Book Four Chapter Six: Perception

SIX

Perception

There are times in all our lives when we simply do not perceive the things around us. For myself, locking a door behind me is a thing I do so automatically that I don’t remember doing it. I have walked halfway to where I was going, then could not recall having locked my front door. I walked all the way back to check and be sure. When non-perception is not the case, preconception often is. I cannot count the times I’ve said to another, “if it had been a snake, it would have bitten you.” The usual answer: “Oh, I didn’t think it would be there.” Sometimes people simply don’t pay attention; other times preconception acts like a blinder. Perhaps we all know someone with a ‘blind spot’. In the currency of spiritual perception, one may either have enough to make a purchase or else one is bankrupt. We are all aware that money in a savings account draws interest. In other words, it takes something to make something. On the other hand, envision a man with a maxed-out credit card. He is sitting on empty, yet the creditors still demand payment.

See Luke 8:18, “Take heed therefore how (not ‘what’) ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.”

Christ called on any of us that have a ‘spiritual’ ear to take heed to spiritual issues. It would seem from the above-cited verse that there are only two processes and they affect spirituality as well as corporeality: they are addition and attrition. These are easy to spot in the physical world. Put a bodybuilder beside a weakling and there will be no mistaking who has what. If you utilize the means to attain knowledge, you increase knowledge. Much more than an ‘addition’ path, we may call this the ‘whosoever hath to him shall be given’ highway.

See Isaiah 50:4, “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: He wakeneth morning by morning, He wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.”

There is a way to go about things, evinced in the expression: ‘how ye hear’ (as opposed to ‘what ye hear’). One might at first think it strange that God would give wisdom to the wise: they already have it - give some to those in need! Right? But, that is not how it works. Giving wisdom to the wise is on a par with giving muscles to the bodybuilder. In the ‘what’ category, the same opportunities present themselves to all participants. It is the ‘how’ that counts. The bodybuilder has sought out, has made use of, has practiced whereas the weakling has availed himself of nothing. Weakness breeds weaker-ness. I am going to list six more scripture references that each point to the principle advocated in Luke 8:18.

      (1.) Daniel 2:20-22, “Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and                     ever: for wisdom and might are His: And He changeth the times and the seasons: He                   removeth kings, and setteth up kings: He giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge                 to them that know understanding: He revealeth the deep and secret things: He knoweth               what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.”

      (2.) 2 Corinthians 8:11, “Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness               to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have.”

      (3.) Matthew 13:11, “He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know               the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”

      (4.) Ecclesiastes 7:12, “For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency                 of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”

      (5.) Proverbs 14:6, “A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy 

             unto him that understandeth.”

      (6.) Proverbs 24:5, “A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.”

What exactly is spiritual? We see it everywhere we look. Mankind asked to fly far back in the timeline. In his impatience, he took up feathers. It was only recently that God answered by giving us the Wright brothers. The nature of man begs for the nature of God just as surely as the child can’t wait to grow up. God promised: ask and you shall receive. But, can we work methodically and patiently enough to see that promise of spirituality realized? Our preconceptions take us way off course. We preconceive that what we ask is what we ask; we preconceive that God is far, far away; we preconceive that if an answer does not assuage our impatient nature, it is just not coming. We are wrong on all counts.

See Hebrews 10:35-36, “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”

I strike the nail again.

God, a spirit, is realizing Himself in a corporeal realm by a process of reverse engineering: He is making man more spiritual.

I strike the nail again.

Those things we call spiritual are things we might also call cognitive. Communication is key.

I strike the nail again.

Christ is the Word; by that, I mean communication. God is communication communicating the nature of the communicator. God delivers, but God is the only source: He only gives of Himself.

See Luke 21:15, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.”

Now, I’ve gone on and on about cognitive abilities. I have much belabored the issue of mentality. I keep hitting the nail, but, when - (when?) - will I drive it home? I am not alone in this, for in a sense, I am only elaborating on themes put forth by the early writers. The mind angle cannot be stressed enough. Spiritual is mental is spiritual.

See Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

We are not being transformed physically. The transformation, the reverse engineering, is in our minds. To become spiritual, the mind is changed. The mind angle, therefore, cannot be over-stressed. Mental is spiritual is mental. And, of course: communication is key. However, for communication to work, there must, I repeat: ‘must’, be something held in common. God could not communicate His nature to us if we had nothing in common with Him.

See 1 Corinthians 14:11, “Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me.”

But, from the beginning, we were something like Him: He made us that way. An upgrade was intended from the get-go. That upgrade will never be comic book superpowers, but the change we will see in ourselves will be that we begin to think and act just like God.

See Colossians 3:10, “And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

The difference between what you perceive and what I perceive cannot be an issue. Both you and I perceive the same thing. How we each perceive that same thing is very much the issue. A person of limited hearing may only hear the lower notes when you speak. A corrective measure, such as a hearing aid, will allow that person to hear the higher elements of your speech. In the Old Testament, certain individuals received things ‘by the spirit’. Contemporary perception may hold that such occurred only with rare individuals, and by some amorphous means not common to every individual.

How do we perceive the communications of God?

A godly man is known to have a godlike nature. If he is a rare individual, why is he rare? Could it be that he is among the few who care enough about those higher issues to actively seek them out?

How do we perceive the communications of God?

In earlier times, the perception was that God communicated with the Pope, who in turn communicated with man. But then, it was perceived that God communicated with the elders, and preachers, and deacons of the church. Seems perception was perceiving more and more ‘rare’ individuals.

By extension, the ‘means’ is becoming less and less amorphous. We see in our day and age that God does not lift the odd skull and drop in a load of godliness; we see that very many studied individuals become godly through their studies. How do you perceive the communications of God? I see ‘by the spirit’ as ‘by the mind’.

See 1Chronicles 28:12, “And the pattern of all that he had by the spirit.”

God communicates to man’s mind. God communicates His mind into man’s mind. That should raise levels of perception. God communicates to man mentally. Perception is, after all, a mental attribute. What means does God choose to affect our thinking? Sometimes God has spoken directly to an individual: as with Moses, as with Jesus. Sometimes God has used the written word: as with the writing on the wall that made a king’s knees knock, as with the Ten Commandments. A proper perception of this will convince us that the writings of old are not merely the writings of men. If God speaks to men to impart knowledge, and men write what they know, God communicates the same knowledge to different men through the writing of those He has previously instructed.

Now, here is an odd question. Does God communicate to a man through writing that comes neither from His own finger, as in the writing on the wall, nor yet again from the hands of other individuals? In other words, is automatic writing indicated in scripture?

Judge for yourselves when you read 1Chronicles 28:19, “All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.”

Yes, we are still engaged in the study of cognitive abilities. How do you perceive that any one of us gets anything at all from God? Where does it enter the individual? There is the physical, and there is the nonphysical. If I kicked you under the table, would you get my message? You might smart, but you’d be none the wiser. You would demand to know why to know what I was trying to convey. If my level of communication was no higher than the corporeal, I could only explain by kicking you a second time. Mental is aligned with the nonphysical. Mental belongs under the heading of things spiritual. So, let’s try communicating under the table once more. This time around, spirituality has imparted new perception to my brain. I now understand that while the spiritual uses the physical to communicate, the mouth would be a more effective instrument than the foot. I cannot communicate very well with a kick because God did not impart wisdom and understanding to my toes; He put all that mental stuff in the mind.

See Exodus 36:1, “Every wise hearted (minded) man, in whom the Lord put wisdom and understanding.”

The heart, of course, is the organ of thought; what we now perceive to be the brain - and not just the brain, but the brain plus. We understand that our understanding is something more than the throbbing of internal organs. The mind, the ‘inner man’, is an alignment of our physical brain to something of equal value on the spiritual plain. Please recall Proverbs 14:6. The scorner sought wisdom and found it not. Had he sought scorning, he would have found that. The scorner did not have a wise mind; he did not exercise the mind with wisdom. His true quest was not for wisdom, therefore, but he sought fodder for his scorning mind. The one to whom finding wisdom was easy, was the one who exercised his mind for, sought out, and desired wisdom.

See 1Kings 3:9, “Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart (mind) to judge Thy people, that I may discern (discriminate) between good and bad.”

Mental is spiritual is mental. Mentality and cognition are spiritual in nature. God has communicated His nature in these. This nature is an active, forward-moving nature: a purpose-driven nature.

See 1Kings 3:11, “Understanding to discern judgment.”

Now, check all of the four words above against the thesaurus. You will get something like this: “Understanding (savvy) to (for the purpose of) discern (perceive) judgment (reason).” While I go to great lengths to communicate plainly and simply, some people will just not get it. Some other people, however, are receptive to the truth. Got Truth?

Get 1Kings 3:12, “I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart (mind).”

The Bible is filled with individuals to whom God imparted something mental. Some got a little. Some got a lot. What is spiritual? Well, what is perception? To perceive is to have a sense of something. The eye perceives light; the ear perceives sound; the brain perceives chemical/electrical impulses. Using cognitive abilities, I have a sense of the room in which I sit. I have a sense of the community in which I live. I have a sense of the nation and era in which I was born. For me to graduate to a broader sense, to a higher overview, addition takes place. I am ‘added to’. A first grader’s mind will neither receive nor perceive things belonging to the third grade. However, the preparations and practices of the second grade will enlarge the mind sufficiently to graduate to that next level. That largeness does not mean that the kid is second grade smart so much as third grade ready.

See 1Kings 4:29, “God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart (mind), even as the sand that is on the sea shore.”

There is an erroneous tendency to think of intelligence as an end or goal. And yet, Solomon’s largeness of mind was measured by a quality that ‘continued’. The beach goes on and on; just around that distant stand of palms, there is another stretch of sandy shoreline.

Even in the historical placement of a single individual, such as Solomon, God imparts a ‘rightness’ for that day and age. We have an expression: ‘man of the hour’, that is, someone who seems tailor-made for the time he lives in. Did God impart to Isaac Newton the cognitive abilities he needed for his time? Did the apple fall or did God toss it?

Did God communicate a nuclear mind to Von Braun? Is God the ‘E’ in M C squared?

See 1Chronicles 12:32, “Men that had understanding of the times.”

God imparts His mind and nature to those we call men of understanding, but it is for those men to use it, to exercise what they have been given. We have all been given muscles. What is an un-exercised muscle? It is a wattle. God gives what He gives for a purpose. What is an exercised muscle? A bigger muscle.

See 1Chronicles 22:12, “Only the Lord give thee wisdom and understanding . . . that thou mayest keep the law of the Lord thy God.”

If God gave you a hammer, I’d say it was a safe bet He expected you to use it on a nail. First, there is knowledge; second, there is understanding; third, there is wisdom. What is the difference between the three? Nothing. They are levels of the God-mind. What is the continuity between the three? Exercise. The exercise of knowledge brings one to understanding. Likewise, wisdom is understanding in practice. Cognitive abilities, perception, a sense of - and, familiarity through contact.

A heart, a mind; a heart and thought.

See 1Chronicles 28:9, “Know thou the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart (mind) and with a willing mind: for the Lord searcheth (hunts) all hearts (minds), and understandeth (digests) all the imaginations (creativity) of the thoughts (reflections).”

We have, therefore we receive, and we have more. God has, therefore He receives and has more. We draw from each other. We may know the visions of God by a mechanism similar to that of God

understanding the imaginations of our thoughts. There is familiarity in close contact.

See 2 Chronicles 26:5, “Who had understanding (knowledge practiced) in the visions of God.”

He that hath an ear, let him hear but take heed ‘how’ you hear. Certainly, if you have an ear that is predisposed to hearing spiritually, you will be given something spiritual to hear, which will both exercise and enlarge your ability to hear spiritually. You learn; you practice what you know. To

practice receiving the communications of God makes you an active participant in the process.

Read Nehemiah 8:2, “All that could hear with understanding.”

Book Four Chapter Five: What exactly is Spiritual?

FIVE

What exactly is spiritual?

Weights and counterweights.

Most of us have seen the novelties that spin on department store shelves. They are like wheels within wheels, and they spin like gyros in several directions at once. They go on and on with seemingly impossible longevity. But, if just one weight is wrong or falls out of sync, the entire gizmo grinds to a halt. Our minds, with their concomitant emotional states, are like those novelties. We might also liken our minds to suns, (and this seems apt) with our emotions as orbiting planets, our affectations as orbiting moons, and our passions as meteors that swing by ever so often on their elliptical journeys.

The obvious part is that the sun’s gravitational force affects the paths of the planets. What isn’t as obvious to most is that the planets and moons, and even the meteors, exert an influence on the sun. Our minds affect our emotions, affectations, and passions. Likewise, our emotions, affectations, and passions influence our minds.

We have sorrow, but we would rather laugh. We have pain where we would rather feel nothing. We suffer the loss of loved ones. It seems like everything and everyone, except ourselves, is allowed to exert control over our lives. When we bemoan our woes, we like to ask, “why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”

See the age-old complaint in Job 21:17, “God distributeth sorrows in His anger.”

And it’s all true; God allows bad things to happen to good people. But, here’s the kicker: many complainers are bad people who just claim to be good. To look past our noses, we must admit to a truth of broader scope: God allows bad things to happen to good people, good things to happen to good people, bad things to happen to bad people, and good things to happen to bad people. The old complaint is just so much sterile argument.

Recently, a mudslide in the Philippines killed nearly 2,000 people. Whether they were good or bad; whether they were Christian or non-Christian is pointless to debate. There were survivors. It now falls to them to make some sense of their losses. They will struggle; they will find a way to cope.

As I have said, a Godless mind will lead an individual to great pains; a ‘God-mind’ will lead an individual through great pains.

See why in Ecclesiastes 7:3, “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart (the mind) is made better.”

Life’s hardships have, at least once, been referred to as the act of pruning a fruitless tree: a remedial act intended as an alternative to destruction. Mankind has often been referenced as a sort of crop that produces something of value to God. Sometimes we are sheep; sometimes we are fruit trees; sometimes we are clusters of grapes. As to the fecundity of grape clusters, that all depends on the vine. If we are sheep, the harvest is our wool: a thing we naturally produce. If we are trees that should bear fruit but do not, the owner has two choices. He can destroy the non-productive tree, or he can work with it in the attempt to turn things around.

So God prunes the tree - is there only one way to interpret being trimmed? No. But, many only see in a one-dimensional way: that is that God is allowing bad things to happen to good people.

Another interpretation is found in Deuteronomy 30:6, “The Lord thy God will circumcise (trim) thine heart (mind), and the heart (mind) of thy seed, to (so that you can) love the Lord thy God with all thine heart (mind), and with all thy soul (the mind of your angelic other), that thou mayest live.”

Yeah, we like to imagine it’s about us, but it’s not. God is working His own work, for His own purpose. As for us, we either will or will not allow ourselves to be brought into harmony with God’s plan. We are here to benefit God. If all He wants is my wool, that’s fine with me. If He likes my fruit so much that He prunes me to produce more of it, that’s cool. I am aware that those things in my life that are for my good, even answered prayers, are of more benefit to God.

See it for yourself in 1 Kings 9:3, “The Lord said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before Me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put My name there for ever; and Mine eyes and Mine heart (mind) shall be there perpetually.”

A spiritual being affecting corporeality for spiritual ends.

What would be the benefit achieved in 1 Kings 17:22? “The Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.”

Is it for the body alone, or might it also be for the soul?

God’s reasons are His own, His purposes spiritual. Remember ‘ingestion’? Remember the 'communicated nature of the communicator'? If you remember those pieces of the puzzle, then try

putting them together with the ‘fruit’ we are called on to bear.

Puzzle over Jeremiah 3:15, “I will give you pastors according to Mine heart (mind), which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.”

You may ask, “Just what is God after?” If He has planted fields of wisdom, should it come as any surprise that wisdom is the harvest?

Glean Luke 16:8, “And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

I have read somewhere that there are two ways to learn a thing. The first way to learn comes through being truly interested in the subject. The second way to learn is to have the material hammered into our thinking time after time after time. Most of us subscribe to the latter method. Such repetitions drive a nail home. So let me hammer you once more with the fact that spiritual and corporeal are not mutually exclusive. Receive the blow one more time that a spiritual God is realizing Himself into a corporeal host - you. Where do you look to find God?

1Corinthians 6:13, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.”

I have stated that a man cannot teach what he has not learned. And, isn’t learning to receive the communications of one who communicates? What exactly is spiritual? By that question I mean, what exactly is spiritual from our perspective? God, a spiritual being, imparts spirituality into corporeal hosts. He communicates His nature, His mind, His will. If we can recognize any of that within ourselves, what we come to understand is exactly spiritual.

In passing the word ‘doctrine’ through the filter of a thesaurus, I found that every alternative word could be associated with the transmission and the reception of mentality.

What is Jesus really saying in John 7:14-17? “Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.”

There has ever been a spiritual component to the sons of men. It is that spiritual side to us (our inner man) that runs afoul of the law. It is that part of us that chooses, rather than reacting instinctively, that leads us contrary to the utilitarian nature of God. If that were not so, we should be no more at fault than the lion that kills to eat. God communicates God to man; man, therefore, must, in turn, communicate God to man; that is man in the image of God. What happens if we turn away our faces, and communicate other matters? Communication of spirituality, or non-spirituality, is intrinsically linked to basic issues of mankind’s justification for continuance, to all issues of worth and judgment.

See just how closely communication is tied to judgment in Matthew 12:36, “But I say unto you, That every idle word (those things that we communicate) that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.”

If we stand in the image of God and communicate what we have learned, we communicate the nature of God. If we turn away our faces from the interface, the great reflection is lost. We, then, communicate everything but the nature of God.

See Mark 7:21-23, “For from within, out of the heart (the mind) of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

As an experiment, assume that the mind of the man in the verse cited above has just been replaced by the God-mind. Go through the list and write down the opposite of each item. Then, read your list. You will note that the things of God, which have been imparted to the mind of the man, have replaced the old issues. If therefore, the mind of the man is identifiable by those things that issue forth from it, then the new issues from that same man would be the identifiers of whose mind? The brain has not changed; what has changed is the orientation, the perspective, the nature and quality of the mind within the brain.

When a farmer goes into the field, digs out all the old beans and re-plants with corn, it is no longer a field of beans. Even though the field of beans and the field of corn are both ‘fields’, something wholly different now issues from that new field. My simple illustration deals with a basic principle: something must be removed for something to be added. It is the principle of ‘displacement’. In construction, we see that never is a new building built on the lot of an older building until the older building has been removed.

See Deuteronomy 10:16, “Circumcise (remove) therefore the (old and unnecessary) foreskin of your heart (mind), and be no more stiffnecked.”

God has called for a new mind in man; it has long been the work of the Lord to cut away the old and create the new.

See also 2 Chronicles 16:9, “For the eyes of the (spiritual) Lord run to and fro throughout the whole (corporeal) earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart (mind) is (made) perfect toward Him.”

Our next reference shows God being strong on the behalf of one whose mind has been made perfect toward God. The individual is described with certain attributes that elicit a favorable response from God. In other words, God proposes to both deliver and honor the individual as a result of those things we see in the verse that identify the nature of the individual.

See Psalms 91:14, “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known My name.”

So, what are those things that describe this individual? I like to view these not so much as mere actions, but as states of being. These identifiers constitute such states of being that God responds favorably. Remember, it is a spiritual God working His own work for His own reasons. By that, I am suggesting that there is a ‘resonance’ between God and the individual because of such states of being. We may assume that these states were not always in place: the end of a journey is an attained state that is reached through the journey. In the scripture, two reasons are given for the response of God; I begin with the latter.

To know God’s name.

It is an attained state. Knowledge is the attained state of having learned; having sought out. Now, of course, to know the name of God involves something more substantial than a merely vocalized sound or written figure. To learn the name of God is to know His very nature. Hebrew names run along those lines: the names ascribed to God reference, in every case, who He is and what He is all about. To have the name or nature of God imparted is to receive from the communicator the communicated mind.

Therein lies the resonance. One does not learn in a stasis; the process is active. If one has not subscribed to the ‘hammer it in’ method, then he has subscribed to the ‘truly interested’ method of learning.

The former reason, which is given in the above-cited scripture, for the response of God is: “He hath set his love upon Me.” The individual was truly interested, to the point where his primary focus was ‘set’ on the mind of God: he was a seeker. Of course, in all, I am still dealing with cognition and mentality.

See Psalms 119:104, “Through Thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.”

In speaking of spiritually inclined people and spiritual lifestyles, we always return to cognitive abilities - in this verse, ‘understanding’. Understanding is a spiritual quality of the mind of God. It is a constituent component of the nature of the communicator. What we see in such an addition is a ‘life-changing’ mindset. The tenets of God’s will: the addition of a godly focus leads the individual to an attained state of understanding. Understanding leads to an inclination against falsity, and thus, by extension, to a personal quest for verity; for every good and honest thing.

The God-mind in man is the realization of God in man. More and more, the seeker’s mind is God. Even so, one must remain vigilant not to misuse the gift. One must not, for instance, be an Ananias.

Good advice about one’s attitude toward one’s new mind is found in Ecclesiastes 5:2, “Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart (mind) be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven (over all; the roof), and thou upon earth (like a chair in one small room): therefore let thy words be few.”

This is excellent prayer advice: preachers beware! Long-winded people may not be winning God’s favor. Less is more.

In the issue of ‘resonance’, one either has or is attaining the God-mind, or one is just not resonating with the Lord.

See the ‘un-mind’ in Isaiah 5:13, “Therefore My people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.”

We need to ask, why does a parent refuse to give the answer to a child’s homework question? Why does a teacher make the student work a math problem without a calculator? The answer is simple: the easy way is not the way to go. What good would there be in a man learning the moves of Kung Fu without the discipline? What good would come from giving the power to wield nuclear weapons to primitive warring cultures?

Sure: God could just hand us all the answers - but, what would happen? The critical would still criticize; the scoffers would go on scoffing; the unbelievers would not become seekers. The attained state of knowledge may only be realized after man has learned all the hard lessons.

Matthew 13:13, “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

Book Four Chapter Four: Am I a rock, Am I an Island?

FOUR

Am I a rock, Am I an Island?

(Are your thoughts really your own?)

Paraphrase: ‘Whoever has a spiritual ear, let him hear what the mind says to the people (congregation)’.

Many believe in their own isolation, in the independence of their existence, will, and thought. What if such an attitude amounts to turning a blind eye to, or wearing blinders so you just don’t see what kind of mind you actually have? ‘I am a rock, I am an island’ may be a lie.

Would you know if your mind was overpowered by a greater mind? You may not have enough

practice to discern one mind from the other. It may be that all mentality feels the same. I assert that your mind may not be your own. If God is a spirit, and spirit is mind, then every brain built to fit that form and function will house that form and function. To any who deny it, the influence of that form and function will be sporadic and forced, but you may not feel a thing: the thought will seem your own. To any who will open to that form and function, strong feelings and energetic displays will be misleading: actually, the thought will seem your own.

Let’s review some recorded instances from scripture. You may draw your own conclusions, that is, if you still think they are your own. Check out these references for higher influences.

Ezra 6:22, “(God) turned the heart (mind) of the king of Assyria unto them.”

Proverbs 21:1, “The king's heart (mind) is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will.”

Ezra 7:27, “The Lord God . . . hath put such a thing as this in the king's heart (mind).”

Job 12:24-25, “He taketh away the heart (mind) of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. They grope in the dark without light, and He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.”

Refer back to watching and being sober. Here are more of the same.

2 Kings 19:27-28, “But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against Me. Because thy rage against Me and thy tumult is come up into Mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and My bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.”

2 Chronicles 18:31, “Therefore they compassed about him to fight: but Jehoshaphat cried out, and the Lord helped him; and God moved them to depart from him.”

Job 5:17, “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty.”

I have plenty more.

We see that people normally wear blinders from such verses as Romans 1:28-32, “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate (libertine) mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

That says quite a lot. Finally, the sons of men recognize that something has been added to the mix.

Add Jeremiah 10:23 to this list, “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

Where do thoughts come from? Like gears in a clock, neural firings are but one aspect of the whole. Let us for a moment return to an early illustration. Nature teaches us the connection of ‘twos’.

A man cannot walk by putting only one leg forward. That would be hopping. A man walks by alternating two legs.

A man cannot breathe by only inhaling. A man cannot breathe by exhaling only. Either of those is a recipe for a red face. A man breathes by alternating between the two.

Nutritional maintenance is not just a matter of intake, but also a matter of purging. We see function in sets.

Likewise, traffic on a highway goes in two directions.

Now, some will prick their ears forward at my last statement; they will sit up and say, ‘there are one-way highways and one-way streets’. Of course, there are. I lived on a one-way street, but just one block over, traffic turned in the opposite direction. Sets. There are one-way highways, but look around: somewhere close by is another one-way highway going in the opposite direction. Sets. The brain is such a highway. Traffic goes in two directions.

See the oncoming headlights in Nehemiah 2:12, “What my God had put in my heart (mind).”

If thoughts were only worldly neural firings, there would be no thoughts of God: not a suspicion, much less a belief.

Again, Nehemiah 7:5, “My God put into mine heart (mind).”

Had man never risen above the level of the animal, we would presently be functioning on instinctual experience. But, we have been given knowledge: a communicated spiritual quality. And, what is communicated but the nature of the communicator?

See Psalms 94:10, “He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not He know?”

Yes, man is able to teach man. That is one of the usual arguments - the one, in fact, that brandishes the ‘a priori mind of man’. Yet, our very experience answers that no man is able to teach what he has not learned. Where do thoughts come from? I assert that thoughts are spiritual communications.

See Isaiah 51:16, “I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth, and say unto Zion, Thou art my people.”

Now that’s an interesting phrase: ‘plant the heavens’. The Mormons might say we each get our own planet to rule, but we’ll leave that for later. We study the spiritual quality called mentality. How do the heavens get planted, and by what seed? Some will automatically make the connection.

See, for example, Matthew 13:23, “But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit.”

Jesus also said that heaven was like a field that a man sowed with mustard seed.

Again, see Matthew 13:37, “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man (and by extension, the sons of men).”

And again, Mark 4:32, “But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all.”

Luke 8:11, “The seed is the word of God.”

And finally, John 12:24, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Yes, heaven is all about the mind of God communicated to us through Christ; about Christ being planted and bringing forth identical seeds to be planted; about the exponential magnification of God.

Book Four Chapter Three: Crook'd Staff in hand

THREE

Crook’d Staff in Hand

As I said, we gather individual sheep into a flock. What are these individualities, exactly? They are the various points of view held by the early writers; they are the myriad personalized notions, differing from one another in certain respects, but all built beneath the same roof. The sons of men have invested a great deal of time and effort in the attempt to ‘figure things out’. We point to some of those early efforts in the interpretation of invisibilities. We have heard that there is one God, and His name is One. We are assured that God is a spirit: Jesus said so. We have argued that ‘spirit’ and ‘mind’ are interchangeable. But - does God have more than one mind? Is the Holy Ghost (or spirit, or mind) but one of many?

See Revelation 4:5, “And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits (minds) of God.”

Sevens abound in the book of Revelation. One point of reference to this profundity of sevens might be the seven stars of Orion. But, Revelation, the book, is laid out in this order: Jesus makes the revelation to His angel, then His angel conveys the message to John who, in turn, records the matter.

The very fact that Jesus has an angel suggests that spirit requires a vehicle, but we will leave that for now. Here, I merely wish to put forth the testimony of the Son of God. I wish to point out that the message of seven spirits, along with its reference to Orion, comes from the Only Begotten.

See Revelation 3:1, “And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith He that hath the seven Spirits (minds) of God, and the seven stars.”

Since Jesus is the keeper of the seven spirits of God, it follows that they each will confess that Jesus is the genuine article. This supposition places good and evil spirits in opposition.

See 1 John 4:2, “Hereby know ye the Spirit (or spirits) of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”

That notion is corroborated in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit (mind) of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.”

The idea of seven minds is intriguing. Are they satellites circling the greater God-Mind, or are they constituents in the makeup of the God-Mind? I am not certain if the many different icons of the spirits; I.E.: ‘lamps’, ‘horns’, ‘eyes’, etc., are simply other colorful ways to describe the invisible, or wholly separate references, as in ‘stars’.

Nevertheless, any one of the seven minds is like a lamp; is like an eye (as in going to and fro in the earth); is like a horn, but, does this latter descriptor mean ‘trumpet’, or does it reference an ‘alter’?

I think the point to pay attention to in our next scriptural reference is that they were ‘sent’ into the world.

See Revelation 5:6, “And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits (minds) of God sent forth into all the (corporeal) earth.”

In reading the verse, I am made to wonder if the slaying of ‘the Lamb’ was not the impetus that caused the seven spirits of God to be sent forth: in that regard, recall Christ’s own words about a seed falling into the ground and dying.

We can, at this juncture, only guess, but such verses as these do give us valuable new insights into these topics. While many paths of investigation may follow the declaration of seven minds, I wish to address but one. I ask this: is there a hierarchy within the seven spirits? Our next scripture suggests a base for a hierarchy, or if you will, the four corners of the roof.

See four of the seven minds in Zechariah 6:5, “And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.”

I get the sense that they do not leave the Lord’s presence so much as issue, or radiate outward from Him. They are like the four winds or the four directions. Nevertheless, they are the four heavenly minds of God, and they have issued forth into the corporeal world; into the heads of men.

Are there four distinctly recognizable types of the spiritual individual? Or, does the spiritual type evince all four heavenly minds? And there is another jewel of information to be found in this verse: it is that our spiritual God is the Lord of all the earth. The connection is plain. Spiritual and corporeal are bound together: God may no longer be placed at inaccessible distances; He is right here beside us.

So, we move on to the remaining three spirits. Dare we hope that they have names? Well, one has a very familiar appellation.

See John 14:17, “Even the Spirit of Truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

Truth is everything that is; spirit is mind. The knowledge of everything that is (the knowledge of Jesus) is an eye-opening onto the spiritual realm. Men do not have such eyes; the sons of men do. So, one of the three remaining spirits is named ‘Spirit of Truth’.

Note from the verse that the world neither sees nor knows Him. Knowing is seeing. We don’t even have to ask who the Spirit of Truth is; He is the Comforter; He is the Holy Ghost; the mind of God. It was Jesus that declared the Holy Ghost to be the Spirit of Truth - that is, the mind of truth. He also said that spirit, or mind, issues or radiates out from the presence of the Lord of all the earth. As you read about that mind in the next verse, recall that one of Christ’s other names is ‘the Truth’.

Read about the mind of Truth in John 15:26, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me.”

In the book of Revelation, Jesus speaks to the seven angels of the seven churches. It might be that Jesus is the angel that houses the Mind of Truth. Conceivably, that housing of the Mind of Truth is what makes the angel ‘Truth’. The angel, as a glove, is built to fit the form and function of what it houses.

Perhaps the Mind of Truth is the central mind, leaving three minds on the left and three minds on the right. The innermost two minds on either side of the mind of Truth constitute the four spirits (minds)of the heavens. What the outermost two minds are remain to be seen. Just a thought.

There is some vague connection between the angel of the church (a group of people) and the mind of the angel. The message went out to the angel of the church. Was it then not intended for the church? Is the conglomerate mind of the body of believers the form that houses the form and function of the angel? Some synonyms for the word conglomerate are fusion, composite, amalgamation, union, and marriage.

Are we just talking levels, here? At any rate, to know is to see. Equally true: to know is to hear.

There is an expression that Jesus repeats in the book of Revelation, thus ascribing importance to it. Do you have a spiritual ear? What do you pick up on?

Hear Revelation 2:11, “He that hath an (spiritual) ear, let him hear what the Spirit (mind) saith unto the churches.”

Two unnamed spirits remain to be discovered. Let us hope that our ears are cocked in the right direction when those names are uttered.