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.)
5.22.2008
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4 comments:
What do you guys think of this post generally?
It sounds like going backwards, but it can be seen as a going forwards too. I could tie it in to G.'s advice to learn the system, do it, then forget about it.
I do still know that real effort to be awake for duration, depth, and frequency is the real thing and effects truly higher-reality states and levels of being (if I may put it that way) and actually increases capacity for understanding and increases being, but I am not casting that off in the post in question, I include that in the two great commandments and the so-called sacraments. The two conscious shocks. But making the effort with a sense of NOW completeness, and from God's will coming from above. A sense of contentment deriving from knowing all is complete. More of an eschatologically vertical completeness and 'it is done-ness'. And all works for the good for those who are in Christ (as opposed to still being in Adam).
This may, among everything else, open up and enable one to be guided more by the Spirit.
Being able to walk outdoors and to be complete and know all is really glorious (it's a higher centers things too, i.e. no negative part, and it's a real will thing, i.e. not involved at all with the external world) and that sanctification is both NOW and complete as well as continuing, but from above. Rather than walking outdoors and being in the usual war and maelstrom - internal, external, imaginative, real - of conflict and internal-considering and on and on, while 'making efforts' (not a bad thing! but after a certain point fruitless if not 'from above').
After writing all those words above and in the post itself I think it is the sense of 'completeness' that would be new. The eschatological NOW-completeness. The stopping of continually yearning for something when you have it now. The realization that the old state of alienation is no longer present. Effort to be in the third state still applies, but acompanied by a 'everything is already complete' feel and realization, which doesn't change the effort, but does change everything. Having that vertical, timeless sense of contentment of completeness and presence may cultivate the necessary acting 'from top down' that is real effort. Real Will. God's will.
It's less about seeing effort differently than it is seeing a completeness, an eschatological NOW completeness in it all. This effects effort in making it more top-down, Real Will; less self-will "I must do this now".
It's a resting on the - or in the - reality of the promises of God and who and what you now are and where you are when you are truly born again and living in the Kingdom of God now.
Maybe a way of putting it in the context of effort is: it's the difference between secular Work effort and a more Spirit guided, Spirit-present effort. Less a context of your old life with all the old people and places and events and memories and conflicts and resentments and more a context of higher center NOW and Spirit of God new territory.
The effort still has to be there though.
> THEN you
> can relax on efforts in the sense of putting x's in
> boxes
I have to retract at least the impression I may have given in the last email(s) or the post I wrote on my Fourth Way blog. I really was making a point that uses alot of Christian doctrinal understanding. But though I hear what Simon is saying in his response, I just want to state that hardcore self-remembering for duration, depth, and frequency (using the card - x's in boxes - method simply to know you are actually doing it) is how one provokes one's limits and the only way to then extend one's limits. It also puts one in rather strange, higher time, higher influence, territory. It is the engine that drives everything else. It is the most easy to not want to do. It is real effort. It causes the backlash states and the difficult events and the general 'being at our limit' which by definition is not pleasant or easy to deal with. It makes our false personality fight back and gives up friction from the world.
But the angle I was getting at is to do all that with a sense of already being complete, and that is more a higher centers thing. It's a different context and state of being. You are no longer all wrapped up in family and world resentments and old memories, but are in a new world living in a present where 'all is good'...
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