“To the woman he said,
I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth;
in sorrow you shall bring forth children.
Yet your desire shall be for* your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
— Genesis 3:16
This verse is traditionally read as a punishment—a divine sentence passed upon Eve for her disobedience. But when read symbolically, as Neville Goddard encouraged, Genesis 3:16 is not about gender or divine wrath. It is a deeply encoded message about the sorrowful beauty of transformation, of imagination moving through resistance to bring forth new realities.
Let’s unfold it.
Pain in Childbirth: The Strain of Shifting Identity
Neville taught that every passage of Scripture speaks to the inner psychological journey of awakening. Childbirth, in this context, symbolises the emergence of a new state of being. When you adopt a new assumption—“I am wealthy,” “I am healed,” “I am free”—you are impregnating your subconscious with a new self-concept. But this is not an instant or effortless transition.
As Genesis says, “in sorrow you shall bring forth children.” This is not sorrow as punishment, but as process. Neville often reminded us that old beliefs do not release their grip easily. To leave behind an identity of lack or fear is to undergo the inner equivalent of labour pains. The old must break apart. The new must be pushed through limitation and resistance. It hurts not because something is wrong, but because something new is being born.
Even Rachel, whose name means “ewe” (a gentle, yielding creature), died giving birth to Benjamin. She named him Ben-Oni—"son of my sorrow"—just before her death. Jacob renamed him Benjamin—“son of the right hand,” or son of power. Here again we see it: transformation costs us. The old self—represented by Rachel—dies in the process of bringing forth a new state. But what comes forth is no longer sorrow, but strength. The child of pain becomes the child of power.
The Woman as Imagination, the Child as Manifestation
In Neville’s framework, the “woman” in Scripture often symbolises the creative faculty of the imagination—the womb of manifestation. She conceives ideas and brings them forth into form. But just like physical childbirth, this inner work is accompanied by effort, sorrow, and delay.
When Genesis speaks of the woman bringing forth children in sorrow, it speaks to the very act of imagination in its fallen state—when it is not yet fully aligned with the divine “I AM.” Until you understand that your own awareness is God, every attempt to create through imagination is mixed with confusion, effort, and waiting. You imagine, but you doubt. You affirm, but you fear. This tension is the birth canal.
Rachel’s death in labour is not literal, but symbolic: the struggle of identity that comes with birthing a new state. A dying attachment to the old, to what we’ve loved or clung to, gives way to the power of the new. The imagination surrenders its old form to bring forth a new reality. Pain marks the threshold.
“Your Desire Shall Be for Your Husband”
This line, often interpreted as submission, has a much deeper symbolic meaning. In Neville’s language, “husband” represents your conscious intention—the active direction of awareness. The woman’s “desire” for her husband is the longing of imagination to unite with the conscious assumption of “I AM.” Imagination longs for direction, for fertilisation by a definite concept of self.
Without the clarity of belief—without the masculine act of assuming a state—imagination remains in longing. It is open, but unfocused. Only when the masculine and feminine aspects of consciousness unite (intention and imagination) can the Word be made flesh.
“He Will Rule Over You”: The Mastery of Conscious Assumption
This isn’t a declaration of hierarchy between people. It is a description of inner structure. The imagination—the womb of creation—does not act on its own. It is ruled by the direction of your self-awareness. As Neville taught,
“Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in Him.”
The “ruling” here is not domination, but alignment. Your world reflects whatever concept of self you consciously adopt. The imagination, once aligned with that concept, brings it into being.
Birth Is Not a Curse, but a Covenant
Genesis 3:16 is not a condemnation of womanhood. It is a poetic description of the drama every soul undergoes on the path to awakening. The pain is real, but purposeful.
The sorrow is not rejection—it is the shadow of glory not yet realised.
You are the woman.
Your imagination is the womb.
Your concept of self is the husband.
And every change you long for must pass through the same birth canal: sorrow, resistance, persistence—until it emerges as form.
Neville put it plainly:
“All things are possible to him who believes.”
But he never said birth would be painless.
*For some reason the ESV translation changed the meaning here to contrary, which is out of line with the biblical narrative.
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