Consciousness part 1
I don't know how else to say it: What you see is what you be. What you magnify is what will manifest. What you believe is what defines your reality. That's why it is so vitally important that we are not self-conscious, but Christ-conscious. (And, really, being Christ-conscious IS being self-conscious, because He is our true idenity.) Let me show you something that I think is important: "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept..." (Genesis 2:21). The Bible tells us that Adam was put to slept, and he slept. But the Bible never tells us that Adam woke up. I think what happened when Adam fell asleep is that he fell asleep to reality. Because the very next thing we see is that God took woman out of man. All of a sudden there was duality. And then the serpent shows up and attacks the weaker vessel and it's all downhill from there. The woman (or the soul... the mind, will, and emotions) started making decisions, and she started making decisions based on lies that she didn't know any better but to believe. The woman was decieved. When we are ruled by our mind (instead of our heart... instead of the mind of Christ), or our emotions, that's when things start to get messy. When we are ruled by our own will, or when we are self-conscious, when we try to go our own way... that's when we stray from the path. Basically, at that point Adam (the representative of all mankind) was asleep at the wheel. And that's no way to get where you're going. Especially when you consider that Adam was already where he needed to be. He was already in the garden of Eden--the finished work that God told him to dress and keep. Let me say it another way: The serpent told Eve that when she ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil her eyes would be opened and she would be like God. But the truth was she was already like God! When she ate of the tree of death her NATURAL eyes were opened, but her spiritual eyes closed. God had told Adam the truth about the tree of death, "The day you eat of it you will surely die." And that's not punishment. That's the natural consequence of eating of the tree of death. What else besides death could have come from it? But lies were believed--which, to me, is the very definition of sin, "unbelief"--and things went bad. Fast forward to the Apostle Paul. Fast forward to the New Testament. After the cross everything changed. BECAUSE of the cross everything changed. Mankind was asleep at the wheel. Then Paul writes, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame" (1 Corinthians 15:34). Paul got it. He knew man had falled asleep, and his message was, "WAKE UP!" The natural eyes that were opened by the tree of knowledge of good and evil couldn't see God. Because they weren't seeing from a pure heart. They were seeing from duality. Light AND dark. But Paul knew the New Day had dawned. The light of the world was shining, and the darkness had fled. Now we can see with the eyes of grace. See things as they truly are!