Luke 11:30 · World English Bible
Luke 11:30 Meaning For Even as Jonah Became a Sign
For even as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so the Son of Man will also be to this generation.
What does Luke 11:30 mean?
Jonah swallowed and returned is the pattern of the self that goes down into the depths of the flesh and rises again, and this rising is the only sign given to the crowded mind. The Son of man is that same awakened self appearing within a person, showing by its descent and return what religion looks for outside in wonders.
From the Esoteric reading below.
Luke 11:30 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Esoteric
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
Jonah swallowed and returned is the pattern of the self that goes down into the depths of the flesh and rises again, and this rising is the only sign given to the crowded mind. The Son of man is that same awakened self appearing within a person, showing by its descent and return what religion looks for outside in wonders. Nineveh is the dense population of thoughts and appetites built up over a lifetime.
What the generation is offered is the buried self coming back from the belly of the body, alive. The proof that the higher life is real is not a marvel from the sky but the return of consciousness out of the depths where it seemed lost.
Jonas: the self that goes down into the depths of the flesh and rises again, the buried consciousness returning Son of man: the awakened divine self appearing within a person Ninevites: the crowded population of thoughts, appetites, and habits a person builds over a lifetime
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Live Luke 11:30 today
- Think of one stretch of your own life you went down into and came out of, a bad year, an illness, a loss. You do not need to post about it or explain it. Just sit with the plain fact that you are here on the other side of it.
- When someone asks how you are and you can tell they mean it, say something true about a hard season you came back from instead of the easy version. Your having come back is the thing they can actually use.
- In a week where you feel buried, under the inbox, under the noise, let yourself be buried without panic. Something in you has surfaced before and knows the way up.
What in you has already come back from somewhere you thought you would not return from?
The same truth in other traditions
Taoism · Tao Te Ching 40
Returning is called the movement of the way. What goes out into the dark comes back, and that turning is the whole proof.
Zen
The tradition tells of the ox-herder who vanishes into the mountains and comes back to the marketplace carrying nothing special. The coming back is the whole teaching, not the vanishing.
Sufism · Rumi
He writes that the reed must be cut from the reed bed and hollowed out before it can sing. The wound and the return through it are what make the sound.
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