Scapegoat Within: Inner Cleansing

Neville's Inner Vision

To the Neville reader, Leviticus 16:20-22 is a map of inner discipline. The completion of reconciling the holy place is the moment you cease defending an inner contradiction and enter a state where the past no longer rules you. When you lay hands on the head of the live goat, you are not blessing a creature but acknowledging the self that knows all your faults and, by naming them, releases them from you. The belief that guilt remains is the goat’s burden; sending it away is the decision of your I AM to set it free. The wilderness in which the goat is released is not a distant land but the empty space of consciousness emptied of attention to sin. The land not inhabited is your mind’s quiet where there is no echo of past transgressions. Thus forgiveness is not received from without but enacted within as a new state of awareness, a conscious act of letting the old self depart and the new, undefiled self to stand.