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Proverbs 11:10 · World English Bible

Proverbs 11:10 Meaning When It Goes Well with the Righteous

When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices. When the wicked perish, there is shouting.

What does Proverbs 11:10 mean?

The city is the whole of a mind, every thought gathered in one place. When the thoughts that side with love go well, the mind is at peace with itself, and this peace feels like celebration in every quarter.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 11:10 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

The city is the whole of a mind, every thought gathered in one place. When the thoughts that side with love go well, the mind is at peace with itself, and this peace feels like celebration in every quarter. What is called the perishing of the wicked is only the fading of the belief in separation. Nothing living dies. A fearful thought loses the mind's backing and quietly dissolves, and the joy that follows is the mind recognizing that what threatened it was never real.

The shouting, then, is not triumph over an enemy. It is the relief of a mind that no longer needs to defend against its own inventions.

City: the whole of a mind, every thought gathered as citizens in a single dwelling

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 11:10 today

  1. Pick one worry you have been circling this week and write down, plainly, what you actually know to be true about it. Watch how much of it was never there.
  2. At dinner or on a walk with someone, say out loud a fear you have been defending against. Hearing it in open air is usually enough to shrink it.
  3. When a notification lands and your stomach drops before you have even read it, pause and read it slowly. Most of the dread belonged to the moment before the words.

What have I been guarding against that may not exist?

The same truth in other traditions

Heart Sutra

What we feared had solid existence turns out to be empty of it. Seeing that, fear falls away and nothing had to be destroyed.

Advaita Vedanta

The rope mistaken for a snake does not have to be killed. The moment there is light, the snake is simply gone, and the relief is the whole of it.

Tao Te Ching 46

There is no greater peace than the end of wanting to defend. When nothing inside is at war, the whole person is quiet.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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