Grass Upon the Housetops

Neville's Inner Vision

129:6 speaks of grass on a housetop that withers before it can take root. In Neville's psychology, the roof is your outward world and the grass, the transient images your mind projects—people, conditions, reputations—that seem to grow only as you give them attention. The verse teaches that such growth is not born of permanent reality but of waking thoughts. When you identify with appearances, you feed a form that cannot endure; you experience the withering because you are not investing in the I AM that remains unchanged. The truth, however, is constant: awareness—the I AM—is the soil in which every real life must take root. If you want lasting growth, you revise your stance from reliance on outer circumstances to the certainty of your divine presence. Imagination creates reality; as you dwell in the inner I AM, the rooftop grass loses its power to define you, and what you call forth emerges from within rather than from without. The discernment of a wise heart is to attend to this inner foundation, not to the swiftly fading shoots on the roof.