What I would say to the street sweeper

My response to that last post would be: we have to make ourselves *able* to not only be in communication with God (and His messengers) but also to be directed by His will. If we're sleepwalking through life we can't complain that God isn't giving us guidance, or guiding us.

How do we not sleepwalk through life? It's what no Christian leaders or educators talk about; certainly not at a truly practical level.

The command, or teaching, to be constantly watchful, and to pray without ceasing, give biblical warrant to the practice of being awake above the common waking-sleep level where all of humanity resides, street sweeper to surgeon.

There is no better explication of the practice than in the Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution. Ouspensky was one of the early debunkers of the Theory of Evolution, mocking the very idea of mechanical evolution, so don't be thrown by the word evolution in that title.

Personally I'm doing marathon efforts with this. Tired of the endless talk and reading and taking in of same old knowledge (can't pour new wine into an old bottle)...i.e. you have to increase *capacity* for understanding to increase understanding. Knowledge plus being equals understanding. Work merely on the knowledge side alone and you stagnate if not start going backward.

I have some experience with this. Been through initiation, through the trenches. This is partly why I come across as crazy to the mainstream environment. Some people think it puts you in the realm of demons. We're already in the realm of demons. Definitely it's a Pilgrim's Progress sort of activity and journey, and as Bunyan clearly presented it, not for everybody. The Homeric epics, Iliad and Odyssey, embody the practice and teaching as a whole as well. It can be dangerous, I have to say. Unfortunately on the spiritual battlefield we're naked or half-armed before we realize the necessity for the full armor of God, Ephesians 6:10-18.