Increasing the bandwidth: Quickening

The wide-ranging effects of the spirit are referred to as quickening. The quickening of the spirit increases the level of detail you are able to perceive, the speed with which you can process information, and the correctness of your judgement of ideas, opportunities, things and people. As God quickens you, you will perceive more details about yourself, others, and the world around you. Your ability to notice and weigh strengths and weaknesses of arguments will increase. You will notice connections between ideas, objects, or effects that you did not before. You will detect motives in people that you did not previously detect. The value you appraise in different options of action will change, as will the cost and benefit of anything you do. Each change from quickening will bring your mind and heart to a state more similar to God’s.

The more God’s spirit flows into you, the more you will learn about what he thinks, feels, and does:

6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood, because he needed to take upon himself a mortal body of water and blood—as we all do—and sanctify it by obtaining and yielding to the Spirit—giving us all an example of what we must also do. And the spirit is the conduit that makes known the will of the Father, teaching all truth.
7 For there are three that manifest God in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.
8 And there are three that manifest God in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. These three were reconciled in the body of Jesus Christ, and provide an example for us to follow in doing the same in each of our bodies, that we might become one with Jesus Christ as he is one with the Father. (1 John 5, Author’s Reflection)

As you give your all¹ for the greatest possible benefit of the world,² as far as you know,³ God will do all he can to magnify your sacrifice⁴ into something even greater.⁵ He will salt your sacrifice.

Most people who have experienced powerful spiritual experiences do so through something external—something they do not cause to happen, but which happens to them. The spirit of God is not an arbitrary external entity. Rather, it operates within you through your own faculties of thought and feeling.⁶ These faculties form your conscience, a precious gift from God that acts as a compass capable of identifying what is best to you.

Your conscience is both a result of and a driver for your awareness of reality. It illuminates the landscape of reality like a lighthouse, shining outward into a world draped in the darkness of ignorance. The light is focused through what you choose to attend to and think about, and it elucidates what was, what is, what could be, how to make it so, and why it matters.

Your conscience is a critical lifeline that will grow more and more as you develop, consult, and honestly apply it, showing you what is best in greater accuracy and to a greater extent. Strictly speaking, your conscience includes the scriptural senses of both mind and heart, though few would see it as both, and some would not make this connection at all.

The conscience can operate on several levels, all of which are functions of the spirit of God operating upon and within you. At the least intentional level, the conscience provides feelings of guilt or confidence. These feelings come whether the individual wants them or not, and in spite of how well or poorly they understand them. Those with greater intention or awareness will experience the conscience as something which provides reasons. A conscience upgraded to explicit reasoning will grow faster and is capable of informing better decisions than one limited to raw feelings.

Your choices grow or diminish your conscience. To the extent you recognize and ideally respond to what it illuminates, your light will grow brighter. To the extent you choose what is less than best, given everything you can and have seen, it will fade.

7 Woe to the world because of their offense. It is necessary that all be exposed to increased light until they reject it, but woe to those who are offended by it!
8 If some aspect of what you do or how you are causes you to be offended by the revelation of greater truth, no matter if it is as integral to who you are as your very hand or foot, cut it off from you and forsake it! It is much better to enter into the life that I give crippled or lame than to be cast into eternal fire into as you were.
9 If some aspect of how you perceive things to be causes you to be offended by the revelation of greater truth, no matter if it is as integral to who you are as your very eye, gouge it out, and forsake it! It is much better to enter into the life that I give with one eye than it is to be cast into hellfire with two eyes. (Matthew 18, Author’s Reflection)

As you do more to incorporate the influence of the spirit into your life, the less that influence will wane.⁷ Instead of experiencing surges of God’s influence from time to time, it will approach constancy and build in intensity and effect.⁸

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)

The more you honestly interpret and apply what God teaches you through your conscience, the more he will teach you.⁹