Meditate | Intense Desire

“Good for eating means intense desire. Appealing to the eyes means delusion. Desirable for lending insight means sensual pleasure. These three are properties of our selfhood (or the woman). Her husband’s eating symbolizes the rational mind’s consent” (Secrets of Heaven 207).

“[Human selfhood] is the tendency not to believe in the Lord or his Word but in ourselves and to think that what we do not grasp on a sensory or factual basis is nothing” (Secrets of Heaven 210).

Intense desire, delusion, and sensual pleasure: these are three properties of our selfhood. My mind’s reaction immediately is, “What would get accomplished if I didn’t have intense desire?!” After sitting with it, the answer came: “peace.” My self’s intense desire for things and to know the future is the antithesis of peace—specifically how “peace has in it confidence in the Lord, that He directs all things, and provides all things, and that He leads to a good end” (Arcana Coelestia 8455).

A good end can and will be accomplished if I let go of my intense desire that so often rules, especially when “I’ve” had a good idea. The Lord gives me an idea and then my mind takes credit for it, which is clearly demonstrated by the way my mind generates intense desire for the result. So, instead, I’d like to focus on peace and confidence in the Lord. When I recognize the feeling of intense desire for something through the course of my day, I can use it as a red flag and choose to identify with something deeper than my experience of intense desire, with the truth that there is peace to be had in trusting in the Lord’s leading and provision for my life.   

Meditate | Trusting the Word

“And Jehovah God commanded the human concerning it, saying, ‘From every tree of the garden you are definitely to eat’” (Genesis 2:16).

“To eat from every tree is to depend on perception in order to know and recognize what is good and true; a tree is perception” (Secrets of Heaven 125).

“If we do not rely on the world for our wisdom, on the other hand, but on the Lord, we tell ourselves at heart to believe in the Lord, that is, in all that the Lord has said in the Word, because those are reliable truths. This is the principle in which we base our thinking. We use rational argument, factual knowledge, sensory evidence, and physical phenomena in confirmation, but whatever fails to confirm the Word we put aside” (Secrets of Heaven 128).

Definitely eat of every tree in the garden; depend on perception from the Lord to know and recognize what is good and true. For me I read, “TRUST;” trust the perception I get from the Word.

In Secrets of Heaven 128 it teaches that we should use worldly knowledge to confirm perception and not the other way around; and if something doesn’t confirm our perception, to put it aside. So often when I read the Word, the loving, true ideas in it directly oppose false ideas I’ve been holding onto (…go figure). It’s almost laughable how hard it is to cast these false ideas aside and let myself believe something more loving and promising of my eternal happiness: like the simple message that I don’t need to worry! The Lord’s thoughts are not my thoughts. I want to trust the Lord’s thoughts, which are available in the Word. So I’ll work on trusting for now and maybe eventually my trust will turn into a continual reliance on what I hear the Lord telling me through the Word. 

Meditate | Exquisite Order

This week's meditation is a welcome addition submitted by Alanna Rose, who has contributed also to the main Essays Column of New Church Perspective previously and whose article was the inspiration for this column. As a reminder, I welcome you to share your insights from meditating on the Word and have them published in this column; to submit, simply follow the instructions above. -Editor

“They were told that unless they possessed a faith inspired by love, entering heaven was as dangerous as walking through fire; but they still insisted. On reaching the ‘front entryway’—the lower realm of angelic spirits—they received such a blow that they went tearing off in the opposite direction as fast as they could go. From this they learned how much danger there was in merely approaching heaven before the Lord had prepared them to feel the emotions that come with faith” (Heavenly Secrets 538).

“In a word, every whole has an unlimited number of parts, organized in the most perfect way; every one of those parts is alive; and every one of them affects us, all the way to our inmost recesses. For the inmost recesses is where heavenly joy comes from. I also perceived that joy and pleasure seemed to come from my heart, gently permeating all the inmost fibers of my body and all the bundles of fibers” (Heavenly Secrets 545[2]).

Sitting with my eyes closed, my back relaxes and expands as I open to the breath.  The back body is associated with trust in the greater whole. It is incredible that there is a world as exquisitely vibrant as the one described in the above passages that is protected by the very order of its form. It is so merciful that the Lord prepares us to feel it. It is hard to describe, but I feel a deep trust in this goodness. I can trust that the Lord is preparing me to harmonize with this order, that nothing can move the love that maintains this process, and that all good things will be shared and protected to eternity. Envisioning this, I feel for a moment I have already arrived.

Meditate | The Time of Conflict

“The time of conflict is when the Lord is at work (for which reason the prophets call a regenerate person the work of God’s fingers [Psalms 8:3, 6; Isaiah 19:25; 29:23; 45:11; 60:21; 64:8; Lamentations 4:2]), and he does not rest until love takes the lead. Then the conflict ends.

When the work progresses so far that faith is united with love, it is called very good, since the Lord now makes us likenesses of himself” (Secrets of Heaven 63).

For some reason (and I’d be curious to know if it’s the same for others), I often fear that love will never return, that I’ll stop loving the people and things in my life and it will never come back. This is how it feels for me in conflict (internal or spiritual conflict). Conflict is one of the most uncomfortable states to be in; I feel totally alone, stuck, helpless, and hopeless. This passage is extraordinarily comforting for how it assures us that those times of conflict are when the Lord is at work and does not rest until love takes the lead. This is a passage much worth repeating throughout my day as a reminder for how I can trust that the Lord actually is leading me to more genuine love even when I am undergoing conflict.  

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.