The Inner Reversal of Beauty

Neville's Inner Vision

Within Neville Goddard’s approach, the verse is an unveiling of consciousness: the ‘sweet smell’ is the cherished self-image, the girdle a protective identity, hair a curated prestige, the stomacher social status, and beauty the outer enchantment. When life reverses these images—stink instead of scent, a rent instead of a girdle, baldness instead of hair, sackcloth instead of garments, burning instead of beauty—it signals not punishment but a crisis of perception. The inner self has mistaken form for reality; the I AM, awareness, remains untouched by such images. The remedy is to revise from identification with outward signs to an inner state of constant awareness. By affirming that I AM is the source and steady ground of all experience, the outward scene reflects a fresh interior alignment. The judgment becomes an invitation: reanchor in consciousness, and allow the apparent reversals to strip away illusion, revealing the radiance of the inward life that never truly departs from you.