Neville Goddard on John 16:20-22 - Mystical Bible Interpretation

Read John 16 in context

Scripture Focus

20Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

21A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

22And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

John 16:20-22

Biblical Context

Jesus tells his followers that their sorrow will turn into joy when he returns; the passage uses birth imagery to show that pain gives way to the joy of new life.

Neville's Inner Vision

From the Neville lens, the sorrow spoken of is not a fact pressed upon you from without but a state you harbor in mind. The world’s rejoicing appears as an outer drama, while your heart remains in the contraction that precedes delivery. The cry of lament is simply an old imagination clinging to lack; the promise is that a new state awaits, born not of time but of consciousness. When you refuse the outer story and assume the end-state you desire, you align with the moment of delivery where joy is already present. Your I AM, the awareness that you are, does not weep for the past but awakens to the truth that the child of joy has already come into your life as sensation, memory, and belief. The verse invites you to dwell in the feeling of completion tonight, to envision the reunion and the assured joy that no man can take away. In this inner birth, sorrow loosens its grip as you persist in the imagination of fullness, until your present experience echoes the fulfilled state.

Practice This Now

Imaginative Act: Assume the joyful state now. Sit in quiet awareness, repeat I am joy returning, feel the inner reunion as sorrow yields to a delivered happiness.