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.
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