Love of God and the neighbor marries its supportive ideation

To obey the law to love God and the neighbor, make a habit of multiplying excuse-the-neighbor ideation like 'Are they undergoing stress or sick? or were they abused?' Once you construct a plausible excuse for nasty behaviors, this blunts evil feelings as though one were kicking a puppy.

Think how difficult it is to disprove plausible excuses for unfortunate behavior! Such plausible excuses may seem flimsy and ethereal, but they have a concrete dampening effect on evil feelings and excuses-for-these thoughts in adulterous interrelation.

For the sin and error nature of the proprium, our fallen egos, yearns to caricature the neighbor so as more easily to hate them! If we do not make excuses for the neighbor, then we accuse them; and we accuse them the more readily as we caricature them and thereby commit false witness within us.

"Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)" (Romans 2:15).

But object constancy, and especially that imbued with excuses-for-the-neighbor, refuses to see only nastiness in anyone and automatically seeks to excuse their perceived offenses. 

Such automatic making of excuses does not preclude physical self-defense or otherwise regulating the neighbor in case of need! This is a process that occurs internally, in the arena of the plate of the heart and in the cup of the thoughts. 

Just as we hunger, and this hunger marries thoughts of satisfying that hunger; and just as we thirst, and this thirst marries thoughts of satisfying that thirst; so excuses for or accusations of the neighbor proceed from good and evil feelings. 

We not love God and the neighbor without its supportive ideation in married relationship with it. We do not love self and the world without its supportive ideation in adulterous relationship to it.

We do not think of someone whom we love without its married ideation. We do not think of someone we hate without its adulterous ideation. Thus do the marriage of love with wisdom and the adultery of sin with darkness array themselves in precise diversity in the Word of the Lord. 

This is the principle reason why we see so many pairs of symbols such as bread and wine and honor and glory and oil and stone and beasts and birds and 3 and 4 and sheep and goat in the upright and reversed positions throughout the Word of God.

We see so many pairs of symbols because of our capacity to receive love and wisdom from our Creator. We consequently have vessels fit to receive these: our wills and understandings. And we see so many pairs of symbols also because of contrasts of inner and outer and the like; and because of didactic pairs of personages (eg Cain and Abel, Rachel and Leah, Esau and Jacob).

All of your feelings and their supportive ideation can be expressed with the spiritual coordinates of this taxonomic system encoded by God into His Word. For you cannot have any desire or thirst or lust of whatever kind without its supportive ideation. If so be you eat bread, you must swallow it with wine; if so be you eat bread of wickedness, you must swallow it with wine of violence.

Thus do we cleanse the inside and the outside of the platter and cup even as the Lord tries the heart and reins.

We navigate this infrastructure rather than being tossed to and fro by it when we study what the Word of God has to teach us about the processes whereby the Lord actually tries the heart and reins (Jeremiah 7:10).

We pass through the fire what may be passed through the fire and through the water what may be passed through the water (Numbers 31:23). In other words, we shun sin and error. And if we do not shun sin and error, passing the feelings we feed within us through the fire and the thoughts we feed within us through the water, we cannot enter the "wealthy place" (Psalms 66:12).

We cannot receive innocence and its supportive ideation from the Lord, becoming as a little child and being given a fleshy heart rather than one of stone, unless we have cleansed our feelings and thoughts as if of ourselves but by the power of God.

You would not put a fresh loaf of bread on a plate covered with mold! And neither would you pour fine wine into a dirty cup. And neither will the Lord come to dwell with us as the bread of divine love and the wine of divine truth if we are withal filthy and endarkened. 

We must be vigilant within ourselves, for it is there that we obey the commandment to "Watch and pray". 

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23)

Confront your evil feelings, confront your twisted thoughts; confront them with the Word, with conscience, with excuses for the neighbor, with whatever of good or truth comes to hand from the Lord to combat them. 

For out of this is the issue of life.

The bottom line is that we must patrol the battlements of feeling and thought like our lives depended on it. The guest room of our lives needs to be free of roaches and cankerworms and bedbugs and stains, or the Lord will not have any room to put all of His stuff and will not even unpack His suitcase.

Godspeed on the Way.