Ecclesiastes 11: Strength and Weakness of Consciousness

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🔍 Explore Verse Ranges in Ecclesiastes 11

Quick Insights

Pouring bread upon waters is the imaginative act that seeds unseen outcomes; what you cast into consciousness returns later as circumstance.
Diversity of giving and broad action is a hedge against imagined limitation; spread attention and trust unpredictable timing.
The observable world—winds, clouds, fallen trees—represents shifting moods and appearances that should not dictate creative activity.
Youth and light are transient stages of awareness; joy is necessary yet must be held with the knowledge that inner judgment and consequence follow every lived image.

What is the Main Point of Ecclesiastes 11?

This chapter teaches that inner activity of imagination and attention is the true sowing; persistent, generous, and fearless mental action, even amid uncertainty, brings results in time. One is invited to act without being governed by transient moods or external signs, to give widely of attention and creative expectation while holding the inevitable cycles of light and darkness in clear awareness.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Ecclesiastes 11?

Imagination here is the farmer and the bread on the waters is deliberate assumption released into the realm of becoming. To cast something upon the waters is to give an image unstintingly to the field of consciousness and trust that the currents of inner life will carry it into manifestation. That trust is not passive fatalism but an active surrender: sow at morning, continue at evening, do not withhold the creative hand when clouds of doubt rise. The repeated counsel to act despite uncertainty is a call to stabilize attention where you wish reality to form and to avoid waiting for perfect external conditions. The natural phenomena mentioned function as metaphors for psychological weather. Wind and clouds are moods; trees falling where they fall are the accidental shapes of external events that seem decisive only until one recognizes their origin in shifting inner states. Observing outward signs obsessively prevents creation, because creative imagination requires movement rather than surveillance. Growth of the unseen spirit, like formation in a womb, reminds that processes occur beyond immediate sight; one cannot micromanage inner gestation by reasoning alone. Patience and consistency are the spiritual disciplines that let subtle impressions congeal into visible fact. Joy is affirmed as a legitimate condition of consciousness, especially in youthful vigor and in days of light, but the text warns against a naïve identification with transient pleasure. Rejoicing fuels creativity, yet the matured creator remembers dark seasons and the eventual accountability of inner life. Judgment here is not punitive tribunal but the natural harvest of images often mistaken for innocence. To know that all comes and passes is to choose images prudently, to put away sorrow and destructive impulses, because what is entertained will return with the same face and measure it was given.

Key Symbols Decoded

Bread cast upon waters is symbolic of a confident inner assumption released without immediate evidence, an image placed into the collective flow with expectation that it will find form in time. The advice to give portions to many reflects psychological diversification: do not fixate on a single outcome or limit attention to one narrow image, for consciousness is a landscape best cultivated with varied seeds. Clouds full of rain are dense feelings waiting to be emptied; they will pour over the earth of your experience when they have ripened, showing that emotional readiness precipitates results. The falling tree stands for the fixed outcome of an accepted idea, showing up where it is imagined to lie; if you imagine disaster toward the north or the south, that imagined alignment becomes history in your inner world. Watching the wind and regarding clouds are analogous to waiting for perfect moods before acting; such observers never sow because creative work requires movement independent of fickle feeling. The growth of bones in a womb points to the unseen stages of manifestation: forms are assembled inwardly in stages that the conscious mind rarely perceives, so faith in the invisible process is indispensable.

Practical Application

Begin by practising daily imaginative giving: form a clear inner scene of what you desire and ‘cast’ it without analysis, letting the image go into the flowing field of expectation. Do this in the morning and repeat in the evening, not as ritual but as two affirmations that steady attention across moods. When doubt or worry rises, notice the wind and the clouds without halting your creative work; continue to sow diverse images so that one narrow fear cannot monopolize the mind. Cultivate joy as an amplifier of imagination, yet temper celebratory states with sober awareness that every image carries consequence. Remove sorrow from habitual attention by intentionally replacing corrosive inner pictures with constructive ones, imagining health, generosity, and abundance until these impressions become the default. In moments of apparent failure, remember that unseen gestation often precedes visible success; persist with trusted assumptions and act as if the harvest is already on its way, while also accepting responsibility for the quality of the images you entertain.

Cast Your Bread: The Inner Drama of Risk and Uncertainty

Ecclesiastes 11, read as a psychological drama, unfolds like a short play staged entirely within consciousness. The speaker is the I who must learn how inner acts become outer facts; the scenes are moods, images, and impulses that take character and voice. Reading each verse as a state of mind reveals a map of creative functioning: how imagination sows, how feeling waters, how fear resists, and how destiny is the cumulative habit of inner acts.

Scene 1: Casting Bread Upon the Waters — generosity of imaginative act

“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” The opening image makes the imagination an action of giving. Bread is the yielded idea, the spoken word, the imagined scene poured without clutching into the subconscious waters. The waters are not external circumstance but the deep receptive faculty — the reservoir of feeling and memory. When you offer a constructive image to this depth without anxious control, something in the hidden depths takes it up and, in time, returns it transfigured. The promise of “many days” names the gestation period: not every imaginal seed blooms instantly; the psyche moves in seasons.

“Give a portion to seven, and also to eight” names imaginative breadth. Seven and eight are symbolic of completeness and overflow. Psychologically this instructs not to invest your creative energy in a single channel or a single contingency. Distribute your bread among thoughts, feelings, acts, relationships, speech, visualizing, and silent believing. The mind that spreads its food widely does not starve; it catalyzes multiple fertile strands in the unconscious so that supply arises from many quarters when one appears stalled.

Scene 2: Weather and Timing — feelings discharge and the futility of waiting

“If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth.” Clouds stand for charged feelings and expectations. When an emotion is full of creative intent it will pour itself outward. The image instructs that feeling is not private: it becomes deed. The inner climate, when saturated, cannot help but precipitate into outer events. Thus cultivating feelings of fullness and expectancy is not indulgence but discipline: fill the clouds with chosen images and they will water your world.

“He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” Here fear and indecision take the stage as critics. To observe the wind is to be ruled by external opinions, conditions, and appearances; to regard the clouds is to wait for mood-perfect conditions. Both attitudes paralyze creative action. The drama shows a protagonist tempted to postpone imagining until the weather aligns; the chorus of wind and clouds tell him to wait. The counsel is opposite: act now. Imagination requires motion, not perfect conditions. Sowing is a practice; it proceeds despite uncertainty.

Scene 3: The Mystery of Inner Growth — incubation beyond reason

“As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.” This verse is an intimate drama about not-knowing. The inner creative process is more like embryology than linear causation. Once an imaginal seed is planted, subtle formative forces rearrange perception, memory, and feeling into a new structure. You cannot micro-manage every stage; there is a womblike intelligence in the deep mind that organizes what you assume. The text counsels surrender to the creative gestation: trust the hidden laws that knit bones from formless thought.

Scene 4: Morning and Evening — disciplined repetition across conscious states

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand.” The drama here calls for rhythm. The imagination must be exercised in waking attention and in the twilight of day when the unconscious opens. Morning sowing is deliberate visualization and inner conversation that sets the tone; evening sowing is the last act before sleep, where one impresses the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Both are necessary because consciousness wears two faces: one that directs and one that receives. Persist in both; do not be satisfied with occasional epiphanies.

“For thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” This humility about outcomes is pragmatic: the creative field is probabilistic not deterministic in form. Different imaginal acts will find their way; you cannot foresee which line will fructify. Hence the instruction to sow widely and persistently.

Scene 5: Light and Shadow — transient joys and menacing nights

“Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun: But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many.” Here the protagonist is invited to savor consciousness’s bright moments — clarity, health, creative success — while still keeping a mature memory of nights. The “light” is conscious awareness, the felt sense of having arrived. But the text warns that life will include darkness: loss, doubt, and the unavoidable seasons where the imagination seems dim. The wise mind enjoys without attachment; it stores experience without idolizing it. This prepares the inner theater to keep acting when the lights go down.

“All that cometh is vanity.” The chorus intones the ephemeral nature of outer results. Images enacted will yield forms that fade; therefore true investment is in the capacity to imagine, not in transitory trophies. Vanity here is a call to shift valuation from outcomes to the inner art of creation itself.

Scene 6: Youth and Judgment — joy with mindful accountability

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth... but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Youth is the creative impulse: bold, inventive, unashamed. Rejoice, for energy and daring are necessary to seed new states. Yet the drama adds accountability: imagination carries moral weight. The “judgment” is not punitive external law but the internal logic of consequences: sustained imagination sculpts character and circumstance. Every repeated inner act becomes a precedent; the deep mind judges by the habit it enshrines. Thus the actor who delights in youthful freedom should also choose images that build a future worthy of that delight.

Scene 7: Purification — removing sorrow and evil as impediments

“Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.” The final scene is a practical command. Sorrow and malign imaginal habits are like stones in a garden bed; they choke the seedling. To remove them is to cleanse the imagination: stop rehearsing misfortune, stop entertaining jealous, vengeful, or despairing scenes. Evil in the flesh is the reflex action that projects scarcity; remove it by substituting sovereign scenes of wholeness. This purification prepares the inner womb to receive and gestate the creative child.

Dramatic roles and inner characters

- The Protagonist (I): the conscious will that decides to act imaginatively and distribute its bread. This character learns the art of persistent, generous imagining. - The Waters: the deep receptive unconscious that accepts images and works on them unseen. - The Clouds and Wind: transient moods and external opinions that can either precipitate creativity when full, or paralyze when observed as sovereign. - The Womb: the incubation faculty — time, feeling, and symbolic structure that forms the imagined reality. - Youth and Light: the creative impulse and awareness, joyous but impermanent. - Judgment: the inner law that converts repeated imaginal acts into permanent habit and external consequence.

Technique and law: how imagination operates

1) Give freely. The first law is generous assumption: commit imaginal “bread” into the deep without clinging. The act is both seed and altar. 2) Diversify. Spread your imaginative acts among many channels so the deep mind has multiple vectors to realize. 3) Fill feeling. Cultivate clouds of expectancy; feeling gives weight to images and causes them to precipitate. 4) Act despite weather. Do not wait for perfect external conditions; imagination needs practice now. 5) Honor the womb. Respect the unknown processes; refrain from anxious tinkering that interrupts incubation. 6) Work morning and evening. Use waking attention and the threshold of sleep as bookends of impression. 7) Cleanse. Remove sorrow and malign rehearsal to allow receptivity. 8) Accept temporality. Revel in the light but remember seasons will pass; focus on the creative capacity rather than each particular fruit.

Conclusion: the chapter as a guide to inner artistry

Ecclesiastes 11, as psychological drama, is a primer on the economy of imagination. It teaches a way of living in which inner acts are given, multiplied, and trusted to lawlike processes in the deep mind. The creative power operates not as magic that bypasses human discipline but as a natural economy: sow widely, water with feeling, respect incubation, act without waiting, and purify the field. When these inner scenes are enacted with steady will and joyous humility, the outer world becomes the inevitable reflection of the theater within. The play closes not with a deus ex machina but with the protagonist learning to be both the actor and the steward of imagination — casting bread, tending clouds, and receiving in time the harvest that consciousness itself has designed.

Common Questions About Ecclesiastes 11

Does Neville link Ecclesiastes 11 to the Law of Assumption or living from the end?

Yes; he connects the imagery to the Law of Assumption and the practice of living from the end, seeing the verses as instruction to embody the fulfilled state rather than chase outer proofs. Casting bread upon the waters is the act of assuming and feeling, while the admonition to sow morning and evening suggests regular, intentional inhabiting of the end-state. The uncertain timing and unseen growth described in the chapter reinforce the need to trust inner assumption and allow the state to work within you until outer circumstances conform; in short, it teaches being the state that produces the desired effect (Ecclesiastes 11).

What manifestation lesson does Ecclesiastes 11 teach according to Neville Goddard?

The chapter teaches practical faith in imagination: plant your inner seed regularly and without exacting timing, diversify your assumptions, and do not let changing outer circumstances stop your inner work. The admonition against watching the wind or clouds warns against waiting for external conditions; instead, act in the state you desire and persist. The morning and evening sowing become two daily acts of assuming and revision, a continual dwelling in the end. This cultivates a state from which events must conform, illustrating that imagination creates reality and that patient, repeated assumption yields manifestation (Ecclesiastes 11).

Where can I find Neville Goddard lectures or notes that reference Ecclesiastes 11?

Look to archived lectures, transcripts and published works that collect his Scripture-based teachings, especially compilations and lecture series that commute through the Old Testament; many online repositories and the Neville Goddard Foundation host audio recordings and typed transcripts, and several YouTube channels and searchable transcript sites index talks by verse. His books and collected lectures also trace the same themes even if a particular chapter citation is not obvious, so search terms like "Ecclesiastes 11 Neville" or browse indexes of The Power of Awareness and lecture collections; listening to whole talks reveals how he weaves that passage into the law of assumption practice.

Can Ecclesiastes 11 be used as a daily Neville Goddard mental practice or meditation?

Yes; treat the chapter as a blueprint for morning and evening mental practice: in the morning deliberately imagine and feel the scene fulfilled, cast the bread of your wish into the waters of your day, and in the evening review or revise any contradictory impressions so you do not withhold the harvest. Use brief, focused imaginal acts that establish the desired state and then detach, trusting the unseen. Repeating this cycle trains your states of consciousness so that waking life must conform, making Ecclesiastes 11 a scriptural companion to the discipline of living from the end and assuming the wish fulfilled (Ecclesiastes 11).

How does Neville Goddard interpret Ecclesiastes 11's 'cast your bread upon the waters'?

Neville reads the counsel to "cast thy bread upon the waters" as a directive to sow imaginings without anxious attachment to outcome; the bread is the imagined scene, the waters are the unknown channels of consciousness, and the return comes after a period in which the assumed state matures unseen. He emphasizes distributing creative attention widely—give a portion to seven and eight—so you are not dependent on one visible cue. Trust in the mysterious workings of the spirit and the law of assumption: assume the end, dwell in the feeling of fulfillment, and quietly expect the harvest that consciousness will bring (Ecclesiastes 11).