At ATR on 6/8/19, Virginia mentioned that she had been told that originally our spirits were outside our souls and bodies. At that point, God started talking to me! He said that when Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he really did die! He was a primary spirit being, in the image of God, and his spirit died! At that point, without his spirit as a container, his soul moved inside his body to be contained. Since he saw clearly in the spirit before, he had seen himself as a being of glorious light, like God! Now he saw his body primarily, and experienced shame for the first time.
God said He is restoring all things! Our proper natural state is body contained by soul contained by spirit in full union with Holy Spirit (God). When our soul is free to expand safely beyond the boundaries of our body, the soul can sense much more of what is around us. For example, a free and expanded soul can sense the frequencies of physical things directly, whereas contained by our body, our soul can only sense the frequency of our own body, or things inside it. God showed me more about our senses later (see below). This is why God revealed to Paul that the saying would be fulfilled, “death will be swallowed up in victory!” The Greek word translated as “swallowed up” has the sense of being completely placed into and contained by something much larger or greater than oneself. For instance, you can drown by being swallowed up by the ocean! The final victory over death manifests by us being “swallowed up” by the Holy Spirit containing our now properly placed and living “external” spirit, and our properly placed and fully restored (formed) soul! That is why scripture tells us to put on Christ as a garment! That is why scripture says that this mortal must put on immortality!
Later, God showed me that our spirit must be “outside” of our bodies first. Once we learn to have our bodies contained by our spirit (restoring the primacy of spirit in our existence), only then can our souls be contained by our spirit rather than our body, which is what is necessary for us to be as we should be. Note that while our spirit and soul would be containing the body, they would both still be inside the body as well. All parts of us are still one! To use the metaphor of a ship, our bodies are anchors, holding us effortlessly in place on our journeys. When our soul is contained by an anchor, we are not truly free. When our soul is “outside” our body, contained by our spirit, then we can “weigh anchor” easily and at any time to continue our journey, and then “drop anchor” when it is time to effortlessly remain in a place, immune to “tide and current.” Our bodies must be subject to our souls, NOT the other way around!
I asked the Lord how to keep my spirit “expanded” naturally, without having to continually primarily focus on that (He had taught me before how to expand my spirit to sense spiritual things around me, and that I could expand my spirit much more than I supposed). He immediately gave me an image of my spirit expanding outside my body, manifesting as red energy (light). But my spirit had an outer “shell” of blue energy, which quickly merged with the red to make the entire spirit a vibrant purple! (God later showed me that the spiritual is discerned, and that discernment showed the light as purple, rather than the magenta that our physical eyes would see.) God ministered to me that since my spirit touched heaven, our unified spirit would manifest the kingdom here (red for man, blue for heaven, purple for royalty). The fully merged and aligned spirit will naturally be properly expanded, so the answer is that unbelief hinders this. That is, while spiritually we are one with God, we do not align properly internally because of unbelief. We still have deep belief in the law of death, and deep belief in the primary reality of the physical world. I then expanded my spirit to contain my body, like in the vision, and as the shell completed, I began to feel lighter! God showed me that feeling with spiritual senses, I felt gravity less, as my physical senses put in less relative input. He showed me that contained by the Spirit, we are not constrained by gravity, space, apparent structure, or even time!
Recently, the Lord gave me more insight into the nature of our senses. Specifically, God was comparing and contrasting the senses of our body, soul, and spirit. He told me that all of our senses should inform every part of us, since we are one, but our body senses would inform us of the physical realm, our spiritual senses would inform us of the spiritual realm, and our soul senses bridge the two realms, but primarily operate in the physical.
God reminded me of the red+blue made purple light I had “seen,” and how He ministered to me that I was discerning and “translating” into visual in my mind. He reminded me that all of our senses just give input to our minds, and we perceive what we are trained to perceive based upon those inputs. He told me that our spiritual senses require training to perceive properly, just as our body and soul (“natural”) senses do. He used an example I am familiar with: physical sound. Many people have asked me how I heard something when I produce or engineer music; I always reply that they heard the same thing I did; I just recognized things they didn’t because of desire, experience, and training. God said that we have natural practice with our natural senses, because if we had no frame of reference, we could never learn to perceive spiritually! But, we need to practice with our spiritual senses after the Holy Spirit enters into us, because we are spiritually dead until then. He also showed me that our soul senses are not well used by most people, since they are constrained by the soul’s containment by the body.
God then began to show me some differences between our spiritual and natural senses. Such as, natural sight responds to reflected light from other sources, but our spiritual sight actually emits light (NOT created light!), and then responds to how that light is modified by other spiritual things. Our natural hearing responds to pressure waves, but our spiritual hearing responds to “physical” substances in the spirit realm, such as faith, hope, and love. When spiritual beings communicate with us, our spiritual input can be perceived by our minds in many ways, activating as a side effect any of our known frames of reference based on our natural senses, so that we understand better. Our “translation” of spiritual to natural is unique to us. Others receiving the exact same message may perceive in a “physical” frame in a completely different way. God then told me that as with all things, unbelief hinders the operation of our senses, but especially our spiritual ones! He then said we would return to this topic soon, but we were done for now.
At ATR on 8/10/19, during worship the Lord had me be still and quiet, as He often does. Then, as I was sitting so, I could feel someone braiding my hair! I reached back, but no one was there, and my hair had not been moved or touched that I could tell. I was then moved by the Spirit to expand my spirit, and the same red and blue makes purple thing happened as a few weeks ago. But this time, I felt that my soul needed to expand also, and I willed that to happen. The spirit shell began to glow MUCH more brightly, beyond natural sunlight (!), and I became much more aware of physical sensation! I could feel air currents moving gently around my body across my skin. The sound of worship was now tangible in a way I don’t know how to describe, far more than simple bone transduction. I could feel the energy of light on my skin, both from inside and outside the building. Also, I felt lighter, like gravity had less effect on me. I almost felt like I could lift off the ground, and my feet began to lose the feeling of ground contact, but I don’t remember rising, nor do I think I actually did. Then, I began to see the waves of worship in and around and between the people. The waves looked like many, many thin white lines in constant rhythmic and intersecting motion. Then, in my vision, the light in the room went dark, and I could see the light emanating from the worshipers! There were columns of light going from most everyone in the building up through the ceiling. Then I looked to my left, and saw myself! I was sitting in the position I was actually sitting in, but I was surrounded by a massively bright ball of light! I knew in my spirit that the light would have been purple if it weren’t so bright! It was beyond any brightness I had yet seen tonight, and could only be described as white. There were columns of light shooting out of all sides of me in all directions, or maybe going in and out, I couldn’t tell; I just knew the light was moving.
At that point, the whole vision collapsed, and I was seeing from my eyeball point of view again. The worship around me was apparently in a wonderful place I had yet to see here at ATR. The Lord said to write this down, so I did.
A few minutes later, there was a group of people sitting on the floor before the Lord, around the musicians. I saw a ball of light, not nearly as bright as what I was seeing before, around them. Then I realized it was one ball of light, not several balls! I had a desire to join the unity of the spirit I was seeing, and the Spirit said to reach out. I did (with my spirit), and was surprised that my spirit grew like a sphere and encompassed the sphere I had seen before, rather than connecting linearly! I then wondered how large my spirit could expand, and the Spirit immediately told me there was no limit! Indeed, He continued, to properly govern the earth, my spirit would have to surround the entire earth! This would also free my soul to sense any thing in the physical realm encompassed by my spirit! He said that the purpose of the spirit sensing spiritual things, and the soul and body sensing physical things (things of the earth realm), is so we can move and function in both realms at once. He continued that the physical realm was made for us in the first place, so we could have the pleasure of walking, creating, arranging, governing, and loving as He does, to increase our loving intimacy with Him. I asked Him how much power it took to expand my spirit that much, since I was thinking of the inverse square rule. He replied that it took a lot, but He had plenty, and we were one.
God then reminded me of something He had taught me while Joseph Sturgeon was speaking at ATR on 5/27/19. At that time, the Spirit ministered to me that the power of the gaze is responsible for our experience of the presence of God. God is outside of our physical realm, and sees ALL of it at once! He used the cosmic background radiation image to help me understand that, but God obviously operates in more dimensions. He showed me the video game Tempest, and reminded me how I saw that. I was somewhat aware of everything happening in that extremely fast paced and information rich screen, but I would focus most of my attention on one spot, and have heightened awareness of several others. God ministered to me that He is seeing everything at once, without the awareness limitations I had. But, sometimes He increases His “focus” on one or more places within our reality. We experience this as His “presence.” He is using the power of His gaze to accelerate change in the places He increases His focus! Of course, if He were to focus most of His gaze on one place, the change would be instantaneous, and destructive to us, so He moderates His gaze at all times. This is mercy and love.
The subatomic particles are defined by observation, after all! God said that words are for releasing from within us, for creating light and life in the physical. The gaze is for aligning, restoring, and recreating. It is the tool of redemption. After reminding me of all this, He said that when we expand our spirit and soul in that way, we are basically omnipresent in a similar (but much lesser) way to Him! And, the focus we give through our soul and body will have the effect on those things we have dominion over in the same way we experience His presence through His gaze! He told me I would understand more as I walked in this new (old) way. He said He loves me, and was greatly looking “forward” to sharing this with me! So am I!
-Bob Henry