Matthew 8:33 · World English Bible
Matthew 8:33 Meaning Those Who Fed Them Fled
Those who fed them fled, and went away into the city, and told everything, including what happened to those who were possessed with demons.
What does Matthew 8:33 mean?
Watching a person's buried, dark side get cast out shatters the calm of the onlookers. The herdsmen's flight is the mind bolting back to the safety of the crowd when the deeper layers crack open.
From the Psychoanalysis reading below.
Matthew 8:33 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Psychoanalysis
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis
Watching a person's buried, dark side get cast out shatters the calm of the onlookers. The herdsmen's flight is the mind bolting back to the safety of the crowd when the deeper layers crack open. Two men had lived among the tombs in genuine suffering, wholly gripped by forces they could not control, cut off from their own wholeness.
What breaks open in front of the herdsmen is a raw glimpse of everything that normally stays below the surface, and the terror it stirs is no different from the dread of watching people act out destruction without even knowing it. Spilling the whole story into the town is helpless, driven talk: one witness cannot hold alone what erupted in front of him, so he hands it to the crowd, where it gets diluted and buried.
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Live Matthew 8:33 today
- When you decide to cut something out of your life today, ask whether you are healing it or just punishing yourself. Choose the version you could still be doing in a year.
- When someone tells you about a habit they are fighting, resist the all-or-nothing advice. Ask what a gentler version would look like for them.
- Under real pressure this week, eat properly and sleep. The urge to run yourself into the ground is the same force you were trying to get free of.
What have I tried to kill in myself that actually needed feeding differently?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching
The one who knows does not speak. Words run out ahead of understanding and leave the understanding behind.
Stoicism · Epictetus
Digest what has happened to you before you serve it up. Sheep do not carry the grass back to show the shepherd, they bring wool.
Zen
When something real cracks open in front of you the first urge is to go tell it. The instruction is to sit with it until it has finished its work in you.
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