In my first year out of college, I joined a writer’s group that met in the attic of a coffee shop. In the brightly lit wooden eaves of the building, free coffee flowed till midnight. Our minds turned to over-caffeinated mush from the hours of pouring over chapters and poems.
A few of the people there inspired me tremendously, but like any average group, most of the writing was boring and repetitive. One of the members that I suffered through was a guy who looked like one of the dwarves from Lord Of The Rings – short and squat with a grisly beard and a flat nose. He wrote as though we were living in B.C. rather than A.D. In his mind, we were all still using weapons made from stone, building fires by friction, and living according to mythologies that represented our heroic struggles.
He confessed to us, that he found nothing even remotely satisfying about the modern world. He didn’t want to be a part of it, and would rather disappear into the classics. We all had the sense that when not with us, he was in a cabin on a river somewhere, reading Homer by candlelight.
Even though I hated his writing and he hated mine, I found him strangely alluring. He was a mystery I wanted to solve, but never did. His stealthy introversion was an intimidating barrier. Since then, I’ve met this man over and over in many forms. The elitist yearning to live in a glorified past is the ultimate resistance to living in the more difficult present. It is anti-life; anti-hero’s journey – a coward’s way out of reality.
In Donna Tartt’s first novel, A Secret History, the plot centers on a small core of Ancient Greek students at a small Northeastern university. Though the protagonist is from a small middle-class town in California, he tries desperately to fit in among the wealthy. As he infiltrates into the tight-knit program, the idealized view of his classmates begins to crumble. Their web of secrets grows thicker by the day. A pagan bacchanal goes horribly wrong, and all that they hide grows larger than anything else they could possibly share.
Though The Secret History was written twenty years ago, the language of the main characters is antiquated and out of place in the modern day college campus milieu. Off in the distance we see the typical students getting drunk at parties, thinking about what they will wear, who they will hook up with, what drugs they can get their hands on. But in the Greek department, the students congregate in a mystical space, a classroom that is virtually hidden from the rest of the campus, where a teacher sees his students not as they are, but what he wants them to be.
Outside, reality remains unfulfilling and stale. Language takes them to a different time and space, to a code of ancient values and pagan objectives. Their shared knowledge both unifies them and rips them apart through selfish objectives (though they seek to lose the self).
“He laughed and quoted a little Greek epigram about honesty being a dangerous virtue… (Tartt, 27).”
There have been many times when I was guilty of living in the past or the future. It was especially intense all through my childhood and adolescence. While growing up, it felt as though I was living a life that was not my own. It was the life of my parents. Though I grew up Fundamentalist, in my head, I was an actress living in black and white on the Silver Screen. More particularly, I was Joan Crawford being witty; Cyd Charisse dancing; Liza Minelli cavorting; or Rosalind Russell outfoxing all of her costars. I dreamt of my future as an independent woman living in a city somewhere, wearing sequins and faux fur, sipping martinis with movers and shakers.
This fantasy represented my escape from childhood – and in reality, I made it come true. I escaped the dreary suburbs with all of that constricting conformity, and have lived in cities ever since. I danced professionally for thousands of people, made the rounds as a musician, and worked as a showgirl/server at a vaudeville circus show. After hours, I conversed late into the night about who knows what, and desperately clamored to find someone outside of the circus tent who could help me breathe. The flashing lights, the glitter that never goes away, the bits of feathers that get caught in your clothes, the costumes sprayed with febreze – five nights a week like a carousel that you can never get off of. The exhaustion, anxiety, and nausea finally wore me down, and I jumped off the ride for good.
Whenever I choose to build a new life, the past haunts me. People I have known in other cities come to me in my dreams, and it’s as though time never passed away. I am there with them again, those people that I love though I will never see again; never get to be a part of their daily rituals and conversations. Part of me is still there.
If I do visit and see them again, I am not able to fully be part of their present. We only live in the past together, in our memories. I’m no longer on the ride. The past and the future never fully exist – both are merely shadows that taunt us, artifacts left behind, thoughts that have become skewed with time.
It’s important to understand what makes you feel fully invested in your present life. Personally, I need to feel that I am part of a community that both inspires me through their creativity, and provides me with a sense of affirmation for my own work. I also need a lot of solitude during the day, and social activity at night. New faces and fresh conversations invigorate me. The sense of mutual support is invaluable. A feeling of success in what I what I do.
There is a Classics major in all of us. We all get stuck, at times, living outside of the present. We hide away there, where it feels safe, where we know what happens next, where inevitably life has to move on.
Please share your own experience of falling out of the present in the comments below. What is it that brought you back?
Lauren J. Barnhart 
For me, it’s all about my past. Where I came from, how I grew up, what I was taught, what I wasn’t taught, how I was loved and how I learned to love. I have always spent the majority of my “alone” time, thinking about my past. I wish I could say it was for the betterment of self, like a spiritual quest. I can tell you this, I’m not a linear thinker so when I’m thinking about my past, I don’t consciously seek something to bring me back and I often try to stay away from “current day” triggers to sustain my past seeking experience. It’s as though I relive pivotal moments of my life in my mind, respond differently, and observe the outcome. Part of why I do this is because I am constantly seeking to better understand myself. I wish I could say that the amount of time I’ve invested extrapolates to an equivocal amount of self-understanding because it does not.
I also have never understood contradictions within my character. I pride myself and like the idea of seeking truth, wisdom, sensitivity, kindness, patience, etc. But why are my actions occasionally unaligned with my ideals? Do I truly seek another’s authentic opinion or simply subconsciously ask someone that I know will agree with what I already desire? Does my mind really work that way? Why do I desire so many things? Why do I believe in a God? What is my place in this world? Where does my living matter go when my heart stops beating?
I do have a sure-fire, trigger though. One that will always work likity-split.
My children.
For each one, three in total,
will bring me back again and again and again.
And for those few minutes, those precious moments that I am present with them, me through them and them through me, they see me, all of me, my beauty, my horror, my brilliance and all that is less than mediocre and I pray to myself and to my God that some day, some day they will say to their children as I have said about mine, that they wouldn’t haven wanted me any other way.
For me, it’s all about my past. Where I came from, how I grew up, what I was taught, what I wasn’t taught, how I was loved and how I learned to love. I have always spent the majority of my “alone” time, thinking about my past. I wish I could say it was for the betterment of self, like a spiritual quest. I can tell you this, I’m not a linear thinker so when I’m thinking about my past, I don’t consciously seek something to bring me back and I often try to stay away from “current day” triggers to sustain my past seeking experience. It’s as though I relive pivotal moments of my life in my mind, respond differently, and observe the outcome. Part of why I do this is because I am constantly seeking to better understand myself. I wish I could say that the amount of time I’ve invested extrapolates to an equivocal amount of self-understanding because it does not.
I also have never understood contradictions within my character. I pride myself and like the idea of seeking truth, wisdom, sensitivity, kindness, patience, etc. But why are my actions occasionally unaligned with my ideals? Do I truly seek another’s authentic opinion or simply subconsciously ask someone that I know will agree with what I already desire? Does my mind really work that way? Why do I desire so many things? Why do I believe in a God? What is my place in this world? Where does my living matter go when my heart stops beating?
I do have a sure-fire, trigger though. One that will always work likity-split.
My children.
For each one, three in total,
will bring me back again and again and again.
And for those few minutes, those precious moments that I am present with them, me through them and them through me, they see me, all of me, my beauty, my horror, my brilliance and all that is less than mediocre and I pray to myself and to my God that some day, some day they will say to their children as I have said about mine, that they wouldn’t haven wanted me any other way.
Thank you Stephen! Beautiful observations. As you continue to write your memoir, you may find answers to some of those contradictions and questions. As for the really big questions like ” Where does my living matter go when my heart stops beating” – the mystery is the most exciting aspect of life.
As I read about your experience with your children, I realized, that currently I am often transfixed by the possibilities for the future. The hero’s journey of trying to become a mother under some difficult circumstances, and the constant presence of someone who hasn’t been born yet.
I also think a great deal about creative goals, though the joy is in the daily ritual of writing and making art. The opportunities are endless, as long as I am open to them in the present.
One of the more mis understood concepts in the universe is time.Translating time through the three parts of our human anatomy( spirit, mind and body) is the best way to share both observations as well as experiences.
Time is defiled when we experience any kind of an event that equates to trauma. A period or span of time in our life when we consciously experienced fear, pain, anguish.
When these events take place to us or around us several things happen within the three parts( spirit, mind and body) which all register the trauma.
When you were violated by a football player your spirit, mind and body all recorded this trauma.
I was violated by an older brother as a teen. My spirit, mind and body all registered this trauma.
My body told me it hurt, My mind registered shame, disgust and condemnation and my spirit registered several minutes of inexplainable shock which created a span of time in my spirit.
This span of time which seemed like hours but actually only several minutest was clearly defiled.Even after I had forgiven him and had cleared and processed this assault i still retained these several miniutes of trauma in my spirit that was hard to ever let go.
This trauma bond to this span of time also became an origination point to this place.
This time, trauma and place became like a puppeteer’s string to be pulled in my life whenever I came close to any familiar emotion as to what had happened during these traumatic few minutes.
These painful recollections were even showing up in several of my dreams. they were also causing me to freeze up if I ever came close to these kinds of emotional experiences.
They were all related and it was finally understood as trauma bonds to time and place….. except it had been registered in my human spirit. Today it is called PTSD except they do not use the spiriitual aspects.
After many many years I began to re- frame this understanding in a context of spiritual warfare.
I had been violated. My sense of timing as well as my true authority had been defiled. It was not until some time later after I had been able to get past the religion thing which appearrs to have defiled you as it did me so that I could finally begin to understand how to gain healiing from this spiritual paralisis(PTSD) and move not only into an area of freedom but eventually to gain some authority in which has created a keener sense of authority and clarity to timing issues in and aroud life issues.
Thank you so much for sharing garryumphress! I’m happy to hear that you have found freedom and a sense of authority from such a negative experience.
Being stuck on mental repeat with a traumatic event is very frustrating, but possibly the only way to eventually move on from it.
I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but I’ve had recurring dreams where I am back in Christian high school or college, being forced to believe things I don’t believe, and being told to act a certain way. There is this sense of incredulousness, and the feeling that I will never graduate, and never escape. And in fact, it is rather strange that I did leave that sub-culture behind. It seems that only about 1% of the people I knew moved on from the church and found a new life. The remaining 99% never asked questions, because they were raised not to ask. That is a dangerous position to be in.
I’ve never had the luxury of time to dwell too long in the past. The future just keeps pulling me along – sometimes faster than I like!
You are a product of the generation that either threw the towel in and used whatever source or means they could. They believed it was the best way to go, however so many acted out of fear, which sadly leads to control.
In the late 60’s Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism was stealthily creeping into the culture.
It was a counter culture movement that no-one had either a way to describe what it was doing to the existing youth nor what it would do to the next generation or the one’s to come.
The counter’s culture weapon of choice came in the form of a book titled the Prophet. It gave the movement part of it’s voice, although no one knew really where it’s roots stemmed from.
It became part of the therapeutic genie in the bottle and seeded thousands of private schools and college campuses and spread throughout the nation in to the minds and spirits of millions.
Today we are finally seeing the result of this initial push that began in the 60’s. It is interesting to watch the increase of these belief systems in the culture and shockingly the govt.
The rest of the 60’s are already thoroughly chronicled. Your parents and the institutional church reacted out of fear resulting in push back as what you have expressed.
There is just nothing more debilitating than someone using fear to shape one’s personal belief systems.
Once fear becomes any part of the motivation than the next human emotion to well up is hatred, which you have already expressed.
Never stop seeking and asking questions.
I celebrate the fact that I ran across your blog.
Sorry as the word hatred is just too harsh. The push back that millions are exepreiencing I believe is just plain religion which is designed to instill first fear, than control and eventually total push back or submission.
You have asked the right questions and have sought in other religions which has contributed to who you are.
The sixties really did create quite a backlash. It was all in the movies and culture of the eighties, when I was a kid. With movies like ‘Poltergeist’ and the idea of spiritual warfare around every corner. Everything outside of the church was evil. I wasn’t allowed to have a Cabbage Patch doll because my mother heard a story about one that became possessed by a demon. The spirits, who ultimately only lived in her mind, controlled her in a bizarre mantra of fear. I thought that if I left the church, I would be taken over by the dark side, like Darth Vader in Star Wars. But instead, I realized it was all a hoax. The only thing truly dangerous is the power of the mind to actually believe all of this craziness.
As already shared you were traumatized by religion.
Your mother sadly was also traumatized by it as well.
A fairly large part of the Christian world operates in a constant state of fear.
Poltergeist satisfied a need for both the Church as well as the Spielberg’s of the world to do what they have always done.
To get as many people as possible to either put their hard earned money in a tray or under a theater ticketing window. The Church did not financially benefit (http://religions.pewforum.org/reports
but the movie did….. as it went to a trilogy.
The story that your mother shared obviously was a knee jerk reaction to what someone else shared with her. Had the person who shared with her knew more about what she was talking about she would have not repeated what she told your mother.
This is religion at it’s worst. Sorry.
People like this who have already thrown in the towel almost always default to the kind of fear that your mother also identified with……. who sadly passed on to you.
This paradigm of fear usually has a layer or two of wounding buried deeply inside of the person’s spirit.
As shared when these paradigms are fitted within the framework of spirit, mind and body we are afforded a glimpse in to the human spirit. If the spirit is wounded or traumatized it will mirror itself into the person’s mind and even manifest itself in to their body.
Looking at it through these lenses there is a good possibility that the person who relayed this story to your mother carries an unhealed wound.
Spiritual wounds are like a force field. It can either be turned on as a tractor beam to do either good or bad. It can either lead us or drive us.
When led it is almost always usually peace.
When driven it is either no peace or a sense of just hurry up or worse…. I missed the timing! Ugh!
Wounded people are usually driven and can often struggle to remain in the present.
Luke! Use the force!
Excellent observations, and very true indeed!
Spiritual surgery…. or slicing through the layers of trauma from my own pilgrimage……. for what ever it may be worth to you.
After decades of observing life through my own particular lens of “cognitive dissonance” which I had developed after my own personal trauma. I began to finally re- frame, not just how I looked at things but how I saw things through my own self made adaptive-survival mode filtered lens.
It was not until I finally began to see through the particular color of my own lens that I was able to develop a language to begin to recognize what had been buried under the trauma.
Once I was able to see through this lens and learn what was hidden underneath the strata of trauma that I began to be able to see the treasures.(read virtues)
Seeing them is one thing.
Unpacking them is another.
Once I could see through my filter the layers began to cascade into revelation.
In essence what I was actually able to do was apply a corrective lens or a spiritual set of contact lenses to see how I had been spiritually ravaged.
The trauma and attacks were perpetrated against me by people who I had loved and respected the most. Especially those who had certain “culturally” and” politically correct” levels of authority over me, or those who I had given permission to do so in hopes it would help me discover my life’s design and purpose.
After drilling down through through the many shades of color in my own lens that I discerned that the trauma and attacks were intentional and perpetrated upon me in a wholesale basis.
This was all about corrupting( defiling) and polluting me spiritually…. and keeping me from the buried treasures and knowing my design.
In my journey (so far) I discovered that the attack actually had seven distinct front lines.
Each and every one of them were designed to devastate me….. and to keep me from seeing the elements that were originally placed in my spirit.
The front line of the attack which wages war against our human spirits comes in 7 distinct colors:( If you are a foodie type than flavors)
They are designed to devastate us and keep us from ever seeing what is has been buried under the trauma in our own design. In my own personal case it was layers of strata that covered my design that was and is still being excavated.
The 7 attacks and each of the 7 correlating colors(virtues) of our human spirit’s design are listed below.
If you are led to see or identify with one or more instances of the seven foundational principles than it may reveal to you the area(s) in your life that may be shaded,( read cognitively dissociated- if there is such a word? or filtered and even blocked.( read your life is, has or will manifests these strongholds).
These optically blinded areas buried by traumas keep us from experiencing our original design…. or living out the seven principles and being able to embrace their correlating virtues in our life….. not to mention preventing our sliding out and away from our ability to gain more of an abundance of the present.
WARNING- YOU MAY SEE OTHERS MORE BEFORE YOU CAN RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN DESIGN.
Bonus question: S.N.L. MADE THIS ONE FAMOUS IN IT’S COMEDY SKETCHES.
Foundational Principles
Stronghold
ATTACK
Root Iniquity
Essential Virtues
Design
Fractured Relation-ships
Someone Came Against The Rights of Individuals
Being a Re-builder
Authority
Victim Spirit
Obtaining Peace at Any Cost
Walking In Dominion
Responsibility
Religious Spirit
Walking in Selective Responsibility
Sanctifying His Family
Sowing & Reaping
The Cult of Comfort
Denial
Embracing the Pain
Stewardship
Ownership
Control
Walking by Faith
Freedom
Predator Spirit
Exploitation
Being Life Giving
Fulfillment
Self-Gratification
Stubbornness
Pleasing God, Not Man
Clue to bonus question.
In the time or your life that your spirit was searching for ways to nurture and be nurtured in having a Cabbage Patch doll, the person( Church lady) who told your mother that all Cabbage Patch dolls were infested by demons was seriously under these stronghold(s).
Predator,Religious,Self Gratification strongholds.,
If you guessed freedom, teacher and fulfillment principle you are correct !!
If you see some or any of the attacks/strongholds in your own life than it is a foregone conclusion the color of trauma you have endured has shaded the filter of the lens you are looking through…. so as to keep you from it’s virtue.( read embracing the principle you were designed to walk out in life.
As already said:
Seeing them is one thing.
Unpacking and synchronizing to them while increasing one’s ability to not fall out of the abundance of the presence is another.
The above is in the form of a matrix illustrating the 7 attacks and virtues. When pasting it to WP it failed to republish rendering it instead in an order that leaves the reader almost clueless to be able to see their own personal design or the correlating virtues.
Sorry and I will attempt to re- publish so that the matrix can be seen. If not I can be e- mailed and will forward it for you @garry@jasonhouse.org
Or a direct link to a site that illustrates these concepts and so much more here:
Click to access RGIGridWithPrinciplesLR.pdf
Though I don’t see the world through the lense of a biblical perspective, having grown up in it, I understand the graph you shared completely. I’m glad that it helped you work through the trauma.
I think my problem with this spiritual point of view, is the fact that it gives power to outside sources rather than viewing the power to change from within. For example, the ‘Demonic Stronghold’ category would be something that I would simply term as a bump in the road. You can either ignore it, plow on over it, or fix it.
Finding self responsibility rather than depending on outside spiritual forces and their whims, was a life changing experience for me. Not to mention, that religion is only real if you believe in it, aka the power of the mind to make it true for your life.
Despite all that, as a personality graph, there is a lot of truth in what you shared. Especially when comparing certain people that I know well to each type.
The “problem” you have referenced in using this “ spiritual point of view, is that it gives power to outside sources rather than viewing the power to change from within.”
I could not agree with you more. Nor could the other 28% or so of the adult “Christian” population in the US who have slipped out of the back doors hardly noticed from the institutional “ Church”- at least in the US over the past several decades.
What this actually is as you refer to as “the problem” are folks who are fed up like yourself who were compelled to pull the rip cord and bail out because of the hypocrisy woven around a majority of predatory religious spirited people, who believe their job in life is to scare us( those with unanswered questions) straight.
I used to think that they all had a piece of my legitimacy as a seeker initially, than a follower and now just a believer.
Key operative word is “used to”.
However a part of the journey was during a season when many of it’s “leader’s”( those people using those outside sources(will circle back to these later) began calling me out for inciting unrest by asking questions, neither the leader’s or the heads of the multi national denominational corporations ever wanted to answer let alone address, especially in front of their congregations!
Yes, I was politely and in a few instances even openly and aggressively directed to get up during a service and leave to never return.( read kicked out). At first it hurt but after reflection it what was exactly what I needed to be able to gain insight and to painfully discover my design.
So I clearly get the “ power ” and “outside sources” thing you have correctly used to identify the distasteful behavior which falls squarely in to the third category of the graph for the teacher gift.
It ( the teacher’s bump) is called as you have pointed out a mis use of the gift of teacher in it in its most degenerate state or as referred to in the graph as using the gift in it’s corrupted state or what is called selective responsibility or negative territory.
In other words it, the church( denomination), the leadership as well as a majority of the congregation are all under the influences of a negative or perverted and degenerate aspect of this gift.
Instead of being able to teach they in their defiled state wind up teaching the hard way, those who are not afraid of heights and are able to still ask questions…… especially the kind that they are not ever told about in seminary, which are not revealed unless the true source of the “ outside sources” are either discovered or revealed.
So they push back against the questions and aggressively those who would ask, and if the required compliance is not adhered to(read cash flow needs) than they would have us believe if we were to ever leave the Church we would free fall in to oblivion. Or worse discover truths that many of them may not ever be able to grasp.
Been there…done that….. probably either burned or gave the t- shirt away after my season of seeking from the institutional church the need to be validated and given a sense of legitimacy and identity.
I cannot remember how many times Jesus had to defend his legitimacy to the Pharisees in his day. I think it was around 21 or more times, which was chronicled in the book of John.
What I believe about you after reading your blog is that you have a dominant gift of prophet.
If you were to study the 7 colors of the rainbow your spirit may naturally gravitate to the color red as this is the first color in the band of the seven colors of the rainbow spectrum.
Each gift correlates to those in the seven colors of the rainbow.
Here is a page from the gift of prophet’s play book. Perhaps it will help illuminate more of the color of your God given design shading your lens which like mine, was deeply buried under the many layers of the strata of life’s trauma.
An important note. One does not have to be a believer to enjoy these principles or experience the “bumps” or have the benefits of their virtues in their life.* are areas that I see in your spirit after studying your blog.
Principle of Design
For the redemptive gift of Prophet
The redemptive gift of Prophet is special in that it is foundational to the principles of the other six redemptive gifts of Servant, Teacher, Exhorter, Giver, Ruler, and Mercy. God has called the Prophet to do research and development. *
The call is to study these principles and to assemble them into functional sets that produce life-changing results. It is the principle of design – the art of weaving principles together for the glory of God in restoring the body of Christ.*
The demonic stronghold for the redemptive gift of Prophet is fractured relationships. The root iniquity is abusing the rights of individuals.*
The essential virtue is to be a re-builder.*
To understand the principle of design, we need to understand that there are three areas of natural law that God has created: (1) Man and Matter; (2) Man and Man; (3) Man and Spirit Realm.
The U.S. has the redemptive gift of prophet. More than any other nation, America has effectively done research and development and embraced the principles of science that governs the relationship of man and matter and have assembled the principles effectively. Think through history of America’s creativity. It produced the automobile, airplane, telephone, telegraph, digital sound, refrigeration, radar, x-ray, and much more). Think of the space technology, medical technology, agricultural technology, manufacturing technology. It is amazing what has been produced in this nation. At this great accomplishment, America as a nation has stepped into one-third of its birthright in terms of using the principles that relate to Man and Matter in terms of researching the finite number of laws and elements and combining them and recombining them into a lists of products, life-giving products that has re-vamped world history and shaped the history of the entire globe. We have taken that level of the prophet’s gift to a new level.
Let’s look at the third level of natural law: Man and Spirit Realm. – Tremendous advances and development have been made in the area of man and the spirit realm. Here in America, there is a growing understanding of occult strongholds and the legal system that enables us to come against them with something other than a power encounter. There is a tremendous flood of revelation that enables man to relate to the spirit realm at a higher level than ever before. Some people can discern the demonic through just knowing in their mind and in their spirit that there is a demonic presence in someone (they don’t know how they know…they just know it is there*). Some can see in the spirit angels and demons and can discern the source of which they come;* some have discernment that operates through colors; others can feel with their hands; others with their smell of odors.
We have begun to understand it, teach on it, and impart this to individuals as a nation; to find out who has the gift of discernment* in the other areas and nurture it. In the prophet nation of the U.S., we are called to master them and weave them together in effective life-giving, life transformational ways.
Another area of emerging research and development is healing the spirit man. We are discovering and learning how to release a man’s spirit, to cause the spirit to grow, to heal the father wounds and break the generational curses. Generational blessings are being discovered and are being released, as well as, being accrued for release to the next generation.
1Thess 5:23 has been misquoted for years. There are those who souls are dominate over their body, but God’s intent is that our spirit would be larger than our soul, and that our body would submit to both.
It is the second level of natural science where the prophet fails: Man and Man: As a nation, we have embraced the wrong principles, the principles of brokenness. America has produced a movie industry that has torn down family principles. This country has produced abortions, pornography, racism that has endured steadfastly in spite of wars and laws that have been passed, the shame of what our forefathers did to the Native Americans. The list of brokenness goes on and on. The divisiveness of the American church, the talk shows designed to celebrate brokenness and create more brokenness by the dishonoring of fellow man. This is the area where the prophet must work to gain spiritual authority. It is not enough to be technology sophisticated and it is a trap from the devil himself for people of a prophet nation to focus on the spiritual realm, to enhance their deliverance skills without dealing with the second level of man and man. Because of the prophet’s own woundedness , the prophet by and large would rather discard people than resolve the tension between them; would rather separate from other people than to embrace the differences and work through them and create healing and wholeness. As a people, we know and are great at taking matter and turning it into a thing of beauty and wholeness, but we don’t know how to effectively do it with people.
Looking at the grid for the redemptive gift of Prophet, it is our desire to help you reach the optimum level of your birthright. As you go through the grid and compare it with the notes below, search your heart and soul to see where you are at and where it is God wants you to be.
Let’s take a look at the negative grid before looking at the positive:
-100 – This is a group of people involved in satanic ritual abuse. Their purpose is solely for the breaking of the human being. It is important that you understand that these groups of people are continually striving to improve their skill to destroy human beings and study every principle. Most Christians discount this group as being harmless or so small that they can’t possibly have an effect. This is the WRONG way of thinking.
-80 – These are groups of people with a theology or philosophy that are designed to create brokenness. Again, it may not appear that these groups are significant in size, but they are groups such as the KKK and racists. They seek to create brokenness and not allow unity in the body of Christ. They take God’s law into their own hands and walk in lawlessness.
-60 – This is a somewhat larger population of people that have no theology or philosophy per say, they are just angry people. They hate for the sake of hating, gang members, victims of broken homes, broken relationships, abused physically, mentally, and/or spiritually. They
include some segments of the church that routinely bash other segments of the church thinking God doesn’t see or hear them. If you go to a church, you know exactly what this means.
-40 – These people are those who silently withdraw. They don’t like what is going on in the body of Christ (or their church), so they will just silently withdraw from the situation rather than address the problem (or sin in the camp). Maybe they don’t like the pastor, the choir, or the nursery etc. Rather than attempting to resolve the issue they have, they will leave the church or group. This only empowers the demonic stronghold over them and the church. This group of people is far more pervasive than the -60 group.
-20 – These people walk in silent toleration of situations, thinking their silence is for a good cause. These people may bite their tongues or tip toe around offenses in the church as though their peace making attempts will con God into thinking they are good because they tolerated others.
We will now move on to the positive side of the grid. If you are not at +100, don’t be disappointed. It is a process to get to the +100.
0 – Wounded. The wounded prophet is generally one who rejected what is known as selective ministry. He/she rejects the concept of working in a group where there is not an easy response to a problem. Rising above this level requires a commitment to solve problems placed before you rather than living content with a partial solution. Being content with only a partial solution is dangerous, as the prophet continues to walk around wounded and will never be able to fully step into the birthright designed for him/her.
+20 – Reconciled to Self. At this level, you, the prophet, are seeking spiritual principles for healing yourself. You are at the point that you can define discernment to your woundedness. You must be able to separate out your soul from your spirit and bring your spirit into dominion over the soul, so as to be whole.
+40 – Reconciling Others. You have the ability to reconcile, empower, and release the broken ones in your community. You have the ability to bring healing to satanic survivors with skill and willingness. You have the ability to bring healing to those suffering from pastoral abuse so that a trust can be regained that was lost due to “sheep bite.”
+60 – Reconciling the Unwilling. At this level of the grid, you are able to reconcile, release and empower the unwilling people. What do you do when a witch has infiltrated the camp (church)? Or the Satanist? Can you apply the grace of God and love and in your spiritual authority be able to bring them to Jesus. The idea here is that God’s prophets be so good at loving the unwilling into the arms of Jesus that no witches coven or satanic group would send their people to you or
your church because they know they will loose their best witches/warlocks to Jesus. Are you here? Are you willing to press in and learn how to get here?
+80 – Reconciling a Group. At this level, you have the ability to reconcile an entire group of people. You can empower and teach them to be sons of God and work together rather than them go back to their segregated churches or organizations. We ought to be able to heal entire groups, empower them based on spiritual authority and release the anointing on entire groups.
+100 – Building in God’s Seasons. This level is the sophisticated integrating of the redemptive gifts, principles and seasons simultaneously. It is currently God’s season for Native Americans. He is preparing to move them to the forefront. It is also a season for the business community to move to the front with the principles of God flowing into the marketplace. The Prophet is designed to do research and development and excel at weaving man and man together.
End of excerpt of Sapphire Leadership page.
If the above lands in your spirit and you identify with it than you are already well along your way in using your dominant gift and waking out your design.
Coming next comment is a glimpse in to those “outside sources” you have referenced.
In part you have always known about “them” but did not have either the vocabulary to explain them nor the ability to know what you knew…. or anyone in your life for that matter to help you develop your ability to know what you knew.
You may also be pleasantly surprised to discover that almost all of those in contemporary or historical Christendom have not known what you knew in your spirit what you have called those “outside sources”.