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Proverbs 23:33 · World English Bible

Proverbs 23:33 Meaning Your Eyes Will See Strange Things

Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind will imagine confusing things.

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What does Proverbs 23:33 mean?

When a mind has surrendered to the ego's blur, perception itself goes crooked. The eyes begin to find temptation everywhere, seeing the projected guilt in one alluring form after another, and the heart, having handed itself to fear, speaks in the twisted logic of separation as though it were sense.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 23:33 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

When a mind has surrendered to the ego's blur, perception itself goes crooked. The eyes begin to find temptation everywhere, seeing the projected guilt in one alluring form after another, and the heart, having handed itself to fear, speaks in the twisted logic of separation as though it were sense. Sight and speech both bend to serve the teacher the mind has chosen.

This is not a curse laid on the body but a description of what a divided mind does with vision and voice. Give attention to fear and the whole of perception distorts, until the mind is willing to hand its heart back to love and see straight again.

Strange women: the many forms projected guilt takes before a fear-led perception, temptation multiplied by a mind looking through the ego Eyes: perception, which finds outside only what the chosen teacher has taught it to seek Heart: the mind's devotion and voice, which speaks in distortion whenever it has given itself to fear

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 23:33 today

  1. When you catch yourself scanning for something to be annoyed at today, stop the scan and look at one ordinary thing plainly instead.
  2. Before you send the message you have been composing in your head, read it once and ask whether fear wrote it. Rewrite that part.
  3. When you are rattled in a meeting or a hard call, say less than you want to. A shaken mind is a poor narrator of what is happening.

When I am afraid, what does my seeing start making up?

The same truth in other traditions

Dhammapada 1

The mind shapes everything it looks at. Speak from a bent mind and the words come out bent too.

Tao Te Ching 12

Chasing after what glitters wears the senses out, until the eye can no longer tell what it is seeing.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

The soul takes the color of its thoughts. Dye it in fear and everything it sees and says comes out that shade.

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