Testing

Sometimes when you're younger, you have not been tested. You don't trust yourself, because you haven't been pushed and pulled. You haven't seen the terror of death and survived. You haven't seen yourself in the midst of temptation -- you doubt that you could walk through the room without slipping the gems in your pocket.

Then you are tested. You are hacked at by temptations, fears, the desire to die, opposition from other people, or whatever else, and your flesh is broken and reformed. Until then, you live in tension, closing yourself up and craving to be changed. Some of what you think are your desires for other things or other people are really just that craving to be changed.

Having been tested, you might think that you have arrived. Or you might think that the process of being tested itself is something to arrive at, something to think of as "the answer" for the rest of your life.

"Flesh", "Spirit"

Sometimes I think of people as "flesh" and "spirit". The "flesh" is like muscles, is strong and thick. The vivid and obvious parts of human psychology are "fleshly". Also there is "spirit". The "spirit" is lightweight and thus can connect with the quiet, subtle, gentle world. The spirit can be easily blown about, can see all sorts of different angles. The spirit is under a person's control, it is free but weak. But the flesh has inertia out of its very strength.

The spirit can truly intend what the flesh can't bring out in the visible world. We tend to judge each other by what we bring out in the visible world. We even judge ourselves so.