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Deuteronomy 34:4 · World English Bible

Deuteronomy 34:4 Meaning Yahweh Said to Him

Yahweh said to him, “This is the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.”

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What does Deuteronomy 34:4 mean?

The land shown from the mountain is the right hemisphere of the brain, the higher mind and its deep stillness, seen from a distance but not yet entered. Moses is the disciplining will that governs the lower faculties and marches them the whole length of the wilderness, and that will can bring a person to the very edge of the higher mind and glimpse it, yet the willing self is not the self that lives there.

From the Esoteric reading below.

Deuteronomy 34:4 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

ESOTERIC

Esoteric

The land shown from the mountain is the right hemisphere of the brain, the higher mind and its deep stillness, seen from a distance but not yet entered. Moses is the disciplining will that governs the lower faculties and marches them the whole length of the wilderness, and that will can bring a person to the very edge of the higher mind and glimpse it, yet the willing self is not the self that lives there. The land flowing with milk and honey is the sweetness of brain galactose, the sugar that feeds the higher brain.

The willing faculty carries a person to the border and then stops, because entering is a different act than arriving.

The land sworn to the fathers: the right hemisphere of the brain, the higher mind seen from the edge but not yet occupied Milk and honey: the galactose, the brain sugar whose sweetness feeds the higher mind The mountain: the raised vantage from which the higher realm can be seen before it can be reached

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Esoteric lens

Live Deuteronomy 34:4 today

  1. There is something you have worked at for months that you cannot force the last inch of. Do your part today, then genuinely let the rest alone instead of refreshing and checking.
  2. With someone you have been trying to change, do the loving thing and then stop pushing. You can walk them to the edge of seeing it, you cannot see it for them.
  3. When a deadline or a decision has you gripping hard, do the next honest step and release the outcome. White knuckles have never once moved a thing forward.

What have I carried as far as effort can carry it?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

A finger pointing at the moon is useful, and it is not the moon. The discipline that brings you to the edge of seeing cannot do the seeing for you.

Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita

Effort takes a person a long way, and then the grip of effort itself must open. Striving carries you to the door, surrender walks through it.

Sufism

The teachers say the seeker's work is to reach the threshold. What happens after that is not work, and it is not something the seeker arranges.

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

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