Letters From Norman
by Norman Grubb

Dec. 1, 1981

Dear Beth,

Your letter has just caught up with me "in the sticks" here, having great times in every place, with new spots of Union Life "knowing" springing up, specially in San Diego, and the group there planning a UL weekend with the Los Angeles groups–about four of them.

so glad to hear from you, dear, and as always from you all in Jackson with my loved Page.

Dear, spirit-reality always will appear unintelligible to human reason, because it is PARADOX only experienced (though maybe never fully understood by reason–do scientists understand the atom??!!)

Thus we ARE spirit–human spirit made precisely in His image, and thus we have full operating personality. So God also is Spirit, in His full operation, and so also is the false god-spirit (1 John 4:6).

But human derivative spirit is only as created as derivative fully-functioning spirits in order to express the Deity Spirit and His nature. So the human is always "managed," enslaved–containers, branches, temples, yet in the paradoxical reality that we manage our managers!

In human experience, when we have gained a profession–medical, teaching, cooking, what not, we are possessed inwardly by a know-how and then we gaily express our expressors. Which is it? A doctor is taken over inwardly by his medical know-how. He calls himself a doctor but he really only is a human practicing a know-how, which has taken him over. I had to learn an unknown language in Congo. After several months learning it, it "got" me. Now, years after, I can always speak it. Which is it–speaking, or the language know-how which has inwardly taken me over?

So in our true spirit-selves. We start taken over by Satan, the spirit of error. We spontaneously express his nature and do his stuff. We do it. Which is it, I doing it, or "the lusts of my father ye will do"?

So now thru Christ’s body-death (His blood phase of His crucifixion was for removal of outer sins, guilt, hell. His body death was the sin-spirit out and the Holy Spirit in), we are possessed, managed, express the nature of the Spirit of Truth. We do this spontaneously. Which is it?–I by my human spirit in its rightful self-expression, or the God-Spirit by me, as me?

So in this permanent paradoxical relationship, my human spirit in this world of sin-diversion by Satan temptation, remains a self-acting spirit and can be diverted from without, first feels those diversions (as did sinless Jesus) as good practice in replacing by my True Self, He in me, as me; or I can occasionally, deliberately respond to ("marry" the spirit-temptation thru soul-body), and commit a sin. Then 1 John 1:9 and Heb. 9:14. Get up quickly!

See Jesus at Gethsemane. Not my will (His pulled human spirit), but THY will.

Hope this clears things. If not, give me another shot at it. I’ll be home Dec 16, and greatly look forward to being with you.

Loving you all,

Norman