Genesis 35:4 · World English Bible
They gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which were in their hands, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.
The surrender is complete when the mind hands over not only its idols but its ornaments, the very decorations by which the ego made itself seem special and admired. What was clutched in the hand and hung from the ears is released, for it was never protection, only the costume of a self built on being set apart.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
The surrender is complete when the mind hands over not only its idols but its ornaments, the very decorations by which the ego made itself seem special and admired. What was clutched in the hand and hung from the ears is released, for it was never protection, only the costume of a self built on being set apart.
Buried in deep and rooted ground, these things are let go where they cannot be idly picked up again. The mind that lays down its idols and its vanities is not diminished; it is freed of the weight it mistook for worth, and stands at last unadorned and whole.
Strange gods: the ego's idols surrendered from the hand, the beliefs the mind gripped as power and finally lets fall. Earrings: the ornaments of specialness, the decorations by which the ego adorned itself to seem chosen and admired. Oak: the deep and rooted ground where what is renounced is laid to rest, the buried place from which the mind agrees not to retrieve its idols.
Christian Psychology lens
What do I keep around mostly so people will think well of me?
Fill a cup to the brim and you will spill it; sharpen a blade too keenly and it will not hold. Gold and status in the house cannot be guarded, and pride in them brings its own fall.
The fewer things you need to hold, the lighter you travel. What you set down stops being something you have to carry and watch.
Wealth is not having many possessions but wanting few, and the one who needs the least is closest to free. The ornaments were never the self.
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Christian Psychology