Inner Judgment of Judges 20:35

Neville's Inner Vision

Within my inner theater I witness the LORD—the I AM—smite Benjamin before Israel as a decisive turning of my mind. This smite is not violence but the clearing of a stubborn belief that has kept a part of me separate from the whole. Benjamin represents worn-out patterns I have kept as 'me,' and when the LORD acts, those images are struck down, not to crush me but to release me. The twenty-five thousand and one hundred men are the countless echoes of doubt I have counted as defenses, the vivid numbers of self-justification that bind immediacy. When the army destroys them, my consciousness chooses to sever the old scripts, to lay down the sword of fear and the sword of pride. All these drew the sword—old voices turning on themselves as the new awareness asserts itself. In this inner victory, the entire being advances, for the mind has cleared away the obstacle of familiar beliefs. The outer world then reflects the awakened state within, as if elevation in consciousness had moved from within to without.