#81: All Trivia Counts

All Trivia Counts

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You move through your day and meet a thousand little things. A word dropped in passing, a look that seems to dismiss you, a small delay, an unexpected courtesy, a minor disappointment. In each of these you react. The reaction may be no more than a tightening of the throat, a quiet lift of the heart, a flash of irritation, or a subtle sense of being put upon. You let it pass. You call it nothing. You tell yourself it does not matter. Yet these very trivia are the places where your creative power stands revealed, and it is here that you may read, as in an open book, the assumptions that are even now shaping your entire life.

The reaction is never to the outer event alone. It is to what you have assumed yourself to be in the presence of that event. The assumption is vast and silent. It is the unseen cause. But it speaks in the small. It betrays itself in the feeling that rises before you have time to think. That feeling is the assumption made visible for an instant. It is the bridge between the invisible conviction and the visible circumstance. When you dismiss the feeling as trivial, you dismiss the very evidence of the power that is creating your world.

You have been trained to look for causes in the large events. You point to the lost opportunity, the broken relationship, the state of affairs around you. Yet the cause was never there. The cause was the assumption you carried into the day, and that assumption announced itself in every small reaction you scarcely noticed. The driver who cuts across your path does not create your anger. Your anger reveals the assumption that you live in a world where you can be disregarded. The person who fails to greet you does not create your sense of being overlooked. That sense reveals the assumption that you are one who can be overlooked. The assumption is always large. The reaction is only its momentary voice.

Nothing is trivial to consciousness. Consciousness does not measure by the outer scale of importance. To consciousness the assumption is everything, and the reaction is its faithful report. Whether the outer event is great or small, the assumption behind the reaction remains the same in nature. It is the feeling of being a certain kind of person in a certain kind of world. When that feeling is one of lack, or of being opposed, or of being less than, it will color every encounter, great or small, with the same tint. The size of the circumstance does not alter the size of the assumption. The assumption is the creator. The reaction is simply the place where you may see it at work.

You say the irritation is natural. You say anyone would feel it. But the feeling is not natural to your true being. It is natural only to the assumption you are now entertaining. Your true being is the awareness that can assume any state and yet remain itself. When you react from the old feeling, you have momentarily forgotten this. You have identified yourself with the assumption. The reaction is the sign of that identification. It is the proof that, for the moment, you believe yourself to be the limited one the feeling describes. To see the reaction clearly is to see the identification. To see the identification is to remember that you are not the assumption. You are the one who can assume.

This seeing is not a difficult work. It is the simplest act of awareness. You do not have to struggle with the reaction. You do not have to force it to change. You have only to look at it without the old justification. You have only to notice what feeling is present and to ask yourself, without condemnation, what assumption this feeling betrays. The answer is immediate. The feeling and the assumption are one. If the feeling is one of being diminished, the assumption is that you are one who can be diminished. If the feeling is one of quiet security, the assumption is that you are one who is secure. There is no gap between them. The reaction is the assumption in its living, active form.

Because assumption creates, the reaction is creative. It is not merely an effect. It is the assumption going forth to clothe itself in circumstance. The small reaction of this morning is the seed of the larger event of next month. You do not wait until the plant is tall before you tend it. You tend it in the seed. You tend it by seeing the assumption in the reaction and by assuming, in that same moment, the feeling of the opposite. You assume the feeling of security in the face of the reaction that says you are disregarded. You assume the feeling of freedom in the face of the reaction that says you are bound. The assumption is made in feeling. The reaction changes when the feeling changes. The world follows the changed feeling.

You may wonder how so small a thing can affect so large a life. But the life is not large and the thing is not small. Both are expressions of the same power. The power is one. The assumption is one. The reaction is only the place where you become aware of it. When you change the feeling in the reaction, you change the assumption at its root. You do not add something new to yourself. You simply cease to assume the old and begin to assume the truth of your being. The truth is that you are the awareness of being, and all things are possible to the one who assumes.

This truth is not something you must achieve by effort. It is something you assume by feeling. The feeling of the old reaction was the feeling of separation, of opposition, of lack. The feeling of the new assumption is the feeling of oneness, of peace, of already possessing. It is a quiet feeling. It does not argue. It does not struggle. It simply knows that all is well because the assumption is well. When this feeling becomes your response to the trivia of the day, the trivia itself begins to lose its power to disturb. The same outer event meets a different inner state, and the event is transformed or ceases to matter.

You do not do this for the sake of the outer change. You do it because you have seen the truth. You have seen that the reaction was never forced upon you by the world. It was always the faithful expression of what you were assuming. Seeing this, you can no longer blame the outer. You can no longer wait for the world to change before you change. You see that the world is yourself pushed out, and the push begins in the assumption revealed by the reaction. To change the push, you change the assumption. To change the assumption, you change the feeling in the reaction. The act is simple. It is done in a moment. It is done by the willingness to see and by the willingness to feel the truth instead of the old assumption.

Tonight you may lie down and review the reactions of the day. You do not review them to condemn yourself. You review them to see. You see what assumption each reaction carried. You see it without defense. And then, quietly, you assume the opposite. You feel yourself to be the one who is not moved by such things. You feel the peace that belongs to the one who knows he is the cause. You feel it until it is natural. You fall asleep in that feeling. In sleep the assumption deepens. The subconscious, which accepts feeling as fact, takes the new assumption and begins to out-picture it. Tomorrow the reactions begin to change of themselves. They change because the assumption that produced them has changed.

You do not need to wait for the night. You may do it in the living moment. When the reaction arises, you see it. You see the assumption. You assume the new feeling. It requires no long preparation. It requires only the seeing and the willingness to feel the truth. The truth is always present. It is the feeling that you are already the one you desire to be. It is the feeling that nothing can come to you that is not already within you as a living possibility. When this feeling lives in your reactions, the reactions become the evidence of the fulfilled assumption rather than the evidence of the old limitation.

You see now why all trivia counts. The trivia is not beneath your attention. It is the very place where attention is most needed. The large events come only after the assumption has grown strong in the small reactions. By the time the large event appears, the assumption has already been fed for days or weeks or years by unnoticed reactions. To wait for the large event is to wait too long. The seed is already planted. The harvest is already determined. But the seed can be changed. The assumption can be revised. The place of revision is the reaction. The time of revision is now.

You may feel at first that the reactions are too quick, too automatic, to be caught. Yet the very fact that you now know they reveal the assumption gives you the power to catch them. Awareness itself slows the old momentum. The moment you remember to look, the reaction is already seen. The assumption is already exposed. And in that exposure the power to assume anew is present. You do not fight the old feeling. You simply cease to feed it with your identification. You turn your attention to the new feeling. You feel it as the truth of your being. The old feeling, starved of attention, fades. The new feeling, nourished by your assumption, grows.

This is not a work of will power. It is a work of seeing and feeling. Seeing reveals what is. Feeling assumes what shall be. The two together constitute the creative act. You see the assumption in the reaction. You feel the new assumption as already so. The reaction changes. The world changes. You remain the same awareness, now living in a new assumption. The awareness itself is unchanged. It is only the assumption that has changed. And because the assumption has changed, everything that flows from it has changed.

You are not asked to believe something you do not feel. You are asked only to assume the feeling of the fulfilled desire in the face of the reaction that denies it. The reaction says, “You are limited.” You assume the feeling, “I am free.” The reaction says, “You are overlooked.” You assume the feeling, “I am seen and known.” The reaction says, “Things are against me.” You assume the feeling, “All things work together for my good.” These are not affirmations spoken to an outer God. They are the feeling of your own awareness assuming its true nature. They are the I AM declaring itself in the place where it was formerly denied.

The world will not always reflect the new assumption at once. The old reactions may linger for a little while. But they linger only because the old assumption still has some life in the deeper levels of your being. As you persist in assuming the new feeling in the face of every reaction, the old assumption is starved and the new one is fed. The reactions change. The circumstances change. You find yourself living in a world that corresponds to the assumption you have been willing to feel. The change is not magical. It is lawful. It is the law of assumption operating consciously instead of unconsciously.

You see, then, that the trivia of your life is not a distraction from your spiritual work. It is the spiritual work itself. Every reaction is a meeting with yourself. Every reaction is an opportunity to remember who you are and to assume the feeling of that remembrance. The driver, the slight, the delay, the courtesy, the disappointment – all are messengers. They bring you news of what you are assuming. When you receive the news without fear and without defense, you are free to assume the news you prefer. You are free to assume the feeling that all is well because you are well.

This freedom is not something you will attain in some distant future. It is something you assume now. It is assumed in the quiet feeling that rises when you see the reaction and turn from it to the truth. The truth is simple. You are the awareness of being. All things exist within you as possibilities. What you assume with feeling becomes fact. The reaction was the fact of the old assumption. The new assumption, felt in the place of the reaction, becomes the new fact. There is no other way. There is no other power.

So you walk through your day with a new tenderness toward every little reaction. You do not condemn it. You do not explain it away. You honor it as the voice of your assumption. You listen to what it tells you. And then you assume the feeling of the fulfilled wish. You assume it quietly. You assume it confidently. You assume it until the reaction itself begins to carry the new feeling. When that happens, you know that the assumption has changed at its root. You know that the cause has been touched. You know that the world must follow.

For the world is not your master. Your assumption is your master. And your assumption stands revealed in every reaction you once called trivial. Now you call it by its true name. It is the creator at work. It is the I AM assuming. It is the feeling that is even now becoming the fact. And because you see this, you are no longer at the mercy of the trivia. You are the master of the assumption that the trivia reveals. You are free.

You are the operant power. You are the awareness that assumes. All trivia counts because it brings you back to this remembrance. It brings you back to the feeling that is the secret of creation. And in that feeling you are at peace. You are secure. You are the one in whom all things are possible. This is the truth. Assume it. Feel it. Live it. And the trivia of your life will bear witness to the assumption you have made.