Ezekiel 1:18 · World English Bible
Ezekiel 1:18 Meaning As for Their Rims
As for their rims, they were high and dreadful; and the four of them had their rims full of eyes all around.
What does Ezekiel 1:18 mean?
A wheel is one of the oldest pictures the mind makes of its own wholeness. Round and four-sided, it stands for the deep center that holds a person together beneath the small daylight self.
From the Psychoanalysis reading below.
Ezekiel 1:18 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Psychoanalysis
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis
A wheel is one of the oldest pictures the mind makes of its own wholeness. Round and four-sided, it stands for the deep center that holds a person together beneath the small daylight self. When it rises up high and dreadful, it carries the awe we feel before something far larger than ourselves.
The eyes crowding its rim show that seeing is not ours alone. Awareness does not live only in the waking mind that looks outward. The deeper part of us has eyes of its own, small points of light scattered through the dark. The rim is full of them because that deeper mind is not dead material waiting to be discovered. It is awake on its own, and its many eyes are the deep self turned back to watch the one who came looking.
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Psychoanalysis lens
Live Ezekiel 1:18 today
- Pause once today and ask who is doing the watching. Not the thoughts, the thing behind them that has been quietly observing your whole day, including the parts you would rather not have seen.
- Let someone describe you honestly without defending yourself. Being seen by another person is practice for being seen from inside.
- In a moment where you are performing, a presentation, a tense call, a post you are drafting, feel the part of you that is watching you perform. It is not fooled, and it is not your enemy.
Who is watching you from the inside, and what would they say about today?
The same truth in other traditions
Hinduism · the Upanishads
The seeker looks for the self and finds that it is the self that has been doing the looking. You cannot stand outside and inspect it.
Sufism · Ibn Arabi
The eye with which you look for God is the same eye with which God looks at you. There is only one seeing happening.
Taoism · Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly and wakes unsure which one is dreaming the other. The watcher you trust may itself be watched.
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