Fragile Fortresses of the Mind

Neville's Inner Vision

To Neville, the 'strongholds' are not walls but states of consciousness you carry. The firstripe figs and their cracking shells symbolize beliefs you worship as protection. When you awaken that you are the I AM, the eater—the inner life-energy that consumes belief—takes what you call fortress and dissolves it. The fortresses have no independent reality outside awareness; they only persist as you imagine them true. Therefore, revise your inner posture: I AM that I AM, and I dwell in the one eternal presence. As you dwell there, the shaking of circumstance reveals the emptiness of the fortress, and it drops away into the eater, harmless and transmuted. Your job is to maintain the assurance of your unity with God, not to bargain with fear. With this certainty, the fig-tree fortresses cease to satisfy and become nothing more than fruit rapidly consumed by the inner appetite. The inner state you hold becomes your world; fix it in the imagination, feel it as real, and watch external defenses dissolve into the sea of awareness.