Recurrence thought

I'll bet once in Hades, in the interval between death and birth, in the recurrence sense, that we get *intensely* nostalgic for our 'past' life. No matter how much it may have been less-than-ideal. We get *intensely* nostalgic for our childhoods and the places and things and people we remember about it.

I mean *intensely.*

You see this power of nostalgia playing out in our human nature in the here and now.

All the negative is forgotten. The danger no longer exists. The unpleasantness is no longer felt.

And when you look at the past from the vantage point of being in the future you tend to see *possibilities* in that past that either weren't there in real time or that you were blind to anyway back in real time, but the *greater vision* of the times that looking backwards gives us makes the times more interesting. Less of an experience of being enchained in humdrum circumstances and necessities and situations and more a vision of what was happening in history and how one could do this or do that and how it is all so opened up and interesting and everybody you know is young again...!

To greater or lesser degree each person would feel and see this.

This draw of nostalgia would not effect (effect as strongly, I'll say) a person who has awakened in life. They, in effect, have *already* seen the bigger vision and it holds little enticement to them.

To use Plato's metaphor, the person who has truly awakened in life would draw less water from the river of forgetfulness (I know that metaphor clashes with how I've put it above). The thirst for the water of the river of forgetfulness would also be, in this sense, the desire to experience the 'past' once again. The draw of nostalgia.

We have to remember our fallen nature hates God

1.

Celestial fire...higher energy...it is the Holy Spirit. The H.S. is God. Our fallen nature hates God. Here is something to observe: in the backlash state when we are full of accumulated energy (after self-remembering effort), and we are castigating people, from memory, in real time, the usual internal-considering, i.e. in the midst of a negative emotional blowout, try to observe how everything you are saying is *really* directed at the Holy Spirit. It's *supposedly* directed at some girl, some guy, some event, memory, whatever. No, see that it is directed at God.

Then note the language you use. "Creep. Fuck off. Who are you? You're nothing. I'll fucking kill you. Screw off. Compared to me you're nothing."

You think you're talking to some human from some past event in your life. No, you're talking directly to God.

This is a powerful and true realization.

You're castigating the Holy Spirit within you. Grieving the Holy Spirit.

2.

This is why this interval - this second conscious shock - is nigh impossible to cross. Because we are spitting at and fighting the only force that can get us across: God.

Celestial Fire - Higher things need higher language

1.

Rare, new things need new, higher language to be identified. Work language is higher language, but I mean everyday language to identify something like the higher energy that is accumulated by self-remembering effort. Maybe the Work language has fallen short a bit here in not providing one, but maybe it's something we have to see eventually on our own and provide it.

Example: celestial fire. It captures the Work as practice. We're burned by it, illuminated by it, emanate it. Consume it.

I got the phrase from John Owen, Calvinist theologian. Psalm 104:4 alludes to it.

My main point: when we see higher levels of energy as celestial fire we react differently to it. When we get emotionally negative as a result of having accumulated such energy by self-remembering we see we are being burned by something rare and higher: celestial fire. I.e. we focus on the energy itself and not on what's making us angry and resentful and out of control in the backlash state and difficult events.

When we focus on the higher energy itself we are not in a state of identification with people, events, whatever. "I'm all angry because I have celestial fire in me. I have to embrace the celestial fire, not grieve it. Not fight it. And what's happening in my thoughts and imagination and events out here in the world...is nothing. It's between me and celestial fire. My limits."

2.

This idea may sound new agey, but really it isn't. It's using language to identify something that is new and rare. When we say 'higher energy' (the result of self-remembering effort) those words don't really denote the rare substance of what we're talking about and dealing with. Higher energy? We've all had high energy. Kids have it. Such words mingle to closely with mundane things.

So celestial fire, though it may sound grandiloquent, is the type of new language needed to identify something that is new and different.

Really, it is biblical too. The Bible uses such language. Fire. Having fire. The Holy Spirit as well is what we are accumulating. Jesus had the Spirit 'without measure'. The only human who *could* have it without measure. We can have it by increasing degree, but our limits are provoked blow out. We "grieve" the Spirit. We're a temple of the Holy Spirit once regenerated, yet we defile the temple.

That is the struggle. Provoking limits so as to then extend limits, with subtle effort.

And it's important to repeat that when you focus on the energy itself (the celestial fire) you aren't focused on the subject(s) of your resentment (whatever they or it is in the moment when you're indulging intellectual and emotional and physical negativity). You realize, whatever difficult thing is happening, that it is the 'celestial fire' that you are in the presence of and that you don't want to 'defile' it by using it for resentment and anger and so on.

Before all the subjects of your resentment were in the forefront. They are tangible (even if negative imagination and bad memories). Now, the higher energy itself is forefront because it has a name; something that identifies it as being rare and new...and present.