Pyramids

I watched a film tonight with Drunvalo Melchizedek. At one point in this film he says that the Great Pyramid at Giza was built very rapidly. In fact within a matter of hours. Not only that, it was built from the top down.

What makes it possible for someone to claim this, without blinking an eyelid? It is really a wonder.

I want to dismiss Drunvalo’s information.

But then I read pages like these: Interesting facts about the Great Pyramid

 

The law of all laws

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” (Matthew 7:1-2)

Strip away all opinions for a moment. Strip away all memories. Strip away all expectation. What is left as the basic law underneath it all?

What is it that can never be argued with, never be denied, never be proven wrong?

That thing is love. The law of all laws is love.

Love is attraction.
When I love music, I feel the music pulling me into its heart. When I love food, it pulls me near so I can eat it. When I love a person, I am helpless.

What I love comes, or I come to it, always and inevitably.

When I judge or criticize something, that very thing becomes the focus and will quickly be part of my own experience. I become full of what I dislike. What I allow myself to be full of, pulls me in. It may look like the opposite of love, but the attraction is the same.

When I judge someone, I slowly become like the person I judge. So I judge myself.

 

Drumming

I have begun to experiment using a hand drum in group meetings, in the men’s group and in volunteer work I do with immigrants. The idea is to get each person to “talk” through the drum, and not use words. Also makes it easier in case English is not their best language.

It is great fun. It also works. It also is surprising what comes out in the drumming.

Here is a quote from an American program about drumming:

“We don’t play the drum or beat the drum, we drum a steady beat that brings our heart in tune with the creator,” said Larry “Grizz” Brown, lead ceremonial drummer and descendant of the Cherokee and Creek Native American tribes. It’s not just something you hear, it is something you feel deep within your soul.”
(source)

The door

Gravity pulls. It is a one-way force. The only known form of energy in the universe that seems to have no opposite. It pulls, never pushes.

According to Swedenborg gravity corresponds spiritually to love (AE 159).

And so gravity also corresponds to the law of attraction. There is only attraction, and no assertion.

Everything is already coming toward us.

When a door opens inward you cannot get it to open by pushing.

Marriage vows – the next level

I can make all kinds of promises to do for you, to do with you, to take care of you. I can make those, because I know that external actions are not in my power. So if I can’t keep the promise, well, that was outside of my power then. External promises are easy that way.

Therefore, rewriting a marriage vow, making it an internal promise, a promise to self first, to you second, actually makes the vow both more honest and more powerful and harder to shirk out of.

Abraham has given such a rewritten vow:

“I promise you that I’m gonna do everything in my power to keep myself happy. And I’m not gonna hold you, not ever, responsible for the way I feel. So you’re free. You are free to behave in whatever way you decide to behave, because I am an exerciser of unconditional love.The first partner that I’m reaching for, the relationship that is SO supremely important to me, is the relationship between me and me. And when I get that into alignment, you’re going to have a really good time with me. Because when I hook up with that source energy, you’re gonna be loved like you’ve never been loved. You’re gonna be appreciated like you’ve never been appreciated. You’re going to be uplifted like you’ve never been uplifted. And you’re off the hook, because I take responsibility for how I feel.”

 

Kicking and screaming

I have just come back from a New Church study weekend, an hour south of Stockholm.

Reflecting on the weekend I would like to quote Eckhart Tolle. He once said that in these transition times people are being dragged into the kingdom of heaven kicking and screaming.

I think God is winning.

 

The quickest remembering

Reading some really deep thoughts today. Thoughts that make me breathe a little deeper, in order to be able to think them.

Here is one:

“Each soul creates the situation and the circumstance for its own highest purpose and its own quickest remembering – in each moment called now.” (Neale Donald Walsch – Conversations With God, book one.)

That was part of an answer to the universal question, Why does shit happen?

In other words, I create the now. I may not create the stories in which many others play a role. Because there is an interaction of creation there. But I do create this very now moment. All of it, for me.

I think there is an awakening number of people on earth now that are able to accept that, are willing to accept that, and even eager to accept that.

By the way, in older language, we read exactly the same ideas in Swedenborg:

“What is natural originates from what is spiritual.

Around every angel in heaven there is an idea of creation.

In the spiritual world creation can be seen by the eye. In that world everything is created (by the Lord) instantaneously; houses and domestic utensils, foods and garments are created; fields, gardens, and plains are created. These and innumerable other things are created according to the affections and consequent perceptions of the angels. They appear around them and continue as long as they are in those affections, and are removed as soon as those affections cease.” (Canons of the New Church 7)

In our world, the natural world, there is a time delay of creation. But other than that the principles are the same.

Life is like a bowling ball

Life sometimes bowls us over. But who is throwing the bowling ball?

 

Misfortunes

I believe that if I blame someone else for the fortunes of my life, then I am chucking God out the window. If Divine providence is in all the details, then it  *is*  *in*  *all*  *the*  *details.*

So when I see someone else do just that (chucking God out), I feel no compassion for their misfortunes, only dismay at the apparently self-chosen removal from the flow of life.

I always have the choice to to seek out a reconnection.

Angel of fear: part three

Part two here.

I found a striking insight on fear in Drunvalo’s book The Flower of Life, vol 2.

“If emotions and feelings are not in balance within the initiate, this imbalance will stop us from evolving. Egyptian initiations a perfect example of the importance that the Egyptians placed on overcoming fear, one of the negative emotions.

Fear was and still is the primary force that stops a person from growing into the light.

As we move into the higher worlds of light, we manifest our thoughts and feelings directly. This fact of nature becomes a tremendous problem, since we will almost always manifest our fears first. And in manifesting our fears in a new world, a new dimension of existence, we destroy ourselves and are forced to leave the higher worlds. Therefore, what all the ancient races have discovered, and what we are rediscovering now in modern times, is that in order to survive in the higher worlds, we must first overcome our fears here on Earth.” (slightly abridged, taken from around p. 262)

This is a simple yet striking insight. If we get propelled into a level of existence, a level of the spiritual world, that is higher than we are used to, the first emotion is fear. Swedenborg doesn’t mention fear in this context, but otherwise seems to fully agree, see as an example Arcana Coelestia 4226:

“Spirits recently arrived in the next life have sometimes complained about not being allowed into heaven. For they had no other concept of heaven than of being allowed in ‘by grace’. They have been told in reply sometimes that heaven is not denied to anyone and if they so desire they will be let in. Some of them have indeed been let into the heavenly communities situated nearest the entrance; but after having entered those spirits realized that their breathing had stopped, and that they were seized with a hell-like pain and torment. All of this was due to the contrary and antagonistic nature of their life. So they reeled back from there.” (AC 4226)

And that means, of course: fear is useful. It is not something to be avoided at all costs. Fear can be an initiation.

Angel of fear: part two

Part one here.

Continuing with this intriguing theme… fear, inspired by a messenger from God.

There is a set of words that occur frequently in the Bible: “Do not be afraid.” And who says these words?

God does. Like in Genesis 15: “The LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram.”
Then it’s the angel of the Lord, like in 2 Kings 1: “The angel of the LORD said to Elijah, Go down with him; do not be afraid.”
Then it’s Jesus talking to the disciples, like in Matthew 14:27: “Immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.”

On the side… I heard a priest of the Svenska Kyrkan ask a bunch of kids during the church service: “How do we recognize an angel? How do we know someone is an angel?” And the answer she gave to her own question was: “They always say to us, Don’t be afraid.”

Let’s be very simplistic here. If an angel turns up and says to me, “Don’t be afraid,” then I assume that the angel has read the situation and my own inner feelings and is responding appropriately. In other words, this is not small talk. This is not the angel version of, “How are you doing?”

Does an angel cause fear, or is he pulling it up out of the recesses of our being? In other words, does God cause the fear, or do we already have it in us?

Part three follows here.

Angel of fear

Sometimes I come across short, baffling descriptions in Swedenborg. Suddenly he is reporting on something, maybe something he saw with his own eyes. This is what it looked like to him. No analysis or further questioning is given.

“Truth from God sometimes appears to evil people. It does this through the presence of an angel near them. But truth from God does not come in by way of their interiors, as it does with the good, because the interiors of evil people are closed. It has an effect only on their exteriors. When this happens they are filled with fear and self-abasement. The presence of truth from God perturbs them and strikes fear into them that is like the fear of death.” (Arcana Coelestia 7463)

This raises as many questions as it answers. Who are these evil people? What makes them evil? What is an interior? And so on.

Then there is the question of chronic fear, panic attacks, paranoia, suicidal tendencies and other fear-related mental states. Do these have anything to do with the above? Does an angel come and unwittingly inspire fear?

Continued in part two.

Other revelations

This post was actually published somewhere else, on the New Church Perspective site. So I’ll just link to it:

http://www.newchurchperspective.com/essays/2012/1/13/other-revelations.html

 

Approach the soul

I felt the need for oracle guidance this morning. It is raining outside, the whole of Stockholm is wet. A wet, but warm, January. This is 2012 alright.

Oracle guidance means for me, for example, grabbing a book of the shelves and randomly picking a line from somewhere on one of the pages. My hand found the book True Christianity by Swedenborg and the line was an odd one:

“When we go to see someone, we do not go to the person’s soul.” (TCR 107)

That’s such an odd statement, especially in a book written 250 years ago. It sounds so modern. At first I had no idea what this meant, but after looking at the context it became clearer. And then my reaction was, Yes, we do.

Swedenborg is using an example, one person interacting with another at the level of daily life. When I go to the supermarket and pay at the counter I am not dealing with the cashier’s soul. It is person to person. Fair enough.

This reminds me of a story I heard. Someone, in a class room, is singled out for a demonstration. He is asked to close his eyes and describe the bus driver who brought them to school this morning. He mentions the clothes that the driver was wearing, the hat, the beard, and the color of his tie. Then, he is asked to describe his mother. He says, “Oh, she is just a good person.”

“When we go to see someone, we do not go to the person’s soul.” Yes, we can and sometimes we do.

Feeling better

A fountain of living water that rises up in us and that never runs out. The water of the spirit. “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). Heart, belly, guts. All are apparent synonyms in the old languages.

It is all about feeling better. First I need to raise myself up into a next level of feeling better, of more vibrant life. Of living water that runs through my bowels and chakras.

I sat in a 3 hour board meeting tonight. So heavy. So many problems, problems leading to other problems, unending. At a low vibration almost anything feels and looks like a problem. At higher vibration, when the water flows, problems are just conversation topics. When the water fountains, problems are rays of light that I am happy to observe and see flowing by. Problems? What problems?

My intention as a leader of people is to raise our vibration and then decide stuff.
To raise our vibration and then look at what looked like a problem a moment ago.
To raise our vibration and then probably we don’t even have to do anything else.

Damn it – bang fist on table - :)

Words of wisdom

I would like to honor a friend of mine here. He wrote the following lines today in a Facebook post. My response to reading these was, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes (repeat 400 times…)”

The organized and so-called “New Church” will remain small, insignificant, and without influence on the planet until it learns to connect with the good in all people and honor and validate that good for them and to them face-to-face.
(Jeremy Finkeldey, Jan 6, 2012)

Endless revelation

Some years ago, when I first started reading Swedenborg, I also came across the book A Course In Miracles. I remember having the following reaction. Swedenborg is written impersonally, in the third person, and tries hard to keep to a straight course in the stormy seas of a historical Christianity. A Course In Miracles (CIM) is written in the first person. It is written with just as much authority as Swedenborg’s Writings, but it is presented in the first person.

That single fact put me off.

It is a few years later now. It has become quite clear for me that God’s revelation did not stop with Swedenborg. Great. It means I am able to read CIM now. Details don’t matter. This is part of the endless and continuing revelation of God.

And now in all your doings be you blessed.
God turns to you for help to save the world.
Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,
And all the world stands silent in the grace
You bring from Him.

(Manual For Teachers, CIM)

 

Master Sha

A friend of mine put a 23 minute documentary on YouTube about Master Sha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIbeE2Hp9c8

It’s a hoot to watch. It is also moving and bewildering. The guy heals the blind and the lame and does this with a child’s delight.

I love it that he shouts at people during the healings. Boy, I would like to do that in my job too :)

Module: Multimedia

Modular meetings main page.

Multimedia

Illustrating or introducing a topic, a struggle, a text. Using sound, color, pictures, music, film, enactment, smells, movement, light. Engaging senses and feelings.

Answering questions like:

What does it sound like?
What does that look like?
What does that smell like?

Examples:

• A film clip from a Gospel film on the exact text used
• Background music during a reading
• Generating a smell, using incense or oils
• Projecting shifting color patterns on the wall
• A drummer highlighting main points in a talk

Purpose: multimedia elements provide immersion, experience, realization, waking up, delight.

Off the Hook

(Sermon “Off the Hook”, January 2012)

Bible text: Numbers 15:27-29; Matthew 9:1-8 (Jesus forgives and heals a paralytic)

I was in Denmark a little while ago and was planning to do the Holy Supper at the Sunday service. One person in the group there asked me the day before if I could talk about sin. Sin. Heavy subject. It was almost as though sin stood in the way, in the way of taking part in the ritual.

Somehow the Holy Supper has become associated with sin in the teachings of the New Church. We are told to examine ourselves once or twice a year, notice something in ourselves that is less than desirable and then admit this before the Lord (Apocalypse Revealed 224). But how is this connected to the Holy Supper?

Swedenborg points out that traditionally people have been asked to confess their sins before approaching the Holy Supper. Traditionally? What does that mean? Well, that is the 2000 year long tradition of the Catholic church, the Protestant church, the Anglican church, etc (True Christian Religion 526).

So we are looking here at a really old idea. The idea that we carry sin in us. This is an idea has influenced all of us, to some degree. Sins are things we have done in the past. Bad things. Things we were born with. Mistakes, habits, even crimes. Then there is original sin, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. The idea that we, as human beings, are bad and deserve to suffer. The Bible is read and understood in this way: God is saying to us that we are not good enough. God is saying to us we are dirty sinners. We need rules to keep us in line. Our very hearts are evil. We are probably going to hell.

Is this exaggerated? Is this stuff from the Middle Ages?

(Insert a little fire and brimstone enactment here? or a sound file? Listen to a Charles Lawson clip about hell…pastor of Temple Baptist Church, Knoxville, Tennessee)

OK, so those are the old ideas. Old Christian ideas, ideas that have been discarded in the New Church. Ideas that have been cancelled out by a new understanding of the internal meaning of the Bible. After all, God is a God of forgiveness, not of guilt.

But hang on a moment… Is this true? Why does a person who knows the teachings of the New Church still associate the Holy Supper with sin? And what about God, do we still associate God with sin also? Ask yourself: Do you? And what is sin anyway?

So we look up what the Writings say about sin. Here’s a summary.

Remission of sins is never instantaneous. Faith by itself cannot purify a person. Sins are moved to the side, but never completely taken away. Sins are not washed away. Sins are removed slowly. It is a lifetime process. We are held in good by the Lord, and in that way kept out of sin. (end summary)

Unfortunately, regeneration as a lifetime process can feel heavy, something we can never get done. Sin cannot be washed away in an instant; that means I still have the sin, no matter what I do. The teachings can be understood this way. It’s probably not the way they were meant to be understood. But maybe they often are.

That’s why sin is associated with the Holy Supper, even in the New Church. A feeling of not being good enough. I am not sin-free, therefore I cannot come forward and open myself to the Lord. The Holy Supper is a ritual of a human being joining with the Lord and the Lord joining with the person. Becoming one, becoming united. And the Lord cannot become one with a sinner, right?

As a result we cannot move, we don’t go forward, we stop ourselves, we are afraid of being found wanting. After all, regeneration is a lifetime process and I am far from the finish line. This is paralysis, being lame. This is the paralyzed man, lying on a mat. He could not walk. If you believe that you are not regenerate enough to allow the Lord into your heart, then you are that paralyzed man or woman. (pause)

There is a misunderstanding about sin here. The misunderstanding is that sin involves the whole of us. We have been educated. We know a lot of things. We know about genetics. The son of an alcoholic runs a high risk of becoming an alcoholic himself. Bla bla bla. It’s nonsense. Statistics show what the researcher wants them to show. It is not science, it is not reality.

But we believe it. We think we are sinners in the eyes of God. We act as if paralyzed. In fact, we often don’t act.

The misunderstanding is that sin involves the whole of us. It does not. If it did there could never be angels. Sin is never washed away, so angels still have sin. But then they can’t be angels. So how does this work?

It is very simple. It is a central teaching of all spiritual traditions in the world, and a central teaching in the New Church as well. We are spirits in a physical body. We are both. We are a spirit and we are a body, at the same time. The Writings call these also the spiritual self and the natural self, or the internal man and the external man. There is a big purpose behind the fact of us living in this physical world, a world that has a mix of good and bad, of contrasts and of suffering. The external self lives in that external world. It makes mistakes. It suffers problems, pain, illness. We think we are the external self. And nothing more. And so we are burdened with sin. And there we are paralyzed.

But we are not the external self only. And the internal self is not sinful, is not evil, is not physical. When we come forward to join with God, in prayer or in the Holy Supper or in meditation, it is for the purpose of remembering that our internal self already is joined to God anyway, always. (See also AC 978 and HH 39)

As it says in Divine Providence 28: “Love and wisdom form the angels’ life. It is apparent also that their life is the Lord’s, indeed is the Lord.” That refers to angels. We are not angels. So we can rephrase this: “Love and wisdom form our life. But it is not apparent that this is so, that our life is the Lord’s, indeed is the Lord.”

What is apparent to the angels is not apparent to us. Yet, the same is true for us, while we are still here on earth, fulfilling a purpose that most people only dimly know.

So there is no need to carry sin as a burden. We don’t have to focus on what’s wrong and let it paralyze us for the rest of our lives on earth.

Isn’t that why the Lord came, and is coming again and again? To say to us that we can let ourselves off the hook. He lets us off the hook. He forgives us, so please forgive yourself too. And forgive each other.

Now, to conclude, I would like to say to you, like the Lord did to the paralyzed man…I would like to say to you, on behalf of the Lord:
“Take heart; your sins are forgiven.”

Amen.