Meditate is a monthly column in which Chelsea shares insights she has gained from meditating on the Word. You can too! Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column -Editor.
“Our entire sense of self resides in our will. The first time we are born, the self is evil. The second time we are born, the self becomes good. The first time, we are born of our parents; the second time, we are born of the Lord” (True Christianity 658).
“Because we have the capacity to choose in freedom, we are able either to will something or else not to will it…
All the evils that we have a tendency toward from the day we are born are a lasting part of the will of our earthly self. When we allow ourselves to be influenced by these evils they flow into our thinking. Good things along with truths flow down into our thinking from above, from the Lord… If we choose evil things, they are received by our old will and become part of it. If we choose good things along with truths, a new will and a new intellect are formed by the Lord above our old will and our old intellect. Gradually over time, the Lord uses the truths that are in our new intellect to implant new forms of good on that higher level. Through these truths he also gains control over the evils that are below, moves them out of the way, and sets everything in order.
This also makes it clear that our thought process purifies and excretes, so to speak, the evils that are resident in us from our parents” (True Christianity 659).
The freedom and ability we have to will something or not to will it is a really important truth for me to remember.
So often I feel hopeless about my will. My will is my will—how can I change the fact that I will/desire/enjoy evil things and evil behavior? Like the passage just said, the “evils that we have a tendency toward from the day we are born are a lasting part of the will of our earthly self.” So I have no choice in the matter… do I? For a while I have felt powerless about it. I’ve felt perplexed about how to bring about true spiritual change—how does it happen? My meditation last month and the passages above have given me welcome mental clarity on the subject. They are empowering. What I hear in the passages above is that even though I can’t control what I will in one sense—that is, evil will arise in my emotions and thoughts without my sense of having invited it—I can control what I will via my thinking. Choosing something is a mental, thought-based action. I think in the past I’ve had the misunderstanding that our will makes the choices and our thought must serve that choice. This can be true, but as this passage says, we actually have the freedom, if we care to use it, to choose what we will. Willing something is a matter of choice! Who knew?
My process recently was feeling stuck and controlled by a recurring evil in my life. From witnessing it manifesting in my life over and over again I could sense that I was simultaneously embarrassed about it and yet righteous about the feelings that would come along with it. The weight of the pain of it on my conscience was enough though to get me to talk it out to my husband and apologize for the actions I’d taken associated with it. The last part of True Christianity 659, that “our thought process purifies and excretes” the evils we have hereditarily, is an affirmation of what I marveled at and felt going on during our conversation: that simply the process of talking it out, thinking out loud about it with my husband’s supportive feedback, crying, and just giving voice to everything I had associated with it in my mind was itself a literally purifying experience! Since this conversation, I’ve been better able to keep this particular evil in check when it comes up—which it does nearly every day. It wasn’t instant salvation, but it was a beginning, an opening of the way for the Lord to start his work in me on this, his work of gaining control of the evil, moving it out of the way, and setting everything in order.
Our will seems like such a powerful thing, but really we have power over it via our thinking. We choose good via truth. Truth is a critical player in rising above the old will and intellect. If you’ll notice in the passage above, the battle between good and evil, so to speak, happens in the arena of our thinking. The evil flows into our thinking; the good along with truths flow into our thinking. What’s one lesson I take away from this? Pay attention to the good thoughts in the tough moments. They are actually there! I’ve been noticing how even just one truth I acquire really does present itself in my mind at the same time as I find myself in the negative state I needed it for in the first place. Holding on to the truth in my mind, by repeating it mentally for instance (which means I’m choosing it), has a way of dissolving the strength of the evil’s influence in that moment. I realize now that this truth’s simple mental presence is actually a sign of the Lord’s presence in me, and my choice of it is the beginning of the Lord forming in me a new will.
So how do I choose not to will something? One way is to give my focus to the good and true thoughts that are flowing in at the same moment as the evil is flowing in. I can’t battle my old will outright—it’s not going anywhere. But the Lord with his truth has the power to free me from its grip and lift me above it to the level of the new will and new intellect that he is forming in me.
Chelsea is wife to a PhD candidate. In addition to mothering her two young children round the clock, she is an assistant editor for New Church Connection and an editor and writer for New Church Perspective.