Between Two Worlds

Hi folks

A little bit about me ….. I have grown up in the Australian New Church. I have been consciously engaged in the Logopraxis community for about three years.  I am currently studying with the Australian New Church College. My passion for ministry is centered in Logopraxis  and I find myself more and more writing specifically for its community.

In Logopraxis we often talk about how our submissions are like precious gifts that we offer up to the Lord and to the community . We place them upon the altar and then step back acknowledging that all we have offered belongs to Him. Our joy then becomes the experience of the act of offering, however small or insignificant it may seem to us at the time. 

Whilst writing allows me to give expression to things that I have experienced in my journey in the Word, it also feeds me and sustains me and I humbly offer in the wish that it might feed you . 

Yours in His Love

Sarah

 

 

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

The ongoing struggle in spiritual work is always between two worlds.

  • The world that we live in and the life of our mind
  • The natural world and the spiritual world
  • The old church and the new church
  • Our hereditary proprium or the Lord’s heavenly proprium
  • Our dream life and our waking life
  • The WOS and the pull towards hell or heaven
  • The Infinite and the finite
  • The Word and Self

How do we achieve the conjunction between these worlds – if at all?

How do we recognize it when we do?

How do we then maintain it?

And how do we marry it in what is eternal?

 

It’s a common theme that comes up again and again in our submissions:

I realise that getting trapped in the literal sense of the Word-taking note of person, place, space, time etc can also be a deterrent to me seeing, what I need to be working with from the internal sense. A lesson for me in trying to remember to stay awake and allowing me to see another level that the proprium employs in its quest for supremacy in my mind.

For me it was about trying to remember to bring the LORD into my day to day life.

I struggled to connect with the LORD and with the ‘work’ itself, finding many excuses and opportunities to avoid doing anything connected to the text. Reading the text because I had, to not because I wanted to.

I felt like I was doing my Logopraxis by rote. Kind of ‘faking’ it. Not really connecting with the presence of the Lord. Doing the external stuff but not really having an internal experience. I got stuck in the thought:

There are also micro-aggressions against genuine love and its truth, filling the moments of our days such as using music, television, computers, fretting, planning,rushing, the news, etc. to keep from being present in the moment with awareness of God’s presence here–moments of communion with the Lord, with spiritual and natural.

It was a good confirmation of how external life tends to GOVERN higher thoughts and affections.

I need to be more open to allowing the LORD to work with me, rather than trying to fight against the process.

My mind wants to see the connection between my states and this story, but I’m having trouble.

There is always an impulse to favor the dying, ‘old church’ of the proprium over the ‘new church’ and the coming of the Lord.

The difficulty is being able to stand apart from the habitual states of mind that become active.

Historical faith, preconceived ideas and beliefs were some of the blocks which prevented what the Lord through the Word was trying to say to me and an intellectual rather than an experiential approach, too.

One minute, I have one foot, …(and half my brain) in the spiritual realm, and the next minute I act like it doesn’t even exist as I delve into worldly and sensuous pursuits.

How does spiritual work co-exist with what I call ‘real life’? Is it just an appearance of what is going on in my mind? How do I live in the world and do spiritual work? Or is spiritual work a way of living in the world?

 

Perhaps we can take comfort in Swedenborg’s journey.

He must have also experienced this as he began becoming more aware of the spiritual world that was opening up to him.  Between the years of 1943 and 1945 be started having psychic experiences, disturbed sleep and an increasing consciousness of the Lord leading him in a direction that was very different to what his life in the external world currently was. He followed this through and began his journey, which eventually culminated in the writing of the Arcana Coelestia, and then all the other works that are included in what we know today as the Heavenly Doctrines.  However, even though his time in the spiritual world and the documentation of the Heavenly Doctrines became his life’s focus, he published the majority these books anonymously.  Right up until his death he remained involved in Swedish politics, writing scientific and economic papers, sitting on the Board of Nobles and traveling back forth to London and Europe.  His friends described him as well loved, kind and caring. In short – he continued to stay active in the external, natural world even though he was clearly actively involved in the spiritual too.

He must have struggled, as we do, with the externals constantly trying to pull him back out of the internals.

But the opposite happens too. Sometimes it’s a struggle to come back into the externals.

 

We’ve all had experiences of this prior to spiritual work.  That feeling of a come down after a holiday or a camp or just an experience that has left you inspired and uplifted.  You might even relate this to the feeling of a movie or a book that you are engrossed in and then it ends.  You are suddenly faced with the task of readjusting back into the ‘real’ world.

It seems a common experience too for anyone who has had a spiritual encounter or a near death experience. They then have difficultly integrating this back into their day-to-day life.

They find themselves asking: “How do I honour this experience and yet still live in the sensual world?”

 

For those involved in spiritual work this is also a common frustration.

 

We have moments of clarity, of feeling the Word working in us.  The excitement of the ‘a ha’ moment when the He reaches out and shines light into an area that had once seemed so cloudy and so dim. And the excitement ignites the fire in us too.  We feel lifted and higher than we did before. We feel His love move in us.

We go out and meet friends and family and try to maintain this feeling of light and heat – of the Word that has touched us.

The world looks changed.  The world feels changed. We ARE changed.

And then. Work, family, news, politics, social media, consumption, acquisitions, arts, music, science, debate, conflict, heartache, sorrow, famine, thirst, disease, war . . .

We come back down, and often it is with a crash.  We land on something that feels anything but soft.

Up and down.  In and out.

 

How do we allow the two to meet graciously?

How do we exist in the spiritual and also in the natural?

How do we live in the Word but also in what is our self?

It seems we are either too much in the internals or too much in the externals.

 

 

I am reminded of the spiral action of the spiritual mind compared to the earthly mind. 

DLW 270

The earthly mind, with everything in it, turns in spirals from right to left, while the spiritual mind turns in spirals from left to right. So the two minds are turning in opposite directions–a sign that evil is resident in the earthly mind and that on its own, it resists the spiritual mind. Further, turning from right to left is turning downward, toward hell, and turning from left to right moves upward, toward heaven.

We naturally assume (no pun intended!) that we are spiraling to the right most of the time but then I am also reminded of the concept of equilibrium.

 

CL 444  ‘Do you not know that there is good and evil? and that good and not evil is from creation? And yet evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good. Good is from creation, and also good in the greatest degree and in the least degree; and when this least becomes none, on the other side evil springs up. There is therefore, no relation nor progression of good to evil; but a relation and progression of good to greater and less good, and of evil to greater and to less evil; for in every and in all things they are opposites. And good and evil being opposites, there is an intermediate, and in that is equilibrium, in which evil Acts of the Apostles against good; but because it does not prevail it abides in the endeavor. Every man is brought up in this equilibrium, which, as it is between good and evil, or what is the same between heaven and hell, is a spiritual equilibrium, which produces freedom with those who are in it. From this equilibrium the Lord draws all to Himself, and the man who from freedom follows, is led out from evil into good and thus into heaven.

Perhaps we are in the center of the double vortex of the earthly mind and the spiritual mind – and that is the equilibrium.  We spin one way but then we spin the other. No wonder we feel disoriented at times.

 

So I go back to two of my original questions. How do we marry the two worlds? How does conjunction take place- if at all?

I think we need to pay attention to the word “marry”.

The two worlds exist but they must not just coexist but must live in harmony.  There must be a marriage.

 

CL 65 The reason why conjugial love, regarded in its essence, is the foundation of all the loves of heaven and the church is that its source is the marriage of good and truth; and from this marriage arise all the loves which make heaven and the church present with a person. The good of this marriage makes love, and its truth makes wisdom. When love approaches wisdom or joins itself to it, it becomes real love; and when wisdom in turn approaches love and joins itself to it, it becomes real wisdom.  

Truly conjugial love is nothing else but the linking of love and wisdom.

 

And this marriage then creates order.

 

CL 67. Since natural loves spring from spiritual ones, and spiritual loves from celestial ones, we can say that conjugial love is the foundation of all spiritual and celestial loves, and consequently natural ones. Natural loves relate to self-love and love of the world; spiritual loves, however, to love towards the neighbour, and celestial loves to love to the Lord. This being the relationship between these loves, the order in which they follow, and in which they are present in a person, is obvious. When arranged in that order, natural loves derive their life from spiritual ones, spiritual loves from celestial ones, and so all in this sequence from their source, the Lord.

 

The marriage shows up the other world for what it is and The Lord allows the re-forming to take place.  Which is an important point.  We need to see both of them in order to acknowledge what is not of the Lord and then eventually no longer want or will it.

 

NJHD 149  . . .   These evils, however, cannot be removed, unless the man sees them in himself, and acknowledges them; and afterwards no longer wills them, and at length shuns them; it is then only that they are removed. This cannot be brought about unless the man is in good as well as in evil; for from good, he is able to see evils, but from evil he cannot see goods. The spiritual goods which a man is able to think, he learns, from the age of childhood, by reading the Word and hearing sermons; and moral and civil goods he learns by his life in the world.

 

So . . .

The hereditary proprium still exists but is less able to hold sway

The hells don’t disappear but they are put in their subordinate place

The external world doesn’t cease to be important or something we must disengage in but instead becomes an opportunity to express and represent and connect with our internals.

The Self still exists but it is now a self that lives to serve and love the Lord.

 

And it is the Word that marries and restructures us, because the Word is the Lord.

2 Kings 19, verse 15:

Then Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said: O LORD God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubims, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.

It is the Word, which dwells between the cherubim in the Ark.  And interestingly- or excitingly the root of the Hebrew word yashab {yaw-shab’}  which the word “dwells” is translated from, means to sit, to remain  . . . .   and to marry.

TCR 234. There is conjunction with the Lord by means of the Word because He is the Word, that is, the essential Divine truth and good therein.

 

If we look and listen closely we can see evidence of this marriage in each other’s experiences of the Word.

I have noticed that the continuing effort to observe truths and sense them, appreciate them, cherish the good in them, and be awake to them – has brought a change of ‘atmosphere’, a sort of sense of fresh air, and not feeling so bogged down in my own heavy states. Within all this is whirling, the dynamic of what is my own, what appears to be my own, and what is undisputedly the Lord;

When I am able to quieten my mind first, pray sincerely and humbly, genuinely wanting to know and use in my life what is of and from the Lord, then I find that the Text opens up and I’m given what I need to know and use in my mind.

The Word allows me to recognize the voice of hell here, threatening , and insinuating that the Lord does not have the power to lift me up, or join the will and the understanding in me. I am very aware of two lives running simultaneously much of the time. When I’m in the lower, the deeper life is invisible. When I’m in the higher, I can see and have compassion for my lower life, because I realize the Lord is ordering all things.

I do realise “finding an identity” is actually more an idea of the Lord becoming more present in me than an actual identity but there is definitely a deepening sense of self emerging which seems completely contradictory from an external understanding of the idea of self. So I guess what I’m being led to is finding a way to exist in the external sensory world. Of finding a way to allow that which is of the Lord in my internal to find expression in the external.

 

So perhaps it is not just Swedenborg’s life we should be looking to as evidence of how to marry the spiritual with the natural world.  We can see it in each other’s too.  We can see the Word through each other if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

AC 3226. Though he is not aware of it, one of the abilities which are present in a person, and which are taken by him into the next life when he passes into that life on his being released from the body, is the ability to perceive what is meant by the representatives that are seen in the next life. He is also able intuitively (sensu animi) to express fully within an instant that which he was unable to do during his lifetime even if he spent hours over it.

 . . . And since everyone enters into those abilities after death and does not need to be taught them in the next life, it may therefore be recognized that everyone possesses those things, that is, that those abilities exist within him during his lifetime even though he is not aware of this.

The reason this is so is that with everyone the Lord is flowing in constantly by way of heaven.

 

And so we look forward with hope,  . . . and trust that if we keep turning back to the Word we will one day – (or one state),  come into a heavenly life where our internals are able to shine forth with consistent nakedness and be projected and reflected in our externals.

 

These two worlds, synchronized at last.

 

HH 498

This first state of man after death continues with some for days, with some for months, and with some for a year; but seldom with any one beyond a year; for a shorter or longer time with each one according to the agreement or disagreement of his interiors with his exteriors. For with everyone the exteriors and interior must make one and correspond. In the spiritual world no one is permitted to think and will in one way and speak and act in another. Everyone there must be an image of his own affection or his own love, and therefore such as he is inwardly such he must be outwardly; and for this reason a spirit’s exteriors are first disclosed and reduced to order that they may serve the interiors as a corresponding plane.

 

 

 

 

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Annie Drake
Annie Drake
8 months ago

I am very glad I read this 🙂 Thank you Sarah.

Ian Arnold
Ian Arnold
4 years ago

Hi Sarah,
I am so very grateful for what you have written here. I just happen to have paused after preparing some notes on Salvation for a little meeting on Wednesday morning. Thanks for highlighting DLW 2170 and the way that, before regeneration, the internal and the external rotate (spiral) in opposite directions. For me, it says it all. Blessings and best wishes,Ian

Sarah Walker
Sarah Walker
Reply to  Ian Arnold
4 years ago

Thanks for sharing that Ian- its brings delight to hear it 🙂