"THREE-DIMENSIONAL PRECEPTION"
 
The Bible tells of a time when Adam and Eve were perfectly obedient children who walked and talked with God in the Garden of Eden. God created them in His own image, and they were in complete harmony with him, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Genesis 2:25, And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Gen 1:26, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:

We know they fell spiritually and physically, but it follows that they also fell mentally. Without their connection with the Infinite Mind, their minds became unbalanced, and they lost their ability to perceive reality with their whole brain, a perception that I call three-dimensional.

I believe our minds were originally designed to think and perceive three-dimensionally, and in our fallen condition we've almost completely lost our ability to do so. Besides being unbalanced our thinking in one hemisphere of our brain seems to contradict the other, so most of us have become either left or right brain dominant.

Without the ability to think holistically we think and perceive on an inferior two-dimensional, "either / or" level, where things appear to come in pairs of opposites, i.e. black or white, hot or cold, up or down etc., and where things seem to always happen in a "liner, sequential way," i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or A, B, C, D, E.

As long as our minds perceive two-dimensionally, our focus will shift compulsively to one of the apparent opposites or to the other, thus giving Satan a great advantage. To deceive, all he has to do is to split the truth and get us to focus our attention on either part. His scheme is to make part-truth look like the whole-truth and the rest of truth seem like a threat to truth, but neither half can be ignored without seriously rupturing truth. Truth is a unity, both sides being so interconnected that the meaning of each depends upon its relation to the other. Satan must enforce an illusion of separation and conflict. Preying on our sin-damaged minds he arouses pride and/or fear to stir us to defend one against the other.

When we focus both of our eyes on an object we see much more than twice as much as we see with one eye. Suddenly we see in a whole new dimension, and likewise when we are able to focus both sides of our brain on a concept we are able perceive in a whole new way.

A two-dimensional person who runs into a three-dimensional concept scratches his head and calls it a paradox, a dilemma, or a catch 22.

When someone is able to reconcile the two apparent opposites into an integrated whole, we say they are thinking paradoxically. I prefer to call it thinking and perceiving three-dimensionally.

I believe two-dimensional either/or thinking, greatly distorts and limits our perception of reality, and causes much of the confusion and disunity on this planet, and I believe that an important part of the plan of redemption is to re-balance our minds and restore our ability to perceive three-dimensionally.

It's not as complicated as it sounds, and we haven't lost our ability to see three-dimensionally, so I believe some pictures may help to clarify this concept.

 A popular paradox is one that pits the optimist against the pessimist. It's a glass that contains fifty percent air and fifty percent liquid. The optimist swears the glass is half full, because he assumes the glass is being filled. The pessimist says it's half empty, because he assumes it's being emptied.



In either/or land it has to be one way or the other. A person who sees the truth might try to make peace by saying, "Your both right, the glass is half full, and its also half empty." But they would probably gang up on him and say, "You have to make up your mind, you can't have it both ways."

When you look at the three-dimensional glass, it's easy enough to see the truth, and this is a simple enough example to sound silly to most of us, but this is the sort of thing two-dimensional people spend time arguing about.

Next we come upon two either/or people looking at opposite sides of a dime. As usual they're arguing. With each of them stuck in their own point of view, one can only see heads and the other tails. A three-dimensional person sees the entire dime.



I use an equilateral triangle to diagram the transition from the two-dimensional level, to the third dimensional whole.

The bottom line of the triangle represents the two-dimensional conflict between the apparent opposites. The top point of the triangle represents the place where the apparent opposites meet and balance each other to unite and become whole.

The religion that teaches that everything has an opposite which is necessary to keep things in balance is partly correct, but there are several problems with this theory. First of all, things that appear to be opposite but reconcile in the third dimension, were never really opposite in the first place. We were only looking at the same thing from two different angles.

There's a second group of things that also appear to be opposites, but if we examine them more closely we find that one is actually the absence of the other, i.e., darkness is not the opposite of light it's the absence of light.

Thirdly there are cases where one thing we call an opposite of another is actually a distorted version of the original, i.e. falsehood is not a thing in-and-of itself, it's only a distortion of the truth.

Then there are the things that are truly opposites, like, submission and rebellion.

Next let's consider coming and going. Imagine that you and a friend are standing next to a merry-go-round watching a child ride by on a painted horse. Your friend says, "Here she comes." And you say, "There she goes." Actually coming and going are two parts of the same thing. Traveling around in circles. A natural thing to do on a round planet.



Two common sayings that sound like they contradict each other are, "Look before you leap." And "He who hesitates is lost." These two sayings are reconciled in perfect timing. It's been said that, "God knows no haste and no delay."



Perhaps the following diagram story will make this concept even clearer.

Imagine two different religious organizations, one that firmly believes truth is a perfect square, and one that believes truth is a perfect circle.

They don't realize it, but they're perceiving the same truth from two different perspectives.

The Circle Church is convinced there can be nothing in the universe more perfect than a circle. They see the Square Church people as rigid, conservative, old fashioned, and "square."

The Square Church is very proud of their four perfect ninety-degree angles and their perfectly equal sides. They see the Circle Church people as liberal, worldly, and "pointless."

As long as they remain in the two-dimensional either/or world, there are only three alternatives.
 
l. They can remain Separatists, and go to their Round Church and their Square Church.
 
2. They can go to War and try to eliminate one another.
 
3. Or they can Compromise.

Which brings us to a very important word, possibly the most important word of our day.

That word is, "Unity." All believers agree we're supposed to have unity, but there is a true unity, and there is a false unity.

False unity comes from compromise. If the "Squares" and the "Circles" try to reconcile their differences through compromise they'll come up with an octagon, or a stop sign.



If a Blue Church and a Green Church tried to compromise, they would conclude that truth was blue-green. However, if they took their focus off of one another and kept their eyes on the prism, they would eventually reach a true unity in the pure white light. Full Prism "Truth" can only be found in Christ, who is the Truth, the Light, and the Way.



Meanwhile let's say a few people from the Circle Church and a few of the people from the Square Church really become converted and give their life to Jesus. As they become more loving and begin to receive the balanced mind of Christ, they actually consider what the other is trying to say and decide to sit down and open the Bible together.

As they pray for the Holy Spirit, asking him to give them a humble and teachable spirit, and to lead them into the "Truth as it is found in Jesus," they discover a higher truth in the third dimension called a cylinder! - - - - No of course I'm not saying the truth is a cylinder, it's just a good example of how two apparently opposite points of view can be reconciled in the third dimension.



Neither of them were completely right and neither of them were completely wrong, but both of them have to become willing to give up their pet theories and their limited points of view to be able to perceive the three-dimensional whole.

If we follow any truth to its logical conclusion it will lead us to Jesus who is the Truth, but truth is too complex to be diagramed as a single arrow, the whole truth is much more like a wagon-wheel.



The spokes on either side of the hub represent pairs of apparent opposites that reconcile and balance one another at the hub.

For the wheel to run smoothly, all of the spokes must be evenly balanced, (temperance in all things).

If we let our attention drift away from the hub and on to any one of the spokes, for more than a moment or two, the centrifugal force will carry us away from center and unbalance the entire wheel.

The apparent opposites which are really two poles of a three-dimensional whole, will have an active and a passive nature. A plus and a minus quality just like a battery. i.e., Law (active) and Grace (passive), Judgement (active) and Mercy (passive), Lion (active) and Lamb (passive). And just like a battery, truth's power depends upon unity of opposite poles.

A battery transmits power as positive and negative poles unite by acid continually circulating between them. Truth's power is released only as converse poles unite through the Word by the Spirit's ministry. Jesus' promise, "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free," depends on constant interaction in the mind via the Spirit, between an active pole that relates to Law and a passive pole relating to grace. Without this, truth ceases to be true and is as powerless as a dead battery.

Now stretch your imagination a little farther, and pretend you're laying on your back in a tee-pee looking up along the poles and out of the small hole at the top.



The hole at the top of the tee-pee represents Jesus Christ, who is the Truth. It is in Him that the tops of the equilateral triangles, the tee-pee poles, the spokes of the wagon-wheel, and the colors of the rainbow, all meet and become one, in the full prism Truth of Jesus.

John 14:6, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Just like the force of gravity in the tee-pee, and the centrifugal force of the spinning wagon-wheel, the things of this world are constantly trying to attract you, but if you simply do not resist, God will draw you upward and to himself by the power of his love.

Jeremiah 31:3, The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.

If any of this appears self-contradictory, amen, let it be. Because spiritual reality is of a higher dimension than physical life, higher truth often manifests as paradoxical opposites. When the elements of truth seem to stand in opposition to each other, we need to continue to study, believing we'll eventually discover how the apparent opposites meet and are reconciled on a higher level. Then truth which appeared to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and we will see that the conflict was not in the truth, but in our sin-damaged minds. Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.

The greatest paradox of all paradoxes, is found in Jesus on the cross. There hangs the eternal all powerful Creator God, who spoke everything into existence, who has voluntarily entered into our world by incarnating as a human being, and is dying like a mortal man. This is where the absolute world and the relative world meet and are reconciled in Christ.

Our God is an Awesome God

Please Lord give them the eyes to see, love disciplevance