Counting the Inner Kingdom

Neville's Inner Vision

Observe how the outer decree to number Israel mirrors an inner decree of the mind to catalog its world. The king's request to Joab—"Go now through all the tribes... and number ye the people"—is symbolic of a consciousness that must see and possess all things, a habit of measuring life by outward signs. God's anger is the tension that arises when consciousness rests on separation rather than unity. To the inner student, this scene reveals that the act of counting is not a neutral data-gathering but an expression of pride: a belief that worth comes from numbers, from control, from the eye that 'sees it.' The remedy in Neville's terms is to reverse the act in imagination: to assent to the state of I AM by which all are already present, seen, provided, and held in perfect abundance. When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled as a constant inner state, the inner census stops asserting lack and begins testifying to oneness. In that shift, the outer world aligns—not by denying facts, but by reinterpreting them in the light of consciousness that knows itself as I AM.