The Praying Woman State

Neville's Inner Vision

To read this moment through Neville's lens is to hear a whisper of the I AM within Hannah. She does not beg a distant God; she asserts the living soul within, and by saying 'as thy soul liveth' she anchors her petition in the fact that her awareness cannot die. The praying self is identified—she proclaims herself as the woman who stood by the altar of her heart, praying unto the LORD—and in that declaration she has already claimed the response in the one Mind. In Neville's psychology, places and people are symbols of inner states; the 'Lord' before whom she stands is the function of awareness that attends every petition. Her steadfast identification with the prayer reveals that faith is not an outpost of hope but a state of consciousness you assume and remain in until it expresses. The inner movement of desire becomes an outer circumstance only when you consistently inhabit the state that granted it in imagination.