November 2, 2008

I was regenerated by the Word and the Spirit prior to connecting with the Work, and now since I've been away from the Work learning Christian doctrine I have converted. I can now turn to the Work anew and again approach everything with "What is real? What is practical?" The Work is my Christian teaching. It always was, since I had the Bible and the Spirit from the beginning of it, but now there is understanding of the faith, which is there now to be more of a real foundation to the Work (and that is practical, for instance in how prayer works when doing the Work, the second conscious shock, all of it, or knowing my foundation in God's Kingdom, my legal standing, etc., is practical when in the midst of spiritual warfare, or knowing that it is the Holy Spirit that is being worked with when accumulating energy, and that it is It that is being 'grieved' when I indulge features of false personality. All of that and more. It's all practical.) The Christian foundation provides what is needed for further stages of Work effort and development. No longer in innocent stages one needs what is Real in a conscious - in understanding - way.

And I no longer have to fear returning to Work teaching as if I am leaving the faith. God knows. I can build being with confidence and unafraid.

Knowing biblical doctrine at its highest level I can see how the Work is real and how the Work transcends that exoteric level in a real way. The Work teaches on the same topics. For instance: determinism, fatalism, total inability, free agency, free will, God's will vs. self-will, ability to do, all the tensions and nuances of these things as discussed in Calvinist doctrine are taught with greater precision - and with all academic and worldly drama and dreck thrown out - by the Work sources (Ouspensky). I find the Work sources (mainly in Ouspensky) to be continually impressive in this respect. The subtlety of the language of the Work is remarkable, and the on-the-mark nature of it is remarkable. The aspect of it having deeper wells when you return to it with greater understanding is remarkable. How it stands up against the best, most mature literature of the world is remarkable. Transcends all that actually, of course. It is a teaching of the Holy Spirit. It is the practical teaching of union with Christ. All obvious to me from the beginning though I didn't put it in such terms in the beginning.

C Influence is the only realm left once the realm of B Influence has been exhausted and it has done what it can do. That big realm needs to be entered into. Continually.

For contact with that realm one needs to be in the - at least - third state of consciousness.

The simple, ongoing goal to read the Word of God complete, seven times, is sufficient and practical. Fourteen times could be the longer goal, double the mark of a king, God-willing.

Prayer and fasting being Christian practices necessary as well. A simple trinity: complete Bible readings, prayer, and fasting. All other Christian practices get done as a matter of course when you are actually doing all the above. Fearing God and not man, tongue as a pure fountain, glorifying God, mortifying all lying, acting from gratitude rather than from resentment in all things, mortifying the flesh, battle with the world and the devil, assaulting heaven, even evangelizing the faith because one's presence in life, and one's influence on others through time evangelizes the faith in a pure way.