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...