Some perspective

Maybe these notes can help or spur you guys to look back in a similar way...

I came across an old website I'd made, and on it I'd listed dates having to do with my Work experience.

I first connected in a real way with the Work in Jan. '92. From there I studied it and did it in a very pure way for seven years to the month. What happened after seven years?

In Jan. '99 I was given a computer and internet access. I then embarked - without consciously trying to do it, just in a state of going with the flow - on teaching and explaining the Work to others which became a pure stage of consolidating understanding of the Work. I'm going to say that lasted about seven years to Jan. '06. That is the most arbitrary date I'm listing because I have a sense that most of the consolidation of understanding took place in a very concentrated period from about late '99 up to the fall of '01. About two years. Then 9/11 knocked everything on its rear end (in the strange ways we've talked about before). So, after 9/11 the 'pure' stage probably was no more, but I think it went on. What I actually think is I shifted from an innocent Work-only focus and began to really learn orthodox biblical doctrine from late '01 to the end of '05. I really have a sense of that because I began my Plain Path Puritan blog in late '05 and I at that time pretty much had all the doctrine down in understanding, and I can see that when I read the early posts on that blog.

The third stage was not so much a Work stage, but when I look back at Jan. '06 to Jan. '13 I can see it was life events and having to make a living taking over everything. '07 my father died. '08 my mother died. '09 I made a lot of money in the stock market. '10 to now I've been through the ringer trying to figure out how to make an actual living for life in the stock market (not easy). When I look back the innocence of my existence was gone and a lot of stress was present and really I had come out of the cosmos of school back into the world.

So, what now? (And, again, pretty arbitrary of me to say Jan. '13 is significant other than it marks the end of a seven year period. Yet it is a natural cycle of years, and when I think back over the last six months I *have* been attempting to make real Work efforts that harken back to my purer stages. In fact that little break down I had last Sept. could have signaled the end of that seven year period as well. So now I ask, since Jan. '13 what kind of a cycle am I in currently? I'm seven months into it, and it's not really defined for me other than my attempt to makes Work efforts in the old way again. But I have a feeling like I'm trying to go back to high school.

Probably now I have to use the full armor of God, including engaging the Bible in a meditative, complete way, and do the Work to the point of really breaking through. That involves getting in shape too. Physically.

But these things are usually done in punctuated fashion. Concentrated times of fast, intense work. I just point that out so as not to get caught up in thinking too linearly regarding the seven year cycles...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Some perspective 2

Some further observations on that rundown...

From that rundown one can see how fast the years go by.

Also, you who first came into contact with me back in '99-'00 probably have really thought I've backslided and gone off the way. Been not serious. But it is these last seven years that have seemed directionless. From '99 through '06 there were mostly pure exchanges. And again, the Christian doctrine focus from 9/11 through to '06 made it seem the Work was discarded.

What have all the other Work groups in the world done in that time but keep talking about the Work? It's a natural progression to move into the ultimate and real school of heaven and earth and all time and eternity.

What has been missing, and what you may have sensed without intentionally articulating it, is the covering, or the cosmos of school. That covering, or cosmos makes influences come alive in ways they don't outside of it. So what once was flowery meadow and clear running stream becomes deadlands and dry stream bed. So with the covering, or cosmos of school, just mentioning a higher influence, talking about it, a Parzival, a Beethoven late string quartet - not to mention Work ideas and practices themselves - the influence and the communicating about it has a life and energy in it that has disappeared without that school element.

I want to clarify one thing from that rundown in the previous email. I actually was practicing the Work in the last seven years. It was the most I've practiced it in the actual real traffic of everyday life in fact. Some of the long-running events I've mentioned involving my family for instance. I used my Work experience and what I'd built up to navigate through that. It's hard to describe, but I was given an onslaught from the world that was pretty much a 10 on a scale of 10 of ferocity. If ever somebody was going to be tempted to do something violent and stupid it was there. A real test. But I was up for it. That's all subsided.

Now I find though that I'm much more self-conscious (in the worldly meaning of that term) about being out and about in the third state. Or I have been in the previous five years or so. But once I know that I can go against it.

Again, too, I want to repeat that when higher influences become old hat it also may mean we have become out-of-balance regarding knowledge and being. We have to increase our capacity for new understanding (increase level of being). And I think I have sold all the great higher influences (B Influences) short when I've made statements such that they have been transcended and so forth. I think they've still got a lot in them to offer once you increase your capacity for receiving what they offer.

Certainly certain influences you do transcend. But there are summit level (and beyond summit level) that still exist.

Of course it is C Influence that we tap into ideally from the third state and higher, but remember that what makes B Influence worthwhile is the amount of C Influence in each one.