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Proverbs 23:27 · World English Bible

Proverbs 23:27 Meaning For a Prostitute Is a Deep Pit

For a prostitute is a deep pit; and a wayward wife is a narrow well.

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What does Proverbs 23:27 mean?

What the mind pursues to feel complete can only deepen the sense of lack that sent it looking. The figure that promises to fill the emptiness is guilt wearing an alluring face, and every step toward it narrows the ground until the mind feels trapped by the very thing it chose.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 23:27 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

What the mind pursues to feel complete can only deepen the sense of lack that sent it looking. The figure that promises to fill the emptiness is guilt wearing an alluring face, and every step toward it narrows the ground until the mind feels trapped by the very thing it chose. Nothing outside can answer the hunger of a mind that believes it was cut off from love.

The pit is not a punishment set by anyone. It is only what it feels like to seek wholeness where wholeness was never lost, in a body or an object that cannot give what was never truly gone.

Whore: the promise that the emptiness of separation can be filled from outside, the pursuit that only deepens the lack Strange woman: the mind's own guilt made attractive, the tempting appearance that draws attention away from love Deep ditch: the sense of being trapped that seeking outside the mind always produces

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 23:27 today

  1. The next time you reach for your phone out of a small empty feeling, pause for five seconds and name the feeling instead of filling it. You can still pick up the phone. Just know what sent you.
  2. When you want someone to say the thing that would make you feel enough, let the wanting sit there unsatisfied for one conversation and stay kind anyway.
  3. Before you buy something today that you were not planning to buy, ask what hole it is supposed to fill. If you still want it afterward, fine.

What am I hoping something out there will finally settle in me?

The same truth in other traditions

Dhammapada 24

Craving spreads like a vine. Feed it and it grows, and the one who feeds it stays caught in it.

Tao Te Ching 46

There is no greater poverty than wanting more. Knowing you have enough is the only real having.

Buddhism · Second Noble Truth

Suffering is built out of thirst, the pull toward what we think will finally complete us. The thirst, not the thing, is the trap.

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