Psalms 85

The Inner Drama of Redemption and Renewal

Psalm 85 reads like a short, intense play in the theatre of consciousness. The actors are feelings, beliefs, and powers of imagination; the stage is the inner land — the secret ground of your awareness. Seen psychologically, each phrase names a movement from contraction to expansion, from accusation to reconciliation, from exile to homecoming. The psalm maps the process by which the imaginal faculty restores a disturbed psyche to peace, and how inner alignment yields outer fruit.

The opening sentence, 'Lord, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob,' is an opening scene: the I AM — the awareness that claims, 'I am' — turns toward the land within and has already been gracious. The 'land' is the emotional climate of the self; the 'captivity of Jacob' is the state in which essential potentials are imprisoned by fear, shame, or negative identity. The kindness evoked here is not primarily historical forgiveness but the first recognition that the higher awareness persists and inclines toward restoration. In psychological terms, this is the moment of grace when the higher imagination remembers the self it created and begins to liberate what thought had confined.

'Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin.' This is the movement from condemnation to pardon. 'Iniquity' and 'sin' are inner judgments and mistaken identities — stories we tell about ourselves that produce guilt. Forgiveness is the act of re-imagining: it is the higher self's radical re-describing of the scene. To 'cover' sin is to cloak the accusatory narrative with a new story. This is not denial; it is reassignment of meaning. The Selah after this line is the pause of attention — the contemplative silence in which the imagination settles into the new frame. Selah asks the reader to feel the pardon, to let the heart accept a different version of itself.

'Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.' Here wrath is psychological heat — the self-anger that lashes out or blames. The turning away of anger is not suppression of feeling but a re-directed awareness. Anger subsides when the imagination embraces a larger perspective: that the self is not defined by its mistakes but is a field capable of creative re-vision. To 'turn' is to re-orient attention; the mind literally rotates away from the condemning scene and toward a compassionate picture.

'Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease.' This line is a petition for interior conversion. Notice the shift from divine action to personal request: consciousness is invited to consent. Salvation here is a psychological awakening — the release from patterns that have dominated the inner life. The plea acknowledges that change requires both the higher principle and the willing human attention. The imagination is both the instrument of salvation and the organ that must be yielded to that work.

'Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations?' These rhetorical questions name the fear that the accused part will never be forgiven, that the identity of fault will define future selfhood. Psychologically, they express anxiety about permanence: the dread that a past self will dictate all tomorrows. The psalm answers this anxiety by invoking revival.

'Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.' Revival is an awakening of creative imagination. To 'revive' is to enliven dormant capacities — courage, joy, trust. Rejoicing in the Lord is rejoicing in the reclaimed self. Asking for mercy and salvation is asking the imaginal faculty to supply a new dominant idea. Mercy is the kind reinterpretation that replaces the old law of punishment with the law of creative causation.

'I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.' The speaker now assumes the posture of listening. To 'hear what God will speak' is to attend to the inner narrative that produces peace. 'Saints' are not distant figures but the faculties of integrity within you — conscience, intuition, will — those elements that hold when you align with the creative word. The caution not to 'turn again to folly' is practical: imagination heals only if the mind stops rehearsing old failures. To return to folly is to feed the old habit and negate the imaginal renewal.

'Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land.' Fear here is best read as reverential attention to the I AM within — a disciplined respect for the creative power of imagination. Salvation is close to those who honor their creative capacity by protecting their imaginal acts: they know that what they assume inwardly takes form outwardly. 'Glory' dwelling in the land pictures the inner presence of well-being and fulfilled potential residing in the psyche.

'Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' This is one of the psalm’s most intimate images. Mercy (compassion, imaginative kindness) meets truth (the unadorned fact of reality as reframed by choice), and righteousness (right alignment) kisses peace (rest that follows right being). Psychologically, the meeting and kiss describe a creative embrace: the felt sense of being pardoned (mercy) aligns with the acceptance of what is actually possible (truth), producing right action (righteousness) and calm (peace). This union is not merely ethical language; it is a model of an inner chemistry where feeling and idea harmonize and produce results.

'Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.' These two lines portray a downward and upward movement that must occur in consciousness for manifestation to happen. 'Truth springing out of the earth' is the imaginal seed planted in the subconscious soil: an accepted assumption, a rehearsed scene, the felt conviction that a new state is real. 'Righteousness looking down from heaven' is the higher law of rightness exercising its influence — aligning will and desire with the imagined scene. When the seed in the soil is watered by feeling and observed by the higher self, it sprouts and becomes visible in experience.

'Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase. Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps.' The concluding promise is the principle of creative causation made explicit: the imaginal Lord gives what is good when the inner land is receptive and has been prepared. The land yielding increase is literally the inner world producing outer effects. 'Righteousness going before' describes the precedence of right assumption and right feeling. When the imaginal law is obeyed, life appears to fall into the pattern of that expectation; you are set in the way of the steps that belong to the renewed identity.

Taken together, the psalm offers a concise program: recognize the higher presence within your psyche; allow it to reinterpret the past with compassion; pause to let that mercy be accepted; cultivate the receptive posture of listening; avoid regeneration of old negative scripts; plant truth in the soil of feeling; permit the right law to oversee the unfolding; and expect the inner land to yield increase.

Practically, this plays out as disciplined imagination. Begin with a scene of pardon: imagine yourself forgiven, not as an abstract idea but as a lived event — feel the lifting of weight, see the doors open, sense the light in the 'land.' Pause (Selah) and let the scene sink into the subconscious by replaying it with feeling. Then, assume the state you desire: hold the conviction that peace will be spoken within you and that the faculties of integrity will cooperate. When anxiety or self-accusation returns, turn attention away from the old charge and back to the reclaimed scene. Treat truth not as cold fact but as an imaginal seed; feed it with the warmth of mercy. Watch how slowly the outer world — relationships, opportunities, inward calm — begins to align with the new inner law.

The drama of this psalm is always renewable: the inner land may relapse into captivity, but the process of reclamation remains accessible. The psalm is less a record of history than a map of inner redemption — a reminder that creativity, when properly directed, undoes the bondage of past imaginations and brings forth a harvest of peace. Mercy kisses truth and the soul yields increase when imagination is knowingly employed as the sovereign power that creates our world.