1 Kings 8:48 · World English Bible
if they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for your name;
A people carried far from home, held in the land of those who conquered them, still turn their whole heart toward what they lost. The captivity runs deeper than the chains.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
EGO & BEING
A people carried far from home, held in the land of those who conquered them, still turn their whole heart toward what they lost. The captivity runs deeper than the chains. The mind gets pulled away from its own ground by grievance, by longing, by the endless replay of what went wrong.
To return with all the heart, even in exile, is to come back to presence right where the body stands. The homeland prayed toward is no place on a map. At the center of a person waits a stillness no enemy can take and no distance can reach, quiet under all the wandering.
SUFISM
Even scattered in the land of those who took them, they can still turn, and the turning is the whole of it. The real captivity is a heart that wandered off and forgot its home, and its rust is the thought that too far means too late.
The cure is the small act of facing back, praying with everything, holding nothing in reserve. And the One they pray toward is already there in the longing, nearer than the far country, waiting inside the very ache that says come home.
Ego v. Being lens
Where is your attention living today, and where is your body?
Do not live in the past or chase the future. Settle fully into the present, which is the only place that can hold you.
No one can take your inner ground from you, only your body and your circumstances. What you keep is a freedom no captor reaches.
Wherever you stand is the place. There is no better ground to be returned to later.
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Ego v. Being
Sufism