Inner House of Mourning

Neville's Inner Vision

Beloved, I enter the house of mourning, for that interior chamber keeps my attention steady until the I AM is clearly present. The house is not a gloom but a disciplined posture of consciousness: when sorrow arises, the clamor of laughter dims and I perceive my real state with sharper clarity. The heart of the wise chooses mourning because in that stillness the inner movements of life reveal what I have believed about myself; vanity and noise fall away, leaving a new axis of awareness centered in the present, not in feasts to come. The end of all men is not a future event but the moment I stop fleeing my own reflection. I practice accepting the sadness as the door through which understanding enters; by the sadness of the countenance the mind is taught to turn wisdom toward action, and my sense of self becomes steadfast, awake, and luminous.