Just a tidbit for this Sunday: When you discover the heart-mind faculty, it will physically alter your body.
On the one hand, this is hardly surprising. If you can wade through all the medical jargon you will discover that the heart’s separate neural network is much stronger than your central nervous system. The difference between the electromagnetic field of the heart and that of the brain was what led to the discovery of the sensory heart. More research along those lines showed that the heart’s nervous system also had nodes where nerves bundle together and act like a brain, processing whatever it is the heart senses with it’s massive field. That the heart could take command of certain physiological functions should surprise no one with sufficient medical knowledge.
However, we observe language in the Bible that indicates faith will permanently change how your intellect processes things. If you allow your faith and convictions to take the lead in making decisions, it will most certainly train your mind to think differently. Is not faith the means of healing from God?
So while there is a common experience of a powerful alteration in your body from a changed heart-consciousness, on the other hand we know it is highly individual in effects. No two of us will experience faith quite the same, and that’s how God intended it. Within a given individual, the effects will be unpredictable. Faith is the final adventure.
This article came to mind: http://montalk.net/matrix/157/spiritless-humans
Can you recommend any “technical” and spiritual articles/books that would perhaps be “Christianity Compatible” and “God Approved” and not just New Age, Other Religions or Occult stuff? Or even if the latter, any useful materials in understanding spiritual reality/spiritual growth?
I suppose there is some overlap in concepts with that article. I’m not into reincarnation, but the other primary difference is that I’m directly connected to a tradition that avoids any attempts to nail things down with such precision as that article tries to do. I won’t say it’s wrong, just not attractive to me. That would be the point I’ve tried to make so often in the past few years: If that stuff answers your needs, stay with it until it quits working for you. I can’t guess how long you’ve been reading my stuff, nor why it holds your interest, but I have found that I’m forced to blaze a trail here in some ways because nobody seems to have taken this path in ages. I don’t find much out there compatible with what burns in my soul. That’s why I write so many books and keep posting almost every day. I bump into other stuff that isn’t quite satisfying to my moral palate, and somehow I feel led to react internally to answer that, writing as best I can what the entails.
That leads me to the point that I’m not sure what would be God-Approved for you, only what works for me. It’s been my experience that the more precise and technical you get in such things, the less it can really help others. I’ve seen before the kind of stuff found at that link, and the various writers seldom agree beyond a certain minimal set of assumptions. While my background is more firmly entrenched in traditional evangelical Christian theology, that also was not my home. My escape was directly through studies in Antiquities of the Near East, a very eye-opening shocker when contrasting that with common mainstream Christian religion. That’s where I get my chatter about symbolism, parables and parabolic language and the trappings of Ancient Hebrew culture. But that’s where God led me; I won’t pretend to know where He will lead you. I have no doubt He will lead, and that it will likely put us more at peace with each other, but I have no illusions that He’ll lead you to my personal comfort zone.
So now I toss it back into your court, brother. If you are familiar and comfortable with the kind of technical details laid out in that article, but realize it’s not quite consistent with where you feel led, why not attempt to express your own thoughts? If you aren’t a writer, do you have other ways of giving shape to what burns in your soul? That pair of fiction books I wrote on the concept of Artificial Intelligence and my chatter about quantum logic and moral reasoning outside those Ancient Hebrew traditions is an example of trying to give shape to the same thing but in a more technical way. I don’t object to some of things in that article, and I suppose you find it answers some of your questions, so how about you synthesize it yourself and share it with us?
Thanks for the reply!
Admittably I think I’m just now starting to create my own ideas and theology, not to speak of any actual understanding of what the spiritual world is about. I’ve read a lot of stuff recently, but my own perspective is just starting to shape up — well, somewhat.
Generally even these kinds of “overtechnical” articles have been helpful; even if they are not exactly true they help create cognitive structures and relate concepts to each other. In principle at least I’m a fairly standard Christian, but reading all kinds of stuff probably doesn’t hurt.
So maybe in the future.
Anyway, please keep up the good work, it’s been personally very useful in understanding the Bible and Hebrew culture!