The walking of the soul

[an email]

I've sent this before, but it's so valuable to see the connection between the Work teaching [i.e. Fourth Way, Ouspensky] and the Calvinist, Puritan, Reformed school of doctrine. This is a passage from Thomas Boston's Human Nature In its Fourfold State. See, at the end, where he basically describes the state of identification, and ties it to being a feature of our fallen nature:

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(6.) Is not everyone by nature discontented with his present lot in the world, or with some one thing or other in it? This also was Adam's case, Gen. 3:5, 6. Some one thing is always lacking; so that man is a creature given to changes. If any doubt this, let them look over all their enjoyment; and, after a review of them, listen to their own hearts, and they will hear a secret murmuring for lack of something—though perhaps, if they considered the matter aright, they would see that it is better for them to lack, than to have that something. Since the hearts of our first parents flew out at their eyes, on the forbidden fruit, and a night of darkness was thereby brought on the world, their posterity have a natural disease which Solomon calls, "The wandering of the desire," or, as the word is, "The walking of your soul," Eccl. 6:9. This is a sort of diabolical trance, wherein the soul traverses the world; feeds itself with a thousand airy nothings; snatches at this and the other created excellency, in imagination and desire; goes here, and there, and everywhere, except where it should go. And the soul is never cured of this disease, until conquering grace brings it back to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ—but until this be, if man were set again in paradise, the garden of the Lord, all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yes, and leaping over the hedge a second time.
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The entire book is Shakespearian due both to Boston's writing skill and the fact that his material is the most foundational truths. You see this in the first main section describing the fall of Adam. And you see echoes of Work teaching throughout. You also see how entire novels have been written on individual ideas presented in such biblical doctrine. I.e. that is the foundational power of what is presented. - C.