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Psalms 143:3 · World English Bible

Psalms 143:3 Meaning For the Enemy Pursues My Soul

For the enemy pursues my soul. He has struck my life down to the ground. He has made me live in dark places, as those who have been long dead.

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What does Psalms 143:3 mean?

There is an old pain that lives inside many people, gathering the sorrows of years into a heavy presence that rises and takes them over. When it strikes, it drags life to the ground and fills the mind with darkness.

From the Ego v. Being reading below.

Psalms 143:3 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

EGO & BEING

Ego v. Being

There is an old pain that lives inside many people, gathering the sorrows of years into a heavy presence that rises and takes them over. When it strikes, it drags life to the ground and fills the mind with darkness. In such hours a person can feel as good as dead, though the body still walks and breathes.

This darkness is not who you are. It is old suffering moving through you, and it survives only by pulling you in unnoticed. The moment you feel it as a presence and no longer mistake it for yourself, its grip loosens and life returns.

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Ego v. Being lens

Live Psalms 143:3 today

  1. When an old heaviness rolls in today, say, this is the old pain, not, this is my life. Feel where it sits in your body and breathe there for a minute.
  2. When a family member says the one thing that always sets you off, feel the surge before you answer. You can let the old reaction be there without letting it speak.
  3. When you are low and someone's message or post stings more than it should, do not reply in that state. Put the phone down, walk for ten minutes, then decide if it needed a reply at all.

What have you been treating as who you are, when it was something passing through?

The same truth in other traditions

Buddhism

The first arrow is the pain itself. The second is the story we tell about it, and the second is the one that keeps us on the ground.

Stoicism · Epictetus

It is not the event that flattens you but your judgment of it. See the judgment as a judgment and it starts to loosen.

Sufism · Rumi

Grief, anger and shame are guests at the door. Meet them as visitors and they do not move in as the owner.

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