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Daniel 6:16 · World English Bible

Daniel 6:16 Meaning Then the King Commanded

Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. The king spoke and said to Daniel, “Your God whom you serve continually, he will deliver you.”

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What does Daniel 6:16 mean?

The lions are the problems that beset a person on his way through life: money, health, the people around him, the fears that circle and threaten. To be cast among them is to stand surrounded by the very difficulties that seem able to devour him.

From the Manifestation reading below.

Daniel 6:16 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

MANIFESTATION

Manifestation

The lions are the problems that beset a person on his way through life: money, health, the people around him, the fears that circle and threaten. To be cast among them is to stand surrounded by the very difficulties that seem able to devour him. Daniel is the person who does not fight the lions or study them. He turns away from them entirely and inward toward the settled sense of the thing he wants, dwelling there until it feels accomplished.

The God he serves continually is his own consciousness, the I AM that is the life in him, and serving it continually means keeping attention fixed on the fulfilled desire rather than the threat. Deliverance follows from that turning. The lions do him no harm because his attention has left them. A person is saved not by defeating the problem but by turning from it to the felt solution, and the den quietly loses its power over him.

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Manifestation lens

Live Daniel 6:16 today

  1. Pick the one worry circling you today, money, a diagnosis, a message you dread. Instead of researching it again, spend five quiet minutes inside the version where it is already handled.
  2. When someone brings you their panic in a group chat, do not add to the pile of what-ifs. Answer from the calm end of it, as if the thing already worked out.
  3. In traffic or a long line, catch yourself rehearsing a confrontation and drop it mid-sentence. Put your attention on the outcome you actually want and leave it there until you move.

Which problem am I keeping alive just by staring at it?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 8

Water does not fight what blocks it. It keeps to its own nature and arrives anyway, and the hard thing wears down without being struck.

Stoicism · Epictetus

Your power is not over events but over where you put your attention. Keep it on what is yours and the threat loses its handle on you.

Zen

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Stop studying the thing in front of you and look where it points.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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