You have to begin to awaken on the battlefield...

You have to begin to awaken on the battlefield. When this time occurs you are discerning light from darkness. Bad angels from good angels. Bad influence from good influence. You can't just say all is darkness because that is not true. That is abdicating your ability to discern between light and darkness that the Holy Spirit gives you once regenerated.

I'm currently in a book that is reproducing ancient magical formulas (it's a Christian book on spiritual warfare titled Powers of Darkness by Clinton E. Arnold), and I recoil in fear of even reading these things in the course of reading the book. I can discern darkness. I recoil at it.

The Work [Fourth Way, but insert any extra-biblical school teaching that is Christian and is on-the-mark, and none will be all wheat and no chaff, and, also, I know of none but Work sources, see right-hand margin] is not that. It is not formulas for protective magic or malevolent magic or love potion magic or divine revelation magic, and it's not about pagan deities and idols. There is no summoning of demons to various purposes.

And with C Influence there is no 'channeling' of some revelation. What is C Influence? It is influence that is conscious in origin and in action and not constrained by time or place. That sounds angelic (messenger of God). It sounds like the Holy Spirit Himself. But, again, discernment *required.* Don't just say everything is dark and evil. Discern the very words coming out of a Christian church leader's mouth. Right? Yes, right.

[Again, this is an email response to the notion that the Work is default about darkness. C Influence is a Work term. It is basic. There is A, B, and C Influence. A Influence are life influences that come at you no effort needed on your part. Influences such as hunger (need for food), need for money, sexual feelings, and - tongue-in-cheek - everything contained in the term 'mother-in-law'. B Influence are influences you have to make some effort to move towards. They require some effort of controlled attention, they don't just come at you. Influences such as art, music, imaginative literature, history, philosophy, religion, science, up to the highest levels of those things. C Influence then is above B Influence and requires more direct contact. It requires a person be, for instance, in the state an inspired artist or composer is in when they are creating. Awake. Above the state of waking sleep where all humanity resides in all their waking days. And C Influence is influence that is conscious in origin. B Influence contains greater or lesser degrees of C Influence. Just being able to discern *that* is a big step in a person's development. It would be sort of right to say special revelation, the Old and New Testaments is C Influence, but that really isn't right, because the word of God is in its own category. It's like the Creator/creation divide. I won't go further.]

The Work is battle with such things inside us and in the world around us that are of the darkness. It is spiritual warfare. It is provoking our limits *so that* we can shine light on what still lies in darkness and get control over it so it no longer has control over us.

The Work is a language that identifies *features* of our fallen nature so that we can then mortify them. It also identifies features of our new nature, or features of the image of God that became disused or distorted at the fall, so that we can cultivate them and bring them to life, by the power and grace of God.

*Christians, for the most part, especially in this era, but excepting the Puritans really, all eras, don't like to talk about or think about spiritual warfare.* This is delinquent. This is sub rate Christianity. (Arnold makes the point when he visits Christians in Africa they tell him they have consternation why American and European Christians don't speak of the spiritual realm and spiritual warfare when they see it as preeminent and necessary in their lives.)

We have a standard called the Bible. If the Work sources said, "Here is how you get a person to fall in love with you: 1. You self-remember for six hours straight for seven days. 2. Then you practice external-considering in controlled imagination of that person seven times a day for seven days. 3. Then [...]

No, that is not what the Work is. There is no calling of demons into our lives to help us in any way or give us anything or anything else.

Yes, we are provoking our limits (in the service of the God-reliant effort of progressive sanctification) which puts us in conflict with features of our fallen nature and perhaps also with influences in the world about us that are dark...*but they are going to be there no matter what.* In other words, yes, we are actively becoming soldiers. We are not necessarily courting conflict, but conflict comes with development by default. We can draw back and say everything is evil, everything is darkness, but that is giving up territory and abdicating the battlefield to the forces of darkness.

You can't be awake in this realm and be unmolested by unpleasant forces, yet God wants us awake (He says it in his revealed word), hence we have to be skillful, wise (wise as serpents, harmless as doves) and effective as soldiers on the battlefield. - C.