Worship & Reality Modification

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.” ~ David Foster Wallace

“When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” ~ Gustav Mahler

“We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.” ~ A.W. Tozer

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” ~ A.W. Tozer

“What we think about when we are free to think about what we will – that is what we are or will soon become.” ~ A.W. Tozer

“The glory of God is a man that is fully alive; and the life of man consists in beholding God.” ~ Irenaeus.

A World Governed by Worship.
1. Worship & Service
  1. The feeling of reverence and adoration for a deity.
    1. Spoken of through the use of many different Hebrew words that describe emotions of love and reverence along with their accompanying demonstrations.
      1. Halal – הָלַל – to be clear or sharp, to be brilliant/shine, to flash forth light, to praise, to boast, to make a fool of, to make a show.
        
        Halal has all seven verbal aspects – binyanim – which means it can take on the active/passive simple, active/passive intensive, active/passive causative, and the reflexive/cooperative.
        
        praise/be praised
        
        glorify/be glorified
        
        cause to shine/be caused to shine
        
        to praise oneself
        
        Tehillah – תְּהִלָּה – praise, song, hymnn.
      2. Zamar – זָמַר – to pluck, to sing, to make music. To slap the bass.
        
        Root comes from pruning → plucking. It’s about the act of stringed music and it’s accompanying lyricism.
      3. Yada – יָדָה – to throw or to cast the hand, to shoot, to give praise, to confess.
        
        Speaks towards throwing up or out the hands as a gesture of openness and vulnerability/desire.
        
        Towdah – תּוֹדָה – to extend the hand(s) in confession, praise, thanksgiving. A chorus.
      4. Barak – בָּרַךְ – to bend the knee, to bless, to adore, to kneel, to invoke.
        
        Speaks of spiritual power transmission between parties or invoking of authority.
      5. Shavach – שָׁבַח – to soothe, to still, to stroke, to praise, to pronounce happy.
        
        Can be either soft or loud, but is about restoring quiet.
        
        He commands the waves to be still with a shout.
        
        We softly sing praise to soothe God’s heart.
      6. Hagah – שָׁבַח – to meditate, to moan, to mutter, to muse.
        
        Associated with the growl of a lion over it’s kill.
        
        Repetitive and almost obsessive (certainly possessive!)
      7. Khazah – חָזָה – to see, behold, perceive, look, contemplate, prophesy.
        
        Associated with both discerning gaze as well as ecstatic visions.
        
        To see things as they are.
  2. The acts or rites that make up the formal expression of reverence for a deity.
    1. Spoken of through the use of many different Hebrew words (some of which overlap) that talk about the responsibilities of service, justice, generosity, and care that mark a follower of YHVH.
      1. Avad – עָבַד – to serve, to cultivate, to labor, to do work.
        
        Though this is one of the words most used for worship and service, it means any kind of work.
      2. Shakha – שָׁחָה – to serve, to bow down, to honor.
        
        Service as an action to demonstrate honor or value towards another.
      3. Natsar – נָצַר – to keep, to guard, to watch over, to preserve.
        
        Associated with the actions by which someone maintains a proper ritual and behavior in the world.
      4. Im asot mishpat – אִם־עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט – to accomplish justice (as in Micah 6:8).
        
        Speaking of righting the wrongs and injustices in the world so that they are reconciled with God’s design for the world.
  3. Worship practices in ancient times governed everything you did.
    1. Families and clans relate to one another as a reflection of how the divine beings relate to one another.
      1. Veneration or denigration of women.
      2. Role of children towards the father and mother.
      3. Attitude towards elders.
    2. Relationship with food and land is directly tied to your faithfulness, obedience, sacrifice and favor with your divine beings.
      1. No ancient culture without a fertility cult.
      2. Primary understanding of favor is tied to crops.
    3. Your relationship to outsiders (war, hospitality, trade, trust) is a reflection of how your divine beings interact with their divine beings.
      1. Clashes between peoples seen as conflict between their gods.
      2. Forbidden to intermarry.
      3. Hospitality laws (bread and salt).
      4. Pantheons – the original united nations.
    4. The stories and symbols that are valued in your society is the reflection of what your divine beings value is the shaping of your society (feedback loops).
      1. Priesthood.
      2. Elders.
      3. Artists.
      4. Musicians.
  4. Nothing has changed but semantics.
    1. Family and gender roles are determined by the divine images ideals that families and individuals buy into.
      1. Virginal goddess worship replaced with beauty cults.
      2. Divine mother worship replaced with hyper-feminism.
      3. Warrior cults replaced with hyper-masculinity.
    2. Relationship with resources governed by the rituals and sacrifices hustle and work ethic associated with success in a particular person’s religion philosophy of work.
      1. Fertility cults replaced by get-rich-quick schemes, affirmation cults, and multilevel marketing.
      2. Money as a symbol of favor replaced by money as a symbol of worthiness/excellence.
    3. Orientation and treatment of outsiders is dictated by the priests social influencers who represent divine beings the ideals of our society.
      1. Caste systems and ostracizing of the other replaced by cancel culture and straw-man media.
      2. Geographical separation based on tribal worship replaced by geographical separation based on race/income/political leanings.
      3. Power of the priests and prophets to control people now replaced by the power of influencers and moguls to control people.
    4. The stories and symbols that we create in our society reflect the divine beings ideals that we value based on our religious ideological upbringing.
      1. Mythological stories of our divine beings replaced by symbolic narratives in media.
      2. Psalms and hymns for emotional development, orientation, and initiation replaced by popular music.
      3. Religious identification facilitated by tribal priests/elders replaced by ideological formation facilitated by education/counseling.
Worship as whole-body intelligence formation.
1. The Sacred Gift – right brain intelligence – faster than conscious thought.
  1. Right brain to right brain communication or “mindsight” allows us to know the mind of another
    1. Develops identity in infants.
    2. Develops group identity in adults.
    3. Transforms character under secure attachment.
    4. Shifts attention to what is most important.
  2. Strengths
    1. Operates at 6hz, making it the fastest form of thinking.
    2. Operates holistically – takes in the full range of perception and picks a focal point.
    3. Contextualized to the personal narrative and how I belong to my relationships.
      1. Answers, “what is like me and my people to do now?”
    4. Grows in the direction of it’s joyful attachments.
    5. Calculates the least harmful alternative.
    6. Most helpful and effective for healing.
  3. Weaknesses
    1. Deprived of resource when alone.
    2. Largely non-verbal.
    3. Largely unaffected by “beliefs” or argumentation.
    4. Very susceptible to unresolved emotional experiences and relational/spiritual deception.
    5. “Freezes up” if tired or exposed to extreme emotions.
  4. Practices
    1. Singing.
    2. Practicing Presence (the fullness of this moment).
    3. Non-verbal expression (prayer languages).
    4. Contemplation (as opposed to meditation).
    5. Face-to-face fellowship (sharing joys and sorrows).
2. The Faithful Servant – left brain intelligence – slow-track conscious thought (5hz).
  1. Ideological vision & abstract thinking allows thoughts to work towards a goal.
    1. Easily understood, but at the cost of other values.
    2. Uses procedural and autobiographical memory well.
    3. Methodical and focused towards it’s target.
    4. Shared explanations, communication and rhetoric allow for large-scale organization without attachment.
  2. Strengths
    1. Operates at “verbal speed” so we can know what we’re thinking.
    2. Easily understood and expressed.
    3. Narrow and specific in focus (allows for clarity).
    4. Easily identifies errors.
    5. Procedural, scalable, works well with technology.
  3. Weaknesses
    1. Hyper-focused and unable to see larger picture.
    2. Over-dependent upon words to provide meaning.
    3. Verbal Logical Explainer errors.
      1. The rush to provide explanations for the data from our right hemisphere can result in simplistic or confabulated narratives in the VLE system.
      2. This is the explanation of a great deal of cognitive dissonance.
    4. The slow track will use all kinds of rationalization, self-deception, and self-justification to maintain it’s generated narrative.
  4. Practices
    1. Meditation (as opposed to contemplation)
    2. Textual/Doctrinal study.
    3. Preaching & Teaching
    4. Verbal Prayer (scripted as well as extemporaneous)
    5. Lectio Divina
3. Anchoring Intelligence – somatic/body intelligence – beginning in the brain stem and extending through an extensive network of neural tissue throughout the body.
  1. The body remembers
    1. somatic symptoms (stress disorders, hives, rashes, migraines)
    2. physical triggers for memory
    3. embodied and peaceful presence is a sign the brain is stable.
  2. Strengths
    1. Too slow to fall for “quick fixes”
      1. I don’t need sleep.
      2. I can ignore my anger.
      3. Stress is a mindset.
    2. Always present to us if we can slow down and “listen”
    3. Anchors us in rhythms of life.
    4. Much more durable and resilient than conscious thought.
  3. Weaknesses
    1. Carries unresolved issues into all areas of life.
    2. Can be ignored, with exponentially negative effects.
    3. Susceptible to chemical influences.
    4. Can be difficult to “reason with”.
  4. Practices
    1. Fasting
    2. Silence
    3. Solitude
    4. Kneeling/Prostration
    5. Ritual Motions
    6. Rest
    7. Breath Prayers
4. Incorporated Intelligence – group mind – the external elements of storytelling, information, and meaning making that are encoded and transmitted by the group to which you belong.
  1. Omnipresent, invisible power of “normal”.
    1. How we talk
    2. The stories we tell
    3. The way we interact with each other.
    4. What success/maturity/worthiness look like.
    5. Mediated by shame and honor.
    6. Group has many systems of “identity standard” enforcement.
  2. Strengths
    1. Slowest to change.
    2. Greatest influence on maturity.
    3. Strongest force for confirmation.
    4. Directly ties to attachment (fast-track).
  3. Weaknesses
    1. Slowest to change.
    2. Takes 3-4 generations to recover from injury and to “judge the fruit”.
    3. Extreme difficulty adjusting to external changes.
    4. Most vulnerable to systematic oppression.
  4. Practices
    1. The constant experience of belonging and relating to your community.
      1. Lifestyle
      2. Rituals
      3. Events
      4. Money
      5. Gossip vs. Well-speaking
      6. Rhythms of Life
      7. Insider/Outsider Identification
      8. Jargon
Ancient/Modern Perspective Compromise.
1. From a modern perspective, the ancients seem to have taken these forms of intelligence and “theopomorphised” them into an invisible world of spirits and divine beings.
2. From an ancient perspective, modern people seem to have made their souls more vulnerable and compromised than ever by ignoring the constant spiritual dynamics or diminishing their influence as “thought patterns” or “feelings” they can ignore.
3. At the very least, “theopomorphizing” some of these attributes serves to give us a richer symbolic palette to talk about these forms of intelligence and that enables us to construct a sense of self that can partner with or war against these embodied ideologies.
4. For those of us who are more open to the spiritual aspects of life, these forms of intelligence become a way for us to more accurately and wholistically engage the spiritual realm we live in and more powerfully engage in it’s transformation.

Kingdoms of Control

The Collaborative Hermeneutic

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