The ‘In Me’ Tool

The Heavenly Doctrines often state the need to remove the concepts of space and time from our thinking as far as possible, when thinking about spiritual and celestial realities. The ‘In Me’ tool is a useful device that can help to do that, so that rather than taking the meaning as relating to realities external to ourselves, we can at least keep some level of attention on the potential meaning the Text might have in connection with our own internal personal life. We achieve this by placing the words ‘in me’ into the Text. There are no hard and fast rules about where the phrase is to be placed, so it’s left to the reader to play with it to see what works. Just keep in mind that the objective is to keep the focus on applying what we are reading ‘in me’.

Everything described in the Heavenly Doctrines apply to the life of our mind, because the spiritual world does not exist outside the human mind – in fact, it is the human mind. In the work of Logopraxis we operate from a principle that all revelation is given to teach us about what exists within ourselves, and we accept that revelation is not to give us information about other people. This tool carries us from natural based thinking to more spiritual based thinking, and greatly assists in setting our task.

So, the ‘In-Me’ tool is a technique to shift our thinking from a natural mode to a spiritual mode of thought, which is focused on applying what we’re reading in the Text to our mental states, to our thoughts and affectional life; to where spiritual work really needs to be focused, ‘in me’. Examples are shown below.

From Heaven and Hell 595 we read:

“It should be known that the hells are continually assaulting heaven and endeavouring to destroy it, and that the Lord continually protects the heavens by withholding those who are there from the evils derived from their proprium, and by holding them in the good that is from Himself.”

And this can be adjusted in the following manner:

It should be known that the hells (In Me) are continually assaulting heaven (what is good and true from the Word – In Me) and endeavouring to destroy it, and that the Lord (the Word – In Me) continually protects the heavens (what is good and true In Me) by withholding those (states of evil and falsity In Me) who are there from the evils derived from their (My) proprium, and by holding them (Me) in the good that is from Himself.

 Key Principle: Evils and falsities (the hells/states of self-centredness) are continually assaulting goods and truths (the heavens/states of good will) in order to destroy them, and the Lord (as the Word) protects what is good and true by holding the mind in what is good from Himself (the Word).

Sample Tasks

• Observe and take note of experiences where evils and falsities (states of self-centredness) arise seeking to destroy goods and truths (states of good will).

• When this is seen try to remember this principle and note any shifts in the quality of my mental state.

From Heaven and Hell 155 we read:

“Angels are not constantly in the same state as to love, and consequently not in the same state as to wisdom for all their wisdom is from, and according to love. Sometimes they are in a state of intense love, sometimes in a state of love not intense. The state decreases by degrees from its greatest to its least intensity …. From this last state they return again to the first, and so on, these alternations following one after another with variety.”

Key Principles

• The state of love and wisdom is never constant in an angel.
• The state of love and wisdom in an angel ebbs and flows, from highest to least intensity.
• The alternate states of love and wisdom in an angel follow on from each other with constant variety.

The Principles Applied with the ‘In Me’ Tool

• The angel (In Me) is not constantly in the same state of love and wisdom.
• The angel (In Me) is sometimes in a state of intense love and sometimes this state is not so intense, decreasing by degrees to the point of least intensity.
• The angel (In Me) experiences an alternation of states of love and wisdom, with the phases of least and then greatest intensity following one from the other with constant variety.

Sample Tasks

• To observe the lack of constancy in my state of love to the Lord or remember to use the Word in my life. I shall observe and record the role of the proprium in attempting to hold me fast in the glue of love of self and the ways of the world.
• To observe what thoughts and feelings are present when I am experiencing conflict, unhappiness, or an absence of the Lord (love and wisdom). And then to note how remembering the fact that the angel in me experiences alternations, changes my thoughts or experience of the difficult state.

Dealing with Person, Place, Time & Space

All Divine Revelation, in order to be available to human comprehension, must take an external form that reflects human consciousness. That being the case, all revelation is presented in appearances of truth, and for us on this level of life we find that it takes its form in the clothing of objects and concepts that belong to the natural level of life. This means that the ‘voice’ of Divine Revelation in the Text is cast in terms of space, time, person, and place. So that unless we read the Text with deliberate conscious attention, we will be lulled into receiving only the literal meaning of the words before us and miss its personal application to the life of our own minds.

In the Apocalypse Explained 1049 it states that “…in the spiritual sense of the Word there is no idea of person, place or time; but it is otherwise with its natural sense.” And the implication here is that in order to think spiritually when reading the Text, we need to make an effort to remove ideas of person, place, time, and space from our thought, so as to help us think in terms of more interior things that relate to our states of mind. Our perception tends to rest in an idea that what is being described in the Text is something that happens to other people, or as something that historically happened in the past, or as something that might have relevance to us after we leave this world in the future. When we think from this natural state of mind in relation to spiritual realities, we easily forget to apply the truths of the Word to our own lives in the here and now.

From Conjugial Love 328 we read:

“To think spiritually is to think apart from time and space, and to think naturally is to think with time and space; for something of time and space adheres to every idea of natural thought, but not to any spiritual idea. The reason is, because the spiritual world is not in space and time like the natural world, but in the appearance of space and time. In the same way also do thoughts and affections differ [in the two worlds”.

In Logopraxis the focus is to see how the Text has immediate relevance to our lives in the here and now, so that its truths can be applied to our thought and feeling life. By conceptually removing references to person, space and time found in the Text, our attention can then be directed toward what they correspond to, which involves states of mind. Therefore, the meaning of what we are reading is transformed into something that has practical application to the work involved in our regeneration right now.

From Heaven and Hell 169 we read:

“The natural man can be of the opinion that he would be deprived of all thought if the ideas of time, space and material things were taken away, for upon these all man’s thought rests.  But let him know that so far as thoughts partake of time, space, and matter, they are limited and confined, but are unlimited and extended so far as they do not partake of these, since the mind is in that measure raised above bodily and worldly things.” 

Whether we are working with a task, sharing our direct experience of the Word working in our life, or listening to another person sharing their experience, an effort can be made to ‘raise our eyes’, raise our understanding “above bodily and worldly things”. To raise our understanding to the Lord is to think from the Word, specifically its truths or principles for life, whereas to think in terms of ‘persons’ is to think materially or naturally [i].