Progress:
A Step Back Floods the Expanse

Firmaments are created with every motion, sound, thought, and with every surmise. They are established in conjunction with the initial appearance of anything, so far as I can tell. Beyond providing a ceiling for that which they cover, they impose duality because they enforce demarcation between that which is above and that which is below, as also between one thing and the next.

Without a ceiling or floor of their own, firmaments are mediums that connect related realms. They are therefore dedicated to serving a superior expanse on behalf of an inferior expanse, such as thoughts above notions. Every one of them is a nexus, a link. They are invisible strings that tie related but different expanses together. Firmaments are therefore like highways; for they run between similar entities, whose citizens and commodities are transported along their roadways. The firmament of earth is vast and varied, from locale to locale, as are the firmaments within man.

When the borders of a perceived spiritual firmament are misunderstood, ignored, violated, or unduly challenged, there may be consequential loss. Complications also arise if a firmament’s niche among a swarm of firmaments is not honored by its host.

Further, expanses can affect an individual by way of their own firmaments, in that disorder can lead to unprofitable leaching between expanses. Once that has begun, disorder quickly spreads; for expanses that initiate unprofitable interactions can behave as rogue firmaments that entice or discourage conduct.

Some firmaments are irregular and behave much like a thread passing through numerous layers to connect varied expanses within entirely different realms. The function of prayer accomplishes just that. The expanse within one who prays trusts that a firmament is provided for the prayer’s ascent, and for the answer’s descent. This Western concept is not greatly different from the Eastern practice of utilizing the kundalini essence for meditation and projection.

When we become distracted, it’s because an unexpected firmament is crowding us, vying for room to become established within our thoughts, that it might deliver its load. Perhaps that firmament is rooted in a friend that we’ve ignored for too long because of other matters. Perhaps an angel is reaching out for our attention. Perhaps it is a projection of spirit from HaShem. Whatever the case or the reason, the distraction is a symptom. It’s warning that there’s insufficient room within our thought processes for a pressing firmament to find footing, so that it might win our notice and deliver its message in an orderly manner. Ignoring distraction is not the best of options.

Like Marta, the sister of Lazarus in the gospels, we can go about doing this and that for all the best reasons and doing well; but our many cares will drain our strength throughout the day and over the years. Somewhat forgetful of our first love as we labor in sincerity when pressures mount, we begin to build and to extend firmaments into which we pour our frustration, our exhaustion, and our resentment at not having received sufficient credit for our labors.

The reservoir of disappointment may fill until the expanse of our hearts erupts with poorly reasoned words via the firmament that has taken root in our thoughts, adversely affecting the expanses of all who hear what the inconsiderate and inappropriate firmament inadvertently delivered. Such outbursts can negate what we’ve shown ourselves to be over the course of our active lives.

Marta’s companion sister, Miryam, is the bitterness that builds within us when we don’t know what to do in response to the firmament of the day’s demands. Rather than acting rashly, Miryam chooses to do nothing; and while responsible Marta labors to meet and satisfy every perceived need, impractical Miryam bides her time and focuses her thoughts, preparing herself to greet one who will bring relief; and when he appears, she will scrub his feet with her hair, which are as firmaments of the expanses that filled her heart as she meditated on questions she didn’t know how to ask.

Any casual acquaintance of the house of Lazarus might judge Marta to be the sensible sister, realistic and dependable; and she is all those things, but she has not ceased from her own works. It’s not easy for her to accept a new firmament, a new paradigm. She might know about it. She might even discuss it in glowing terms, but she can’t embrace it and absorb it without help from a strong hand.

Miryam’s prayerful tears keep her mind open, and they reserve room into which she can admit new firmaments from unexpected quarters in answer to the prayerful firmaments of thought her mind generates. She finds release through the expectation of receiving answer to her prayers; for prayer is the extension of robust firmaments from an earthly expanse to a heavenly expanse, whether it be in the third or second heaven. “Prayer without ceasing” is not a matter of saying words. It’s a matter of keeping open.

My interest in firmaments centered on the rise of iniquity within the Light Bearer; for as covering cherub, he had oversight on both firmament and expanse, and he proved to be susceptible to intrusion by the firmament of iniquity. How then are we, who are less gifted spiritually, to be armed against iniquity’s influence? Or are we? To our understanding, we are imperfect from our earliest memories. Perhaps our idea of human perfection is mistaken.

Perception is a matter of focus within grace. Any competent counselor will agree that the single-eyed focus is best. In the swineherd’s confession, we understood that his mind, darting between this and that thought, was barely capable of sanity and he was under constant duress, leaving him powerless against his spiritual conflicts.

Goliath had been on the right track with his singular point of view, but he had squandered disciplined focus on strategies for warfare, only to be undone by the spontaneity of a godly shepherd, if we read his story as a literal report. If the stone selected from David’s sling was Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, the giant was undone by the ministry of a priest. There are firmaments between a parable and its interpretations.

We’ll not find the reason iniquity gained foothold in Lucifer through speculation or by religious studies. Every school, whether of thought or of practice, has its tools and its methods. A search for the unknown ought not to be limited to the parameters of what is known or what is approved as reasonable investigation. To discover the answer to iniquity’s origins and, perhaps, to learn of its functions and its purpose, we will have to probe the earliest moments of creation. If we are to make the attempt, it behooves us to remember that an inexperienced child is on equal footing with a wise old man: better footing, in fact; for the child’s memories are nearer to its origins in heaven than are our own.

Searching out the realities, meanings, and implications of these things, we are like fishermen. We cast our nets the whole night long, catching nothing; but in the morning, a man on the shore calls out to us that we should cast on the other side; and our net becomes full to the breaking point.

Once the net is emptied, its expanses are twisted into the concept of “the catch,” which is the firmament that prevails among professionals with their eyes on the market market; but when the fish are shaken from the net, falling to storage within the keep, the catch explodes again into an undisciplined expanse of fish. The metaphor is clumsy and inept, but it tugs at masks hiding spiritual realities that peek through the latticed windows of hearts and minds.

That it is written that God creates the fruit of the lips signifies that HaShem is the source of all thought. The implication is that our words are the bodies of thought and that, to be heard, they must be raised by HaShem from burial in the heart and mind, so that they can find release through the open tomb of the mouth.

When a promising thought slips the hook, the mind’s faculties will assert themselves, attempting to reel filaments of the thought back in again before they are lost, even while the heart searches out the waters of the mind, probing for the most promising direction f for another cast. This interplay be acknowledge that our expressions serve adventure, not sober faith that can edify. The intellectual zenith provided by volitional focus might truly seem like epiphany, but if we see ourselves as having charge over a dialog, over which we clearly have limited control, we are deluded.

We search as though looking outwardly, in denial of God’s bounty and care; and we constrain infinite Wisdom c to its correlations with the finite capacities and expectations of wisdom’s attributes m. Thoughts shift from understanding to thoughts about how life can be manipulated from within the dark medium of natural intellect.

Competing firmaments struggle, one with another, like twins struggling within the womb—warring against each other within the cosmic expanse that hides from us what we are becoming in the mind of HaShem. Should one twin annihilate the other? Fratricide is murder.

Wheels turn within wheels; and if we should grab at their spokes to slow the chariot and reverse momentum to better understand, we’ll cartwheel end up sprawling on the ground. The laws operating within our souls, both good and not good, are given for our good by the good God. How can we judge between them?

If our minds dwell on the Tree of Life as though it is some outward manifestation in a remote location, we grind our teeth on the shell of the nut; but because we know the outward reality is a parable that hides nutrition; and so, the mind computes and the heart dreams, casting its nets. Postulating about the quality of the nourishment the Tree provided in its season, the serpentine spirit designed by the creator to address the concerns of life finds the flaw in the shell, leading us to the kernel.

As the tendrils of our hearts reach out, emboldened by
tenuous inroads of the spirit, a serpentine essence arises
within us, racing upwards along our spines, to join with
the outward focus of our minds, meeting, aligning, and
merging with godly thoughts that move understandings
forward.

We attribute visceral sensations to enthusiasm, but they manifest the kundalini essence. Is it not written, “Rise up, O King, eternal”? As Nehushtan arose on the desert pole, so that all who saw him would live, even so Messiah must climb the pole of our bodies as his spirit ministers to our spirits, lifting them to the father, affirming the words, “If one prevails against him, two will withstand that one: a three-fold cord is not easily broken.”

The mind is a symphony, not a recital; and the single- eyed focus may not always be expedient for our edification. To insist upon any focus is to pursue an agenda; and such aids to thought as meditation, mantras, fasting, and rituals, if practiced by will power, and not in answer to spirit, can turn the spiritual life into a parlor game. HaShem will knock us off the board when we offend, which we are certain to do.

No regimen we map out for ourselves will long succeed. Those who are born of the spirit are moved by the spirit. Onlookers may judge them to be doing one thing today after having been seen doing another thing yesterday so that they could prepare and position themselves to do a third thing tomorrow, which is what they had been secretly hoping to get away with all along; but in fact they had been doing the same thing at all times and within every point of observation, which was doing their best to conform to the will of HaShem’s spirit as it unfolded in their hearts, moment by moment.

The single-eyed focus attends the spiritual reality of those prepared for the forehead seal; but that seal is not gained by acumen—by esoteric muscle building, whose foundation is of the material realm. The seal is a gift of father to son. Within each of us, ImmanuAL is a reservoir of spiritual power. The well at Sh’khem is vacillation between the known and the unknown. The Breath of God awaits, sitting upon the casing of Jacob’s well. The cistern of Living Waters, Yahushua will share the water to which we have access, because he looks to share the waters to which he has access.

The sages of the East call the higher waters the “kundalini essence.” Its mist rises from the ground; for Ya’akov’s well is the seat of consciousness within any of East or West.

The desert well is deep. Its water is drawn from temporal heaven through the thirsty sands of earth. It protects them from evaporation; and retrieving them requires the labor of those armed with rope, bucket, water pots, and stamina.

T he Living Waters of the eternal require interface. Labors within the temporal profit little. Our interface is the Breath of Life, the hidden presence of ImmanuAL, which rests behind our inhales and exhales; and congruence is found in the prayer closet, in the yoga of meditation. We’re not offenders because of a word, but the Breath is called Yahushua, the Shout of God. Merging within the kundalini, we can do anything; for the Shout of God’s Breath makes us Sons of Man, much more than conquerors.