Divine Providence Reveals that Trial and Tribulation only Appear to be a Curse (Pt. 2)

You'll be surprised read, here in part two, that Cortland had farther to fall. Miraculously, he can see that all he went through was a direct expression of his spiritual state. Through it all, the Lord was revealing his inner state for what it was, calling him to love the truth for the right reasons. (Start with part one here). -Editor

From Part 1: There was a hitch in my giddy-up. All I did was work, drink beer, smoke marijuana, and socialize. Although I was a hard worker my work ethic was not based on the principles of charity so I was externally productive but still void of fruit. Even still, I believed that pure influx would lead me to a life of genuine good use and the most egregious part of my life was long behind me. Boy did I get a wrong number! What was to come was purely a manifestation of where my spirit was and it manifests itself in every particular of my life.

From here on the reader will have to excuse me for not going into detail about what happened over the next 10+ years. If I were to attempt to do so it would fill many pages so I hope the trials and tribulations in themselves will reveal what this small piece is trying to express.

On November 23, 1999, two days before my 30th birthday, my mother called 911 and told the operator that she was going to take her life and then proceeded to do just that. I appeared to be doing okay until about two months after when it dawned on me that Mamma was gone. For the next two years I sat in my studio apartment(as I had moved away from my children) with my one and only love: alcohol. I was able the receive a two year respite from full blown addiction only because of the fact that I drank myself into destitution and had to move back in with my family. I still drank on a daily basis, but it was not as bad as it had been during the previous two years when I lived alone.

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Divine Providence Reveals that Trial and Tribulation only Appear to be a Curse (Pt. 1)

This is part one of Cortland's honest account of where he came from and how he found (or was found by) the Lord. He lays out the exterior and interior facts of his life with abandon. It's a remarkable story. Stayed tuned for part two next week. -Editor

I don’t believe in God, was the statement I made, in a casual tone, as we lay watching television in our bedroom at our home in South-central Los Angeles. “What!" my older brother replied. How could there be a God when black folks are subject to so much apathy, injustice, and flat out evil? Of course I was not able to articulate my sentiments in such a fashion at the time. I was barely fifteen but I felt confident that my stance had been validated within my statement as such. He looked at me, rolled his eyes and said, "Whatever," as if I was just going through a phase.

By the Spring of 1986, I would put my atheistic beliefs into practice by indulging in the un-godly crack-cocaine epidemic that plagued our community at the time. After spending six to seven months in one-room apartments and motels, both selling and using the illicit drug, I would spend another six months in many of the various juvenile facilities throughout the county of Los Angeles. In June of '87, after being released back to the custody of my mother, we relocated to Sacramento. I made an earnest effort to reform upon arrival but it did not last very long. One year later, the day after graduating high school, Mamma said that I 'gradually-waited' for them to give me a diploma, since I barely graduated receiving a D grade in the majority of my classes. I went to the local Carl’s Jr. and got a job. The very next day I went into Der Wienersnitzel right down the street and took a second job. While my classmates were enjoying their summer and preparing to enter college, I was working sixteen to twenty hours a day cooking corndogs and double-cheeseburgers. This endeavor may have been honorable if it were not for my intentions.

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Failure is Not a Detour

Lori peers over her shoulder at all that failed to thrive in her life, despite her clear intentions and decisive actions. Though many of her dreams have not been realized, she is reaping where she did not sow. -Editor

This is a theme I have been sashaying with for a long time now. I am only in my fifties but the view over my shoulder has a trail of broken dreams that I believed in with my whole being. Many of them died.

John and I articulated a plan of planting a church congregation in New Mexico in the 80's. I do not remember any space parceled out for doubt that we would succeed. We had prayed about this. John had studied the demographics until he could recite them by heart. We had no gap between our clasped hands for The Goal to slip through. But after three years of living and breathing it, we let it go like a trapped bird and watched it fly out the window. Yet in the silence that stayed behind to keep us company I learned that there is life after failure. I have more respect for John for reaching and losing, not less. There are gray and white memories of our family of six hovering below the poverty line, reminding me that I have lived with less than I have now. Failure made me stronger, insulating me from entitlement.

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The Most Powerful Phrase I Know

Ronnie shares a phrase, originally recorded by Swedenborg, that has the power to overcome the negative states we struggle with. He has experienced it's transformational strength, and encourages everyone to use it for their own benefit. -Editor

There is a phrase which has the power to scatter a thousand demons. There is a phrase which can instantly wash the mind of evil thoughts and feelings. There is a phrase which the Lord spoke as a voice from heaven to His servant Emmanuel Swedenborg as a gift for our people to free ourselves from the bonds of hell. Would you be surprised if I told you this phrase was beyond our expressing with physical words and that it must be searched for in the heart beyond the shores of our spiritual awareness. Well that might be what you would expect, but actually we are lucky enough to have this phrase written down for us in Emmanuel Swedenborg's work True Christian Religion 567.4 where it says these amazing words,

"[I] do not will to do this thing because it is a sin against God."

Now let me give you a moment to test this out. Find some evil thought, feeling or intention in yourself, if you need some help think of something in this article that may have frustrated you and what it makes you want to do. Do you have it? Now think the words "[I] do not will to do this thing because it is a sin against God."

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Meditate | There Ain't Nothing Like a Sound Mind

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. You could write for Meditate, too! Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor.

New arrivals to heaven relaying an idea found in Swedenborg’s writings: “Every single thing that exists on earth exists in an infinitely more perfect form in the heavens… After death, we are perfectly human. In fact, we are more perfectly human than we were before in the physical world...”

One of the new arrivals, a politician: “I cannot actually tell any difference between my being alive then and my being alive now, except that my reasoning is now sounder. When I have reflected on what I used to think, a number of times I have felt ashamed of myself” (True Christianity 693).

This meditation helped me in the circumstances I’m in right now. My one-year-old son is sick and I feel a lot is being asked of me. Well, not a lot, but one big thing: not to put myself first, but instead put my children and my husband first, and handle it gracefully, that is, with Grace, without turning the experience into resentment and reason for blame—which I did just this morning.

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Appearances of Reincarnation

Ian takes arguments for reincarnation and views them through a Swedenborgian lens. He changes the question from 'does reincarnation exist?' to 'how could one's experience appear like reincarnation?' -Editor

According to Emanuel Swedenborg, we only live once on earth. After death we live in a spiritual world and move eventually to a permanent place that depends on the spiritual nature we created by our actions on earth. We are not reborn or reincarnated again on earth, to have another attempt to do better next time.

Historically, however, there have been many stories about reincarnation, notably the "transmigration of souls" (metempsychosis) that Plato describes in the Republic. Reincarnation has been an essential part of Hinduism and Buddhism. It is interesting to see when it became popular in the west. We might assume it came with the great interest in spiritualism in Europe and America that started in the 1840s, which lead to a great many scientists becoming interested in it, with the formation of the learned societies of psychical research in the period 1850-1900. But it did not: there was no hint of reincarnation among those beliefs. Instead, it came through the books of theosophists like Annie Besant and was imported into western thought from the early 1900s. It has subsequently become rather widespread among spirit communicators, and it is especially dominant in the "channelled works" written under dictation from spirit sources that claim higher knowledge.

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