Station Keeping
I had mentioned on the previous page that, with one exception, I have no problem maintaining a sense of peace throughout the day. From that, one could conclude that an operating philosophy of always maintaining a mental climate of peace would be optimal. However, the circumstances of the single failure belies the appearance of optimality and reveals more subtleties than meets the eye.
I had successfully lived several days of maintaining an attitude of peace prior to that day, but on that day, I foolishly rebuffed several attempts of the Holy Spirit to indulge in a thankful state of joy and love, believing the urge to be somewhat carnal and wasteful of resources. A few hours later, I found myself heavily buffeted by temptations along my usual compulsions. I fought for a long while, and ended the day completely exhausted mentally, finally going to bed early as a preventative precaution that I have mentioned elsewhere.
During my analysis of this incident the following morning, I began to feel the compulsions rise again. On a sudden thought, I rebuked the demon that I suspected was behind the temptation and it dissolved almost immediately. The moment that happened, I realized that he was the true reason behind my mental exhaustion. What had happened was that, as I strove to maintain a sense of peace, I was being "blown off-station" by the demon, requiring the Holy Spirit to expend neurotransmitters to regain that mental state, much as a satellite in Geo-synchronous orbit has to expend propellant to "keep station" in the face of ion storms from the sun that "blow it off-station". This drove up my neurotransmitter burn-up rate to a point where I could not finish the day with an ample supply.
I was rather troubled, and irked, by the fact that, despite my striving to stay in a state of peace, I got no warning or indication from the Spirit of the impending situation: being God, couldn't he give me a heads up about what was coming up? I went to work, and about half-way through the morning again felt the Spirit trying to move me to a state of thankful joy. I was about to suppress that, thinking that the Spirit was trying to blow me off and my sense of irritation at not being warned earlier when the Spirit, in His own way, pointed out that His call to move from peace to joy was indeed from Him. So what was my basis for believing that moving from peace to joy really was a waste of the neurotransmitter budget that merited an Inner Man veto?
Well, uhh, no. I wasn't sure.
It was at that point and on that day that I realized that I didn't know the real natural history (or pre-history if you will) of temptation. The resulting research lead me to the realization documented earlier in this essay of the implications of brain parallelism, and the real reason for the calls of the Spirit to move from peace to joy or love: going to those mental fruit virtues of the Spirit generate the necessary neurotransmitters that the Spirit would have used to counteract the incipient tempation coming from the demonic tempter at the preconscious level. If one likens temptation to a weed, I was just clipping off the above-ground, evident aspects of sin in a misguided effort to "save neurotransmitters". The more optimal strategy of the Spirit was to expend a little bit extra "up front" and eradicate the temptation at the incipient root level.
In short, probably all of the temptations that seem to pop up on their own rather than being triggered by external sources actually are already being thought by the Heart. We are not made aware of those thoughts because we don't actually know that we are thinking them until the Human Heart sees fit to throw them up the bitstream to the Inner Man. Since the Spirit is resident in our Heart, He is fully aware of what is happening. In my case, he tried to issue the call to move from peace to joy and love as a preventative measure (the sort of thing one prudently does if one possesses that unique ability to, you know, see the future). By not selecting that menu option, I let my "non-conscious" mental state deteriorate until I was made aware of it when the heart finally threw up a little of the trash that had been accumulating there.
Operating Strategy for Symbiotic Christians
In response to that single failure, my current operating strategy is as follows: pursue a mental attitude of peace unless the Holy Spirit throws up a thought to move to joy or love. If my mental attitude is poor and way below that of peace, I strive to that mental state of peace, but not beyond or above that. While I am in a state of peace, I stay in a state consistent with the will of God. Thus, if I spontaneously get a thought to move from peace to joy or love, and have not been thinking about doing so, I do not suppress the thought but regard it as a menu option being thrown up by the Spirit that would be prudent to select. Think of this as a form of sensing that the Spirit is "stomping on the accelerator" to move me around some obstacle on the spiritual (and thus mentally unseen) lane on the highway of life. In doing so, I acknowledge that the Holy Spirit, being God, forsees all things and moves to work on my behalf, as my advocate, to help me avoid any problems.
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