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Proverbs 27:20 · World English Bible

Proverbs 27:20 Meaning Sheol and Abaddon Are Never Satisfied

Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; and a man’s eyes are never satisfied.

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What does Proverbs 27:20 mean?

There is a hunger in the ego that no gaining can ever fill, because it feeds on the belief that something is missing. It sends the eyes out to seek among bodies and things, and each acquisition leaves the same emptiness, so it must look again, and the looking becomes a pit that only deepens as it swallows.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 27:20 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

There is a hunger in the ego that no gaining can ever fill, because it feeds on the belief that something is missing. It sends the eyes out to seek among bodies and things, and each acquisition leaves the same emptiness, so it must look again, and the looking becomes a pit that only deepens as it swallows.

The lack was never in the world; it was the mind's own choice to feel incomplete. Nothing outside can satisfy a wound the mind is making within. Only when it turns to receive the wholeness love already holds does the endless craving quiet.

Hell and destruction: the appetite of the ego that can never be filled because it is built on the belief in lack, the pit that deepens the more it takes Eyes: the mind's habit of seeking outside itself for what can only be found within

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Christian Psychology lens

Live Proverbs 27:20 today

  1. When you reach for your phone out of that restless itch today, put it down and stay in the restlessness for sixty seconds. The feeling passes, and that tells you something.
  2. Tell someone one thing you have that you are genuinely glad about, not as a lesson, just out loud. Saying it makes it real in a way thinking it does not.
  3. When you feel behind after seeing what someone else has, close the app and look at the room you are actually in. Nothing in that feed can fill a hole it just dug.

What am I still looking for outside, in a place it has never once been found?

The same truth in other traditions

Tao Te Ching 46

There is no greater poverty than wanting more. The one who knows enough is already rich.

Buddhism · Second Noble Truth

Craving is the ache itself, not the cure for it. Each thing you get quiets it for a moment and then it starts again.

Stoicism · Seneca

It is not the poor man who has little but the man who longs for more. No amount fills a want that is built on feeling empty.

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