Mental Filters

Our limited capacity to learn necessitates having a filter to reduce the amount of information to a level we can absorb and make sense out of. Our filters are biased and molded and tightened by culture and bigotry. The new birth brings a new filter. We will always have a filter because of our limited ability. We always believe our filter is correct no matter how irrational. A mew filter must come supernaturally but it also must be chosen and accepted. A filter strengthens and grows by feeding on information that favors its bias.

There are two basic kinds/types of filters – those based on FEAR and those rooted in LOVE.

A fear filter narrows and restricts over time until it chokes out all counter information. A love filter zeros in on life-giving information and faces, and over time is able to expand one's capacity to think more broadly, more complex and with peace. An indicator of what kind of filter we are using is how we define the word “truth”. If truth means primarily information collected to buttress our bias, then likely you will find that fear is the adhesive used to hold it all together. If truth is a balanced discovery of life-giving relationships and information that contributes to explaining and enhancing those relationships, then you will likely begin to notice that compassion and love is the substance of choice to bind together the various materials and people that bring joy.

As a person moves from the 4+ level lower and lower in the brain he loses relational capacity, synchronization etc. Ironically sometimes he believes while he is moving deeper into isolation that in fact he is ascending into higher and higher truth. He becomes more intense in self-justification and becomes frenzied in assembling information and facts in his own defense. He believes himself to be approaching the very center of truth while in fact he is losing touch with reality because of his isolation of spirit. He insulates himself with facts so that he cuts off more and more channels of communication from outside his mind. Intensification of false reality leads to a self-justifying spirit which by extension is also an other-blaming, other-condemning spirit.

Growing awareness of true reality leads to more spontaneous compassion. To realize how and why someone is self-deceived can nurture pity, caring, concern and a warming that I too often suffer from self-deception and need latitude from others and protection from God while I grow.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness to most people means excusing the offense done against them and attempting to stuff or deny the internal pain they suffer. Inherently they realize there is something wrong with this but they sometimes try to force themselves to stuff the pain and push the memory out of their mind and pretend outwardly that everything must be OK because it is a religious duty to do so. This kind of forgiveness is driven by fear – fear of God not forgiving us if we don't forgive, fear of not looking religious to those around us, fear of condemnation even from our own conscience. But running away, hiding, pretending and fear do not heal. It only masks the deep reservoir of pain, bitterness and desire for revenge seething at our deepest level. But even that has to be hidden and denied for fear of condemnation.

What we really desire is for the offender to suffer at least the same pain we have suffered, but preferably much more. We want sweet revenge. We want to even the score and then some. And we think the only way to assuage our pain is to somehow inflict the pain back onto the offender, or at the least hope to see them suffer deeply from some other source while we gloat over their pain. This emotional belief has driven our belief about the nature of hell and our desire to view God sharing our emotions. We want God to feel hatred and vengeful like we do so we can be justified in our anger. If it's OK for God to punish in anger then we feel it's OK for us to indulge in it since we are in His image. But in fact – we are only creating Him in our image – and the image of Satan.

True forgiveness means acknowledging our pain, embracing it, exploring it, not hiding from it, not stuffing it. It means recognizing the source of the pain and who offended us and how much, but then choosing to take ownership of it instead of blaming. Blame assigns ownership of our pain to the offender and leaves the key for our freedom in their hand. But even if they try, they can't use the key to set us free. Only we can use the key to walk out of our prison. Facing and owning the pain and rejecting the false hope through blame and revenge releases the other person in our mind and allows God to heal the pain and truly set us free.

WYSIWYG

I believe that the WYSIWYG principle is exactly what is demonstrated in the events and lives at the time of Hell. What You See Is What You Get. What is very interesting is that this principle has been working itself out since the beginning of sin. As Lucifer began seeing an arbitrary God Who would refuse to forgive if anyone disobeyed Him, Lucifer himself refused to turn back while there was still possibility of his own forgiveness. “Memory recalls the home of his innocence and purity, the peace and content that were his until he indulged in murmuring against God, and envy of Christ. His accusations, his rebellion, his deceptions to gain the sympathy and support of the angels, his stubborn persistence in making no effort for self-recovery when God would have granted him forgiveness --all come vividly before him.” GC 669 What he insisted on seeing was an unforgiving God and his belief became his reality in fact – he placed himself in a permanent position of unforgiveness.

Then he applied the same principle to the angels he was deceiving and caused the same results in them giving the appearance that his views of God were in fact correct. What was actually correct was that he was creating his own god and then becoming a victim of it.

Witnesses

God has never instructed us to argue for Him. That is what attorneys do. We are not suited to argue for God because we have not the capacity to know everything about Him for one thing, and more importantly we misrepresent His attitude when we argue, for we adopt the techniques of His enemy, the spirit of Satan, when we indulge in argument and debate.

We are called to testify as witnesses. Witnesses do not know all the facts or have the complete picture. That is why God insisted there always be more than one witness. A witness has only a small bit of the giant puzzle to contribute. But every piece brought to the table and humbly surrendered to be interlocked in unity with all the other witnesses create a compelling and more accurate portrait of God to a skeptical world.

A witness testifies to his own experience and perspective. It is unique and different from anyone else but not antagonistic if it is truthful. If instead of exercising ourselves trying to force our perspective and understanding on everyone else, we simply presented what God has been, and is now to us, we would see God's power and beauty emerge in a glorious way.

Relationship Despair

Confusion. Frustration. Suppression. Numbness. Dullness. Insight. Weakness. Hopeless feelings. Now there’s a good one - hopeless despair. We all need more of that, a bigger dose of hopeless despair once in a while, to remind us of how helpless we are and how big God is. Just thinking about it that way nearly ruins the hopelessness right off the bat thinking that God may show up any time now and intervene. Not that I can make Him do that by manipulation.

I woke up musing about this situation with K_____. I’ve seen this pattern before but interestingly enough it always involved women before and I was always labeled as something of a womanizer - whatever that means and implies. I always felt misjudged but helpless to defend myself since the circumstances and evidence always favored everyone’s judgments of me. Now the same thing has happened but this time it is a man and there is definitely no sexual overtones. The symptoms are strikingly similar though. Someone is listening and open and seems to understand me. There is mutual openness and seeming vulnerability and safety. Something deep inside me stirs and begins to move that I don’t understand and it frightens the other person and confuses me and those around me. The other person is frightened or overwhelmed by either my unusual openness or my desperate clinging lunge toward emotional intimacy and suddenly withdraws to protect their self from this unknown force, sometimes accusing me publicly of inappropriate advances on them. I am deeply hurt. The thing that stirred inside me dives for cover again and tries to burrow back into deep secrecy and isolation where it has lived most of my life. I never get a very good look at it partly because it doesn’t show itself long enough to observe carefully and partly because I am so ignorant of understanding to know what I am looking for.

Last night I was reading a little in Living With Men by Jim Wilder and read a section that suddenly exposed some strong clues associated with this mystery. He describes a boy who’s “attachment light” was seldom responded to by those around him when he was growing up and developing his brain capacity. Consequently he suffers intense pain and feelings of rejection which he cannot stop. He cannot turn off his attachment light by choice but he does learn to cope with the problem by hiding his light (just this second I was hit with the thought of hiding your light under a bushel and it felt very convicting) and pretending that he doesn’t hurt. He learns to function by being stoic and learning to appear “normal” on the outside so no one will see his pain and make him feel shameful. The book says that by the time the boy is about 13 he becomes so good at this that his light seldom comes on anymore and he is not even aware of the problem anymore.

As I read this paragraph my emotions surged strongly in recognition of an exact description of my life. In one way it is a relief to finally hear an explanation that makes sense, but in another way I face a blank wall. If the remedy is in a healthy community that fosters growth and healing, right now my case must be nearly hopeless, for no such community exists for me as far as I know.

I also realized this morning that there is at least one major difference between K_____ and myself. Besides that fact that he has a family that is committed to learning these concepts and growing together no matter how much pain it entails, K_____ has not seemed to be one to lunge toward someone and become clingy like I do repeatedly. He may have done it at some time but definitely not toward me. Although we had a wonderful intellectual friendship and a mutual desire to grow in understanding of ourselves and of God, we were quite distant at the emotional level and very guarded. This may be due to the marriage syndrome where once people leave school and get married it seems impossible to develop deep friendships with anyone else again.

Whatever the case may be, Wilder’s description still fits me perfectly. He states that for the rest of his life this boy’s greatest pain will come from ruptured relationships and his level one bonding functions will be very undeveloped, ignorant, weak and unsynchronized. That certainly describes me rather well. What to do about it is still a complete mystery to me, but that’s where I am right now.

As I read more today about good and bad mothers I wondered how that applies to our relation to God. I have thought that we need to get synchronized with God’s feelings and emotions. But since God is the perfect mother and we are all so immature He must need to synchronize with us first until we are mature enough to initiate synchronization with Him. So it’s not wrong to ask Him to come and feel our feelings with us. That is how we learn to return to joy, by having someone join us where we are first and then watch them to learn the way out of it back to joy camp. But will He do it directly Himself or does He use people to do it for Him? Or, as is often the case, is the question itself full of wrong assumptions?

So how do I apply this right now? Will God come and feel stuck with me? Lonely? Misunderstood? Rejected? It seems like I’ve heard of Him doing that an awful lot. And does this tie in to what Jesus said about not doing anything except what He saw His Father doing? In a perfectly matured, synchronized relationship who initiates the cycle? Or is it so mutual that it makes little difference? Or are the questions all wrong still?

I’m sure glad God is in charge of this whole learning process. He is trustworthy to continue what He designed us for and what He is doing in us. Sometimes it’s hard to stay in hopeless despair long enough to give God a chance when you are learning so many exciting things.