"I am not able to do anything of myself: as the voice comes to me, so I give a decision: and my decision is right, because I have no desire to do what is pleasing to myself, but only what is pleasing to him who sent me." — John 5:30
This verse reveals a foundational truth of spiritual consciousness and manifestation. It is not a confession of weakness—it is a statement of divine alignment. “I am not able to do anything of myself” is not the voice of powerlessness, but the recognition that the outer man—the ego, the reactive self—has no creative power on its own. It is a yielding to the inner source, the Father within, which Neville Goddard often describes as your own wonderful human imagination.
“As the voice comes to me, so I give a decision” illustrates that creation begins with inner hearing—what is accepted and assumed within. We do not create by effort but by surrendering to the assumption that something already is. The world judges by our outer actions, but the inner world hears our every claim and brings it to birth. “My decision is right” because the law responds not to emotion or striving, but to what is truly believed within.
The final line—“I have no desire to do what is pleasing to myself, but only what is pleasing to him who sent me”—is a symbolic death of the ego, the old habitual self. It is the surrender of Cain (outer man) to Abel (inner man), of Saul to David, of your reactive state to your prototype. It is no longer what do I want? but what am I embodying? When the Bible says, “the one who sent me,” it is not describing two separate beings. Rather, it expresses the perspective of human consciousness, which experiences imagination as something outside itself until it is fully recognised and embodied. The “one who sent me” is your I AM—your true identity, forever sourcing life through imagination. It may at first seem like two separate entities, for this is how imagination appears to the unawakened mind—until it is deliberately set in motion.
This is not a surrender to an external god, nor to fate or circumstance—it is a surrender to the imagination itself. That same imagination is the centre of your being. It is the Father within. It is the awareness of being that declares the end from the beginning. When you stop reacting to what appears, and instead abide in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are doing the will of the one who sent you—your own I AM.
In symbolic terms:
- It is Saul (the old reactive state) stepping aside for David (the anointed imagination).
- It is Cain (outer effort) yielding to Abel (inward knowing).
- It is the ego letting go, so that the true “I AM” may act.
This is the just judgment—because it is not based on appearances, but on inner knowing. It is not ambition, but assumption. Not striving, but surrender.