The Spiritual You

The Spiritual You

Copyright © 2005 by William J. Landon

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Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Other Scripture from the King James Version as noted by (KJV)

ISBN: 0-595-34879-3

ISBN: 978-0-5957-9597-0(eBook)

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1   A Spiritual Universe

CHAPTER 2   The Three Part You

CHAPTER 3   Perfectly Incomplete

CHAPTER 4   The Physical You

CHAPTER 5   The Soul You

CHAPTER 6   The Spiritual You

CHAPTER 7   Religion and Spirituality

CHAPTER 8   Doing and Being

CHAPTER 9   Soulish Living

CHAPTER 10 The Spirit and the Law

CHAPTER 11 Dividing Soul and Spirit

CHAPTER 12 Spiritual Relationship

CHAPTER 13 Spiritual Unity

CHAPTER 14 Spiritual Knowing

CHAPTER 15 Female Before God

CHAPTER 16 Spirit Living

APPENDIX Bible Verses Used by Chapter

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my wife Kim and all my fellow travelers on the journey to the greater expression of my human spirituality and their’s. They have given far more than can be returned. They have been the willing conduits of

God’s love.

Introduction

The Spiritual

The spiritual component of human existence is simultaneously the most important and least understood aspect of our being. As we have traveled through the passage of time from the original creation event, the human race has become progressively more estranged from our spiritual roots and core. What this means in a practical sense is that we have progressively become more estranged from our true identity. That is, we have become more and more alienated from the true self that God the Father created us to be. This estrangement has resulted in a progressive degeneration of human kind. While there have been many rises and falls in humanity’s values and moral condition, the general trend has been in decline. Our decline is one of social condition, not of individual situation.

This is not a new, dire prediction but the fulfillment of a pronouncement that is nearly two thousand years old: "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them." (2 Timothy 3:1—5) Be assured at the outset of this book that I am not writing this to bring up prophecies of end time disasters. Such writings can be readily found anywhere. Further, I am not at all sure that such subjects as end times predictions minister to much benefit for our daily living. People have always had a lurid fascination with disaster and this is unhealthy. It is not my intent to contribute in any way to this fixation.

On the other hand, I will not shrink away from whatever truth the Father may choose to show me—whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. The purpose for writing this book is to hopefully bring the people who read it to a greater understanding and grounding of the true nature of our humanity and of the world we live in. We waste a great deal of our energy and effort in worthless pursuits because we do not understand what is of value and what is not. We do not understand what is real and what is not. This situation has developed because we have lost a great deal of our connection with our true beginning which is to say with our spiritual roots.

From the Primitive

Perhaps the greatest factors contributing to the increasing distance between our understanding of how things are and of the reality of the world are technology and prosperity. I must quickly point out that I have nothing against either of these issues (technology or prosperity). In and of themselves, technology and prosperity are just conditions. They have no inherent goodness or evil in themselves. They are, rather, put to good or evil applications. In any case, it is futile to speak against either of these things. No nation or culture is going to go backward in technology voluntarily and no one is going to walk away from prosperity. To expect any society to do this would be at best idealistic and at worst stupid.

We should, however, understand how these two conditions can work to effect our lives and our understanding of reality. With increasing technology comes increasing ease and comfort. Physical prosperity also contributes substantially to our ease and comfort. In and of itself this is not a bad thing. It may even be correct to see the advances in technology and the benefits of prosperity as blessings from God insofar as they improve our lives. What is a very great potential for evil however, is how we allow this ease and comfort to color our perception of the world and our place in it. If we are not careful about how we understand our accomplishments and situation in the material world we can be severely warped in our concept of reality.

This happens when we see our comfortable lives as an indication of God’s blessing on us and our lifestyle as a result of either our righteousness or the correctness of our lifestyle. We can also be warped in our view of life if we see prosperity as a result of our own power and intellectual superiority. In the worst cases we may fall prey to both of these delusions. I firmly believe that the most difficult condition there is for people to survive is prosperity. In the primitive setting, people are concerned with basic survival. In this setting we see both positive and negative consequences. Primitive cultures should not be held up as ideals of the way people ought to live. Neither should these cultures be seen as inferior to technological ones. Where the great advantage in primitive settings lies is in the clarity of vision such situations allow.

The Down Side

We can see both a positive and a negative in the primitive. The negative is that there is little higher aspiration in a culture living at the survival level. This is merely a fact of life. You cannot be just getting by in the area of the necessities of life and at the same time be writing symphonies and novels. One of the great gifts of technology and the prosperity that it brings is the creation of leisure time. With leisure time comes the opportunity to create and enjoy beauty and to develop and express cultural ideas.

We must try to get this aspect of human expression into a proper perspective. I have seen this truth mishandled on both ends of the spectrum. There are those who feel that the primitive expresses a purity and genuineness that is an ideal of humanity. Where I find this difficult to accept is in the fact that I have never heard this expressed by anyone living in a primitive culture. It is just no fun spending your whole life figuring out where the next meal is coming from. It is nowhere near ideal watching half your children die before the age of ten. The vast majority of the people who idealize primitive culture have never had to live under these conditions.

Primitive cultures represent life lived at the subsistence level. If we are to be honest with ourselves we will see that this is not necessarily an ideal. It is also not necessarily a sign of some sort of inherent inferiority. Again, if we are to see these things in a clear light we must try to remain free of emotionalism and idealization.

The Up Side

The thing that primitive cultures have that is superior to technological ones is a sense of spirituality. When you live close to the edge it is quite difficult to fall into the false idea that you are in charge of your life and world. When we are constantly faced with danger and privation, we know that we are not the biggest influence at work in our world.

This is exactly what technology and prosperity insulate us from. Once I have met my needs as well as a fair number of my wants in the material I will probably become a little arrogant. Why not? If I am capable of setting myself up so well, what need do I have for God? As my level of prosperity raises, my perception of a need for God (or any other view of the spiritual for that matter) drops. To the person rolling in material prosperity God often just gets in the way. Physical prosperity tends to dull our view of the spiritual component of living in general. The primitive has no such opportunity to fail. When we live at the subsistence level we know that we are very dependent creatures. We may not know upon what we depend but we cannot escape the understanding that we are not in charge.

The person in a technological culture on the other hand is in danger of becoming ever more convinced that they are in complete control of their world and their life. We control most every aspect of our lives. What we don’t presently control our technology is working on controlling. While we no longer cherish the same rosy view of a technical fix for every problem as we did in the early twentieth century, we still trust our technology for a great deal. What we cannot gain a technical control over we can control through our laws and regulations. In the final extremity, what we cannot control technically or legally, we try to control militarily. Thus the fantasy of our godliness grows in our minds.

The Problem

Into this sea of good times comes the problem. As we draw ever further away from our mere survival level roots, a very surprising negative appears. This is the increasing feeling that we are not as happy as we could be or should be. Or to put it more correctly, we are not content. This is very unnerving to us. For our whole lives we have been told that if we can have just a few more material possessions we can be perfectly contented. If we have a little bigger car, a little bigger house in a little better neighborhood or a little better job with a little more income we will arrive at a place of peace and contentment.

Yet, where have we arrived? If we are honest with ourselves we find that in pursuing these things we have only arrived with bigger lifestyles and bigger bills. We have more stuff and we are still not content. Rest continues to be a very elusive commodity. We are not at peace—just more affluent. In the end, we have found (if we have found anything at all) that it was really peace and rest that we have always sought. If we are honest with ourselves we have found that our quest for more material prosperity has brought us no closer to being at peace. Our failure to find rest is evident in the ever-increasing number of pharmaceuticals available for the treatment depression, fatigue and anxiety. It appears that what we haven’t been able to correct in our living, we are seeking to swamp out of existence with drugs.

When we look to the world for an explanation of this failure we get more halfway ideas and answers that do not satisfy. The world says: You just don’t have quite enough stuff yet. We are told that we just haven’t found the right therapy or prescription yet. We may go through this loop several times before it dawns on us that we will never have enough stuff or the right medical treatment. By the way, I am not opposed to the practice of either medicine or pharmacology. What I am concerned about is that we are trying to cover up a failure at just plain living with the use of these technologies.

So now we know that mere physical possessions and the meeting of physical needs is not going to get us where we really want to go. If you have made it even this far you are miles ahead of most of the world. The sad truth is that millions upon millions of people never allow themselves to get beyond the a little more stuff stage in their life search. There are many people who will go to their graves never having questioned why life never managed to live up to expectations.

Beyond Stuff

For the rest of humanity who accept that the purely physical approach to life is superficial, another wide and bewildering sea of possibilities is opened up. This is the supermarket of soulish attainments. These are the attainments of mind and emotion. A near numberless array of possibilities exists that all promise to supply what is missing in the shallow world of material possessions. These options offer the promise of contentment through mental achievement (learning new stuff), activity achievement (doing new stuff), personal enrichment (getting new reputation stuff), artistic achievement (creating new stuff), and self-discoveries (understanding psychological stuff).

This is a good first step but it is only a first step. It is good to move beyond the merely physical but does this bring us the contentment we seek? Sadly, I must say that this alone does not bring peace and rest. The problem with this new set of potential acquisitions is that they are still attainments centered and grounded in this present world. This is consumerism of the soul. While the practitioners and proponents of this level of living hold to its superiority over crass materialism their approach is still fundamentally flawed. We tend to see pursuits of the mind (soul) as superior to grubbing around for material goods. Nevertheless, in the end these mental pursuits are not superior, only different.

If we can maintain our honesty with ourselves we will come to a point in this nonphysical pursuit of contentment where we will be forced to admit that we still aren’t getting it. I now know a lot more stuff and I am far more accomplished. I am more cultured and sophisticated but I am still not content in my life. There must be something more out there.

Its Not Religion Either

One subset of the soulish pursuit of peace should be mentioned briefly at this point. This is the pursuit of religious attainment. Understanding religious pursuits is important to our investigation of our spiritual identity. This will be one of the most important things we will look into not because it is the way to achieve peace but because religion is one of the most insidious traps in this journey.

Religion is the classic close but not exactly in the pursuit of human spiritual fulfillment. We should always remember in any endeavor, the close call is always the most dangerous situation. The things that are close but not exactly right are dangerous because they look so good and are very nearly right. Through this closeness these counterfeits can make us think that we are on the right track while subtly leading us down a blind alley. Religion is a phase in the search for personal spirituality that many (if not all) people go through. The religions of the world are a logical place to start on a search for the spiritual because they sit between the spiritual and the physical. World religions are in the world but they talk about the spiritual. Some are even founded on a measure of spiritual truth but they are still fundamentally grounded in the world. This is why religion is a place we may well come through in the search for the spiritual but is it not a place we should stop at for long in seeking the spiritual.

Religion is really a soulish pursuit because it plays on our mental and emotional being. These are soulish attributes of our makeup. The religious person classically engages in external actions that make them look good and caring or that produce a feeling of elation or joy. In the end, however, these things are fleeting and pass away. This is why we need to keep going back to the religious group or organization for a refill. Like the addict that needs the next fix, the religious people never seem to get to a point where they have arrived.

The Brass Ring

Many people dropped out trying to achieve contentment through material possessions. Many more drop out looking for fulfillment in intellectual, religious and cultural attainments. For those who have had the drive and courage (and really—the touch of God) to see that their life’s emperor in all his new clothes was really still naked, there is only one place left to look in our search for contentment. This is the realm of the spiritual.

When we speak of the spiritual realm we speak of something that many, many people have no idea even exists let alone what it is about. The idea of the spiritual has been so pounded out of us by our life of technically derived ease and prosperity and soulish religion that we are all but ignorant of it. In fact, mankind has achieved in these days a level of spiritual ignorance never before attained or even dreamed of.

Forgive me a little sarcasm but it is all too sadly true. In most peoples’ life view the spiritual not only is unimportant, it doesn’t even exist. Yet it is in this very realm that what we really seek after is found. For this reason, the spiritual realm is THE important part of our lives—whether we seek it, understand it, recognize it or not. The only difference between the person who accepts their need for a spirituality and one who doesn’t is in their possibilities. The person who seeks for a spiritual answer has a chance to succeed in finding peace, contentment and true meaning in their life. The person who rejects the spiritual aspect of their life has no chance at all.

It is for those who come (or more properly, are led) to the place of seeking the spiritual answer that I write this book. I am speaking here to those who are able to see that their real contentment rests in their final life completion in the spiritual. These are the people that this book is written for. In reality, we will never reach any ultimate completion in this life but that fact shouldn’t stop us from making the trip. How much peace and rest we find in this life will be directly proportional to our surrender to the spiritual realities of our being. This is not meant to be a how to book but only an encouragement. There are no legitimate how to methods in human spirituality. All that I am capable of doing is to testify and encourage. I can give some shape or definition to this journey and I can hopefully encourage people to go on in it, but I cannot tell anyone how to take the journey.

Spirituality

One of the most liberating and exasperating aspects of human spirituality is its subjectivity. No two human spiritual expressions are identical. There are some commonalities that we will look at but no one can tell you what your spiritual you should (or will) look like exactly. This individual character of the spiritual you arises because of the nature of our spirituality. Each one of us has been created to be spiritually individual—unique and rare. Further, we were not created as beings with a spiritual component for no reason.

The human spirit is an integral part of our makeup. What is more, our human spirit is the deepest and most intimate part of who we are. As such, our spiritual part is primarily an issue between God the Father and ourselves. The human spirit is a part of us that is, in its most intimate and real sense, a component of our life that is not and cannot be shared with any other human being. It is in the spiritual part of us that we carry on our personal relationship with God. We have a spiritual part (the human spirit) for just this reason—to have a personal, intimate relationship with God. Even though many elements of our world including religion may tell us that personal relationship with God is not possible, I must say that this is completely possible. In fact, our personal relationship with God is the purpose of the entire physical creation.

Yet Another Ocean

We can see from this that the acceptance of certain basic facts is necessary to proceed in this journey. It is my fervent and unshakable belief that there is one true spiritual reality or truth. While our human spirituality is subjective in its individuality, it is founded on a set of absolute and objective spiritual facts. As we have become more disenchanted with our life condition, a wide variety of spiritual expressions have arisen. It is into this ocean of options that we now plunge.

If we look at the buffet of possible expressions of human spirituality we see a wide assortment of proposed truths. There is new age, Christianity, Satan worship, nature worship, the spiritual expression of native cultures and so forth. All of these expressions accept the existence of a human spirituality. However, the differences in their basic assumptions about the true nature of human spirituality raise an unsettling prospect. All of these explanations may be wrong but they cannot all be right. We cannot say that all these diverse explanations of spirituality are correct because they contain ideas that are mutually exclusive. If one explanation holds that the universe is self-generative and another that God created the universe, they both cannot be right. There is an ultimate spiritual truth that is right and all the others, at the points where the diverge from this truth, are wrong. This is an uncomfortable reality that modern religion tries to dance around. This evasion of the truth is done in an attempt to avoid being offensive. Unfortunately, personal offense in this topic is unavoidable.

The foundational truths of the spiritual realm are fixed and therefore they allow certain realities and exclude others. When we consider what is true and what is fiction we cannot rest in the false security that all spiritual propositions are mutually allowable. What I will present here is the understanding of spiritual reality I have received. I would ask the reader to consider this understanding. In its favor I would point out that this view has nothing to sell, join or sign up for. I have, to the best of my ability, as God has equipped me, tried to keep ulterior motives out of this view. In many systems of spiritual understanding there is the underlying motive of personal gain. I have tried to avoid this.

Foundations

I would recommend some general ground rules to guide the search of any seeker after an understanding of their spiritual identity. First, I would never accept any system of spiritual understanding that required the authorization or approval of men. If I can only be the spiritual person I was created to be by the authorization of some man or institution of men then I must reject this understanding. There is no believable source of spiritual understanding that maintains that we need the blessing of any person or organization to attain our spiritual identity.

Next, I would never accept any understanding of the spiritual that did not come with some kind of objective proof. The spiritual is just too important to be entrusted to hearsay. That is exactly what unsupported opinion is—hearsay. Surprisingly, millions of people entrust their spiritual understanding to just this kind of system. If you believe what you believe based solely on what the pastor says or what the guru says then you are a fool. I don’t think many people would make an important financial or health related decision without first getting all the facts they could. Further, most of us would want some assurance that the people giving us the advice were competent and free from competing motivations.

Unfortunately, most people’s standard for spiritual advice is much less strict. We seem willing to accept just about anything from just about anyone when it comes to teaching in the area of spiritual truth. It is one of the ironies in life that we place the least value on the things of greatest worth in our lives. This is another evidence of how far wrong we have gone in our understanding of life. In this I am not giving a stamp of approval to any set of spiritual experts. I don’t believe that any human institution confers spiritual understanding on anyone. For this reason we cannot rely on worldly credentials for assurance that a particular teaching on spirituality is true. What I earnestly recommend to spiritual seekers is to question every idea of spirituality. Further, we need to decide on a standard of spiritual truth then try every idea we consider against that standard.

The Standard

In my search I have tried a good many things for my spiritual standard. The one I have always come back to and the one I now stand on is the Bible. If you don’t like this standard then find one you do like. I am not selling Bibles. Be aware, however, that the standard you choose should be a rigorous and unchanging one. Your standard should be able to cover all situations and provide an unending stream of new insights.

As I mentioned before, I have tried a number of spiritual standards—Taoism, Hinduism, spiritism, the occult, organizational religion and others. If the idea of the Bible as a spiritual standard offends you then try the other standards available. You should make every effort, however, to be as totally objective as you can in making your assessments. Do not reject the Bible out of hand. Many people reject Christianity outright because they have had a bad experience with some church, group or individual. Please don’t reject the truths of the Bible because someone you knew mishandled or misunderstood it. You owe it to yourself to find out for yourself if the Bible testifies to the truth or not. In the end, you can only do this by personal experience. I sampled many different sources of spiritual information before settling on the Bible. However many sources you try depends on the leading you receive. My point is that this is the most important search any of us will ever undertake. Given this fact, we owe it to ourselves to be as rigorous as is necessary to assure that we come to the right conclusion.

The spiritual realm is deeper than we will ever be able to come to fully know. I do not feel led to present a discourse in the proofs of the Bible’s accuracy and authenticity as a spiritual guide and standard. In any event, the strongest evidence of my conviction of the Bible’s truth and worth is the testimony that it is the spiritual standard I use. I would only ask the reader to put aside any preconceptions they may have gotten from Christianity or Judaism. I have found that few people and none of the institutions in either of these camps have much of a clue. This may sound arrogant and perhaps it is. However, I don’t think that these groups lost their way because they were not smart enough or diligent enough to see clearly. Organized religion misses the mark because they have mixed agendas and mixed motives. The organizations of religion are trying to preserve or increase their organizational status and influence as well as trying to seek God. In reality, we can never make these kinds of competing programs work well simultaneously.

There are a good many people in the religious world who know the words in the Bible but their teaching and living show little understanding of the truths contained in this book. I maintain that if a person will approach the Scriptures with the idea of establishing and growing a personal one-on-one relationship with God they will be amazed and rewarded by the results. This is a message that will not be found in any religious organization or fellowship that I am aware