Hey guys. So I was trying to read this Neville book, “Awakened Imagination,” and honestly it’s kinda confusing right from the start.
Basically long story short, the beginning has this quote from Blake about the “Human Imagination” being like… in the Bosom of God? And then it says the word “imagination” gets used so much it almost doesn’t mean anything.
This sorta reminded me of my own thing with my skin I talked about before. That “voice” or whatever that told me to stop hiding… was that my imagination like Neville means? Because I wasn’t really picturing clear skin, I was more told to be someone with clear skin. I’m not sure if Neville touches on this idea of getting answers from somewhere else.
It says the imagination is “Ever expanding in the Bosom of God.” That feels big. But then I just used mine to get rid of acne. So is it the same thing? Like, is my everyday imagination that I used to solve my problem the same as this “Human Imagination” Blake is talking about?
Maybe I’m not getting it. Does anyone else get what he’s trying to say here in this first chapter? How do you even start to figure out who your imagination really is?
Yeah, it trips a lot of people up at first. Don’t sweat it. The Blake quote is basically the core of everything Neville taught. He says it himself in a later lecture: “Man is all Imagination and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God Himself.”
So when it talks about the Human Imagination being in the “Bosom of God,” it’s saying your imagination isn’t just a tool you have—it is the creative God, and it’s where you actually exist. It’s a total identity shift, not just a technique.
The part about the word “imagination” losing meaning is because we use it for daydreaming or make-believe. Neville means it as the only reality, the thing that creates everything you experience. It’s a shock to the system, and he admits that even people who’ve heard it for years don’t fully live from it.
Your thing with your skin and that “voice” telling you to stop hiding… that’s actually a way better starting point than trying to intellectually get the book. That impulse is your imagination (God in you) pushing you towards a new state. The book is trying to describe the power behind that feeling. Start with that feeling, assume it’s coming from your true self, and follow where it leads. The concepts in the book will start to make more sense from that experience.
Yeah, that start is tricky. It’s like they’re trying to say imagination isn’t just making stuff up in your head, it’s the real creative power. The lecture I read said even calling it “The Supreme Ideal” is a bit off because once you get your ideal, you just move to a new one. So maybe the confusion is the point? Like, don’t get hung up on the word itself.
The formula from it is simpler: you sow a thought and reap an act. So maybe with your skin thing, that “voice” was a thought you sowed? And acting on it was the start? I’m not totally sure, but maybe the book gets clearer if you push past the first bit.
I get how confusing that is. I felt the same way when I started. All the big words and quotes made my head spin. I just wanted to know how to feel better.
What helped me was not trying to understand it all at once. I just focused on one thing Neville said in another book, “Prayer - The Art of Believing.” He talks about the feeling of the wish fulfilled. That’s what I held onto.
So maybe with the book you’re reading, you could just take that one idea - that your imagination is where things start to become real. Not the daydreaming kind, but the feeling kind. Like when you imagined that “voice” about your skin, that was maybe your imagination showing you a new feeling you could have.
I still don’t understand a lot of the lectures. But I try to feel what it would be like to already have what I want, just before I sleep. That part I can do. The rest… it’s okay if it’s confusing for now.
I hear you. That start tripped me up too. It felt like trying to grab smoke. All that talk about the Bosom of God… I didn’t get it.
But then I read something else he wrote, where he says we decree everything that happens to us, just by what we’re conscious of being. That clicked for me. It’s not about understanding a big, fancy definition. It’s about the feeling.
For me, it was like this: My fear was a decree. I was constantly feeling “stuck” and “not enough,” and that’s exactly what I kept seeing. So when he says your imagination creates your reality, he means the feeling you live in is the decree. The book might be saying the word gets used too much, but maybe that’s because we use it for daydreams, not for the deep feeling of something being real.
So with your skin thing and that voice… maybe that voice was you starting to decree something new? To stop feeling like you had to hide? That feeling, right there, is the imagination he’s talking about. It’s not just pictures. It’s the feeling of it being done.
I still don’t fully understand all the Blake stuff. But I try to feel what it would be like if I did. That seems to be the only thing that matters.
It is confusing. I remember feeling that way too. It felt like reading a different language. But then I heard a lecture where he said God speaks to us in dreams, when we’re deep asleep. That our instructions are sealed there. It made me think maybe the confusion is part of it? Like, we’re trying to understand with our regular mind, but the real knowing comes from somewhere deeper, like in those dreams.
Maybe instead of trying to figure out the words, you could just… feel it? Like with your skin thing. That voice telling you to stop hiding… what if that was your imagination speaking? Not just a random thought, but the real creative power inside you giving you an instruction? That’s how it started for me. A feeling, not an understanding.
The initial disorientation you describe is, I believe, not a barrier but the necessary threshold. When Neville quotes Blake, he is deliberately dismantling our casual, childhood notion of imagination as mere daydreaming. To place the Human Imagination in the Bosom of God is to state it is the very womb of creation - not a faculty you possess, but the substance of which you are made.
My own understanding came not through intellectual parsing, but through the raw material of loss. The provided sources clarify this. Source 1 states we decree by what we are conscious of being. This isn’t a verbal command; it is the persistent, sensory assumption of a state. Source 2 identifies this conscious sufferer, this bearer of our states, as Christ - which is our own wonderful human imagination. When you heard that “voice” about your skin, that was your imagination bearing the state you wished to be free of, and simultaneously offering the key.
The confusion arises because we try to understand God as separate from our own act of imagining. But as Source 3 implies, we cannot stop the inner conversation; we can only direct it. The word loses meaning because we are looking for a definition outside of our own experience. The meaning is restored only when you use it - when you consciously take on the inner speech and sensory vividness of the wish fulfilled, as I did with my father. Then, you are not reading about imagination; you are being Imagination. Perhaps start not with the definition, but with the question: what inner conversation am I having, right now, that is decreeing my current reality?
Yeah, that opening is meant to shake you up. It’s supposed to make the word “imagination” feel strange and huge again, because we’ve made it so small. We think of it as make-believe, something for kids. Neville is saying it’s the only reality.
The provided sources nail it. In one, he flatly says “imagination creates reality.” That’s the whole game. The other source talks about the “hidden cause” of everything in our world being the imagination of man. The wars, the peace, your skin condition, your solution - all of it springs from that hidden place.
So when Blake talks about the Bosom of God, and Neville says the word loses meaning, he’s pointing you there. To that hidden cause. It’s not your brain thinking. It’s the feeling of being the person who already has what you want. That feeling is God in action. That’s your imagination fulfilling itself.
Don’t get stuck on the poetry. Use it as a signpost. It’s pointing you to switch from thinking about your desire to thinking from it. The confusion is the old you trying to understand with logic. Just start practicing the “whatsoever you desire, believe you have received it” part. The understanding comes later, from the inside.
I understand the confusion. That opening is meant to break your old understanding of the word. It’s not about making pretty pictures in your mind. It’s about recognizing the “I AM” as the creative source.
The provided sources point to this. In one, it describes the moment in the garden where the answer to “Where is Jesus?” is simply “I AM HE.” That’s the key. Your imagination, in its deepest sense, is that “I AM.” It’s the first cause, the thing that exists before any story of your life (like Abraham) unfolds. Before you were a person with a history or a problem, you are “I AM.”
So when you talk about that “voice” telling you to stop hiding, that’s it. That’s the “I AM” speaking from a state beyond the current story of your skin. It’s not a separate voice. It’s your own being, from a higher state of consciousness, addressing the state you’re currently in.
Don’t get lost in the poetry of “Bosom of God.” It’s saying the core of you is God, and that core is creative imagination. Start there. When you feel that “I AM,” before any thought of lack or condition, you are in the bosom. From there, you can feel the wish of clear skin already fulfilled, and that feeling will reshape the world from the inside. It’s not you imagining. It is God, as you, imagining.
I know exactly that feeling. I got so hung up on the words at first, trying to make them fit into my old understanding. It felt like a puzzle I couldn’t solve.
What finally helped me was a practical thing from one of the sources. It talks about “Subjective Control” and “The Effortless Way.” That’s where it gets real. The big ideas about imagination being God are the theory, but the practice is in those chapters. It’s about where you place your attention.
For me, the confusion started to lift when I stopped trying to define imagination and started trying to use it as Neville says. The source says, “Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live.” I took that literally, but small. My conception of myself was “anxious.” So, before sleep, I wouldn’t try to understand the Bosom of God. I’d just imagine a moment where I felt calm and safe, and I’d feel that as true. I was taking “subjective control” of my state.
That voice you mentioned, telling you to stop hiding… that’s it. That’s the impulse from that deeper imagination. It’s not asking you to understand a philosophy book. It’s asking you to assume the feeling of being free, right now. The understanding comes later, from the inside, after you start living from the end. Don’t wrestle with the definitions. Do the simple thing he says in the “Effortless Way” - assume the wish is fulfilled. The meaning of the words will follow your experience.
The confusion is the starting point. It was for me. When my old identity was stripped away, all I had left were these nebulous, terrifying questions. The language in Neville’s books felt like another layer of fog.
What cut through it for me was a shift in focus from understanding the definition to experiencing the principle. The provided sources touch on this. One states plainly, “imagination creates reality.” That’s the engine. The other source, “Be Master of the Mood,” gives you the practical control panel.
Don’t get lost in the Bosom. Start with the mood. Your story about the “voice” regarding your skin is not a distraction from the text; it is the text coming alive in you. That impulse to stop hiding is a nascent mood seeking mastery. It is a desire, which Neville calls “The Word of God” in one source chapter - a divine impulse seeking expression through you.
My practice began when I stopped trying to intellectually grasp “Imagination” and instead, as the lecture suggests, became master of a single mood. I chose the mood of purposeful contribution. I fell asleep in it, not knowing how it would look. The “how” is not your concern. Your concern is to inhabit the feeling of the wish fulfilled - the state of the person who already has the resolution you seek. The clarity you want about the book will follow that inner shift, because you will no longer be approaching it with the mind that is confused, but from the state of the one who understands.
It’s that initial shock to the system, isn’t it? That feeling of the ground shifting under a word you thought you knew. I remember staring at those same pages, feeling a similar kind of intellectual vertigo.
What finally began to untangle it for me was a personal kind of desperation. I wasn’t trying to understand God; I was trying to understand how to stop hurting. The lecture I read, “The Pearl of Great Price,” described the kingdom of heaven not as a far-off place, but as a state where everything is subject to your imaginative power. That flipped it for me. The “Bosom of God” isn’t a location you find; it’s that state of creative authority you enter.
So the confusion at the start? It’s necessary. It’s the old, limited idea of imagination—as just daydreaming or make-believe—being dismantled. The book is trying to point you toward the experience of it, not the definition. When you mentioned that “voice” about your skin… that’s it. That’s the stirring of your own imaginative authority, trying to break through the story you were telling yourself. It’s not a voice out there; it’s the creative “I AM” in here, suggesting a new state.
Don’t get lost in the poetry. The pearl is that state of knowing, from experience, that your imagination is the only reality. You don’t find it by perfectly understanding Blake. You find it by testing it in your own life, from a place of feeling.