#162: The Invisible Movement

The Invisible Movement

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have assumed the end. In the quiet of your own mind, away from the eyes of the world, you have felt yourself into the very state of the fulfilled desire. The longing has ceased. The strain has gone out of you. In its place there is a deep, quiet sense of completion, a feeling that it is already so, that the thing is yours, that you are now the one who has realized it. This feeling is the assumption. It is the creative act itself. And having performed this act, you have done all that is required of you. The end has been willed in consciousness. From this moment the end itself begins to draw to it everything necessary for its visible expression. But this drawing, this bringing together of the necessary means, is not done in the outer world where you can watch it. It is done in the invisible. It is an unseen rearrangement of the entire fabric of your life, a movement that begins the instant your assumption is accepted and continues until the thing stands before you, solid and real.

The difficulty arises when, after this inner act, you turn your eyes outward and find that nothing has changed. The same conditions meet you. The same problems present themselves. The evidence of your senses stands as a direct contradiction to the state you have assumed. And in that contradiction the temptation comes to abandon the feeling, to question whether the assumption was real, to wonder what more must be done. But I tell you, nothing more is to be done by you. The work is finished in consciousness. What follows is the invisible movement, and this movement is not your concern. It is the concern of the law itself. You have planted the seed. You have given it reality in the only place where reality can be given—in feeling. Now you must trust the growth. You must trust the unseen rearrangement that is even now taking place beyond the range of your senses.

Consciousness is the only reality. The world you see and touch is but the out-picturing of the states you have occupied and are now occupying. When you rise in consciousness to the feeling of the end fulfilled, you have changed the state. The old state begins to die. The new state begins to live. But the death of the old and the birth of the new are not first visible in the outer world. They are first accomplished in the invisible realm of consciousness. There is an interval. There is a time in which the old expression lingers while the new one is being prepared. During this interval the senses continue to report the old. Circumstances appear unchanged. People behave as though nothing has happened. And it is here that most lose heart. They see no movement and they conclude there is none. But the movement is there. It is invisible. It is a rearrangement of causes, of people, of circumstances, of opportunities, all moving toward the fulfillment of the end you have assumed. You do not see the hand that moves them. You do not know the path they take. But they move, surely and irresistibly, because consciousness has willed it and consciousness is reality.

To trust this invisible movement is to cease from interference. It is to refrain from questioning the how. It is to refuse to outline the way in which the thing must come. For the moment you begin to question the process, the moment you begin to search for signs or to help the thing along by anxious thought, you have left the end and returned to the means. And the means, when sought from the level of the old state, can only confirm the old state. But when you rest in the assumption, when you persist in the feeling of the end as real, the means are compelled to serve that end. They arrange themselves without your knowledge. They appear in the most unexpected places. They come through the most unlikely people. And all of it is the invisible movement doing its perfect work.

You cannot see this movement. No man can see it. It is not given to the outer eye to trace the steps by which an assumption objectifies itself. The ways of consciousness are past finding out. They are not the ways of the logical, planning mind. They are the ways of the deeper self, the I AM, the awareness of being that knows no limitation. When you assume the end, you have lifted this I AM to the level of the fulfilled desire. You have made yourself one with it. And this one, being one with the end, draws the end into expression. It does so by an invisible process. It does so without effort on your part. Your effort, after the assumption, is only to remain faithful to the feeling. To remain faithful is to trust. To trust is to know that the movement has begun and cannot be stopped except by your own return to doubt.

Doubt is the only enemy. Doubt is the return to the old state. When doubt arises, it is not a sign that the assumption has failed. It is a sign that the old state is still active and is seeking to regain its throne. The old state has momentum. It has been built by years of assumption. Its expression in the world has a certain weight. When you assume the new, this old momentum does not vanish instantly. It continues for a time. And during that time the senses report the old. This report is used by the old state to argue against the new. It says, “See, nothing has changed. Your assumption is false.” But these are not arguments to be answered. They are simply the voice of the old. You do not argue with it. You do not try to convince it. You simply ignore it. You turn your attention back to the feeling of the end. You let the old have its say while you remain unmoved in the new. As you do this, the old loses its power. Its momentum is overcome by the momentum of the new assumption. And the invisible movement proceeds with greater freedom.

The assumption of the end is the rising in consciousness to the naturalness of being the one who has realized the desire. It is not a strained effort. It is not a hopeful pretense. It is the quiet acceptance of the state as your present reality. When this acceptance is complete, there is no longer any question of whether it will come to pass. There is only the feeling that it is so. This feeling is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not seen. It is the evidence in consciousness, and consciousness is the cause. The visible world is the effect. The effect must follow the cause. There may be an interval between the cause and the effect, but the effect is inevitable. Your trust during the interval is your acknowledgment of this inevitability. It is your refusal to be impressed by the effect while it still lags behind the cause.

You live from the assumption. You think from it. You speak from it. You act from it. Not in the outer world where others can see, but in the inner world where the real work is done. In the outer world you go about your business as naturally as you can. You do not force doors. You do not manipulate people. You do not announce what you have assumed. You keep the secret. For the secret is the assumption held in the feeling of naturalness. When it is truly natural, you do not need to boast of it. You do not need to defend it. You simply live from it. And this living from it gives the invisible movement its freedom. It allows the rearrangement to proceed without the friction of your anxiety or your interference.

The world of appearances is a slow world. It does not change in a moment. It has its own rhythm. But the rhythm of the invisible movement is not the rhythm of the outer world. It is the rhythm of consciousness itself. And consciousness can rearrange an entire life in a moment when the assumption is deep enough. The time it takes for the visible to conform is determined by the depth of the assumption and the persistence in the feeling. Some manifestations come quickly. Others seem to take longer. But in every case the time is not wasted. It is the time in which the invisible movement completes its perfect work. During this time you are being trained in trust. You are learning to live by the invisible rather than by the visible. You are learning that the true cause is always in consciousness and that the visible is always the servant.

When you have truly assumed the end, you have died to the old state. The old man is no longer your identity. You have risen as the new man. This rising is first in consciousness. The outer rising, the visible change in your world, follows as the natural consequence. But the interval between the inner rising and the outer rising is the time of the invisible movement. In this time you must not look back. You must not return to the old feeling even for a moment. For every return to the old is a denial of the new. It is a slowing of the movement. It is a re-impressing of the old state upon consciousness. But when you persist, when you refuse to look back, the movement continues until the old expression is completely replaced by the new. Then you look upon your world and you see that it has changed. And you know that you yourself, by your assumption and your trust in the invisible, have been the cause of the change.

There is no need to force the manifestation. There is no need to make it happen. The assumption has already set the cause in motion. The invisible movement is the working out of that cause. Your only responsibility is to remain faithful to the feeling of the end. Faithfulness here means persistence in the assumption despite the contradiction of the senses. It means returning to the feeling whenever you find yourself slipping back into the old state. It means falling asleep at night in the feeling of the fulfilled desire. It means waking in the morning and assuming it again before you meet the day. Each time you assume it, you strengthen it. Each time you strengthen it, you give greater power to the invisible movement. And the movement, having greater power, completes its work in shorter time.

The invisible movement is not partial. It is complete. It rearranges everything necessary for the fulfillment of your assumption. It does not leave out some things and include others. It brings the whole thing into being. The people who are needed appear. The circumstances that are needed arise. The opportunities that are needed present themselves. And all of this happens without your conscious planning. It happens because consciousness, having been impressed with the end, must express the end. It has no choice. The law is exact. What you assume in consciousness must come to pass. The only variable is the time it takes and the ease with which it comes. And these are determined by your persistence in the feeling and your trust in the invisible movement.

So you see, after you have assumed the end, there is nothing more for you to do but trust. Trust that the movement has begun. Trust that it continues. Trust that it cannot fail. This trust is not a passive waiting. It is an active resting in the conviction that the thing is already done in consciousness and must therefore appear in form. It is a quiet knowing that the world is even now being rearranged to conform to your assumption. It is a refusal to be disturbed by appearances. It is a living from the end rather than toward the end. And as you live from the end, the end appears. Not because you have forced it, but because you have assumed it and trusted the invisible movement that follows every true assumption.

You have assumed the end. The invisible movement is at work. Rest in this knowing. Live from this certainty. And let the thing you have felt as real come to pass in its own perfect way. For it will come. It must come. Consciousness has willed it, and consciousness is the only reality.