2 Kings 5:14 · World English Bible
Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
The disease was never in the skin. A commander arrives with silver and expectation, wanting a cure grand enough to match his idea of himself, and the ordinariness of a muddy river insults him.
From the Indian Guru reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
AWARENESS
The disease was never in the skin. A commander arrives with silver and expectation, wanting a cure grand enough to match his idea of himself, and the ordinariness of a muddy river insults him. That insult is the ego, which would rather stay sick than be made small.
Going down seven times is surrender repeated until it stops being a gesture and becomes a dissolving. What comes up out of the water is a child's freshness in the same body, the innocence that was underneath the armour of being somebody all along.
SELF-HELP
The cure most often refused is the one small enough to insult the person who needs it.
A belief about one's own standing decides what a person will consent to do, and that consent decides whether a method ever gets run at all. Rank insisted the remedy be proportionate to the man; the belief produced fury, fury nearly produced a departure, and departure would have settled it for good.
What turned it was performing an unimpressive act on the word of the man of God, then performing it again after six attempts had shown nothing. Most people quit around the sixth and conclude the method was worthless, when the return on a small correction arrives all at once, long after the work that earned it. A person who will only do what feels worthy of them stays exactly as they are, and the years pass with the condition untouched.
Indian Guru lens
Where am I staying stuck because the cure looks too ordinary for someone like me?
Water takes the lowest place and so wears down what is hard. Going down, not up, is where the power is.
A student arrives full of learning and is told to drink tea. The ordinary cup, the ordinary act, is the whole teaching, and only pride finds it too small.
The reed cries because it was cut from the reed bed. The cutting is what made it able to sing.
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Indian Guru
Self-Help