Okay, this entry may seem kind of controversial, but whatever, I'll just write it.
I think I am learning more and more how to experience the opposite/flip side of "demon posession". That is, Christian spirit possession, namely allowing the Holy Spirit to possess our Spirit, or "consciousness" so that the "consciousness" of Jesus takes over our consciousness.
Here is the theological and philosophical basis first. I think that if someone can get demon possessed and have the conscious mind of an evil spirit take over/take control of him, then this just shows that the human spirit/consciousness can be totally taken over by another conscious/spiritual mind. The question is whether or not it is taken over by something evil, dark, and against God, or by something (or in the Christian sense someone) good, holy, and for God. Hence the Holy Spirit.
It is a little like a someone taking over the driving seat in a car, and making you, the original driver, strapped/buckled/locked down in the passenger seat where you are no longer in control of where the car goes. In demon possession, sometimes it is involuntary, the demon just hijacks the car, locks you down in the passenger seat, and drives away crazily like a maniac and you can't control him. Or sometimes it is voluntary when someone willingly invites in demonic spirits to take over. Either way, the driver is an evil, dark, demonic being.
In Christian spiritual possession however, Jesus, through means of the Holy Spirit in us, gently takes over the wheel and drives peacefully in his direction and guidance, and will. Since Jesus respects our freedom/free will, he will not forcefully take over the driver's seat and hijack the car unlike demons. He will only take over if we willingly and freely move over to the passenger seat, and remain there. To remain there is hard, because usually after a few seconds, we naturally just drift back in the driver's seat, and Jesus being the respectful and loving God that he is, will not force himself to take over our being.
The scriptural support of this is Colossians 1:27, as well as Galatians 2:20. I am highly influenced by Frank Laubach in his experiential interpretation/application of these scriptural truths. That means there should be mini-labels all over our bodies, including our hands, feet, eyes, neck, chest etc that say "Property of Jesus" and that they all belong to him. Furthermore, anything that we experience, Jesus experiences at the same time. More specifically, anything that we feel with our 5 senses, Jesus feels it at exactly the same time, moment, and capacity that we experience it in. So each time we walk in the perfume section of a department store and smell the cologne, Jesus smells exactly the same phenomena, each time we put on shoes, Jesus feels the exact same sensations on our feet, each time we shake someone else's hands, Jesus feels exactly the same physiological input on our hands that we do. The same goes with all the emotional, social, spiritual experiences that we have. He is always in the "same car" as us. The question is only whether he's driving it at the moment or not.
I think I am learning in this journey of practicing God's presence how to allow myself to be "spiritually possessed" by the conscious spirit of Jesus' mind. It is hard to explain, but in good moments where God infuses extra doses of grace in my life, it feels as if Jesus himself, the person who died on the cross for me, who made the heavens and the earth, who sustains every molecule/atom in the universe with his powerful word is occupying the "driver's seat of my consciousness". It's as if he's actually controlling my being, and I'm just sitting right beside him, joyfully consenting to him taking over. Of course this is the exception rather than the norm, for the two times that it has happened it took about 30 minutes in total quiet solitude for every inch and fiber of every level of my being to be surrendered to him and to move over in the passenger's seat. It is only then that Jesus takes over the driver's seat of my being just like how a demon takes over and possesses a poor human soul. The thing though, since Jesus is so kind to respect my free will and only take over if I completely and utterly surrender myself to him, usually when I come out of solitude and back to the "real world" I am just bombarded by too much stimuli and distractions that I just end up getting distracted and subconsciously but quickly gravitate towards the driver's seat again and put Jesus in the passenger seat. It takes about 30 minutes to put him fully back on, but only about 30 seconds to kick him off and go about things my own way again.
But during the moments it does last, however, there is a sense of indescribable joy and peace that takes over the atmosphere of my soul. It is different, not only in quantity, but in kind, than earthly joy and peace. I wish that I could maintain this state forever, however, I am too sinful! I need more and more of God's grace to do so! Hopefully by his grace I improve more and more each day! Why do I not willingly give myself to this type of communion with God more frequently if it is the most blissful, satisfying, meaningful state my human self can experience? The answer is a mystery. The answer is sin. Sin is a mystery. In this case, only a mysterious cure can cure this mysterious disease. Oh Jesus, save me from this body of death!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
found a way to win every minute while listening to a sermon!
As I attended Grace Toronto Church's evening service tonight, I wanted to try to keep God on my mind in second person at least every minute. Especially listening to the Pastor preach his sermon.
I didn't want to do it "mechanically" or "legalistically" without any life in the process of attempting it though, so I sought the Holy Spirit to lead me in a certain way to do it, according to His specific "flow" or "rhythm" of the moment (which I am coming more and more to believe that differs every moment for each individual Christian).
As the pastor just started to preach, I went about at attempting this vigorous yet "strenuously satisfying" pursuit.
As the first minute passed, some ideas were coming into my head. Whether or not they were DIRECTLY from the Holy Spirit or indirect suggestions mingled with my archives of Game with Minutes strategies I am not sure. Regardless, the suggestion was this:
"since I am commanded by God:
1) to be thankful in all situations, continually thanking God for everything (Philippians 4:6, Ephesians 5:20, Colossians 3:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)
as well as
2)to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) aka keep in constant communion with Him
why not try to combine these two commandments which God wants us to do continually?
So here I am, with the first minute into the sermon, trying this wacky idea of trying to practically apply these two commandments simultaneously while the preacher is expounding his points from Ephesians 1:1-6. In my mind, a more specific idea of concretely applying these two commandments throughout the whole sermon popped in my head. Try to thank God for everything the Pastor mentions. Every few seconds try it. No matter what the pastor mentions, just try to keep thanking God in second-person communication for anything my mind can think of that the pastor says.
The results were astonishing! I think by God's grace I was on a roll! When the pastor mentioned stuff like "Paul's letters", I'd say in my mind to God "thanks that you gave us Paul's letters". When he mentioned "Peter" (the apostle), I'd say to God right away "thanks for Peter". When he mentioned "growing up in a democratic culture", I'd immediately thank God for democracy right after. When he mentioned american football, I'd quickly thank God for sports the second after. When he mentioned an analogy about winning the lottery, I thanked God for money afterwards. When he mentioned the "educated class in developed countries", I thanked God for post-secondary education. And of course whenever he mentioned Jesus and/or what Jesus did on the cross for our sins, I'd express to God my grattitude for my salvation. Since Dan McDonald is a Cross-centered preacher, I found myself thanking God for salvation several times throughout the sermon. And when the pastor was silent for a few seconds, I tried to thank God for whatever came to my mind, which included thanking God that the pastor had fingers, that he had glasses, that he had hair, that he had a wife and has a marriage. Haha. It helped!
Here's the cool part. By God's grace, it worked!!! The strategy flew! I was able to simultaneously digest over 90% of the content of the sermon (except for one part when he talked about a story of a football star, I got lost on some parts while trying to thank God every few seconds) while thanking God silently in my mind for whatever I thought of during the whole 30 minutes of the sermon! I think I can truly say to myself that I won the Game with Minutes EVERY minute of the sermon! The cool thing is, I not only communed with God at least once every minute, I think it was once every few seconds too! I think the most that I stopped was for 5 seconds! With this strategy and the grace of God's empowerment over months and months of training, I kept God on my mind every 3-4 seconds during this sermon! Praise God for both the open/creative idea, the grace to carry it out, as well as the exhilaration that accompanied the experience!
Nearing the end of the sermon though, I started to feel that this strategy was starting to become a ritual, and that after the sermon, if I still continued, it might have started to get ritualistic. So I persevered until the sermon was over, thanked God (one last time haha), and was willing to "close" this mini-chapter/leading of the Spirit which had a certain rhythm of gratitude for these sacred 30 minutes.
I know it's probably not God's will for me to use the exact same means for every single moment, for he is a God of variety, spontaneity, and freshness that is ever creative, adventurous, novel, and keeps us surprised every turn around the corner. I don't want any method of keeping in communion with him every minute to become mechanized/ritualized. But I want every one to be natural, receiving the fresh signals from the Holy Spirit, fresher than the news on the morning paper. If every "method" that the Spirit has given me can be metaphorically represented as a key on a piano, I want to put each of these keys on the piano scale of my mind, and play each one appropriately when the time is called for while paying attention to the composition of holy spiritual music of the Father's will.
HALLELUJIAH!
I didn't want to do it "mechanically" or "legalistically" without any life in the process of attempting it though, so I sought the Holy Spirit to lead me in a certain way to do it, according to His specific "flow" or "rhythm" of the moment (which I am coming more and more to believe that differs every moment for each individual Christian).
As the pastor just started to preach, I went about at attempting this vigorous yet "strenuously satisfying" pursuit.
As the first minute passed, some ideas were coming into my head. Whether or not they were DIRECTLY from the Holy Spirit or indirect suggestions mingled with my archives of Game with Minutes strategies I am not sure. Regardless, the suggestion was this:
"since I am commanded by God:
1) to be thankful in all situations, continually thanking God for everything (Philippians 4:6, Ephesians 5:20, Colossians 3:17, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)
as well as
2)to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17) aka keep in constant communion with Him
why not try to combine these two commandments which God wants us to do continually?
So here I am, with the first minute into the sermon, trying this wacky idea of trying to practically apply these two commandments simultaneously while the preacher is expounding his points from Ephesians 1:1-6. In my mind, a more specific idea of concretely applying these two commandments throughout the whole sermon popped in my head. Try to thank God for everything the Pastor mentions. Every few seconds try it. No matter what the pastor mentions, just try to keep thanking God in second-person communication for anything my mind can think of that the pastor says.
The results were astonishing! I think by God's grace I was on a roll! When the pastor mentioned stuff like "Paul's letters", I'd say in my mind to God "thanks that you gave us Paul's letters". When he mentioned "Peter" (the apostle), I'd say to God right away "thanks for Peter". When he mentioned "growing up in a democratic culture", I'd immediately thank God for democracy right after. When he mentioned american football, I'd quickly thank God for sports the second after. When he mentioned an analogy about winning the lottery, I thanked God for money afterwards. When he mentioned the "educated class in developed countries", I thanked God for post-secondary education. And of course whenever he mentioned Jesus and/or what Jesus did on the cross for our sins, I'd express to God my grattitude for my salvation. Since Dan McDonald is a Cross-centered preacher, I found myself thanking God for salvation several times throughout the sermon. And when the pastor was silent for a few seconds, I tried to thank God for whatever came to my mind, which included thanking God that the pastor had fingers, that he had glasses, that he had hair, that he had a wife and has a marriage. Haha. It helped!
Here's the cool part. By God's grace, it worked!!! The strategy flew! I was able to simultaneously digest over 90% of the content of the sermon (except for one part when he talked about a story of a football star, I got lost on some parts while trying to thank God every few seconds) while thanking God silently in my mind for whatever I thought of during the whole 30 minutes of the sermon! I think I can truly say to myself that I won the Game with Minutes EVERY minute of the sermon! The cool thing is, I not only communed with God at least once every minute, I think it was once every few seconds too! I think the most that I stopped was for 5 seconds! With this strategy and the grace of God's empowerment over months and months of training, I kept God on my mind every 3-4 seconds during this sermon! Praise God for both the open/creative idea, the grace to carry it out, as well as the exhilaration that accompanied the experience!
Nearing the end of the sermon though, I started to feel that this strategy was starting to become a ritual, and that after the sermon, if I still continued, it might have started to get ritualistic. So I persevered until the sermon was over, thanked God (one last time haha), and was willing to "close" this mini-chapter/leading of the Spirit which had a certain rhythm of gratitude for these sacred 30 minutes.
I know it's probably not God's will for me to use the exact same means for every single moment, for he is a God of variety, spontaneity, and freshness that is ever creative, adventurous, novel, and keeps us surprised every turn around the corner. I don't want any method of keeping in communion with him every minute to become mechanized/ritualized. But I want every one to be natural, receiving the fresh signals from the Holy Spirit, fresher than the news on the morning paper. If every "method" that the Spirit has given me can be metaphorically represented as a key on a piano, I want to put each of these keys on the piano scale of my mind, and play each one appropriately when the time is called for while paying attention to the composition of holy spiritual music of the Father's will.
HALLELUJIAH!
Friday, September 17, 2010
God feeling "objectively" closer in a spiritual sense
The past couple weeks or so have been really rich with God, in practising and cultivating his presence in my life. It has not been full of spiritual ecstacy or indescribable holy euphoria, (although there were short moments were that arguably seemed the case). It has, instead, been different.
After all this hard work of trying to keep an existential awareness of God throughout every moment of my life since March 2009, I sense another breakthrough.
God just simply feels "closer". Now this feels like a different type of "closeness" than what people (or at least myself) normally mean when they say "I feel close to God". I am not talking about having intense emotional experiences where one feels intensely intimate with God, whether through corporate ecstatic worship (i.e. Hillsong concerts), or crazy/supernatural phenomena happening in my personal devo. This type of "closeness" I have been experiencing lately is not closeness in terms of the depth of intimacy two friends experience when having many warm encounters within a set time period, and how one feels emotionally "closer" to another friend. The type of closeness I'm talking about feels somewhat akin to closeness in "physical proximity", just like how someone can stand apart from you in a room at different distances. For example, the "emotional closeness" between a couple could be very emotionally intimate, but if they are both in a big room, their physical proximity from each other can vary at different times during a time period, let's say at a social gathering or party. On a certain night, the "emotional closeness" could remain the same, while the "physical proximity closeness" could differ throughout the night (e.g. when both are going around, doing different things, talking to different people, going to the washroom etc.)
It is this latter type of "closeness" that I am beginning to feel with God. In a spiritual sense, he is feeling more and more closer in "spiritual proximity" as opposed to "emotional intimacy". It is weird. It feels as if a new continuum/guage of the former just recently formed itself in my spiritual consciousness that has previously never existed (or at least I was never previously aware of it) before. Although sometimes I don't have intense spiritually euphoric moments with God in the latter guage/continuum, with respect to the former, I still feel he is more closer in "spiritual distnace rather than emotional distance. It is just like how me and my human best friend can feel different distances in physical proximity at a party even though at different moments I feel different levels of friendship intimacy with him.
It is starting to get to the point where if I guage whether or not I was in the presence of God or not during a certain time (i.e. 9am-10am), I would guage whether or not we were both present in the same place, rather than guage whether or not we had mutually strong emotional experiences during that time period (of 9am-10am). Just like how if you were to ask me if I met with my dentist and was in my dentist's presence this morning, I would either say "yes, I went to his clinic and saw him, and we interacted with each other" but I wouldn't say "yes, I had an intense emotional experience full of intimacy with him." I either experienced him in his presence or I didn't. Just like that.
When the Bible talks about different chracters (i.e. David, Paul, John etc.) exhorting others to "come near to God" or "pursue and run towards God" or "come close to him", perhaps they sometimes are talking about "objective spiritual distance" between God in addition to emotional distance with God. Just perhaps. I am not an expert on exegesis/hermeneutics so I am not sure. All I know is that I am starting to detect a difference in kind/quality in my spiritual intuition with God lately.
After all this hard work of trying to keep an existential awareness of God throughout every moment of my life since March 2009, I sense another breakthrough.
God just simply feels "closer". Now this feels like a different type of "closeness" than what people (or at least myself) normally mean when they say "I feel close to God". I am not talking about having intense emotional experiences where one feels intensely intimate with God, whether through corporate ecstatic worship (i.e. Hillsong concerts), or crazy/supernatural phenomena happening in my personal devo. This type of "closeness" I have been experiencing lately is not closeness in terms of the depth of intimacy two friends experience when having many warm encounters within a set time period, and how one feels emotionally "closer" to another friend. The type of closeness I'm talking about feels somewhat akin to closeness in "physical proximity", just like how someone can stand apart from you in a room at different distances. For example, the "emotional closeness" between a couple could be very emotionally intimate, but if they are both in a big room, their physical proximity from each other can vary at different times during a time period, let's say at a social gathering or party. On a certain night, the "emotional closeness" could remain the same, while the "physical proximity closeness" could differ throughout the night (e.g. when both are going around, doing different things, talking to different people, going to the washroom etc.)
It is this latter type of "closeness" that I am beginning to feel with God. In a spiritual sense, he is feeling more and more closer in "spiritual proximity" as opposed to "emotional intimacy". It is weird. It feels as if a new continuum/guage of the former just recently formed itself in my spiritual consciousness that has previously never existed (or at least I was never previously aware of it) before. Although sometimes I don't have intense spiritually euphoric moments with God in the latter guage/continuum, with respect to the former, I still feel he is more closer in "spiritual distnace rather than emotional distance. It is just like how me and my human best friend can feel different distances in physical proximity at a party even though at different moments I feel different levels of friendship intimacy with him.
It is starting to get to the point where if I guage whether or not I was in the presence of God or not during a certain time (i.e. 9am-10am), I would guage whether or not we were both present in the same place, rather than guage whether or not we had mutually strong emotional experiences during that time period (of 9am-10am). Just like how if you were to ask me if I met with my dentist and was in my dentist's presence this morning, I would either say "yes, I went to his clinic and saw him, and we interacted with each other" but I wouldn't say "yes, I had an intense emotional experience full of intimacy with him." I either experienced him in his presence or I didn't. Just like that.
When the Bible talks about different chracters (i.e. David, Paul, John etc.) exhorting others to "come near to God" or "pursue and run towards God" or "come close to him", perhaps they sometimes are talking about "objective spiritual distance" between God in addition to emotional distance with God. Just perhaps. I am not an expert on exegesis/hermeneutics so I am not sure. All I know is that I am starting to detect a difference in kind/quality in my spiritual intuition with God lately.
Monday, September 6, 2010
another breakthrough
last night, when my soul was desperate for renewal, weary at the very depths of my being, starving for spiritual nourishment, I spent some solitude with God. I told him my worries, my inadequacies, my inner struggles, and just what was on my heart. That was really relieving, more than I had anticipated.
Then I asked Jesus to reveal to me how to become the type of person that didn't worry, idolize, and get bogged down by the things that were worrying me, bogging me down, and things that I were idolizing.
At that moment, I remembered what I read the day before from Madame Guyon's classic "Experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ". She gave some very helpful hints to achieve experiential union with Christ.
"But in coming to the Lord by means of "praying the Scripture, you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read."
I then applied some of that to the passages of not worrying from Matthew 6.
With the premise of Christ being and actually living "in me", I tried to apply M Guyon's further advice:
"Now, waiting before Him, turn all your attention toward your spirit. Do not allow your mind to wander. If your mind begins tow ander, just turn your attention back again to the inward parts of your being... (The Lord is found only within your spirit, in the recesses of your being, in the Holy of Holies; this is where He dwells... The Lord will meet you in your spirit. It was St. Augustine who once said that he had lost much time in the beginning of his Christian experience by trying to find the Lord outwardly rather than by turning inwardly.)"
Once your heart has been turned inwardly to the Lord, you will have an impression of His presence. You will be able to notice His presence more acutely because your outer senses have now become very calm and quiet. Your attention is no longer on outward things or on the surface thoughts of your mind..."
and about the mind wandering when we try to practice the presence of God, she offers this wonderful and very helpful advice:
"When your mind has wandered, don't try to deal with it by changing what you are thinking. You see, if you pay attention to what you are thinking, you will only irritate your mind and stir it up more. Instead, withdraw from your mind! Keep turning within to the Lord's presence. By doing this you will win the war with your wandering mind and yet never directly engage in the battle!"
I tried to intently apply this advice. And low and behold, something very mystical and unexpected happened!
After a few minutes, as I was "centering down" it felt as if the consciousness of Jesus himself just entered in my consciousness. It was like a holy/divine version of a demon posession. It felt that way because I felt another being's consciousness take presence in my being (well, it was more like I acknowledged it all of a sudden). I was surprised at first and didn't know what to think. I believe that that person was Jesus himself. He didn't present himself by force, but very gently, and I liked it. I felt like i could "turn this off" at any moment, but I didn't want to. In fact, I kept on saying to the Lord "LORD! Please, in your mercy allow me to experience this state of my awareness 'being in you' last forever! I don't ever want it to go away!".
There was a cool characteristic of this. Usually, when I try to rigorously practice the presence of God, I feel like most of the time, I have to consciously force myself to refresh the presence of God in my mind every few seconds or so (it has become more natural and gradually more "semi-automatic" along the way, though far from perfect). Much like refreshing the page of a website every few seconds, because in my experience, after a few seconds of consciously thinking of God, he's gone! But this time, it was different! It seemed effortless! I didn't have to (at least in a very strenuous way) really "refresh" it every few seconds, and it seems as if God, for a moment just took over and rested in my conscious awareness with hardly any effort to maintain it on my part! I knew this had to be from God because this experience was so off the charts of what I was normally capable of that it couldn't have been from my own efforts. It was that of another league.
And, as I am understanding now, Jesus cannot live, act, or experience anything without the other two members of the Trinity experiencing it as well. I am learning that to be in the presence of Jesus is also to be in the presence of the other members of the Trinity as well. So with this in mind, I felt as if Jesus was sort of "showing me" how to experience life with a "behind the scenes inner interaction with God the Father and the Holy Spirit" while encountering the trials, difficulties, unexpected curveballs of everyday life. This latter part is very hard to explain, but I felt it occur. I will try to sum up what I felt experientially.
1. Jesus does everything, and that means EVERYTHING, as an act of obedience to what he sees the Father do and command (John 5:19). This involves every moment knowing what to do, and being empowered to do it.
2. Jesus is empowered to both know the will of God through divine guidance by the Holy Spirit, as well as carry out the will of God through the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
3. This is to be done through the different faculties of my thoughts, feelings, will, physical body, and social life, because Jesus loved God through all these various fundamental dimensions of his being. (The Great Commandment loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and other stuff about other dimensions of our being recorded in other parts of the Bible)
4. Since I am to imitate Jesus and to be conformed completely into his image and likeness, I am to learn #1, #2, and #3.
How Jesus showed me how to do this experientially in my first-person consciousness. Once again, it is extremely hard to explain, but I felt myself going through a wordless "spiritual tutorial" in my mind as of how to carry this out.
Wow. What a divine moment.
I recall what St. Teresa of Avila said when she said experiencing the divine assistance of God's grace through the first level of a result of a combination of our grace-and-effort pursuit to "train ourselves to be godly" (1 Timothy 4:7), and then a second level, where eventually it just gets completely taken over by God's providence and grace where the product is a result of an abundance of grace just completely overshadows any result of human training and effort.
The difference is illustrated through an analogy she gave. The first level is illustrated through a bucket being filled through lots of aqueducts being built and supported to pour and direct water into the bucket. The aqueducts represent God-honouring self-discipline. This is the first level. Then the second level is to have a source of abundant water just flowing and gushing out of the bottom of the bucket itself, completely independent of any outside/external sources directing water into it. This is the second level of experiencing God's active/abundant grace.
I think last night, in the realm of practicing God's presence and experiencing the depths of Jesus, God, in his completely undeserved grace, allowed me to experience the second level.
Then I asked Jesus to reveal to me how to become the type of person that didn't worry, idolize, and get bogged down by the things that were worrying me, bogging me down, and things that I were idolizing.
At that moment, I remembered what I read the day before from Madame Guyon's classic "Experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ". She gave some very helpful hints to achieve experiential union with Christ.
"But in coming to the Lord by means of "praying the Scripture, you do not read quickly; you read very slowly. You do not move from one passage to another, not until you have sensed the very heart of what you have read."
I then applied some of that to the passages of not worrying from Matthew 6.
With the premise of Christ being and actually living "in me", I tried to apply M Guyon's further advice:
"Now, waiting before Him, turn all your attention toward your spirit. Do not allow your mind to wander. If your mind begins tow ander, just turn your attention back again to the inward parts of your being... (The Lord is found only within your spirit, in the recesses of your being, in the Holy of Holies; this is where He dwells... The Lord will meet you in your spirit. It was St. Augustine who once said that he had lost much time in the beginning of his Christian experience by trying to find the Lord outwardly rather than by turning inwardly.)"
Once your heart has been turned inwardly to the Lord, you will have an impression of His presence. You will be able to notice His presence more acutely because your outer senses have now become very calm and quiet. Your attention is no longer on outward things or on the surface thoughts of your mind..."
and about the mind wandering when we try to practice the presence of God, she offers this wonderful and very helpful advice:
"When your mind has wandered, don't try to deal with it by changing what you are thinking. You see, if you pay attention to what you are thinking, you will only irritate your mind and stir it up more. Instead, withdraw from your mind! Keep turning within to the Lord's presence. By doing this you will win the war with your wandering mind and yet never directly engage in the battle!"
I tried to intently apply this advice. And low and behold, something very mystical and unexpected happened!
After a few minutes, as I was "centering down" it felt as if the consciousness of Jesus himself just entered in my consciousness. It was like a holy/divine version of a demon posession. It felt that way because I felt another being's consciousness take presence in my being (well, it was more like I acknowledged it all of a sudden). I was surprised at first and didn't know what to think. I believe that that person was Jesus himself. He didn't present himself by force, but very gently, and I liked it. I felt like i could "turn this off" at any moment, but I didn't want to. In fact, I kept on saying to the Lord "LORD! Please, in your mercy allow me to experience this state of my awareness 'being in you' last forever! I don't ever want it to go away!".
There was a cool characteristic of this. Usually, when I try to rigorously practice the presence of God, I feel like most of the time, I have to consciously force myself to refresh the presence of God in my mind every few seconds or so (it has become more natural and gradually more "semi-automatic" along the way, though far from perfect). Much like refreshing the page of a website every few seconds, because in my experience, after a few seconds of consciously thinking of God, he's gone! But this time, it was different! It seemed effortless! I didn't have to (at least in a very strenuous way) really "refresh" it every few seconds, and it seems as if God, for a moment just took over and rested in my conscious awareness with hardly any effort to maintain it on my part! I knew this had to be from God because this experience was so off the charts of what I was normally capable of that it couldn't have been from my own efforts. It was that of another league.
And, as I am understanding now, Jesus cannot live, act, or experience anything without the other two members of the Trinity experiencing it as well. I am learning that to be in the presence of Jesus is also to be in the presence of the other members of the Trinity as well. So with this in mind, I felt as if Jesus was sort of "showing me" how to experience life with a "behind the scenes inner interaction with God the Father and the Holy Spirit" while encountering the trials, difficulties, unexpected curveballs of everyday life. This latter part is very hard to explain, but I felt it occur. I will try to sum up what I felt experientially.
1. Jesus does everything, and that means EVERYTHING, as an act of obedience to what he sees the Father do and command (John 5:19). This involves every moment knowing what to do, and being empowered to do it.
2. Jesus is empowered to both know the will of God through divine guidance by the Holy Spirit, as well as carry out the will of God through the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
3. This is to be done through the different faculties of my thoughts, feelings, will, physical body, and social life, because Jesus loved God through all these various fundamental dimensions of his being. (The Great Commandment loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, strength, and other stuff about other dimensions of our being recorded in other parts of the Bible)
4. Since I am to imitate Jesus and to be conformed completely into his image and likeness, I am to learn #1, #2, and #3.
How Jesus showed me how to do this experientially in my first-person consciousness. Once again, it is extremely hard to explain, but I felt myself going through a wordless "spiritual tutorial" in my mind as of how to carry this out.
Wow. What a divine moment.
I recall what St. Teresa of Avila said when she said experiencing the divine assistance of God's grace through the first level of a result of a combination of our grace-and-effort pursuit to "train ourselves to be godly" (1 Timothy 4:7), and then a second level, where eventually it just gets completely taken over by God's providence and grace where the product is a result of an abundance of grace just completely overshadows any result of human training and effort.
The difference is illustrated through an analogy she gave. The first level is illustrated through a bucket being filled through lots of aqueducts being built and supported to pour and direct water into the bucket. The aqueducts represent God-honouring self-discipline. This is the first level. Then the second level is to have a source of abundant water just flowing and gushing out of the bottom of the bucket itself, completely independent of any outside/external sources directing water into it. This is the second level of experiencing God's active/abundant grace.
I think last night, in the realm of practicing God's presence and experiencing the depths of Jesus, God, in his completely undeserved grace, allowed me to experience the second level.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
new frontiers of this experiment
Tonight, I had dinner with a few friends of mine. I was surprised at the result of playing this Game during the meal. Surprised, because I am slowly realizing the peace and satisfaction that comes from experiencing the fruits of the initially hard labour of building up this habit of keeping God on my mind throughout the day through everything I do.
As a result of researching methods on how to train myself to pick up this habit, I've been reading about different accounts of people who have mastered this art of practicing God's presence, and reading their thoughts/experiences on it. One of these masters suggested trying to keep God on the "fringes" of our consciousness while attending to very mind-consuming tasks, another talked about trying to keep a thought of God's presence "just below our consciousness". Well, I've been experimenting with this method during times of arduous tasks, and although it seemed a little weird at first, it is starting to become natural.
As well, the frequency of keeping God on my mind has also improved overall. A big reason of this is that my mind (or spirit?) has started to make semi-automatic habits of returning to God. Much like after one learns the (originally weird) grammar structures of a new language and is habitualized to them, they start to become semi-automatic when one speaks. Something analogous has happened to the "grammar of my mind".
What did this result in tonight's dinner? For the first 20 minutes or so (I didn't keep perfect track of how long it lasted), I had success in keeping God in my mind almost every minute while talking to my 3 friends! I remembered to pray for them while talking to them, as well as remember God being present during the conversation! It was awesome! The coolest part of it all, was that these 2 things were semi-automatic during the whole time! The first being keeping God on the "fringes" of my consciousness or just "below" it. The second being my mind exercising it's semi-automatic habit of returning to God by itself without "me telling it to do it". It was an awesome experience. I think I even ventured into the territory of "multitasking" my attention to God and to my friends at the same time! It was awesome! I remember trying to "multitask" doing this about a year and a half ago when I first started. It was like trying to speak fluent Russian in a week. I also thought that multitasking attending to God and others was cognitively impossible. Now, it is starting to become a reality through increased understanding, experimentation, and habituation!
I am getting a taste of 1 John 5:3. God's commands really aren't burdensome. That is, after through grace, discipline, and perseverance, we master them. They are in the beginning, but for the person full of faith, unwavering perseverance, and sacrifice, after a while one realizes that these commands are like grammar rules of a language. They are cumbersome to learn in the beginning, but after a while, becoming more fluent in that language, one realizes the value of those grammar structures and how they actually help one communication, rather than burdening the speakers and listeners of that language. After a while, it would seem strange not to obey the commands, or "rules" of the language, and it would actually take effort NOT to obey them. Just ask any native speaker to make a grammar error in their own language. It actually takes effort for him to consciously come up with a sentence with grammar errors.
It's almost been a year and a half since I started this game. Praise God for His commandments to practice His presence!
As a result of researching methods on how to train myself to pick up this habit, I've been reading about different accounts of people who have mastered this art of practicing God's presence, and reading their thoughts/experiences on it. One of these masters suggested trying to keep God on the "fringes" of our consciousness while attending to very mind-consuming tasks, another talked about trying to keep a thought of God's presence "just below our consciousness". Well, I've been experimenting with this method during times of arduous tasks, and although it seemed a little weird at first, it is starting to become natural.
As well, the frequency of keeping God on my mind has also improved overall. A big reason of this is that my mind (or spirit?) has started to make semi-automatic habits of returning to God. Much like after one learns the (originally weird) grammar structures of a new language and is habitualized to them, they start to become semi-automatic when one speaks. Something analogous has happened to the "grammar of my mind".
What did this result in tonight's dinner? For the first 20 minutes or so (I didn't keep perfect track of how long it lasted), I had success in keeping God in my mind almost every minute while talking to my 3 friends! I remembered to pray for them while talking to them, as well as remember God being present during the conversation! It was awesome! The coolest part of it all, was that these 2 things were semi-automatic during the whole time! The first being keeping God on the "fringes" of my consciousness or just "below" it. The second being my mind exercising it's semi-automatic habit of returning to God by itself without "me telling it to do it". It was an awesome experience. I think I even ventured into the territory of "multitasking" my attention to God and to my friends at the same time! It was awesome! I remember trying to "multitask" doing this about a year and a half ago when I first started. It was like trying to speak fluent Russian in a week. I also thought that multitasking attending to God and others was cognitively impossible. Now, it is starting to become a reality through increased understanding, experimentation, and habituation!
I am getting a taste of 1 John 5:3. God's commands really aren't burdensome. That is, after through grace, discipline, and perseverance, we master them. They are in the beginning, but for the person full of faith, unwavering perseverance, and sacrifice, after a while one realizes that these commands are like grammar rules of a language. They are cumbersome to learn in the beginning, but after a while, becoming more fluent in that language, one realizes the value of those grammar structures and how they actually help one communication, rather than burdening the speakers and listeners of that language. After a while, it would seem strange not to obey the commands, or "rules" of the language, and it would actually take effort NOT to obey them. Just ask any native speaker to make a grammar error in their own language. It actually takes effort for him to consciously come up with a sentence with grammar errors.
It's almost been a year and a half since I started this game. Praise God for His commandments to practice His presence!
Saturday, August 15, 2009
August 15, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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