Perceiving the Spiritual (1)

We are all different and have different giftings. Blake Healy's seeing is very visual and seems very physical. The way he describes it in The Veil indicates that he often sees things with his physical sight. However, he understands that he is seeing a visual representation of a spiritual reality that human eyes cannot see.

When you see in the spirit, it is a visual representation of spiritual reality. That thing isn’t really there, but represents something that is.

An angel is a spirit, not limited by physical form. When I see an angel, I am seeing a visual representation of what and who they are… I am seeing a visual metaphor of who this angel is.

When I receive something from the spiritual realms, it seems like an idea or a picture just arrives in mind. This is often described as seeing in the Spirit.

To explain how this works, I need to compare it with ordinary perceiving. When I am struck by an idea I have read in a book, it is retained by my memory. I can pull it out of my memory into my mind and think about it any time. If I have an experience that strikes me, it is retained in my memory. I can rehearse in my imagination any time. For example, if I saw someone that I had not seen for a long time getting off a train yesterday, I can pull that scene out of my memory into my imagination and see the scene again. These memories come through my physical senses. I see the scene and hear the conversation. I read the book with my physical eyes.

With spiritual stuff, it is very similar, except that I did not have the initial experience of seeing the scene of hearing the idea with my physical senses. The spiritual thought or picture is just there in my mind and I do not know how it got there (I presume by the Holy Spirit). It drops from mind into my memory, so I can recall the idea t and think about it, even though I have not come across it before. Likewise, I can bring the picture to my imagination and see it, and describe what I see, even though have not seen it with my physical eyes. The difference is that the idea or picture is put into my mind by the Holy Spirit, via my spirit, rather than passing through my physical senses.

I realise that we are all different, but reading The Veil made me realise that there are many other ways of seeing available to Christians that I need to press into.