On still reading Homer

I'm still reading Homer complete. Though I'm still just in the midst of Book 11 of the Iliad. Still, it is a book that I don't get the feeling I am wasting my time, as in thinking I should be reading something else. The Bible can be a pull no matter what, though, especially when you see a context for it like the Proverbs being knowledge you need for the spiritual journey after death. That sort of makes it of the utmost importance to read NOW. Yet even so Homer still stands up (because it too gives a language for that afterworld journey, as does the Work).

Proverbs and the quest in the spiritual realms

I was also thinking about xxxx's mentioning of Proverbs. It seems that proverbs as a genre are supposed to be in memory. And of course they are easier to memorize than other types or genres of Scripture. I think - I know - all Scripture can be put into memory my steady reading of it, but Proverbs can be used for that unique attempt to memorize actual verses and being able to repeat them from memory.

I was also thinking about how I see the proverbs themselves. They are basic, primary, simple. That is because when we die and are in essence we need such simple, primary truth as our foundation and as our means to navigate that world.

Like if we are confronted by demons and we think maybe lying and saying we aren't what we are (thinking the demons would be mollified if we did this), but then we remember proverbs about how it is better to tell the truth than to lie, and so we boldly say the truth that we are heirs of the King of all creation, and that act makes the demons give way. Simple things like that.

Of course we're in that spiritual world now too. - C.

ps- I think there is truth in seeing the fantasy type quest as happening when one physically dies and is able to stand and be awake to some degree. You're making your way to the Kingdom of God, and in between there is Satan and his demons (the Prince of the power of the air), and obstacles, and so on. And you draw on your knowledge of the Word of God (your sword), your faith (your shield) and your ability to be awake and to fear only God and to recognize the Way and the destination.

Regarding the feeling we get reading old blog posts

Regarding the feeling we get reading old blog posts. That mixture of feeling of time having gone by perhaps unprofitably, or without as much profit as could have been gained from it; and of thoughts, sometimes deep and foundational thoughts and insights, going by the wayside, not amounting to much in the long run. All that type of feeling. To confront that and do battle with it you just have to set real aims to step into real Work and make real, consistent efforts over time. This regains all that is lost and builds what wasn't yet there.

Here is a wonderful name for the Old and New Testaments

In the midst of the parable of the sower there is a wonderful name for the Old and New Testaments:

Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

The Word of the Kingdom

...

One day we're going to die then ability to be awake in the moment, in difficult situations, developed being will manifest, in a strange wonderland.

Note on the Calvin posts

I don't know why I wrote two long posts on John Calvin. It's not like I'm a groupie. It's really just because the chain of doctrine that is the armor of God and that changes you internally is 'Federal' theology. It has the individual level and the level that is the great arc and mechanics of the plan of redemption. It's like the 'mechanics of mysticism.' Of course it is the Work in biblical doctrinal language. And Calvin is like the prophet on the mountain elucidating it, or teaching others who presented it...

Logos

Exchanging comments with an atheist I was reminded of this light that exists between us all that enables us to communicate. The irony of the atheist saying what is 'God' and blah, blah, blah. The Bible says Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, sustains this entire Creation. He is the light, the Logos, that which we recognize the presence of, and come into the presence of, to some degree or another, when we come into an "I am here" presence. When we stop chasing the creation - in identification - and come into presence of Him by whom all things were created and by whom all things consist. That Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit we accumulate and we provoke our limits and grieve that Spirit, and perhaps also extend our limits by degree as well.

My sense of Calvin

[Response to an email correspondent...]

Here's my sense of Calvin. He was separate pretty much from the revolutionary Christian world going on around him, basically he was content to be a scholar, he was very much into classical literature, his father put him on track to be in the church, then something happened with his father's relationship to the church and he put him on track to be a lawyer, then his father died, so Calvin followed his real interest to be a classical scholar. All during that time Lutheranism was an influence in his university environment. He also lived with a Waldensian, a wealthy merchant who later was burned at the stake. He wrote a book on Seneca. Then something happened. He barely alludes to it, but he was regenerated by the Word and the Spirit, strongly, quietly, then he found that people were coming to him for the 'pure teaching' despite himself. He became known. He had to leave Paris when some religious scandal broke out involving people associated with him. He wanted still to go somewhere and lead the quiet life of a scholar. At some point he wrote the first edition of the Institutes (much smaller than the final edition). It became a bible of the Protestant cause. He became famous, though he was using about six different fake names in his wanderings. Then he was accosted by a firy guy name Farel and told to come to Geneva and be a leader there or experience the wrath of God.

All through it he seemed to be passive. He seemed to be quietly resigned to not have, or own, his own life. But he was quite strange in his ability to learn the Bible and apostolic doctrine and to elucidate it so young. Jacob Arminius (the father of Arminianism, kind of the opposite of Calvinism) had this to say about Calvin:

"I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read…. For I affirm that in the interpretation of the Scriptures Calvin is incomparable, and that his Commentaries are more to be valued than anything that is handed to us in the writings of the Fathers -- so much so that I concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished above others, above most, indeed, above all."

Another thing I discern in Calvin is he intentionally didn't mix the language of the faith with anything else. This is why you don't see him saying anything positive about Homer, et al, other than something like you find in his Institutes in Book 1, chapter 10, paragraph 3. In that passage he subtly separates the Homeric pantheon from the usual false idols that were worshiped. Yet still, condemns the whole lot. Zwingli was more open about his classical learning and valuation for it, but I can tell Calvin is doing the "when I learned the truth I put childish things away" thing. Plus, he carried the gravitas of the Reformation on his shoulders and couldn't be wishy washy to any degree. This includes politically. This is also why he didn't write about himself much at all. It was all seriousness in time of war when everything was at stake, and he was the central figure others looked to for guidance.

You rightly discern in the post-Calvin Reformed theological universe (really once out of the 1500s, except maybe in the Netherlands) a less deep understanding, even though the intellectual level is extremely high. I can still get things from those guys, but we know more and can navigate it all for the wheat and not stumble upon the chaff.

An intense intellectual scholasticism entered the picture, but it happened for a reason. When truth - apostolic truth - is so blatantly brought into the light it gets attacked and attacked and attacked and every kind of attempt from every conceivable angle to defile it is made. Not only from without the camp, but from within the camp as well. So the intense definitions and so forth, and the confessionalism (the composing of so many confessions an catechisms and writing of the systematic theologies, by whatever name or form they took in the early decades and onward) were necessary. Because there really are 'hinges' in doctrine upon which falls to one side or the other internal states, and it is those hinges that get attacked and false teachers try to present them dishonestly and so on and so forth. Hinges such as justification by faith alone. Or sola Scriptura. All of the five solas.

And the practical matter is this: when a person is converting (they've already been quickened by the Word and the Spirit, but now when they are converting) they need to come into contact with clear, on-the-mark doctrinal teaching. So as a practical matter it is effective for the forces of darkness to engage in the endless sophistry and defiling of the truth, as well as the controlling of what is published and taught and so on, because it keeps the truth away from God's elect and it buys them time, which is really the only thing the devil's side has. A continual hold-everything-up strategy. Because they can't win. But they can delay the proceedings. At least it seems that way. But it's a real conflict with real demands and payment and so on.

Gurdjieff was right about Roman Catholicism. You really have to know the history of Christianity at a sophisticated level to see the Reformation and everything else clearly. The Church prior to the Reformation was many things, geography alone dictating alot, distance from Rome dictating alot, it's not monolithic. But the real Beast/anti-Christ stuff began to emerge (and if I knew more I could give an exact date, but) around probably when the Inquisition started to take off. 1100s? I need to read Schaff, but it's 8 volumes. The corruption had really set in by the time Luther hammered the 95 theses on that church door.

One last note: Calvin and Zwingli both were forced to be more conservative publicly and in their main writings because of the Anabaptists to their left. The radicals of the Reformation were as demonic as the Romanist side, in their own way, and as off-the-mark. For instance Zwingli was forced to officially adopt infant baptism - the Romanist practice - after initially being against ritualism and all that because he was in a battle with extremists on his left who threatened everybody because bad doctrine was an invitation for Rome and the secular powers they influenced to attack (ironically, but good doctrine is the armor of God), so the on-the-mark doctrine (which is why Calvin wrote his Institutes, to be a document presenting on-the-mark Protestant doctrine, which is how it was received as well, and was extremely effective as that) was a real weapon in that war. So mostly concessions were made by Zwingli and Calvin in this context in the realm of ecclesiology and sacramentology. The less important, really, areas of doctrine in question; and you really see the schisms and arguing among the post-Calvin Protestants in these two areas too, though that is a simplification. - C.

ps- The Puritans are always 'suspect' by the mainstream Reformed/Calvinists of our day and in the post-Reformation eras generally. It's because the Puritans are seen as 'pietists', which to Puritans just means having and doing the practical level of the faith, and to their critics it means being weird and 'mystical' and so on. Modern day Calvinism is really 'academic theology'. Those types are Man #3 types, but the reformers were Men #4 types.

Some quick thoughts to a correspondent on John Calvin, Fourth Way, Renaissance, etc.

I may be
> less set in theological
> terms than yourself. I think I'm quietly questioning
> the rationale of post
> reformers - intellectual feasts - because I feel an
> affinity with a more
> medieval mind set where there was a greater unity and less
> schism between
> the Christian and pagan - though I don't feel pagan -
> and that edges me
> perhaps to give greater consideration to both the orthodox
> and catholic than
> I might have previously and obviously I see the work spread
> through it all,
> the pagan too. Anyway, I'll circle round a while yet
> mulling on these
> things. I'm fascinated by the idea Homer and the
> classics had a significant
> influence on Calvin. I never came across it in his
> writings. Homer may be my
> next big read.

[This is long, but I've tried to throw down some distilled things on this subject. It's not just me talking...]

Yes, Calvin is accused by modern day Calvinists of being too medieval himself. Too mystical. Bernard of Clairviox (sp?) is referenced as much as Augustine in his Institutes.

What you see in the post reformers is scholasticism (categorization, ultra-fine definition, etc). It takes over after the organic school emerges. The Medieval time had its scholasticism too. (How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?)

Zwingli and Calvin were the two primary guys (Luther was a force - same age as Zwingli - but a different animal, which is why Lutheranism is what it is, and Calvinism founded empires.)

Calvin wrote a book on Seneca, was a humanist scholar, etc., etc., then experienced regeneration by the Word and Spirit and converted and set foot out of Paris not knowing where he was going. Zwingli died young in battle (Zwingli is associated with reform in Zurich as Calvin is associated with Geneva.)

You have to read all these guys adeptly. They all operated in the midst of a furious and intensely violent war. Calvin was forced to be a political leader including in his writings. For instance, in the Institutes you'll read him giving very Romanist-like eXoteric explanations of the sacrament of baptism. Then in his less public Sermons on Ephesians he - like Zwingli - said baptism is a ritual for stupid people. People who need the visual. Also, when Calvin came into direct contact with a Romanist like Cardinal Sadoleto he sounds like an anabaptist. For example Calvin says to Sadoleto that one doesn't need a church building and physical trappings and all that. That is the true Calvin. But as a political leader and leader in the war of the times he had a responsibility to be more accommodating to the theology of the day because he could get an entire population killed. (This is why Servetus was put to death as well. If Geneva hadn't it would have put the entire city at risk of invasion and death. You have to see everything regarding the Reformation and the reformers in the context of the times.)

But the chain of TULIP is the mystical chain the Bible teaches. When seen and accepted it effects the internal reorientation from being man-centered to being God-centered. It goes against Old Man logic and demands. It is not only new thinking but it is accepting that there is something higher than you. Five solas as well.

You don't have to think in terms of going 'Catholic' or 'Orthodox' just 'apostolic.' The school is there in all those periods of history. The reformers went 'back to the source' as did the Renaissance. What you will see in Orthodox writings that you like you'll find was actually written by a Celtic Christian from the 4th century, for instance. Arminian Baptists accuse Calvin of being Romanist because the true school can be found in medieval sources here and there which Calvin learned from and cites.

The document that is two letters, one by Cardinal Sadoleto and one by John Calvin, is must reading to know Calvin. Calvin had just been kicked out of Geneva by the political leaders and Sadoleto saw an opportunity to turn the populace of Geneva back to Rome, so he wrote a public letter to Geneva. Calvin, in exile, but feeling a responsibility to defend Geneva, wrote a public letter that answered Sadoleto point-by-point, but it is unique in that it is Calvin the warriour going up against anti-Christ. It's published with titles like 'A Reformation Debate, Calvin vs. Sadoleto' and similar titles.

Main thing is find the true school of it all. Calvin has power because he represented the true school in the most foundational and literary and on-the-mark way. (This is why his writings immediately were translated by the dynamic, poetic, action-oriented Elizabethan culture that knew real school.) He brought his Renaissance background to elucidating it. You just have to see where people go off-the-mark and not let that paint everything. It's usually in ecclesiology and sacramentology where humanity gets 'inside' and brings the usual 'group' crap and brings things down to a worldly - and worse - level. But there is a true ecclesiology (cosmos of school, C Influence, teachers, the Word of God) and a true sacramentology (the two conscious shocks, for instance, or prayer and fasting, etc.).

I've said it before but the three main branches of the faith - Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, correlate to the three basic centers of Man #1,2,3. But it is the intellectual part, the Protestant, that keeps you honest and gives you understanding. The emotional part, the Roman Catholic, is where the devil sets up camp. That is not to say it - the emotional part - is all bad, but just that the devil plants himself 'there' because that is where - intellectual division of the emotional center - magnetic center is developed, i.e. the gateway to real understanding. The Orthodox is best summed up by practice, and the Work is mostly seen in the Orthodox division. But you can't avoid the Protestant - true Protestant - intellectual part. Once you have it you are a different animal.

Pilgrimage

I sound weird. It's because most of what I discuss I'm now above. But I can't find new territory. It's kind of strange when you are at a place where there are no books to give you anything new.

I say that and I wonder: physics? Higher mathematical languages? Sanskrit? I don't think so.

I've written about it recently. When you have exhausted the realm of B Influence there is only C Influence left. But engaging that requires being in the third state of consciousness, at least. Then after that one wonders what one does.

I'm starting to sense it requires a pilgrimage. Or some kind of moving journey. Maybe that is seeing it too eXoterically. A pilgrimage or journey, yes, but how to effect that. It could be an activity. A subject matter. The arc of mastering something new.

ps- In case I didn't make it clear, the impressions coming from the new subject or activity you are mastering, while in the third state, become the communication from C Influence. Putting it too simply.

Schedule self-remembering

This is important.

I'm close to seven complete readings of the Word of God.

For the seventh I'm just going to take notes as I go along. Not mechanical, what is necessary at the moment to put things in memory. For such a big influence like the Bible (I mean BIG in terms of pages and words) you have to stay light and lithe with the side projects to help you get it more in memory. - C.

ps- Another important thing I see is schedule self-remembering. I havn't done enough of that, and it develops and cultivates real will in a practical and real way.

pps- There is schedule self-remembering where you use the clock (pick a time to be awake) and then there is the type where you use unpredictable things that you know will happen, like loud noises when out and about, or a police or ambulance or fire truck siren, or somebody calling your name. Many possibilities. Seeing a dog or a squirrel...

ppps- Death tests are in this category too.

RE: Unique idiot (this email contains a big subject)

> I read the book idiots in Paris.. it was quite interesting
> because it was a combination of the diaries of Elizibeth
> Bennet and John Bennet. John Bennet was kind of like a
> lunatic yogi, who would do things like sit with his arms
> outstretched for 3 hours trying to "break through"
> whilst Elizibeth was a hopeless devotional type who'd
> write things like "today Mr Gurdjieff drank tea!"
> etc etc...
>
> But between the lines you got a decent impression of what
> was going on there.

So notice it didn't occur to him to attempt to be in a real state of self-remembering, non-identification for three full hours? Is this why Ouspensky left Gurdjieff's environment? (Maybe he was doing that and I'm reading too much into it with not enough info.)

It's common to wonder where it leads. Because at first it leads to higher experiencing and higher understanding of things we already know (influences, for instance), but we have to consider that when we exhaust all that and then wonder 'where does it all lead?' that it leads to us being in higher realms, able to be used by God, in battle, for instance, or even just in a garden of the higher Kingdom of God, but it manifests in events down here too.

Like, once I remember going to an apartment complex to pick up my young nephew to take him to a park, and unique events occurred, a family was moving, my nephew had played with their little girl, so I said let them play on the grass awhile and say goodbye, and I sat in my car, then the little girl threw some toys at me, angry, didn't know why, but I waited, then finally my nephew got in the car, then I started to drive away, and just then the toddler - not the little girl but a younger child - of the family bolted in between parked cars and into the path of my car with the mother frantically running after (and the mother was intensely frantic, more than what the event seemed to call for, but in recurrence it may have been the event of the death of bad injury of her child...but I had seen it all as if in slow motion (I was in a higher state), and had already stopped (a common sleeping state would not have seen the event unfolding and just hit the
accelerator and who knows), and I've thought that that is a good example of how you can be used to change things. That child wasn't hit by a car that day because I was able to be used by higher forces, I was delayed (me being strange, not in a hurry, like normal humans) which altered the timing of the events then in the event itself which I was now taking a part in I was awake, and so on.

Remember I've mentioned that I always used my time with my little nephew to practice being in the third state. It was a reason to go to unique places, parks and so on. Pulling him in a wagon around the neighborhood. Things like that.

So that is a big thought: knowing that that effort to be in the third state not only puts you in contact with C Influence, but it makes you available to be used down here in ways you can't predict, and it also gives you things, puts you in environments you can't necessarily see, that effect you. - C.

POSTSCRIPT: This subject is big because it gets at the wall that one hits with this Work. It gets at what is beyond that wall.

It's the same old foundational Work teaching though: make efforts without expectation of results. That is not because it's a 'wrong motivation' to work for results, but it's because you can't discern what the results are except perhaps, and at first, in hind sight.

You throw your hands up, exasperated, "There's nothing to do!" meanwhile things are happening all around you *and through you* that you're not discerning. Things are happening, that is, as long as you *are* making efforts.

You're a soldier on the battlefield in the higher world, active, and then you just stop making efforts and the higher forces say: "Well, we lost that one. Didn't think anything 'was happening.' No, you were just in the midst of battle being a rare soldier for us, usable. And now you've gone away because you think nothing was happening. OK, we'll wait on you. You'll wake up again in time..."

POSTSCRIPT II: Starting to move and act in the higher world consciously. This is the #5 Man stage of Work.

New word: frame

Look how Thomas Boston uses this word 'frame' in this section of his Human Nature in its Fourfold State:

*******
The heart, that was made according to God's own heart, is now the reverse of it, a forge of evil imaginations, a sink of inordinate affections, and a storehouse of all impiety, Mark 7:21, 22. Behold the heart of the natural man, as it is opened in our text. The mind is defiled; the thoughts of the heart are evil; the will and affections are defiled—the imagination of the thoughts of the heart, that is, whatever the heart frames within itself by thinking, such as judgment, choice, purposes, devices, desires, every inward motion, or rather the frame of the thoughts of the heart, namely, the frame, make, or mold of these, 1 Chron. 29:18, is evil.

Yes, and every imagination, every frame of his thoughts, is evil. The heart is ever framing something; but never one right thing—the frame of thoughts, in the heart of man, is exceedingly various; yet are they never cast into a right frame.
*******

It's a useful word as he uses it because it gives understanding, or a 'view' of what the heart is doing which is behind our actions and words and thoughts and deeds and so on. But if the heart frames things differently (which is what the Work gets at with active reasoning and attitudes and thinking from the Work rather than from life and so on) then... It kind of is a word to connect one more with the inner 'reins' of real will.

Boston, in this book, discusses Work ideas in Christian language. Rebellious will, disordered affections, darkened mind, as the result of the fall. You have to read it. Here's an online version.

Might be of interest

I came across this in a volume of writings of Christian mysticism:

The three books attributed to King Solomon - Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon - are written for three progressive degrees of awakening (or, you know). Proverbs = exoteric; Ecclesiastes = mesoteric; Song of Solomon = esoteric.

Ouspensky said the same of the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the Gospel of John, and Revelation.

I've finally sorted out my reading

I've finally sorted out my reading. I was looking for something with more power (more higher centers material) than 19th century novels. They can be interesting and fun, but... So I thought epic poems. But that didn't fly. I've read them all. I decided I can't find anything more powerful than the Bible and sound doctrine. So: 1. the Bible (AV1611), 2. Thomas Boston's unique and powerful work Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 3. Pilgrim's Progress, 4. The Fourth Way, and, 5. for now, Don Quixote.

A critic, in passing, mentioned off-hand that Don Quixote had the 'cosmic' in it. It's also one of the seven or so great novels I have listed to read. I read an abridged version many years ago, but don't remember it. I wasn't awake when I read it. Interestingly when I read War and Peace many years ago I was awake, because I remember that work and the reading experience.

The books listed above are in the history, imaginative literature, philosophy, and sacred writings template. The Boston work is history (the ultimate history, the history of redemption). Bunyan is imaginative literature, and the Work fills in for philosophy. The Bible for sacred writings. They all have the advantage of being Christian works, so no mixed language like if I included a pagan work or something.

The Boston and Bunyan books were folk classics in their day.

I've already written all this before, but...

I think a very sound 10 book list of great novels is this:

Don Quixote
Tom Jones*
Moby Dick
War and Peace*
Anna Karenina
Brothers Karamazov
Vanity Fair*
Middlemarch
Ulysses
Magic Mountain

I've only read, complete, three of them!

100 Novels

Don Quixote
Moby Dick
War and Peace Has Been Read
Anna Karenina
Brothers Karamazov
Vanity Fair Has Been Read
Tom Jones Has Been Read
Crime and Punishment Has Been Read
Ulysses
Magic Mountain

The Idiot
The Possessed
Pride and Prejudice Has Been Read
Emma
Persuasion
Père Goriot
The Woman in White
Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamamable
Herzog
Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights
The Master and the Margarita
The Stranger Has Been Read
Journey to the End of the Night
Nostromo
Deerslayer
The Red Badge of Courage Has Been Read
Robinson Crusoe
Moll Flanders
David Copperfield

Sister Carrie
The Count of Monte Cristo
Middlemarch
Invisible Man
As I Lay Dying Has Been Read
Light in August Has Been Read
The Sound and the Fury
Absalom, Absalom!
The Great Gatsby Has Been Read
Tender is the Night

Madame Bovary Has Been Read
The Recognitions
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Sorrows of Young Werther
Dead Souls
Hunger Has Been Read
U.S.A. Trilogy
The Scarlet Letter Has Been Read
A Farewell to Arms Has Been Read
Steppenwolf

Clarissa
Les Misérables
Brave New World Has Been Read
The Ambassadors
The Castle
The Trial
Kim
A Separate Peace Has Been Read
The Tin Drum
The Leopard

Women in Love
Babbitt
The Call of the Wild Has Been Read
Doctor Faustus
I Promessi Sposi
Of Human Bondage
Tropic of Cancer Has Been Read
The Man Without Qualities
Lolita
At Swim-Two-Birds

Nineteen Eighty-Four Has Been Read
Gravity's Rainbow
All Quiet on the Western Front Has Been Read
The Catcher in the Rye Has Been Read
Juliette Has Been Read
Rob Roy
Frankenstein
And Quiet Flows the Don
Angle of Repose
The Red and the Black Has Been Read

The Charterhouse of Parma
Tristram Shandy
Gulliver's Travels
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Cossacks
Fathers and Sons
Huckleberry Finn Has Been Read
Slaughterhouse-Five Has Been Read
Brideshead Revisited
The Day of the Locust

Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Mrs. Dalloway Has Been Read
Germinal
The Age of Innocence
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Has Been Read
Decline and Fall
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Resurrection
On the Road
Naked Lunch

prophet, priest, and king

Looking back you can see how the school demands a complete education.

One talks of reading Calvin and biblical doctrine at the highest, most comprehensive level, and the world says: "That is what people who are going into the ministry do!"

One talks of war and law and government and wealth, and the world says: "Pick one!"

One talks of the Work and increasing level of being and engaging the Bible to an absolute degree, and the world says: "Lighten up!"

But what it is is the education of one who is a prophet, priest, and king.

One can get drawn into it without realizing the all-encompassing nature of the program one finds oneself involved in.

Book 22 of the Odyssey (those 12 women)

Think about this: in Book 22 of the Odyssey, when Odysseus finally slaughters the suiters and clears out his Palace of their presence (they are the Many 'I's) there is the episode at the end of the book where he uses the 12 maids (a specific number) who had been having sex with the suiters and had been generally promiscuous in sporting with them and all that in Odysseus' absence to clean the palace of the dead and the blood, and then he and Telemachus take the 12 maids out and hang them all from the same rope.

It seems so cruel, but it's because they were foundational to the chaos.

There are alot of little details in this episode that will bear pondering on, but the overall meaning within the context of the Work and the Palace being Odysseus' inner being is those 12 sexually 'boundery crossing' or promiscuous maids represent the sex center of the inner being when it is operating where it shouldn't (sexual energy operating in centers where it doesn't belong) and is contributing to the chaos of the lower centers in sleeping man. And there are 12 of them because there are 12 divisions in the four centers: instinctive, moving, emotional, intellectual.

This goes back to my seeing the Work in full in the Odyssey which I wrote about on one of the yahoo forums way back when. This episode just struck me in its meaning though.

I see unpleasant things in myself

I've been reading some of the comment threads on older posts on my Plain Path Puritan blog (I did get some comments at times), and I'm surprised at how bizarrely knuckleheaded I come across at times. Especially when I couldn't recognize when someone was coming on in a way to intentionally be not hostile like the others and I'd, as if in a daze of 'everybody is the enemy', slam the person. Responding like I was continually under a hail of stones. And I notice that I'd often not answer direct questions which is something I've complained about in others.

Of course I don't know the context now, I mean being called a psycho and a liar 400 times by trolls can make you hyper defensive and hyper aggressive at the same time, but it's really not a 'me' that I like seeing (and I know it IS me).

Writing with understatement and little to no emotional volatility is a mark of a mainstream, or mature, voice. I'm all overstatement and high energy volatility. I can write the other way, but I default to the latter when I don't care and am just being me.

I kind of interact with people as if I'm never going to have to interact with them again. Actually one guy wrote a description of me, and he was just purely going on what he read on PPP (explaining the context would take too much time) and he kind of nailed me. He wrote, about me, on another blog:

"That would be sad indeed if that blog [Plain Path Puritan] was Robert T’s [he meant Robert K's, a name I was using on another blog]. But then again, sometimes the emotionally and psychologically unstable, who find self-justification for their unpleasant personalities by separating from “evil” people and seeing black and white in everything, have been spot on historically in some of their critiques. Anne Hutchinson did rightly discern the legalism in the New England churches, though she was somewhat nutty herself."

This guy proved to have some understanding in other things he wrote on the blog we were both commenting on at the time, before I was banned. When I was banned he announced he would leave too (a comrade!, no, actually I think he just wanted to get back to his daily work). But his words above do describe me: "But then again, sometimes the emotionally and psychologically unstable, who find self-justification for their unpleasant personalities by separating from “evil” people and seeing black and white in everything, have been spot on historically in some of their critiques."

It's hard to gauge just how much you are responsible for having an unpleasant personality and how much of it is a result from conditioning from all the friction that occurs when you are truly developing, not to mention the spiritual warfare crap you receive from the world simply because you have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit (big crime!).

Another difficultly is seeing the 'black and white' thing. Because, when you try to see everything in shades of gray you can lose your discernment of on-the-mark/off-the-mark. Separation becomes mixture becomes 'back in the fun house' and nothing is real or important!

And the two big subjects I've been involved in that has shown up this unpleasant personality in me is the Work, and biblical doctrine. Two subjects where being in the watery middle is the same as being in dead sleep and the devil's camp.

Switching to real life, I HAVE been conditioned to hate people though. I mean, I just *may* be a hater. You should hear me in traffic. Everybody's an annoying moron. I guess I'm doing that 'making requirements' thing, which I added to my list of features of false personality only after Simon brought it to my attention. I didn't see it because that's what I do. MY CHIEF FEATURE! FINALLY FOUND!

I should just tone it down.

The Bible and classical music

How many times I've read a book of the Bible, set it down, and then let it disappear out of mind as I plaster my attention on the everyday world around me.

When you don't ponder what you've read it disappears. There is, of course, the initial impact of reading the Bible for the first and second and third time. The big fact of it gets into you.

But to get it in memory like a symphony requires pondering it after you set it down.

That is a good analogy. When you *know* a work of classical music you can draw it's movements and musical themes up into memory. You can see and hear its whole.

To get this with Bible books requires a more diverse approach (since each book contains different kinds of material).

I recently read Philippians. After setting it down I pondered what I'd just read and what came to mind was the statement Paul makes that whatever you need ask God for it; and to be equally content whether you are in a good situation or in a bad. In so many words (the words in the AV are much better, but I didn't just look up the passage, yet it's there for the finding).

So that is something I have in memory for Philippians. It's a start for that book (that work of music).

My goal is to know each book as I currently know Beethoven's 3rd or 7th Symphony...

Hammering the Bible into essence

Hammering the Bible into essence.

Jer 23:29 Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?

A practical thing to do is to hammer the Bible into essence. Get it past the shell of personality and directly into essence.

I've had experience with this with psalms which I meditated on while walking and self-remembering. These are moments that I can remember to this day. I would often visualize images to accompany the verses, but just having higher energy and devoting real meditation on the Word at hand does it.

Imagine having that fire from higher energy and hammering the entire Word of God into essence and having it in essence pure and whole and complete.

From B to C Influence

Once you have chased B Influences to their summit (and you have exhausted A Influences or seen their limits and all that), then you have C Influence left. And to be in contact with C Influence you simply have to be in the third state of consciousness (self-remembering, non-identifying).

So B Influence is exhausted? Good! A rare accomplishment. Now you only have C Influence to chase and work with.

But you don't know what that means *concretely*? Just a little bit, but not much? So, that just means you are a beginner in it. What is analogous to engaging B Influences regarding the realm of C Influence? Reading books and building understanding is to C Influence how? Building one's inner bodies?

The influence of C Influence is Providence? That is a non-concrete statement, but yet that doesn't means there is no truth in it. The moving world of things and events? Does it include general revelation? Probably it's more in the realm of special revelation since C Influence involves actual contact with the source.

But when you are in actual contact with the source it requires a level of circumspection and responsibility and seriousness that can be taxing, no? Yes! One reason why we avoid this *contact with C Influence*? One reason. Maybe a bigger reason than we think.

Especially when you're no longer in the innocent stage. In the more advanced stage where you *know* what is happening and what you are getting in to more is required of you. "Wait a minute, I can get myself killed here! I've gotta be awake...!"

I'm on a battlefield...

Building being...

In actual contact with C Influence...which is not necessarily pleasant as we can see in the Homeric epics. Athena helped Odysseus, and she also smashed his ships... All for a purpose that was going in the same direction...

From an intro to the Brothers Karamazov

I won't type it out because it's too long, but the intro to the Bantam paperback edition (Andrew R. MacAndrew trans.) of the Brothers Karamazov is interesting. The writer shows how BK sums up all of Dostoevsky's previous works. In the great novels that came before each had a single protagonist at its center where Dostoevsky presented a part of personality (he even shows how D. has a theory of personality and essence though he saw it as the shell of personality and the inner part where the spirit resides). Then in BK he created three brothers who each represent together the total personality (Ivan = intellectual, Dimitri = emotional, Alyosha = will).

Basically, without knowing it, this intro writer, very knowledgeable of Dostoevsky and his works, was describing Work knowledge regarding centers and personality and essence and so on.

Yes, I'm embarking on a thousand page novel: the Brothers Karamazov. A very handsome paperback edition, by the way. Nice cover.

I may regret it (or decide it is not what I want to do after reading 30 pages or so), but it IS one of the ten great, iconic, canonic novels I have identified.

An aside: it's interesting how critics mock or deride Dostoevsky's Christianity. They want to claim his works as part of their intellectual world, but they don't want the Christianity. Harold Bloom mocks the Epilogue to Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov (oh, I won't say, in case anyone hasn't read it and wants to). This writer I am referring to now doesn't mock the Christianity in this intro, but I've seen it elsewhere. Like I noted with CandP: liberals of the 20th century couldn't have really read Dostoevsky since D. saw directly through them and made such fun of them in his novels...

Some thoughts on books...

I just got some perspective on what I'm reading just now.

When I finished Crime and Punishment I launched into John Owen's Biblical Theology. About 220 pages in I began starting other books. The usual mode. I started Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Chapman's Homer, The Fourth Way, my continued sixth complete reading of the Bible. I set a record for starting and stopping different books.

I've been in bookstores indulging my current state of being in-between books, so I can look at them all and decide on a new one.

Unfortunately for me I really am beyond all the usual, common level of influences. I mean, it's old ground for me. (I did order the Bantam Classic edition of Brothers Karamazov which I might actually read sometime in my project to read the ten great iconic, canonic novels.)

So I returned to the book I was actually a couple of hundred pages into already, the Owen book. I notice I really only have 470 pages to go with it (it's appendix includes a whole different book I don't have to read).

And each of the remaining four section are only in the 115 page realm. Very doable when seen like that (and I need to see it like that because it can be real hard plowing type reading in places).

I don't want to die with alot of 'data' shallowly implanted on my short-term memory. That is what I think about when I think about reading a book. So I want to read books that have deep language that helps or enables or adds to ability to conduct spiritual warfare and increase of being. Plus, the ultimate book, the Word of God, requires new capacity for understanding to get more from it. I.e. Work effort. So Work effort is the effort I need to do.

But we do also have to refresh our memory with high influences. Get above ourselves.

Service, or third force motivation

I found the text at this link interesting. Of particluar interest is
the emphasis Gurdjieff places on doing the exercises solely as a
service. Like you would clean your teeth before bed or clean your
home, but these exercises are to be made internal for oneself.

-------

The Work is Service. It's the only way to consider it. I think also that there is a lot in that approach. There is a lot that is revealed through Service. I'm speculating but my sense is that these people that find themselves chewed up/spat out in cults never had that perspective. I wouldn't like to say they are motivated purely by vanity or self-will, but I do sense this lack of Service is at the root of their ailing and a possible cause for them being attracted to a cult circuit in the first place. Although, one has to reserve caveats for the exceptions. I suppose the cult experience is one way in which individuals are broken down and prepared for the real Work, but again how many of those types are fit for the Work I don't know.

+++++++

ME (ct):

An example of the service approach (and keep in mind I'm intentionally using Work language, because this subject could easily be dealt with solely by going into the Christian sphere) is to use the third force (motivation) of realizing that the more you awaken, the more you develop *real* consciousness, and understanding, and increased level of being, the more you help everybody who is connected with you at any point, to any degree, in your circle of time. Even people who are no longer alive currently, but who you have a connection with, ancestor, family or friend or acquaintance or whatever relation. In this sense consciousness, real consciousness, is C Influence an is like an electrical current, or heat, that travels all through the connections of the fullness of time that is your life in recurrence and even above recurrence eventually.

(After I wrote the above I realized that we need to define 'service' as G. seemed to be using it. I'm not sure it's clear in the context itself, but for the record by service I adopted the meaning of like 'doing something as if it is being done, even if partly, for others.' Kind of like evangelizing, or any third line effort.

There's a big subject in there though. A big orientation that can be missed. Without getting into moralizing though, which is where fallen man will always take such a thing. There is self-interest even in evangelizing the faith. The Bible says so... Some are like stars who bring many to the faith...something along those lines...)

Warriours are needed

I was recently involved in seeing a 'gamer' (I guess that is what they are called) doing his thing online. He was involved in a World War II game where he was able to be a fighter plane and fly around and get in dog fights with other fighter planes, in the higher cyber realm, each one flown by somebody from anywhere in the world. The whole time I was thinking how childish it is. A mere game. I may have given that away too with some language I used which upset him. Couldn't help it. Later, though, it occurred to me that online games like that where a person is going up against other real people from anywhere in the world is a real analogy for what occurs when you get into higher states and engage in spiritual warfare in the higher realms.

The gamers are chasing something at the very eXoteric level, yet there is meaning there at the eSoteric level.

This occurred to me days afterwards when I was in a gas station paying for gas, and I was silently looking at the cashier and thinking that anybody, any being, any level of being, could be working such a menial job, an Achilles, an Odysseus, yet at the same time that beeing can be fighting in the Great War in the higher realms.

Warriors are needed. To discern the battle, the lines, the forces, the goals, is all higher centers work and understanding. To get there and be in the battle, an effective warriour, is conscious shock work. The analogy appears in the physical life as it happens. Everything then takes on meaning. And events occur that wouldn't normally occur.

To chase this - the eSoteric level of the battle - with the same enthusiasm and attention of an online gamer (a directed attention in this case rather than an attracted one) would be what is needed.

What did I keep saying? "Get on the battlefield!" - C.

A striking Gurdjieff observation on basic human nature

[Updated below]

I can't get out of my mind Gurdjieff's striking (though obvious though no less striking for being obvious) statement that humans just want to *astonish* other humans.

"I've astonished you with my entrance into this room."

"My story I am telling is astonishing you."

"I've broken this record and now you are astonished at my accomplishment."

"Though I'm a nobody with no worldly attainments I still astonish you with my aura which angers you."

What happens when you lose the motivation to astonish your fellow human beings? You become anathema. You become an astonishing buzz kill in all environments. You don't want to astonish anybody, and hence the illusion and vanity of it is seen through and the game is over. You buzz kill. You must leave!

And notice that even if you have done something truly astonishing your fellow human beings will react as if you havn't done anything afterall. Only the really innocent ones will be impressed. Otherwise they think: "So you are standing at that podium with all those microphones speaking to the world of your discovery of intrinsic qualities of sunlight enabling man to draw infinite energy from the sun...wow. Somebody was going to discover that. So you are a geek that wasted your life thinking about such things. Allow me to astonish you with the fact that I've just returned from a journey to an ancient forest with a beautiful woman where we discovered a stone chapel where a wise man told us secrets you will never know. I've astonished you."

Update: the Word of God teaches contentment as an answer to the above. When you are content you don't feel a need to impress. Of course the world gets angry when they see contentment and considers the content person to be mentally deficient...

This is amusing

Here's something on a different subject. This is not just a person who doesn't know what he is talking about, but he is so ignorant of the subject it is actually very funny. This is from a cult awareness type website talking about Gurdjieff and his system:

"All joking aside, Ouspensky reported in his book In Search of the Miraculous that he had practiced 'self-remembering' according to Gurdjieff's instructions. Ouspensky had been a seeker long before meeting Gurdjieff and had tried meditation and even hashish and nitrous oxide, seaching for consciousness expanding methods.

One day while practicing self remembering, Ouspensky set out to do some tasks. That afternoon, he 'came to'. To his amazement, discovered he had spent half the day, going around town and had done his errands.

In other words, practicing G's method, and being instructed in this by G himself had sent Ouspensky into several hours of what a modern clinicial would call a dissociative fugue/amnesia state.

Ouspensky thought this was some special attainment. He did not understand that his field of attention had fractured,and that this was potentially harmful and not helpful.

It was also fortunate that Ouspensky had spent the day on foot or using a horse drawn taxicab. For had he gone through this fugue/dissociation while driving an automobile, the consequences could have been dire."

From here:
http://forum.rickross.com/read.php?12,54613,60090#msg-60090

- C.

ps- I know you all know this, but he is referring to Ouspensky's discovery of the 'waking sleep' state, and the attainment in question was simply being able to see it. He tried to be in a state of self-remembering as an aim, fell asleep, then came to later. Remembering his aim enabled him to see what waking sleep was.

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. -Rom. 13:11

The increasing demands of the context of Work

> I've been getting back into the Work a lot lately in a
> real practical way.
> It's come about I think due to the process of
> journaling, or in particular
> trying to sort out my life, my ideas and my beliefs -
> I've been just dumping
> it all on the page for several weeks and looking at it.
>
> I also seem to be on fire with a desire to get back into
> the Bible, it's a
> new feeling. The summer is coming and I am feeling
> inspired.
>
> I think I need to commit to it and go for it.
>
> S

It's just that you really have to make it the first thing in your life. Valuation. That's what gets lost after the initial main stage of lifetime build up and then discovery and then enthusiastic practice.

If you see it in the context of faith and spiritual warfare and moving forward in life guided by the Spirit, not really knowing what you will be getting into, even though you are still doing what you have to do, it can all get encapsulated into a bigger thing that can demand the valuation necessary. - C.

Seeing Christian doctrine in the light of real history and life 2

In the previous post with this title I was talking about how cruel life is when you have no Mediator between man and God (like the religion of Islam).

I should have added that in those cases not only is there no true Mediator (which can only be Jesus Christ, the Son of God become man), but the people will inevitably adopt human mediators. I.e. mediators with original sin and the spirit of the devil in them (usually full to the brim).

"What do I do, Imam?" Find a way to torture the victim in the most painful way possible. "Then what?" Then prepare to be tortured yourself. "Praise Allah."

"What do we do, Holy Father (Pope 'Innocent')?" Massacre the entire population man, woman, and child in the most horrific ways possible. "Yes, Holy Father. You are Jesus on Earth."

Spurgeon Quote

"[T]he offending of human nature is sometimes the first step towards bringing it to bow itself before God." - Charles Spurgeon

He's referring to the doctrines of grace, or five points of Calvinism, that so assault fallen man's sense of what is 'right' or even 'logical'...

Spurgeon sometimes gives the impression of a middle eastern wise man or poet. I mean, there's a poet in swashbuckling Persion dress somewhere in there. Something like that...

Words and new wineskins

I think everybody (or just myself) is tired of words. I find that I can write down the most practical penetrating real insights and truths about the plan of God or the only real goal of a human and all that, and still, really, it is just words. Because you walk away from the paper or screen and the thought just stays there and you go to whatever you are doing in your everyday life.

Words of course though have real power up to a point. When I first encountered the words that described self-remembering to me, and I was ready for it and knew what it was, I didn't walk away from the page the same person. I was changed.

But after awhile words reach their limit.

Really, what it is is this: pouring new wine into old wineskins. You need a new wineskin to hold the new wine. You need to develop capacity for understanding to develop new understanding.

The old Work teaching that it is knowledge plus being which equals understanding.

So you have to increase level of being at the same time of taking in new knowledge and new insights and all the rest.

This can be forgotten.

But the original point I thought I was going to make, which is still worth making is this: hmm...actually it's the point I ended up making... I was going to say when words reach their limit one can only read the living language of the Word of God and do the being-increasing efforts of the Work. Things that effect essence.

Interesting 7 book list

I've come up with an interesting seven book list (I know, I'm an exciting person). It is a Christian book list. Here it is, then I'll show why it's interesting:

Holy Bible, AV1611
History of the Christian Church - Schaff
Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan
Institutes of the Christian Religion - Calvin
God, Heaven and Har Magedon - Kline
Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach
Fourth Way - Ouspensky

The Bible is unique in the list, for obvious reasons. It isn't paired with anything.

The other books are in the categories of history, imaginative literature, and philosophy (basically). The model I struck on was to see the other six books as being paired up into exoteric/esoteric representatives.

Schaff's history is exoteric Christian history; Kline's book is the deeper, even esoteric, history of redemption from eternity.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is exoteric; Parzival is esoteric.

Calvin's Institutes are exoteric doctrine and practice; whereas the Fourth Way represents the esoteric level of knowledge and being.

And when I look at that list, if you count the abridged version of
Calvin's Institutes I read complete, and if you include a one-volume history of Christianity I read complete (Schaff's work is 8 volumes) I really have read all seven books.

Which tells me I may have run the course of this subject.

Seeing Christian doctrine in the light of real history and life

It strikes me that a profitable way to see the truth of Christianity is to contrast it with something anti-Christian like Islam. One insight as example is how life is very cruel when you don't have a Mediator between you and God. God, after the fall, is not well-disposed towards human beings. The only thing that give some degree of protection is the common grace type mediation between God and man, effected by Jesus' work, and the full protection that God's elect have via having faith in Jesus and having Him as our personal Mediator between us and God the Father.

Islam only has God the Father, El Elyon, God's name as He's known to the nations (and, of course, their false idol god allah who the really satanic in Islam worship).

Because Islam only has God the Father with no mediator their lands are barren, their lives are cruel, their nations are tyrannous. Etc.

Life is cruel for fallen man when you have no mediator between you and God. And, again, non-believers benefit by being in the lands of Christians because common grace flows down on all. He makes the sun to shine on all. That doesn't mean all who are in Christian lands are regenerate believers. They just benefit by being in the vicinity. But when you get into the truly dark lands of peoples like Muslims, where there are no Christians, where the truth itself is suppressed, you see how mean and cruel life without a mediator between man and God is.

Muslims are Arians. They refuse to recognize Jesus as God come in the flesh. Islam is a Christian heresy. They have no Mediator, in a common grace sense, or in a salvation sense.

Seeing this makes doctrine practical. You see the doctrine of the Mediatorship of Christ practically in the light of real history and real life on this planet.

Deep theme seen by the piercing eye of faith

Remember how big it is to 'see' the theme of idol worship all through the history books of the Bible. This is big because it's an example of what the Bible communicates on deeper levels, 'scholarly exegesis' and their 'exegeting' notwithstanding. The theme itself, the reality of false idols, of worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, is foundational for understanding and awakening.

A high form of what the Puritans called experimental Calvinism

For regeneration and justification - salvation itself - one doesn't need the Work, but once one is born again and desires the practical level of the faith (the Puritans just knew it as spiritual warfare and assaulting heaven) the ideas, practices, and goals of the Work, as especially found in the main works of Ouspensky, are the real thing.

The law in the Garden and the law given on Sinai

This is a comment I wrote under a post somebody wrote about how the law God made in the Garden with Adam is the same law God gave to Moses on Sinai:

+ + +

It's also just straight Federal Theology. The parallel of the two Adams demands that the law given on Sinai be the same as that given to Adam in the Garden.

Jesus came to fulfill what Adam failed to fulfill.

Where some stumble at all this is to wonder what the Sinai law has to do vis-a-vis the nation of Israel, and that is simple: Israel was a type for the Messiah. Jesus' life mirrors the history of national Israel. In the fulness of time Israel was to bring the Messiah, the pure bloodline from David, into the world.

In God's plan of redemption, as well, it has to be seen that Adam and national Israel are unique players. Neither pre-fall Adam nor national Israel can be compared to fallen man. National Israel had a role to play (just as Adam in the Garden did) that was unique in God's plan. Individually each Israelite (or foreigner among them) was saved by faith in the coming Messiah, just as we are saved by faith in the already-come Messiah, but National Israel itself plays a role in the plan of redemption that makes it unique and non-correlative to fallen mankind in general.

This is why Paul struggles in the language he uses to explain the unique position of his people in Romans. He wants to say they are unique in God's plan (they are) yet they are also individually under the curse of the law as any other, but because they are unique in God's plan let God judge them and so on.

Jesus in Leviticus 14

To see the deeper meaning in any passage of the Old Testament, especially the ceremonial laws, see Jesus in them. Jesus himself said it was all about him. This is how Old Testament saints knew about the coming Saviour, and hence were able to have faith in Him, by the types and shadows in the ceremonial laws.

Also, to read the Old Testament passages, any of them but especially the particular descriptions of the ceremonial laws, to see Jesus and His work in them you can get more understanding of Jesus. Take Lev. 14 for instance. Below is a commentary on it from this site. I can't vouch for the site or the commentary as a whole, but I like this passage:

Leviticus 14 - Rituals On the Cleansing of a Leper



A. The sacrifice for a cleansed leper.



1. (1-9) The first seven days of the ritual.



Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "This shall be the law of the leper for the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest. And the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him; and indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field. He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean. After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his tent seven days. But on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows; all his hair he shall shave off. He shall wash his clothes and wash his body in water, and he shall be clean."



a. Then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds: In this cleansing ceremony, one bird was killed in an earthen vessel over running water, and its blood was applied to a living bird, to some cedar wood, to some scarlet fabric, and to some hyssop. Then, using these things, the blood was sprinkled on the one who was cleansed from leprosy. Then, the living bird was let go.



i. This seems to be a picture of Jesus’ death and its spiritual application; a “heavenly” being (as a bird is “of the heavens”) dies in an earthen vessel, while remaining clean (because of the running water). The death of the bird is associated with blood and water; the blood is connected with life (applied to the living bird), and then applied to the one cleansed.



ii. Cedar wood: Cedar is extremely resistant to disease and rot, and these qualities may be the reason for including it here - as well as a symbolic reference to the wood of the cross. Some even think the cross Jesus was crucified on was made of cedar.



iii. The connection with hyssop is also important. Jesus was offered drink from a hyssop branch on the cross (Matthew 27:48), and when David said purge me with hyssop in Psalm 51:7, he was admitted that he was as bad as a leper.



b. He shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows: After the sacrificial ceremony with the birds, the cleansed leper had to wash their clothes and shave off all of their hair. They started all over again, as if they were a brand new baby.



i. Again, this seems to be an illustration of being “born again” - a completely new start.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and general revelation

Somebody has written a book on the subject of Homer and general revelation. Here is apparently an abstract the author has written of his own work:

http://fc.hbu.edu/~lmarkos/homertochristbook

Good quote from Ouspensky's wife

I will just leave you now with a definition of 'being' you might find useful to consider (attributed to Madame Ouspensky, by John G. Bennett, as quoted by Tony Blake in "The Intelligent Enneagram")

'Being' (said Madame Ouspensky) is what you can bear.

From here.

Providence and sanctification

John Flavel - Puritan - writes about providence and in one chapter he talks of sanctification:

"Now there are two means or instruments employed in this work. The Spirit, who effects it internally (Rom. 8. 13), and Providence, which assists it externally."

I've never seen it this way, but it rings so true when you see it put this way. Providence, events, people, places, things, phenomena, work to help or give friction or what have you. You see this in Work effort. When you have the Spirit from making self-remembering efforts you then are in a new world where providence is acting on you externally.

Havn't you observed the 'coincidences' that occur when you are doing something 'bad' or wrong or what have you. A person appears out of no where. Something. Also, the difficult, surprising event that occurs when you are filled with higher energy. Things like this. Other examples, different types of examples, as well.

Spiritual Warfare contains it all

Living in a neither fish nor fowl realm between the two languages of the Work and the Faith I see what I knew long ago (but forgot, or didn't see strongly enough at the time) that spiritual warfare is what brings together Work knowledge and practice and the Bible without mixing languages or creating watered-down weak hybrids of systems and teachings. The Grail knight is engaging in spiritual warfare and the Israelites between Egypt and the Holy Land are engaging in spiritual warfare. The church Christians are doing anything but engaging in spiritual warfare. This is the sickness of the mainstream Christian realm and is why Christians like myself are such an immediate, intuitive, instinctive threat to them and their environments. They don't even cotton to Puritans when it comes down to it (I speak of the self-professed Calvinists and Reformed), not that the Puritans even wrote about or practiced spiritual warfare at the truly practical level.

This is the focus and anchor and consolidating pursuit now for myself: spiritual warfare.

When I engage in Work efforts I am putting myself on spiritual ground where the forces of light and darkness meet. When I am provoking my limits to then give myself the potential to extend my limits I am engaging in battles with the world, the flesh, and the devil that is spiritual warfare.

I found when I was putting together Bible verses and passages to bring to mind in everyday situations and events and circumstances that what naturally occured was a presentation of categories of spiritual warfare. This is what the Christian comes to when the Christian gets to the practical level of the faith: spiritual warfare.

This is sanctification: spiritual warfare. It is what we do because it is our nature after regeneration by the Word and the Spirit to do. We desire to engage in spiritual warfare. The churchians desire to avoid spiritual warfare at all costs and to remain comfortable and smug in villages of morality and pretend the faith is about family and 'being good.' A Christian born again by the Word and the Spirit knows differently.

It is in our new heart to engage in spiritual warfare.

It is in the heart of the world, the flesh, the devil and churchianity to dissuade Christians from engaging in spiritual warfare.

This they can't do. The Holy Spirit gives us guidance to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil and any who would tempt or put fear into us or attempt to dissuade us from engaging in the battle until the return of our King.

Scripture worth remembering

1Th 5:16 Rejoice evermore. (Always be joyful. I.e. remember God's remarkable promises to those who believe in His Son.)
1Th 5:17 Pray without ceasing. (This is a constant command in the New Testament. One can't really see it's practical meaning without including some aspect of self-remembering. But always asking for what you need, and for wisdom and strength and so on too.)
1Th 5:18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (Gratitude in place of resentment regarding anything. It's powerful that the will of God is being defined here.)

This is Scripture worth remembering.

Quick summary of classical covenant theology (Federal Theology)

In classical covenant theology (Federal Theology is classical covenant theology systematized) there are three basic covenants. The Covenant of Redemption made between God the Father (representing the Trinity) and God the Son. This covenant was made before the foundation of the world. In this covenant the Son agrees to pay the price for God's elect. The Covenant of Redemption is a covenant of 'works.' Then there is the Covenant of Works itself made between God and Adam. This takes place in time, in history. God commands Adam "do this and live" and Adam fails to fulfill the covenant and falls, and all who are 'in Adam' fall as well because Adam is the *federal head* of all humanity. The creation itself falls as well.

Once Adam falls the Covenant of Grace is announced to him (this is the aforementioned Covenant of Redemption as it plays out in historical time). The Covenant of Grace says "believe this and live". It begins with types and shadows of the coming Saviour. The object of Old Testament saint's saving faith was the *coming* Messiah, which they knew of in the types and shadows of the ceremonial laws and from their prophets. The object of New Testament saints saving faith is the *already come* Messiah.

All the other covenants from the fall to the incarnation of Christ are part of the Covenant of Grace (including the Mosaic Covenant). The Noaic Covenant is part of the Covenant of Grace because with it God sets the stage for the Covenant of Grace to play out. He says He won't bring destruction on man or creation like He did with the flood. The Abrahmic is the covenant of grace, the Davidic as well. The Mosaic Covenant *seems* like a covenant of works and it *is* BUT only for Jesus to fulfull. The Mosaic Covenant is a *republication* of the Covenant of Works in the Garden that God made with Adam. Jesus needed to be born under the law to have that law to fulfill. It is made with *national Israel* which is a type for Jesus Christ. When Jesus fulfills the law (to a 't') he is doing what the *first Adam* failed to do, and thus as the federal head of God's elect he is fulfilling the Covenant of Works AND he is paying the penalty for it being broken - death. Jesus' following the law to a 't' and his willing death on the cross is called his active and passive obedience. It is *imputed* to any who believe in Him.

The new covenant is different from the old in that what God demands in the new he *gives freely.* Faith for instance. Among other ways it's new and better.

Behind all this is - and what this is - is the Plan of Redemption. Man created 'on high', a fall, and then being drawn back up to a higher level than where you were created at (that is the eschatological glorification aspect). The Plan sets up the mechanics for created beings to develop by God's will *without* it being merely by fiat (which would just make us robots).

It's mystical. Self-will vs. God's will. The position (with all the tensions and mystery and acting 'top down') the covenants and our 'federal heads' Adam and Christ put us in gives us the potential to come alive in a real way (or not, i.e. hell is real, as real as glorification). You become 'in Christ' and no longer "in Adam" by simple belief in Jesus Christ and who He is. Of course this 'simple belief' entails alot of inner battle and getting above vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will. It requires regeneration by the Word and the Spirit. Etc. You have to become a new man.

But everything else on this planet and in all cultures and activities of man is general revelation and idol worship and basically vanity chasing its tail. You can learn from it all, develop in it, but eventually there is one thing that is real and necessary. John 3:16! - C.

Guiding metaphors...

I'm beginning to wonder if the desert metaphor (having left Egypt - symbolic of the world - but not yet at Canaan - the promised land) is the best way to get context and understanding of where one is and what one is supposed to be doing. What does the desert part of the journey call for? Persevere. Stay strong. Continually refresh yourself as to why you are here and what it's all about. (It's easy to forget in the withering immediate conditions of the desert.)

This clashes some with the big Work metaphor of the Grail Knight. You know, take to the trackless forest, meet conflict, persevere, enter new worlds... Hmm... Maybe it doesn't clash so much...

I just saw something 2

You see, there's a difference between knowing the Bible, being regenerated, being who I was prior to 2002 on the one hand, and then being a real hardcore Christian on the other.

The latter is when you enter the 'weird' zone (I say honestly without mocking the faith). Prior I could still be the secular person high on the Homeric epics and practical knowledge on inner development that was delivered in very secular mode (the Work sources) and all that. But when you convert everything is filtered and wrapped with a more serious consciousness of your own real situation as a fallen human being in need of saving.

This is why the Work crowd, such as it was, literally scattered. Literally! ("Run away!")

So then, though, as this new person I wasn't as adept yet with my subject as I had been with the Work, and I was sort of in an in-between state and an undeveloped stated regarding my understanding of the new thing: biblical doctrine and practice.

But you can see how fast I work, because I read what I was writing in 2002 and 2003 and '04 and I had already gotten the 'whole' that is there to get from the Bible and theology, and it is the summit of what theologians write about and all that. Still you have to settle into it all, grow into it, and get real understanding over time. You can be a tyro immediately and know real things, but you're still a live wire.

Now I can step back; with perspective; and be more of an anchored source in my delivery. If I get into that having-an-audience stage again.

I just saw something

I just saw something about myself that explains to me some of my anchorless condition I've been in for quite a few years. When you all first met me I was still the Homer, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Parzival person who knew the Work and wrote about it. I can see that 'me' clearly. Then... I transitioned into the necessary Christian territory. This was necessary, but left me less sure of my surroundings. The average Christian and Christian environment is a bit shallow to say the least.

And I don't want to make it sound facile, but 9/11, that event and the date attached to the event, was some kind of strange marker or milestone as it turns out. Because it happened for everybody it seems facile to claim it as a milestone for yourself personally, but I think it has to do with the otherworldly and plan of redemption aspects of that event. It was a biblical event, in other words. A shock on a universal scale. The Work stuff was more innocent prior to that date (I shouldn't say that though because it was dead real no matter world events; we're not attached to world events in that sense). I mean even the writing and exchanges and all that on Work forums. After 9/11 all that was a bit fractured and scattered about.

Then I converted. You convert when you begin to learn real biblical doctrine. Learn what you are to have faith in and what you are to repent of, and why it all is. Why you need a saviour. Regeneration happened years - many years - prior, but actual conversion happened after 2001. (Though I have to toss in the fact that I was learning real doctrine prior to that too, but it was more an intellectual pursuit than the activity of real conversion. But we always have to write about these things as if they are more defined and clear cut than they are.)

So that's why I've been in this drift, and havn't given a sense of wholeness and anchored understanding like I perhaps could prior to 9/11.

I broke myself down again to accept the orthodox Christian teaching. Just as I got broken down prior to connecting with Work teaching in a real way.

Hence my juvenile style (intentionally, yet still juvenile) when interacting on Christian subjects.

But I am coming out of that and consolidating now. Which means I can discourse on the Plan of Redemption from understanding. And what the mystics know from understanding.

medium wisdom

We can be doing anything, really, as long as we are taking in higher (for us) influences and provoking and extending our limits. Then what we 'do' is really just puppet-on-a-string stuff. Because no matter how serious you get about something a point is reached where you start thinking about a Diet Coke and Panini (or whatever your particular thing is). Or about going to sleep. Or about seeing that must-see game (or whatever). You write an essay getting to the foundational truth of everything and include practical knowledge about how to reach the supernatural, then you go get a drink and turn on some sporting event.

Mystics, even. They wake up. "Oh, God. Here I am still." Then they get involved in politics and get famous causing trouble. Nothing else to do.

There's nothing to do! (Maybe it's enough to introduce the average person to the very first levels of awakening - as they spit at you and call the police - because most people are, you know, where they are, in the average sense...)

Nevertheless, one can can engage higher influences and provoke and extend limits no matter what is going on or what we are 'doing'...

Something big

I just now opened a rare volume of John Calvin's, his Sermons on Ephesians, and where I opened it he was talking about how Christ comes to us, and about the Lord's Supper, and what it means spiritually, and it is SOOO obvious that the Lord's Supper is the second conscious shock and the developing of higher bodies (our higher body) and that is what it means that we eat Christ's body and blood. There is no question. Ritual is dead if it is mere ritual. Calvin knew this, Zwingli knew this (they were the main guys regarding pure doctrine). The first conscious shock involves accumulating the Spirit, the second involves taking on Christ's body. That moment, or time, or process of transforming negative emotion (which for us is merely emotional energy of the level of higher centers which we can only experience as explosive and negative) is the process of developing your higher body, taking on Christ's body, to put it in Christian language.

Baptism is baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is regeneration, or being born again. Baptism after that means praying and accumulating the Spirit. "Peter prayed and was filled with the Holy Spirit." (from memory, not exact wording).

Self-remembering, non-identifying, over time.

Try this after trying to make yourself taller by standing up harder

Here's something subtle: when you finally know the faith and you know that the two conscious shocks are the two 'sacraments' (at the deeper, practical level) and you know that it is only God's will that sanctifies then you can 'let go' and just 'be.' Be in the arms of the faith.

Enough with the efforts!

Efforts are good at first to see your limits and to awaken initially.

See, I saw a woman singing a Christian song and the look on her face reminded me of this. The completeness of the faith was in her face. She didn't need anything else but her faith, hope, and love. The Old and New Testaments and understanding the parts in relation to the whole (Federal Theology) are enough. The two great commandments as be awake and love your enemies. The two conscious shocks, which are effected by God's will in us, from above, when they are.

Not by self-will. So stop with that. Be guided by the Spirit. In the present. Be an idiot. (You have to cast off a lot of worldly wisdom and knowledge to be this kind of idiot.)

Know the Bible, yes. Know the history of redemption. But, I mean...allow God's will to work in you from above.

(There will still be storms and battles. There will still be provoking of limits and extending of limits. But it will come from above. And you will be complete already, at every step. It will be completeness NOW, vertical, in the Kingdom of God now, while the necessary journey continues in time until glorified.)

Body, soul, and spirit

There is debate among theologians regarding whether man is tripartite (body, soul, and spirit) or whether soul and spirit are synonymous and man is better described as body and soul. The latter position is best, I discern, and orthodox Reformed theology discerns (despite the attractiveness of having '3' elements to our being, that is really just misleading in this case. Beings are soul/spirit in a body, or tabernacle.

On this subject, though, I came across some colloquial language in Fielding's Tom Jones which may give insight into the relation of spirit to soul. A landlady had mistaken a lady for a whore and effusively apologized and the lady responded (when offered something of the landlady's to wear):

"...I will [not] condescend to put on any of your dirty things. I would have you know, creature, I have a spirit above that."

Now, pay no attention to the affectation of being 'better' than others here, I am getting at the natural, colloquial language of which Fielding is good at reproducing. "I have a spirit above that."

In this sense spirit is the quality of the soul. Something overly pious, or fake modest Christians object to is any talk of degree of level of being of believers, even though the Word of God speaks explicitly of it. But that is neither here nor there regarding the point of this post.

There is body and soul. That is what we are. Then our spirit is the quality of the soul. Not in the sense of being an abstraction (quality); it is a thing, the Spirit itself, of which Jesus only had/has the full measure (itself a reference to degree of level of being in reference to spirit); so then also our spirit develops, in the fullness of time, by the grace of God.

Contact

To be in contact with what is higher (good higher) we need to be in the third state of consciousness (self-remembering). If we are walking around thinking it would be nice to have real supernatural contact every now and then we have to remember the fundamental fact that higher influence can't reach us if we are in the 1st and 2nd state of consciousness. We have to be in the 3rd state of consciousness. Even if it's not continuous, effort to be there begets contact with higher influence.

Maybe there are bad influences, higher only in terms of space, the Prince of the power of the air and his demons; but we have to have control and discernment and inner-command and the full armor of God to get through this layer of influence, untouched, or undefeated.

Prayer is more powerful in the third state of consciousness. If you know of the third state of consciousness you have travelled a good way down a road guided by the Holy Spirit Himself to get to this understanding and state. So recognize this fundamental truth. To be able to have contact with higher influence (and to get above laws such as the law of accident) you have to get yourself into the third state of consciousness.

The 6 activities and the second conscious shock

I was thinking about something brought up in the recent exchange on the food octave. Something about prayer and the difficult mi12-fa6 interval that represents the second conscious shock. It reminded me of the Work teaching on the 6 activities.

Here is a post I wrote on that subject five years ago or so. I always remembered it as one of my more useful posts because the subject really was in need of being put in a practical context, and I think I was able to do that in a rather complete way:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/work_celestial/message/241

I also surprised myself when I reread it because as I was reading it I knew it was the activity of 'magic' that prayer and the second conscious shock fell in to, but I didn't think I hit on that five years ago, yet I see that I had a whole paragraph on just that (not prayer itself, but just how much of Work efforts fall into the category of the activity of magic).

Maybe I was hesitant to see 'prayer' connected with 'magic', but maybe the terminology 'magic' can be changed. The Work sources don't mean actual 'magic' anyway. Maybe 'cultivating' is a word that can used for it. After all, what activities of the six does the effort of a farmer planting crops fall into?

Creating
Building
Destroying
Inventing/Adapting/Discovering/Fixing
Magic
Crime

One wouldn't say or think 'magic', even though we could intellectually understand that connection. Cultivating, though, seems to fit, even as a broad category label for that activity. Doing something now for a pay-off in the future. It is different from building because what happens is not something we can so obviously do hands-on. We can build a house from foundation to roof, but a farmer can't make his crops grow. And we can't get through the Mi12-Fa6 interval on our own, using the same activity that got us there (creating, i.e. self-remembering effort, or building even, the more rote, getting-into-the-self-remembering state). For the second conscious shock effort we have to use another activity. Magic. Or cultivation. Prayer. Perhaps fasting, if necessary. Beforehand. Knowing what it needed. Knowing from Work experience and history what will inevitably happen and asking for assistance to get through it.

The main thing here is the necessity to use (or match up) the right activity for what you are trying to do. When you're banging your head against a wall you are, among maybe other problems, not approaching your goal using the right 'triad', or activity; which is a big part of it, if not most all of it...

Moving on (from recurrence)

How do I know I'm moving on (from recurrence) and that I'm no longer in the Kingdom of Satan? God has called me. He's gathered me. It's done. Effectual calling. I know the voice of the Shepherd, and I value it. I fear God alone and not man. I'm trustworthy to God. I'm one of His.

The Work and the Divine Covenant

"The God-given covenant carries, of course, obligations. The life of faith and repentance, and the obedience to which faith leads, constitute the covenant-keeping through which God's people receive the fulness of God's covenant blessing. "I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession" (Ex. 19:4 f.). Covenant faithfulness is the condition and means of receiving covenant benefits, and there is nothing arbitrary in that; for the blessings flow from the relationship, and human rebelliousness and unfaithfulness stop the flow by disrupting the relationship. Israel's infidelity was constantly doing this throughout the Old Testament story, and the New Testament makes it plain that churches and Christians will lose blessings that would otherwise be theirs, should covenant fidelity be lacking in their lives." - J. I. Packer, from here

"Should a reader ask, Does my getting to heaven depend upon the everlasting covenant or the new one? The answer is upon both. First upon what Christ did for me in executing the terms of the former; second, upon my compliance with the conditions of the latter. Many are very confused at this very point. They who repudiate man’s responsibility will not allow that there are any "ifs" or "buts," restricting their attention to God’s "wills" and "shalls"; but this is not dealing honestly with the Word. Instead of confining ourselves to favorite passages, we must impartially compare Scripture with Scripture, and over against God’s "I will" of Hebrews 8:10-12 must be placed the "But Christ as a Son over his own house: whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end . . . for we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end" of Hebrews 3:6, 14! Does this render such a vital matter uncertain, and place my eternal interests in jeopardy? By no means: if I have turned "from transgression" God has made an everlasting covenant with me and has given to me the same Spirit which abode—without measure—on the Mediator (Isa. 59:20,21). Nevertheless, I can have Scriptural assurance of this only so long as I tread the path of obedience." - A. W. Pink, from here

If you're a Man #4 Christian (and higher) the good works you do are the same as are commanded by God in the Word of God and that boil down to the two conscious shocks. When you do the Work, as a Christian, you are engaging in covenant living. You are holding up your end of the covenant, and God rewards that. This is how you see the practical aspect of being in covenant with God. (By the way, what God demands of His own He gives freely. You're given the Spirit upon regeneration which enables you to have faith and to do good works. Doing the Work - or good works, as commanded by God, done in faith, and done to the glory of God - isn't a part of the law of works but is part of the law of Christ; it's like spiritual warfare, you want to do it because it is what you are and it is coming from your new heart.)

So holding the two conscious shocks and walking the King's Highway is doing your part of the covenant with God. Fall and you will be let known that you have fallen. Stay in watchfulness and the fear of God only (self-remembering and non-identifying) walking the King's Highway and you will receive what God's own receive.

Comment from a post below

I'm the writer of this, and I thought I'd archive it as its own post. The subject is rather big:

There's that famous tension within us all of that common embarrassment that I think our fallen nature inculcates in us (and the world does too) when we contemplate God and eternity and giving ourselves to God (or, that kind of language, you know) vs. the fact that when we die we die alone and will face that event and whatever journey it holds alone, so we think: "Against that what is the embarrassment worth?" Or we should think that.

I always think: imagine being encased in rock six hundred feet below the surface of the earth and you are alive for eternity and nobody can hear you or come to save you and you are there thinking "I was too embarrassed to cling to, to throw myself at the feet of, the Saviour and King that was offered to me, the only Person who could save me from where I am now..."

The practical thing is: recognize vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will and mortify them. Faith, repentance, and God's will will take their place, will be quickened in you. And you become a prophet, a priest, and a king to ever greater degree in the process, with legal standing in the Kingdom of God, for eternity...

Then see what's going on. Get the basics first. Have your wealth secured, get your mansion, have your glorified body, then see what there is to do.

The fear of God

Look at the description of this book.

This is what I came into understanding of independently. Seeing the fear of God in non-idenitifying which also would include self-remembering by default. But to see that as the 'practice' of the Christian. This is why I am in tune with the Puritans (as they really were, not the popular myths and disparagements that come from the world towards truth and on-the-mark knowledge and practice, including the disparaging coming from the very worldly environment of church level Christianity, or, churchianity).

(The link above references the book Puritan Spirituality by J. Stephen Yuille)

Last moments of Christians, last moments of atheists

Here. There is some introductory material you can scroll down through. Overall, the collection of quotes and vignettes sparks memories and evokes foundational thoughts.

Post-post

There's power in these verses:

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/gracelist.html

POWER!!!

Damn it.

There's real, and then there's screwin' around.

WAKE UP!!! (I shout into the mirror.)

Why? Aren't you going to be in the same straits once
glorified? Looking for and thinking up stuff to do?

I don't know. It will probably be different,
methinks. Safe to say it will be different. Right
now we are in a difficult in-between state and
condition. Even when totally asleep we are in fallen
flesh bodies which are rather unfortunate and limited
tabernacles. Even if you have one others want to
devour then after-the-fact it's yeah, hm, right, ok,
gotta go.

And anyway I've already solved all that. It's on my
Plain Path Puritan blog. How in heaven you become the
actual material and events of heaven. It's probably
freaky at first until you begin to get the hang of it
then it's like Greek myth somewhat. Now we see
through a glass darkly.

Everything's been solved.

Over and over.

Just as in heaven you become the actual material and
events of heaven it's the same now with understanding.
If you develop understanding it actually becomes your
being, your body. We can see and feel understanding
residing in the Word of God. And in the influx of the
Holy Spirit and mortifying process of Work efforts.

Now go to the world you ungrateful vain children.
Away! Off with you. I'm the only one who knows
anything. I alone am here, awake, not dead in sin. I
alone. Me it is who knows, no one else. You have no
allies when you know and do the Work. None but me.
I, and I alone. - Me