Note: If desired, watch all of Acts 23 from the Visual Bible movie, Acts.
Yesterday’s reading was about the third phase of the spiritual path, which is service and merging. As mentioned, the third phase is a very attractive phase, and many people want to jump to the third phase without completing purification. However, purification is necessary in order to intuit spiritual intuition without confusing it with ego.
Since purification is vitally important, today’s reading returns our attention to purification. Today’s reading is a serious reading. It points out that the purification stage can, at times, get “very, very tough.”
That was my experience, and it will most likely be your experience too.
The seriousness of today’s reading isn’t meant to scare anyone. It’s meant to prepare you. To “prepare” is to make someone ready to do or deal with something.
How does today’s reading help prepare you for purification?
If you know there are tough times ahead, when the tough times arrive you can see them as a normal part of the process. Knowing tough times are normal can help you move through them more easily.
Today’s reading also explains why the purification phase gets tough. Resistance makes it tough. We are afraid that the darkness in the mind is the truth about us, and so we resist looking at it. Yet, the darkness needs to be seen so it can be healed.
The reading says:
… cruelty lives in you as a wish. It is important to note that the cruelty is a wish, for a wish is not what you are. A wish is what you are not, but what you may pretend to be.
When we are cruel, we get pleasure from causing pain and suffering in others. That isn’t very pretty to look at, but in one way or another, we’ve all been cruel.
Why do we wish to be cruel?
Cruelty is the ultimate divorce from oneness. When we are cruel, we feel powerfully separate. Cruelty inflates the ego.
Today’s reading encourages us to look at the darkest aspects of the mind. It acknowledges that we may be afraid to look, but it encourages us to overcome that fear with a strong desire for our spiritual aspiration. It is as NTI Luke 22 said:
Great fear is nothing more than great resistance.
And so the means for overcoming great fear is great willingness.
Great willingness comes from remembering what you want.
Note: The next tip will be available tomorrow morning after 3:50am ET at this link.
