Proverbs 23:26 · World English Bible
Proverbs 23:26 Meaning My Son
My son, give me your heart; and let your eyes keep in my ways.
What does Proverbs 23:26 mean?
A mind is always giving its heart to one teacher or the other. The ego asks for the heart too, and takes it whenever attention is spent guarding, comparing, and defending.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 23:26 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
A mind is always giving its heart to one teacher or the other. The ego asks for the heart too, and takes it whenever attention is spent guarding, comparing, and defending. Here the quieter voice within asks for the same devotion, not to bind the mind but to free it, because whatever the heart is given to becomes the pattern the eyes then follow.
To watch the ways of love is simply to let perception be led by peace instead of fear. The mind that hands its heart to gentleness finds its whole seeing changed, for sight follows wherever the heart has already gone.
Heart: the mind's willingness and devotion, the part that chooses which teacher to trust Eyes: perception itself, which shows the mind whatever the heart has already chosen to seek
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Christian Psychology lens
Live Proverbs 23:26 today
- Before you unlock your phone the first time today, take one breath and decide what you are opening it for. Where your attention starts tends to decide where it stays.
- Pick one person you will meet today and give them your attention fully, phone face down, eyes up, for the length of the conversation.
- When something irritating lands, an email, a traffic jam, a comment, ask what you are looking for in it. If it is evidence that you were wronged, you will find some. Look for something else instead.
What have I been handing my attention to without deciding to?
The same truth in other traditions
Dhammapada 1
We become what we give our mind to, the way a wheel follows the ox. Thought leads and the whole of life walks behind it.
Sufism · Rumi
Whatever you keep gazing at, you slowly turn into. So give your heart to what you actually want to be.
Stoicism · Epictetus
The only thing truly yours is where you place your attention. Hand it to fear and fear runs the day.
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