Deuteronomy 15:7 · World English Bible
If a poor man, one of your brothers, is with you within any of your gates in your land which Yahweh your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother;
To harden your heart is the work of the ego, which sees the person in need as fundamentally other, separate from you, a problem outside your life. The hardening feels like protection, but it is really a contraction, a shutting down of the life that wants to flow through you.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
EGO & BEING
To harden your heart is the work of the ego, which sees the person in need as fundamentally other, separate from you, a problem outside your life. The hardening feels like protection, but it is really a contraction, a shutting down of the life that wants to flow through you.
When you are present, something is revealed: the same consciousness that looks out through your eyes looks out through theirs. The one who suffers is not other than you; you are two forms of one Being. Feel that, and the hand opens by itself. You do not force generosity as a duty; it arises because you can no longer pretend the other's need is separate from your own.
Ego v. Being lens
Where has your heart quietly closed, and what would it cost to let it open again?
The one who suffers in front of you wants what you want, to be free of pain. Seeing that clearly, the wish for their relief rises on its own.
The same self that looks out through your eyes looks out through every other pair. What you do to another, you do inside one life.
Do not do to another what you would hate done to you. The whole of it is there, and the rest is commentary.
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Ego v. Being