"Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (Genesis 1: 26, New King James Bible). "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;" (Psalm 8: 3-6, New King James Bible). "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace." (Romans 6: 14, New King James Bible).
In a material existence that seems out of intelligent control most of the time, dominion seems like a concept unrelated to humanity. "Where is my dominion over anything in this world that I have to live in?" we may ask ourselves. Indeed, what is the meaning of 'dominion' as referred to in some biblical writings, such as those at the top of this article? According to a 1969 copy of Webster's New Students Dictionary (G. & C. Merriam Co.) one definition of 'dominion' is: "Supreme Authority: Sovereignty." Thus, using this simple definition, (and according to religious writings on dominion) we each have supreme authority (or sovereignty) over many things in God's creation, despite what appears to be our lack of control over anything. We must have an inheritance we don't understand. So, to approach the real significance of dominion, in order to find our own relationship to it, it helps to remember something Christ Jesus once said concerning God. He stated, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."(John 4:24, King James Version). Thus, since God is a Spirit (not a finite, material being) we might turn our gaze away from the material realm to the spiritual realm to uncover what dominion really means; for, dominion belongs to us, as an everlasting condition, and by perceiving its deeper, more spiritual meaning is of vast importance to each of us, right here in this material experience. We can start from the beginning of human history, where the concept of dominion entered the picture when God gave dominion, as a gift, to humanity. Spiritually speaking, we don't and can't earn it, because it already belongs to each of us through our Sonship and Daughtership to God; therefore, our quest is not the pursuit of a fantasy. It is the uncovering of the spiritual truth of our divine circumstances as children of God, rather than children of men. Dominion is granted to us, to administer, as we come into the knowledge that God, Spirit, is our only Source and Origin—our only true Father and Mother (having both male and female qualities). It becomes clearer as we turn our thoughts away from materiality (fleshly lineage) and its many evils that seem to belong to us as children of the flesh, and begin to realize that our true identity is spiritual in body, soul and mind—rather than physical. Thus, dominion, and the authority it gives to us, is not something we must strive to attain. It is the natural and ultimate state of our being, established by the Creator since the beginning of creation—and whatever dominion spiritually means, each of us has been endowed with it, without any effort of our own. So, we must learn of it, in order to activate it in our human life experience. Paul the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." (I Corinthians 15: Verses 44 (2nd part) and 45). These two views of 'body' show the difference between the seeming fleshly identity of so-called mortals, and the spiritual identity of immortals. One is clearly finite and the other is infinite. Viewing identity from a spiritual perspective brings into consciousness the spiritual identity of mankind, the Christ identity of being, which Jesus personified. In his ministry of healing the sick and sinning humans who came to him for deliverance from their fleshly ills, he showed that evil never belongs to any of God's children, no matter how many material 'conditions' claimed to have dominion over people. Instead, Jesus knew that beneath the material illusion of being was always hiding a child of infinite Spirit—God. Christ Jesus was our spiritual brother, showing us our real and true Selves, our Christ Selves—although we didn't remember such identities, nor did humanity grasp the kingdom of God that is ever-present with us. Mentally sleeping in the belief of materiality (the Adam dream) we don't perceive the true reality of ourselves or the spiritual creation of God's making, because the five physical senses don't perceive anything that can't be seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled with the finite physical senses. Yet, spiritual sense can always detect the invisible realm of God's eternal health and harmony, and this realization in consciousness causes the falsities of the flesh to disappear in what is called 'healing.' And this is where dominion comes into being. When we turn away from the false identity to our true, realization of spiritual identity, we find that we are God's spiritual, everlasting children, which even physical death does not touch. Our body substance is not the flesh; our substance is actually spiritual. Our woes in this human experience are all a case of mistaken identity. In God's spiritual creation, we each have dominion over the beliefs of the flesh, and all their conditions. Life is everlasting; therefore, health is everlasting. But the everlastingness is in Spirit…not matter. Our false belief in a fleshly identity hides from us our truer identity of body, soul and mind in Spirit. Then (to bless us the way God intended dominion to do) spiritual realization delivers us from all the evils with which this material experience seems to afflict us. Here's an illustration from an old children's story that clarifies what I mean: A queen gave birth to twin boys. One twin was stolen away by a maid at the castle and the other twin was left alone to become the prince of the land. The stolen baby grew up, in poverty and abuse, and became a young man of the streets, stealing and doing whatever was necessary to survive on these 'mean streets'. Now, despite the fact that this young man had a false sense of his own identity (he was really a prince, and the king and queen of the land were still his real parents) the law-breaking, urchin of the streets he had become did not know of his true identity or lineage. Finally, one day he came into contact with his twin brother, the prince. At first, they thought they just looked alike by accident. So, the prince invited his lowly brother to come to the castle and pretend to be the prince, once in awhile, so the prince could experience life outside the palace. This ruse worked for awhile, until the parents saw the two together, and realized that their long-lost son had been found. All the blessings of the royal family, and his true inheritance, then came to the lost son, when his true identity was revealed. He also had a loving family: his true mother, father, and twin brother. All of his circumstances changed, and he became a new being. This tale shows how easily a false sense of identity, and origin, can lead one astray as to what one's true inheritance is. Just as the lost prince was trapped in a false identity of poverty and abuse, the love that his true parents felt for him still existed, awaiting his return. His true inheritance also awaited his return. Only by making the shift, in his own consciousness, from the false identity to his real identity, allowed the lost prince to have dominion over his life, due to the forever love and abundance of his true parents. Being an 'Adam' or an 'Eve' descendant is our false identity. We are, and always shall be, God's own children. Spirit is our true Source of all things. Without our knowledge of this, however, we will never claim our true inheritance and all the blessings that God has provided for his own off-spring. Lost in the material beliefs of this world, we don't realize how close Spirit is to us. We don't perceive God's omnipresence and eternal love for us. We are living in the fallacy of physical, mortal existence, seemingly separated from God, our true, royal Parent. On this subject of identity, the Bible tells us, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36, King James Version). Perhaps this mean that if we recognize our real identity and existence as a son and daughter of Spirit, (God) this recognition and spiritual perception of our truer Self will free us from whatever afflicts us under the mistaken, fleshly identity, and turn us to behold our divine inheritance rather than fleshly heredity. This is what Christ Jesus was teaching throughout his ministry. We each have a Christ identity. This does not mean we have a Jesus identity…only Jesus has his own identity. But, to repeat: I believe that Jesus was our spiritual brother, who came to reveal that we each have a spiritual identity (the Christ identity) that belongs to us. We are all princes and princesses to God. We don't know the name of our spiritual identity yet, but neither did the lost prince know the name that his true parents had given him at birth. We awaken slowly to the truth of being, and all that it includes. So, dominion means deliverance from all the trials and tribulations of the flesh, by showing us that, as God's spiritual off-spring, we are free of the false, so-called laws of materiality. We are spiritual, not material beings. We are governed by spiritual Law alone, despite the beliefs of this world. (When we learn to believe and trust this, even our physical illnesses can be spiritually healed.) Our kingdom is not of this (seeming) material realm. Our true kingdom is the invisible realm of God, which operates on our behalf whenever we turn to it and remember its ever-presence, existing under the all-power of God. Once we begin to realize the omni-presence of this kingdom, and our own place in it, the evils that seem to attach to us in this human experience fade away—sometimes fast, sometimes more slowly, depending upon our own beliefs in the matter. We have dominion over all our human beliefs…what we accept of this world, and what we reject. Believing ourselves to be fleshly identities, we may suffer from any evil belief that comes our way. But our innate dominion allows us to perceive our spiritual, everlasting body, soul and mind, still safe in God's care forever, invisibly present at all times. Thus, dominion is our natural, spiritual poise. It is spiritual mastery over material incongruities. It is the presence of that divine consciousness in which we realize "all is well" in God's omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent creation—despite all physical or material evidence to the contrary. Material 'evils' can change and vanish; God's good never changes. It is eternal. Realizing that we have spiritual dominion over every belief of the flesh allows us to accept and reject whatever we decide. But to know our real, spiritual identity is to have the divine dominion that exists within our spiritual consciousness (our Christ consciousness) which is our only true mind. The Christ Consciousness is universal—it is within everyone, everywhere. It is the awakened consciousness that knows only health, abundance and our eternal life in Spirit. Within this divine consciousness (our spiritually awakened Selves) we realize that evil is never something—it is always the supposed absence of something. Evil is not sickness—it is the fraudulent claim of the absence of our God-ordained health. Evil is not poverty—it is the fraudulent claim of the absence of our God-ordained abundance. Evil is not person—it is the fraudulent claim of the absence of our spiritual brother or sister, in their Christ identity, standing before us. Thus, evil is nothing in God's creation, which is ever-present with us forever, on any level or realm of existence (such as this physical realm) we seem to be experiencing. To experience the loss of dominion (or the sense of loss, for dominion itself cannot be lost) is to experience the seeming presence of a false mind or consciousness that does not know of God's creation, invisibly present throughout the entire material realm of manifested beliefs. When we find that we've never left our heavenly home, safe in the arms of Spirit, we also find that our dominion isn't such a mystery anymore.
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