Inner Neighbor Revelation

Neville's Inner Vision

To Neville, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is not a geographical path but a path of consciousness. The robbers who stripped him are beliefs and memories that wound the sense of self; the half-dead traveler represents a state of awareness awaiting a new assumption. When the lawyer asks 'Who is my neighbor?' he is really asking what state of I AM will justify itself by dividing the self into others. Jesus answers by describing a neighbor as anyone you encounter who awakens mercy—yet the mercy begins within. The man who passes by on the other side is the old self that refuses to live in the consciousness that all are one. The Samaritan who tends him is the present, imaginative act of love, a revision that you, not the world, must perform in your mind. When you imagine yourself filled with compassionate action toward the wounded man inside, you enact the reality you desire. Your neighbor is your inner state named by acts of mercy and non-resistance; peace is the felt presence of unity as you assume it.