Song of Solomon 1: States of Consciousness

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Quick Insights

The poem stages an interior romance where longing and remembrance are active states that shape perception and attract experience.
Desire appears as a magnetic feeling that, when imagined and felt vividly, becomes the architect of intimate realities.
Shame, darkness, and duty are acknowledged and transmuted when the self recognizes them as parts of the beloved rather than obstacles.
The house, the chambers, the vineyards and the perfumes are psychological landscapes: tending them with attention and feeling alters what you meet in waking life.

What is the Main Point of Song Of Solomon 1?

At the center of this chapter is the simple consciousness principle that what you dwell upon with emotional conviction becomes your inner architecture and thus the stage for outer encounters; when imagination and feeling unite around an identity of being loved, chosen, and at home, reality answers by arranging circumstances that correspond to that inner state.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Song Of Solomon 1?

The opening ache of wanting a kiss is not mere eroticism but the impulse of consciousness to be recognized and mirrored. That desire identifies a state: I am beloved, I am desirable, I am held. When you live primarily in that conviction internally, every sense seems to confirm it. The perfumes and ointments are metaphors for the flavor of feeling you emit; attention that carries a sweet, confident scent draws like attitudes and situations. The psyche is learning that the aroma of sustained emotion perfumes the world you walk into. A darker self-portrait appears, a voice claiming to be 'black' or marked by labor and neglect. This is the shadow that believes its service disqualifies it from being loved. Rather than rejecting or hiding that part, the inner lover invites it into the chambers. Recognition, not suppression, transforms the voice of condemnation into intimacy. The one who tends vineyards but cannot tend her own vineyard represents a pattern of expending energy outwardly while starving the self. Turning imagination inward to feed your own vineyard—that is, to cultivate self-worth and to rehearse the feeling of being chosen—shifts the plot; the labor becomes fertile soil for a new harvest. The figure of the king or beloved moving into the inner chambers is the arrival of higher assurance and acceptance into private corners of consciousness. When fear and duty give way to the experience of being welcomed, a man-made table of judgment becomes a table of banquet. Memory of love becomes stronger than intoxicants; it steadies and elevates. This chapter is a map of initiation: you pass from yearning through acknowledgment of hidden wounds to an inhabited state where imagination sits as sovereign in the private rooms of the soul, and the outer world rearranges to match the new interior decree.

Key Symbols Decoded

The vineyards are inner capacities that require attention and choice; they are where desires are planted and harvested. When they are neglected in favor of productive labor that lacks inward nourishment, the harvest fails to satisfy. The chambers and the bed are the secret rooms of identity where you rehearse and feel the truth about yourself; lying between the breasts becomes the posture of a belief held close to the heart until it saturates every thought. The perfumes, spikenard and myrrh, are the tonal qualities of feeling — the mental fragrances emitted by sustained imagination that attract corresponding scenes and people. Darkness and the sun's mark speak to the complex relationship with self-image: outward conditions may have scorched parts of identity, but naming them 'comely' is the act of reimagining and thereby restoring beauty.

Practical Application

Begin with a nightly practice in which you enter your inner chamber as a scene. In imagination, place yourself in a private room where someone who fully loves you sits close, speaks your name with warmth, and kisses you with the tenderness you long for. Make the scene sensory: notice the scent, the warmth, the texture of the bed, the hush of the beams above. Hold the feeling of being chosen vividly for a few minutes, letting it swell until it becomes more real than any unfinished duty or outward criticism. When intrusive doubts arise, address them as characters who can be invited into the scene rather than banished; see them soften in the presence of the beloved. During the day, tend your vineyard by giving small acts of inward attention: a sentence of gratitude focused on how it feels to be loved, a minute of visualizing yourself moving through tasks as someone already fulfilled. Whenever you find yourself serving others at the expense of inner cultivation, pause and rehearse the inner embrace until the outer labor is flavored by the same confidence. This steady rehearsal trains imagination to create the conditions you desire so that actions flow from an inner identity rather than from lack, and reality begins to mirror the love you first lived as a feeling.

The Inner Theatre of Longing: A Drama of Desire and Awakening

Song of Solomon 1 reads as an intimate psychological drama played out within the theater of consciousness. The lovers, the maidens, the king, the vineyards and the perfumes are not historical persons and places but living states of mind and stages of inner activity. Read this way, the chapter becomes a precise map of how imagination creates, sustains and beautifies inner life—and thereby fashions outward experience.

At the center is a yearning voice: 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.' This is the soul calling for an inward confirmation—the kiss of imagination that seals a state with feeling. The kiss is not physical but the inner word, the assumed state, the warm acceptance that tastes of creative pleasure. To be kissed is to be acknowledged and to feel the presence of the creative power. The voice knows that the inward communion—'thy love'—is richer than any external indulgence. This opening phrase frames the whole chapter as an insistence that the source of joy and reality is within, not without.

The name of the beloved 'as ointment poured forth' indicates reputation and atmosphere as emanations of the state one occupies. In consciousness, a name is not a label; it is a scent—an aura—projected by the inner mood. 'Therefore do the virgins love thee' points to the attraction that a certain inner state exerts on unformed aspects of the self (the virgins). When the soul lives in a fragrant assumption—content, confident, and imaginative—other faculties are drawn to serve and reflect that mood.

'Draw me, we will run after thee' dramatizes the dynamic relationship between desire and imagination. There is a magnet in consciousness which, when aroused, pulls the self forward. The soul asks to be drawn into the private chamber of imagination where creation is formed. To be brought 'into his chambers' is to be invited, or to invite oneself, into the hidden workshop where images are given shape with feeling. In psychological terms, the chamber is the state in which you persist in a chosen assumption until it becomes the dominant attitude of your life. Running after the beloved describes aligning the whole psychic energy toward that assumption.

'We will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine' underscores that joy in imagination is recollection and fixation. Inwardly recalling the beloved state—vividly and with feeling—is a higher intoxication than sensual pleasures. Joy is sustained by memory and repeated assumption; it is not dependent on external proof. 'The upright love thee' suggests that integrity of inner discipline—coherence between what you assume in the chamber and how you live—makes the imagination effective.

The speaker's confession, 'I am black, but comely... because the sun hath looked upon me,' is a sober recognition of how outer exposure and self-judgment color the inner sense of worth. 'Black' here is the state of feeling neglected, undervalued, or overshadowed by life’s harsh light; yet 'comely' affirms an essential inner beauty that the speaker refuses to deny. This duality is common in psychological experience: the self appears blemished by circumstances, while imagination knows the latent beauty. The phrase 'my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept' is crucial. It depicts the divided self that serves external duties, expectations and social roles ('mother's children') while neglecting its own inner garden. The vineyards are the imagination's plots—habits, affections and assumptions that must be tended. Keeping another's vineyard means losing one's own creative center; the result is an outer busyness without inner cultivation.

When the soul asks, 'Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon,' it is searching for the particular state where fulfillment lives. 'Where do you feed?' is psychological: in which mental posture or feeling does my desire find rest? The flock and the shepherds' tents represent clusters of thoughts and peaceful attitudes. The question 'for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?' names distraction—following the moods and pleasures of other states rather than abiding in the chosen one. If the beloved is unknown, the counsel is to follow the footsteps of the flock—observe where consistent joy and simple faith dwell—and feed your nascent ideas beside those quiet tents. In practice this means imitate and persist in small, steady impressions that produce growth: a humble, sustained feeling is the bedrock of creation.

The celebrated images—'I have compared thee ... to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots' and 'thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold'—are metaphors of potency and adornment. Horses and chariots symbolize mobilized will and imagination running with power and dignity. When inner states are harnessed, they move destiny. The jewels and gold are the habitual affirmations and values that decorate and secure the mind. To 'make borders of gold with studs of silver' is to set protective, noble limits around the life of imagination—principles and practices that honor the assumed state so it can flourish outwardly.

'While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof' situates the sovereign seat of consciousness. The 'king' is the ruling imagination, the one who occupies the table—the center of attention and thought—and from that throne the subtle perfume of conviction is diffused. Spikenard and myrrh—rich, lingering scents—symbolize concentrated feelings of love, devotion and assurance that mature and permeate the inner atmosphere. The deeper the feeling laid in the heart, the more it perfumes the whole being; even when the mind engages in routine tasks, the scent remains and alters the quality of all experience.

'A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts' speaks of the intimacy between sustained assumption and the sleeping mind. Night here is the state of the subconscious: when the conscious mind rests, the assumed feeling lies close to the heart and works uninterrupted. This is why the imagined scene carried into sleep is so potent: the night receives and consolidates the inner act. The beloved lying between the breasts is the creative principle nested in the affections; it saturates both waking thought and dream-life until the external world reshapes itself in correspondence.

'My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi' points to the preciousness of a chosen assumption lodged in secret, fertile places of the psyche ('Engedi' as a quiet spring). When the imagination tends its secluded grove, it produces fragrant, concentrated realities—camphire—ripened by solitude and attention. 'Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes' celebrates the gentle innocence and clarity of perception that arise when one lives in the beloved assumption. Doves' eyes are quiet, trustful seeing: a perception unclouded by fear.

Finally, 'also our bed is green. The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir' describes the architecture of a life built on imaginative assumption. A green bed signifies freshness and fertility of intimate life; cedar beams and fir rafters imply strength, durability and beauty underpinning the inner dwelling. When imagination is rightly cultivated, the inner house not only becomes livable but also strong and ornamented—able to manifest outer stability and grace.

Taken as a whole, this chapter instructs a method. First, invite the creative power inward—ask for the kiss of imagination and place it in the chamber. Second, tend your vineyard: stop serving external distractions and begin daily cultivation of quiet, concentrated feeling. Third, identify and follow the footsteps of steady states where joy and rest dwell, and feed your newborn ideas beside their tents. Fourth, sit the king on the table of consciousness—give imagination the throne—and allow the perfume of conviction to diffuse. Fifth, carry the assumption lovingly into sleep by dwelling in it until the night consolidates it. The outer world will, in time, echo the internal architecture: fragrant reputation, attracted faculties, strength, and beauty.

Song of Solomon 1 is therefore not a love poem about two people but a manual of inner transformation: an intimate allegory showing how imagination, when loved, invited and disciplined, recreates the visible world. It says plainly that the beloved is not elsewhere; the beloved is the assumed state within, and when you keep your vineyard, the king's kiss will become the law of your outer life.

Common Questions About Song Of Solomon 1

How does Neville Goddard interpret Song of Solomon 1?

Neville Goddard reads Song of Solomon 1 as a mystical drama of consciousness in which the lover and the beloved are states of the one self, not separate people; he teaches that the opening invitation to be kissed and drawn into the chambers describes the operation of assumption and the imaginal act that births reality (Song of Solomon 1:2, 1:4). The kisses are the creative affirmations of the imagined state, the chambers are the receptive state where you dwell in the fulfilled desire, and the bride’s longing is the conscious desire ready to be assumed as true until it hardens into fact.

What does the bride in Song of Solomon 1 represent according to Neville?

The bride is the subjective self, the conscious I that yearns and must be led into a new state; she symbolizes your waking imagination and feeling center that must take on the desired identity to produce outward change (Song of Solomon 1:5–6). As the one who is brought into the king’s chambers and whose love is remembered more than wine, she represents the believing self that must persist in the assumption of the end, guarding her vineyard against doubt until the inward marriage with her beloved, the assumed state, settles into experience.

How can I use the imagery of Song of Solomon 1 for a manifestation practice?

Begin by relaxing into a quiet hour and read a short, evocative phrase such as let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth or bring me into his chambers (Song of Solomon 1:2, 1:4), then imagine the scene vividly until you feel it as real: the warmth of the kiss, the security of the chamber, the smell of spikenard. Assume the state of having what you desire, dwell there until the feeling is natural, and exit to sleep from that state so the imaginal act impresses the subconscious. Repeat nightly, persist in the assumption without arguing with present facts.

Which passages in Song of Solomon 1 does Neville recommend for nightly imaginal acts?

Choose brief, sensuous lines that point to intimate acceptance and possession: let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth (1:2), draw me, we will run after thee; the king hath brought me into his chambers (1:4), while the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof (1:12), a bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts (1:13). Read one or two lines slowly, imagine the living scene with feeling, and allow that state to be your last living assumption before sleep.

Does Neville teach the lover in Song of Solomon 1 is our imagination or divine presence?

Neville teaches that the lover is the human imagination, which he calls the operative God within; this imagination is the divine presence because it fashions the outer world according to inner states (Song of Solomon 1:13–16 underscores the intimate oneness). Thus the beloved is not an external deity but the inner creative power that intimately unites with the bride when she assumes her desired state. To act as if the beloved is present is to recognize your imaginative faculty as the presence that fulfills desire, transforming inner conviction into outer manifestation.