“And God said unto Moses, I AM That I AM: and he said, Thus shall thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you . . “This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” “I AM,” then, is God’s name. Every time you say, “I AM sick,” “I AM weak,” “I AM discouraged,” are you not speaking God’s name in vain, falsely. I AM cannot be sick; I AM cannot be weary, or faint, or powerless; for I AM is All-Life, All-Power, All-Good. “I AM,” spoken with a downward tendency, is always false, always “in vain.” A commandment says, “Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” And Jesus said, “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” If you speak the “I AM” falsely, you will get the result of false speaking. If you say, “I AM sick,” you will get sickness; if you say, “I AM poor,” you will get poverty; for the law is, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “I AM,” spoken upward, toward the good, the true, is sure to out picture in visible good, in success, in happiness. Does all this sound foolish to you? Do you doubt that such power goes with the speaking of God’s name? If so, just go alone, close your eyes, and in the depth of your own soul say over and over the name “I AM.” Soon you will find your whole being filled with a sense of power that you never had
before . . power to overcome, power to accomplish,
power to do all things.
And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. Having discovered God to be our awareness of being and this unconditioned changeless reality (the I AM) to be the only creator, let us see why the Bible records a trinity as the creator of the world. In the 26th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, it is stated, “And God said, Let Us make man in Our image”. The churches refer to this plurality of Gods as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. What is meant by “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit” they have never attempted to explain for they are in the dark concerning this mystery. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three aspects or conditions of the unconditioned awareness of being called God. The consciousness of being precedes the consciousness of being something. That unconditioned awareness which preceded all states of awareness is God . . I AM. The three conditioned aspects or divisions of itself can best be told in this manner: The receptive attitude of mind is that aspect which receives impressions and therefore may be likened to a womb or Mother. That which makes the impression is the male or pressing aspect and is therefore known as Father. The impression in time becomes an expression, which expression is ever the likeness and image of the impression; therefore this objectified aspect is said to be the Son bearing witness of his Father-Mother. An understanding of this mystery of the trinity enables the one who understands it to completely transform his world and fashion it to his own liking.
When we examine the mind of the average person, we find that they usually identify themselves with mind or body. They either think that they are body or that they are mind, and therefore they can control neither mind nor body. The “I AM” in their nature is submerged in a bundle of ideas, some of which are true and some of which are not, and their thought is usually controlled by those ideas without receiving any direction whatever from that principle within them that alone was intended to give direction. Such a one lives in the lower story of human existence but as we can control life only when we give directions from the upper story, we discover just why the average person neither understands their forces nor has the power to use them. They must first elevate themselves to the upper story of the human structure, and the first and most important step to be taken in this direction is to recognize the “I AM” as the ruling principle and that the “I AM” is you. Another method that will be found highly important in this connection is to take a few moments every day and try to feel that you . . the “I AM” . . are not only above mind and body, but in a certain sense, distinct from mind and body; in fact, try to isolate the “I AM” for a few moments every day from the rest of your organized being. This practice will give you what may be termed a perfect consciousness of your own individual “I AM,” and as you gain that consciousness you will always think of the supreme “I AM” whenever you think of yourself. Accordingly, all your mental actions will, from that time on, come directly from the “I AM”; and if you will continue to stand above all such actions at all times, you will be able to control them and direct them completely.
In the course of human experience progress for man sometimes seems impossibly difficult, but this is because we are in the thought of limitation, dependent upon material things, and thus subject to “the law of the flesh.” However, when we catch the vision of the Cosmic Christ and identify ourselves with that, we no longer come under the law of outer things, but, as Paul said, under grace. No human being ever lived who was more under bondage of law than Paul. He was so steeped in it from his earliest days that he almost lost his faith in God. Then he realized the Truth one day, and hundreds of years later, Luther, reading those wonderful words that Paul wrote, was also set free in the same way: “The just shall live by faith.” This means that when you see the vision of the divine possibility within you and stretch forth your hands toward it, you are no longer under the law of sin and bondage. The limitations and weaknesses of your own character, the mistakes of the past, no longer have the slightest power to keep you back. You are under the law of grace. Calvary is past and Easter morning is dawning. It is the dawn of Easter and never again will you have the Thursday or Friday to go through. You are under grace. This is the real law of scientific prayer. It is withdrawing yourself from the limited condition into the spiritual realm where there is freedom and dominion. How do you withdraw yourself? By some physical act? No. It is a matter of attention. When your attention is centered on limitation, on your weaknesses or other people’s weaknesses, on your difficulties, your sickness, your fears, you are in bondage to these things. As Paul says, “His servants ye are to whom you obey.” But when you lift your attention . . your I AM . . out of the limited things into the spiritual, then you are in a state of consciousness where the limiting things no longer have any power. This is why scientific prayer performs miracles right and left. This is why it turns people’s lives upside down, takes them out of beds of pain and sickness, and brings them out of lives of sin and self contempt. Scientific prayer does this . . not now and again, not occasionally, but every day in the week in every quarter of the world. It does it whenever and wherever one raises his consciousness to the presence of God.
Emmet Fox stated previously that God, the I AM That I AM, was differentiated into men and women. I AM is the lost word and secret Name of God in us. It is our true identity; our real name; it is Divine Spirit, which is our real eternal self; it was never born and will never die. Knowing this final name of God, says Fox, is what gives one power, because it identifies one with the true nature of God. He remarks that a statement such as I AM elicits the question, I AM what? This requires a qualification, and when one completes the sentence, one limits it. An answer such as I AM a man means you are not a woman and such qualifications limit the expression in one way or another. However, the qualification of I AM That I AM does not limit any expression. It states the absolute . . God! Fox maintains that God is unlimited, I AM That I AM, unexpressed, creative power, Divine Mind waiting for expression and man is God’s expression. It is man’s oneness with the divine that empowers a person and allows one to attach the I AM to all the attributes of God (such as freedom, joy, health, success and abundance). I AM always connects one with divine power because we are the I AM of the I AM That I AM. It is the presence of God in you. It insures that you can go direct to God, that you do not need any intermediary. This last statement relates well to an earlier observation in which Wilber distinguishes between the God of the subtle realm with whom one can bargain for one’s salvation, and the God of the causal realm where all communication is transcended, for one actually becomes that oneness.
I AM is your true identity. I AM is your real name, and in that name there is power. I AM is Divine Spirit, your real eternal self. It was never born and will never die. I AM is never sad, never grows old, never worries or sins or knows fear. However, this I AM is filtered through your consciousness and so you have the power of misusing it, as many people do. You have free will and the power to choose whether you will use it constructively or destructively. You can attach the I AM to your true nature and experience great power, or you can misuse it by misrepresenting yourself in many limited ways.
All the quotes in The Power of I AM are credited
to the following authors.
Neville Goddard, Joseph Murphy, Walter C. Lanyon, Walter Devoe, Lillian DeWaters, Emmet Fox, Ella Wheeler, Christian D Larson, Edna Lister, Thomas Troward