Inward Garden Covenant

Neville's Inner Vision

Within the Song, the garden is not a location on a map but your state of awareness. The words 'A garden inclosed' and 'a spring shut up, a fountain sealed' announce that the Beloved is already yours as your I AM. The plants and the spices are not outward possessions but inner powers—the pomegranate for fruitful thoughts and deeds; camphor, spikenard, saffron, calamus and cinnamon as the refined fragrances of worship; frankincense and myrrh as the quiet atmosphere of divine presence. When you tend this inner garden, you revise lack by assuming that the Beloved stands with you and that you and God are one garden. Your external life then follows your inner state: acts of love, harmony, and luminous perception bloom as the fruit. The covenant Loyalty is your decision to dwell in that unity, not as a distant promise but as a continuous mode of feeling and awareness.