Inner Thorn, Inner Grace

Neville's Inner Vision

Paul’s appeal in this verse is not a biography of a man begging God for a change in circumstance, but a disclosure of the inner process by which a belief is shifted. He prays to the 'Lord' thrice because he has not yet realized the one place in him where change is born: the I AM, the immutable awareness in which all things unfold. The thorn represents a persistent sense of limitation visible in his outer life; the prayers are attempts to bend reality to his desire. Neville would say the real issue is not the thing itself, but the state of consciousness that projects and sustains it. When you persist in prayer, you are rehearsing a more powerful assumption. God’s reply—though spoken in the silence of the heart—invites a revision: not the removal of the condition, but the awakening to grace that is already present. By resting in the realization of your I AM, the mind transcends the need to alter appearances and discovers that power is not in asking but in becoming the state that makes it so.