#190: The Creative Power of Conviction

The Creative Power of Conviction

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

Can conviction bring to pass the thing desired? Most decidedly it can. For conviction is assumption stabilized, and what is stabilized in consciousness must appear in form. Men go through their days wondering why their longings remain unsatisfied, why the conditions they endure seem fixed and unyielding, why the same patterns repeat year after year no matter what outer effort they make. They do not see that the cause is not in the world around them but in the quality of their own convictions. They assume for a moment and then waver. They feel the wish fulfilled and then permit doubt to return. They touch the state and then withdraw from it. And so the assumption never becomes conviction, and the thing desired never becomes fact.

Conviction is the moment when assumption ceases to be something you are trying to do and becomes something you are. It is the inner act made permanent. When you assume a state you feel yourself into it. You live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. But assumption can be temporary. It can rise and fall with the mood of the moment. Conviction is assumption that no longer rises and falls. It has become fixed. The feeling no longer needs to be induced; it has become your natural response. You think of the state and instantly the feeling is there, quiet, certain, unquestioned. This is the creative power. This is what turns the invisible into the visible.

Your world is always the out-picturing of your convictions. Everything you now see and experience was once a conviction held in secret. You may have forgotten the moment it became fixed within you, but it did become fixed, and the outer world faithfully reproduced it. There is no other way a thing can appear. Consciousness is the only reality, and conviction is consciousness in its fixed and settled form. When you are convinced of lack you express lack. When you are convinced of limitation you express limitation. When you are convinced of a state of freedom, or wealth, or love, or health, that state must find expression. It has no choice. Life does not argue with conviction. It simply brings forth the fruit of whatever has been stabilized in consciousness.

The great error is to look to the senses for proof before conviction has been reached. Men say, “When I see it I will believe it.” But this is to reverse the divine order. Conviction comes first. The evidence follows. Signs always follow; they never precede. When you are convinced, you do not need the evidence to sustain your conviction. You are sustained by the inner certainty itself. The outer may still show the old condition, but you are no longer moved by it. You know it is passing because you have passed from the old conviction to the new. The bridge of incidents that will bring the new state into visible form is already forming, though you see it not. You rest in the knowledge that what is fixed within must become fixed without.

Feel, for a moment, the difference between hoping for a thing and being convinced of it. Hope still looks forward. It still admits the possibility of failure. It still belongs to the man who is not yet. Conviction belongs to the man who already is. There is no anxiety in conviction. There is no watching and waiting. There is only the quiet knowing that it is so. This knowing is not reached by argument or by weighing evidence. It is reached by persistent assumption until the old state loses its feeling of reality and the new state acquires it. You dwell in the feeling of the wish fulfilled until that feeling becomes natural. You do not force it. You simply return to it again and again, and each return weakens the hold of the opposite state until at last the new state stands alone, unquestioned, fixed. Then conviction is born.

This birth of conviction may come suddenly or gradually. There is no rule. One man may assume for a single night and awaken convinced. Another may persist for weeks before the old doubts finally dissolve. What matters is not the time but the persistence. You do not measure the success of your assumption by what the senses report. You measure it by the degree to which the feeling has become natural. When you can think of the desired state and feel no contradiction, no effort, no doubt, then the work is done. Conviction has come. And with conviction comes the creative power that compels the world to conform.

You cannot serve two convictions at the same time. You cannot be convinced of lack and at the same time convinced of abundance. One must give way to the other. The old conviction will fight to retain its place. It will present arguments from the past. It will point to present appearances. It will whisper that the new state is impossible. But these are only the dying gestures of a state that is losing its hold. If you return to the assumption whenever these arguments arise, if you feel the wish fulfilled even while the senses deny it, the old conviction weakens and the new one strengthens. Eventually the old dies altogether, and only the new remains. Then there is no more inner conflict. There is only the settled peace of conviction.

This is why thanksgiving is the natural expression of the man who has reached conviction. He does not give thanks because he hopes the thing will come. He gives thanks because in consciousness it has already come. The thing is not yet seen by the senses, but it is already established in the only place that matters. This inward thanksgiving is the proof that assumption has passed into conviction. It is the “thank you, father” that proves the two have agreed. And when the two have agreed, the thing is established on earth. You do not need to tell anyone what you have done. You do not need to announce your conviction. It is enough that it is fixed within you. The world will know soon enough, for it has no choice but to reflect what has been stabilized in consciousness.

If you are now experiencing conditions you do not desire, know that you are convinced of those conditions. Not consciously, perhaps. Not in words you would speak aloud. But in the deep places of your being you are convinced that this is how life is for you. That conviction is the cause. The condition is only the effect. To change the effect you must change the cause. You must assume the opposite state and persist in the assumption until it becomes your new conviction. You must feel yourself into the state of freedom, or abundance, or love, or health, until that feeling no longer requires effort. Until it feels like the most natural thing in the world. Then the old conviction of the opposite state will have lost its power, and the new state will begin to appear.

Do not concern yourself with how the change will come. Conviction does not ask how. It knows that the ways of consciousness are past finding out. When you are convinced of a state you do not scheme or plan or manipulate outer events. You simply live from the conviction, and life itself arranges the means. The person who can help you appears. The opportunity opens. The circumstance dissolves. All without your conscious direction. For consciousness is the potter, and conviction is the fixed mold into which life pours itself. You do not need to tell the potter how to work. You need only present the mold.

The man who is convinced walks differently from the man who is still hoping. He speaks differently. He reacts differently. He does not argue for his conviction. He does not defend it. He simply lives from it. And because he lives from it, the world treats him as the man he is convinced he is. This is not pretense. It is not acting as if. It is the natural expression of a consciousness that has become fixed in a new state. The old man has died. The new man has risen. And the world must reshape itself around the new man.

You may wonder whether you are capable of such conviction. But the capacity is already within you. You have formed convictions all your life. You are convinced of your name, of your age, of your nationality, of countless facts about yourself and your world. These convictions were not always there. They were formed by assumption repeated until they became fixed. You can form new convictions in the same way. You can assume a new state of being and persist in the assumption until it becomes as fixed as your conviction of your own name. There is no difference in the process. There is only a difference in the state assumed.

When conviction comes, effort ceases. You no longer try to make the thing happen. You no longer watch anxiously for signs. You rest. This rest is the Sabbath of consciousness. It is the state in which you know that the work is finished. The assumption has been accepted. The conviction has been established. And now the creative power does its work without interference from you. You go about your daily affairs from this inner rest, and all things arrange themselves accordingly. This is the effortless way. This is the way of the man who has discovered the creative power of conviction.

If doubt returns, do not fight it. Simply return to the assumption. Feel the wish fulfilled again. Do not argue with the doubt. Do not try to overcome it by force. Simply give your attention to the new state until the feeling of it being so regains its naturalness. Each time you do this the doubt loses a little more of its power. Eventually it will cease to arise at all. For doubt cannot live in the presence of settled conviction. It withers when it is no longer fed by your attention. And when it has withered completely, only conviction remains.

You are always assuming. The only question is whether your assumptions are passing into conviction or remaining in the realm of hope and doubt. If they remain in hope and doubt, the things you desire will remain in the realm of the possible but not the actual. If they pass into conviction, the things you desire will pass into the realm of fact. There is no other law. This is the law of consciousness. This is the law that was known to the prophets and to the one who said, “According to your faith be it unto you.” Faith here is conviction. It is the stabilized assumption. And according to the degree of your conviction will the thing be done unto you.

Tonight, before you sleep, turn your attention to the state you desire. Do not ask for it. Do not petition for it. Assume it. Feel yourself into it. Dwell in the feeling of it being so. And continue in that feeling until it begins to feel natural. Do not measure the night by the clock. Measure it by the degree to which the new state has become your conviction. When you can rest in the feeling without effort, without doubt, without watching, then you have done all that is required of you. The creative power of conviction has been released. And what you have stabilized within must appear without.

This is the secret that was hidden from the foundation of the world, yet it is the most simple and natural thing in life. You do not need to be anyone special. You do not need any outer advantage. You need only the willingness to assume the state you desire and the persistence to remain in the assumption until it becomes conviction. Then the world will change, not because you have forced it, but because you have changed the cause of which it is the effect. You have become convinced of a new state of being, and life has no choice but to express that conviction.

You are not the man who is trying to become convinced. You are the man who already is convinced. And being convinced, you are free. The power that creates worlds is now at work in you, and all things are possible to him who is convinced. This is the truth. This is the creative power of conviction. And it is yours tonight.