Moving across the boundaries... As time goes on and our personal growth progresses, as we lose more and more of ourselves, we find an increasing ability to move across the boundaries that once kept us, unknowingly, under lock and key.
What are these boundaries we need to move across? They are self-imposed demarcation lines within our spirit, barring us from the very thing we are wanting. This is a huge subject; but it is here distilled it to its essential essence relevant to us for our own forward movement. In order to maintain the subject spiritually, we need to explore it spiritually through our intuitive senses, rather than our rational ones; for that which is truly spiritual is personal: personal is spiritual: “then shall I know even as also I am known.” ....Inner face to face knowledge is spiritual. It is “perfect.” It is knowledge which is complete; and therefore, heavenly. It gets us taken where we want to go. ....Outer intellectual knowledge is ineffectual. It is “in part.” It is knowledge which can never be completed; and therefore, earthly. It cannot get us taken where we want to go. It cannot perfect us. And so... ”it shall vanish away.” For it only gets us left behind in endless wranglings about the knowledge of some, thing. It is “outer darkness.” Because it doesn’t illuminate us to our own selves to expose our own iniquity in order to change and transform our spirit. Outer knowledge will not change our spirit. And unless our spirit is changed we will not know: for we know at that point where we are known.
But as we are becoming more open, we are becoming more intuitive, and therefore, more personal; and hence more spiritual. And so we are growing in the awareness of the inner workings of our own mind and soul and spirit. We are becoming increasingly conscious of even the slightest nuances of thought and minutiae of feelings. And accompanying them, still mostly unbeknownst to us, the boundaries in us between ‘inner lands:’ walls dividing inner realms which are banning us, keeping us from the truth which saves, the offence of the truth that we don’t want to know... the thoughts and intents of our own heart.
More and more we are catching fleeting glimpses of those things in us we may need to change, but in subconscious fear instantly run from them as we hit the boundary. Daily, moment by moment, we are presented with a choice, or a challenge: to maintain that flash of insight we had into our own condition, or to quickly hide from it, and push it back down and bury it; for it is often the case that the thoughts we spy are not those we would like to have! And instead of welcoming these, to understand them, and deal with them, in order to change, we hide from them: and so lose “the key of knowledge.” By not entering in we lock ourselves out! This is our habit, and our whole, unhelpful, never-ending modus operandi. Yet these very things rising up to the surface in us, knocking on our door, wanting to be seen and exposed, are true gifts of insight far too valuable to ignore, no matter how painful they may be.
Spiritual growth entails pain. Pain we’d prefer not have! But in interpreting it as something to be run from, we cannot understand, or buy “the pearl of great price.” It is that self knowledge which we have pushed away that is the precious treasure to bring us the very light we were needing!
The natural thing is to hide from the light that exposes us to our own selves. But to function properly our spirit needs new light, just as vitally as our bodies need fresh water. In truth we are learning to become more spiritual, and to be more connected, through openness. And in this our spirit desperately needs every intuition into our own condition that it can get. Every gifted sight it is given of itself is important. And everything it hears is vital. Blind we cannot travel very far. Deaf we cannot move forward into hearing what we need to hear in order to change to become more filled with God’s light. But there are barriers and boundaries to cross within us that we haven’t allowed ourselves to hear of yet which are keeping us from our heart’s truest desire, and that which we most earnestly seek. Therefore, if we are selective with our intuition, and shut out “the sting of death:” i.e. our secret hidden thoughts which momentarily rise up in us, threatening to take from us, to take us, we cannot be further released into a fuller expression of our mission and purpose in this world.
We are like ostriches. We have all grown up to believe that the thoughts and attitudes within us which witness to us as something ‘bad’ in us, are bad; and therefore, are as something for us to quickly hide from, so as we can’t see them! And there, we are not unlike the proverbial ostrich, burying our head in the sand, and imagining we can’t be seen!!
Perhaps our ‘ostrich nature,’ in us, is because we haven’t totally accepted the fact that our hearts are always deceitfully wicked, yet we are always loved: non-stop; and always forgiven: even before we knew in us, a need to be forgiven. The acceptance of these three facts is our bedrock; our peace. If we built on this we would sail across every boundary known to man! We would fear nothing. It is only fear which holds us back. Being afraid of the fearful inner truth, and rejecting it – squashing it down to keep it out of our sight – is our sole enemy. Without that fear, there would be light, and a greater and greater outworking of our personal call, and a continuing river of ever deeper and deeper revelation, in us; and a more connected involvement and insight into the particular part we have been given in the increase of the spiritual wellbeing of mankind.
It could be that we are refusing the light, thinking it darkness! All spiritual growth or forward movement is according to the light we are able to bear knowing that whatever the light exposes in us is light, not darkness! The darkness in our thoughts and attitudes vanishes at that very moment we accept the light which exposes them, in us, to us. For all things that are exposed and reproved in us are made visible to us by the light: so that whatever becomes visible to us within us IS light, not darkness ...and so there is nothing to fear!
Therefore, we should welcome the light that reproves us in us; for there is no darkness so great as our refusal to be made manifest by the light. To run to the light, that it might shine on us inside us, in the very deepest place within us, is our highest forward movement, and works for our highest joy, and our eternal happiness. This...is joy unspeakable full of his glory.
We are of all people most blessed who understand this...this ‘back-to-front’ truth. Because it will set us free! For this is “the key of knowledge,” which for generations has been kept from us, by “the lawyers,” which unlocks all of the doors, in all the inner boundaries that have kept mankind captives since time began; which have kept us, generation after generation, left behind on the wrong side of the line; and will keep us so in the future also, generation after generation, until we ‘die.'
Whilesoever we are running from the light that stings us, so it can’t shine in on us inside, we are opposing our own selves. We are subtly becoming our own enemy. And so we are missing out. And we are being left behind. But the more we allow the light to expose us to our own selves, the more filled with light we will become. And dead to ourselves: “taken,” in spirit, we cross the line – the divide – the spiritual boundary between heaven and earth – and ‘disappear : ‘ – ( becoming unintelligible to the earthly people of God: ‘invisible;’ ‘mythical,’ ‘untouchable’ to those who are left behind, for the light is as darkness to them, they cannot comprehend it: for not being apprehended of the LORD in the light themselves, they cannot apprehend his true people in the light either, for they are not present there; and so they are estranged from them, their being of a different spirit) – and enter heaven here on earth: in being wholly raptured, wholly taken, in having nothing at all, but him.
The ‘glorious liberty,’ which surely we all seek, is a realm of TOTAL LIGHT! So without our being totally exposed to the light, shining in on us, where we are, here and now, we will not be able to bear the TOTAL LIGHT of heaven, shining in on us, there, where we want to be ...in one accord with our beloved LORD JESUS... for affinity with affinity; light accords with light, and darkness with darkness: so that where we are ‘at’ now, is that realm we will actually dwell in then; for there is only ever... NOW! (‘...the Son of man cometh at such a time...as ye think not...’)
There is no MOVING ACROSS THE BOUNDARIES or movement across any line, which is not in itself, real: i.e. which ‘is not come in the flesh’ (I John 4:2, 3) – which is not JESUS present in the flesh – present and living, and loving and walking in the depths....of our spirit...in the Spirit of GOD.
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To the Garden Returned
WAY BACK IN TIME, BEFORE THE DAWN OF FIRST MEMORY there existed a most beautiful garden, with a river of light flowing through it which watered it. The garden was planted in an unknown pleasant land, filled with all kinds of trees, and herbs, shrubs and flowers. Trees whose fruit was good for food, plants whose structure and beauty was good for the illumining of the mind, and flowers so infused with visionary fragrance they would uplift the soul and fill it with joy. It was a glorious paradise of bliss and innocence, comfort and warmth, and all pervading delight. Its inhabitants lived in open nakedness of soul and moved freely about the garden, drinking from its many pools and streams, caring for its flora and fauna, and learning much from its many wonders.But upon the rise of an exceptionally beautiful morning, a seemingly small choice was made by these inhabitants beside one of the pools of water. They drank from the only one which had been forbidden them, which drinking from brought an end to innocence and for them the decline of the garden and its fall into ruins. These inhabitants were soon driven from the garden and sent out into the wilderness. From then on the garden could no longer exist on the earth. It could be only in the spirit. Within the innermost heavenly hearts of those who lived in the light, a life of love; and who grieved over their just banishment until every particle of the refusal of the light was overcome and they were naked again. ....Then, once more, in this second garden, the innermost garden of all where young ones played were pools of water. One of which, if they should drink from, would bring them, unknowingly, blindness, aging, and banishment; and an existence of lifeless delusion in outer darkness, in the outskirts of the garden. As before, this dreadful pool was exceedingly beautiful, and completely desirable to give one, wisdom and knowledge and the delight of knowing for oneself. Any of the children of Love which drank from this pool were removed to the outer edges of the garden, blind to their exclusion from its centre; for once drinking from the pool of outer knowledge they no longer had any idea of their true condition, or where they actually were. ...And the interaction between the youngest children in the centre of the garden and the older ones in its edges was fraught with difficulty; for they could not recognize one another. The thick curtain encircling the centre of the innermost garden a barrier through which they could not see or understand each other. ....And, the curtain, the obscuring veil has existed unto this day, yet now it is torn down and taken away: even the blinding to the truth as existed once upon a road to Emmaus; for no longer can we know one another after the flesh: now know we nothing by ourselves: “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation...” “...in such an hour as ye think not...”
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