Morning Musings #55 - Who is the "thief" in John 10:10, and who is the "I" that gives abundant life?

John 10:10 "The thief comes not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I AM come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
I don't know about you, but I would puzzle over this verse (as well as most of the Bible) for years, wondering what "form" this thief would take in my life. I was continually looking for this thief to appear, not realising he had already plundered my house.
Today, I have clearly identified this "thief"... it is our natural mind with all of it's lower emotions generated from the nature of judging "good and evil". And our mind, for the most part is magnetised to negative emotions; happiness is a mere fleeting state of this mind.
By the way, this "mind" is the Rosetta stone that will unlock all the mysterious Bible passages - whenever we see verses talking about an enemy, accuser, thief, satan or the devil etc. understand that it is talking about your natural mind.
So, now that we know who this "thief" is, who is the "I" that wants to give us life to the full? When you take a look at the original Greek it will give you the word "Ego". 😊 The Greek language seems to be similar to our English in that we only have one word to describe the 'self', so it can be a little confusing.
As a Christian, I thought the "I" was Jesus and I was looking to him to give me this abundant life, but the abundant life never came. In fact, it was such a life that the only thing I will say is, I don't ever want to repeat it. As I mentioned earlier, I was still looking for a thief while my house had already been plundered (stealing, killing and destroying).
The Bible mentions another "mind", besides the natural mind ... and that would be the "mind of Christ" or the "I". It's this higher mind of spiritual awareness or consciousness that is the "I" that leads us into abundant life.
We know we are in this higher "mind" or awareness of abundance, when we feel invigorated by the way we live our life every day. We feel emotionally and physically energised and experience an overall sense of well-being!
The polar opposite of this would be to feel dread everyday, living in a sense of hopelessness and just wanting to die... so that we can "go home" to get rest from this daily toil.
Do you recognise that all of this is taking place within your "mind" (psyche), and that there is no one else coming to steal, kill and destroy you?
It is our lower emotions like self pity, grief, resentment, unworthiness, unforgiveness - those kind of things, they will absolutely destroy your life. They destroy your emotional well-being and eventually your physical body, because these emotions send messages to your physical body, to the DNA that you do not want to live.
And the cells in your body make adjustments through dis-ease to shorten life, to accommodate your psychological (unconscious) 'wish'. Because we tell our body every day through our emotions of dis-ease, that we don't want to live.
When we are conscious enough to consistently live in (and identify as) our "higher mind", the Christ or the "I" - we get to experience the abundant life as what is known as the "fruits of the Spirit" or the effects of the higher mind - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control or contentment.
Our entire body/being responds to these higher octaves of emotions like a flower does to sunshine - one can feel energetically every cell in our body open up to receive the Life Force, and there is a vibrancy to our being. We call it "heaven".
And when we experience those emotions and feelings, they also send messages to our body DNA telling the cells that "I want to live"! Anybody that has ever been in love, knows what this feel like - and has probably said "I want to live forever" in this state of love. That is heaven, or abundant life! ❤ And you can maintain that "honeymoon" by yourself WITHIN your SELF!

#abundantlife #thief #bibleverse