Meditate | Forgiveness

“The Lord cannot be worshipped except from charity” (Secrets of Heaven 440).

“The Lord… said that we should not forgive our brother or sister up to seven times but up to seventy times seven. This means that we should forgive as often as our brother or sister sins, without limit, or to eternity, which is holy” (Secrets of Heaven 433).

Forgiveness. I think—well, I can only know for myself—that my ego or outer self says, “Yes, forgive others without limit if…” If they repent, say. But I think this passage would have said something about that, inserted some additional clause, if that were the case. I think my role is to forgive, because the Lord is forgiveness and mercy itself. And the part of me that wants to withhold forgiveness until something that serves me has happened, like having the other person change his ways, is not of a heavenly origin. Even though a person changing his ways may be a good thing, my needing it to be so in order to forgive them is selfish and self-serving. Similar to what I’ve heard said of anger; the resentment that results from not forgiving others lives, along with all its negative effects, in the person not forgiving, whereas the other person is forgiven already by the Lord. Good things for me to think about.

Meditate | Expanding Love

“Everything good in the next life expands without limit… Life bounded by the body is such that we can’t progress any farther than loving our neighbor as ourselves, because we’re wrapped up in bodily concerns. But when these concerns have been laid aside, love grows purer and purer until at last it is angelic. Angelic love is to love one’s neighbor more than oneself” (Secrets of Heaven 548).

“The whole of heaven and its inhabitants without exception trace their origin to the Lord alone, in general and in the smallest particulars. This is the source of order, unity, of mutual love, and of happiness, because this is what causes individuals to look to the health and happiness of all, and all to that of every individual” (Secrets of Heaven 551).

It feels good to recognize that this is the order the Lord has written into life—the more bodily concerns are set aside, love is “programmed” to grow, expand, and become purer and purer until it is angelic. It reminds me of the passages in the Word about not needing to worry about what we’ll eat, wear, etc.—a.k.a bodily concerns. The Lord makes it possible; he teaches us a way to move toward angelic love while we live in the world. One way I can participate is by not worrying about my bodily concerns so much—practice putting them secondary to serving and loving others. At the same time, I get a lot of joy out of taking care of my body so I can better serve others and live in my life, do my work. So maybe that is a balance—managing my time so that I meet the needs of my bodily concerns sufficiently so that they don’t need to be central in other times of my life. And a boon to this practice is to trust in the Lord that he is providing everything that I need in order to do his will, in general and in particular, in my life at all times. 

Meditate | "Lord Willing!"

“The ignorance about [perception] is so great that people are capable of believing it to be a kind of ongoing revelation, or else something instinctive. Some suppose that it is no more than make-believe, while others have other ideas. Yet perception is the epitome of the heavenly character that the Lord gives to those who have a loving belief in him” (Secrets of Heaven 536).

I feel like I’ve fallen under the idea before—and translated it into my whole life—that perception is “ongoing revelation.” Life—once it’s all in order, once I’m ‘living the heavenly life’—always will feel good. It will be just an ongoing experience of blissful revelation—joy, perpetual good feelings, wise insights, the whole bit. But perception is not ongoing revelation. Thank goodness, really, because being under the impression that my life is somehow meant to have a relentless effusion of positivity, and being faced with the reality that it clearly doesn’t, is a combination ripe to get me feeling down. So what is perception?

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Meditate | Livin' It

“’They are filled with the fat of your house, and you slake their thirst with a river of your pleasures, because yours is the wellspring of life. In your light we see light’ (Psalms 36: 8, 9). The fat and the wellspring of life stand for the heavenly quality that belongs to love. The river of pleasures and the light stand for the spiritual quality that belongs to faith” (Secrets of Heaven 353).

It has been really helpful to have the daily intention in my mind, “I want to be loving, kind, useful, and merciful. May that be my focus today and may I not be attached to the results of my actions.” (See last week’s meditation post). To live this way means to be living from the heart, filled with the fat of the Lord’s house, connected to Him in my heart/inner self as the wellspring of life, and to live off of His river of pleasures and see in His light. And this doesn’t mean I’m not getting anything done! On the contrary, all my actions have a more genuine source. Write because it is useful; live because it is kind and useful; act because it is loving, kind, and merciful; and not be attached to the results of my actions, but act for the action itself, because it is loving, kind, useful, and merciful. The Lord will take care of the rest. 

Meditate | Is it Merciful?

“It is the inner contents, or the Lord working through the inner contents, that give the outer shell life” (Secrets of Heaven 349).

“Charity means love for our neighbor. It means mercy too, since if we love our neighbors as we do ourselves we have mercy on them when they are suffering, as we would on ourselves” (Secrets of Heaven 351).

These ideas give the phrase “living from the heart” new meaning. How can I live from my true heart? What would that look like and consist of? One possibility is that I can ask myself before taking actions in my daily life, “Would the action be loving, kind, useful, and merciful?” Or does it have the fiery, tense edge of intense desire? Actions taken that are in alignment with the inner self taste different than the urgency and graspingness of the feelings behind actions that arise from intense desire, or the outer self’s purely self-oriented concern. First off, the former way is not attached to the results of the actions taken. It has a gentleness and patience that the latter lacks. If I can be sensitive to the feeling that is giving rise to the idea of a specific action, then perhaps I can distinguish between these two sources and make choices that bring greater blessings and happiness to everyone involved.

Meditate | Root to Rise

“Deeds inspired by charity are alive. They are said to send roots below and yield fruit above, as in Isaiah: ‘The remaining refugees of Judah’s house will put new root downward and produce fruit upward’ (37:31). To produce fruit upward is to act with charity as motivation” (Secrets of Heaven 348).

Everything living is from the inner self. The inner self is the only thing that lives. Charity, or loving others, is so central. The only source of charity or our love for others is the inner self, our tap root to the Lord. Earlier in this passage it says that “deeds of faith that lack charity are deeds devoid of faith,” and are wholly of the outer self. So we can have “faith,” or some imitation of it in our outer self, but it is not true faith until it is living by way of loving others, which requires a rootedness in our inner self, in the Lord. There is no other way to love others than from our connection with the Lord who supplies our inner self with the flow of that love.