Meditate | Shoveling

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. We welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. Contact us if you'd like to write a submission for this column. -Editor

"Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity;
Yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood.
He made a pit and dug it out,
And has fallen into the ditch which he made" (Psalms 7:14-15).

"The Lord witnessed the outer self at its most beautiful, when united with the inner self. He also witnessed what it is like when not united to the inner self (verses 10, 11, 12, 13 [quoted as follows])" (Secrets of Heaven 1538).

"And Lot raised his eyes and saw the whole plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered (before Jehovah had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt as you come to Zoar.
And Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan; and Lot set out from the east, and they separated, a man from his brother.
Abram lived in the land of Canaan, and Lot lived in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent as far as Sodom.
And the men of Sodom were very evil and sinful against Jehovah" (Genesis 13:10-13).

Lately I’ve had ample opportunity to witness what my outer self is like when not united to the inner self. It’s painful to witness the outer self chugging along in all its falsity and compulsion. What’s worse though is the stretch of time when I’m falling for it, believing I am nothing other than the troubling thoughts and feelings that it’s continually offering my consciousness. “The wicked” are talked about a lot in the Word, but it was only after reading the imagery in Psalm 7, and especially in verse 14, that the hunch started coalescing in my mind that “the wicked” is nothing other than my outer self when left to its own devices. It is my experience to a T that there is a part of my mind that is continually having questionable relations with not-so-well-intentioned spirits; these liaisons produce a seemingly endless supply of negative thoughts and feelings, conjuring a diffuse state of melancholy should I choose to adopt their progeny. The ceaseless onslaught is threatening only to a point—the point when I am able to gain some distance in consciousness between “me” and “it;” or like when Abram and Lot separate from one another. Recognizing the outer self for what it is, that it “pitches its tents” as far as “Sodom” where evil and sin are in abundance, opens the possibility for freedom from its mesmerism despite its enduring residence “in the land.” The good news is we can put our focus on uniting our inner selves with the Lord through the process of repentance, even with the outer self there like an old, black-and-white slapstick reel of a man repeatedly digging a hole and falling into it.

I pray that the next time you or I notice the outer self bubbling up with its age-old babble, we may have the presence of mind to give it the line, “Put down the shovel, and step away from the hole!”

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Chelsea lives with her husband and three young children in Willow Grove, PA. She is an assistant editor for New Church Connection and an editor and writer for New Church Perspective.