Mark 9:18 · World English Bible
and wherever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth, and wastes away. I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they weren’t able.
A mind seized by fear is thrown about without mercy, torn between impulses it did not choose, wasting away because it believes an alien power moves it from within. The father who describes his son is describing the terror of watching a beloved part of oneself convulse under a force that seems stronger than every attempt to help.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
A mind seized by fear is thrown about without mercy, torn between impulses it did not choose, wasting away because it believes an alien power moves it from within. The father who describes his son is describing the terror of watching a beloved part of oneself convulse under a force that seems stronger than every attempt to help.
The helpers could not cast it out, for fear is not undone by fear or by effort that still believes the affliction is real. Only a strength that knows the torment is a figure in a dream can lift it, because it looks past the convulsion to the quiet Self that was never truly touched.
Son: the part of the mind that appears possessed by fear and helpless before it. Father: the mind's tenderness toward its own suffering, love pleading for the release of what it cherishes.
Christian Psychology lens
What in me is panicking right now, and what part of me is calmly watching it?
The untrained mind thrashes like a fish pulled onto dry land, flung about by cravings and terrors it never chose. What steadies it is not more struggle but clear seeing.
Arjuna says the mind is restless and violent, as hard to hold as the wind. Krishna answers that it can be quieted, not by force, but by steady practice and by resting in what does not move.
We are not shaken by events but by our judgments about them. The convulsion lives in the opinion, so that is where the healing has to happen.
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Christian Psychology