Inner Covenant of Friendship

Neville's Inner Vision

Think of this verse as a description of your inner relationships. A friend who loves at all times is the steady state of your own consciousness; the brother born for adversity is the I AM that rises with you when events move within. When the mind is void of understanding, it strikes hands with conditions, binds itself to another's fate, and thus becomes surety in the theater of appearances. The one who loves transgression loves strife, that is, the mind clinging to drama rather than to the peace of realization. And the man who exalts his gate - his external persona, his defenses, his imagined worth - stirs up destruction by inviting an inference of separation between the self and the whole. The cure is not to withdraw from life but to enter a higher fidelity: to accept loyalty to the inner I AM and to let the heart be generous without clutching outcomes. Your true relationship to every friend and to every trial is with your own inner state. When you awaken to the I AM as the permanent lover of your soul, the outer scenes shift to harmony, not by force, but by the natural alignment of consciousness.