Acts 17:34 · World English Bible
Acts 17:34 Meaning But Certain Men Joined with Him
But certain men joined with him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
What does Acts 17:34 mean?
The names open the inner change that follows understanding. Dionysius carries the root of the god of intoxication and release, the ecstatic faculty in a person that breaks past ordinary reason, and he is of the Areopagus, the hill of Ares, the seat of judgment and mind; so the reasoning height itself yields to the deeper knowing.
From the Esoteric reading below.
Acts 17:34 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Esoteric
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
The names open the inner change that follows understanding. Dionysius carries the root of the god of intoxication and release, the ecstatic faculty in a person that breaks past ordinary reason, and he is of the Areopagus, the hill of Ares, the seat of judgment and mind; so the reasoning height itself yields to the deeper knowing. Damaris opens toward the gentle, the heifer, the tender receptive nature that also takes hold. Together they are the 2 faculties in one person, the mind on its hill and the soft receptivity beneath it, both cleaving to the higher truth.
What clings to the awakened teaching is a person's own reason and their own tenderness turning at last toward the same center.
Dionysius: the ecstatic faculty that breaks past ordinary reason toward the divine Areopagite: belonging to the hill of judgment and mind, the reasoning height that now yields Damaris: the gentle, receptive nature, soft as the heifer, that also takes hold of the truth
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Esoteric lens
Live Acts 17:34 today
- Take one thing you have been analyzing to death, a decision, a text you keep rereading, and set the thinking down for an hour. Go for a walk and let the softer part of you have a turn.
- With one person today, drop the debate. Say, you might be right, and mean it, and watch what opens when your cleverness steps back.
- When you are losing an argument you came to win, in a meeting, over dinner, say the tender true thing instead of the sharp accurate one. It costs something and it is almost always better.
Where is your thinking standing guard over something your heart already decided?
The same truth in other traditions
Sufism · Rumi
Reason brings you to the door and then stands there, unable to enter. Rumi says the mind is a good guide until the threshold, where love takes over.
Zen
The teaching points past words to something the thinking mind cannot grab. The sharpest student is the one whose arguing finally softens and lets go.
Hinduism · Bhakti teaching
The tender heart reaches what study alone cannot. Knowing and loving are two hands of the same person, and both must open.
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