The Magnificent Mind
The magnificent mind is a perfect mind, undefiled by error or the flesh. The flesh is not just the visible, it is the ungovernable. The flesh is what is visible, but what is visible is without discipline.
The flesh is synonymous with power and power is relative and always shifting. There is nothing that is real because nothing is certain or permanent with physical reality. Everything is relative in the world of the flesh. The only arbiter in this world is physical force. The only discipline that exists in this world is that which can be had through physical force. However, this system had migrated to using law as a conceptualization of force.
Law is nothing but codified opinion by those who have the power to enforce it. Without an enforcement option, law is nothing but opinion.
Force is a manifestation of the Law of the Jungle. It is the application of the dictum that might makes right and the end justifies the means. But this is the result of never maturing spiritually.
We all mature physically and so we all consume. We all create costs by living. Life is not free it comes with costs. All costs must be paid. It depends on who pays them as to whether we are spiritually mature or not.
The spiritually mature pay their own way. They cease at some point in time, being dependent on others.
However, this is not a subjective condition. We do not have the right or power to decide if we are paying our way or not. We do not get to determine our costs nor the value of our work. This is where discipline enters the picture. The magnificent mind is disciplined and is spiritually mature. This means that it absorbs all costs onto itself and additionally creates a surplus.
It is this surplus that forms civilization and is understood as economic development.
Consumption must come from somewhere. We either consume the modest surplus of a pristine earth, or we add value to the earth to increase its fruitfulness and consume a portion of this.
However, if everyone consumes the equity produced but only a few produce a surplus, the surplus, if any, will soon evaporate and the prospect of economic development will be lost. If this happens the producing fraction is likely to become demoralized. If this happens the nation will fall.
The spiritually immature who consumes more than he or she produces, does not have a disciplined mind. Without discipline the mind is rendered mundane. People do not realize this. If the mind is not disciplined there is no progress.
If there is no progress, there is no mind.
There is a war for the mind going on. This is the war of good versus evil. There is no war in the physical world that is not an evil war. When we say it is an evil war it means it is a war of flesh against flesh and if one side is more right than the other, one has to measure in what way that war is more right and measure it against the ways in which the other side is more right.
In the end, flesh against flesh only leads to the victory of flesh and the victory of flesh over flesh is not a win for the spirit.
If we do not engage the mind, that is discipline it, where will it go? Where it leads, we will surely follow.
Imagine a mind that is undisciplined. It will be distracted by everything that is around it. It will ultimately become a slave to the flesh. The undisciplined mind is a brain. The brain is flesh and responds to the compulsions of the flesh.
If the mind is not active, then the flesh must take over. The only way the mind can be active if is it seeks the truth. It is truth that disciplines the mind. This is also the process which leads to spiritual maturity.
To have a disciplined mind and in time a magnificent one is to seek the truth. This might appear to be a paradox. How do we seek what we do not know. 2+2 equals something, but what? How do we know the answer unless we know the answer.
What if we answer with the word, ‘elephants?’ How do we know elephants is not the right answer to 2+2? Perhaps it is.
This question of how do we know what the truth is, unless we know the truth brings us to the oft asked question as to what is the truth?
If reality is not true then how is a representation of reality, true?
We talk about inductive truth or truth based on observation, but how many observations will give us the truth if we cannot see the truth?
How do we make an observation if an observation is restricted to mental activity?
How do we discern the truth if the truth is restricted to the observation, that is the mental event with no way to objectively verify what is observed?
Even if everything we can observe and measure tells us that the earth revolves around the sun, how does knowing that discipline the mind?
But are facts what is mean by the truth? Are facts and truth equivalent?
Facts are flesh. Facts are only relevant to the physical world. This is the world of assets and all that is physical and an asset belongs to God.
Facts are not truth. Facts are. Facts are the substrate on which we work, and on which we erect the truth, or church.
We discipline the mind by building the church. But we know the church is not built with bricks or bodies. That would be a fact, if we say a bigger church in terms of bricks and bodies is a more successful church, then assets form the foundation of truth. But assets are facts or form facts, but not truth. So, saying the church is measured by physical features, might be a fact, but it is not true.
No number of physical things will build the church. The church is not a physical thing so how can the accumulation of physical elements create the church.
The church is the value we add to assets. The church belongs to the metaphysical realm, not the physical realm.
We cannot build the church using physical things because the physical realm is not our province. We cannot claim the physical world, none of it is ours. We need to build with the only thing we have to build with, the fruits of faith, the work that produces value.
We must add value to assets, but we cannot do this without a disciplined mind. A disciplined mind seeks the truth, not facts.
The mind that embraces discipline with great passion, is a magnificent mind. This mind finds its way to perfection and to God.