#188: The End of Inner Conflict

The End of Inner Conflict

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Man is forever at war within himself, and this war is the hidden cause of every frustration he meets in the world. You desire a state, you assume it in moments of vision, yet you also assume its denial, and these two assumptions live together in your consciousness, each claiming to be true. The world you experience is not at fault. It is the faithful out-picturing of the state you are now conscious of being, and when that state is divided against itself the reflection must be divided also. Conflicting assumptions can produce only conflicting results.

Consciousness is one. It knows no division in itself. The division you feel is not in consciousness; it is in the assumptions you entertain while you remain conscious of being. You are always assuming something about yourself. You assume you are this or that, you assume the world is for or against you, you assume your desire is possible or impossible. These assumptions are not idle thoughts. They are the very garments you wear, the very states from which you view and therefore create your world. When two such garments are worn at the same time, when two opposing states are assumed with equal or nearly equal feeling, you are a house divided, and no house divided against itself can stand.

You cannot serve two masters. You cannot assume that your desire is already fulfilled and at the same moment assume that its fulfillment is withheld or delayed. One assumption will always weaken the other. The stronger feeling will dominate, yet the weaker one will still exert its influence, and the result will be the compromise you now call your life. You move forward a little and fall back. You see signs that encourage you and then signs that discourage you. You feel moments of certainty and then moments of doubt, and you wonder why the thing you desire does not appear in its fullness. The reason is simple. You have not yet ended the inner conflict. You have not yet allowed one assumption to live alone in your consciousness.

The end of inner conflict is not achieved by fighting the unwanted assumption. Fighting only keeps it alive, for what you resist you continue to hold in attention. The end comes when you withdraw your attention completely from the state you no longer wish to express and give it wholly to the state you desire. This withdrawal is not an act of will in the usual sense. It is the simple act of feeling yourself to be what you desire to be and continuing in that feeling until it becomes the only natural feeling you know. When the feeling of the wish fulfilled is natural to you, the opposing assumption has already died. It has no food. It withers from lack of attention, and your consciousness, now unified, begins to out-picture only the one state you have assumed.

You may ask how you can feel a thing to be natural when the evidence of your senses denies it. The answer is that feeling does not argue with evidence. Feeling simply assumes the state and rests in it. You do not try to make the feeling natural by repeating words or by forcing belief. You simply assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire as you would assume the feeling of being in your own home after a long journey. In the beginning the feeling may seem strange, yet you persist in it. You return to it whenever you become aware that you have slipped back into the old divided state. Each time you return, the new feeling grows more natural, more effortless, until one day you discover that you no longer have to return to it. You are living in it. The conflict is over.

This change of feeling is the true meaning of being born again. You die to the old assumption by giving it no more attention, and you live to the new by feeling it as your present reality. The old man, the divided man, passes away, and the new man, the unified man, stands in his place. Everything in your world that corresponded to the old divided state begins to fade, and everything that corresponds to the new unified state begins to appear. You do not manipulate persons or conditions to make this happen. You simply cease to assume the old and continue to assume the new, and the world, which is yourself pushed out, rearranges itself accordingly.

Observe yourself closely and you will see how often you entertain conflicting assumptions without knowing it. You assume you are loved, yet you also assume you are unworthy of love. You assume you are successful in your aim, yet you also assume that success is for others and not for you. You assume the desire is on its way, yet you also assume that there is still something you must do or overcome before it can arrive. These secondary assumptions are the real disturbers of your peace. They are the hidden enemies that keep the primary assumption from bearing fruit. When you detect such a secondary assumption, you do not argue with it or try to overcome it by force. You simply ignore it. You return your attention to the primary feeling, the feeling that the thing desired is already so, and you let the secondary assumption die of neglect.

The world will always reflect the state you are now conscious of being. There is no other cause. If your world shows conflict, look within and you will find conflicting assumptions. If your world shows harmony and fulfillment, look within and you will find a single, dominant assumption lived in feeling. There is no mystery about it. The law is constant. Consciousness is the only reality, and whatever you are conscious of being, you will express. The only variable is the unity or division of your assumptions.

When inner conflict ends, something profound happens to your sense of self. You no longer feel pulled in two directions. You no longer wonder whether your desire will come to pass. You rest in the quiet certainty that it is already done, and this rest is itself the evidence that the assumption has become natural. From this rest, action, when action is needed, flows effortlessly. You do what is to be done without anxiety, without the feeling that you must make something happen. You move as one who knows the end is already secured, and your movements are therefore free from the strain that once accompanied them. The world senses this freedom and responds to it. Persons and events arrange themselves to confirm the state you now occupy alone.

The assumption you entertain is your decree. It is the word that goes forth and does not return void. When that word is single, when it proceeds from a consciousness no longer divided, it brings forth after its kind without delay or distortion. When the word is divided, when two opposing decrees are issued from the same throne, the manifestation is confused and the harvest is mixed. You are the throne. You are the one who issues the decree by assuming a state and feeling it real. There is no higher court. What you assume and feel to be true is what you decree, and what you decree is what appears.

You may have tried many ways to resolve your conflicts. You may have argued with yourself, reasoned with yourself, or sought help from others. All such efforts leave the root untouched, for the root is the assumption itself. Only a change of assumption can end the conflict, and a change of assumption is achieved only by a change of feeling. You must feel yourself to be the one you desire to be, and you must feel it so completely that the opposite feeling has no place in you. This is not easy at first, because the old assumption has been lived in for a long time and has therefore become habitual. Yet persistence in the new feeling will make it habitual also, and when the new feeling is habitual the conflict is over.

Consider what it means to live without inner conflict. It means that when you think of your desire there is no opposing thought that rises to challenge it. It means that when you feel the wish fulfilled there is no little voice that whispers of difficulty or delay. It means that your consciousness is single, and because it is single the world it projects is single also. There is no longer a war between what you want and what you believe. There is only the quiet, steady feeling that what you want is already yours, and this feeling is the father that draws the manifestation to you.

The feeling of the wish fulfilled does not argue. It does not look for signs. It does not question the how. It simply rests in the assumption that the thing is done, and in that rest the how takes care of itself. When you are divided, you are full of questions about the way. When you are unified, the way is no longer your concern. You know that the assumption, being the only reality you now entertain, must externalize itself, and you leave the externalization to the law that never fails. This is the peace that passes understanding. It is not a peace achieved by effort. It is the peace that follows the ending of conflict, the peace of a consciousness that is no longer at war with itself.

You are always assuming. There is no moment in which you are free from assumption. The only question is whether your assumptions are unified or divided. If they are divided, your life will show the division. If they are unified, your life will show the unity. There is no other law. There is no other cause. The world is yourself pushed out, and you push out only what you are conscious of being. Change what you are conscious of being by assuming a single state and feeling it natural, and the world must change with you.

The end of inner conflict is therefore the beginning of true creation. When you no longer entertain two states, when you have died to the old assumption by withdrawing attention from it and have risen to the new by feeling it as your only reality, you stand in the position of the creator who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Your word, now single, goes forth with power. Your assumption, now undivided, clothes itself in form. Your world, now the reflection of one state rather than two, begins to bear witness to the unity you have established within.

This is not a future event. It is a present possibility. You can begin tonight, in the quiet of your own mind, to assume the state of the fulfilled desire and to feel it as natural. You need not announce it to anyone. You need not argue for it or defend it. You simply feel it, return to it whenever you become aware of the old division, and let the feeling grow in naturalness until it is the only feeling you know. When this happens the conflict is ended, and you will discover that you are no longer the man who desired and doubted. You are the man who assumed and received, for assumption and reception are one when the assumption is single and the feeling is pure.

You are not asked to believe something you do not feel. You are asked only to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and to persist in it until it becomes your natural state. In that persistence the old assumption loses its life, the division disappears, and you stand revealed to yourself as the one you have assumed yourself to be. The end of inner conflict is therefore not something you achieve by struggle. It is something you allow by feeling. Feel the end, feel it as natural, feel it as the only state you occupy, and the conflict that once tore you will trouble you no more. The world will then have no choice but to reflect the unity you have established in consciousness, for consciousness is the only reality and you are its operant power.