“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
—Colossians 3:2 (NIV).
This is no shabby snobby dig at the world around us and the people in our lives; it’s more about life enhancement and going on to the place we’re simply destined for...
How is it that we can at once fly high above the claptrap of common, annoying, noisy life?—yet, we commonly don’t. Most of us identify our innate chagrin with the reality of our experience.
The promise held close to our respective personas is we can actualise these yearnings within our very souls. Yet, we continue insanely looking yet never finding—our search never finds us, and we’re bereft of the spirit that causes to somehow possess us.
We’re separating what’s termed the ‘internal’ person from the ‘external’ person here; the spiritual from the natural; the higher mind from that which is lower—the default kind of thinking that naturally comes from the inner person and their world, not heaven and the things of God.
The person of the higher mind has learned to integrate both mind and body, spiritually. They’ve negated the overweening grip the body has over the mind; the mind is therefore able to (finally) influence the body.
These people are “spiritual even in body, because [their] actions and words proceed from the higher mind, which is spiritual, through the lower, which is natural.”[1] (Italics used for emphasis.) The mind is to the cause, as the body is to the effect. The mind must be the antecedent of action.
We desire a high-mindedness if we have any sense in this life. We want to break past the common vulgarities and petty complaints and useless power plays of the lower mind. We want more for our time, and frankly more (from our minds and bodies) for our God, than the grubby plate of common lukewarm minced corn we’re dishing ourselves and others up.
And it’s due a penchant for ‘the appropriate’ that we’re like this, as we struggle to stomach and reconcile the odious denigration of a life poorly lived.
Being high-minded is no trip of haughty pride, but a seeking for the very best one person can offer their God.
The higher mind is a thriving garden, a pleasure playground active in the goodness of the living realm.
It gently and peacefully cascades over the waterfalls of liquid gold—the trusted quality of the richest virtue. It nimbly skips through the treacherous underlying and around the bounds of the world’s rationality.
There is good and common thought—both in solid and noticeable abundance—yet, higher thought is hardly visible to these purveyors—it’s a scale tantalisingly obscure for those stuck in the common, lower mind-set.
Cherish the vision of a plain yet spectacular time when irksomeness has ended, vulgarity vanquished—such is the beauty and wonder of things abstract; not for everyday, deceived minds, deluded beyond holy comprehension.
To get to this higher place—a plateau above common experience—requires a ‘letting go’—a losing—of the heavy cast iron shackles of this world and its transitoriness. If we don’t want it why would we take it?
The higher mind is there. It’s a choice we make. Choosing the higher mind is the way to a higher joy, and a superior experience of life—for us and everyone around us.
Invest and reap.
© S. J. Wickham, 2009.
[1] Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion (Vol. II) (trans. John Whitehead) (original copyright c. 1771, BiblioBazaar, 2008), p. 34.
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