Psalms 22: The Psychology of Forsaken Faith

Compare with the original King James text

🔍 Explore Verse Ranges in Psalms 22

Quick Insights

A cry of abandonment maps the mind's movement from felt separation into a creative pivot where imagination can redirect reality.
The psychological drama shows shame and exposure as internal scripts that attract confirming outer circumstances when held as identity.
A turn toward remembrance and praise is described as a conscious reorientation that rebuilds inner authority and changes the field of perception.
Deliverance is depicted not as an external rescue but as the natural consequence of changing the habitual assumption that gives rise to suffering.

What is the Main Point of Psalms 22?

This chapter presents a single consciousness principle: the reality you inhabit is the consequence of the state you assume. When feeling forsaken, the mind dramatizes that assumption with vivid imagery and bodily sensation, and those inner scenes shape experience. Conversely, by shifting into remembrance, praise, and the implicit conviction of presence, you alter the underlying assumption and the field responds, transforming despair into vindication.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Psalms 22?

The opening agony is the mind's pain when identity constricts to a small, helpless narrative. Emotionally, it is the childlike voice that asks why support has vanished, and that voice gathers images — of being laughed at, of being cast out, of being consumed — until the inner theater plays those possibilities into apparent fact. This state is not simply reflective; it organizes attention and expectation, calling forth behaviors, perceptions, and synchronistic confirmations that make abandonment seem objective. The movement toward memory and praise functions as a strategic reversal of that organizing principle. Remembering a source of strength or a time of deliverance is an act of imagination that reinstates a different assumption: that one is held, known, and invested in by reality. Praise here is not mere ritual but a psychological posture that aligns feeling with that remembered assurance. As posture changes, so does the staging of inner images; the cast of persecutors shrinks, the bodily anguish relaxes, and alternatives appear. This is how inner life reorganizes outward circumstances. The final vision of universal remembrance and worship reveals the teleology of consciousness: that a persistent inner conviction radiates outward until it finds congruent expression. The ‘‘meek’’ who eat and are satisfied point to those who adopt humility without collapse, who imagine fulfillment calmly until it manifests. The generational language suggests that these shifts are not purely personal but archetypal: a corrected inner story rescues not only the immediate ego but sets a template for future imaginal acts. Deliverance is therefore less a miraculous exception and more the predictable fruit of sustained assumption.

Key Symbols Decoded

Hostile animals, crowds that stare, and bones exposed function as metaphorical pictures of inner states where vulnerability is amplified by self-judgment. The dog or lion is the prowling fear that circles a consciousness convinced of its isolation; the crowd that parts garments and casts lots symbolizes the mind's fixation on humiliation and the splitting of identity into observed fragments. When these images are entertained with intensity they become the grammar of expectation, translating private dread into what feels like public fact. Conversely, mentions of remembered protection, praise in the assembly, and the promise of posterity decode into inner resources: memory as a reservoir of safety, praise as the creative energy of affirmative feeling, and posterity as the long view of belief sustained over time. Garments and bones also hold positive valences when reimagined: clothing becomes the robe of assumed identity and bones the framework of steadiness. Changing the way one pictures these symbols re-tunes the nervous system and the imagination so that outer events realign with the new inner story.

Practical Application

Begin by noticing the dramatic scenes that replay when distress arrives: describe them in full detail privately until you can see clearly the images, voices, and bodily sensations involved. Once identified, intentionally rehearse a brief inner scene that conveys the opposite assumption — not a wishful addendum but a lived moment in which help is present, dignity is intact, and the body feels held. Make this imagined moment specific, sensory, and short enough to feel believable, then return to it several times a day with the feeling of it already true. Persist with the practice until the rehearsed state becomes the default background feeling for ordinary moments, and watch how outer circumstances begin to conform. When doubt arises, treat it as a passing weather pattern rather than new fact; refuse to reenter the old drama by refusing to amplify those images. Speak silently the conviction you rehearsed, let small acts follow it, and cultivate gratitude for subtle confirmations. Over time the imagination that once created despair will be the engine of a different reality.

Psalms 22 as Inner Drama: The Psychology of Lament and Deliverance

Psalm 22 reads as an intimate psychological drama, a map of shifting states of consciousness that moves from utter abandonment through bodily collapse to triumphant reidentification with the creative power that brought the experience into being. Read as inner narrative rather than literal history, its images are stages and faces of the single human mind: the speaker, the accusers, the beasts, the congregation, and the promised generations are all states and motions within consciousness. The psalm charts how imagination creates, suffers, is misunderstood, and finally transforms its world by returning to full awareness of its own sovereign power.

The opening cry — the voice that asks why God is far — is the self addressing its own creative faculty. 'God' here names the imaginal act that makes the outer world; to say it is 'far' is to recognize that attention has been diverted from this inner source to the senses and to appearances. The sense of abandonment is not a cosmic neglect but the felt result of losing contact with the inner creative act. That loss produces the howl of desperation: a consciousness that can no longer justify its experience by any inner certainty, and so turns complaint outward, demanding evidence from the world.

This inward scene soon exposes the symptoms of that loss. The speaker describes being poured out like water, bones out of joint, strength dried, tongue cleaving to the jaws. These are the bodily metaphors of a mind that has yielded its power. When imagination is unmoored, the 'body' — the psychosomatic response and the whole pattern of outer events — reveals exhaustion, fragmentation, and helplessness. The images of being a worm, reproach of men, laughed at and scorned, describe the inner narrator's degraded self-image. Self-contempt is both cause and product of being turned away from the inner Source: the more the thinker believes in lack, the more the world mirrors that belief.

The hostile figures — bulls of Bashan, ravening lions, dogs, the assembly of the wicked — are not literal animals and enemies but the forms doubt and fear assume when they gain ascendancy in consciousness. Bulls of Bashan are massive, entrenched beliefs; they represent stubborn opinions and cultural convictions that beset the individual, blocking the flow of creative life. Lions and dogs are the predatory loops of anxiety and shame that circle and snap. The 'assembly of the wicked' is public opinion, the chorus of voices in the mind and around the mind that judge, ridicule, and strengthen the mythology of powerlessness. These are the pressures that press upon imagination and force the experiencer into a defensive, contracted state.

The vivid line about hands and feet being pierced and garments parted dramatizes how identity and action are crippled when imagination accepts limitation. Hands and feet symbolize faculties of doing and moving; when they are 'pierced' the individual feels nailed to a narrative of impotence. The parting of garments and casting lots for vesture portrays the stripping away of selfhood — one's roles, values, and identifiers are parceled out by chance and circumstance when inner authority is surrendered. This humiliation is the interior cost of giving creative reins to fear.

Yet the psalm is not only an anatomy of despair; it is a staged reversal. Intermittent acknowledgments — that God inhabits the praises of Israel, that ancestors trusted and were delivered, that the speaker was given hope from the womb — function like inner reminders of original creative identity. They register as memories or intuitions that the imagination is at root benevolent and generous: the seed of creative power was present at the beginning of one’s experience. Those recollections become anchors around which the mind can reconstruct its inner posture.

The turning point appears when the cry to not be far is made: 'Be not thou far from me; for trouble is near.' This is a deliberate reorientation — a demand that the creative faculty once more be attended to. It is not a request to a distant deity but a command to attention itself: return to the creative act, for the current trouble arises from its neglect. The subsequent images of rescue from the sword and lion, of being heard from the horns of the unicorns, signal the activation of inner strength when attention again aligns with imagination. The 'horns' and 'unicorns' are symbols of focused power, of concentrated imaginative intent that pierces apparent obstacles.

The psalm then moves from supplication into proclamation. The speaker vows to declare the name unto brethren, to praise in the great congregation. This is the shift from private suffering to public testimony, but psychologically it indicates reintegration: what was once inwardly known returns outwardly as confident expression. The 'brethren' are other aspects of the self, and the 'congregation' is the field of awareness where imagined realities take form. To praise is to give attention, and when the inner witness praises, it calls forth fulfillment. The renewed voice asserts that the meek shall eat and be satisfied — a reversed law of consciousness: the humble, who relinquish egoic control and trust the inner creative faculty, find that their imaginal acts feed and nourish reality.

This psalm closes with a universalizing speech: all ends of the earth shall remember and turn, and future generations shall declare righteousness. Psychologically, this envisions the ripple effect of a single mind reclaiming its creative authority. When one inner drama is resolved by reembracing imagination as the operative power, that resolution becomes archetypal; it echoes and induces similar awakenings in others. The 'kingdom' being the Lord's points to the simple, radical truth that the inner kingdom — the realm of imagination — governs the outer. The governance is not authoritarian but formative: what is believed, seen, and felt inwardly will be read out by the senses as circumstances.

Reading the psalm as a guide, the practical instruction is clear. First, recognize the distress as a state, not an identity. The opening lament establishes that despair is a voice, not the whole man. Second, name the hostile forms in consciousness (the bulls, dogs, assembly) and see them as projections that arose from a severed attention. Third, deliberately return attention to the creative faculty: imagine relief, security, competence. The psalm's movement demonstrates that sustained imaginative vision — attended to with conviction and gratitude — transforms the body-image, social image, and the outer scenario. Fourth, make the shift public within consciousness: declare the name to the 'brethren'; allow the new state to be experienced by all inner elements. This internal proclamation cements the change and invites external confirmation.

Importantly, the psalm does not deny the reality of suffering; instead, it shows suffering's function. Affliction can be the crucible in which one learns to recognize and then use imaginative power deliberately. The apparent abandonment is the lesson: when God seems far, it is time to relearn how to 'be' God in imagination. The narrative insists that the creative power does not disdain the afflicted; rather, it hears the cry. The healing comes when the cry becomes an inner act of attention — a turning, not away from pain, but toward the making faculty.

In sum, Psalm 22 is a psychological roadmap. Its metaphors are states, its actors are forces within the mind, and its movement traces the lawful mechanics of imagination bringing inner states into outward manifestation. The chronicle from desolation to declaration teaches the hands-on method: see the inner causes, persist in the imagined end, and let that presencing reshape the body of your affairs. Consciousness is the theater, imagination the playwright, and the world you inhabit is the enacted script; change the script inwardly and the stage will shift accordingly.

Common Questions About Psalms 22

How does Neville Goddard interpret Psalm 22 in terms of consciousness and manifestation?

Neville Goddard reads Psalm 22 as a map of consciousness: the opening cry records the experience of feeling separated, an imaginal state that, when entertained, produces its outward counterpart, and the middle verses expose the dramatized beliefs that hold that state in place. The turn toward trust and declaring God's name marks a shift of assumption; imagination now dwells in the redeemed end and thereby changes outer circumstance. The psalm's progression from despair to praise is a model for manifestation: inhabit the end emotionally and act from that assumed state, for what you persistently assume and feel internally will be given outward expression, culminating in communal praise (Psalm 22:22).

Is Psalm 22 a prophecy or an inner psychological drama according to Neville-style readings?

Psalm 22 functions as both prophecy and inner psychological drama; the words describe outward events yet primarily expose the interior state that produced them. As an inner reading shows, the psalm dramatizes the experience of separation, suffering, and the pivot into trust, and that inward shift is what brings the prophetic language to pass. Prophecy in Scripture often records the consciousness of man made visible; when imagination and assumption change, external correspondences follow. Students should therefore attend first to the felt reality portrayed in the psalm, assuming the ending of praise and deliverance until the outer world mirrors that inward conviction, and so prophecy and psychology converge (Psalm 22).

Can Psalm 22 be used as a guided imagination or affirmation for arriving at a desired state?

Yes; Psalm 22 can function as a guided imagination and affirmation when read inwardly with feeling rather than externally as mere history. Begin by entering quiet and living the scenes: feel the abandonment, then imagine the reversal where strength returns and praise flows; speak present-tense statements as if the delivery has already occurred, allowing the sensory details to convince the mind you are already in that state. Repeat the lines that declare trust and vindication until they become the accepted inner assumption, then carry yourself from that state into action. Used this way the psalm becomes a structured imagination that moves consciousness from lack to fulfilled expectation and thus alters outer events (Psalm 22:3,22:24).

How can Bible students apply Psalm 22 practically using Neville Goddard's law of assumption?

Bible students can apply Psalm 22 practically by using the law of assumption as taught by Neville Goddard: first identify the inner sentence of the psalm that expresses the settled end you seek — for example, 'I will declare thy name' or 'my praise shall be of thee' — then assume and dwell in the feeling of that completed state as if it were true now. Walk, speak, and think from that assumed reality, repeating short present-tense declarations and living the sensory details. When doubt arises, return to the scene of fulfillment in imagination until the state is unquestioned. Persist until outer circumstances adjust; the psalm will then read like a testimony of the assumed fact (Psalm 22:22-26).

What are the key 'I AM' statements or assumptions in Psalm 22 that align with Neville's teachings?

Psalm 22 carries implicit 'I AM' assumptions that this teaching highlights: I am known from the womb and therefore sustained; I am heard when I cry, so my prayer is effective; I am counted among those who will declare God's name and praise, so vindication is my present reality; I am not despised forever, I will be satisfied, and my heart will live forever. These lines become effective when mentally assumed as present truths rather than future hopes. By adopting the internal declarations — I am sustained, I am delivered, I am a praise-bearing vessel — the student lives in the state that brings those words into external manifestation (Psalm 22:9-11; 22:22-26).