There is a place in the mind meant for one thing only, the meeting with God, and into it the ego has brought its endless trade. Every bargain there is the belief that peace must be bought, that innocence has a price and forgiveness is an exchange. A mind turned wholly toward truth will not tolerate that traffic, for love keeps no accounts and asks no payment. The overturning is not anger but correction, the sweeping away of the idea that the holy can be sold.
Even the doves, the emblems of peace, had been priced and traded, and this is the ego's cruelest bargain, to make a mind pay to feel whole. That charge is cancelled here, and what was a marketplace of guilt becomes again a quiet room where the mind remembers it was never for sale.
Temple: the part of the mind set apart for communion with God, the still center where nothing but love was meant to enter
Moneychangers: the thoughts that turn every relationship into a transaction, weighing worth and demanding payment for what is freely given
Tables: the ego's ledgers of debt and credit, the accounting of who owes and who is owed that keeps guilt in circulation
Doves: the peace of God offered as a purchase, innocence made a commodity when it was always a gift