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John 3:20 · World English Bible

John 3:20 Meaning For Everyone Who Does Evil Hates

For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed.

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What does John 3:20 mean?

Whatever stays unconscious in a person cannot bear to be seen. The ego works in dimness, in reactions and resentments nobody wants to look at.

From the Ego v. Being reading below.

John 3:20 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

Whatever stays unconscious in a person cannot bear to be seen. The ego works in dimness, in reactions and resentments nobody wants to look at. This explains why the mind turns away from stillness, away from the plain light of awareness. Being seen is the one thing it cannot survive.

The avoidance has nothing to do with punishment. Presence simply shows each pattern for what it is, and a pattern held in full awareness can no longer work in secret. In that clear seeing it loses its power and dissolves.

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Ego v. Being lens

Live John 3:20 today

  1. Think of a resentment you keep rehearsing in your head and look straight at it for a minute without justifying it. Just see the shape of the thing.
  2. When you snap at someone today, say out loud that you snapped and why, as plainly as you can. Naming it in the open takes most of the power out.
  3. When you feel the urge to fill a quiet moment with your phone, let the quiet stay. The restlessness that comes up is exactly what has been hiding.

Which reaction in me only survives because I never look at it directly?

The same truth in other traditions

Stoicism · Seneca

He said to put each day on trial before yourself at night, honestly and without excuses. What is examined loses its grip.

Zen

A pattern seen clearly cannot keep running the show. The looking is the whole cure, not a step before it.

Sufism

The practice of muhasaba is to sit each day and take honest account of the self. The parts of you that hate being counted are the parts still in charge.

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

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