#91: Subjective Control

Subjective Control

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have tried with all your might to rearrange the circumstances of your life. You have pushed against the things that seem to oppose you. You have reasoned with them, pleaded with them, fought them in your mind, and yet they remain. The reason is not that the circumstances are too strong. The reason is that you have been attempting to control what cannot be controlled. The outer world, the events, the conditions, the actions of others — these are effects. They have no power to initiate. They can only reflect. And what they reflect is the state you are occupying in consciousness. So long as you remain in the same subjective state, the same reflection must continue. This is why effort on the outside so often fails. It is effort in the wrong direction.

The only direction in which control is possible is inward. The only thing you can ever control is your own subjective state — the state of consciousness from which you view and experience your world. This state is the cause. Your world is the effect. When you accept this, you cease to waste your energy on the shadow and turn instead to the light that casts it. You turn to the subjective. And the instrument by which the subjective is controlled is attention. Attention is the beam you direct. Wherever you direct it, you strengthen and sustain that place in consciousness. If you direct it to the problem, the problem lives and grows in your subjective world. If you direct it to the solution, to the fulfilled desire, the solution lives and grows there. The choice is always yours.

Yet attention wanders. It is its nature at first to return to the old and familiar. It wanders to the evidence of the senses, to the memory of failure, to the fear of what might happen, to the question of how the change can possibly come. And every time it wanders there, it feeds the old state and keeps the old reflection alive. Therefore the mastery of the subjective is the mastery of attention. And the mastery of attention is achieved by one simple, persistent act: the act of repeatedly returning attention to the end.

The end is not the outer event you desire. The end is the inner state in which that event is already real. It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled. It is the quiet conviction that it is so. It is the assumption that the thing you want is already yours in consciousness. When you return to the end, you are not imagining a future scene. You are occupying the state now. You are feeling the relief, the satisfaction, the naturalness of having it. You are being, in consciousness, the one who already has what you desire. This is the creative act. This is the assumption made living. And it is this act, repeated whenever attention wanders, that establishes the new subjective state and compels the outer world to conform.

You do not return once and then rest. You return whenever you become aware that attention has strayed. There is no other measure. In the moment you notice that your mind is dwelling on the denial, on the lack, on the difficulty, in that moment you bring attention back. You bring it back to the feeling of the end. You do not argue with the denial. You do not try to push it away. You simply withdraw attention from it and place attention upon the end. You feel, even briefly, the feeling that would be yours if the desire were already realized. You dwell in that feeling. You assume it. And then, if attention wanders again five minutes later or five seconds later, you return again. You return without discouragement. You return without self-reproach. For self-reproach is only another wandering of attention to the old state. You simply return.

This returning is the whole of subjective control. It is not a technique added to life. It is the way you live from now on whenever you remember. It requires no special posture, no special time, no special words. It requires only the willingness to notice when attention has left the end and the willingness to bring it back. At first this may seem constant. You may find yourself returning many times in a single hour. But each return weakens the hold of the old state and strengthens the new. Each return is a declaration in consciousness that the end is more real to you than the denial. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the number of returns grows fewer. The new state begins to hold attention more naturally. The feeling of the wish fulfilled becomes easier to assume and easier to maintain. What began as a conscious effort becomes a quiet habit of the mind. This is the naturalness you seek.

The senses will continue to report the old condition for a time. This is to be expected. The outer world is always the last to change because it is the reflection, and the reflection cannot change until the light that casts it has changed. So you do not look to the senses for confirmation. You do not wait for the outer to prove that your returning has been effective. You know that the proof must come, for consciousness is the only reality and the outer has no choice but to mirror what is established within. Your part is only to keep returning attention to the end until the end is so firmly established in consciousness that it feels natural. When it feels natural, the outer will conform. It always does.

You may wonder how long this returning must continue. It must continue until the state is established. There is no other answer. Some desires yield quickly. Others require more persistent returning. But the measure is not time. The measure is the establishment of the feeling. When you can think of your desire and feel the naturalness of its fulfillment without effort, the state is established. Until then, you return. You return in the morning when the old worry appears. You return at midday when the senses present their evidence. You return at night when you lie down to sleep. You return in the very moment the denial seems most real. And in every return you are controlling the subjective. You are refusing to feed the old state with attention. You are nourishing the new state. You are doing the only thing that can ever change your world.

This act of returning reveals to you the true nature of faith. Faith is not a belief in something far off. Faith is the persistence of assumption. It is the continued returning to the end in spite of all evidence to the contrary. It is the refusal to be moved from the state by the reports of the senses. When you return again and again, you are exercising faith. You are proving to yourself that you believe the end more than you believe the appearance. And this faith, this persistence, is what moves the mountain. The mountain is not moved by effort on the outer. It is moved by the change in the subjective state. And the subjective state is changed by the repeated returning of attention to the end.

You will discover, as you practice, that this returning brings a profound change in your feeling of self. You cease to feel yourself as the one who is struggling with circumstances. You begin to feel yourself as the one who determines circumstances by the state he occupies. You are no longer the victim of the world. You are the master of the state from which the world springs. This shift in the feeling of self is the real transformation. The outer circumstances may not have changed yet, but you have changed. You have taken control of the only thing you can control. And in taking that control, you have become free.

The world will call this simple returning foolishness. It will say that circumstances are too strong, that the problem is too real, that one must do something on the outside. But you know better. You know that nothing on the outside can be done until something is done on the inside. You know that the inside is controlled by attention and that attention is mastered by returning to the end. So you are not disturbed by the opinions of the world. You simply continue to return. You continue to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You continue to live in the end in consciousness. And you wait in the certainty that the outer must follow.

There is a quiet joy that comes with this practice. It is the joy of knowing that you are no longer at the mercy of events. It is the joy of knowing what to do when the denial appears. It is the joy of having found the point of control and of exercising it. This joy is not loud. It is not excited. It is the deep, quiet satisfaction of one who has discovered that he holds the key and that the key is simple: return attention to the end, again and again, until the end is realized. In this returning you are not working against life. You are cooperating with the law of consciousness. You are letting the law work for you by giving it the state you desire it to externalize.

As the days pass and you persist in this returning, you will find that your attention begins to dwell in the end more and more naturally. The old state, starved of attention, loses its vitality. The problems that once seemed so solid begin to appear less real, less important, less permanent. You see them for what they are: reflections of a former subjective state that you are no longer sustaining. And because you are no longer sustaining it, it must fade. This fading is not something you force. It happens by itself when attention is withdrawn and placed upon the end. This is the effortless way. It is effortless because you are not fighting the outer. You are simply changing the inner by the repeated act of returning.

You can test this for yourself tonight. Choose one desire, one thing you truly want. Define the end. What is the feeling you would have if it were already so? That feeling is the end. Now, as you go through the evening and as you lie down to sleep, return to that feeling whenever you remember. If your mind turns to the problem or the lack, return. If doubt arises, return. If the how questions appear, return. Do not answer them. Simply return to the feeling of the end. Do this again and again. And observe what happens in your consciousness. Observe how the feeling becomes more natural, how the conviction grows, how the peace comes. This observation will convince you more than any argument. You will know by experience that subjective control is real and that it is achieved by repeatedly returning attention to the end.

This is the teaching. It is not new. It is the ancient truth dressed in modern words. It is the truth that consciousness is the only reality and that you, by the control of attention, determine what shall be realized in your world. You determine it not by forcing the outer but by establishing the inner. And you establish the inner by returning, again and again, to the end. There is nothing more to do. There is nothing else that can be done. All else is secondary. The primary act, the creative act, the act that changes everything, is the returning of attention to the end.

So return. Return tonight. Return tomorrow. Return whenever attention wanders. Return until the end is so firmly established in consciousness that you walk in it naturally, think from it naturally, live from it naturally. And when you do, your world will bear witness. It will bear witness because it has no choice. It is the faithful reflection of the subjective state you have controlled by the mastery of attention. And the mastery of attention is nothing more and nothing less than the repeated returning to the end. This is subjective control. This is the secret. This is the way. And it is open to you now, in this moment, if you will but return.