The Inner Descent of Beauty

Neville's Inner Vision

Within the I AM, I hear Ezekiel's cry as a call to awaken from the dream of outward splendor. 'Egypt' and its 'daughters' are not distant kingdoms but my own attachments—beauty, status, and the thought of being seen as great. The wail is the inward alarm that such pretense cannot endure the light of awareness. To cast them down into the nether parts is to acknowledge that these outward forms are not the substance of life; they are fleeting movements of consciousness, cast down to the pit where they can be forgiven and dissolved. When I ask, 'Whom dost thou pass in beauty?' I confront my own habit of passing judgment by appearances, of comparing self to others, of cherishing form over essence. The response is not punishment but a revision: I pass that beauty by the uncircumcised and return to the inner standard—the I AM—whose only true beauty is purity of awareness and integrity of feeling. Exile and return occur as I relocate identity from the world's eye to the inner sun of consciousness, embracing suffering as necessary discipline that purifies the self.