2 Corinthians 4:4 · World English Bible
in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
There is a force that blinds the mind, and it is thought itself, endlessly claiming to be you. The god of this world is the egoic mind, and it rules by keeping your attention so full of noise that the light within is never noticed.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
The same verse, read by 4 traditions.
EGO & BEING
There is a force that blinds the mind, and it is thought itself, endlessly claiming to be you. The god of this world is the egoic mind, and it rules by keeping your attention so full of noise that the light within is never noticed. This is why so many look and yet do not see.
The light was never absent. It shines quietly as the awareness in which every thought appears. What blinds you is not any lack of light but a mind too crowded to receive it. Grow still, let the thinking settle, and the light that was always here begins to shine through you.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
There are powers in the mind that can take hold of a person without his knowing it. The spirit of a whole age, the assumptions everyone shares, can settle over someone like a fog and quietly decide what he is able to see. He believes he is looking freely, but something is choosing for him.
What such a person cannot see is the deepest image within himself, the pattern of wholeness every human being carries. It shines at the center, yet a mind gripped by outside forces stays turned away from it. The light does not fail. The person is simply held facing the wrong direction, and only when that grip loosens does the inner image become visible to him.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Blindness is rarely the absence of eyes. A man can stare straight at the good and see nothing, because something in him has an interest in the dark. Resentment, pride, the refusal to bow to anything higher than the self, these govern a mind like a petty god and keep the light shut out.
The worst captivity feels like independence from the inside. He who serves the spirit of the age imagines he sees clearly while the one thing worth seeing is edited from view. Open the aperture, and the image of what a human being could become floods back in. First a person has to want the light more than he wants his excuses.
SUFISM
A window caked with grime lets in no morning, though the sun presses against it the whole time. The blindness is not the eye's fault but the heart's, its love of status smeared thick across the glass. What blinds a person is whatever he has quietly made his real god.
The cure is to name that idol and turn from it, scraping the pane where no one watches. The light was never withheld. It stands at the window, waiting for a surface clean enough to shine through.
Ego v. Being lens
How much of what blinds me today is just my own noise?
The mind is both the trap and the way out. Lost in its own noise it blinds you. Seen clearly, it becomes a window.
The mind clouded by its own chatter cannot see even what is close. Let it settle, like muddy water left alone, and clarity returns on its own.
The sun has not gone out, you are standing in a room with the curtains closed. Open them and you will see the light was never waiting on your permission to exist.
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Ego v. Being
Psychoanalysis
Clinical Psychology
Sufism