Soul\'s Journey the Soul (or

¶ … Soul's Journey

The Soul (or Mind's) Journey to God

We are blessed only as we rise above ourselves, that is, above our human condition with all its turmoil, sin, and grief into a more spiritual state of consciousness. Only God can raise us up out of a corporeal sense of selfhood into the consciousness of divinity. We have to want to grow spiritually with our whole heart. If we do humbly desire to be closer to God, God will help us, lift up our consciousness, and guide us "in the way everlasting." Prayer, or communication with God, is, therefore, the first (and absolutely necessary) step for spiritual growth to take place.

Life on earth is a stage in our spiritual development, a rung in the ladder we are climbing, where we can mentally climb upward in our understanding of God, or the First Principle. First Principle is that aspect of God which governs the Universe and science by means of eternal laws. What we need to do is turn to God and let ourselves be led. Consciousness (the "mind") is where we will find God's eternal image and likeness. By resolving to walk prayerfully in God's way, we experience the joy and knowledge of His presence.

Creation has three stages. God has the idea ("Be it made"), God perfects the image ("He made it"), and creation appeared ("It was so done"). Christ also experienced himself in three stages -- as flesh and blood (corporeal), as the image and likeness of God (spiritual), and as the divine (God).

The individual mind in three aspects is conscious of the body, is self-reflective, thinks of itself as having an identity, and looks to God for wisdom.

Each of these three stages is divided into six divisions of action. For example, after 6 days, Jesus was transfigured.

Accordingly, man goes through six stages from lowest to highest in ascending to the consciousness of God. Man's prayerful nature makes him capable of ascending to God and growing from temporal consciousness to eternal consciousness. The six stages are "sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence, [and] illumination of conscience." These stages are built into us, part of our spiritual nature, implanted in us by God. We lose sight of them when we sin, but God's love awakens us, and divine justice (or the human suffering that comes from sinning) helps us to repent and change our ways. As we learn to know and understand God, we learn to see ourselves as perfect, the image and likeness of God, or as God's eternal, spiritual idea.

Christ is that aspect of God, which impelled by divine Love, is understandable to human consciousness.

If we want to ascend to God, we must avoid sin, which clouds the mind. A pure mind prays best and most clearly communicates with God. We must pray, live holily, and strive to express God's attributes of love, forgiveness, order, intelligence, artistry, purity, growth, and truthfulness -- in order to understand and see ourselves as God's image and likeness.

God is calling us to do this and has made us able to do it.

In the first stage, carnal sense appears to be intelligent and believes itself to be because it believes it understands the nature of everything.

Carnal sense is concerned with material things, with counting, measuring, weighing, and naming all the objects in the material world, evaluating function, distinguishing one thing from another, etc.

In the second stage, the believer is one stage higher because the believer knows there is MORE than a physical universe and that God has a plan for the world.

Thus, two states of consciousness clearly emerge, one to grow out of, the other to grow into spiritually. One state is material and corporeal, the other spiritual and eternal. In the corporeal stage there is corruption, while the spiritual is eternally pure and incorruptible. "Behold, I make all things new."