I guess that's why they call it the journey...

From the beginning of creation, we were in God’s image. It was always within us. We just had to realize it, getting past our Adam natures (not with efforts, which is only more Adam nature, but in belief) that we inherited after the deception of man by his self.

What of this: the verse “beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing” doesn’t refer to the “Devil himself” dressing as one of Bo Peep’s little lambs-it is the emergence of the self in a believer…that’s why we’re to test what we read and hear-even in the scriptures-because it’s all to easy for the self to mix truth and error & act from pride, greed, and lust even when it is coming to awareness of life. Only in abiding in Life (the vine) can truth appear.

It seems that the main cause of deception’s ease is built-up error- like plaque on perfectly white teeth. When we awake to the Life we have, there’s so much to un-learn before we can fully walk in that Life; so much muck and mire, if you will, to escape once we know we were not made for trudging. When I hear people speak of the challenge of belief, they mostly mean a tedious, disciplined, persecuted existence. But that is not the resistance of the journey. Instead, it is the alternatives to living in truth that our self-deception built through the centuries-those religious mentalities and complicated circumstances-that our foundation must lay above.

Portions of these lyrics remind me of the awakening (whew!):

how can you see into my eyes like open doors
leading you down into my core
where i've become so numb without a soul my spirit sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home wake me up inside
wake me up inside
call my name and save me from the dark
bid my blood to run
before i come undone
save me from the nothing i've become

now that i know what i'm without
you can't just leave me
breathe into me and make me real
bring me to life

wake me up inside
wake me up inside
call my name and save me from the dark
bid my blood to run
before i come undone
save me from the nothing i've become
bring me to life

frozen inside without your touch without your love darling only you are the life among the dead
all this time i can't believe i couldn't see
kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
i've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
got to open my eyes to everything
without a thought without a voice without a soul
don't let me die here
there must be something more
bring me to life

-evanescence