Song of Solomon 5: The Consciousness of Longing

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Quick Insights

A summons at night describes the movement from ordinary sleep into an awakened longing of imagination; the speaker's heart is awake while the body rests.
A hand at the door and the pain of missed recognition dramatize the moment belief reaches for realization and misses it, creating loss and yearning.
The violent encounter with watchmen and the stripping of a veil portray inner critics and the cost of exposure when the self seeks to manifest desire.
The final exaltation of the beloved as perfect beauty shows how the inner ideal once recovered becomes the template for lived reality, reconciling longing and identity.

What is the Main Point of Song Of Solomon 5?

This chapter stages an interior drama in which imagination knocks, the self hesitates, realization withdraws, and then the loss and suffering that follow compel a deeper seeking; the central principle is that consciousness creates experience by either opening to the inner presence of desire or by refusing it, with exposure and longing as the forces that reshape identity until the inner beloved is reclaimed as living reality.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Song Of Solomon 5?

At the most immediate level this is a portrait of awakening: the heart wakens while the body sleeps, meaning that awareness can shift without external change. Imagination stirs like a gentle knock demanding entry, and our willingness to open determines whether that seed becomes form. The moment of putting off a coat and washing feet speaks to shedding defensive identities and rites of purification that precede reception; but the indecision that follows shows how preparation alone does not produce reality without the decisive act of inviting the inner presence in. The drama is psychological rather than historical — a sequence of inner movements where desire must be acknowledged and given a place in conscious life. When the beloved withdraws, the soul experiences failure and seeks externally, calling without answer. This absence is not punishment from without but the internal consequence of a closed door: when imagination is not allowed to be lived as if true, the corresponding outer circumstances recede. The beating by watchmen and removal of the veil are metaphors for the social and inner wounds that follow exposure and vulnerability. Critics, judgments, and the self-accusatory voice compound the loss, forcing the seeker to narrate the pain. That narrative, however, becomes the crucible; it intensifies longing and redirects attention inward, turning suffering into the motive force for re-imagining and re-engagement with the inner beloved. Finally, the concluding hymn of the beloved as wholly lovely is not mere praise of another but an affirmation of the ideal state of consciousness that once again becomes available. The elaborate description translates into qualities of awareness: purity, strength, steady beauty, and intimate presence. Reclaiming this inner figure signals the restoration of identity aligned with desire fulfilled; the psychological journey ends not in external triumph but in recognition and admission that the imagined beloved is the source and pattern by which life coheres.

Key Symbols Decoded

The knocking at the door is the voice of imagination seeking entrance; it is a subtle, urgent appeal from the creative center of mind asking to be acknowledged. The act of opening represents an inner consent, the willingness to live 'as if' the desire has already been realized, whereas the beloved's withdrawal indicates the immediate consequence when that consent falters — the imagined reality collapses and leaves a felt absence. The watchmen and the theft of the veil depict the punitive elements of self-consciousness and external opinion that capitalize on vulnerability. When the seeker reaches outward in a state of exposed longing, inner guards and social narratives may exploit that exposure, inflicting shame and loss. The ornate descriptions of the beloved are symbolic inventory of qualities within consciousness: luminosity, purity, firmness, and sweetness, each a state to cultivate so that imagination’s presence is no longer fleeting but established as character and perception.

Practical Application

Begin by noticing the subtle knocks of imagination during quiet hours — a word, a picture, a feeling that stirs. Before taking action, allow the inner motion to speak and practice mentally opening to it with a brief, vivid scene of fulfillment, persisting in that feeling for a few minutes as though the door has been opened. If doubt or hesitation arises, acknowledge it without capitulation, then return to the imagined scene; the discipline is not to force external change but to cultivate an unshakable inner acceptance of the desired state. When pain or criticism arises after a lapse, treat it as informative rather than definitive: examine which beliefs closed the door and gently rewrite the inner account by recalling moments when the beloved was present. Use the descriptive qualities as prompts for daily imaginative rehearsal — feel the warmth, steadiness, and clarity attributed to the beloved until those qualities color your self-perception. Over time the act of sustained, feeling-based imagining transforms responses to exposure and loss into a steady creative force that makes the inner beloved the governing reality of experience.

The Inner Drama of Longing, Loss, and Pursuit

Song of Solomon 5 reads like a brief but intense psychological drama played out within the chambers of human consciousness. The speaker's garden, the lover's knocking, the painful withdrawal, the public wounding, and the ecstatic catalogue of the beloved are not external events but a mapped sequence of inner states: longing, awakening, receptivity, disappointment, exposure, and the renewal of identity. Read as a story of mind, this chapter shows how imagination and feeling fabricate the experience called life and how the creative power operates from the quiet center of awareness.

The garden is the inner sanctuary of attention. To say 'I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse' is to claim entry into a private state of being where memory, desire, and sensibility are cultivated. The garden language names a cultivated imagination: herbs of memory, spices of affection, honeycomb of delight. Gathering myrrh with spice, eating honeycomb, drinking wine with milk — these are images of savoring inner experience. They describe a consciousness that tastes its own resources. When the heart is allowed to feast in the garden, the imagination supplies richness. This is the creative law: what attention consumes becomes the content of experience.

The paradox 'I sleep, but my heart waketh' identifies two levels of awareness. The outer sleeper is the day-to-day personality, performing roles and moving through habit. The waking heart is the deeper creative self — aware, receptive, and alive even while the surface life appears dormant. It is in this half-sleep, half-awake region that the lover's voice is heard: the knock at the door. Psychologically, the knock represents an impulse from the deeper self seeking relationship with the conscious mind. It is always present as the summons of imagination. The language directs us inward: the invitation is 'Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.' This is the inner Self asking for recognition in tender language; it asks for receptivity without judgment.

The detail of head filled with dew and locks with drops of the night paints the moistness of new seeing — the still, sensitive receptivity that exists before the mind quickly rationalizes or resists. Dew and drops belong to the threshold between sleep and waking, where impressions are fresh and uncoerced. The beloved's hand entering by the hole of the door and the narrator's bowels being moved indicates a visceral response to the inner call: a physiological-equivalent of feeling the stirring of life within. When the hands and fingers become fragrant with myrrh as they touch the lock, imagination is acting upon the threshold. The scent of myrrh signals anointed attention, an elevated quality of feeling that consecrates the contact. Small acts of inward refinement — attention, tenderness, intentional feeling — lubricate the lock of resistance.

Yet the drama turns: the narrator arises to open, and the hands drop myrrh upon the handles, but when the door opens, the beloved has withdrawn. This painful retreat is a natural psychological pattern. When desire moves from yearning into anxious striving, or when the small self seeks to seize the experience instead of embodying the feeling, the living presence slips into the silence. In inner work terms, this is the moment when trying to force the presence produces absence. The beloved's withdrawal is not punishment; it is the pattern of spirit retreating from grasping. The soul fails, she seeks and cannot find; she calls and receives no answer. These are the words of the self that has mistaken excitement for union and so has missed the very state it sought.

The public humiliation follows: watchmen of the city find her, they smite and wound, the keepers of the walls take away her veil. The watchmen and keepers represent interiorized social rules, critical voices, and the defensive structures of the ego that police conduct and meaning. When the inner self exposes longing in an unguarded way, these guardians of reputation react — shame, injury, and the stripping of disguise. The veil is a symbolic defense that hides vulnerability. When it is taken, the psyche feels exposed. This portion of the drama shows how inner failure to sustain the species of attention that invited presence leads to outer consequences: ridicule, inner self-judgment, and the sense of loss of dignity.

The speaker then confides to the daughters of Jerusalem — to the witnesses of the collective within — 'tell him, that I am sick of love.' Here the pleading reveals yearning as the formative force. The phrase sick of love names a passion so dominant it becomes illness; it is the condition of appetite that drives the seeker to seek. Psychologically it is the fuel for transformation: intense desire destabilizes the old patterns and forces a reconfiguration. Desire is not a moral failing; architecturally it is the motive force that can break hardened defenses.

When the chapter asks 'what is thy beloved more than another beloved' and goes on to describe him, the answer comes in symbolic stock: whiteness and ruddy balance, head as fine gold, locks black as raven, eyes like doves, cheeks like beds of spices, lips dropping myrrh, hands like gold rings set with beryl, belly as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires, legs as pillars of marble on sockets of fine gold, countenance as Lebanon. This is not a literal portrait but a catalogue of psychological qualities. The beloved is the integrated imagination: pure (white), vitalized (ruddy), wise and exalted (golden head), mysterious and fertile (black locks), peaceful perception (eyes of doves), sweet expression (lips with myrrh), skillful agency (hands with rings), deep resource and clarity (ivory and sapphires), sturdy moral posture (pillars), and majestic presence (Lebanon cedars). The beloved embodies the higher state of consciousness that balances opposites and delights in harmonious beauty.

Interpreting this practically, the beloved is the idealized self that functions as attractor. When one assumes that inner state — when imagination inhabits the qualities named — the outer life reflects it. The Song teaches that the beloved is 'chiefest among ten thousand' because an integrated imaginative state surpasses ordinary preferences and distractions. This is the law of selection: the field of consciousness magnifies the state to the extent one occupies it.

The momentum of the chapter reveals two operative creative principles. First, the inner world acts as cause; attention, feeling, and imagination form the outer narrative. The garden feast results from inward savoring; the knock and the withdrawal are consequences of inward receptivity and tension. Second, timing and manner matter: presence cannot be hauled by force. When the seeker moves with open, fragrant-handed receptivity, the beloved arrives. When the seeker moves with alarmed grasping, the beloved withdraws and the watchmen judge. In practice this teaches a way to align feeling and imagination: cultivate the garden (taste the inner delights), abide in the half-sleep where heart waketh (sustain the feeling-state), and meet the knock with soft, anointed hands (respond without grasping).

The episode of being wounded and stripped is also an invitation to understanding vulnerability as a purification process. The keepers' removal of the veil exposes the seeker to the raw interior, and this exposure, though painful, clears defenses that obstruct union. The sickness of love that follows is the solvent of the old identity. In other words, falling apart is sometimes necessary for re-formation. The lover's perfect description at the end offers the map toward reconstitution: to recover the beloved is to reinhabit the qualities listed.

Finally, the chapter instructs on the creative discipline: imagination must be embodied with feeling. It is not mere colorless fantasy but the charged assumption of being already in the desired relation. The hands dropping myrrh onto the lock suggest a small rite: consecrate the moment of contact. A concentrated, fragrant assumption of the beloveds qualities opens the door. If absence becomes the object of attention, it will replicate. If presence is assumed inwardly with sensory detail and feeling, reality answers in kind.

Read as biblical psychology, Song of Solomon 5 becomes a manual for the inner craft. The garden is the workshop; the knock is the summons; the withdrawal and wounding are corrective chastening; the beloved's portrait is the blueprint. The creative power at work is the imagination, driven by feeling and sustained attention. By tending the garden, refining the hands that touch the lock, refusing the panic of grasping, and persisting in the embodied assumption of the beloved, one engineers a transformation of consciousness that manifests as renewed union, dignity, and the radiant qualities catalogued in the song. The poem ends not with despair but with the recognition of what is to be made: a self fashioned by inner taste, longing, and imaginative fidelity.

Common Questions About Song Of Solomon 5

What is the meaning of Song of Solomon 5 in Neville Goddard's teachings?

In Neville Goddard's teaching the scene in Song of Solomon 5 becomes an inner drama of awakening and neglected assumption where the beloved represents the living power within and the bride the individual's consciousness that sleeps yet wakes at the voice of desire; the knocking and opening are the imaginative acts that admit the creative state, while the beloved's withdrawal shows how quickly a realized feeling can vanish when the assumed state is not sustained. Read as instruction, the chapter teaches that to have and keep your beloved you must persistently assume the state already desired, for manifestation is the result of continued inward acceptance (Song of Solomon 5).

How can Song of Solomon 5 be used as a guide to manifestation and imaginative prayer?

Use Song of Solomon 5 as a blueprint: enter the secluded chamber of imagination, hear the knock of your desire, and answer by assuming the fulfilled state; imagine the textures and scents—myrrh, honey, wine—as sensory confirmations of the desired reality. If the beloved withdraws, recognize that doubt or divided attention has prevailed and return immediately to the scene, rehearsing it until the feeling is real. Treat each episode as a revision exercise where the watchmen are resistances to be calmly overcome by re-embodying the inner conviction that the wish is already accomplished (Song of Solomon 5).

Are there Neville Goddard lectures, transcripts, or PDFs that explain Song of Solomon 5?

Yes; Neville gave many Bible lessons that interpret the Song of Solomon as allegory of inner states, and you will find recorded lectures, transcribed talks, and PDFs in various archives and collections devoted to his work. Look for recordings labeled as Bible studies on the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon and for published compilations of his lectures; prefer sources that reproduce his words accurately so you can practice the techniques he taught. Use those resources to learn the methods of assumption and imagining, then apply them privately to the scene in Song of Solomon 5 for direct experiential confirmation.

How do I practice Neville-style revision or imagining using imagery from Song of Solomon 5?

Begin by selecting a moment you wish to change and lie quietly in the evening or just before sleep; imagine the scene in Song of Solomon 5 where the beloved knocks and you open, making it sensory—feel the myrrh on your hands, the warmth of honey, the sound of the voice—and replay the moment until the feeling of fulfillment saturates your awareness. If waking events contradict your wish, use revision: mentally rewrite the day so the beloved stayed, or the desired outcome occurred, and end in the feeling state. Repeat nightly with persistence, dismissing watchmen of doubt by simply returning to the chosen inner scene (Song of Solomon 5).

What do the bride and beloved represent in Song of Solomon 5 from a consciousness perspective?

From a consciousness perspective the bride is your personal awareness, which at times 'sleeps' in ordinary belief but is capable of waking to recognize the creative presence; the beloved is the Imagination or Christ within—the active I AM that when embraced brings form into being. Their intercourse is union of feeling with the inner word; their separation is loss of assumed feeling. The drama teaches that your outer life reflects whether you entertain the beloved within your mind; to see change, cultivate the bride's readiness to open and cherish the beloved's presence until the desired state is fully lived (Song of Solomon 5).