Isaiah 57

The Inner Drama of Broken Idols and Divine Mercy

Read as a psychological drama, this chapter is a staging of inner life: characters, places, rituals and judgments are states of consciousness given voice so that we may recognize how we create and undo our experience. The opening lament — 'the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart' — is not about historical fate but about the subtle withdrawal of awakened attention from a world that mistakes appearances for the whole. The 'righteous' here names an inward clarity, a compassionate state that quietly exits the theater of drama because it has outgrown the scene. Those 'merciful men' who are 'taken away' are inner mercies and faculties of insight that retreat from the noisy crowd of opinions when they are not acknowledged; they enter 'into peace' because peace is the natural habitat of imagination undisturbed by outer disturbance.

The scolding that follows — 'draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore' — is a reading of the self divided. Sorcery in the psyche is the spell of identification with appearances and collective habit. To be the 'son of the sorceress' is to be begotten by unconscious suggestion: carried along by the glamor of immediate sensation, by culturally supplied images that pass for truth. Adultery and whoredom signify divided attention; the mind vows allegiance to the higher Self but repeatedly sleeps with the world of sense. 'Against whom do ye sport yourselves?' asks the inner authority — who are you deceiving when you laugh at your own forgetting?

The image of idolatry 'under every green tree' is a map of the imagination's substitutions. A 'green tree' suggests what seems alive and desirable; we plant idols there — mental forms, compulsive ideas, the stories that gratify short-term craving — and make offerings to them. 'Slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks' names the suppression of nascent possibilities. The 'children' are new desires, creative impulses, innocent intuitions that arise low and hidden in the psyche. When we sacrifice them to the demand for immediate profit or social acceptability, we kill the future in favor of a brittle present.

'Among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion; they, they are thy lot' paints a frozen landscape of habit. Smooth stones in a stream are habits worn down by repetition; making offerings there means that the self placates its dull circuits rather than invoke living imagination. This is the worship of the familiar — ritual performed to maintain the comfort of the known. In psychological terms, the worshiper who 'pours a drink offering' upon those stones invests energy in maintaining habit, believing small compensations will secure identity.

The loftiness of the 'high mountain' where the bed is set is the posture of an inflated self that mistakes grand outward positions for inner life. Going up to offer sacrifice on a peak is the ego's attempt to secure reverence by spectacle: perform piety, curry favor with authority, make large appearances. Setting 'remembrance behind the doors and posts' is the staging of public persona — the careful memory of how one appears to others — while secretly 'discovering thyself to another than me' reveals the betrayal inherent to divided loyalty. Making 'a covenant with them' is the act of binding oneself to opinion, to approval, to roles that are not the true longing of the heart.

The 'king' and 'ointment' are social approval and flattery. To go 'to the king with ointment' is to seek validation by perfuming the self for public consumption; this debases the inner sovereign and trades authenticity for a costume. 'Debased unto hell' is the inner lowering that follows: continual compromise sinks the quality of attention, and the imagination becomes an instrument of smallness rather than a treasury of creativity.

'Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way; yet saidst thou not, There is no hope' diagnoses exhaustion and complacency. The exhausted self keeps moving along an habitual road of striving while secretly holding the belief that effort alone is life. 'Thou hast found the life of thine hand' names practical, doer-based living — the belief that clever activity and provision will secure being. This posture 'was not grieved' because it mistakes doing for identity; what it lacks is the receptive feeling-state that lets imagination reconstitute reality.

'Of whom hast thou been afraid or feared, that thou hast lied?' exposes the underlying fear that shapes self-deception. Fear prompts the mind to lie — to fashion stories that justify loss, protect image, or mute appetite for change. The inner 'I' answers: 'have not I held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not?' Here the creative center — the abiding awareness — withdraws when the mind refuses its invitation. Divine presence is not a punitive judge but a silent reservoir; when we stop listening, it appears to be hidden. Its withdrawal is the mirror of our forgetfulness.

'I will declare thy righteousness, and thy works; for they shall not profit thee' is the paradox of moralizing without imagination. To rehearse righteousness as a trophy, to parade good deeds while the heart is untransformed, yields no true alteration of circumstances. The inner law demands a change at the level of feeling and assumption, not merely of behavior. Hence the counsel: 'he that putteth his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain.' Trust in this context names the orientation of attention to inner reality: a trust that assumes the presence and creative potency of the higher Self; from that trust a new 'land' — new experience — issues.

'Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumblingblock out of the way of my people.' These are practical directives for the theater of consciousness. To 'cast up a way' is to remove old negative assumptions, resentments, and limiting self-images that trip the imagination. The 'stumblingblock' is every habitual disbelief: self-condemnation, suspicion, complaint. Preparing the way is the interior practice of creating a path for imagination to act in freedom.

The high and lofty One who 'inhabiteth eternity' names the I AM — the awareness that does not move in time. Yet it 'dwelleth...with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.' Contrition here is not despair but receptive humility: a settling of resistance so that imagination may be reoriented. The 'revive the spirit of the humble, and the heart of the contrite ones' is an enactment of therapeutic return: when attention turns from judgment to willingness, the creative principle restores the inner powers that had been withdrawn.

'For I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth' acknowledges the dialectic of lesson and mercy. Wrong states will exhaust themselves; conscience will be roused until the mind grows tired of sustaining them. At that point, when the self has been softened, the creative center re-engages: 'I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him.' Healing in this grammar is a reenactment of imagination: the creative power notices, forgives, revises assumption, and produces new scenes. The 'comforts' restored are changed feelings, fresh assumptions, and the appearance of events that flow from them.

'Create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near' names speech as instrument. Words shape internal landscapes; the 'fruit of the lips' are the declarations and imaginal statements that bring the inner and outer into alignment. Peace, pronounced as a creative affirmation, reaches both the distanced parts of ourselves and the intimate. The imagination listens to the word and obeys; speech becomes the seed from which experience ripens.

The chapter closes with a contrast: the wicked are like a troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt, lacking rest. Psychological unrest churns up muddy perceptions and obscures the clear sight of imagination; systemically, this agitation produces situations congruent with instability. 'There is no peace to the wicked' is not moral condemnation so much as a diagnostic: a disturbed assumption yields a disturbed world.

Practically, read this as instruction. The drama maps how attention, belief and imagination create reality: abandon the worship of habit and public accolades, remove stumblingblocks of fear and pretense, practice contrition as receptive willingness, and employ the creative word to declare the state you assume. The 'righteous' are not people but states you can enter; those states 'perish' from your life only when you make offerings to idols of convenience. When the higher Self is honored by imaginative fidelity — when inner scenes of peace are enacted repeatedly until they 'take on the tones of reality' — the outer world rearranges to reflect that inner architecture.

Thus Isaiah 57 is not a chronicle of historical doom but a guidebook for inner transformation: it shows where imagination is prostituted, how the inner God withdraws in the face of self-betrayal, and how humility and the creative word restore what was lost. It invites the reader to become a conscious dramatist of the mind, to remove the stones of habit from the stream, to descend into the valleys to protect the children of nascent desire, and to climb no mountain of false glory. In the theater of consciousness the play is yours to write; align feeling with intention, speak peace, and watch the world take its cue.