The following was written after reading Galatians chapter 5
From the Tree of This-and-That:
The left-brain-mind is the part of our brain that is designed to experience the world as this thing that is apart from or something other than the rest of creation [that stuff]. This part of the brain is a tool, designed to focus in on individual bits of definable, measurable matter [the Greek meter, to measure].
As such, when looking with the left-brain-mind only – we cannot see the fractal nature of reality. We cannot see that what the left-brain-mind experiences as separate things are all actually arabesques in a single pattern or happening. From its point-of-view, life is reduced to the sum of its parts – losing all sense of connectivity and spark.
Every interaction and every connection will be experienced as though it is foreign – we say things like, “You need to face facts,” or “…confront reality,” as though we are these skin-encapsulated Persons who have to lug around this sack of tissue and go about conquering and to conquer.
This is just a good actor:
Adam and Eve have partaken of a fruit of distinctions – a bitter fruit in a garden of uncontrasted sweetness. It grows on the Tree of knowledge of this and that [good and evil, day and night, pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, sickness and health, life and death, God and humans, etc.]. Adam and Eve have left the primitive [or child-like] experience of nakedness – of just being without dressing up in this Persona or that Self – and they have now become this and that.
The left-brain, Self-consciousness reigns – having replaced the right-brain, God-consciousness that had previously been humanity’s state of mind. Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed. There never was a problem with the nakedness, but once the Self-consciousness gained dominion – shame entered in, Adam and Eve got busy trying to cover their shame with clothing and labor – until they eventually lose consciousness [or die].
The next step for God’s creation [according to the plan that was counseled on in the beginning] was to enter the Sabbath rest. However Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of this and that at the direction of Satan, not God. Instead of being still and knowing that He is God – they desired a distraction from this rest. The diversion is how this can ignore its nakedness – so God provided physical coverings and manual labor for Adam and Eve according to their desire. Now this doesn’t have to be conscious of its nakedness because it is busy doing that.
To cut through the coverings acquired by your left-brain-mind, you must rest. But rest doesn’t mean to stop. Stopping just shifts the idolatry from being busy to being idle. When working from your left-brain-mind, you’ll always just make yourself a better and better actor [hypocrite]. The left-brain-mind will always try to work at doing things that would just happen spontaneously [be part of our nature] if we would just soften the right-brain-heart in repentance.
To yield, to submit, to rest, to sit down, to cease your frantic effort to be this or that.
Your flesh was crucified on the cross too:
But to be busy doing that – because you still identify your-Self as this – is being entangled with a yoke of bondage. However, in Jesus Christ, neither business nor idleness avails you any thing. Instead, you have been called to liberty – not to use that freedom for an occasion to serve the flesh – but to serve each other in love.
Those who have denied their Self so they could be identified with Christ have nailed their flesh to the cross with Him, and have had this crucified. So we may just walk in the Spirit, identifying ourselves with Jesus Christ [doing His works, saying His words, having His same mind in us, etc.]. Because only by so doing can we cease to be subject to the flesh and to the power of the devil. So long as we are playing the game of this vs. that – flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh – pitting things against each other, as being contrary one to the other – we cannot do the things that we desire.
The gospel is not a battle between the forces of this and that – darkness vs. light, good vs. evil, virtue vs. vice, men vs. women, flesh vs. Spirit, etc. Evil is not really any thing at all – it’s no-thing [nothing]. Evil is the shell of what remains after meaning has departed from something. It has no power or purpose on its own anymore, only the meaning we choose to give it.
The works of the flesh are manifest:
- Adultery
- Fornication
- Impurity
- Lasciviousness
- Idolatry
- Pharmaceuticals
- Hostility
- Quarreling
- Jealousies
- Outbursts of anger
- Selfish ambition
- Divisions
- Heresies
- Envyings
- Murders
- Drunkenness
- Revelling parties
But the fruit of the Spirit is:
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Faith
- Longsuffering
- Gentleness
- Goodness
- Kindness
- Meekness
- Temperance
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8 Comments
LDS Anarchy 
Doesn’t making a distinction between the left and right brain result in one falling into the “this and that” trap?
Modern research has discovered that there are really two brains working together. One brain in the right hemisphere, the other in the left hemisphere.
Each brain expresses themselves and perceives reality in opposing ways — and they must be brought together in harmony for the whole picture to be properly seen. The two brains are joined by a bridge of connecting tissue that allows them to communicate with each other and to combine their individual expressions, so that outside observers perceive a single message.
The “This and That” game pits one thing against the other — in some attempt for up to conquer down — or awake to beat asleep.
The Lord has said that “children are whole from the foundation of the world.” Another way of saying “whole” is “united” or “complete” or “with no divisions or separations among the parts,” — meaning that the two brains are united, each one working as they are supposed to work — not working as “this” part and “that” part.
The left-brain is what sees the contrast, sees the bits and particles. It is the part that defines things as “this” and “that” — so when children grow-up in a world where all the adults have brains in which the left-brain-mind is dominant — as they grow up, “sin conceiveth in their (right-brain-)hearts.”
The effect of sin is that it separates us from God [because the left-brain sees the separations and the distinctions].
Seedofjapeth — you mentioned on the other post that you are new to this blog — have you read the first post that LDSA wrote on the split-brain model of the gospel?
I just checked it out now. Connecting the right and left brain to the yin yang is an interesting concept. That would imply that a preference for balancing the hemispheres of the brain would be preferable.
Connecting the right brain with what people throughout history have called “the heart” is a new concept for me as well.
In the post it is mentioned that the devil will sometimes exploit right hemisphere thinking in order to mislead people however I would contend that the devil also misleads people through exploiting left brained styles of thinking. All sorts of horrible things have been done under the worldview that the world is mechanical. All sorts of horrible things done in the name of science and politics.
If people balance the right and left brain the horrible tendencies associated with left brain dominance disappear in the individual who achieves such balance.
Right — never pitting one against the other in the game of This vs. That, and “So long as we are playing the game of This vs. That – flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh – pitting things against each other, as being contrary one to the other – we cannot do the things that we desire.”
Oh yes — he hardens the heart to be sure — but the devil also darkens the mind as well. This post talks specifically about that too.
[…] recent series of blogs is based on an ongoing conversation with this […]
Ah, is this a narrative of another one (point of view) who “worships” a God that they allege does not reign, but is reigned by a left-brain. Consider that the “left-brain processes” that result in such a construction in language (and the related experiences) are entirely in accord with the Will of an Omnipotent God.
“Eve Evil (Attention is worship)”
Audio:
text:
Can’t tell if you’re agreeing or disagreeing — but I’ll say that I think that the created universe is really a reflection or manifestation of a more complex and enduring reality — that of the mind, call it consciousness or maybe I’d call it “agency”.
In any event, what we see and experience as tangible are the shadows/images of a vibrant and endless resourceful intelligence that is dynamically and continuously self-creating [like a fractal] — the right-brain-heart of God. And every part completely and perfectly reflecting the whole – like two mirrors placed in front of each other.
Nothing happens here that does not first begin in that unseen realm. If something in the left-brain-physical world experiences instability, then the right-brain-spiritual component has been experiencing instability. Physical/material problems are important only insofar as they are a message sent to the visible world.
Therefore, to seek healing, one goes to that unseen level of existence to repair the disturbances that are manifesting here – because once healed there, the physical world will reflect that. The priesthood is the tool that connects us with the unseen world to rearrange the structure of this world. Whereas, physical medicines are a form of magic — because they rest in the assumption that matter has power over the mind, instead of the other way around.
And to comprehend nature, we have to stop thinking of the universe as material [i.e. left-brain dominate point-of-view — that it is composed of particles] and begin seeing it as a manifestation of agency [consciousness or “mind”] – permeated with sparks of informative energy.
The created universe [the left-brain-mind of God] exists as such only insofar as it is reflected and considered by agents, things with consciousness/”mind”.