Praise: Raised and Sustained Assumption

“If you do well, will you not be lifted up?” — Genesis 4:7

The early chapters of Genesis are not about two brothers in a field. They’re about you — and what you offer to yourself each moment in imagination. One state of mind is Abel: quiet, assumptive, faithful. The other is Cain: angry, cynical, brooding — convinced that life has wronged him, that others are chosen, that he is overlooked. But the truth is Cain doesn’t understand the law.

What law? That your inner assumptions create your world.

In Genesis 4:6–7, Cain is depressed, his face fallen. Why? Because his offering is not accepted. But God says something astonishing: “If you do well, will you not be lifted up?” In other words: if you assume rightly — if you bring the right offering — your inner state will be exalted. It is not the world punishing Cain. It is Cain refusing to rise.

Anger, sulking, jealousy — these are the signs of an unoffered self. They are the emotional residue of someone still worshipping the facts of life rather than their divine power to change them.

This isn’t about giving God a better gift. It’s about treating your own imagination as God.

To praise isn’t to flatter some external deity. Praise means to raise — to elevate your assumption of self. It means stopping the mental habit of defeat, bitterness, and passive resentment and choosing instead to cleave to the vision of who you truly desire to be.

As Genesis 2:24 says:

“For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife…”

The 'father and mother' are the psychological patterns you were raised with — the stories, limits, and emotional grooves you inherited. To praise is to leave those familiar, inherited assumptions and cleave instead to your desired identity — your ‘wife’. That act of cleaving is a form of praise. You lift your inner conversation, you turn from complaint, you offer up your mind to its highest assumption.

Neville wrote: “Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” But many Cain-states would rather assume rejection, pity, and injustice — not realising this is the only thing being “offered.” Not a lamb. Not grain. Just the state. And the state determines the outcome.

“And if you do not do well, sin is waiting at the door, desiring you…” — Genesis 4:7

Sin here is not moral failure. It’s missing the mark of assumption. You haven’t imagined well — you’ve imagined poorly of yourself. You have offered up a low state. And that state rules over you until you lift your eyes and choose again.

Praise, then, is not a performance. It is an inner act of devotion to your higher self — the one you choose to be. When you refuse to dwell in the Cain-state, you are praising. When you walk away from the passive inner accusations and step into the bold feeling of “I AM,” you are praising.

The Messiah came through Judah — the name meaning praise. Why? Because the power to transform begins not in the evidence, but in the assumption that dares to believe in its own divinity.