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Yet, here is a principle: While the experience of a given grace arises into the body-mind, the body-mind is never the source of such a motion and never has the same quality as what is given in spirit. An example... happiness, arising from pleasure, has the quality of the body-mind. Happiness does not arise as a strictly spiritual movement. Joy, or bliss, is a deeper, more subtle motion, arising from spirit, never from an object bringing pleasure. Happiness relies on contact, through one of the sense organs (i.e., eye, taste ...) with an object that appears to cause the feeling; joy arises directly from spirit, even if an object was the initial elicitation for the joyfulness. Happiness cannot be without the object; joy can arise independently of any object.
So, this blowing of Wind can lead one toward something or away, without the self consciously deciding the movement. This movement can be a temporary movement, not necessarily permanent, and it can be lasting in the sense of the experience dissolving into a state of stability. All this is not the decision of the person. For example, on another day, the body-mind may register, arising from Grace, a joyfulness in speaking of the Quakers and its work for the Good. Due to this freedom of Spirit, one learns to be a servant of Grace, one needs to awaken daily with a receptivity to the freedom of the Wind blowing as it will. This in Scripture is called walking in the Spirit. This is, also, imaged in the Gospel, with Jesus speaking to his followers, when calling them, "Come, follow me." He did not give a handout of details on where they would be going, only that they were to be going, following a higher Principle than their own sense of self; Jesus represented That for them.
Yet, this following the blowing Wind, more accurately being blown by the Wind, cannot be merely an effort of ego, for in the psychological self one cannot initiate or sustain a spiritual motion. So, one learns to surrender to the Spirit to make possible the walk of Spirit. One learns this surrender largely through repeated failed efforts to manifest the following by efforts of the self-sense ~ all such are destined to end in futility, which is good, for the futility is the opening for Grace in the relaxing of the ego-sense. One example of this in the Christian Scriptures is the failed attempt of the disciple Peter not to deny his beloved Jesus, when Jesus was being questioned prior to his execution by the Roman state. He had prior declared he would never deny Jesus, but he did. Later, Peter risked life-and-limb, and tradition says was crucified upside down on a cross for the Christ. This transformation of Peter was partly due to his failure to live up to what he in himself as person, in the first place, could not live up to.
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One such teaching of the ways of Spirit arose the same morning in morning Quiet, sitting together with the community here and two visitors. In the Quiet arose both a subtle vision and a strong sense, felt in the body-mind. The sense appeared to me as the nakedness of Spirit. The vision that kept returning, while the sense was constant, I cannot start to put into words, so will not attempt. Only, I can say, the visionary experience was an appearing in a subtle image of the message received; the message was not given first in words, only through insight ~ of course, then, this passes through mind into conceptual understanding, which is a step away from the direct perception, or insight. We could say in-sight becomes out-sight, or understanding.
The nakedness of Spirit was communicated into the body-mind as a blissful, subtle sense of freedom from all qualities and qualifications. This, I emphasize, is different from a mental knowledge of such. This is a direct meeting with the Reality of the knowledge, this is, as with all direct wisdom, a knowing of the knowledge. So, the experience of the nakedness of Spirit is prior to knowledge of it, experience itself arising out of a direct meeting with the Truth.
As all spiritual realities, this is an action within Silence. All spiritual movements are within Silence. Silence itself is without qualities, so, we could say, the nakedness of Spirit is the nakedness of Silence, if we understand Silence as Presence, or universal Spirit.
What was given was the knowing that the Spirit cannot receive into itself any idea, any quality, any thought, anything. This is why, at times, we speak of Pure Spirit. Purity, here, means with no addition and does not bear a moral sense.
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