I've heard it said that for some people, life begins at thirty. Well, I'm still three years out, still languishing on in the end of my twenties.
A painful decade it has been, frocked with the utter depths of loneliness and longing, yearning to find who I really am and where I really belong, with no emotional support and no affection all along the way.
The clouds have not yet even begun to part, but I can sense a clearing not too far ahead, at least I hope. I can't live like this much longer.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Winds of Spirit
My life of the past almost decade has been colored with shades of pain, depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear, deep longing, and all kinds of other feelings that I can't place or describe. The feelings cling to me like mud on a pair of shoes. I walk around every day, broken. It's become the only thing I know.
Where ever you go, there you are
How I've longed to get away, to escape. But I know it would only follow me.
Sometimes, when I lie down to take a brief nap, I get a snap of clarity in that instant of time that the mind shuts off and I pass into a dream state. One such time, I lied down with a burden of pain on my chest. In this moment of clarity and for a moment I felt like I descended into a place of inner purity where the heaviness of these feelings could not touch me. It was as though they were oil, and when I descended into the waters of sleep they stayed afloat above the water and I was safe from them.
It made me think about the promise of Jesus and the prophets, that rivers of living water would flow out from us. If rivers of water flow out, that must mean there has to be water within. But what is this water, and what makes it living? And more importantly, how do I make that water come to the surface so that I don't have to be in some kind of consciousness limbo to perceive it?
Every so often, a strange influence passes over me. Usually, it occurs when I am driving on a road I've never driven on before when I have the windows down and the weather is nice. I suddenly feel as though I am a million miles away from where I've ever been before, that my life is new and unfolding in a way that is completely fresh. My heart feels pure and my thoughts renewed. Whenever I pass back into the familiar, however, the feeling passes with it.
Every so often, I see the subtle hand of God working in my life, but I never really comprehend it.
I once read a strange analogy concerning the relation of our lives with a higher dimension....
Say we lived in a realm that is only 2 dimensional instead of 3 dimensional. Say we were all flat people living in a flat world in a flat universe. Flat is all we know. BUT, there is a third dimension that we are not aware of. The third dimension can pass through this flat dimension, but all the flat dimension knows of it is the impression it makes at the point of intersection.
I know some readers are thinking jeez what a bunch of gobbledygook. For those, let me put it this way. Pretend our world was as flat as a sheet of paper, and we with it. The only shapes known in that world are flat shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, tetrahedrons, whatever. All flat.
Now.. above that world there exists a third dimension, but the flat world cannot comprehend it. In this higher three dimensional world world there can exist more complex shapes. Spheres, Square blocks, and whatever else, but in the 2 dimensional world, there can only be flat circles, squares, etc.
If a sphere wanted to interact with those flat world people, it could intersect that world. It would be as though a sphere were passing through a sheet of paper. Wherever the sphere touches the paper, it forms a circle, but only one flat portion of the sphere can interact with the flat plane of that 2 dimensional world.
So, wherever the sphere interacts with the flat world, the flat people can only comprehend a circle. Likewise, if a pyramid wanted to appear in the 2d flat world, it could only form a triangle there, even though the rest of the 3 dimensional form would still protrude into the 3rd dimension beyond the flat plane of the 2 dimensional world.
I know I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is.
The truth is we live in a 3 dimensional world, or 4 if you count time as a dimension. But there are higher dimensions, the only problem is we cannot perceive them because they exist outside of our dimensional jurisdiction, or comprehension. Just like a sphere cannot exist in a 2 dimensional realm, only a circle can. In the 3 dimensional world, the sphere can exist. How many further dimensions are there? What exists in them? Nobody knows, but science knows they exist.
The bible says God has planted eternity in the hearts of men.
I was just thinking earlier about my experience today eating with my "pastor." It was just a simple time of hanging out and taking bread together, just like Jesus hung out with his 12 disciples and ate, drank, and slept along with them every day. Every day was a divine moment, them, Jesus, and the fullness of God that dwelt in Him.
The seemingly mundane was of divine and eternal significance.
There is a scene in the movie Waking Life which deals with that idea. Two men are seen sitting there discussing it, and the scene drifts away as the faces of the two men become two huge clouds, making it seem as though their faces together was a lot more significant than it was before.
It just made me think. All these moments of loneliness, mundaneness, and whatever else, are they really divine moments? Moments that have the full attention of God and every supernatural being in the entire universe?
What is man, that you should be mindful of him?
The wind blows where it wills, no man knows from where it comes or to where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
One thing that I have been made keenly aware of, is that God works in mysterious ways. And often those ways seem weird. We only see a part of whatever he is doing, but there is more to the complexity of his "shape" than we can comprehend, because the rest of its dimensions lie hidden in the reaches of time and circumstance, extending into the hidden hearts of other men, relationships, events, etc. His divine wisdom is interwoven into everything, and all we can ever hope is to catch a glimpse of some small part of it.
For now we see as through a glass, darkly, but one day I shall know even as I am known.
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.
All I want right now is for that fresh wind to blow away the crustiness that has corrupted my life and my thoughts, and propel me into that new fresh life with fresh thoughts forever.
Where ever you go, there you are
How I've longed to get away, to escape. But I know it would only follow me.
Sometimes, when I lie down to take a brief nap, I get a snap of clarity in that instant of time that the mind shuts off and I pass into a dream state. One such time, I lied down with a burden of pain on my chest. In this moment of clarity and for a moment I felt like I descended into a place of inner purity where the heaviness of these feelings could not touch me. It was as though they were oil, and when I descended into the waters of sleep they stayed afloat above the water and I was safe from them.
It made me think about the promise of Jesus and the prophets, that rivers of living water would flow out from us. If rivers of water flow out, that must mean there has to be water within. But what is this water, and what makes it living? And more importantly, how do I make that water come to the surface so that I don't have to be in some kind of consciousness limbo to perceive it?
Every so often, a strange influence passes over me. Usually, it occurs when I am driving on a road I've never driven on before when I have the windows down and the weather is nice. I suddenly feel as though I am a million miles away from where I've ever been before, that my life is new and unfolding in a way that is completely fresh. My heart feels pure and my thoughts renewed. Whenever I pass back into the familiar, however, the feeling passes with it.
Every so often, I see the subtle hand of God working in my life, but I never really comprehend it.
I once read a strange analogy concerning the relation of our lives with a higher dimension....
Say we lived in a realm that is only 2 dimensional instead of 3 dimensional. Say we were all flat people living in a flat world in a flat universe. Flat is all we know. BUT, there is a third dimension that we are not aware of. The third dimension can pass through this flat dimension, but all the flat dimension knows of it is the impression it makes at the point of intersection.
I know some readers are thinking jeez what a bunch of gobbledygook. For those, let me put it this way. Pretend our world was as flat as a sheet of paper, and we with it. The only shapes known in that world are flat shapes. Circles, squares, triangles, tetrahedrons, whatever. All flat.
Now.. above that world there exists a third dimension, but the flat world cannot comprehend it. In this higher three dimensional world world there can exist more complex shapes. Spheres, Square blocks, and whatever else, but in the 2 dimensional world, there can only be flat circles, squares, etc.
If a sphere wanted to interact with those flat world people, it could intersect that world. It would be as though a sphere were passing through a sheet of paper. Wherever the sphere touches the paper, it forms a circle, but only one flat portion of the sphere can interact with the flat plane of that 2 dimensional world.
So, wherever the sphere interacts with the flat world, the flat people can only comprehend a circle. Likewise, if a pyramid wanted to appear in the 2d flat world, it could only form a triangle there, even though the rest of the 3 dimensional form would still protrude into the 3rd dimension beyond the flat plane of the 2 dimensional world.
I know I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is.
The truth is we live in a 3 dimensional world, or 4 if you count time as a dimension. But there are higher dimensions, the only problem is we cannot perceive them because they exist outside of our dimensional jurisdiction, or comprehension. Just like a sphere cannot exist in a 2 dimensional realm, only a circle can. In the 3 dimensional world, the sphere can exist. How many further dimensions are there? What exists in them? Nobody knows, but science knows they exist.
The bible says God has planted eternity in the hearts of men.
I was just thinking earlier about my experience today eating with my "pastor." It was just a simple time of hanging out and taking bread together, just like Jesus hung out with his 12 disciples and ate, drank, and slept along with them every day. Every day was a divine moment, them, Jesus, and the fullness of God that dwelt in Him.
The seemingly mundane was of divine and eternal significance.
There is a scene in the movie Waking Life which deals with that idea. Two men are seen sitting there discussing it, and the scene drifts away as the faces of the two men become two huge clouds, making it seem as though their faces together was a lot more significant than it was before.
It just made me think. All these moments of loneliness, mundaneness, and whatever else, are they really divine moments? Moments that have the full attention of God and every supernatural being in the entire universe?
What is man, that you should be mindful of him?
The wind blows where it wills, no man knows from where it comes or to where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
One thing that I have been made keenly aware of, is that God works in mysterious ways. And often those ways seem weird. We only see a part of whatever he is doing, but there is more to the complexity of his "shape" than we can comprehend, because the rest of its dimensions lie hidden in the reaches of time and circumstance, extending into the hidden hearts of other men, relationships, events, etc. His divine wisdom is interwoven into everything, and all we can ever hope is to catch a glimpse of some small part of it.
For now we see as through a glass, darkly, but one day I shall know even as I am known.
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.
All I want right now is for that fresh wind to blow away the crustiness that has corrupted my life and my thoughts, and propel me into that new fresh life with fresh thoughts forever.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Caverns of Mind
Back in my hazy drug days, while I was high on pot, I became aware that my mind was almost uncontrollably flipping between different mental states. It was like the annoying feeling you get when you are watching TV and someone else has the remote. At times I felt as though I was losing control of my mind completely. One time I felt as though my mind was but a candle of awareness burning in the complete darkness. It was a strange feeling, because it felt as though my mind itself was constricted, that there was more to perceive, though not through physical sense, that I could not perceive. I actually started having more and more severe panic attacks because of these kinds of sensations, and the symptoms lasted a long time after I kicked the drug habit.
Through these and other experiences, I was frightened to realize how limited my awareness of reality truly is. Think about it. The extent of your life and who you are is stored in various forms all within this little watery body bag we inhabit. All your thoughts and memories are encapsulated in this fragile chemical electric organ sitting between our ears. If it is destroyed or damaged, your life is destroyed or damaged.
Science has not yet even begun to scratch the surface of its enormous complexity. What vitalizes this mesh of cells? What gives it its capacity to enable human consciousness? They throw around all kinds of complicated scientific gobbledygook to explain it, but the reality is, they haven't got a flipping clue.
There is so much more to reality than the basic physical things we are familiar with. Science points its instruments to the sky to collect gamma rays, theta rays, UV, infrared, microwave, and an assortment of all kinds of radiation in order to glimpse the vastness of the visible universe. Despite all our technology, all we are able to measure are these manifestations in different wavelengths of the same force - electromagnetism. What other *ism's are there that we have not yet discovered. Science says something doesn't exist if we can't measure it or observe it. Man's little scientific scopes and probes are useless if we don't know where to point them, or what to look for.
I once read that some of the first Americans to go into space in a rocket got themselves high above the earth into the heavens above, and as they looked around, they proclaimed "We don't see any God up here." One of my favorite writers, J. Preston Eby, countered their fallacious and pompous arrogance by writing "they didn't see any God because they were on the wrong frequency. God lives in the realm of spirit." God cannot be seen even if you were to travel to the ends of time and space.
Every culture has believed in the "spiritual" realm, albeit with different ideas about it. The basic premise is always the same, that there are unseen higher forces at work in the world that are intimately connected to us and our lives / purposes / destinies.
Our humanistic mindset here in the West has its roots set deeply in Medieval European superstition, or rather in the distancing of ourselves from that dark ignorance, but in so doing, western thought seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Ancient man used to think the seat of God was just above the circle of the earth (some thought the sun was god). Man looked to the heavens as the seat of divine residence or authority. Yet when man shot himself to the sky, he didn't see any divine thrones, so he figured, well, so much for God.
The fool has said in his heart...
The truth is, despite all our "enlightenment," man is as deep in darkness as he ever was, and in the west we have managed to swing ourselves from the depths of one kind of superstition straight into the polar opposite, a position equally as foolish and dangerous.
The mind is a tricky thing. We are bound and limited to what we have experienced, and cannot truly comprehend anything beyond that. If I encounter information pertaining to something I have not experienced, it is automatically related and compared to the information that I have available to me, none of which is guaranteed to be accurate or correct. In fact, my own physical perception automatically distorts reality, filtering it through faulty and unreliable data-gathering channels, and then is further distorted by subconscious analysis in a disorderly associative storage system that sorts and orders and labels everything based upon whatever is already there through very liberal pathways of relationship. The brain is a perfectly imperfect database of knowledge. It is the reason two people can witness the same event and say they saw two different things. Of course, then, when you throw emotion into this already senseless mixture, you add a whole new layer of complexity and irrationality.
I myself have become well aware of how limited I am by my mind. I am aware of what the bible calls the carnal mind. The mind that is composed of and empowered by fleshly tissue. What can the brain do, when it is made only to support a primitive life on this planet?
Man recently has created a nice little dream for himself. He thinks his technology is so great, and will be his own salvation. He dreams of building machines to propel him into the vast reaches beyond.
I was watching the History channel and these physicists were saying how great it would be and how much we really need to reach out and colonize Mars. How it, compared to the other planets around, is hospitable. I got a little ill. I don't see what is so hospitable about living on a rock in space that never gets above -200 degrees, has almost not atmosphere, no water, and no life at all. We can't transform it. We will never "terraform" it. It's a dead rock. How are you going to get ANYONE to want to go live on a dead planet?
Man thinks he can conquer the universe with his puny mind. He surely dreams.
Lately, my own mind has felt like a cavern. I wander around in it, constantly finding bits and pieces of memories here and there. They are all that I am, so I thought.. but also lately I have been feeling a breeze blowing through my little cave, bringing with it new and unfamiliar sensations.
I am realizing that my first impression or opinion about things more often than not is proved to be wrong. I misunderstand, misjudge, miscalculate, and fall short in just about everything. I have underestimated so many people because of the crusty thought barrier that lies in between their soul and mine, that crusty barrier being my own perverse and misguided thoughts.
My mind is truly a cavernous pit of lies, and I have come to realize that everything I think is wrong. My own thoughts deceive me more often than not. I now understand what it means in the Bible, "Be ye transformed by the renovation/renewing of the MIND." "There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end leads only to DEATH."
Wretched man I am, where do I go from here? How can my mind be renewed?
... To be Continued.
Through these and other experiences, I was frightened to realize how limited my awareness of reality truly is. Think about it. The extent of your life and who you are is stored in various forms all within this little watery body bag we inhabit. All your thoughts and memories are encapsulated in this fragile chemical electric organ sitting between our ears. If it is destroyed or damaged, your life is destroyed or damaged.
Science has not yet even begun to scratch the surface of its enormous complexity. What vitalizes this mesh of cells? What gives it its capacity to enable human consciousness? They throw around all kinds of complicated scientific gobbledygook to explain it, but the reality is, they haven't got a flipping clue.
There is so much more to reality than the basic physical things we are familiar with. Science points its instruments to the sky to collect gamma rays, theta rays, UV, infrared, microwave, and an assortment of all kinds of radiation in order to glimpse the vastness of the visible universe. Despite all our technology, all we are able to measure are these manifestations in different wavelengths of the same force - electromagnetism. What other *ism's are there that we have not yet discovered. Science says something doesn't exist if we can't measure it or observe it. Man's little scientific scopes and probes are useless if we don't know where to point them, or what to look for.
I once read that some of the first Americans to go into space in a rocket got themselves high above the earth into the heavens above, and as they looked around, they proclaimed "We don't see any God up here." One of my favorite writers, J. Preston Eby, countered their fallacious and pompous arrogance by writing "they didn't see any God because they were on the wrong frequency. God lives in the realm of spirit." God cannot be seen even if you were to travel to the ends of time and space.
Every culture has believed in the "spiritual" realm, albeit with different ideas about it. The basic premise is always the same, that there are unseen higher forces at work in the world that are intimately connected to us and our lives / purposes / destinies.
Our humanistic mindset here in the West has its roots set deeply in Medieval European superstition, or rather in the distancing of ourselves from that dark ignorance, but in so doing, western thought seems to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Ancient man used to think the seat of God was just above the circle of the earth (some thought the sun was god). Man looked to the heavens as the seat of divine residence or authority. Yet when man shot himself to the sky, he didn't see any divine thrones, so he figured, well, so much for God.
The fool has said in his heart...
The truth is, despite all our "enlightenment," man is as deep in darkness as he ever was, and in the west we have managed to swing ourselves from the depths of one kind of superstition straight into the polar opposite, a position equally as foolish and dangerous.
The mind is a tricky thing. We are bound and limited to what we have experienced, and cannot truly comprehend anything beyond that. If I encounter information pertaining to something I have not experienced, it is automatically related and compared to the information that I have available to me, none of which is guaranteed to be accurate or correct. In fact, my own physical perception automatically distorts reality, filtering it through faulty and unreliable data-gathering channels, and then is further distorted by subconscious analysis in a disorderly associative storage system that sorts and orders and labels everything based upon whatever is already there through very liberal pathways of relationship. The brain is a perfectly imperfect database of knowledge. It is the reason two people can witness the same event and say they saw two different things. Of course, then, when you throw emotion into this already senseless mixture, you add a whole new layer of complexity and irrationality.
I myself have become well aware of how limited I am by my mind. I am aware of what the bible calls the carnal mind. The mind that is composed of and empowered by fleshly tissue. What can the brain do, when it is made only to support a primitive life on this planet?
Man recently has created a nice little dream for himself. He thinks his technology is so great, and will be his own salvation. He dreams of building machines to propel him into the vast reaches beyond.
I was watching the History channel and these physicists were saying how great it would be and how much we really need to reach out and colonize Mars. How it, compared to the other planets around, is hospitable. I got a little ill. I don't see what is so hospitable about living on a rock in space that never gets above -200 degrees, has almost not atmosphere, no water, and no life at all. We can't transform it. We will never "terraform" it. It's a dead rock. How are you going to get ANYONE to want to go live on a dead planet?
Man thinks he can conquer the universe with his puny mind. He surely dreams.
Lately, my own mind has felt like a cavern. I wander around in it, constantly finding bits and pieces of memories here and there. They are all that I am, so I thought.. but also lately I have been feeling a breeze blowing through my little cave, bringing with it new and unfamiliar sensations.
I am realizing that my first impression or opinion about things more often than not is proved to be wrong. I misunderstand, misjudge, miscalculate, and fall short in just about everything. I have underestimated so many people because of the crusty thought barrier that lies in between their soul and mine, that crusty barrier being my own perverse and misguided thoughts.
My mind is truly a cavernous pit of lies, and I have come to realize that everything I think is wrong. My own thoughts deceive me more often than not. I now understand what it means in the Bible, "Be ye transformed by the renovation/renewing of the MIND." "There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end leads only to DEATH."
Wretched man I am, where do I go from here? How can my mind be renewed?
... To be Continued.
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