Q. Would you please share with me your thoughts about how to study the Bible?
A. The most important thing you can do is to read the Bible. I do not mean reading a verse or two, but reading a book of the Bible all the way through. Many people who want to study the Bible do not do this simple thing. Once you have read a Bible book several times through, you start to get an idea of what it is all about. Here are some verses on this point: 2 Chronicles 34:14-28; Nehemiah 8:l-18; Psalm 19:7-10; all of Psalm 119, but see for instance, verses 9-16; 1 Timothy 4:13; Revelation 1:l-3. These all show the importance of reading, meditating on, and remembering the Word of God.
The next step is to outline the book of the Bible you have read over and over again. Find the natural places where the author moves on to a new topic. In the historical books this is often indicated by a change of place or by the passage of time. In the prophetic books and the epistles, there will be indicators in the text, such as “This is what the Lord says,” or “Now I want you to know, brothers” or “Finally.” When you come across these “context markers,” they will help you to break the text up into smaller pieces. Then, read each piece over and over until you can summarize in your ow words what that portion is about. Your summary might sound like this: “Jesus heals a lame man at a pool” or “Paul discusses the importance of living a pure life.” Summarize each of the pieces of the book in a similar way.
Then divide each piece into its paragraphs. Your Bible should be able to help you here, for many Bibles divide the text into paragraphs, indenting the first line of each paragraph. You should be able to summarize each paragraph like you did the larger pieces. Try to figure out how the thoughts flow from one paragraph to the next.
Once you have done this for the entire book, you have a good idea.of what the book is all about, and how the ideas flow from beginning to end. Then you can use that overview to help you understand what any one or two verses mean. You can also look at other passages where the same concept occurs and let those verse inform your thinking about this passage. You are looking to understand how the verses harmonize and fill in meaning for one another. If you think they are in conflict with each other, chances are good that you have misunderstood one or both of them.
Then, you can compare your results with what the writers of commentaries have said about a passage. But it is much better to do you own work first before you consult the commentaries. Then you will be able to debate the writers and not just swallow everything they try to feed you. If you look at commentaries, it will not take you long to discover that some are better than others, and that some are written for expert scholars, while others are on a very simple level. Find the level that you need given where you are in your Bible study. Try to discern the strengths and weaknesses of the commentary writer. Do not just accept what they say because you suppose they are better informed than you are. Listen to their reasons, and see if they make sense to you. (Sometimes they will persuade you, and sometimes you will only become convinced never to use that commentary again.)
Finally, you should be able to summarize what you have learned about a passage by explaining it to someone in a way that they can understand. Give your reasons for the interpretations you have made and the conclusions you have reached. Also, let it be known that you are willing to study the passage some more and would be open to hearing another point of view.
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Copyright ©2005 Steve Singleton
Steve Singleton has written and edited numerous books and articles on subjects of interest to Bible students. He has been a book editor, reporter, news editor, and public relations consultant. He has taught Greek, Bible, and religious studies courses in Bible college, university, and adult education programs. He has taught seminars and workshops in 11 states and the Caribbean.
Go to his DeeperStudy.org for Bible study resources, no matter what your level. Explore “The Shallows,” plumb “The Depths,” or use the well-organized “Study Links” for original sources in English. Check out the DeeperStudy Bookstore for e-books, free books, and great discounts on over 120,000 Christian books. Sign up for his free “DeeperStudy Newsletter.”
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There is in every person the possibility of an integrated Soul Personality. However, normally the average person is split to a greater or lesser degree, dependent upon the amount of pain, trauma and undigested stress in their lives and dependent upon the amount of work they have done to integrate their personalities by means of therapy and meditation.
Therapy and psychology allow intellectual appreciation of the problem in ourselves and others. It takes meditation to heal the splits and integrate the separated selves.
Colin Ross (Ross, 1997) lists 11 dissociative features of the Shamen work, and relates each to Dissociative Identity Disorder or Splitting. These parallelisms are worth mentioning here, as they further ground the experiences of Split patients in a milieu that is pathological by reference to the abilities of Shamen which are integrated and real:
Structured, Meaningful Hallucinations– Shamen deliberately induced special states of being, in which they could communicate with other realms of being, such as the spirit and animal worlds, symbols of the split off parts of the client, the subconscious and the Unconscious. The Shamen induced these states so that they could access the split off parts of the client and heal them, thus also giving the client the ability to access unconscious parts other processes cannot reach.
Trance States– Trance states through meditation were essential prerequisites for communication with the split parts of their clients, out of body experiences, possession, etc. Split patients frequently enter trance. One of the major diagnostic criteria for Splitting is ease of hypnotizability. As people evolve, they get more ability to easily enter meditative states which precede integration of the split parts. However, although they find it easy to enter these states, integrated Shamen always have the ability to return, unlike their unintegrated split patients who are lost.
Hypnotic Anesthesia– Such Shamanic super abilities as walking naked in the arctic winter, holding hot objects, and self-piercing indicate hypnotic anesthesia. Split patients often report anesthesia and amnesia for the pain of abuse, or self-inflicted pain.
Symbolic Dreams– Shamen’ dreams and meditations were often lucid and directed at finding and conveying information about the clients split parts to the real world of the client. Once buried information is acknowledged it becomes available for being grounded and healed. Jung accessed the split parts of his clients using this method so that he could integrate them. The psyche of the Split patient usually tries to spontaneously heal itself through dreams which often involve conveying information about past abuse which has been forgotten through amnesia. Once acknowledged by the waking personality it helps to organize the personality system or leads onto accessing other buried information for the waking personality.
Ritual Dismemberment– Often initiation as a shaman involved ritual dismemberment analogous to death, as a symbol of spiritual fragmentation of the many split personalities within. The Shaman must have the ability to split and then integrate himself before attempting to integrate other people. Normally Shamen were trained by other Shamen although spontaneous Integration also occurred. Only when the apprentice Shaman had Integrated and healed all his splits into the Integrated Soul personality was he strong enough to attempt to heal others. It takes a strong sense of the Higher Soul Infused Personality to be able to enter into the various unintegrated parts of the personality and then return as it is easy to get lost. Split patients have, by definition, undergone dismemberment of the self as a strategy for survival, essentially they are lost.
An example of the training given to Shamen is available in a 5000 years old text called, “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.” In there a meditational methodology for integration with the soul has been extant for millennia. However, always the Guru Shaman who has walked the path was considered essential to the process of soul integration.
As can be seen from this list of correspondences, there is much commonality between the “professionally” achieved and culturally approved meditative states of the sub-arctic shaman, and the dissociative states of the split patient. Split patients are usually more highly evolved than the average person as their amnesia is starting to slip. They have more psychic ability, more meditative ability, more hypnotizability.
Normal people do not have the ability to know that they are split, they think they are perfect. The symptoms of splitness need to be pointed out to normal average people before they can overcome the paradigm of not understanding that they are not yet integrated, they are split too..
This is an Introduction to Split Personality from many works of Psychology and the Shaman as Trained Healer and personality Integrator.. Later I hope to complete the work in 1. The concept of universal dissociation. 2. Multiple personalities, MPD. 3. The Integrated Soul Personality and Energy Enhancement Meditation.
The healer, Shaman, Enlightened through much training, always have the ability to come back to themselves, to re-integrate after helping the integration of a client.
However, the cure for split personality for everyone is integration of the splits by grounding all the negative energy created by traumatic experiences which sustains the splits. As we ground all the negative energy through meditation, so the splits disappear and one integrated soul personality becomes in charge..
Start your integrative Process by learning how to meditate and then speed it up with the advanced techniques of Energy Enhancement based upon the thousands of years old ancient effective techniques of Taoism, The Kundalini Kriyas, The five elemental circulations of the Qi of Chinese Alchemical Taoism, The Guided Meditation of the Emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistus encapsulated in VITRIOL and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
Satchidanand,
Director of Energy Enhancement, is one of the leading teachers of Meditation!
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