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Proverbs 9:12 · World English Bible

Proverbs 9:12 Meaning If You Are Wise

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you mock, you alone will bear it.

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What does Proverbs 9:12 mean?

Whatever teacher the mind chooses, it chooses for the mind alone, because the mind is the only place where the choice takes effect. To be wise is to accept love, and the peace of it is felt where it was chosen, within.

From the Christian Psychology reading below.

Proverbs 9:12 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY

Christian Psychology

Whatever teacher the mind chooses, it chooses for the mind alone, because the mind is the only place where the choice takes effect. To be wise is to accept love, and the peace of it is felt where it was chosen, within.

To scorn is to choose the ego, and the ego's gift is exactly the loneliness the choice describes, a self walled off from everything and carrying its guilt by itself. No one is punished from outside. The mind simply lives in the world its chosen teacher shows it.

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Live Proverbs 9:12 today

  1. Catch yourself mid-complaint today and see what it costs you. The bitterness lands in your body first, long before it reaches anyone else.
  2. Be generous with one person today for no reason and tell no one. See where the good of it actually shows up.
  3. In traffic, in the slow line, in the meeting that is going nowhere, choose how you are going to be in it. That choice is the only part of the situation that is yours.

What kind of day am I making for myself right now?

The same truth in other traditions

Dhammapada 1

All that we are arises from what we have thought. Act from a clear mind and ease follows you. Act from a clouded one and trouble does.

Hinduism · the law of karma

What you plant is what grows in you. No one is handing out punishments from outside, the seed simply becomes the plant.

Stoicism · Epictetus

Epictetus said people are disturbed not by things but by their views of things. The world you live in is largely the one your own judgments built.

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