We all have different experiences and perspectives. But different realities? I think of the sheer number of mental illnesses that begin with and rely upon this mindset of isolationism.
My thought is that our feelings are truly like a window. Sometimes a dirty and distorting window. And our best assessment of the greater reality beyond us will come when we lift the window and are no longer gazing through the distortions of our feelings and emotions.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been misled by my feelings and emotions on too many occasions to not learn something from it.
Staying with the window analogy if we keep the window of our emotions clean we can often accurately assess what is outside. But a lot of things in life tend to gunk up that window from the inside until the reality outside isn’t so clear.
Things like unresolved personal issues/hurts/fears; unforgiveness; trespasses against others ; agendas and games that we cling to religiously. Anything else?
Are we healthy? Sickness affects our perceptions. Even needing to use glasses, hearing aids, prosthesis affects our view(s) on reality.
Are we extremely emotional in any way? These affect our perceptions.
Are we desirous of something? Wanting something affects our perceptions (hence the bible’s prohibitions of wanting something that you don’t have- even if you never have the ability to act on your wants).
Are we having an extraordinarily good or bad day? that too will affect our perceptions
The only way we can be sure of what we are experiencing is to confirm with others, and asking others “did you [see, hear, smell, feel, taste] that? and after awhile the people who would be constantly confirming would think you’re crazy for asking them to confirm what’s plain to them.
Another way would be to record everything that’s going on with scientific instruments, which would also be crazy to lug around with us. We base things off of experience, which we assume to be the same the next time around.
A third way to be sure how to make sure we’re experiencing reality is to be 100% completely emotionally detached from the situation and the outcome (maybe in that sense the Buddhists have it right!) HOW to be emotionally detached is another matter altogether! Flippancy probably isn’t the way to go, because that tends to piss people off. Neither is a devil-may-care attitude. But this **might be** the only way to become sure that we are experiencing the reality that is!!
And I can hear your comments “what about the reality of the spiritual?” I am discounting that concept entirely because the spiritual nature would cause us to become MORE attached to the situation, as in “oh, if i don’t say something to this person about [fill in the type of religion or “relationship” BS you want] that person could go to hell.” or “If I don’t [or DO] perform X act(s), I am going to heaven.” The idea of detachment says “It doesn’t matter what happens to me, [or this other person,] ultimately in the grand scheme of things.”
Actually, you shared a lot of good stuff and put a lot of thought into it.
While I hadn’t included sickness/disability as “distorters of reality” they certainly are. I was focusing specifically on emotions/feelings; because as a species we put a lot of stock in these things.
On “emotional detachment”. The “Christianese” response to this is to simply “leave it at the foot of the cross” or “crucify the flesh with Christ” (our emotions and feelings being a “surging” of the flesh). But imho, this is not presented as clearly as it could be and is left as a “just have faith” equation — and if you cannot do it, you are “lacking faith” (which further beats you down).
In various Eastern and Native beliefs I encountered, they more effectively break down the process and I found it easier to understand.
“Detaching” the emotions is a meditational exercise (in Christianese a prayer exercise) of learning not to abolish them or beat them down with a stick (feelings, distractions), but to exert increasing control over them them vs letting them control you. If you NEED to see something purely and feelings/emotions (or any other distraction of your flesh) flares, you let it for the moment. And then you visualize a bubble around it to contain it and let it diminish until it’s nothing. If it “resurrects”, you do it again. And again: so long as “needing to beat it” doesn’t become the new feeling, the new emotion, the new distraction!
If it does you just let it continue what it’s doing inside the bubble, and gently move it aside so you can see the “reality” (the purity) beyond it. Put it in a certain “spot” as something you need to come back to and deal with later, if it hasn’t collapsed in on itself before you get back to it. Or if it will not be brushed aside, YOU slide around it and leave it where it wants to be. Either way, you are asserting that YOU are going to decide what you want/need to focus on.
In all cases (and contrary to a lot of religious teaching), you don’t try to beat it down with a stick (ie, recrimination). This just turns it into the lion that will devour you. Let it fade into the mosquito you can then brush away or squish if need be.
And then with this understanding, I came back to the Christian process and found it made a lot more sense AND had a lot more power.
“Actually, you shared a lot of good stuff and put a lot of thought into it.
While I hadn’t included sickness/disability as “distorters of reality” they certainly are. I was focusing specifically on emotions/feelings; because as a species we put a lot of stock in these things.”
… etc…
Everything ultimately points to Christ. The methodology you are describing is not far from the one today used in the cognitive behavioral sciences, and specifically, strongly, used in “hypnosis”/”nlp” (“neuro linguistic programming”).
Carlos Castenada has been proven to be a “fraud”, but I continue to find great insights from his works. And, they certainly were very intrinsically “shamanistic”, being based around the “brujo” observations.
I do and look everywhere.
Really, this is not only required for understanding of Scripture, especially the advanced stuff in the New Testament, but naturally is forced for anyone who actually really bothers to truly understand it. Which is very much opposed to just mindlessly accepting what others say, under the pretense of echoing their dogma is the same thing as critical thinking.
Still, being locked in these things is part of the design. From Christianity to Judaism to Islam… to, really, just about everything else modern, including the religion of science and atheism.
It is all a well crafted trap specifically designed to empower the force of repentance due to the extraordinary nature of the sin created in people.
Wherever there is very hardened legalism there are the most hardened of hearts. and with it a deeply vast interworked dense star without light… a dead star… where it will ultimately collapse in on its’ self due to the sheer weight of it. Unlike supernovas and literal stars, this happens when evidence of God is shown. Such as we see in the apocalyptic parables of Jesus in the gospels.
If you are condemning a lot, strongly… then when it comes time for that standard to be applied to your self, it thoroughly and strongly – profoundly – implodes.
So, it is all are chopped down. And judgment is not necessary between good and evil.
I maintain that what our “cognitive behavioral sciences” are just “discovering”, spiritual Christians have had available to them since Pentecost.
Rather than “naturally forced”, with me it was more of an organic process. It just happened over time as I learned more and more about God’s nature through His Spirit and written word. Though I admit that the first few years was spent learning the difference between the voice of my feelings and agendas and the Spirit’s voice. I found a distinct difference between the two.
And organically over time, the voice of my agendas and baggage has grown less and less pervasive — so long as I remember to keep up with my spiritual calisthenics.
Religion is about exerting and then not losing control over “others” (including the “congregation”). It is why many of the right-wing religious nuts are VERY much about exerting control over everyone . . . but themselves! Free thinking is actively discouraged.
Whereas the spiritual path of Christ is very much about free thought, free mind, free spirit. The focus is control of self, rather than control over others.
I find that we can accept God telling us very much, perhaps, but those matters which are very strange can be difficult to hear. So, the way around that, is what I was talking about.
There was not a natural means, per se, God simply uses the alphabet from earth to speak to me. Some languages offer some words, others offer different words. Complex concepts often require complex demonstrations. Such as what I call “metaphoric frameworks” (like “software libraries”, also often called “software frameworks”). (Which, yes, in turn, comes from physical engineering.)
I do not go, certainly not anymore, ‘oh by appearances, this can be no messenger of God, because they are gay, lesbian, prolific sexually, atheist, alcoholic, drug addict…. and so on. Because these things can be faked, and further, they can be separate from who the person really is inside.
For instance, masculinity effectively has been broken down to testosterone. Animals and humans have it. The bull shark is a good example of an animal with naturally extremely high estrogen.
All the same behaviors are there with testosterone in human males as with advance animals with it.
Carve that out, seeing it by observing the behavior via contrasting. Where the right contrast can reveal what before was hidden. And, then we see more of who the person really is, apart from any of their earthly functionalities.
I think our feelings can distort reality to a certain degree. Feelings are biological responses to which we’ve assigned meaning. So, it would stand to reason that individuals would interpret a single “reality” differently.
Our preferences have everything to do with our feelings.
As finite beings we can never see all of reality or see it perfectly clearly. But we should not let this keep us from developing a clearer and clearer Insight as we grow.
(Vs, as we stagnate?)
“Our preferences have everything to do with our feelings.”
I suppose that is so, though I do like to think I hold some preferences that are logic based, and not feeling based.
But, yes, ultimately, preferences and feelings do go together.
Thing is, I was told this. By an angel. It was shocking to me, at the time, because I had not yet made sense of angels relying on rhetorics. (The actual statement was, ‘there is no truth, because we believe what we want to believe, based on our preferences’.)
When I finally figured this out, I put myself to work to examining my preferences, and trying to change them where I can.
We can think we want one thing, but maybe something else is even better for us.
“As finite beings we can never see all of reality or see it perfectly clearly. But we should not let this keep us from developing a clearer and clearer Insight as we grow.
(Vs, as we stagnate?)”
I was about to say we never can, but I do not like saying never. After all, seeing God, we see everything. And, ‘we have the mind of Christ’ to inform us on that which we can not see.
This is my lifelong obsession and priority. I can’t do anything unless I know what the lay of the land is.
This is tied to what both Jesus and Paul said about the flesh opposing the spirit and the spirit being contrary to the flesh. Feelings and urges are of the flesh — and they tend to drown out things of the spirit — including wisdom, intellect, freedom to choose.
And these things of the spirit “require” one to not just be at the mercy of their “flesh” (feelings, urges, preferences).
“This is tied to what both Jesus and Paul said about the flesh opposing the spirit and the spirit being contrary to the flesh. Feelings and urges are of the flesh — and they tend to drown out things of the spirit — including wisdom, intellect, freedom to choose.”
“And these things of the spirit “require” one to not just be at the mercy of their “flesh” (feelings, urges, preferences).”
You believe God does not have feelings or preferences?
That’s an excellent question; and I really don’t know. Passages in the Bible do suggest things please and displease God; and speaks of “those He loves and those He hates”. The OT talks much about His wrath or vengeance. But it also talks about His feathers and wings protecting us! How much of this is a true image of God — and how much are they simply the perspectives a child trying to understand an adult world without sufficient experience/context?
We relate to God in the same way a child relates to an adult — as best as they are currently able. Which is not the way they will relate to those same adults later on.
All I know is that the God who is my Father, is very personable. Is this my perception, or true actuality? Some day I’ll know. For now, I know I am loved and cared for.
“How much of this is a true image of God — and how much are they simply the perspectives a child trying to understand an adult world without sufficient experience/context?”
This is not an understanding I see which is normal with human beings.
I do not view emotion as sinful, nor necessarily of the flesh. I view David, for instance, and Jesus, as individuals with a very strong and robust heart, and feelings. I have certainly seen plenty of dispassion, but I have also seen extraordinary passion from spiritual people.
Where, by “people”, I mean angels… and they certainly have a wide range of feelings I certainly do not see with regular human people.
As angels always see the face of the Father, I believe that is what they are reacting to, and certainly, we have all met Jesus through angels just as John the revelator did.
Normally, I find angels are joyous, unusually so. Human beings, not so much.
Spiritual excitement is one of the bigger emotions I have seen, where it is clear that “something really exciting and good is about to happen”.
Normally, when I think of God as beyond angels and men, I think in terms of God’s long term plans, and how God will make good on all of the world. And the future that is coming (and in some ways, suirely, already here).
Peace and confidence are strong emotions I certainly have seen more then a few times from very spiritual people.
I certainly do believe eyes of fire indicate a strong heart full of powerful emotions.
Having emotions is not sinful. As you pointed out, even Jesus had them when in-the-flesh (beyond, who can rightfully say?). Sin enters the equation when “they have us”. The flesh craves the worship of emotion, feeling and urges.
Here’s a question: with the Holy Spirit living in us, are we not able to always “see the face of the Father”? (Even if we don’t always avail ourselves of that gifted ability! Remember, Peter “sank” when he stopped looking in Jesus’ face and looked instead at the fearful waves).
Many religions get caught up on “seeing God’s hand” (the physical manifestations into this realm”. As singer Steven Curtis Chapman says, God’s true children are “seeking His face, and not only His hand”.
Emotions, particularly the more spiritual ones like joy and peace are not verboten. There is even a place for passion — though compassion is far more noble. Sin enters, when we cease “having them” and they “have us”.
You could probably find no shortage of “churches” out there who’s worship ” in Spirit and in Truth” has fallen into the worship of flesh and feeling — who ramp up and worship the feelings and “the passion” in song, in shouting, in dancing, in glorying in Salvation as “just a feeling”.
Or who sink to the worship of dead physical objects, books, rituals, ceremonies — and try to “justify” it by “faithfully” gritting their teeth and cranking out emotions that their flesh can then feast upon and worship.
Again, here, I largely like to consider the phrase, from an old love and rockets song, ‘you can go against nature, but that is nature too’. Accompanied with Paul’s self-examination he shared with us, that he does not even judge himself.
We can ‘do this and do not do that’, but ultimately, we get to a place where everything is more dynamic, flowing, and hopefully, God will have shown us just how rarely things we do and say are as we thought they were. Maybe even more importantly, how often what God does and says so often is not as we thought they were. Which includes what others do and say.
All of this certainly runs down deep, even to what we think.
Then, there are multiple tracks of thinking, what earth language now, today, calls “conscious” and “unconscious”. In dreams, our first person, present tense usual viewpoint is as our “conscious”, while everything else is as our unconscious.
“Spirit” wise, with Christ in our hearts, does not also come with Heaven and her host?
I have been told this, and often wonder at it, at how I am as two different people, yet one.
We come by our default (or “fallen”) nature quite naturally. I think it’s good that Paul both “anguished” this in Romans . . . and celebrates that a “renewed nature” was his birthright in Christ. (As in, one has to “know the woe”, before they can seek and then adequately rejoice in the release from it!).
In my experience, the Holy Spirit shows me the benefits of the “do”s when my eyes are on God . . . and I experience the woes of the “don’t”s when my eyes are just on god-of-self. It becomes a very streamlined and organic process, as per Jesus’ assertion that He ushers in a “yoke” that is easy and a “burden” that is light.
My thought and experience has been that God’s Spirit in my heart of conscious choice, means I am translated into a denizen of that Kingdom — including “heaven and her host”. I am in the physical world, but not “of it”; with Jesus as the model. He still had interest and concern for the worldly goings-on. But His perspective of them was spiritual, and eternal.
How am I two different people, yet one? Or am I perhaps more of a mini-Trinity? Body, mind and spirit? I can operate and manifest in just one of these modes. But I remain an incomplete, fractured “one” unless they are all sounding in harmony.
Paul did speak of having removal of all which is him, and what does that then leave us with? Still, two, from my count. God in our hearts and life, world, reality… “our own personal Jesus”, as the song lyrics so aptly put it (a truly powerful concept accepted by metaphor via a truly good song)…
After all, Paul speaks of the dead rising, the angels, the saints, Jesus, and us rising up to meet them… then finishes it explaining we personally will live with Jesus forever and ever. But, how is that, for such big crowd? Innumerable, is what is shown at times.
With Jesus in our hearts, God in our hearts, we have the doorway to Heaven in our hearts.
This is also very much “us”, even as the Father was very much Jesus. We can speak in terms, which are also true, that Jesus rose up to sit in the throne of his father, and he asks us to do as he did — literally, in Revelation.
Paul spoke of order in the church, that prophets should hold and control “their” spirit, where, in fact, he was pointing out that is their spirit.
If all else was burned away, died, the spiritual death of the old self, then what is left, but the Spirit of Christ?
There is, after all, no resurrection from the second death, either it has no power over you, or does not. If you are already conformed to Christ, you remain yourself and ‘as if pass through the fire, retaining much, or even all, of your belongings’.
25 responses to “Are our feelings an accurate window on reality?”
we all have different realities. I mean, what is “real” anyway?
so to answer your question, yes our feelings are definitely an accurate window on what we all perceive our own realities to be.
We all have different experiences and perspectives. But different realities? I think of the sheer number of mental illnesses that begin with and rely upon this mindset of isolationism.
My thought is that our feelings are truly like a window. Sometimes a dirty and distorting window. And our best assessment of the greater reality beyond us will come when we lift the window and are no longer gazing through the distortions of our feelings and emotions.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been misled by my feelings and emotions on too many occasions to not learn something from it.
maybe you misunderstood my first sentence? I meant that my reality is different from yours, not that we each have several realities – but, who knows.
but what we see is what we see. it’s your/my reality. if it’s a dream, the dream itself is real, not what’s going on in the dream.
My assertion is that differing experience, personality and perspective do not HAVE to isolate us in “different realities”.
And noted that isolating in nothing bigger than an exclusive “personal reality” is where many mental illnesses (which are on the increase) gestate.
I doubt it.
I have had too many experiences where I have accidentally uncovered information that has altered or even reversed a perspective I held.
My experience echoes yours.
Staying with the window analogy if we keep the window of our emotions clean we can often accurately assess what is outside. But a lot of things in life tend to gunk up that window from the inside until the reality outside isn’t so clear.
Things like unresolved personal issues/hurts/fears; unforgiveness; trespasses against others ; agendas and games that we cling to religiously. Anything else?
It depends on a whole lot of factors.
Are we healthy? Sickness affects our perceptions. Even needing to use glasses, hearing aids, prosthesis affects our view(s) on reality.
Are we extremely emotional in any way? These affect our perceptions.
Are we desirous of something? Wanting something affects our perceptions (hence the bible’s prohibitions of wanting something that you don’t have- even if you never have the ability to act on your wants).
Are we having an extraordinarily good or bad day? that too will affect our perceptions
The only way we can be sure of what we are experiencing is to confirm with others, and asking others “did you [see, hear, smell, feel, taste] that? and after awhile the people who would be constantly confirming would think you’re crazy for asking them to confirm what’s plain to them.
Another way would be to record everything that’s going on with scientific instruments, which would also be crazy to lug around with us. We base things off of experience, which we assume to be the same the next time around.
A third way to be sure how to make sure we’re experiencing reality is to be 100% completely emotionally detached from the situation and the outcome (maybe in that sense the Buddhists have it right!) HOW to be emotionally detached is another matter altogether! Flippancy probably isn’t the way to go, because that tends to piss people off. Neither is a devil-may-care attitude. But this **might be** the only way to become sure that we are experiencing the reality that is!!
And I can hear your comments “what about the reality of the spiritual?” I am discounting that concept entirely because the spiritual nature would cause us to become MORE attached to the situation, as in “oh, if i don’t say something to this person about [fill in the type of religion or “relationship” BS you want] that person could go to hell.” or “If I don’t [or DO] perform X act(s), I am going to heaven.” The idea of detachment says “It doesn’t matter what happens to me, [or this other person,] ultimately in the grand scheme of things.”
Actually, you shared a lot of good stuff and put a lot of thought into it.
While I hadn’t included sickness/disability as “distorters of reality” they certainly are. I was focusing specifically on emotions/feelings; because as a species we put a lot of stock in these things.
On “emotional detachment”. The “Christianese” response to this is to simply “leave it at the foot of the cross” or “crucify the flesh with Christ” (our emotions and feelings being a “surging” of the flesh). But imho, this is not presented as clearly as it could be and is left as a “just have faith” equation — and if you cannot do it, you are “lacking faith” (which further beats you down).
In various Eastern and Native beliefs I encountered, they more effectively break down the process and I found it easier to understand.
“Detaching” the emotions is a meditational exercise (in Christianese a prayer exercise) of learning not to abolish them or beat them down with a stick (feelings, distractions), but to exert increasing control over them them vs letting them control you. If you NEED to see something purely and feelings/emotions (or any other distraction of your flesh) flares, you let it for the moment. And then you visualize a bubble around it to contain it and let it diminish until it’s nothing. If it “resurrects”, you do it again. And again: so long as “needing to beat it” doesn’t become the new feeling, the new emotion, the new distraction!
If it does you just let it continue what it’s doing inside the bubble, and gently move it aside so you can see the “reality” (the purity) beyond it. Put it in a certain “spot” as something you need to come back to and deal with later, if it hasn’t collapsed in on itself before you get back to it. Or if it will not be brushed aside, YOU slide around it and leave it where it wants to be. Either way, you are asserting that YOU are going to decide what you want/need to focus on.
In all cases (and contrary to a lot of religious teaching), you don’t try to beat it down with a stick (ie, recrimination). This just turns it into the lion that will devour you. Let it fade into the mosquito you can then brush away or squish if need be.
And then with this understanding, I came back to the Christian process and found it made a lot more sense AND had a lot more power.
“Actually, you shared a lot of good stuff and put a lot of thought into it.
While I hadn’t included sickness/disability as “distorters of reality” they certainly are. I was focusing specifically on emotions/feelings; because as a species we put a lot of stock in these things.”
… etc…
Everything ultimately points to Christ. The methodology you are describing is not far from the one today used in the cognitive behavioral sciences, and specifically, strongly, used in “hypnosis”/”nlp” (“neuro linguistic programming”).
Carlos Castenada has been proven to be a “fraud”, but I continue to find great insights from his works. And, they certainly were very intrinsically “shamanistic”, being based around the “brujo” observations.
I do and look everywhere.
Really, this is not only required for understanding of Scripture, especially the advanced stuff in the New Testament, but naturally is forced for anyone who actually really bothers to truly understand it. Which is very much opposed to just mindlessly accepting what others say, under the pretense of echoing their dogma is the same thing as critical thinking.
Still, being locked in these things is part of the design. From Christianity to Judaism to Islam… to, really, just about everything else modern, including the religion of science and atheism.
It is all a well crafted trap specifically designed to empower the force of repentance due to the extraordinary nature of the sin created in people.
Wherever there is very hardened legalism there are the most hardened of hearts. and with it a deeply vast interworked dense star without light… a dead star… where it will ultimately collapse in on its’ self due to the sheer weight of it. Unlike supernovas and literal stars, this happens when evidence of God is shown. Such as we see in the apocalyptic parables of Jesus in the gospels.
If you are condemning a lot, strongly… then when it comes time for that standard to be applied to your self, it thoroughly and strongly – profoundly – implodes.
So, it is all are chopped down. And judgment is not necessary between good and evil.
At the end.
I maintain that what our “cognitive behavioral sciences” are just “discovering”, spiritual Christians have had available to them since Pentecost.
Rather than “naturally forced”, with me it was more of an organic process. It just happened over time as I learned more and more about God’s nature through His Spirit and written word. Though I admit that the first few years was spent learning the difference between the voice of my feelings and agendas and the Spirit’s voice. I found a distinct difference between the two.
And organically over time, the voice of my agendas and baggage has grown less and less pervasive — so long as I remember to keep up with my spiritual calisthenics.
Religion is about exerting and then not losing control over “others” (including the “congregation”). It is why many of the right-wing religious nuts are VERY much about exerting control over everyone . . . but themselves! Free thinking is actively discouraged.
Whereas the spiritual path of Christ is very much about free thought, free mind, free spirit. The focus is control of self, rather than control over others.
I find that we can accept God telling us very much, perhaps, but those matters which are very strange can be difficult to hear. So, the way around that, is what I was talking about.
There was not a natural means, per se, God simply uses the alphabet from earth to speak to me. Some languages offer some words, others offer different words. Complex concepts often require complex demonstrations. Such as what I call “metaphoric frameworks” (like “software libraries”, also often called “software frameworks”). (Which, yes, in turn, comes from physical engineering.)
I do not go, certainly not anymore, ‘oh by appearances, this can be no messenger of God, because they are gay, lesbian, prolific sexually, atheist, alcoholic, drug addict…. and so on. Because these things can be faked, and further, they can be separate from who the person really is inside.
For instance, masculinity effectively has been broken down to testosterone. Animals and humans have it. The bull shark is a good example of an animal with naturally extremely high estrogen.
All the same behaviors are there with testosterone in human males as with advance animals with it.
Carve that out, seeing it by observing the behavior via contrasting. Where the right contrast can reveal what before was hidden. And, then we see more of who the person really is, apart from any of their earthly functionalities.
I think our feelings can distort reality to a certain degree. Feelings are biological responses to which we’ve assigned meaning. So, it would stand to reason that individuals would interpret a single “reality” differently.
Or that the same person would interpret it differently from one moment to the next at the behest of feelings.
True.
Your preferences invariably distort reality, whether that involves feelings or not.
Otherwise, we are finite beings, so we can never see reality as it truly is.
Though, this is rhetorical. Can we? I
Our preferences have everything to do with our feelings.
As finite beings we can never see all of reality or see it perfectly clearly. But we should not let this keep us from developing a clearer and clearer Insight as we grow.
(Vs, as we stagnate?)
“Our preferences have everything to do with our feelings.”
I suppose that is so, though I do like to think I hold some preferences that are logic based, and not feeling based.
But, yes, ultimately, preferences and feelings do go together.
Thing is, I was told this. By an angel. It was shocking to me, at the time, because I had not yet made sense of angels relying on rhetorics. (The actual statement was, ‘there is no truth, because we believe what we want to believe, based on our preferences’.)
When I finally figured this out, I put myself to work to examining my preferences, and trying to change them where I can.
We can think we want one thing, but maybe something else is even better for us.
“As finite beings we can never see all of reality or see it perfectly clearly. But we should not let this keep us from developing a clearer and clearer Insight as we grow.
(Vs, as we stagnate?)”
I was about to say we never can, but I do not like saying never. After all, seeing God, we see everything. And, ‘we have the mind of Christ’ to inform us on that which we can not see.
This is my lifelong obsession and priority. I can’t do anything unless I know what the lay of the land is.
This is tied to what both Jesus and Paul said about the flesh opposing the spirit and the spirit being contrary to the flesh. Feelings and urges are of the flesh — and they tend to drown out things of the spirit — including wisdom, intellect, freedom to choose.
And these things of the spirit “require” one to not just be at the mercy of their “flesh” (feelings, urges, preferences).
“This is tied to what both Jesus and Paul said about the flesh opposing the spirit and the spirit being contrary to the flesh. Feelings and urges are of the flesh — and they tend to drown out things of the spirit — including wisdom, intellect, freedom to choose.”
“And these things of the spirit “require” one to not just be at the mercy of their “flesh” (feelings, urges, preferences).”
You believe God does not have feelings or preferences?
That’s an excellent question; and I really don’t know. Passages in the Bible do suggest things please and displease God; and speaks of “those He loves and those He hates”. The OT talks much about His wrath or vengeance. But it also talks about His feathers and wings protecting us! How much of this is a true image of God — and how much are they simply the perspectives a child trying to understand an adult world without sufficient experience/context?
We relate to God in the same way a child relates to an adult — as best as they are currently able. Which is not the way they will relate to those same adults later on.
All I know is that the God who is my Father, is very personable. Is this my perception, or true actuality? Some day I’ll know. For now, I know I am loved and cared for.
“How much of this is a true image of God — and how much are they simply the perspectives a child trying to understand an adult world without sufficient experience/context?”
This is not an understanding I see which is normal with human beings.
I do not view emotion as sinful, nor necessarily of the flesh. I view David, for instance, and Jesus, as individuals with a very strong and robust heart, and feelings. I have certainly seen plenty of dispassion, but I have also seen extraordinary passion from spiritual people.
Where, by “people”, I mean angels… and they certainly have a wide range of feelings I certainly do not see with regular human people.
As angels always see the face of the Father, I believe that is what they are reacting to, and certainly, we have all met Jesus through angels just as John the revelator did.
Normally, I find angels are joyous, unusually so. Human beings, not so much.
Spiritual excitement is one of the bigger emotions I have seen, where it is clear that “something really exciting and good is about to happen”.
Normally, when I think of God as beyond angels and men, I think in terms of God’s long term plans, and how God will make good on all of the world. And the future that is coming (and in some ways, suirely, already here).
Peace and confidence are strong emotions I certainly have seen more then a few times from very spiritual people.
I certainly do believe eyes of fire indicate a strong heart full of powerful emotions.
Having emotions is not sinful. As you pointed out, even Jesus had them when in-the-flesh (beyond, who can rightfully say?). Sin enters the equation when “they have us”. The flesh craves the worship of emotion, feeling and urges.
Here’s a question: with the Holy Spirit living in us, are we not able to always “see the face of the Father”? (Even if we don’t always avail ourselves of that gifted ability! Remember, Peter “sank” when he stopped looking in Jesus’ face and looked instead at the fearful waves).
Many religions get caught up on “seeing God’s hand” (the physical manifestations into this realm”. As singer Steven Curtis Chapman says, God’s true children are “seeking His face, and not only His hand”.
Emotions, particularly the more spiritual ones like joy and peace are not verboten. There is even a place for passion — though compassion is far more noble. Sin enters, when we cease “having them” and they “have us”.
You could probably find no shortage of “churches” out there who’s worship ” in Spirit and in Truth” has fallen into the worship of flesh and feeling — who ramp up and worship the feelings and “the passion” in song, in shouting, in dancing, in glorying in Salvation as “just a feeling”.
Or who sink to the worship of dead physical objects, books, rituals, ceremonies — and try to “justify” it by “faithfully” gritting their teeth and cranking out emotions that their flesh can then feast upon and worship.
Again, here, I largely like to consider the phrase, from an old love and rockets song, ‘you can go against nature, but that is nature too’. Accompanied with Paul’s self-examination he shared with us, that he does not even judge himself.
We can ‘do this and do not do that’, but ultimately, we get to a place where everything is more dynamic, flowing, and hopefully, God will have shown us just how rarely things we do and say are as we thought they were. Maybe even more importantly, how often what God does and says so often is not as we thought they were. Which includes what others do and say.
All of this certainly runs down deep, even to what we think.
Then, there are multiple tracks of thinking, what earth language now, today, calls “conscious” and “unconscious”. In dreams, our first person, present tense usual viewpoint is as our “conscious”, while everything else is as our unconscious.
“Spirit” wise, with Christ in our hearts, does not also come with Heaven and her host?
I have been told this, and often wonder at it, at how I am as two different people, yet one.
Strange things.
We come by our default (or “fallen”) nature quite naturally. I think it’s good that Paul both “anguished” this in Romans . . . and celebrates that a “renewed nature” was his birthright in Christ. (As in, one has to “know the woe”, before they can seek and then adequately rejoice in the release from it!).
In my experience, the Holy Spirit shows me the benefits of the “do”s when my eyes are on God . . . and I experience the woes of the “don’t”s when my eyes are just on god-of-self. It becomes a very streamlined and organic process, as per Jesus’ assertion that He ushers in a “yoke” that is easy and a “burden” that is light.
My thought and experience has been that God’s Spirit in my heart of conscious choice, means I am translated into a denizen of that Kingdom — including “heaven and her host”. I am in the physical world, but not “of it”; with Jesus as the model. He still had interest and concern for the worldly goings-on. But His perspective of them was spiritual, and eternal.
How am I two different people, yet one? Or am I perhaps more of a mini-Trinity? Body, mind and spirit? I can operate and manifest in just one of these modes. But I remain an incomplete, fractured “one” unless they are all sounding in harmony.
We each have Christ in our hearts, God.
Paul did speak of having removal of all which is him, and what does that then leave us with? Still, two, from my count. God in our hearts and life, world, reality… “our own personal Jesus”, as the song lyrics so aptly put it (a truly powerful concept accepted by metaphor via a truly good song)…
After all, Paul speaks of the dead rising, the angels, the saints, Jesus, and us rising up to meet them… then finishes it explaining we personally will live with Jesus forever and ever. But, how is that, for such big crowd? Innumerable, is what is shown at times.
With Jesus in our hearts, God in our hearts, we have the doorway to Heaven in our hearts.
This is also very much “us”, even as the Father was very much Jesus. We can speak in terms, which are also true, that Jesus rose up to sit in the throne of his father, and he asks us to do as he did — literally, in Revelation.
Paul spoke of order in the church, that prophets should hold and control “their” spirit, where, in fact, he was pointing out that is their spirit.
If all else was burned away, died, the spiritual death of the old self, then what is left, but the Spirit of Christ?
There is, after all, no resurrection from the second death, either it has no power over you, or does not. If you are already conformed to Christ, you remain yourself and ‘as if pass through the fire, retaining much, or even all, of your belongings’.
After that, then what?