We live in a universe that is expanding, growing. We are part of this universe. We are expanding and growing too. That is the basis for our life, and the reason we are here. There is no set goal, no finish line that God has designed that we need to reach. It is an open-ended growth.

To live we need to grow. You know that for a plant or a tree. If they don’t grow, no matter how little, they die.

Now comes the jumping point: to grow requires resistance, stepping stones, spring boards, wanting something that is not yet. Growth needs contrast. Without contrasts there are no choices. Without contrast we cannot know that there is more than we already have.

Another word for contrast, historically, is… evil.

Heaven and Hell 537 – Swedenborg

There is a balance between heaven and hell. However, it is not the kind of balance that occurs between two people who are fighting physically, with one just as strong as the other. Rather it is a spiritual balance, one of the false against the true and the evil against the good. This is the spiritual balance that provides us with our freedom for thinking and intending.

This is the world of contrast we live in, every day, inside of us and outside of us. Freedom is not an optional property of human life.

It is at the heart of being human.

I have two cotton blindfolds, one white, one black. I ask for a volunteer. I say, now I am going to show you experientially the difference between good and evil. Volunteer says,OK.

First I ask him to put the black blindfold on, snug, he can’t see around the edges. I ask him what he sees. He sees nothing. We take the black blindfold off and put the white one on. I ask him what he sees now. Again he sees nothing.

Black is evil, white is good.
Lesson #1: both make you blind.

Then I ask, was there any difference between having a black or a white blindfold on? Yes, there was. What? The white was lighter, more light came through, it was noticeable

Black is evil, white is good.
Lesson #2: black blocks the light more effectively than white does. White is closer to being transparent to the light.

I ask the volunteer to place the two blindfolds on the floor and then to stand himself in relation to them, where he thinks he himself is. He does this and places himself in the middle between the black and the white. (Aside to the audience: he must have read Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell… )

Then I ask him to imagine he is God and change his position in relation to good and evil. He walks over to the white blindfold, moves past it, looks back at white, and at the black that is now in a straight line further away from him. Does God see evil?

Black is evil, white is good.
Lesson #3: No, God only sees white. The black that lies a little further away from God than the white, is just that: it is a little further away from the light. Seen from God.

Go to part two: contrasts.

These are travels of the soul. They require a yes first.

Why does it look like some people do not have this wish to travel, and have no yes in them for such a thing. Why is it my business? OK, maybe it is not.

I need, want, and am moving in the direction of people that have this yes, a yes to the travel of the soul. Specifics may still be odd or at odds. The yes is a yes. The yes is always the same.

These are the people I am meeting, met today, and will meet tomorrow.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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 - :)

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)

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)