Matthew 8:32 · World English Bible
Matthew 8:32 Meaning He Said to Them
He said to them, “Go!” They came out, and went into the herd of pigs: and behold, the whole herd of pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea, and died in the water.
What does Matthew 8:32 mean?
Casting something out without ever taking it back in does not truly cleanse a person. It only drives the rejected force back down into the depths, and the cost is the animal, instinctive life that had been carrying it.
From the Psychoanalysis reading below.
Matthew 8:32 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Psychoanalysis
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis
Casting something out without ever taking it back in does not truly cleanse a person. It only drives the rejected force back down into the depths, and the cost is the animal, instinctive life that had been carrying it. A herd stampeding off a cliff and drowning, creatures destroyed at the very moment another man is freed, is the mind's own picture of a violent swing to the opposite extreme.
The dark contents, refused a welcome, grab the pigs as a temporary ride, and the whole living mass of animal energy goes under. What drowns is not evil finally wiped out but the earthy, bodily ground that wholeness actually needs. Any inner order that casts out its dark side by sheer command pays for it by losing its own living, creaturely depth.
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Psychoanalysis lens
Live Matthew 8:32 today
- When you catch yourself building the case against someone in your head, pause and ask what in that case is also true of you.
- In the group chat where someone has become the problem, do not add the next line. Let the thread cool without your contribution.
- When the pressure at work makes you want to dump it on whoever is nearest, hold it for ten minutes first. Walk, get water, and let it be yours before it becomes theirs.
Where have I set something of mine down on someone else and walked away?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 2
Light and dark define each other. Try to keep one and banish the other and you have removed nothing, only hidden where it went.
Hinduism · Upanishads
Fear comes from seeing another as wholly other. The one who finds all beings in himself has nothing left to hate or to flee.
Sufism · Rumi
The wound is where the light gets in. Covered over and shoved out of sight it does not heal, it only works underground.
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