Matthew 13:13 · World English Bible
Matthew 13:13 Meaning Therefore I Speak to Them in Parables
Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don’t see, and hearing, they don’t hear, neither do they understand.
What does Matthew 13:13 mean?
A mind still choosing fear can look straight at love and register nothing, because it sees only what it has decided to see. The senses report faithfully; it is the interpreter behind them that refuses the meaning.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Matthew 13:13 through 2 lenses
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
Christian Psychology
Esoteric
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind still choosing fear can look straight at love and register nothing, because it sees only what it has decided to see. The senses report faithfully; it is the interpreter behind them that refuses the meaning. Truth spoken plainly slides past a mind that has closed the door, so it is offered instead in images that wait quietly until willingness opens.
Nothing is hidden except by the one who will not look, and the seeing that fails is the seeing that has chosen not to understand. When the mind consents, the same words that once passed unheard become suddenly clear.
Parables: love offered in gentle images that a resistant mind can hold until it is ready, meaning kept safe until willingness receives it
Christian Psychology lensGo deeper in the app
ESOTERIC
Esoteric
The inner meaning is spoken in coded images because most of consciousness remains fixed on the outer surface and cannot receive the hidden sense directly. To see yet not see is to take in the literal picture while missing the meaning buried inside it, the eyes of the surface self resting on the shell of the story and never reaching the kernel. The parable is the very method of concealment, wrapping the truth of the body and consciousness in figures so that only the awakened inner faculty can unlock it.
Hearing without understanding is the same condition in another sense, the words landing on the ear while the deeper mind stays asleep. The teaching is hidden in plain images on purpose, waiting for the part of a person ready to turn inward and read what the surface eye passes over.
Parables: the coded images in which the inner truth of the body and consciousness is deliberately concealed Seeing eyes that see not: the surface faculty that takes in the literal picture but never reaches the meaning hidden within it
Esoteric lensGo deeper in the app
Christian Psychology lens
Live Matthew 13:13 today
- Reread a message or a page you decided you already understood, slowly, as if you had never seen it. Your first reading was a decision as much as a reading.
- The next time someone repeats something they have told you before, assume you missed it rather than that they are nagging. Ask them to say it again.
- In a tense exchange, before you answer, ask yourself what you have already decided this person means. Then ask them what they actually mean.
What have I been looking at for years without seeing?
The same truth in other traditions
Zen
Two people look at the same moon and only one of them sees it. The difference is not in the moon.
Stoicism · Epictetus
We are not shaken by what happens but by how we read it. The eyes report, the mind decides what it means.
Tao Te Ching 1
Some things cannot be said straight. They are pointed at, and the pointing waits until you are ready to follow it.
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