Continued from Part 2

The change from heterosexual female/male or bisexual female into echadsexual female/male can only happen in the context of Christian/Messianic plural (polygynous) marriage. It isn't something you are 'born' into or can suddenly 'switch' into. You have to grow into it.

If echadsexuality is a true, biblical state of being, then there must be parallels in the allegorical equivalent which is the Mystical Marriage of Christ to the Church (Messianic Community). And if it is a process, then there must be a spiritual equivalent for that too. And there are. Having identified them, and got a handle on them, I will then devote the remainder of this essay delineating the practical path that leads to this blissful echad union.

It is possible that you have already experienced this echad union within your local congregation, though I'm afraid it is becoming very rare to find a group of people who have this overwhelming communal, unselfish, sharing ahavah/agapé love. If you have never seen the film called The Mission, starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons (1986), then I recommend your viewing it. On the practical level of communitarianism it perfectly illustrates what can be done with a true biblical vision. The Guarani Indians of South America, under Jesuit leadership (before that Catholic organisation descended into inquisitorial barbarity itself), built a society modeling that of the first Christians/Messianics in Jerusalem. A true echad marriage will reflect the kind of spirit that lay behind these Indians' success before it was brutally suppressed and destroyed by jealous and violent men.

The condition of echad that obtains between the saints and their Bridegroom in heaven is described to us in the Book of Revelation. They are all described as priests (kohanim) of Yahweh and of Yah'shua (Jesus) (Revelation 20:6), reminding us of 1 Peter 2:5 wherein it is stated that all true believers are priests (and by extension, priestesses) in the making. In this paradisaical condition, all tears are wiped away, there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain (Revelation 21:4). And whilst the fullness of this beautiful world is not available here - because this is a fallen, mortal world - the spiritual, mental and emotional aspects are very much accessible here and now through right relationship with Yah'shua (Jesus). That echad or 'oneness' relationship is both singular (personal) and plural (collective) since the Bride of Christ is both One and Many simultaneously. What this means is that individuality and a collective consciousness-awareness are in perfect spiritual alignment and harmony. The attainment of this state of being is called 'renewal' by Yah'shua (Jesus) (Revelation 21:5) and is the substance of the message of the prophet Jeremiah who indicated that the Torah or Law of Yahweh would be entirely internalised, natural, and beautiful (Jeremiah 31:31ff) so that the outer Kingdom or Rule of the Messiah becomes equalised with the inner Kingdom (Luke 17:21).

The Kingdom of Elohim (God) cannot come in its fullness to the earth until Christ returns and inaugurates the Millennial Reign. Only a true theocracy can accomplish that so that we do not have conflicts between inner and outer, spiritual and secular. However, Yahweh has given us two microcosms of this Kingdom Life in the form of the Local Assembly (congregation, church) and polygamous marriage. The purpose of polygamous marriage is therefore to be a reflection, beacon, and assembly point for this perfect heavenly order which replaces the old one we are currently struggling in (Revelation 21:4). That New Order can, however, be birthed and matured within polygamous marriage here and now. And that is what we are about here at this ministry.

Much of the cause of our inner pains is wrong mental programming. We believe lies about ourselves, about others, about Elohim (God), and about the Messianic Community (Church). We come to believe these lies because of events in our lives that shape our consciousness. Various types of fear, anger, jealosy and other disturbing feelings are caused by the brainwashing we inflict on ourselves when we tell ourselves lies in the midst of strong feelings when we are in pain and suffering. These are called emotion-backed addictions. Various things can trigger them as we all know. Getting these false mental programs out of our system enables us to overcome disturbing emotional reactions and find peace. Thus it is that many people have deep-seated negative feelings aroused when they learn about polygamy - something in their programming opens an emotional sluice and out comes a barrage of abuse, disgust, anger or whatever. Many Christians/Messianics interpret these reactions as being 'of the Spirit' when in fact their source is human-emotional caused by false mental programming over many years. And as I described in Part 2 of this series, what we have to do is reprogram our psyche by asking Christ into our situation (preferably when we are emotionallty disturbed), to reveal the truth or the lie of the situation, and then to ask Him - through the Spirit - to make the necessary changes within. These changes may either be gradual (the more usual path) or instant (unusual, but very satisfying when it happens!).

Once a lie has been revealed to us, we have to repent! Yes, we are responsible for what we believe, even if others taught us the lies. All lies are an offence to Yahweh but He is quick to forgive upon repentance. They may - and more than likely - be the cause of demonic harrassment, so getting deliverance (which you can, in most instances, do yourself), is very important too. By this means wrong mental and emotional programming can be changed and the 'new man' (or 'new woman') be gradually reborn.

I don't think there is a single culture or congregational environment in existence that remotely reflects the ideal. They each may have excellent aspects which are condusive to the Christian/Messianic paradigm but as a whole they are defective. We know this is true because none of us is without sin and all of us have been shaped by the cultures we grew up in. Sadly, many churches/assemblies adapt the Gospel to different cultures because they have been taught the liberal secular lie that all cultures are equivalent in their own spheres. They aren't. To become a Christian/Messianic means to retain the good in our native cultures, expunge the evil, and invite Christ to re-form us in the image of the heavenly culture of the New Jerusalem.

When a born-again believer receives the gift of the Holy Spirit he is attracted to (or repelled by) people in a different way. This reorientation may be gradual or sudden. What was previously attractive in people may become revolting and what was revolting may suddenly become attractive. Immoral lifestyles, once enjoyed as a heathen, become repelling. For most the changeover is gradual, depending on the level of depravity entertained before conversion. As we know full well from Paul's epistles, former pagans were still struggling with the immoral ways of their past because their psyches were so messed up by their former culture. And as I said in Part 2, each of the seven churches (assemblies) of Asia Minor had problems, some of them very grave, and nearly all of them in the sexual arena. These former pagans were having a struggle in overcoming, but overcome they were commanded to do, and encouraged they were to strive diligently and consistently. There was no cheap grace but active, dynamic discipleship was enjoined. They had a struggle before them.

Marriage - the joining together of two or more souls in intimate contact - inevitably causes many problems in readjustment. Our differences are highlighted when we get near to each other, more so in a marriage than in a local congregation because the former is so much more intimate - it has a sexual dimension. Newly weds respond by making all kinds of readjustments, some good and some bad - some beneficial, and some harmful. Some pursue a dialectic approach by trying to find a 'middle ground' whereas in others one or other of the spouses 'insists' that things be done his or her way. But the truth of all marriage in Christ is that we must progressively move towards Him in the building of our relationship. That requires finding the Path of Torah which lays down the ground rules for home in terms or morality, ethics, codes or behaviour, diet, observance of holy days, sabbaths, etc.. But there is also New Covenant Torah which defines the way we are to interrelate. And its chief model is, of course, the allegorical Echad uniplural marriage of Christ to His Church (Messianic Community).

Marriages are not ready-made ... they have to be created. And like moving into an old house with a view to developing and modernising it, there is usually quite a bit of stripping away to be done of old paint, wallpaper, etc., and perhaps even some rebuilding. Our former lives as singles have to be reconstructed as married spouses. This is more than a redecoration job - it's a fundamental reconstruction.

Our problems come when one or other of the spouses refuses to reconstruct. One part of the house may be done up beautifully while the other is in a state of semi-ruin. Inequalities such as these are a real problem but have to be faced, acknowledged, and something done about them. And if it's the husband that's in a state of unyielding disrepair, then the marriage has huge problems before it has even started.

In the period between betrothal and full marriage in the Hebrew system, the husband went away and built his bride or brides a home under the supervision of his father. The bride would wait expectantly for her bridegroom to return and collect her. On the spiritual level, this is the time that prospective husbands should be retraining to be married men and leaving batchelorhood behind them. They are the future leaders of the home, and so theirs is the responsibility to get their spiritual act together before marrying. A man who does not use time to prepare for marriage and leadership isn't worth his salt. He is the one who must teach his wife or wives, not the other way round. That is the true domestic order established by Yahweh. And to do the job well, he must be both fearless and humble.

A life in Christ implies not only physical resurrection after death but spiritual resurrection here and now. A life in Christ implies big changes in habits, outlooks, and - ultimately - personality. He has got to stop thinking like an animal and start thinking like his Master. Young children use ego mechanisms backed by hair-trigger emotions to develop security, sensation, and power-magnification of their moment to moment sensory inputs. A man in Christ has to learn to rise above these and respond to the leadings of the Holy Spirit and the explicit instructions given in Torah. He has to grow from one state of consciousness-awareness to another. And he must be in a position to teach his wives to do the same.

The Bible speaks of 'carnal man' and 'spiritual man'. What exactly are these, how can we distinguish between them, and how can we rise above the carnal and into the spiritual in Christ? The carnal consciousness of man is ego-directed, subject-object, emotion-backed security, sensation, and power-consciousness (increasingly involving the rational mind) that makes us inflexibly guard and protect habitual folkways (our culture) and personal patterns. This should be contrasted with the spiritual man where ego-driven negative emotions have been replaced by wide-ranging insight and deep intuitive understanding mediated by the Holy Spirit which gives a soul thus blessed great flexibility to flow in mutually supportative and loving ways with no inflexible folkways or personal patterns beyond that which is required by Torah.

Because this transition is a gradual process, sometimes consisting of smaller or larger quantum leaps, every current thought, feeling and experience can, when made captive to Christ, aid you in your growth towards this Christ-like, spiritual person if you know how to use and direct them.

The vast majority of people both in the West and elsewhere - including probably the bulk of Christians/Messianics of all denominations - are operating out of the carnal man. Some infallible bench marks of the carnal soul are an impulsive drive to find enough security, sex, 'cool' sensations, ego rushes, prestige, money, power and status. This endless struggle to attain these things creates lives full of constant resentment, worry, suspicion, anger, jealosy, shyness and fear. These things do not, however, make for unhappiness per se - it is our internal mental addiction to, desire for, false wants (which we call 'needs') that prevents us from developing satisfactory interpersonal skills of the kind needed both for the local congregation and a plural marriage to thrive. Addictions (emotion-backed demands) bring fear of non-fulfilment; jealosy that someone (like a sister-wife) may steal our source of fulfilment; anger when someone thwarts us; cynicism if constantly undersupplied; paranoia if constantly threatened; boredom if we're making no progress toward satisfying our addictions; worry if we can't see a steady supply; anxiety if we're worried about being worried; and unhappiness when the outside world, our church (assembly) or our marriage relationship does not supply us with whatever it is we are addicted to. Since the nature of earth life is that we can never have everything we would like, an addicted person has no chance of living a happy, loving, peaceful, conscious, wise, and effective life. The addictive programming of our culture is not for us to find and enjoy that which we prefer in life.

The trouble is with most people is that they view life as a kind of grocery store. Their carnal mind believes that they are 'owed' certain things. Yah'shua (Jesus) says 'no' - we are actually owed nothing. Our only obligation is to serve Yahweh, our Heavenly Father, and to receive all that He wants to give us. Adjusting to that thought immediately dismantles many of our foolish addictions. There are, for instance, men wandering around desperate to find plural wives. They are getting nowhere and yet their addiction is literally consuming them. They are not yielding to Yahweh's will but to their own pre-programmed addiction. They have seen that polygamy is lawful and their carnal man has sprung into action and yelled: 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!' That piece of wrong programming has to go.

Then there are women who suddenly learn that polygamy is biblical and - horror of horrors - that their husbands are being called into this lifestyle. Irrespective of whether the husband is or isn't called (which is not simply based on having a biblical understanding of the principle), she is reacting to some mental programming which tells her that any kind of non-monogamous relationship is going to make her a loser. All the feelings of the carnal woman, described above, are aroused. And this may indeed be what Yahweh intends, so that she can see what is carnal and what is truly of the Spirit. This sudden 'revelation' may well be Yahweh's way of jolting her out of her false sense of security and propelling her (albeit unwillingly at first) into a spiritual mind- and heart-frame.

Finally, there is all the programming we have received about sexual relationships. We may have dreamed all our lives of the perfect, fulfilling monogamous sexual relationship to then suddenly find that this is selfish, restricting, and harmful to the soul that deep down wants to grow and expand into the Light of Christ. Civil war erupts, the carnal man is threatened, choices have to be made. It isn't pleasant! It is scarey! But then any leap of faith from the carnal to the spiritual is scarey. I know - I have made that leap many times and received my burns and stripes.

Above all things, Yahweh-Elohim wants you to find love, inner peace, wisdom, and effectiveness in all areas of your life. He says you can do these things by obeying Him, trusting His Son, and responding in faith. As you work with your carnal soul and determine to overcome it through faith in Yah'shua (Jesus) and obedience to Torah, so things will begin to change within. The initial movements may be uncomfortable and threatening, but the final result is always worth it. Be encouraged in raising your spiritual standards and aiming for the high ground of Christ.

The greatest problem for women in particular when it comes to the challenge of accepting and living polygamy is the fact this lifestyle may challenge years of emotion-backed desires. Women are much more feeling-based than men who tend to primarily occupy the mental terrain as their primary moving force. Yet men also suffer from emotion-backed desires and must struggle with these too. Once emotions become the primary driving force in our lives, we are headed for trouble, because no-one has ever found true happiness based on these. They may have found flashes of pleasure but never happiness.

The great drive of lesbianism, and by extension bisexuality, is the perceived emotion-based need for same-sex sex. It's a lie. No woman 'needs' that. And yet our wants and desires can be so seductive, can't they? They masquerade as 'needs' that must be satisfied so that we can be happy at last. They lead us from one illusion of happiness to another - usually a series of psychic 'highs' that we want to perpetuate at all costs. It's the Cassanova Syndrome and is equally applicable to heterosexuals, bisexuals, lesbians and homosexuals.

How many of you have said this to yourselves: "If only I could find the right person to love, then I would be happy!" So we search for someone who our addictions tell us is the right person - and we experience some pleasurable moments. But the relationship gradually deteriorates. We decide that we didn't find the right person after all. Why? What is the reason for the failure? It is because we didn't know HOW to love.

Once Christ is in your life and you have learned to centre on Him first, and others, second, your whole perspective changes, for then you discover that the reason for your failed earlier relationships is because it is more important to be the right person than to find the right person. That's the first lesson. The second - which can only be learned once the first has been understood - is then to find the 'right person' ... the one that Yahweh has chosen for you. And you'll never do that ... because you'll be deaf to the Spirit for all the 'noise' coming out of your carnal self ... until you have learned to get yourself right. And to do that you must first get right with Elohim (God).

Our negative emotions are the most unreliable guide to making life decisions such as marriage because they are the result of an extensive pattern of scars and wounds that we have experienced. We must first take these to Christ for healing. Don't even think about marriage until you have attended to that. Emotional wounds caused by abuse or wrong, anti-Torah decisions lead us to perceive differences that make us uptight instead of similarities that enable us to understand and love. That wrong programming can make women perceive their sister-wives or other people as threats that are potentially dangerous to their well-being. The response is hormonal leading to jungle-survival responses that prepare us for fight or flight. That's the carnal man, important for life-threatening situations, but disasterous when they get in the way of relationship-building. There is nothing worse than to be trapped in false perceptions of people and the world, and especially our husband or sister-wives.

These perceived threats evapourate when seen through the Light of Christ - through the eyes of the Saviour of mankind. The Bible tells us not to worry about those things we have no control over but to place everything in Yahweh's hands and simply do our part, whatever, and however limited, that may be. Worry, anxiety, and other unpleasant emotions are absolutely unnecessary and simply lower our insight and the effectiveness of our actions.

For the most part, the great fear of women is that they will not be loved. The fear of most men is that they will lose their perceived power and not be accepted. Men and women are both addicted to power based on fear. Men seek power so they can be accepted, and women seek power so they can be loved. We become emotionally programmed to control and manipulate people in order to be happy, and it's a disaster! Control and manipulation are the antithesis of echad. A person addicted to power at length becomes very finely tuned to the actions or vibrations of any person or situation that even remotely threatens their power addictions - their ability to manipulate and control people and the things around them. This function is, however, part of our growing-up process by which the ego is formed and we receive an identity. However, we cannot remain in this ego-centric state for ever, even though many men and women remain that way all their lives. We have, as various biblical writers have told us, to learn to put aside childish robes and grow up (1 Corinthians 13:11). We have to move from a spiritually milk doctrine to a meaty one (1 Corinthians 3:2).

None of us can make real progress in life until we have discovered who we really are. That means that we have to learn to stop acting the social rôles assigned to us by parents, school, government, friends, and spouses, and go directly the source of Truth, Yahweh-Elohim. We are defined by what He says, and that is in the Bible. Once we have done that we must learn the very important lesson that Francis of Assissi immortalised in his prayer:

"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
and wisdom to know the difference"

As I said, life does not deal us all the cards we would wish to have. A few we can change, the majority we cannot. And that is because Yahweh has ordained that we have certain lives, giving us a certain degree of flexibility in choice for good or evil. It is useless, therefore, to protest in those departments of life we cannot change even though I know we all do it. A sign of spiritual maturity is that we stop protesting and accept the things we cannot possibly change, leaving insoluble problems in Yahweh's hands to deal with as He sees fit.

It is my strong belief that if you can be successful in polygamous marriage - which is, after all, the most intimate of relationships in this life apart from that we have with Yahweh - that you can be successful in most relationships with others. The first principle of success has to be the Two Great Commandments which are, firstly, to love Yahweh-Elohim with your might, mind and strength, and, secondly, to love everyone else as you love yourself (Matthew 22:37-39). But you can never really love another person until you have learned to love yourself as unconditionally as you love them.

We have been taught the lie that we must place conditions on our love. "If you really loved me, you would ..." and then we use one of our addictions to finish the sentence. Disasterous! Don't do it! Please. This is an exchange - it is not unconditional. Therefore we can say that unconditional Christ-like love is not "I can love you if you do what my emotional programming (my addictions) says I need you to do." Christian/Messianic love is "I love you because you are there. I love you because you are a part of the nowness of my life. I love you because although our minds and hearts may not be recognising and obeying Yahweh's Torah, I love you because Christ loves me unconditionally, and that is the ground of my loving." We may hate what they believe and do but that does not give us a ground to not love them as people. Real love is simply accepting another person completely and unconditionally.

Now this does not mean that we can enter into an echad relationship with such a person. It may be that our love is not reciprocated, and that is ok. If we cannot love until we are loved back then we have an addiction and we have placed conditions on it, for whatever reasons (and they may be many ... like the fear of getting hurt should we be rejected). Echad love is two-way or multi-way. It's a complete electrical circuit, if you will.

I do recommend three revelations known as the New Olive Leaves received by our Order which elaborate upon these principles and invite you to take a look at them (OB 44, OB 99, and OB 214). We have built our own echad polygamous marriage up around these principles which are amplifications of what is already given in the Bible.

The love in Christ you have for yourself and the love in Christ you have for your husband and sister-wives in a polygamous relationship are building blocks joining together within you to create a beautiful world of real, abiding and eternal love. But to do this we have got to get rid of the interference from our programmed addictions ... those emotion-backed demanding instructions stored in our brains. Only when these have gone can we truly evaluate the here and now and understand what is really going on. People with addictions always misinterpret events and spin various illusions which are their false perceptions of reality. They may be able to masterfully spin words together to make the illusion seem real but any close contact with such persons soon exposes the lie of their life. And that is probably why plural marriages are so vulnerable. We can only ever really evaluate wisely when we are dealing with reality and not distorted emotion-backed perceptions.

A good place to start is simply accepting the status quo, no matter how bad it may be. Joseph did that in his Egyptian prison and flourished. Others did not and stagnated. We must learn to accept the previously unacceptable, be it the truth of plural marriage or our handicaps in relating to people, or whatever. Then we have a true handle to grasp instead of an etheric illusion.

It is a truism that when our emotions are triggered we cannot perceive clearly our life situation, so we invent another one. Our brain then sends a flow of information to our consciousness in which separation and alienation are emphasised. We create a horribly warped evaluation of the here and now based on our addictive programming. When this happens, we magnify differences and suppress similarities between ourselves and others. And this destroys our ability to love unconditionally.

We all know, however, that just having the desire to love is not enough. As far back as we can remember we have been aware of the importance of love in our lives. We know that a lack of love is responsible for most of the unhappiness in the world - a lack of love for Yahweh (which includes obeying His commandments), a lack of love for ourselves, and a lack of love for each other.

The Bible teaches that those Elohim (God) has joined together in marriage no-one must rend asunder. What Yahweh has joined together is holy - sacred. It follows, quite naturally, that what He has not joined together in marriage is unholy and sacriligeous. Anything that is joined together by man is Russian roulette - it could be right or wrong. In order to maintain law and order in this mortal sphere, Yahweh does require that those who yoke themselves together in marriage stay together except under very special circumstances that permit divorce. The reason there was no divorce anciently was because the right people were yoked together and no matter what their problems were, they were required to stay together and fix things.

Any marriage can be successful and work if there is unconditional love of Elohim (God) and of each other. It may not be God-ordained but it can work. Such a marriage cannot, however, ever flow into the fullness of echad which is why picking marriage companions must be done right. If it is done on the basis of sexual attraction - heterosexual or bisexual - you have a small probability of its being right and God-ordained. That's not to say there shouldn't be sexual attraction because that is a vital component of romance. But it is to say that getting cleared of personal addictions - be they sexual or non-sexual - is a must to proper discerment. Once that is done, then a clearer revelation from Yahweh can be obtained. Once it is clear that the selection is God-ordained, and all the parties have that assurance from Yahweh, then the obligation of the several parties - husband and sister-wives - is to seek the fullness of echad union at every level: spiritual, mental, emotional, and sexual. And though there will be differences between male and female and between female and female, as defined by Torah, full union is enjoined upon them all. But you'll never achieve that until:

• (a) Emotion-based addictions and fears are cleared away;
• (b) Yahweh is the FIRST LOVE of husband and wives; and
• (c) The husband is the FIRST LOVE of the sister-wives.

Once this order is in place, then all the mental, emotional and sexual aspects of the relationship will effortlessly fall into place. What results is not sexually driven at all but has a sexual component. Husband and wives are neither heterosexual nor bisexual but echadsexual.

There may be said to be four major steps into the echad way of inter-relating:

• 1. Becoming free from emotional addictions by confronting reality, letting go, and deliverance;
• 2. Learning to relate in the present by being satisfied with what one has (Philippians 4:11-12);
• 3. Interacting with others in the relationship by losing consciousness of self; and
• 4. Merging into the Echad way of being.

The Book of Revelation describes seven overcomings that mortal men and women must strive for which are mediated by the respective seven Ruach haQodesh's (Holy Spirits) and which correspond to the seven wives of Isaiah 4:1 and the seven churches (assemblies) of Asia Minor (see Part 2), about which I have already written previously in a number of different articles. Each of these may be said to be seats of consciousness in our souls. For now we will look at just four of these in order to keep the picture simple, the fifth to the seventh being in reality developments of, and incorporate, the fourth:

• 1. Security (lower carnal)
• 2. Sensation (lower carnal)
• 3. Power (lower carnal)
• 4. Love (higher spiritual)

I call the first three carnal centres of consciousness the Centres of Unhappiness. This is not because they are unimportant but because they are a constant source of trouble and woe when they come to dominate our personality.

1. Security

We all need to feel secure but tend to look for security in all the wrong places. Used in the wrong way, we become preoccupied with food, shelter, or whatever we equate with personal security. This mental programming forces our consciousness to be dominated by a never ending battle to get 'enough' from the world in order to feel secure. Its associated emotions are fear, worry, anxiety, and the like. When we are dominated by the need for security our happiness inevitably tends to be a yo-yo affair. It leads to constant driving compulsiveness, a constant fear of loss, and the endless triggering of an unlimited chain of future possibilities about which to worry. People who are driven by this constant need for security tend to live very unstable and less-than-happy lives.

That is not to say that we do not need security. We do, This impulse was placed in us by the Creator to ensure that we take adequate care of ourselves. However, it is not supposed to dominate our conscience. Yah'shua (Jesus) taught that we should place our concerns about daily necessities in the hands of Yahweh and get on with the more important things of life, and included a line in the Lord's Prayer saying: "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3). He also told us not to worry about tomorrow because there were more than enough things to worry about each day (Matthew 6:34). If the birds of the air don't have to worry because Yahweh takes care of them, then neither should man (Matthew 6:26). Provided we are about Yahweh's business, our conscience firmly fixed in a higher, spiritual sphere, the lower concerns of life will be taken care of by Him on our behalf.

The fact of the matter is that the external conditions of our life do not actually make us feel secure or insecure. They only trigger internal programming. That this is true is proved by the fact that one person can feel secure with practically no money whereas another may feel insecure with a million dollars in the bank. If you've ever read Donald Duck comics you'll all know what I mean when I mention the millionnaire Scrouge McDuck. What actually triggers our fear and anxiety is not, for example, whether we have enough money or not, but when the outside world clashes with our security programming picked up from addicted people before we were mentally and physically mature. Logic alone tells that it is in any case impossible to get enough of whatever it is we may equate with security. Ask Scrouge McDuck! We can so easily become like the rat which is running as fast as it can in a revolving cartwheel cage. There is no way we can find security by running faster or by achieving more effeciently. The only time we are really justified in being led by this seat of consciousness is if we find ourselves in a jungle situation and faced with the immediate need for fight or flight on a physical level, which was what the seat of consciousness was designed for. Instead we have used it for other things.

Once we have become aware of the silliness of rooting our lives in this kind of security and have given it over to Christ, we can move on. We can do that by asking Yah'shua (Jesus) to reveal to us any lies about our fears, worries, and anxieties and letting Him do the healing. This requires faith. We have to let go and simply say: "Lord, I yield all these my fears, worries, and anxieties to You." You will be surprised by the change and the new-found peace.

Remaining as an adult in any kind of irrational fear makes you more jumpy and less perceptive, it uses up your energy by making you tense, and keeps you from enjoying the here and now. If we analyse it we discover that most of our experiences of insecurity and fear are usually associated with the 'futuring' of our rational mind. We then tend to forget that in all the situations that we went through the previous year, we were, in the here and now, able to handle them in one way or an other. If we look back at all the 'threats' of the past year, we are usually able to develop an understanding that we did not need fear or feelings of insecurity to produce the optimal response to each situation in the hear and now of our life. In fact, all the fear and worrying simply wasted our energy! It wasted our potential for happiness. Some people manage to kill almost all of their enjoyment of the present by worrying about the future. If there is something we need to do to make us more secure in the future, get busy and do it now! If you can't, put it in the hands of Yah'shua (Jesus). It's that simple.

If you want to know why so many people are lonely in this world, then examine this particular addiction, because when your consciousness is preoccupied with striving towards what you feel to be your 'security needs' you are more isolated from people than on any other level. All your enegry will be at its lowest. When you are preoccupied with security, you trap yourself in subject-object relationships with others. You create 'others' as objects to help you become more secure - or as objects to fight because they threaten your imagined security. The problem is you can't love 'others' at this level of awareness because it belongs to the jungle situation of survival and creates distances between people. If your consciousness is imprisoned on the security level, you may sleep 12 hours a day and still complain of being tired.

The way to get over this addiction is by developing two parallel things:

• (a) A deeper faith in Yah'shua (Jesus) to take care of the future; and
• (b) A deeper understanding of how our 'thirst' for security is all a matter of emotional programming.

It's all happening in your head. Our feelings of insecurity are not a necessary consequence of people, things, or circumstances around us. Gradually we begin to realise, once we let go, that our life is what it is and not what we think it is. Once we start learning to eliminate the addictive models of how we feel things should be, we start feeling good and right here and now. And to do that we need to move away from security-consciousness to love-consciousness. The result will be that we find ourselves able to flow into situations that offer us far more real security that our carnal struggle for 'security' will ever provide. For real security lies only in the love which is Christ which begins to flow though us as we turn our consciousness to Him. It can never ultimately - at the highest level of our being - be found in the world of people and things around us.

2. Sensation

Physical sensation is a wonderful thing but it is not the taw or omega of our created purpose. When carnal people centre themselves in a quest for sensation they are embarking on a quest for happiness in life by providing themselves with more and better pleasurable sensations and activities. And yes, you've guessed it, sex is the most appealing of all sensations. Our addictive sensations may include the sound of music, the taste of food, the thrill of danger, and so on. But the problem with these things is the ever-present risk of disappointment, frustration, or boredom. Being centred in sensuality again offers a yoyo kind of enjoyment of life and is marked by a constant driving compulsiveness, the constant fear of loss, and the potential for satiation and boredom when we repeatedly experience an enjoyable sensation. Like security addiction, it is another dead-end.

People who get hung up on security tell themselves: "I can feel happy if I can just feel secure" but once they begin to feel more secure they soon discover that this is not true. They then feel that if they can arrange the people and things in their lives to provide a constantly varied pattern of beautiful sensations that they will be happy. And so they unconsciously or consciously set about manipulating and controlling people to bring about the sensations they most desire. This may result in the domination and control of a family by 'keeping them together' and assigning them different rôles, or tying our children to our apron strings. Or it may consist in finding lots of sexual partners to give us plenty of stimulation and variation. Many men attracted to polygamy use it in order to prop up a sensation addition. It's a lie because it results in subject-object sex in which they become the subject and treat 'others' as sexual objects. But it's never enough, you can't get happiness from it, and sex is never enough. The increasing frequency of stories of degrading sex in polygamous marriages that assails our email boxes is surely evidence of that - one perversion begets an ever greater perversion until, at the end of the line, you realise that you were on the road to satanism. For Satanism and devil-worship operate on the level of the three carnal principes. No matter who you are or what you may believe, once these three centres of consciousness dominate you, you are an apprentice in Satanism.

Sex is, in any case, only a small part of ourselves and a small part of others. In the homosexual, lesbian, and bisexual it is, however, a very big part of themselves because their whole identity is defined by it instead of by the higer principles of man such as love. And really it doesn't matter how loving a lesbian or bisexual may 'feel', they are still trapped by the sexual - and therefore a lower carnal - definition of themselves. And if they examine themselves honestly, they will discover that one of their primary driving forces is sex. Anyone driven by sex - heterosexual or bisexual - will, if they are honest, discover that their partners are not responding to them as whole persons and that they themselves are not responding as whole persons. Behind the exquisite sexual dance, both parties really feel the shallowness of the subject-object relationship. They know something is wrong, even if they may not exactly know what it is. For it doesn't matter how many terrific sexual orgasms they have, it is never enough. Even if such people could attain a dozen such terrific climaxes a day, life would still seem hollow. For this level of consciousness is only ever capable of producing flashes of pleasure followed by long periods of indifference and boredom.

Sensations, however 'cool' or 'groovy', can never make you happy if you are depending on them for happiness. You become driven, sometimes satiated, but never tuned into the flow of the here-and-now when you are chasing sensation after sensation. And it doesn't have to be sex. It can be food, music, special environments, movies, plays, speed, religious experiences or whatever. But the same sensations can be enjoyed when your consciousness is no longer stuck in carnality. When your focus is Yahweh and His love, sensations can then add to our happiness as part of the here-and-now in life. The search for happiness through sensations keeps us ingeniously busy - but nothing is ever enough until you are enough (on a lower level) and then (on a higher level) Christ is enough. Not until we are fully and 100% in Christ can we truly enjoy, without addiction, all that this life offers us. Until that has been achieved, nothing ever quite does it for us, and the enjoyment we seek tends to elude us as long as we addictively demand it. Once you upgrade 'addictions' into 'preferences', you enjoy it all.

The search for happiness through sensations is definitely an improvement on the search for happiness through security. You meet more people, you will have more energy, and you will probably need less sleep. But it is still a dead-end because it cannot provide wisdom, peace, and happiness. It is a cul de sac, a 'no through road' which will force you to retrace your steps. And what a tragedy to consume your whole life in such an addiction when a whole new reality awaits you.

3. Power

The last of the carnal centres of consciousness and addictions that can never provide you with 'enough' and which has produced not a few megalomaniacs is Power. Most of the people in the world are addicted to this dark trinity of security, sensation and power. And, believe it or not, the attempt to find happiness through power is definitely a forward step in growth towards spiritual freedom. When people operate out of the power centre of consciousness they have more energy and they will interact with more people. But these will still be subject-object interactions in which people either cooperate in your power games or threaten them. To live in this centre means that life is a series of competitive moves and countermoves.

The 'game' here is similar yet different to the other two. When you don't get what you want, the reaction is anger, resentment, irritation, hostility, hate, and similar such emotions. And like security and sensation, life is a yoyo movement fueled by constant driving compulsiveness, constant fear of loss, and being continually caught up in defending and trying to control because our power threat stimulates a counter-attack from others. Living in this sphere of consciousness is to make life a battle zone, revolution, civil war, etc.. There is no peace here - no repose. All the dictators this world has ever seen fed off this centre of consciousness, not to mention the many megalomanic patriarchs, pastors, and self-styled evangelists and their ilk who are principally out for one thing: prestige. And we must not forget the Jezebelic women of this category who are likewise out for power, control and prestige. Power means visibility, and visibililty can mean prestige.

Money or looks can be used as a means of acquiring power as opposed to security, and with it you can manipulate and control people. Prestige is the same because you can manipulate and control people with that too. There are all sorts of power addictions. Do your power addictions keep you preoccupied with external symbols such as cars, attractive homes, fashionable clothes, the latest PC, and the like? Or have you upleveled the game to internal status symbols - such as knowledge and lots of hobbies so that others perceive you as an interesting achieving person? Or perhaps sex has become a power game whereby you enjoy sex not just for the sensations but also the challenge to your power centre? Do you seek the sexual partner who is hardest to attract because of the ego challenge? Do you seek lots of wives to parade your status in the polygamy community and to show off your power? Oh, I have met polygamist men who are constantly boasting of the number of wives or children they have. They just can't wait to tell the world!

And yet is it not also true that the people who are the most successful in the power game are simply living a hollow life with external evidences of worldly success - but without really winning inside in terms of peace, serenity, and oneness with others and with Elohim (God)? It is very often the case that the more successful a person is on the outside the greater is their failure on the inside. Anxiety, ulcers, and heart disease tend to increase with external 'success'.

To the degree that your moment-to-moment consciousness is based on security, sensations, and power, you are trapped in the carnal pathways of our worldly society and culture - and you are not finding enough to be happy.

People come to Christ for all sorts of different reasons. They try philosophy, religion, alternative sexuality, the New Age, Wicca, and even Satanism. The more aware of them come to eventually realise that the "I am" religions and philsophies are, ultimately, vaccuous and unfulfilling. The more aware and wise amongst these people realise the utter futility of trying to make it in life using security, sensation, and power as their centres of being. The others either get swallowed up and lose their individuality or are utterly destroyed.

Now what I am not saying - and Christianity is certainly not saying - that you should kill your ego, which is what Buddhism and various New Age philosophies teach. They want you to detatch from your egos - from sensation, security, and even power - and simply get 'absorbed' into a nothingless which they call 'Nirvana'. Or to put it another way, they want the ultimate in brainwashing - they want you to be washed out completely. Christianity does not repudiate the need for security, sensation, or power, which are built into us by the Creator. Instead, it teaches us that we need to being these carnal aspects of our being into subjection by making them captive for Christ.

What we as believers have to do - and we must do it or suffer - is to absolutely reject the addictive demands of these three areas of being. Our security needs to be found in Christ, and in Christ alone. Our sensations should be enjoyed within certain contexts and in certain proportions only that are mediated by the Light of Christ. And our power should be used to serve the Kingdom and the King, and not dominate and control other people. When this happens, marvelous changes take place, and we gain a right perspective of things.

The love of Yah'shua (Jesus) is our integrative, ordering and subliming principle. He sets the standard for true power, sensation and security needs, and realises them through the Holy Spirit. He orders our financial, sexual,and inter-personal living and relationships. The manual is Torah in the Bible, the living reality is His actual presence within us.

There is nothing wrong with money and sex - for that matter, there's nothing wrong with lots of money and sex provided they are used in the right way and provided they do not become addictive demands. It is the clanging of these emotion-backed circuits in our brains (often pushed by demons who are admitted when Yahweh's Laws are broken) that causes unhappiness, because they are testimony that our link with Elohim (God), love, and true happiness is broken. It is these uncontrolled drives that keep us disappointed, frustrated, and suffering if the happenings outside us to not exactly correspond to our inside programs.

It is easy to see the more obvious power games involving money, political power, status symbols, people bossing each other around, and the like. But it is important to be aware also of the more subtle power games people play. For instance, it is clear that someone talking in a loud voice may be trying to control people, but a power game may also be present when someone talks in an unusually soft voice that makes people be quiet and listen hard if they are to hear. Someone who is constantly ordering people about and who forcefully insists that people accept his or her opinion can be coming from the power centre (the male maccho/butch feminist technique). However, someone who is always quiet can be subtly manipulating by his or her 'sweet acceptance' and 'you-always-know-best' attitude (the subtle feminine snake-oil merchant). This type of subtle manipulation makes one put energy into extracting what someone else really wants. This game creates a subject-object type of separateness. We might ask ourselves, "What do I do to get what I want?" "What masks do I wear?" "What part in the drama do I play?"

Your average carnal person who does not know Christ and who has not fully yielded to Him has hundreds of things in his head that he is protecting as part of his personal boundaries and social position. We grow in contentment and happiness as we gradually realise that all of this junk is not who we really are. It is just ego-backed programming that we have picked up on our way to where we are now. As we release our security, sensation and power addictions to Christ enormous beneficial changes will start taking place within us.

Yah'shua (Jesus) taught that he who loses his life will find it (Matthew 10:39; 16:25). One of the benefits of the spiritual life is that whatever you let go of, you get back. I am not suggesting that we renounce sex, family, career, etc.. I am not suggesting for one moment that we aim for a sensationless, powerless, and insecure life. As we relinquish the control of carnality and place Christ on the throne of our life we soon discover that we have all the power, sensation and security in our life that we need - in fact, we are promised that we will have more than we need, for it will be "pressed down, and running over" (Luke 6:38). When we learn to unconditionally love those around us as people, we open doors that we would never have dreamed of opening before.

The moment you approach life with power addictions, you will be instantly resisted by the power addictions of other people. Instead of opening themselves to help you get what you want, they close themselves and are automatically antagonistic to your power thrusts which threaten them. Some of the most dramatic performances of your ego and your rational mind are triggered at this power centre of consciousness. Many religions - including warped versions of Christianity - treat the ego as an enemy ... which on its own it is, but in its proper place is not. Why would the Creator give us an ego in the first place if its destination were total destruction? When the ego (self) is destroyed you are left with a mere robot, automaton or slave. Some of the most egotistical people there are want nothing more than ego-destruction ... of their rivals. A wrongly positioned ego can be both enemy and friend. Placed in a servant relationship to Christ, the ego is liberated to be what it was made to be.

To be useful, the ego does require intelligence and understanding. Our egos and rational minds are often like the well-meaning neighbour who sees his friend lying in the street with a broken spine after being hit by a car. When he picks him up to take him to the hospital, the broken spine crushes the spinal nerves so that his friend will never walk again. In trying to help, the neighbour ignorantly damages his friend. Similarly, when our egos and rational minds use the programming of our carnal self, they continually keep our lives from working in ways that produce optimal enjoyment.

There is, moreover, a difference between male and female ego. The female ego was designed by the Creator to be positioned under that of her husband, as both male and female ego are designed to be placed under Christ. She is supposed to find her security, sensational delight, and power satisfactions in a positioning under her husband. He, in His turn, is supposed to overcome and ensure that the love of Christ is properly positioned in her life by leading her to that place of safety and fulfilment. To be sure, she can position herself there alone without him though this is not her final position of repose.

In the diagram above the three lower centres are depicted in perfect harmony within the female (pink) sphere of love. She is positioned within her husband (blue) who is positioned within Christ the Illuminator (yellow). These lives are empowered, sensational, and secure, but apart from the destructive effects of carnal addiction since they are in their proper positioning - female in male, and male in Christ. A true echad polygamous marriage with three wives is illustrated in the diagram below:

It is vitally important that we remember that whilst our carnal tendencies are slated for crucifixion and destruction, this is not true of the need for power, sensation and security. Every human being - man and woman - needs these centres of being. They are our friends, not our enemies. Our enemy is the lies that Satan tells us about ourselves, about others, and about Elohim (God). It is the truth that sets us free (John 8:32). Since these aspects of our consciousness and being are our friends, we should engage them to root out our addictions (lie-based 'needs') and uplevel them (if they are in harmony with Torah) to preferences. Obviously some addictions are sin and can never be 'uplevelled'. Our egos trigger a feeling of uneasiness when the outside world does not fit our addictive models of how we think it should be, and this is something we have got to be very careful about, because we dare not confuse our impure, disordered feelings with the 'Spirit'. Yah'shua (Jesus) is able to teach us through our egos to give us the emotional experiences that enable us to become aware of our addictive demands and to understand the heavy price we pay for all of them sooner or later if they are not reprogrammed and sinful tendencies embraced by the soul not washed away in the blood of redemption.

Blood, the Bible teaches us, is the life of the body (Leviticus 17:11,14; Deuteronomy 12:23). The atoning blood of Christ is the Divine Life released violently on our behalf through the Cross that enables our own messed up life to be transformed (John 6:53-54)). The goal is not to kill the ego but to retire it due to lack of work! If you killed your ego, you might retreat into a schizoid-type shell that would keep you from enjoying the beautiful things Christ offers us through life in Him. The great egotistical battles for dominance that take place around us has resulted in terrible psychological and spiritual bondage - there are the dominators and the submissives, and not a small proportion of the submissives are schizophrenic - forced by fear, as they have been, to shut off their egos so as not to intimidate the dominants. A lot of plural marriages are like this, the wives mere shadows of their husbands' vast, ugly egos (see diagram to right). All that is her personality (pink) - all that defines her - progressively shrinks until it is swallowed up in the man's darkness. But because Christ is not in this picture nourishing, she is dying, and must break loose before she is destroyed. When this happens, polygamy just becomes another variation of satanism which is concerned with the swallowing up of men's and women's egos by Satan who then bleeds them alive until they are no more than shells. (Sister-wives can do this to each other too as one tries to dominate the other).

When our egos have been reprogrammed (and remember, the only way to reprogram them perfectly is in Christ, the Perfect Man and Perfect Elohim (God) in echad oneness), they will immediately stop triggering negative emotions that interfere with our happiness. We should therefore welcome our ego, as is taught in the Second Great Commandment, by learning to love ourselves, and love our neighbours in the same way (and our neighbours, you will remember from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is everyone - Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31,33). You will find that many people are willing to do that and it's called humanism (at least, its more enlightened form). But this is still not enough, because unless our loving is defined by truth, it will remain imperfect and not solve our problem. Once we have taken the important step of loving ourselves and everyone else unconditionally, we must then (or preferably simultaneously) take the great leap by loving Yahweh, our Creator, with all our mind, might, strength, and soul. Once He is within us through His Son, Yah'shua (Jesus), the real miracles can begin to happen. There is a light in the Self that renounces ego and turns to love but it is a mere pinprick compared to the Light of the world, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), and it cannot deliver you from the enemy - DEATH - or give you ETERNAL LIFE.

So I urge you, if you have never heard the message of the true Gospel preached to you before, to take a look at what Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) offers you. To do this, click the cross to the right before proceeding. If you are already trusting in the Messiah, continue reading as we address what needs to be done to raise the soul out of the carnal morass and into the true light of happiness. But before I do, I want to share a true story to illustrate the direction I am pointing towards.

A True Story

For about the last two weeks one of my wives and I have come to get to know a very interesting American Christian. Though we were astonished by the fact that Yahweh had been revealing exactly the same things to us as He had to Him (though should we really be surprised?) about echad, the Godhead, and many, many other truths, what really interests me here is the story in how he met his most recent wife and how what followed is a perfect illustration of true echad love.

One day he was surfing the net and met this Asian woman from the Far East in a chat room. They went into unpremeditated, spontaneous praise of Yahweh, and this went on for some considerable time. Just praising Elohim (God) together - two complete strangers. After the praise session ended, the man told this woman that no matter who she was or what she did that he would unconditionally love her. He made no demands of her. Just one supreme demand of himself. Now he had done this many times with other people with mixed results, including with a previous wife who refused to believe him and rewarded him by physically abusing him - yes, he just offered the other cheek which just increased her rage and violence. In the end they separated. The reaction with this Asian woman was very different. Both were, as a result of their praising, just filled with the Holy Spirit. When my friend told her that he would unconditionally love her, something amazing happened to her: she replied, with the full conviction of her soul and with not a trace of hypocrisy or doubt, that she would unconditionally surrender to him.

Two love birds in love with Christ. But that was not all. The change that took place in the woman spread rapidly through her family. Cutting a long story short, this is now leading them into polygamy. Yahweh has already found and aligned several of his wives-to-be with him.

Now there is nothing fake about this. The joy in this couple has to be seen to be believed. And the secret of it is based on three very simple core Gospel principles:

1. Unconditional surrender to Christ who unconditionally loves us back, enabling us to obey Him;

2. The unconditional love of the woman by the man, enabling her to unconditonally surrender;

3. The unconditional surrender of the woman to the man, enabling him to unconditionally love.

Whenever we 'demand' someone else to behave in the way we want, even if such a demand is based on Torah (like wives submitting to their husbands) it is always rooted in the carnal trinity of power, sensation and security. It doesn't matter who is doing the demanding or what legalistic 'rights' the people have. The only 'demanding' any of us can do as adults is to demand unconditional love of ourselves! Natural obedience and submission can only flow when this first step is taken. Every other form of obedience which is 'expected' will always be resented and trigger carnal addictions in those who are not yet free.

What was it that attracted people to Christ in the New Testament so deeply? Why did they give Him their undying loyalty and love? The answers to these questions - the questions about joyful polygamous marriage - are to be found in the 'love centre' or our human consciousness as I call it. And that is what I am going to be devoting the rest of this essay to.

Sevenfold-Man

I would like to suggest to you that there are seven states of being (each corresponding to one of the seven annual festivals of Messianic Israel) which, when fully integrated, make not only for the perfect man but also for the happy man. But before I do this, I would like to change the names of two of these 'lower' centres of consciousness to reflect their transformation when properly positioned in Christ:

When our security as men and women is in Christ, the result is always Shalom or Peace, so I have renamed the 'security' centre 'Peace' to reflect that. This shalom is an inner peace which transcends the reach of tension, anxiety, stress, anger and fears, and as a result safeguards our health. Thus the 'jungle security' mentality is replaced by complete trust in Christ.

I have likewise renamed the 'sensation' centre to 'joy' to reflect the transformation that attends all our sensual delights in Christ. When our sensations integrate into an echad (unity) they produce joy in the physical realm which naturally - because we are living souls where body and spirit are supposed to be viewed as one - spills into the spiritual. All our sensual delights, including sex, become (in their proper positioning) shere delight.

Finally, I have left the 'power' centre name unchanged though I am talking about a completely different 'power' which is in Christ (energising power) to that which is of the carnal man or woman (draining/parasitical power). This power is a conglomerate of resources beyond our own - because they are of Christ - which we can draw upon to overcome weakness, inadequacy and tiredness, suffering and depression. This is the power of the resurrection made available to us as trusting, obedient disciples.

I have also represented this trinity of spheres in a downward pointing triangle to denote their secondary position to the other spheres (which for now I have collectively called 'love') that complete the septenary.

The Upper Triunity

We now move from the lower aspects of man's nature to his higher and this triunity you will see I have depicted as a triangle pointing symbolically upwards towards heaven and the Elohim (God) whereas the three carnal ones point downwards towards the earth and matter. Love is the crown of this trinity.

True Love or Ahavah denotes, according to the First of the Two Great Commandments, our true relationship with Elohim (God) and, according to the Second Great Commandment, our true relationship with others. In this love there is no friction, anger, jealosy, or envy.

The second upper centre is Wisdom or Hochmah which in the soul centred in Christ is the wisdom of the Creator in the construction of the human soul, the processes of life (visible and invisible), the delicate balances required for health, and the whole of the Cosmos in which we live.

The third is Life or Chayim. A soul truly in Christ is alive in the fullest sense of the word because He is the Life. When we have Him as our centre, we have something truly worthwhile to live for in contradictinction to the selfish life serving our carnal addictions which is no life at all. This life becomes available to us only as we supplant the egotistical cravings to serve self and to turn them into serving Yahweh and others. It is in this service that we find perfect freedom.

The Complete Echad

The seventh sphere is Truth or Emet. Truth defines love and everything else. Yah'shua (Jesus) says that He is the Truth because He embodies in one Person everything that is truthful about life and living. The diagram below depicts this seven-fold perfect way of being or Septenary in Christ:

The fact that Truth (Emet) lies in the centre and not Love (Ahavah) often surprises many Christians/Messianics. However, if you place Love at the centre you cannot know whether it is true or counterfeit love. Love is defined by Truth. There are many ideas about 'love' in the world - humanistic love, New Age love, Moslem love, and so forth. Yet they are not the same. Love is defined by our relationships with one another, and those relationships - if they are true ones - are revealed by our behaviour. True behaviour reflects Torah, Yahweh's Law, as (for example) found in the Ten Commandments. These tell us, for example, that adultery is not love. Others will disagree. Truth is the arbiter of these two claimants for love. Therefore Truth defines love and not the other way round.

Thus someone who tells you that two homosexuals in a sexual relationship are 'loving' one another is given the lie by Torah which says that such is an abomination and that such cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Can you see how believing a lie affects all the other spheres of our being? Take polygamy as an example. When people say and teach that polygamy is a sin, they are believing and propagating a lie which will impinge upon all the other spheres of their being. Thus Paul is able to list truth as the primary virtue when he says:

"Whatever is true, whatever is honourable,
Whatever is just, whatever is pure,
Whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious,
If there is any excellence
If there is anything worthy of praise,
Think about these things.
Whatever you have learned and eceived and heard and seen in me, do
and the God of peace be with you"
(Philippians 4:8-9).

You will notice that the beginning is Truth (Emet) and the end, Peace (Shalom). Always. The truth defines everything else in the Cosmos. Without this root principle, there is only anarchy and chaos, and the universe becomes relativistic. Truth is not a moving target. It is stationary. It does not change. Therefore we may rest securely in it (the Security Centre), and this gives us Shalom.

Perverting Echad

The world, however, with its addictions and wrong relationships, turns everything upside-down or otherwise rotates and sets its priorities in different ways, depending on their carnal addiction. Thus the soul obsessed with power will have this as the primary principle in his or her life (see right). Notice that the red (carnal) triangle dominates and the loser is Life. Rotate the diagram in different ways and observe the various ways in which our being can be twisted. We not only need the right centre but we also need the right apex. This diagram would therefore be respresentative of the power-hungry Christian/Messianic who twists the truth for his own carnal ends. You will hopefully recognise in this perverse model many of the power-based charismatic twistings of the Gospel.

The unconditional Love of Yah'shua (Jesus) in the Truth of Torah is the only Way, and this is hammered home in the Book of Revelation which reminds us in several places that the true Gospel is faith in Yah'shua (Jesus) and obedience to the commandments (Revelation 12:17; 14:12; 22:14).

Here is another perversion of the Gospel (see right) where Security (Peace) is elevated to the apex, thus inverting the Truth. Its adherants cry: "Peace at all costs! Let's just accept one another!" A noble-sounding cry on the surface - a half-truth, in fact. Yes, we should 'accept' everyone as people by loving them unconditionally but not their untruths! We cannot unconditionally accept any falsehood! The ecumenical way is not the Way (Derech) which is Truth (Emet). I know some patriarchs who, in order to maintain 'peace' at home, never challenge their wives but let them do what they want. Quite apart from the fact that this is not true headship at all, it encourages Jezebelism. It is the husband's duty not only to unconditonally love his wives but to lead and correct them. And if that disturbs the peace, then that 'peace' was in any case an illusion - it was a peace built upon carnal addictions and expectations. For an illustration of this satanic illusion (for that is what it is), see my fourth wife's article on Hecate which is useful in showing the demonic connection that is created every time a lie is believed and implemented.

And then we come to the sensual patriarchs for whom sex is the apex of values. This is another perversion. This is their 'joy' only it isn't true joy - it is ultimately empty, because it's carnal.

There are Christian/Messianic people coming into polygamy who represent all of these positions. They are not only a menace to themselves but to others who imitate their examples. And ultimately what they are propagating is a lie. We have seen in recent months one Christian polygamy ministry exposed as possessing a power-centred spirit. Others are dominated by sensual and security issues that are reflective of the general obsessions of the surrounding culture in which they were birthed and from which they derive their life. They are dangerous because they are false.

There are other more sophisticated corruptions because they are not so much carnal as 'religious'. What kind of religious system do you get, for example, when you set Wisdom as your apex (see right)? Gnosticism. There are many believers who would have us believe that Wisdom is the path to salvation rather than its fruit. I rank Kabbalists as part of this deception though doubtless you could think of many more. Knowledge-based religions like Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses are also examples of gnosticism. Their lie is detected in the absence of love for anyone not part of the 'élite group'. Talmudic Jews - and those Messianic Jews infected by its spirit - are of the same ilk. Finally, there are those who would ram the Bible down your throat because they don't understand that true wisdom and understanding only comes through applied love.

These, then, are some of the 'twists' that Satan tries to sell us and we must beware of them. A lot of mess in the contemporary Christian/Messianic polygamy movement is because of them and not just through the various ministries with their biases but also through many individuals with warped views deriving from their carnal addictions. Many of the failed polygamous marriages are a direct result of either husbands or wives falling for the traps of these twisted concepts.

4. Learning to Live in Love

People pride themselves in a lot of things these days. Typically, they point to their great external successes in accumulating goods, influence, power, fame, wealth, sex ... or even wives. But in nearly all cases this is because their consciousness is operating on the three lower centres of Security (Peace), Sensation (Joy), and/or Power. And they are nearly always a failure in terms of their inner, spiritual lives.

The Bible speaks of many different kinds of love: friendship (philia), filial (brotherly/family) love (storgé) , sexual love (eros) and Christ-like sacrificial love (agapé). These are, however, largely Greek distinctions and are different in some respects from the Hebrew viewpoint. In the Hebrew tongue there are basically only two types of love: ahavah and dod. Dod is sexual-romantic love and predominates in the Song of Solomon as expected but also appears in Proverbs and Ezekiel. The other - ahavah - is usually non-sexual and embraces all the other Greek distinctive types, though sometimes it does overlap into dod as well. Rayah, which translates our affectionate romantic "my love", appears exclusively in the Song of Solomon. A third word is used exclusively of Yahweh and is chesed, often rendered "loving kindness" and appears mostly in the Psalms. Thus to the Hebrews there were basically three kinds of love:

• 1. Divine Love - undeserved loving-kindness (chesed) = Gk agapé (grace);
• 2. Human non-sexual Love (ahavah) = Gk. philadelphia, storgé; and
• 3. Human Erotic/Sexual/Romantic Love (dod) = Gk. eros.

When a person is living in chesed or agapé love then there are some very distinct traits we can recognise. These are important because they are signposts to us, telling us whether we are in true Christ-like love or in a twisted form that stems from addictions from our lower, carnal nature. When you are in this chesed unconditional love you not only accept everyone as people but you accept anything that they do or anything that happens to you on an emotional basis.

This needs explaining because it is easily misunderstood. A mother will still love her child even if he upsets a bottle of milk and it smashes on the kitchen floor. Obviously she would prefer for the bottle to remain intact and for the milk not to be spilled. But if it spills, that's here and now. Why get emotionally upset and stir the baby up too?

Now I am not saying we should be emotionless in all situations. There are times to be angry but we had better be careful what kind of anger it is and who it is directed against and why. There is such a thing as righteous anger. But there is also unrighteous anger (the response when someone exposes a sin or lie in your life) and profitless (addictive) anger as when someone insults you. If someone says something rude to you and you explode then the fault is yours. You don't need to. The response is usually based on some carnal addiction involving security, power or sensation.

How do you love everyone unconditionally with chesed love so that you do not upset yourself - no matter what he or she says? This can only be done when we transcend our security, sensation, and power addictions by placing them all at the foot of the Cross and renouncing them. That means letting go of many undesirable personality traits which we may convince ourselves are genetically inherited and which we have no power over (the usual cop out) or we can be wise and recognise that we are responsible at all times for the way in which we react to situations. We are only disturbed when our emotional programming clashes with events taking place outside of us which do not conform to that conditioned programming. As our addictions begin to melt away, we begin to experience everything and everyone around us in a different way. They become viewed not in terms of how they meet our addictive needs (for you are losing them in Christ) because you see the 'here and now' instead. Thus we can look at someone having a temper tantrum with pity, compassion, or amusement instead of being sucked into the destructive atmosphere itself. Once you can see beyond yourself and into the person (say, having a tantrum) you perceive that they are creating an illusion that you do not wish to be a part of. They may want or expect you to react to their tantrum in a certain way and get even more angry when you don't 'fall into line' and do their unconscious bidding, but you are under no obligation to do so. Paul said:

"All things are lawful (permissible) for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any" (1 Corinthians 6:12, NKJV).

Here the apostle is responding to people in the congregation who boasted that they had the right to do anything they pleased, uncluding react emotionally how they wanted to, to what they wanted to. But that is not Christian/Messianic 'freedom' - we are not free to be law-breakers or disregard the commandments. But we are free from the law of sin. I can lose my temper for no reason at all if I want to - what's to stop me? - but that is hardly beneficial. Put in the parlance I am using: why should I be brought under the power or dominion of other people's carnal addictions and emotions?

People everywhere are living out their addictions, so why be stupid and get sucked up into them? As Christians/Messianics, we are supposed to be realists living in the here-and-now, not living in delusional fantasy worlds. Once you have obtained an insight into what emotional addictiveness is, and can see the hollowness, futility and stupidity of this suffering, you achieve the insights that enable you to get free from them and to help others do the same. And that is our Christian/Messianic mandate.

Anger vs. Calmness

We have to accept that people are where they are and not get emotionally embroiled in their chaos. That does mean we should be dispassionate and uncaring: it does mean that we should walk in Christ's Spirit and not our own! It means that we must be ruled by His passions and not our carnal nature. And if that upsets people who expect you to respond in like manner to their addictions, tough luck on them. It may irritate or enrage them, but what is the best for you ... and them? Do you descend into their darkness, or elevate them into the light which you have by attempting to show them - a different way to their own? And if they reject your offer, then leave them, because you will never force them to change. People have their free agency. Move on to someone you can help because they want to be helped and grow.

Once you upgrade your own addictions to preferences and (as necessary) eliminate them, you find you are much more accepting of people who are trapped where you used to be instead of engaging in 'battle royals' with them.

A very dear sister in the patriarchal movement shared her thoughts about this in a most interesting and helpful way. She wrote:

"I have learned not to try to counsel people unless they have me on a pedestal. That's the only way it works, and that's why I really believe that if you're going to do counselling, with the ones you counsel you should comport yourself and even dress with authority. That's the only way people take you seriously! I truly mean this. I found out from years of trying to help my sister and friends stuck in destructive patterns, that I would listen and sympathize and offer practical advice and plans and help them get clarity on their motivations for hours and hours...and then they'd turn back to their bad patterns again. I think it was a counsellor who told me not to bother, because for counselling to be successful, the other person has to see you as a symbol of authority, a substitute parent, a fount of wisdom, a sibyl, whatever.

"Otherwise, they just think they're talking to a friend and they feel good for a little while and then go back and do it all over again. You have to inspire some sort of archetypal awe in them or it's just a nice chat. The extra clout gives them the prod in the backside to actually change, if they're going to. There's that saying, that many make the journey to the well of healing, but of those few are willing to drink its waters. How true!"

We waste a lot of time and drain ourselves unnecessarily of energy because we never get to the root of problems or confront people with reality. It is usually a thankless task and will invariably provoke hostility and resistance. But if they really want to learn and change they will listen and make an effort. Otherwise your effort is in vain.

People naïvely think that just by making a declaration of faith in Christ that all their problems are solved, that they are instantaneously sanctified, and are somehow 'right' because the 'Spirit' is in them. It's not so simple. And whilst we do indeed have a jurisdictional covering in the blood of Christ over us, and whilst it is true that Christ unconditionally loves us as persons, we are not instantaneously sanctified and He does not accept our sinful behavioural patterns. We have to work on these. At the same time, He is not fuming at the ears as we walk around doing stupid things based on emotional addictions. Instead, He uses people and events to help nudge us into awareness and ultimately change.

We must learn not to get irritated by other people. It's not as hard to do as you may imagine. We may be rightly upset by some act of evil that someone does and want to do something about it. If we can, then we should do it whether instantaneously, a minute later, an hour later, or a day later. I could get upset by the war in Syria, but what's the point? I am doing what I can in prayer intercession and in teaching the people who come within my sphere of influence how to deal with conflict. Beyond that it is in Elohim's (God's) and others' hands. That is reality and there's no point in getting upset about it.

As you learn to live in the chesed love of Christ your whole inner world begins to change. People and circumstances cease to become a threat, for no one can threaten your preferences. 'Others' can only threaten our addictions. And to know what they are, you only have to note what people talk and write about. I know one lady who is obsessed with male authority. She writes quite lucidly for the most part, and quotes scripture well, but it is plain for me to see that she has a major emotional addiction that needs working through and that what she writes from her head has little connection to what is actually in her heart. She suffers, as so many do who have conflict between one level of consciousness and another, from the 'love-hate syndrome'. It's destabilising, destructive and promotes suffering. Before we start complainining about the world and (in this case) men, we have to deal with our own addictions, because only then will we have a right perspective.

As you admit Christ more and more into your consciousness and let His love fill you, you will find that your 'ego' has less and less to do, and your ego will activate the egos of others less and less. Thus people begin to experience you as becoming purer and more spiritually attractive as you give your ego less to do. This helps them become purer and more spiritual too. Even though they may still be stuck in the lower three centres, they find that they seldom get in touch with tense feelings when they are with you. They can begin to get a taste of what it is like to live in the more joyous chesed Christ-like love. They may revert to their old ways when they are not with you (and likely will), but you will have planted a seed of awakening in them which they will find hard to suppress unless they consciously cultivate hatred and willfully kill that seed off altogether.

Wonderful physiological things begin to happen when you live in this love. You get healthier and look younger. As you spend more and more time in chesed so you will enjoy interacting with people more. Your paranoias begin to subside and you can begin to enjoy beautiful feelings of warmth and echad oneness. In marriage this also causes deeping awareness of physical touch and other senses that enriches your love-making and ability to communicate at deeper levels. As you break through one illusion after another, you realise that it was only your head that previously kept you from loving people unconditionally. It was not always their actions as you had been conditioned to believe.

Let me give you a personal illustration. There was a time when watching people smoke, drink alcohol, or have immoral sex used to really upset me because I knew it was contrary to Torah. I wanted them to be the way that Yahweh does. But once you react in that way, your love quotient goes down and your tension is picked up instantly, repelling them. What they may be doing may be wrong, but so long as they are not hurting anyone else but themselves, why should we be addicted to their behaviour negatively? Of course if a smoker gets close to me and starts forcing me or my family to passively smoke his carcenogenic toxins then I will react, and with justification. I do have the right to protect my health. If I meet a practicing homosexual I will not shun or ignore him but try to befriend him whilst giving him no quarter if he expects me to embrace the lifestyle. I'll accept him where he is and try to love him unconditionally. But there will naturally be boundaries I will not cross. My aim will be to befriend and expose him to spiritual reality and expose the futility of his illusion.

Every experience you have of other people either leaves you peaceful and loving or it makes you aware of your remaining addictions to be reprogrammed. Test yourself continually. Guage your reactions. Make mental notes and then, when necessary, go into prayer to remove the obstacles to chesed loving.

There is an ancient saying which runs something like this: "When I don't know who I am, I serve everyone around me; when I do know who I am, I can relate to everyone around me". Most people who have addictions can rarely make personal connections with others because their relationships are subject-object. They appear distant, aloof, and cool. And the reason is probably because they don't know how to.

Selfless service is by far the best way to get free of the three lower centres of consciousness. You don't need masses of psychology or religion to do it. You just need to give of yourself. You can tell who are the most spiritually free because they are constantly giving of themselves. Those who don't give of themselves are usually trapped in their own addictions and are themselves waiting to be served! An ego grasping for security, sensation, and power will always trade or barter energy for something that will best enhance its mirage-like lower consciousness situation. When you only do those tasks which are pleasant, unavoidable, or that enhance your security, sensation, and power trip, you let your ego keep you trapped. Selfless service without thought of reward or recognition is a characteristic of this agapé or chesed love of Christ. If you want to know those who have it and those who don't, then this is very often a good indicator.

When you are thus living in this holy love, you are always satisfied. You always have enough. You know that your feelings of isolation, separation, and paranoia are always artifically created by your emotional programming. We realise that although our bodies and minds are different, in the realm of being aware of people as people, all of us are the same. We are all of Adam's race.

And just as a mother loves her infant no matter what he does, you realise that as you grow into this Christ-like love that you can love everyone around you - regardless of what he says or does. Even if someone attacks you fiercely through words or even hits you, he is simply playing out his addictions. He is trying to get you to act differently so that his addictions will not trouble him when he interacts with you. And when you don't play his game, he will usually leave you, or throw you out.

That is why love must always be at the apex of our consciousness with truth at the heart. Our being is like a tree where the trunk consists of Love-Truth-Peace, and where Power, Joy, Wisdom and Life are the branches. Yah'shua (Jesus), when He appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, gave them His Peace:

"Peace (Shalom) I leave with you, My peace (shalom) I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:27, NKJV)

That was a simple instruction: be peaceful! Don't worry! If you live in His love and truth you will have peace. Guaranteed. Don't let your heart be troubled - don't get emotionally ensnared in false programming. Just say no. And ask Him to break in to your addiction, pain, and fear, and heal you. But you must do your part. You must choose the way you want to live.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to return love no matter what anyone does or says? And if you remain loving when they try to hurt you, you may even help them break through the illusions of their addictions through your suffering. The only way such people are ever going to discover love is by seeing it revealed in people like yourself.

Now here is something that may help you make this transition from emotion-based addictive behaviour to the freedom of Christ's love: no matter how horrendous a person's acts may be, they always want to be understood and loved. We all do. If you will just remember how trapped we beccome through our addictions, you will understand. You will gain insight and Wisdom.

Relationships that are forceably held together by 'should's' and 'should nots' lose their spontaneous here-and-now vividness. Love cannot be a programmed addiction held together by fear or pressure. Real love blossoms and remains where there is no addiction - but instead a vibrant, totally here-and-now involvement. And the optimal future is always generated from the free-flowing, non-expectant present moment.

When this state of being comes to be, you can just be with someone silently and enjoy them. Words aren't needed. You can experience a deep inner peace just by being in that person's presence. When two or more people are walking in the same path towards the same goal, you have echad. Occasional dramas may play themselves out but you don't need to be involved in them. You can detatch emotionally and gently guide by teaching and loving. The Two Birds revelation of our Order may help you understand what I am saying here and which I recommend you study.

The Apostle John said:

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:18-19, NKJV)

In marriage, as elsewhere, it is love that overcomes all obstacles. But in order to love, there must also be trust. Without that trust, love cannot be. Love that is given must first be received, for otherwise no amount of loving will benefit the one to whom it is being given.

Some people are just too proud to receive. They want to be self-sufficient and independent. They want to manage on what they have. It is impossible to grow into the fullness with such an attitude. Man was not made to be alone. He needs to:

• (1) Love; and
• (2) Be loved.

Not surprisingly, therefore, Satan attacks these two areas of life like none other, stirring up doubt and mistrust.

Echad polygamy isn't really possible until you have overcome carnal addictions. You can create something else and give it a label, but it isn't echad or oneness. Anything that is centred on 'me' or 'my wonderful (or not-so-wonderful) feelings' will never approach it.

The lower triunity of consciousness must be subdued and integrated

When two or more people love from this chesed love, they do not experience the love they have for other people as detracting or threatening the love they share. It is spiritual and transcends, in a way, the marriage relationship. The Body of Christ (Messianic Community) is not held together by a jealous, romantic model of love that constitutes an addiction that makes them vulnerable to suffering. And that is why the best of all possible marriage must start from this spiritual centre. And that is why polygamy can only really truly work where this chesed love is the centre of everything.

Conclusion

This has been a lengthy three-part treatise but necessary, I feel. Much more could be written and probably will be in the future. The language I have used here is a little different to what we are familiar with in the gospel, and this has been purposeful for I have wished to relate the human condition to the vocabulary we are familiar with.

It is my contention that the drive behind homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexuality ultimately derives from the lower three centres of security, sensation, and power. I would encourage anyone of this disposition who has been reading these articles to consider these things and to ask salient questions. Similar questions ought to be asked by the heterosexual also for just because one is 'heterosexual' doesn't mean one is 'normal' or fully 'human' in Elohim's (God's) eyes. To be a heterosexual does not mean that one is sin-free in the sexual domain any more than being a bisexual means that one is not living a holy life in the sexual domain either. Such a controversial statement does need a final clarification.

As I have said above, when men and women are walking in chesed love - the unconditional, sacrificial, and non-egocentric love of the Elohim (God) - all barriers to love come down. I am speaking of the Body of Christ or Messianic Community here. There is a non-sexual depth of love between the redeemed and sanctified where self is forgotten and the overwhelming drive is to serve one another and be with one another. The first Christians/Messianics were so close that they met every day - not for formal church services always but spontaneously ... because they wanted to be around each other. There was a depth of love and transparency that astounded the pagan world and which was primarily what converted the heathen to Christ. Nobody resented anyone else loving others so freely and fully, save perhaps those who had not overcome their emotional addictions from the trinity of carnal centres of consciousness.

The upper triunity of consciousness in echad unity

My point quite simply is this: chesed love flowed freely between the first believers, a love that would be the envy of nearly all contemporary marriages which have become so obsessed with the three lower levels that as far as Yahweh is concerned, they are not really marriages in the spirit at all. It follows that if polygamy is scriptural - which we know it is beyond any shadow of a doubt - that the same length, depth, and breadth of chesed love which belongs to the redeemed in the allegorical marriage of Christ to His Church (Messianic Community) must also belong to literal marriages in its romantic and eros aspect. There is simply no way that it cannot be without dismantling the entire paradigm of Mystical Marriage in Christ which drenches the entire New Testament and which is hinted at throughout the Old. That is not to say that such a relationship between husband and wives and between sister-wives should, or could, ever be forced (for then it would become another destructive emotional addiction) or be without fences, but that it must naturally flow out of chesed. As such, then, this is neither heterosexuality nor bisexuality, but something completely new and infinitely higher - echadsexuality. Each and every family must find out for itself where the boundaries lie, having always a clear view of Torah blessings and limitations before them, and simply flow in that ocean of unending love that is in Christ.

It has not been easy for me to explain these things and I have likely left gaps here and there which hopefully can be plugged later. I am sure some will misinterpret some of the things I have said here and that more clarifications will be needed. However I will say this in conclusion: some things can never adequately be expressed in words but have to be lived to be known and understood. This comes from the Wisdom centre of the upper triad of consciousness. And to know it, you have to be free of the lower addictions of carnality.

The sevenfold dance of perfect echad love

It is my prayer that Yahweh our Heavenly Father will guide you into all truth and that from this truth you may begin or continue to love selflessly and so come to know His shalom - that eternal Peace.

Author: SBSK