I AM, I Said

The subject line may have just inspired the sweet seventies melodies of Neil Diamond dancing through your mind.  If not, here is a link to the song, I AM I Said by Neil Diamond.  Now you can have the song stuck in your head for the next several hours.

I knew I wanted to explore the power of the I AM affirmations as an effective mindfulness and manifestation exercise. However, it was an interesting series of events that lead me to write about Neil Diamond’s own revelation.

I recently awoke from a dream where I heard the lyrics of this song. It stuck with me as this song connects to one of my earliest childhood memories. We’re talking about 1974. I was three years old. It was a sunny, warm weekend morning and my parents had this record spinning serenely in the background. I was playing on the back of the love seat, when I heard the line:

“I am….I said…To no one there….And no one heard at all….Not even the chair.”

And as a three year old child, I thought he was talking specifically about the chair I was playing on.  It took me 47 years to look up the inspiration behind Neil Diamond’s song. Sure enough, it circles back to his own self-discovery in the empowerment to be found in the I AM affirmations:

Neil Diamond told Mojo magazine July 2008 that this song came from a time he spent in therapy in Los Angeles. He said:
“It was consciously an attempt on my part to express what my dreams were about, what my aspirations were about and what I was about. And without any question, it came from my sessions with the analyst.”