CHRISTIAN LIFE COACHING
The Ultimate Coaching Experience
With Dr. Rick Barr
(Beyond where psychology will take you)
To become healthy creatures we must develop three minds that came to us throughout the history of mankind: the body mind that was the focus of the pagan religion, the soul mind that was the new focus of the Jewish religion, called out of the pagan mindset; and finally the fulfillment of the soul/body Jewish mind set, the spirit mind that is the new discovery of Christianity.
Where you have come from in terms of your experience of religion in your life does not really matter to the more important point that all healthy people meet in a place called “Delight” where the hierarchy of spirit, soul, and body are all working at peak levels even on the bad days, even more, especially on the bad days.
The Body (Greek soma) Mind
The body mind is most obvious in the functioning of a baby. The baby is all body mind. He is the total consumer. Everything comes to him by the mouth whether it be love, nurturing, or even all the experiences that the baby takes in. The body mind can only perceive. If the baby cannot see you, you do not exist. The peek-a-boo game with the baby, and the body mind, is actually the death and resurrection game. (You see the young boy taking in God, en-theo-ism, in this picture.)
When the baby is hungry, tired, or wet it cries. He makes it obvious that he is more than hungry, tired or wet. He is dying! He is not being a drama queen!
For the body mind all life is taking in, consuming. If I am not taking in love, not taking in worth, then I am dying. According to the body mind “I am what I consume.” No self-respecting cannibal would ever eat a coward for fear of becoming a coward. The disciples of Jesus always fed on the body and bread of Jesus and always found themselves overflowing with virility and virtue (Latin for man is vir).
Our religion, and its effectiveness, becomes a reflection of the highest mind we are capable of using.
All pagan religions have in common the body mind. The pagan projects his personal experience of consumption onto the universe and calls God “The Great Mother” who always was and always will be. She is the total consumer. She gives birth to her children who she finally devours. She is womb. She is tomb. She never has enough no matter how hard we try to appease Her. It never is enough. The central symbol of pagan religion is the serpent in a round circle with its mouth on its own anus, an eternal re-cycling machine. She is never upset because whether you are living or dying, you are Her food, you are her fertilizer. She lives and feeds on your blood.
What clinical psychology calls depression, is simply recognition that She wins in the end. What clinical psychology calls a manic/depressive or a bi-polar personality is simply the recognition that She is both good Mother and evil Mother. What clinical psychology calls addiction is simply incest with the Great Mother.
The Soul (Greek psyche) Mind
When the Jews found themselves called out of Egypt, they found themselves even more called out of the pagan mindset of the body mind. (Jacob has to learn to fight with his other half to get out of Egypt like in the picture.)
If the pagan mind (body mind) commands one to get love, the Jewish mind (soul mind) commands one to get real.
The body mind says death is an inevitable fact of life, but the soul mind says “No death is punishment for disobeying God’s laws.” The body mind says we are all victims of fate. The soul mind says we are all sinners who disobey God, but could obey God, and live forever.
The reason mankind in history has always hated the Jew is that the Jew brought us morality and history. The body mind does not like to be told “get real because you are spending more than you have.” The body mind believes the past is the golden age of mankind, but the soul mind believes the future is the golden age of mankind “when the Messiah will come.”
If the body mind runs by the law of consumption, the soul mind runs by the law of compensation so that what I sow, I shall reap. What I put into the system, I will take out. So if the body mind sees God as the Great Mother, the soul mind sees God as a Judge who is never satisfied either.
The difference, however, between the Great Mother and God as Judge is that the Great Mother produces shame where I am never good enough but the Judge produces guilt where I never do enough good.
The Spirit (Greek pneuma) Mind
The battle between the body mind that wants to get love and the soul mind that wants us to get real, seems to tear us in two and produce gridlock that can never be undone. (Jesus is battling this gridlock in his own body and soul in the wilderness. He had to quiet his body and soul mind to make this happen. Sometimes this happens with a nervous breakdown. For Jesus it was an induced breakdown by the Spirit of the Father. Before he was only filled with the Spirit. After the wilderness experience, he was flowing in the Spirit. He experienced the power of the Spirit. One writer calls it the difference between success and significance.)
The Greek pagan body mind set wants us to leave the body and focus on the soul, but the Jewish soul mind set tells us that as a human we are a psychosomatic unity, a soul body unity. The body is good because the Judge created the body. Sex is good in the context of marriage because God created the man and the woman to have sex with each other and bring increase, children, prosperity, and a future society living in peace.
The Jewish soul problem is that the more I try to please the Judge the more I become aware of sins that I never was aware of when I was still a baby. So if growing up with a moral conscience creates a bigger debt in my soul, does it not make more sense to stay immature, dumb, and innocent? To do as the Greeks suggest, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?”
So as one unhappy but ambitious Jew observed “Religion seems to increase sin and guilt so what is the point? And then screamed out to no one in particular: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
The answer came as quickly as the question was delivered: “Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
What the Jew Saul discovered to become the anointed Jew Paul was that Jesus brought humanity a new mind and new mindset: the spirit mind.
As the body mind commands the individual to get love, and the soul mind commands the individual to get real, the spirit mind commands the individual to give love for that sort of love is also light.
As the body mind functions by the law of consumption, and the soul the law of compensation, the spirit mind functions by the law of jubilee.
The law of jubilee was an economic reality based on the horror of slavery and being in debt to a person which is slavery. Every 50 years all economic debts and mortgages were to be forgiven in Jewish society. It was a reminder to the prosperous Jew that God you call Judge is also God you should also call Redeemer who paid off your debts and gave you the Promised Land, a land you did not work for, nor till under, but a land given to you with crops and vineyards already flourishing. And when the Jews were in captivity in Babylon, the prophet Isaiah predicted when history comes to an end, the Messiah, the Anointed One, shall come and announce the year of Jubilee, the year of favor (Greek charis), shall be standard practice.
And when Jesus preached his first public sermon in his hometown in Nazareth, he preached that passage, and said, “It is now happening!”
This meant the law of jubilee will always satisfy beyond imagination of the law of consumption and the law of compensation. The spirit mind will always satisfy beyond the body mind and the soul mind.
Our Product
When you learn to give love and become food for others, you will always satisfy the body’s need to get love, to get worth, to get food for body and soul.
When you learn to give love and become credit for others, you will always satisfy the soul’s need to get real, to get compensation, to give credit when the soul only wants to take credit.
This is the place of Delight that everyone longs for, and it is no longer the golden age of the past like it is for the body mind nor the golden age of the future like it is for the soul mind, but the golden age for the spirit mind is Today.
No matter where you have come from in terms of ethnic/religious/economic or age, the humble (Hebrew unaw), the afflicted (Hebrew unaw), the poor (Hebrew unaw), the oppressed (Hebrew unaw), the needy (Hebrew unaw), the meek (Hebrew unaw), those who want what they need according to the spirit, shall inherit the earth.
They shall rule finally and live in never ending Delight (Hebrew Eden) even when the rest of the world has died and inherited the wind.
The greatest miracle in the history of the world, a time which we now measure history, is the Incarnation where the Spirit of God became body and soul and dwelled among us.
This miracle by faith, not by religion, can be yours today. You are the burn in the bush, the fire in the tree, the prince and princess who has forgotten who you are.
Dr. Rick Barr, October 12, 2015
