Interlude Explanatory

After the first five essays of this website were written, I was trying to figure out what subjects to tackle next.  I had several candidates, but during the process of writing them, I got a sense that I was going in the wrong direction, so stopped writing them.  This sense is quite unlike what I felt while writing the published essays, in which there was a felt certainty that the essay was not only right, but written at the right time and situated correctly in an overall framework. 

My problem was that I did not see that overall framework clearly from the beginning.  In the early stages of this Great Work, I sort of stumbled in the right direction thanks to the core logic of the events happening to me that motivated this website in the first place.  The first three serve as a foundation, which makes sense because everything has a foundation.  Those things which appear not to have one actually do, for the foundation may be consumed to the point of vanishing in the process of growth to maturity.  It is also the habit of science teaching to lay a foundation of elementary concepts before elaborating on application.  Thus, custom and the natural order of the way education happens worked together to ensure that that first thing was actually written and put first.

The next two essays dealt with controlling the thought life which was, at the time, the most amazing thing that had happened to me.  In retrospect, the selection of that subject was strategically correct, and in light of my relative ignorance of the overall framework at the time I wrote those, I chalk getting it right up to my very long-suffering Symbiote. 

But when I tried to write the next essay after Variance Managment, I kept getting the distinct feeling that, while I was still stumbling in the right direction, what was required of me was a more precise heading than was implied by the term "stumbling in the right direction".  The sense that the essay needed writing was strong at the beginning, but as I worked on it, I kept getting the impression that it was going "off track".  The general direction was right, but the writing felt imprecise because a precise heading and destination were required first.  This sense of things "not going in the right direction" would lead me to stop working on the essay.

Prior to April, 2008, I would have dismissed my feelings as being unworthy of guiding anything in my life, and that doing so would be a sign of irrationality.  However, I now see that such feelings are from the Deus symbiote within me.  I needed that framework, precise heading, and precise destination if I was going to make progress, but until I was open to the idea that a framework was needed, any ideas that my Symbiote would throw into the bitstream would not be seen as the solution.

It was while thinking about what to write after the fourth attempt at starting a new essay, and failing, that this distinct thought came into my mind: the work on symbiotic control of the thought life was essentially complete.  When this thought first came into my mind, I initially resisted it, but then realized that my objections were to the formatting of the essays and not the content.  On the one hand the essays are not in a format that is easily understood by a lay audience, and considerable work is required to generate a book or pamphlet that can be used by the average christian layman to bring about the same results in their life that appeared in mine.  On the other hand, the essays are complete from the point of view of the concepts that have to be learned and the techniques to apply to get the promised results.  In short, we had a situation where the work allowed independent verification by competent investigators, but had not been translated into technology simple enough for lay people to employ.  This is not unusual: the theology of salvation can be very involved and complicated, with twists and turns that only those who have studied at the post-graduate level can understand and appreciate, but the process of getting saved is so simple that a recipie of how to do it, along with the supporting verses, have been put on the back of a plastic business card.  The theology is necessary so that one can say, with confidence, that that business-card sized plan of salvation is correct.  It is that confidence that helps fan the initially small flame of faith.

It was at that point that I realized that the problem the essays were addressing had changed: My original intent had been to debug what had happened at Pentecost, why the spiritual gifts started at that time had stopped, and figure out what had to be done to reboot the Church into Version 2 of Pentecost.  To do that, the investigation and removal of the causes of Pentecost's "crash" was essential to prevent recurrence.  Since that line of research is currently blocked, I had no obvious research direction.  This essentially suspends the reboot of the Church into a second Pentecost at this time.

However, the comment about the completeness of the thought life essays reminded me of one important aspect of some of the problems that scientists and engineers face: they are segmented. 

Many problems cannot be solved all at once, but can be solved piece-by-piece.  They have natural places where a sub-solution can be developed and applied to a segment of the problem that is independent of the other parts.  Sometimes, there may be a natural sequence in which the segments are addressed, but each segment is easily handled as they are encountered in that sequence.  One of my former bosses, Mike Brazell, liked to point out that the best way to eat an elephant is to do it "one bite at a time."  If one looks carefully enough at a problem, you'll see where to put the knife or your teeth to best break it down.

It was at that point that I realized that the problem to be solved was not the Reboot of the Church into a second Pentecost, but the "reboot" of the Holy Spirit in individual believers, with that problem naturally segmented along the lines of the specific capabilities of the Holy Spirit.  The first three essays (perhaps expanded in the future) are the foundation of all that follows, while the next two ("Hack yer mind" and "Variance Management") dealt with the capability of the Holy Spirit to oppose the desires of the flesh as outlined in Romans 7:25 to 8:13. 

There are other capabilities.

In response to this revelation, I have reformatted the "Symbiotic Christianity" portion of the website to reflect the segmentation of the revised problem statement and the areas of the Holy Spirit that the research has addressed.  I now understand where the aborted essays should go and what they have to accomplish, and expect two more essays (one by July 30) before a personal vacation and house renovation hiatus between July 30 to August 19, 2008. 

Because of the nature of the segmentation, a parallel adaptation, translation, and validation, of the solved segments into lay-readable text can be pursued, initiated, and completed.

Finally, and most importantly, I know the direction the research must go, and the research that must be accomplished next so as to facilitate the entire process.