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Support your practise by…
taking a single statement from below and calling it to mind as often as is practical over the course of a day as a contemplative exercise.
A: Principles
A1. The Lord is the Word down to the very letter of the Text Itself. (This is why in Logopraxis you so often hear the term ‘Text’. We are taking the Text Itself in our mind as God with us)
A2. To approach the Lord is to approach the Text in the acknowledgment that this is the Lord’s Human and it is Divine.
A3. To live from the Word is to live from the Lord.
A4. We must have an outside source of Truth. The Word is the objective standard.
A5. Everything is always fully present.
A6. Representatives are not things in themselves.
A7. The science of correspondences is an applied science.
A8. What you come to see has always been there, but it is now that Truths are revealing it.
A9. The use of doctrine is to protect charity.
A10. We must distinguish between principles and our way of understanding them. We need to work to be open to have our way of understanding changed by what truths teach.
A11. Until the false heavens of historical faith are exposed you aren’t going any where.
A12. The human mind has discrete degrees.
A13. Higher can see lower; lower can’t see higher.
A14. Divine Truth is not something we see; it is something we see by.
A15. To think spiritually is to think above time and space; but to live spiritually is to bring the Word (truths) into time and space.
A16. If there is good in a falsity the Lord can use it as a truth.
A17. Thoughts and affections are not our own; every thought and affection flows in from the spiritual world. (Being in this truth makes objectivity a possibility)
A18. Spirits are their love. On this physical plane we have more than our love. We have resistance to our love. We also have memory. On this plane we can work.
A19. Evils as they are in us personally must come to light.
A20. Separating from evil is seeing the evil for what it is. The freeing is in the seeing.
B: The Word
B1. The Word shows us what the proprium is and what the Lord is.
B2. In the Old Church salvation is in Lord as historical person; in the New Church salvation is in a new understanding of the Word.
B3. Working with the Text puts our inner and outer worlds into a new relationship. The outer world becomes the ground for inner work.
B4. The Text is constant. It is structured in a particular way. At the literal level it is set in stone. As application in each person’s life it is infinitely flexible and varied. Each must draw the doctrine needed for his or her own life.
B5. In Logopraxis we aren’t looking at the literal Text as IT, rather as a basis for practice.
B6. The Word leads us into spiritual truths by means of external pictures. We must begin putting off those external things to see the spiritual beyond them.
B7. (i) The Letter serves as a memory.
(ii) Doctrine serves as something to build the rational.
(iii) Practice serves to build will.
B8. The Text is not just another thing the Lord flows through, it is THE thing.
B9. The Lord approaches us through the Word.
B10. The Word restructures the mind.
B11. The Word is what brings about conjunction between the internal and external man.
B12. If I experience that the Word is the Lord I will put myself in subjection to it. Until then I think and reason about the Word.
C: Definitions
C1. Influx/flow is a change in our thinking structures so we can see what is already present. It’s not movement from one point to another; it’s the appearance of things arising in our awareness.
C2. An appearance is not something false; it’s how something higher is perceived in the lower. If the appearance is seen from a higher plane (truths from the Word) it is recognized as an appearance. If it is seen from the same plane it is taken as the thing in itself.
C3. Faith is the level of trust one actually has in what one professes to believe.
C4. Truth is good appearing in the understanding.
C5. Good is a felt sense of truth.
C6. Meditation is thinking interiorly in spirit abstractly from the body.
C7. Spiritual temptation is when what the Word says is true is brought into question.
C8. Use is attending to inner states while we are engaged with life.
C9. Wisdom is to will well from love; intelligence is to understand well from willing well. Wisdom does truths from love; understanding is seeing from truths which have been worked into life.
C10. When you read the term Life in the Heavenly Doctrines, think in terms of the life of the mind.
C11. When you read the term Charity in the Heavenly Doctrines, think in terms of the inner work of self-examination and repentance.
C12. Repentance is thinking from the Word as opposed to thinking from oneself. (The Greek word translated as ‘repentance’ in the Gospels is ‘metanoia’ which means ‘new mind’ and carries a sense of transformation, not regret.)
C13. A church is a particular understanding of the Word.
C14. A human being is between proprium and the truth. Angelic consciousness doesn’t self-reference; an angelic state is one with its function.
D: Proprium
D1. We see representations of our states of being arise as thoughts and moods. Proprium sees what is arising as itself.
D2. Part of the proprium gets hold of truths then uses them to judge our state and we feel condemned. A spiral into self-pity, guilt, negative self-talk, anxiety, depression, etc. indicates this has happened. Being able to see that such a hijack has happened is a function of the Lord as the Word. Stick with the seeing.
D3. Evil spirits jump into anything that does not measure up to our idea of the ideal. Specifically seeing this can be turned to good if we recognize the state as being a reflection of the nature of the proprium.
D4 In Logopraxis failure is success.
D5. Proprium says, “I work hard to be good. I deserve heaven. Why is this hell?”
D6. If we allow the Text to show us what the proprium is we can be more aware of how it tries to divert us.
D7. What passes for ‘spiritual life’ is often the proprium dressing up for heaven.
E: Logopraxis
E1. Logopraxis leads to a change in the structure of our mind.
E2. Logopraxis is a path not an intellectual pleasure.
E3. We work with the Word to help us stop trying to manage our regeneration. We give ourselves to the Text that it might manage our regeneration.
E4. Approach the Text with a view to practice. Work to drop ideas of space, time and person.
E5. Believe in truths from the Word more than in appearances. The issue isn’t the appearances; the issue is the conclusions we draw from appearances. In Logopraxis we learn to see appearances from what truths teach.
E6. The purpose of the task is to illustrate a spiritual principle operating within the mind; to bring a spiritual principle into focus.
E7. There is ‘my’ idea of what evil is…then there is what the Lord wants me to work with (perhaps for someone else’s sake, unknown to me, ever). Ask, ‘What is it the Word wants me to work with?’
E8. Life conditions are to be used as triggers, reminders. In Logopraxis they are not something we try to change. We try to maintain our focus on inner things.
E9. Trying in our own strength to change, to be good (not lust, eat healthily, etc.) will eventually bring us to the end of ourselves. Rather, strive to see the externals in the context of what the Word offers.
E10. Don’t go by being gratified or by “how I feel”. By sincerely engaging with the Word it can’t be but the Lord is doing something. Be true to the principles you recognize. Ask, ‘What is my response to what is required of me?’ –Take note, pay attention; face the truth of that response.
E11. See the activity of your mind in light of what truths teach.
E12. There is a struggle to get beyond the appearances. Sit with the struggle without judgment. It is useful to hold two things at once mentally [for instance, truths and appearances or lower and higher levels] and allow them to interact.
E13. It doesn’t matter what Text of the Word we use, the process the Word takes us through is the same.
E14. Going through the Word with Logopraxis will unpack who you think you are and what you think you know. It will cut your assumptions. When we start out we are active and the Word is passive. In Logopraxis the Word needs to become active and we need to become passive.
E15. Dedicate what you do in Logopraxis to the intention to be of more use in your interactions with others.
