Psalms 143:4 · World English Bible
Psalms 143:4 Meaning Therefore My Spirit Is Overwhelmed Within Me
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is desolate.
What does Psalms 143:4 mean?
There are moments when the inner darkness grows so heavy it seems to swallow you whole. The mind is overwhelmed, the heart feels emptied of all life, and everything within has gone still and grey.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
Psalms 143:4 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Ego v. Being
EGO & BEING
Ego v. Being
There are moments when the inner darkness grows so heavy it seems to swallow you whole. The mind is overwhelmed, the heart feels emptied of all life, and everything within has gone still and grey. This is real, and it must not be denied or covered with false comfort.
Yet in the depth of that desolation, notice the awareness that registers the emptiness, the silent witness that sees the overwhelm without being destroyed by it. The suffering feels total only because you have taken it to be all of you. When you feel the pain fully and sense the space in which it appears, the desolation is held by something within you that despair cannot reach.
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Ego v. Being lens
Live Psalms 143:4 today
- When the emptiness feels total, sit down and let it be as bad as it is for five minutes, no fixing. Then feel the part of you that is still here watching it, calm and quiet underneath.
- Ask one person to simply sit with you, not to advise or cheer you up. Say, I just want company for an hour.
- On a day when you are hollowed out and still have to work, pick the smallest possible next step and do only that. One email, one dish, one ten minute walk.
Who is the one in you who has been watching all of this without being destroyed by it?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism
Suffering is to be looked at squarely, not argued away. Holding it with a steady, kind attention is what begins to change it.
Stoicism · Seneca
No grief lasts at full force. It feels endless only from inside the hour you are in.
Hinduism · Bhagavad Gita
What is deepest in you cannot be cut, burned or drowned. The storm is real and it is not reaching the ground you stand on.
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