Heading For Healing 36: "And God Walks With Them" -- A Book Report On "I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes" By Glenn Clark

Neville Goddard found himself in a vision leading a gay throng of Near-East celebrants to the House of God. A voice rang out, saying, "And God walks with them," referring to Neville. You can read his oft-repeated story in "What Does the Lord Require?," "Eschatology - The Doctrine of the End," "Building Your Temple," "Who Paul Really Is," "They Related Their Own Experience," in the question-and-answer section of "Live In The End," "His To Give-Yours To Receive," "The Crucifixion," and I believe elsewhere. Neville often repeated the story BECAUSE IT HAPPENED TO HIM. Thus it informed his theology that just as "Jesus" was God, so also he was God. Not "a" god, but THE God, as are you and I. Because God says we are (e.g., Psalm 82:6, and, if you can read, in the vision Neville had), and it isn't wise to call God a liar. If you are not catching on to the Bible's thrust that God is us and we are God, you are not reading the Bible. It starts with the first word, brasheeth: "God as the Son the Beginning." The whole thing is our history AND God's history as one from beginning to end.

I say all that to introduce you to this: Glenn Clark's technique of prayer as laid out in his book I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes. I gave my extra copy of this title away, but as I read the copy I kept, I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, and How to Find Health Through Prayer, I realized that Clark is talking about a type of prayer higher than the Law of Assumption I usually hype. MAY I HIGHLY RECOMMEND I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES BY GLENN CLARK TO YOU? Abebooks.com lists a bunch of them. Here is a Preview I found online, and the text of How To Find Health Through Prayer.

Neville Goddard's teacher and mentor Abdullah taught a technique of prayer based on the Law of Assumption. It is something of a laborious system of focused imagination repeated until "all the tones of reality" are achieved and one enters sleep in that state. I personally had a hard time reconciling this involved, assertive process with Neville's later insistence that prayer shouldn't take longer than about ten seconds. What happened to change repetition to flash? Neville evolved; he found the water of life. THAT is what Glenn Clark's book is about: how to evolve into a higher being.

Which has to do with attitudes. But Clark has an odd way to getting around to it. He tells a tale of how he discovered the meaning of hind's feet, which was key to his change. A hind is a female deer in the Bible. They are very surefooted, which is the secret. Well, the secret is actually correlating and coordinating our subconscious "foot" exactly in the track of our conscious "foot." I.e., we have to make our thoughts like God's thoughts and our will God's will. Neville got there, and Glenn got there. Glenn takes great care in describing how we might get there, too. And again, it all has to do with attitudes, which have to do with self-control and submission.

Clark has written the book as a manual on how to cultivate God-like attitudes, i.e., God's frame-of-mind. THE CHARACTER OF THE PRAY-ER IS A BIGGIE IN PRAY-ING. It is less what you DO in prayer than what you are ARE. Prayer can be manipulating the universe by repeated exercise, but it is more properly God's grace. The idea is to be Him, as GOD IS IN HIS REPRESENTATIVES. Thus the Voice from heaven could sincerely and honestly say, "And God walks with them," when Neville who had taken on God's attitudes led the procession to His house. The message is God is truly YOU when you are truly God's representative.

I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes in chapter 3 contrasts John the Baptist's way of prayer, which was by Law, with Jesus' way of prayer, which was by Grace. Maybe I should put those as the Law and the Grace, for they are both constants in God's manifestation. Both are good; one is better. From Matthew 11:12 Clark takes "From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force," John being the greatest of those who pray by concentrated effort of mind to force their will be done. Yet the least of the Kingdom of Heaven who sublimate their will to God's will are greater. It is faith that in seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness FIRST, being lost in Him, all things whatsoever we need will be added unto us when we need them and how we need them.

The difference is encapsulated in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. John the Baptist is the Voice; Jesus is the Word. John is in the wilderness; Jesus is with God. "A Voice is communication viewed from the outside; a Word is communication viewed from the inside. One is the shell; the other is the heart" (p. 80). Of the heart angels ascend to heaven and descend with the Kingdom's manifestation on earth. Well, no. I got that wrong. The angels ascend and descend upon the Son of Man, which we are.

Clark then gives a veritable encyclopedia of desirable character traits for the attitude of prayer, not the least of which is honoring the Son as one does the Father. Also in one's heart is meekness, humiliation, repentance, humility, surrender, selflessness, transparency, and the incandescence of wisdom and power. There is also knowing, realization, conviction, faith, trust, belief, conception, and opinion . . . oneness, reverence, love, comradeship, friendship, affection, attachment, and liking. I list these three "ladders" (there are nine more given), but Clark explains them. His intention is that they will be studied and absorbed and inculcated into one's self over several months of devoted reflection.

Hey, we've only got one lifetime here right now. Let's get crackin'.