Proverbs 6:18 · World English Bible
Proverbs 6:18 Meaning A Heart That Devises Wicked Schemes
a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are swift in running to mischief,
What does Proverbs 6:18 mean?
Every attack is imagined before it is acted, and the heart that devises is the mind rehearsing separation in secret, building in fancy the very world it will then meet as fact. What the mind pictures with conviction it goes on to perceive, so the wicked imagining is the first cause and the outer trouble only its echo.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
Proverbs 6:18 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Christian Psychology
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Christian Psychology
Every attack is imagined before it is acted, and the heart that devises is the mind rehearsing separation in secret, building in fancy the very world it will then meet as fact. What the mind pictures with conviction it goes on to perceive, so the wicked imagining is the first cause and the outer trouble only its echo.
The swift feet are eagerness in the wrong direction, the readiness of fear to hurry toward the harm it has already dreamed. A mind that stops rehearsing guilt has nowhere left to run, for the road to mischief exists only as long as it is being imagined.
Heart: the imagining place of the mind, where separation is pictured first and thus made ready to be seen Feet: the mind's chosen direction, here quick with fear, hurrying toward a harm it has already dreamed
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Live Proverbs 6:18 today
- Today, when the imaginary argument starts up in the shower or the car, the one where you finally say the perfect cutting thing, let it stop mid sentence. You are practicing a fight you do not want.
- Before you walk into a conversation you are dreading, stop picturing how badly it will go. Walk in with no script and let the actual person surprise you.
- In traffic or a long line, when the story starts about what the other person is doing to you on purpose, hand them the simplest explanation instead. They are tired. They did not see you. That is usually the whole of it.
What have I been rehearsing in my head that I would never want to happen?
The same truth in other traditions
Dhammapada
It says the mind precedes all things, and whatever a person dwells on with conviction, they go on to live in. The thought comes first, the world follows.
Bhagavad Gita
Krishna says the mind is a friend to the one who has it in hand and an enemy to the one who does not. What it rehearses becomes what it serves.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
He said the soul takes the color of its thoughts, so he was careful what he kept turning over. You become whatever you spend your afternoons imagining.
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