As I reflect back to my experiences playing the game with minutes the first few months I started, much improvement has occured! There were times in the first couple months where I felt like I wasn't making any progress, and I was tempted to give up. I had to keep reading Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach's writings to keep me going, by continually recasting the vision of how it would be like one day if I could have constant communion with God with all the immensity of intimacy that the Scriptures talk about, but what so very few Christians experience. Reading some Dallas Wilalrd articles/interviews helped keep me going as well.
Thsi game with minutes is no longer as "torturing" as it used to be. My mind is slowly but stedily adapting to the rigorous training applied to it for these past 5 and a half months. I still cannot get near 90% of a day, but when I keep on trying and trying, I no longer get mental fatigue. Especially when I am alone, away from other people. That time ist he easiest. I still do find it a challenge to keep god in mind as I interact in conversation with other people. But I am slowly grasping it, much like learning to ride a bike without hands. At first, only being able to let go half asecond, then a full second, then a few seconds, adding more seconds each time. It seemed impossible to keep God on my mind as I talked to others and read books before. Now it is slowly becoming more and more doable as each week passes.
I am sensing God's presence with me more and more aech month. It is very different from an internse/sharp feeling or emotion one gets at a Christian worship concert (e.g. Hillsong). Instead, it is a very subtle, yet semi-detectable presence in the "background" of my everyday ilfe. Borrowing an analogy from an author orignially ued to illustrate another point, this is very much like the faint peaceful musc in the background of a room. And over time, the "volume" of thismusic increases slowly, but steadily. I am "subtly", yet noticeably feeling god's presence with me where I am now.
It is like a person who is blindfolded, standing outdoors during the sunrise right at dawn, originally being faintly aware of the sun's rays, heat and light shining on him and all around him. As the sun rises more and more towards noon, the blindfolded person senses the sun's rays, heat and light more and more, creating a stronger and stronger awareness of the sun's presence in the sky, although he cannot see it with his eyes. By noontime when the sun is directly over him, he knows it is there, and little faith is required because he knows the sky's full of the sun and it gives him heat and light. It is a little like that for this experience. I have not reached the stage of "noontime" with the presence of God yet, but it gets closer and closer every month. Judging from the Great saints of chhurch history who have mastered this art of practising the presence of god though, it will take around 10 years to fully mster this discipline that eventually results in the full freedom of noon.
I remember when Frank Laubach first played this game with minutes in his first few months, he experienced the hand of God moving before him, observing that "obstacles that once seemed insurmountable have meled away". One instance of his were the fact that Muslim priests who were previously unfriendly to him started to treat him warmer and friendlier. It's very interesting. After I first played this game in March until now, I have seen the hand of God move in pretty extraordinary ways. In terms of my ministry serving in East Asia, I saw a lot more spiritual fruit in my students affter I started playing than before it (first semester in the fall, I saw no substantial fruit). In other "obstacles" such as the housing situation, God miraculously provided and allowed the school and police to make an exception in their city's laws just for us. When I returned to Tornoto, I saw God significantly working in the people I was interacting and grew up with all my life in unusual ways not seen before, as well as providentially arranging meetings with potentially like-minded people to partner with in starting something like a spiritual disciplines league next summer when I return to Toronto. I felt like God was piecing certain things together this summer. Externally speaking, God has been working around me where He has sent me after I started playing this game with minutes. It could very well completely be a "coincidence". But as one saint of intense prayer said before, "coincidences happen a lot more when I pray". I fancy taht this is the work of the Holy Spirit accessed through the discipline of the game with minutes. If we could only have 10 Christians in each Bible-believing church in Toronto do this, we'd see revival soon.
In terms of my spiritual life, this game with minutes has accessed more of the Spirit's power in producing in me the fruit of the Spirit. The biggest one has been pece. Things that once would have caused me to worry, "flip out", get angry, or upset about have lossed their power on me. I'm still human with emotions, but these things, for the most part (I still am stumbling from time to time) have lost their grip on me. When I encounter situations that tempt me to worry, "flip out", get angry, or upset, I no longer am mastered by those feelings. God has made me more peaceful during "heated" arguments (whether I'm a participant or observer), I generally have the peace of God more and more. As for the other fruti of the Spirit which are love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, I found that these have been a natural by-product of playing the game with minutes, it's amazing.
One reason why I think that this helps produce the fruit of the Spirit, is because it helps me dwell on godly thoughts. Not only that, it helps me correct my false, evil, and self-harming destructive thinking that tends to be subconscious. The majority of my harmful thoughts, I've discovered, usually occur below my immediate conscious awareness, and require rigorous mental alertness to detect. I do not write 15 page essays encouraing myself to be prideful. I can spend 15 minutes daydreaming subconscious prideful thoughts when I'm not alert though. And switching this type of subconscious thinking, since it is subconscious, is much like switching grammar structures. For example, in English, if I were to start switching a subject-verb-object structure (Chris eats apples) to a subject-object-verb structure (Chris apples eats), it would take time, alertness, training and discipline to successfully start using the alternate grammar structure naturally, without thinking it. Evil, self-harmful subconscious thoughts are like that. The difference is that speaking wrong grammar structures is detectable as soon as it comes out of the mouth. Evil subconscious thoughts though, aren't detected by my ears. These evil subconscious thoguhts will not set off "security systems" automaticaly in my mind as soon as my mind drifts into sinful thought patterns. This game with minutes helps me to monitor my mind more frequently, for the thoughts are where evil thoughts get their source from. This game with minutes helps me to switch the "grammar" of my subconscious thoughts and emotions when they lead me to think unhealthy and ungodly thoughts and emotiosn and switch my subconscious thoguths to think healthy and godly thoughts as well as emotions.
From time to time, I get a more intense/apparent feeling of God's presence. I had one instance last night, where, when I was in solitude, I really sensed Jesus sitting on my bed with me, and just being my King, brother, as well as friend, all in one. I "hugged" him, and I felt close to Him. It was a wonderful hour of solitude. About a week ago, I decided to ask the Holy Spirit to help my legs run as I was finishing the last 5 minutes of my 40 minute jog. i felt a strange presence in my legs that helped me run. (I was inspired to do this after reading about Frank Laubach praying to God to guide his arm moment by moemnt whiel he played tennis, and as a result, he played better. He then did the same thing to his opponent, and then he started to play better as well.)
The wonderful thing about this game with minutes, as there are multiple blessings of this game, is that one never really "gets used" to the stage on is at. I have a feeling that for the rest of my ilfe, as I keep on playing this game, the experience will continue to evolve forever in this lifetime. I also suspect that life with God in the afterlife will continually evolve in deeper and deeper quality in the intimacy with God.
As Ravi Zacharias says, this God is the God of perpetual novelty. I wonder how my experience playing this game with minutes will evolve in the next 2 months.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
June 25, 2009
It has almost been 4 months since I have attempted this experiment of trying to keep God in my mind every minute of my existence that I am awake.
Overall I seem to have made progress. It is less "abnormal" and requiers a little less effort than the first week that I have attempted this, which was the first week of March.
Still, there is much progress to be made. I am still so very far from mastering every single minute from being in continual conversation with God in second person.
I am starting tos ee the frutis of the first 2 months of flat-out strenuous discipline of the mind. I ahve to say mentally, during Mach and April of 2009 my mind went under the most strenuous training it has ever went through in the history of its existence. 23 years of nto disciplining what my mind thinks of every minute all of a sudden to trying to drag its untamed/untrained/wild thoughts back into my control by yanking the leash of my thought patterns. I know that the path ahead is going to be hard as well. It ain't over yet. I am convinced more and more that this skill/discipline is somewhat akin to learning a new language, where one would completely deceive oneself if one thought he could completely master this in a few months. Maybe 10 years or more to have a pretty good grasp of it (though that does not mean one has exhaustively studied all the "Shakespeare" of the language yet, just like how an elementary school kid can't fully appreciate Shakespeare, yet is "fluent" in his mother tongue).
One source of motivation though, is the fact that I refuse, just refuse to abandon these past 4 months of spiritually disciplining my mind and let all this effort go to waste. After you've "been in the game" for this long (actually, it's not that long, but subjectively, trying to train every moment of everyday for 4 months), you just can't quit. You just can't!
One of the things that kep me motivated in the beginning was the fact that there were certain things in my life in the past, where hardcore discipline just proved fruitful after months of hard toil, seeing no results. Examples were breakdancing, losing weight, improving my English, and learning a second language after the age of 20. All of these pursuits, although I haven't fully attained the expertise leve of these pursuits, I have come quite a long way due to a long process of arduous discipline, where there were consecutive weeks and even months of seemingly "fuirtless"labour, only to see a big breakthrough after persevering a little longer.
Another thing that kep me motivated in the beginning was raeding the amazing accounts of Frank laubach's personal experiences of mystical intimacy with god during the first few months of his own hardcore disciplien of this experiment. The Holy Spirit gave me the desire to want such intimacy, closeness, and joy in God that I kept on trying through those suppoesdly "fruitless" days, and kept my hand to the plow.
I was a little disappointed though, when I didn't seem to experience the types of holy mystical euphoria that Mr. Laubach experienced with God himself in the first few months. As a result of realizing that, I learned two things. One was that in the beginning, I tried to picture Jesus beside me, present with me, while doing all my daily activities because I wanted to experience intimacy with Him. But I didn't necessarily focus on the aspect of being in submission to God the Father, learning from Jesus my teacher, and consciously trying to continually conform my character to Jesus'. This was a crucial, perhaps the main element, in Frank Laubach's first few months of this experiment. I only then raelized later on when I re-read Frank Laubach's accounts of his first few months of the game with minutes, is that he had constant submission and conformity to Christ as the main ingredient of his journey. It seems that seeking spiritual ecstacies with god, although wasn't something to be avoided, wasn't the primary thing he was looking for, and came as a by-product itself. Thsi really spoke to me, because god told me alter on, that Himself, and the holy joy/pleasures that he gives are not the same thing. And to lvoe the latter did not necessarily mean that I loved the former, and could even be a hindrance to attaining the former (an illustration taht helped me understand this, was that a husband loving his wife is not the same thing as loving the positive/fluffy emotions that the wife gives him, and that idolizing the latter could actually prevent the attainment of the former). A Dallas Willard quote sticks out to me when I am reminded of this: "If you love God, you will be happy, but you cannot love God by loving happiness. You have to love God and let the happiness take caer of itself. Happiness is a by-product." Since Frank Laubach was so focused on loving God, he REALLY got the by-product as a result.
Having said that, there were some moments (not a ton), where I did feel spontaneous joy in God. Now this is a very different type of "joy" that I experienced, relative to certain "superficial/happy-clappy.giddy" emotions (not bad in themselves) that one can easily get from hillsong concerts. I am not against those emotions. But I think that in relative comparison to these moments of experience a qualitatively different type of mysteriousnew joy were much, much deeper. They seem deeper than emotions. If emotions were branches of a tree, then this joy would be in the roots of it, under the ground. I don't have anything against Hillsong, in fact, I enjoy some of their songs. But I think they have limits in facilitating one's joy in God. They can, if you may, help you get "infatuated" with God. But they don't give you the types of experiences you get after toiling to build a relationship with someone, sacrificing, loving them at a cost, like a husband and wife. The qualitative difference int his type of "joy" compared to the rudimentary version is roughly representative of this new type of "joy" I experienced in certain spontaneous moments of practising this experiement.
Aside from joy, another positive effect on my life is just the growth of peace. Isaiah 26:3-4. My peace in God has grown a lot. I used to let things take away my peace from God before undergoing this experiment. Ministry results (how students were doing in respect to wanting to know God initially and deeper) used to have a profound effect on me in ruining my mood. But now, as I practise this experiement more and more, I am experiencing the peace that comes when things don't seem to be going right (in my human eyes), and when students don't seem passionate for God.
Also, it seems that I have a strange deeper love for strangers on the streets now. I see them as human beings with whole new "worlds" of themselves. it also seems taht God, in His grace, has been putting me in a favourable light to somem people that I either didn't naturally get along with too well, or were neutral before. This is something similar to what frank Laubach experienced.
What I thoguht was pretty immpossible before, keeping God in mind as I engaged int he use of language with otehr humans (speaking, listening, raeding, writing) is slowly becoming an actualized reailty. There were certain days where I would experience breakthoughs when it seemed somewhat like all of a sudden a new "power" was acquired after weeks of training/attemping, and I could considerably listen to another human in conversation, while keeping Jesus in second person at the same time! The same with reading books, that is simultaneously reading a book and practising the presence of God at the same time! I have to say though, these were followed by days of struggle later on to maintain these new enlightenments and breakthroughs of the skill of something similar to cognitivemultitasking. it seemed taht one day I would be doing good in practising the presence of God whiel processing language in interacting with other humans, then the next day, these "powers" would be completely gone! I am kind of encouraged though, that this progress is more like a three steps forward and two steps back kind of improvement process.
I still am far from completely mastering this. From even winning half o fth eminutes of my day (maybe not even a quarter, for I do nto calculate it that precisely). But I have gained progress since i first started.
I am devoting the rest of my life to mastering this art.
Overall I seem to have made progress. It is less "abnormal" and requiers a little less effort than the first week that I have attempted this, which was the first week of March.
Still, there is much progress to be made. I am still so very far from mastering every single minute from being in continual conversation with God in second person.
I am starting tos ee the frutis of the first 2 months of flat-out strenuous discipline of the mind. I ahve to say mentally, during Mach and April of 2009 my mind went under the most strenuous training it has ever went through in the history of its existence. 23 years of nto disciplining what my mind thinks of every minute all of a sudden to trying to drag its untamed/untrained/wild thoughts back into my control by yanking the leash of my thought patterns. I know that the path ahead is going to be hard as well. It ain't over yet. I am convinced more and more that this skill/discipline is somewhat akin to learning a new language, where one would completely deceive oneself if one thought he could completely master this in a few months. Maybe 10 years or more to have a pretty good grasp of it (though that does not mean one has exhaustively studied all the "Shakespeare" of the language yet, just like how an elementary school kid can't fully appreciate Shakespeare, yet is "fluent" in his mother tongue).
One source of motivation though, is the fact that I refuse, just refuse to abandon these past 4 months of spiritually disciplining my mind and let all this effort go to waste. After you've "been in the game" for this long (actually, it's not that long, but subjectively, trying to train every moment of everyday for 4 months), you just can't quit. You just can't!
One of the things that kep me motivated in the beginning was the fact that there were certain things in my life in the past, where hardcore discipline just proved fruitful after months of hard toil, seeing no results. Examples were breakdancing, losing weight, improving my English, and learning a second language after the age of 20. All of these pursuits, although I haven't fully attained the expertise leve of these pursuits, I have come quite a long way due to a long process of arduous discipline, where there were consecutive weeks and even months of seemingly "fuirtless"labour, only to see a big breakthrough after persevering a little longer.
Another thing that kep me motivated in the beginning was raeding the amazing accounts of Frank laubach's personal experiences of mystical intimacy with god during the first few months of his own hardcore disciplien of this experiment. The Holy Spirit gave me the desire to want such intimacy, closeness, and joy in God that I kept on trying through those suppoesdly "fruitless" days, and kept my hand to the plow.
I was a little disappointed though, when I didn't seem to experience the types of holy mystical euphoria that Mr. Laubach experienced with God himself in the first few months. As a result of realizing that, I learned two things. One was that in the beginning, I tried to picture Jesus beside me, present with me, while doing all my daily activities because I wanted to experience intimacy with Him. But I didn't necessarily focus on the aspect of being in submission to God the Father, learning from Jesus my teacher, and consciously trying to continually conform my character to Jesus'. This was a crucial, perhaps the main element, in Frank Laubach's first few months of this experiment. I only then raelized later on when I re-read Frank Laubach's accounts of his first few months of the game with minutes, is that he had constant submission and conformity to Christ as the main ingredient of his journey. It seems that seeking spiritual ecstacies with god, although wasn't something to be avoided, wasn't the primary thing he was looking for, and came as a by-product itself. Thsi really spoke to me, because god told me alter on, that Himself, and the holy joy/pleasures that he gives are not the same thing. And to lvoe the latter did not necessarily mean that I loved the former, and could even be a hindrance to attaining the former (an illustration taht helped me understand this, was that a husband loving his wife is not the same thing as loving the positive/fluffy emotions that the wife gives him, and that idolizing the latter could actually prevent the attainment of the former). A Dallas Willard quote sticks out to me when I am reminded of this: "If you love God, you will be happy, but you cannot love God by loving happiness. You have to love God and let the happiness take caer of itself. Happiness is a by-product." Since Frank Laubach was so focused on loving God, he REALLY got the by-product as a result.
Having said that, there were some moments (not a ton), where I did feel spontaneous joy in God. Now this is a very different type of "joy" that I experienced, relative to certain "superficial/happy-clappy.giddy" emotions (not bad in themselves) that one can easily get from hillsong concerts. I am not against those emotions. But I think that in relative comparison to these moments of experience a qualitatively different type of mysteriousnew joy were much, much deeper. They seem deeper than emotions. If emotions were branches of a tree, then this joy would be in the roots of it, under the ground. I don't have anything against Hillsong, in fact, I enjoy some of their songs. But I think they have limits in facilitating one's joy in God. They can, if you may, help you get "infatuated" with God. But they don't give you the types of experiences you get after toiling to build a relationship with someone, sacrificing, loving them at a cost, like a husband and wife. The qualitative difference int his type of "joy" compared to the rudimentary version is roughly representative of this new type of "joy" I experienced in certain spontaneous moments of practising this experiement.
Aside from joy, another positive effect on my life is just the growth of peace. Isaiah 26:3-4. My peace in God has grown a lot. I used to let things take away my peace from God before undergoing this experiment. Ministry results (how students were doing in respect to wanting to know God initially and deeper) used to have a profound effect on me in ruining my mood. But now, as I practise this experiement more and more, I am experiencing the peace that comes when things don't seem to be going right (in my human eyes), and when students don't seem passionate for God.
Also, it seems that I have a strange deeper love for strangers on the streets now. I see them as human beings with whole new "worlds" of themselves. it also seems taht God, in His grace, has been putting me in a favourable light to somem people that I either didn't naturally get along with too well, or were neutral before. This is something similar to what frank Laubach experienced.
What I thoguht was pretty immpossible before, keeping God in mind as I engaged int he use of language with otehr humans (speaking, listening, raeding, writing) is slowly becoming an actualized reailty. There were certain days where I would experience breakthoughs when it seemed somewhat like all of a sudden a new "power" was acquired after weeks of training/attemping, and I could considerably listen to another human in conversation, while keeping Jesus in second person at the same time! The same with reading books, that is simultaneously reading a book and practising the presence of God at the same time! I have to say though, these were followed by days of struggle later on to maintain these new enlightenments and breakthroughs of the skill of something similar to cognitivemultitasking. it seemed taht one day I would be doing good in practising the presence of God whiel processing language in interacting with other humans, then the next day, these "powers" would be completely gone! I am kind of encouraged though, that this progress is more like a three steps forward and two steps back kind of improvement process.
I still am far from completely mastering this. From even winning half o fth eminutes of my day (maybe not even a quarter, for I do nto calculate it that precisely). But I have gained progress since i first started.
I am devoting the rest of my life to mastering this art.
Friday, April 3, 2009
April 3, 2009
It has almost been a month since I started this experiment of the "Game with Minutes" that Frank Laubach came up with.
At first, it was extremely hard on certain days. It was a tortuous workout on the mind. First of all, I think psychologically, my mind was not used to the habits of keeping God on my mind every minute. Second of all, spiritually, I think that demons weren't happy that I was attempting it, so that added obstacles.
It seemed completely impossible before to talk to others while practising this, let alone reading stuff. But I think the impossible seems to have been cnoquered by God's grace! I have improved, I think.
The 3rd night I tried it, I experienced a pretty cool few hours of actually being relational with God, and felt that he was there somewhat. I kept saying things to him nonstop in second person, not only big things, but actually mostly small things.
The first week was extremely hard and I got down on myself quite a bit sometimes due to the sheer difficulty I experienced. It helped though, that I was fasting with the team that whole week. I think I could say that I experienced exponential growth each day during that week in my ability to keep God in mind. There were some moments where I wanted to give up because itw as just simply too hard.
Either one or two weeks later I cried in front of the team during church time. I tihnk it was a result of doing thsi thing. I cried due to previously taking for granted Christ's sacrifice for me, where a lot of the time I previously flippantly acknowledged it without deeply appreciating it.
When I tried it with Casey, the experience was sooo exhilarating@ Just having someone int he same palce acknowledging Jesus in a casual conversation did wonders for me! I don't think it had that big of an affect on Casey, althought he said that it felt cool, yet weird for him. It felt weird for me too, but not in a sketchy way, but in a "this is so cool, I've never done this before" type of weird. I felt so euphoric in a way I haven't felt before. It was different in quality. I've never felt that way in intimacy with Jesus before. It felt really different from Christian music concerts where everyone goes crazy (not in a bad way). After the session, I felt uplifted and thsi sort of immense joy being in the presence of God that lasted for a couple hours and actually kinda prevented me from preparing for a student training session the next day.
Today, I think I sensed a demon(s) in one of the students I was talking to that was struggling with knowing God. Still nto sure whether it's an intellectual problem or heart problem, or both. I didn't fully understand his reasons, thinking. It seemed kinf of abnormal for a human. It may have just been really screwed thinking from reading weird stuff, or simply a demon. There was this period all of a sudden where it was like I suddenly realized there was a demon in the midst.
Whether inside or outside of the student, I'm not sure. I just unexplainably sensed it. I thought I could see it in the student's behaviour and laughter. His thinking seemed confused, but not in a logical way. It seemed like someone was maybe messing around with his mind. It seemed ilke a demon was intentionally toying and messing around with the student's thoughts. It was kind of freaky in a way. For the rest of the conversation I was intensely praying in my mind for the demon to be casted out and away, and to leave the student alone in the name of Jesus. I even prayed in tongues for this. I offerd to pray for the stdeutn, but he refused quite a few times. I felt the urge to pray for him, finally he relented and let me pray for him. I put my hand on hij, I quietly mumbled prayers to God to cast out any demons that might be disturbing him so that he could think clearly. We'll see what happens. I wonder if he was possessed or not.
Right now, I think I improved a lot relative to a month ago. I think sometimes, when I don't think of God, my mind will sometimes go back to God. Some sign that a habit has already started to form. Dallas Willard reminded me that it takes time, and I shouldn't harass myself or push myself too hard in this. It's a lot easier than the first two weeks I started this. I tseems to evolve. I can scarcely remember what kind of lief I had before I started this. It seems like the whole background or wallpaper of lief seems to change when I do this. It seems deeper than pleasure. It's deep joy in God. As cheap as it is to say this, I can't describe it, and I can actually start to understand some of the mystics when they say that they can't describe what the experience is like.
I still don't get all my minutes down though. In time. Also, I don't feel especially close with God in subjective intimacy feel right now. I think God's teaching me to do it for him, and not for myself. As long as He's happy, I should be happy because I know it pleases Him.
I think I got a little traction in doing it while talking to my teammates in English. Second language is hard though, like in class. It is the hardest when I'm with students for some reason. Maybe it's because my mind is focused on the ministry while sacrificing attention from my intimacy with God. also maybe because listening and speaking in a second language that I just started acquiring two years ago takes up relatively more energy/capacity in my mind. I hope this improves over time.
Interesting thing is, I think I have had a breakthrough in my cognitive language processing, of "entering int he world" of the speaker through their words. Hard to describe. I think this is partially due to being forced to try to focus on just the meaning of the words of a speaker in the speaker's world, and nothing else, due to conserving my midn's cognitive reserves/capacity. This apparently leaves more room for me to think of God in second person. So making this room for God in my capacity has inadvertently made me process language more efficiently due to being forced to really focus in my concentration linguistically because less cognitive energy is focused on it.
At first, it was extremely hard on certain days. It was a tortuous workout on the mind. First of all, I think psychologically, my mind was not used to the habits of keeping God on my mind every minute. Second of all, spiritually, I think that demons weren't happy that I was attempting it, so that added obstacles.
It seemed completely impossible before to talk to others while practising this, let alone reading stuff. But I think the impossible seems to have been cnoquered by God's grace! I have improved, I think.
The 3rd night I tried it, I experienced a pretty cool few hours of actually being relational with God, and felt that he was there somewhat. I kept saying things to him nonstop in second person, not only big things, but actually mostly small things.
The first week was extremely hard and I got down on myself quite a bit sometimes due to the sheer difficulty I experienced. It helped though, that I was fasting with the team that whole week. I think I could say that I experienced exponential growth each day during that week in my ability to keep God in mind. There were some moments where I wanted to give up because itw as just simply too hard.
Either one or two weeks later I cried in front of the team during church time. I tihnk it was a result of doing thsi thing. I cried due to previously taking for granted Christ's sacrifice for me, where a lot of the time I previously flippantly acknowledged it without deeply appreciating it.
When I tried it with Casey, the experience was sooo exhilarating@ Just having someone int he same palce acknowledging Jesus in a casual conversation did wonders for me! I don't think it had that big of an affect on Casey, althought he said that it felt cool, yet weird for him. It felt weird for me too, but not in a sketchy way, but in a "this is so cool, I've never done this before" type of weird. I felt so euphoric in a way I haven't felt before. It was different in quality. I've never felt that way in intimacy with Jesus before. It felt really different from Christian music concerts where everyone goes crazy (not in a bad way). After the session, I felt uplifted and thsi sort of immense joy being in the presence of God that lasted for a couple hours and actually kinda prevented me from preparing for a student training session the next day.
Today, I think I sensed a demon(s) in one of the students I was talking to that was struggling with knowing God. Still nto sure whether it's an intellectual problem or heart problem, or both. I didn't fully understand his reasons, thinking. It seemed kinf of abnormal for a human. It may have just been really screwed thinking from reading weird stuff, or simply a demon. There was this period all of a sudden where it was like I suddenly realized there was a demon in the midst.
Whether inside or outside of the student, I'm not sure. I just unexplainably sensed it. I thought I could see it in the student's behaviour and laughter. His thinking seemed confused, but not in a logical way. It seemed like someone was maybe messing around with his mind. It seemed ilke a demon was intentionally toying and messing around with the student's thoughts. It was kind of freaky in a way. For the rest of the conversation I was intensely praying in my mind for the demon to be casted out and away, and to leave the student alone in the name of Jesus. I even prayed in tongues for this. I offerd to pray for the stdeutn, but he refused quite a few times. I felt the urge to pray for him, finally he relented and let me pray for him. I put my hand on hij, I quietly mumbled prayers to God to cast out any demons that might be disturbing him so that he could think clearly. We'll see what happens. I wonder if he was possessed or not.
Right now, I think I improved a lot relative to a month ago. I think sometimes, when I don't think of God, my mind will sometimes go back to God. Some sign that a habit has already started to form. Dallas Willard reminded me that it takes time, and I shouldn't harass myself or push myself too hard in this. It's a lot easier than the first two weeks I started this. I tseems to evolve. I can scarcely remember what kind of lief I had before I started this. It seems like the whole background or wallpaper of lief seems to change when I do this. It seems deeper than pleasure. It's deep joy in God. As cheap as it is to say this, I can't describe it, and I can actually start to understand some of the mystics when they say that they can't describe what the experience is like.
I still don't get all my minutes down though. In time. Also, I don't feel especially close with God in subjective intimacy feel right now. I think God's teaching me to do it for him, and not for myself. As long as He's happy, I should be happy because I know it pleases Him.
I think I got a little traction in doing it while talking to my teammates in English. Second language is hard though, like in class. It is the hardest when I'm with students for some reason. Maybe it's because my mind is focused on the ministry while sacrificing attention from my intimacy with God. also maybe because listening and speaking in a second language that I just started acquiring two years ago takes up relatively more energy/capacity in my mind. I hope this improves over time.
Interesting thing is, I think I have had a breakthrough in my cognitive language processing, of "entering int he world" of the speaker through their words. Hard to describe. I think this is partially due to being forced to try to focus on just the meaning of the words of a speaker in the speaker's world, and nothing else, due to conserving my midn's cognitive reserves/capacity. This apparently leaves more room for me to think of God in second person. So making this room for God in my capacity has inadvertently made me process language more efficiently due to being forced to really focus in my concentration linguistically because less cognitive energy is focused on it.
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