Luke 2:34 Meaning And Simeon Blessed Them

The same truth that lifts a mind can seem to strike it down, and both are named here because they are one event seen from two sides. What falls is not the person but the false self, the structure of guilt and defense the mind had mistaken for itself. And what rises in the same instant is the innocence that was always underneath. The fall only looks like loss to the ego that is losing.

That this correction is spoken against is no surprise. A mind still invested in fear will resist the very thing that would free it, calling its rescue an attack.

Child: the awakened self within the mind, the presence before which the false self falls and the true one rises Sign: the correction that divides the mind against its own defenses, welcomed by love and resisted by fear

Simeon is the one who hears with understanding and gives his consent, and the child he blesses is the imagination newly born within a person. That birth is set for the fall and rising again because it overturns the old order of the senses. States a person once trusted must fall so that the states he has assumed may rise. The same power that lifts one condition lets another sink away.

Israel is the inner imagining self, and within it these fallings and risings play out as one state gives way to the next. The child is a sign spoken against because the world of appearances will always argue against what has not yet shown itself. To be born from within is to trust the unseen assumption over the loud report of fact. What rises in a person is the state he quietly took to be true.