Spiritual Living, and the Consumption of Alcohol

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The Christian bible, in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18, advises us not to drink excessively. ''Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, let the Holy Spirit fill, and control you.'' Is this enough though, should we ever in fact be drinking any alcohol, at all? This next bible verse is from Luke chapter 1, verse 15. It is talking about the birth of John the Baptist. ''For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.'' This verse is implying, I think, that to be completely filled with the holy spirit in this way requires total abstinence from the consumption of any alcohol. I believe then that to be a Christian full of the holy spirit, we must give up all alcohol consumption. This article will explain my views and considerations reflectively on this controversial topic. The book of Proverbs in the bible, also advises against drinking. Here are a couple of verses. Proverbs, 23:19-20...''A wise person will not be among the drinkers of alcoholic beverages.'' and, Proverbs, 23:31........''God instructs not to look at intoxicating drinks.'' In regard to Jesus, it is a subject of debate whether he drank wine, or just pure grape juice. When he turned water into wine, they said that he had kept the best wine until last. This seems to suggest to me that it was unfermented and pure grape juice. Whether Jesus actually drank alcohol, or not, is lost somewhere within the annals of time. Jesus was given either wine, or vinegar, on the cross. The King James version tells it like this. This is to be found in John, chapter 19, verses 29 and 30. Hyssop is a type of herb from the mint family used traditionally for cleansing the inner body, for indigestion, and for promoting good bowel movement. It is used for flavouring foods, or can be drunk as a tea which can help to cure throat infections, and asthma conditions. 'Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.'' Jesus might indeed have drank some alcohol, but that proves nothing, except that he tried all things human, and that he mixed with humans without it ever affecting him, in relation to his position with God. Alcohol could never take him away from this continual contact with God, as he would never allow it to. Jesus was a being that was so far above mere mortal man that we will never know what he really did, and exactly why he did it, while he was on the earth plane. We do know that he was tempted many times to sin, and that each time he refused this invitation by following his father's will, and by always pushing all other ways behind him. Sometimes this took place quite forcefully, as in his words to his disciple Peter, ''to get behind me, Satan.'' This happened when Peter had questioned if what Jesus had foretold about his coming crucifixion would really have to happen, or not. Alcohol dulls the brain, the senses, and adversely affects our body. In a way, it acts like meditation, and similarly removes us from connecting to our problems through allowing us to forget, or to move away from these problem areas of our life, for a short period of time. It cannot alter consciousness itself, however. It just drops us into a lower level of consciousness, or restricts our access to be able to reach the still higher levels. Meditation though helps us to connect to our higher self, and so allows us to bring back its solutions to our problems. When we consume alcohol, no such solutions can ever be found. Love brings all things as required to all people exactly as they are required for them to be able to go through and to experience what they need to experience. Is alcoholism ever required in a soul's experiences or not, that is the only real question here? Are negative habits such as smoking, and swearing, in any way, a necessary part of a soul's pathway to its perfection, or not? Well, the human factor has often acted to weaken the pathway that was originally made up of a purity of only love. When the human loves other things more than love itself, these other things then become attractive to it, and so more of the same are then also attracted to it. This is unnecessary, but when it happens, it becomes then part of that particular human's growth cycle. Eventually, though they will grow away from these addictions, once more again. This all matters as it relates to the progressiveness of accumulated growth and the speed of movement through the levels of consciousness, but in the end even this serves soul, as nothing can ever hurt soul. Only the human factors have been stretched too much, and often the human ends up destroying its own vehicle, and so soul must then manifest another vehicle, and hopefully linked to a more experienced one now, the next time around. All such vehicles are linked to each other, and so improve on each other progressively in their beneficial connection to soul. This takes place as a soul's life progresses into right development through the creative pursuit of experiences, created to increase the knowledge and understanding of love within that soul. Why did mankind discover alcohol then, and how does this discovery serve God and love, given all the damage that it seems to be doing? Love is never damaged by anything. All only ever really serves love from itself. Love is all, and love is all there really is. Everything is love. We are just learning more and more to see this. All is the result of the oneness of God's love living within us as us. Alcohol was allowed to be discovered, because it brings to love another previously unknown factor of the human, that has been displayed only now through the use of alcohol. Alcohol brings a pseudo happiness by the accompanying illusionary dropping of the problems of the mind. They are not dropped however, just masked and covered over by a temporary blindness. Alcohol changes your mind's actual functioning. Your mind now starts taking on the personality more as it configures itself from your ego's positioning, rather than from your soul's position of greater love. This means that if you examine your behaviour when drunk, it will in a way describe the inner you in a way that can be seen from its opposite. The negative personality is aggravatingly exaggerated, and the positive side is being downplayed. Love brings you to yourself, sometimes from rather roundabout ways. Touching the sleeves of happiness, whether true happiness, or just an illusionary picture projected from a vehicle called alcohol, still never the less allows you to see that far more exists, than just the life of your human side, or your physical body. Your soul utilises anything that it can to help you to find itself within you. Alcohol, and every other type of habit is always being used for a secondary reason like this, and good always comes out from the midst of all things, no matter how they are presently looking to you as seen from your present level of consciousness. God is served by all, because all is perfect within him. All is perfect in the way that God sees things to be working, and as seen from his bigger picture viewpoint. I have heard the explanation that alcohol was introduced to allow man to further forget who he really was. This was done so that mankind would not ignore the physical world, but to really learn to embrace it more fully as well, while he was there. The physical existence required a balanced living to be obtained from maintaining at first a greater physical contact with these lower worlds. After accepting the lower worlds where we find ourselves, we can then endeavour to see the higher worlds once more again, but now from a more realer, and from a more earthly based spiritual perspective. After this, we can view all things now at the same time in a balanced and more interactively perfect way. Soul learns from outer experience how it operates inwardly. Soul also shows us from its inner experience how we should be operating externally. The answer is to live as a human being here on Earth allowing our soul to guide us within us in a balanced way from loving who we are enough to steer away from anything that detracts from this loving in any way. Alcohol though separates so effectively, that you must give it up entirely in order to move upwards past a certain point of consciousness. You cannot go any higher than this while still consuming alcohol. The higher consciousness levels are only available to a clear and pure mind, and with a heart that is living from love. The use of tobacco and alcohol could be said to retard spiritual growth. How do they do this? Spiritual growth is about awareness, and any substance that enters your body affects this purity of awareness in you. The awareness is always there within you, trying to open itself more and more, as you allow love to live more and more in you, and by seeing love living within every experience. On the other hand smoking, alcohol, and drug usage closes down awareness by establishing a linkage to something other than higher consciousness. It links you to a lower form of animalism that exists within lower formers of life. It is a primitive form of consciousness that is still lacking in the aware perception of higher functioning levels of love. Love refines itself in you as you progress spiritually. Love polishes itself so that its light pours forth from you, not now being held up anymore by your fears of darkness, and by the play of your lower emotions eating away the light in such a way that it shines darkly, rather than from its fullest possible fullness of itself. If you want to shine at your strongest with this purest of light of God's love in you, you will need to drop drinking alcohol that only tends to darken the lens of your light. It darkens it both for you, looking at it shining from within you inwardly, and it darkens it also for others, looking at it shining from you outwardly towards them. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com We would not like to see a poor monkey drinking alcohol, why do we drink it ourselves?