How we live and perceive life stems from how we think and feel. In this episode, Amy Killingsworth explains the Complex of the Mind as the second category of the Rise to Reign framework. She explains the Hebrew concept of the heart and the soul for us to fully understand how to accept the truth and perceive life. Understanding the Mind as the heart and soul of our being is where the transformation really happens in our lives. Please tune in to the first installment of this mini-series on the Mind as she explains how you can rewrite your story through the process of self-inquiry.

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Reigning In Your Soul: Understanding The Complex Of The Mind

In this episode, we are talking about the second category of the Rise to Reign Framework, which is the mind. A little bit of a recap, the Rise to Reign Framework is seven pillars of wisdom applied to seven categories of life. Previously, we covered the body and now, we’re going to get into a little bit of a mini-series on the Hebrew concept of the heart or the soul, which is the complex of the mind, the will and the emotions. This is going to require multiple episodes so that they don’t get super long. Now, I’m going to get into the mind and after that, we’ll cover the emotions.

I’m excited about this part because this is where I start to see transformation in people’s lives. A lot of what we’ve been doing in Season Two that started at the beginning of June 2021 up until this point has been like a background. I’m going to refer to concepts in the pillars that you need to have the background for. It would be great if you had started on the first episode, the beginning of June 2021, and made your way through to this point.

It’s not that you won’t get value by just reading on what we’re doing, but this framework is something that I’ve used for several years. I’ve seen massive transformation not only in my own life but in the people’s lives that I work with. It’s here for you and it’s available, so I would encourage you to work through it step-by-step, line upon line, precept upon precept.

The Archetypes: Understanding The Heart And The Soul

With that being said, we are going to get into the part of the second category, which is the soul, which is a mind, will and emotions. To recap, you’re a tri-part being. You are a spirit, so that’s the eternal part of you that was created outside of time and space that was put into time and space in a body, and you have a heart or a soul. We covered the body before, and now we’re going to start talking about the Hebrew concept of the heart or the soul.

This is the entire human personality. It’s a mind, the will and the emotions, plus the patterns picked out throughout one’s life. This is the emotional patterning, the survival instincts and your style of relating. This is a false self. When you talk about identity, we go through the archetypes of the prisoner, the slave, then the prince or the princess, depending on gender, then the king or the queen.

The king or the queen is your higher self. That is your true and honest nature where there’s no pretense, where there aren’t layers that life puts on you, the mental patterns, the emotional patterning that life puts on you and that you develop to be able to survive in the world. The process of healing is peeling back those layers and going on a journey inward to examine what we have chosen to believe, and how we choose to show up and how we are moving through life, and is that authentically us or is that something different?

The mind is the thoughts and beliefs that you have. These trigger emotions and the quality of your emotions is the quality of your life. Click To Tweet

In the Bible, in the New Testament, this is what Paul refers to as flesh. The human personality, the mind, will and the emotions, a component of that is the flesh. There are two representations of it. The king or the queen, the higher self, is the human personality complex controlled by the spirit. Then there’s the negative representation of it, which is the lower nature, which are the prisoner, the slave, the prince and the princess that is the flesh. These are areas of our personality that are not subject to the spirit.

With that in mind, the soul is an overlay on the heart that obscures it. If you think about your heart being the true you, that’s the king or the queen. It’s the essence of who you are with no pretense. It’s how God created you. It’s your intentional and original design. That’s the heart. It’s like the purity of you.

The soul is more like the fleshly overlay. That is the things that we inherited maybe generationally, the patterns that have been passed down to us, the things that we have picked up, the armor that we have put on, etc. This is a complex topic to talk about. We’re going to parse it out a little at a time. If you want to go deep into this and do the work, I’m going to need you to come on that journey with me in the Rise to Reign workshops and eCourses that we offer. We’re getting ready to launch that soon, so that’s good news. This is going to give you an overview. It will give you a framework, a template to be able to begin to do this work of self-inquiry.

The mind, will and emotions are what make up the complex of either the soul or the heart, if you want to look at it one way or the other. We’re going to talk about going to the mind now. I don’t think I’m going to get all the way through it. In fact, I know that I’m not, so we’ll pick it up on the next time and I’ll finish it up. Probably what I’ll do is go over the concepts of the mind and how healing looks when we talk about the mind. Then next time, we’ll talk about how to apply the different principles to the mind, the category of mind like we did in the episode for the body.

Understanding The Mind: Scriptures That Inform Our Thinking

When we talk about the mind, this is our thoughts. It’s our patterns of thinking, mindset, beliefs and mental strongholds. Mental strongholds and patterns of thinking are the same things, but there’s a slight difference. This is what we think and this is how we think. It’s important. It’s important because this determines everything. It even determines your physical health. Your thoughts have a profound effect on your emotions. Your emotional body is what informs your physical health. Maybe even more than what you do with your physical health, as far as like diet, exercise and sleep. This is critical. That’s why I get excited about the topic. It’s because this is where we start to see the fulcrum that everything shifts on, and so we start to see the change and the transformation happens.

There are three scriptures that I use that help us inform our thinking about thinking. The first one is from Proverbs 23:7. It says, “As a man thinks in his or her heart, so is he or her.” I love what Joyce Meyer says about this is where the mind goes, the person follows. Your thinking is the foundation of everything that you see around you. If you have a problem with your money, you have a problem with how you think about money. If you have a problem in relationships, you have a problem with how you think about a person or a situation. We always have that root cause of thinking whenever we have dysfunction or struggle in our lives, and that is born out in the scripture, “As a man or woman thinks in his heart, so is he or her.”

 

The second scripture that we use when we’re talking about the mind is, “Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” I’m going to take these one at a time and parse them out for you. The third scripture that we use when we talk about the mind and healing the mind is, “The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We take every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Other translations say, “We take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” That’s found in 2 Corinthians 4:5.

The mind again is the thoughts and beliefs that you have, and these trigger emotions. The quality of your emotions is the quality of your life. That’s what that scripture means when it says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” It’s because when your emotional quality is whether you’re happy, sad, angry, frustrated, joyful, positive, negative, suffering, whether you make others around you suffer. The whole thing turns on your thought life.

How you experience life is based on your emotions. Your emotions come from your thoughts. You’ll see as we progress and we get into emotions, that’s its own category. It’s not its own category but we’re going to handle it separately. You’ll see how and this is how we do like root cause analysis as we keep pulling the threads and we’re eventually going to get back to a thought system.

It’s not what happens to you in life that causes suffering. It is how you think about what happens to you. This is something that people battle with me on to the death because we want to blame our suffering on something, on a person, on a situation. I’m not saying that life doesn’t hurt. What I am saying is that you can be in pain without suffering. The way that you parse those two things out is the way that you think about your pain. It’s the way that you think about your circumstances.

Re-Write Your Story

I mentioned Paul in the New Testament. I am reading through the Bible for a year now. I’m right in the middle of Acts, and I switched over to Romans, and it tells a bunch of his story. That guy had it rough. He was stoned, shipwrecked, thrown in prison, but he was positive. He wrote 2/3 of the New Testament in that place of difficulty because he had such an incredible mindset, and because he took his pain and gave it purpose. He rewrote his story from a victim of his circumstances to that suffering that he was undergoing was forwarding a cause that he cared deeply about, which is the gospel and the cause of Christ. We each have the opportunity to do that in our lives.

When I work with people on their emotional healing, which is the core of what Rise to Reign does, we look at your story and those decision points and catalyzing events, and maybe the adverse childhood events that have caused trauma. Your trauma and your heartbreak and your disappointment. We look at it and we rewrite it in a way that has purpose and meaning. For my own life, I have been through some difficult things. I’m not saying that they didn’t hurt and that sometimes they don’t still hurt, but the reason that I have the ability to do what I’m doing is because I went through that.

How you experience life is based on your emotions. Click To Tweet

This is the most fulfilling work I could have ever imagined. I couldn’t have put myself into this work and into this calling if I had tried. The reason I’m here is because of the hard stuff that I’ve gone through. The way that I have been able to work with the Holy Spirit to heal and put a framework together, download a framework, to be able to help others through the same process. That’s looking back on that pain and giving it an empowering meaning, and that rewrites a story. That rewrites a trauma but we have to change how we think about it.

We have to change how we think about the circumstances in our life, especially only where the past is concerned. You can’t change any of the events. If you regret something, if you messed up, which we all have and do, you can’t go back and do the past over again. The only thing you can change about the past is the way that you see the past. The lens that you look through, the thoughts and the way you frame your thoughts around it is super important.

It’s the difference between a life that is quality and a life that is moving forward and helping others versus a victim of your circumstances. Please understand, I’m not at all inconsiderate or uncompassionate. I’m not sure that’s a word, but I do have a high degree of empathy. I’m in the healing field, so obviously I care and I do have empathy. I’ve been through horrible things and I underwent a lot of traumas. I know everybody that I’ve ever worked with or even known has had trauma and gone through horrible things. I’m not insensitive to that. What I do want to help all of us do is to take that and rewrite the story so that we may have pain, but we don’t have suffering and we have an empowering meaning.

The Original Sin

Let’s talk about original sin. This is where it gets interesting to look at. If we go all the way back to the Biblical narrative of how humanity began, God created Adam. Then he realized that Adam needed a companion, so then he created Eve. We had the first two humans in the garden and everything was perfect. God provided for every single one of their needs. He put two trees in the garden and one was the Tree of Life and one was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He said, “Don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” What original sin is that Eve took the fruit and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The reason that she did that was because the serpent came along and made a suggestion to her, and told her a lie that she ended up believing as truth. The suggestion that the serpent made to Eve that caused her to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was it’s this lie right here, “God is holding out on you.” That right there, my friends, that lie, that false belief is the root of all false beliefs.

 

If you peel back the layers and come all the way to the hot lava core of any dysfunction, there’s a lie. There is a network of lies usually, but if you peel all those back and unwind them, it’s that God is holding out on you. That God didn’t come through for you, doesn’t care about you, doesn’t love you, didn’t create you intentionally on purpose. Some versions, “God is holding out on you, God has failed you. God is keeping something back from you for himself or because he doesn’t care.” What Eve does is she forms an agreement. That means that she joins her will with Satan’s suggestion or with the serpent’s suggestion.

When we talk about the will, we’re talking about our sovereignty and our consent, which I covered in great detail. What she does is she gives her sovereignty away to the serpent by agreeing with that suggestion, which is a lie and it’s, “God is holding out on you.” God told them not to eat. The actual truth is that God told them not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because he was trying to protect them. He was trying to protect their innocence.

It was that boundary that he gave them which was to protect their original design and to protect their innocence and their relationship with him, but she forms an agreement, joins her will with Satan’s suggestion, which is a lie. She believes that lie that God is holding out on her. Then she takes action based on that lie and ruins everything. We are still massively feeling the effects of that one choice.

Self-Inquiry: Make The Right Choices By Renewing Your Mind

One of the things that I say over and over again, and I will beat this drum as long as I have breath, is that your choices matter. Your choices matter more than you can possibly probably even imagine. You are here on this Earth with absolute intention. You were shot into time and space like an arrow. What you choose to do with your life, moment by moment, is important.

There’s something that Pascal called the Dignity of Causality. That’s part of the image spirit that we are. Our choices have huge impacts, not only on the world, like the time and space that we live in, but on eternity. Your choices are important and they’re impactful, but your choices are born out of a belief, and your belief is born from your thoughts.

If you want to make the right choices, you have to have the right thoughts. How do we think the right thoughts? We have to renew our minds. This is Romans 12:2, “Don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is self-awareness. When I talk about self-awareness, it’s journeying inward and examining your internal reality. We have so much blame, chaos and conflict going on in the world. It’s because people are looking outside of themselves and going, “You, that, them,” and what’s needed to heal ourselves and to heal the world is to journey inward.

When you are triggered by something or someone says or does, it doesn’t help anybody for you to focus on that person or that thing or that event. You have to go inward and find out what’s going on inside of you, and unwind that and choose consciously what and how you’re going to think. It’s that self-awareness. It’s the process of inner work or self-inquiry, and that’s how you renew your mind. You examine your thought life. You think about what you’re thinking about and question it, “Is it true?”

There’s another scripture in Philippians 4 that gives us those criteria, “Is it true? Is it honest? Is it just? Is it lovely? Is it worthy of praise? Is it of good report?” You examine your thoughts and see if you can make them line up with the truth. If it doesn’t, then you don’t choose to entertain it. You don’t join your will with it. The agreements that you make is when you join your will with a thought or a suggestion. The enemy, the adversary, the cohort of darkness is always trying to make suggestions to you. They’re always trying to put thoughts in your head and make suggestions. They’re only suggestions until you join your authority with it.

It's not what happens to you in life that causes suffering. It is how you think about what happens to you. Click To Tweet

We covered this in sovereignty. Joining your authority with it is what gives it power because you are the image bearer. You have the authority, and he has none, except for what you give him with your consent. I’m getting to get out of that because I’m getting ahead in talking about applying the principles to the categories. Questioning the meaning and what we’re thinking about.

When you step outside of your mind and observe it, this is becoming conscious. The word ‘conscious’ triggers a lot of people if you’re a Christian or if you come from a fundamentalist background because it’s like, “That’s new age.” It’s not new age. This is how we’re designed. All truth is God’s truth. Just because it’s been co-opted by somebody who denies God or the scriptural narrative or the reality of Jesus as Lord, doesn’t mean that there’s not truth in that. It doesn’t mean that there’s no truth in the study of Psychology. We need to be able to put our religious programming aside, and get what we need to be able to live on the Earth and reign as kings and queens like we’re intended to do, like we’re supposed to do.

You step outside of your mind. You observe it, the Biblical process of renewing your mind. It’s in the Bible, so you can trust that. The Biblical process of renewing your mind is stepping outside of your thoughts and observing them. This is becoming conscious or this is the process of waking up. When you’re living in this story or the narrative, you can’t see it or you become a prisoner of it.

This is what we refer to as unconscious or asleep when you believe everything that’s going on inside of your mind like, “He’s a jerk. She’s my oppressor. I hate everything because of who the president is,” or whatever your particular brand of the story is. When you’re inside that narrative, you’re sound asleep and you’re running a pattern. You’re running a program. You’re on autopilot. The process of renewing your mind is the process of coming conscious and examining your thought life.

Self-Inquiry: Demolishing Strongholds

Let’s talk about strongholds. I want you to imagine like a web of thoughts. It’s like a tangled web or a network of beliefs that support and reinforce each other. When Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, he talks about demolishing strongholds. The way you demolish strongholds is you unwind them by this process of inquiry. The scripture says, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have the divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

What does it mean that we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God? Remember when I said as every lie and every suggestion call into question the character of God. Healing is replacing a lie with the truth. It always is replacing lie with the truth at its very core about what you believe about God. This is where religious programming is so detrimental.

Honestly, if somebody comes in to Rise to Reign and are going to go through the process of all of this healing, I almost prefer people who don’t have a background in church. I’m a pastor’s daughter, a pastor’s granddaughter, third generation on both sides. I know that’s a strong statement. They’re not all like this, but religious programming almost does more to drive us into bondage about what we think about God because there are many rules. It’s all about the rules that you have to keep. The nature of God is eclipsed by that.

 

Jesus talked about the upside-down kingdom and he talked about the Pharisees, which were the religious people who cleaned the outside of the cup. That’s your behavior. That’s the face you put on and present to the world, but the insight is filthy dirty. The internal work is correcting your vision or your lens through which you see the Father and through which you see God.

It’s important because remember that master lie that we are talking about with Eve, was that God is holding out on you. If you think that God is holding out on you, when he gives you a command like, “Thou shalt not lie or kill or steal,” if you have that source fundamental belief that he’s trying to keep something from you, then you’re going to be susceptible to do those things because you’re like, “God is holding out on me so I need to take care of myself. I need to get mine. I need to do what I need to do to get what I need to get,” which is maybe revenge or pleasure or whatever.

God’s way of doing things, his original design, is the only thing that works. We have to trust that. We have to trust that God has our best interests at heart. We have to trust that he’s intimately involved, that his eyes don’t miss a thing. We have to be able to trust that he is good. We have to be able to trust that he wants the best for us, that he’s not out to get us or to punish us, to be able to relax into that trust relationship, where we believe what he says and do what he says and live the abundant life that he came to give us.

Self-Inquiry: Take Every Thought Captive And Pay Attention To Your Words

Healing for the mind involves replacing lies with the truth. Those are lies that we believe about God, lies that we believe about ourselves, this is our self-image, and lies that we believe about others and how the world is or works. The last process that I want to talk about regarding self-inquiry is taking every thought captive. If you’re not used to examining your thoughts and have a hard time, pay attention to your words. Your words will tell you exactly what you’re thinking.

Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart,” which is the mind, will and emotions, “the mouth speaks.” If you’re not used to sitting back and being like, “What am I thinking about?” Doing that, like coming conscious and examining what’s going on in your mind, pay attention on how you feel, first of all, and see if you can attach that to a thought that you’re thinking. It’s attached to a thought, I promise you. Sometimes we have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.

Your choices matter more than you can possibly even imagine. You are here on this earth with absolute intention. Click To Tweet

If you’re having a hard time tracking down your thoughts, then pay attention to your words because your words will always reveal what you’re thinking about. I’m a trained professional. I’m a coach and consultant. I do this work for a living, but I can talk to somebody for 5, 10 minutes, and I can tell you what their mindset is. Easy-peasy piece of cake because if they’re speaking words, they’re telling you what they’re thinking. When you know what they’re thinking, you know what their mindset is. You can tell they’re good quality or maybe their emotional life by the words that are coming out of their mouth. You can do this for yourself.

We’re going to get further and deeper into this. My challenge is for you to pay attention to the thoughts that you’re thinking, and ask yourself if they’re true. Ask yourself if they’re empowering and if they’re moving you toward the life and the world that you want. If you are feeling things like heavy feelings like depression or if you’re struggling with regret or guilt, those things need to be looked at. They need to be examined. They’re rooted in the way that you’re thinking. See if you can trace it all the way back to how you see yourself and how you see God.

I know that this is a lot to handle in a show, but what I’m trying to do is give you the framework and the overview to begin this process. If you feel like it’s overwhelming and that this information is brand new and you feel like a total beginner, that’s okay. What I want you to do is see if you can start somewhere. With that place that you would want to start is to start to try to be the observer of your mind, which means to step outside of it and see what you’re thinking about. Notice how that makes you feel and see if you want to choose that thought. If you don’t, choose something else. In the next episode, we’re going to talk about applying the Seven Principles of Rise to Reign to the 1/3 of the category of the soul, which is the mind. That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for reading. I will see you in the next episode.

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