#90: Interference

Interference

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have often wondered why that which you have assumed has not yet appeared in your world. You have felt the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You have claimed it as your own. Yet the evidence of your senses remains unchanged, or the change you seek is strangely delayed. The cause is not in the desire. The cause is not in any power outside yourself. The cause is interference, and this interference is nothing more than your own wavering attention.

Consciousness is the only reality. It solidifies itself in the form of your world according to the state in which it is fixed. Attention is the beam of light that selects the state and holds it steady before consciousness. When that beam remains fixed in the feeling that your desire is already realized, the state is impressed, and consciousness, being God, must outpicture it in your world. But when attention wavers, when it turns even for a moment to the old state, to the problem as it appears, or to the question of how the thing shall come to pass, then interference is set up. The fulfillment is delayed until the interference is removed by the return of attention wholly to the desired state and its persistence there without wavering.

You cannot serve two masters. This is not a moral commandment. It is the simple law of consciousness. Attention can serve only one state at a time. If you would have the new state appear, you must withdraw attention from every appearance that denies it. You cannot fix your attention in the feeling of wealth and at the same time allow it to dwell upon the appearance of lack. You cannot assume the feeling of health and at the same time let attention rest upon the feeling of illness. The moment attention is divided, the creative power is divided, and the thing desired is held at bay. This divided attention is the interference of which we speak.

The senses will always present the old picture. The circumstances will always reflect the former state. These are not obstacles in themselves. They become interference only when you permit your attention to rest upon them, only when you believe them to be the reality instead of the reflection of what you were formerly conscious of being. The moment you turn your attention from them and fix it again in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, the interference ceases. You have withdrawn the light that gave the old state its seeming life.

Do not ask how the thing shall come to pass. The how is not your concern. Any attention given to the how is interference, for it takes your attention from the end and places it upon the means, which do not yet exist. The means will appear when the end is fixed in consciousness without wavering. Speculation about the way is proof that you have not yet attained the naturalness of being the one you desire to be. When you are truly one with the desired state, the question of how no longer arises, for the thing feels natural, and that which feels natural is already moving toward externalization.

You are told that he who lacks wisdom should ask of God, who gives to all liberally and upbraids not, but let him ask not doubting. He who doubts is as a wave of the sea, tossed and driven by the wind. Such a one must not think that he shall receive anything from the Lord. The Lord is your own awareness of being. The doubting is the wavering of attention. The wave is the restless turning from the desired state to the appearance that denies it. When attention wavers in this manner, nothing is received, for nothing is fixed. Only that which is fixed in consciousness can externalize itself.

When you come into the joy of thanksgiving, when you actually feel grateful for having received that which is not yet apparent to the senses, you have become one in consciousness with the thing for which you gave thanks. This gratitude cannot be felt while attention wavers. Gratitude is the sign that attention is fixed. It is the natural response of one who knows the thing is already his. Where there is wavering, there is no true gratitude, only hope mixed with doubt. And hope mixed with doubt is interference.

You cannot take with you into the new consciousness any part of the old man. All of your present beliefs, fears, and limitations are weights that bind you to your present level. If you would transcend this level, you must leave behind all that is now your present self. This leaving behind is accomplished by the withdrawal of attention. You take your attention away from all that is now your problem or limitation and dwell upon just being. Then, within this formless awareness, you give form to the new conception by feeling yourself to be that which you desire to be. Any return of attention to the old is interference with this new conception.

The invitation given us is to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. The body is your former conception of yourself. The Lord is your awareness of being. To be absent from the body is to withdraw attention from the old state. To be present with the Lord is to fix attention in the new state. When attention wavers between these two, you are neither absent from the old nor present with the new. You are in a state of interference, and in that state nothing is established.

The story of creation is given in the first chapter of John. In the beginning was the word. The word is the desire. And the word was with God. The desire must be fixed or united with consciousness to give it reality. This agreement is never made between two persons. It is between the awareness and the thing desired. When attention wavers, the agreement is broken. The desire is no longer with God. It is floating, unattached, and therefore without power to externalize. Only when attention returns and remains fixed is the agreement re-established, and the child, the thing desired, is born.

You are now conscious of being. You are actually saying to yourself, without using words, “I AM.” If it is a state of freedom that you desire, before you have any evidence of freedom in your world, you begin to feel yourself to be free. The very second the feeling “I AM free” is attained without wavering, the two have agreed. I AM and freedom have agreed to be one, and this agreement results in the birth of the thing agreed upon. But if, after this feeling is attained, attention wavers and returns to the feeling of bondage, the agreement is broken, and interference is set up. The freedom that was about to appear is delayed.

Do not speculate as to how this newly attained consciousness will embody itself. No man knows the way. Speculation is proof that you have not attained to the naturalness of being the thing desired and so are filled with doubts. These doubts are interference. They are the wavering of attention from the feeling to the question. When you cease to speculate, when you rest in the feeling that it is so, the interference ends, and the embodiment proceeds.

You are told to forgive if you have aught against any, that your father may forgive you. This is not a moral requirement. It is a psychological necessity. If you hold in consciousness anything against another, you are binding that condition in your world by giving it attention. But to release every man from blame is to free yourself from interference. You no longer attend to what others have done or failed to do. Your attention is free to rest wholly in the desired state. This general amnesty removes one of the greatest sources of wavering attention.

Tithing is necessary, but you tithe with God. You give to your awareness of being the quality you desire to express by claiming yourself to be that quality. When you claim yourself to be wealthy, you have given wealth to God. Your awareness, which is no respecter of persons, returns to you pressed down and running over with that quality. But if, after you have made the claim, your attention wavers and you begin to attend to the appearance of lack, you have taken back your tithe. The interference is the withdrawal of attention from the claim. The return of the pressed-down measure is delayed until the claim is renewed and attention is fixed once more.

“I AM the vine and ye are the branches.” Consciousness is the vine. The qualities you are conscious of being are the branches. A branch has no life except it be rooted in the vine. Things have no life except you be conscious of them. If you take your attention from a thing, it passes away, for your attention is as the sap that keeps it alive. Interference is the turning of attention from the desired state to some other state. The desired state begins to wither when attention is withdrawn. It is restored when attention returns and remains fixed.

To dissolve a problem that now seems so real, all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent to it. Begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem. The very second you do so, the problem begins to dissolve. This is not because you have fought it. It is because you have ceased to feed it with attention. Interference with the solution ends when attention is fixed in the solution itself.

You are seeking to be salvaged from that which is not your problem. “I AM” is he that will save you. If you are poor, your savior is riches. If you are imprisoned, your savior is freedom. Claim “I AM he.” Claim it in consciousness, not in words. Feel yourself to be the thing desired until the feeling is natural. When you lose yourself in this feeling, the quality embodies itself in your world. You are healed from your problem when you touch the solution of it. The day you touch this being within you by feeling yourself to be the fulfilled one, virtue goes out of you and solidifies in your world as the fulfillment.

You believe in God. Believe also in me, for I AM he. Have the faith of God. Make yourself one with the desired state and find it not robbery to do the works of that state. Begin to believe your awareness of being to be God. Claim for yourself all the attributes you have heretofore given an external God. You will begin to express these claims when your attention is fixed in them without wavering. For I AM not a God afar off. I AM nearer than your hands and feet, nearer than your very breathing. I AM your awareness of being. I AM that in which all that you shall ever be aware of being shall begin and end.

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. The Lord is your consciousness. Except that which you seek is first established in your consciousness by fixed attention, you will labor in vain to find it. All things must begin and end in consciousness. Blessed is the man that trusteth in himself, for man’s faith in God is measured by his confidence in himself. Put not your trust in men, for men only reflect the being that you are. They can bring to you only that which you have first fixed in consciousness by your attention.

No man taketh away your life. You lay it down yourself. You have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. No matter what happens in your world, it is never an accident. It occurs under the guidance of an exact and changeless law. No manifestation comes unto you except the father within you, your own fixed attention, draws it. When you realize this, you cease to blame others for that which you are. You see that every wavering of attention is a laying down of the life you desire and a taking up again of the life you do not desire. You choose, therefore, to lay down only the old and to take up only the new by keeping attention fixed in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

“I AM” comes not to destroy but to fulfill. “I AM,” the awareness within you, destroys nothing but ever fills full the molds or conceptions one has of oneself. It is impossible for the poor man to find wealth in this world, no matter how he is surrounded with it, until he first claims himself to be wealthy by fixing attention in the feeling of wealth. Signs follow. They do not precede. To constantly kick and complain against the limitations of poverty while remaining poor in attention is to play the fool’s game. Changes cannot take place from that level of attention, for life is constantly outpicturing the state in which attention is fixed.

Follow the example of the prodigal son. Realize that you yourself brought about the condition of waste and lack by the wavering of your attention. Make the decision within yourself to rise to a higher level where the fatted calf, the ring, and the robe await your claim. There was no condemnation of the prodigal when he had the courage to claim his inheritance as his own. Others will condemn you only as long as you continue in that for which you condemn yourself. Happy is the man that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth. For to life nothing is condemned. All is expressed according to the state in which attention is fixed.

Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor, strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself by the fixation of your attention. The measurements of right and wrong belong to man alone. To life there is nothing right or wrong. Stop asking yourself whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire. Your desires are ever fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be by the direction of your attention. Leave all judgments out of the picture. Rise in attention to the level of your desire and make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now.

Have faith in this unseen claim until the conviction is born within you that it is so. Your confidence in this claim will pay great rewards. Just a little while and he, the thing desired, will come. But without faith, which is fixed attention, it is impossible to realize anything. Through faith the worlds were framed, because faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not yet seen. Do not be anxious or concerned as to results. They will follow just as surely as day follows night when attention does not waver. Look upon your desires as the spoken words of God, and every word a promise. The reason most fail to realize their desires is because they are constantly conditioning them with wavering attention. Do not condition your desire. Accept it as it comes to you by fixing attention in the feeling of it.

Such acceptance is like dropping fertile seed into prepared soil. When you can drop the thing desired in consciousness, confident that it shall appear because attention is fixed, you have done all that is expected of you. To be worried about the how is to hold the fertile seeds in a mental grasp and therefore never to have dropped them in the soil of confidence. The reason men condition their desires is because they constantly judge after the appearance of being and see the things as real, forgetting that the only reality is the consciousness backing them. To see things as real is to deny that all things are possible to the one who fixes attention without wavering.

A question often asked is this: If one’s desire is a gift of God, how can you say that if one desires to be free from some condition that such a desire is good? The answer is that no man desires the problem. What he desires is to be free from it. But because he does not believe that the desire to be free contains within itself the power of freedom, he conditions that desire by attending to the problem instead of the solution. He sees the only way to express freedom as the changing of the outer, forgetting that the life wrapped within the desire has ways that he, as man, knows not of. Its ways are past finding out. Thus man distorts the gifts of God through his wavering attention.

Problems are the mountains that can be removed if one has but the faith of a grain of mustard seed. Faith here is fixed attention. Men approach their problem knowing that it will still be there in the morning. Because life is no respecter of persons and destroys nothing, it continues to keep alive that which attention is fixed upon. Things disappear only as man changes the fixation of his attention. Consciousness is the only reality, and things but mirror that which you are conscious of being by the direction of your attention. The heavenly state you are seeking will be found only when attention is fixed in it, for attention is the door through which the manifestations of life pass into the world of form.

When you rise in consciousness to the point where you are really grateful for having received the thing desired, you automatically rejoice and give thanks inwardly. You have already accepted the gift which was but a desire before you fixed your attention, and your faith is now the substance that shall clothe your desire. This rising in attention is the spiritual marriage where two shall agree upon being one, and their likeness is established on earth. Whatsoever you ask in the name, which is the nature, of the thing desired, the same is given unto you. To ask in the name is to rise in attention and become one in nature with the thing desired. Rise in attention to the nature of the thing, and you will become that thing in expression.

Tonight, as you enter into the silence, assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Feel it to be natural. Feel the peace of it. And if any thought arises that seems to interfere, any memory of the old condition, any doubt, any question of how or when, do not fight it. Simply withdraw your attention from it and return to the feeling. Do this gently, persistently, joyfully. Every time you return, you weaken the interference and strengthen the assumption. As the assumption becomes fixed, the interference disappears, and the world begins to reflect the new state. You sleep in the feeling, and as you sleep the interference starves, for it has no life save that which your attention gives it.

You are at this moment calling out of the infinite that which you are now conscious of being by the fixation of your attention. Not one conviction will fail to find you when attention remains fixed. You are the vine. The qualities you fix in consciousness are the branches. Just as a branch withers when the sap of the vine ceases to flow toward it, so do the things of your world pass away when attention is withdrawn from them. But when attention is fixed in the desired state, the sap flows, the branch lives, and the thing appears.

There is nothing covered that shall not be uncovered. That which is spoken in secret shall be proclaimed from the housetops. Your secret convictions of yourself, these secret claims that no man knows of, when really believed by fixed attention, will be shouted from the housetops in your world. For your convictions are the words of the God within you, which words are spirit and cannot return unto you void. You are at this moment calling out of the infinite that which you fix by attention. And not one word or conviction will fail to find you when wavering ceases.

You stand this night before a great realization. The power is not in the desire. The power is not in any outer technique. The power is in the fixed attention, the unwavering occupation of the desired state. This power is yours, for you are the awareness in which attention moves. Choose, therefore, to fix your attention in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and to let no interference arise from wavering. For as you do, the world conforms, and you know the joy of the one who has discovered that he is the sole cause of his experience. Your experience changes as your attention is fixed without wavering in the state desired. Tonight you choose to be only the fulfilled one by fixing attention wholly in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and letting it be.