I won’t tell you that your heart will protect your mind, only that it can.
There is a large body of clinical literature on the power and limits of verbal manipulation. It works best when practiced by a certain group of people within the spectrum of psychopathic tendencies. It’s a part of the unique genius of psychopathy to discern your weaknesses.
However, what the clinical literature fails to take into account is the resistance to manipulation exhibited by those who tend to focus on their convictions as the source of mental orientation. To some degree, the brain has to agree with the safety of having the heart in command. This arrangement is presumed in some non-Western cultures, but flatly denied by Western psycho-mythology.
The intellect is part of the fallen nature. On it’s own, it remain vulnerable to all sorts of fears and other emotional prodding. It is incapable of forming the kind of self-control depicted by the likes of Spock in Star Trek. Reason has never been, and never will be, strong enough to protect the soul from the madness of demonic influences. Only the heart is capable of tapping into the divine power of sanity.
The story of how Western Civilization was formed reveals the deep roots in demonic superstition. Without this wide open fear of the unknown, it would not have been possible to manifest the corrupting power of Aristotelian logic. The sense of rational order is just a thin veneer over superstition; the two are symbiotic and the result is quite Satanic. It breeds a pretense of reason, and allows the superstition to fester and lurk in the shadows of the unconscious mind. As long as that area remains repressed, it’s power over human behavior is ignored. There is no effort to remedy.
A critical element in Western mythology is rejecting the truth of the Fall. While the rational mind can swallow it as doctrine, the underlying subconscious beast is unable to act on it. The biblical heart-led path acknowledges our fallen nature and takes for granted how it will influence human behavior. While we can make efforts to build a culture that prevents the fallen nature from ruling, the biblical approach focuses on redemption, cleaning up the mess and healing the wounds from an already fallen condition.
We know that choices made based on our fallen lusts will open the doors to demons. We know that our sins give Satan permission to enter our lives. Instead of wasting energy over horror at the thought, we take for granted the much larger mission of winning back that territory within us that he holds by default. We regard preventing sin as the impossible dream; we will work for it, but don’t expect flesh to ever get there. We work for it because that is how we manifest holiness. But the majority of our time and energy goes to discerning how to reclaim what was already lost by the mere fact of being born in the flesh.
When wrestling with demons becomes routine, so do miracles and blessings from God. Life is prayer; prayer is life. It is in prayer that we defeat the forces of Darkness. All the other stuff we do with our fleshly existence is laying claim to the plunder of prayer warfare. In prayer we are granted insights into the actual reality of things; in prayer we make those fateful decisions. The flesh must then be prodded into lining up with that.
The current churchian obsession with objective reality on the one hand, and surrendering to the pursuit of feel-good religion on the other, is the product of Satanic influence in churches. This influence is borne through the doors by the impression that the church must be taken seriously by the secular society around us. The proposition that we have only objective or subjective truth is a false dichotomy. Divine truth cannot be known by the intellect except as a side effect of the heart knowing the truth and walking in it. The heart knowledge of the truth is neither objective nor subjective, but far above the level of the intellect.
Your heart-led convictions can guard your hearts from lies.
(This kind of contemplative teaching is one of the goals of those long bike rides. Pray that the Lord delivers support for keeping up the habit of long, hard rides.)
