You can’t do this with your head, only by your heart.
It’s not that people can’t change via lesser faculties, but your heart is the only part of you that can find reality and your proper path through it. The intellect cannot even really know reality. If you train hard enough going back through all the assumptions of ANE thinking, you’ll arrive at the same conclusion — that you have to rely on your heart-mind. Might as well take the shorter path and start there in your heart and begin taking out the mental trash.
Every question in your heart is fundamentally a moral issue. Nothing else matters; the search for moral clarity is seeking the heart of our Creator. What does God want? It’s written into Creation itself. Everything in the written revelation of Scripture is also discernible from sensing reality through your heart. That’s because the only way you can really understand the Bible is to have your heart in charge so that you recognize what it says in words based on what is stamped into your convictions. Convictions are eternal; they existed before any of us. What they say to you reflects the nature of that eternal truth expressed in your particular context.
And if that sounds like babbling, don’t waste any more time reading this until you know what it means to live from your heart.
This is a time of tribulation; God is shredding all the shadowy nonsense that defies His moral character. He is shining the light of His glory through the darkness. It is disruptive in the sense that none of us will be so pure as to pass through without some parts of us shaking loose and falling into the Abyss. So as His glory washes over us, we shed things that really didn’t belong. Only He can tell you what needs to go, and He speaks only in your heart.
One way or another it means you will plant a smaller footprint on the earth simply because more of you will die on this plane as more of your heart connects with the Spirit Realm. Over the past few weeks I’ve mentioned a few ways I’ve release my grip on some things in this life. For you, dear Reader, they are symbols at most, examples in my life of what the Lord is doing for all of us. They weren’t bad things, per se, just things that belonged back there behind me. They can’t go with me into the future. Say goodbye!
Example 01: Once I gave that Studio laptop to my brother, something dead dropped off. I mentioned that I’m down to my netbook and everything is just dandy. My heart is at peace with this situation. About the only thing that I still need is just a better mouse. On a whim, I picked up a Logitech gaming mouse awhile back and it’s okay, but it’s for gaming, not for writing and editing images. If you happen to have one of those little notebook mice you can send me, let me know; otherwise I have to save up and buy one. But this thing is easily the most reliable and consistent machine I’ve ever owned for running Linux. I’ve adjusted to the small screen (10-inch) and cramped keyboard well enough, and I’m getting used to the way the Atom processor works. At some point in the future, I’m sure the size and weight of this thing will be very important to my calling.
Example 02: Yesterday I noted that I’d have to change my diet a bit to accommodate the costs of some big changes in our lifestyle. Sure, it’s prompted by a tighter than usual budget this month, but my heart warns me that things will be just about as tough from here on out because of larger economic shifts coming at all of us. We’ve been reading about this for years, and a lot of the warnings have gotten tiresome because they were all based on bogus assumptions. Wasn’t the banking system supposed to have shut down some time back? Reading the facts from the heart, we have no need for panic mode and sudden radical shocks that the survivalists and “preppers” think they see coming. It’s the sort of thing where they are right in some ways, but wrong in what they make of it. My next income windfall may not arrive, but if it does, it is likely to be the last we see for awhile.
Example 03: Even farther back in my blog posts I mentioned a strong leading in my heart to get used to cycling as transportation, not just for fun. It’s not that the fun is fading; this is hard to summarize. I still wish I could take long country rides over those hilly back roads out south and east of here. That long chase after Hog Creek Valley was an awful lot of fun. What wasn’t fun was the five or six miles I had to traverse from my house to get out there. Now the house is gone and I’m ever farther away from that lovely area, and I’ll miss the loop through Harrah and Jones, too. But if I start needing all that riding experience for other things, I still have the memories resting in the same place as a lot of other places I’d love to see again. At least one of my novels was simply a great way to review those long hikes and rides in the Benelux. But somewhere just down the road, as it were, is a time when riding will be about the only way I can get around in pursuit of my divine calling, and I already know I can make some very long distances without trouble.
Example 04: Something more difficult to describe is a raft of visions in which I would find myself in military situations. At the time it was hard to grasp the meaning, but I’m starting to think it has to do with the mindset one has to adopt in order to do all that stuff. It’s not the tactics and weaponry, but the basic adaptability and habits of day-to-day existence while doing something that simply had to be done. Roll out of the sleeping bag at o-dark-thirty and have just enough time to heat your canteen cup of water over a Sterno-can fire hidden inside a dark-colored stovepipe section. You get one good cup of hot coffee or cocoa with your cold packaged breakfast, wash whatever you can stand to expose and shave, and then get on with the work at hand. No two visions were quite the same because the details weren’t the point — it was the mindset.
Will this blog still be here in the coming months? I suspect it will, but I’m prepared to cut myself back something more minimal. Even if all I have is a plain-text newsletter posted somewhere or sent out as email, I can’t imagine that I would fall silent. I’ve already said I don’t believe the changes coming will be wholesale and sudden. I’m certain we can dismiss the nightmare scenarios. Sure, stock up on canned goods if you can and have storage space. Maybe think about weapons for protection, but make sure you know how to use what you get for that. Make sure you have some idea when to use them. But follow your heart, not my advice.
What matters is the character of things. We are entering a time when you will need to retract inward in terms of dependencies, and extend outward your readiness to give of yourself. Some things in your life will have to die and fall off. Decide what really matters and be ready to keep doing that. Pray about the best way to be ready for what God wants from you. Explore the concept of your moral dominion. There are a lot of things we’ve been taught to care about that don’t belong to us, including some people. Be ready to let them go as God removes them. At the same time, be ready to take command of things God will point out to you as your mission.
God alone knows the timing. Don’t get impatient; a lot of things will grow out of your heart long before they are ripe. Hold in your mind the certainty that some stuff will surprise you; that’s the nature of our existence. Take on a sense of contingency in most of this life, in the sense that far more is temporary than your mind wants to admit.
Trust your heart; you’ll be okay.
