Inner Defilement of Self-Worship

Neville's Inner Vision

Notice that the psalm speaks of defilement not as punishment from without, but as the outcome of an inner allegiance. The 'own works' and 'inventions' are your vivid images—assumptions about how life and worship must appear. When you live by those images you are, in effect, courting a private idol, and your inner atmosphere throbs with the energy of self-willed worship. Defilement then is a state of consciousness you inhabit, a world you build by thinking you are separate from the I AM. The shift to freedom comes the moment you reverse your stance: you do not try to cleanse the surface; you return to the immutable I AM, the awareness that remains whole while you revise the imagined ceremony. Practice the art of revision by choosing one defining image of worship and replacing it with the perception that the I AM is complete in you now. As you feel this new inner tone, your outer life aligns, and the invented idols lose their grip.