Three coverings, not one. Marcus does not say "wrappings" in general — he names three kinds: ἀγγεῖα (vessels, containers), φλοιοί (rind, husk) and καθάρματα. The words are ranked by increasing contempt: a vessel is mere packaging, a rind is what you scrape off a fruit, and a κάθαρμα is "the sweepings after a cleaning," in common speech a straight insult ("offscouring"). The body turns out to be neither prison nor enemy but packaging of varying worthlessness. The same move — and the same word φλοιός — returns a few lines later in 12.8, where the causes too are to be seen "bare of their rinds."

How exactly God sees. μόνῳ γὰρ τῷ ἑαυτοῦ TERMνοερῷ μόνων ἅπτεται — a double "only": only by what is intellectual in himself, and only what is intellectual. This is not observation from outside but touch (ἅπτεται), like by like: the coverings simply do not exist for God — he does not see through them, he has nothing with which to touch them. And what he does touch is described by two participles in a water metaphor: ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ ἐρρυηκότων ("having flowed out of him") and ἀπωχετευμένων — from ὀχετός, "a conduit, a channel": mind in a man is a channel led off from the source. This is the Stoic effluence in its pure form; cf. the divine portion in a human being.

Theology turns into a technique. The passage could have ended at the first sentence — but it is followed by ἐὰν δὲ καὶ σὺ τοῦτο ἐθίσῃς ποιεῖν: "and if you too make a habit of doing this." The mode of vision ascribed to God is offered as an EXERCISEexercise. It has ready models: 9.18 — "go inside, right inside their ruling parts, and you will see what judges you are afraid of"; 9.34 — "reckon that you are looking at their poor little souls bare."

The profit is named, and it is practical. περισπασμός is a "pulling aside": a military term for the diversion of forces, cf. 7.20. The release is put in the verb περιαιρήσεις ("you will strip off all round") — the very motion by which rind is removed: you handle your own scatteredness as God handles the coverings. And the close is an a fortiori: a man who does not look at the κρεᾴδια wrapped about him ("bits of meat" — butcher's language, not the philosophical σάρξ) will hardly go on to study clothes, house and reputation. The last pair is περιβολὴ καὶ σκηνή, "wrapping and stage-set": σκηνή is the backdrop of a theatre, cf. 10.27 and 11.6. The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one desire.