Fortitude
I think I may start a pattern of reading one classic novel a year. Last year it was Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Before this year is up I think I'll read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
UPDATE:
If this novel turns out to be too tedious I'm not finishing it. Life is too short for that when you're beyond it already. I hit a goldmine in Vanity Fair, being a great novel (or interesting in a way I was precisely looking for, societal relationships and phenomena and all that, described with understanding and skill) I'd not read before.
So I'm not going to record the page number progress. I should've chosen more wisely like I did with the Thackeray. I chose Wuthering Heights based on a reference in some guy's blog profile. Probably a James Joyce would have been better after a 19th century work like the Thackeray... (This is all normal sifting of influences that goes on, but when you write a blog post announcing you're going to do something this type of retraction has to be made!)
OK, I'll leave the PPP blog alone for awhile. They're pretty much ignoring me pretty well now anyway. Not much more I can berate them with. I just get drenched in that level and can't reascend. I'll leave it alone.
There are a couple of good posts recently on the '+' blog. One thing I've experienced in my 4th, then 5th, and now 6th complete reading of the Bible is coming into truly new understanding of it each time. The post on Leviticus on the + blog may not come across saying what I was trying to say, completely, but it's an example. To be able to 'see' and understand a book like Leviticus, beyond the surface of it (i.e. beyond understanding the role of the law given on Sinai and how that applies then and now and all that, which is alot to understand in and of itself) is to truly be given new understanding. To see that book especially in the more practical, useful level. I once made a list of features and traits (negative ones) that corresponded to things Leviticus is talking about, so I've gone deeper there in the past, but to see it as I wrote about it in that + blog post is different. It is almost in the category of seeing an instance of divine irony in the text, which is often tricky and hard to see (people often claim God is 'laughing' at us or being something equivalent to the 'guru' type thing, but they don't have understanding let alone reverence - fear - of the text and of God).
I'm not going to record anything here on this blog regarding actual ground level Work aims. That is something for private records and journals. I would only do it as an example. For pedagogical reasons, if you will. But that has been done.
I WILL continue to note my progress in the 6th complete Bible reading on the PPP post I set up for that though. Because I will finish that. That is a big, serious aim. One complete reading is big. I'll also continue to record the reading of the Edwards' book, because that is a project that symbolizes a completion of a big stage (of study). In case no one noticed I put two links in the PPP blog's right hand margin to those two book-reading posts for ease of finding.
I heard a woman on the news, in the aftermath of a horrible murder-suicide committed by someone known in her New Orleans neighborhood, say something interesting (seemingly obvious, but it seems insightful the way she said it). She said: it seems like the line between surviving and coping and no longer being able to survive and cope is getting thinner nowadays...
If you ever start feeling like what that women said that is when prayer as a real powerful help (ask and ye shall receive) and strength in Christ, and the Spirit of Christ, which is the Holy Spirit, and ministering angels, all are there to be used (and you have to be good at it via experience, and increased understanding of it and how it works and manifests). You don't have because you don't ask. It's revolutionary to realize you can draw on something bigger and more powerful than you. That is how people in the world in a comfortable situation do it anyway. They belong to something bigger than them. They draw their sustenance from a big company or government institution or what have you. At the worldly level that gives comfort and stability in life. But spiritually, you have that at an infinitely bigger and more powerful level...
I have to remember what I'm currently involved in accomplishing:
1. My 6th complete reading of the Bible.
2. Read complete Edwards' History of the Work of Redemption.
I'm reading the Bible because my now long-standing goal is to read it complete 7 times. I have to do the 6th reading to get to the 7th. (Looking back I did the first three complete readings over a span of seven or so years, then the 4th in '04, the 5th in '05, and now the 6th in '06.)
I'm reading the Edwards book because it will complete my theological studies. It is a history of sacred history. I didn't have that complete yet. (The history angle I mean. I had the poetry and philosophy angle (not to mention the actual Bible). By poetry I mean things like Pilgrim's Progress and Grail Romance, and by philosophy I mean biblical doctrine as found in systematic theology and biblical theology, etc.) I have everything else. So reading the Edwards book is important as a completion of a long project to learn the Bible and to learn biblical doctrine.
As for a big 3rd thing... Godliness. Practical effort. Work aims. One thing that happens when you come to ultimate influences and truth is you can get depressed with the fact that there is 'no where to go, nothing to do.' That Camu-ish box you can get into. No illusions means seeing the prison. The prison of your body and the prison of the fallen world. Limitations. As C. S. Lewis said, you don't want to just be able to fly into nature in some bird-like way, you want to be nature. (Using nature as an example of what a human being can long towards.) Like Demeter isn't just a goddess-being she is an actual field of wheat. That type of thing. Imagine experiencing those sensations and influences you've had glimpses of from nature and the different seasons and different times of life, and then imagine being actually inside them, or being them. That is what Lewis was getting at when he was articulating this banging your head against a wall thing human beings get into when they think of ultimate things and where they are now and the limitations they are under. On this subject Calvin says: don't even try to think about how things are and will be different in a glorified body, in a regenerated heaven and earth. You can't conceive of it, and you can only come woefully short of conceiving it and get yourself depressed about it all. In so many words Calvin said that.
3. Conscious shock effort. With aim.
I've been there before and it is the road to higher experiences. It is. You have to move in more than just the fourth dimension. You have to move inwardly and upwardly. But it's also just the road to increasing level of being and increasing capacity for more understanding and ability to see and experience more...
And to begin to accumulate you have to get on your horse (that is, get yourself into the 3rd state of consciousness) and go into the trackless forest (i.e. actually make a unique effort that takes you out of your normal patterns and state of comfortable sleep).
'Accumulate' can be put as an aim, and so can 'contain.' You accumulate by straight self-remembering effort for duration, depth, and frequency. You make 'contain' as an aim when you discern you have entered an emotional (backlash) state. So when you see this you can then set an actual timed 'contain' aim to be in a state of non-identification for, say, an hour.
Transform happens on its own. It is also the second conscious shock (as 'contain', via non-identifying, is), but it is Real Will, it happens from above you, and in time, and only as the result of accumulating higher energy and struggling to contain it.
An analogy: the grail knight on his horse riding through the trackless forest is in the 'accumulate' phase. The grail knight when he comes to a clearing and encounters conflict with other knights is in the 'contain' phase. The grail knight as he then proceeds from those battles and mysteriously enters the higher world, or geography, of the grail castle (or mountain) is in the 'transform' stage. Notice the transform stage just happens, in time, as a result of the accumulate and contain stages. It's not something the knight 'does', but then again he does cause it; but it is higher emotion and real will at work.