“A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also.” John 14:19
We are not here preserving or protecting the self. Neither do we desire to save it. Our remaining open to hear the Body when the fellowship is transparent (Gal. 4:16) is a mercy from the Lord. And the consequence of such fellowship is that the Lord can do something. By our being open to the Body and not preserving our self, we can receive help from the saints. We are helped to be a person who relates in life rather than relating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So this is our prayer — that the Lord would bring us out of the realm of knowledge and into the realm of life.
With the realm of life there is a flow and a supplied consciousness in our very being. This supplied consciousness is God Himself as life (John 14:19-20). This is also the way the Lord manifests Himself to us (John 14:21). In other words, life is experienced in the form of a consciousness. Life is God Himself in our very being. So when we fellowship with the Lord, it brings in the consciousness of His life (Rom. 8:16), and we treasure that consciousness because it is God Himself operating within us (Phil. 2:12-13). Out of this fellowship the Lord may restrain us from speaking something that may seem right, logical, and good. We are restrained by a feeling within, a consciousness. If we follow that consciousness and go along with it, we relate in the realm of life, not in the realm of knowledge. By this kind of experience we are led out of the ignorant self that does not know how to relate in the realm of life.