Oil of Gentle Correction

Neville's Inner Vision

Your heart is not a fixed place but a living state of awareness. When you incline it toward evil or the pleasures of others, you shrink your inner authority and invite the appearance of trouble. The line about not eating of their dainties is a rebuke to the appetite that seeks to mold you from outside. The antidote is an unspoken assumption: you are the I AM, the steadfast consciousness that observes thoughts as events in time but remains untouched by them. The righteous who smite you is your own higher standard, the inner critic that corrects you with kindness. When correction lands as an excellent oil on your head, it softens ego and clears vision, a sign that your prayer remains present in calamities. You do not escape trials by escape, but by aligning with truth within. As you revise your state to insist on integrity, you discover that difficult circumstances react to your inward posture, not to you as a separate self. In this light, discipline becomes grace, and rejection of vice transforms into faithful action within.