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.

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Meditate | It's Not About "Getting There?"

Spiritual and heavenly things—as a group and individually—go through cycles, for which the daily and yearly cycles are metaphors. The daily cycle begins in the morning, extends to midday, then to evening, and through night to morning. The corresponding annual cycle begins with spring, extends to summer, then to fall, and through winter to spring.

These changes create changes in temperature and light and in the earth’s fertility, which are used as metaphors for changes in spiritual and heavenly conditions. Without change and variation, life would be monotonous and consequently lifeless. There would be no recognition or differentiation of goodness and truth, let alone any awareness of them. Secrets of Heaven 37

In an earlier passage than the one cited above, Swedenborg explains how for those whose love and faith are united, as is the case in heavenly angels, their love reveals all religious knowledge to them (34).This strikes me as a very powerful idea. A life focused on loving the Lord and the neighbor is capable of providing all religious knowledge, and yet all things, even spiritual and heavenly things go through cycles like the days and years. Cycles are inevitable or else we would have no way of being aware of goodness and truth (I write this from a feeling of amazement more than conviction). The day and night and the seasons are on account of variations of heat and light; there are different levels at different times, but it always leads to morning and it always leads to spring.

So it all comes back to morning and spring, but there is wisdom to be found—a deeper awareness of goodness and truth—by going through every part of the cycle, including the night and the cold of winter. In a lot of ways the complexity of how the Lord leads us in our levels of love and truth and takes care of our evil and falsity is beyond me; but it is enough for me to remember and hold at the front of my mind that change and variation—even in heavenly and spiritual things, which I take to mean things in myself, in my will and intellect, that have to do with loving the Lord and the neighbor—are essential and inevitable. Continual change and variation in spiritual and heavenly things in my life is an essential part of the process.  

Meditate | Evening to Morning

“Every single moment of regeneration carries us forward from evening to morning, just as it takes us from the outer self to the inner, or from earth to heaven.” Secrets of Heaven 24

“’A crushed reed he does not break, and smoldering flax he does not quench; he propels judgment toward truth. [In other words, he does not break our illusions or extinguish our cravings but bends them toward truth and goodness.]’ Isaiah 42:3, 4, 5.” Secrets of Heaven 25

Whatever my life feels like in a given moment, even when I feel stuck, I can trust that the Lord is using everything of me, my illusions, my false ideas, even my perception of “stuckness” to bend me toward goodness and truth, to lead me to peace and trust.

The evening often feels interminable. I am reminded of a time when with a couple of friends on a trip we ended up camping one night along the way. The camping gear we had with us was limited and we didn’t have very good rain protection. It down-poured all night long and our tent, our sleeping bags, and ourselves got soaked through. There was no sleeping and we had no clocks or light; we only could wait for the dawn and trust that sometime once again the sun would rise.

The possibility of the sun rising can feel so distant and hard to believe in on many levels in my life, when in reality the entire evening is not separate from the morning, but rather is in service to it; it is transitioning to morning constantly; it never stops. Even if the false ideas that come with the evening would like to have us think that the evening is independent of the dawn and can convince us that we’re going nowhere, we’re stuck, and that the night is everlasting, even these ideas the Lord uses to bend us to good and truth. The evening is becoming morning. The Lord is carrying us from evening to morning.        

Meditate | What's in it for Me?

Read the Word and believe in the Lord, and you will see the truths which should constitute your faith and life. Everyone whose soul desires is capable of seeing the truths of the Word in light. (Apocalypse Revealed 224:3)

Enlightenment through the Word comes by an inward route. (De Verbo 13)

So what’s in the Word for us? To put it briefly: the opportunity to enter into a living relationship with the Lord.

The addition of this column was inspired by Alanna Rose’s article, “Meditate on the Word of God.” After reading her article I began to practice daily what she suggests. Each day I read a few numbers from Secrets of Heaven and write down any sentences or phrases that strike me. I choose one or two of these and sit for meditation, concentrating on the passages and what they mean. In time, the passage, like the bud of a flower, begins to unfurl itself in my mind, releasing sweet scents and radiant colors. I take the time after meditation to write down what has come to me.

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