Acts 18:18 · World English Bible
Paul, having stayed after this many more days, took his leave of the brothers, and sailed from there for Syria, together with Priscilla and Aquila. He shaved his head in Cenchreae, for he had a vow.
A vow taken on the body reaches its term, and the shorn head marks the moment the lower growth is cut back so the current running through a person can move on to a higher station. Hair is the outgrowth of the animal nature at the crown; cropping it at the harbor releases the force gathered under discipline and sends it inland along the spine toward the seat of authority.
From the Esoteric reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
ESOTERIC
A vow taken on the body reaches its term, and the shorn head marks the moment the lower growth is cut back so the current running through a person can move on to a higher station. Hair is the outgrowth of the animal nature at the crown; cropping it at the harbor releases the force gathered under discipline and sends it inland along the spine toward the seat of authority.
The 2 companions are the paired currents that always travel with the awakening self, breath and blood keeping pace as the work advances. What looks like a traveler settling accounts is a stage in the body completed and left behind, the vital energy loosed from its old restraint and carried up to the exalted region.
Cenchrea: the harbor of the small seed, where the gathered force waits at the threshold before it is released. Head: the crown of the body where the animal growth is trimmed away to free the energy beneath. Syria: the higher ground of the mind toward which the loosened current is carried.
Esoteric lens
What small thing could you cut back today so the strength under it finally has somewhere to rise?
The head is shaved at the start of the path, a plain outward cut that marks an inward turn. The body carries the decision so the mind cannot quietly take it back.
Train the body as part of the training of the soul. Habits of appetite are not separate from habits of thought, and cutting one back frees the other.
In learning you add every day. In the way you take away, less and less, until what is left can act without strain.
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Esoteric