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Numbers 21:5 · World English Bible

Numbers 21:5 Meaning The People Spoke Against God and Against

The people spoke against God and against Moses: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, there is no water, and our soul loathes this disgusting food!”

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What does Numbers 21:5 mean?

In the long stillness of meditation the lower self rebels against the very discipline that is freeing it. Drawn up out of the lower mind and its rule of the senses, a person reaches the dry patience of the inward wilderness and there the carnal voice complains against the mind that led it and against the higher power behind that mind.

From the Esoteric reading below.

Numbers 21:5 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

ESOTERIC

Esoteric

In the long stillness of meditation the lower self rebels against the very discipline that is freeing it. Drawn up out of the lower mind and its rule of the senses, a person reaches the dry patience of the inward wilderness and there the carnal voice complains against the mind that led it and against the higher power behind that mind. It craves the coarse food of the senses and turns in disgust from the fine bread, the subtle wisdom and brain-sugar that feed the higher self, and from the water of truth. What is happening is simple: the appetites, hauled out of their old comfort into the demanding quiet, resent the light nourishment of the spirit and howl for the heavy meals of the flesh.

Egypt: the lower mind, the self ruled by the senses, the old bondage a person is drawn up out of Wilderness: the dry, patient ground of meditation where the lower self is tested Bread: the fine, subtle food of wisdom, the brain-sugar that feeds the higher mind Water: truth, the living nourishment the carnal self loathes Moses: the picture of a person's own mind, the inner leader guiding the ascent

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Esoteric lens

Live Numbers 21:5 today

  1. When you sit still for five minutes and your mind starts listing everything else you could be doing, stay the five minutes anyway. The complaining is the part you came to meet.
  2. Be with someone without the entertainment on. A dinner with no screen will feel thin for about ten minutes and then it will not.
  3. In the dull stretch of the afternoon, when your hand reaches for the phone out of boredom rather than need, let it stay empty for one minute. Plain is not the same as empty.

When the quiet starts to feel like nothing, what am I actually hungry for?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism

The mind resists training the way a wild animal resists the rope, and the pulling back is not a sign you chose wrong. Restlessness in meditation is the practice working, not failing.

Stoicism · Epictetus

When you first eat plain food after rich food, your mouth calls it tasteless. The taste changes before the food does.

Sufism · Rumi

The body complains loudest right when the soul begins to feed. Hunger of this kind is a sign of where you are heading, not proof you should turn back.

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