Internal Floundering

Deeper exposure of evil for evil relationship last night. Nearly all my communication is based on view of other person's resistance. Working very hard to dislocate splinter from another's eye. Definitely need a new heart and new perception.

It is very difficult for me to discern difference between conviction and false gods. False gods are very adept at using my mind to make me feel depressed and self-pity when others don't value me. I especially feel depressed when I believe I have yet again overwhelmed a sensitive person with too much “intimacy” and frightened them away from ever getting near me again. I feel intense shame, beat myself up emotionally, tell myself that I'm a jerk and I never know how to properly relate to people emotionally. It is always too much or too little affection. Every time I try to express what I believe is being honest about how I feel it either scares people off or makes them angry or both. Now on top of that I can add feeling guilty about being an image manager and trying to always control what people think about me.

How can I identify lying spirit gods? It seems I have to know the real laws and my relationship to them. I have to know what is true as well as know God, the source of truth. When I try to argue with the voices they always win because they can always out-feel me.

• I need discernment that I don't have and can't produce by my mind to uncover the disguises of the enemy gods. They are not me, they are sin living in me.

• I need to know solidly how much authority I have in Jesus Christ, not just intellectually but in my deepest spirit.

• I need to exercise that authority against the gods as soon as I identify that they are harassing me again.

• I need to arrest them boldly and decidedly and force them into judgment before the court of heaven.

• Then I need to know how to impose a strong restraining order against them to prevent them from stealing, killing and destroyed my life and marriage and relationships further.

Internal Analysis

I am slowly becoming aware that the immense wall of resistance inside me has a mixture of fear, guilt, pride, shame, rebellion, self-justification, self-defense, fear of death. Sounds like the same ID's as the gods that have been getting exposed. I feel incapable of managing them in this situation as far as getting them to relinquish resistance, they refuse to take directions about this. I stay confused about what method or handle of willpower to use to unlock my mind or even where permission is needed. The exit door is not clearly marked, at least on the inside. And one of them that most people on the outside insist is the only exit clearly looks like it will not only destroy my false identity but my real heart as well, though that fear has been unpacked much better than ever before.

Yesterday Rose observed that my basis for thinking – perceiving reality - is deeply distorted due to a life-long lack of encouragement and affirmation. That feels very true. It feels very strongly that that is one of the primary missing ingredients I need to be able to discern the way out of my trap or take action to move. This is clearly what the Life Model describes as type A trauma. My early years of deep fear of God have not been completely undone yet and the residual effects are still evident far more than I wish was true. Of course, this simply means that I am finally starting to uncover deeper levels of the brain and embedded beliefs that have not yet been exposed over the years of new beliefs that have replaced much of the upper level lies. In fact, I now remember Wilder explaining that when you get down to level 1 and 2 problems and emotions it is beyond the reach of the will or consciousness and can only be changed from the outside. He said the only use for the will at these levels is to trust the other person to make the changes, but with no control either over what is changed or any ability to reverse the changes once they are made.

I don't understand why I don't feel much more appreciation and spontaneous gratitude for what they are doing for us. This is probably the best effort anyone has ever put out for us for the least appreciation. The only positive thing I see in this is that I am not like the people that Regier talks about that shower him with flattery making him realize they didn't get what he was trying to get through to them. This lack of natural gratitude as a constant in my life is baffling to me. Maybe that's because it is rooted in such deep levels of the brain that is is beyond access from my conscious searching. It also makes me afraid they will run out of patience with me and give up because they are not appreciated. Of course there is also the expiration date fast closing in on their stay here that stirs my fears.

Uncovering these emotions is only possible at this point in my journey by capturing them early in the morning and chasing them from one to the next and capturing them in writing before they go deep into hiding again. They only peek out when everything is quiet and my mind is actively digesting the previous day's input and the overnight filing process. Then after awhile they all sink back into hiding and don't emerge again unless some unexpected emotional event occurs. And even then only selected ones surface in response to whatever fits the nature of the event and quickly return to hiding to avoid observation.

Two Languages

I am in the infant stages of learning about real heart communication and identification. I am beginning to learn some of the most elementary principles that seem so obvious and yet so unknown. After they dawn on me, (which probably means they are linked together between my left and right brain), I realize they were right there in the Bible all along and other people have been trying to convey them to me for a very long time. That makes me feel a little stupid. Maybe that's what the Bible is talking about in 1Cor. 3:18-20 Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, "He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR CRAFTINESS"; and again, "THE LORD KNOWS THE REASONINGS of the wise, THAT THEY ARE USELESS."

2Co 5:16 “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” I think I may be starting to understand a little of what this might mean. It is highlighting the difference between two languages, the language that most humans typically use and the language of heart communication. Actually they are more like filters than separate languages. We always have filters in place when we think and talk. The problem is not just whether we have correct information but even more so how we interpret it and what part of our brain is allowed to interpret it.

Learning to live from my heart, even a renewed heart, is a real struggle for me right now. It is much easier to interpret others through the filters I have used all my life that were both trained into me by my family, church and culture and ones I have cultivated. But most all of these familiar filters, even though they sound very right, are easily defendable and can even be deeply entrenched in proof texts and quotations, these filters are actually based on formulations of the false gods that have deceived me all these years. These filters are based on the Sarc (or Sarx), which is the Greek word translated in the Bible as “flesh”. That is the natural part of us, human nature, what feels normal and sensible, common sense etc. Much of religion is based on Sarc thinking though that statement would be sure to raise intense controversy. Sarc thinking can be based on very true information and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt but still not be heart-oriented or sensitive.

Heart language requires having “the eyes of heaven”, perceiving not only others but also our own hearts with new appreciation and insight. It is a skill that everyone must have if they are to participate in heaven's kingdom but is so rare it is startling when we see it. In fact, we often mistake it for simple-mindedness, immature thinking or even naivety. It is most easily seen in small children but is soon trained out of them by abuse and lies. It is being able to honestly express the truth about our real emotions and motives, either good or bad. It is also the ability to discern the difference between what originates from an innocent heart and what purports to be from our heart but is actually gods masquerading as our identity. This is the part that is very new and very difficult for me to successfully navigate right now.

But as I consider the alternative - that is, to continue to misjudge and wound the hearts of those around me in my attempts to defend myself or maintain being right – I decide that this venture is more than worth the effort and dis-ease of being out of my comfort zone for a season. Viewing the immense damage I have already caused the hearts of my own wife and children over the past 30 years I believe it is time to accept a radical new direction in my thinking, believing and relating.

This is very unsettling and frightening for me and makes me feel very vulnerable, as I have expressed recently in my blogs. I have to accept the very real possibility that someone, or many ones, will choose to exploit my vulnerability and choose to hurt me deeply. That is the price I have to be willing to pay to unlock my real heart and actually begin to live real life again.

I remember when I was a teenager at LBA in Tennessee going out into the circle and lying down in the grass struggling with this very issue. I sensed that my ability to enjoy beauty and have deep relationships was fast eroding and being replaced by a feeling of callousness and walls of self protection. I no longer could genuinely revel in a beautiful sunset or experience many feelings like I used to do. Intrinsically I realized that my capacity for experiencing joy and connecting meaningfully with other people was the exact same capacity that I was willing to allow myself to be hurt and wounded without cutting myself off. At that time I made a conscious decision to be willing to accept that. I believed for many years that that decision still stood in my life. But over the past few years I have begun to realize that somehow that decision has been largely reversed, but so subtly that I didn't realize it was happening. I again became aware that many of my relationships, especially with close family, were feeling more and more at a distance even though externally they look respectable. But this time I am in the quicksand so deep that I could not get out by myself. I heart is struggling and gasping for it's last violent attempts to breath and I need emergency resuscitation.

I have been praying for months for something more than just another seminar or even a week-long counseling session, as good as those have been. I needed someone, preferably a couple, to literally move in with us and show us what it looks like while teaching and coaching us how to live and love and be real in everyday life. God was so wonderful, as He always is though I often don't perceive it, and sent that very thing into our lives. We are right now going through that very process with the most unusual couple I have ever met who have those exact qualifications. In fact, they have made it their life work to do just what I described, to live with people, provide their professional mediation skills and their wide variety of training along with their more important abilities to live from their hearts transparently in any situation. It is literally taking weeks for me to slowly unfreeze the thick walls encasing my own heart. I often feel very much like the frozen waterfalls in the recent movie Narnia, as they begin to crack and soften and leak, threatening to collapse into a torrent of revived life and free flowing emotions again.

I don't yet have an ending for this to write yet. That's because I'm still in the middle of the process and don't know what's next. I am simply trying to express and understand and share it as it happens.

Heart springs

'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' Matt. 22:37-39

I find it quite interesting that each mention of this in the Bible always lists the heart first and the mind near the last. I think that is very significant. I also am beginning to see that loving your neighbor as yourself cuts two ways and has interesting implications. It also is much more of a heart issue than a mind problem. It is, in fact, a principle as much as a command.

If I don't love my own heart, respect it, value it and care for it I am incapable of effectively doing that for the people closest to me, my spouse and family. I am not referring to selfishness, I am referring to discovering my true identity that God implanted in me at conception and designed for me to be.

I am a human being, not a human doing. But long ago I lost sight of that and have viewed myself in essence on the basis of all my doing. Therefore I became an image manager and live in constant fear of what others might think about me. This also disables me from relating to the hearts of those around me especially in my family.

Pr 4:23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.

I never really understood what this was saying until this morning, at least to a greater degree. My heart is really the “vital connection” to the Source of Life, God Himself. When I am not connected and aware of my heart I have choked off the channel through which I need to receive life. I also am unable to give life to other hearts. If my heart is buried under a mountain of religion, fear, shame, information, worries, distractions, addictions etc. – the spring is clogged up and I don't experience fruitfulness and joy and all the results of living water in a dry land.

Reproof and Identity

One of the big reasons it is so hard to accept reproof is that is feels like an attack on my value and identity. It seems that effective reproof would make a stark distinction between the sin that dwells in me, the false gods acting out through me, and the real heart in me that is easily wounded and never originated the offense in the first place. Separating behavior and identity in our understanding and perception of our self is a massive paradigm shift but is undermined when it is not used in reproof.

This is why it brings such hope when someone cares and affirms another person's true heart intentions while exposing the self-defeating, hurtful habits that hold them hostage. If this distinction was practiced much more, there would be much more hope around peoples hearts opening the way for love to enter and begin to work and grow. Making this distinction is an act of grace, not holding our sins against us but acknowledging it presence and control in our soul. This is the core essence of what Jesus was all about. I have heard about it as theory but am just now vaguely beginning to perceive it with both halves of my brain.

I want to know what this looks like. I want to practice it. I want to be able to receive it and have others treat me this way. The reason I get so defensive and resistant to any attempts to reveal my deep issues is that it is almost always perceived as an attack on who I am. That reinforces th shame that has been the trademark atmosphere of my soul environment all of my life and is the catalyst for discouragement and despair. Pride then comes forward to counteract and protect my heart from being hurt again and the cycle continues to spin.

If I am rebuked for pride and rebellion, my true heart motives, my real identity is attacked as being haughty, selfish and wicked. I hear my Dad repeating his mantra to me again, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee...” (1 Samuel 15:23 KJV) I remember the intensity and even how my body felt when receiving that strong message from him again and again. I didn't really know what witchcraft, iniquity and idolatry meant, but I knew they must be very bad so I must be a very bad person at my core. Another favorite memory verse often rehearsed to me was Jer. 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” This was the primary definition of my heart I learned as I was growing up.

Now I realize that this is why I struggle inwardly to be able to believe what feels like anti-truth that I have been learning from various healing ministries we have been involved in over the past few years. The idea that my true heart has good desires and may even be created perfect in its motives, or at least designed that way seems blatantly anti-biblical, in spite of exhaustive proof-texting to the contrary to convince me of the truth of God's word. I'm sure that some will be equally stirred up with strong feelings against what I am saying for possibly very similar reasons. My left-brain mind has been more or less accepting of this “new theology?” for some time, but my control center and gut belief wiring (false gods) says it can't be so. For all the texts that promise cleansing, renewal, a new heart and identity seem to always have an “if” connected, which in my training and belief system always meant I had to repent enough to impress God that I was worthy enough to be forgiven and saved (until the next offense).

This underlying (with the emphasis on “lying”) theology, reinforced by life-long training and coaching by both family and church makes up much of who I perceive myself to be. And I believe until it is fully allowed to be exposed in the true Light and seen (by my heart, not just my mind) for the monster that it really is, it will continue to run as the default Operating System of my psyche. And as long as this is my OS, it's conclusions and assumptions will strongly influence how I treat other people as well as myself.

Right now I feel the confusion of two Operating Systems running in parallel inside me. No wonder I give people confusing signals and conflicting messages between my words and my mannerisms. It seems like Paul described the same problem in Romans 7.

As I think of it, my mentors in my childhood and early youth were working from the paradigm that people must be thoroughly convinced and convicted of desperate wickedness before they could learn anything about grace. I never did learn about grace. For years it was just a very confusing, baffling word that didn't logically fit anywhere in my understanding of religion. I was taught by implication and mentoring to skim very lightly over, and discount the weight of verses portraying God's wastefully extravagant plans to change us for His name's sake, and instead to dwell primarily and heavily on texts that seem to demand performance and proof of repentance before God could accept and then change us (with a lot of will-power on my part). No wonder many of my friends have abandoned the church trying to reconcile the reality of their true heart within and this theology without (without true grace).

My assigned identity with Saul as being a rebellious and stubborn boy had the effect of producing and strengthening those very traits in my life. The gods stepped in and began to perform, fulfilling my father's prophesies over me. I was receiving a cursing instead of a blessing, just as he had experienced. Indeed, rebellion really is like witchcraft; it casts a spell over you and when you receive it's predictions it assigns its own identity to your self-perception. This is reinforced by resulting actions and reactions toward the very people who assigned you the identity in the first place confirming in their minds their beliefs about you as being valid and “gospel” truth.

As all this faulty thinking and false training is floating to the surface this morning from the cesspool underneath, God pointed me to His word for me today. As I was looking for the above texts in a concordance this text also caught my attention as well. Unfortunately it is not underlined in RED in my parent's Bible like the previous ones are. “And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings..., saith the Lord GOD.” (Ezekiel 20:44 KJV) He also reminded me that Saul's identity was produced by a long series choices that resulted in his rejection as king and a life of guilt and despair. It was a terrible curse to have that identity assigned to me and forced on me for the “crimes” of childhood mistakes and sins.

Though it was a commonly held belief by my Dad's culture that “negative motivation” techniques would result in positive changes, the negative messages were only received as delivered and the false gods moved into their new home happy to extend their destruction and madness to yet another generation. The sins of the fathers are indeed visiting the third and fourth generation of those who hate God. (Ex. 20:5) And why shouldn't we hate Him, if He is of the character we were led to believe.

Praise God for His grace that “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20 NKJV) I choose to receive the prophecy twice spoken directly to me by people of God in recent months. Though I don't yet know what it looks like or all the implications, I accept it as the Word of the Lord for my true destiny. Amazingly, it comes from the story of the same Saul that produced the previous identity curse that was prophesied over me so many years ago producing so much pain and dysfunction in my life these many years. This is the real desire of God's heart and His prophecy about me.

“And the spirit of the LORD will come powerfully on you, and you shall prophesy with them, and shall be turned into another man. And it will be when these signs have come to you, you will do for yourself what your hand finds; for God is with you.” (1 Samuel 10:6-7 MKJV)

“And the spirit of the Lord will come on you with power, and you will be acting like a prophet with them, and will be changed into another man. And when these signs come to you, see that you take the chance which is offered you; for God is with you.” (1 Samuel 10:6-7 BBE)