Inner Exile, Inner Return

Neville's Inner Vision

In Neville's vision, the whole passage is a map of inner states. The land that becomes a desolation is your current disposition—your present set of beliefs and feelings. The seventy years are the duration you have allowed a stubborn Babylonian habit—fear, control, or lack of faith—to hold your attention. The king of Babylon represents the externalized force of that habit, the ruling idea you suffer as real. When the seventy years are accomplished, the LORD says, I will punish that nation—not as punishment from above, but as the turning of your awareness. The desolations become perpetual only if you cling to that old state; yet the prophecy also whispers a return: by choosing the I AM—your true, unconditioned awareness—you dissolve the old regime and establish a new land inhabited by possibility. The shift is not a future event but a now-lived transformation in consciousness, felt until it is real in your experience.