Meditate | Worth the Effort

Meditate is a monthly column in which insights gained from meditating on the Word are shared. This month, Chelsea finds reflection of a core aspect of our minds in a couple seemingly unrelated stories in the Old Testament. As usual, we welcome your insights, too, in the form of comments or even your own article. —Editor

“Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, and said, ‘Where is the Lord God of Elijah?’ And when he also had struck the water, it was divided this way and that; and Elisha crossed over” (2 Kings 2:14).

“It happened after this that the king of the people of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his place. Then David said, ‘I will show kindness to Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness to me.’

So David sent by the hand of his servants to comfort him concerning his father. And David’s servants came into the land of the people of Ammon. And the princes of the people of Ammon said to Hanun their lord, ‘Do you think that David really honors your father because he has sent comforters to you? Has David not rather sent his servants to you to search the city, to spy it out, and to overthrow it?’

Therefore Hanun took David’s servants, shaved off half of their beards, cut off their garments in the middle, at their buttocks, and sent them away. When they told David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, ‘Wait at Jericho until your beards have grown, and then return’” (2 Samuel 10:1-5).

“In general [the children of Ammon] are people whose worship is external and to some extent appears holy, but is not internal. They are also people who take up the things which belong to external worship as goods and truths but reject and regard as worthless those that belong to internal worship…People with whom such good exists are interested solely in the external features of worship and doctrine, and despise, reject, indeed are utterly averse to the internal; and as a consequence they have falsities instead of truths” (Arcana Coelestia 2468).

I was particularly struck (oh, what a pun) with how Elisha takes up the mantle of Elijah and strikes the water and it parts. He takes action while simultaneously asking the “affirmatively doubtful” question, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” I like that. How often are we asked to take action while also asking that question, and indeed good things happen—but we are not given total confirmation of God’s presence in our work before we take the action. That’s a first thought. You could stop there. But here’s another on this collection of passages if you want to keep reading. Later, I happened to read 2 Samuel 10 which seemed like a totally random story, though kind of intriguing and unfortunate: David sends men to bring comfort to the new king of Ammon because he lost his dad. Such a sweet intention! But the people of Ammon are totally skeptical, and think these men must be spies—they assume total malicious intent on the part of David, so they shave the men’s heads and tear their garments, to the buttocks and send them away. So these guys leave totally ashamed with little hair and half-naked. Ouch! It was beyond me what I could glean from reading such a chapter until I read a passage that happened to reference both of these stories. They both are about clothing—in one the clothing has power, in the other, it’s ripped. Turns out, a mantle means divine truth, which has power, and so ripped clothing understandably means divine truth lost or rejected (Arcana Coelestia 4763).

But how is knowing this applicable to my spiritual life? It actually fits in really well with what I’ve been contemplating lately and let me try to convey it. Here’s the deal—let this sink in:  “that which is animated by the Lord in a person is the very thing which makes it seem as though it were from herself. That a person does not live from herself is an eternal truth; yet if she did not appear to do so she could not possibly live at all” (Arcana Coelestia 1712). So I have this mind that can’t help but think it’s separate from God, even though its connection to God is what gives me the ability to have that thought in the first place. In a word, this is my sense of autonomous selfhood or simply, my sense of self.

My mind is inherently caught up in the way things seem—it needs to have a sense of separateness from God to function—but the trick is “that no trust ought to be placed in such appearances but in Divine truths themselves, no matter how hard to believe these truths might appear to be to that rational. This is so with all Divine truths; that is, if the rational is consulted regarding those truths they cannot possibly be believed, for they transcend its whole range of understanding” (Arcana Coelestia 1936).

What are these Divine truths? Swedenborg lists a few:

“The truth that no man, spirit, or angel, only the Lord, lives of himself, and that the life a man, spirit, or angel has is but an outward appearance of life with him. To the rational, which judges from illusions, this is repugnant; nevertheless it ought to be believed because it is the truth…

It is a Divine truth that in the Word every expression, which to man seems to be utterly simple and unwrought, possesses an incalculable number of facets, more in fact than the whole of heaven. And the arcana contained there can be displayed by the Lord to angels in unending variety continuing for ever. To the rational this is so hard to believe that it is never willing to give any credence to it. Nevertheless it is the truth…

It is a Divine truth that nobody is ever rewarded in the next life for good deeds if he has set merit by them, and if he has done them for the sake of his own gain, position, and reputation. Nor is anyone ever punished for bad deeds if he has acted with a truly good end in view; for in the next life it is the ends that are regarded, and deeds in the light of those ends. This too the rational is not able to believe, but because this which it does not believe is the truth, no trust should be placed in a rational which does not base its conclusions on internal things but on external…

[These examples and countless others] show that no trust should be placed in the rational, since the rational is immersed in illusions and appearances. It therefore rejects truths when these are stripped of illusions and appearances, all the more rejecting them the more that self-love and its desires are present, as well as reasonings, and false assumptions regarding faith” (ibid).

I don’t know about you, but I am aware that my mind has a chronic aversion to these kinds of ideas. It gets so irritated by them that it offers all kinds of reasons why they can’t possibly be true and why, in their stead, I should be worrying profusely about, well,  just about everything. Calling it "the rational" makes it a little hard to relate to, so it helps me to realize that what it means by "the rational" is my mind when left to its own devices.

The take away I get from all this that ties to the story about the people of Ammon is that I can be wary of this part of my mind that is the people of Ammon. It’s not about feeling bad when I find myself getting caught up in this way of thinking—rejecting Divine truths and totally getting caught up in thoughts connected to the appearance of things that are opposed to Divine truths. It’s good to notice when I’m doing that! Noticing is the first step toward freedom. When I notice, I can start to learn the predictable outcome; that there is this part/level of my mind that is always going to reject the truth. So I can begin to emphasize the truth itself by making use of my capacity for conscious reflection. Reflection is key. Like David’s intention, God just wants to bring comfort to me by way of these Divine truths! But it takes “effort of thought” to put my trust in them:  

“This shows that a person ought to compel herself to do what is good and speak what is true…[because] in doing so a person [is given] from the Lord [a heavenly perspective on her feeling of self-life]. This [heavenly perspective on her sense of autonomy] is formed within the effort of her thought” (Arcana Coelestia 1937).

So I am meant to speak what is true, out loud but also in my head, and have the "effort of thought" to put my trust in Divine truths even when I am in the full feeling of the a part of my mind that doesn’t just not care about it, but actually finds it threatening—it wants to destroy it: shave its head, cut its clothes, and kick it out!

Chelsea Rose Odhner

Chelsea is a writer of poetry and prose, songs and social commentary, with over thirty years of experience in existing; a few of her pieces can be watched here and several can be read here. She is fascinated especially by embodied spiritual life—how we support and engage the life of the spirit through our life and experience in the physical body and world. This interest has led her through a career in massage therapy, training in and ongoing study of yoga practice and philosophy, a degree in English and Biology from Bryn Athyn College, and it sustains in her a ceaseless appetite for studying the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and the sacred texts of the world’s religions, particularly those of Christianity and Hinduism. She works part time as a social media moderator for the Swedenborg Foundation and as a freelance editor. She lives with her husband and three children in Willow Grove, PA.