Feasts of Ignorance, Captivity

Neville's Inner Vision

From the Neville vantage, the words describe not a distant nation but a state of consciousness that rises with the morning to worship sensation. The 'early rising' and the 'strong drink' are not a bottle or a banquet; they are habitual thoughts that intoxicate the mind, drawing attention outward while inner work is ignored. The harp, the viol, and wine in their feasts symbolize external pleasures that claim the senses, yet the mind refuses to notice the activity of the divine I AM within—that work is your own inner creation. When knowledge of your true self is missing, your 'people'—your distinguishable states of awareness—are carried away into a form of captivity: limitation, thirst, famine of the spirit. The remedy is not victory over a king but a revision of consciousness: awaken to the fact that the Lord's hands are always at work in you; you are the place where divine order and imagination meet. To return, you must refuse to identify with the feast and instead assume the reality of your I AM, here and now.