Psalms 138: The Consciousness of Praise

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Quick Insights

Praise arises as a unified state of heart and attention; declaring what is true inwardly reshapes outer perception.
Answering in distress is a return to inner strength, where imagination supplies renewed power to act from confidence.
Greatness and humility are not opposites but different levels of awareness; the high and the low exist as felt orientations that attract outcomes.
The inner hand that protects and perfects is the sustained imagining of the desired end, held with mercy and persistence until it manifests.

What is the Main Point of Psalms 138?

At its center, the chapter teaches that consciousness is creative: sincere inner affirmation, held with feeling and steadiness, aligns the unseen processes that bring about outer change. When attention praises, remembers, and trusts in what has been imagined, that posture becomes an agent that revives, protects, and perfects the affairs concerned. The psychological drama is simple—one moves from complaint to confident petition, from scattered fear to a steady inner posture that shapes reality by its persistent assumption.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Psalms 138?

The act of praise described here is not only gratitude but a purposeful fixation of the mind upon the desired state. When the heart 'sings' inwardly it is actually rehearsing an inner fact; that rehearsal carves neural pathways and clarifies intention. This concentrated rehearsal is the psychological seed that germinates; it shifts identity from one who lacks to one who already possesses, and that identity becomes the magnet for corresponding events. When the cry of distress is answered, the process is the reversal of identification with trouble. The answer is not primarily an external rescue but an inner recognition that restores strength to the soul. Strength appears when imagination is redirected from the evidence of senses to the vividness of the end already realized; the felt sense of rescue animates choice and action, dissolving the paralysis fear creates and allowing creative response. The portrayal of 'high' and 'low' registers a truth about inner posture: elevated consciousness can still attend to the humble, and humility is the condition in which imagination finds practical purchase. Pride, by contrast, creates distance from subtle impressions and therefore from the means of manifestation. The promise that affairs will be perfected is an invitation to sustain mercy toward one's own creative acts—treating imagined outcomes as works in progress shaped by consistent feeling and attention rather than by frantic correction.

Key Symbols Decoded

The temple or holy place functions as the focus of concentrated attention, a private inner room where the imagination dwells in truth. To worship toward the temple is to turn awareness deliberately toward the center of one's desire, aligning thoughts and feelings there until that inner altar becomes the commanding presence that organizes life. The 'word' magnified above name signals the primacy of mental declaration; a firmly held, spoken-in-mind assumption exerts more force on experience than any external label because it establishes the narrative that the psyche obeys. Enemies, hands, and salvation are psychological motifs: enemies represent resisting beliefs and contrary expectations, the stretching forth of a hand is the decisive volition that interrupts habit, and salvation is the transformation from identification with lack to identification with sufficiency. Mercy enduring forever names the ongoing tenderness required toward imagination itself, a patient refusal to abandon the assumed state before the outer world reflects it back.

Practical Application

Practice begins with a deliberate scene of inward praise that feels as if the desired reality already exists. Sit quietly and speak inwardly with whole-hearted conviction about the outcome you intend, allowing the words to be seasoned with vivid feeling and gratitude as though the event has occurred; repeat this rehearsal until it settles into the background sense of who you are. When trouble arises, return to that inner script immediately, not as denial but as a corrective posture that revives the soul and supplies the resolute strength to act from confidence rather than fear. Attend to subtle shifts: notice pride that distances you from the quiet work of imagining and choose humility by returning to small, manageable visualizations that carry feeling. Protect the imagined scene from contrary opinions by treating it as the work of your own hands—tend it with mercy, affirm it each day, and let your persistent inner declaration complete what your will begins, so that outer circumstances are gradually reorganized to match the inner reality you have faithfully maintained.

The Inner Drama of Unfailing Praise

Read as the theatre of consciousness, Psalm 138 unfolds as an intimate psychological drama. The speaker is not an external person pleading with a remote deity but an individual engaged in a sequence of inner states: praise, petition, response, trial, vindication, and completion. The characters and places named in the short psalm are best understood as internal voices and arenas — the holy temple is the inner sanctuary of attention, the gods are lesser beliefs and authorities that claim influence, the kings are dominant ideas that rule perception, the enemies are contradictory thoughts and fears, and the Lord is the central creative Presence in awareness: the living imaginal faculty that shapes experience.

The psalm opens with wholehearted praise: I will praise thee with my whole heart. Psychologically, this is the deliberate, undivided investment of attention into a single inner conviction. To praise 'before the gods' means to affirm the central creative conviction in the face of competing loyalties. The gods are the customary authorities of the mind — the voices of habit, social conditioning, inherited fear — that ordinarily command our allegiance. The act of worshiping toward the holy temple signals an orientation toward the inner place where experience is formed. The temple is not architecture but a climate of attention: the deliberate interior posture in which imagination is allowed to be sovereign. To praise the Lord in that temple is to choose the imaginal word over every idol of reason or sense.

Notice the distinction the psalm makes between name and word: 'for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.' The name is the ego-label, the notion of who I am based on past identity, social role, or reputation. The word is the living declaration — the inner statement, felt and imagined, that actually creates. In biblical psychology the active word is the felt scene, the inner assumption that births outward form. Magnifying the word above the name means giving creative primacy to the imagined state rather than to the old self-definition. When imagination is elevated like this, the inner scene carries more power than the established identity. This is the pivotal shift in the drama: the operative power moves from memory-bound selfhood to the vivid, assumed inner statement.

The psalmist then remembers a 'day when I cried' and affirms that 'thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.' Here we see a moment of conscious petition — a crisis state in which attention cries out for deliverance — and a corresponding response from the creative center. The 'answer' is psychological: the arrival of a sustaining imaginal conviction that replaces panic with composed expectation. Strength in the soul is not mere bravery; it is the architecture of inner assurance, the felt bodily conviction that the assumed state is real. This is the crucial technique: move feeling into the present-tense certainty of the fulfilled desire, and soul-strength follows. The drama shows that when attention authentically assumes the reality it wants, an inner rescuer appears — the Presence that always acts when believed.

When the psalm says 'All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O LORD, when they hear the words of thy mouth,' it stages how outer conditions align with the spoken or imagined word. The kings are the ruling mental images that govern experience: beliefs about money, relationship, status, health. When the central word is confidently declared and inhabited, those ruling images change their tune; they praise, they conform. This is not an external prophecy about rulers but a psychological truth: inner speech and acted imagination reshapes the patterns that controlled perception. The 'ways of the LORD' become the altered pathways by which life now flows — the habitual channels of thought reoriented around the chosen reality.

The psalm then addresses the paradox of transcendence and attentiveness: 'Though the LORD be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly; but the proud he knoweth afar off.' The creative Presence is described as exalted, yet it pays special attention to humility. In inner terms, the higher imaginative faculty responds most readily to those who admit lack and become receptive. Pride — the insistence on sensory evidence, logic, or past identity — distances one from the creative Self. Pride 'knows afar off' because it cannot enter the quiet, receptive posture required for imagining new reality. The psychological lesson is blunt: the greatest creative power within consciousness is activated by humility, by willingness to be moved and to let go of the old story. Pride remains at a distance, clinging to the past, while the lowly soul — open, hungry, imaginative — is granted the living word.

The dramatis personae shift to trial: 'Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me.' Walking amid trouble is the everyday condition of the human psyche, confronted by seeming obstacles and contrary evidence. The divine act — the creative faculty at work — revives the one who assumes life as already fulfilled. Revival here is a reanimation of expectation: an interior movement from despair to the vivid rehearsal of the desired state. The psalm continues: 'thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.' The outstretched hand and the saving right hand are metaphors for the operative powers of imagination. One hand reaches into the arena of resistance and neutralizes hostile thought patterns; the other delivers rescue through the active, willful occupation of the desired scene. In psychological drama, these are not supernatural interventions but the enlivenment of attention into corrective imagery that dissolves fear.

The concluding promise — 'The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands' — gives the finale. To perfect what concerns me is to carry the imaginal plan through to completion. The creative faculty works until the inner assumption has been fully expressed. Mercy enduring forever is the kindness of imagination toward its own creations: patience, gradual rearrangement of habits, and the steady fruition of what has been imagined. The warning 'forsake not the works of thine own hands' is an instruction to consciousness itself: do not abandon the inner scenes you have generated. Abandonment means relapse into doubt; sustained attention ensures completion.

Read as a psychological manual, this psalm outlines a method and maps the obstacles: choose the inner temple as your focal stage, magnify the living word above the old name, cry honestly in moments of need, receive the strengthening answer by occupying the felt reality of the wish fulfilled, expect the formerly ruling patterns to change when addressed by a new imaginal declaration, remain humble and receptive, and persist until the creative act completes itself. The enemies to be faced are internal — pride, fear, proof-texting by the senses — and the weapons to oppose them are the outstretched hands of attention and imaginative right action.

The narrative also offers a therapeutic consolation: the central Presence is both lofty and tender. It is 'high' because it holds perspective beyond immediate sense-perception; it is 'respectful to the lowly' because it first acts on those who know they need help and are willing to be moved by a new inner picture. This mutual relation — an exalted power that radiates into humility — describes the way imagination operates: it is sovereign, yet it requires cooperation. It will not force its way into a closed mind; it works with the willing.

Finally, the psalm is an encouragement to stewardship. The 'works of thine own hands' are the life patterns you have created in imagination. To 'forsake not' them is to continue to nurture and inhabit the inner scene until its externalization is inevitable. The creative process is not magic but disciplined attention: conceive clearly, feel truly, persist quietly, and allow time for the inner word to organize outer circumstances. When done, even the kings of your mental kingdom will praise the new order, and what once seemed merely a name will be overtaken by the living word.

In this way Psalm 138, understood psychologically, becomes a concise manual for imaginative creation: radical devotion of attention, the primacy of the inner word, receptivity over pride, perseverance amid trouble, and the rescue and completion performed by the very imaginative faculty that is oneself. It stages the human psyche as the field of enactment and shows that the sanctuary we seek is within, where the praise of a whole heart transforms the world.

Common Questions About Psalms 138

Are there Neville-style prayers or scripts based on Psalm 138?

A Neville-style prayer modeled on Psalm 138 is spoken as an imagining: enter a quiet state, declare inwardly that you praise with your whole heart, see the answer given and favor surrounding you, feel the strengthening in your soul and the right hand of help, then thank and praise as if the deliverance is already accomplished (Psalm 138:1,3,8). Speak it in the first person, dwell in the scene for several minutes, and end with gratitude. Repeat nightly until the felt reality becomes unshakable, letting the imagined state govern your waking expectation and actions.

How do I apply the Law of Assumption to promises in Psalm 138?

Apply the Law of Assumption to Psalm 138 by assuming the fulfilled state the Psalm promises and living from that inner reality; make the promise personal, imagine its completion, and cultivate the emotional conviction that it is accomplished, thus aligning your consciousness with the assumed end. When doubts arise, return to the inner scene and rest in the feeling of having been answered, using praise and gratitude as reinforcements (Psalm 138:1,3). Do not argue with appearances; persist in the state until it becomes dominant, for the promise that God will perfect what concerns you becomes effective only as you sustain the assumed state.

Can Psalm 138 be used as an imaginal act to change consciousness?

Yes; Psalm 138 can be practiced as an imaginal act by turning its phrases into scenes you inhabit in the mind until the feelings of fulfillment become dominant. Quiet the body, imagine the answered prayer, see yourself walking in favor, and feel the gratitude and confidence the Psalm expresses (Psalm 138:1,3,8). This is not intellectual agreement but living from the end; the repeated, vivid imagining moves your state of consciousness so that external circumstances reorganize to match it. Use the Psalm as the script for the scene, then persist in that state irrespective of outer signs.

What verses in Psalm 138 are best for affirmation and meditation?

Key anchors in Psalm 138 for affirmation and meditation are the opening lines about praising with the whole heart (Psalm 138:1), the acknowledgment that God has magnified his word above his name (Psalm 138:2), the testimony of being answered in trouble (Psalm 138:3), the promise that God will perfect what concerns you (Psalm 138:8), and the assurance that God respects the lowly (Psalm 138:6). Repeat these citations as short affirmations, entering a vivid inner scene for each, allowing feeling to saturate the imagination until the words are no longer mere text but present experience.

How does Neville Goddard interpret Psalm 138 for manifesting favor?

Neville Goddard reads Psalm 138 as a declaration that favor is first established within consciousness, and that praise and thanksgiving are the means by which the assumed state is made real; he points to the Psalm's insistence on wholehearted praise and the magnifying of God's word as a call to live in the end already achieved (Psalm 138:1–2,8). In practice this means assuming the feeling of having been heard and favored, dwelling in that inner state repeatedly until it governs your outer life, refusing to be moved by contrary evidence, and using gratitude and imagination as the instruments by which the promise is fulfilled.