John 2:21 · World English Bible
John 2:21 Meaning But He Spoke of the Temple
But he spoke of the temple of his body.
What does John 2:21 mean?
Here the confusion is named plainly, for the mind of separation always hears the word sanctuary and points to flesh. It believes the holy place is the body and so believes the body can be lost, attacked, and mourned.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
John 2:21 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Here the confusion is named plainly, for the mind of separation always hears the word sanctuary and points to flesh. It believes the holy place is the body and so believes the body can be lost, attacked, and mourned. But the true temple was never the form. It is the awareness within that no scourge reaches and no death can close.
When the body is taken for the dwelling of God, every threat to the body seems a threat to the divine, and fear has its foothold. Seen truly, the body is only a figure in a dream, and the sanctuary it was mistaken for is the mind's own knowledge of its Source, standing whole behind the image.
Temple: the awareness of God within the mind, the sanctuary that no harm can reach Body: the form mistaken for the dwelling, the perishable image that fear defends as though it were the soul
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Christian Psychology lens
Live John 2:21 today
- The next time your body is the thing bothering you, the ache, the tiredness, the photo you hated, speak to it the way you would about a car you are fond of. It is yours and it matters, but it is not you.
- When someone insults or dismisses you, feel the sting and then ask what in you was actually touched. Usually it is only the image you were holding up, not the person holding it.
- Under real pressure today, the deadline, the hard phone call, the traffic, put a hand flat on the table for a second and remember that the one feeling all this is steadier than the week suggests.
If I am not the image I defend all day, what am I?
The same truth in other traditions
Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita
Weapons do not cut it, fire does not burn it, water does not wet it. What a person actually is cannot be reached by anything that reaches the body.
Taoism · Zhuangzi
He compared a lifetime to a brief stay in a borrowed lodging, which is no reason to despise the lodging and no reason to mistake it for home.
Stoicism · Epictetus
He said plainly that he was not the small body carrying him around, and that whoever confuses the two has handed every passerby a way to frighten them.
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