Purity of Presence in Psalms

Neville's Inner Vision

Think of the verse as a map of the inner state. Not sitting with vain persons or dissemblers is not a social rule, but a posture of awareness: I withdraw my attention from any belief or thought that puffs itself up as real while hiding its manipulation. The 'congregation of evil doers' is the broadcast of fear, doubt, and self-deception within the mind; hating them is simply refusing to host those conditions in my own imagination. Washing hands in innocency is a symbolic cleansing of judgment from the self, a return to the altar of my true I AM—the point of undivided attention where God speaks as presence. To 'compass thine altar' is to walk around the inner sacrament with reverence, not with guilt or self-criticism. The outer ritual is a picture of the inner discipline: I state, I see, I am clean, therefore life follows in harmony with the Presence. The practice aligns belief with the unaffected I AM, so the world must shift to match the inner state.