Mid-century illustration of a calm sea at dawn

1 Corinthians 2:2 · World English Bible

1 Corinthians 2:2 Meaning For I Determined Not to Know Anything

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

What does 1 Corinthians 2:2 mean?

To know nothing but Jesus Christ is to fix your whole attention on your own imagination, for that awakened imagining power is the Christ meant here. Every other authority, every voice of circumstance, is set aside so that one thing alone is held as cause.

From the Manifestation reading below.

1 Corinthians 2:2 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

MANIFESTATION

Manifestation

To know nothing but Jesus Christ is to fix your whole attention on your own imagination, for that awakened imagining power is the Christ meant here. Every other authority, every voice of circumstance, is set aside so that one thing alone is held as cause. The mind that will know only this has stopped consulting appearances and consults its own assumption instead.

And him crucified names the imagination fastened to a single state and held there until it takes on flesh. To crucify is to nail yourself to the feeling of the wish fulfilled and refuse to come down, loyal to it while the senses deny it. This is not a scene from long ago; it happens in a person whenever he stays fixed to what he has assumed. The state you fasten yourself to, and will not abandon, is the one that becomes your life.

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Live 1 Corinthians 2:2 today

  1. Pick one state to live from today and let it be the only authority you consult. When your phone offers you forty other moods, go back to the one you chose.
  2. When a group chat or a coworker tries to pull you into the running commentary on how bad things are, stay friendly and stay out of it. Hold your one thing and let the thread scroll on.
  3. In the hardest hour of the day, refuse to come down from the feeling you chose this morning. Not stubbornly, just loyally, the way you would stay with a friend.

What do you keep consulting instead of your own settled sense of how this turns out?

The same truth in other traditions

Bhagavad Gita 12

Fix your mind on one thing and rest it there. Of all paths, the steady settling of attention is the surest.

Sufism · Rumi

There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground, but the one who digs one well deep finds water.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

Do not scatter yourself across a thousand opinions. Return, again and again, to the one thing that is actually in your hands.

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