Inner Exile and Return

Neville's Inner Vision

I tell you, the pit and chains are not history, but the mind's own grasping nets. When a nation for the soul sets against him, it is a belief that someone outside governs your liberty. The king of Babylon is the ruling idea—the habit that keeps your voice quiet on the mountains of your awareness. The mountains themselves become a theater for approval and denial; when they hear no voice, you have yielded to a form of exile within. The mother, pictured as a vine, is the self's ancestral currents of desire and loyalty; her fruit ripens by waters of belief until she appears tall among the branches. But plucked up, dried by the east wind, with her strong rods broken, this is the inner judgment that your former rulers are now powerless. The wilderness and dryness of the ground symbolize a break from outer supports; the fire that devours the rod is your old claims burning away under realization. Yet the lamentation is not doom but a beckoning: return to your inner garden, to the waters that never cease, and plant a new rod of truth. And the way back is to awaken to I AM, the awareness that plants a fresh rod in your consciousness.