Honeyed Temptation, Bitter End

Neville's Inner Vision

Consider the 'lips of a strange woman' as the tempting speech of a belief that magnetizes you away from your I AM. The honeycomb sweetness and the smooth oil are not external flavors; they are the vivid images your imagination pours into a state you crave. When you feed that image, you move consciousness toward a choice, and that inner movement unfolds as an outer scene you call judgment. The end described—bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword—reveals that the kingdom you inherit is the one you imagined and persisted in within. If you cling to appearances, you cut yourself with the very words you have given life; if you withdraw into the awareness that you are the I AM, the temptation loses its bite because it has no substance outside your inner consent. Your responsibility is not to punish temptation but to re-enter the one power by which you live: the state of consciousness in which you know, here and now, I AM.