Garage Conversion To Family Room

Two forces converge in opposition, in the name of God.

One seeks to dominate the world through appearances. The other seeks the kingdom of heaven that is within.

Those seeking world dominance through appearances use rationalization to justify their conduct. They look at their conduct to the extent that it can be justified, and they ignore the rest of what they. One of this persuasion can kill, torture, torment vindictively without facing the vindictive motivation within him. His unconscious aim can be to send you to hell while he proclaims his only intention is to get you into heaven by imposing upon you punishment consistent with his biblical interpretations. He denies the act of interpretation of the Bible as he uses his interpretation as his instrument of abuse of power. He says, and maybe even believes at times, that the Bible says what it does not explicitly say. For instance, he can interpret a child's grimace as an expression of disrespect warranting corporal punishment, and call that Biblically commanded. Yet, nowhere in the Bible does it describe that particular grimace, given in that particular context.

Rather than examining how his own conduct that calls for his self-correction, he blindly justifies his behavior on imaginary Biblical grounds. Such an individual may be extremely disciplined, to the point of not being able to openly express spontaneous feeling. His identification with the letter of the law, and as long as he appears to get away with what he is up to, he regards it as good. This makes him exactly what Jesus railed against, while he calls himself a true Christian believer. He regards his actions as right, as leading him to heaven, and his actions upon you right, leading you to heaven, while he secretly (even to himself) harbors hatred toward you, having made you the scapegoat for his frustrated life and intense self-disapproval.

The churches of this individuals school him to succeed mightily in the material world because his sole focus is on conducting himself according to appearances for the sake of accumulating appearances. Money is the appearance or symbol of freedom and power, so he pursues the all-mighty dollar with the utmost discipline, making every necessary sacrifice to accumulate more and more. He seeks to own people and manipulate their loving expressions; since he is not what he seems to be he thus steals a love not truly aimed at him. He lives in a false world that means less and less to him, driving him to seek more and more appearances of power to mask his growing sense of inner emptiness.

His chief aim is to appear respectable, to gain the admiration and approval of others to make up for his lack of interior self-honesty, so he follows the laws of the land to the letter, on the surface, which convinces him that he is immaculately ethical. He may generously engage in charitable philanthropy, giving a mere pittance of his holdings to those who suffer a vast cost of his self-service. He is all about appearances, though he has been told that the kingdom of heaven is within, and that it profits a man nothing to own the world at the cost of his soul. He believes he serves his soul by denying himself of deep, inner self-examination; but that light is pure food for the soul.

Traveling in the counter direction are those who entrust their lives to the loftiest of motives. They place their trust in inner self-examination, with the aim of expressing the authenticity of their pure love. They seek to harm no one; to love everyone. The man of appearances proclaims to love everyone without examining the feelings in his heart. He goes to church and cuts you down with his sword, defending his action by proclaiming publicly he is loving you that way, because he has his Biblical justification for it. The inner dweller of the spiritual world seeks to know his love for you by examining what is driving him and how his thoughts, feelings, actions, and speech impact you and him. He too seeks to conquer the world, but to conquer it with the love that he feels. He wants to live the richest life on earth possible, while the super-wealthy man of appearances claims to care nothing for this world and to live only for his delivery to heaven, which will occur as long as he can Biblically justify his actions without examining the actual content of his own heart, or of yours.

So here these two ideologies clash, on the field of earth; and it seems that never the twain shall live together in harmonious accord, for each regards the other's way with enmity. The man of appearances wages wars in the name of God, because he can Biblically justify his murderous acts of atrocity as long as he continually denying the love surging in his heart. What limit is there to the ugliness can he commit to get us all to heaven?

The man of spirit seeks a heart of peace with God, to be led by the living voice of God that prompts his heart from within. He can see how the Bible supports his actions as well, but he does not choose his path to adhere to the Bible, but rather to adhere to his own sense of love and truth, of goodness and of beauty. Then he sees how the Bible backs him up, and then he loves that book for its eternal support. The Bible leads him to lead others to heaven by loving them and forgiving them in truth; but his work is on himself, to get himself free from anything that would compromise his total love.

One man defines love by outer appearances supported by logical justifications. The other defines love by a wordless, thoughtless desire to serve goodness in some essential way. How will their war end? Who will survive it? The man of appearances seeks to play god5B4 and run the world. The man of spirit seeks to allow god's love to flow freely and purely through him, but he wants to survive and succeed in worldly terms as well - that is part of is carnal nature - even his artistic nature. The man of appearances thus serves the man of spirit, because he gives the man of spirit the opportunity to unite the two opposing forces in a meaningful collision.

Here is how. The man of spirit strives upward. The man of appearances pushes spirit downward, down deep, deep beneath the surface of his awareness, like paving raw living earth with layer upon layer of dead asphalt. But the life of spirit is eternal. As the man of spirit accepts this cross-current of forces within himself, he resolves his own ego-battle, and thus contributes to the resolution of the ego-battle fought on the world's stage between nations, races, creeds, colors. Accepting this conflict within him means that he identifies with both forces. Accepting this as purposeful, the man of spirit rises above it, and rising is what lifts his soul, and the soul of the world.

The man of spirit, of true spirit, experiences this spiritual conflict on a global scale within. And if he allows that conflict to exist in him without resistance, it resolves itself into the making of a new man. He begins to feel compassion for the man of appearances, whom he now sees as "the lost man", for that man lives without the full experience of all tB68he love that is in his heart. He lives against the life building up within him. This manifests into the various forms of physical and psychological warfare that he wages in the outer world, the lives and hearts he breaks with steely self-justification. But he is only at war against his own life.

As the man of spirit accepts the man of appearances into his heart, he receives "the gifts that wise men bring". Those gifts are worldly wisdom, worldly ability, the worldly gift of attraction of worldly things. As you love those who would murder you their power joins your power in support of your worldly and spiritual interests. They help you to bring heaven and earth together, to make the world a spiritual kingdom, ruled by human beings in accordance with the spiritual laws of love. It would appear that God would have us all unite in love for one another and for the world. He who can accept the love of the adversary makes that adversary friend.

So before you condemn someone for being bound to the appearance level, consider the gifts, the offerings, that individual brings your way. Accept your conflict with that person; accept it into your heart. Thus, you accept his power in a way that marries your own, giving birth to a higher man. Accept both approaches by identifying with both, and accept their conflict as your own conflict, as a conflict of forces within yourself. Allow them to mingle in your heart until you can love both as one, as two sides of one coin. What happens next will surprise you. You will lose your animosity and grow in the power of love. You will find that other's strength supporting rather than thwarting your own. You will be more successful in both a spiritual and a worldly sense.

Those who would destroy all that is beauty in this world are your enemy until you allow their motivations to exist in your heart, together with the opposing motivations that seek to perpetuate all the beauty and expand it, contribute to it, give to it their own inner potential for expressing beauty in the world.

When you can love your enemies you have found a key to greater power than you have ever known. You will be the best salesman in the world. Your own greater empowerment in this world, and the power of the world to overcome the human conflict that generates wars, ecological deterioration, sadistic destruction will take place. You then become a point of the global conflict's resolution in your own heart. What a great honor has been bestowed upon you, the honor of receiving such immense responsibility. The tragedy of the world becomes your victory, and through your love, the world's victory.

The darkness works like fertilizer on a heart that's pure.

Bob Lancer leads individuals, businesses, families, and associatio5B1ns to fulfill their greatest dreams. He does this through a wide variety of venues, including his WSB radio show, Bob Lancer's Parenting Solutions, a show that focuses as much on the raising of ourselves and of our society as on the raising of children. The show has been on the air since 1995 and broadcasts to 35 states over the radio, and worldwide over the internet.

He is the author of numerous books and he has created dozens of motivational recordings on his themes.

Bob Lancer transforms audiences through his dynamic keynotes and seminars on parenting, marriage, and personal and professional development at live events, including conferences around the nation and overseas. He has been leading his audiences to greater personal and professional success as a public speaker, seminar leader, consultant and author for over 20 years and his work has been featured on CNN and other network television stations, in national magazines and in major newspapers.