#181: The Psychological Distance Between You and Your Desire

The Psychological Distance Between You and Your Desire

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You look upon your desire and you see it standing at a distance. You see it as something that belongs to another day, another condition, another state of affairs. You feel yourself separated from it by time and by circumstance, and this feeling of separation has become so familiar that you accept it as the natural order of things. But this distance is not in the world around you. It is not in the nature of life itself. It is in your consciousness. It is the distance between the state you are now conscious of being and the state you desire to be. It is a psychological distance, and it exists only because you stand in one state and look across to another.

Consciousness is the only reality. All that you see round about you is your consciousness out-pictured. Your world in every detail is the visible expression of an invisible state of consciousness. Therefore, when you are conscious of being the one who desires, your world must reflect that state of desire. The desire appears distant because you have placed it outside yourself in consciousness. You have made it an object to be attained rather than a state to be assumed. You have become the desirer rather than the embodiment of the desire, and so long as this is your position, the distance remains.

But consciousness is one. There is no separation within it. What you are conscious of being, you are, and what you are, you express. The psychological distance is created the moment you refuse to identify yourself with your desire. The moment you say within yourself, “I desire it,” instead of feeling “I am it,” you create the gap. You stand here as the one who lacks and you look there at the thing you lack. This standing here and looking there is the distance. It is not real in any ultimate sense. It is the illusion created by occupying the wrong state of consciousness.

To collapse this distance you must do the one thing that seems impossible to the outer man. You must rise in consciousness to the naturalness of being the thing desired. You must feel yourself to be the embodiment of your desire now. Not in the future when conditions change, not when you have more time or more money or more evidence, but now, in this present moment of your awareness. When you do this, the distance vanishes. There is no longer a you here and a desire there. There is only the one state of consciousness in which the desire is already real. From this state your world must rearrange itself to bear witness to what you are conscious of being.

This rising in consciousness is the inner act that bridges every gap. It is not accomplished by effort or by struggle. It is accomplished by assumption. You assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You feel yourself to be the rich man, the healthy man, the free man, the loved man—whatever your desire may be. You do not look at this state as something you will one day enter. You look from this state as something you already occupy. This shift in position, this change from looking at to looking from, is the collapse of the psychological distance.

You are told that you shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass. This decreeing is not done with words. It is done with consciousness. You decree by becoming conscious of being the thing decreed. When you become conscious of being your desire fulfilled, you have decreed it. The signs follow. They never precede. The outer evidence comes after the inner assumption has been made. It cannot come before, for the outer is always the servant of the inner. When you understand this, you cease to look for signs. You cease to wait for evidence. You rest in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire, and you let the evidence come in its own way and in its own time.

Many of you have tried to bring your desires to pass while remaining in the old state of consciousness. You have affirmed. You have visualized. You have worked and planned and hoped. But you have done all these things from the position of the one who still desires. You have looked at your desire from the outside. You have treated it as something to be acquired rather than something to be assumed. And so the distance has remained. The psychological gap has not been closed because you have not changed your position in consciousness. You have tried to bring the desire to you while remaining the one who is separated from it.

But when you change your position, when you move from the consciousness of desiring to the consciousness of being, everything changes. The desire is no longer something you are reaching for. It is something you are resting in. The striving ceases. The anxiety disappears. The waiting is over. For you have arrived at the end. You have identified yourself with the fulfilled state. And the end is the beginning of its expression in your world.

This identification is the spiritual marriage of which the Bible speaks. Two shall agree as touching anything, and it shall be established on earth. The two that agree are your awareness of being and the thing desired. When they agree, when you feel yourself to be the thing desired, the agreement is made and the child is born. The manifestation appears. But this agreement cannot be made between two persons. It is made within yourself. It is made between your awareness of being and the state you desire to occupy. When these two become one in feeling, the distance collapses.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot feel yourself to be the fulfilled desire and at the same time feel yourself to be the one who lacks it. One of these feelings must die. The old man must be put off. The new man must be put on. This dying and living is not a future event. It is a present possibility. It is done by a simple change of attention. You take your attention from the old state—the state of lack, of desire, of separation—and you place it upon the new state—the state of fulfillment, of being, of oneness. You dwell upon the new state until it becomes natural to you. And when it is natural, you have collapsed the distance.

The Bible tells you that you must be born again. You must leave behind the conception of yourself as the one who desires and assume the nature of the one in whom the desire is already fulfilled. This new birth is not a change in the outer world. It is a change in consciousness. It is a rising from the state of the desirer to the state of the fulfilled. And this rising is accomplished by feeling. You feel yourself to be the thing desired. You feel the joy of it. You feel the relief of it. You feel the naturalness of it. And you persist in this feeling until it becomes your permanent state of consciousness.

When this feeling becomes permanent, the psychological distance is gone. You no longer have to work yourself up into the feeling. It is simply the way you are. You walk in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire. You react from it. You live from it. Your thoughts, your words, your actions all flow from this state. They are the natural expression of what you are conscious of being. And your world, which is your consciousness pushed out, begins to reflect it. The things that seemed so distant begin to appear. The circumstances that seemed so fixed begin to change. All because you have collapsed the psychological distance by identification.

You may ask how this feeling can change the outer world. But the question itself reveals that you are still standing at a distance. You are still looking at the law from the outside. You are still trying to understand with the intellect what can only be known by experience. The law is not something to be understood. It is something to be lived. When you live it, when you feel yourself to be the fulfilled desire, you know. You know that consciousness is the only reality. You know that what you are conscious of being, you must express. You know that the distance was never real. It was only the illusion created by standing in the wrong state.

This knowing is faith. Faith is not belief in something afar off. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. When you feel yourself to be the fulfilled desire, you have the evidence within you. The outer world has not yet confirmed it, but the inner confirmation is there. And this inner confirmation is all that is necessary. For the outer must follow the inner. It can do no other. When you have this faith, you do not need to see the thing to believe it. You believe it because you feel it. And the feeling is the substance that will clothe itself in form.

You are told to go within in secret and shut the door. The door is the door of the senses. You shut out the evidence that denies your desire. You go within to the secret place of your consciousness. There you feel yourself to be the thing desired. You do not argue with the outer world. You do not reason with the evidence of your senses. You simply assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and you abide in that feeling. The moment this feeling becomes your dominant state, the distance is gone. Your desire is no longer something you are waiting for. It is something you are living.

This abiding is the secret of persistence. It is not a straining to hold on. It is a resting in the state. It is a dwelling in the consciousness of the fulfilled desire. And this dwelling is natural when you have truly identified yourself with it. It is the natural state of the new man. The old man, the one who desires, lives in the interval between states. He is always becoming, always hoping, always waiting. But the new man, the one who is the fulfilled desire, lives in the state itself. He does not strive. He does not hope. He knows. He rests. He lives from the end.

This is the difference that identification makes. This is the difference that collapses the psychological distance. The old man lives in the gap. The new man lives in the fulfillment. The old man is always reaching. The new man has arrived. And in arriving, he expresses all that he is.

You are told that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. The Lord is your consciousness. Except your desire is first established in your consciousness, all your outer efforts are in vain. They cannot bring to pass what has not been decreed in consciousness. But when the decree is made, when you have become conscious of being the fulfilled desire, then the outer efforts, if any are needed, are guided and empowered by the inner state. They become the natural channels through which the desire expresses.

So you see that the psychological distance is not overcome by outer means. It is overcome by inner means. It is overcome by the simple act of identification. This act is available to you at any moment. You do not have to wait for a special time or a special place. You can do it now. You can feel yourself to be the fulfilled desire now. You can collapse the distance now.

When you have identified yourself with your desire, you give thanks. You say within yourself, “Thank you, father.” This is not a formula. It is the natural expression of one who has received. You do not give thanks for something you have not received. You give thanks because you have received it in consciousness. The father, your awareness of being, has given it to you. And you are grateful. This gratitude is the seal of identification. It is the proof that you have collapsed the distance. For you cannot be grateful for something that is still at a distance. Gratitude is the feeling of possession. It is the feeling that it is already yours.

So cultivate this gratitude. Not as a means to an end, but as the natural consequence of your identification. Feel the thank you father rising from within you. Feel it as the response of your consciousness to the assumption you have made. And as you feel it, the distance collapses even more. For gratitude is the atmosphere in which the desire grows and expresses.

Tonight, when you lie down to sleep, take your desire with you into sleep. But do not take it as a distant thing. Take it as a present reality. Feel yourself to be the man or the woman who has already realized the desire. Let this feeling accompany you into sleep. And in sleep, the distance will be further collapsed. For in sleep you are free from the outer evidence. You are free to assume any state. And if you assume the state of the fulfilled desire, you will rise in the morning with a new sense of certainty. The psychological distance will have lessened. And as you persist in this practice, the distance will disappear altogether.

You will find that your reactions to life change. Where before you reacted from the consciousness of lack, now you react from the consciousness of fulfillment. Where before you were anxious, now you are at peace. Where before you strove, now you rest. For you are no longer the one who desires. You are the one who has. This change in reaction is the proof that the distance has been collapsed. For your reactions reveal your state of consciousness. If you react as the fulfilled one, you are the fulfilled one. If you react as the one who still desires, you are still at a distance.

So watch your reactions. They will tell you whether you have truly identified yourself with your desire or whether you are still standing apart. And if you find that you are still reacting from the old state, do not condemn yourself. Simply return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Persist until the new reaction becomes natural.

For persistence is the bridge that spans the psychological distance. It is not persistence in effort. It is persistence in assumption. You assume the feeling again and again until it becomes your permanent state. And when it is permanent, the distance is no more.

You are told that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the state of consciousness in which your desire is realized. When you are in that state, there is no condemnation. There is only the quiet joy of knowing that all is well. The outer may still show the old picture, but you know that it is but the out-picturing of the old state, and that as you persist in the new state, the outer must change.

This knowing is the victory. This is the faith that overcomes the world. The world is the out-picturing of your former consciousness. When you change the consciousness, you overcome the world. You are no longer at the mercy of conditions. You are the master of conditions. For conditions are but the servants of consciousness.

So you see that the psychological distance between you and your desire is not a fixed thing. It is a variable thing. It is measured by the degree of your identification. When identification is complete, distance is zero. When identification is partial, distance remains. The whole of the spiritual life is the story of this identification. It is the story of becoming one with that which you desire.

And this becoming one is not a future event. It is a present possibility. It is possible now, in this moment. You do not have to wait for anything. You do not have to change anything in the outer world. You have only to change your consciousness. You have only to feel yourself to be the fulfilled desire. And in that feeling, the distance collapses.

This is the great truth that sets you free. You are free from the belief in separation. You are free from the belief in distance. You are free to assume any state of consciousness you desire. And in assuming it, you express it. You become it. You live it. And your world bears witness to it.

So assume it now. Feel it now. Live it now. And let the world bear witness to the collapse of the psychological distance between you and your desire. For consciousness is the only reality, and you are the operant power. What you are conscious of being, you express. And when you are conscious of being the fulfilled desire, the distance that once seemed so real is seen to be the illusion it always was. You are one with your desire. You have always been one with it. You have only to feel it to know it. And in knowing it, you are free.