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Jeremiah 13:17 · World English Bible

Jeremiah 13:17 Meaning But If You Will Not Hear It

But if you will not hear it, my soul will weep in secret for your pride. My eye will weep bitterly, and run down with tears, because Yahweh’s flock has been taken captive.

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What does Jeremiah 13:17 mean?

Pride is the voice of the ego, the false self that will not listen because listening would be its ending. When you refuse to hear what is deeper than thought, you do not become free; you are carried off by the very mind you defend.

From the Ego v. Being reading below.

Jeremiah 13:17 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

Pride is the voice of the ego, the false self that will not listen because listening would be its ending. When you refuse to hear what is deeper than thought, you do not become free; you are carried off by the very mind you defend. This is the captivity.

Something in me grieves quietly for this, not with drama but with the tenderness that awareness feels toward what remains asleep. The tears are compassion, not punishment. When you finally grow still and listen beneath your own thinking, the ego loosens its grip and you return to yourself.

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Ego v. Being lens

Live Jeremiah 13:17 today

  1. Think of advice you have brushed off more than once, probably about your sleep, your temper or your phone. Instead of defending yourself, sit with the chance that the person was right.
  2. Let someone finish telling you something you are sure you already understand. Do not correct them, and look for the one part you had not actually considered.
  3. When you feel yourself hardening in an argument, text or meeting, say "let me think about that" and mean it. The relief of not having to be right is bigger than winning.

What have you refused to hear because hearing it would change you?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism

Compassion looks at someone caught in their own confusion and does not turn away or condemn. The chains people wear are mostly of their own making, which makes the sorrow tender rather than angry.

Sufism · Rumi

The wound is the place where the light enters. Grief over our own hardness is already the beginning of its softening.

Tao Te Ching

What is rigid breaks and what is soft endures. The hard will that refuses to bend is nearer to its end than it knows.

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