In Ezekiel 9, the prophet sees a striking vision: a man clothed in linen, equipped with a writing kit, is commanded by God to go through Jerusalem and place a mark on the foreheads of those who “sigh and cry” over the abominations committed within the city. Those without the mark are handed over to destruction.
When interpreted through the teachings of Neville Goddard, this passage sheds its historical weight and becomes a deeply psychological drama—a reflection of the awakening of the individual soul from material consciousness to divine imagination.
Jerusalem as the Mind
For Neville, Jerusalem symbolises the mind or consciousness—not a city of stone, but the inner world of man. The abominations happening within are symbolic of corrupt states of thought: fear, lack, dependency on the outer world, and forgetfulness of the creative power within.
Those who “sigh and cry” are not external mourners, but inner aspects of the self that long for spiritual alignment, that begin to sense something is wrong with the way reality is being created.
The Scribe in Linen: The Law of Assumption
The man clothed in linen, with the inkhorn at his side, is not a mere angelic being, but the law of assumption itself. He symbolises the moment in the psyche when one begins to live deliberately—where imagination is no longer suppressed, but remembered.
To be marked on the forehead is to have your thinking changed. The forehead, in symbolic language, is always associated with thought. The mark is not physical—it is a transformation of consciousness. It represents the beginning of a new awareness: a mind shifting from reaction to creation.
The Hebrew Word for Sin: “To Miss the Mark”
The symbolism deepens when we consider that in Hebrew, the word for sin is "chata’" (חָטָא)—which literally means “to miss the mark.”
This re-frames the idea of sin not as moral failure, but as a failure to recognise and use the imagination rightly. To sin is to forget the power of the inner world—to identify instead with outer circumstances, with Cain, and not with Abel.
In this light, the mark on the forehead given in Ezekiel 9 is the opposite of sin. It is a correction of vision—an inner alignment that sets the individual back on course toward imagination, intention, and divine awareness.
The Death of the Unmarked: Shedding False States
Those who are not marked are destroyed—not as an act of vengeance, but symbolically, as a purging of false states of consciousness. These are the dead aspects of the mind—the mechanical, ego-driven patterns that no longer serve the evolving soul.
As Neville would say, only the states die—not the individual. The destruction in Ezekiel 9 is the burning away of unawakened thought. It is the beginning of the resurrection of imagination.
The Mark and Cain: A Conscious Parallel
This symbolism of the mark echoes the story of Cain and Abel. After Cain kills Abel (a symbolic death of the imagination), he is marked by the Lord—not as punishment, but as a sign of his consciousness, now fallen and identified with the outer world.
Both Cain and the unmarked in Ezekiel represent states of man who are unaware of the inner creative power. But the mark on the forehead in Ezekiel is a sign of awakening—a sign that the inner man is beginning to turn inward, to “hit the mark” once again, through conscious use of imagination.
Conclusion: The Inner Mark of Awakening
The mark in Ezekiel 9 is not about outward religion or divine wrath. It is a spiritual symbol of a mind beginning to remember itself—a consciousness shifting from separation to unity, from sin (missing the mark) to vision (hitting it).
To be marked is to begin the journey back to Christ consciousness, to the inner alignment Neville called “living in the end”—dwelling in the assumption of the wish fulfilled.
This mark is given when you “sigh and cry”—when the soul recognises its own fall, not in guilt, but in yearning to return to the truth:
“I AM the beginning and the end.”
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