"Delilah said to Samson, "Until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me what you may be bound with." (Judges 16:13; New King James Bible Version (NKJV). "Then she said to him, "How can you say, 'I love you,' when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and have not told me where your great strength lies. And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death, that he told her all his heart, and said to her, "No razor has ever come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If I am shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man." (Judges 16:15-17; NKJV). "When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, "Come up once more, for he has told me all his heart." Then she lulled him to sleep on her knees, and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him." (Judges 16:18-20; (NKJV). "Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven." (Judges 16:21 & 22; NKJV). "So it happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, "Call for Samson, that he may perform for us." So they called for Samson from the prison, and he performed for them. And they stationed him between the pillars." (Judges 16:25; NKJV). "And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. Then Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" and he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life." (Judges 16:29 & 30; NKJV). "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life." (John 6:63; NKJV).
The story of Samson's famous haircut at the hands of Delilah needs pondering. Why? Because this biblical account illustrates the way we bring the things we deeply believe into our human experience. We conjure them up until they take some sort of material form, or occurrence, in our earthly realm, whether for us or against us. So, upon analysis, here is my sense of what may have actually happened with Samson due to that famous haircut: As Samson grew from a youth to a man, his hair remained uncut. This occurred because his mother was told by an angel from God; "For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." (See Judges 14: 5; King James Bible (KJV). Knowing of this directive to his mother concerning his hair, Samson may have believed that his physical strength (which grew to phenomenal proportions) was connected to his physical hair, which kept growing at the same time. Instead of realizing that his physical strength was rooted and grounded in God, infinite Spirit, Samson erroneously placed all his reliance for this unusual strength upon his long hair—a finite, material thing. When his locks were shaved off by his devious lover, Delilah, Samson was defeated in spirit. Believing (even in advance of his loss of hair) that matter (a material thing) had power over his spiritual strength, Samson mentally gave up the fight before it really began. Instead of depending upon God, who was always with him and the Source of all his human manifestations of power, Samson became weak and helpless over a temporary loss of hair. I've forgotten the term for this axiom, but it states that just because two things occur simultaneously doesn't mean they are necessarily related. For example, some people today think that sun-spots can affect their behavior, or physical stability, and so in times of high sun-spot activity, these individuals 'act out' such claims. Yet, sun-spots and human behavior are not necessarily related at all. Also, the ancient belief of were-wolves as a product of a full-moon has some believers even today. Yet, no such relationship has ever been proven, which would cause a person to manifest wolf-like characteristics when the moon is full, in any particular nightly view of the sky. So, Samson's hair grew, and his physical strength grew at the same time—but that doesn't necessarily mean that one caused the other. Nothing in the angel's message to Samson's mother said that the two (strength and hair) were related. Thus, it is my belief that Samson never lost his physical strength at all, after his head was shaved—he just believed that he had. Therefore, once shaven, he didn't believe he had his great, human strength anymore. Instead, after realizing the hair-cut, he became too physically weak to fight off his attackers. Had he known that God, infinite Spirit, was the real and only Source of his gift of phenomenal strength, Samson might have lived a much longer human life. Instead, he waited until his hair grew out again, and when his own belief determined that he was strong again, he finally accepted that his strength was back, and he acted upon that change in belief. The collective, carnal mentality (that false part of us that still believes we are material beings in a material universe) does not perceive that we are the spiritual sons and daughters of God, still existing in our forever, spiritual Home. This collective, false sense of humanity always tries to hold spirit and spiritual laws in the grip of finite materiality. We then fulfill, or act out, our own deeply-held beliefs about physical (rather than spiritual) health, abundance, life and all other things, until we believe we are on safe, material ground again. Then, when matter (the flesh) again behaves in the way we believe it should, we begin to feel we are healed, first mentally, then physically. But ten minutes later, we may suffer another claim of lack of health, lack of supply, lack of peace, or lack of any other God-given good. Thus, we are all masters of our own fate, in that sense. We allow worldly beliefs of physical being to over-ride any spiritual sense of who we really are (God's spiritual, everlasting children) and where we really are (the invisible-to-the-physical-senses kingdom of God.) When we cease over-riding our innate knowledge of our spiritual heritage of all things good, a change occurs toward the harmony we are meant to have, even in our often-hostile earthly experience. The more we remind ourselves that (despite all appearances to the contrary) we 'live, move and have our being' in God's invisible realm, the more harmony begins to manifest in our individual, human circumstances, even though we are still 'in the flesh' and experiencing this finite, material level of thought. When, believing more in God's ever-present spiritual power of good, in spite of material appearances, we begin to bring it forth into our daily lives on a more regular basis. And though hidden to our material senses, we know our God-ordained good is ready to spring forth into human form, when we accept it as our higher reality. Samson didn't perceive his own spiritual identity underlying his earthly sense of being. In assessing his spiritual strength, he tried to bury it in his material sense of himself, instead of realizing that Spirit, (not the flesh) always was and always will be his Source of every good thing created. Samson abandoned his own physical strength when he broke the First Commandment which Moses brought down from the Mount: "Thou shalt have no gods before me." (Exodus 20:3; King James Bible Version). This early directive from God means that we are to have no belief in what seems to be material powers over us. Since God, Spirit, is our only Source, Substance, Origin, and Omnipotent Life Force, nothing material has any real power, or even permanent substance over any one, or any thing in God's spiritual creation (the ONLY creation). The Adam dream is symbolic of what humanity is all about (for those of you who wonder "What's it all about, Alfie?"). The material realm is only what we (under the influence of Adam's carnal, sleeping mentality) collectively believe our reality to be. Adam's dream 'creation' became a place of finite form. In his dream, God's spiritually, perfect, immortal creation was changed into Adam's creation of a finite place, where the dueling powers of good and evil exist. It was never the truth of being, nor has it ever represented God's spiritual creation, still present and active, though invisible to the physical senses. God's creation was never the dueling arena for good and evil that Adam perceived. God, infinite Spirit, is the only real power in Its own, spiritual creation, and never created an opposite power to inhabit it. All other boasts of power are temporary glips on the radar screen of the false, material sense of ourselves. It is only this material sense of us that dies, for death is impossible for the Almighty's sons and daughters, or for anything else God has created. One can read the first account of this dream of life in matter in the second chapter of Genesis, when Adam fell asleep and, in his lower level of consciousness, dreamt that he, Adam, became the creator of his own universe. A thorough study of the Bible will show that Adam never woke up from his 'deep sleep', and we in this earthly experience are the descendants of such a dream-state (lower level of conscious awareness) which we collectively share. (This is why telepathy is quite real—we all swim in the same, collective, dream mentality, so to speak.) Samson's story illustrates the dualistic conflict which exists for all of us in this Adam-dream of material, versus spiritual existence. Here, in the human experience (where we seem to be fleshly creatures with our souls trapped inside finite forms) we haven't awakened fully to our own, spiritual identities, free of all forms of mortality and evil. Each one awakens in his or her own time. Now, my view of Samson's story is only a theory. It happened long ago; but I've seen, through a long practice of spiritual healing, how much the beliefs of people, especially what they deep-down believe to be true, makes all the difference between chaos and harmony in this sometimes-treacherous, material level of thought. The importance of belief and where we mentally place power in this human experience is echoed in Christ Jesus' words In Matthew, Chapter 8, verse 13 (King James Bible Version). when a centurion came to him for the healing of one of the centurion's servants: "And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour." Thus, it seems to me that just as Samson made the mistake of giving material things power over him, (through his own erroneously-accepted beliefs of the collective carnal, material mentality) we each do that, every day, in many ways. Yet, just as Samson had a more permanent strength which he knew not of, so do we all have the things from God that we know not of—which make us always whole and free when we find our oneness with God, where no lack, or weakness of our spiritual, Christly, Self exists.
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