Over the course of these meditations, which are the meat of this column, the presence of the Lord in my heart has been a recurring idea. My awareness of the complexity of this idea has deepened over the course of my regular meditation practice reading Secrets of Heaven and writing these posts. This week’s passage and the meditation and insights that followed my reading of it have been a pivotal part in this process and are what you read below.
“When the earliest people (whose nature was heavenly) spoke of a snake, they meant watchfulness. They also meant the sensory level of the mind, which enabled them to watch out for any evil that might otherwise hurt them… Something similar was meant by the bronze snake lifted up in the wilderness [Numbers 21:9]. It symbolized the sensory level in the Lord—the only heavenly person and the only being who watches over and provides for everything. That is why people who looked on the bronze snake were saved” (Secrets of Heaven 197).
The Lord in my heart—as my heart, my will—is an entire person; a person with all the levels a person has—a complete human, the complete human. So I can let go of my “levels” and adopt His on all parts of myself—the sensory level included! I can look to the Lord for protection from evil and provision of all things!
The idea of the Lord as a human being has never felt so essential, so present, so purposeful and intimate as it does now. I have never had such a complete idea of the Lord, the Lord as a person in my heart. The image of Elisha lying on the boy who was dead and bringing him back to life (2 Kings 4: 32 – 37) is a picture of what I now see my relationship to the Lord as a complete human being to be. The Lord will bring me to life by lying on me face to face, chest to chest, hands to hands, feet to feet, sensory level to sensory level.
This is how I could become a heavenly person, a likeness of the Lord. This process requires me to surrender all my levels, my entire “human form” to His. Recognizing this for the sensory level is just the beginning. Seeing how I can surrender my sensory level to the Lord’s paints a picture for how I can work to match and surrender all my levels to the Lord. I can’t watch out for evil; I can’t provide for myself even on the most basic level. I can surrender this part of myself to the Lord. Or in other words, I can look to the Lord’s sensory level to protect me from evil and provide everything I need.
So it’s not just that “the good love desires” and “the truths taught by faith” sort of swirl around in my heart and provide me with life. Rather, the Lord, who is “the only heavenly person,” is present as an entire human being in my heart*. And over the course of my spiritual journey I can learn how to surrender deeper levels of my ‘self’ to His.
*I say “in my heart” because it seems like the simplest term that makes the Lord feel the most present to me; it might be more accurate to say in my spiritual self, or my spirit, since I am talking about my entire true human form matching the Lord’s on every level.