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Matthew 24:43 · World English Bible

Matthew 24:43 Meaning But Know This

But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.

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What does Matthew 24:43 mean?

The house is the body and the whole field of a person's consciousness, and the goodman is the ruling awareness set to keep it. The thief is the sudden intrusion that comes at an unguarded hour, the loss that slips in through inattention when the watch is not kept.

From the Esoteric reading below.

Matthew 24:43 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

ESOTERIC

Esoteric

The house is the body and the whole field of a person's consciousness, and the goodman is the ruling awareness set to keep it. The thief is the sudden intrusion that comes at an unguarded hour, the loss that slips in through inattention when the watch is not kept. Its coming cannot be timed, and that is the point: only a steady wakefulness across every watch of the night keeps the dwelling whole.

The watches are the divisions of the inner night, the stretches of dimmed awareness a person passes through, and it is in the unwatched stretch that the breaking-in happens. What is held within is kept not by knowing the hour but by not sleeping through it.

The house: the body and the whole field of consciousness a person is set to keep The thief: the sudden intrusion and loss that slips in at the unguarded hour, through inattention The watch: a division of the inner night, a stretch of dimmed awareness through which a person passes

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Esoteric lens

Live Matthew 24:43 today

  1. Choose one hour today with notifications off. Most of what gets in and steals your attention arrives through a door you simply left open.
  2. Before you open a group chat or an email thread you know will rile you, take a breath and decide how you want to come out of it. That decision made in advance is the guard at the door.
  3. When you feel yourself slipping into autopilot at work or in traffic, say your own name silently and look around once. That is the watch being kept.

Which door of mine has been left open the longest?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism · Dhammapada

Guard the mind the way you would guard a house, because what slips in through a careless gate does the damage.

Stoicism · Epictetus

Keep watch over your own impressions as a sentry keeps watch. Nothing enters and takes you over unless you let it in unexamined.

Tao Te Ching 52

Close the gates, guard the senses, and you stay whole to the end. Leave them wide open and you spend your life being emptied.

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