Meditate | What Does It Mean To Be Alive?

Nothing that is a person’s very own has any life in it. When presented to view, it looks hard as bone, and black. Everything that comes from the Lord, on the other hand, has life. It has a spiritual and heavenly quality and looks like something living and human.

Incredibly, perhaps (although it is absolutely true), each word, each mental image, and each scintilla of thought in an angelic spirit is alive. Passion received from the Lord, who is life itself, permeates every single thing about such a spirit. Secrets of Heaven 41

The Lord is life itself. This amazes me. Life is something we receive from the Lord. It is so easy for me to get more focused on the concept of “having.” I have life. I have love. I have passion. But all these things we receive from the Lord. My concept of reception has been shifting. It is now a much more dynamic, moment-to-moment, real time experience of receiving things (like passion and life and good and true thoughts) from the Lord. Recognizing that, that it’s a constant flow is hard for my small, limited mind to handle sometimes, but it excites my spirit.

Also this passage changed my ideas about what is our “very own.” I often in the past have equated what is our “very own” with what is physical. The physical parts of me are inherently lifeless and it is only through the Lord’s influx that I get to be alive. But really it is deeper than that! The Lord is life itself, and so everything good and true is living—said to be alive, even “every scintilla of thought of an angelic spirit.” I’ve been under the misconception of the overly general idea that everything “spiritual” is alive, but everything “physical” is dead or inherently lifeless. But what about evil desires and false thoughts? What about hell? These are certainly not physical things, even though they act on us physical-spiritual beings. They are spiritual realities but they are certainly not in the category of things good and true. So the spiritual world is not all living? It is comprised of living things and things that are not living? So evil spirits are not living but they exist? That is an amazing mercy of the Lord. I would imagine this is because even evil spirits retain that faint glow of life from the Lord that gives them freedom and rationality.

Well, I don’t have a full understanding of the spiritual world. I’ve had a limited understanding of it and still do, but it’s nice to think that my understanding is shifting. The more I read the more I become aware of how immense and amazing the Lord’s mercy is. Even though this passage makes me think about the complexity of the spiritual world, it ultimately is a reflection of who the Lord is, and I love learning more about the Lord. 

Comments

[Alanna]

Thanks for sharing Chelsea. I had an experience yesterday of the Lord being the only living being. I was poaching eggs for three people, myself included and one of them was not there yet. I made the eggs for myself and the other person and was just finishing them when the third person walked in. I had the thought that they could make their own eggs while I ate mine at the peak of their readiness, but then began making their eggs anyway while mine sat on my plate. I had the thought that the Lord is charity and only the Lord can fight against our selfish desires, like my desire to sit and eat right then. I finished poaching the third person's eggs. They offered to do it instead of me towards the end but it was so close I just finished them. Anyway, the experience I got was that it was the Lord being charitable and poaching the third person's eggs and not me and it is such a relief to think about the Lord being the only doer and the only one that exists and I just get to step back and witness him and let my self awareness fall into obscurity.

[Brian]

thanks for highlighting and discussing this quotation. I love working on this paradoxical and beautiful idea of human "life" next to God's Life.

Its strange, we really have no life ourselves, but the Lord's biggest goal in life is that we get to experience His life as our own.

AC 1812.2 The Lord however, in all His conflicts brought about by temptations, never fought out of self-love, that is, for Himself, but for all throughout the universe. He did not fight therefore to become the greatest in heaven, for that is contrary to Divine love. He scarcely did so to become the least. He fought solely so that all others might become something and be saved,

Brian

[Chelsea Odhner]

Thanks Alanna and Brian for your comments!

I love your living example of the Lord as the only doer, Alanna. Exactly.

And Brian, like Alanna's experience, the more we practice awareness I think the more we'll get to have an exquisite feeling of it being the Lord himself that fills us with good and true thoughts and feelings that we get to be vessels of. That's bliss. Well, Erelah woke up, or I'd think more about this and write some more... :)