Matthew 21:12 · World English Bible
Jesus entered into the temple of God, and drove out all of those who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables and the seats of those who sold the doves.
The mind was made to hold only one Presence, and when love enters it, everything that traded there on other terms is turned out. The buyers and sellers are the ego's endless bargaining, the habit of pricing every thought and every brother by what he can be made to yield.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
The mind was made to hold only one Presence, and when love enters it, everything that traded there on other terms is turned out. The buyers and sellers are the ego's endless bargaining, the habit of pricing every thought and every brother by what he can be made to yield. Where the holy was meant to live freely, the mind had set up a market, exchanging peace for advantage and calling the transaction worship.
The overturning is not anger but correction. A mind cannot bargain and pray at once, and love does not negotiate for a place it already owns. What is cast out is only the belief that anything true could ever be bought or sold.
Temple: the mind itself, made to be the dwelling of God and nothing else. Moneychangers: the ego's bargaining thoughts, weighing and pricing what was meant to be given freely. Tables: the fixed arrangements of the ego, the settled trade the mind mistook for its rightful order. Doves: peace turned into a commodity, the gift of the Spirit reduced to something sold.
ESOTERIC
The higher self enters the body and drives out everything that has turned the sacred place into a market. The temple is the body, meant as a house of inner worship, and the moneychangers are the faculties that reduce spiritual worth to gain, weighing the holy in terms of profit.
Overturning their tables is the Christ self clearing the house of that lower trade, and the doves being sold are the finer spiritual powers, offered up for barter and cheapened in the exchange. When the higher self takes possession, the body is swept clean of every faculty that has been selling its sacred life for something less.
Temple: the body, meant as a house of inner worship Moneychangers: the faculties that reduce spiritual worth to profit, weighing the holy as gain Doves: the finer spiritual powers, cheapened when they are put up for barter Tables: the seats of the lower trade, overturned when the higher self clears the house
Christian Psychology lens
What have I been quietly charging someone for, and what would it feel like to simply cancel the bill?
The usefulness of a bowl is in the empty space, not the clay. A mind filled with deals and calculations has no room left to receive anything.
A teacher poured tea into a full cup until it ran over the table. You come already full of your own terms, he said, and nothing can be given to you until you empty out.
You cannot hold on to what is not yours and also stay free. Let go of the bargaining and what remains is already yours, and nobody can price it.
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Christian Psychology
Esoteric