as you rest in this knowing, the world begins to change around you. Not because you have forced it, but because you have changed the cause of which it is the effect. Not because you have argued with the facts, but because you have ignored them in favor of the greater reality of your assumption. Not because you have denied their existence, but because you have denied them the life of your attention.

Tonight you can begin this practice. As you prepare for sleep, take your attention from every fact that has troubled you. Assume the consciousness of the fulfilled desire. Feel it to be natural. Feel it to be already so. And fall asleep in that state. In that moment, you have broken the false authority of the facts. You have asserted the true authority of consciousness. And the facts will begin to change, though you may not see the change immediately. The change is in the cause, and the effect must follow. In the morning, when you awaken, carry this knowledge with you through the day. When facts rise to meet you, greet them with the quiet knowledge that they are already changing, for you have changed their cause. Do not fight them. Do not fear them. Simply persist in the assumption, and they will fade away as the old effects of an old consciousness that is no more.

This is the way. This is the truth that sets you free from the false authority of facts. Walk in it, and the world will be made new for you, not by the changing of facts alone, but by the changing of the consciousness that first gave those facts their seeming power. And as you do this, you will know what it means to be the awakened man, the man who is no longer the slave of appearances but the master of his own creation. The facts of your life have no authority over you. They are effects, not causes. They are reflections, not the light. They are servants, not masters. You are the master. You are consciousness. You are the one who decrees in secret, and the open manifestation must follow. Assume the consciousness of the fulfilled desire, and let the facts do what they will. They will do only what they must: they will bear witness to your assumption. And in the morning, when you awaken, you will walk as one who knows that something has already changed within him, for the false authority has been broken and the true authority of consciousness stands revealed.