#178: The Secret of Inner Stability

The Secret of Inner Stability

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Why is it that some assumptions, once truly made, endure every contradiction and at length harden into concrete fact, while others, though held with what seems equal intensity, dissolve at the first appearance of opposition? It is not the assumption that differs in kind. It is the stability of the consciousness that makes the assumption. Consciousness is the only reality. What you are conscious of being, you are. And what you are, you must out-picture in the world round about you. But the out-picturing waits upon the stability of the consciousness that assumes. When that consciousness wavers, the assumption collapses. When that consciousness rests unmoved, the assumption endures and fulfills itself.

You have discovered that you can assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You have discovered that by feeling yourself to be the person who has what you desire, you set in motion the creative power of consciousness. Yet you have also discovered that the assumption does not always harden into fact. It often melts away when the senses report the opposite. Why? Because the assumption was made, but it was not established. It was assumed as a desirable possibility, not as the natural and inevitable expression of your present consciousness. And so, when contradiction appears, as it must appear, the assumption, having no deep root, withers.

Inner stability is the secret. It is the state in which the assumption ceases to be something you do and becomes something you are. You do not merely visit the consciousness of the fulfilled desire; you dwell there. You make it your home. You rest in it. And when you rest in it, you are no longer moved by the evidence of the senses. The evidence of the senses belongs to the old state. It is the out-picturing of what you were conscious of being yesterday. But you are no longer yesterday’s man. You are today’s man. You are the man who is conscious of being that which you desire to be. And so the old evidence has no power over you.

You see, the outer world is not the cause. It is the effect. It has no initiative. It can only reflect what is first established in consciousness. When your consciousness is unstable, when it fluctuates between the assumption and the contradiction, the world fluctuates with it. One day the assumption seems real; the next day the contradiction seems more real. And so nothing is established. But when your consciousness becomes stable, when it no longer reacts to the contradiction, the world must stabilize around the new assumption. It has no choice. For the world is yourself pushed out. It can only be what you are in consciousness.

The development of this inner stability begins with the recognition that consciousness is God. The awareness of being is the Lord. And the Lord is not divided against himself. When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are claiming that the awareness of being is now that which you desire to be. You are not adding something to yourself. You are simply becoming aware of being it. And this awareness, when it is allowed to rest, is the creative power. But if you do not rest, if you continue to labor in your mind, if you continue to look at the contradiction and wonder how it can be overcome, you are serving two masters. You are trying to serve the new state and the old state at the same time. And no man can serve two masters. One or the other will claim you.

The stable consciousness serves only one master. It serves the assumption. It serves the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It serves the naturalness of already being the person who has what was formerly desired. And because it serves only this one master, it is not moved when the senses report the opposite. It knows that the senses are reporting the past. It knows that the past has no power over the present assumption when that assumption is rested in. The contradiction may appear. The senses may deny. But these things appear to the old man. They do not appear to the new man. And you are the new man when you have assumed and rested.

Rest is the secret. Not the rest of idleness, but the rest of completed work. When you have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled, the work is done. The creative act is finished. All that remains is for you to rest in the consciousness of the finished work. This is the Sabbath of which the wise have spoken. Six days you labor to attain. But on the seventh day you rest. You rest because the assumption has been made. You rest because the feeling has been felt. You rest because you have become one with the state desired. And in this rest, the assumption sinks into the deep of yourself and becomes your natural consciousness.

When this naturalness is attained, contradiction loses its power to move you. You look at the contradiction and you know it is but the old state seeking to reassert itself. You know it is the world of the past trying to claim you. But you are not claimed. You have claimed the new. You have become the new. And so you remain unmoved. You do not argue with the contradiction. You do not fight it. You do not even deny it with loud words. You simply remain in the consciousness of already being that which you desire to be. And in this remaining, the contradiction dissolves. For it has no root in the new consciousness. It has no substance where there is no attention given to it.

You have seen men who hold an assumption for a little while and then abandon it at the first sign of opposition. You have seen other men who hold the same assumption and see it come to pass in the face of all opposition. The difference is not in the assumption. The difference is in the men. One man is unstable in consciousness. The other is stable. One man assumes and then looks to the outer world for confirmation. The other assumes and rests in the assumption, knowing that confirmation must come because consciousness is the only reality. One man is double-minded. The other is single-minded. And the double-minded man receives nothing, while the single-minded man receives the promise.

To be single-minded is to have died to every state other than the state assumed. It is to have accepted the new state so completely that the old state has no claim upon you. When contradiction appears, the unstable man reacts from the old state. He feels the pang of disappointment. He questions whether the assumption was true. He wonders what he did wrong. But the stable man does not react from the old state. He remains in the new. He feels no disappointment because he knows the assumption is true. He knows the contradiction is not the denial of the assumption but the evidence that the old state is still being out-pictured until the new state has fully taken possession. And so he persists without effort. He persists because persistence is now the natural expression of his consciousness.

This persistence is not the persistence of will. It is the persistence of being. When you are conscious of being healthy, you do not will yourself to remain healthy. You simply are healthy. And health persists. When you are conscious of being secure, you do not struggle to maintain security. You simply are secure. And security persists. The same is true of the assumption. When you have become conscious of being the person who has what you formerly desired, the assumption persists of itself. It does not need your help. It needs only your rest. It needs only your continued dwelling in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

The unstable assumption collapses because it was never truly accepted. It was assumed with one part of the mind while another part remained anchored in the old state. And so, when contradiction comes, the part that remained anchored in the old state rises up and claims you. But when the assumption is made with the whole consciousness, when every level of your being has accepted it as natural, then there is no part left to rise up and claim you. The whole of you rests in the new. And the whole of you cannot be moved by that which belongs to the old.

You develop this stability by living in the assumption. Not by visiting it occasionally, but by making it your dwelling place. You rise in consciousness to the level of the fulfilled desire and you remain there. You do not descend to meet the contradiction. You do not go down into the old state to fight it. You remain above it. You remain in the consciousness that is the solution of every problem. And from this height, you look down upon the contradiction and you know it has no power. It is like looking at a shadow and knowing that the shadow cannot affect the substance that casts it.

The feeling of naturalness is the key to this stability. When the assumption feels natural, it has taken root. When it still feels strange or effortful, it has not yet been established. And so you persist in feeling the wish fulfilled until the feeling becomes natural. You do not force the feeling. You simply assume it and rest in it. You live with it. You sleep in it. You go about your daily affairs in the consciousness of already being the person you desire to be. And as you do this, the feeling of naturalness grows. What once seemed strange becomes familiar. What once seemed impossible becomes inevitable. And when it becomes inevitable in consciousness, it becomes inevitable in the world.

Contradiction, when it comes, is not a sign that the assumption has failed. It is often a sign that the assumption is taking root. The old state does not yield without a struggle. It does not surrender its place without resistance. And so the appearance of contradiction is frequently the evidence that the new state is displacing the old. But if you are unstable, you will interpret the contradiction as failure. You will abandon the assumption. And the old state will reassert itself. But if you are stable, you will interpret the contradiction as the death of the old and the birth of the new. You will remain unmoved. And the new will triumph.

You cannot be both the old man and the new man at the same time. You cannot be both the man who lacks and the man who has. You cannot be both the man who is sick and the man who is well. You must choose. And when you have chosen, you must remain in your choice. This remaining is the secret of inner stability. It is the refusal to be moved from the state you have assumed. It is the quiet insistence that consciousness is the only reality and that what you are conscious of being must externalize itself. And this insistence, because it is quiet and because it is rooted in being rather than in effort, has all power.

The world will test this stability. It will present every appearance that denies your assumption. It will seem to conspire to prove you wrong. But these tests are not punishments. They are not signs that you have failed. They are the necessary experiences through which the stability is developed and proved. For stability that has never been tested is not yet known to be stable. But when the assumption has been held in the face of every contradiction, then you know, with a certainty that nothing can shake, that consciousness is indeed the only reality. And from that day forward, your assumptions no longer collapse. They endure. They fulfill themselves. And you walk in the freedom of one who has discovered that he is the cause of his world and that his world must conform to his consciousness.

This is the secret. This is the eternal secret. You are the awareness of being. You are the I AM in which all assumptions live and move and have their being. When this awareness rests in the assumption of the wish fulfilled, it is God assuming and God fulfilling. And God cannot fail. Therefore, assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Rest in that feeling. Remain unmoved by every contradiction. And you will discover that the assumption, once established in a stable consciousness, has no power on earth that can prevent its fulfillment. You will discover that you are the stable one. You are the rock upon which the assumption is built. And upon this rock, nothing can prevail against you.