The Relation Between THE PROMISE and THE LAW
This is a very good question. People came in droves to hear Neville preach about the Law. They left in droves when he preached the Promise. Yet Neville clearly saw the Promise as more important. I weep too, Neville; I weep too.
Neville learned the Law from Abdullah, his teacher of Hebrew and kabbalah in the 1930's. Abdullah, Neville said, did not teach the Promise because he had not yet experienced it. The Promise was something Neville learned when it happened to him. Well, let's look first at the Law and see how it can lead to the Promise.
The Law, simply put, is God. Everything is within the constraints of "God." All Creation on every level in every dimension all through time is but God's manifestation. There is no outside. There is not anything anywhere that is not God's manifestation. Manifestation is constrained by God's nature, which is the only nature that can manifest. Manifestation cannot manifest anything that is not God's nature.
You think, "Oh, no. There is misery and suffering and darkness and pain and fear in the world. That cannot be God's nature." But God is everything, and he is doing everything THROUGH what he is. Nothing dies despite its deaths. Everything is in transition. Misery, suffering, darkness, pain, fear, AND guilt and hope and repentance and love all generate conformance to God's nature. Ignorance is a cruel taskmaster, but it gets the job done -- the "job" being what God is doing. The one who suffers does not know that they are God, nor does the one who causes suffering. There is not anything else. God is what we are, and that is what we are learning. Everything has been forgiven because it is God, when it is God.
If you want to learn about the Law as God, I recommend reading Raymond Holliwell's Working with the Law: Powerful Principles for Abundant Living (http://dreamingtribe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/working-with-the-law-raymond-holliwell-pdf.pdf). In short, the Law -- God -- who is being manifested is Imagination. Oops, THAT Law is not in Holliwell's book. Why not? Because God is Imagination, and Imagination is God. Imagination is the nature of God. Imagination is not "a" Law of God; it is THE Law; it IS God.
"Wait, wait, Dan. If Imagination is God, who is the Imaginer?" The Imaginer is the Ineffable Source whose existence we cannot imagine. We cannot know It, but we can imagine and know Its Imagination, which is God to us, and is us. There are not two Gods here, nor three, either: there is only that of God we can know, and that of God we cannot know -- the one true God who is both accessible and inaccessible, yet without division. Like a fifty-fifty ice cream bar where you can only know the vanilla ice cream because you are vanilla ice cream, you can never know the orange. Something like that. Learn to live with it, will you, for we all are of the whole bar. We ALL are one God, no division, hallelujah.
So anyway, the Law is the Ineffable's Imagination, his intelligence, which manifests as Its own out-picturing. We, being God, learn to control what we imagine because we want nice stuff to manifest. That is cool, but manifesting nice stuff is not all that the Ineffable Source desires. The manifestation of Its own personal Being is what It wants. Yes, that quality of being has to be cultivated, generated over time, and at some point it does become cultivated. We have then transitioned from DOING like him to BEING like him. "Ahiyeh Ashur Hiyeh," "I Am His Becoming" (Exodus 3: 14, my interpretation from Alexander's notes). When we were born our being flipped from God-consciousness to the ignorance of human consciousness. The Promise is that just as we flipped into human consciousness to learn through death, we will flip back to God consciousness to practice life.
For a biblical illustration of the Promise, Neville spoke of the promise of Isaac, 'Laughter,' given to Abraham in Genesis 17. There is a lot going on in that chapter. In the first verse is the first occurrence of God's nature Eil, the Shaddai, God as the Divine Providing Breasts. Hmm. Sounds like the Ineffable's Imagination. Abram's nature is changed from the Exalted Father to Abraham, Merciful Father -- the God of Love -- an example for all of us. Sarai, Abram's princely consciousness, is changed into Sarah: princess. From being like, to being. You absolutely will miss this if you are not reading Alexander's translation from the ancient Aramaic: Sarai is old and barren; Sarah is restored to youth and life-giving fruitfulness (Genesis 18: 12 and 14; 21: 1-7, Alexander). She bares and nurses the Promise. Think the old woman with the issue of blood for twelve years and Jairus' twelve-year old daughter. AND in this chapter circumcision is commanded (put the knife away; it means to live a holy life). Even if Genesis 17 is allegory, it is a heavy hitting chapter.
"Dan, Dan, Dan. It is as impossible for a ninety-year-old woman to become nineteen again as it is for a man to re-enter his mother's womb to be born again." Yup. But I work for a God who, as he thinks of you, you are. Where Sarah a woman, it would be really amazing. Sarah was Abraham's THOUGHT, his desire in his imagination. It went from dried up to youthful fruitfulness. Sarah is an allegory.
I personally (with Bullinger's help) found the Promise first mentioned in Genesis 3: 22-24: "Behold. Adam wanted to be like one of us, to know the good and the evil; now, that is why he extended his hand and took from the tree of life and ate, so he could live forever" (Alexander) The Aramaic goes nuts here talking about our life of affliction, until in verse 24 it says, "so as there would be one day a return to the way of the Tree of Life" (Alexander). Our return to God-consciousness was promised in the beginning. Bullinger in the Companion Bible notes that the hope for the Promise was kept by the Cherubim tabernacled at the east of Eden: "and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life." That is, the Cherubim PRESERVE the way back to Paradise.
Problem for Anesio: the Cherubim are the keepers of Judgment. THE Judgment: "Whereas He consecrated for human beings to die one season, and after their death, one judgment" (Hebrews 9: 27, Alexander). The judgment is: "He or she is like God." We died once in Christ at the beginning of time, and through however many lives and afflictions it takes we are eventually generated unto the character and behavior of the Almighty and pass the muster of Judgment -- that we are finally, adequately like God. I do not know how anyone can "achieve" to receive the Judgment except to practice the Law conscientiously. Through trial and error one becomes more like him. It is not a bad goal to pursue! And in answer to your question, yes, when one achieves the Promise, the Law is quicker (and/or may disappear altogether! See "Rehnborg Revisited: the New Age of Faith, 'Living is He That Lord'" (http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2017/01/rehnborg-revisited-new-age-of-faith.html). Neville's wife was ill, Paul left his co-worker sick in Troas, Jesus died. These at their highest. Think about it.
The Promise is our regaining consciousness that we are God. It is not the adoption of a philosophy but the actual assumption of God's nature -- the waking up to the nature of God being ours. The Law is the natural out-working of that nature, which occurs because we are God even in our ignorance. We imagine an experience -- that it is -- and our intelligence becomes that form. The form of the Ineffable is not the things that we get, it is the fleeting experience. The association between imagination and manifestation of experience becomes constant, if not immediate. There is a bridge of faith in the twain, of having received experience that has not yet occurred. Remember, "When it works, you have found Him, and He is yourself!"
8 Comments:
Do you suppose then that a woman, taking the story literally, who desired to have a child past child bearing years, could accomplish this using Imagination? Or there are limits to Imagination?
"We died once in Christ at the beginning of time, and through however many lives and afflictions it takes we are eventually generated unto the character and behavior of the Almighty and pass the muster of Judgment -- that we are finally, adequately like God." <--To me this means we are not God, as Neville suggested, but children of God or God's creation.. else why would we have to become like God? That's why I don't understand the whole idea of the Promise in context of already BEing God. Seems redundant. If the Promise is our regaining consciousness that we are God, I don't understand why God chose to lose that consciousness.
By Anonymous, at 5:34 PM
I do not think that you have listened enough times to Neville's lecture Unless I Go Away. The enormous field of sunflowers all bent, smiled, frowned at the same time. In concert. They did all God's will, but they were fixed in the ground. Bound. Magnificent, but slaves. They were manifestation of God, but unlike him in that they acted in response. They were IGNORANT of the freedom we and the Ineffable Most High have. We are them learning that freedom. That specific ignorance has been isolated like a germ in a lab and the disease is being cured.
Is the Ineffable limited? For his Manifestation to purely reflect his character, it has to have had the same freedom and made the same choices It made. This process relects his limitation: we have to be cultivated, his character and integrity inculcated in us over however many lifetimes it takes in this "death."
By Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 10:35 PM
I think I have recently hear reports of one or more women well past childbearing age succeeding in bearing live, healthy children. What constitutes in your mind the use of imagination? Magick? In jest let me say that it would help if the woman could become an allegory. I am not personally in favor or trying to fulfill allegories in a literal sense. But if a woman can find a way, she'll do it.
By Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 10:43 PM
Good morning. I have listened to that lecture numerous times, but not in a while. I will have a listen again soon. What I am taking away from your reply is that we are God's creation, not God burying himself in Man (like wearing a costume, hitting himself over the head and forgetting he's God). But honestly, I think my capacity for understanding is limited. I mean compared to yours. Maybe my thinking is too literal, or something. But who knows where I am on this journey, beginning or nearing the end.
I do not mean magic, as in the connotation of evil that that word conjures. I can hear Neville's voice in my head right now, because I've listened so many times to recordings, him saying that "there is nothing impossible to the God with whom all things are possible." In fact, he even had a lecture titled "All Things Are Possible."
It's just... I'm going to start the day off as a Doubting Thomas. I'm choosing to bounce this off of you because I think you can handle it, whereas most Neville followers cannot. Do you ever wonder if Neville was making stuff up? I mean the testimonies he told. Kind of like those infomercials and commercials with teen tiny print that say "not real clients" and "results may vary" etc? I've been an avid lurker/reader on several very large online Neville communities for a while now, and really no one has presented any huge success stories in terms of manifestations. And I know the real meat of Neville's teaching and of God is the Promise, but that's the END. We are still (supposedly) here learning to become (like) God.
By Anonymous, at 5:19 AM
Actually, I mean both: we are God's creation AND God burying himself in man, no hammer needed. Two natures joined in one. One is jerk human nature, the intelligence of matter working itself out, and divine spirit/consciousness imbued upon it in amnesia to bring both to higher similarity to the Ineffable, that Its form may truly be Its manifestation in every way.
Your understanding is cool, you've got questions. You cannot expect to understand revelations until they are revelations to you. Give God time. By magick I mean Pop! There it is. Like Dynamo, Magician Impossible manifestations. There is an element of achievement in imagining. Man can achieve whatever he imagines . . . given time and effort. But it starts with imagination and intention. I am not a big manifestor of my desires -- I gave that up to God a long time ago. Yet I marvel at how things he and I desire for me work out. Here they are. I look at my present situation and simply thank him. It's that count your blessings thing.
And no, I do not think that Neville was making things up, but he was not explaining contrubuting factors, like his dad being the ship's chandler when he got preferential treatment in passage from the steamship company. You have contacts, too, or God can arrange them when you are moving along in faith that he is steering. Try defining the blessings you do already have. Might not seem like much, but you have got some. Thank Him for them.
By Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 6:16 PM
Hey, thank you for your reply. I always look forward to them. I had no idea that his dad was the ship's chandler and for me that does kind of take away from the "manifestation" of his going first class. But honestly, I never really saw his passage as a manifestation at all... both going TO Barbados and the time he needed to get back to NYC, knowing that his family was wealthy. It really wasn't too big a surprise imo when his brother sent him money to come home for the holidays. What I meant by testimonies though is those of others. Such as the student who declined the homeless man money and imagined him employed and then ran into him a month later. Or Mrs J. E. and so forth. I just wonder sometimes. But I'm a doubter.. of everything. I always want proof.
By Anonymous, at 6:50 PM
Remember that the miraculous part is timing and other people doing things under invisible compulsion. Things happen "naturally" under God's orchestration, and God turns out to be our own wonderful human imagination.
By Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 11:14 PM
Have you seen the proof of him being honorably discharged or of T.K.'s lottery winning story in the newspaper ? =) there's some proof for you!
By Neuromantic*, at 11:22 AM
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