The Pearl and the Camel

Jesus gave two teachings that, when read symbolically, speak directly to the spiritual cost of discovering the true creative power within: imagination.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
(Matthew 19:24)

“The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
(Matthew 13:45–46)

The first is a picture of inability: the rich man cannot enter. The second is a picture of success: the merchant does enter—but only by selling everything.

The Bible isn't simply warning about wealth or greed. It’s pointing to something deeper. The "rich man" is anyone who is full of external dependencies: knowledge, reputation, traditions, religious practice, identity, logic. These things weigh down the camel. They bulk up the self. And that self is too wide to pass through the eye of the needle.

The “eye of the needle” is the symbolic entry point into a new mode of being—one where imagination is your only foundation. To enter that space, you must be empty. You must go inward without baggage. And most people won’t. They would rather walk away sad, like the rich man, than give up the outer scaffolding they’ve relied on.

The merchant who finds the pearl does what the rich man could not: he gives it all up.

The “pearl of great price” symbolises the discovery of imagination as the true power of creation. This isn’t a mental technique—it’s the awareness that imagining is the source of everything seen. To accept that, to really live by it, you have to give up all your second-hand truths. You stop trying to please the outer world. You stop looking to ritual, culture, or even logic to tell you what is possible.

You sell all you had. You buy the pearl.

This moment of inner transformation is echoed all the way back in Genesis:

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
(Genesis 2:24)

This verse, though often read literally, is rich in symbolism. To “leave father and mother” is to break away from inherited structures—the things you’ve been taught to believe by tradition and upbringing. It is to leave the old ways of understanding God, the world, and yourself. And to “cleave to the wife” is to unite with the inner creative power, your imagination. That union—when imagination is trusted and impregnates the subconscious with assumption—produces one flesh: reality made manifest.

The rich man cannot do this. He is still joined to father and mother. Still bound to law and lineage, external order and inherited understanding. The merchant has already left all that behind. His union is internal. He has become one with the power within himself.

This is the price of the pearl: you must let go of everything you thought you knew.

You must stop leaning on the outer world as if it were cause. You must stop looking to others to define truth. You must become poor in spirit—stripped of outer props—and pass through the needle’s eye.

Then, and only then, do you possess the one thing worth having.