Inner City Covenant

Neville's Inner Vision

That which Hosea names as Gilead, the priests, and Ephraim, I encounter as symbols of my own inner life. Gilead—the city of them that work iniquity—stands for the habitual thoughts and images I accept as real, the mental atmosphere that breeds violation and strife. The company of priests, who murder in the way by consent, represents the inner ministry of my mind—the answers I give to fear, the rituals I perform to justify separation, the judgments I permit in which I say, this is the way. When these inner priests agree with violence, they make my life a procession of devitalized actions. I see the horrible thing in the house of Israel—the whoredom of Ephraim—as my own misaligned loyalties, the parts of me fleeing from the single I AM, the awareness that I am, to be loyal to images of injury and lack. Yet Hosea invites a turn of consciousness: defilement is a state of mind, not a place; the I AM can revise every thought to holiness. By assuming a new ruler of my temple—an undisturbed, united awareness—I can feel the defilement dissolve as I rest in I AM.