Luke 7:12 · World English Bible
Luke 7:12 Meaning Now When He Came Near
Now when he came near to the gate of the city, behold, one who was dead was carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. Many people of the city were with her.
What does Luke 7:12 mean?
The gate of the city is the threshold of consciousness, the point a person reaches at the edge of a state of awareness, and drawing near it is enough; the gate need only be approached, not conquered. The dead man carried out is a desire of the mind that has died, the single offspring of the spirit, for the mother is the spirit within and this son was her only one.
From the Esoteric reading below.
Luke 7:12 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Esoteric
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
The gate of the city is the threshold of consciousness, the point a person reaches at the edge of a state of awareness, and drawing near it is enough; the gate need only be approached, not conquered. The dead man carried out is a desire of the mind that has died, the single offspring of the spirit, for the mother is the spirit within and this son was her only one. She is a widow because the emotional nature has been left without its active partner, the initiating power gone, and the much people are the untrained thoughts that gather around a grief.
What is carried out at the edge of awareness is a dead product of the mind, and the spirit that bore it grieves alone until the higher awareness comes near enough to raise what died.
gate of the city: the threshold of a person's consciousness, the edge of a state of awareness dead man: a desire or offspring of the mind that has died within a person mother: the spirit within a person, the source that bears its single offspring her: the emotional nature of a person, left partnerless in its grief
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Live Luke 7:12 today
- If something you hoped for has quietly died this year, let yourself name it once today without fixing it. Just stand at the edge of it for a minute, no plan required.
- When someone tells you about a loss, resist the advice. Come near, stay a beat longer than is comfortable, and let the silence do the work your words were going to do badly.
- When you feel the familiar heaviness arriving in traffic or in line or between meetings, stop pushing it away. Let it be there for the length of the red light, then move.
What have I been carrying out for burial without ever letting myself stand near it?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
Standing at the gate is already arriving. There is no gate to break down, only a threshold to come near.
Sufism · Rumi
The wound is the place the light enters. Grief carried out into the open is not the end of something, it is where the opening happens.
Stoicism · Epictetus
You cannot command the loss, only how you stand at the edge of it. Meeting it is enough, you do not have to conquer it.
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