All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, fish another. There are also Heavenly bodies and there are Earthly bodies; but the splendor of the Heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the Earthly bodies is another. The Sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another, and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving sprit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was out of the dust of the Earth, the second man from Heaven. As was the Earthly man, so are those who are of the Earth; and as is the man from Heaven, so also are those who are of Heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the Earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from Heaven. I declare to you brother, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed–in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true.

 Bad company corrupts good character. Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say to this your shame. We are mostly accustomed to look upon all opposition which is not animate as that of the stolid, inexorable hand of indifference, which wears out the patience more than the strength. We are not saved only to be instruments for God, but to his sons and daughters. As His disciples, our lives must be a holy example of the reality of our message. Even the natural heart of the unsaved will serve if called upon to do so, but it takes a heart broken by conviction of sin, baptized by the Holy Spirit, and crushed into submission to Gog’s purpose to make a person’s life a sacred example of God’s message. The only way to be obedient to the Heavenly vision is to give our utmost for His highest—our best for God’s glory. This can be accomplished only when we make a determination to continually remember God’s vision. However, the best way to be is obedient in the details of our everyday life. The goal is self-control. Try to directly alter troublesome thoughts and actions. You do not need people to pry into your past or emotions and conflicts; you simply need to break the habit of drinking too many colas. Even when more serious problems are at stake, techniques like the self-control have proved valuable. If you have learned responses that cause problems, then you can change these issues by relearning more appropriate responses. Behavior modification is any classical or operant condition to directly alter human behavior.

 We cannot feel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by dividing ourselves from the World. Every man thinks that perfection, that he is himself; that the only knowledge that he possesses; and that the only pleasure that he pursues. Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped. Then the LORD God Almighty will have mercy. You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times for the times are unlovely. Seek good, not bad, that you may life. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Do not like bad, love well; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. There will be wailing in all the streets and cries of anguish in every public square. The farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail. There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will past through your midst, says the LORD. Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice.

 He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. However, the one who hear my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete. Imagine that you are eating a chocolate bar, and then suddenly you discover that you just half of a chocolate laxative. You vomit. Months pass before you eat chocolate again without feeling ill. You now have a conditioned aversion to chocolate. (A condition aversion is a learned disliked or negative emotional response to some stimulus.) For example, is every one of your neighbors is women, and all of them are mean and friends with each other, you will have a conditioned aversion in your generalizations about women.  How is a conditioned aversion used in Therapy? This notion, which establishes the nature of the serpent’s role in sexual symbolism rather concisely, also summarized the character of the male boundary fear. It was thought by the ancients, and is still believed by the European peasantry, that during sexual conjunction the male serpent introduces its head into the mouth of the female, and that the latter gnaws and bites it off, thus becoming fecundated. 

The serpent represents, among other things, the widespread notion of female vagina dentate (Latin for toothed vagina) describes a folk tale in which a woman’s vagina is reported to contain teeth, with associated implication that sexual intercourse might result in injury, emasculation or castration for the man involved, and is often portrayed biting the penis. The serpent is not so much a phallic symbol, but the symbol of oral aggression against the phallus. The trivial realities upon which these grotesque fears are based are nothing more than the ejaculation and detumescence, with the accompanying emotional quiescence. The oral-narcissistic conflict translates detumescence into castration-what once was is no longer—ejaculation into vampirism, and satiation into death. Concern over the loss of semen is rife in Asian countries, where hunger and deprivation contribute to oral definitions of sexuality. However, the sudden emotional quiescence is probably the most powerful factor in activating male fears, particularly in societies where masculine prestige is strongly dependent upon activity of some type. Alexander is reputed to have reported that only sleep and sexual intercourse made him conscious of his mortality. The fear of penetration usually betokens other boundary fears, such as those found in a patient: he was afraid to have intercourse because he is allergic to latex. 

There was no reason for him to have sex, as he could not reproduce and orgasms are said to be painful. In two other cases the father’s embrace is feared as lethal. The association between snakes and death, and even in this sense, however, the snake as phallus is relatively infrequent in Greek myth, and it may be that the obstinacy with which psychoanalysts cling to this equation is based on a genuine cultural difference between Greece and Victorian Europe. It is assumed today that the fear of snakes is found primarily among women (partly perhaps because Victorian ladies were expected to be somewhat phobic), but this was certainly not true in ancient Greece. I have already related how Alexander’s mother, Olympias, slept peacefully (I refer to the presumed reality, not the associated myth) beside a serpent; and Plutarch reported that tells of wild Dionysian dancing with serpents, which wound themselves around the women and their spears and chaplets, frightening the men out of their wits. We would expect, from our analysis thus far, that in given culture the male would also be phobic of sexual encounter and such intimate situations and sexual innuendos tends to inflict its anxieties on him, so that the difference would be far from absolute. We find his fears are justified. They make too many demands of the young man. Psyche begs him ceaselessly to let her see her sisters, so she can flaunt her good fortune; he yields, they frighten her with the snake story, and she peeks at him, discovering that it is indeed a handsome boy in bed, sleeping alone peacefully, rather than a serpentine mass of transference. However, it is too late, she has hurt him, and he leaves.

 Psyche wanders from one mother-goddess to another, but they all refuse her, and she finally comes face to face with her angry mother-in-law, Aaliyah, who sets her a series of impossible tasks, including sending her to the underworld. She manages to perform them, however, and is reunited with her husband, Eros. Thus she resolves the conflict by returning to the source of it and fulfilling her apparently insatiable needs (which she has thoughtlessly projected onto the mother figure, perhaps with some psychological justice). Note that while in the underworld, Psych must not permit herself to accept any appetizing food or comforts, nor nature any of those who seek help; she must maintain a cold, narcissistic detachment—otherwise, as is always the case with such tales, the visit will be permanent. For going to Tartarus and back is the precise equivalent of the ultimate insatiable need—the desire for the complete peace and security of the womb, without being destroyed.  I noted earlier that while the serpent was associated with death and fears of the dead, it also connoted immortality. In a similar fashion, the serpent appears as a homeopathic remedy for the fears of boundary violation which sexuality arouses in orally fixated individuals. The snake is often utilized as a bisexual symbol, and bisexuality, like parthenogenesis, is an obvious solution to boundary fears.

 However, while the parthenogenetic fantasy eliminates the male intruder, it does not resolve the more fundamental problem of sexual limitation. The oral-narcissistic conflict, it will be recalled, arises from a failure to cope with the loss of the infantile illusion of oneness with the World, of completeness and self-sufficiency. Almost everyone has a phobia or two. Many people fear heights, snakes, public speaking, spiders, and so forth. Usually this causes little difficulty because the person carefully avoids feared situations. However, consider the following: an entertainer with stage fright, a student with test anxiety, a reporter who fears people, and aspiring producers who fears heights, or a newlywed with a fear of sexual intimacy. Each may be hampered enough by fears or anxieties to seek aid. Now about the collection for God’s people: Do what I told the financial advisors to do. On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. Then, when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Sacramento. If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me. If anyone does not love the Lord—a curse be on them. Come, O Lord! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.