I tell you, you are all imagination and not a prisoner of anything or anyone, rather you have imprisoned yourself. You have brought all of your experiences into being and you can change them now that you know who you are. When you hear the word Lord, don’t think of another. The word is Yod Hey Vav Hey and means I AM, as do the words Father and potter. Your awareness of being is your I AM, your potter who molds your world. To him and him alone lies all of the responsibilities for what is done in your world. Your own wonderful human imagination is the cause of the restrictions on the freedom that you enjoy today.
There is no other cause but the Lord, who is the Father, who is the potter, and if he is your own wonderful human imagination, to whom can you turn to praise or blame for the circumstances of your life? The blind leaders of the blind blame society or the government for the causes of the phenomena of their life. But I tell you, there is no other cause; for there is no one outside of self. Society, the government, your family, or friends, are all within you. Although they appear to be pushed out, there is not a thing that does not now exist in you; as Divine Imagination (the Lord God Almighty) has reproduced Himself in you . . the human imagination; and Divine Imagination contains all things within Himself.
When you affirm “I AM,” you speak the name and power of the Divine Being. Your present mind, body and affairs have been generated from limited mortal thoughts and feelings. In a sense, you have taken the name of your Creator in vain when you have affirmed the limited beliefs of mortal thought and feeling. You have said “I AM” mortal, sinful, weak, poor, sick, unsuccessful. According to this limited faith you have created limitations within yourself. Now you can regenerate or reform your mind, body, and affairs from the faith born of the Thought of your Creator. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Your thought is your faith. Your faith is only as strong as your thoughts. All the possibilities of a new, strong faith are opened to you as you regenerate your mind by the development of positive thoughts of Truth. Do not separate feeling from thought, for it is the life of thought. You can know the Creator only through your own thought, only as you can conceive of the beauty of Divine Ideas, and express their quality through your own nature. You can know as much of Divine Love and Wisdom as you can generate through your thoughts and feelings. Your capacity will grow forever.
I tell you: everything is possible to the individual when he knows who he is. You are the Joshua of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New. And Jesus, your own wonderful human imagination, is Jehovah. He is your awareness, but as long as you see Jehovah as someone other than yourself you will not apply this principle. You must be willing to give up all foreign gods, all idols, and return to the one and only God, whose name is in you as your very being! If you were trained in the Christian faith, you were taught to believe that Jesus was on the outside.
But how can you put him to the test if he is another? There never was another Joshua or Jehovah. There is only God, the director of the great dance of life whose dancers are himself. God plays the part of the bum and dances the dance of poverty. He also plays the part of a millionaire and dances to the tune of millions, as every part is being played by God. Now, everyone must act from where he is! Ask yourself: where am I? If I AM God, where can I go and God (I AM) is not? If I make my bed in hell, God (I AM) is there. If I make it in heaven, God (I AM) is there, for everything penetrates me! I do not have to physically move. Simply by adjusting my thinking I can move from one state to another.
From beginning to end, the Bible speaks only of the creative power of God (I AM). You can take that same creative power and use it here in the world of Caesar, for it is your own wonderful human imagination. If you will conjure a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream and remain faithful to that vision as Paul was to the heavenly vision, your desire will come to pass. Paul did not expect the vision. It came upon him suddenly, like some great catastrophic earthquake. You cannot conjure the vision, it simply happens. But you can conjure a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your desire, remain faithful to it and it will project itself upon the screen of space. I’ve done it unnumbered times.
Take a simple scene. Would someone congratulate you if they heard of your good fortune? Then allow them to do so. Accept their congratulations, just as you would if they came to you in the flesh. Now remain faithful to that vision. If you need a more complex scene, like two people discussing your success, eavesdrop on them. Listen to their words of praise or envy, then do not forget that vision. Conjured in your imagination, carry it with you, knowing that what it implies will come to pass, for its potency is not in the scene itself, but what the scene implies.
The progress of the individual toward self-mastery is real only to the degree that one brings the negative mind into a higher realization of Consciousness, and causes each particle of one’s physical cosmos to evolve and show forth the divine intelligence which has been appropriated and individualized around that person’s positive I AM center. Negative or base thoughts and desires fill humanity’s nature with a consuming fire, which poisons the blood and burns out the nerve centers. This causes disease and pain in the body, and weakness and discouragement to the mind, hindering the human organism from enjoying the peaceful, vitalizing influx which flows from the soul life. Joy and satisfaction are attributes of the All Mind, and the soul, as an individualized expression of the Over-Soul, contains all the essentials of happiness within itself, and can impart the only true happiness to its human mind and body to the degree that it can gain full and free expression through the positive and negative poles of mind in which it is organized.
God, as your imagination, can never be so far off as even to be near, for the nearness implies separation. Wherever you are, I AM! To say: “I AM” is near, is to claim God is another . . but there is no other. You and God are one, for He is your wonderful human imagination!
Until it is revealed to you, use his name as revealed through his prophet Moses. “And when you go to them just tell them ‘I AM’ has sent me unto you.” Lead them out of the wilderness into light by my name. When you can lead yourself today, no matter where you are, whether you are now bewildered, whether you are unwanted (as you think you are), or unemployed, (as you may be) . . lead yourself from these states of barrenness into states of fruition, a fruitful state, in the name. Just simply assume “I AM”, and you name it, hear it, smell it, see it to the best of your ability, and to the degree that you remain loyal to what you are imagining and hearing, you will actually externalize it in your world. Don’t judge it before you try it.
When people say Jesus Christ is coming again do not believe them, for Jesus Christ has never left you. Did he not say: “Lo, I AM with you always, even to the end of the age?” Then how can you look for him to return? Scripture states that Christ was taken up into the kingdom of heaven (which is within) and that he will come in the same manner as he was taken up. If Christ (God’s creative power) is in you, he cannot come from without. Although he seems to be invisible, Christ has never left you, as you cannot detach yourself from imagination.
You have the capacity to believe. You may believe in something stupid, but you believe and your belief will make it work. The one I speak of as God (I AM) is your mightier self, yet your slave, for purposes of his own. He waits on you as indifferently and as swiftly when your will is evil as when it is good. He does it by conjuring images of good and evil just as though they were real. Allowing you to imagine whatever you desire, he projects it upon this screen of space in order for you to experience it. You can move into it so naturally and so easily you can forget the thoughtless moment when the seed was planted, and therefore do not recognize your own harvest.
I ask you to use this power called the law. Simply determine what you want and imagine a scene which would imply you have realized it. Enter into the spirit of the scene. Participate in it by giving it sensory vividness. Then relax as you feel its reality. Don’t consider the means. Know your desire is already an accomplished fact and you are now reveling in it. Then have faith, for faith is loyalty to your unseen reality. Your imaginal act, although unseen, is reality for God did it. If I asked you who is imagining it, you would respond: “I AM” and that is God’s name forever and forever.
As we are told, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ (I AM) is in you?” Then test yourselves to see if you really realize it. Put yourself to the test If I say, “Jesus Christ,” and your mind jumps on the outside to something other than yourself, you have failed the test, for you are told: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? . . unless, of course,” said he, “you fail to meet the test!” Well, you have just had the test. So, when I use the words, “Jesus Christ,” and something on the outside comes to you, you have failed the test!, for Jesus Christ (I AM) is in you. If I go to Him in my prayer, where would I go but to myself? He became as I AM, that I may be as He is. He actually became me. He is in me as my own wonderful human imagination, for “by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made,” so I go within and appropriate the state.
So, I only ask you to be as faithful to any imaginal state in this world, no matter what it is. In everyone God resides. Everyone has to say, “I AM.” That is God. I AM Einstein, I AM Neville. I AM is God. Neville is a tiny thing resting on the foundation that is God. I AM rich . . that is a tiny thing on the foundation of God, and God is Infinity, God is Everything. Therefore, whatever you say, before you say it, you say, “I AM”.
The first great discovery that man made was that he could think. This was the day when he rose from the ground and said, “I AM.” This marked the first great day of personal attainment; and from that day man became an individual and had to make all further progress himself; any compulsory evolution stopped when man became an individual, and from that day he had to work in conscious union with Nature and Her forces; but he did not have to work alone, for Instinctive Life has always been with him and will never depart from him. Instinctive Life desires that man shall express more, and yet more, of its own limitless possibilities. Man is evolving from an Infinite basis; behind him is the great Unknown but not the great unknowable; for the unknown becomes known through man, and whatever more Instinctive Life is to do for him must be done through him. Nature must work through man in order to work for him. This is true all along the line of life and endeavor.
To say:”I AM going to be rich,” will not make it happen; you must believe riches in by claiming within yourself: “I AM rich.” You must believe in the present tense, because the active, creative power that you are, is God (I AM). He is your awareness, and God (I AM) alone acts and is. His name forever and ever is “I AM” therefore, he can’t say: “I will be rich” or “I was rich” but “I AM rich!”
All Quotes from David Allen’s The Power of I AM Volume 3 Are Attributed to…
Benjamin Johnson, Charles Fillmore, Charles Haanel, Christian Larson, Edna Lister, Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes, Eugene Del Mar, Fenwicke L. Holmes, Florence Gloria Crawford. Frances Larimer Warner, Franklin Fillmore Farrington, H. Emilie Cady, Helen Wilmans, Henry Harrison Brown, Jane Woodard, Joseph Murphy, Nancy McKay Gordon, Neville Goddard, Orison Swett Marden, Robert A. Russell, Walter C Lanyon, William Walker Atkinson / Yogi Ramacharaka