Forty-day aim to control specific areas of talk:
1. Avoid unconscious use of slang language and swearing.
2. Avoid aimless talk. Recognize gossip as a descending octave.
3. Avoid complaint or 'moaning'.
As a general guide: Stop talking before they stop listening.
And pray.
During Lent Sundays are not counted as they are always taken as days of remembrance. As this aim follows Lent, Sundays are counted as days of effort.
I haven't said it, and in the fire it may be missed. This aim assumes the daily practise of self-remembering:
- whilst reading scripture
- during the efforts to make this aim real
- during seven routine daily tasks & events
Luk 21:19 In your patience possess ye your souls.
Notes
- Think of The Odyssey, Bk 17
Argus the Hound, there at the end of his days. Odysseus returns after 20 years, the man that bred the hound - it's extraordinary to see a beauty like this lying in the dung. Eumaeus the swineherd: This dog did have a master but it's all too obvious he died abroad.
I am in the fire. By 0800am I was in a major conflict with several people, outnumbered and losing control. It came from nowhere, unexpected side swipe. The heat is on. I spent the day attempting to resist some major force pushing me to identify. Probably I am lost in a state of identifying with only some occasional breath of air. I'm sinking. And I know it. How did I cope controlling my mouth? Pretty poor. Maybe some control but mostly none. I watched myself cussing and bitching. I was out in the battlefield exhausted, drained, wanting to run home feeling that I'm not cut out for this. (I'm at home now feeling just the same.) Overwhelmed, bruised, out smarted.
I have this picture of an innocent walking into an ambush without any awareness of what is lying in wait. Having been assaulted he spends the rest of his time reeling from the shock, and feeling woefully inadequate to the quest as it unfolds. He leaves the battlefield like a whimpering Labrador mauled by a Pitbull, head hung low, hunched shoulders, tail between legs, licking his bleeding wounds in disbelief and with a degree of fear. Is this an exaggeration? It's an emotional state. It's what you get when you are measured and cut to size without even knowing what hit you. Innocent? May be not, but in the context of the assault, woefully inadequate and unprepared. And now, where next but to rest and return tomorrow and to care less for what the world will do. An aim was set, a trajectory defined by an effort. Nothing else exists. The forest is in darkness and there is a hush. Take your victuals, dust off your jacket, rest and prepare. A journey has begun and only through Our Lord, will this crossing be taken. Amen. [060208] And admit it, you can't do it alone. - The calm after the storm. It had to be so. I was too battered for anything else to be possible. Yet on reflection, you can't knock these opportunities to experience serious friction generating events. Win or lose, you have to know that such things have to occur. [070208]
- It seems I swear a lot. I knew it. I know why too but that's nothing. I don't control it. It's the biggest area of weakness out of the three listed at the top of this post. It has to be clear - observing myself swearing is not enough. There has to be control. I have to be present to prevent it occurring. It's dumb, almost literally. I saw today how I lose energy as I swear. [090208]
- Three strikes against me. Yet, other events were controlled. For the record, the two events which are most likely to catch me out are: a) recounting past events, or someone else's story, or b) as an exclamation - something goes wrong and I blurt out "Shit!", "Fuck!", etcetera. [100208]
- Another day another war. What do I do? It seems worse, or no better. Nothing has changed. I'm still banging heads with people at 0730 am, (and that, by any standards, isn't worth it). It is interesting to observe though. Interesting how it steals energy, not obviously but it leaves one weakened and feeling less sure, more wobbly. You just can't afford to be wobbly. Forty-nights out in the wilderness with the Devil tempting you is a long time if you start wobbling within the first seven days. It's a long haul. I swore today in a way that I just didn't yesterday. If nothing else at least swearing is a good pointer to the state I'm in - it's a sure sign of sleep. It's easy to be innocent in the midst of these events. Did I say innocent? I meant foolish and duped by one's rational blood & soil thinking. (Not that I want to encourage anything specious but we can understand that there is an order of creation that is supra-rational, burying our heads in the sand of reason is no salvation). To read times of intense strife and friction as if routine daily events of no particular order or value is neither clever or savvy. OK, so it was draining, and the day went pear shaped, but so what? How many other people have daily lives that mess up as soon as they step out into the world? You are just a statistic, one of any number. And, this may be so. You can believe it. Or not. I had to consider, given the nature of my Work, this assault comes from that same generation of vipers, that same godless progeny that were building the civilization of Cain in the blood of his brother. These out of control, out of nowhere, assaults upon our Work - upon my Work - have the tell tale signs of the Rulers of the Darkness of This World that lurk with the intent of smothering all signs of Light. This may all read as highly paranoid but in the heat of the battle, this feels more like a truth than entertainment for the stressed. I recollect a line, a decree given for the Wayfaring Man: The Unclean Shall Not Pass. So with prayer and the help of the Most High God and this decree, I build my defences. For the record, no sooner had I declared that decree than I was racked with physical sensations that appeared to affirm something real in this working. When we step out into the field of battle, when we declare our aims with actions and efforts, be sure the Devil and his children will have your name. (Your fellow sufferers may not know what you are doing but these dark angels most certainly do.) [110208]
Isa 35:8 And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. - There's no telling what places you are going to find yourself roaming when you get involved in efforts to awaken. Stranger still, almost paradoxical, you become alert and awake to certain events and conditions which would lull you into mechanical states, you are vigilant like the night watch at dawn, yet your vulnerabilities in other areas are all the more exposed. Not surprisingly given recent events, I have been waiting for the next onslaught expecting it from the external world, I've braced myself for the inevitable vicious assault. Yet, today I realised much of the past 24 hours I have been smothered with the blanket of internal considering. I have been spent high on the scale of identifying with every passing emotion, trip wires around various individuals, all living and familiar to me in present time. All of this goes on, the Green Knight wants to destroy us, he is the agent of destruction, an enemy on the way. Yet what has he and all the devil's agents? We have in our possession everything we need, even the mystery itself belongs to us. We are great accumulators, it is a divine gift. What has changed? Five years ago I would be here or I would be identifying, now I am here or I am identifying and that part of me that would be here appears to watch that part of me that is identifying. [160208]
- I absolutely and completely lost control and flew into a near rage this evening - as close as I can get to fury. Full on melt down, burn up, blow out, incendiary device thing. Total and complete identification with a state of frustration-anger-annoyance-madness rolled into one. Open warfare in the trenches, dirty dog fighting. Black fiends falling. [210208]
- Something utterly mystical as if regenerating the whole time body took place this day. The details too acute and personal to put down here. It began early in the morning, a cascade of events that took me from Ludgate Hill, around St Paul's cathedral into Watling Street (a discovery in itself) arriving at St Mary Le Bow for Holy Communion. I was never particularly drawn to Wren's churches personally yet repeatedly my spiritual destiny is woven a little more tightly to his elegant symmetry. I had attempted earlier in the month to arrange a tour of the Whitechapel foundry, where so many of the greatest bells originate, but they were booked months in advance. I was disappointed. What have any of these things to do with this aim? Everything. We must learn to inhabit deeper parts of centres. I'll leave it like that. [220208]
- Lot of lessons revealing that I cannot control my mouth. I cannot shut up when I need to. I push things, events, with the things I say. I draw events towards conflict by my inability to shut up. And the words I choose being almost intentionally insulting/challenging/ threatening in ways and turns. Sometimes manipulating sometimes provoking. I let the small man have dominance. Although not wholly. I know for certain that I might choose a particular word to get someone's heckles up because I cannot tolerate their vanity and self-love and it needs kicking. Wrong or right, I can provoke from Work I's. Not certain that should be permissible? Still, I could defend it by saying that the result is a lot of friction which is good for me, but really? I'll leave this note floating because I'm somewhat ambivalent about this matter. I think the first point, at least within the context of the current aim, is that whatever is being vocalized is to be controlled. Beyond that I might look at what is vocalizing, who is doing the talking. [260208]
- Another 19 days to go ... and I'm feeling like I've reached a temporary plateau. I daren't say the external assaults have diminished but it is as if those fires I ran through in the early phases of this effort are somewhat below. They were grossly stupid and crass, not especially subtle. Blind and brutish darkness flailing desperately. Well, maybe that type of event is enough to effectively stop some wayfarers? The lesson is simple, welcome all that hits you, receive it as a gift. Friction creates energy. See all negativity as a gift. Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, (EPH 5:20). In anycase, the challenges become increasingly subtle. My struggles are now much more with rapidly emerging states of identifying (with ultimately small trivial interpersonal events) which rise like rogue waves from deep within. Calm waters that suddenly threaten to pound this little ship in two, wine dark depths that would swallow 'me' whole, it only takes the smallest leak. What's to be done? Move fast, remember, consciousness is an under utilized energy - it doesn't belong to us (any of us), it isn't located in some part of the brain - it's 'out there' and free for the effort of taking. You must take it, own it, or fly low with broken wings. Get on your wedding shoes. Harps and bells moving like a wind, here am I far from dry land ... [030308]
- Just a short note. Got home from work last night, changing out of my work clothes I placed pocket notepad & pen (which I use to record self-remembering efforts) on the shelf. Having changed went downstairs and got on with life and the evening passed. Went to bed late, slept soundly and awoke, opened my eyes. Instantly like a slap, a shock wave hit me - I was 'out', not present through all yesterday evening. I had forgotten myself for a very long time. That's the thing, it is very easy to forget oneself and when it happens and you experience that initial shock of awakening you realise how little you appreciate or understand what it means to self-remember. Interesting. Remember that shock.
- I noticed yesterday, and less so today but then again odd times throughout the week gone, I'm swearing again. Also, never really strapped down the use of slang and catch-phrases and all that lazy stuff that we do with language. In fact, on consideration I reckon the best method for tackling that sort of thing would include an effort to expand one's vocabulary. In truth, a forty-day aim is always a difficult enterprise and this is no exception. I have probably lost a lot of the original impetus and focus. It has become more an effort to self-remember. On the other hand, the unstated aim which coincided with this effort has been most successful. One benefit of a long aim is that one gains a perspective over the journey taken. All those early struggles and dog fights would have no meaning now but they are part of a story and most certainly are meaningful because of that. Events are bracketed. There is a point in the work where life can be anything. I hardly think it matters any more what circumstances or events befall one. I even see how often I intentionally orchestrate events to create situations for myself that are bound by laws that are sure to grate and cause friction - there is something beautiful in willing bondage and knowing that one is liberated and free already and all these worldly things are merely exercises in non-identification. Literally, tests. I could learn my prayer a little better. I could give up yet more of the territory that I spent my entire life protecting. So much has been wasted. Conscious love has no requirements. Now, there is an all embracing rule if one is able to meet it. The future is above us. [150308]
22 comments:
Same exact thing happened to me a day or two ago. I had the same reaction too. I'm so easily provoked. And then you look at the person who did the provoking and you know it's all mechanical and stupid. You see yourself taking things seriously that are miles beneath your understanding. But you can 'see' how it happened. The trigger was something with a history. Some frustration, long-running. Maybe you've been selfless in dealing with something, then you get an insinuation that you've been lazy or not dealt with that thing. Blam. Indignation. Resentment. Outrage. The voice raises in volume. You feel righteous in indulging all the drama.
A new link is in the margin of my Fourth Way blog. The notes to von Clausewitz' On War as that work corresponds to doing the Work and spiritual warfare and inner development.
When you read those notes you can see immediately that many things are missing in the common Work approach where one gets konked over the head over and over *in the same ways.* We're not recognizing the battlefield. That we are ON a battlefield, to begin with. We aren't discerning the forces on the battlefield. We aren't keeping in mind what we are doing there. The aim. Practical things of war.
In our defense the correlation between Work efforts (like accumulating energy) and fire fights is more nebulous than it would be for a soldier in a war. A common soldier has alot done for him to. We have to do it all for ourselves. A soldier can sleep knowing others are on guard or others have made a wall and so on. That a higher command with more information exists and all that. We have to build the fortification and we have to guard ourselves even when we inevitably have to fall asleep. And we have to be our own higher command while at the same time wade into the thick of battle. (Separation.)
Definitely we need help. Help from above. Which is Real Will.
I say again: prayer. Asking God to help you when the inevitably unpredictable, difficult event(s) occurs. I mean asking beforehand. Asking for all the things the Work teaches. Asking for understanding and wisdom and strength and watchfulness too. Work language, biblical language. All of it.
When you know from experience what *can* and probably *will* occur then you begin to have the advantage. You can make contact with God who is above time to deal with such things when they occur. But that gets serious. To be in contact with God is not playing around. I think we unconsciously know this and kind of step back from it for that reason. Valuation comes into play.
In the difficulty and failure things are being learned. New things. That we are part of an army. Soldiers of Christ. Not alone. That prayer plays a role. That angels play a role as well. That we need the literal armor of God of which prayer seems to be part (Eph. 6:18).
These are connections between the Work teaching and biblical teaching. Just putting two and two together, really. Obvious, but not so until you start to put it together.
Yes. There is a great deal that is being taken in and learned through failure. We need to feel it severely. In a very obvious way, we'd love ourselves too easily if all we did were sail calm waters. Events like we describe are so necessary. They hammer home fundamental truths about reality - and as much as we may know such things intellectually, we need to understand these things emotionally and deeply. We so easily forget, if we ever realised, that this is a strange and dangerous land. The centre of gravity of the emotional centre is Will. We take these batterings, we lose these battles and strangely through such events we learn to develop Will because we are shown so positively how negative the common state of identifying with everything really is - we learn how to obey the Work. Thank God!
I have as a part of my Work history a real time event of Real Will manifesting as a result of prayer and asking God for it.
I've written about it before, but to have it in your 'history' is of course a big thing. It increases valuation and also understanding obviously. But it has to be remembered.
When my father began his real decline there was all kinds of chaotic forces that came my way from family members. It triggered alot of that. So without even knowing future events I felt a need to use a portion of my day(s) to go for a walk and to pray to God for wisdom and strenght and understanding and ability to act from the Work (or His will), Real Will, when it became most necessary to be able to do that.
And then sure enough a major event occured (motivated by money) where I was bizarrely accused of trying to kill my father, and I found myself surrounded by five policeman, full of false witness about me from two rather malignant siblings, and they were looking for *any* sign of unstableness or anger or whatever, and I knew this, and I was calm as one could be, diplomatic, not even a trace of sarcasm, as I was being continually taunted by the policeman.
In the aftermath I could see a direct correlation between my prayers on those walks and my ability to remain cool, calm, and collected in that weird event.
I could also see the event was used (by God, I'll say) to totally humiliate my 'enemies.' They were totally knocked down in the eyes of neutral family members, I was raised up, and I had all the power from that point on.
Then of course the danger for me was to indulge resentment over it *later* in time, always a temptation, and I did that *somewhat*, maybe lessening my advantage a little, but not to any critical point.
That was Real Will, though. Everthing leading to that event was geared to make me explode. And I didn't come close to it. I was acting from above. As the result of prayer. But making those prayers and requests beforehand showed understanding itself, and was a kind of 'doing' in a real way. So Real Will might also involve doing now what you know will have effect in the future. Like a farmer planting a crop. He doesn't make the crop grow, but the act of planting it has a role in that Real Will. God's will.
Then as I wrote a few months ago I experienced a real instance of how God lets you know you you fall off the wagon. You don't lose your justification or standing in the Kingdom of God when you sin, but you DO get a message from God that you are not living up to your own new standards. And they are things you don't want to do anyway. They are beneath you, and beneath your interests and desires. But one *can* fall into old ways, but then you have to deal with the consequences.
It makes me see how you can actually walk in a circumspectful, tactful, understanding way so as to actually maintain a direct line - the King's Highway - that is raised above the accident and chaos and negative forces and violence of the world around that Highway.
That 'straight line' sense of walking that you, Paul, alluded to in a link on something or other you sent once in email.
Don't get - or feel - overwhelmed! (England just may be a more difficult environment than America currently for all of this. So take that into consideration. At least it may make the failures less depressing knowing you may be in a tougher spiritual environment.)
All you write about spiritual forces coming at you is not paranoid. The Puritans wrote about it. The battle begins once one is regenerated by the Word and the Spirit. Then the devil and his army notice you once you begin to act from the Work - from the Bible, as it all is one thing - in real time. They notice you because you declare your presence and intent and all that in the midst of their kingdom. But you have to know that in the conflict the devil and his followers are a defeated foe. You have all the armor you need right now. Remember to ask for help too! (I feel like Jiminy Cricket...)
Maybe if you concentrate on prayer alone rather than trying to 'do.' Ask in prayer for how you want to be and act and so on.
I also wanted to say something earlier: Work efforts, whatever they are, really need to be accompanied by efforts to self-remember and accumulate energy. Though in this case it may turn a difficult situation into an explosive one, but still... It is the energy you need for developing real understanding through it all...
Self-remembering is probably the cause of the negativity and violence that I'm describing. It would make sense. Well, actually I think there's a few things at work here but the key point is that these things happen. It's hellish too. It is the hellish-ness and the threat of physical violence and the possession (out of control deep darkness level of identifying) of people I'm 'banging heads' with that tipped me off. I always try retain the work idea that you can never be given more than you can handle. I've just paraphrased it rather poorly. Like last week, the day after, unable to take more of the same, today has been like a soft spring afternoon, light filtering through the still naked trees, the song of Greenfinch & Great tit balancing in the boughs. Almost Eden. Everything sweetness and light, even the one who yesterday looked like he might assault me. I understand enough. I think you are right, the intensity of prayer needs to measure up. That's how we learn.
But with prayer also it is Real Will. I.e. you ask for ability to do what your aim is then when the time comes you receive a 'top-down' ability to do. It happens above time even. You are just doing it. Descent of the dove Real Will.
Prayer in this sense is the reins of higher volition.
I've done it. I'm not just theorizing, I've done it. And of course when I was praying I was self-remembering as well. This, to use Christian language if one must, is like prayer in a state of worship. (Of course I see the Work language as being Christian language...)
Psalm 141:3 is a good prayer for your effort.
I've been discovering even more clearly how Wilhelmus à Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service is a unique work for a Work Christian. He doesn't get into Work ideas and practices, but he DOES get into practical matters of being on the Way. And it is all striking to a degree that I couldn't communicate fully here.
Look at the insight on contentment he has that I posted on my Fourth Way blog. That's one example, but it is a massive four volume work and a treasure of similar insight.
He speaks from understanding regarding being in conflict with the world. He has a chapter on prudence that speaks to much that we converse about regarding Work efforts yet from many different angles.
Worth looking into.
If you acquire it used, single volume by single volume, I would acquire volumes 3 and 4 first, speaking from a Work perspective (volume 4 having the most material on practical matters you don't find in systematic theologies, but volume 3 too, it's just that 3 is mostly taken up with a discourse on the ten commandments, but it then goes into the practical chapters like contentment). The first two volumes are worth having, but they cover what most good systematic theologies give you.
These big theologies you seem to digest like a breakfast cereal almost subsume me. I think I might spend the rest of my life digesting Calvin's Institutes - and still not really get it's depths. You do, however, make a case for Brakel's work that is intriguing. I always say, No more books - and then another arrives. Oh well.
I admit to feeling a certain discomfort on that subject of being in conflict with the world. I understand that the Work puts one in that position of conflict. Yet, there is something of the world that forces everyone to experience trouble and strife. It is what the world is. In that sense it's universal and I don't like to make a big thing out of it. Others' not in the Work are fighting their own hells. What separates our position is that, people of the world are trying to find an escape from their suffering, trying for a life of comfort and ease, a life of joy & happiness, fun even. In a curious sort of way, we also may have ideals in sight but the friction and suffering, the toil and trouble of the world doesn't win out ever, doesn't really steal our energy, it is food, it fuels our work. We go against the world with intent to make it serve our need, one of the mysteries of the grail: it's gifts are freely available upon every altar in the land. We make ourselves Holy Temples. (1 Cor:3)
If it helps I've come up with a list that is more of a whittling down of basic Christian influences:
+++++++
12 Christian Sources
SACRED REVELATION
Holy Bible, AV1611
GENERAL REVELATION
Iliad & Odyssey - Homer
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Institutes of the Christian Religion - John Calvin
The Christian's Reasonable Service - Wilhelmus à Brakel
Manual of Christian Doctrine - Louis Berkhof
CHURCH HISTORY
History of Protestantism - J. A. Wylie
VISUAL DOCTRINE
Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Fourth Way - Ouspensky
HISTORY OF REDEMPTION
Human Nature in its Fourfold State - Thomas Boston
God, Heaven and Har Magedon - Meredith G. Kline
+++++++
Maybe I'll type out some W. a Brakel excerpts over time to give you more of a sense of what his work has to offer. I find him valuable because it's not just more words, he actually writes from understanding of what a person can expect to experience when they are regenerated and when they embark on the Way. It's practical writing to a more experiential degree than usual. He, for instance, doesn't just say prudence is good and should be cultivated and on and on on that subject like most books would; he says...I can't repeat it. I just read his opening paragraphs in his short chapter devoted to prudence, and it is so impressive and Work-like in that he present prudence as a 'new idea.' Wow, I just read more and a Brakel states in this chapter what I tried to start getting at on one of my sites regarding recognzies forces at work in any event, people, motives, etc. a Brakel gets at all this as he talks of aim and means and so on.
One thing about a Brakel's work is it is often chosen as the desert island work of theology by people when they make those choices. Because it is on-the-mark theology first, then it has all the practical teaching as well. And it's big. 2500 pages. Though readable pages. Good size print.
You really can learn new things reading it when you have a Work history as experience to match up against it. Like that insight on contentment, how people actually despise it when they see it in a believer. Not just that they think the person is simple-minded or whatever but that they actually despise the the contentment they see. That's something that is hard to learn on your own (he of course quotes the Bible on the subject, so one could learn it from there, but we all need teachers). His book quotes the KJV throughout by the way, and quotes it a lot, as in full quotes rather than verse references, which is another good thing about the work...
Of course I may be able to skim the large work and cull the main insights relevant to Work understanding and experience (I'm not kidding). And post them. Because the big four volume work is divided up in pretty recognizable categories, and I'd just skim through the practical chapters looking for more revelatory, helpful insights you don't find anywhere else...
I wouldn't be surprised if Calvin's Institutes has what a Brakel has but at more depth. I havn't explored Calvin's book in depth like I should have by now.
Having said that the Dutch Second Reformation DID have the unique aspect of bringing that Calvinist doctrine to the practical level, and it was doing it self-consciously.
Yes, don't let my ranting about churches keep you from exploring things over there (not that you would, I'm just saying...). Afterall, your country has places and buildings California (or probably Australia too) doesn't. Just the names you throw out, names that have that accumulation of time. Even liberal doctrine doesn't have to be a barrier, because really...you know what you know, and you're there for the presence and perhaps even communion (vertical and horizontal).
Oh let's not let our guard down so easily. It's true Britain is full of history and the imaginal interweaves with the divine presence that runs through time captured and recorded here. I love something I find here, it is REAL, communicable contact, stretching throughout these lands. Yet I walked out of Mary Le Bow - and this is a church of some significance - outside of my imagination - being that it is C of E (and closely tied to Canterbury), the Court of Arches at Mary Le Bow is the highest ecclesiastical Court in the country AND YET, a notice outside declares the main aims of the Church as: "to promote reasonable religion." Whoopee, you can find Biblical support for THAT. No doubt such weak statements reflect the stance of a leadership that quakes in the void of the 'modern' world. That stupid fool priest that encouraged discussion on the introduction of Sharia and wrote a forward to the barbarised edition of the Bible will be connected to that aim. Great. I'll have my adventures, pilgrimages and journeys in the flesh and spirit and where it takes me to these places of worship I'll embrace it - but I find their insipid aim less than worthless. I want contact, I want to tighten the net. Reasonable religion? It stinks of worldly care.
Here's something I was thinking, maybe it's true, maybe not. In America if a solitary person wanders into a church it's like wandering into somebody's house. Who are you? Are you married? Do you have a job? Where do you work? Are you a child abductor? Do you have mental problems? Why are you holding a Bible, that's weird. This is our home, were you invited here?
blah blah blah
I picture stone chapels and open cathedrals and such in England that seem like it is normal for lone strangers to wander into rather than this nuclear family atmosphere.
Of course I'm sure I'm weaving imaginary notions of modern day England in there.
I'm probably not taking into account all the barriers the Department of Tourism and Maintenance of National Landmarks have erected around those place.
No, my guard is not down. (Heck, I've been spending time on KJV-only pro and con sites lately. I can't give up confronting the modern day shallowness and antichrist spirit...)
I think there's some truth there. You really can walk into these churches and it's ok. You might end up talking to someone or not. But in anycase it's an unstated and ancient tradition at work, that is (just to make the point) a biblical practise, to always welcome pilgrims. Sometimes, in more remote locations you have to go find the key held by a local trustee. Really churches were never locked until sometime during the 1980's after a spate of vandalism & theft. I think I take it somewhat for granted that I can just wander into a church. I admit, I love churches, I love to look over the land just to see the spires, storehouses of Holy power, as places of a prayerful atmosphere (perfect for higher forms of SR) and because I can freely enter a church without ever being a member, a familiar face or at least not having to be of the 'family'. I can see what you describe being exactly the case with a great many of the happy-clappy & more ethnic oriented churches such as congregate in community halls and the like. You wouldn't walk into one of those places. There's nothing there without the people/congregation. The beauty of an old church is that what you are wanting to contact is concentrated in that physical space, borne in the history and exists as a part of the focal point of the architecture and inner dressing. You can reason it any number of ways but the fact is that there is something Holy to be found in these churches. I understand there is something to be said for an unadorned room, a meeting place (Quakers?) where the 'power' is with the work of the group. Chateau du Prieure. Amwell House. The Dicker. Maybe that is something I have not experienced in an esoteric sense. It is something I wonder about. What could be achieved with a group, a tight group without leakage. But right now, generally speaking, I guess I'm exploring something else. Different story.
A note; a side note: I'd repeat something I'd write in the past: what we are up against is not an infinite number of things. They can be counted. They can also be categorized. Just as we can count actual time. As O. put it, increase the amount of finite time during the day that you aren't asleep, decrease the amount of finite time during the day that you are asleep. This is concrete. Doable.
I know we are also dealing with flashes, and there are above-time, and different speeds of time elements in all this, but still, for the Observing I that operates with everyday time the amount of time in a day is finite and countable...
Re note '11' that shock becomes more palpable the more you develop. You're able to see the difference more acutely because you're able to be to a greater degree in the third state of consciousness when you are.
There's a similar shock that involves expressing emotional energy negatively. When you've been in the third state of consciousness for a good while, a longish effort like 40 days, you can 'feel' the different state when your voice starts to rise and spew out negativity over whatever.
But of course because these states are relative it's easy to go back down to the normal states and to lose feeling for the differences. Yet development still occurs despite that. We want to raise our average state to the third level and higher...
Union-with-Christ is 'ct.' I don't know why I changed it. I'll probably go back.
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