This is Volume 3
A Man of the Field
Forming
The
Volume
3: Regeneration
Spiritual
Disciplines For Daily Life
Volume 1: Reformation
The Struggle Against
Nonduality
Volume 2: Enlightenment
The Spiritual Sense of the Writings
Volume 4: Uses
The New Church Mind In Old Age
By Leon
James
October
2002
(draft 18)
This file loads slowly due to its large size!
If oddities in the font show up on your Web page, you can get a perfect copy of this as a .doc file:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume3-nonduality.doc
Author
information appears at the end. This document is in the process of being
revised. Please note the draft version marked on top. To print this document,
see Printing Note at the end.
A “field” means doctrine (AC 368)
A "man" signifies faith
and truth (AC 427; 4823)
Volume
3: Regeneration
Spiritual
Disciplines For Daily Life
Table of Contents
Access other Chapters and Volumes here:
1. Introduction: The
Spiritual Dimension Within The Natural
1. The
Inherited Self Vs. The Innate Idea Of God
2. What Is
Being Regenerated? – The Proprium
3. No Yoga
In The Church Hall?
4. How The
Spiritual Can Be Approached.
5.
Regeneration Requires Rational Consciousness
6. The Two
Phases Of Regeneration
7. Turning
A Moral Discipline Into Spiritual
8. If I’m A
Good Man, Why Do I Need To Be Regenerated?
9. The
Physical Body Hides The Spiritual Devil Within
10. Spiritual
Insanity Chains Us To Hell
11.
Spiritual Sanity Is To Return To God And To The Word
12.
Macro-Behaviors Are Regenerated By Means Of Micro-Behaviors
13.
Self-Witnessing Our Micro-Behaviors
14. Overlap
Between The Mind And The Spiritual World
17. Enlightenment
From The Letter Of The Writings
18.
Regeneration Disciplines Are Spiritual
19.
Innumerable Things In Every Evil
20.
Relationship Between Interior Evils And Exterior
21. Do We
Need To Confess Our Sins?
22. Without
Self-Monitoring Our Evils They Cannot Be Removed
2. Snatching Things From
Sudden Memory
1. What
Makes Our Life Moments Spiritual
2. The Most
Ancients Prior To The Split-Brain Evolution
3.
Self-Witnessing Sudden Memory As A Spiritual Discipline
4. Filled
With Blasphemous Thoughts And Curiosities
5. The
Natural Mind Must Be Compelled To Realign Itself
3. Conscience And
Temptations Are The Methods Of Regeneration
1. Creating
More And More Angels
2. External
And Internal Methods Of Cooperation
4.The remains of good and
truth in the afterlife
5.The Regeneration Of The
Threefold Self: Willing, Thinking, And Acting Out
1.
Self-Examination: Monitoring The Threefold Self
2. Keeping
Track Of The Motives We Have
3. The
Agony And Ecstasy Of Regeneration
4. Head In
Heaven, Feet In Hell
5. Seeing
The Ugly Scary Proprium
6.
Regeneration Is By Spiritual-Rational Correspondences
7.
Teachings Regarding Doctrine And The Spiritual Sense
1. Introduction:
Subduing The External Man
1.
Discounting Our Wife’s Opinion Relative To Our Own
1. A
Philosophy Of Action Or Spiritual Discipline
2. Men’s
Resistance To Conjugial Love
3.
Conjugial Commandments In The Writings
4.
Commitment To Conjugial Unity
5. The
Four-Step Conjoining Process
7. The
Husband’s Spiritual Dependence On The Wife
2. External
Reformation Vs. Internal Regeneration
3. Leave
Mother and Father And Cleave To The Wife
5. Proving
The Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1
6. External
And Internal Marriage
7. Heresies
Regarding The Husband's Wisdom
8. Feminine
Love Within Which Is Masculine Wisdom
9. The Role
Of The Wife In The Husband's Wisdom
10.
Inventory Of Confessions For Husbands
11. Six-Step
Process For Removing Our Evils
12. The
Marriage Of Good And Truth.
13.
Shunning Sins, Doing Good, And Performing Uses
4. The surrendered wife vs. the surrendered husband
1. The
Surrendered Husband is The Ideal Elevated Man
2. The
Self-Entrapment of Male Intelligence
3. Who Is
Going To Do The Bills?
4. The
Spiritual Physiology Of Marriage
6. Divine
Truth Within Which Is Divine Love
7. Is The
Surrendered Husband Feminized?
8. The
Conjoint Mind Is Both Masculine And Feminine
5. Rule 1: The Regeneration
Discipline Of Acting From The Wife
2. I’m
Commanded To Not Disagree With Her
6. Giving Up Male
Prerogatives As Contrary To Conjugial Unity
7. The Equity Model Versus
The Unity Model Of Marriage.
8. The Spiritual Discipline
Of Sweetheart Rituals
1.
Sweethearts Spend All Their Time Together
2. The
Commandment Of Conjugial Simulation
9. Conjugial Intimacy
Disciplines
10. Overcoming Threats To
Sweetheart Rituals
11. How To Avoid Turning
Cold Against The Wife
1. The
Fallacy That Men Want Sex More Than Women
12. Spiritual Psychobiology
Of The Conjoint Self
1.
Conjugial Husbands Are Loyal To The Wife
13. The Regeneration
Discipline Of Conjugial Massage
2. The Sensuous Mind Turns Itself Away From The Rational
3. Creation Of The Natural-Rational Mind
5. The
Masculine And Feminine Mind.
14. The Regeneration
Discipline of Heaven On Wheels
4. Driving
Like The Lord Is My Passenger
5. The
Conjugial Discipline Of Partnership Driving
15. The spiritual
discipline of shopping together
15. Wife takes precedence
over the children
1. The
Parenting Relationship Is Temporary And External
2. Moses,
Paul, And Swedenborg Phases Of Marriage
3.
Blood-Love For Children Is Spiritually Hurtful
16. The spiritual
discipline of metanoid television watching
1. Teaching
The Metanoid Self-Witnessing Technique
17. Summary of
anti-absorption techniques.
Additional Regeneration Disciplines
2. Laundry
And Housecleaning Disciplines
3. Daily
Disciplines Of Studying The Writings
4.
Monitoring What’s In My Mind
5.
Monitoring What’s On My Face
6.
Monitoring What Are My Eyes Doing
8.
Conjugial Grooming Rituals.
9. The
Discipline Of Junk E-Mail
10. How To
Handle Junk Phone Calls
11. The
Spiritual Discipline Of Eating Half-Portions
12. Arrival
And Departure Rituals With The Wife
13. The
Spiritual Discipline Of Colon Cleansing
14.
Acknowledging The Lord’s Co-Presence
15. Talking
To The Lord Is To Apply The Letter To The Letter
16. Rational
Consciousness Of The Lord Now Conjoins
17.
Rational Consciousness From Applying The Letter To The Letter
18. So Far
As The Lord Is Present, So Far He Speaks With The Man
19.
Cleanliness And Health Disciplines
20. Not
Detachment, But Right Attachments
21.
Self-worth, Self-esteem, Self-efficacy
22. Remains
Are The Cornerstone of Self-worth
23.
Shunning The Rage-Depression Spin Cycle
A Kingdom
Of Uses: The Innocence of Old Age
1. The Writings Are A Divine Scientific
Revelation
2. The Writings Are The Lord’s Second
Coming
3. Heaven Is Created From Rational Love
4. A Divine Revelation That Surpasses All
Others
5. Swedenborg’s Scientific Experiments In
The Spiritual World
6. Swedenborg’s Dual Citizenship—Natural
And Spiritual
7. This Book Is About Regeneration
Access other Chapters and Volumes here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Every
spiritual truth in the Writings
is a Divine Commandment
Preface to Volume 3
You may
want to read the Preface to Volume 1 and Volume 2 along with this. See Table of
Contents for the location of the Preface to Volume 1.
This Volume
is called Regeneration. Volume 1 is called Reformation, and Volume 2,
Enlightenment. These three represent the three steps that the
When we
read the Writings as a Divine Scientific Revelation we are undergoing
reformation. It can take just a few months, or longer, depending on how intense
our study of the Writings is. For my part, I could not read anything else since
I started reading the Writings. Whenever I read other books I soon begin to feel
that I’m wasting my time, and with relief and joy, I reach for a book of the
Writings. I make sure that I’m always surrounded by the Sacred Volumes. It is
with joy and interest that we take up the truths, the new information, the new
science, the new insights, the new concepts and the new reasoning from them. We
become erudite and intelligent and rational in our ability to think, to
distinguish, to trace, analyze, evaluate. With our rational-mind formed from
the Writings we complete our reformation, a new man, looking in everything
towards heaven, instructed by the Lord Himself, walking out into life with new
powers to wage war against our inherited character or proprium.
The truths
of the Letter of the Writings give us this new power. Volume 2 explains the
process by which we are enlightened from the Lord when we apply these truths to
our daily willing and thinking, hour by hour, minute by minute, and second by
second. The Writings gives us a scientific
understanding of regeneration. It is a process of rewiring millions of bundles
of fibers in our inherited will. These spiritual fibers have grown and matured
into degenerate organs that coil in the opposite direction of the heavenly
will. Consequently our will is a receptor of evil affections from hell and we
have these affections in us. They make our life, and were the Lord to remove them, we would have no life left. Hence regeneration is the
gradual process of replacing these degenerate fibers, one by one, and replacing
it with a heavenly affection that coils in the heavenly direction. This new
will then becomes a receptor for heavenly affections, and it is being
regenerated or purified more and more. As the heavenly affections are
instilled, the Lord removes the infernal ones. In this way we do not feel that
we are losing life, but gaining it. Our new affections are far superior to the
old, giving us new perceptions and understandings, new powers to act and
execute.
To be
enlightened is to acquire the spiritual consciousness or conscious awareness of
spiritual-rational correspondences. These are appearances of Divine Truth accommodated
to the individual’s intellect by discrete degrees. Volume 2 explains how we can
extract a spiritual sense from the Letter of the Writings. This spiritual sense
cannot be described in natural language except by means of correspondences. In
the initial phases of reformation, the
To see the
spiritual sense we need to look at the literal expressions as natural-rational
correspondences. Once this is acknowledged, we are prepared for enlightenment.
This happens the moment we apply some doctrine or principle to our willing and
thinking. We are then enlightened as to this one thing we were applying. It may
not seem much at first, but the new perception of this one thing is so
powerful, so real, that it is enough to be proof that we are capable of
spiritual consciousness in the physical body. Applying the natural-rational
correspondences of the Writings to the stream of willing and thinking,
has a built in mechanism of enlightenment. The Lord enlightens every time this
is done by anyone. Thus it functions as a new psycho-physiological mechanism
for the human race. Hence we may call it a scientific mechanism, knowing as
always, that every mechanism is maintained in place by the Lord on a continuous
basis by influx of good from within.
Enlightenment of this or that truth
builds and cumulates so that it becomes a permanent background to our
personality.
Rational
consciousness is the method the Lord has provided for the new human race to be
conjoined with Him. He has now revealed Himself as the Divine Human within whom
there is the Divine Rational. Henceforth the new celestial mind of the human
race is to dwell in new heavens built out of these new rational truths. Our enlightenment
continues to grow in regeneration. It is a gradual process of using higher
correspondences as the basis of our thinking, as explained in Volume 2.
But
regeneration is not an automatic process. Nor is it easy. It is a commandment
of the Letter that we cooperate with the Lord in the process of His removing
the degenerate fibers in the will. He cannot create new heavenly fibers without
us letting go of the old infernal fibers. It cannot be done like the weight
control surgery popular today, of mechanical suction or aspiration of the
surface layers of fat under the skin. Regeneration is more like a heart
transplant. The new heart has to fit the genius and life of the old individual,
or else it cannot survive. The new heavenly affections that the Lord implants
must be loved, or else we feel that we don’t have our life back. But they
cannot be loved without first detesting or rejecting those in place now,
to which we are committed and by which we are delighted.
This is
where the hard part comes in: How do you
learn to hate what you love?
This
difficult struggle is regeneration. This Volume is about regeneration
disciplines for husbands. A discipline is a method of procedure we use when the
outcome is of great importance to us. Nothing is more important to us than
regeneration, for it is the only path available to salvation and heaven. First
it is necessary to focus on the Letter of the Writings from a perspective of
enlightenment, as explained in Volume 2. This builds up the Spiritual Doctrine
in our understanding. The level of thinking by which we operate
when thinking about the Spiritual Doctrine is called interior-natural, or
spiritual-natural. This is effective in proportion to our gradually
increasing enlightenment. This basis of thinking is called spiritual-rational
correspondences and is a discrete degree above the Letter of natural-rational
correspondences.
Physiologically,
natural-rational correspondences operate in the upper portion of the natural
mind, but spiritual-rational correspondences operate in the interior-natural
mind, which is within the natural-rational mind. This is why thinking with
spiritual-rational correspondences is called enlightenment while thinking in
natural-rational correspondences is not.
It is the
Spiritual Doctrine we need in our mind to lead us through regeneration. The
angels are doing the leading and we must understand them in a
spiritual-rational way, not merely in a natural-rational way. When we understand
the angels’ leading us at the level of natural-rational correspondences we are
not yet being regenerated because we are not yet willing to look upon the evil
delights we are to give up. Spiritual-rational correspondences in our thinking
are far more powerful in fighting against the evil delights we want to hang on
to. We need interior spiritual truths to be able to fight interior spiritual
evils. There is always a balance between heavenly and infernal loves. The
highest heaven must have the lowest hell, the lowest
heaven must have the highest hell. There is an exact correspondence so that one
supports the other. The formation of the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind is a
Divine operation, as explained in Volume 2.
Without
regeneration disciplines can we cooperate with the Lord?
I give many
illustrations from my own regeneration journey. It’s obvious after studying
regeneration that it is a general process of spiritual biology. It has to do
with willing and thinking moment by moment. This is our human life. Without it
we are no longer human. We never go to hell for the sins we’ve inherited, nor
even for the sins we’ve committed. We only go to hell for the sins we are
committing in the world of spirits. In the afterlife, we bring with us a
psychological disposition that defines our preferred relationship styles with
others. All our preferences in the
spirit-body now become intense loves that cannot be resisted.
We are then at the complete mercy of
our preferences, loves, affections, delights, motives.
This is why
regeneration is so crucial. It is the only biological process available for
getting rid of the infernal affections, replacing them at the same time with
heavenly affections.
This must
be done while we still are tied to the physical body. It cannot be done after
we wake up in our spirit-body.
Since we
express a preference or delight, moment by moment, every day in our willing and
thinking, you can see that there are thousands of individual distinct items of
willing and thinking chained together as an act or decision. There is no time
to waste if we are seriously engaged in cooperating with the Lord regarding our
regeneration. We are not going to be regenerated by floundering or relaxing or going
slower or using any of the many tactics men use to oppose their regeneration.
This is a serious matter of life and death, of eternal misery versus eternal
conjugial bliss. Nothing can be more important!
You will
see that I emphasize the wife’s role in the regeneration of the husband. The
regeneration discipline of the Doctrine of the Wife presented here is that the
husband needs to learn to love to act from his wife’s will, more than he loves
to act from his own will. I have discovered the great efficacy of this
spiritual method.
There is no
area of life that does not need to be regenerated. The illustrations I present
are only points on a map. The map is your ego. It is the ego that needs to be
regenerated. And the ego starts with being the all in all in our self. Thus,
the ego must be dethroned and the Writings enthroned as a Divine King. This is
done my the daily study of the Writings and applying
it to life.
DEDICATION
To my wife
It is
her internal wisdom that led me to write this book as-of myself. She brought
into our marriage the conjugial love she has in her from the Lord, inborn from
nativity
An inclination to love one of the opposite sex, and with it
a capacity for receiving that love, has been implanted in Christians from
birth, for the reason that this love comes from the Lord alone
(CL 466).
Wives are by birth forms of love, so
that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands … But it is
different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but
designed to receive that love from their wives (CL 216)
The intelligence of women is by
nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle, while the
intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and
given to intemperance. Evidence that
this is the nature of women and the nature of men is clearly apparent from the
body, face, tone of voice, speech, bearing and behavior of each sex.
(…)
From this I could clearly see that a
man is born a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of love. I could also see what the nature of the
intellect is and what the nature of love is in their beginnings, and thus what
a man's intellect in its development would be like without conjunction with
feminine love and eventually conjugial love.
(CL 218)
The man of the field is
the living husband
Chapter 1
Self-Witnessing
Your Life
A person's mind is his
spirit, or the surviving personality which lives on after leaving the material
body. (TCR 816)
A man who examines himself for the
purpose of practicing repentance, should explore his thoughts, and the
intentions of his will; and there he ought to examine what he would do, if he
were at liberty; that is, if he were not afraid of the laws, and the loss of
reputation, honor, and gain. A man's evils are in his thoughts and intentions;
and the evils which he does with the body are all from thence. Those persons
who do not explore the evils of their thoughts and of their will cannot
practice repentance; for afterwards they think and will just as they did
before; and yet willing evils means doing them. This is meant by
self-examination. (NJHD 164)
Chapter 1, Section 1
1. Introduction: The Spiritual Dimension Within The Natural
Today on
the car radio on my way home, I heard an interview with a famous lawyer known
to millions from his TV appearances, books, and the famous cases he had
successfully pleaded. At one point he was asked to give his definition of what
is “right.” He said that would be a very difficult thing to define, that it
would be impossible for him to do so, since he didn’t know what is right. He
said the world knows what’s wrong, what’s evil, when we see it, like the Nazis
and what they did. But no one knows what is right, he said. Who is going to
decide what is right? “No one to my knowledge,” he said has ever heard God say
to them what is right. I do not believe that for a moment. A human being is
always looking to know what is right, and the answer evolves. Anyone who says
that he knows what is right, I feel sorry for him, because he has lost one of
the chief reasons we are human, which is to look for what is right, but never
actually find it, though his understanding of it gets better.”
This is an
approximate rendition, as I can recall it. You can see that this philosophy of
what is right, is a nonduality because it denies the absolute duality between
human beings and God. Those who accept this duality, know what is right because
God reveals it to them in the Word or in teachings based on the Word, and in
their conscience—for the idea or concept of God’s existence is “inscribed” on
the mind of every human being, and along with it, an innate cognitive ability
to distinguish between good and evil, and consequently between right and wrong
(xx). This famous lawyer no doubt had both, besides being literate in history
and literature, having written book and articles on this subject. He also has a
conscience by which he could know that there is God (xx). He thus had to work
actively to neutralize and eliminate these sources of knowledge of God and what
is right in a Divine absolute sense.
Note how we
all accomplish the same thing while we are in our unregenerate state. Prior to our conscious free choice of
reformation in adulthood, the
The idea of
God that everyone has through conscience from within,
is something we own. It feels like our own idea because it comes to every human
being from within (xx). We already know it as children when we first hear the
idea of God from an adult or a TV show. Children instantly accept it, acting as
if they already knew about God. They may have questions about God, but not
ignorance of Him. This “implanted” idea of God (xx) is necessary to guarantee
that no human being under any circumstance of time and place,
will have the free choice of living life in accordance with God’s wishes or in
accordance with the wishes of the self. This is the fundamental innate absolute
duality of human life upon which every right and rational idea is based. It
therefore enters into every concept of right living, regeneration, and heaven.
It is the only means of salvation the Lord has provided for the human race. The
result of every individual’s choice in this fundamental duality is the final
outcome of their destiny: eternal bliss in heaven with a conjugial spouse vs.
insane and cruel misery forever in hell. Could anything possibly be as
important as this?
1. The
Inherited Self Vs. The Innate Idea Of God
And yet the
unregenerate mind, whether a New Church mind-to-be, or a famous popular lawyer
in America, defender of individual rights, willfully sets aside the God in our
conscience, calling it a mere self-produced concept, and leading a life guided
by the search for what’s right, rather than by a knowledge of what’s right. While we do so, our understanding and intellectual scholarship are
drawn more and more into the stream of unregenerate affections, which are
infernal. Rejecting the fundamental duality of God’s definition of right
vs. ours, is a self-condemnation to eternal misery in an infernal mind that
would scare us to death, could we see it as the angels see it, in its true
nature. The Writings reveal that the self, called our very own or “proprium” in
Latin, appears in the afterlife as a bony skeleton-head charred black,
sometimes “grayish-white like a plastered wall” (SE 5464). In either case it is
ugly and inhuman.
When we
willfully silence and turn away form the inborn living idea of God, we turn
ourselves to the proprium. We are then led by the hells, as detailed in this
horrendous description of what we are in ourselves from birth and self-guidance,
and what to destiny it leads us:
(1) They place themselves at the back, below and above, and
there they thrust in their thoughts; they turn the thoughts of another spirit,
and thus of a man, to himself, to his own power, to his own praise, in a word,
to the proprium. Almost all infernals know how to do this.
(2) Others gaze upon various parts of the body and upon the
head and, where they see anything black, they know the proprium still rules
there - for the proprium is black, because it is of the love of self - and,
then, they seek to learn what of self is there, and, when they find out, they
infuse their own thoughts there, and lead [their victim] whithersoever they
will.
(3) Some look into the forehead; and, if it appears black,
they then lead him; likewise, if it is grayish-white like a plastered wall,
inasmuch as this indicates simulated external sincerity; but from him in whom
they see human flesh they withdraw, and him they do not lead.
(4) Some cast a black veil over his face and also over his
breast, and thus they magically take away his thoughts of the neighbor, and
oblige and compel him to think of himself; and so they lead him, but not like
they do others who are black of themselves: the former return immediately.
(5) Some enshroud another in darkness and convey [him] into
the dark, and so compel him to think of self.
(6) From the color around a spirit or man - black, white,
flesh-color, or yellow -
they conclude something about the man's state as to his proprium,
or self-love. Where it is black, there is self-love: such a one is led; and it
is according to the intensity of the black.
(7) Some only perceive by means of the thoughts of another -
for there is a general law of thoughts - and these insinuate themselves into
them and turn them to [the victim's] proprium and love of self, in all ways -
by phantasies, by magic; and by the aid of many of the hells; and, so, they
drive him to thinking about himself; and, when it comes to that, he is in their
power.
(8) Sirens know how to insinuate themselves into the various
affections which are the ruling love of a man; and so they take him with them.
Also, they know how to reduce the thoughts of another, magically, even to the
sensual, which is the extreme external; and, when he is reduced to that, they
induce various phantasies and lead him whithersoever they wish. It is the
sensual of man where his self-love, or proprium, resides: so far as he can be
drawn up, or elevated, out of that, as to the thoughts, towards interiors, so
far he can be led away from his proprium. Man's sensual, at this day, is, with
most people, wholly corporeal, and has not anything spiritual.
(9) It was granted me to perceive when I was in the
proprium, and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for
nothing; wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be
done. Hence is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for
the sake of self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they
appear to be led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the
changes of the state of the thoughts. There were some such of the Swedish
nation, whose desire it had been thus to reduce the thoughts of other spirits
to subjection, and so to lead them whithersoever they would; but they did not
know how, save one or two of them. They were in the western quarter. (SE 5464)
When I read
this, I am scared! What scares me the most is the idea that I was headed to
this destiny as a result of my willful rejection of God.
I didn’t know the magnitude of the consequences, though I could have known had
I wanted to. It’s scary to think how close I came to having that destiny of
passing to the next life with an unregenerate proprium.
Whether we
say self or love-of self, it is the same in the unregenerate state prior to
reformation. We are born with the inherited tendency to love our self more than
God. This is called the Fallen human race. It is the
proprium or self that is our god from birth so that it kills off the other
innate tendency which is to obey God. As children, every unregenerate person
goes through a state of innocence in which the Lord walls of the inherited
love-self and its related infernal affections. The child’s unconscious
spiritual mind is surrounded and infilled by angles, an activity which results
in an outward natural behavior that is innocent and full of the love to obey
and be close to others. This is the period of life when the idea of God becomes
conscious, and the child’s natural mind gets trained to know consciously what
is right and wrong.
But soon
the Lord can no longer continue walling off the inherited loves because this
would take away the individual’s inner freedom to choose. We could then choose
heaven, but not from our free will, and therefore, we could not love that
choice. And whatever we do not love is not appropriated to our being, hence it
is not there in the afterlife. Therefore the Lord is compelled to free the
inner dams of infernal loves, whereupon the angels are forced to withdraw, and
the individual is then led by the infernals. But after adolescence, when we
enter young adulthood, we once again are given the desire and power to turn
ourselves away from the proprium by turning ourselves to God, and this gradual
turning is called reformation. Upon completion of reformation, which can last
months or years, we are ready to begin regeneration and undergo the spiritual
rigors of temptations.
By means of
these temptations, carefully managed in a sequence and timed by the Lord, we
become aware of our infernal delights, and are forced to face them, and do
battle against them. In these battles the Lord draws near the individual, very
close, and the angels are present ready to battle the hells. For when one
individual on earth fights with a temptation, the entire hells are united in
that battle. No one could withstand this unimaginable line up! In the quote
above (SE 5464) it is said: “these insinuate themselves into them and turn them
to [the victim's] proprium and love of self, in all ways - by phantasies, by
magic; and by the aid of many of the hells.” Note the phrase “by the aid of
many of the hells” which tells us that the infernals use each other’s “magical”
powers to fight battles against us in any temptation. This is the awesome work
of regeneration that lies ahead of us in forming the
2. What Is
Being Regenerated? – The Proprium
You can see
that “regeneration” refers to the self or proprium. It is the proprium that
needs to be regenerated. And it is revealed that the proprium cannot be “fixed”
but is lost forever. One can only be saved by the proprium being reborn, the
old being laid to rest, the new being an image of the
Lord’s Proprium or Personality. The Lord is the only actual Human! This is a physiological
or genetic fact about the human race existing on this earth. The proprium,
being a spiritual organ, cannot die. If it is “fallen” or degenerate, it cannot
be fixed. But the Lord loves the human race for the sake of which the universe
exists, and the Lord is omniscient and omnipotent. To Him the entire human race
appears as one, and He evolves this race in the image of His Own Proprium. This
is an inexorable evolution for there is no other power in the universe than the
Lord’s power within each and all things. The Lord can withdraw His power from
anywhere anytime and the “it” falls into an inanimate thing, or vanishes
altogether from existence (xx). There is no want of power in the Lord to do
anything.
It would be a grave error to believe
that the revolting degenerate proprium we are born with,
has evolved because of a want of power in the Lord to prevent it.
The
Writings explain this fully in a rational way by means of the Doctrine of
Permissions, and why the Lord has allowed this sorry evolution. And yet when
the Lord’s work of evolution and creation is viewed from a spiritual
perspective, it is seen as Divine and perfect work. It
would be an imperfect creation if people were condemned to hell on account of
their birth, would it not? Similarly, condemning people on account of how they
behaved, as a means of punishment, would also be imperfect, when viewed
spiritually. The Lord does neither. He
does not condemn anyone to hell, for whatever reason, no matter how evil and
cruel a person’s deeds were. (xx)
The truth
is that the Lord instructs everyone who arrives in the afterlife. They are
given instruction, therapy, real-world experiences
recreated on a kind of spiritual holo-deck (xx). They are taken for visits to
heaven. They are given anything they need and want, and then they are required
to make a choice: to enter heavenly life or life in hell. This proves that the system and the process are perfect, since both
heaven and hell can only exist in a free choice!
Note also
this statement in sub-paragraph (8) of the quote above (SE 5464):
It is the sensual of man where his self-love, or proprium,
resides: so far as he can be drawn up, or elevated, out of that, as to the
thoughts, towards interiors, so far he can be led away from his proprium. Man's
sensual, at this day, is, with most people, wholly corporeal, and has not
anything spiritual.
The only
method we have of accessing the spiritual is by means of thoughts, that is, by
means of the truths we think about and with which we reason and draw
conclusions. These truths in our conscious mind are not spiritual truths but
representatives and correspondences of spiritual truths. These are the truths
that save us because they are our own and feel like our own. Therefore our
freedom of choice is maintained even though we obey these truths against our
preference.
The truths
we understand give us the power to align ourselves with new powerful
affections, higher powerful loves implanted in our interior-natural mind by the
Lord. Therefore, even though we compel ourselves, we do so in freedom. These
spiritual truths, in their natural correspondences, are rational truths, not
sensuous experiences. They are in our natural-rational mind or understanding.
These truths cannot be discovered when we are in the state turned to the
proprium. Self-intelligence, natural
science, mental disciplines, physical initiations—not of these things can
discover a single spiritual truth no matter how advanced they become.
Spiritual
truths in correspondence are available only from the revelations the Lord gives
the human race in His Word, and for the new age of the Second Coming, His Word
is the Writings, which will endure forever (xx).
Note this
statement in sub-paragraph (9) of the quote above (SE 5464):
It was granted me to perceive when I was in the proprium,
and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing;
wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be done. Hence
is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for the sake of
self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they appear to be
led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the changes of
the state of the thoughts. “
Swedenborg
was given to see what we cannot, namely a conscious perception of his proprium
and of being in and out of it. But all we need is his description, if we take
it as the Divine Truth the Lord wants us to know for our regeneration. “When in
the proprium, I was fit for nothing”—what a devastating confession by the man
whose mind was prepared by the Lord from his early childhood to develop into
the first of the new race called the
About two
years before I discovered the Writings I had a disturbing vision. I believe I
was just falling asleep, when I saw from a distance a person wrapped in a black
robe. It was coming closer to me but I could not see legs or feet. I then saw
the head in bright light. It looked like a mummy that had been unwrapped, with
a bony head that was extremely emaciated with hardly any flesh. It had no hair.
I couldn’t tell its gender but I thought it might be a female. Then as it got
close to me it seemed that it projected something at me with extreme power and
violence. It felt that my personality or self was shattered, imploded from
within, annihilated. I woke up from the terror of it. I thought about this
vision over the years. First I decided it could’ve been a male, not a female.
Second I couldn’t decide whether it was benign or hostile. It sure didn’t feel
good to be shattered like that, but I thought maybe that’s how earthlings feel
when they are visited by a higher power, like those who saw angels in the Bible
and fell on their face as dead. But eventually I decided it was inimical to me
otherwise I wouldn’t have felt so terrified. I did not think about again until
just recently as I was rereading the passage quoted above about the proprium
(SE 5464). After discussing it with my wife, I became convinced that what I saw
was my proprium!
When I
interpret my vision this way, it all makes sense. The appearance of the image
was that of the proprium as described in this passage. The amazing hostility
and violence it expressed against me makes sense when I consider that the
proprium has an insane murderous love to destroy the individual. The proprium
fears and hates the
This idea
also helps me to understand a long-standing insight my wife has had for years
as she tried to help me in my regeneration. She saw that I had a streak in me
for self-destruction. To her this was plain to see by how I behaved, what I
considered more important than something else, how I buried myself in my own
unhappiness, how I kept myself from knowing what I needed to know, and so on. To
me this was a big mystery. How is it possible that I should wish for my own
destruction? It didn’t sound logical to me. The self is animated by
self-preservation not self-destruction, or else the race could not survive—I
thought. Also, it didn’t seem to me that I was bent on destroying myself and I
was a student of the self, practicing self-monitoring techniques, analyzing my
life, and so on. Surely I would be aware if I was so aberrant in my tendency—I
told myself. So I would never believe it and my poor wife had
to patiently and without letting up, remind me of her perceptions.
All this
makes sense when I consider what in fact my proprium is—this infernal
monstrosity filled with insane hatred against anything from heaven. Definitely
my proprium would be happy to destroy me, to take over, to pull me into hell,
to make me its vile slave or zombie. This is quite a paradox to resolve, isn’t?
The proprium whom I identify with and love is a monster that desires to destroy
me!
All this
should tell us that we are to take charge of our regeneration in a conscious
and disciplined manner, using whatever methods of discipline we can invent to
carry out our expected and required side of the regeneration equation: the Lord
does everything but we must do just one thing, namely, to face our proprium, to
monitor our willing and thinking in the light of Doctrine in our understanding,
and to make a free choice of rejecting the evil delights, one by one, daily,
hourly, and by the minute. This alone is the real and actual work of
regeneration.
3. No Yoga In The Church Hall?
It’s likely
that some of the attractiveness Americans feel toward nonduality and
non-Western spiritual disciplines is due to our deep rooted desire for
self-improvement and the quest towards ever greater achievements and victories.
The interest in attaining greater control over one’s body is widespread in the
Western world, as indicated by lifestyles that feature body-building workouts,
muscle man contests, beauty pageants, and the varieties of physical disciplines
imported from the East such as the many martial arts, Tai Chi, Tae Bo, and
Yoga, which are sweeping the country today. My wife and I have attended Iangar
Yoga classes in a Church hall for several years now. In this connection, a
reader of this book sent me this clipping about a Church hall in
The Guardian
Adopting the lotus position may seem harmless but be warned
it could well be the first step on a slippery slope to damnation - especially
if it follows the cobra or the lion. For those who believe they can combine the
pursuit of yoga with the practice of Christianity it is time to roll up the
yoga mat and think again, according to the Rev Derek Smith. Having banned
classes from his church hall at St Michael's church in Melksham, Wiltshire, the
vicar has called upon Christians who indulge in the activity to "examine
their consciences".
Yoga, he believes, is "incompatible" with
Christianity because of its associations with the Hindu faith. Even if
followers in the west use yoga purely for fitness purposes, spiritual leaders
in the east insist it is inseparable from Hindu devotional practice, Mr Smith
said yesterday. "I would ask people
who do yoga to think about whether they believe they were in breach of their faith
or not. If they genuinely believe what they are doing is acceptable - and I
know people that do - of course, I would ask them to follow their
consciences."
(...)
The Church of England defended Mr Smith's decision, backing
the right of clergymen to take a stand against any practices which "do not
square with Christian teachings". "Yoga is used as a kind of generic
term for exercise and stretching, but there are many different types of yoga.
But some have a more spiritual basis as handed down from eastern
religions," a spokesman said. "it is reasonably understandable that
someone can say so if they don't want something with a spiritual basis taught
in their church hall." The church
was keen to promote good relations with other religions, he added, but that did
not involve being "wish-washy or mealy-mouthed" about distinctions in
faith.
Our Yoga
teacher ends each class in the Church hall with prayerful hands extended before
the chest and the greeting “Namaste.” Once in a while she explains to newcomers
that it means “The God in me greets the God in you.” She never said anything
else about it and there are no other signs of Eastern nonduality. For me, it’s
just a convenient place for an excellent physical discipline. I thought about
discussing with her the idea of how God can be in each of us, but my wife nixed
the idea—and rightly so, as I immediately saw it. What would be the point of
such a discussion? How could it possibly have a useful ending? But it never
occurred to me that I should stop attending classes because she ends each class
with Namaste.
I discussed
in Volume 1 how we are to deal with nonduality—not by confronting those who
think from it. Our job in forming the
4. How The Spiritual Can Be Approached
Regarding physical
disciplines, many serve a good use under appropriate conditions, but not under
others. The difference is to be understood by considering things the Writings
say in relation to the natural mind and spiritual mind. The management or
planning function of the mind is called the natural-rational or “external rational” (AC 2657). This is not the “interior-natural” mind nor the “spiritual-rational”
mind, which are in discrete degrees above the natural-rational mind and develop
in adulthood in proportion to our progress in regeneration (AC 4038). The interior rational (or
spiritual-rational) is of spiritual and celestial origin, but the external
rational (or natural-rational) is of hereditary and cultural origin (AC 978,
4286; AE 355:14). There is nothing spiritual about the natural-rational mind
and there is only spiritual/celestial things in the
interior rational mind. This absolute dualism in the levels of the mind
corresponds to the discrete degrees in which the heavens are in relation to
each other:
The existence of these three degrees in people can be seen
from the elevation of a person's mind even to the degrees of love and wisdom
possessed by angels of the second and third heavens. For all
angels were born people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements
which are those of his mind, a heaven in miniature form. Consequently
there are from creation as many degrees of height in a person as there are
heavens. The human being is furthermore an image and likeness of God, and these
three degrees are therefore engraved on a person because they exist in the
human God, which is to say, in the Lord. (DLW 231)
The things in
our natural mind are corporeal, sensuous, and rational. Whatever we do in this
plane of life has nothing spiritual in it because the spiritual cannot exist in
the natural plane. Rather, the spiritual can exist in the natural plane
indirectly, by correspondences. We can look at anything we do that is merely
natural, like eating, talking to a friend, or driving a car. In order to
communicate with the spiritual dimension we must look upon these natural acts
as correspondences. When looked at this way, we are communicating with the
spiritual dimensions that are associated with those natural acts. Every natural
act has a spiritual dimension associated with it (xx). But we do not know or
reflect upon the spiritual dimensions of our everyday acts. We may reflect on
their legal and moral dimension, so that we think, “This is legal, this is
illegal” or, “This is moral, this is immoral.” But if someone said, “This is
spiritual, this is not,” we would not know what they meant, and in fact, no one
would. Knowing what is spiritual is possible only from the Lord’s new
revelations of the Word of the Writings (xx).
The
Writings reveal that the celestial human mind, such as angels
have, and such as the most ancient peoples had on this earth, can have a
sensuous consciousness of the spiritual within the natural (xx). Their brain
and respiratory physiology were different from ours—they had internal breathing
instead of external, they spoke by lip movements instead of vocal cords, and
their brain was not split into two halves (xx). They looked at every object
around them and saw within each the spiritual dimension. A natural object was
nothing to them but a correspondence to a spiritual event, which was taking
place in the spiritual world. This is the “spiritual dimension” of any natural
object, quality, or event. It is nothing but the spiritual event or quality
that causes the natural event to occur. The natural event is nothing but an
ultimate effect brought about by a spiritual cause.
For
example, when they saw horses, their mind perceived the idea of intelligence
from the Doctrine of their Church. Or if they saw rain, they perceived of
truths in their various forms that correspond to the spring rain, the autumn
rain, the river, the ocean, the lake, the putrid waters—which are
falsifications of truths. The sun and the mountains represented to them the
Divine Human whom they expected to arrive into the world. Being compassionate
to a stranger represented to them charity from the Lord. When they saw a
disorderly act by someone they were horrified because to them it represented
rejection of the Lord. all day long, as they lived
their lives on earth, they could think of nothing but what each thing in their
environment represented in spiritual reality.
In forming
the
You can see therefore that we must
approach the spiritual through the rational, not through the sensuous.
To approach
the spiritual through the rational means that we use correspondences, that we
see each natural event as a correspondence for a spiritual event which is
primary, that is, the cause of the natural event. Physical disciplines like
Yoga are natural activities. To the
A choir at a distance was heard one morning. From the
choir's representations I was permitted to know that they were Chinese, for
they exhibited a kind of woolly goat, then a cake of millet, and an ebony
spoon, also the idea of a floating city. They desired to come nearer to me, and
when they had joined me they said that they wished to be alone with me, that
they might disclose their thoughts. But they were told that they were not
alone, and that some were displeased at their wishing to be alone, although
they were guests.
When they perceived this displeasure they began to think
whether they had transgressed against the neighbour, and whether they had
claimed anything to themselves that belonged to others. All thought in the
other life being communicated, I was permitted to perceive the agitation of
their minds. It consisted of a recognition that
possibly they had injured those who were displeased, of shame on that account,
together with other worthy affections; and it was thus known that they were
endowed with charity. (AC 2596)
'The spoon-bill', 'the duck', 'the owl', 'the raven' stand
for varieties of falsity which arise when Divine truths in the Word are
rendered valueless. (AC 5044)
I was once allowed to perceive the nature of conjugial love
among polygamists. ... After conversing with me for a while at a distance, the
substitute sent me an ivory spoon and other tokens that they came from him. At
the same time a passage was opened up to transmit the heat of conjugial love
experienced there. It was perceived by me as resembling the fetid warmth of a
bath-house; on feeling it I turned away, and the passage by which it was
transmitted was closed off. (CL 344)
In other
words, the spiritual dimension of the spoon I brought home represented
something about foreigners and their innocent as well as perverted affections
and beliefs.
When we
discuss physical disciplines, we must also include mental disciplines like
meditation, shamanism, and asceticism. Many people consider mental disciplines
to be spiritual in contrast to physical disciplines. But to the
Finally I talked with the spirits of that world about the
belief of the inhabitants of our world concerning their resurrection.
I said they were unable to conceive of people coming into
the next life immediately after death, and then looking like people in face,
body, arms and feet, having all their outward and inward senses. Even less could they believe that they would
then wear clothes and have houses and places to live.
This was entirely due to the fact that most people here base
their thinking on bodily sense-impressions, so that they do not believe in the
existence of what they cannot see and touch.
Few of them can be withdrawn from outward sense-impressions towards
inward ones, and so be lifted into the light of heaven in which inward
impressions can be received.
It is for this reason that they cannot have any concept of
their soul or spirit as being a person, but think of it as wind, air or some
formless breath, which yet contains some vitality. This is the reason that they
believe they will only be resurrected at the end of the world, which they call
the Last Judgment, thinking that their body, though collapsed into dust and
scattered to all the winds, must then be brought back and reunited with their
soul or spirit.
[2] I added that they
are allowed to hold this belief, because there is no other way that those who,
as I said, base their thinking on outward sense-impressions, could think of
their soul or spirit living as a person in human form, except by re-entering
the body they carried around with them in the world. Unless therefore the body were said to be
resurrected, they would at heart reject the teaching on resurrection and
everlasting life as incomprehensible.
(...)
[4] For they are
unaware that each person is inwardly a spirit, and the life of the body and all
its parts comes from the spirit, not from the body by itself. They do not know that it is the spirit which
is the real person, sharing its form, but invisible to the body's eyes, being
visible only to the eyes of spirits.
Hence it is too that, when a person's spirit has its sight opened, which
is the result of the withdrawal of the body's sight, angels can be seen as
people. So it was that angels appeared
to the ancients, as related in the Word.
I have had several conversations with spirits whom I knew
when they were people living in the world, and asked whether they wanted to be
clothed again with their earthly bodies, as they had previously imagined. On hearing this they ran off to a distance at
the mere idea of being reunited, in astonishment at having been led in the
world to think so by blind faith without any understanding. (EU 165)
The
afterlife is existence in the spiritual world. The spiritual world is a
rational world while the natural world is a physical world. If we arrive in the
afterlife with nothing but a corporeal idea of the afterlife, our mind does not
contain natural-rational ideas, but only natural-corporeal and natural-sensuous
ideas. The existence we have in the spiritual world is completely determined by
the ideas we bring with us. Ideas based on sensuous impressions from the
physical senses contain within them evil affections and delights. But ideas
based on rational truths from revelation contain within them good affections
and delights. Good affections and delights are incorporated into the heavens
while evil affections and delights are incorporated into the hells. Good
affections can only exist within rational truths; evil affections can only
exist in sensuous fallacies. What is called spiritual in a genuine sense is related
to rational truths within which are good affections. But sensuous and corporeal
ideas are not rational and contain evil affections.
Meditation
is a mental activity but the cognitive level of this activity remains natural,
not yet spiritual. All mental activity in the natural mind is not yet
spiritual, only natural. For mental activity to be spiritual, it must exist in
the interior-natural mind, which is a discrete degree above the
natural-rational mind. The interior-natural mind is purely rational, therefore
genuinely spiritual. This mental activity is not from self, as is the activity
in our natural-rational and natural-sensuous. The activity in the
interior-natural mind is nothing but the reaction by correspondence to what’s
going on in the interior unconscious spiritual mind that is occupied by the
angels. Therefore the activity in the interior-natural mind allows us to be
rationally conscious of the spiritual world, its events, heaven, and the Lord.
This is no speechless ecstasy or religious swooning, but only rational
understanding of interior truths. These interior truths are genuine spiritual
and conjoin us to the Lord and heaven. The expression “higher consciousness”
properly refers to this consciousness of the activity in our interior-natural mind.
How the this mind is opened by the Lord is discussed in Chapter
7 Sections 8 and 9.
5. Regeneration
Requires Rational Consciousness
Referring
to the New Church mind, there is no way that we can ‘break through’ to higher
consciousness by meditating on the Lord or on the Writings, or by inhibiting
content to one’s thinking while sitting in meditation or some posture of
repentance. The only way for the New Church mind to draw near to the Lord and
to the higher consciousness angels are in, is through rational
consciousness, not natural (xx). This is because all the concepts of the Second
Coming are rational, and all the ideas of the angels are rational, not natural.
This is necessary since the New Heavens of the Lord’s Second Coming have
replaced all the old heavens, so that the angels had to acquire the rational
truths of the Divine Human revealed in the Writings. All those who now enter
heaven must do so through these “interior rational” truths, also called
“spiritual-rational” truths, and also “celestial truths.” The spiritual sense
of the Writings is called the Heavenly Doctrines, and all the ideas of this
Divine Doctrine are spiritual-rational and celestial.
Meditation
and other specialized cognitive activities cannot contain any
spiritual-rational concepts, but only natural-corporeal and natural-sensuous ideas,
visions, or realizations. In Eastern practice of these specialized cognitive
activities it is expected that such cosmic breakthroughs to God do occur. But
the
For us
there cannot be a supreme moment of achievement in meditation whereby the Lord
breaks through from within and presents Himself to us sensuously, as He
did to Swedenborg, and others before him in visions,
as the Bible testifies. In the new era of the Second Coming the Lord can only
come to us in the interior-natural, after He opens it (AE 708[2]). And
this opening can occur only to the extent that our natural-rational has been
appropriately prepared by a life of discipline and virtue (reformation and regeneration).
Meditation and Yoga, and etc., can be useful as lessons in discipline to the
external man, but not as sensuous breakthroughs to the Lord in the internal
man, or of reaching higher spiritual consciousness.
Those who receive the light of intelligence from the Lord as
a sun are those with whom the intellectual and its rational have been opened,
and who have, in consequence, thought rationally about what should be believed
from the spiritual affection of truth; while those who receive light from the
Lord as a moon are those in whom the intellectual and interior rational have
not been opened, but only the natural, and who in consequence have thought from
the memory about what should be believed; and to think about this from the
memory is to think only from such things as have been heard from a teacher or
preacher, which they call truths and believe to be truths although they may be
falsities, since they are not seen beyond the memory.
If such while in the world were also in the faith of
charity, they are in the heavens under the Lord as a moon, for the lumen, from
which is their intelligence, is like the moon's lumen in the nighttime, while
the light from which is the intelligence of those who are in the heavens under
the Lord as a sun is like the light of day.
(...)
Their affection of knowing truth and doing good is, like
themselves, natural, thus deriving more or less from the glory of being
learned, and from reputation that looks to honors and gain as rewards,
differing in this from such spiritual affection of knowing truth and doing good
as those have who are in heaven under the Lord as a sun, for with these this
affection is so separated from natural affection that the natural affection is
under the feet.
(...)
To this is to be added, that there are three heavens that
are under the Lord as a moon, a higher, a middle, and a lower; or what is the
same, an interior, a middle, and an exterior, but yet all who are in these
heavens are natural. These heavens are interior, middle, and exterior, because
the natural like the spiritual is divided into three degrees; the
exterior-natural communicates with the world, the interior with heaven, and the
middle conjoins.
Nevertheless, those who are in the heavens under the Lord as
a moon cannot enter into the heavens that are under the Lord as a sun, because
their interior sight or understanding has been formed to receive the lunar
light there, and not to receive the solar light. They are comparatively not
unlike those birds that see in the night and not in the daytime, consequently
when they come into the sunlight that those have who
are under the Lord as a sun their sight is darkened. Those who are in these
heavens are those who have been in charity according to their religious
principle, or according to their faith; but such as are natural and are not in
the faith of charity are in the hells under these heavens. (AE 708)
Note the
statement in the next to the last paragraph in the quote: “the natural like the
spiritual is divided into three degrees; the exterior-natural communicates with
the world, the interior with heaven, and the middle conjoins.” Here the
“exterior-natural” refers to the three levels in the natural mind: corporeal,
sensuous, and rational. these are called external in
contrast to the “internal man” which refers to the spiritual mind, here called
the “interior degree that communicates with heaven.” And in between the
internal man and the external man is “the middle that conjoins” the two. This
middle portion is called the interior-natural mind.
Fore
greater clarity of conceptualization, please consult the diagrams in Chapter 7
Sections 8 and 9.
6. The Two
Phases Of Regeneration
The
But in fact
disciplines are implied in the Writings where regeneration is discussed—which
is indeed almost everywhere. The rational concepts of the Writings easily lead
us to formulate any number of disciplines suitable for our regeneration, as
illustrated in this volume. We shall call them “regeneration disciplines.” They
are spiritual disciplines as well as religious disciplines because of the purpose
that motivates us to perform the discipline repeatedly in daily activities,
hour by hour, and minute by minute. Regeneration refers to the biological
process of growing new spiritual fibers in huge quantities. A fiber is an
organic part of the will and the understanding, which are the two organs that
make up the human mind.
To grow a
new spiritual fiber we must reconnect an old spiritual fiber. This is because
the old fibers are coiled the wrong way in a permanent organic structure that
is an image or model of hell, thus infernal, monstrous, and opposed to heaven.
This mass of ossified, dehumanized, blob is connected to the hells,
communicates with the hells, is influenced by the hells, and with irresistible
force pulls the individual to hell in the afterlife. It is called “man’s
proprium” (xx). This is the Fall of the human race.
Now when any infant is born on earth its proprium irresistibly leads it to hell
in the afterlife. In order to alter this biology, the Lord has provided the
process of regeneration. This involves a rebirth phase called reformation of
the understanding, and a regeneration phase of the will. The regenerated mind
is new mind, not a repaired or fixed up old mind. The entire old mind must be
put to sleep, and the entire new mind must be grown into a new understanding
and a new will.
Any
individual is regenerated who is willing. The process involves two phases.
Phase 1:
Reformation of the understanding or cognitive mind.
This
involves studying the Writings and having its literal sentences available in
the mind in order to evaluate the concepts and ideas we have. The cognitive
mind is made of our concepts and ideas, and the reasoning process we use to
make decisions in all things of life. These life strategies run our daily and hourly
decisions and dictate our attitudes. Thinking is involved in everything we
do—getting dressed, driving to work, having a conversation, daydreaming,
reading the Writings, etc. Every second of life occupies at least one thinking
act, and possibly more, so that on any day we have a potential of performing
more than 86,000 thinking acts. This is daily. Now we must examine as many of
them as possible in the light of what we know from the Writings. Do they fit or do they not? It will be
seen more and more THAT NONE FIT! The reason for this is fully explained in
Volume 1. Reformation takes months, sometimes years, in order to rearrange
everything in the mind. But sooner or later, enough things in the mind are
rearranged that we can begin phase 2, even as we continue working on phase 1.
The Lord provides for an overlap for the sake of maximum progress in our
regeneration.
Phase 2:
Regeneration of the will or affective mind.
The
understanding is reformed from without, using the Letter of the Writings which
we have taken up in our natural-rational mind (see phase 1). The will is
regenerated from within, when we apply the Doctrine of the Letter in our
understanding to our motives. This is called from within, while the
understanding is called from without, because the organ to the will is a
discrete degree above the organ of the understanding. This is why we say that
the motive is within the act, “within” referring to a discrete degree above. Every act of thinking is performed FROM THE
WILL. No act of thinking can take place on its own for it has no power,
just as my electric toaster could not operate when I don’t plug it in. The will
provides the power and the on/off timing of every act of thinking. The organ of
the will is made of spiritual fibers that are tied to either hell or heaven.
The will cannot live or exist when not so tied to either heaven or hell.
The
unregenerate will is called the proprium or self. Human beings are nothing but
affections that exteriorize as thinking acts, which in turn exteriorize as sensory
and motor acts of the physical body. Human actions are therefore produced by a
threefold self: the will, the understanding, and the sensorimotor or corporeal
mind. This threefold self is the person, the body being nothing but an
inanimate chemical plant under the control of the threefold self.
Disciplines
are systematic methods we learn to carry out our share of the regeneration
task. The Lord activates and animates everything in our will, understanding,
and body. And yet, He provides that some of this activity be appropriated to
our regenerated self, to the extent that we are willing to suffer ourselves to
perform the task of conscious self-monitoring of our acts of willing and
thinking. Since we perform many thousands of such acts every day, you can see
why regeneration takes the entire life on earth. It also continues in heaven,
but in a different form.
Physical
and mental disciplines cannot add to our salvation but moral disciplines can.
This is because the moral level of willing and thinking is in the natural-rational
mind, a discrete degree above the natural-sensuous and corporeal where mental
disciplines exist. Yet not all moral disciplines of life are spiritual and
contributors to our salvation. The moral level of thinking that is located in the
natural-rational mind is a natural way of thinking, not yet spiritual. The
spiritual level begins in the interior rational, also called the
spiritual-rational. This is located in the spiritual mind, a discrete degree
above the natural mind. But the spiritual mind is unconscious while we are tied
to the physical body. Therefore the Lord provides for another way we can be
conscious of the spiritual. He creates the interior-natural mind within the
natural-rational mind, as frequently explained in this book (see especially
Chapter 7 Sections 8 and 9).
The moral
decisions we make can be animated to have a spiritual within them if we are
motivated by the desire to regenerate in accordance with the instructions in
the Letter of the Writings. Fro example, we refrain from cheating on an exam or
a declaration form. Why? First, because we don’t want to get
into trouble later. This is a natural motive. Later, we refrain because
we value integrity of character. This is a higher motive, yet it is still
natural because in the natural mind. At reformation, we refrain because it is
contrary to the commandments in the Writings. During regeneration, the Lord
brings deep seated hidden motives to our awareness so that we may be tempted to
go ahead and cheat and make false declarations when we can justify it to
ourself. Now if we refrain because to cheat or be deceitful would be preventing
our old will from being put to sleep. Any active affection we permit, remains
and cannot be put to sleep by the Lord. Note then, that the spiritual doesn’t
begin until regeneration of the will begins. Reformation of the understanding
is not yet spiritual if it is not carried out into the will (xx).
7. Turning A Moral Discipline Into Spiritual
Moral life may
be lived either for the sake of the Divine or for the sake of men in the world;
and a moral life that is lived for the sake of the Divine is a spiritual life.
In outward form the two appear alike, but in inward form they are entirely
different; the one saves a man, the other does not. For he who lives a moral
life for the sake of the Divine is led by the Divine; while he who leads a
moral life for the sake of men in the world is led by himself. (HH 319)
Clearly,
then, our moral behavior or conduct is not sufficient to form the
This is a
matter of our heaven or hell! To enter our inner mind and to observe the
affections behind our thinking and behavior is the regeneration discipline
called self-witnessing. This is a spiritual discipline to the extent it
is done for the purpose of our salvation—meaning that we are motivated to form a
new mind in accordance with Divine Commandments which we have taken up for
ourselves from the Letter of the Writings. In
the Writings every truth we understand is a Divine Commandment that we must
obey, or else we cannot complete the formation of the
At this point something will now be said on how the internal
man is reformed and how the external man is reformed -by means of it. The
internal man is not reformed merely by knowing, understanding and being wise,
and consequently merely by thinking; but by willing what knowledge, understanding
and wisdom teach.
When a man knows, understands and has wisdom to see that
there is a heaven and a hell, and that all evil is from hell and all good is
from heaven; and if he then does not will evil because it is from hell, but
wills good because it is from heaven, he is in the first stage of reformation,
and is at the threshold out of hell into heaven.
When he progresses further, and wills to desist from evils
he is in the second stage of reformation, and is now outside hell but not yet
in heaven, which he sees above him. A man must have such an internal in order
that he may be reformed; but he is not reformed unless the external as well as
the internal is reformed.
The external is reformed by means of the internal when the
external desists from the evils which the internal does not will because they
are infernal, and still more when the external for this reason shuns them and
fights against them. Thus willing is the part of the internal and doing of the
external. For unless a man does that which he wills there is within him the
failure to will which eventually becomes want of will.
[2] From these few considerations it can be seen how the
external man is reformed by means of the internal. This also is what is meant
by the Lord's words to Peter:
Jesus said: If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
[Simon] Peter saith unto Him: Lord, not my feet only, but
also my hands and my head.
Jesus saith to him: He that is washed needeth not save to
wash his feet, but is clean every whit. John xiii. 8, 9, 10.
By washing is meant spiritual washing, which is purification
from evils; by washing the head and hands is meant purifying the internal man;
and by washing the feet is meant purifying the external man. That the external
man must be purified when the internal has been purified is meant by this,
"He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his
feet." That all purification from evils is from the Lord is meant by this,
"If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." It has been shown in
many places in the ARCANA CAELESTIA that washing among the Jews represented
purification from evils, and that this is signified in the Word by washing; and
that by washing the feet is signified the purification of the natural or
external man. (DP 151)
The
“external man” referred to here is not the physical body since the mind is
being discussed. The external man refers to the lower regions in the natural
mind called the corporeal and sensuous mind. The “internal man” here is not
referring to the spiritual mind, as elsewhere in the Writings (xx). Here the
internal man refers to the upper portions of the natural mind called the
natural-rational mind. It is said that the external man is reformed by means of
the internal man. This means that the lower natural mind (sensuous) is reformed
by means to the higher natural mind (rational). It is the natural-rational mind
that holds the motives and concepts of regeneration from the study of the
Writings as the Divine Word. This is the mind that must compel the sensuous and
corporeal mind to obey.
This Number
makes it clear that reformation and regeneration is about our willing and
thinking, moment by moment, all day long, every day. It is necessary therefore
that we acquire means or techniques by which we can become aware of the willing
and the thinking we do all day long. This technique is therefore a
self-witnessing activity, that is, a self-monitoring activity in which we keep
track of what affections and thoughts occupy our mind.
The state of a
person's mind in the natural world determines its state in the spiritual world. (TCR 816)
8. If I’m A Good Man, Why Do I Need To Be Regenerated?
I received
this email message from a man who read a few portions of this book:
If we throw God away, we are still left with our neighbour. Whether
one believes in God or not, one is still left with how one will deal with one's
fellow man.
Only one course is open to man. Basic
human decency. Whether we believe God to be a very personal divine human
or a very impersonal force, there can only be one option: to treat other people
well and kindly.
It is impossible for one who has treated (on the whole) his
fellow-man kindly and fairly, not to end up in heaven. It is similar to a piece
of cork that cannot be submerged under the water. The kind man will jump his
way into heaven! Even the loudest atheist will eventually find himself in
heaven, IF he has been kind to his fellow
man.
From the
perspective of the Writings, we can recognize this argument as sadly wrong. It
draws a nonduality between having no faith, having little faith, having much
faith. It puts the idea of having faith in God on a continuum, and that it is
not of a fundamental importance where on the scale of faith people locate
themselves, as long as they are good people who were kind to the neighbor—they
will all end up in heaven. And the implication usually is that, therefore let
us not argue much about religion, and let everyone believe whatever they want
as long as they are good to the neighbor. This implication makes a nonduality
out of having a true religion and having a false religion. It puts all
religions people practice on a continuum from “whatever religion” to what is
true religion, should there be such a thing. It also makes a nonduality out of
heaven and hell, supposing that people are lined up on a continuum of being
good, from saintliness to average, to mischievous, and on to less and less
good.
Instead of these nondualities about religion, faith, and heaven, there
only absolute dualities in the
Why does
this happen? How can it happen? The Writings explain it rationally and
scientifically. We are born a dual citizen—a spirit attached to a physical
body. The spirit, which is our organic mind or self, is born in the world of
spirits and remains there while the physical body and natural mind are built up
on some earth surrounded by nature and our sensory-motor experience of it. Upon
the death of the physical body, our mind suddenly awakens in our spirit-body
where it had been since birth. But now the rules of reality are different, and
we can no longer be a divided person, such as a hypocrite or a
wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing. Since the physical body is gone our sprit-body is
totally free and cannot but express the quality of the
loves we have built up in our natural mind. With the physical body gone, we
remain such as we arrive (xx).
9. The
Physical Body Hides The Spiritual Devil Within
While we
are attached to the physical body, it absorbs the organic life of our loves in
the will. People can train themselves to totally hide what they’re actually
feeling, thinking, or desiring. But with the physical body gone, there is no
absorption and covering up of one’s desires, attractions, and motives. These
feelings in the will plainly show to the other spirits and angels who can see
from some distance whether they are good or evil.
Furthermore,
and most important to know, is that it is not possible to change these desires
and attractions, once the physical body is cut off from our spirit. Shortly
after arrival in the afterlife, our spirit-body undergoes a separation or
homogenization process. Those who will be entering heaven may have evil loves
to which they are attached, which they were unwilling to give up in the life of
the physical body. So now they must undergo a purification process by which
they are given the choice to at last cast out these evil loves. This is a very
painful process because it is much more conflictual to give up evil loves when
we already are in the spirit-body. Having completed purification, they can
enter heavenly life with all the good loves they developed in life.
Those who
will be entering hell must be prepared for life there. Nothing good can remain
attached to them from whatever good affections they acquired prior to the
separation of the physical body. For example a kind man who felt a private
arrogance and disdain for others, nevertheless loved his country, his children,
his animals, his parents, and a few sincere friends. He was willing to be kind
and generous with them. But inwardly this kindness and generosity was attached
to what is his own in others. His children were his own. His country is his
own. His parents and friends are his own. So he loved his own in them. But as
soon as his own is removed from them, he hates them. And this hate comes out in
the spirit-body which compels him to pounce and devour and destroy. He now
hates children and goes into a violent fury when seeing an infant (xx). Similarly with loving a woman or wife. Inwardly this love is
a love of one’s own, and as soon as the wife ceases to favor him, he pounces on
her. Now, upon entering hell, he must give up any of the good traits he had
even if it was only for what is his own in others. When nothing of good is left,
even apparent good, he enters hell and lives the life of sub-human insanity
filled only with terrible fantasies.
10. Spiritual
Insanity Chains Us To Hell
How do we
make sure that we avoid such a terrible fate? We lead a busy life, we take care
of our family, we pay our taxes, we’re decent neighbors, we go to war for our
country, we work and produce something useful, we support the community
organizations—WHAT MORE DOES IT TAKE TO BE A GOOD PERSON??
From the
perspective of the Writings we can see clearly what the answer is, and we can
explain it rationally. What it takes to be a good person is to look to God and
expect Him to tell us, to lead us, to empower us. This is what it takes to be a
good man. There is no other way to be a good person. Why? Because
good exists only from God (xx). If we don’t get it from God, we don’t
have any. And God gives every person good
according to this person’s free choice for accepting. Some people are
willing to accept a lot of good from God, and they are good people, very good
people, heavenly people. Others are willing to accept
just a few goods from God, and reject all the rest He desires to give them.
What is the reason that we do not accept most of the goods God wants to give
us? The answer from the Writings is explained rationally and scientifically.
The reason
is that we are born with a spirit that is deformed and monstrous, like those
who dwell in the hells. This inherited deformation consists of our spiritual
fibers in the organs of the will and understanding: they are twisted around in
a horrible looking mess. This is because they are attached to the hells and
reflect the appearance of hell. Everyone’s spirit is malformed from heredity.
The entire human race has this hereditary infirmity. We are born with evil affections
in the will. Every baby and infant has it, but it is kept suppressed by the
angels who are guarding the spirit of that child in the world of spirits. But
after some months have elapsed from birth, it is more and more difficult for
the angels to stay around as guards because the child is unwilling to stay in
that state of mind. Evil affections are so attractive and so delightful that
they engage in much bad behavior, contrary to order, breaking the peace, being
cruel and selfish, obeying foolishness instead of the wisdom of parents and
caretakers.
As a
growing infant or child we turn away from the angels because we love the evil
delights more than the good. The evil delights are from hell and fit the
twisted coils of our will an understanding. Bad things give us more pleasure
and enthusiasm, more happiness, than good things. Good things flow through the
twisted coils in our will and we feel tortured, obsessed, in a rage. We fly off
the handle because good feels like torture to evil. Good affections from the
angels flow into our mind—like being nice instead of rude, or being responsible
instead of irresponsible. When affections flow in from the angels they are
coiled in the shape of heaven. But the shape of the coils in the will run in
the opposite direction! They are modeled according to the shape of hell.
Therefore a huge battle arises as to which shape is going to prevail.
As it is desirable that the origin of perception, internal
dictate, and conscience, should be known, and as at the present day it is
altogether unknown, I may relate something on the subject. It is a great truth
that man is governed by the Lord by means of spirits and angels. When evil
spirits begin to rule, the angels labor to avert evils
and falsities, and hence arises a combat. It is this combat of which the man is
rendered sensible by perception, dictate, and conscience. By these, and also by
temptations, a man might clearly see that spirits and angels are with him, were
he not so deeply immersed in corporeal things as to believe nothing that is
said about spirits and angels. Such persons, even if they were to feel these
combats hundreds of times, would still say that they are imaginary, and the
effect of a disordered mind. I have been permitted to feel such combats, and to
have a vivid sense of them, thousands and thousands of times, and this almost
constantly for several years, as well as to know who, what, and where they were
that caused them, when they came, and when they departed; and I have conversed
with them. (AC 227)
This
spiritual combat is felt in the conscious natural mind by the action of
correspondence. Whatever happens in our
unconscious spiritual mind has a corresponding effect in our conscious natural
mind. This is felt more clearly and definitely as we focus in on our habits
of willing and thinking.
The Lord grants every individual a
free and crucial choice for our fate and future: Will we compel ourselves to
keep our focus on this constant activity going on in the mind, or will we
largely ignore it, relying on outward deeds and occasional self-examination. This is where we begin to realize
that a self-witnessing discipline is necessary if we are going to keep the
focus and monitor the thousands of acts of willing and thinking every day and
hour of our allotted time on earth. According to life expectancy in the Western
countries today, the average man has approximately two-and-a-half billion
seconds (2.5 billion) on this earth. If we remove one-third for unconscious
sleep, we will make a little over one-and-a-half billion acts in our willing
and thinking during conscious waking time. So that’s the average man has in
terms of opportunity to examine, repent, and modify more than a billion times
while we are still attached to the physical body. Once we make the transition
and awaken in our spirit-body, we are in a radically new situation. Without the
physical body to absorb the affections in our will, and without the fear of
punishment and death, we lose all restraint in controlling our impulses.
Whatever
loves we left deposited in our will now become our master and we cannot
restrain them. If these impulses in the will are contrary to Divine Order, the
spirit must be restrained by separation from others to prevent their
victimization. This separation is actually an incarceration in eternal hell.
Why eternal? Because the spirit refuses to let go of the evil
impulses despite repeated invitations by the guardian angels to come up to
heaven. But this is not possible without giving up the evil impulses,
and this the spirit is never going to agree to, not to an eternity—such is its
amazing tenacity and love for insanity. And it must be remembered that we are
born inverted in our spirit so that our evil affections and impulses appear to
us as good, since they are so delightful. And due to this, we judge falsities
as spiritual truths, and we judge spiritual truths as falsities. This prevents
us from knowing the reality that all our acts are from evil affections until we
are willing to undergo reformation by means of spiritual truths obtained from
the Writings. For the Writings is the only source of spiritual truths in the
new era of the Second Coming (xx). All those on earth who do not know about the
Writings, nevertheless will be taught its concepts when arriving in the afterlife
(xx).
Those will
then accept the truths who have lived their life
sincerely in accordance with the Word and Doctrine available to them from
conscience, religion or faith. But those who did not submit themselves in life
to conscience, religion, or faith for the sake of God, will reject the truths,
and thus reject heavenly life where obedience to the Doctrine from the Writings
is life itself. All those who are unwilling to live their life in such
obedience to God’s Word, are then prepared for life in hell. All their good
traits are isolated in the will and rendered inanimate. This is done by angels
from the Lord who gives them perception into the spirit’s interior will. It’s a
kind of spiritual surgery, as I imagine it. At last, without any good and true functioning,
the spirit is ready to enter hell where it maintains itself at a sub-human life
made of insanity and revolting fantasies. There they choose to remain forever
no mater how many times they are offered entry to heaven. They hate heavenly
obedience more than the misery of hell. That’s why they are sub-human and
appear to angles looking down as monstrous devils, insane satans,
obsessed genii, repulsive sirens, and the like, these sorry outward appearance
being reflections of their love for self and hatred for God.
To focus on
the thousands of acts of willing and thinking every day, means to monitor and
keep track of them. Note that normal
social life does not require this kind of self-knowing. Society requires
that we know things outside of ourselves, like the history of our country, or
the multiplication table, or how to read instructions and write messages. But
there is no requirement that we monitor our feelings, motives, thoughts, and
interior dialog with ourselves. Once in awhile, if get called on the witness
stand, we might have to report on some of our willing and thinking. We are
asked, Why did you do this? Or, What
did you decide then? Or, Were you in love with her at
that time? Etc. It is required by law that we answer honestly, but knowing the
answer is not a requirement. In that case we reply, I don’t remember, and the
court accepts it. But the court does hold us responsible for knowing things
outside of ourselves, such as, Did you see him or not? and,
Were you ever contacted by this person” etc.
And yet,
for our eternal fate in the afterlife, this external knowledge is not at all
crucial, and will only last us as long as we are attached to the physical body,
while the
usefulness of the interior knowledge will last us to eternity. Clearly the
interior knowledge is immeasurably more important than the external knowledge,
and yet, prior to our reformation, everyone favors the external knowledge, and
pursues it, hardly paying attention to the far more crucial interior knowledge,
which is knowledge about the character of our willing and thinking all day
long.
This sad
and terrible situation is the result of rejecting the goods God desires to give
us, and instead, leading our life by self-intelligence and self-reliance in
spiritual matters. When we declare that we are an atheist, agnostic, secular
humanist, materialist, cynic, realist, etc., we are making the free choice of
leading ourselves in spiritual matters. The Writings say that this is spiritual
insanity (xx). Spiritual insanity is the
state of our spirit when we replace truth with falsified truth in our
understanding. This is inevitable when we lead ourselves in spiritual
matters since we are born spiritually insane, and what is insane cannot be made
sane except by receiving truths from God. To receive truths from God, one must
acknowledge Him and His Word. Those who do not have the Word or knowledge
derived from it, then must acknowledge their
conscience as the inner Voice of God in them.
Note well:
If they obey conscience without acknowledging that is the Voice of God, they
cannot be reformed and all their good behavior and good intentions are only
exterior, and within this nice interior, there remains their secret loves of
evil delights. In the afterlife they are never willing to let go of a single
one, and so their life is in hell. But if we acknowledge the voice of
conscience as God operating within them and guiding what they must do to go to
heaven, then they arrive in the afterlife prepared to obey God’s Order in the
truths taught to them at that time by the welcoming angels.
God gives us the ability or power to
obey our conscience because it is essential that we make free choices, without
which we can have no sense of self, no sense of human happiness.
Since we
are born with the fibers coiled and modeled after the shapes of hell, we are
filled with evil delights that we are unwilling by free choice to let go of,
and to detest. These evil affections motivate our thinking to reason in a
certain way that the conclusion will be favored by the evil affection.
Therefore God must give us a conscience that has the power to resist evil
delights. In addition to conscience, God reveals reality and truth in His Word.
This knowledge about Himself and the spiritual world,
spreads throughout society through religion, theology, education, reading, art,
entertainment. Almost no one of the human race is raised without finding out
about God’s existence and about life after death. We freely make the choice to
reject the idea of God. After that we are on the road down to hell since no
other source of truths is available to the human race. And we must have these
truths from God to guide our conscience and decisions. Without these truths,
not God guides us, but devils in hell to which our spirit is attached by birth.
Our
spiritual insanity doesn’t show in our social relations and work. The strong
motive for self-preservation drives us to hide and moderate the insanity that
wants to break out into the open and enjoy the delights of mayhem and violence,
of seduction and corruption, of theft and deception, of vulgarity and
obscenity. These awful affections in our will are kept in moderation and
suppression by the stronger motive of self-preservation, for in all societies
it is forbidden to do these things unchecked, and doles out punishment to those
who go beyond the accepted limits. Societies do this for their own
self-preservation since no society can survive without punishing behaviors that
have no limits of self-restrain (xx).
The motive
for self-preservation has many components and enters into other motives that
seem like altruism rather than self-preservation. But this is a false
appearance that must be detected when we examine our habitual willing and
thinking. During reformation, and throughout the long years of regeneration, we
can become conscious, to the extent that we care to, of habits of willing and
thinking that are clearly selfish when we look at them. The external act of the
physical body may be consistently kind and responsible, to such an extent that
spouse, family, friends, and coworkers would rate this individual very highly
on a scale of kindness and good will.
But heaven
cannot be obtained by merit because it has to do with fibers and coils in the
will. Self-preservation, desire for success and power, and many secret passions
within our will, drive us to exert control over our appearance, visible acts,
reputation, language, style. The outward acts are forced, not preferred. If
others were able to access a man’s feelings and thoughts, would they still
think of him as kind and decent when they can see he wishes them ill, despises
them in comparison to himself, and cares nothing for their suffering. They
would recoil from him like he is a monster and wicked devil, which he is, since
tied to the devils in hell by heredity. We are each like this prior to
reformation.
And what is required for
reformation? The return to God and to the Word by which He
reveals Himself and reality, that is, spiritual truth.
11. Spiritual
Sanity Is To Return To God And To The Word
Keeping all
of the above in mind, let us get back to the email message that started the
discussion in this section:
If we throw God away, we are still left with our neighbour. Whether
one believes in God or not, one is still left with how one will deal with one's
fellow man.
Only one course is open to man. Basic
human decency. Whether we believe God to be a very personal divine human
or a very impersonal force, there can only be one option: to treat other people
well and kindly.
It is impossible for one who has treated (on the whole) his
fellow-man kindly and fairly, not to end up in heaven. It is similar to a piece
of cork that cannot be submerged under the water. The kind man will jump his
way into heaven! Even the loudest atheist will eventually find himself in
heaven, IF he has been kind to his fellow
man.
And so the
answer to this point of view is that there is no “basic human decency” except
in humans who have been reformed and regenerated (xx). This biological activity
in the will cannot occur except by means of understanding revealed truth, which
is spiritual reality. The truths of the Word and the Doctrine of our religion
or faith, must be taken up in our mind by means of
reading the Word as a Divine Book, Holy because it is God speaking to our mind.
Once our understanding is reformed, we can undergo the required regeneration by
using our understanding to compel ourselves to reject what we prefer, and to
choose what we know is from God and heaven.
The notion
that “It is impossible for one who has treated (on the whole) his fellow-man
kindly and fairly, not to end up in heaven” is a spiritual insanity. What matters for living in heaven is not how
we treated others, but how we loved them. All loves from self are from
hell. Therefore, our only way to heaven is to abandon all our own loves and to
start loving only the things that are from heaven and God. We cannot decide on
our own what is from heaven and God because we are spiritually insane. this will always drive us to reject the loves of heaven, to
enter the loves of hell, and then to remain there by calling them loves of
heaven. This is the insanity. And this: “Even the loudest atheist will
eventually find himself in heaven, IF he has been kind to his fellow man.” This
is also spiritual insanity because heaven is from God, not from self. Hell is
from self. One cannot deny God and accept heaven. Denial of God leaves us
facing the hell with which our spirit was born.
From all
this you can see that knowing your willing and
thinking in detail reveals the evils that you delight in and partake in, and
are unwilling to give up. But only when they are held up to
the truths of reality in the Word. Rejecting the Word is death of the
spirit. But since the spirit is immortal, death refers to hell because life
there is sub-human misery in eternal insanity. It is not a punishment by God,
for God constantly sends angels to hell to beg all the inhabitants to repent,
reform, and enter heavenly happiness. But none are willing to listen to what to
them seems false and a worse choice than the misery in which they obstinately
keep themselves in forever. Such is the amazing stubbornness of self-willing
when allowed to grow to its own level of thinking and enjoyment.
For the
The Lord
commands us that we compel ourselves to reform as-of self by means of the
understanding we pick up from studying the Writings as Divine Truth in every
detail. Only this kind of study will put the Writings into our natural-rational
mind. Then, possessed by more and more spiritual truths, we can progress in our
regeneration. This progress depends on how much we are motivated to apply the
truths from the Writings to our daily willing and thinking. This is the
filtering process, the healing process, by which we become spiritually sane and
prepared for a life in heaven. From being born hellish and sub-human, we are
thus reborn human and angelic.
The
12. Macro-Behaviors
Are Regenerated By Means Of Micro-Behaviors
All acts we
do occur in a sequence and a setting. For example I awake at dawn, drive to the
beach with my wife, drive back and fix breakfast, and clean up the kitchen.
This is a morning routine that takes up a small portion of every day. As I
describe this to you, I use expressions that refer to macro-behaviors, or
behavior units that are fairly general. You can see that each detail mentioned, has sub-components that I do not mention. For instance, I
spend about one hour at the beach walk but I didn’t even mention that, nor did
I mention what sub-routines my beach walk consist of. One for instance, has to
do with saying good morning to the other beach walkers. This has many details
to be considered since it varies with each stranger we say good morning to.
And I don’t
even mention many things that I do while walking on the beach, such as admiring
the sunrise, listening to waves, watching the frigate birds high in the sky
looking for favorable air currents, and numerous other things. When I get down
to mentioning even more detail, I enter the micro-behavior world. Most people
do not describe things at this level for it would be too boring and even
meaningless, thus interfering with normal communication. For example, I could
describe what I do with my cell phone, not wanting to leave it in the car,
fearing another break in as we had twice before. When I enter the car I place
the tiny little phone on the tray, then when I arrive
at the beach, I pick it up and put in my right back pocket. I have my wallet in
my left back pocket. I have my keys in my left side pocket. I avoid putting the
cell phone with the keys for it makes a noise as I walk.
Who could
stand endlessly discussing such details on our daily round of routines? So we
don’t. And even each of these sub-details has sub-sub-details, like how I put
the phone in my back pocket as I exit the car. My back pocket seals with a
Velcro strip so I have to manage to open the flap held tight by the Velcro, as
I hold the cell phone in the hand. This takes some practice to do effectively.
And then
there are finer details to each of these little movements, as when I have a cut
healing on my finger and try to avoid opening the wound by putting pressure on
it at a certain angle. In each of these micro-behavior details there is a
threefold stepwise execution. First, I have a motive, like protecting my cut
finger from being injured as I open the Velcro flap. Second, I have a thought,
like monitoring the angle of pressure on the cut on my finger and judging at
which point I should no longer put pressure. Third, I have a sensorimotor
execution of the hand rotation, force exerted, and finger movement You can see then that willing and
thinking is performed in numerous sequence of micro-behaviors built into
macro-behaviors. The macro-behaviors cannot be modified unless the
micro-behaviors are modified first.
In fact
self-modification of macro-behaviors is achieved in two steps. First, there
must be a general motive or goal, such as going to the beach at dawn. All the
sub-behaviors and their micro-behaviors depend on this one macro-behavior
motive. The morning I decide to sleep in, all the micro-behaviors at the beach
do not occur. In regeneration, the motivation to modify macro-behaviors must
therefore come first. For example, I may decide that it is my citizen’s duty to
pick up sharp pieces of glasses I see as I walk, so as to prevent injury to
those who walk barefoot. In the past I did not do this. Now I’m motivated to be
a better beach citizen and to stop acting with indifference towards the danger.
This begins my regeneration effort with regard to this one area. It starts with
a macro-motivation.
Now I need
to struggle to regenerate all the micro-behaviors. For example, I see something
a few feet away that might be a piece of glass. I should go over there and
examine it, but I don’t want to break my aerobic pace, so I keep walking. I
feel bothered. Now I can continue to walk or I can turn back. I’m in a
struggle. And so on. You can see that the micro-behaviors confront the actual
issues involved in carrying out the macro-behavior. Motives are set within
motives in a complex hierarchy and we cannot regenerate the macro-behavior unless
we tackle and modify the lower issues attendant to the micro-behaviors. This
applies to all regeneration.
13. Self-Witnessing
Our Micro-Behaviors
Self-witnessing
is a term I’ve been using for decades to refer to my long standing penchant for
metanoid self-monitoring. This is a dual focus—one on the mental activity going
on, and one on its monitoring and evaluation. I became consciously aware of my
metanoid focus in my early twenties, though it felt so familiar that I always
seem to have had it, but not by conscious reflection, until my twenties. The
Writings speak of this double focus in connection with self-examination,
repentance, and regeneration (e.g., DP 114).
[A person] can from wisdom above view the
love that is below, and in this way can view his thoughts, intentions,
affections, and therefore the evils and falsities as well as the goods and
truths of his life and doctrine; and without a knowledge and acknowledgment of
these in himself he cannot be reformed. (DP 16)
Without self-examination, recognition, acknowledgment,
confession and rejection of sins, thus without repentance, there is no
forgiveness of them, thus no salvation, but eternal condemnation (DP 114)
IV. EVILS IN THE EXTERNAL, MAN CANNOT BE REMOVED BY THE LORD
EXCEPT THROUGH MAN'S INSTRUMENTALITY
It is only religion which renews and regenerates a person.
Religion is allotted the highest place in the human mind, and sees below it the
social matters which concern the world. Religion too climbs up through these as
the pure sap rises in a tree to its top, and from that lofty position it has a
view of natural matters, just as someone on a tower or a mountain has a view of
the plains beneath. (TCR 601)
The will inclines from birth towards evils, even to those
which are enormous; hence, unless it were restrained by means of the
understanding, a man would rush into acts of wickedness, indeed, from his
inherent savage nature, he would destroy and slaughter, for the sake of
himself, all who do not favor and indulge him. (ISB 14)
From these
and many other passages in the Writings we acquire the idea that constant
self-witnessing is a method that allows us to carry out the cooperation with
the Lord that He commands us to perform because it is necessary for our
regeneration. When you begin self-witnessing one striking aspect of it is to
become conscious of the macro and micro-integration of human willing and
thinking. For example, I think about taking in the car for servicing. This is a
macro-topic in my day’s schedule, to be integrated with many other macro-topics
like sending email to someone, grooming the cat, shopping for groceries,
reading the Writings, vacuuming the pool, and so on. Every macro-topic is kept
in place by priorities of motives or affections in the will. But every
macro-topic is constructed of a integrated series of
micro-topics, each of these being maintained by a hierarch of sub-motives,
affections, and preferences in the will.
For
example, vacuuming the pool is made of sub-tasks (1) getting the pole from its
place behind the plants without injuring the plants; (2) taking off the brush
attached to it and affixing the hose nuzzle extension on wheels; (3) curling or
snaking the long hose into the water to fill it with water and empty it of air;
and at least a dozen other sub-tasks. Each sub-task has a series or hierarch of
affections that determine the style, rate, and effectiveness of my willing,
thinking, and acting out the movements of hands, head, and body. Each sub-task
offers plenty of opportunity for inherited and acquired evils to break out and
take over, producing errors, ineffectiveness, damage, injuries, anger,
affectational styles, neglect, laziness, carelessness, and many others.
Self-witnessing
reveals the astounding complexity of the ordinary behaviors we perform mentally
and physically. Every micro-act or detail is managed by the Lord through good
and evil spirits with which He connects us, moment by moment as we perform our
willing prompted by affections, our thinking prompted
by knowledge and beliefs, and our sensory and motor activities that are in
credence with our mental activities. But self-witnessing in itself is not a
spiritual or religious activity. What makes it spiritual is the motive we have
in doing it. A spiritual motive for self-witnessing makes it into a spiritual
or religious discipline. From the Writings we have the commandment to know our
willing and thinking so that we may evaluate each mental act in the eight of
Doctrine in our mind from the Writings. This is the spiritual motive for
self-witnessing in the
Physical
and mental disciplines are in the external
natural mind and have nothing in it from the spiritual and celestial mind (AC
978, 4286; AE 355:14). From the natural nothing else but natural things can
come out. There is no possibility of “emergence” of the spiritual from the
physical, as proposed by some neuroscientists today. No matter how evolved the
brain becomes it will never be able to give rise to the sensation. The brain
remains a dead physical compound just like the natural sun. Everything from the
physical universe comes from this or that sun or galactic cluster. No materials
that are from this source, no matter how chemically evoluted, can reach across
the discrete degree that eternally divides the natural substance from the
spiritual substance (DLW 185).
Brain
activity is the patterned electrical and chemical motions of physical
substances. Sensations are neither electrical nor chemical. Therefore
sensations cannot exist through the brain and in the brain (ISB 1[2]). They
exist in the mind and through the mind. The mind is spiritual organ, that is,
an organ made of spiritual substances. When we are born as human beings, we
have a physical body in the natural world to which is connected by
correspondence, a spirit-body in the spiritual world.
Our
spirit-body can be seen by the spirits from a distance (AC 4527).
It should be known that every man as to his spirit is in the
spiritual world in some society there, a wicked man in an infernal society and
a good man in a heavenly society; and sometimes he also appears there when in
deep meditation. (DP 296:[6])
Physical
eyes, sensors, cameras, instruments, and other detection devices invented on
earth are incapable of seeing or recording the spirit-body. This is because
there is no crossing of the discrete barrier between natural and spiritual
things. Their relationship is not by crossing, contacting, developing into, or
emerging from—these being phenomena in continuous degree, not discrete (see
Chapter 5 Section 6). Their only connection is by correspondence (DLW 374).
In other
words, at any moment the spirit-body receives or detects a pattern of influx in
its spiritual world environment where untold numbers of spirits live in their
spirit-bodies. Spirits is the name used for human beings who live in the
spiritual world after having died in the natural world from which all humans
originate. The spirit-body of spirits is able to detect influx from other
spirits at any distance no matter where the others are located in the spiritual
world (HH 198). What determines the strength of the
influx are the specific affections each spirit has in their organ called the
will.
Spirits who
have compatible affections in their will are in close presence, can interact
directly, can speak to each other, touch each other, feel each other, and
experience all the sensations we have in the physical body but to a far more
sensitive degree than possible on earth (AC 4760[2]). Spirits who have
antagonistic affections in their will cannot be together because they strive to
annihilate each other (HH 194). These rules or laws of the spiritual world are
fixed and maintained by the Lord who is very closely involved in the management
of all these people’s affections, and the thoughts that are created by these
affections in another part of the spirit-body and which is called the understanding.
14. Overlap
Between The Mind
And The Spiritual World
Spirits who have similar concepts and ideas in their understanding are
able to congregate and live together in a city governed by representatives
appointed by the Lord, or, by the Lord through angels who reside in a discrete
degree above that city. In this way the hierarchical discrete levels of the human mind are
identical with the hierarchical discrete levels of the spiritual world. It is
organized from top to bottom:
1) The spiritual Sun in which the Lord can be seen
2) The Third Heaven of Celestial Angels
3) The Second Heaven of Spiritual Angels
4) The First Heaven of Natural Angels (or Angelic Spirits)
5) The world of spirits where the new arrivals congregate. This
is also where our spirit-body is while we are connected to the physical body
6) The region of the first hells, which are the mildest
7) The region of the second hells, which are intermediate in
insanity and wickedness.
8) The region
of the deepest hells, where those are isolated whose abominable fantasies have
the persuasive power to turn other spirits into zombies
When you
look at this alignment it is the same whether you are looking at the level of
organization of the human mind or the spiritual world. There is a perfect
overlap between the two. This is why it is said by the Lord that the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you, though the people He said it to could not yet understand
how this was possible (AC 9305). Seventeen centuries later the Lord has made
His Second Coming, having sufficiently prepared the human rational faculties to
be able to receive the new interior truths of the Heavenly Doctrines in the
Writings. He was able to create New Heavens as well as a new interior portion
of the human mind. What made this possible was our ability in these higher
levels to understand by correspondence, interior-natural truths about the Lord
and His Divine Laws of managing the universe. Infinite such truths are
contained in the Writings, enough that only a small portion of them can be
uncovered by the generations to eternity (NJHD 260).
Most people
who hear this assertion about the Writings instantly reject it as foolish
nonsense or naive exaggeration. But it is the truth, both because it so
asserted in the Writings (xx) and because it is rationally explained why and
how this marvel is real. Nothing whatsoever is left to dogma or mystery. Nothing. All of the assertions in the Writings are fully
and completely explained and justified rationally so that anyone can verify
that this is so by studying all of the Writings with the purpose of finding in
it the Divine Truth. Not a single dogma can exist in the Writings since
dogma is from hell and every single thing in the Writings is from heaven (TCR
779).
Those who
are offended by this assertion raise this objection: Is it not obvious that it
is a dogma to say, either you accept all of the Writings as Divine Truth or you
cannot see the spiritual things in it when you read it. But this objection is
not valid. One must first grant that there is Divine Truth or else the
assertion is not being investigated. If you accept that there is Divine Truth
then you must accept that it is possible that only Divine Truth is
contained in the Writings. One follows the other logically. Now if you admit
that it is possible for the Writings to contain only Divine Truth then you can
read the Writings and see spiritual truths in them. And if you also rearrange
your life, your daily willing and thinking, all your concepts, with no
exceptions, to be compatible with your understanding of these spiritual truths,
then you will also be close to heaven and the Lord, and you will see and
perceive with certitude that the Writings are the Divine Truth, that is, the
Word of the Second.
From all
these considerations and facts you can see that everything about your salvation
depends on rearranging your daily willing and thinking. Why everything? Does
not my faith count? It only counts to the extent that our faith acts together
with our charity (TCR 336-393). Knowing, understanding, agreeing with, and
teaching the Writings is not enough. Add to it
religious faith and call it the Word, and it is not enough. But do your daily
willing and thinking according to your understanding of it, and that is enough
to prepare your spirit-body for heavenly life. Salvation is not by religious
membership and sincere worship. Salvation is only by charity directed by faith.
By charity. Not by faith. Note well: we are not saying
“by charity alone” for this does not lead to salvation since charity without
faith is not genuine charity from the Lord (TCR 336-393). Only that is from the
Lord in our spirit-body which is from charity combined with its own faith.
Now since faith in its essence is truth, it follows that in
proportion to the volume and coherence of truths faith becomes more and more
perfectly spiritual, and so less and less natural-sensual. For it is raised
into the higher region of the mind, from where it sees below itself rank upon
rank of proofs of itself in the natural world. A great volume of truths
cohering as it were in a bundle makes true faith more enlightened, more easily
perceived, more outstanding and clear. It also becomes more easily linked to
the various kinds of good belonging to charity, and consequently more easily
freed from evils, and by stages less subject to the enticements of the eye and
the longings of the flesh, thus becoming essentially happier. In particular its
resistance to evils and falsities is increased, and so it becomes more and more
alive and conducive to salvation. (TCR 352)
Charity
from the Lord cannot be adjoined with faith that is spurious or false, and thus
reformation must be completed in the afterlife. Those who exercised charity of
religion without confirming it by the falsities of their religion can compete reformation in the afterlife, and then continue with
their regeneration to eternity. But those exercised the charity of their
religion and adjoined to it by confirmation the falsities of their religion
cannot complete their reformation in the afterlife, for they resist and are
unwilling.
The
How do
we cooperate with Him? This becomes the spiritual bottom line for every New
Church husband who is willing to begin his reformation sometime in adult life (AE 803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]).
15. The
Mind And The Brain
Cooperation
requires conscious continuous action and reaction. The Lord is very closely and
intimately involved in this process. First, he implants spiritual truths in the
upper levels of the mind, as discussed above. We are totally unconscious of
this process, just as we are unconscious of how the brain calibrates and
manages the thousands of hormones and chemical substances every second to
produce adequate electrical patterns or footprints to make possible sensation
in the spirit-body. At some point the brain activity matches a certain
predetermined rational pattern or footprint. This pattern of activity in the
brain is now ready for being acted upon by correspondence. The spirit-body then
becomes conscious of a sensation and thought. Note well: the brain pattern of
activity does not cause the corresponding sensation in the spirit-body, that
is, in our conscious awareness. This sensory awareness in the spirit-body is
not caused by the physical sensory input to the brain—which is impossible
(TCR 336-393).
Rather, the
relationship is more like a resonance which occurs in the physical world for
things that are in continuous (not discrete) degree with other. For example the
sound of a car horn enters the brain and produces an identifiable pattern of
electro-chemical activity. The brain activity is an informational
representation of the specific qualities of the sound. While the brain is thus
engaged in the patterned activity, the spirit-body resonates to this pattern,
and when there is a match, we experience the sensation and we hear the horn.
Then we can react to it through a similar process. Second by second, our
spirit-body is thus active and growing by cumulating sensations, thoughts, and
affections. This growth process in the organs of the spirit-body is deformed,
injured, corrupt by inheritance. Our spirit-body is
created when the physical body is born and the child takes its first breath,
filling the lungs (D.Wis 6[9]). This opening of the lungs permits or occasions
the start the life of sensation and thought, and therefore, the start of the
spirit-body and its development.
In short, all affections for good and truth reach out into
heaven, and there is thus connexion and linking with those there who have
similar affections. All affections for evil and falsity reach out into hell,
and there is thus connexion and linking with those there who have similar
affections. Affections reach out into the spiritual world, almost as the range
of sight reaches out into the natural world. The connexions in either place are
much alike, the difference being that in the natural world they are with
things, in the spiritual world with communities of angels. (LJ 9)
Our moment
to moment willing and thinking is what causes the growth of the spirit-body.
Such as the willing is, with its companion thinking, such is the growth of the
spirit-body because such is our connection to heaven or to hell. When we are
thinking this or that in the course of the day we are becoming a part of the
affections that motivate the thinking and reasoning. These affections either
reach out to heaven or they reach down to hell, as indicated in the quoted
passage. The Lord is revealing this fundamental duality to us: Either we are in
heaven or in hell with every moment of willing and thinking. And thus our
affections continually reach up to heaven or down to hell. And we are at the helm, we are responsible by rational choice or choice guided
by the voice of conscience. And such as our choices are, such is our spiritual
fate (xx).
But note
well: This is not an equity model but an all or nothing model! The millions of
choices you’ve made in a few decades on earth will not be put on a scale,
weighed, and the preponderance of frequency wins. There is no way of entering
heavenly life with an equity model! It’s all or nothing at the gates of heaven.
If you enter with a few affections that reach down to hell, can you enter? You
would be suffocated by the sphere of Good there.
Will you be
able to leave your evil affections behind when you arrive at the gates of
heaven, so that then you can enter? You might reason this way: Does it not say
that the highest angels admit that if they were left to themselves they would
be plunging into hell with their affections of old that they once had? (see xx) And so not even the angels are
perfect. But this is not a correct argument. The angels are perfect
because they have left all their affections, left them for the Lord to be in a
disanimated state. True, we are told that they can be revived once again by the
Lord, if this were for a Divine purpose, which proves that they are still with
the angels and will always be (see xx). But it’s clear that they do not have a
single affection that is active that does not reach to heaven. This is why
angels are called perfect (xx).
And so,
when you arrive at the gates of heaven, will you be able to voluntarily give up
every one of your affections that reach down to hell? You will not be able to
because you will not be willing. What an amazing fact! (xx)
You can
understand why this is so. You have these
affections still with you because you have not been willing to give them up in
all of your regeneration on earth.
You might
think that when you get there and everything is all over, then you would be
willing to let go of them, especially when you realize that they prevent your
entry into heavenly life. But you’re only dreaming or lulling yourself to sleep
with this vain hope. The Writings clearly
explain that the affections you hold on to until death are the affections you
remain with to eternity! (xx, xx). The basic
reason for this is that affections are immortal spiritual fibers within which
you feel the love of your life. Take away those fibers, and you no longer feel
the love of your life, hence you cannot be happy or motivated to do anything.
In the
unregenerate state into which we are born, our spirit-body is an offshoot of
the fibers of the parents (CL 206). Such as is their spirit-body such is the
spirit-body of their children. All the evil affections and unconscious
preferences and tendencies are in the things inherited by the spirit-body. If
we then lead a life motivated by these inherited tendencies in the spirit-body,
we will develop a permanent infirm spirit-body that is not capable of living in
the heavenly regions of the mind.
Everything
therefore depends on monitoring our willing and thinking every hour of the day
so that we can identify every particular evil affection
and all the falsities of life that these evil affections create in our
understanding and philosophy of living.
The state of the case with the evil in the other life is
that they are not punished until their evils have reached their height, and
this both in general and in particular. For such is the equilibrium in the
other life that evil punishes itself, that is to say those who are evil run
into the punishment of their evil, but only when it has reached its height. Every evil has its limit that varies in each
individual case, beyond which it is not allowable to pass. When an evil person
passes beyond this limit he precipitates himself into the penalty, and this is
so in every particular (AC 1857)
This
passage discusses what happens in the afterlife to those who are unwilling to
eliminate their evil affections and falsities in this life.
I have
discovered that metanoid
self-witnessing is an effective method for identifying the content
of our willing and thinking in daily life. Therefore if becomes a useful spiritual
discipline by which husbands can cooperate with the Lord in their reformation
and regeneration. Only by performing this cooperation hour by hour, minute by
minute, can the husband become a conjugial husband. Without becoming conjugial,
the husband cannot regenerate because his regeneration must involve his wife in
a specific way as discussed throughout Chapter 9.
The interior can perceive what takes place in the exterior,
or what is the same, that the higher can see what is in the
lower; but not the reverse. Moreover they who have conscience can do
this and are accustomed to do it, for when anything contrary to the truth of
conscience flows into the thought, or into the endeavor of the will, they not
only perceive it, but also find fault with it; and it even grieves them to be
of such a character. (AC 1914)
As our
regeneration proceeds day by day, the interior rational (or
spiritual-rational) which is in the spiritual mind, is progressively opened by
the Lord through the influx of the angels into those concepts in our mind that
are suitably formed for their influx. This opening process is a
psychobiological formation of spiritual fibers growing in the upper levels of
the mind (or spirit-body)—for “a person's spirit is his mind,
and whatever comes from it” (TCR 138). The activity and influence of the
interior rational mind is proportional to the extent to which it can “descend”
into (or within) the concepts and ideas of the interior-natural mind (AC 5150).
When the interior-natural is active within the natural-rational, the mind is
properly aligned to function as a genuine human being, which is the celestial
person (or angel) (AC 1940[2]).
In order
for the interior-rational to be active within the external-rational mind, there
must be an interior-natural portion formed by the Lord within the
natural-rational. Then the interior-natural can resonate by correspondence to
the spiritual mind and reveal to our conscious awareness what those spiritual
truths are with which the angels flowed in.
This
mutually beneficial interaction between angels and earthlings takes place by
correspondence in discrete degrees, not by continuous degree or direct contact.
I have spoken
with spirits about the changes of state of man's life, that it is inconstant,
and that he is borne upward and downward, now toward heaven and now toward
hell. But they who suffer themselves to be regenerated are being borne
continually upward, and thus always into more interior heavenly societies.
Extension of sphere into these societies is given by the Lord to those who are
being regenerated, especially to those who are being regenerated by means of
temptations, in which resistance is made to evils and falsities; for the Lord
then fights through angels against the evils and falsities; and in this way the
man is introduced into the societies of these angels, which are more interior
societies; and into whatever societies he has once been introduced, he there
remains; and from this he also receives a more extended and elevated capacity
of perception. (AC 6611)
Every
earthling who is thus regenerated becomes an angel in the afterlife and
continues to participate in this ever expanding activity of unity involving the
ever expanding human race. This union of humanity into one is visible in the
spiritual world as the Grand Human, visible to Swedenborg and the angels (HH
59). Religious or spiritual disciplines are necessary tools of regeneration, a
process that progresses only to the extent that we consciously and actively
cooperate in it. The religious discipline is a method of practice for
increasing the cooperation we are required to perform.
IV. EVILS IN THE EXTERNAL, MAN CANNOT BE REMOVED BY THE LORD
EXCEPT THROUGH MAN'S INSTRUMENTALITY. In all
It is
important to understand what makes a discipline religious or spiritual. Those who approach the Writings from a perspective or motive that
is secular, not religious, do not see much in the Writings that teaches
physical and mental disciplines. For instance, Wilson Van Dusen, a well
known authority on Swedenborg, once complained that “the Writings themselves
barely touch on how to regenerate, how to make it of the life, how to
practice" ("Spiritual Practice That Makes Religion of the Life: Open
Letter to the
A similar
form of this idea is suggested by Alfred Acton (“Emanuel Swedenborg’s Concept
of Creation and the Human Mind” Arcana 1994 v1 n2 45-54)
The human is similarly layered [as the spiritual world]. Inmostly,
there is the soul on the plane of human internals, below which are the three
spiritual levels, which are unopened here on earth. Still lower is the interior
rational, which is on a plane with the world of spirits and can be opened
somewhat here on earth when a person is in deep meditation or reflection. Below
this level is the natural mind proper with its rational, imaginative, and
sensual levels. (p. 52)
The
Writings do not specify under what conditions the interior-natural can be
consciously “accessed” as it were by meditation or reflection. I think that the
attempt to direct access by means of reflection could merely yield content from
the lower “sensuous” and “imaginative” mind or higher up from the
natural-rational, but not anything from the interior rational and
interior-natural, which is spiritual. The interior-natural reacts by
correspondence to the unconscious interior-rational, thus giving us the ability
for a spiritual consciousness. The interior-rational in the spiritual mind and
the interior-natural within the natural mind are both created and operated by
the Lord with no contribution from self or world. Only the external-rational is
constructed by means of things from self and the world.
There is
this danger to look out for:
A mind removed from the world thinks indeed concerning God,
but not from God (DP 142)
This is
said about our state of mind when we are physically sick and scared. The reason
given is that when “ a man is in sickness, and is
thinking about death and the state of his soul after death, he is not then in
the world but is withdrawn in spirit; and when in this state only, no one can
be reformed” (DP 142). If meditation succeeds in withdrawing us from the world
it would have a similar effect. Perhaps Rev. Acton’s reference
to meditation or deep reflection denote intense focus on the
dualities in the Writings as we read and study. This intense focus is what
I would call the work of reformation, which is, to comprehend dualities from
the Writings and to gather them in the conscious mind as Doctrine for life.
This in
itself is not yet enlightenment. No matter how deep the reflection and
complicated the scholarship, its substance is tied to the literal of the text.
Thus it Is not yet seen in the light of heaven. But
when we consciously apply the Doctrine in our mind to guide our daily willing
and thinking, then the Lord can give enlightenment while we are engaged in the
activity or use. Enlightenment therefore does not come with reflection or
study, but with applying what we comprehend so that it guides our willing and
thinking while we are engaged in an activity or use.
With those
who believe these things, and love it to be so, all evil and falsity are
removed while they are reading the Word, because the Lord then enlightens them
and leads them. And then they do not think from themselves, nor are they
affected by the Word from themselves, but from the Lord; consequently no evil
and falsity of evil enter, because the Lord removes these. These are they who
understand the Word, and are affected by the truths from it, and also love to
live according to them. (AC 10638)
Note well:
The more we are studious with the Writings, the better
is the Doctrine that we build up in our rational mind. The better the Doctrine,
the greater the enlightenment when we apply it to our willing and thinking. A
form of Doctrine in our mind is better than another to the extent that it is
developed rationally and consistently. A serviceable Doctrine is one that
integrates all conceptual elements in our mind. There must be nothing of
nonduality left and everything must be aligned in terms of discrete degrees.
For instance when we think of “sin” we must also think of “inherited evils,”
“regeneration,” and “temptations.” Without connecting concepts in this way, no
rational account of operations is possible. Yet all spiritual operations are
rational.
Or, to give
another example, when we think of “conjugial love” we must also think of
“scortatory love,” “chastity,” and how the “spiritual mind” of men and women
differ. Doctrine refers to not just memory and comprehension of passages in the
Writings. It also means figuring out the assumptions and implications of every
sentence and phrase. The context must be kept in mind in which the phrase and
sentence is embedded, which means collecting together what’s being said about
that subject from different places in the Writings.
This
approach to reading and studying the Writings is necessary to build up our
natural-rational ideas and reasoning process. Into this will then flow the
interior truths from the Lord during enlightenment. Note that these interior
truths are not the Doctrine in our mind. They are the new meaning we see in
them during the state of enlightenment. When we write these down, or recall
them later, we only comprehend them externally, in the natural light of the
natural-rational. Then when a state of enlightenment is given again, new
meaning is perceived in sentences and phrases that we are very familiar with
already, but in which only the old meaning was seen. Such is enlightenment from
the Lord through Doctrine in our mind. Periods of enlightenment alternate with
periods of self-initiated light, or obscurity. Only when we arrive in heaven do
we remain in a permanent state of enlightenment.
17. Enlightenment
From The Letter
Of The Writings
Enlightenment
is from the Lord while we are reading the Writings for the purpose of knowing
the Divine Truth.
'With which you shall do the signs' means consequent
enlightenment and corroboration of truths. This is clear from the meaning of
'sign as the corroboration of truths, dealt with in AC 6870 The reason why
enlightenment is also meant is that the corroboration of truths comes about
through enlightenment received from the Lord when a person focuses his
attention on the Word to the end that he may have a knowledge of truths. (AC
7012)
As we focus
our attention on the Letter of the Writings so that we may know truth, the Lord
enlightens us. To have the purpose of knowing the Divine Truth is the same as
to have the purpose of living that truth, whereas the purpose of obtaining a
mere memory knowledge of Divine Truth does not result in enlightenment.
As regards enlightenment and a resulting corroboration of
truths, it should be recognized that no enlightenment nor
thus any corroboration of truths is possible with those who are interested, as
the Jews and Israelites were, only in things of an external nature and not in
anything internal. But when those who are interested in external things and at
the same time in internal ones read the Word they receive enlightenment, and
with that enlightenment they see truths, which after that are corroborated for
them over and over again. (AC 7012)
And what is so amazing, the nature of each person's
enlightenment is determined by the nature of his affection for truth, and the
nature of his affection for truth is determined by the good present in his
life. This also goes to explain why those who have no affection for truth for
its own sake, only for the sake of gain, receive no enlightenment at all when
they read the Word. Instead they merely corroborate for themselves matters of
doctrine whatever they may be, whether they are false, as heretical teachings
are, or entirely contrary to truths, as the teachings of the Jews are, since
they do not seek the Lord's kingdom but the world, not faith but renown, thus
not heavenly riches but merely earthly ones. Or if a desire to know truths from
the Word does perhaps descend on them, falsities present themselves instead of
truths, and at length denial of all truths. These matters have been stated in
order that people may know what enlightenment is, and a resulting corroboration
of truth. (AC 7012)
Enlightenment
is a gradual and cumulative process like the growth of plants or the body of an
infant. In the case of enlightenment, it is the growth of the interior-natural
mind from which we have enlightenment. This organic development proceeds at a
variable rate according to “each person’s...affection for truth.” This means
“by the good present in his life.” And the good present in our life is the
quality of the willing and thinking we perform all day long, every day, hour by
hour, and minute by minute. Prior to enlightenment we are unwilling to be
reformed, unwilling to rearrange everything in our mind in accordance with the
truths of the Writings. Even if we are persistent students of the Writings
prior to enlightenment, we are told that “falsities present themselves instead
of truths.” All we do is “merely corroborate ... matters of doctrine whatever
they may be.” We cannot tell whether these doctrines be true or false for we
are not enlightened.
But
enlightenment spoken of here is not the same as the enlightenment we have as
angels. This enlightenment is that which is given in the spiritual mind, but we
are unconscious of this mind while tied to the body. Instead, the Lord gives us
enlightenment by correspondence so that we are now conscious of higher
cognitions which are animated from within in the interior-natural mind.
Nothing
from the influx into our spiritual-rational mind by the Lord through the angels
can be perceived while we are in a natural body (with the one exception in the
case of Swedenborg). The correspondential effects of that influx are felt and
consciously seen in the interior-natural that the Lord builds within the natural-rational
level of the natural mind (see diagrams and charts, especially in Chapter 7
Sections 8 and 9). Now when we reflect upon what we see happening in the
natural-rational mind, we can become conscious of new understandings that
represent more interior truths than before. This is called enlightenment (AC
10215).
Note that
the enlightenment cannot come from or through meditation because the highest
content possible content in mediation is below the natural-rational level o
understanding. But it may come somewhat, as Rev. Acton suggests, from
reflection when the content is rational and spiritual. This content cannot be
imagined or discovered but must be consciously received from reading the
Writings as the Lord in His Word for the New Church mind by which the
interior-natural degree is opened in us.
18. Regeneration
Disciplines Are Spiritual
They hold a false opinion who call
the mere memory-knowledge of things celestial and spiritual, separated from
charity, faith. For sometimes the worst of men have this knowledge more than
others-as those who live in continual hatred and vindictiveness, and in
adultery, and are therefore infernal, and after the life of the body become
devils. (AC 1162)
A central
thesis that runs through the Writings is that the primary thing of religion is
charity. All genuine faith and worship comes from charity. Therefore, where
there is no charity, there is no faith and only corrupted worship that leads to
hell. Prior to our reformation in adult life, we are unregenerate and immersed
in all the evils from the hells to which we have ties by heredity and culture.
Until our reformation, our faith and our worship is not genuine or true faith
and worship. And even in adulthood, we may become expert at the knowledges in
the Writings, and teach it to others, but this ability is not a sign of true
faith or true worship, since this depends only on regeneration. And
regeneration depends on charity as the prime mover.
Charity
refers to the motivation within our faith. Charity is in the will while faith
is in the understanding. Until reformation in adult life we have external faith
in the understanding but it is not alive with charity in the will. During
reformation we become motivated to put charity into our faith. This is what
starts reformation and keeps it going until all our concepts in the
understanding are rearranged and redefined to conform to our faith, which is
our knowledge of Doctrine from the Writings.
But what is
charity in the will? How do we put it there? The answer is that we put charity
in our will by compelling ourselves to cooperate with the Lord in our
regeneration and salvation. We already know of the need for our cooperation, as
it is taught in many places in the Writings. When we are ready to live this
requirement, we put charity into the will. Charity is a motive discipline. By
this motive we examine what is in our will, and evaluate it according to the
Doctrine in our understanding from the Writings. Everything in our will is
either form hell or from heaven, so it’s a categorical duality of choosing one
versus the other.
Not
choosing, and letting it lie there by default, amounts to the same as choosing
hell. The Lord cannot remove the hell in our interior mind unless we cooperate
by struggling against the hells in our awareness. These hells are revealed to
us from within by conscience and by the Doctrine. It stands to reason therefore
that we must deal with our daily willing and thinking in terms of a spiritual
or religious discipline, by which we are motivated to shun those that are evils
and hold them in aversion, that is, detesting them.
This is not easy because we are born with a deep seated delight in these evil
affections from hell. This is why I call it “the struggle” for reformation.
From the life of everyone it may be known what his
acknowledgment is. All they are called "sons of Ham" who have a
memory-knowledge of the knowledges of faith, and have not charity, whether it
be a memory-knowledge of the interior knowledges of the Word, and of its
veriest mysteries, or a memory-knowledge of all things in the literal sense of
the Word, or a memory-knowledge of other truths, whatever their name, from
which these may be regarded, or a knowledge of all the rituals of external
worship-if they have not charity, they are "sons of Ham." (AC 1162)
To the extent that we function in our daily tasks from the interior
activity of charity, to that extent our physical and mental disciplines will
have become spiritual. The focus therefore needs to be on how the inside world of charity
in the will, can be within the outside world of thinking and action. As we
perform our routine acts outwardly, what is happening inwardly to our external
or lower mind?
What are we
enjoying or hating about what’s going on?
What are we
thinking that we do not show?
[2] For every general is derived from all the component
items, as from its own particulars; in no other way can any general come into
existence, for it is called a general because it comes forth from particulars.
Therefore such as is a man's life in general, such is it in the most minute
atoms of his effort and intention-that is, of his will-and in the most minute
atoms of his thought; so that there cannot be the smallest bit of an idea in
which the life is not the same.
As for example with a haughty man; in every single effort of
his will and in every single idea of his thought there is haughtiness; with him
who is covetous there is in like manner covetousness, and so with him who hates
his neighbor; just as with the stupid man there is stupidity in everything of
his will and everything of his thought, and with him who is insane there is
insanity. Since this is the nature of man, in the other life his quality is
known from a single idea of his thought.
[3] When a man has been regenerated, then all things in him,
both in general and in particular, have also been regenerated, that is, have
life, and the life they have bears an exact proportion to the degree in which
his own will-which is foul and dead-could be separated from the new will and intellectual
that he has received from the Lord. (AC 1040)
The
separation of the “old will” from the “new will” refers to the activity of
willing and thinking in our daily activities. Since we are required to
modify our current willing and thinking in every detail of life, it stands to
reason that this cannot be done without monitoring our willing and thinking all
day long! Continuous self-witnessing is a total
discipline for the
It should be known, moreover, that, so long as man is in
knowledges only, and not in any life according to them, he is in his proprium
and led by self; but, when he is in a life according to them - and to the same
extent - he is elevated out of his proprium, and is led by the Lord. This man
does not perceive, but still it is so; and so far as man is led by the Lord, so
far is there good in him, or good is what he wills and thinks. But it should be
thoroughly known, that nobody can live according to the knowledges from the
Word, except from them he reflect upon his thoughts, intentions and deeds, that
is, examine himself, and abstain from evils and do good as from himself:
otherwise, there is no reception by man; and if there is no reception, there is
no conjunction with the Lord; therefore, neither can he be led by the Lord. (SE
5945)
It’s a
rational question we may ask ourselves: “I know it is required that I cooperate
with the Lord in my regeneration (AE 911[17]); Now then, how do I know when I’m
cooperating?” The discipline of self-witnessing becomes a religious discipline
under such a motivation. Within such a motivation the Lord infuses interior
rational truths that cannot come into our awareness from the natural-rational
mind and the outside world. These interior rational truths have a
correspondential effect on the interior-natural mind, which constitutes our
conscious spiritual awareness. This effect is to produce enlightenment which is
the mental state angels are in. Through enlightenment we receive the
experiences of wisdom, endless progress, bliss, full confidence, and charity.
What a boon to humankind!
Learning to
cooperate with the Lord in our regeneration is required for two reasons. First,
what we do as-of self out of love is appropriated to us. The
Any freedom coming from the Lord is real freedom; but any
that comes from hell and makes itself at home with a person is slavery. Still
spiritual freedom must inevitably seem like slavery to anyone who enjoys the
freedom of hell, since they are opposites. Yet all who enjoy spiritual freedom
not only know but feel that the freedom of hell is slavery. The angels
therefore shun it like the stench of a corpse, though those in hell sniff it as
if it were a perfume. (TCR 495)
This
ability to love acting from the Lord is possible for those who train themselves
to love acting according to the Doctrine they have from the Writings. This
is because acting according to Doctrine from the Writings is the same as acting
from the Lord. Through self-witnessing disciplines we train ourselves to
will and think from Doctrine in our mind. (For more on self-witnessing methods
see Note 20 at end).
Further,
through self-witnessing we are given illustration in life of what the doctrine
means at more interior levels than we can think when reading and studying the
Writings. This is what it means that the angels have Doctrine written on their
heart (AE 15). Our sequence of willing and thinking makes a stream of actuality
which is an ultimate for interior truths. To witness this stream of Providence
is similar to read the literal of the Writings. Into this ultimate stream of
expression there is a discretely higher interior which is its cause. This
higher interior is revealed by the Lord to the witness just as the higher
interior truth contained in the literal of the Writings is revealed when we are
enlightened. Self-witnessing one’s willing and thinking according to
Doctrine from the Writings is a new method available to humankind for spiritual
renewal and higher evolution. It is an everlasting gift and miracle from
the Lord that He brings with His Second Coming.
As deeds and
works are from the will and thought, so are they from the love and faith,
consequently they are such as the love and faith are; for it is the same thing
whether you say one's love or his will, and it is the same thing whether you
say one's faith or his established thought; for that which a man loves he
wills, and that which a man believes he thinks; and when a man loves what he
believes he also wills it and as far as possible does it. Everyone may know
that love and faith are within man's will and thought, and not outside of them,
for love is what kindles the will, and the thought is what it enlightens in
matters of faith; therefore only those that are able to think wisely are
enlightened, and in the measure of their enlightenment they think what is true
and will it, or what is the same, they believe what is true and love it. (HH
473)
The Writings
reveal that it’s common for people to arrive into the afterlife not knowing who
they are, that is, what affections and ideas are in their subconscious mind.
For instance, husbands do not at first recognize their wives in the afterlife
while wives always recognize their husbands (xx). This is because men are less
aware of what fills their subconscious while wives have an inner perception of
their husbands subconscious mind (CL 166). But it’s
otherwise with men who are prepared for conjugial love since they strive by
discipline to uncover their subconscious (see Section 1 below).
19. Innumerable
Things In Every Evil
What is in
our subconscious? The Lord says: “innumerable things” of evil!
There are innumerable things in every evil. In man's sight
every evil appears as one single thing. This is the case with hatred and
revenge, theft and fraud, adultery and whoredom, arrogance and high-mindedness,
and with every other evil; and it is not known that in every evil there are
innumerable things, exceeding in number the fibers and vessels in a man's body.
For a wicked man is a hell in its least form; and hell consists of myriads of
myriads of spirits, and every one there is in form like a man, although a
monstrous one, in which all the fibers and vessels are inverted. The spirit
himself is an evil which appears to himself as a
"one"; but there are innumerable things in it as many as the lusts of
that evil, for every man is his own evil, or his own good, from the head to the
sole of his foot.
Since then a wicked man is such, it is evident that he is
one evil composed of innumerable different evils each of which is a distinct
evil, and they are called lusts of evil. Hence it follows that all these in
their order must be restored and changed by the Lord in order that the man may
be reformed; and this cannot be effected unless by the Divine Providence of the
Lord, step by step from the earliest period of man's life to the last. (DP 296)
Who is the
wicked man spoken of here? It is everyone prior to being regenerated. Since
there are innumerable things in every one of our evil affections it is clear
that we must rely on the Lord to clear them and remove them from us. The very
least we can do is to keep track of the major ones in the major categories as
we become conscious of them through self-witnessing. You can see that that a
general type of confession and self-examination once or twice a year or month,
is not going to achieve regeneration. Monitoring our willing and thinking hour
by hour every day is necessary and essential for us to become aware of our
general evils. And when we shun our general evils, the Lord is able to remove
the innumerable evils that are attached to every general evil.
For
example, there are innumerable evils attached to being overweight from overeating
and under-exercising. We must take charge of it in our willing and thinking,
day by day, so as to shun the evil delights that cause us to overeat and
under-exercise. To the extent that we struggle under this yoke, trying to
subdue and control ourselves, to that extent the Lord can remove the
innumerable evils that are attached to this general one.
The same
goes for all our daily habits and routines that are from evil affections, such
as our anger, impatience, swearing and cussing, adulterous thoughts, enjoyments
of vulgar entertainment, our bending the rules of honesty and fairness to our
favor, our neglect of duties and promises, and many such things. These are the
things in which are hidden from our consciousness the innumerable evils that
are spiritual fibers tying us to the hells and that are broken by the Lord to
the extent we do our share.
In hell every lust of evil when visually represented appears
like a noxious creature, as a dragon, or a cockatrice, or a viper, or a bird of
night, or an owl, and so on; and similarly do the lusts of evil appear in a
wicked man when he is viewed by angels.
All these forms of lusts must be changed one by one; and the
man himself, who with respect to his spirit appears as a human monster or
devil, must be changed to become like a beautiful angel; and every lust of evil
must be changed to appear like a lamb, or a sheep, or a pigeon, or a turtle
dove, as the affections of good in the angels appear in heaven when visually
represented; and to change a dragon into a lamb, a cockatrice into a sheep, and
an owl into a dove can only be effected step by step, by rooting out evil from
its very seed and implanting good seed in its stead.
This, however, can only be done as is done, for example, in
the grafting of trees. When their roots with some of the trunk remain, the
engrafted branch draws sap through the old root and turns it into sap that
makes good fruit. The branch that is to be engrafted can only be taken from the
Lord, who is the Tree of Life. This, moreover, is in accordance with the words
of the Lord (John xv. 1-7). (DP 296:[2])
Who is the
“wicked man” discussed here? It is us, prior to our reformation and
regeneration. When we are viewed by angels prior to our regeneration, they see
“a human monster or devil,” a dragon, cockatrice , or
owl. These are the actual forms of our lusts or evil affections and delights.
Note also that the makeover from devil to angel, from cockatrice to sheep, can
only be effected like it is done with “the grafting of
trees.” We must become physiologically attached to the Tree of Life, as the
Lord calls Himself. We become an “engrafted branch” that “draws sap through the
old root and turns it into sap that makes good fruit.”
In other
words, the Lord gives us new spiritual affections to replace the old, and
thereby we can live in eternal happiness. The sap we draw is by means of
spiritual fibers in our new will. The old fibers must be uprooted by the Lord,
and we would have no life remaining in us if He did this without our cooperation.
This cooperation must be specific and particular, day by day and hour by hour,
as our willing and thinking is witnessed, analyzed in the light of Doctrine,
condemned in that light, and shunned and detested. When we reach the point of
detesting the old affections and delights, one by one, then we have a new life
from the Lord.
This is a
piecemeal process. Detesting one evil doesn’t make us detest another,
especially when the other is hidden in our subconscious because we care not to
monitor and find it.
A wicked man from himself continually leads himself more and
more deeply into his evils. It is said, from himself, because all evil is from
man, for man turns good that originates from the Lord into evil, as was said
above. The real reason why the wicked man immerses himself more deeply in evil
is that as he wills and commits evil he advances into infernal societies more
and more interiorly and also more and more deeply. Hence also the delight of
evil increases, and so occupies his thoughts that at last he feels nothing more
pleasant. He who has advanced more interiorly and deeply into infernal
societies becomes as if he were bound with chains. So long as he lives in the
world, however, he does not feel his chains, for they are as if made from soft
wool or from fine threads of silk, and he loves them as they give him pleasure;
but after death, instead of being soft they become hard, and instead of being
pleasant they become galling. (DP 296:[3])
Here we are
told that before we are reformed (“a wicked man”) we tend to lead ourselves
more and more deeply into our evil affections, loving them more and more,
feeling them delightful and pleasant like nothing else, by which we are tied
more and more to the hells. As we advance more and more interiorly into infernal
societies, the delight of our evil increases until we become obsessed with it,
thinking of nothing else. Then we are chained to those infernal societies,
though we do not feel the chains until the afterlife. Then these chains, “instead
of being soft they become hard, and instead of being pleasant they become
galling.” Thus is our inevitable perdition and damnation, unless we undergo
reformation, then are willing to suffer ourselves to
undergo regeneration.
It is not known, however, that this increase of delight
comes from a man's penetrating into infernal societies more and more interiorly
and more and more deeply as he commits the evils from will and at the same time
from thought. If the evils are only in thought and not in the will, the man is
not yet in an infernal society with the evil, but he enters it when the evils
are also in the will. If he then also thinks that the evil is contrary to the
precepts of the Decalogue, and considers these precepts as Divine, he commits
the evil of set purpose, and thereby plunges to a depth from which he can be
led out only by actual repentance. (DP 296:[5])
At first we
think about our evil affections, turning them over in our mind as we consider
whether we should do them or not. If we given in and do them, we advance more
deeply into associations with the infernals. Then, if we
continue to will them despite our conscience, we “plunge ourselves to a depth
from which we can be led out only by actual repentance.” Will such
repentance come to us? Not without reformation, and the deeper we are in hell,
the less we want to repent and reform.
The withdrawal from evil is effected
by the Lord in a thousand ways that are most secret. Of these only some have
been disclosed to me, and none but the most general, as, that the delights of
lusts of which man knows nothing are admitted by companies and groups into the
interior thoughts of man's spirit and from these into his exterior thoughts in
which they make their appearance under a certain sense of satisfaction,
pleasure, or longing; and there they mingle with his natural and sensual
delights. Here are the means of separation and purification, and also the ways
of withdrawal and removal.
The means are chiefly the delights of meditation, thought
and reflection for the attainment of certain ends which are uses; and ends that
are uses are as many in number as the particular and individual matters of
one's business and office. They are also as many as the delights of reflection
for the attainment of certain ends, as that he may appear to be a civil and a
moral man and also a spiritual man, besides the undelightful things which
interpose. These delights, because they belong to his love in the external man,
are the means of separation, purification, rejection and withdrawal of the delights
pertaining to the lusts of evil that belong to the internal man. (DP 296:[10])
Here we are
given just a few general details about how the Lord removes our evil
affections, which He does “in a thousand ways that are most secret.” The Lord
supervises this process very closely since it will determine whether we end up
in heaven or in hell. First He admits some particular delights of lust into our
interior mind of which we know nothing. This is done through the intermediary
of evil societies. From there they are admitted into our exterior mind where we
become conscious of them, feeling them as “a certain sense of satisfaction,
pleasure, or longing.” There they mingle with our natural delights and sensual
pleasures. At that point we can voluntarily deny them and reject them because
they are contrary to our conscience or the Doctrine we have from the Writings.
In this way, to the extent that we shun them in our external mind, the Lord can
remove them in our interior mind.
The separation of
profane and holy ideas when thus conjoined cannot be effected except by means
of such infernal torment that if a man were aware of it he would as carefully
avoid profanation as he would avoid hell itself. (AC 301)
20. Relationship
Between Interior
Evils And Exterior
The difference, as well as relationship, between the interior evils and
exterior, are described next:
Take, for example, an unjust judge who regards gains or
friendship as the ends or uses of his office. Inwardly he is continually
engrossed in these, but outwardly his object is to act as a skilled lawyer and
a just man. He continually delights in meditating, thinking, reflecting and
framing intentions that he may bend, turn, adapt and adjust the right so that
it may still appear to conform to the laws and bear a semblance to justice. He
does not know that his internal delight consists of cunning, fraud, deceit,
clandestine theft and many other evils; and that this delight, composed of so
many delights of the lusts of evil, rules in every detail of his external thought,
where he harbors the delights of appearing to be a just and sincere man.
Internal delights are let down* into these external delights and they are
mingled like food in the stomach; and there they are separated, purified and
drawn away. This, however, is done only with the more grievous delights of the
lusts of evil. (DP 296:[11])
“An unjust
judge” refers to our constant desire to criticize others in our own mind. We do
not show this on the outside because our goal is to gain friends and influence
through the relationship. Inwardly, we are continually preoccupied with this
goal, but outwardly we strive to appear sincere and altruistic. We continually
delight in “meditating, thinking, reflecting and framing intentions.” We do
this by “bending, turning, adapting and adjusting” every little move so that our secret goal may not be discovered. What is
amazing is that we “do not know that our internal delight consists of cunning,
fraud, deceit, clandestine theft and many other evils; and that this delight, composed
of so many delights of the lusts of evil, rules in every detail of our external
thought, where we harbor the delights of appearing to be a just and sincere man.”
This is our
undoing. We look away from ourselves that we may not see the delights of our
evil intentions in our interior mind. We are content to go by our reputation,
and believe that, or pretend to. So at the conscious plane (“outward
thought”)we think of ourselves as sincere and good, but at the subconscious
plane (interior mind), we seek out the delights of our evils such as
selfishness, egotism, arrogance, insincerity, manipulation, dominion.
Now when we
are regenerating, the Lord “lets down” the interior delights of evils into the
outward consciousness where they commingle with the delights of appearing of
sincere and altruistic. They mix “like food in the stomach, and there they are
separated, purified and drawn away.” In this way our interior delights of evils
are removed by the Lord to the extent that we are willing to give up the outer
delights of evil. Our cooperation is necessary because before the Lord can draw
them away we must become aware of them and repent by desisting.
But this is
done differently before and after reformation. In the next portion, “a wicked
man,” as before, refers to our state prior to reformation, while “a good man”
refers to our state after reformation when we are being regenerated.
With a wicked man no separation, purification and removal is
possible other than of the more grievous from the less grievous evils. With a
good man, however, there can be the separation, purification and removal not
only of the more grievous but also of the less grievous evils. This is effected by the delights of the affections of the good and
the true, of the just and of the sincere, into which he comes so far as he
regards evils as sins, and so shuns and turns away from them, and still more if
he fights against them. These are the means by which the Lord cleanses all who
are saved. (DP 296[12])
In other
words, prior to our reformation, removal of interior evil delights cannot take
place. But after reformation, the Lord can remove all our evil delights to the
extent that we cooperate. This means loving to be sincere and good, regarding
evil delights as sins, desisting from engaging in them, and fighting against
them until our delight in them turns into detestation. This the mechanism by
which the Lord saves everyone. It’s clear from this that our primary task in
regeneration is to cooperate with the Lord in this mechanism, and this
cooperation must be in all the details of our conscious willing and thinking,
not just in their general.
21. Do We
Need To Confess Our Sins?
An article
in the July 2002 issue of New Church Life
by Rev. Erik Sandstrom examines the question of how “we tackle our spiritual
life or regeneration” (p. 284). His short answer is, “By finding our hereditary
evils!” (p. 284). He cites AC 4317, which I’m citing below in context:
[Hereditary evil] consists in willing and hence thinking
evil; hereditary evil being in the will itself and in the thought thence
derived; and being the very conatus or endeavor that is therein, and which
adjoins itself even when the man is doing what is good.
It is known by the delight that is felt when evil befalls
another. This root lies deeply hidden, for the very inward form that receives
from heaven (that is, through heaven from the Lord) what is good and true, is
depraved, and so to speak, distorted; so that when good and truth flow in from
the Lord, they are either reflected, or perverted, or suffocated.
It is from this cause that no perception of good and truth
exists at this day, but in place of it, with the regenerate, conscience, which
acknowledges as good and true what is learned from parents and masters.
It is from hereditary evil to love self more than others, to
will evil to others if they do not honor us, to perceive delight in revenge,
and also to love the world more than heaven; and from the same source come all
the derivative cupidities or evil affections.
Man is ignorant that such things are in hereditary evil, and
still more that they are opposite to heavenly affections; and yet it is
manifestly shown in the other life how much of evil from what is hereditary
each one has drawn to himself by actual life, and also how far he has removed
himself from heaven by evil affections from this source. (AC 4317)
Let’s list
the point in each sub-section in the quoted passage:
(1) Every
individual is born with hereditary evil which lies in the will. These evils in
the will are the source of falsities in our mind, the two always going
together.
(2) The
carrier of this hereditary evil is the “very inward form” of the will, which is
the source of all our motives, interests, and delights. As a result of this
spiritual deformity, the good and truth inflowing into our mind from the Lord
through heaven, “are either reflected, or perverted,
or suffocated.”
(3) The
result of this physiological malfunctioning is that “no perception of good and
truth exists at this day.” In place of perception we have dictates from the
conscience inwardly, an outwardly from parents and teachers. Following these
dictates is called spiritual obedience. Note that it is not a rational
understanding that produces the obedience but fear of punishment and desire for
reward. This is an external obedience rather than a free choice from love and
rationality.
(4) We
inherit the love of self in the will so that we love others less than
ourselves, and only when they “honor” us or agree with us. this
love of self is the source that leads to all the “derivative cupidities or evil
affections” in our character.
(5) When we
arrive in the afterlife it becomes manifest that we love self alone, and others only to the extent that they honor us or
agree with us. Otherwise we hate them and desire to cheat them, to dominate
them, to abuse them, or to destroy them. These hatreds and monstrosities are
hidden from our conscious awareness while we are still tied to the physical
body. And yet everyone is able to become aware of them by self-monitoring their
thoughts and feelings.
Knowing
that we are all this way, for there are no exceptions (xx), we ought to be
strongly motivated to monitor our willing and thinking all day long, so that we
may become aware of our actual evils in operation. We must witness ourselves in
order to discover when and where we wish for something bad to happen to
someone, or when we feel envious of someone’s good fortune, and how we use our
imagination to delight ourselves with denigrating others and ignoring their
expectations, needs, or requests to us.
Those who
are still in an external state of religion sometimes need or desire external
absolution rituals for their sins by someone trusted or in authority. They are
encouraged to make lists of their sins and to confess them one by one,
receiving absolution for each. But you can see that no one can take away sins,
not even the Lord. If the Lord could, He would take away everyone’s sins and
would admit each to heavenly bliss to eternity. Such is His Divine Love. Such
is His ardent desire for the human race. But He is prevented for the sake of
the individual. Should He try to remove evils, He would damage us far worse
that the evils do. We would be left without life at all (xx). This is because
our evils are our life, since humans are inmostly nothing but their loves and
affections (xx). Therefore the Lord cannot remove sins or evils from any
individual.
This is why
the Lord has provided a way that is feasible, practical, and fully effective
for every human being who wishes to use it. This is called regeneration.
In
regeneration we cooperate as-of self with the Lord by choosing to reject a
particular evil that delights us or fulfills our needs. This is what makes it
possible: our choosing to reject it. Whatever we do in freedom is done from
love (xx) and therefore it is a higher rational love that makes us reject lower
evil loves. As a result, in the afterlife, we arrive with a mind filled with
rational loves, within which we can live as a heaven, because the Lord’s good
and truth flows in from within these rational loves.
It’s clear
from these considerations that the
(a) by performing uses in everyday work situations (NJHD 126)
(b) in every office, in every business, and in every work (NJHD
123, 126)
(c) according to one’s occupation (TCR 580; AC 2364; AE 1180)
(d) by reflecting on the goals we are reaching for (DP 296)
(e) by dealing with unpleasant things which interrupt (DP 296)
Rev.
Sandstrom emphasizes those Numbers that teach that it is not what we say in
public to others that determines what we actually are inside. It is not our
reputation with others that determines our spiritual fate in the afterlife, but
how we thought to ourself privately. These private reactions and thoughts
correspond to our actual affections, those that we have with us in the
afterlife and determine out spiritual fate.
When we
operate in the company of others, we tend to think in our external personality.
We want to be consistent in what we show to others, and we want to hide those
things in us that would draw their condemnation or rejection. The people we
don’t care about because they have no power over us,
are sometimes made targets of our hatred and arrogance. But we hide these
insanities from those whose reactions would affect our situation. We also show
some of our evils and negativity, but carefully selecting only those that we
can get away with without excessive cost or punishment.
If we act
in a decent or compassionate manner towards others, we derive social benefits,
but to derive spiritual benefits as well, we must be acting from a rational
love. For example, we might refrain from doing evil to someone out of fear or
for the sake of some reward. This is an outside or natural motive, and does not
constitute a spiritual renunciation of evil. Hence the evil remains, and in the
afterlife it asserts itself, and we become that evil. But if at the same time
we also refrain from doing evil on account of God, we derive full spiritual
benefit. In the afterlife, this love of not doing evil to others on account of God, can be infilled with heavenly good and truth, so that
that individual enters heaven and lives there.
We are
privately confessing to the Lord our sins against Him, by self-monitoring our
willing and thinking all day long for the sake of our regeneration. It is the
Lord who manages the timing and content of our awareness and insight into our
sins or evils. If we started telling Him about them, it would be pretending
that He doesn’t know them, or that He is not in charge of managing them. This
would be a foolish pretense. What the Lord wants us to do is to monitor the
evil affections and delights, and their false thoughts and attitudes. He brings
them to our conscious awareness to the extent that we are willing to desist
from them because they are sins against Him. He keeps out of our awareness
those evils we are not ready to give up willingly.
But note carefully: We do need to
make lists of our sins, not for the priest, not for the Lord, but for
ourselves!
It’s very
important to have a scientific or medical perspective on regeneration, for this
knowledge helps us to cooperate more with the Lord. The slow down is not on the
Lord’s side. He would go more rapidly. But we are holding Him back like a
toddler at a street crossing—you end up picking up the child and carrying it
across. But the Lord cannot pick us up and carry us to heaven, or else He
would, do not doubt that! So He has revealed to us in a scientific way what the
process entails and how we are to cooperate for maximum pace. For instance, He
has revealed that He cannot remove sins clinging to us by our love, so He wants
us to voluntarily desist from it and to detest it. Then He can remove it. So
this is rule number one. Rule number two has to do with the direction of our
progression. We cannot move from the general sins and evils to the particular, but
only from the particular to the general (xx).
In other
words, if we confess and repent of a general evil in us, the Lord cannot remove
it. This is because the particulars are still in place. But if we desist from
willing a particular evil, the Lord can remove it. And if we desist from a
group of particular evils that cluster together into a general evil, then the
Lord can remove the general evil after all the particulars had been removed. If
the Lord could remove a general evil directly, then all our sins could be
removed instantaneously merely by saying, “Lord I repent of all my sins and
from now on I will refrain from all my evils.” But this is a useless prayer
(xx). It effects nothing toward our regeneration.
Obviously, since the Lord cannot remove the particular evils we hold on by mere
pronouncement of a formula, even if it is meant sincerely at the moment of the
prayer. Remember that removing evils has to do with replacing an evil love with
a rational love. And love is what we freely do, if nothing prevented (xx).
I have
observed the truth of this in myself. When it comes to conjugial affairs, my
wife brings to my attention things in my behavior or attitude by which she
feels my opposition to conjugial union. For example, I have postponed reading
some financial papers she wants me to read so we can discuss certain matters of
investment, insurance, and retirement pension. Each time she brings the matter
up I feel repentant and promise to do it at last. In the morning I think to
myself that I’ll do it in the afternoon. IN the afternoon I tell myself I’ll do
it in the morning. How pathetic! It’s obvious as I think about it that what I
need to do is to monitor the particulars of this general evil in my character.
As long as I don’t locate the particulars that allow me to play this foolish
game, I will not be able to lay away the general. which
means that the bad behavior continues even now. (I’ll definitely do it
tomorrow, I mean it. Help Lord!)
22. Without
Self-Monitoring Our Evils They Cannot Be Removed
Regeneration
involves freely rejecting our evils even though they delight us tremendously.
It is not possible to reject our own evils by the group or collectively, as
just discussed. It is only possible to reject them one by one. Therefore if we
don’t make lists, how are we going to keep track of them so we may reject them?
This is a practical issue. If we run a department store without an inventory,
can we succeed? We must identify something before we can sell it or reject it.
Therefore we should use the method of making lists and inventories of our evils
and falsities just as we make lists of things to do on a busy day.
No one can shun that
of which he is ignorant
(DP 278)
Regarding
confession, Rev. Sandstrom cites DP 278, to support the idea that “confessing
ourselves guilty of all kinds of evils can have a potentially disastrous
consequence” (New Church Life, p.
287). I’d like to quote that Number in a larger context, while I summarize each
point in numbered items:
II. EVILS CANNOT BE REMOVED UNLESS THEY APPEAR.
**(1) The title of the Number asserts that the Lord
cannot remove our evils in secret or unconsciously. Removal of evils is a
conscious and cooperative process, more like lifting a heavy
furniture by two men, than surgery performed while being put to sleep by drugs.
This is what’s meant by the expression “unless they appear.” To continue the
quote:
This does not mean that man is to do evils in order that
they may appear, but that he is to examine himself, not his actions only, but
also his thoughts, and what he would do if he were not afraid of the laws and
disgrace; especially what evils he holds in his spirit to be allowable and does
not regard as sins; for these he still commits. (DP 278)
**(2) The cooperative process is between the Lord and
the individual. First, we ought to “examine ourselves.” It is specified that
the self-examination focus must be threefold: (a) our feelings or motives in
the will; (b) our thoughts and beliefs; and (c) our public acts as regulated by
society (“the laws and disgrace”). In other words, we are commanded to examine
our minute by minute willing, thinking, and acting out. It is stressed
(“especially”) that we monitor the “evils we hold in the spirit to be allowable
and do not regard as sins.”
What are
these particular types of evils? The evils we “do not regard as sins.” For
example, we may have long standing habits of thinking about others in a
derogatory way. We never bring this out to the surface and would not want
others to know about it. We see it as merely an inward habit that you won’t
allow to have overt consequences. Just a kind of quirk—we might think. But this
is fooling ourselves. We should use the definition of
the Word for it, not our own, namely, “evils he holds in his spirit to be
allowable and does not regard as sins.”
To continue
with the Number:
In order that man may examine himself an understanding has
been given him, and this separate from the will, that he may know, understand
and acknowledge what is good and what is evil; and also that he may see the
quality of his will, or what it is he loves and desires. In order that he may
see this his understanding has been furnished with higher and lower thought, or
interior and exterior thought, to enable him to see from higher or interior thought
what his will is doing in the lower or exterior thought. This he sees as a man
sees his face in a mirror; and when he sees it and knows what sin is, he is
able, if he implores the help of the Lord, not to will it, but to shun it and
afterwards to act against it; if not wholeheartedly, still he can exercise
constraint upon it by combat, and at length turn away from it and hate it. (DP
278)
**(3) Here the Lord is revealing the method He has
provided for the human race to be regenerated for a life in heaven. From being
born infernal, every individual can be regenerated into an angel by the time
one passes on. The method is a psycho-physiological one and involves two phases
or movements repeated numerous times daily during regeneration. The human race
received a split-brain to reflect this two-phased process regeneration (xx). I
call it metanoid self-witnessing. The passage here describes it as “higher and
lower thought, or interior and exterior thought.”
The higher
thought can see the lower thought “as a man sees his face in a mirror.” The
higher thought refers to the level of thinking in our natural-rational
understanding. The lower thought refers to the sensuous and corporeal mind,
which are discrete degrees below the natural-rational region of the natural
mind. Higher level thinking is accomplished by means of higher correspondences,
also called more interior truths. Lower level of
correspondences are sensuous and corporeal, not rational. Therefore the
lower self, called the external man, is filled with evils from its inherited
ties to the hells. It cannot regenerate itself for to the lower self, whatever
feels good is good. Pleasure rules and the proof is
always in the pudding.
But the
higher self, meaning the natural-rational, takes up cognitive constructs and
representations for life, for heaven, for regeneration. Most
of all, the Letter of the Writings, which the natural-rational takes up in its
memory, concepts, and principles. The dictates and distinctions of
conscience, and the knowledge of the Letter of the Writings, create a higher
natural understanding that can look down on the lower natural understanding,
and evaluate it, judge it, condemn it; and then, repent from it, compel the
lower to desist from it, and at last detest it. This is the process of
regeneration the Lord has provided for the salvation of the human race.
Note how
the entire process of regeneration is recapitulated at the end of the quote
above that we are now discussing:
when he sees it and knows what sin is, he is able, if he implores
the help of the Lord, not to will it, but to shun it and afterwards to act
against it; if not wholeheartedly, still he can exercise constraint upon it by
combat, and at length turn away from it and hate it. (DP 278)
(a) with self-monitoring from the higher to the lower, “he sees
it.”
(b) from knowledge of the Letter of the Writings, he “knows what
sin is.”
(c) by imploring the Lord for help, he is given the power “not
to will it, but to shun it .”
(d) after being able to shun it, he gains the power “to act
against it.”
(e) by acting against it, “he can exercise constraint upon it by
combat” from conscience
(f) by repeating these steps many times, we “at length turn away
from it and hate it.”
This
six-phased process is cumulatively particular to an evil, and then its consummated and ends. for
example, men have a pornographic interest in women who enter their sphere of
vision, either in reality or by medium of photography or movie. Even after
undergoing reformation, and as I’m undergoing regeneration at age 64, I have
not yet gained control over my roving eyes. Movie producers and magazines
editors take advantage of this general interest men have in voyeuristic and
scortatory interests. It is also a primary mode for marketing many products to
men such as automobiles, clothes, weight loss programs, and financial
investments, etc. Year after year, week by week, I have worked to decondition
my roving eyes, and I’m still failing in the attempt. I know I will have
victory. I’ve been stuck on step (e), namely, I exercise “constraint upon it by
combat” form conscience and from the Doctrine from the Writings I have in my
upper mind. But I have learned the last step to “at length turn away from it
and hate it.”
But at the
end, when I get to hate scortatory interests and delights, I will have peace IN
THAT LIMITED AREA OF REGENERATION. I will not have to fight the battle again,
once I hate scortatory involvements.
This is the
case with all our evils. Regeneration is therefore a geographic process like
the growth of plants and populations, spreading in different areas at different
rates and with various effectiveness, force, or virulence..
To continue
with the Number:
Now, and not before, he first
perceives and also feels that evil is evil and that good is good. This then is what is involved in
examining oneself, seeing one's evils and recognizing them, confessing them and
afterwards desisting from them. (DP 278)
**(4) When we reach vastation of a particular evil,
have fought against it, and no longer do it, then, “and not before, we first
perceive and also feel that evil is evil and that good is good.” This is a
momentous event! For the first time our eyes are opened to spiritual
consciousness. From a merely natural animal-human, we turn into a genuine
human, a celestial mind. We no longer choose to do that particular thing
because it is evil. This is true freedom (xx). We can see the contrast.
Before, we
were slave to the evil. It made us do the evil even while we were trying not to
do it. Thus we were in an infernal freedom to do it, which is a slavery of it.
To perceive that “evil is evil and that good is good” is the mark of the
celestial regenerate mind. The unregenerate mind perceives evil as good and
perceives good as evil (xx). This momentous event marks the birth in our mind
of the Divine Human in His Divine Rational. This birth repeats itself endlessly
with each particular evil that is vastated and removed. In place of the former
evil is good from the Lord that comes to us through our Spiritual Doctrine.
Note that the Spiritual Doctrine likewise has to be particular and geographic,
for there has to be a Spiritual Doctrine for each area and sub-region of our
personality.
To continue
with the Number:
[2] As, however, there are few who know that this is the
Christian religion itself, for only they have charity and faith, and they alone
are led by the Lord and do good from Him, therefore something will be said of
those who do not do so and yet think they have religion in them. They are:
1. Those who
confess themselves guilty of sins of all kinds, and do not search out any one
sin in themselves;
2. Those who from
religious principles omit such inquiry;
3. Those who on
account of worldly matters give no thought to sins, and consequently do not
know them;
4. Those who
favor sins and therefore cannot know them.
5. In all these
persons sins do not appear, and therefore cannot be removed.
6. Lastly, the
reason hitherto unknown will be made manifest why evils cannot be removed without
this search, appearance, acknowledgment, confession and resistance. (DP 278)
**(5) This portion of the Number we are discussing
states the conditions we must remove from our mind or else we cannot be
regenerated because evils in us cannot be recognized. There are four such
conditions preventing regeneration:
(a) relying on a ritualistic and general confession of sins
rather than on self-monitoring and judging particular sins we actually commit
(b) using a principle, doctrine, or dogma to reject the
necessity of constant self-monitoring and condemning of each sin in particular
(c) rejecting the central importance of religion in life, and
thus neglecting to examine oneself
(d) favoring sins as allowable or as not damning
Continuing
with the Number:
These points, however, must be examined one by one because
they are fundamentals of the Christian religion on man's part.
First: Concerning those who confess themselves guilty of
sins of all kind and do not search out any one sin in themselves. Such a one
says, "I am a sinner; I was born in sin; there is nothing sound in me from
head to foot; I am nothing but evil. Good God, be gracious to me, pardon me,
cleanse me, save me, make me to walk in purity and in the way of
righteousness"; and so on. Yet he does not examine himself, and
consequently is ignorant of any evil; and no one can shun that of which he is
ignorant, much less fight against it. After his confession he also believes
himself clean and washed, when nevertheless he is unclean and unwashed from the
head to the sole of the foot; for the confession of all sins is the lulling to
sleep of all, and at length blindness. It is like a universal lacking every
individual, and this has no existence. (DP 278)
**(6) the fundamental or governing principle in the
Continuing
with the Number:
Second: Concerning those who from religious principles omit
such inquiry. They are especially those who separate charity from faith; for
such a one says to himself, "Why should I search out whether there is evil
or good? Why should I search out whether there is evil when evil does not
condemn me; and whether there is good, when good does not save me? It is faith
alone, thought of and declared with assurance and confidence,
that justifies and purifies from all sin; and when once I am justified I
am whole in the sight of God. I am indeed in evil; but God wipes it away as
soon as it is committed, and so it appears no more"; besides other things
of a like nature. Who does not see, if he but opens his eyes, that such are
empty words in which there is no reality, because there is no good in them?
(...) (DP 278)
**(7) Note the sentence: “Who does not see, if he but
opens his eyes, that such are empty words in which there is no reality, because
there is no good in them?” We can recognize it easily, that when we never wash
our clothes, they will remain dirty and foul smelling. Similarly we ought to
reason that ritual washings or incantations will not clean the clothes,
therefore will not regenerate our character from being born infernal. We are
not rational when we believe that our sins are forgiven, washed away, taken
away from us by mere declaration of faith, no matter how sincere and well
meaning. Sins are evil habits we delight in, that tie us to the hells. Those
ties must be broken by free choice and combat, or else they remain regardless
of piety and sincerity. No more can sins be taken away by sincerity of faith,
than a fever can be taken away by bogus aspirin. That which is truly sincere,
shuns evils and does not do them.
To continue
with the Number:
Third: Concerning those who on account of worldly matters
give no thought to sins, and consequently do not know them. These are they who
love the world above all things, and admit no truth that would lead them away
from any falsity of their religion. They say to themselves, "What have I
to do with this? It does not enter into my thought." Thus they reject the
truth as soon as they hear it, and if they listen to it they stifle it. They do
much the same when they hear preaching: they retain nothing of it save some few
phrases, but not any of the substance. As they deal thus with truths they do not
know what good is, for truth and good act as one; and from that good which does
not spring from truth there is no knowledge of evil unless it is also called
good; and this is effected by reasoning from falsities. These are they who are
meant by the seed which fell among thorns, of whom the Lord says:
Other seeds fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up and
choked them....
These are they who hear the Word, but the cares of this
world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, so that it becomes unfruitful.
Matt. xiii. 7, 22; Mark iv. 7 [18, 19];** Luke viii. 7, 14.
(DP 278)
**(8) The literal of this passage appears to talk about
others, not ourselves as “the
Leaving
this attitude and orientation behind, we can accept the idea that it applies to
us, and therefore that we should use correspondences to discover how it applies
to us. The Writings assert that the Word cannot be understood without doctrine
(xx). In that case we can ask ourselves: What doctrine do we have in our mind?
And how did we use this doctrine to understand the Writings? And now we can
further as to the logical implications: And if we did not create Doctrine for
ourselves, and used it to understand the Writings, then what did we understand?
Searching the Writings we find the teaching that the Letter of the Word is dead
(xx) and leads to any falsification we desire in support of our evil
affections, thus all sorts of idolatries.
Now we can
perceive a deeper spiritual sense in the original sentence: “those who on
account of worldly matters give no thought to sins.” Now we can perceive that
the expression “worldly matters” is a correspondence for “our understanding of
the Letter prior to reformation.” Also, that the expression to “give no thought
to sins” is a correspondence that signifies the
We can
confirm the spiritual sense we have extracted by correspondence. Consider this
passage in the Letter of the Writings:
In the Word evils are sometimes called sins, sometimes
iniquities, and sometimes transgressions; but what the specific meaning of each
of them is, is not evident except from the internal sense. The word
transgressions is used for deeds contrary to the truths of faith, the word
iniquities for deeds contrary to the good of faith, and the word sins for deeds
contrary to the good of charity and love. The first two kinds of deeds spring
from a perverted understanding, the last from a wicked will (AC 9156)
This
confirms the idea that the expression of “giving thought to sins” is a
correspondence that signifies self-monitoring our evils for the sake of
amendment and regeneration. The Letter of this passage explicitly defines
“sins” as “iniquities and transgressions.” It is therefore permissible to use
substitution of one for the other since they are in parallel relationship (xx).
“To give thought” is a correspondence for self-monitoring since it requires
focus and awareness for the higher mind to look down on the lower, and judge
its acts on the basis of conscience and the doctrine in our mind from the
Letter of the Writings (xx).
** (9) Note again the portion of the passage discussed
in above:
Concerning those who on account of
worldly matters give no thought to sins, and consequently do not know them. These are they who love the world
above all things, and admit no truth that would lead them away from any falsity
of their religion. They say to themselves, "What have I to do with this?
It does not enter into my thought." Thus they reject the truth as soon as
they hear it, and if they listen to it they stifle it. (DP 278)
Note that
prior to reformation, we “love the world above all things.” When applied to
ourselves, this expression is a correspondence for loving the Letter above
loving the spirit within the Letter. “The world” represents the dead Letter of
the Word (xx). “To love it above all things” signifies that we are in an
idolatrous worship within which there is no internal (xx). The
Prior to reformation, immersed in the idolatries of the Letter, the
The truth
that “leads away” from the falsity of the dead Letter is the truth that the
spiritual sense is to be extracted from the Letter of the Writings.
They say to themselves, "What have I to do with this?
It does not enter into my thought." Thus they reject the truth as soon as
they hear it, and if they listen to it they stifle it. (DP 278)
This refers
to our initial opposition to the idea that the Writings are written by pure
correspondences. This new spiritual Doctrine breaks the idols of our worship.
As long as salvation lies in the Letter, we feel comfortable in our
unregenerate state. We don’t have to face the reality that every sentence of the
Writings is about our regeneration, since salvation is by regeneration, and
everything in the Writings is for the salvation of the human race. By
acknowledging and accepting the idea that the Writings are written in pure
correspondences, we suddenly have the awesome responsibility of searching out
the literal of every sentence, figuring out its correspondences, making a
coherent thesis or doctrine from it, search the Writings again to confirm this
spiritual Doctrine, be enlightened by the Lord, and reapply the new perceptions
to our daily and hourly self-monitoring.
This is an
awesome task and we resist committing to it the more we find out its details.
We “reject the truth as soon as we hear it” signifies our opposition to the
idea that the Word of the Writings is also written in pure correspondences like
the Old and New Testaments. We are unwilling to get near to the idea, enough to
see that the correspondences of the Old and New Testaments are corporeal and
natural-sensuous, while the correspondences in the Writings are
natural-rational. When we hear these facts we “listen to them and stifle them.”
In other words, we reject them.
To continue
with the discussion on the Number:
Fourth: Concerning those who favor sins and therefore cannot
know them. These are they who acknowledge God and worship Him according to the
customary ceremonials, and who convince themselves that any evil which is a sin
is not a sin; for they disguise it by fallacies and appearances, and so hide
its Enormity. When they have done this they favor it, making it their familiar
friend. It is said that those who acknowledge God do this, because others do
not regard any evil as a sin, whereas every sin is an offence against God. But
examples may illustrate this. A man does not regard evil as a sin who in his desire for wealth makes certain forms of fraud
allowable, by reasons which he devises. The same is true of the man who
justifies in himself the spirit of revenge against his private enemies, or who
in time of war justifies plundering those who are not his country's enemies.
**(10) This passage, when considered through
correspondences applied to our regeneration, discusses our merely natural life
when it is not infilled with the spiritual sense of the Writings, which is the
only sense that is serviceable for our regeneration, and consequently for our
salvation. By remaining in the Letter of the Writings, our understanding of
spiritual topics is called “customary ceremonials” which is a correspondence
for outward worship within which there is no internal, called the Jewish state
of the
The word transgressions is used for deeds contrary to the
truths of faith, the word iniquities for deeds contrary to the good of faith,
and the word sins for deeds contrary to the good of charity and love. The first
two kinds of deeds spring from a perverted understanding, the last from a
wicked will (AC 9156
“Deeds that
are contrary to the truths of faith” signifies that the Letter of the Writings
teach that we must extract the spiritual sense form the Word in order to be
regenerated (xx). This is the “truth of faith” defined in the Letter. Our daily
willing and thinking remain transgressions that are contrary to our
Continuing
with the Number:
Fifth: In these persons sins do not appear, and therefore
cannot be removed. Every evil that does not become manifest nourishes itself
being like fire in wood under the ashes, and like matter in a wound that is not
opened; for every evil that is denied an outlet increases and does not abate
until the whole has been destroyed. Therefore, lest any evil should be shut in,
everyone is permitted to think in favor of God or against God, and in favor of
the holy things of the Church or against them, and is not punished for it in
the world. (DP 278)
**(11) “These persons” refers to the New Church
mind-to-be prior to reformation when we have fallen into New Church idolatries
due to our being immersed in the dead Letter, as just explained. that “sins do not appear” in this state signifies that our
willing and thinking are transgressions and iniquities, ad explained just
above. When we are in this purely natural understanding and worship, it dos not
appear to us that our willing and thinking are so many sins. Therefore the mind
remains infernal and the
The Lord
has provided for the reformation of the
Note this
life-saving revelation: “Every evil that is denied an outlet increases and does
not abate until the whole has been destroyed” (DP 278). What does “every evil”
mean in the literal? It means that there is no particular evil, weighty or
light, that does not DESTROY THE WHOLE MIND, when left remaining by denial. The
physiology of evil is that it is a defective organic fiber constituting a
portion of the organ of the will, in the same way that the muscles in the wall
of a malfunctioning heart constitute a portion of the heart itself. If there is
a genetic defect causing heart muscle failure, the body will die. But with
evils, we need also to think about a deadly virus or bacteria
that kills the body when receiving a foothold. Even though the virus
initially remains in a single cell, when the time is consummated, and the
infected cell has changed sufficiently, the virus population breaks out and
infects more and more cells until death.
For
instance, at age 64 I’m still overweight by about seven percent or 10 lbs. I’ve
been struggling for decades to monitor the evil affections that lure me into
overeating every day a little bit. In my 20s I was 40 lbs overweight. I
struggled from natural good and conscience to keep the issue of overweight as a
moral issue as well as a health issue fro myself. I could convince myself to go
on a weight loss diet from time to time, losing most of the extra lbs., but
they slowly crept back within a shorter or a longer time. I’m still struggling
with this evil in my character.
Despite my
long standing focus and interest in metanoid self-witnessing I haven’t sufficiently
become aware of the hidden impulses that lure me to eat and punish me with
depression if I refuse to feed my face. So I keep on struggling, imploring the
Lord for help. I receive the answer from within: “You have soap and water. Go
wash your hands and face, and you’ll be clean.”
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings
from before mine eyes, cease to do evil; Learn to do well.... Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.... But if ye refuse and rebel, ye
shall be devoured with the sword. Isa. i. 6, 16 [17], 18, 20.
To be devoured with the sword signifies to perish by the falsity of evil. (DP
278)
The Lord is
waiting for me to face the evil of overeating from its particulars, not
generals.
To continue
with the Number:
Sixth: The reason, hitherto unknown, why evils cannot be
removed without this search, appearance, acknowledgment, confession and
resistance. In the preceding pages it has been mentioned that the universal
heaven is arranged in societies according to [the affections of good and the
entire hell according to] the lusts of evil opposite to the affections of good.
Every man as to his spirit is in some society - in a heavenly society if he is in
the affection of good, but in an infernal society if he is in the lust of evil.
Man does not know this while he is living in the world, but nevertheless as to
his spirit he is in some society; otherwise he cannot live, and because of it
he is governed by the Lord. If he is in an infernal society he can only be led
out of it by the Lord according to the laws of His Divine Providence, one of
which is that he must see that he is there, must desire to go out and must
himself endeavor to do this of himself. This he can do while he is in the
world, but not after death; for then he remains to eternity in the society in
which he has placed himself while in the world. This is the reason why man is
to examine himself, see and acknowledge his sins and repent, and afterwards
persevere right on to the end of his life. That this is the case I could
establish from much experience even to complete belief; but this is not the
place to set forth proofs of my experience. (DP 278)
(12) Again
the Number summarizes the necessary conditions for our regeneration.
Regeneration is called here the “removal of evils.” The summary of regeneration
is specified now in five steps:
q
search
q
appearance
q
acknowledgment
q
confession
q
resistance
“Search”
corresponds to performing constant self-monitoring of our willing and thinking.
“Appearance” signifies to locate and identify a particular evil as we perform it, that is, catching ourselves in the act. “Acknowledgment”
refers to critically examining the particular willing or thinking in the light of
our doctrine that we have in our understanding from the Letter of the Writings.
“confession” means that we are to condemn ourselves on
account of this evil, for performing it over and over again, for loving it, for
hanging on to it, keeping it in our bosom like a cherished monstrosity.
Finally, “resistance” refers to desisting, that is, compelling our lower mind
not to continue willing the evil, thinking it, and loving it.
Note the
sentence: “Every man as to his spirit is in some society - in a heavenly
society if he is in the affection of good, but in an infernal society if he is
in the lust of evil.” This awesome revelation about the vertical community
gives the human race an entirely chained view of itself. This revelation is no
less revolutionary about the human mind than the Copernican revolution was
about the universe. We are dual citizens, and have always been since the
beginning of creation. Upon birth, we have a physical body in some society on
earth, and tied to this physical body, a spiritual mind that is in some society
in the spiritual world.
The
spirit-mind has to grow up and mature like the physical body to which it is
attached by correspondence. The natural portion of the spirit-mind, or its
external form, is built up by sensory input from the environment of the
physical body. Simultaneously, the spiritual portion of the spirit-mind, or its
interior form, is built up by sensory input from the environment of the
spirit-body in the spiritual world. These two sensory input sources are coordinated
by the Lord so that there is no chaos of independent development and
functioning. The spiritual mind develops and receives input from the spiritual
world, to the extent that the natural mind develops and receives input from the
Letter of the Writings, or from instruction based on it.
The mind of
every human being is “governed by the Lord” through the intermediary of the
vertical community (xx). The passage above says
Every man as to his spirit is in some society - in a
heavenly society if he is in the affection of good, but in an infernal society
if he is in the lust of evil. Man does not know this while he is living in the
world, but nevertheless as to his spirit he is in some society; otherwise he
cannot live, and because of it he is governed by the Lord. If he is in an
infernal society he can only be led out of it by the Lord according to the laws
of His Divine Providence, one of which is that he must see that he is there,
must desire to go out and must himself endeavor to do this of himself (DP 278)
There is
only one alternative provided by the Lord, only two states are open to the
human mind, one choice: “Every man as to his spirit is in some society - in a
heavenly society if he is in the affection of good, but in an infernal society
if he is in the lust of evil.” Our heredity predominates us to “the lust of
evil” so that each one of us is “in an infernal society” prior to reformation,
regardless of religion, intelligence, and lifestyle. There are times when we
appear to be animated by some good intention, which we also delight in from
heredity. While we are in this externally good state, we are led by the Lord
through the heavens. The rest of the time we are led by the Lord through the
hells. The Lord cannot prevail upon us to stop loving our evils. He waits and
works in the unconscious background keeping things from getting worse. It’s up
to each of us to begin our reformation by means of the Letter of the Writings
applied to our life.
Rev. Erik
Sandstrom cites DP 278, discussed above in some detail, to warn that
“confessing ourselves guilty of all kinds of evils...may promote them instead,
and blind us to them, to boot.” (Ibid, New Church Life, p. 287). This refers to “confessing all our
problems to others” and since the Lord already knows all our problems, we don’t
need to confess them to Him either. But we must be careful not to draw the
wrong conclusions! We went over the entire Number, looking for its literal
meaning as well as applying correspondences to it to see how it applies to the
regeneration of our willing and thinking. the point is
that confessing every sin is necessary in order that it may “appear,” that is,
in order that we may become aware of it. Confessing our evils to others and to
the Lord is permissible, but we must know that this has no power to regenerate.
What has
power to regenerate and save is self-witnessing, self-monitoring, and
self-examining every evil the Lord brings to our awareness. And once it
appears, to condemn it and to compel our lower mind not to will it.
Chapter 1, Section 2
2. Snatching
Things From Sudden
Memory
A man's mind is his
spirit (DP 296)
As I
practiced the self-witnessing discipline for more than three decades I’m able
to say various things about it that may be useful to others (see Note 20 at end).
My most amazing discovery was the existence of “sudden memory” by which I’m
referring to the stream of thought that is our actual mental life in the
natural mind. This stream of thought is the outward form of our affections (see
Note 19 at end). The quality of our affections is the result of which spiritual
societies we are in contact as the sequence of thoughts proceeds. Through
self-witnessing practice I was striving to “tune in” to the stream while I was
carrying out my tasks all day long. This is not like meditation or deep
reflection which occurs when we stop our tasks and sit doing nothing, thus
disengaged from the surrounding pace.
The stream
of thinking accompanies every act and is a characteristic of human life. I was
able to tune in and listen to some extent, I suppose, for the stream goes fast
and if you try to catch it, it begins to tumble and roll like an avalanche.
It’s as if the conscious filter can hold only so much of it and the rest spills
and dissipates as more keeps coming.
What I
found amazing is that the instant I tried to reflect on what I snatched form
the stream, it would be gone. I could not remember what it was. It’s quite
unsettling. How do I get hold of it or some of it long enough so I can examine
in greater detail? You may be familiar with this experience when, upon
awakening, you are still affectively filled the sphere of your vivid dream, but
the instant you try to reflect on what it is so you can put it in words, it
remains unavailable to the conscious mind, staying just out of its reach—like
the “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon researched in psycholinguistics when I was
in graduate school in the 1960s. We were taught that there are two types of
memory: short term and long term. The first lasts for several seconds—like the
phone number we look up and then dial. If we wait more than a few seconds to
dial we have to look it up again. We move things from short term to long term
memory by repetition and rehearsal with the motive to recall it later. Sudden
memory seems to work for a second or two.
I
discovered that I can make myself think in words or sentences as I carry out my
tasks. This is somewhat like giving a “blow by blow” description to an
imaginary tape recorder of what one is thinking. It seems to slow the stream
down for awhile, enough so that my short term memory retains more of it and I’m
able to get a fix on what the topic is and its direction. In short term memory
we can be aware and evaluative, and put anything we want into long term memory
by mentally rehearsing or making a physical record of it. In this way the
mental discipline pays off because it gives access to our normal everyday
affections.
Slowly I
began to exert rational and religious control over my interior dialog, my
daydreams, and my emotional reactions to things moment by moment all day long. Also, my attitudes and interests. I would stop myself from
continuing a line of thinking: “Stop it. Why are you wasting time thinking
these useless things?” Or: “That’s not a nice thing to think.” Or: “How low can
I get to be so fascinated by that sort of thing?” Etc. This gave me greater
conscious control over my mental life allowing me to clean out the mental
pollution that reigned in it from birth and culture. It is not possible for
humans to do anything without the accompanying thinking stream. By controlling
this, we control a portion of our natural mind. Control of the lower natural
mind (corporeal and sensual) by the higher natural mind (natural-rational) is
necessary for regeneration. To the extent that we do this, to that extent the
Lord can open our interior-natural mind (DLW 248).
This is the
genuine human or celestial mind. It is where our life in heaven is. It is where
the Lord’s Proprium dwells. The highest angels have a direct perception of how
this Proprium comes into them by influx, followed by their as-of-self acting
from it spontaneously and as if from self in full liberty (AC 47, 233, 1712,
2877, 5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). This
process is inhibited and destroyed when we do not remove the mental pollution
by our own daily efforts, as-of-self but looking to the Lord for strength.
The
celestial regions have walls and guards (xx) that keep out mental pollution
(strangers and evil spirits) from entering that lofty region or level of
consciousness. Therefore we need to erect such walls and establish guards in
our mind to prevent unholy things from entering and lodging in our mind. Our
culture of entertainment and social cynicism specialize in manufacturing large
quantities of polluted ideas, pictures, and situations. Without vigilance
exercised every hour of our waking time our mind gets inundated by pollutants,
poisons, viruses, and all sorts of unpleasant, sleazy, scortatory, and idiotic
suggestions. The mind is weighted down by them, even sinking into the
corporeal.
Woe to
those who make this their abode for in the afterlife they are captured and
tortured by those who have these same things in them. And the omnipotence of a
loving God cannot deliver them from this miserable lot for to remove them from
it would leave nothing behind for any life by them (AC 5854[3]). Best therefore
that we be diligent and sincere in our efforts at self-witnessing while there
is still time and opportunity.
Have you
listened in on yourself lately? We cannot trust the reputation or opinion we
have of ourselves, for this is subjective, biased, and self-serving. The check
mark we place on rating scales are inflated or deflated in accordance with our
vanities: How good am I? How often do I get mad? Am I ever unkind or gross?
What kind of mistakes do I make? How happy are the people around me with my
conduct? Etc. To answer objectively and accurately we must witness our life.
When I
first discovered sudden memory I was so delighted and felt powerful for the
first time (see Note 19 at end). I really had found something that is universal
yet unknown. A secret of understanding. I immediately
felt superior. I was brave in situations I had been timid. Etc. Until at last I
thought I was a god. I used the concept of avatar I read about and applied to
myself. So this is what it means to be an avatar. I am it. Etc. I started
making discoveries and this was proof that I was a god—see Note 3 for list of
discoveries. But the Writings saved me.
You have to
snatch things from sudden memory into short term memory, and from there you can
write it down or dictate it as a record. You have to put it into sentences,
what you get to see. The sphere of sudden memory is not linguistic
but thought-representations, like spirits think. It’s faster since they think
faster than us. Material brain slows it down. We need this slow down to train
our conscious awareness, which starts slow cause based on sensory input in
natural min d. This is not like a spirit thinks (HH 239). Which
means at any moment we’re but a few hours away from speaking in this
thought-language and thinking faster and more powerfully, yet totally
spontaneously. We enjoy being a spirit, especially at the beginning
while we’re still a little in both worlds and sense the contrast keenly.
I snatched
from sudden memory sphere the sentence “It’s the purpose.” I kept making myself
repeat the sentence with the intentionality of “How is this?” And it kept not
coming to me so I kept repeating it for a whole minute or longer as I went
about cleaning up the kitchen and having a loose dialog with my wife who was
opening amazon.com boxes and reading me the e Ta of C from each. I told myself
I must try to think about it again later. So here I am. What was it all about?
I know it was deep, it was enlightening. In sudden memory I am more consciously
at the level of how the interior-natural mind thinks in the brain of the
spirit-body, not how the natural-rational mind thinks in the brain of my
physical body. Knowing this is pretty good. How many people know this, or can
believe it when they hear it? Only those who are willing to
think in dualisms. And further, they must be dualisms that are not
adulterated or modified by consulting the natural mind. They must be dualisms
from the Writings because it is our only source for genuine spiritual
dualities. All dualities are unique
permanent distinctions that never cease to eternity (DLW 226). (see Volume 1)
1. What
Makes Our Life Moments Spiritual
Back to “It’s the purpose.” I was thinking about what makes our life moments spiritual?
And I perceived in the sphere of sudden memory that everything is interrelated
so that one has an effect on all and all has an effect on one—which is the
sphere of heaven (HH 49). What makes something I do heavenly is the region or
sphere of heaven—when I’m in it and when I’m not. In which case I am in the
infernal spheres, to a smaller or greater distance depending on …here it
comes…the purpose that animates or motivates each and every micro-act I
perform. If my purpose or goal-intentionality is in the heavenly sphere, my act
is spiritual. If not, my act is natural. Some natural intentionalities
are motivated by mild infernal affections that the Lord is able to bend into
the shape of fibers that can contain the heavenly sphere. But other more grave
forms of infernal affections refuse to be re-shaped in that way, and thus we
remain in them.
And still
further, my purpose has to fit the Lord’s purpose. Does it? How? Etc.
So I
understood. It’s the purpose that makes my discipline spiritual and religious.
Didn’t I already know this? Yes, it’s all over the Writings and I’ve been
reading them daily for years. And yet the heavenly secret enclosed in the idea
I take up from the literal remains a secret to the natural consciousness. As a
secret it can only work generally in my character, from a distance, less
effectively. But when the interior of the literal in our memory is opened, the
secret enters into conscious awareness through sudden memory. Then we see
clearly, but until then only in obscurity like the sight in a thick fog whereby
we bump into tress and fall into ditches. This is how our natural mind works,
before it is turned around towards the spiritual mind.
The
spiritual mind is in rational and good order, but the inherited natural mind
and the natural mind instructed by sensory input alone, is not a rational mind
but the opposite. To itself the unregenerate natural mind appears logical and
supremely rational:
With many in the world this does not take place, because
they love the first degree of their life, called the natural, and have no
desire to withdraw from it and become spiritual. The natural degree of life
regarded in itself loves only self and the world, for it clings to the bodily
senses and these occupy a prominent place in the world; but the spiritual
degree of life regarded in itself loves the Lord and heaven, and also itself
and the world, but God and heaven as higher, principal and ruling, and itself
and the world as lower, instrumental and serving. (DP 324:10)
I noticed
things in sudden memory that show how angels are at work in the unfolding of
our moment to moment biography. Their thought and intention descends by
correspondence into the sphere of sudden memory. I snatch something, it’s a
flash, it’s a warning, and my thought becomes conscious of “Careful, easy, keep
your finger away.” Or: “The Lord wants me to be forthcoming and compassionate.
I must overcome this reluctance.” The connectivity between what the angels
think and what I think is specific but correspondential. The thoughts I become
conscious of must feel like my own characteristic or recognizable thoughts. It
would destroy a person’s sanity to experience that one’s thoughts come from
another source (xx). Mystical voyeurism, shamanism, and voodoo spirit
possession rituals relate to non-normal states that in prior dispensations were
normal, but are no longer allowed by the Lord on this planet (HH 249; EU 155).
Direct
communication with spirits and angels used to be routine with the people of the
most ancient Church prior to the evolutionary splitting of the human brain into
two hemispheres (xx). And it has been revealed that this type of communication
may be routine on certain other planets:
The preacher who was with me had no belief at all in the
existence of planets other than our own, because in the world he had thought
that the Lord was born solely on this planet and that without the Lord there
was no salvation. He was therefore brought into a state like the one spirits enter when they appear on their planet as people -
the one described above - and was then sent to that planet, not only to see it
but also to talk to the inhabitants there. When this had been done,
communication from there was granted to me as well in order that I might in a
similar way behold those inhabitants and also some things on that planet.
Spirits and angels can talk to people, whatever language they speak, because
their thought passes into the ideas in people's minds and so into the words they
speak. (AC 10752)
Notice the
sentence, “He was therefore brought into a state like the one spirits enter
when they appear on their planet as people - the one described above - and was
then sent to that planet, not only to see it but also to talk to the inhabitants
there.” It is said here that earthlings can talk to spirits, but note that the
preacher, who was from our earth, was taken to “that planet” thus, not to this
earth. There is no evidence that the Lord ever allows people on this earth to
have a conscious dialog exchange with spirits. Dr. Ian Thompson (see
Acknowledgment and Note 12 at end), while reviewing a draft of this book,
commented in an email exchange:
It is clear that verbal communication with spirits is
possible according to the general laws of order, but that these may be
overruled by the consideration of specific groups of people, such as those on
our earth.
However, it appears that the 'abnormal' people on our earth
can still arrive at mental states in which communication is possible. These are
generally not rational states - so they
do not learn anything of genuine truth - but are altered or upset states of
consciousness - such as with the mentally ill (schizophrenia), or with those who particularly desire and cultivate them.
The manner of interaction with spirits in these altered
states is not different in principle from our normal influx from the spiritual
world: In particular, inputs from e.g. hellish spirits with novel contents are
indeed flowing into what you call 'sudden memory', and have to be fought
against in exactly the usual way as above.
What is different about influx in
altered/schizophrenic states are in particular three features:
1) attributed:
the source is attributed to specific
spirits. These spirits are those associated spirits that Swedenborg describes,
with (normally) inactive memory of their own. They are self-motivated, but rely
on the person in the world for memory and sensory input: they talk on the basis
of these memory and sensations. Hence they are very suggestible to ideas about
what they own life is, and will readily agree to being called e.g. Napoleon.
2) into sensory mind:
influx is not only into thoughts (as
usual), but also into the sensory mind. This gives visual and auditory (etc) hallucinations. (Note: not into the brain or into bodily organs, but into the
sensorimotor mind).
3) more forceful/harder to resist:
the influx in these states is more
obviously persistent, hellish and harder to resist. The Lord now ensures that resistance is not
futile, so these people end up with really dramatic temptations almost every
minute of their lives! This is quantitatively different from our normal
temptations, but is essentially the same process.
Actually, it is not clear whether the hellish influx in these
states is harder to resist than 'normal', because we do not really know how
hard it is for 'normal hellish people' to resist their temptations. Quite
difficult, I should think, if they have no truths to
fight with.
None of the above is permitted with those who are on the way
of rational reformation and regeneration, as they are too similar to miracles.
(
Dr.
Thompson suggests here the idea that spirits may inflow into sudden memory. We
can think of sudden memory as an intermediary zone between the conscious and
the subconscious. The affections of spirits are brought into connection with
the sensuous content of sudden memory. The spirits are not specifically aware
that this stream of sensuous consciousness issues from the earthling with whom
they are coupled at any one moment. It may even be that several individuals
contribute to the content from their own sudden memory, somewhat like what you
would get if you read random paragraphs from several books in alternating
sequence. It would not be easy for you to figure out the plot of any of the
books! Similarly with the spirits who are kept in rapid alternating contact
with the sudden memory of several earthlings. They would not be able to figure
out with whom they are!
No doubt
the laws of
2. The Most Ancients Prior To The Split-Brain
Evolution
The other
model, therefore, is that conscious dialog is not allowed ever on this earth at
the present time. Under what conditions it would be allowed, I do not know. The
most ancients prior to the split-brain evolution, did have dialog, though
mostly in dreams rather than in the awake state (AC 597[2]). In the episode
quoted just above (AC 10752), the preacher got enthused about an earthling
woman and grabbed her by the hand, which she withdrew when she realized he was
a spirit.
While the preacher was with those who were clothed, there
appeared a woman of a very beautiful countenance, clothed in a simple garment,
a tunic that hung behind in a becoming way, and was also drawn over the arms;
she also wore a beautiful head covering in the form of a garland of flowers.
Upon seeing this virgin, the preacher was very much delighted, and spoke to
her, and also took hold of her hand; but as she perceived that he was a spirit,
and was not from that earth, she betook herself away from him. (AC 10754)
How is this
possible on a physical earth? Perhaps in the sense that during these
encounters, the spiritual eyes of the earthling is opened, like the shepherds
who saw the Angels at the Annunciation (xx). If the spirits are seen, they are
also heard and sensed in touch. But the seeing and sensing is not of the
physical body but the spiritual body, though the earthling person may not know
this--as in the OT scenes when Angels visited certain individuals:
A CONTINUATION ABOUT THE FIFTH EARTH
IN THE STARRY HEAVEN.
It was afterward granted me to speak with these spirits
about their own earth, for all spirits know about this when their natural or
external memory is opened by the Lord, because they bring this memory with them
from the world; but it is not opened except with the Lord's good pleasure. With
regard to the earth from which they were, the spirits then said that when leave
is granted they appear to the inhabitants of their earth and speak with them as
men, and that this is effected by their being let into their natural or
external memory, and consequently into thought such as they had when they lived
in the world; and that at the same time the interior sight of the inhabitants,
that is, the sight of their spirit, is opened, and in this way the spirits
appear to them. They added that the inhabitants know not but that they are men
of their earth, and only notice that this is not the case when the spirits are
suddenly taken away from their eyes.
I told them that in ancient times it was the same on our
earth, as with Abraham, Sarah, Lot, the inhabitants of Sodom, Manoah and his
wife, Joshua, Mary, Elizabeth, and the prophets in general; and that the Lord
appeared in the same way, and that until He revealed Himself those who saw Him
knew not but that He was a man of the earth; but that now this rarely happens,
lest such things should compel men to believe; for a compulsory faith, such as
enters by means of miracles, does not cleave to the man, and also might be an
injury to those with whom faith could be implanted through the Word in a state
that is not compulsory. (AC 10751)
Thus, the reason that conscious rapport with spirits is
never allowed on this earth any more is that such direct awareness takes away
one’s rational, hence one’s spiritual freedom to choose. In the past the
rational did not play that role in regeneration. The result is corporeal
spirituality in the natural mind, while the spiritual mind remains closed. All
who are in this state are infernal (AC 141). Since the dispensation of the
Second coming has now begun only the rational can support spiritual life.
Either the rational must be opened here, or hereafter. When arriving in the
afterlife our mind (spirit-body) must have been grown into a form that can
receive spiritual-rational truths which are more interior than the natural
mind. But the natural mind must have suitable conceptual vessels to contain the
spiritual-rational truths we receive by being instructed when we arrive in the
afterlife (NJHD 51).
Hence the awesome importance that we take charge of our goals and
purposes, and of our thoughts and reasonings, every day, hour, minute, and
second. It has
got to go down to the particular, for the general cannot change unless all
its particulars are changed. We cannot regenerate and prepare the vessels
we need for heavenly life unless we take care of these particulars. Hence the
all importance of self-witnessing disciplines. We must not avoid them.
One of the
great experiences I have several times a day (on some days) is to snatch from
sudden memory the work of the angels who are with me, as with every individual
regardless of religion or belief (xx). Of course today angels cannot be
perceived in the natural world by means of the physical senses of the body—see
the discussion in Chapter 4 Section 5). Sensuous consciousness of spirits and
angels, such as Swedenborg had, would be injurious and therefore is not allowed
by the Lord (HH 249). But rational consciousness of the work of the angels with
us is allowed and encouraged because it is of the Laws of Divine Providence in
the new civilization of the Second Coming (see the discussion in Chapter 4
Section 5).
Rational
consciousness is the level for genuine spiritual truths and celestial Doctrine
in our mind. The Lord’s giving of the Holy Spirit to the disciples represents
the new consciousness of Him that He is creating in the human race. This
rational consciousness replaces the earlier sensuous consciousness of Him. The
New Heavens are in this rational consciousness of the Lord and the workings out
of His Divine Providence.
From this it is evident that by "Moses said, Make me
see I pray Thy glory" is signified the noticing of the internal in the
external of the Word, of the church, and of worship. … To receive the internal
of the church is to receive Divine truth from heaven, and thereby heavenly
love.
(…)
And I will show grace to whom I show grace, and I will show
mercy to whom I show mercy. That this signifies that
Divine truth and good shall be revealed to those who receive, is evident from
the signification of "showing grace," as being to endow with
spiritual truth and good, here to reveal it, because the subject treated of is
the internal and the external of the church, of worship, and of the Word …
(…)
Those who are in external things not separate from what is internal,
can all see the interior things of the Word, of the church, and of worship, thus they can "see the faces of Jehovah."
(AC 10574)
10581. And it shall be when My
glory passeth by. That this signifies the interior things of the Word, of the
church, and of worship, is evident from the signification of the "glory of
Jehovah," as being the interior Divine things of the Word, of the church,
and of worship…. (AC 10522).
Those are said to "see the back parts of Jehovah and
not the faces," who believe and adore the Word; but only its external,
which is the sense of the letter, and do not penetrate more interiorly, as do
those who have been enlightened, and who make for themselves doctrine from the
Word, by which they may see its genuine sense, thus its interior sense. (AC
10584)
We can
apply these passages to the stream of consciousness as we proceed in our daily
willing and thinking. The most immediate awareness of this stream is sudden
memory. But because of the extreme brevity of this awareness, most of us most
of the time cannot capture, cannot paraphrase or describe it, hence, cannot
know it. But with practice, as I have indicated, we can snatch portions of the
script of existence, or book of life. When we do this we become aware of the
internal spiritual meaning within the natural stream of perception and
behavior. This is revealed to us by the Lord, as indicated in the passages
above referring to Moses. It is said that
Those who are in external things not separate from what is
internal, can all see the interior things of the Word, of the church, and of
worship, thus they can "see the faces of Jehovah.
(AC 10574)
To see the
“Faces of Jehovah” is to see the Divine Providence in action, or, to see the
internal spiritual things in the sequence of willing and thinking, from which
is doing. This is possible when we apply the Doctrine in our mind that we have
taken up from the Writings. Our willing and thinking is then seen without the
natural cloud and obscurity that is the normal mode of perception and thinking.
When we
snatch a view of the Faces of Jehovah we are seeing the angels at work in our
life. I have noticed this numerous times but it goes by so fast that it’s hard
to hold on to it and make a record of it. This is why I follow the
self-witnessing principle “If you think it, ink it.” For instance, I’m about to
go inside the house and notice a leaf floating in the pool. I bend over and try
to reach it, but it floats out of my reach. I pick up the net stick and reach
for the leaf with it. The leaf is headed to the other side of pool so I walk
around to reach it and do. But then I see the chlorine container which reminds
me to take a look to see how much is left. It’s completely empty. That shocks
me since I thought I had another two days before I need to add more chlorine.
Still, I feel happy that I was reminded through the leaf. Then I thank the
Lord’s Divine Providence for making it happen. Then I realize the angels served
as intermediaries. And I thank the Lord for that.
Over the
years I noticed that I can hear the warning of angels just before I commit a
mistake but choose to ignore it. A second later I can no longer remember the
warning. Then I make the mistake and become aware of it later, when facing the
consequences of forgetting something, or putting something back, or not writing
it down as a reminder, or not setting the timer properly, or eating something I
shouldn’t have, etc. Numerous times a day we come across a warning from the
angels that we ignore and then pay for. I learned to respect these warnings,
the majority of times. I make myself do it, do it properly, or do it rightly. I
then reap the benefits of staying out of trouble and enjoying predictable
routines and events. In addition to these benefits there is also the closeness
I feel to the Lord knowing the details He takes care of with every individual
every moment to eternity.
Be it known that the Divine Providence is universal, that
is, in things the most minute; and that they who are in the stream of
Providence are all the time carried along toward everything that is happy,
whatever may be the appearance of the means; and that those are in the stream
of Providence who put their trust in the Divine and attribute all things to
Him; and that those are not in the stream of Providence who trust in themselves
alone and attribute all things to themselves, because they are in the opposite,
for they take away providence from the Divine, and claim it for themselves.
Be it known also that insofar as anyone is in the stream of
Providence, so far he is in a state of peace; also that insofar as anyone is in
a state of peace from the good of faith, so far he is in the Divine Providence.
These alone know and believe that the Divine Providence of the Lord is in
everything both in general and in particular, nay, is in the most
minute things of all … and that the Divine Providence regards what is
eternal …
[5] But they who are in the opposite are scarcely willing to
hear Providence mentioned, for they ascribe everything to their own sagacity;
and what they do not ascribe to this they ascribe to fortune or chance; some to
fate, which they do not educe from the Divine, but from nature. They call those
simple who do not attribute all things to themselves or to nature. From all
this again it can be seen what is the quality of those who have care for the
morrow, and what the quality of those who have no care for the morrow. (AC
8478)
To
acknowledge the Lord’s Omnipotence from religion is to be “in the stream of
Providence” in a general way. To witness the sequence of events in which
we participate through the awareness of sudden memory is to be in “in the
stream of Providence” in a particular way. This witnessing of the Lord’s
3. Self-Witnessing
Sudden Memory As A
Spiritual Discipline
When you
begin to practice self-witnessing sudden memory as a regeneration discipline
you come face to face with inherited ties to evil spirits. It’s not a visual
“face-to-face” communication but a mental one involving the organs of the will.
Neither the spirits nor you are aware of each other consciously so that the contact
is by correspondence only. If anyone tells you about having actual direct
communication with spirits, the
It is
required for our regeneration that we react to what we observe about the
ceaseless stream of our willing and thinking.
It is the rational in fact that coordinates everything in
the natural, and in accordance with that coordination fittingly regards the
things that are there. Indeed the rational is like a higher faculty of seeing
which, when it looks at facts belonging to the natural man, is like someone
looking down on to a plain below him. The light of that faculty of seeing is
the light of truth, but the origin of that light rests with the good present in
the rational. (AC 3283)
It is said
here that the rational self can monitor what the sensuous and corporeal self is
thinking or willing. This is the essential method of regeneration that the Lord
has provided to the human race after the most ancient peoples destroyed themselves
through “dreadful” idolatries (xx). The new human race after that received a
split mind so that the understanding could be elevated to heavenly light even
though the will remained unregenerate and infernal (xx). By this means, we can
learn the heavenly truths from the Word, understand them in an enlightened
state, and make a choice to compel our sensuous and corporeal self to obey and
to desist from committing evils and thinking falsities. This has become the
means of regeneration for the
Anyone can know that thoughts are led or tend in accord with
the intentions, that is, in the direction that the man intends; for thought is
man's internal sight, and resembles the external sight in this, that to
whatever point it is directed or aimed, thither it turns and there it rests.
Therefore if the internal sight or the thought is turned towards the world and
rests there, it follows that the thought becomes worldly; if it turns to self
and self-honor it becomes corporeal; but if it is turned heavenwards it becomes
heavenly.
So, too, if turned heaven-wards it is elevated; but if
turned selfward it is drawn down from heaven and immersed in what is corporeal;
and if turned towards the world it is also turned downwards from heaven, and is
diffused upon the objects that are before the eyes. (HH 532)
This passage
shows that anyone can perform self-witnessing or self-monitoring of the
thoughts and the intended outcomes we desire with our affections. The stream of
thinking of the sensuous self is automatic and proceeds spontaneously as we
cope with the moment by moment demands of living and doing. We can examine this
spontaneous stream by directing our focus on it in a metanoid stance, looking
down upon the stream of thinking like on a plain below. IN this way we inform
ourselves of the content and quality of our thinking and willing all day long. Willing
is an act. Thinking is an act. We are responsible for all our acts. Therefore
we are responsible for our willing and thinking acts, each one of them,
thousands of them by the hour, every day. We
are nothing but the cumulative collection of those acts. Such as these acts
are, such are we, when we arrive in the afterlife.
Man's love is what makes his intention and determines the
sight of the internal man or the thought to its objects; thus the love of self
fixes it upon self and its objects, the love of the world upon worldly objects,
and the love of heaven upon heavenly objects.
So when the love is known, the state of the interiors which
are of the mind can be known, that is, the interiors of one who loves heaven
are raised towards heaven and are opened above; while the interiors of one who
loves the world or who loves himself are closed above and are opened outwardly.
From this the conclusion follows that if the higher regions
of the mind are closed above, man can no longer see the objects pertaining to
heaven and the Church, but those objects are in thick darkness to him; and the
things in thick darkness are either denied or not understood. This is why those
who love themselves and the world above all things, since the higher regions of
their minds are closed, in heart deny Divine truths; and if from their memory
they say anything about them they nevertheless do not understand them.
Moreover, they regard them in the same way as they regard
worldly and corporeal things. And being such, they are able to direct the mind
to those things only that enter through the senses of the body, and in these
alone do they find delight. Among these are also many things that are filthy,
obscene, profane and criminal; and these cannot be removed, because into the
minds of such no influx from heaven is possible, since their minds, as just now
said, are closed above. (HH 532)
You can see
from this that our consciousness, or life orientation, is such as the content
is of our willing and thinking hour by hour all day long. This content can
originate solely from the sensuous and corporeal self, in which case the
willing and thinking is purely natural, having no spiritual dimension that we
can appropriate. Or, the content of our willing and thinking can be based on
the rational self that has taken up the scientifics of the Letter. The scientifics
of the Writings contain all the spiritual topics of the Heavenly Doctrines.
Even though we understand them naturally, at first, even this natural way of
understanding them is rational, and therefore a discrete degree above the
sensuous thinking an dwelling. Unless we modify our
sensuous thinking by means of these rational concepts, we cannot be
regenerated. Those who arrive in that state in the afterlife can receive
nothing of heavenly light, and have a lot with the infernals.
[3] Man's intention, by which his internal sight or thought
is determined, is his will; for what a man wills he intends, and what he
intends he thinks. Therefore if his intention is heavenward his thought is
determined heavenward, and with it his whole mind, which is thus in heaven; and
from heaven he beholds the things of the world beneath him like one looking
down from the roof of a house.
So the man who has the interiors of his mind open can see
the evils and falsities that are with him, for these are below the spiritual
mind. On the other hand, the man with whom the interiors have not been opened
is unable to see his evils and falsities, because he is not above them but in
them.
From these things it can be concluded whence man has wisdom
and whence insanity, also what a man will be after death when he is left to
will and think and to act and speak in accordance with his interiors. All these
things also have been said that it may be known what the quality of a man is
interiorly, however he may seem outwardly to resemble others. (HH 532)
These
sentences show how essential it is for the
We first
need to face heavenward by taking up the sentences of the Writings into the rational
understanding. This is facing heavenward because the Writings are the Lord, and
heaven is where the Lord is. Then we must look down upon our lower natural mind
“like one looking down from the roof of a house.” From that perspective and
light, we “can see the evils and falsities that are with us.” These evils are
the evils that we are willing, and these falsities are the falsities that we
are thinking. Without the Letter of the Writings in our rational mind we cannot
evaluate the stream of our thinking and willing because “because we are not
above them but in them.” What allows us to be “above them” is the heavenly
light, which refers to the sentences of the Writings in our natural-rational
understanding.
4. Filled With Blasphemous Thoughts And Curiosities
To react to
what we observe is to make an evaluation of our willing and thinking. This evaluation
is from a rational level, looking down, while the stream of thinking we are observing, is from a sensuous or corporeal level. An analogy
might be standing on a bridge and looking down on the flow of a
semi-transparent river and inspecting its contents—stones, fish, plants,
debris. These things represent the content of our mind—knowledges, truths, and
falsifications of truths. The flow of the river is the sequencing of the
thoughts, their reasoning and coherence.
THAT CRUEL SPIRITS AND ADULTERERS LOVE NOTHING MORE THAN
FILTH AND EXCREMENTS.
(((((I have
spoken) previously of this [fact] that to such spirits, filth and excrements
are very pleasant, so that they prefer the pleasantness of beholding such
things to all other pleasantnesses, and not only filth and excrements, but also
foul, loathsome, and horrid intestines of animals, to that degree, that when
they act through man they snatch away all his interior sense, as also [his]
sight, to such things, because they, are delighted therewith.
This also was shown
me by manifest experience; when I walked in the street, they carried away my
eyes to all such things; wherever there was filth, excrement and intestines,
thither they directed my eyes, although I was ignorant where were such things
in the street, because not observed by me. Still they saw these, whilst I was
wholly unobservant, and thither directed my eyes, either to [my] side, or about
[my] feet, or near and farther from thence; and the did not turn my eyes to
anything else. (SE 2843)
Monitor
your eyes as you walk on the street or as you read a magazine or watch TV. The
eyes respond to our interest, to our affections, to what we find delightful. As
your eyes roam they settle on this or that object, body part, detail. The eyes
are quick. You have to catch yourself and become conscious of where they settle
for how long, and where they keep coming back to.
These eye movements will reveal interests and delights that we do not wish to
publicize because they are filthy and scortatory, as the passage above describes.
As Swedenborg walked in the street, the spirits with him “carried away my eyes
to all such things; wherever there was filth, excrement and intestines, thither
they directed my eyes, although I was ignorant where were such things in the
street, because not observed by me.” Monitoring our eyes will reveal to us what
filthy things are of interest to us form heredity.
These filthy interests are not our own affections,
they are the affections of the filthy spirits. But we are tied to those spirits
by heredity and the filth remains with us unless consciously removed.
Since spirits take possession in that way of all that forms
a person's thought and will, and angels take
possession of what is even more interior, so that he is joined very closely to
them, the person cannot avoid the perception and sensation that he himself is
the one who thinks and wills. . (AC 6193)
Our
inherited connections with evils spirits cause our minds to be filled with
blasphemous thoughts and curiosities.
Anyone who is
governed by bodily and worldly love, and not at the same time by spiritual or
by celestial love, does not have any but evil spirits with him, even when
external holiness exists with him. Good spirits cannot in any way be present
with such a person, for they perceive in an instant the kind of love which
governs a person. There is a sphere emanating from the interior parts of him
which the spirits perceive as plainly as man by his sense of smell perceives
offensive and foul odors floating around him in the air. (AC 4311)
I remember
that I was only six years old when I first became aware of blasphemous thoughts.
I recall part of the episode since it was so dramatic: I was walking home from school
and I couldn’t stop thinking blasphemies about God. I became very agitated and
started running as a way of making it stop. That is all I can remember. In
adolescence I put religion away from myself and whatever blasphemy I performed
was hidden and restricted to cussing in imitation of the people around me.
Since I was living in French Canada I was surrounded with people who cussed
using words from the sacred worship of their Catholic religion. Also, Jewish
people cussed using the Lord’s Name in vain, and I adopted this habit as a way
of feeling like an adult. It is ironic that for years I would say the word
“Christ” perhaps a dozen times a day and not think anything about what it
means.
There are with
every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. The evil spirits excite his
evils, and the angels inspire things that are good and true. (AC 904)
For the nature
of all communication in the next life is this: In a community in which people
are alike, each thinks that what is another's is his own. When therefore people
who are good go into a heavenly community they instantly enter into all the
intelligence and wisdom of that community, entering into it so fully that they
know no other than that such things exist within themselves. This is also how
it is with man and a spirit present with him. The things that flow in from
spirits from hell are evil and false, but those which flow in from angels from
heaven are good and true; and through these opposite kinds of influx a person
is held in the middle, thus in freedom.
(…)
Evil spirits …
are angry if they are told that their thoughts and desires do not begin in
themselves, because that idea is contrary to what their loves lead them to be
delighted with. And they are all the more angry when they are told that life
does not exist independently in them but flows into them. (AC
6193).
When I
became a Christian in my forties, I was filled with terror on occasions when I
forgot myself and used the Holy Names of the Lord in vain. I punished myself
with guilt and remorse until at last I stopped all cussing, either with the
Holy Names or with vulgar expressions that demean women and conjugial love. I
then also started practicing self-witnessing sudden memory and I was shocked
and horrified to observe sequences of blasphemy in my thinking. This was before
I was led to the Writings and so, I did not know that we are with evil spirits
through our inherited connections.
Anger is a
general affection resulting from whatever is opposed to self-love and its
cupidities. This is plainly perceived in the world of evil spirits, for there
exists there a general anger against the Lord, in consequence of evil spirits
being in no charity, but in hatred, and whatever does not favor self-love
[amori proprio] and the love of the world, excites opposition, which is
manifested by anger. (AC 357)
Even after
I knew about the vertical community from the Writings (see Chapter 7 Section
6), I experienced my blasphemous thoughts with shudder and panic. The
unpleasant experience receded as soon as I began to have a better understanding
of the purpose why the Lord allows them in my mind. I saw that they are
spiritual temptations brought to my awareness so that I can reject them
voluntarily in my reformed mind. My childhood was a period of absorption of the
verbal blasphemy performed by the adults in my family and cultural environment.
It was part of growing up and becoming like others in the community.
This
conduct reinforced and confirmed the anti-God orientation of the evil spirits.
People showed much inventiveness in how efficiently they can chain together
long strings of blasphemies of all kinds, and usually relating to God, one’s
mother, and sexual or scortatory activity of the most vulgar and perverse kind.
These confirmed blasphemies in our mind then come to haunt us when we approach
heaven through the Writings. The spirits who are kept by the Lord in
communication with our interior mind react vehemently and with much blasphemy,
as witnessed by Swedenborg:
Unless they
[evil spirits] are given the opportunity to revile the truth, and indeed to
blaspheme it, they cannot live (AC 1695)
Evil … spirits
rush into insanities both from the hatred they bear against the Lord, and from
their infernal suffering, and catch at such phantasies. (SE 458)
THAT EVIL
SPIRITS ESPECIALLY HOLD INFANTS IN HATRED.
… The reason
is, because they hold in hatred the Lord, who alone is Innocence. - 1748, June
10. (SE 2284)
It is
important to realize that what comes into the mind from the evil spirit
societies is not damning or a sin. I was able to stop blaming myself by no
longer identifying with those awful snatches of thoughts. These were not my
ideas, but theirs! I was not the one with affections for blasphemy; it was
them! But at the same time I was led to understand that it is my responsibility
as to how I react to them. My reaction is what comes out of the mind, and for
this I am responsible. Do I just continue being a host to them and letting them
use my house, or do I boot them out?
The spirits
with man, however, are changed in accordance with the changes of his
affections; thus, there are some spirits with him in infancy, others in
boyhood, others in youth and manhood, and others in old age. (HH
295).
If they are
lovers of self or lovers of gain, or lovers of revenge, or lovers of adultery,
similar spirits are present, and dwell, as it were, in their evil affections,
and man is incited by these, except so far as he can be kept from evil by good
spirits, and they cling to him, and do not withdraw, so far as the evil
affection prevails. (HH 295)
Those who are
not led by the Lord not only act in partnership with evil spirits, but even
arouse the evil spirits to action, because they believe their desires and
thoughts are their very own; while those who are led by the Lord are aroused by
the evil spirits, and the Lord acts to keep them from consenting. This too is
the belief of those who are led by the Lord. (SE 1591)
And so I’ve
found metanoid self-witnessing to be very useful in becoming aware of thoughts
in my mind that were correspondences to the evils of the spirits who were
connected to me. The instant the blasphemous content starts flowing, I judge
and condemn it. Thus judged, they flee back into their caves, and the Lord can
break the spiritual connections, replacing them with better ones. Thus we make
progress in our regeneration.
Evil spirits cannot be with those who believe in the Lord
It has been shown before that evil spirits are distressed
and tormented when angels look into them ... It is almost the same when a
person on earth has faith, or is kept in a state of faith by the Lord. Then
evil spirits cannot approach, but likewise begin to feel distress, and want to
flee away. Several times I have heard them complaining and lamenting, when they
were in the presence of faith. 1748, 16 May. (SE 1966)
In the conflicts brought about by temptations evil spirits
are permitted to draw forth all the evil and falsity residing in a person, and
to fight from that person's evil and falsity. But once they have been overcome
they are no longer allowed to do so, for, being within that person, they
instantly perceive that good and truth have been confirmed. Such perception
exists more completely with spirits than with men. From the very sphere of a
person confirmed in truth and good they recognize in an instant what the
situation is, what response they will get, and much else. This is quite clear
in the case of a spiritual and regenerate person, with whom evil spirits are
present just as much as they are with one who is not regenerate; but with the
regenerate person they have been subdued and are subservient. (AC 1695)
For more
discussion on our association with evil spirits see the vertical community in
Chapter 7 Section 6.
5. The
Natural Mind Must Be Compelled To Realign Itself
The life of
regeneration is a never ending struggle against the inherent opposition between
the natural and spiritual mind (AC 8961). Regeneration progresses to the extent
that the natural mind is compelled to realign itself to be congruent with the natural-rational
concepts we take up from the Writings. The natural mind’s nondualities are
turned into categorical dualities that are suitable for containing spiritual
truths from influx. Spiritual truths have no other source. They come into our
conscious life by correspondence to the extent that the external concepts from the
Writings are loved and willed in daily life. Disciplines of
self-witnessing allows us to monitor our daily life which is constructed
out of sequences of feelings, thoughts, and acts. The content of our threefold
self can be witnessed, sampled, recorded, examined, and used as objective
information on where we need to make the changes for regeneration (see Note 20
at end).
The
The
directionality of our thinking is constrained by the affections living in our
will. The Lord cannot hook us up to good spirits whose influence would cause
our thinking to end up in a place that we reject as strange and not of our own.
We only accept as our own the thoughts we can love. Therefore the Lord is
constrained by our loves, and can only exert so much influence before it is
detected by our inherent opposition. Should we detect the Lord’s forceful
operation in our mind we would instantly be infuriated against Him and reject
Him creating a much worse situation for ourselves.
Hence the Lord’s infinite love for us compels Him to restrict what societies He
can hook us up with moment by moment, bending the affections and thoughts
towards good, but never forcing:
The Lord never forces anyone, for nothing to which anyone is
forced appears as his own; and what does not appear to be his own cannot be his
love's, and so be appropriated to him as his own. Therefore man is led by the
Lord continually in freedom, and is also reformed and regenerated in freedom.
(DP 43; see also: AC 3348, 1079; AE 151; SE 2012).
Whatever is
done for the sake of the end, namely, salvation, is
according to the laws of the Divine Providence. For, as was said before, the Divine
Providence, keeping this end continually in view, is constantly moving in ways
different from and contrary to man's will. Therefore, at every moment of its
operation or at every step of its progress, when it perceives man to deviate
from this end, it directs, bends and disposes him in
accordance with its laws by withdrawing him from evil and leading him to good.
There are
thousands and thousands of arcana, of which scarcely a single one is known to
man, whereby a man is led by the Lord out of the life of hell into the life of
heaven. (AC 9336)
It will be seen in what follows that this cannot be done
without permitting evil. Moreover, nothing can be permitted without a cause,
and such a cause is only to be found in some law of the Divine Providence which
explains why it is permitted. (DP 234)
Self-witnessing
disciplines become religious and spiritual when we turn to the Lord for
strength and capacity out of a motive for cooperating in our regeneration. It
becomes a holy discipline. Therein lies the holiness
of the religious life. As I have practiced self-witnessing disciplines for
years I can present some of the observations I was able to make about myself.
You will see that what applies to one individual also applies to others since
we share heredity and culture.
As I
monitor my threefold self in the stream of behavior I notice many things that
are in place in my habit routines and mental scripts. One large area to witness
is food behavior. What are my thoughts? What procedures do I follow? Do I follow
rules or merely cravings? How do I decide when to start, when to stop? How fast
do I put things in my mouth and in what sizes? Do I swallow what’s there before
I put more in it? Do I chew adequately? Do I dislike exerting control over how
fast I eat and how much? Do I exert a veto power over my cravings? Etc. The
monitoring of these sequences is equivalent to a mapping of the spiritual
societies we are connected to. For instance if we stuff and swallow repeatedly
we are with different spirits than if we moderate size and rate. If we deny
ourselves another portion we are with different spirits than if we give in to
our appetite and overeat. Affections for unhealthy foods come from different
spiritual societies than affections for healthy food.
One arouses
spirits of the same character and feeling as oneself.
That a person's
states are changing day by day, every hour, even every minute, is obvious.
Therefore, there are very many states of understanding, and states of feeling.
Now there is something dominant in each person, and no matter what state a
person slips or comes into, there are spirits who had had the same ruling
passion in their life interacting and cooperating. So they are not always the
same, but many different ones, and all of them think they are the person; in my
case, only that they were with me. (SE 1928)
Another
large area of daily self-witnessing is the behavioral sequences we chain when
doing something physically. As I get dressed I observe when I decide what to
wear, how I take off what I’m wearing in the house, and how I put the clothes
on. I had a habit of taking my shirt off by pulling it off my head in one rapid
motion. When the shirt was tight or had buttons I would often rub my eye in the
process. My eye eventually started having an unpredictable twitch that would
last for a few minutes at a time. My wife heard about it and urged me to
moderate myself and be more rational about it. I must not use brute force. I
must do it in two stages, head first, then shoulders and arms. I resisted this
for a long time and kept injuring my eye. Today I have a little more control
over the process and my eye sopped twitching. But it continue to be a conscious
discipline and I remind myself that I have to get rid of the affections that
keep me hooked to the bad spirits that enjoy my distress.
While doing
repair and cleaning tasks around the house I observed myself with numerous
illogical and stupid ways of doing many details. I would try to work on
something that was located at the extreme point of my reaching, doing it
inefficiently, resisting the logic of getting the step ladder. Many such
details occur in the course of an hour of work. I seem to follow the principle
of “least effort” as the standing operational procedure for all my movements. I
also take risks that are foolish and cause trouble. I would throw something,
and miss, instead of walking it over. I would try to pick up a leaf on our pool
deck, bend down as I walk, miss it, try to grab it again, miss it again, and
finally stop and pick it up. A similar illogic animates my behavior routines
when I vacuum the carpets. When I’m being with good spirits I take care to get
things off the carpet that are going to be in my way.
When I’m being with bad spirits I try to move the things with one had as I keep
pushing the vacuum with the other, an ineffective and dangerous procedure that
interferes with the cleaning and gives me muscle stress or injury.
I also
witness myself doing what I had seen my father do for years—get mad at objects
while manipulating them. At some point of trying to screw something or unscrew,
or fit into something else, he would swear and kick and smash as if some
frenzied spirits had suddenly invaded his mind. Now this insane script repeats
itself through me. But I put a stop to it. I make myself stay with the good
spirits who inspire deliberate caution, prudence, and rationality in the
sequence of my thoughts, and motions.
When I
stand waiting for someone to finish talking, I automatically lean against the
wall or some furniture in a slouching position. Now I have trained myself to
stand up straight, chest up, stomach in, breathing regularly. It took years of
daily strengthening disciplines like brisk walking, working resistance bands,
Yoga, and Somatics. Now when I stand, I stand straight with the affections that
bring good spirits around. I also monitor my face, that it may be appear pleasant to the onlooker. I watch my face in the
mirror as I go by and find my expression compressed downward as if I’m worried
or tired. So I reset it out of a motive to be in the company of better spirits.
Whatever these affections are that create a hardship expression on my face, are
affections that I cannot bring with me to heaven. Therefore I must practice now
to get rid of them.
I believe
that physical and mental disciplines, when the motive is spiritual, are
excellent methods of preparation for our regeneration because they foster the
growth of a suitable natural-rational area in our
To many
people it smacks as un-American not to want to be first in any contest one is
in. Psychotherapists and counselors present the view that we should be rational
about it, as expressed in this type of attitude: “I would like very much to
win, but if I don’t, I’m not going to cry over it.” This intelligent principle
of the natural-rational mind is not yet a spiritual motivation, though many
people have trouble doing even this much. How many people have you encountered
who are sore losers, or else, depressed ones? Many indeed.
Conquering
and discarding the irresistible desire to be first is a useful mental
discipline for the
All who have had
conscience are saved; but they who have had no conscience cannot be saved. (AC 5145)
Chapter 1, Section 3
3. Conscience
And
Temptations Are The Methods Of Regeneration
As it is desirable that the origin of perception, internal
dictate, and conscience, should be known, and as at the present day it is
altogether unknown, I may relate something on the subject. It is a great truth
that man is governed by the Lord by means of spirits and angels. When evil
spirits begin to rule, the angels labor to avert evils
and falsities, and hence arises a combat. It is this combat of which the man is
rendered sensible by perception, dictate, and conscience. By these, and also by
temptations, a man might clearly see that spirits and angels are with him, were
he not so deeply immersed in corporeal things as to believe nothing that is
said about spirits and angels. Such persons, even if they were to feel these
combats hundreds of times, would still say that they are imaginary, and the
effect of a disordered mind. I have been permitted to feel such combats, and to
have a vivid sense of them, thousands and thousands of times, and this almost
constantly for several years, as well as to know who, what, and where they were
that caused them, when they came, and when they departed; and I have conversed
with them. (AC 227)
Every human
being is equipped with “perception, internal dictate, and conscience” (AC
1043[2]). These functions of the inner mind are produced by our
correspondential interaction with spirits and angels. We can be consciously
aware of the effects of these interactions on our thinking and willing moment
by moment in our daily activities. It’s important to know the psycho-physiology
of these interactions and the more details we learn the better we can manage
them. The human mind is not a static repository of memories and drives or
needs. A better model would be to think of the “online mind” as when we are
“being online” with the computer, surfing the Internet. In order for you to be
connected to the World Wide Web your computer must be networked or hooked up to
another computer called a “server” owned and run by an “online service
provider.” These companies charge you for keeping your computer connected to
the network.
There are
many networks connected together by this industry so that it is global.
Millions of computers around the world are thus interconnected into one grand
network, able to interact by text, by images, by voice, by video. Some of the
images, text, voice and video recordings, are on your computer. You can view or
hear them when you’re not online since they are permanently stored on your
personal computer, and you can access them at any time any number of times. But
most of the text and recordings in the global network are not on your personal
computer—they are on other people’s computers. In order to access or view them,
you must be online.
The lower
part of your mind is called the natural mind. It is below the spiritual mind.
These two portions of the mind are discretely different: they operate
differently, on different principles, made of different materials. They can
interact through the laws of correspondences. But within each portion of the
mind, the interaction is not by correspondences, but by direct contact and
communication. The natural mind is similar to the online computer with global
network connectivity. Its connection to the natural world is by direct contact,
but its connection to the spiritual world is by indirect correspondence. We are
therefore dual citizens. A horizontal or direct connection to everything in the physical
world, and a vertical connection to
everything in the spiritual world. Therefore what is going on in our
mind is not static from what is deposited there, but dynamic from our constant
interactions with the horizontal network and the vertical network.
The mind is
never inactive, even during sleep. The two organs of the mind—will and
understanding-- are always active, just like the right
and left hemispheres of the brain. The brain’s activity is electro-chemical,
that is, physical, but the mind’s activity is sensory and rational, that is,
spiritual. The mind is also called the spirit-body (DLW 391).
The
spirit-body of every human being is created along with the physical body, and
is connected to it. The Lord is the Manager of these connections (HH 112). He
makes sure that the connections don’t get mixed up! The same spirit-body, or
mind, must be connected to the same physical body as long as the person still
lives on earth. But in the afterlife, the spirit-body is no longer connected to
the physical world. The Lord also manages the universal network of human
beings, past and present, all of whom live in the spiritual world. Those who
are still connected to a physical body are also in the spiritual world since
the mind, or spirit-body, cannot descend into the physical universe. It is born
in the spiritual world, and never leaves it.
The Lord
manages the countless numbers of people who have ever been born on the
countless earths in the universe. He interconnects them so that in His eyes
this entire network is joined together into the shape and form of a human
being. This universal network is called the Grand Human (or Grand Man), and
Swedenborg has been given to see it also so that he may describe it for us and
be a witness that it does indeed exist (EU 9; AC 684, 1276).
Theistic
science will in the future be able to describe many of these details by
extracting them from the Writings. Some of the details we can read in the
literal of the Writings, but most of the rest is hidden and must be extracted
by appropriate analytic procedures of rational thinking as specified in the
Writings. Since the Writings are the Word, they are written in a style that
accommodates the infinite Divine Truth of the Lord. There are more truths hidden in the Writings than can ever be extracted
by the cumulative human race forever (xx). Clearly, Swedenborg could not
know or understand most of what lies hidden in the sentences that He composed
under the guidance of the Lord. This is also true of the sentences composed by
the prophets and writers of the Old and New Testaments. The writers could not
know what was hidden or located inside those sentences. Only the Lord could
know and knows, for He is the infinite Divine Truth by which everything created
is made of.
The purpose
of being born on earth is that we can develop our natural mind which then
allows our spiritual mind to also develop. These two minds must be formed together
in order for us to be able to live as angels in heaven. This is the Lord’s
purpose in creating the universe, namely, to have the earths be incubators for
angles in the heavens. The heavens are so formed and arranged that its
inhabitants can live a perfect life to eternity. The Lord’s Divine Love is the
motive for this purpose. The Lord desires with infinite power and intensity to
create angels whom He can make perfectly happy. For in this activity His Love
finds fulfillment.
1. Creating
More And More
Angels
The whole angelic
heaven consists solely of the Divine Truth which proceeds from the Lord, the
reception of which makes angels (AE 594)
How does
the Lord achieve His purpose of creating more and more angels? Why does He not
create every human being full fledged, an angel in heaven? Why does He first
make human beings divided, physical body on earth, spirit-body in the spiritual
world? The general answer is that He does everything in accordance with His
Order, which is rational and consistent. We need to understand why this idea
just mentioned is a human idea that is not fully rational. An angel in heaven
who is created full fledged is not a rational idea. Perhaps a robotic angel
could be created this way, but not a human being who has a sense of total
freedom and selfhood.
All
happiness of life can exist only in an angel who has a sense of freedom and
selfhood, of identity and purpose different from another angel. An angel must
have a history, a biography, unique experiences, in order to feel free and a
self. Thus, every angel is unique due to this cumulative experience of
selfhood, and this to eternity (DP 334).
This sense
of self-generated freedom and cumulative identity or personality requires
therefore social life, birth into a family or society, an environment that
provides variable sensory input, and a mind that is self-conscious of itself,
willing and thinking moment by moment, and thus accumulating experiences and a
biography. This life cannot be created in one fell swoop, by fiat, by pronouncing
a Divine Word. It must develop from beginning to eternity. By deeper studies of
the Writings you will be able to understand why this individual life cannot be
produced solely in heaven, and thus why there must be a dual universe: natural
and spiritual. We are thus born on some earth in the universe, are connected to
a physical body for awhile, then we are cut off from the physical universe at
death and then live eternally in the spiritual world.
This is
also the reason why the spiritual world has the outside appearance of the
natural world. Our spirit-body is developing all along through our sensory and
rational experiences while connected to the physical body. It would be mighty
strange and impossible to then all of a sudden lose everything that is
contained in the spirit-body! What is our sense of selfhood and freedom if by
death the spirit-body is thrown into a coma of unconsciousness? There is not
selfhood other than the biography we have accumulated since birth and through
our physical activities on earth. The people we have known and loved, the
activities we have learned to do and desire, our set of unique preferences and
thoughts—these have all come into existence through the physical body and our
social life on earth. They cannot be taken away altogether, for then nothing is
left.
And so it
is inevitable and rational that the appearance of the spiritual world and
spirit-body be like the appearance of the natural world and physical body.
Heavenly inhabitations are therefore like earthy ones, but more magnificent by
many orders of difference. The environment of heaven is kept in perfect order
by the Lord since it is a spiritual environment, but the environment on earth
is not. Hence there is disorder in the physical universe.
The Lord
creates the physical universe and body to allow the possibility of disorder,
and He also maintains the disorder that does develop in strict bounds or
limits. These limits are called the Laws of Permissions (DP 234). No disorder
can come into existence except that which is allowed by these Laws of
Permissions. If you study the Writings you will learn about these laws through
the history of civilizations or “Churches.” These historical developmental
details are also applicable to the individual biographical details of every
human being. In order to become an angel, our spirit-body must develop and go
through these various stages or phases which are described in the historical
developments of the human race. The development of the individual’s mind
recapitulates the evolution of civilizations (AC 10225).
The early
generations on this earth belonged to the civilization of the
Today we
are part of the fallen generations and the Lord has provided new ways by which
we can live our life on earth in preparation for heaven. In this fallen state
our physical and spirit body must develop in a an
environment of disorder. From heredity our two bodies are filled with disorder
that is maintained by our connectivity to evil spirits as well as angels. Upon
death of the physical body, the spirit-body starts conscious life in the
spiritual world. All sorts of disorder have formed this spirit-body, thus there
are both good and evil spirits. Good spirits are those whose spirit-body can be
regenerated, which means that the disorder can be removed by the Lord without
destroying the individual’s sense of selfhood. Evil spirits are those whose
spirit-body cannot be regenerated, which means that the disorder cannot be
removed by the Lord without destroying the individual’s sense of selfhood.
Good
spirits can be prepared for life in heaven by further experiences in the world
of sprits, located midway between heaven and hell. Evil spirits can be prepared
for life in hell. Hell is the environment the Lord creates through His Laws of
Permissions. Various sorts of disorder are allowed in order to create an
environment that would accommodate the many varieties of evil lusts and insane
fantasies. In this way, the evil spirits can continue to have a sense of
selfhood and freedom. They live in the hells forever since they are immortal
and since they are unable to give up the disorder that makes up their
spirit-body. In hell they are called devils, satans,
genii, sirens, and many other names depending on the disorder of their
character.
While our
spirit-body is still connected to the physical body we are able to undergo
regeneration if we agree to cooperate with the Lord in this healing and
purification process. The Lord cannot remove disorder in us unless we agree to
it. If He removed them without our agreement we would lose our sense of freedom
and selfhood, hence our happiness of life as human beings. The Lord therefore
labors with every person to achieve cooperation. The more cooperation we give,
the more He can regenerate us, that is, remove the inherited and acquired
disorder. Nothing is more crucial
therefore than learning how to cooperate with the Lord in our regeneration!
The confession of the
Lord and the acknowledgment of His Divine in His Human is the life of all
truth, both in the Word and in doctrine from the Word. (AE 392)
2. External
And Internal
Methods Of Cooperation
The Lord
provides two methods for this cooperation, one external, the
other internal. The external method is through learning truths from revelation
called “the Word.” The internal method is through perception, internal dictate
and conscience, as described in the passage quoted above. By acquiring Doctrine
of Life in our understanding from the Word, we can be reformed so that we can
lay aside the false ideas in our mind from culture and self-intelligence. By
compelling ourselves to obey the inner dictate of conscience, we can be
regenerated gradually until all disorder is removed from our active
personality. By these two methods our spirit-body develops a new constitution,
one that can live in heaven where only order can exist. Any disorder left in
the active personality makes it impossible for us to live in the environment of
heaven. It is crucial therefore that we use every moment of life on earth,
every day and every minute of the hour, to continue this process of reformation
and regeneration.
The Lord gives us awareness of the
disorder in us bit by bit. He very carefully manages this process so that we
never feel like we are forced or compelled by Him, but only by our self. Our reformation
and regenerating proceeds day by day seemingly through our own effort and
choices. Of
course there is no power in the universe except the power of the Lord. And so
we must keep in mind that our efforts as-of self are required but that it is
the Lord who supplies all the power for the effort and the change. If we forget
this we are going to assume that the power is ours, and this is a disorder of
insanity or fantasy, hence we cannot be reformed and regenerated. Neither can
we say to the Lord, “You go ahead and do it for me or to me.” This would also
be a disorder of insanity. So there is no
other way but to compel ourselves to act in accordance with conscience and the
truths we derive from the Word.
To act
means to will and to think. Our physical body merely does what we are willing
and thinking moment by moment. And so the focus of regeneration must be on
willing and thinking. You can see that
there is no reformation and regeneration without self-witnessing, that is,
without monitoring your stream of willing and thinking moment by moment.
When you are monitoring the moment by moment stream of willing and thinking,
the Lord makes sure that you become aware of a particular disorder in you. This
conscious awareness is brought about by temptations. There are natural
temptations, spiritual temptations, and celestial temptations (AC 847[2]). We
must learn what they are from the Word. The way we must handle these three
types is different. Each requires its own healing procedure.
[2] There are many kinds of temptations, which are in
general the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural; and these ought never to
be confounded. Celestial temptations can exist only with those who are in love
to the Lord, and spiritual ones with those only who are in charity toward the
neighbor. Natural temptations are altogether distinct from these, and indeed
are not temptations, but merely anxieties arising from natural loves being
assailed by misfortunes, diseases, or a depraved condition of the blood and
other fluids of the body. From this brief account it may in some degree be
known what temptation is, namely, anguish and anxiety occasioned by whatever
opposes one's loves. Thus with those who are in love to the Lord, whatever
assails this love produces an inmost torture, which is celestial temptation;
with those who are in love toward the neighbor, or charity, whatever assails
this love occasions torment of conscience, and this is spiritual temptation.
[3] But with those who are natural, what they frequently
call temptations and the pangs of conscience, are not temptations, but only
anxieties arising from their loves being assailed, as when they foresee and are
sensible of the loss of honor, of the good things of the world, of reputation,
pleasures, bodily life, and the like; nevertheless these troubles are wont to
be productive of some good. Temptations are moreover experienced by those who are
in natural charity, and consequently by all kinds of heretics, Gentiles, and
idolaters, arising from assaults on the life of their faith which they cherish.
But these are distresses that merely emulate spiritual temptations. (AC 847)
You can see
from this that a temptation is a warning or distress signal we receive when the
Lord brings us into conscious awareness of a disorder in our willing and
thinking. To acquire a moral character we must remove the immoral within us.
This we must do as-of self by experiencing a conflict in our mind. This
conflict is the result of an actual battle that surrounds our spirit-body in
the spiritual world. Evil spirits approach our spirit-body and infuse into it
evil desires and insane thoughts. This infusion process is quite common when
spirits congregate together or come near to each other. As a result of this
infusion or influence, our mind becomes active with the particular disorder
that characterizes those spirits. The Lord connects and disconnects our
association with evil spirits, moment by moment, bringing near certain evils
spirits at certain times, and keeping others away.
The Lord
decides at which point we are ready and willing to deal with a particular
disorder. He then brings around the evil spirits whose character relates to
this particular disorder in us. We are then conscious of this disorder. We feel
it as a desire or need or motive or purpose. It is in our will and we have the
strong desire to engage in it, to follow it, to identify ourselves with it, to become
it. Simultaneously, the Lord brings around good spirits or angels, and they
engage the evils spirits in combat. They use truths of the Word in our
understanding to fight this struggle.
You can see
from this description what a temptation is. Our mind, or spirit-body, is
surrounded by evil and good spirits engaged in a fight. The weapons of combat
are the truths and falsities in our spirit-body from experience and
inheritance. The Lord carefully manages the combat so that we have the maximum
chance of winning. We can still lose if we insist on identifying with the
falsities activated by the evil spirits. For example, I suddenly feel an
impulse to get up from this typing and go to the kitchen and eat some more
chocolate. I already had some chocolate just a few minutes ago, but now I want
some more. This is the sign that the Lord has approached certain evils spirits
that excite my mind to eat more than I want to. This is a disorder in me from
childhood, very familiar. I would be obese by now if I gave in to it. Certainly
it has caused me to be overweight for many years. Being obese or overweight is
a disorder. If I arrive in heaven with this disorder, I cannot enter it and my
eternal happiness.
So I must
rid my character of this disorder. I think about denying myself for the sake of
my diet, rationally chosen, and for the sake of maintaining order. This is a
sign that the Lord has approached good spirits. And now the combat of
temptation is on. I am in it. Whether I win or lose depends on my free choice.
Consider
another example. As I’m typing this one of my cats enters the room (the other
two are already asleep). He does the usual thing, trying to engage me in his
ritual. He makes a characteristic sound behind me. That is his demand. Now my
temptation begins. I don’t want to stop writing and go ritualize with him. I
ignore him, hoping he will go away. This is a disorder of my willing which is
activated by the evil spirits the Lord has approached to my spirit-body in the
spiritual world. I feel a pang of guilt. I love my cat and I don’t want him to
feel rejected and unhappy. He depends on me for services like feeding,
scratching, grooming, and playing. This is his life, his happiness, and I’m
denying it for him. What kind of love is this? These thoughts and feelings are
signs that the Lord has brought certain good spirits to the vicinity of my
spirit-body. The combat is on.
Now Mana
escalates. He jumps on the table where the computer is and looks at me four
inches away. I have the impulse of picking him up and putting him out so he
stops bothering me. I’m afraid that he is going to jump on the keyboard or on
the zip drive or behind the table where the wires are. I’m thinking what a
little pest he is. I’m gritting my teeth with anger. I feel like slapping him off.
Etc. All these thoughts and feelings are activated by the particular spirits
the Lord has brought near. Simultaneously I feel guilt, regret, compassion. How can I be so cruel and selfish to this little
creature of God whom I love? Tears come to my eyes when I see the monster I am.
I am shocked at myself, at the feelings of violence and cruelty. These thoughts
and emotions are a signal that the Lord has brought certain good spirits around
who are infusing and activating the ideas and attitudes that I have developed
in the past. I am surrounded by warring combatants. Who will I let win? Therein
lies my fate and my future.
I look at
the beautiful little creature’s face and I’m ashamed of myself. I get up. He
follows me. We go to the kitchen. I feed him. He doesn’t want it. I give him
some cold mild on a plate. He smells it and walks away. He goes to the spot
where the catnip box is kept and looks up. I give him some on a tray. He revels
in it, lying on it, putting it all over his body, licking it. He lies on his
side and looks at me expectantly. Throughout these activities I’m experiencing
the conflict. I want to go back to the typing. I want to spend the minimum
time. I want to cheat him out of some of the things he demands and wants. I
make myself stay and postpone leaving, moment by moment. I give him grooming, I
play with him with his string. At last I am able to say, OK, enough is enough.
I walk away. I close the door so he can’t come back to interrupt me. I feel
guilty about that. I resume my typing, relieved. Etc.
You can see
from this description what temptation combats are and how they involve the
second by second stream of willing and thinking of our behavior all day long.
This is what our regeneration is made of. This is how the Lord can prepare our
mind for heavenly life, by removing disorder that He brings to our attention,
if only we are willing to focus on the details. Every day brings temptations,
every hour and every minute. There are many temptations in a single minute. No
topic is left out, large or small, for our life is nothing but a collection of
these topics, our feelings and thoughts running themselves off. When the Lord judges that we are no longer willing or able to handle more
temptations, our time has come and we make the transition to the spiritual
world.
From then
on we are absolutely unwilling to undergo more temptations. Such as we then are, such we remain. To the extent that we are willing to
deal with remaining disorders, the Lord can continue to regenerate us. But we
are only willing to do this if we have arrived imbued with a love for the Lord,
for the Doctrine that we have acquired from the Word or from our religion and
conscience.
Conscience is twofold, interior and exterior; interior
conscience is that of spiritual good and truth, exterior conscience is that of
what is just and equitable. Conscience itself is an interior plane in which the
influx of the Divine good terminates. But they who have no conscience have not
any interior plane to receive this influx; and with these persons good flows
through down to the exterior natural or natural-sensuous; and as before said is
there turned into foul delights. Sometimes these persons seem to feel a pain as
of conscience, but it is not conscience; it is a pain arising from the loss of
their delight, such as that of honor, gain, reputation, life, pleasures, or the
friendship of people like themselves; and this is because the terminations are
in delights like these. (AC 5145)
Heaven is
within, in the highest portion of our mind. This spiritual-celestial mind must
be opened or animated by means of temptations and regeneration. When it is
opened, it then acts as a “termination” of resting place for the influx of
spiritual truths. When these spiritual truths are in our mind, we are in heaven
since heaven is in the spiritual truths. Spiritual truths are from the Lord,
hence they are Divine. This is why it is said that the Lord dwells within us,
that is, His divine Truth rests in our spiritual mind, and He is Divine Truth.
Note that conscience exists in two forms, external in the natural mind, and
interior in the spiritual mind.
External
conscience strives to protect the natural goods and truths that we have
accumulated such as the delights of honor, gain, reputation, life, pleasures,
and friendships. The pain of external conscience is not spiritual conscience
but the fear of losing natural delights and the things of the self and the
world to which we are attached. Internal conscience strives to protect
spiritual goods and truths such as our delights in being saved, loving uses,
the neighbor, the Lord, and the Doctrine from His Word. Without this interior
conscience, the spiritual mind cannot be opened and there is no termination or
resting place for heaven in us.
Chapter 1, Section 4
4.The remains of good and truth in the afterlife
What remains are, has been stated and shown above (AC n.
468, 530, 560, 561, 661, 798, 1050), namely, that they are all the states of
the affection of good and truth with which a man is gifted by the Lord, from
earliest infancy even to the end of life; which states are stored up for him
for the use of his life after death; for in the other life all the states of
his life return in succession, and are then tempered by the states of good and
truth with which he has been gifted by the Lord.
The more remains therefore that a man has received in the
life of the body, that is, the more of good and truth, the more delightful and
beautiful do the rest of his states appear when they return.
That this is really so may be evident to everyone, if he
will consider. When a man is born he has not a particle of good of himself, but
is wholly defiled throughout with hereditary evil, and all that is good flows
in, such as his love for his parents, his nurses, his companions; and this from
innocence. Such are the things that flow in from the Lord through the heaven of
innocence and peace, which is the inmost heaven, and thus is man imbued with
them in his infancy.
[2] Afterwards, when he grows up, this good, innocent, and
peaceful state of infancy recedes little by little; and so far as he is
introduced into the world, he comes into its pleasures, and into cupidities,
and thus into evils; and so far the celestial or good things of the age of
infancy begin to disappear; but still they remain, and the states which the man
afterwards puts on or acquires are tempered by them. Without them a man can
never be a man, for the states of the cupidities, or of evil, if not tempered
by states of the affection of good, would be more atrocious than those of any
animal. These states of good are what are called remains, given by the Lord and
implanted in one's natural disposition, and this when
the man is not aware of it.
[3] In after life he is also gifted with new states; but
these are not so much states of good as states of truth, for as he is growing
up he is imbued with truths, and these are in like manner stored up in him in
his interior man. By these remains, which are those of truth, born of the
influx of spiritual things from the Lord, man has the ability to think, and
also to understand what the good and the truth of civic and moral life are, and
also to receive spiritual truth or faith; but he cannot do this except by means
of the remains of good that he had received in infancy.
That there are remains, and that they are stored up in a man
in his interior rational, is wholly unknown to man; and this because he
supposes that nothing flows in, but that everything is natural to him, and born
with him, thus that it is all in him when an infant, when yet the real case is
altogether different. Remains are treated of in many parts of the Word, and by
them are signified those states by which man becomes a man, and this from the
Lord alone. (AC 1906)
This
passage says a number of things about remains that can be summarized in the
following points:
(1) Remains
are “states of the affection of good and truth.” These states are in the
interior mind and unconscious.
(2) The
Lord implants these states throughout our life on earth, from infancy to the
end. The are called “gifts of life.”
(3) All
states of affection we acquire in this life, “return in succession” in the
other life, the evil affections as well as the remains of good affections
implanted by the Lord unbeknownst to us.
(4) The
remains of good affections “temper” the injurious effects of the evil
affections we brought with us into the afterlife.
(5) The
more remains the Lord has been able to implant in our interior mind, “the more
delightful and beautiful do the rest of our states appear when they return.”
The Lord implants remains in our unconscious interior mind to the extent that
we shun evils as sins consciously in our external mind (xx).
(6) The
innocence of infants, expressed as “love for parents, nurses, companions,” is
not in the infant or from the infant, but from the Lord through the influx of
good. These flow in “from the Lord through the heaven of innocence and peace,
which is the inmost heaven.” The states of good that flow in from the “heaven
of innocence and peace” temper the infant’s evil states from inheritance so
much so that the evil is hardly noticeable in the infant, and what shows
instead is innocence and delight that make babies appear so cute and adorable
to their parents and grown ups. These states of innocence remain for the
afterlife, along with other remains implanted throughout life.
(7) But
then, as the child grows up, “this good, innocent, and peaceful state of
infancy recedes little by little; and so far as he is introduced into the
world, he comes into its pleasures, and into cupidities, and thus into evils;
and so far the celestial or good things of the age of infancy begin to
disappear; but still they remain.” The innocence of childhood is succeeded
developmentally by the corruption of evil delights and cupidities from the
world and from inheritance. But the remains of innocence are stored up by the
Lord in our interior mind for use in the afterlife, and this not only in our
childhood, but throughout life, in proportion to our cooperation in reformation
and regeneration.
(8) In the
afterlife, we receive new states in proportion to our affection for truth: “these
are not so much states of good as states of truth, for as he is growing up he
is imbued with truths, and these are in like manner stored up in him in his
interior man.” Without learning truths by means of education and experience,
our afterlife cannot be rational, and yet heavenly life is in the truths we
bring with us. These remains of truth are “born of the influx of spiritual
things from the Lord.” Note that these are not the natural truths we also
acquire, but the spiritual truths from the Lord through His Word. From these
spiritual truths “man has the ability to think, and also to understand what the
good and the truth of civic and moral life are, and also to receive spiritual
truth or faith; but he cannot do this except by means of the remains of good
that he had received in infancy.” Our natural intelligence of “civic and moral
life” are enabled by the spiritual truths from the
Lord without which civic and moral motives and decisions would not be present.
Survival of society therefore depends on spiritual ideas from the Lord
implanted in our unconscious interior mind.
(9) The
civic and moral life, animated from within by the spiritual truths from the
Lord, as well as the external religious life, can be animated by the Lord only
“by means of the remains of good that we received in infancy.” These remains
include the affection for good and truth. This is a celestial affection, not
natural, for in the natural we do not love good and
truth, and if it appears that we do, it is because of a motive for reward and
merit—which are natural motives, not celestial.
At some
point in adult life we must desire to return to the states of innocence in
order to be motivated to undergo reformation, and then regeneration. These
affections for good and truth are stored up by the Lord in our interior
spiritual mind. Now as an adult independent thinker, we take up the Writings to
gather the spiritual Doctrine by which we reorder our mind and struggle against
the nonduality by which it is filled and in which it is immersed. First we read
and study the literal of the Writings and take up its meaning into our
natural-rational mind.
Once these
rational truths are in our understanding, we can use them in our willing and
thinking all day long. We analyze our concepts, assumptions, beliefs, and
decisions, debunking their hidden and assumptive nonduality, reforming them
into new shapes, new meanings, new assumptions, all of
which are from the Lord through the rational truths we pick up from the
Writings. The Lord then adjoins and conjoins the unconscious remains of good,
and this action animates our truths, gives them power to guide our willing and
thinking. In this way we are reformed and prepared for heavenly life.
Chapter 1, Section 5
5.The Regeneration
Of The Threefold Self: Willing, Thinking, And Acting Out
Man's interiors are distinguished into degrees, and in each
degree the interiors are terminated, and by termination are separated from the
degree next below; it is thus from the inmost to the outermost.
The interior rational constitutes the first degree; in this
are the celestial angels, or in this is the inmost or third heaven. The
exterior rational makes the second degree; in this are the spiritual angels, or
in this is the middle or second heaven. The interior natural makes the third
degree; in this are good spirits, or the ultimate or first heaven. The exterior
natural, or the sensuous, makes the fourth degree; and in this is man. These
degrees in man are most distinct.
[3] Thence it is that if he lives in good, a man is as to
his interiors a heaven in the least form, or that his interiors correspond to
the three heavens; and hence it is that if a man has lived a life of charity
and love, he can be carried after death even into the third heaven. But that he
may be of this character, it is necessary that all the degrees in him should be
well terminated, and thus by means of terminations be distinct from one another;
and when they are terminated, or by means of terminations are made distinct
from one another, each degree is a plane in which the good which flows in from
the Lord rests, and where it is received.
Without these degrees as planes, good is not received, but
flows through, as through a sieve or a basket that has holes in it, down to the
sensuous, and then, being without any direction in the way, it is turned into a
foulness which appears to those who are in it as good, namely, into the delight
of the love of self and of the world, consequently into the delight of hatred,
revenge, cruelty, adultery, and avarice, or into mere voluptuousness and
luxury. (AC 5145)
Regeneration
is to be understood as a psychobiological process of the mind. The mind is a
spiritual organ, not natural, because it is constructed out of spiritual
substances from the spiritual Sun. The essence of these substances is Divine
Truth within which is Divine Love. Clearly, then, the mind is a rational
construction because it is constructed out of truth. The substance of truth is
a spiritual substance, immortal and permanent. The spiritual fibers that
constitute the organ of the mind are laid down and coiled in particular
directions. In this mode the mind is able to function as a receptor organ for
spiritual truths flowing in from the Lord through heaven.
The mind
develops by means of truths we learn or acquire through instruction and
experience. The lower portions of the mind are called the external natural mind
because it serves for a resting place or “vessel” for the natural goods and
truths that enter through the senses of the physical body in the natural world.
This external mind cannot receive any goods and truths from the spiritual
world. Spiritual goods and truths can only be received by the upper portion of
the mind, also called the interior or spiritual mind. This inner portion of the
mind can only be built up by regeneration, and especially by our struggle
against spiritual temptations. This struggle is what the Lord calls our cooperation
in regeneration. The Lord opens the spiritual mind to the extent that we suffer
ourselves to undergo regeneration by means of spiritual temptations.
The
spiritual mind has three levels or discrete degrees: natural-spiritual,
rational-spiritual, and celestial-spiritual. These three degrees in the
spiritual mind correspond to the three heavens. If we suffer ourselves to
undergo spiritual and celestial temptations, the spiritual mind can be opened
all the way to the highest or inmost. Those who have this highest level opened
can receive interior-rational truths, also called celestial truths. Within
these inmost truths is the Third Heaven and those whose mind has been opened to
this level become angels of the Third Heaven. But those who can receive only spiritual-rational
truths, enter the Second Heaven. Those who can only
receive natural-spiritual truths live in the First Heaven as angelic spirits.
Those who can only receive external natural truths have their spiritual mind
closed. When they arrive in the afterlife they sink down into hell because
their mind has remained such as it was when they were born, namely, filled with
“the delight of hatred, revenge, cruelty, adultery, and avarice, or ... mere
voluptuousness and luxury.” Since this is their total functioning mind, they
are unwilling to let go of its content and remain in them forever.
Regeneration
is therefore the task of building up the spiritual mind.
This growth
process consists of two steps in sequence. The first step is to let go of the
evil affections in the natural mind. The second step is to compel yourself to
will what is good from what you know is true. What is true refers to what the
Writings teach. These principles of good and true are called the Doctrine of
the Church in the mind. In other words, we study the Writings and formulate
Doctrine in our understanding. This Doctrine teaches how we should will and
think.
Since
willing and thinking is made of thousands of particular items every hour and
day, you can see that we must be able to monitor our willing and thinking
sequences all day long to make sure that they agree with the Doctrine we have
in our understanding of the Writings. There is no general way of being
regenerated, by confessing, by repenting of all our sins during prayer, by
giving charity or doing good to others. These things
may be helpful and desirable but they do not accomplish regeneration. The only
thing that will accomplish it is to become aware of all the items in our
willing and thinking, judging them in the light of our Doctrine, and desisting
from doing and thinking them because they are sins against the Lord and they prevent
our spiritual mind from being opened. The Lord opens our spiritual mind to the
extent that we are willing to clean out the natural mind as-of self.
A man's evils are in
his thoughts and intentions (NJHD 164)
1. Self-Examination:
Monitoring The Threefold
Self
A man who examines himself for the
purpose of practicing repentance, should explore his thoughts, and the
intentions of his will; and there he ought to examine what he would do, if he
were at liberty; that is, if he were not afraid of the laws, and the loss of
reputation, honor, and gain. A man's evils are in his thoughts and intentions;
and the evils which he does with the body are all from thence. Those persons
who do not explore the evils of their thoughts and of their will cannot practice
repentance; for afterwards they think and will just as they did before; and yet
willing evils means doing them. This is meant by self-examination. (NJHD 164)
Self-examination
is therefore a process of self-monitoring. This involves monitoring and
note-keeping of our mental life in daily tasks and interactions with others. It
is similar to self-witnessing but more limited in focus and duration. Each exercise
involves keeping track in the three “domains” or organs of the mind: affective,
cognitive, and sensorimotor.
Affective Organ (will):
“What feelings do I have in this situation?” Or: “What do I
feel like doing right now?”
Cognitive Organ :(understanding):
“What thoughts do I have right now?” Or: “What are the words
and sentences I’m thinking right now?”
Sensorimotor Organ (acting out and sensations):
“What sensations am I experiencing right now?” And: “What is
my body doing and how does it appear to others—my face, my hands, my position,
my rhythm, my voice, my breathing, etc.”
Keeping
cumulative notes in a journal or diary is necessary. Dictating notes with a
recorder is also useful. Part of the discipline is to review or analyze the
data collected over many samples of one’s interactions and behaviors and to
evaluate them as indicators of one’s dedication and progress in regeneration.
(See Note 20 at end, for additional articles on the self-witnessing
techniques.)
Another
area is the entertainment content we enjoy on TV, comics, novels, and music.
The
We can make
a free choice to shun these fallen things for inner spiritual reasons rather
than for mere obedience to authority such as parents or teachers. The
The “small”
choices regarding our lifestyle—are we noisy neighbors or aggressive drivers,
etc.—carry equal weight or greater weight than the large things of our
biography—degrees, income, awards, recognition, important achievements. The
little things carry more weight because they are far more numerous given that
they are the constituents of the larger things. And the more frequently we
perform non-charitable acts, thoughts, or feelings, the more they fix our
character habits, and the less we can change in the afterlife. Our lot there is
what we bring along.
Knowing this, and keeping it in mind
through spiritual discipline, gives us the motive to persist and the courage to
suffer through it.
Even
ordinary and relatively mild things ought to be resisted and held in aversion.
For instance when someone says to me “That was lucky” I feel prudent in thinking
“Amen” to acknowledge that, in my mind, luck is something the Lord produces,
not blind chance. Or if a student thanks me for a course they found valuable, I
immediately make my mind dwell on the idea that it is the Lord who decides who
gets what when. The Lord uses my skills to advance the development of others
that He brings around to my sphere of communication. I had nothing to do with
the actual success of it and its effects on others. I was allowed to
participate in something the Lord had arranged and brought about. For example,
when I get to the parking lot on campus and can’t find a space I inhibit an old
habit of saying “Oh, no, how annoying!” and instead I say “Lord, you made this
decision for me. Thy will be done, not mine” and when I find a space for my car
I acknowledge it by saying “Thank you Lord.” And it’s been many years since
I’ve been vigilant in breaking the verbal habit of saying “Darn!” “Shoot!” and
“Gosh!” and of course, the Lord’s Name said in vain. These appear little things
in the scheme of things and yet they are the most important in fixing our fate
in the afterlife.
Those who have conscience do not swear in vain
(AC
2842.)
It’s worth
cautioning here that swearing acts can be subtle and subconscious. I noticed
that I can swear merely with the body without words, like
q
rolling the eyes in protest
q
kicking an object in disgust
q
whistling under the breath
q
smirking as a comment
q
slapping the thigh in disapproval
q
snapping the fingers in condemnation
q
and so on.
In the
To fight
this built-in habit we need to remind ourselves constantly that every detail is
either from Divine Providence or Permissions (DP 234, 249, 251, SE 1088). This
is a rational attitude. I try to remind myself of this frequently in the course
of a day or hour: “This is the Lord’s doing.” I say to myself. Or: “The Lord
did this to me.” I say these things when I’m under stress: When I trip and
fall; when I can’t find a parking space; when I get a hernia; when I get into
an accident; when I reflect on 9/11 and all things of our biography and
history. It’s easier to attribute to
This means
that we can’t back off from our rational certitude of the Lord’s omnipotence;
we can’t think that when a tragedy happens that the Lord’s power somehow failed
the prevent it. Every detail of that tragedy is under the Lord’s purview and
power, including the skills that the attackers have to carry out their misdeed.
We need to understand why the Lord gives ability to a child rapist to carry out
his foul deed. It’s not because the Lord
lacks power to prevent it. It’s not because the Lord was the source of the
evil intent. Why then? The Lord rules and manages by means of His Divine Wisdom
from His Divine Love, which has infinite power. This is where we must base our
understanding of why the Lord gives His power to the evil doer. The Lord manages the hells no less than the
heavens, but not in the same way. He prevents innumerable evils from being
performed moment by moment. He keeps Himself in full control all the time of
everything. And so His Divine Wisdom from His Divine Love creates and maintains
a Divine order for all things and events.
The Laws of
Permissions are part of this Divine order. It is a perfect order that allows only
good to be the permanent outcome of every single thing. And the evil deeds of
the rapist, or thief, or deceiver, also must have a permanent good outcome or
else the deed cannot come into existence. This general idea can be deepened
more and more with further study of the Writings, and it will then be very
evident that the Lord is always in charge from His Love through His Wisdom. In
short, this is a perfect world. The
2. Keeping
Track Of The Motives We
Have
My
self-witnessing discipline also applies to the repeated choices I make in
compelling myself to go through routine tasks in preparing for lectures without
allowing myself to slack off because I’ve already reached the top of my career.
And especially, the motives I have for sustaining my preparation and performing
each detail of my tasks as instructor and mental coach. In the early years I
would do my work conscientiously for external motives—reputation, awards,
recognition, remuneration, fear, anxiety, enjoyment of dominion, etc. These
good works will not help me in the afterlife and they will be put to sleep by
the Lord and exiled to the far reaches of my spirit. Only those will help me that
I did for interior motives, such as, that
q
the Lord wants me to
q
the angels are looking on
q
I must perform compassion
q
I must be fair
q
I must set a good example
q
I must be a good leader
q
a sincere teacher
q
a helpful coach.
Why must I
have these motives? Because otherwise I act from hell and I am
hating uses and the Lord, loving myself only.
As is a person's life in general therefore, so is his life
in every individual part, indeed in the smallest individual parts of his motives
and intentions - that is, of his will - and in the smallest individual parts of
his thinking; so that not the least part of an idea can exist in which the same
life is not present.
Take someone who is arrogant: arrogance is present in every
individual endeavor of his will and in every individual idea of his thought.
With someone who is avaricious avarice is in a similar way present, as is
hatred with one who hates the neighbour. Or take someone who is stupid:
stupidity is present in every individual part of his will and also of his
thought, as is insanity with one who is insane. Such being the nature of man,
his character is recognized in the next life from one single idea of his
thought. (AC 1040)
In other
words our general behavior is created out of particular details. Another way of
saying this is that our macro-behaviors are made of our micro-behaviors. Also,
every act of thinking is motivated just as every act of doing. The motive
enters into every micro-behavior or else the behavior would not occur. A
particular thought would not occur were it not motivated by some intention,
affection, or goal. The expressions “someone who is arrogant” or “someone who
is avaricious” or “someone who is stupid” signify the
God is unceasingly
present, and continually striving and acting in man (TCR 74)
When one acts honestly and justly with a companion, one
person may do it for the purpose of appearing to be honest and just out of
regard for himself and his own honor; another on account of the world and gain;
a third with a view to reward and merit; a fourth out of regard for friendship;
a fifth from fear of the law and the loss of reputation or employment; a sixth that
he may draw someone to his own side, even when he is in the wrong; a seventh
that he may deceive; and others from other motives. In all these instances,
although the deeds are good in appearance, since it is a good thing to act
honestly and justly with a companion, they are nevertheless evil, because they
are done, not out of regard for honesty and justice and for the love of these,
but out of regard for love of self and the world which the man loves; and
honesty and justice are made to serve that love as servants who serve a lord,
and whom the lord despises and dismisses when they fail to serve him. (HH 472)
This
absolutist thinking is precisely what secular psychologists uniformly declare
as unhealthy and counsel people that they cannot be happy and adjusted
individuals as long as they do this kind of absolutist thinking that involves
“I must” (I must be honest; I must be sincere; I must be a good role model,
etc.). This is how Dr. Albert Ellis refers to this kind of thinking (Feeling
Better, Getting Better, Staying Better: Profound
Self-Help Therapy for Your Emotions. Impact Publishers, Inc). He is one of
the best known scientific psychologists and a popular author and trainer of
“rational-emotive therapy.”
For decades
now, the theme of the mental health outlook being generally advocated by
American psychologists has been to “learn to accept yourself as you are, free
of any demands that you be different. Do not attempt to measure yourself or set
some kind of value on yourself.” An icy cold atmosphere of nondualism surrounds
the therapist’s client in the form of non-judgmentalism: “If you accept
imperfection in yourself, you are less likely to engage in dangerous behavior such
as striving for the unattainable.” The nondualist philosophy of unconditional self-acceptance
teaches that maladjustment and neurotic anxiety stems from an excessively
severe and watchful conscience. This theme was introduced more than 100 years
ago by Sigmund Freud who, like Karl Marx, had no use for religion and sin. And
yet God has revealed that the opposite is the reality: that sin is real, that
the dictates of conscience are given by God as the means by which we are able
to avoid the unending misery of hell. The
The Lord
provides a tremendously rich social and physical context for every individual’s
daily life on earth. There is so much to do to survive or thrive. Our
personality is made up of thousands of distinct habit routines we acquire in
childhood, and onward to the end. Any one of these can be selected as a
discipline that is fashioned into an excellence or expertise by dint of
persistent techniques applied in daily rehearsals. For instance, for many years
I have taken upon myself the discipline of washing dishes. I insist, without
much opposition from others, that I wash the dishes for every meal. I beg
people to just put their used dishes any time they wish on the counter by the
sink and I will take care of it with pleasure. When I come around the kitchen
and see any dishes I quickly wash them. Even today after years of discipline, I
experience temptations of leaving them lying around when I don’t feel like
doing dishes. What a joy there is in overcoming the temptations and doing the
dishes. Also, I inspect the items to make sure I do a proper job. If my wife
finds some ill washed dish or fork, I feel guilt and regret.
All of this
relationship I am having with washing dishes makes it into a regeneration discipline
because my motive is spiritual—that is, wishing to cooperate with the Lord as
He strives with me to regenerate my character and make it fit for heavenly
life. Only with this religious motive can the
3. The Agony And Ecstasy Of Regeneration
True order is
connected with decorum, beauty, elegance, perfection (TCR Additions 3)
Regeneration
can only take place in the conscious aware mind!
The Lord is
operating from within while we operate from without. This joint action defines
regeneration. It is not something we can do on our own. It is not something the
Lord can do for us unconsciously, without our conscious cooperation.
Regeneration
begins after reformation. Reformation lasts months (see Volume 1) while
regeneration lasts decades. Regeneration begins when we are enlightened, that
is, immerse our thinking in spiritual-rational correspondences. These are a
discrete degree above the natural-rational correspondences of the Letter of the
Writings. Enlightenment depends on two steps. First,
acquiring the Letter of the Writings as Divine Truth in our understanding.
This refers to the literal meaning of the sentences and their inter-relationships
noted by regular study. Second, applying this Divine Doctrine
in our mind to our daily willing and thinking. The moment we begin this
second step, we are enlightened by the Lord. We continue to be enlightened more
and more as we continue to apply the Divine Doctrine in our understanding.
The enlightenment consists in a new
perception of higher correspondences. This is the first time that the
This new
spiritual consciousness is the ecstasy of regeneration.
We are now
conscious as a new birth. Before enlightenment we were immersed in
natural-rational correspondences, which is the Letter of the Writings. This
immersion of our thinking in natural-rational correspondences prevented like a
veil, our seeing through it, which means, our seeing a more interior degree of
it, which has been there all along but we cannot see it until we remove the
veils.
We put the
veils there, and maintain it up and dark to the vision.
The Lord
permits it because it is our first state in regeneration, and we must be in
this first phase in order to get on with it. The end is the celestial mind and
personality we long for. We long for it from within, from the Lord, from
creation, because the celestial mind is the final creation, the completion of
the evolution of the human race. It is such as is the celestial mind of the
angels in heaven who are wise far above anyone on earth. This wisdom can belong to the
Enlightenment
is given to anyone, man or woman, at any age, from any religion or belief
system, country, or planet. The Lord is with every human being in the universe,
participating and co-managing every detail conscious to the individual, and
managing by Himself every detail of which the individual is unconscious. Human
life itself depends on the Lord being with that individual in this
co-managerial process. Since the Lord manages these details in the mind of
every individual, you can see that He can also give enlightenment to every
individual. And He does, using the same condition or rule for everyone who
wants His spiritual light. This condition is that the individual undergo
regeneration. The Lord has therefore made a scientific revelation of Himself
and His Divine Rational mind.
This Second Coming of the Lord takes
place to each individual in enlightenment.
Although we
worship the Letter of the Writings during reformation, our level of thinking
and reasoning about regeneration and the Word, is
immersed in the natural-rational correspondences of the literal meaning in the
Letter of the Writings.
But enlightenment cannot be given by
the Lord in the Letter!
Enlightenment
refers to spiritual light from the spiritual Sun. Enlightenment is experienced
as perception of spiritual-rational correspondences within the natural-rational
correspondences of the Letter. This is not a mysterious process, as is fully
explained in Volume 2. It is a mechanism of regeneration over which we have rational
control. Enlightenment is an organic process going on in the internal portion
of the natural-rational mind (consult diagrams in Volume 2). As we are
struggling and progressing in our regeneration, the Lord is creating a new mind
within the natural-rational mind. This is a biological new growth of spiritual
fibers at a discrete degree above the spiritual fibers of natural-rational
correspondences in the external natural-rational mind. Now, in this new organic
receptor within our rational, we are capable of perceiving consciously with
direct sensuous awareness, interior truths which from the Lord only and are
called spiritual-rational correspondences.
Spiritual-rational
correspondences are within natural-rational correspondences. This is because
the new interior-rational mind the Lord is creating within the individual, is a discrete degree above the individual’s
self-intelligence from the Letter. When our thinking is immersed in and reasons
from the Letter, it is called self-intelligence because it must be the first
phase of regeneration. We must be led by self-intelligence to being
regenerated, otherwise we feel coerced, and lose our life should the Lord
continue to coerce us. And then we’ll never regenerate and be blissful
conjugial husbands in heaven to eternity! That
ecstasy must be bought by our agony.
Why?
Because we are born infernal, and to extirpate the infernal fibers in our will,
while new heavenly fibers are implanted, is to experience agony. Regeneration
is therefore both ecstasy and agony. At first, more of the
agony than the ecstasy. But in old age, the
4. Head In Heaven, Feet In Hell
We
experience enlightenment as ecstasy. It is the conscious perception of
spiritual-rational correspondences. This enlightenment is given to anyone.
Volume 2 describes the mechanism by which the Lord gives this enlightenment to
any individual. You’ll find there methods which the regenerating
Once we
perceive consciously these spiritual-rational correspondences, we are enlightened.
There is no mystery to it, only a rational mechanism in human consciousness
operated by the Lord for the sake of our regeneration.
By means of
enlightenment, the Lord can elevate our conscious awareness to heavenly light.
This conscious awareness is not corporeal or natural-sensuous. It is rational. Enlightenment
refers to the consciousness of the celestial mind. This mind responds and
reacts to spiritual correspondences, while the natural mind responds and reacts
to natural correspondences. The Letter of the Writings on earth is necessarily
written in natural-rational correspondences, but in heaven it is written in
spiritual-rational correspondences.
By allowing that the Letter of the
Writings is written in natural-rational correspondences, we receive
enlightenment and we can begin our regeneration.
Now we
begin regeneration in earnest. Our head is in heaven while our feet are in
hell!
Our head
was not in heaven until enlightenment. The Letter of the Writings cannot give enlightenment
because it is necessarily written in natural-rational correspondences. All
spiritual things written down in a natural language must be natural-rational
correspondences. There is no other possibility. The topic itself may be
spiritual, such as the Lord, the Word, regeneration.
But the understanding of the spiritual topics is at the level of
natural-rational correspondences. Spiritual topics can be understood at the
level of corporeal correspondences,
in which case we have an Old Testament perspective on God and religious
behavior. Further, spiritual topics can be understood at the level of sensuous correspondences, in which case
we have an New Testament perspective on God and
religious behavior. Finally, spiritual topics can be understood at the level of
rational correspondences, in which
case we have a Third Testament perspective on God and religious behavior.
None of these correspondences in
which the Threefold Word is written can give enlightenment.
For the
Being
enlightened means that the
Can the
enlightenment be taken away? Easily. In a moment. What causes it to be taken away by the Lord?
The Lord doesn’t take it away, but we do by erecting a cloud, dark and false,
between the natural and the spiritual correspondences. An example of erecting a
dark cloud is the convinced belief that the literal meaning of the Writings is
the spiritual meaning of the Word (see Volume 2). Another example is the belief
that one can be regenerated by the casual study of the Writings, or its familiarity
by collateral literature. This is a stumbling block to regeneration because it
prevents the individual from being enlightened. Enlightened is possible only
after the individual has acquired in the understanding, passages from the
Letter of the Writings. As these natural-rational correspondences are applied
to our willing and thinking, we achieve enlightenment, in proportion to our
application. And this is the agony.
The head is
in heaven, but the feet are in hell. through the head
we have ecstasy; through the feet we have agony. That our feet are in hell
means that our will is still infernal and will remain with infernal portions
for many years and decades as regeneration proceeds. Why are we in agony when
our feet are in hell and our head is in heaven? Because from
our head in heaven we perceive Divine truths in the form of spiritual-rational
correspondences. This is called light from heaven. It is the light by
which the angels see in heaven. It is the light which is within
spiritual-rational correspondences. Without spiritual-rational correspondences
our mind is in infernal light because there are only two possibilities. To see
solely by the light of the literal meaning of the Word is to see only by the light
of self-intelligence, and this is from the natural world because from the natural
mind.
5. Seeing The Ugly Scary Proprium
Enlightenment
leads to agony because heavenly light illumines things that are in our will,
which is in hell, that is, which is infernal by heredity. The agony is the
torture we experience when Divine light shines on our infernal affections and
delights. This searing torturing light is something that the evil spirits and societies
are experiencing as divine light is brought near them (xx). When we look upon
our affections and delights from the light of spiritual-rational
correspondences, we are shining Divine Truth on the infernals tied to us. They
experience this as torture and agony. They are trapped by us keeping them tied
to us. As long as we love the infernal delights, we are tied to the devils and satans in hell. They cannot escape because they are tied to
us as we are tied to them.
As long as we believe that these infernal
affections and delights are our own, the tie cannot be broken by the infernals
or by the individual.
They are
with our lower self represented by our feet, but the angels are with our higher
self represented by our head. Now there is a battle. This battle is called
“combat” in the Writings which make many new scientific revelations about the rules
of this combat, and its fateful outcome for the individual. IN general this
topic is discussed in the Writings under the subject of “temptations” (e.g.,
xx, xx).
The Lord supervises
this fateful combat between the hells and the heavens. In spiritual and
celestial temptations, which are the most severe and crucial, the power of the
angels enters our mind from within the spiritual-rational correspondences we
have acquired from the spiritual sense of the Writings. These
spiritual-rational correspondences are collected in our mind into a coherent principle
and system of reasoning called by the Writings “the Spiritual Doctrine” (see
Volume 2 for details).
The
Spiritual Doctrine is the source by which the Lord gives enlightenment.
i The Word cannot be understood
without doctrine.
ii. Doctrine must be drawn from the sense of the letter of
the Word.
iii. But the Divine truth which must be of doctrine appears
to none but those who are in enlightenment from the Lord. (SS 50)
We
therefore do battle with the infernal delights by means of the Divine Doctrine
in our mind called the Spiritual Doctrine (AC 2496, 2517). This means to have
the head in heaven. The Spiritual Doctrine exists and is immersed in
spiritual-rational correspondences. It cannot be written in a natural language
but it can be written in a celestial language, as shown by the fact that the
Writings in heaven are written in this script of spiritual-rational
correspondences (xx).
The
Writings discuss a variety of agonies during regeneration. They are called
variously “idolatries,” “backsliding” (AC 4815), “hardening of the heart or
making it stubborn” (AC 7412), “obstinacy or making heavy the heart” (AC 7473),
“making it unyielding” (AC 7632), “turning from the East” (AC 279; DLW 144), “to
teach and to seduce” (AR 134), and others (AC 1250, xx).
As the heart corresponds to the affections belonging to the
love, and thus to the will, the wise men of old ascribed affections to the
heart, and some placed there the abode of affections. This is the source of the
common expressions, " a magnanimous heart," "a timid
heart," "a joyful heart," "a sad heart," a soft
heart," "a hard heart," "a great heart," "a
little heart," "a whole heart," "a broken heart," "a
heart of flesh," "a stony heart," "fat, soft, or vile in
heart," "having no heart," " giving the heart to do,"
"giving a single heart," "giving a new heart," "laying
up in the heart," "receiving in the heart," "not reaching
the heart," "hardening one's heart," "lifted up in heart,"
"a friend in heart," also the terms "concord,"
"discord," "madness" ("vecordia"), and many other
like expressions. And in the Word, the "heart" everywhere signifies
the will or love, for the reason that the Word was written throughout by means
of correspondences. (D.
Regeneration
agonies are the automatic consequence of the head in heaven looking upon the
feet in hell.
Looking upon means shining the light
of Divine Truth upon the infernal affections of the will which we are unwilling
to let go.
When I look
at myself in the mirror I am shocked. I am in agony. From heavenly light I can
see the family evils on my face. I try not to make an expression, but the
unregenerate proprium is still there, in command. The face reflects the
affections (xx), consequently the unregenerate proprium. It is an ugly charred
bony figure (xx). This infernal proprium is inherited; it cannot be saved or
modified or regenerated. Regeneration is by a new proprium, the old is laid
aside, and all its life is removed by the Lord. Angels still have their old
proprium, but it is no longer animated or operational (xx).
I see
haughtiness in my face. Arrogance. Nastiness.
Cruelty. Corporeal sensuality.
Selfishness. Madness. Also:
cleverness, fear, insincerity, grossness.
When I see
the delights I have by monitoring my willing, I am shocked. I am in agony. From
heavenly light I can see that what I enjoy is sleazy, scortatory, engrossing,
animalistic. I eat a snack when I don’t want to because of weight control
issues. Between doing or eating something healthy vs.
unhealthy, I’m attracted more to the unhealthy and the nonproductive.
When I see
the thoughts I have by monitoring my thinking, I am shocked. I am in agony.
From heavenly light I can see that what I’m thinking is illogical. Even as I’m
eating the extra piece I don’t want to, I’m thinking something illogical, like
“It won’t matter. My weight won’t go up. I can just absorb it.” Or else” “I’ll
start all over again tomorrow.” Or, in another arena of the day, I see myself
think derogatory thoughts about my neighbor. Somebody I pass by on the highway
or the shopping mall, somebody I see on TV, somebody I see across the room,
somebody I think about—these are all occasions for me to think negative and derogatory
thoughts about them. I observe this and I’m in agony.
When I see
the acts I execute by monitoring my acting out, I am shocked. I am in agony.
From heavenly light I can see that what I’m doing is not from heaven, which
means it is from hell. Why then don’t I stop? Because I love
that sleazy illogical infernal delight. This is agony. On some days I
feel abulia—the psychological state of feeling like we can’t do anything. I
have the Writings! I think to myself “Later, not now.” Or, I might think: “I’m
enlightened. I’m activated by spiritual-rational correspondences in my
interior-natural mind.” And my response is: “Yeah. Good. I need to eat
something now. Then I need to sleep some more. then I
must rest from my rest.” I am in agony.
I make
myself smile to my wife. I hear complaining about me. I nod. I’m in agony. I
want to protest and disagree. I want to explain to her why she is wrong. But I
force myself not to talk, not to interrupt, not to give her a hard time. I
remind myself of Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife. I simulate agreeableness.
I confess and I promise. I’m in agony. But also in ecstasy as
I see myself do the right thing, as I see the power of enlightenment acting
against the hoards of the hells.
6. Regeneration Is By Spiritual-Rational
Correspondences
The
regenerating
For food in the cities. That this signifies such things in
the interiors of the natural mind, is evident from the signification of
"food," as being all things that are of use, thus truths and goods
(of which just above, n. 5293); and from the signification of "cities,"
as being the interiors of the natural mind. In the universal sense
"cities" signify the doctrinal things of the church (see n. 402,
2268, 2449, 2451, 2712, 2943, 3216, 4492, 4493); but in an individual sense
they signify the interiors of man where doctrinal things are, or rather where
are truths conjoined with good. That the truths and goods in man form as it
were a city, may be seen above (n. 3584); and hence that man himself in whom is
the church is called the "city of
The interiors of the natural mind are signified by
"cities" in Isaiah (...) and the goods and truths in the interiors
are signified by the "cities" in the Lord's parable in Luke (...) Here
therefore by "heaping up food in the cities and guarding it," is
signified that truths conjoined with good were to be stored up in the interiors
of the natural mind; and when these truths and goods have been stored up there,
they are called "remains," in which the veriest spiritual life of man
consists, and from which he is spiritually nourished in every case of need and
want, that is, in every spiritual famine. (AC 5297)
That truths adjoined to good are stored up in the interiors
of the natural mind, and there preserved for use in after life, especially for
use in temptations during man's regeneration, is a secret known to few at this
day; and therefore something must be said about this. For by the "seven
years of abundance of produce" are signified the truths first multiplied,
and by the corn being "put in the cities" and "in the midst"
is signified that these truths adjoined to good are stored up in man's
interiors: and by the "seven years of famine," and by the sustenance
at that time from the gatherings, is signified a state of regeneration through
truths adjoined to good, stored up in the interiors.
[2] The secret is this: from earliest infancy even to the
first of childhood, man is being introduced by the Lord into heaven, and indeed
among celestial angels, by whom he is kept in a state of innocence; a state in
which (as is known) infants are up to the first of childhood. When the age of
childhood begins, the child gradually puts off the state of innocence, though
he is still kept in a state of charity by means of the affection of mutual
charity toward those like himself, which state with many continues up to youth,
and meanwhile he is among spiritual angels. Then, because he begins to think
from himself and to act accordingly, he can no longer be kept in charity as
before; for he then calls forth inherited evils, by which he suffers himself to
be led. When this state comes, the goods of charity and innocence that he had
previously received, are banished according to the degree in which he thinks
evils and confirms them by act; and yet they are not banished, but are
withdrawn by the Lord toward the interiors and there stored up.
[3] But as he does not yet know truths, the goods of
innocence and charity he had received in the two preceding states have not yet
been qualified, for truths give quality to good, and good gives essence to
truths; wherefore from this age he is imbued with truths by instruction, and
especially by means of his own thoughts and confirmations from them. Insofar
therefore as he is then in the affection of good, so far truths are conjoined
with good in him by the Lord (see n. 5340), and are stored up for use. This
state is what is signified by the "seven years of abundance of
produce." It is these truths adjoined to good that in the proper sense are
called "remains."
Insofar therefore as the man suffers himself to be
regenerated, so far the remains serve for use; for so far a supply from them is
drawn forth by the Lord, and is sent back into the natural, in order to produce
a correspondence of the exteriors with the interiors, or of what is natural
with what is spiritual; and this is effected in the state signified by the
"seven years of famine." Such is the secret.
[4] The man of the church at this day believes that no
matter what anyone's life is, he may of mercy be received into heaven, and
there enjoy eternal bliss; for he supposes admission to be all that is
necessary. But he is much mistaken, for no one can be admitted and received
into heaven unless he has received spiritual life, and no one can receive
spiritual life unless he is being regenerated, and no one can be regenerated
except through the good of life conjoined with the truth of doctrine: from this
he has spiritual life. That no one can come into heaven unless he has received
spiritual life through regeneration, the Lord plainly declares in John:
Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except
a man be born anew, he cannot see the
and then He says:
Verily, verily I say to thee, Except
a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the
"water" is the truth of
doctrine ..., and "spirit" is the good of life. No one enters by
baptism; but baptism is significative of that regeneration which the man of the
church ought to keep in mind. (AC 5342)
Note
especially this sentence:
Insofar therefore as the man suffers himself to be
regenerated, so far the remains serve for use; for so far a supply from them is
drawn forth by the Lord, and is sent back into the natural, in order to produce
a correspondence of the exteriors with the interiors, or of what is natural with
what is spiritual; and this is effected in the state signified by the
"seven years of famine." Such is the secret. (AC 5342)
Here it is
revealed the spiritual-rational correspondences are called “remains” and that
the Lord uses remains in our mind by sending them “back into the natural, in
order to produce a correspondence of the exteriors with the interiors.” The
earlier passage said that the regenerating mind is called a “city of
Truths conjoined with good were to be stored up in the
interiors of the natural mind; and when these truths and goods have been stored
up there, they are called "remains," in which the veriest spiritual
life of man consists, and from which he is spiritually nourished in every case
of need and want, that is, in every spiritual famine. (AC 5297)
The
interior-natural mind is formed by the Lord within the natural-rational mind.
In other words, the spiritual-rational correspondences are within the
natural-rational correspondences we have from the Letter. Spiritual-rational
correspondences are called the remains of truth conjoined to good by which we
are regenerated. “The Lord sends back these remains” to the external, which
means that we become conscious of the remains in the form of spiritual-rational
correspondences. This is enlightenment.
It is said
that “the interiors of man where doctrinal things are, or rather where are
truths conjoined with good.” “Doctrinal things” refers to the Spiritual
Doctrine to be extracted from the Letter of the Writings. The Spiritual
Doctrine is located in the interior-natural mind. “Truths conjoined with good”
are from states of celestial innocence granted by the Lord. Celestial innocence
refers to enlightenment because then we think from the Lord and not from self.
Spiritual-rational correspondences in the interior-natural mind are called
remains, and they are what the Lord uses to regenerate us. This cannot be done
from natural-rational correspondences, which is the literal meaning, because
these are not remains but from self-intelligence. In other words, our study of
the Writings adds itself to our self-intelligence, not to our regeneration. But
it is necessary step in our regeneration. They are truths not yet conjoined to
good because they are not from innocence but from self-intelligence. Genuine
truth that is adjoined to good appears to the human race in the form spiritual-rational
correspondences.
Note this
warning:
The man of the church at this day believes that no matter
what anyone's life is, he may of mercy be received into heaven, and there enjoy
eternal bliss; for he supposes admission to be all that is necessary. But he is
much mistaken, for no one can be admitted and received into heaven unless he
has received spiritual life, and no one can receive spiritual life unless he is
being regenerated, and no one can be regenerated except through the good of
life conjoined with the truth of doctrine: from this he has spiritual life. (AC
5342)
“The man of
the church at this day” refers to the regenerating
In other
words, the process of regeneration involves applying the “truth of doctrine” to
“the good of life.” The “truth of doctrine” refers to the spiritual sense of
the Writings which we have gathered together into a coherent principle of life.
Thus, the “truth of doctrine” is the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind. the ”good of life” refers to our daily willing and thinking.
In other words, we are to apply the Spiritual Doctrine to our daily willing and
thinking. This brings enlightenment. This is regeneration. Consequently, it is
salvation.
7. Teachings Regarding Doctrine And The Spiritual Sense
All the instruction there is done from the doctrine drawn
from the Word, and not from the Word apart from doctrine. Christians are
instructed from the heavenly doctrine that is in entire agreement with the
internal sense of the Word. The rest, as the Mohammedans and heathen, are
taught from doctrines suited to their apprehension, which differ from the
heavenly doctrine only in this, that spiritual life is taught by means of moral
life in harmony with the good tenets of their religion from which they had
derived their life in the world. (HH 516)
Although the doctrine of faith is in itself Divine, and
therefore above all human and even angelic comprehension, it has nevertheless
been dictated in the Word according to man's comprehension, in a rational
manner. (AC 2533)
As the Lord is the Word, He is also doctrine; for there is no
other doctrine which is itself Divine.
(AC 2533)
In regard to doctrine the case is this: Insofar as there is
what is human (that is, what is of sense, of memory-knowledge, and of the
rational) as the ground of belief, so far the doctrine is null and void. But
insofar as what is of sense, of memory-knowledge, and of the rational is
removed, that is, insofar as doctrine is believed without these things, so far
doctrine lives; for so far the Divine flows in (AC 2538)
The Lord is doctrine itself, for everything of doctrine
proceeds from Him, and everything of doctrine treats of Him; for all doctrine
treats of the good of love and of the truth of faith. These are from the Lord,
and therefore the Lord is not only in them, but also is both. From this it is evident
that the doctrine that treats of good and truth, treats of the Lord only; and
that it proceeds from His Divine Human. (AC 5321)
Doctrinal things are nothing but the means of arriving at
good as the end (AC 5997)
The case being so with the spiritual church, it is not to be
wondered at that with most persons faith is the essential of the church, and
not charity, and also that they have no doctrine of charity. Their doctrinal
things being from the Word does not make them Divine truths, for from the sense
of the letter of the Word any doctrinal thing whatever can be hatched, and that
which favors the concupiscences can be readily learned; thus also what is false
can be taken for what is true, as is the case with the doctrinal things of the
Jews, of the Socinians, and of many others; but not so if doctrine is formed
from the internal sense.
The internal sense is not only that sense which lies
concealed in the external sense, as has heretofore been shown, but is also that
which results from a number of passages of the sense of the letter rightly
collated, and which is discerned by those who are enlightened by the Lord in
respect to their intellectual. For the enlightened
intellectual discriminates between apparent truths and real truths, especially
between falsities and truths, although it does not judge about real truths in
themselves. But the intellectual cannot be enlightened unless it is
believed that love to the Lord and charity toward the
neighbor are the principal and essential things of the church. He who
proceeds from the acknowledgment of these, provided he himself is in them, sees
innumerable truths; nay, he sees very many secrets disclosed to him, and this
from interior acknowledgment, according to the degree of the enlightenment from
the Lord. (AC 7233)
No one can enter
heaven unless he has acquired spiritual life through regeneration (AC 5342)
Chapter 2
The Doctrine of the Wife
The Word is
vivified with man, according to his life of love and faith … They whose
internal is open, and who thus as to their internal man are capable of being
elevated into the light of heaven, are enlightened … Enlightenment is an actual
opening of the interiors of the mind, and elevation of them into the light of
heaven …. Holiness from the internal, that is, through the internal from the
Lord, inflows with those who esteem the Word to be holy … They who are led by
the Lord are enlightened, and see truths in the Word, but not they who are led
by self (NJHD 256)
Chapter 2, Section 1
1. Introduction: Subduing The External
Man
Now as merely natural truths and goods, which in their
essence are falsities and evils, are altogether opposite to spiritual truths
and goods, which in their essence are truths and goods, therefore the devil, by
whom is meant hell, is in unceasing hatred against them. This is why hatreds of
various kinds are unceasingly ascending from the hells; while on the other
hand, spiritual loves also of various kinds descend from the heavens, and
between the hatreds of the hells and the loves of the heavens there is an
equilibrium, in which the men in the world are held, in order that they may be
able to act from freedom according to reason.
Consequently those who do not live from the Word but from
the world, since they continue natural, receive evils and the falsities thence
from hell, and conceive from them hatred against spiritual truths and goods.
Their hatred does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly
in their spirit; but it becomes manifest after death, when they become spirits.
Then they burn against those who are in spiritual truths and goods with a
hatred so great that it cannot be described; it is indeed a deadly hatred; for
as soon as they see an angel who is in these truths and goods, or if they
merely hear the Lord named, from whom these truths and goods are, they
instantly come into a fury of hatred, and feel nothing more delightful than to
pursue them and to do evil to them. And as they are unable to slay their body
they endeavor with a burning heart to slay their soul. (AE 754)
The
absolute duality of heaven and hell cannot be escaped. While we are in the
world, the Lord keeps us in equilibrium between evil affections from the hells
and good affections from the angels. Who are these evil spirits, called the
devil? Ordinary folks like we are who lived a normal life according to their
self-intelligence, exercising their freedom to chose
what to think and love. They are the future devils who have an insane hatred
for all truth and good they sense in the angels. It is said that “their hatred
does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly in their
spirit.” We are them in our unregenerate state regardless of religion,
philosophy, or lifestyle. We become those devils in the afterlife unless we
compel ourselves to live by the Writings rather than by the world. To live by the Writings means to monitor our
daily willing and thinking and subjugate them to conform to the Writings,
shunning whatever is not in agreement, and desisting from willing and thinking
in that way.
To compel
ourselves to live by the Writings is to obey the Divine commandment that we
cooperate in our regeneration. This cooperation includes fighting as-of self in
our temptations, refusing to give in to them.
Temptations,
therefore, have for their end that the externals of man may be subdued and thus
be rendered obedient to his internals, as may be evident to everyone from the
fact that as soon as man's loves are assaulted and broken (as during
misfortunes, sickness, and grief of mind), his cupidities begin to subside, and
he at the same time begins to talk piously; but as soon as he returns to his
former state, the external man prevails and he scarcely thinks of such things.
The like happens at the hour of death, when corporeal things begin to be
extinguished; and hence everyone may see what the internal man is, and what the
external; and also what remains are, and how cupidities and pleasures, which
are of the external man, hinder the Lord's operation through the internal man.
From this it is
also plain to everyone what temptations, or the internal pains called the
stings of conscience, effect, namely, that the external man is made obedient to
the internal. The obedience of the external man is nothing else than this: that
the affections of what is good and true are not hindered, resisted, and
suffocated by cupidities and their derivative falsities. (AC 857:2)
The
“external man” refers to our corporeal-sensuous self. We can also call it the
“sensorimotor mind” to distinguish it from the cognitive and affective portions
of the mind, which refer to the understanding and the will (see Chapter 8
Section 6). These three portions of the natural mind are arranged in
distance from the physical body. The affective functions of the mind are in the
will, or the inmost. The sensorimotor functions of the mind are close to the body
senses and the brain. The sensory organs of the body and the brain are physical
objects. They receive the chemical stimulation but they do not contain any
sensations because these are spiritual in substance, not chemical. The
sensations are in the natural mind, not the physical brain whose activity is
nothing but molecules and electricity moving in patterned motion. So to feel
sensations, we need a sensory portion of the natural mind which is made of
spiritual fibers. These can contain the sensations we experience when our
physical organs are stimulated by the natural environment.
This sensorimotor
mind is a receptor of stimuli from the spiritual world, of pleasures and
cupidities. The passage above says that this lower mind is a hindrance to
regeneration because it resists obedience to the higher portion of the natural
mind called the “internal man.” The internal man discussed here is that which
is in the depth of the natural mind. When speaking of the spiritual mind, the
internal man is the inmost of the spiritual mind called the celestial mind,
while the lower portion of the spiritual mind is called the external man. So,
both the natural mind and the spiritual mind have an external and an internal
portion.
The
internal man of the natural mind operates with concepts and reasoning that is
called the rational level of thinking. The Lord operates into this level by
means of the voice of conscience which is activated by our affections
for good and true, as the passage says. This means that our rational mind
prefers the good to the evil, and the true to the false. The Lord insures that
every human being is equipped with a conscience, for without it, one cannot be
saved for life in heaven.
From this
you can see that we are divided men, at war with ourselves. The higher wrestles with the lower and the lower resists, hinders, and
tries to suffocate the voice of conscience. These battles can be severe and we
experience inner pain, or the sting of conscience, when the lower wins over the
higher. Temptations play a crucial role in our regeneration because they compel
us to face the battle. Without temptations we can continue ignoring our evil
affections until death, and so come into the afterlife with the evil loves.
These evil loves cannot be removed in the spiritual world and prevent us from
choosing life in heaven.
Through
temptations in the natural mind, our external man is beaten into subservience
to the internal man. Gradually there is a realignment of the external man
through obedience to conscience and to the commandments contained in our
Doctrine from the Writings. Our life is thereby regenerated and the delights we
then experience are far more intense and blissful than former cupidities of our
unregenerate state. Sensorimotor pleasures are still retained as proven by the
immeasurably stronger sensations good spirits and angels experience in
comparison to life with a physical body (CL 44[8]). ). But spirits and angels
do not value sensuous pleasures highly in comparison to the rational delights
of the internal man. Yet the pleasure and happiness experienced by angels from
sexual love is immeasurable finer and superior than
the strongest pleasures we can have in the physical body. So we are not losing
anything or giving up anything when our external man is subservient to the
internal man. On the contrary, we are losing most of what we can have by
continuing in a state of disobedience to conscience and Doctrine.
Conjugial disciplines are techniques
we can use to fight our battles on behalf of conscience and Doctrine.
One might
at first think: Why do I need conjugial disciplines? Do I not love my wife
dearly? Do I not pray to the Lord to unite me with her in conjugial love? Do I
not feel it strongly enough? But I think these are vain thoughts, even
meritorious. Conjugial love is not a feeling or a status obtained by
declarations and reputation. Conjugial love is a doing. It is an activity of
willing and thinking not as oneself but as the conjoint self. To the extent
that we will and think as the conjoint self, to that extent we are progressing
towards conjugial love. It stand to reason therefore we have to take charge and
make sure that we are performing conjugial love daily, hourly, and minute by
minute. Doing this vigilantly and effectively is called a conjugial discipline.
1. Discounting
Our Wife’s Opinion Relative To Our Own
For many
years I hear my wife saying to me that I don’t listen to her, that I don’t
value her ideas, that I have an automatic prejudice against her because she is
a woman and women have no credibility with men. I did not appreciate this
wisdom and insight she was trying to pass on to me. I did not listen to this
idea, automatically assuming she was talking in hyperboles and exaggerating,
since she is a woman. This proved her point, of course, but I was too much into
my obscurities from ego to want to really figure out what she was saying and
whether it was correct. I was able to make progress in my regeneration to the extent
that I was willing to listen to my wife. The more I listened, the more I got to
find out that she was correct and insightful in her observations, philosophy,
and principles. This dawning realization continued to the extent that I was
willing to admit to myself that my ideas are frequently mistaken and
inaccurate. This was a totally new experience as I always implicitly had full
confidence in my own ideas.
There
arrived a stage where I was eager to listen to her wisdom, insights, and
opinions. I valued them as I saw their intelligence and depth of comprehension.
I discovered a new aspect to feminine intelligence and can clearly see how
superior it is to male intelligence. The Writings reveal that feminine
intelligence and wisdom is in their interior mind, thus of celestial origin,
while male intelligence is in the external mind, thus of natural origin (xx).
This gender-typed difference in intelligence enters into every single thing of
the threefold self—every feeling, every aspect of thinking, and every acting.
Women are very capable in enacting male styles of reasoning, acting, and
speaking in various social situations and roles. But these are surface
appearances enacted for natural reasons (power sharing and equal access), not
spiritual. In the interior mind, in which every thing is spiritual, women
retain feminine structures of feeling and thinking, by necessity of permanent
creation and eternal being.
The intelligence of women is in essence modest, refined,
peaceful, yielding, gentle and tender; but that of men is in essence serious,
harsh, hard, spirited and disposed to license.
(…) Men's gestures are bolder and stronger, women's weaker
and feebler. Men's behavior is less restrained, women's more elegant.
[2] I was able clearly to see the innate difference of
character between men and women by observing how boys and girls behaved when
they got together, a sight I have several times seen from a window in a large
city overlooking a street, where twenty or more children gathered every day.
The boys, in keeping with their innate character, played together making a
noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one another.
But the girls sat quietly by the doors of their houses, some
playing with babies, some dressing up dolls, some embroidering on small pieces
of linen, some kissing one another. I was surprised to see that the girls still
looked favorably on the boys, for all their behavior.
This experience allowed me to see plainly that a man is by
birth an intellect, a woman a love, and what kind of intellect and what kind of
love they are in their beginnings. So I could see what a man's intellect would
be like, if it developed without being linked with feminine love, and later
with conjugial love. (CL 218)
Consider
the last sentence: “So I could see what a man's intellect would be like, if it
developed without being linked with feminine love, and later with conjugial
love.” Remember this is the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming to the
Husbands, in keeping with their innate character, played
together making a noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one
another.
“Making noise” means that they accuse each other, but in
this case, the wife (AC 375). Also: that husbands are
subjected to the greatest temptations on account of their inherited nature (AC
756). “Noise” also means that husbands are kept in the emotion of fear “in
order that they may be deterred from evils” (AC 4942). The evils here refer to
the husband’s abusive treatment of his wife. “Shouting” refers to the “spirit
of war” (AC 1664), which is alternately applied to protect “the Lord’s truth”
or to rob a neighbor’s goods, in this case, the conjugial happiness of his
wife. “The Lord’s truth” here refers to the Writings. “Shouting” also refers to
declaring one’s faith to others (AC 5323). Here this means preaching to the
wife about how to interpret what the Writings say, by which husbands intimidate
their wife. “Fighting” refers to “fierce conflict … and
laboring … in thoughts and developments of truth” (AC 263). Here this
refers to the husband’s struggle for reformation. “Beating” is a sign of
rebellion against authority or legitimate officials (AC 4324).
In other
words, husbands reinterpret the literal text of the Writings to support their
dominion over the wife. “Throwing” in a bad sense means attacking truth and
“drowning in falsity” (AC 6693), and in a good sense it refers to “initiation
of truth into good” (AC 4266). “Stones” refers to “the
truth of faith” (AC 114, 4672). “At one another” designates the husband and the
wife. In other words, husbands alternate between periods of conjugial
cooperation with their wife and periods of enmity against the wife. When
cooperating, husbands are initiated in the interior truths of the Writings, and
thus they are regenerated.
To
summarize what the passage says about how husbands treat their wives: A husband
makes accusations or is verbally abusive to his wife .
This evil behavior is inherited and in order to get rid of it the husband must
be willing to undergo the greatest temptations. In order to deter the husband
from injuring his wife physically, the Lord keeps him in fear of the
consequences. During regeneration, the husband alternates between periods of
warring against his wife and periods of cooperating. When he is aversive to his wife, he is also rebellious against the
Writings, reinterpreting passages therein to justify his dominion over the
wife. When he cooperates with his wife, he is initiated into the interior
truths of the Writings, by which he is enlightened and prepared for life in
heaven.
Another
passage tells us about wives:
The nerves are softer in women; the veins somewhat wider,
and the arteries stronger [than] in men: the hips broader, because the hips
signify conjugial love, see Arcana Coelestia (SE 6110)
We can
apply this passage to our wife by substituting “wives” for “women.” “Nerves”
refer to truth (AC 4303). The truth in the wife’s understanding is “softer”
than the truth in the husband. Truth that is softer is more compatible to love
(AC 185). In other words, the wife’s understanding is higher than the
husband’s because it accords better with love. That the wife’s
understanding is celestial while the husband’s is more outward and less perfect
is revealed in many places in the Writings (see Sections 1and 2 below). “Veins”
is used to discuss purification of the blood, that is,
rendering suitable for celestial life (AC 5174). “Wider” means greater in scope
(AC 8121). “Wider veins” therefore means that the wife is regenerated from the
inmost and sits waiting for the husband that he may catch up to her and conjoin
with her in conjugial love, which celestial from the inmost.
The wife is
more willing than the husband to suffer herself to undergo rigorous
regeneration by the Lord since she is motivated by conjugial love and the
desire to conjoin with her husband from within. The husband is less willing to
do this. His love for conjunction is not as deep. He must struggle in
regeneration to attain to the same celestial depth. “Arteries” refers to
“genuine good” which is compared to the blood in the arteries (AC 3470). This
good “leads and applies truths into form” which means that the wife’s higher
love acquires to itself a greater wisdom. The wife’s wisdom, therefore, is to
“lead” and the husband’s wisdom is to cooperate with her leading. Thus he is
obedient to a higher good, whereby he can be regenerated still further.
Chapter 9, Section 2
2. The
Doctrine of the Wife
In heaven a married pair is spoken of, not as two, but as one angel (HH 367)
Each love knows its own love, and they unite reciprocally, or mutually
and alternately. (TCR
Additions 4)
One of the
truly remarkable revelations given in the Writings is that the chief power and
dynamic spiritual force that animates the universe is conjugial love, the love
that internally binds and unites the minds of a husband and wife. Conjugial
love is the chief love that rules all other loves in the universe.
The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who
reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial
love.
The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is
that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's
masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's
femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the
smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is
therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and
longs to be joined to the other.
Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an
impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For
the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to
become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they
are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they
are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that
impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female,
and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows
that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)
The extending
power and influence of this love can be seen in all living species whose
survival depends on male-female bonding for propagation. The supremacy of
conjugial love expresses God’s chief purpose in creating and maintaining the
universe. This purpose is to create an ever growing heaven populated by angel
couples who were born on some earth, developed a spiritual mind by living
rightly, then went on living to eternity in one of the
many heavenly societies Swedenborg has witnessed. The afterlife consists of a
heavenly life for soul mates bonded in marriage love between a husband and a
wife. This life constitutes the highest human spiritual state and is called
heaven. The inhabitants of heaven are all human beings born on one of the many
earths in the universe and are called angels in the Writings. We can truly say
that this revelation is good news.
The bad
news is that conjugial life does not come to us automatically and that most
people on this earth reject it and act against it, especially men. This is so because
we inherit our parents’ traits, both physical and spiritual or mental (CL 202).
Scientists today are unaware of these revelations in the Writings. It is
believed that psychological traits are not inherited, and it is not known that
psychological traits are spiritual organs constructed out of spiritual
substances from the spiritual world. These spiritual substances are carriers of
the mental or spiritual traits of parents. We thus inherit tendencies that
oppose conjugial love. One example is people’s desire to know more than one
partner sexually. Individuals who exhibit this
interest on Earth, continue to experience the desire for or interest in other
partners. But conjugial love does not allow this interest to remain in one’s
organic constitution, even when it is expressed merely hypothetically or in
fantasy.
This tendency and proneness to evils just mentioned, which
is transmitted from parents to their children and descendants, can only be
broken down by a person being born anew by the Lord's help, a process called
regeneration. Without this not only does the tendency remain unbroken, but it
is reinforced by a succession of parents, becoming more prone to evils, and
eventually to every kind of evil. (TCR 521)
Another
example of how conjugial love is opposed by inherited traits is the desire for
independence based on the false idea that the individual is the unit of life
and self-fulfillment. When people marry there is often a sense of loss of
freedom due to the marriage bond. But this idea is false because the bonds of
marriage and union create a state of heavenly freedom, while what is opposed to
this bond is rooted in infernal freedom, which is actually slavery to inherited
evil traits. Conjugial love establishes the married couple as the unit of human
life giving the partners a wholeness and completeness they do not have outside
the union.
For
conjugial love to develop with a couple it is necessary for both husband and
wife to overcome the inborn resistance husbands have for it. Marriage starts in
the external mind of the partners through commitment and natural love for one
another. This love is not yet conjugial love, which is a spiritual love, and
the relationship is not yet a spiritual one, not yet an inner union of minds.
In order for conjugial love to develop and grow the husband and wife must
change their inner character by defeating all the inherited forces that are
opposed to their conjugial union. The Writings teach that only couples that go
beyond the external bond of marriage into an internal union of minds can be
together as an angel couple in heaven. It is therefore of the utmost importance
to gain the knowledge of how to accomplish this since it doesn’t happen
automatically even with married individuals who sincerely love each other from
a natural love and are devoted to each other from loyalty and friendship.
The
Writings show how the natural love between partners joined together through an
external bond is not spiritually deep enough and as soon as external conditions
change and become a challenge, the love seems to evaporate and instead there is
anger, rage, resentment, and disdain. Due to the spiritual constitution of men
and women, there is more resistance to conjugial love on the part of husbands.
Wives are born with an inclination towards marriage and a desire to move on to
an internal or spiritual union, as long as the husband also desires it.
Husbands on the other hand are born with an inclination for having multiple
sexual partners and feel restricted by the marriage bond to one wife. As a
result, husbands need special help in order to be able to overcome their inborn
resistance to conjugial love, which is “the love of one of the sex,” in
contrast to the “love of the sex,” which is natural, not spiritual, and roving.
1. A
Philosophy Of Action Or
Spiritual Discipline
The
“Doctrine of the Wife” designates a philosophy of action, or spiritual
discipline, for husbands that is based on the Writings and is intended to help
them overcome their resistance to conjugial love.
In summary,
this doctrine says that the husband's regeneration or self-change efforts, to
be successful, must be focused on his wife and through his wife. She is to be
accepted as the seeing eye in the marriage
relationship and he needs to agree to voluntarily subjugate all of his
resistances to her wisdom and inner perception in everything pertaining to
their relationship. Swedenborg explains the mechanism whereby the Lord gives a
special perception to each wife about her husband's affections and
inclinations, knowledge which is not given to the husband so that he is only
dimly aware of his own inner tendencies. The spiritual purpose for this difference
in perceptual powers is to make the husband's regeneration dependent on his
wife. This is called "cleaving to the wife" in the Old Testament, and
is a Divine commandment enjoined on every husband. Without following this
commandment the husband cannot be regenerated, hence cannot have an eternal
marriage in heaven with this or any other wife.
People who are in a state of truly conjugial love look to
eternity in their marriage because eternity is inherent in this love. Its
eternity is owing to the fact that this love in the wife and wisdom in the
husband grow to eternity, and as these grow or progress, the partners enter
more and more deeply into the blessings of heaven -- blessings which their
wisdom and love of wisdom at the same time carry concealed within them. If one
were to snatch away an idea of eternity, therefore, or if by some chance it
should slip from their minds, it would be as though they were cast down from
heaven. (CL. 216)
In people who did not have conjugial love there is no
spiritual or inner bond, but only a natural or outer one; and if an inner bond
does not hold the outer one in its order and course, it does not last. (CL 320)
Conjugial
union depends therefore on the willingness of the two partners to modify their
inner character into a form that makes them fit together spiritually. Since
husbands put up more resistance to this union than wives, it is necessary to
give them spiritual tools that can overcome their own internal resistance.
2. Men’s
Resistance To Conjugial
Love
Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in
them to wish to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in
their will they constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to
unite themselves with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But
it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but
designed to receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive
it, the more readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail
to receive it, their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait. (CL
216)
Many
husbands resist the process of conjugial unification with such intensity and
ferocity that it appears they are hell-bent on destroying their union, their
marriage, and their heavenly place with their wife. This is true whether or not
the husband is a member of the
Concerning
conjugial love, the Writings identify a natural opposition between men and
women regarding their receptivity to it:
Wives love the bonds of marriage, provided that their
husbands love them too. (CL 217)
It is different with husbands. Because they are not born
forms of love, but are receivers of that love from their wives, therefore to
the degree that they receive it, to that degree their wives enter into them
with their love. But to the degree they do not receive it,
their wives stand outside with their love and wait. (CL 216)
Avoiding
the conjugial union is natural and inherited for men as well as being fully
supported and reinforced by a masculinized society. New Church husbands have a
distinct opportunity to liberate themselves from this inherited evil by using a
systematic self-change method to achieve freedom. This method is the Doctrine
of the Wife, namely, a set of commandments extracted from the Writings to help
Passages in
the Writings that discuss men's understanding and women's affections are
sometimes interpreted by men to mean that Scripture gives them the role of
ruling over women or "having predominance" in relation to
understanding or intellectual things, since men are born a form of
understanding. While women should rule or "have
predominance" in relation to affect ional things relating to feelings and
love. In order to see the error of this attitude, we need to draw a
distinction between
(a) what the Writings say in the
literal
and
(b) the conclusion we draw from the
literal.
In this
case the Writings say that men are a form of understanding and women a form of
love. What conclusion are we to draw? Are we to conclude,
(c) that in matters of Church
governance or some other forensic or intellectual issue, men should
predominate; but in matters of domestic order and works of charity or
community, women should predominate?
Is this a
correct conclusion? Part (a) is far from part (c) which is a political
application having to do with governance and community relations. Whatever
social applications one makes from Doctrine or from the Word is not in itself
the Word or Doctrine. The Doctrine of the Church in the Writings does not
actually say that men should predominate in Church administration or that women
should be excluded. It is not correct to say that the Writings or the
Doctrine of the Church give men the Divine right to have predominance over
women in any area of life, intellectual or otherwise.
The claim
that men should predominate over women in decision-making in any given area of
society appears to be a self-serving policy by a masculinized society. The
persuasion guarantees that men will rule over women in everyday life--at home,
Church, profession, in managing things, making the final decisions, prevailing
in opinion, in short, recreating and maintaining a man's world. The Doctrine of
the Wife interprets the passages in the Writings relating to men’s
understanding and women’s affections as indicating that the husband's
understanding should unite with the wife's will, instead of predominate. And
since the will rules the understanding, it would make more sense to say that it
is the wife who is to rule the husband's understanding. It is therefore the
feminization of marriage that creates its sanctification and fulfillment.
Note
carefully that this is totally different from the idea that women should rule
over men. For we are talking about men’s voluntary choice
of acting form themselves or from their wife. When a wife rules over
her husband it is a disorderly state (CL 291). Instead, the husband chooses to
act from his wife’s will instead of his own. This is a free choice and can end
at any time he so wishes. The wife has no power to make him act from herself. This
is something the husband must do and enforce on himself.
Whether you
say "ruling over" or "having predominance over" is the same
in terms of the actual consequence, which is that the will of one prevails over
the other. But there is an essential difference between ruling over someone by
domination and ruling over someone by voluntary submission or cooperation. For
instance, the police force in a democracy rules over the population in daily
activities in public places. This is not oppression or domination as long as
the population willingly and rationally submits to the authority of the law and
its legitimate agents. But in an autocratic society the law rules by dominion and
is hostile to the population.
The
Doctrine of the Wife deals with the husband's voluntary and rational submission
of his will and judgment to that of his wife in all matters pertaining to their
relationship and interaction. If he refuses, there is nothing she can do to
compel him since he has the greater power. In other words, the husband must
listen and choose to follow the wife's directives in all things of their
decision-making. Obviously this must be a voluntary submission on the part of
the husband and not a dominion over him by his wife. Dominion of one over the
other is destructive of the conjugial union but voluntary submission for the
sake of union promotes it and makes it spiritual.
The infernal marriage, with those
who are in the love of ruling and are atheists. On the part of the man there is
deadly hatred. But, still, he is manifestly the servant and slave of the wife,
so that he dares not murmur against her will: but [this], when she, by various
means, has obtained the ascendancy. The reason is, because the man's
understanding is subjugated. These have no interior virtue and honor:
consequently, [such a one] is not a man. (SE 6110)
Every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only
naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife,
such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. (...) It comes
from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man
who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and
inmostly warm toward harlots." (CL 294).
New Church
husbands who acknowledge the Writings as the Word may have the temptation of
thinking that because they possess the Word of the Second Coming, they are
automatically spiritual. However the Writings teach that it is not the Word
that makes the Church but the understanding of the Word, and not even this, but
the degree to which people live in accordance with their understanding of the
Word (TCR 245). And so the study of and expertise in the
Writings do not in themselves make us spiritual. Husbands who study the
Writings and worship the Divine Human nevertheless remain natural, hate the
conjugial, remain unregenerate, and love unchaste sex--until and to the extent
that they live their daily life in accordance with their doctrine. The Doctrine
of the Wife will help husbands live their life according to their understanding
of Divine Truth. Every husband must create adequate and effective Doctrine for
himself so that he may strive to live according to it. It is in this striving
that the Lord can be present by influx. Without this striving the Lord cannot
be present in actuality, as taught in the Writings (xx).
3. Conjugial
Commandments In The
Writings
The Word cannot be understood except by means of doctrine
from the Word. The doctrine of the church must be from the Word … The Word
without doctrine is not understood … They who are in enlightenment form for
themselves doctrine from the Word … Doctrine formed by one enlightened may
afterwards be confirmed by things rational and scientific; and that thus it is
more fully understood, and is corroborated (WH 8)
In the Word
of the Writings, the Lord has given a number of new commandments to husbands
who aspire to become one angel with a conjugial wife. The Doctrine of the
Wife is a collection of these commandments and its purpose is to assist
regenerating husbands in their difficult task. I can hope that the Doctrine
of the Wife will become an ever-expanding body of knowledge, as future
generations of regenerating husbands contribute to it through the expansion and
deepening of their conjugial relationship. Representing the ideas of the wife
will be a primary concern in this knowledge base cumulated by
This new
state of culture and consciousness will be higher than all the preceding states
of humanity on this earth. This is why the Writings call the
The future
of humanity depends on the success of husbands in learning to conjoin to their
wife on the internal plane of the mind and not just on the external plane of
the body and material possessions. This internal conjunction is called
conjugial love and is the basis of all other loves in the universe. All other
loves are derivative of this one great love. But the husband cannot from his
own self conjoin to his wife in an internal way. He appears to be able to do
this externally or socially, but he cannot be conjoined in the internal mind
without becoming aware of the existence of the internal mind. This is normally
closed to his conscious awareness while he is still in the early stages of
regeneration. By acknowledging the Doctrine of the Wife, and then striving to
follow it, the husband is spiritually empowered by the Lord to overcome himself
through the act of enthroning the wife in his mind. By doing this, the
husband’s internal mind is activated and made operative in his awareness or
consciousness. The principles in the Doctrine of the Wife make explicit in the
husband’s mind that there needs to be an internal relationship with the wife
and how he can foster it.
To enthrone
the wife means to conjoin his cognitions or reasoning quality with her
affections or needs. This can be done only by loving her affections more
than his own, which means following her will or
judgment rather than his own whenever they are opposed. By suffering
himself to be led by her affections, the husband receives new cognitions that
are harmonious with the wife’s affections. These new cognitions are new
spiritual truths from the Lord given the man through his acceptance of the wife’s
affections as-if his own. In the Heavenly Doctrine (or Swedenborg’s Writings)
the Lord gave husbands a long list of commandments to follow in order to allow
them to achieve this internal union, each husband with his wife. The Doctrine
of the Wife is not only a collection of these commandments but an exposition
and explanation of them.
The
following are some examples of conjugial commandments for husbands. Note how
easy it would be to overlook these passages and not see them as commandments,
but husbands who are zealous for conjugial love can perceive and acknowledge
the commandments in these passages.
(1) All
human development is in relation to marriage
(see CL 191).
Therefore
unmarried men are to be considered "pre-husbands" in the sense we
think of "preschool" as a state that prepares for the real thing. One
implication of this commandment is that the curriculum in biology and
psychology needs to introduce all concepts and goals in human behavior as
arranged in a hierarchy with the top always being the conjugial union. The
hierarchy of affections corresponds to the hierarchy of goals so that the top
affection or love is also the primary goal that governs all other goals.
(2)
Husbands are wiser and more spiritual than unmarried men
(see CL 199).
The Lord's
commandment in the Old and New Testaments that a man shall leave his father and
mother and cleave to his wife, means that the man should dethrone his own
affections ("father and mother") and enthrone his wife's affections
in his own mind, thus to "cleave" unto her (Conjugial Love No 194).
The implication of this principle is that every boy’s education and
socialization process ought to be oriented towards becoming a husband and
letting his wife change his old character called “father and mother” into a new
conjoint character called “one flesh.” In order for her to achieve this, he
must give her all the help he can muster through daily interactions of a
conjoint nature called “cleaving to his wife.” The Doctrine of the Wife is a
collection of principles that foster the husband’s angelic development. A
single man ought to think of himself as a pre-husband. A single man should look
at every woman as someone’s wife. Feminity and feminization ought to be valued
as the ideal state of society and the world. Becoming a husband ought to be
seen as a biological necessity and an essential step for spiritual development
towards becoming whole and complete. As the Writings put it
“marriage is a person's fulfillment, since it makes a person fully a person”
(CL 156).
(3) Women's
intelligence is like the Lord's intelligence, but men's intelligence is not
(see CL 218).
And behold Isaac was laughing with Rebekah his woman. That
this signifies that … Divine good was adjoined to Divine truth, is evident from
the representation of Isaac, as being the Divine good of the Lord's rational …
and from the representation of Rebekah, as being the Divine truth of the Lord's
rational (AC 3392)
The rational with the Lord … is represented by Sarah (AC
2189)
Here it is
said that the Lord’s Divine Rational within which is the Divine Truth is
represented by the wife. Women's intelligence, like the Lord's, is described in
the Writings as "modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and
gentle," while men's is described as "critical, rough, resistant,
argumentative, and given to intemperance." The implication of this for
husbands is to reinforce in their mind the Doctrine of the Wife as long as
their highest objective in life is to form a conjoint union. Unless husbands
elevate the conjugial goal to the highest position in their goal-hierarchy,
their life is not in the Lord’s order of things.
The central
feature of the conjoint couple is that the husband loves to be led by his
wife’s affections more than by his own. In this way man can be redeemed from
his nature as critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and intemperate,
traits, which gradually but inexorably take him to hell. His wife is a man’s
ticket to heaven, her heaven, for all the societies of heaven exist in a
feminized atmosphere, which is the Lord’s Proprium—modest, gracious, peaceable,
compliant, soft, gentle.
(4)
Conjugial love is the state of internal union between husband and wife and it
is achieved when they will that their two lives shall become one life
(see CL 215).
The “two
lives” in the Writings refer to the will and the understanding, or, the
affections in the will and the cognitions in the understanding. To will that
the two lives become one life means therefore that the will of the wife must be
conjoined to the understanding of the husband. Conjugial love is a biological
growth process of the mind or spirit that is achieved when the wife's
affections (or will) are joined to the husband's cognitions (or understanding).
In other words, the husband's thoughts and understanding are joined to the
wife's will and affections. This is not an automatic growth process that comes
with merely living together. Both partners must consciously will the
conjunction. The husband must will to conjoin his own understanding or thinking
to his wife's affections or will. This is not easy to achieve because of the
inner resistance he experiences and requires persistent effort into which the
Lord's power can inflow and achieve the union.
Before
being regenerated, men have an inborn tendency to discount the opinion or
judgment of women in comparison to their own. Husbands experience a sense of
revolt at the notion that they give up their own independent ideas and desires
in favor of their wife’s judgment with regard to all things involving their
joint life. This is why husbands must appeal to the Lord for strength and
resolve to overcome their inner resistance to the process of conjugial union.
The husband
can overcome his resistance entirely if he is willing to follow this one rule
on a daily and regular basis: When his wife expresses her affections in the
form of a direct request or an implied one, the husband must give and follow
these minimally appropriate replies:
Yes.
O.K.
That's right.
I will.
And
never anything else,
for it is always offensive and disagreeable to the wife's affections. (Of
course variations, extensions and equivalents of these are also acceptable.)
This principle may strike some as excessive or perhaps emasculating and
denigrating to men. But this is not the case. On the contrary, it is angelic.
The Writings reveal that the lower angels, called spiritual, reason about
truths before confirming them in their understanding and thereby accepting them
as genuine. But the higher angels, called celestial, do not reason about truths
so as to confirm them because they are given by the Lord to perceive truths
instantly, that they are genuine. They do not need to reason about them. All
they have to say to anything by way of confirmation is Yea or Nay. It is not
denigrating but elevating for a husband to keep himself from disagreeing with
his wife’s affectional requests. If she makes a request of him, his only
rational and loving answer is to confirm and go along. This relationship mode
builds and fosters their conjoint union.
4. Commitment
To Conjugial
Unity
Women are
born willingnesses and never cease their striving to conjoin internally to
their husbands. Since wives are conjugial willingnesses by spiritual necessity,
they are zealously involved in leading their husband out of their inborn hell
of unwillingness or independence. This is why husbands must bend over backwards
to accommodate and adjust to their wife’s affections all the time and without
exception of situation, topic, or area of contention. It doesn’t matter that
the wife may appear wrong in some situation and it doesn’t matter if she makes
mistakes, or if she fails in something due to her own temptations and
regeneration needs. Despite her failings, the husband should honor her at all
times. After all, the husband makes plenty of mistakes yet expects her to honor
his unilateral decisions. The rationale for his compelling himself to abide by
her affections is not that she is more right or smarter than he. It is his
acknowledgment of the Doctrine of the Wife that provides the rationale, and
this must be constant and continuous to eternity.
The most
important part is that the husband remains unfailingly committed to internal
union—this must never fail if we are to achieve success. This unfailing
commitment becomes real and actual when the husband does the following:
(a) He
acknowledges that he is out of line as soon as his wife tells him this.
(b) He
promises her in the name of the Lord that he is determined to change his
behavior.
(c) He asks
the Lord to give him the power to accomplish this.
(d) He
makes reparations by fixing the problem and adding a treat as a sign of
friendship.
(e) He
honestly strives to be true to his word by being watchful, even keeping a diary
if it’s helpful.
And when he
fails again, he repeats these steps—which for most husbands may be necessary to
do several times every day, year after year for decades.
5. The
Four-Step Conjoining Process
Conjugial love grows spiritually when the couple repeatedly
goes through the following four steps on a daily and hourly basis (based on CL
293-294):
Step 1: The wife acts. She reveals her affections to her husband in the
form of a direct request or an implied request, either in word, gesture, facial
expression, or mere expectation.
Step 2: The husband receives. He wills himself to love her affection—which
is within the request, and by this, he receives it, that is, conjoins his
cognitions to it. Her affection now is as-if his own. He chooses to act from
his wife’s will.
Step 3: The husband acts out. He says one or more of these four things:
Yes. O.K. That's right. I will, (and equivalents).
Step 4: The wife reacts. She feels his reaction of
conjunction as her bosom delight.
These are
the four steps of conjunction. The husband must constantly strive to build up
the network that conjoins his cognitions or thoughts to his wife's affections,
which are expressed as her moment-to-moment needs and requests. The conjunction
steps must be performed. Unition of mind or spirit cannot develop from mere declarations
and promises, or even occasional and intermittent good behavior. The
conjunction steps have to be performed continuously. Think about muscle
building exercises, how we repeat the same movement in series or in sets during
one workout session. Muscle tissue is built up, fiber-by-fiber, cell-by-cell,
with each repetition of a movement. In a similar manner the husband builds up
the spiritual fibers of conjunction with his wife when he repeats these four
steps on a daily and hourly basis. The Writings make it clear that the mind is
a spiritual organ made of functioning parts and fibers just as the organs and
muscles of the physical body. Repeating these four steps of conjunction
gradually but cumulatively builds up the united mind of the conjugial couple.
This united mind is a new spiritual organ called the angelic mind. Couples in
heaven have such a mind and those who have not developed such a mind while on
earth are unable to be immersed in the atmosphere of heaven and live there to
eternity.
To show how
the four-step conjunction process works in practice, consider this example on
the next page, to which most couples can relate:
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step
1: The
wife acts |
Wife
says: “Honey, we need to talk about this now” (=her affectional request). |
Ditto |
|
Step
2: The
husband receives (or rejects) |
The husband internally disagrees (=hates conjugial unity
and feels it’s a loss of individuality). He wants to tell her several reasons
why it’s a bad idea to talk about it now (=discounts her intelligence). He
thinks about those reasons and loves them (=clinging to father and mother). |
He is conscious of an inner feeling of anger and his mind
begins to rehearse reasons why they should not talk about it now. But he just
laughs at himself doing that. He turns away from himself and turns to his
wife and to her affection and intention. He embraces her affection and
immerses himself in it (=cleaves to his wife) |
|
Step
3: The
husband reacts |
He says: “You don't understand.” And keeps talking for
several more sentences (=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her
freedom). |
He says: “O.K. Sure.” |
|
Step
4: The
wife reacts to the husband |
The wife senses her husband's conjugial cold and experiences
the pain and loneliness of internal separation. In her chest she senses his
rejection or refusal to conjoin his thoughts to her affection. |
The wife senses conjugial delight in her chest and
experiences her husband's act of conjoining with her (=one flesh). One more
pair of her affections and his thoughts are now united and function as one
conjoint individual (=angel). |
6.
Many times
my poor wife tried to tell me that I talk to her defensively, which she
experiences as offensive and upsetting from within. A family trait, she added,
to spurn me on to insight. For decades, my response was to deny that I was
defensive. Each time we went through this routine, the conjugial separation she
felt was made more painful and desperate. What could she do to penetrate this
wall of blindness and denial? She got no relief, year after year. At last the
Doctrine of the Wife was born in my understanding (in 1985) as I diligently
studied the Writings daily. The Lord showed me in illustration while reading
the Writings that the expression in Genesis “Hearken unto Sarah” (see
discussion below) was a commandment, and therefore applied to me. My
defensiveness was obviously a denial of that commandment. I was not hearkening
unto my Sarah when I disagreed with her or made her cry—which happened
frequently! I attributed her unhappiness to her lack of capacity to adjust to
reality. I did not attribute it to me. This is another form of conjugial cold
and lack of inner friendship.
Later I was
able to see the psychobiological perspective on the Doctrine of the Wife.
That's when my regeneration really started showing results. For a long time I
was merely able to compel my external behavior, putting on a pleasant
expression on my face and compel my mouth to express the opposite of the
defensive and offensive things I thought and felt whenever she was “in my
face,” while not budging an inch in my mind. She would never compromise, thank
God. She remained steadfast and brave in opposing my resistance to
single-mindedness and independence. This power she had from the Lord, she often
said. I falsely thought she was being rigid and uncompromising, unreasonable,
not coping with life’s demands. Such was my conjugial cold and blindness.
She
suffered much because of my stiff-necked and self-centered gender bias. I used
to freely declare that women were great, etc.; because this is the reputation I
wanted for myself as a politically correct and just person. But in actuality I
acted like I considered the views and opinions of women to be inferior to
men’s. My wife’s opinion and judgment didn’t count with me as much as my own.
This was my inherited culture bias and I lived it, enjoyed it, and held on to
it. I came to realize that this unreality would inexorably take me to hell, like
an unseen current that pulls a ship towards the reef and disaster. My wife was
my only chance to make it to reality, and to heaven.
Since the
beginning of our relationship, my wife loved my cognitions and instantly and
constantly conjoined herself with them, making them as-if her own. She saw and
understood what I saw and understood about anything and everything I had an
interest in. She was my cognitive clone. In the Writings it is stated that a
wife is the love of her husband’s wisdom. But she was more than this for she
had her own mind and she deftly applied my knowledge and reasoning to all
situations, surpassing me in many things. I admired her. I was not envious of
her. I felt both superior and inferior to her. But she did not unconditionally
love my evil affections. She did not go along with the modern fallacy that love
is unconditional and therefore a wife has to accept her husband’s evils and
weaknesses. She drew a distinct line and never wavered.
Her
intelligence was the deepening of my intelligence. I could not attain with my
wisdom to the depths she could attain through my wisdom in her. Later I
understood why when I read in the Writings that her wisdom is, by spiritual
biology, inmost or celestial (third heaven), while a man’s wisdom is spiritual
(second heaven), which is lower or more external. As she receives my wisdom she
takes it into her inmost, which means that she elevates it within herself and
from spiritual she makes it celestial. This power a wife receives directly from
the Lord.
A wife
attains, lives, and uses a deeper wisdom than her husband’s, even though she
remains dependent on and united to her husband’s wisdom. It is rational
therefore for the husband to conjoin his wisdom to the wife’s affections
because her affections are conjoined in herself to a deeper wisdom than the
husband’s wisdom is in himself. In this way he can also attain to a deeper
wisdom. If he does not conjoin himself to her affections he cannot attain this
deeper wisdom, intelligence and understanding. This principle applies to all
rational ideas, including religious doctrine and domestic management. Husbands
can gain a more interior understanding of the Writings if they conjoin
themselves to their wife’s affections because they are then in a more interior
state. To conjoin himself to his wife’s affections means to
listen to her requests and not to disagree on something whenever he decides it
as an exception. This is the orientation of the Doctrine of the Wife.
Here is
another example (on the next page) of how the four-step conjunction process
works in practice:
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step 1: The wife acts |
Wife
continues to clean up and arrange things while husband watches TV. She is
very much aware that she is doing this in front of him. Is he going to ignore
her, she wonders? She is letting him see that she is determined to finish. |
Ditto |
|
Step 2: The husband receives (or
rejects) |
The
husband sees her but feels cold for her. He hates the fact she picks this
time to buzz around the room, trying to make him feel guilty, no doubt, he
tells himself (=ignores her requests). He thinks about many reasons why she
is wrong while he is right, and he is in love with those reasons (=clinging
to father and mother). |
The
husband sees her and is instantly aroused by the sight of her slaving away
while he does what pleases him. How can he ignore her affection in completing
this task? It doesn’t matter that he thinks this is the wrong time to do it.
Here she is and he must respond. He sees her presence as his business and he
compels himself to accept the affection that animates her task orientation
(=cleaves to his wife). |
|
Step 3: The husband reacts |
He says in a tone of protestation: “Honey, do you have to
do that now?” (=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her freedom). |
He
immediately presses the mute button, gets up, and begins to facilitate her
movements. it is as if he said "O.K. I will" to her silent request
for sympathy and recognition. |
|
Step 4: The wife reacts to the husband |
The wife
senses her husband's conjugial cold and experiences the pain and loneliness
of internal separation. In her chest she senses his rejection or refusal to
conjoin his cognition to her affection. |
The wife
senses conjugial delight in her chest and experiences her husband's act of
conjoining with her (=one flesh). One more pair of her affections and his
cognitions are now united and function as one conjoint individual (=angel). |
It is therefore provided by the Lord that conjugial pairs be
born, and they are raised and continually prepared for their marriages, neither
the boy nor the girl being aware of the fact. Then, after a period of time, the
girl - now a marriageable young woman - and the boy - now a young man able to marry
- meet somewhere, as though by fate, and notice each other. And they
immediately recognize, as if by a kind of instinct, that they are a match,
thinking to themselves from a kind of inner dictate, the young man, 'she is
mine,' and the young woman, 'he is mine'" (CL 316).
Here is a
third example (next page):
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step 1: The wife acts |
They are in traffic. Husband is driving. Wife
says: “Honey, it’s very stressful driving in the fast lane. Can you please
stay in the right lane?” (=her affectional request). |
Ditto |
|
Step 2: The husband receives (or rejects) |
The husband instantly feels
rage (=hates conjugial unity and feels it’s a loss of individuality). “It’s
actually safer in this lane. Just let me handle it.” (=discounts her
intelligence). “I told you before. Leave the driving to the driver. That’s
the way it should be.” (=clinging to father and mother). |
He is conscious of an inner
feeling of anger and annoyance at her interfering with what he wants to do.
But he makes himself look at the situation from her perspective. He turns
away from himself and turns to his wife and to her affection and intention.
(=cleaves to his wife). He has compassion for her fears. |
|
Step 3: The husband reacts |
He says: “Do some deep
breathing and relax. You know I hate it when you tell me how to drive.”
(=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her freedom). |
He says: “O.K. I’ll switch
lanes as soon as I can.” |
|
Step 4: The wife reacts to the husband |
The wife senses her husband's
conjugial cold and experiences the pain and loneliness of internal
separation. In her chest she senses his rejection or refusal to conjoin his
thoughts to her affection. |
The wife senses conjugial
delight in her chest and experiences her husband's act of conjoining with her
(=one flesh). One more pair of her affections and his thoughts are now united
and function as one conjoint individual (=angel). |
More
examples are given below in the Inventory of Confessions.
7. The
Husband’s Spiritual Dependence On The Wife
Even though
men are born understandings and receive wisdom from the Lord, they cannot hold
on to this wisdom or make it their own, unless and until they love their wife's
judgment above their own judgment. The husband's spiritual wisdom, when
genuine, is to know this. The husband's conjugial love is to love this.
The reason
for this co-dependence is that the wife's wisdom is inmost and celestial, from
the Lord. The wife's conjugial love is to love the husband's wisdom to the
extent it is genuine. Note this qualification—to the extent it is genuine,
since the wife should not love her husband’s ideas and reasoning
indiscriminately, just because they are his. Until the husband accepts the
Doctrine of the Wife, he is in the delusion that he has genuine understanding
of his own, from the Lord, independently of the wife. This delusion comes from
conjugial cold within the man. As long as the husband lives this delusion he
will deny and oppose his spiritual dependence on his wife. This false sense of
independence is also the reason that men discount the views of women in
comparison to their own views. Even when they deny this and act as if they
value the judgment of women, inwardly they despise women’s opinions, as revealed
in the Writings.
Men can
overtly declare that they support gender equality, but this is merely a
political stance they put on in order to uphold their reputation as fair minded
and favorable to women. In this state of mind they discriminate against women,
discount their views, and abuse them, while at the same time denying this.
Husbands refuse to recognize this year after year into the marriage. They seem
to be trapped in this mode of resistance. It makes their wife feel desperate
and confused and leaves them suffering and longing for intimacy and friendship.
Conjugial love is in the same measure a conjunction of
minds, and the conjunction remains during the bodily life of the one after the
passing of the other. This conjunction holds any inclination to remarry in
balance as though in a scale, and tips the scale its
way to the degree that true love has been embraced (CL 318).
Chapter 2, Section 3
3. The Unregenerate Husband
The husband
in his internal mind sanctifies marriage when he acknowledges, confirms, and
lives in accordance with the Doctrine of the Wife. This Doctrine is a Spiritual
Doctrine because it is drawn from the Letter of the Writings, as explained
throughout this Section. The Doctrine of the Wife is addressed to husbands and
is phrased as follows:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that husbands are to learn to
love acting from the wife, more than from self.
There are
no other rules except those that follow from this one rule. You can see that
this is a Divine Rule when you reflect on the Adam and Eve story in the Word of
the Old Testament, as it is explained scientifically in the Word of the
Writings (xx). This rational explanation shows that the spiritual sense of Adam
is the husband, and more specifically, the content of the husband’s will and
understanding, whether from self and hell or from the Lord and heaven. The
state of mind of Adam, prior to Eve’s apparition, was loving himself, loving
his self-intelligence, loving his manly prerogatives that take precedence over
women, loving to intimidate women and make them serve him, motivated to go
after what he is interested at the neglect of what he is to take care of.
This is
called the husband’s unregenerate state. Today in
This “or
else” is not said as a threat, punishment, or warning. It is a scientific
statement about the mind’s organic properties that we are to know about, just
as we know about the physical body that vitamin C fortifies its capacity to
resist an invading virus. If our immune system fails and we get the flu for
which we were vaccinated, is it reasonable to say that we are being punished,
or being unlucky? Scientifically we can see that the immune system is very
complex, hardly known, and vaccination is only a partial assist to the immune
system. Failure of our system is not attributed to our stupidity, since we went
to get the vaccination, and we practiced medically recommended washings and
inhibitions.
It is
exactly parallel with the mind, as it is to the body, since everything in the
body is a mere correspondence of that which is in the mind or spirit of every
human being. Whether we say mind or spirit, it is the same, for what is the
spirit except what the mind is, when we know that our affections are located
and live in the organ of the will, and our thoughts are located and live in the
organ of the understanding. These two organs make up the mind, and they make up
the spirit, for there is nothing in the spirit except affections and thoughts
(xx).
You can now
see that if we are denied entry into heaven, it is not a punishment for
misdeeds on earth. For example, if you are denied entry at a customs office or
check point, it is not a punishment for your race or your legal status as a
lawful citizen of a recognized nation. Instead, you don’t have your medical
vaccination certificate with you, something that you
know is required to be shown to gain legal entry. It is exactly parallel to
your being denied entry into heaven. It’s not that your past misdeeds have been
found out at the gate, and now a judgment has been rendered against you, and condemned
to hell—for there is no other place available when we are denied entry to
heaven!
If it’s not
because of our past misdeeds, why are we not admitted to heaven?
The answer
is that we are admitted, but before we can our second step at the entrance
gate, we are seized by mental pangs and inner torture of the most intense and
unpleasant kind. We are desperate to stop it, and it stops the moment we cast
ourselves down to the lower regions of our mind. This makes sense if you think
of the mind and the spiritual world as exactly alike. Heaven is the uppermost
region in the spiritual world, and hell is the lowest region there. Similarly,
with the human mind: the highest region of the human mind is a heavenly state
of life, bliss, love, consciousness, and understanding of truths and reality. This
is why the Lord said that the heaven is within us (xx). So it is the same thing
whether we say “entering heaven” or “entering our heavenly or celestial state
of humanity.”
In the same
way, hell is within us, at the lowest region of the human mind. Entering hell
therefore means sinking into the lowest form of the human mind—corporeal
spirituality in which there are no rational truths whatsoever. The outward life
of this hellish mentality shows as hatred, cruelty, selfishness, foolishness
and stupidity, insanity, grossness, vulgarity, immorality, and devoid of any
artistry or aesthetics. Denied entry into heaven and casting oneself out upon
arrival, is just a correspondence idea for the actual reality, which is that we
are then made of a mind or spirit whose will is filled with affections that are
suffocated by any rational-spiritual idea or lifestyle.
If you were
able to force your rebellious adolescent to believe and accept the Ten
Commandments and the Numbers of the Writings that you quote to them, what would
happen? The poor individual would be so tortured that it would be an inhuman
way for you to treat anyone like that. Instead, you have to give up the idea of
forcing the adolescent to accept the necessity of the Commandments and related
lifestyle behaviors. The Lord does likewise, never forcing any person to accept
and live by His Commandments. This guarantees that we always stay in a mental
balance that allows us to freely choose our willing and thinking. This is the
unregenerate Adam whose willing and thinking is biased in favor of his own
proprium, his own ego, his own way of thinking, his own things that he likes to
do, and that he doesn’t like to do and doesn’t want his wife to interfere. This
is the unregenerate husband who loves himself above his wife.
The wife is
in his eyes always less than himself, in all things.
Therefore
she knows that she is nowhere his first. As a result, she knows, perceives, and
senses that he is not hers. He is officially her husband, but not actually. A
wife has enlightenment from the Lord in sensing these conjugial matters (xx). By
this enlightenment, the wife can lead her unregenerate husband into undergoing
reformation. He resists and opposes her directions. Thus she feels unhappy,
lonely, and desperate. At last he is willing to apply his skills and
intelligence as a man to his own marriage. He begins to listen to her at times.
In those times, he feels happy. It’s a new feeling, a new state. Now he decides
to undergo reformation. He studies the Writings, builds it up into a Doctrine
in his mind, and starts dumping things that are contrary to the Letter of the
Writings.
His mind
rearranged and reordered by the Writings, he is a reformed man, a
1. The Appearance Of Eve
The
appearance of Eve as a correspondence to the New Church mind, marks the first
time that the unregenerate husband is seized with the determination to undergo reformation
and regeneration as a Divine Commandment of the Writings, hence the Lord. His wife seen through Rule 1 is the
appearance of Eve. This is what it means for the husband to reform and
regenerate. If he could do it by himself, would he not have done so already?
How long can he believably claim that his wife is not unhappy, and that if she
is, it is not his fault, thus not something that he could change, but refuses
to do so because he is in love with himself. This
self-love takes precedence over her, shuts her out, turns her from a wife into
a whore to whom he is married. Therefore she feels used, disrespected,
denigrated, injured, worthless, thrown away.
But then
the husband is seized with remorse and pity for her. He gets a glimpse of his
monstrous selfishness. He feels moved to repentance and change by his
conscience and by higher and deeper feelings he didn’t even know he was able to
have. He now turns to the Word and studies the Writings. He worships the Letter
of it as Divine. He undergoes reformation and sees that his male prejudices,
his male prerogatives and perks, his male belief systems—all of it, must be thrown away as dirty dish water or water that runs off an
agricultural field that is poisoned with insecticides and deadly chemicals.
As he is
reformed he begins to see the literal sentences of the Writings in a deeper way
because he is honest enough to want to apply them to himself. At first this is
only a very general sort of application and shows mostly in terms of his
declarations of support for Rule 1 and its sub-rules or applications. His wife
continues to suffer silently within herself, but she is encouraged by his new
declarations that sound genuine. Especially is she comforted and reassured by
the fact that he is now willing to accept Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment for
himself. She feels inward reassurance
because he now puts the Lord into the marriage, for the first time.
2. External Reformation Vs. Internal Regeneration
Studying
the Writings gives us an understanding of what is a thing or object. Every
created thing is created into a Divine order of discrete degrees (xx). Every
object is distinct and has an outside and an inside. This is the definition of
a thing or object. It must have two properties to be a created object. One is that
must be distinct form any other created thing. The other is that it has an
outside and an inside. Thus existential duality is built into the universe. For
instance, a fruit has an outside peel and an inside flesh. A rock has an
outside surface and an inside structure or matrix. The Word has an outside
Letter and an inside meaning. A government has an outside cohort of elected and
appointed officials, and an inside authority of making laws that apply to all
citizens. A marriage has an outside legal and social reality in the community,
and an inside mental or spiritual reality in the mind of the husband and wife.
The husband
has a mind which has an outside portion and inward portion. The outward portion
of his mind is called natural and the inward portion is called spiritual. The
mind has two organs: the will and the understanding. Each of these organs must
therefore have an outward portion and an inward portion, like the heart and the
lungs whose outside walls are made of different types of muscle structures or
membranes than the inside of their walls. At birth the outward portion of the
mind, which is natural, grows into a deformed pattern as it matures. The inward
portion, which is spiritual, remains undeveloped until reformation. At
reformation we use the power in the Letter of the Writings to reorder or
priorities, rearrange our goals, reconstruct our
definitions, radically changing our justifications and orientation. Now Eve
appears on the scene, and we acknowledge Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment to which
we are committed out of fear of hell and love of heaven.
Reformation
takes place in the outside portion of the mind. The order in this portion of
the mind is a model of hell, from heredity and culture (xx). It is filled only
with nondualities, as discussed in Volume 1. Without the Letter of the
Writings, taken up into our natural-rational understanding as Doctrine with a
Divine authority, we could not undergo reformation. Our acknowledgement that
the Doctrine in our conscious understanding is Divine,
becomes the condition which the Lord has specified, for being regenerated. That
is, for removing the evil affections from hell, and planting new affections
from heaven. The part of the husband who displays these new affections, is the man whom
the wife recognizes as her conjugial husband. When this man is around her,
she is in her joy of life.
But the bad
guy husband always seems to return unexpectedly and suddenly, especially when
she “crossed an invisible line” that he built in his mind and maintains for himself.
Like a Jekyll and Hyde masquerade, the husband alternates between treating his
wife with evil and treating her with good. He is still not reformed in many
areas of his relationship. He is only reformed in some areas, those areas that
he will allow. And so his wife languishes, begging the Lord to return the
conjugial husband to her.
But while
he is oscillating between these two states of order and disorder, the husband’s
spiritual mind is being opened and implanted by the Lord. This is an unconscious
process of the Lord and heaven in our mind. Simultaneously, the Lord creates an
interior portion within the man’s natural-rational mind. This interior portion
is called the interior-natural mind and it is capable of spiritual
consciousness. This process has been described in detail in Volume 2.
Regeneration
begins in the areas of the husband’s mind in which he was willing to undergo
reformation. While he remains in an unregenerate state in some areas, he is
making progress in regeneration in other areas. Now for the first time he
begins to change in the inward portions of his mind. The outside portion of his
mind consists of his corporeal, sensuous, and natural-rational portions. The
inward portion consists of his interior-natural mind that the Lord build within his natural-rational mind. The husband himself
is in full charge of his natural-rational mind, but only the Lord is in charge
of the interior-natural mind. The husband therefore owns his external mind, but
the Lord owns his interior mind. To regenerate means that the husband compels
his external mind to align itself with the interior mind. In other words, he
compels his conscious willing and thinking all day long to conform to the
spiritual truths kept in his interior-natural mind by the Lord. In effect, this
result is that the Lord now rules the man, to the extent that the man compels
his willing and thinking to conform to the spiritual truths he can perceive.
These perceptions of spiritual truths constitute his spiritual understanding of
the spiritual topics he reads in the Letter of the Writings (as explained in
Volume 2).
In this way
portions of the husband are regenerated from the interior to the external, and
these portions give the husband an ability for
conjugial love. The wife is now completely reassured. She can now see that her
husband knows and wants to unite with her from within, that is, with the
external portion of his mind under obedience from the interior portion. She
sees that her husband wants now to be ruled by the Lord. And this is the
condition for conjugial love and internal unity.
You can see
from this scientific and medical account of regeneration that Rule 1 is nothing
but a behavioral method by which the husband can engineer his regeneration. His
mind starts in a disorder, prior to the appearance of his wife as Eve, his help
mate in regeneration. When he lives his life by Rule 1 the husband is
actualizing his wife as his spiritual help mate. Rule 1 is his lifeline, his
ticket to her heaven, which is his ritual inheritance form the Lord, his
Rule 1 guarantees that the regenerating husband will enter into the
inner marriage, that is, the external marriage within which is the spiritual
marriage. The external marriage is the social and legal form of it, hence also
the body and the external behaviors and interactions visible to others if they
are present. The internal marriage is the spiritual form of the marriage within
the external form. A couple may appear compatible and friendly to one another,
while inwardly there is disagreement and enmity. Rule 1 is a method for
eliminating this inward disagreement and enmity the husband feels towards his
wife. By following Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment, the husband gains the power
to gain control over his willing and thinking, forcing these to conform and
obey Rule 1.
In other
words, whenever he disagrees with his wife’s explicit or implied requests, he
compels his outward behavior and appearance to obey her request. This by itself
would be mere hypocrisy, ultimately to fail, if he did not also agree with
himself that he owes allegiance to Rule 1 from the Lord, not from himself. Therefore
the husband cannot justify going against Rule 1 at any time he so wishes
because some line he defined has been crossed by his wife’s request. This would
make a shambles out of Rule 1 and the Doctrine he has from the Letter of the
Writings. Therefore he has no other option but to continue to compel himself to
obey Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment. IN this way the inward unity with his wife
can go forward gradually and cumulatively over the years of his regeneration.
3. Leave Mother and Father And Cleave To The Wife
Marriage is
the state of spiritual growth between a wife and a husband. There are two
phases to this growth, external and internal, or, growth in the external mind
and growth in the internal mind. In the external mind, marriage is masculinized
and, in society, this is equivalent to the popular notion that it’s a man's
world. But in the internal phase, which comes next, the husband through living
the Doctrine of the Wife feminizes marriage. Thus from a man’s world society is
transformed into a feminine world, more gentle, more interior in intelligence,
and nearer to the Lord’s intelligence and character. In the Writings it is
stated that the Divine Proprium, which refers the Lord’s Character, is the all
in heaven and the angels are given to adopt or assume this Proprium as-if their
own (AC 8409).
In their
conversations with Swedenborg the inhabitants of the highest of the three
heavenly Kingdoms said that they actually have a living perception of the
Lord’s influx (HH 8). The Lord inflows into their internal
mind with Divine Good and Truth, the good into their will and the truth into
their understanding. They attribute all their intentions and ideas to
this Divine influx. They also said that the instant they close themselves off
to this influx in favor of their own intentions and ideas, they experience a
sudden drop, whereupon heaven disappears for them and they are in a lower
spiritual realm. But the instant they turn themselves again to the Lord and
admit Him by influx, they experience an elevation of the mind and they find
themselves again in their heaven. Paradoxically, the more they empty themselves
and allow spiritual influx from the Lord, the more they feel free and powerful;
but the more they turn to their own ideas and intentions and doing what they
then feel like, the more they feel constrained and captive of their flight of
ideas and emotions. While we are still in the physical body on earth we tend to
feel the opposite of this heavenly model. In our external mind it appears that
we feel most free when we do what we desire without any interference anywhere.
Most
husbands experience a sense of constriction and loss of freedom when they
acknowledge the commandment against adultery, even in the imagination. Most
therapists in our generation tell their clients that it does no harm to the
marriage when the husband fantasizes about sexual activities with other women
so long as it remains fantasy. They even prescribe it as an activity that can
re-invigorate the couple’s sexual relationship. Both self and society look with
favor upon that which the Lord forbids, as people can read in the New Testament
for the past two thousand years. While our moral or religious life is
restricted to the external mind we feel a loss of freedom when we acknowledge
God’s commandments. But when our internal mind is opened and made operational,
we are turned to God and His commandments and feel freedom in obedience to His
will. The internal mind of everyone is opened through the ongoing process of regeneration.
This consists of a life in accordance with one’s doctrine based on God’s
commandments.
The
commandment for husbands to "leave mother and father" means to
abandon loyalty and love for masculinized truth, and the commandment to
"cleave unto the wife" means to conjoin himself
in all things with the wife's affections. The essence of a woman’s life is her
affections and when the husband conjoins himself to his wife’s affections he
becomes a unity with her. The affections in her will and the cognitions in his
understanding are organically conjoined like the heart and the lungs in the
body that function together as one circulatory system. This is not just an
analogy. It takes organic substances from the spiritual world to create the
organs and fibers that make up the will and understanding in the mind. As the
married partners are engaged in their daily interactions their new joint mind
comes into being, built up fiber-by-fiber during their interactions.
In this way
they gradually achieve the state of "one flesh" which means of one
mind, i.e., the mind of an angel. This angelic mind is composed of the wife's
affections in the will conjoined with the husband's cognitions in the
understanding, thus making one angelic mind out of a man and a woman. This conjoined
mind is the highest state provided by the Lord for humans and in this state we
are truly human, immortal, in perfect health, ecstatically happy, fully
rational, loving and compassionate, creative and skillful to the extreme in all
things. This is the angelic state, and it is created when the husband loves his
wife's affections more than his own and adjusts his own cognitions or ideas to
harmonize with the wife's affections. In his striving to achieve unity the
husband is feminizing the marriage. And the Lord rewards them by creating the
perfect angelic mind out of the two imperfect individuals.
4. Becoming An Interior Man
From being
an unregenerate outward man, the husband after reformation becomes an inward
man. The outward man is represented by a mule of the desert (xx) and hunter of
the field (xx)—thus rough, gross, and anti-feminine. But after reformation the
husband becomes gentle, civilized, and wise. He is then called a man of the
field (see the Introduction to Volume 1). The
XV. THAT IN THE MARRIAGE OF ONE MAN WITH ONE WIFE BETWEEN
WHOM THERE IS LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL, THE WIFE BECOMES MORE AND MORE A WIFE, AND
THE HUSBAND MORE AND MORE A HUSBAND.
That love truly conjugial conjoins two more and more into
one man may be seen above (CL nos. 178, 179); and because the wife becomes a
wife from conjunction with her husband and according to it, likewise the
husband from conjunction with his wife; and because love truly conjugial
endures to eternity, it follows that the wife becomes more and more a wife, and
the husband more and more a husband.
The reason is, because in a marriage of love truly
conjugial, each becomes an ever more interior man; for that love opens the
interiors of their minds, and as these are opened man becomes more and more a
man. To become more a man is, on the part of the wife, to become more a wife,
and on the part of the husband, to become more a husband. I have heard from angels, that a wife becomes more and more a wife as her
husband becomes more and more a husband, but not the reverse, for rarely if
ever is it lacking that a chaste wife loves her husband. What is lacking is
love in return on the part of the husband; and this is lacking on account of
there being no elevation of wisdom, which alone receives a wife's love.
Respecting this wisdom, see nos. 130, 163-65. This, however, is said of
marriages on earth. (CL 200)
In this
passage, and similar ones elsewhere, the Lord is revealing to the human race
one of the most central and important scientific facts about human kind. Every
man of the race is born a pre-husband or a husband-to-be. In other words, the
individual male as a single man is not a true human being but only natural.
True human beings are celestial, such as those who live in heaven. To become
one of them we must prepare our mind by compelling the disorderly external mind
to obey the order of the interior mind. This order in the interior-natural mind
is a Divine order expressed in the higher spiritual correspondences active
there and of which we are conscious when regenerating. This is called being enlightened
by the Lord through the Letter of the Writings and its Heavenly Doctrines that
we are taking up in our memory and understanding for the sake of regeneration.
To “become
more and more a husband” is a correspondence for regeneration. A husband who is
undergoing regeneration is the husband who is becoming more and more a husband.
The expression “becoming a husband” signifies to form the
It is now revealed
that conjugial love “opens the interiors of their minds, and as these are
opened man becomes more and more a man.” (CL 200).
The conjugial couple is the genuine
unit of the human race.
Knowing
this Divine truth gives the regenerating
5. Proving The Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1
In the celestial Church good resided with the husband and
the truth of that good with the wife; but in the spiritual Church truth resided
with the man and the good of that truth with the wife: Such is and was the
actual relationship between the two, for in human beings interior things have
undergone this reversal. "wife" in the
representative sense signifies truth, and a "husband" good (AC 4823).
We can
apply this passage to ourselves by looking at the main expressions as
correspondences to activities in our willing and thinking. Doing this will
allow us to see its more interior meaning, that is, what the Lord is saying to
us about our willing and thinking, and especially, how they are to be
regenerated. Note the contrast between the “celestial Church” and the
“spiritual Church.” Taking it as a correspondence to our regeneration, the
“spiritual Church” represents our willing and thinking during regeneration on
earth, and the “celestial Church” represents our willing and thinking as conjugial
couple in heaven. During regeneration “truth resides with the man and the good
of that truth with the wife.” But in conjugial partners “good resides with the
husband and the truth of that good with the wife.”
Human
action is always by the understanding from the will,
and never by the will through the understanding (xx). This amazing scientific
revelation will surely revolutionize many social practices and beliefs, once it
is generally understood. Applying this principle to the passage above (AC
4823), we can say that during regeneration the husband (“truth with the man”)
acts from the wife (“the good of that truth with the wife”). This follows
logically from the principle that it is the understanding that acts from the
will, since truth is in the understanding while good is in the will. To say
that it is the understanding that acts from the will, is the same as saying it
is the husband who acts from the wife, since truth in the understanding of the
husband acts from good in the will of the wife. Truth is in the understanding
while good is in the will. Truth always acts from good (xx).
But during
regeneration “good resides with the husband and the truth of that good with the
wife.” In other words, the wife acts (“truth of that good with the wife”) from
the husband (“good resides with the husband”). Again for the same reason as
before, namely that it is truth in the understanding (conjugial wife) that acts
from the good in the will (conjugial husband), and never the good in the will
that acts through the understanding.
What is the
significance of this? What does it mean that in the first state the husband
acts from the wife, while in the second state the wife acts from the husband?
The second state is always higher or more interior than the first,
in the same degree that celestial is higher than spiritual. While the husband
is regenerating on earth he is called a spiritual Church, but after, in heaven,
he is called a celestial Church. Now you can see how Rule 1 is related to the
spiritual sense of this passage (AC 4823). The spiritual sense discusses the
contrast between the husband on his way to conjugial
love vs. the husband in conjugial love. While the husband is on his way to
conjugial love he acts from his wife. Once he is in conjugial love, his wife
acts from him. When he acts from the wife he is regenerating. In other words,
in order to regenerate the husband must act from the wife. Rule 1 says that the
husband must learn to love to act from his wife more than from himself. You can
see therefore that Rule 1 is a Divine Commandment by which we can approach conjugial
love.
Continuing
with the same Number:
In the celestial church the husband was in good, and the
wife in the truth of this good; but in the spiritual church the man is in
truth, and the wife in the good of this truth; such were they in fact then, and
such are they now, for the interiors of man have undergone this change. Hence
where celestial good and celestial truth from it are treated of in the Word, it
is said "husband and wife;" but where spiritual good and spiritual
truth from it are treated of, it is said "man and wife," or rather
"man and woman." (AC 4823)
The
expression “man and woman” signifies husband and wife in an external union,
while “husband and wife” signifies husband and wife in an internal unity.
Marriage in an internal unity is the true marriage, but marriage in an external
union is only a representative of true marriage. On earth, the regeneration of
the husband is the condition for an internal unity. This internal unity is
exactly proportional to the husband’s progress in regeneration. When he
falters, the internal unity dies. The husband is not much aware of the internal
unity, seeing it from a distance like a four-legged animal approaching in a field
with tall grasses. But to the wife the internal unity is up front, right in
front of her face. It is the biggest thing in her life, all other things having
a smaller importance. This is how she feels and is from creation.
Prior to
regeneration, the husband acts from his own will. This unregenerate male mental
state is as deadly as a poisonous snake and as slick as an eel. Deadly to himself and slick in his apparent inability to see his
own spiritual insanity. Everyone prior to regeneration is spiritually
insane (xx). Women marry the unregenerate man, who then becomes their
unregenerate husband, rough and painful, self-involved, loving the masculine
sphere above that of the feminine. The unregenerate husband is toxic to his
wife, in whom conjugial love is present from nativity (xx). He hates conjugial
love because the unregenerate mind hates what is heavenly, and hates conjugial
love more than any other thing in the universe because it is the highest and
most central of all heavenly loves and truths.
The Lord
has therefore provided the
To oppose
Rule 1 is to keep the marriage in an external union, merely legal, social, and
convenient for multiple reasons. To adopt Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline
is to move the marriage into its interior unity.
How does
Rule 1 work? why does it work? Consider this passage:
As speech is the form of sound, so man may be described as
the form of the wife; they are one flesh; a man shall cleave to his wife; the
wife is the man's soul, and life, or is the heart of the man; but neither knows
anything else than that the other is his, or hers, and that each is the other's
reciprocally and mutually. (SE 6110)
“Man” here
signifies the husband who makes Rule 1 into a regeneration discipline. The
husband who loves to act from his wife is the “man” here described. The husband
is created to be the form of his wife. That he is “created” means that his
regeneration creates a “man” out of him, that is, a conjugial husband. Man is
created the form of his wife because man is born an understanding of truth
while woman is born a will or affection of truth (xx). Every man attains the perfection of his creation when he allows himself
to be regenerated by the Lord. To allow himself to
be regenerated means that he compels himself to act form the wife, not from
himself. He has to desist from acting from himself since this is evil, as all
things of the unregenerate man are evil (xx). Hence Rule 1 is his very
salvation, the bridge that leads him away from hell and to heaven.
Note this
amazing scientific revelation: “a man shall cleave to his wife; the wife is the
man's soul, and life, or is the heart of the man.” This refers to the
regenerating husband who follows Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline. The
expression “to cleave to his wife” signifies the application of Rule 1 in his
everyday interactions with his wife, which means, always, since the external
union of marriage makes one responsible to the other 24 hours a day. The
expression “the wife is the man’s soul” signifies that when he loves to act
from his wife, his will can be regenerated, so that form an infernal man he can
become celestial. The expression “the man’s soul” refers to his will because a
man is nothing but his affections, and his affections are in the will. Therefore
in his will is not regenerated, he remains infernal, which is referred to as
the soul dying or being destroyed.
The
Doctrine of the Wife is called here “the man’s soul” because this Doctrine
regenerates his will. And the regenerated will is his new “life.” This new
celestial life is said to be “in the heart of the man” because heart represents
the love of his will. When he loves to act from the wife (Rule 1) his wife is
in his heart, and she is his soul, therefore, his life. To cleave to his wife
is man’s life because he then acts from her, not from himself. To act from himself is death because he then cannot be regenerated.
The husband's life enters the wife, through the thighs, and
by means of love. How truth then becomes good, or understanding, the will of
the wife, and how, finally, the husband's understanding becomes the form of the
wife's affection. (SE 6110)
Here it is
specified what Rule 1 is, namely, it is “the husband's understanding [when it] becomes
the form of the wife's affection.” The “wife’s affection” signifies to act from
the wife since the understanding acts from the will and affection is in the
will. When the husband’s acts from the wife’s will he is said to “enter her
through the thighs, and by means of love.” This is the meaning of loving the
wife: To cleave to her, to act from her will, and to love this. To love to act from her affections is the
true love that unites.
To become “the form” of the wife’s
affection, the husband has to appropriate to himself the wife’s affection.
The wife’s
affection, now in the husband’s will, motivates and
directs all his thinking. His willing is according to her affection, and
therefore his thinking will also be, as a consequence of the first. This is
what creates the internal unity of conjugial couples.
But once
they are completed as a conjugial couple, it is said that the wife acts from
the husband. This is a way of saying that the husband and the wife act from
each other. Nothing else would be logical. The husband’s understanding has been
formed by the wife’s affection during regeneration. Now, this understanding is
therefore her understanding in her husband since it was formed by her
affections. Therefore she acts from this understanding. She doesn’t act from
her own understanding for this would not be unity.
Any widow. That this signifies those who are
in good without truth, and yet long for truth, is evident from the
signification of "a widow," as being good without truth, and yet
longing for it. That "a widow" has this signification is because by
"a man" is signified truth, and by his "woman" is signified
good; and therefore when the woman of a man becomes a
widow, she signifies good without truth.
But in a still more interior sense "a widow"
signifies truth without good. The reason is that in this sense "a
husband" signifies good, and his "wife" truth ... (AC 9198)
You can see
here that “widow” or “woman without husband” represents the two states of
marriage when they both fail. The failure of the external marriage is
represented by “widow” in the spiritual sense, but the failure of the internal
marriage is represented by “widow” in the celestial sense. “Widow” in the spiritual
sense signifies “good without truth.” This is the failure of the external
marriage. But “widow” in the celestial sense signifies “truth without good.”
This is the failure of the internal marriage.
Good receives power
through truth (AC 3563,
4592)
A man is
constructed spiritually as the inverse of a woman since woman is interior truth
covered over with external love while man is interior love covered over with
external truth (CL 32). Therefore, the
wife’s truth is more interior than the husband’s by spiritual make-up.
The
Writings also teach that in all things whatever is interior is always more
heavenly than that which is exterior (xx). Clearly then, a woman's intelligence
is more celestial or higher than a man's intelligence because the quality of
intelligence and wisdom is determined by the truth out of which they are made.
The recognition by the husband that the wife’s intelligence is higher than his
own sanctifies the marriage in his mind.
Regeneration
in the case of husbands consists in giving up their own proprium and living
as-if from the Lord's Proprium. This means abandoning the unregenerate masculine
truth (=leaving father and mother) and entering existence into the interior
feminine truth (=cleaving to his wife). The feminine truth is celestial while
the masculine truth is spiritual. Feminine truths are called “truths about
good” or “truths about love,” while masculine truths are called “truths about
truth” or “truths about wisdom” (xx). In the Lord’s Proprium there are both
types of truths since in Him infinite distinct things are a one (xx).
The Lord’s
Proprium is the very atmosphere of life in heaven and only those couples can
live in it that have abandoned the natural order of life in the external mind
and live in the spiritual order of life in the internal mind. Husbands must
choose to place their own masculine affections or intentions below the feminine
affections of their wife because her intelligence is higher or more interior
than his intelligence and this higher or more interior intelligence can conjoin
only with feminine affections, and not with masculine. Higher truths are called
here feminine because they are truths about love and good, and these are
celestial things. Masculine truths are called lower because they are truths
about truth and wisdom, and these are spiritual things. The celestial is higher
than the spiritual. Celestial truths are called feminine truths because woman
is born a form of love and good, while man is born a form of truth and wisdom
(xx). Celestial truths are about love and good while spiritual truths are about
truth and wisdom. Therefore feminine
truths are to rule over masculine truths since the higher rules over the lower.
(xx) Higher means more interior, as celestial is more interior than spiritual.
By accepting the wife’s affections as-if his own, the husband
experiences an inner elevation of the mind because he can now be given higher
truths in his understanding. These higher truths are feminine in constitution and he can
now appropriate them to himself by conjoining them to the wife’s affections in
him, which he upholds as-if his own. It is this spiritual biology that
necessitates the process whereby feminine affections are conjoined with
masculine cognitions in the mind of the husband. The Writings call this union
“the marriage of good and truth.” All good belongs to affections in the will
and all truth belongs to cognitions in the understanding.
We know
from the Writings that the Lord's purpose in creating and maintaining the
universe is to populate the heavens with individuals born on earths. The
greater the number of people in heaven, the more perfect it grows (xx). In
other words, people in heaven continue to experience greater and greater
perfection every day to eternity. The unit of life in heaven is the couple, not
the individual, and all heaven is made of married couples. The angelic or
conjugial couple is in actuality a single complete angel. Swedenborg witnessed
a representation of this when he saw an angel approaching him from a distance,
and when the angel was nearer he saw that it was a husband and a wife. This
visual representation confirms the idea of the actual internal unity of the
married couple.
6. External
And Internal Marriage
Changes of state are of one kind with men and of another
with women, because, by creation, men are forms of science, intelligence, and
wisdom, and women, forms of the love of these with men (CL 187).
Passages
such as the above are seized upon by a man’s external masculinized mind, which
wants to hold on to the idea that intelligence and intellectual pursuits is the
arena of men while feelings and affections are the arena of women. By this
affirmation men put themselves ahead of women in intelligence and wisdom while
they concede that women are ahead of men in love and affection. This false and
self-serving view turns their marriage into an inauthentic union made by man,
not by the Lord. The union men want to make is the adjunction together of man's
intelligence or wisdom with woman's “affectional predisposition,” as it has
been called in
(a) The
difference essentially consists in this, that the inmost quality in masculinity
is love, and its veil wisdom, or in other words, it is love veiled over with
wisdom, while the inmost quality in femininity is that same wisdom, the wisdom
of masculinity, and its veil the love resulting from it.
(b) This
second love, however, is a feminine love, and the Lord gives it to a wife
through the wisdom of her husband, whereas that first love is a masculine love,
which is a love of becoming wise, and the Lord gives it to a husband according
to his reception of wisdom.
(c)
Consequently, the male is a form of the wisdom of love, and the female is a
form of the love of that wisdom.
(d) Therefore from creation there was implanted in both male
and female a love of uniting into one (CL 32).
This
passage has four sentences, which we marked from (a) to (d) in order to
consider each in turn. Sentence (a) specifies the "essential" or
inmost spiritual difference between man and woman. This spiritual organic
difference is such as to allow the formation of an internal unity between a
husband and a wife. No unity is possible between alike and alike for that
yields only an external adjunction or co-location. Note that in order to create
a structural unity there must be a particular kind of difference or relation
between the two parts, so that they may function in unison like the heart and
the lungs in the body act together in unison, each having its own distinct
form, yet the two fitting together for joint operation as one. Sentence (a)
specifies the organic structural relation in marriage by indicating that
feminizing it consists in elevating masculine wisdom from external truth and
reasoning, to internal, or which is the same, from the external mind to the
internal mind.
A wife
imbibes and appropriates her husband's intelligence and wisdom and then
elevates it within herself, that is, makes it more interior, and then covers it
over with feminine love. This is stated in sentence (b). Note this very
important observation: In sentence (b) it is said that the Lord gives the wife
conjugial love "through the wisdom of her husband." There are two
ways of interpreting the meaning. One is that the wisdom mentioned here is the
wisdom of the husband such as it is in the husband. But this is not in accord
with the Doctrine of the Wife and its rationale. The other possible meaning is
that the wisdom of the husband mentioned here refers to the wisdom of the
husband that is now in the wife, and this wisdom is higher than the husband’s
even though it originated from the husband. This means that the wife has
conjugial love from the Lord when she unites the current wisdom in her
(originally from the husband) with harmonious affections also in her, within
which is the love from the Lord.
In this
second interpretation it is clear that the wife's intelligence and wisdom is
more interior than his, even though her wisdom originates with him. But it is
given to the wife to take that wisdom of the husband within her and to elevate
it by implanting it in her inner rational mind where it now functions at a more
interior level than that of the husband from which it originated. The Writings
say that this interior truth is represented in the Old Testament by Sarah,
Abraham's wife, and by Rebecca, Isaac’s wife. It is celestial truth and is such
as the highest angels have. Angelic unity of the married couple depends on the
husband imbibing the wife's affections and the wife imbibing the husband's
cognitions. This reciprocal and organic process gradually changes and perfects
the cognitions and affections of both husband and wife in an endless process of
deeper and richer union. This is not a static or one time process. When the
husband imbibes the wife's affections, his cognitions must change accordingly
in order to maintain the equilibrium of unity. He gains a deeper wisdom than
before. When a wife imbibes her husband's cognitions, her new affections are
more sublime than before. Swedenborg was very affected by this interiorized
beauty whenever he was in the presence of angelic wives who were advanced in
wisdom. The more husbands and wives love each other's reciprocity, the more
they are conjoined in deeper unity. And this to eternity.
What an amazing and wonderful reality! This is indicated in sentence (d).
Sentence
(b) also states that the Lord gives the husband wisdom according to his
"reception" of wisdom. What is the measure of his reception? Not his
knowledge and intelligence, but the life he conducts according to these. This
means the kind of affections he favors because people are led by their
affections. The Lord is instructing husbands that if they favor the affections
of the wife, then they are receptive of His Wisdom. Then He can give them that
Wisdom to be as-if their own, and more of it to eternity. A husband can become
wise only to the extent he is living what we knows to be true from his religion,
and in the case of the Writings, this means loving the affections of his wife
above his own. These are the affections wives have from the Lord and by
elevating them above their own affections, husbands are living the doctrine
they know and understand from the Writings. They are then receptive to the
Lord's Wisdom.
As they
receive deeper wisdom from the Lord, their wife imbibes it, elevates it in her
interior mind, and receives new, deeper and more genuine conjugial love from
the Lord. The husband now can imbibe her new affections--and the cycle of unity
continues to grow and perfect itself forever. To imbibe the
wife's affections and to favor them means that the husband must never disagree
and always agree with his wife's affectional requests in all things.
7. Heresies
Regarding The Husband's
Wisdom
The
Writings of Swedenborg contain the greatest scientific revelations ever made to
humankind. The center of these revelations is that human emotions and feelings
are arranged in a hierarchy from strongest to weakest, and the strongest at the
very top is the intense desire to unite in marriage. This state of inner
unition between a husband and a wife is the complete and pure human state of
life. It is the angelic life of couplehood. This is the life Swedenborg
witnessed with numerous couples with whom he interacted in the spiritual world
and the heavens. The married couple is organically united in spirit or mind in
a fashion similar to newly born Siamese twins who are physically joined in the
body. Without knowing this internal spiritual reality, an inner union between
husband and wife cannot be achieved. In fact, due to inherited evils, there is
strong opposition to the conjugial union, especially by men.
In
Conjugial Love Number 168-177 it is shown that a conjugial union is necessary
for an individual to become whole and complete as a human being. A man and a
woman are singly incomplete, the man lacking the love or affections his
understanding needs to be whole, and the wife lacking the understanding or intelligence
her love and affections need to be complete. It is stated that men are born to
be “intellectual” while women are born to be “affectional.” The Writings also
state that men are called wisdoms while wives are called affections. A woman is
said to be the love of her husband’s wisdom. A man’s mind is born a form of
understanding while a woman’s mind is born a form of love.
There is a
temptation for men when they come across statements such as these in the
Writings. From a natural perspective men prefer to
think that they are superior to women in understanding the dynamics of life and
the world, and therefore they feel that they should have the ultimate power to
decide things relating to Church, government, business, and domestic affairs.
In other words, it’s a man’s world and women have their appropriate place in
it. The letter of Sacred Scripture in the major religions is written according
to natural and cultural appearances so that men of every religion have found
Divine justification for putting men ahead of women in many walks of life, if
not all. This masculinized notion is a doctrinal fallacy. Husbands must let go
of this persuasion or fail in their attempt to regenerate and become an angel
with a wife in heaven.
In order to
free oneself from this masculinized persuasion it is necessary to balance
statements of Scripture with passages that say just the opposite. For example,
in the symbology of the Writings, Abraham represents Divine Love while his wife
Sarah represents Divine Truth. This correspondence is repeated in other
Biblical couples such as Rebecca and Isaac. In the story of Hagar and Ishmael
in the Old Testament we are told that Sarah asked Abraham to banish Hagar and
her child Ishmael from the household, an idea to which Abraham balked. So God
appeared to him and commanded, “all that Sarah saith
unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (Genesis
"Husband," when mentioned in the Word, signifies
good, and "wife" then signifies truth. It is otherwise when the
husband is called the "man;" for then "man" signifies
truth, and "wife" good (AC 2517)
In the spiritual church the wife represents good and the man
represents truth, but in the celestial church the husband represents good and
the wife truth; and-what is a mystery-they not only represent, but also in all
their activities correspond to them. (AC 4434)
This is
another example showing that the intelligence of a wife is higher or more
discerning than her husband’s, and that a husband should be obedient to his
wife for the sake of conjugial love. Abraham’s idea in his own external mind is
to think that Ishmael is his son, and so he is disinclined to listen to his
wife when she tells him to get rid of him. Sarah’s more interior perception can
see that Ishmael is not the one, that Isaac will be the inheritor, and that
leaving Ishmael to hang around will threaten Isaac’s God given mission. If
Abraham is going to advance to his inner rational state he must disregard his
own inclination and external reasoning, and submit to his wife’s more interior perception
and spiritual understanding which she has from the Lord. This exchange in the
Old Testament represents the Doctrine of the Wife, which is summarized by the
Divine commandment to husbands: “Hearken unto her voice.”
And behold
Isaac was laughing with Rebekah his woman. That this signifies that Divine good
was present in Divine truth, or that Divine good was adjoined to Divine truth,
is evident from the representation of Isaac, as being the Divine good of the
Lord's rational (n. 3012, 3194, 3210); from the signification of
"laughing," as being the love or affection of truth (n. 2072, 2216);
and from the representation of Rebekah, as being the Divine truth of the
Lord's rational (n. 3012, 3013, 3077). Hence it is evident that "Isaac
laughing with Rebekah his woman" signifies that Divine good was present
with Divine truth. (AC 3392) (italics added for
emphasis)
The reason
for the apparent contradictions as to the intelligence and wisdom of men and
women has to do with the fact that the internal and external mind is in an
inverse relationship. Intelligence of the external kind is a lower form of
intelligence, less spiritual and celestial, in comparison to the intelligence
of the interior mind. Conjugial union is the joining of the internal mind in
which the intelligence of women is more internal than the intelligence of men.
This allows men to escape their inherited lower state of masculine independence
and evolve into a new higher state of conjoint dependence. This is the angelic
state of life.
A sermon by
Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard titled "The Transformation of a Man into a Husband
and a Woman into a Wife through Marriage" appeared in New Church Life,
June 2001 issue, pages 243-248. We will use this article to illustrate some
doctrinal issues in relation to the Doctrine of the Wife. The literal of the
Writings can lead to misconceptions unless contextualized in relation to the
Doctrine of the Wife or other passages in the Writings. In other words,
articulating the Doctrine of the Wife and applying it to interpret the literal
of the Writings avoids the heresy of believing that men’s intelligence in
forensics and in spiritual instruction is superior to women due to men's
wisdom, which women cannot attain. It is difficult to avoid this heresy without
the Doctrine of the Wife.
It is
customary to make a statement of denial in relation to the heresy of the
superiority of men over women. Rev. Howard states it this way:
It is
important to take teachings such as these in their proper context. Some have
read into such teachings in Conjugial Love the erroneous notion that masculine
virtues are extolled over those of the feminine. Nothing could be further from
the truth
(NCL,
June 2001, p.244).
Every
“We say
that masculinity cannot be converted into femininity, nor
femininity into masculinity, and that after death a male is consequently still
a male, and a female still a female. (…) The difference essentially consists in
this, that the inmost quality in masculinity is love, and its veil wisdom, or
in other words, it is love veiled over with wisdom, while the inmost quality in
femininity is that same wisdom, the wisdom of masculinity, and its veil the
love resulting from it. This second love, however, is a feminine love, and it
is given by the Lord to a wife through the wisdom of her husband, whereas that
first love is a masculine love, which is a love of becoming wise, and it is
given by the Lord to a husband according to his reception of wisdom.” (CL 32)
Rev. Howard
concludes:
From this
we can see that the reception of masculine wisdom depends upon a man's
willingness to look to the Lord and shun as sins against the Lord the evils
that may tempt him. Thus we can see that a man does not automatically receive
wisdom because he is a male. He receives it only by honoring the Lord through
living according to His commandments.
Following The Lord's Commandments Through One’s Wife
How does a
man live according to the Lord's commandments? One might think at first that
the husband has that power from the Lord independently of his wife. Can a
husband live according to the Lord's commandments from his efforts apart from
the wife or can he do this only through his wife? Could it be that the husband
cannot follow the Lord's commandments unless he does so through his wife? How
else can the mind of each grow into reciprocal form that can fit into a unity
of mind or spirit? This conjoint growth process was described above as a
four-step interaction repeatedly made with each other on a daily living basis.
What would happen if the heart said to the lungs, “I’m superior,” while the
lungs, speaking in unison, retort, “We are superior.” One angel in heaven is
made of a husband and wife interacting continuously as a conjoint unity.
Swedenborg was witnessed this phenomenon while speaking to an angel husband in
heaven who had invited him in to discuss the subject of wisdom:
I saw
inside that the building was divided into two sections, and yet the two were
still one. It was divided into two
sections by a transparent partition, but it looked like one room because of the
partition's transparency, which was like the transparency of the purest
crystal. I asked why it was arranged like that.
The
receptionist said, "I am not alone. My wife is with me, and though we are
two, yet we are not two but one flesh."
To which I
replied, "I know you are wise, but what does a wise man or wisdom have to
do with a woman?"
At this,
with some feeling of annoyance, the receptionist's expression changed, and he
stretched out his hand, and suddenly, then, other wise men were present from
the neighboring buildings. To them he said with amusement, "Our visitor
here says he wants to know what a wise man or wisdom has to do with a
woman!"
They all
laughed at this and said, "What is a wise man or wisdom apart from a woman
or apart from love? A wife is the love of a wise man's wisdom." (CL 56)
Rev. Howard
recognizes that women’s wisdom is more interior, therefore, higher, than a
man’s:
Feminine
wisdom, or perception, does not easily lend itself to description because it is
of a more interior nature than is the wisdom given to a man (...) They are
entirely different in quality and nature, yet complementary to each other.
(NCL,
June 2001, p.245)
From the
perspective of the Doctrine of the Wife it is not enough to say
(a) that masculine and feminine wisdom are different; and
(b) that they are complementary.
A
conclusion must follow:
(c)
Therefore the husband should elevate the wife's judgment above his own.
Another way
of saying this is Rule 1 for conjugial husbands, as discussed frequently
throughout this volume:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that
husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
Without
this conclusion, the literal of the Writings may be misinterpreted. The
husband's wisdom may indeed be elevated even to the highest heaven, but he
cannot appropriate it to himself. His wisdom falls back quickly to the level of
his love or affections, which are in hell for all who are unregenerate. The Writings
make this comparison referring to the natural man before he is regenerated:
He is also
like an adulterer who hides a harlot in a room below, and in turn ascends to
the highest story of his house, and there in the presence of his wife talks
wisely with visitors about chastity, and again steals away from the company and
satiates his lust with the harlot below (TCR 590).
This
comparison is said about every husband whose internal spiritual mind has not
yet been opened through regeneration. Husbands can elevate their intellect into
doctrinal things of the Writings while they are studying and applying
themselves piously. Then they descend from the lofty heights of studies and
interact with their wife, abusing them mentally, discounting their intellect, holding
the wife's judgment as nothing in comparison to their own, and other such
indignities, which they think nothing of. And this is done repeatedly, daily.
There is no regeneration possible for them so long as this pattern in their
life continues to rule their interactions with the wife.
Rev. Howard
cautions that the wife’s love of her husband’s wisdom does not mean that she
also loves his evils:
No wife can
love a proud or conceited husband. (...) The attraction he feels [as he is
drawn to her by love] has the effect of subduing his proprial pride. (...)
Through the influence of her love his mind becomes elevated and aspires to a
new idealism that no longer looks inward. He feels an incentive to live in a
manner worthy of her love and respect. Through her influence he is withdrawn
from his fallen proprium. By living a principled life of service to his wife,
family and others, he begins to receive a degree of wisdom which will draw the
affections of his wife
(NCL,
June 2001, p.247).
The husband
must make progress in his regeneration or character reformation, for without
this there is no wisdom in him that the wife can love. According to the
Doctrine of the Wife the only way a husband can improve his wisdom is by
elevating his wife's judgment above his own. This is “living a principled life
of service to his wife.” Unless this is the case the husband is drawn away by
his proprium or inborn egotism and cleaves to his idols rather than his wife.
It’s not enough to respect the wife and consult her in matters of importance,
though these external rituals are required. If there is no commitment to the
Doctrine of the Wife the husband can be drawn away by his masculine proprium
and decide to exercise a veto power over the “joint” decision making process.
Consulting
the wife in matters of importance still allows the husband to override her
point of view or desire in the matter. And he will exercise this power when he
is tempted, which means he cannot loose himself, cannot change his character,
cannot regenerate, cannot form a union with the wife, cannot become an angel.
But if he
commits to the Doctrine of the Wife he cannot permit himself to exercise veto
power or override his wife’s affections in any matter whenever he is inclined
to do so for whatever reason or rationale. He can only compel himself to be
obedient to the Heavenly Doctrine for this is the Lord’s Two Great Commandments
rolled into one. By loving the wife above himself, the
husband loves his closest neighbor, and he thereby simultaneously loves the
Lord because this love for his wife and her love for him is conjugial love, the
love in which angels are in heaven. The Writings teach that it is the Lord’s
most passionate desire that He be able to create as many angel couples as we
let Him, for this is the purpose for which He created the universe and
maintains it in order to perpetuity.
It is
believed that if the husband applies himself to following the commandments, his
wisdom will grow from the Lord, and the wife will be able to love his wisdom
even more, and thus the couple is conjoined. But this contains a dubious
assumption, namely, that the husband gains wisdom from the Lord apart from his
wife, through his own independent effort and striving to follow the Lord's
commandments, and then the wife can love this new wisdom in him. But the
Writings specify that a husband receives new wisdom from the Lord only in
proportion to his love. Striving to improve in itself is not sufficient for the
husband to receive more interior truths from the Lord. This is because the
striving is from his proprium. His only salvation is to love the wife's
judgment and perception above his own, to love the wife's wisdom above his own.
Then his love will be elevated because her wisdom is more interior than his.
This higher love can now receive more interior wisdom from the Lord. This is
the genuine new wisdom, which the wife takes into her inmost and from which she
brings out a feminine veil of love that covers her.
There are,
in consequence, two loves in a man, one of which is the love of growing wise,
which comes first, and the second of which is the love of wisdom, which comes
afterwards. But if this second love continues on in a man, it is an evil love,
and is called conceit or love of his own intelligence.
It will be established later that to keep this love from destroying man, it was
provided from creation that this love be taken from him and transferred into
woman, so that it might become conjugial love, which makes him whole again. (CL 88).
8. Feminine
Love Within Which Is
Masculine Wisdom
It is this
feminine love within which is masculine wisdom that makes the atmosphere of
heaven in which the angels live in blissful splendor to eternity. Couples here
on earth in which the husband is committed to the Doctrine of the Wife and
lives it, are internally in this heavenly atmosphere. Their conjoint spirit is
actually in heaven.
I have
often asked myself this question: What does it mean when the wives of
There are
two types of explanations. One type takes the position that Doctrine is for
men, primarily, especially formulating Doctrine and interpreting the Writings
as Doctrine. The other type takes up the position that Doctrine is separate
from priesthood. For instance, an evil or insincere priest can perform
sacraments but can’t create genuine doctrine (AC 9180). An evil man can create
only false doctrine because he creates it from his self-intelligence. He is no
motivated to understand the Writings for the sake of truth, but for the sake of
dominion. Therefore the Lord can reveal not a single genuine Doctrine to his
mind. He will teach only false and adulterated doctrine.
This proves
that being a priest and performing the sacraments for the community does not
necessarily go with being good and, therefore, having truth in the doctrine
they formulate.
It stands
to reason therefore that a priest has no special authority to create Doctrine
for the Church. The Writings say that priests ought to teach the Word in
sermons and classes (NJHD 315). It doesn’t say that that what they therefore
teach will be genuine Doctrine. This depends entirely on his state of
regeneration (LIFE 39). A priest has no special inspiration to formulate
genuine Doctrine when he is in evil, for falsity goes with evil, not truth.
Since we never know whether an individual is internally in good or evil (CL
523), we cannot automatically assume that any priest’s teachings of doctrine
are genuine or false—it could be either. If we merely accepted what a priest
teaches out of authority for his position, we are precipitated into persuasive
faith, and this is deadly for it leads to no belief at all when we arrive in
the afterlife with that kind of faith (NJHD 117)
So priests
ought to encourage people to study the Writings and accumulate their Doctrine
from it. This is the only protection the sheep have from the wolves—their own
reformation, that is, their acquisition of knowledge from the Writings and the
use of this Doctrine in their daily willing and thinking. This is the only way
to develop genuine Doctrine for each
He who
loves the ends also loves the means (AE 1144). Since the end in view is
reformation and regeneration through forming Doctrine and living it, therefore
teaching how to form Doctrine is the priest’s primary work of saving souls. Primary, because no one is saved by sacraments, but only by
regeneration (LJP 216). And no one is regenerated without willing and
thinking Doctrine from one’s as-of self comprehension (AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877,
5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). Clearly
therefore, the
I come back
to the question I posed above: Why are we not seeing more doctrinal activity
and involvement by women in the
The
priesthood may discourage or prevent women from becoming priests in the full
sense. This is one issue. But the priesthood may not discourage women from
actively being interested in doctrine and contributing to it. Regardless of the
Church’s official position on the issue of “women priests,” the priesthood must
always teach men and women how to formulate Doctrine for themselves out of the
Writings. They must teach that there is no power of salvation in the
sacraments they provide or in the doctrinal things they teach. They must
teach that the only method of salvation is reformation and regeneration, and
that this can be performed only by means of Doctrine each individual forms from
the Writings in their own individual mind.
The
attitude that Doctrine is primarily for men is present in all religions. Where
I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family it was required that all boys start
attending “cheder” (religious classes) at age four or five. But the girls were
kept with the mothers learning domestic duties. This is clearly detrimental in
the light of the preceding discussion. Other religions, both Western and
Eastern, similarly keep women from active involvement with formulating Doctrine
for the Church. There is thus a long standing generational bias to deny women
what they need for their own salvation. What can motivate this except the
hatred for conjugial love? This is a hatred all men have from inheritance and
confirmation in life (see the following Sections below).
Of course
we know from the Writings that the Lord protects all innocent people from being
denied spiritual freedom. The women who are deprived by the dragons (AR 565) of
their doctrinal rights and privileges are protected inwardly by the Lord so
that their spiritual choices in life are protected. Outwardly, that is,
socially and politically, women can be denied knowledge and legitimacy of
forming Doctrine, and this results in great harm to the community. But
inwardly, every woman is given by the Lord other secret means of reformation
and regeneration. Women receive special perception from the Lord so that they
have Doctrine written in their hearts, like we all do when we become angels in
heaven (HH 25). This inward perception gives them wisdom, or the ability to
perceive that a spiritual proposition is true or false. Men do not have this
perception from the Lord so they must study as-of self and struggle with
learning the Writings and applying it to their willing and thinking. In this less
direct and more elaborated way, men too can form Doctrine.
The
And we are
to remember this: that the level of life of the highest angels of the entire
human race, now and into the future, is as nothing in comparison to the Lord’s
Life, His Love and Wisdom (HH 273).
9. The Role
Of The Wife
In The Husband's Wisdom
One of the
many biological facts revealed in the Writings is that the spiritual
constitution of men and women is inside out and outside in relative to each
other. This organic difference results in reciprocal roles for unition. Unition
would not be possible unless the spiritual organic parts of men and women were
reciprocal. Wherever the word "spiritual" is used, you can also think
"mental" because the mind is the spirit-body that continues its
immortal life in the spiritual world. At birth, the mind or spirit is born
along with the physical body and is formed through social and natural
experiences on earth.
Man was
created by God so as to have his internal in the spiritual world and his external
in the natural world. Thus he was created a denizen of either world in order
that the spiritual, which is heavenly, should be planted in the natural, which
is worldly, just as a seed is planted in the ground, and he might thus become
steadfast and enduring to eternity. (TCR 14)
We are thus
dual citizens, the physical body on earth and the mind or spirit in the
spiritual world.
Man was
created by God so as to have his internal in the spiritual world and his
external in the natural world. Thus he was created a denizen of either world in
order that the spiritual, which is heavenly, should be planted in the natural,
which is worldly, just as a seed is planted in the ground, and he might thus
become steadfast and enduring to eternity. (TCR 14)
When the
spirit is disconnected from the physical body at the time of passing on, the
spirit is then visible in its full form and beauty. Swedenborg has encountered
thousands of individuals in heaven and they all are in the “flower of youth and
beauty” or around seventeen or eighteen. The spirit-body is organically and
functionally far superior to the physical body, even the body of a top fashion
model or athlete that our society admires. Men and women appear in their ideal
form in heaven, but in hell they appear deformed.
In order to
be soul mates in heaven a wife and a husband must develop a character and
personality other than what each was born with on earth. One of the startling
revelations in the Writings is that the character of every child contains the
cumulative evils of all its ancestors. It is also taught that no one goes to
hell for the evils of another. We inherit the tendency and preference towards
innumerable evils attached to egotism and irrationality (CL 202). But
simultaneously we also inherit the power to oppose our evil tendencies and to
reject the false philosophies within which these evils are immersed. The Lord
in regeneration gives us this power. First, the Lord makes spiritual truths
available to us in our external mind through education and instruction. Second,
he gives us the power to live up to these truths, as we are tempted over and
over again in daily living. As we struggle with our temptations and win
victories over them, the Lord is able to open up our internal spiritual mind,
which is in heaven. This internal mind then descends into the external mind
where we become conscious of it. This is our tangible reward.
The process
by which husbands are regenerated is not the same as what happens with single
men. The wife plays a required role. This makes sense since the couple’s life
in heaven is only through a conjoint mind. This must be developed on earth
because regeneration is possible only while we are in the physical body. Once
the spirit-body is liberated, its life then continues such as it developed
while tied to the physical body. There is no “changing your mind” after you
pass on. A regenerating couple on earth must therefore evolve and develop a
conjoint mind through daily interactions. This is why it is required that the
wife be involved in the husband’s regeneration. The wife’s role in the
husband’s regeneration is determined by the biological necessity of their
respective spiritual form. The Doctrine of the Wife specifies the kind of
interactions that correspond to this form.
It has now
been revealed that husbands are born conjugial unwillingnesses and feel the
urge to rebel, to resist, to protest, to complain, and to withdraw. But the
wife, strengthened by the knowledge of spiritual truth and reality, will remind
him thus:
My husband,
you know you cannot save yourself by yourself. You know the Lord has appointed
me to lead you to heaven. To assist me in this task, the Lord gives me
perception to see your inmost inclinations or affections, and the Lord gives me
wisdom to defeat the pack of delusions and lies that you've surrounded yourself
with and to which you continue to hold on. You have no choice. I'm waiting. The
Lord and heaven are waiting. Get with it. Give up your pride and arrogance and
listen to me. Do as I ask. Etc.
This is the
Doctrine of the Wife--talking sense into men that they may enjoy eternal
conjugial bliss. It contains the idea that marriage is social, legal, and
religious on the outside but spiritual on the inside. The external aspects of
marriage may be called by the usual word "conjugal" but the internal
spiritual aspects are called "conjugial." The extra “i” represents
the elevation of the natural marriage into spiritual marriage. The Lord intends
that we first form, build, develop the outside conjugal aspects of marriage and
then, when this is solidly established, that we form, build, and develop the
inside conjugial aspects.
Unity is to
be achieved in both outside and inside aspects. Then the marriage is truly
conjugial, blessed, and eternal. But the fact is that
external unity can be achieved and then never go on to internal unity.
Spiritually this is a disaster. Husband and wife are then on their own in
regeneration, like single men and women. This is important to remember when a
woman feels discouragement because her husband resists the work it takes to
achieve inner unity. All is not lost for her, and though it is not possible to
know this fully in advance, she can trust that the Lord will provide her with
her true soul mate in the afterlife. A wife ceaselessly and courageously
continues her efforts to unite herself to her husband, externally and
internally, despite all his efforts to discourage and resist her. By doing this
she makes it possible for the Lord to unconsciously prepare her conjugial mind from
within in such a way that she in the afterlife can conjoin with a suitable man
also prepared for her by the Lord.
10. Inventory Of Confessions For Husbands
To shun evils is to
do goods (AE 803)
The
Writings teach that “All of us are born with a tendency to every kind of evil,
and if we do not partially remove evils by repentance, we remain subject to
them, and if so cannot be saved.” (TCR 520) The Writings also teach "A
mere verbal confession that one is a sinner is not repentance." (TCR 516). In order to repent and reform we must become
conscious of each evil trait in our character in a specific way. This is the
purpose of the inventory of evils inspired by the Doctrine of the Wife. The
inventory is something we need to keep track of for ourselves. A public
confession to anyone but one’s wife is not a requirement for repentance and
regeneration. But because we don’t want to publicly discuss our evils of daily
life is not a reason for not becoming aware of them ourselves in an objective
way by self-witnessing and monitoring our moment by moment willing and thinking
all day long. This kind of self-awareness takes practice to perform effectively
just like any other discipline or task that you learn to do well. First, can
you see yourself making this kind of confession to the Lord, to yourself, and
to your spouse?
I husband,
will circle the items that constitute my confession, which is that I have been
engaging in these lowly acts on a regular basis and that now I wish to stop, by
first, recognizing my brutishness, and second, holding it in aversion for the
sake of the Lord and a heavenly life with my wife. One way I can show my honest
intention is to print out the list with the circled items and to ask my wife to
help me fill in what I have left out.
I also
realize that it is not up to me to tell her to fill out a similar list for
herself because our situations are not parallel, and for me to ask her to do
that would be insulting her and thus contrary to the intent of this confession.
I also
dedicate myself to maintaining these lists up to date so that I will write all
those additional items that do not yet appear, but of which I'm guilty and
become aware of.
In all this
I realize that though I must do this as-of self, the power for my success is
solely the Lord’s. I acknowledge that the removal of these evils is not
something I do on my own and alone. Angles and spirits are present and
intimately involved in every detail. The Lord manages and supervises this
process in its every detail.
Now take a
look at the list. It can be considered a behavioral Inventory of Confessions
for husbands. You might like to adjust the style and particular content to fit
your actuality. These items are for the most part the things I have noticed in
myself, after much help and insistence from my wife. A few were added from
other husbands who wrote to me. I numbered them for easy reference but I have
not tried to order them or group them—though that might be a beneficial task as
it increases consciousness of the inner affections that maintain these outward
behaviors of conjugial evil, both inherited and acquired.
1. I
upset her by raising a topic at the wrong time
2. In
our conversations, I initiate most of the topics
3. When
we talk, I pursue my perspective on the topic rather than hers
4. When
I get upset in our exchanges, I raise my voice and put on a stern face
5. When
I'm under stress, I don't mind taking it out on her
6. When
I'm very angry, my body assumes a threatening posture towards her
7. When
I feel that she is driving me nuts, I stay away from her
8. When
I think she is not paying attention, I punish her by making her feel bad
9. When
I feel nagged, I think it is OK not to answer her
10. If
in a discussion, I feel that she is getting irrational, I put her down in my mind
11. If
I get annoyed at her, I don't mind showing it
12. I
refuse to take responsibility for her bad feelings
13. I
criticize her when I feel she deserves it
14. I
hate it when she pouts because of something insignificant I did to her
15. I
hate it the way she keeps bugging me when I won't do something her way
16. Sometimes
I think she is a bit lazy
17. I
think she tends to deliberately exaggerate our difficulties
18. I
often think it is unfair the way she mostly wants things her way
19. When
things get impossible with her, I just walk off
20. When
she leaves or comes home, she wants me to make a big fuss over her, and I hate
it
21. When
she has PMS, I try to stay out of her way
22. I
don't mind embarrassing her in public if she gets on my nerves
23. When
I drive, I don't tolerate her telling me what to do
24. I
put my loyalty for our children ahead of my loyalty for her
25. I
show my impatience when I am shopping with her and thinking she is taking too
long
26. When
I get mad at her, I stay mad longer than a few minutes
27. When
I make her cry, I wait more than five minutes to come to her rescue
28. I
let weeks go by without making her dance with me even though I know she wants
to
29. I
let days go by without giving her a shoulder and neck rub even though she would
want one
30. I
let a whole day go by without giving her at least one kiss or hug
31. I
often change topics without satisfying her
32. I
frequently conveniently forget something I agreed to do
33. I
neglect her and exploit her in many different ways
34. I
betray her in my mind by ridiculing her, belittling her, saying No to her
35. I
try to keep certain information about myself from her so she won't be able to
get to me by using it to pressure or fight me
36. I
retaliate when she's just doing her conjugial job pointing to my resistances
and lack of cooperation in conjugial unity
37. I
flatulate at my pleasure without consideration for her feelings or
sensibilities
38. I
belch aloud in her presence without excusing myself, acting like a savage
39. I
expose her to my bad breath
40. I
expose her to my body’s unpleasant acrid odors from sweating and not washing
41. I
often present my scratchy unshaven face and irritate her skin and her sense of
grace
42. I
touch her with dirty finger nails
43. I
let my nose and ear hair grow until they show despite her protest
44. I
walk around the house in dirty shorts and sneakers, not caring about what it
looks to her
45. I
leave my clothes lying around for her to pick up
46. I
never pick up after her, expecting her to do that
47. I
don't launder my dirty clothes and often don't bother thanking her for doing it
for me
48. I
am mostly oblivious to washing dirty dishes, leaving the kitchen chores to her
49. I
expect her to take care of the bills and then criticize her if she makes a
mistake or is late
50. I
don't call her when I'm late coming home, ignoring her fears and insecurity
51. I
neglect to express my appreciation for a thousand little kindnesses she does
for me all day long
52. I
don't mind staring at other women when she is with me, and I don't hide it from
her (or else: and I hide from her).
53. I
stare at other women when she is not with me, without trying to remind myself
that my wife wouldn’t like that
54. I'm
not upset if I forget to do something I promised her, and I don't try to own up
to my mistake and make her feel better about it
55. I
fail to give her dependable and regular sexual satisfaction due to my
incompetence
56. I
fail to massage her body every day, though she likes it, needs it, and feels it
as closeness
57. I
sometimes criticize her body parts
58. I
fail to play with her hair, though she told me many
times she likes that and makes her feel secure
59. I
often fail to comment appropriately on her appearance, clothes, jewelry
60. I
sometimes criticize her looks
61. I
make her wait when she calls me to the meal table
62. I
make her late when she's anxious to get there on time
63. I
often enter a room where she is and do not first acknowledge her presence
64. I
often show insufficient enthusiasm for her proposals, hints, plans
65. I
lie to her when I decide it is OK to do that
66. I
let her believe a lie sometimes to avoid an argument
67. I
don't laugh at her jokes or sense of humor
68. I
have not bothered to learn how to walk with her without bumping into her
69. I
have not bothered to learn how to drive without making her anxious about my
driving
70. I
have not bothered to learn how to find something at home without asking her
(e.g., a light bulb, a battery, a clean bed sheet, a tax record, etc.)
71. I
have not bothered to learn how to buy her tampons without having to ask her the
size
72. I
have not bothered to remember what her doctor's name is and what medicines she
takes
73. I
don't feel responsible for running out of things at house parties--that's her
problem
74. I
don't feel responsible for getting us to a social engagement on time
75. I
don't feel responsible for keeping up appropriate social appearances and do all
the expected rituals fro family and friends, like birthdays etc.--that's her
job
76. I
don't feel responsible for planning and preparing for a party we throw--that's
her job
77. I
don't feel responsible for taking care of Christmas gifts--that's her job
78. I
don't feel responsible for taking the cats to the vets for their shots, but I
complain when she doesn't
79. I
make her responsible for overdrawing our checking account
80. I
don't feel responsible for taking our clothes to the cleaners
81. I
sometimes forget our anniversary date
82. I
often discount what she says and perceives, even though I know from the
Doctrine of the Wife that she speaks and perceives from the Lord
83. I
raise my voice above hers to force her to relinquish her demand
84. I
am task-involved in discussing something with her, and pay little attention to
how she feels during the discussion, simply ignoring her frustration and
suffering
85. I
often ignore where a discussion was left off, so she gets the feeling it is
hopeless because there is no cumulative progress--so she has to start from
scratch each time
86. I
often forget things that are important to her that she doesn't want me to
forget. Further, I don't act like my forgetting is a big deal and I act like
she is a stickler or nag because she insists on remembering that stuff
87. I
don't try to find out what she thinks about many things because I don't make
the effort to find out, so that she is left with the injurious feeling that I
don't care about her and that I'm not interested in her
88. I
raise my voice at her and intimidate her physically (like throwing something,
banging on something, or grabbing her with force, etc.) so that she feels fear
from me as if I were her father or a stranger
89. I
criticize her, which makes her feel that I do not like her
90. I
don't always help her when she needs help, thus letting her figure it out for
herself--which gives her the feeling of not having a friend
91. I
have sex with her without making up for my prior insults or quarrels--this
makes her feel like a slut, but I act like it is not a big deal
92. I
use my male prerogatives to satisfy myself in sex without wanting to know or
making the effort to find out, whether she has been satisfied
93. I
rebel against her desire to know my every move, and don't tell her details
about my schedule, so she has to wonder where I am and when I'm coming home.
And worse: sometimes lying about what I do or covering it up because I want to
retain my independence, or because I decided it is not her role to keep tabs on
my comings and goings.
94. I
resent her for wanting to micro-manage my time or activities and, going along
with that resentment instead of fighting it as illegitimate and evil
95. I
involve myself with activities that exclude her automatically so she feels like
her connection to me is broken, e.g., having a long conversation with an
ex-girl friend; going to a bar with the boys and spending time there, instead
of coming home to her; spending a lot of time at some hobby in which she cannot
participate or in which I don't want her to participate; etc. etc.
96. I
embarrass her in public, or to her friends or company, or to the children;
making a scene and spoiling the decorum and mood she wants to set or maintain
97. I
keep away from her at parties and gatherings, sticking with the men, avoiding
the women's talk as disinteresting; or, if participating, then taking over and
dominating the conversation or focus
98. I
don't mind letting a whole day go by without complementing her or her
appearance or her work; taking her for granted, and making her feel that I'm
taking her for granted instead of treating her like I think she is special,
which is what she wants and needs
99. I
relentlessly pursue my topic, insisting on my opinion or judgment, suffocating
her with my dominating power and rigidity and selfishness
100. Sometimes
I act like I don't want to have sex when she hints at it
101. I
refuse to give her veto power over what I want to wear, then embarrassing her
by what I wear as if that decision is mine entirely
102. I
act disinterested in her aesthetic side so she ends up feeling neglected and
needing friends who will give her attention
103. I
leave wet towels in the bathroom for her to pick up, like she were my slave,
and then not acknowledging her charitable deed on my behalf
104. I
jab my fingers into my wife's ribs, and claim I'm just tickling, when really
it is to make her flinch and struggle to pull away—a kind of obnoxious game
violence
105. I
procrastinate in self-destructive ways (e.g. not getting forms filled out by a
deadline, not taking care of needed repairs), then act like she's responsible
for the remedies to the situation (like rushing to the post office for me, or
making the phone calls to service people)
106. (add your own)
You can see
from the inventory of evils that the items are pretty universal and apply to
every husband. You can also see that they are very specific and recur many
times in the course of a single day. You can also see that there are thousands
more that have not been written down. Many additional items are mentioned or
described in Section 1 above and in the sections on disciplines below.
11. Six-Step
Process For Removing
Our Evils
The
sequence of our moment to moment behaviors is made of three parallel or
“simultaneous” levels integrated into a smooth flow: the motive, the reasoning,
and the body’s actions. The motive is affective and resides in the will. The
reasoning is cognitive and resides in the understanding. The body’s actions is sensorimotor and physical. Every single
sensorimotor act is the effect, while the cause is the reasoning that is
selected and driven by the motive. This threefold integration of the natural
mind is like the threefold integration of the body, which corresponds to it:
the heart and the circulation of the blood (affective; the will); the lungs and
the respiratory system (cognitive; the understanding); and, the nervous system
(sensory and motor activities). Clearly then, as we perform one of the
behaviors on the inventory of evils, it is a threefold integration that allows
us to perform it: our anti-conjugial motive or affection selects and drives the
negative thinking about our wife, and the two acting to trigger the outward
nasty, hurtful, and insensitive behavior. When we think of this integration we
cannot dismiss these behaviors as relatively unimportant, due to family or cultural
habits, and other such excuses.
Many
believe that man is purified from evils by merely believing what the Church
teaches; some, that man is purified by doing good; others, that it is by
knowing, speaking and teaching such things as pertain to the Church; others, by
reading the Word and books of piety; others, by attending churches, listening
to sermons, and especially by approaching the Holy Supper; others, by
renouncing the world and devoting oneself to piety; and others, by confessing
oneself guilty of sins of all kinds; and so on.
Nevertheless,
man is in no wise purified by all these works unless he examines himself,
recognizes his sins, acknowledges them, condemns himself for them and does the
work of repentance by desisting from them; and unless he does all these things
as of himself but still in acknowledgment from the heart that he does them from
the Lord.
[2] Until
he does these things, the actions just mentioned avail nothing, for they are
merit-seeking or hypocritical; and those who do them appear in heaven in the
sight of angels like beautiful courtesans giving forth the offensive odor of
their defilement; or like ill-favored women made to appear handsome by the
application of paint; or like clowns and actors wearing masks on the stage; or
like apes in human clothing.
When,
however, men have removed their evils then the actions mentioned above are acts
of their love, and they appear as beautiful men in heaven in the sight of
angels and as their associates and companions. (DP 121)
Note well
what the Lord is telling us here. Our evils cannot be removed unless we go
through this sequence:
Examining the sequence of our daily willing
and thinking
Identifying the evil behaviors at all three
levels—what we will as our affections, what we think in our understanding, and
what we execute in our outward acts
Acknowledging that if we don’t stop doing them,
we go to hell (“condemning” oneself)
Repenting so that we can rationally see that
they are selfish and evil
Desisting so that we no longer do them—in our
willing, in our understanding, and in our outward acts
Knowing that the power to desist is from
the Lord but that nevertheless we must struggle as-of self to bring it about
This
six-step process must consciously be practiced as a daily and hourly
discipline. If this seems exaggerated to you, ask yourself, what then is going
to get rid of these evils in you? Are you relying on what the first paragraph
says in the quoted passage above? Which lists these things:
Being
purified from evils by merely believing what the Church teaches
Being
purified by doing good things (as long as the good things outweigh the bad
things)
Being
purified by knowing, speaking and teaching things that pertain to the Church
Being
purified by reading the Writings and books of piety
Being
purified by worship in the Church (listening to sermons and approaching the
Holy Supper)
Being
purified by confessing oneself guilty of sins of all kinds
These are
not going to get rid of your evils or neutralize them somehow. Only cooperation
as-of self in getting rid of them will achieve the process, and without
undergoing this process there can be no salvation and life in heaven. There are
no exceptions! And how can the process go on if you don’t begin it and get it
going? And is it not a most dangerous evil to postpone the beginning of it?
Clearly then, you must make the decision to begin today, now at this hour!
He who
leads a life of piety, and not at the same time a life of charity, does not
worship God. It is true, he thinks of God, yet he does not think from God, but
from himself; for he constantly thinks of himself, and not at all of the neighbour (NJHD 124)
Believing
that you do not need to rid yourself of these evils in relation to your wife is
called here a life of piety that is not at the same time in a life of charity.
For charity to your neighbor refers to conjugial love to your wife, since this
is the love that is to be placed above all other loves (xx).
God is
loved when a man lives according to His commandments; and the neighbour is
loved, when a man performs uses. In order therefore that a man may receive the
life of heaven it is absolutely necessary that he live in the world, and engage
in its various duties and vocations. (NJHD 126)
I did not
struggle with my daily evils for many years. When my wife brought them forward
I told her no one is perfect. When she asked me whether I think I can go to
heaven with them, I replied that eventually I will get rid of them. When she
pointed out that I do not know how long I have on this earth, I became anxious,
but I still wanted to postpone getting rid of them. It was too much work, too
soon, I felt. I can take it little by little, with more comfort, so the process
doesn’t interfere with my pious activities studying the Writings and writing
about it. But the passage above, and many others like it, should have told me
that I do not love the Lord unless I obey His Commandments, and He commanded
that we as-of self get rid of our evils so that we may be regenerated. And
neither did I love my wife who is my neighbor in the house because I was
willing to subject her to continued hurt from my evils. And neither did I love
uses because loving self, willing to live with one’s evil affections, is not a
use but contrary to use.
Hereditary
evil derives its origin from everyone's parents and parents' parents,
or from grandparents and ancestors successively. Every evil which they have
acquired by actual life, even so that by frequent use or habit it has become
like a nature, is derived into the children, and becomes hereditary to them,
together with that which had been implanted in the parents from grandparents
and ancestors. The hereditary evil from the father is more inward, and the
hereditary evil from the mother is more outward. The former cannot be easily
rooted out, but the latter can. When man is being regenerated, the hereditary
evil enrooted from his nearest parents is plucked up by the roots; but with
those who are not being regenerated, or who cannot be regenerated, it remains.
(AC 4317)
We cannot
be regenerated in the abstract or in the general. Only in the
particular. And if we are regenerated in the particular, then we will
have been regenerated in the general. Every particular evil in our affections
is a spiritual fiber that lives on forever, unless rooted out by the Lord. And
this rooting out or purification process is performed by the Lord—but only to
the extent we cooperate, that is, we make lists of our evils, monitor their
occurrence, and make a conscious effort to desist from it because it is
contrary to the heavenly mind we must have to live in heaven. We have numerous
such evils that we inherit and many more that we add prior to our reformation
when we lead life in spiritual unconsciousness. Since there are these many
thousands of evil affections we hold on to and enjoy, it takes years and years
to go through them one by one. Clearly we cannot afford to postpone the process
for one more day. And it is begun, we cannot afford to waste a single day in
which we do not identify a bunch of them, and struggle consciously against
them, thanking the Lord for supplying the power. And He is always willing, if
only we are.
But what
hereditary evil is, few know; it is believed to consist in doing evil; but it
consists in willing and hence thinking evil; hereditary evil being in the will
itself and in the thought thence derived; and being the very conatus or
endeavor that is therein, and which adjoins itself even when the man is doing
what is good. It is known by the delight that is felt when evil befalls
another. This root lies deeply hidden, for the very inward form that receives
from heaven (that is, through heaven from the Lord) what is good and true, is
depraved, and so to speak, distorted; so that when good and truth flow in from
the Lord, they are either reflected, or perverted, or suffocated. (AC 4317:[5])
Once again
you can see from this passage that doing evil is the resultant effect of
willing evil and the thinking derived from it. And willing evil is a love of
the infernal or lust. It is something delightful to us. And note this very
important statement: that the evil love in our willing “adjoins itself” to the
good we are also willing, and therefore, corrupts it. The good we are doing,
and the uses we are engaged in, are not genuine good because the evil we are
also permitting in us, remains and corrupts
unconsciously. Therefore we have no choice but to monitor our willing and
thinking hour by hour and to go through the sex-step process outlined above.
12. The
Marriage Of Good And
Truth
Regeneration is the psychobiological
activity of the Lord in our mind by which He conjoins His good to the truth we
take in from His Word. When good is conjoined to truth in our mind, it is called a “marriage,”
as in this passage:
There is,
however, a marriage of good and truth in the cause, and there is a marriage of
good and truth from the cause in the effect. The marriage of good and truth in
the cause is a marriage of the will and the understanding, that is, of love and
wisdom.
There is
such a marriage in everything that a man wills and thinks, and in his
consequent conclusions and purposes.
This
marriage enters into the effect and, indeed, produces it; but in the process
good and truth appear to be distinct, because what is simultaneous then produces
what is successive. For instance, when a man wills and thinks about being fed,
clothed, having a dwelling place, conducting any business, performing any work,
or engaging in social intercourse, he first wills and thinks about these
things, or forms his conclusions and purposes, simultaneously; but when he has
reduced into effects what he has willed and thought, the one follows after the
other; nevertheless, they continue to make one in his will and thought.
In these
effects, uses pertain to love or good, while the means employed to furnish the
uses pertain to the understanding or to truth. Anyone may confirm these general
truths by particular illustrations, provided he clearly perceives what has
relation to the good of love and what to the truth of wisdom, and also how
these are related in the cause and also in the effect. (DP 12)
This says
that the threefold integration of our behavior is called by the Lord a
“marriage.” The outward act involving the physical body is nothing but an
automatic effect of the marriage of our will with the understanding. In other
words, every act, at both the macro and micro levels, is the child or offspring
of our willing and thinking. This is the marriage the Lord is talking about to
us. The Lord’s intent is to create a celestial marriage in our mind in order
that we may become angels—for this is His utmost desire, as He often reveals it
in all Three Testaments of His Word. But in the Third Testament of His Second
Coming He can at last reveal the rational principles by which He governs the
universe and our regeneration. And so it has been amply shown in many places in
the Writings that affections in our will remain forever because they are
spiritual fibers, and as such immortal and indestructible. And yet the Lord has
provided that He can uproot them, lay them aside so they can have no influence
on the new will He gives us. But this requires our active and willing
cooperation, and He has explained in the Writings what this cooperation must
consist of.
We have
been discussing this cooperation process throughout this book, and especially
in Volume 2. The Lord calls it a marriage between the good He gives us in our
new will and the truth we acquire in our understanding from His Word, in the
First Education of the letter, and then in the Second Education of the spirit,
when we undergo reformation in adult life (AE 803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]). Now
we can understand this process at first in the general only, and then after
regeneration is on its way, we can understand it in a particular way. And this
particular understanding refers to the thousands of acts of willing and
thinking we do in an hour and in a day. These particular acts must be witnessed
and condemned, ad discussed above. The self-witnessing of our willing and
thinking is our reformation and our regeneration, therefore our enlightenment
and salvation, but only when put up the inner struggle to inhibit them, to
desist from willing and thinking all the old things that must be uprooted by
the Lord. And He does it to the extent that we cooperate willingly and
effectively, that is, sincerely.
The
inventory of evils in our willing and thinking can only be identified and built
up when we monitor our willing and thinking all day long, hour by hour. In the
Lord’s providence, to which I can testify, it is a task that is most arduous at
first, but after just a few years of practice, or three to four thousand days,
it no longer feels arduous, and then we bask in the bliss of understanding the
Lord’s Word that His Yoke is easy (xx). And we continue our struggle until the
end, but we have our love in it.
… the Lord continually flows in with man with good, and in
good with truth; but man either receives or does not receive; if he receives,
it is well with him; but if he does not receive, it is ill with him. If when he
does not receive he feels some anxiety (here meant by "distress of
soul"), there is hope that be may be reformed; but if he has no feeling of
anxiety the hope vanishes.
With every
man there are two spirits from hell, and two angels from heaven; for man being
born in sins cannot possibly live unless on one side he communicates with hell,
and on the other with heaven; all his life is thence.
When man is
grown up and begins to rule himself from himself, that is, when he seems to
himself to will and to act from his own judgment, and to think and to conclude
concerning the things of faith from his own understanding, if he then betakes
himself to evils, the two spirits from hell draw near, and the two angels from
heaven withdraw a little; but if he betakes himself to good, the two angels
from heaven draw near, and the two spirits from hell are removed.
[2] If
therefore when a man betakes himself to evils, as is the case with many in
youth, he feels any anxiety when he reflects upon his having done what is evil,
it is a sign that he will still receive influx through the angels from heaven,
and it is also a sign that he will afterward suffer himself to be reformed; but
if when he reflects upon his having done what is evil, he has no anxious
feeling, it is a sign that he is no longer willing to receive influx through
the angels from heaven, and it is also a sign that he will not afterward suffer
himself to be reformed.
… for with those who are then in anxiety there is an internal
acknowledgment of evil, which when recalled by the Lord becomes confession, and
finally repentance. (AC 5470)
You can
clearly see from this passage that reformation occurs only in adult life, and
only if all along, in our youth, we allowed our conscience to survive. For there are many who squelch, subdue, and eventually silence all
conscience within them from the Lord. This is the anxiety we feel when
we observe our evil willing and thinking. The anxiety is the consequence of
allowing the angels to stay near us in our decisions and reflections. In this
way we avoid giving ourselves totally over to the evil spirits and creating a
permanent association with hell that later remains. The passage also shows that reformation in
adult life depends on “the things of faith in the understanding,” which means,
the Doctrine we take up from the literal of the Writings. This Doctrine in the
understanding then is made spiritual by the Lord who opens our spiritual mind
to the extent that we cooperate. The passage also shows how important it is to
maintain a good education and social atmosphere for the youth who are in our
charge. This means teaching them about how to resist the nonduality of culture
and science in their social environment.
It is known
that faith from love is the essential means of salvation, and thus is the
principle of the doctrine of the church; but since it is important to know how
a man can be in such enlightenment as to learn the truths that must constitute
his faith and in such affection as to do the goods that must constitute his
love, and thus can know whether his faith is a belief in truth and his love a
love of good, this shall be told in its proper order, as follows: (AE 803)
This
passage (more is quoted below) outlines the details of how we can cooperate in
our regeneration by the Lord, for without this cooperation the Lord cannot
regenerate. Note that we cannot be regenerated without knowing spiritual truths
by enlightenment from the Lord. We cannot obtain spiritual truths from self or
from the literal of the Writings, as shown in several places above. Spiritual
truths only come to us by means of enlightenment from the Lord when we read the
Writings and apply its Doctrine to our willing and thinking. Note also that we
cannot cooperate in our regeneration by means of the spiritual truths we
acquire but only by means of the affections we have for them. When we have an
affection or love for the spiritual truths that we receive by enlightenment,
then and only then, do we have the motive “to do the goods that must constitute
our love.”
13. Shunning
Sins, Doing Good, And Performing
Uses
How do we
know whether the affection we have for doing good is
genuine, that is from the Lord and not from self? For both are possible! We can
have a love for doing good to others and for
performing uses that is from self, not from the Lord. That is, we can love to
do good and perform uses for selfish reasons such as
reputation, gain, or merit. This is not from the Lord, hence its is not doing good actually, and it is not performing uses actually. Hence
the Lord is giving us methods by which to know ourselves, whether we do good and perform uses form self or from Him. Several are
outlined in the continuation of the passage (AE 803). The numbers are in the
original.
(1) Let him
read the Word every day, one or two chapters, and learn from a master and from
preachings the dogmas of his religion … and that the Lord is the God of heaven
and earth, … that the Word is holy, that there is a
heaven and a hell, and that there is a life after death. (AE 803)
For the
(2) Let him
learn from the Word, from a master, and from preachings, what works are sins,
and that they are especially adulteries, thefts, murders, false witness, and
the others mentioned in the Decalogue; likewise that lascivious and obscene
thoughts are also adulteries, that frauds and illicit gains are also thefts,
that hatred and revenge are also murders, and that lies and blasphemies are
also false witness; and so on. Let him learn all these things from childhood to
youth. (AE 803)
This
specifies what we are to learn in our First Education about the literal of the
Writings: namely: which of our loves and deeds are sins. They include outward
acts (“thefts, murders, false witness”), acts of thinking something
(“lascivious and obscene thoughts”), and acts of loving something (“hatred and
revenge”). Sins are therefore in our willing, in our thinking, and in our
outward acts.
(3) When
man begins to think for himself, which is the case after he has grown up, it
must be to him the first and chief thing to refrain from doing evils for the
reason that they are sins against the Word, thus against God, and for the
reason that if he does them he will gain, not life eternal, but hell; and
afterwards as he grows up and becomes old he must shun them as damned, and must
turn away from them in thought and intention. (AE 803)
Note that
we don’t begin to think from ourself until young adulthood when we are
considered “grown up”—in today’s times and culture this means in our late
twenties and early thirties. Even if you are born in the
But in
order to so refrain from them and shun and turn away from them, he must pray to
the Lord for help. The sins he must refrain from and must shun and turn away
from are chiefly adulteries, frauds, illicit gains, hatreds, revenges, lies,
blasphemies, and elation of mind. (AE 803)
Note that
we must acknowledge that it is the Lord who is withholding us from evils but
that we are to struggle as-of self to do this. The Lord cannot remove our evils
unless we struggle as-of self to do this. Note also that these evils are in our
behaviors and acts at all three levels, outward and inward. To will evil is an
act. To think something obscene is an act. These inward acts are just as
necessary to remove as the outward act. Generally in society, from a social and
legal point of view, outward acts are more important to regulate, while inward
acts are left to one’s freedom. But spiritually, the reverse is true. Inward
acts are more important because the rule over the outward acts. “Hatreds” are
acts of hating; blasphemies can be outward or inward acts, or both. Adulteries
can be merely cognitive acts, like enjoying watching obscene movies or enjoying
daydreaming about sexual acts that are forbidden or scandalous when performed
outwardly. Illicit gains include the thought of cheating but not doing it out
of fear of repercussions. Note that it is
not the occurrence of these thoughts or feelings that is
the sin, but our approving of them, that is, not shunning them.
(4) So far
as man detests these evils because they are opposed to the Word, and thence
opposed to God, so far there is granted him communication with the Lord, and conjunction is effected with heaven. (AE 803)
Conjunction
with heaven and the Lord opens our spiritual mind by which we are regenerated.
Note that this conjunction or communication only takes place when we detest our
evils of willing and thinking. And further, to detest them because they are
against the Writings, therefore against the Lord Himself.
For the
Lord enters, and with the Lord heaven enters, as sins are removed; since these
and their falsities are the sole hindrances. The reason is because man has been
placed in the midst between heaven and hell, wherefore hell acts from the one
side, and heaven from the other; therefore so far as evils that are from hell
are removed, so far goods from heaven enter; for the Lord says:
Behold I
stand at the door and knock; if anyone hear and open the door, I will come in
to him (Rev. 3:20).
(AE 803)
The Lord
desires nothing more than to grant us conjunction with Himself
and heaven. But it says that sins hinder. He cannot enter until He removes our
sins, and He cannot remove our sins until we allow it, for this is given to us
by creation. Without this freedom we have of not allowing the Lord to remove
our sins, we could never be regenerated and saved (xx). And so the Lord
guarantees that we retain this spiritual freedom forever. Our spiritual freedom
is achieved not from ourselves, but solely from being in balance between good
forces from the angels and evil forces from the devils with which everyone is
associated by the Lord so that they may have freedom of choice. And when sins
are removed, “goods from heaven enter.” This refers to our new willing and
thinking after reformation.
But if man
refrains from doing these evils for any other reason than because they are
sins, and are opposed to the Word and because thence to God, no conjunction of
heaven with him is effected, because his refraining is from self, and not from
the Lord. The Lord is in the Word, even so that He is called the Word (John
1:1-4), because the Word is from Him; consequently the conjunction of heaven
with the man of the church is by means of the Word, as may be seen in the work
on Heaven and Hell ... (AE 803)
By means of
the Writings we have conjunction with the Lord because He is His Own Word and
Divine Truth. This conjunction is only in proportion to sins being removed by
means of the spiritual truths of doctrine from the Writings. If we only have
the literal truths of the Writings, the Lord cannot enter, cannot remove sins,
cannot regenerate us and save us. And the
Lord gives us the spiritual truths within the letter to the extent that we
detest our sins because they are contrary to the literal of the Writings.
(5) So far, then, as man detests these sins so far good
affections enter. Then so far as he detests adulteries so far chastity enters;
so far as he detests frauds and unlawful gains so far sincerity and justice
enter; so far as he detests hatred and revenge so far charity enters; so far as
he detests lies and blasphemies so far truth enters; and so far as he detests
elation of mind so far humility before God and love of the neighbor as oneself
enter; and so on. From this it follows that to shun evils is to do goods. (AE
803)
14. To Detest Evils And Sins
To shun the
evils within our willing and thinking is to detest them. To detest our evils is
to do good from the Lord. To do good from the Lord is to be saved. Everything about our regeneration depends
therefore on our willingness to detest our evils. This willingness is at
first extremely difficult to muster because we love our sins and we are
unwilling to detest them. Hence we experience spiritual temptations which are
states of despair and inward suffering and dread. The inward pain is felt on
account of our realization that we must give up our delights of sin because
they are contrary to heaven. It appears to us in those states that we are going
to lose all the value of living that makes it worthwhile. But after the
temptation process is over, the Lord gives us inward peace (xx) and the
strength to detest our sins. Nor can this be accomplished generally, once and
for all initiation or baptism, but gradually over time, after many many
temptations in everyday situations over and over again, each time with a slight
but significant variation. This is what we must be willing to go through.
(6) So far
as a man is in these good affections he is led by the Lord and not by self; and
so far as he acts from them so far he does what is good, because he does this
from the Lord and not from self; and then he acts from chastity, from sincerity
and justice, from charity, from truth, in humility before God; and from these
no one can act from self. (AE 803)
Our goal in
regeneration is to lose self and gain the Lord! And when we have gained the
Lord we have immeasurable improved our condition of life, our happiness, our
fulfillment, as well as the happiness of others who benefit from our love of
uses, and especially our wife, for the greatest of all uses and all happinesses
is the use of conjugial union. Such are we from creation, that we complete
ourselves as perfect human beings in our heaven, in the conjugial union, while
all else is meager in comparison to this human state.
(7) The
spiritual affections that are granted by the Lord to him who is in them and who
acts from them, are the affection of knowing and understanding the truths and
goods of heaven and the church, together with the affection of willing and
doing them; also the affection of combating with zeal against falsities and
evils and dispersing them, both with himself and with others. From this man has
faith and love, and from this he has intelligence and wisdom. (AE 803)
Where do we
get intelligence and wisdom, the two things men long for and in which they feel
their fullness of being? This passage tells us that it is from faith and love
that we get intelligence and wisdom. If we pursue intelligence and wisdom from
our self-intelligence and self-motivation, we only get stupidity and
foolishness, no matter how learned and famous we become in our generation. But
if we pursue faith and love, then we get intelligence and wisdom. And what is
faith and love that we are to pursue? How do we pursue them? It says in the
passage that we get faith and love by doing these two things: (1) “combating
with zeal” the many evil affections in our will; (2)
acquiring Doctrine from the Writings in our understanding (“truths and goods of
heaven”) to guide and direct our combats against our evil affections. From
these two actions we have faith and love that gives us the intelligence and
wisdom that is the fullness of our being as a man.
(8) Thus
and in no other way is man reformed; and so far as he knows and believes
truths, and wills and does them, so far is he regenerated, and from natural
becomes spiritual. The like is true of his faith and his love. (AE 803)
The faith
and love we have from our willingness to undergo reformation and regeneration,
is a spiritual faith and a spiritual love. These two things cannot exist in the
natural mind. The spiritual mind must first be opened by the Lord so that
spiritual faith and love can exist within us, within our natural mind that is otherwise
empty and infernal. We become spiritual when our spiritual mind is opened by
the Lord. This is a psychobiological process of growing spiritual fibers that
coil in a special way and form our spiritual-body which we need to live in
heaven (xx). There is no other way that the Lord has provided for our
regeneration. He uproots the old evil affections in proportion to how much new
spiritual fiber we allow Him to grow in us (xx). If the Lord should implant
spiritual fibers at a greater rate than He uproots the old depraved fibers,
what do you think would happen? We would suffer the agony of death and be
destroyed forever. Therefore it says that we are regenerated “so far as we know
and believe truths.” To “know truths” refers to our study of the Writings and
extracting Doctrine for ourselves. To “believe truths” refers to compelling
ourselves in our willing and thinking all day long, to conform to the Doctrine
in our understanding.
[3] If
evils have not been removed because they are sins nothing that a man thinks,
speaks, wills, and does, is good or true before God, however it may appear as
if good and true before the world. The reason is that they are not from the
Lord but from man, since it is the love of the man and of the world from which
they are, and which is in them. Most people at this day believe that they will
come into heaven if they have faith, live piously, and do goods; and yet they
do not turn away from evils because they are sins, consequently they either do
them or believe them to be allowable; and those who believe them to be
allowable do them when opportunity is given. (AE 803)
This
passage refers to a most dangerous and pernicious nonduality that can destroy
our regeneration and spiritual life. It is the equity model of good and evil.
It is the belief that our good traits can outweigh our bad traits, and since no
one is perfect, everybody has flaws which must hen be
balanced as against their good. In relationships this belief expresses itself
variously as “I am the way I am. Don’t try to change me. Take me as I am if you
love me. Ignore my weaknesses, focus on my strengths. Nobody is perfect. Who
can be the one to throw the first stone. Who is
blameless? Who doesn’t have faults? It’s human. Etc.”
(See the discussion on Unconditional love in Chapter 6, Section 7.) But this
and many other passages teach the contrary, that there is no compromise or
equity or balance between good and evil loves. They are in a discrete duality.
Every single evil affection must be uprooted and not a single one can be taken with us
into heaven. This can only be done when
we shun our evils as sins. Why? Because, as it says, if we shun them for
reasons of reputation, gain, or merit we shun them from self, and not from the
Lord, all things from self are infernal (xx). But when we shun our evil
affections and delights because they are sins, we shun them from the Lord since
sin is an idea that is connected directly to the Lord: we sin against Him when
we love our evil delights! And this makes His goods unavailable to us, as a
result of which we enter the life of misery from which we can never escape to
eternity.
But let
them know that their faith is not faith, that their pious things are not pious,
and that their goods are not goods; for they flow from the impurities that lie
inwardly concealed with man; and externals derive everything that they are from
internals. For the Lord says:
Thou blind
Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the
outside may become clean also (Matt.
There is no
equity in spiritual things, no continuum between evil and good, no compromise, but only absolute truth and absolute good
distinct from all evil and falsity. Religious worship and piety are nothing
when we fail to undergo reformation and then regeneration. The “inside of the
cup” refers to our evil delights and their many false beliefs. The “outside of
the cup” refers to our religious and pious behaviors, thoughts, and prayers. It
says that these are not pious and not good unless we are sincerely struggling
against our evil delights and false beliefs. “Sincerely” struggling against
them means acquiring effective techniques to combat them rather than leave it
up to circumstance, hope, promise, or wish fulfillment. It requires a conscious
focus and discipline on a daily and hourly basis to be effective and real. Do
you not agree? The shunning of our evil affections as sins against the Lord
must be a forefront activity for our day, every day, don’t you think? How else
can we get rid of each particular and specific delight and belief or idea?
There is no general forgiveness and dispensation or propitiation of our evil
attachments (xx). It’s a matter of a psychobiological gardening—the uprooting
of each bad plant and the implanting of a new plant in its place. No other
method has been provided by the Lord from creation! This He repeats to us man
times in all Three Testaments.
From this
it can now be seen that if a man were able to fulfill all things of the law, if
he should give much to the poor, if he should do good to the fatherless and the
widow, and if he should also give bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty,
take in the strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and go to them that
are bound in prison, if he should earnestly preach the Gospel, convert the
Gentiles, frequent temples, listen devoutly to preachings, observe the
sacrament of the Supper often every year, spend his time in prayer, and other
things; and his internal has not been purified from hatred and revenge, from
craftiness and malice, from insincerity and injustice, from the filthy delight
of adultery, from the love of self and the consequent love of rule, and the
pride of self-intelligence, from contempt of others in comparison with oneself,
and from the other evils and their falsities; still all these works would be
hypocritical and from the man himself, and not from the Lord. (AE 803)
The Lord
makes a wonderfully helpful list of our evil delights—the spiritual fibers He
must uproot for us, if only we Let Him. The first grouping is about religious,
pious, humanitarian, and “spiritual” behaviors that are internally hypocritical
because they depend and live from equity theory, or the cherished idea that our
good traits and deeds outweigh our bad, so that we don’t have to struggle so
hard against some of the evil delights we are unwilling to give up. This is the
first grouping of our evil affections and thoughts that lead to damnation. The
second grouping refers to the evil affections that we are unwilling to give up,
that we are willing to keep: “hatred and revenge, craftiness and malice,
insincerity and injustice, the filthy delight of adultery, the love of self and
the consequent love of rule, and the pride of self-intelligence, from contempt
of others in comparison with oneself.” Keep a list of these things and use it
to organize the inventory of evils discussed above. These are the chief enemies
of reformation and regeneration.
And yet
these same works, when the internal has been purified, are all good, because
they are from the Lord with man, and since the man is in the faith and in the
love of doing these works he will do them as a matter of course. (AE 803)
There is no
merit in doing good from the Lord. Doing good is to detest our evil affections, as discussed above.
But note that it is not possible to do good except from the Lord, which for the
This has
been proved to me by a thousand examples in the spiritual world. I have there
heard that it has been granted to many to recall the actions of their life in
the world, and to enumerate the goods they had done; but when their internal
was opened it was found to be full of every evil and the falsity therefrom; and
it was then disclosed to them that the goods they had enumerated had been done
from self, because for the sake of self and the world, and that they were full
of evils from their interiors; and on this account they appeared either as if
scorched with fire, or as if sooty. (AE 803)
The Lord
has provided through the Writings all that the
Chapter 2, Section 4
4. The surrendered wife vs. the
surrendered husband
The
Doctrine of the Wife is a religious and spiritual discipline for husbands. The
wife has no actual power to control her husband. The main principle in the
doctrine of the Wife is Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that
husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
The
initiative here is in the husband. It his voluntary decision to learn a new
thing: to learn to love acting from his wife more than from himself. What
happens when he does not take this initiative and actually opposes it
ferociously? After all, this is the most common scenario with husbands: they
oppose their own reformation, and by this, they oppose their wife’s desires and
requests regarding his conduct and personality. If the wife then continues to take
the initiative, the husband knocks her down, and the marriage turns into a
hell. This is the theme of a new movement among wives started by Laura Doyle
through her book known as “The
Surrendered Wife.”
Here are
excerpts from the Introduction of the book:
Why Would a Woman Surrender?
When I was newly married at 22, I had no idea I would ever
call myself a surrendered wife. At that time, I would have been repulsed by the
whole idea.
(…)
At first I treated him with respect and kindness because I
was so impressed with him. Then, as his imperfections grew more familiar and
glaring, I began correcting him as a way of trying to help him improve. From my
point of view, if he would just be more ambitious at work, more romantic at
home and clean up after himself, everything would be fine. I told him as much.
Needless to say, he didn't respond well to this. In fact,
the more I tried to control him, the more strained things got. While my
intentions were good, I was clearly on the road to marital hell.
(…)
None of us feels good about
ourselves when we're nagging, critical or controlling. I certainly didn't. The
tone of my voice alone would make me cringe with self-recrimination. Through
surrendering, you will find the courage to gradually stop indulging in these unpleasant
behaviors and replace them with dignified ones.
(…)
There was no single moment when the
surrendered light bulb went off in my head. Instead, I changed little by
little. I experimented, first by keeping my mouth shut and sometimes even my
eyes when John drove. When we arrived in one piece, I decided that I would
always trust him behind the wheel, no matter how strong my urge to control.
(…)
We were intimate again. Instead of
keeping a running list of complaints about how childish and irresponsible he
was, I felt genuine gratitude and affection for John. We were sharing our
responsibilities without blame or resentment. Instead of bickering all the
time, we were laughing together, holding hands, dancing in the kitchen and
enjoying an electrifying closeness that we hadn't had for years.
(…)
The basic principles of a surrendered wife are that she:
Relinquishes inappropriate control of her husband
Respects her husband's thinking
Receives his gifts graciously and expresses gratitude for
him
Expresses what she wants without trying to control him
(…)
If you're a wife who feels
overwhelmed, lonely and responsible for everything, this book is perfect for
you. If you can admit that you frequently or sometimes control, nag, or
criticize your husband, then it is up to you and you alone to take the actions
described here to restore intimacy to your marriage and dignity and peace to
yourself. … The point of my journey was to give up controlling behavior, and to
look inward instead of outward.
(…)
1. Do not surrender to a man who is physically abusive to
you.
2. Do not surrender to a man who is physically abusive to
your children
3. Do not surrender to a man who has an active addiction.
4. Do not surrender to a man who is chronically unfaithful.
(…)
If your husband doesn't fall into
one of the categories above, then you are married to one of the good guys. Not
a perfect husband, but one who is capable of loving you and cherishing you one
who has the potential to help you feel great about yourself and your marriage.
(…)
I know what I'm suggesting is difficult. I know it doesn't
seem fair. It didn't seem fair to me that I had to work so hard to change while
my husband continued to sit around watching television, but your husband will
have to make big changes too. … He will have to listen to his own inner voice
of conviction instead of relying on yours to tell him when he's not doing
something right. He will need to use his own mind to figure out what's best for
his family rather than reluctantly carrying out your subtle or not-so-subtle
orders.
(Laura Doyle. “The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to
finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with a Man” 2001 on the Web at
www.surrenderedwife.com/chapterone.html Accessed June 2002)
This new
philosophy is being acclaimed by many wives whose marriage became more
satisfactory when they stopped trying to “control” their husbands and learned
to act like a “surrendered wife.” The lesson I see in this is that a man has
more power to make his wife miserable than the other way round. The
“surrendered” wife gives up two things. One is her participation in negative
interactions that are used by the husband to create a hell for her. This is no
doubt a good thing for her and for their relationship. The other thing she
gives up is her participation in initiating his reformation. This is not a good
thing.
The wife
has an essential role to play in her husband reformation. He is dependent on
his wife for undergoing reformation and he is rarely able to do it on his own.
The examples Laura Doyle gives about her “control” attempts include all the
things that he should be listening to her, but refuses. It is his refusal,
attitude, and punishing reaction that turns her
interventions into “nagging” and “controlling.” She is only courageously
insisting that he change his irresponsible, bad behaviors that are abusive,
rejecting, and non-cooperative. The wife’s motive is not “control.” This is a
basic misunderstanding of the surrendered wife proposal. This notion assumes
that what the wife is trying to do is to control her husband. This is a
misconception that men have foisted on women so that the men won’t have to
change. Anytime a man thinks that his wife is “nagging” him or trying to
“control” him, it is most likely not so. This may happen, but it is rare with
the vast majority of cases. Wives are more honest and more skilled in
relationships. They are given perception about what conduct in their husbands
is injurious to their intimacy and love.
This
motivation ought to be honored by the husband. And when it is, the husband does
not feel “nagged” or “controlled” but helped along the way of reformation and
regeneration. If the “surrendered wife” surrenders her role in his reformation,
the external marriage may improve, as Doyle testifies, and others who have
followed her. But the inner union is made impossible. For that union to
develop, the husband must accept his wife’s role in changing him.
1. The Surrendered Husband is The Ideal Elevated Man
Men are
unwilling to give up the male prerogatives or perks that society bestows upon
them as a right and privilege for being a male man. I received this idea from
childhood culture. My parents said it was better to have boys than girls. Boys
carry the name and the blood line. Boys grow up to be men with power, fame, and
riches. Girls were nice, but they were weak and you had to spend more effort at
keeping them unspoiled so a man would want them. They also cost you a lot of
money when you give them in marriage. Boys can protect you and take care of
you. Yes, boys are trouble sometimes, but you have to give them a lot of slack.
Etc. As a result, I was instructed by my parents before marrying that I be sure
to “train” my bride right from the start to be subservient to me. She has to
follow your word. A man must wear the pants and make the decisions. She has to
serve you, cook for you, wash your clothes, look after you properly, like you
deserve. And you have to let her know you’re expecting her to look fresh and
nice for your, when you come home, anytime. She shouldn’t let herself go. You
have to demand respect from her. Then she’ll love you and she’ll be happy, and
she’ll take care of your children too. How astonishing to me now, as I list
these factual realities of cultural gender arrogance.
The truth
in the Writings has now been revealed: It is the opposite! It is the feminine
perception and the feminine intelligence and the feminine beauty that is
superior relative to men (xx). And so it is the feminization of marriage that
sanctifies it and makes it a spiritual and whole (see Chapter 9 Section 1
above). One might wonder: Does this mean that it is the man who has to
surrender to the wife—THE SURRENDERED HUSBAND? This would not be far from the
truth, as long as you make sure to include the idea that it is another way of
saying Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that
husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
This is
what makes the difference between subjugation, servitude, and dominion. Only
love can fend away these inherited enemies. Rule 1 doesn’t say “Husbands must
obey their wives.” Neither does it say “Husbands should listen to their wives.”
It says: “Husbands are to love acting from the wife more than from self.”
If a
husband behaves in a way that is pleasing to his wife, he is pleasing her, even
if internally he feels emotional conflict and stress. This is the first step of
learning to live by Rule 1. It is loving your wife
more than loving yourself. This type of love is called celestial, and is
the highest human love (xx). If this love is elevated by the husband to the
highest position in his hierarchy of loves, he will behave to please her, and
this always means firstly, to avoid displeasing her. Eventually he will no
longer feel the inner conflict of rebellion when he is pleasing her. He will
then act to please her, and love it. From then on he lives by Rule 1, the
celestial life on earth. He is conjoined as one from within with his wife. Of
the two, they make a one—the conjoint self (see Chapter 9 Section 4
below).
This is the “surrendered husband”—the
elevated true man of creation, who loves the feminine sphere of his wife’s
affections more than the masculine sphere of his own affections.
The
“surrendered wife” is the man’s exploitation of the woman, as a result of which
he fails to attain his true self, the self into whose perfection he was created.
A man can reach his perfection in the state of being an elevated husband, which
is defined as a husband who has learned to love acting from his wife’s
affections more than from his own. The man is then a celestial mind, conjoint
to the wife from within. Her life is his life because affections is nothing
else than life itself in human beings. He then acts from his wife within him.
Note how different this is from acting from the wife from without!
If a man
acts from his wife from without, he is not a man but a zombie under the woman’s
control. She thereby becomes infernal, and he as well, because only voluntary
submission can create the zombie relationship with someone. The Lord guarantees
freedom of choice moment by moment for every individual in the universe. If a
husband becomes a zombie, he maintains himself in that state voluntarily, by
his own falsifications of truth or reality. This is acting from the wife from
without—she is standing there, with her hands on the hips, staring him down,
and giving him orders to prove to herself that she can dominate him. This is an
infernal couple. But it’s altogether
different when the husband acts from the wife from within.
The
expression “to act from the wife from within” means that the husband loves her affections
and appropriates them to himself. Now the wife’s affections are within him. Now
he acts from the wife’s affections from within. This kind of action is possible only from love of her affections.
And what is loved, one chooses freely and voluntarily, in freedom (xx).
2. The Self-Entrapment of Male Intelligence
I agree on
this with Laura Doyle and the many enthusiasts she seems to have among married
women: It’s far better to be treated in a civilized way by one’s husband than
in an abusive way.
What a
relief these women feel when their man suddenly stops the heavy handed
punishing treatments and abuses, verbal and physical, social and psychological.
But he still holds it on top of his wife’s head, like a sword of Damocles,
ready to fall on her head if she should step over a line that he defines.
This is an
external improvement, like what the citizens experience when a dictator of a
country passes away and is replaced by a democracy. Yes, being treated with due
human rights is a start. Look what it took for the man to stop making a hell
for his wife: Her surrender! He is now back with his
male privileges and prerogatives! She is now treated a little better, but at
what ultimate cost?
The wife’s
surrender in order to achieve peace, romance, and respect is similar to the
psychology and politics of blackmail, family style. The man says to his wife: “I
will stop abusing you and neglecting you if you turn yourself into a
surrendered wife.” And she has no choice but to accept, or else see no end to
the abuse. She has no recourse because the man she is tied to by external
marriage bonds, has closed off the interior
relationship between them. Yet the interior marriage relationship is the wife’s
life roots, the wellspring of her happiness and fullness of being. This is why
she is married: To unite herself from within—feelings, thoughts, futures. She is the genuine married partner while he is the
bogus husband, one who does not treat her lovingly, but tortures her instead.
She feels like a lamb chained to a wolf who at any moment he wishes, can pounce
on her and annihilate her lifeline.
The husband
sees himself adjoined to her in the
exterior physical and social domains. She sees herself conjoined to his interior psychological and emotional self, his
hopes and aspirations, his dreams and perfectionism, his intelligence and power
of reasoning. She loves all of these because they are his, and unites herself to them, which means, she takes these things within
herself as she takes his semen into her birth canal. But the husband in
contrast spews out his wife’s affections and walls himself off to be sure they
don’t get to him. He will not appropriate them. His wife’s affections are his
pet peeves, the bane of his marriage. It is on account of her affections that
he denigrates her, calling his wife a nag, the moment her affections touch him.
He acts like he wants to shake them off, like so many worms clinging to his
body. He hates conjugial love because he is born with hell within him.
And hell
hates nothing more fiercely an insanely than the idea of conjugial love. When an
infernal sees a an angel couple, and receive a whiff
of their conjugial sphere, they fly into a maniacal frenzy in an attempt to
tear apart and squash the couple. But as they approach nearer to the angel
couple, the infernals are seized with such anxiety and terror,
that they cast themselves back down into hell. This was witnessed by
Swedenborg in the spiritual world where the angel couple had descended (xx).
Such is the
husband’s inherited opposition to internal unity with his wife. Such an
internal unity with the wife REQUIRES that he love her affections!
But he
hates her affections and finds them obnoxious and unpleasant, grating and
nagging on his nerves. This hatred of her affections is what his lower outward
self expresses as abusive behavior, emotional coldness, uncaring, and
independent. She desires to tie him to her, for this is the internal unity. He
is revolted by the idea and makes him suffocate. He feels all the joy of his
life squeezed out of him when her affections touch him. He then feels like he’s
been burned and denigrated. He lashes out against this hated foe called his
wife’s affections. And she wonders “Why? And how can he be such a beast, such a
hypocrite, so self-destructive of his own elevated happiness, who he was created to be, whom I fell in love with? O, O
Where is my true husband who has been hijacked by this rude and gross man
pretending to be my husband. How long Lord?”
So now
that she is a surrendered wife she sees her inner striving for conjunction with
him closed off. The
door has shut!
How could
it be otherwise? He still wants her to
obey him! This is the death of the conjoint couple, the celestial ideal
creation that makes up one celestial angel. As long as the husband wants his
wife to obey him, the interior door is shut tight. She is excluded in an
absolute way. It feels to her like death. Now it’s her husband and God, forming
an alliance against her. She is the third person. First comes himself. Then comes his God. Then comes her. This
is the hierarchy in his mind, the idol he worships, or claims to, for
convenience and perks. By the wife “obeying him,” he means that he wants her to
act against her own wishes, her own best sense of what their relationship needs!
She is the expert who can see the relationship in a rational way since
conjugial love imparts the perception to the wife (xx). Her inner desire for
conjugial love is the source of her perception form the Lord. The Lord gives
her conjugial love, and then he can have it to the extent that he loves her
affections (xx). When he doesn’t love her affections, she is powerless like a
fish before a steamboat, or like a tomato on the road before a truck.
She feels
disjointed, rejected, abandoned for the sake of an external politically
motivated physical and social intimacy, but not a spiritual intimacy. What she
craves for is a spiritual unity, which means that he loves her affections,
appropriates them as his own, then acts from her, now within him. It’s a
process that continues and repeats itself endlessly so that she is in the
fullness of perfection of her being as a woman. A woman and a man are created
reciprocals, in general and in every particular so that they may be united into
one conjoint self.
Consider
the wife who got into an accident on her way over to visiting her husband in
the hospital, where he was waiting for a suitable donor to replace his worn out
heart. The take her to emergency and before she dies she wills her heart to her
husband. They perform the heart transplant and now he sits at home thinking about
her. He lives because her heart is in
him.
This story
is parallel to the conjugial union which is established when a man adopts the
Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline. The wife dying
represents his hatred for her affections. The wife’s heart that is now transplanted
in him, represents her affections within him, because
he now loves them. That she is no longer around physically because she has
died, represents that she has resurrected in his mind as the conjugial wife.
Since this is a spiritual unity, it doesn’t appear in the outside natural
appearances.
Perhaps it
is necessary for a woman to become a “surrendered wife” for awhile, as a phase
in the marriage relationship. This may be imposed on her by the husband’s relationship blackmail mentioned above.
But if there is going to be a heavenly marriage with these two, the man must
become a “surrendered husband” as discussed above, since this is the state of
perfection into which a man is created. This is his “elevated state.” This is
the second phase, when the marriage turns into an inner unity between the
willing and thinking of the man and the willing and thinking of the woman.
It has been
revealed that a woman’s intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and grace is more abundant and inspired than a man’s (xx). A woman’s
intelligence is celestial or the highest and inmost of human possibility (xx).
A man’s intelligence is spiritual, which is a discrete degree below that of the
celestial. A woman’s intelligence can therefore be compared to the noonday sun
in the summer, while a man’s intelligence is like the light of the moon on a bright
night (xx).
Since this is the created reality,
it is rational and spiritual for man to love to act from his wife more than he
loves to act from himself.
This means
that the highest wisdom and intelligence of a man is that which he acquires for
himself from his wife’s affections which he has taken up within himself.
Affections
always determine the quality of wisdom and intelligence:
Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such
is the man. (DLW 362)
The
affections in the will are called “love.” The unregenerate husband acquires all
his wisdom and intelligence from his own affections. This intelligence opposes
itself to the intelligence of his wife, which she acquired from her affections.
In other words he loves himself and is sealed and isolated in himself. There is
no entry point. His wife receives from the Lord conjugial
love in her affections (xx). Her affections regarding him and the marriage are
therefore heavenly. She now has to wait. At some unpredictable point he will
decide to stop opposing and hating her heavenly affections. He undergoes
reformation by means of the Letter of the Writings which he applies to his
mind, bringing order out of disorder. Now he officially acknowledges to her
that he is struggling to learn to love her affections so that he could act from
her, rather than from himself. His Doctrine now confirms this process and he is
officially ready to participate, to submit, to die, for the sake of being
reborn an angel man.
He begins
regeneration. He fights against his nature. He has to simulate friendship and
enthusiasm as he painfully makes himself swallow her affections, like bitter
medicine. As he persists in this struggle, the Lord enlightens him. He builds
Spiritual Doctrine for himself whose power is so great that he sees himself a
new creation. He loves to love his wife’s affections! He has been healed. He is
now the elevated husband in training. He is happy. She is ecstatic. Soon they
are both ecstatic. Ecstasy becomes the bliss of their life here on earth. They
are forerunners of the new human race. The Alpha Couple.
The angels are in bliss for they actively participate in this awesome makeover.
Angels love nothing more than to assist in the birthing of conjugial love in a
couple on earth (xx).
Now the new
husband would not be able to support displeasing his wife, an idea that
devastates him as if all his happiness were suddenly gone. He would always act
from her affections, which means from her perceptions and perspectives, not his
own. In this way he can be conjoined to her form within and be happy and wise
to eternity.
But if the
wife surrenders to him, he is once again entrapped in his own male intelligence
and externality. It’s as if God had not created Eve as an
help mate to Adam.
The husband cannot save himself and
he cannot be saved by his wife, as intended by the Lord.
The future
of this man is sorry and miserable. This fate is not something she contributed
to. He is the one who forced her into the subservient status of a “surrendered
wife.” He forced her by systematically wearing her down over years of strenuous
effort. He made her feel scared, made her doubt herself, threatened her,
ignored her, did not value her judgment or opinion. So she had no choice but to
give up her most central role and task in life: To unite herself to her husband
and thus to make him happy and alive from herself, from what she has in herself
from the Lord. This is how the Lord intended it from the beginning and this is
what the Lord once again will re-create, as conjugial love is to return to this
earth through the Heavenly Doctrines (CL 130).
When the
man acts from his wife’s affections which he has internalized (Rule 1), her
life is in him like the organ transplant the husband received of his wife’s
heart. Her life is within him because her life is nothing else than her
affections (xx). His intelligence is now
reformed by the new affections in his will. Her higher affections, which
are from love and good, shape his new intelligence which are
from truth and faith. He receives truth from the Lord as before, but the truth
he now receives is far more interior and higher than before because he now has
his wife’s affections in the will, and these celestial affections conjoin themselves with a more interior truth form the Lord.
The more
the man loves his wife’s affections, the more he has got the celestial love
within him, and the more interiorly he can receive Divine Truth from the Lord.
When he has only his own affections in his will, the man also receives Divine
Truth, but in a more external way. The Lord longs to be conjoined with the man
more and more interiorly, as He is already conjoined to the woman through
conjugial love.
3. Who Is Going To Do The Bills?
Recall
again that “surrendered husband” doesn’t mean that she must now do the
finances, the military service, and the paycheck! Equity is not what it refers
to (see Chapter 9 Section 5). Rather, to be a surrendered husband means that he
prefers to act from her more than from himself. If she says, “Honey, would you
explain to me our finances?” he then strives to satisfy her. He explains as
much as she wants to know and tries to respond to her inner emotions and
intentions so she can feel that he is with her and for her. That’s what she
wants, that’s what the surrendered husband gives. Or, if she says, “Honey, I
think we should do x, not y” he then strives to value this request, to honor
it, so that she feels that he cares and he likes her. If she says to him,
Do this.
Don’t do that.
Do it this
way. Don’t do it that way.
Start now.
Stop now.
Keep up
with me.
Lower your
voice. Stop frowning.
And other
things like these,
and he
doesn’t do any of these things, what will happen?
What will
happen to her conjugial? She will be feeling a process of breaking off, a
growing incapacity to feel conjoined to him from within. This is because he
refuses to meet with her in the interior mind. That’s where they are
united, each giving something and living by what the other has. He—the
cognitive reception from heaven by means of her celestial affections which he
has internalized as-if his own. These are the interior truths that her conjugial
love craves from within to unite with. Her
inmost being or consciousness wants to unite to this Divine truth he receives
from the Lord by means of her affections in him.
This is
the achieving of the conjoint self. (See Chapter 9 Section 1 above.)
4. The Spiritual Physiology Of Marriage
One
expression of men’s distaste of the feminine sphere is the grouping of the
people at family gatherings. The men group together and bask in the masculine
sphere of each other. Their wives are forced therefore to group with each
other. They rather be together with their husbands,
but when they try, the husbands abuse them. So the only peace the women can
find is in each other’s sphere. This changes completely when a husband is
surrendered to his elevated creation, which is that he act
from his wife’s affections within him. When he does this, his intelligence
tells him that his wife wants to be together with him. He is entertained by her
feminine sphere far more than he cares for the masculine sphere. The feminine
sphere of his wife is now his life. This is because her life is in her
affections, and when he appropriate her affections to
himself, her life is now within him. Now he is a complete man, a true human, a
celestial mind, a conjugial husband.
The reason
husbands hate the affectional sphere of women is that it breathes out conjugial
unity, spiritual conjoining in willing and thinking. The man feels this as a
process of being shackled or restricted. He feels that the woman wants to
encroach on his territory of independence and freedom. He experiences the
mother, the sister, the girlfriend, or the wife as constant nagging to do this
or to do that, to be this way or that way, never to be who
you really feel like being. So men prefer the permissive company of other men who
respect the brotherhood rule of not trying to pressure or coerce one another.
The woman’s
sphere of affections is animated and domestic, because it is celestial.
Domestic uses are celestial while forensic uses such as business, science, and
politics, are spiritual and natural uses. The reason domestic uses are higher
is because they have to do with the home, with conjugial love, and with raising
children. These are celestial uses because the purpose of the earths in the
universe is to be a seminary for a heaven out of the human race (xx). Domestic
uses are therefore higher. Women are in charge of domestic uses because the
affections of women is celestial by birth, while the
affections of men is spiritual by birth. Celestial uses are far more elevated
and human than spiritual uses.
A man can
transcend his lower creation by conjoining with a wife who is created into a
higher creation. This is the meaning of the surrendered husband. He is surrendering the masculine idea that
his essence is masculine.
For in fact
the Lord has revealed the physiology of the masculine and feminine. The man as
a whole, and in his every part and particle, is love in his inmost, and this
love is covered over with truth, which forms his exterior. The reciprocal is
the case for what women are made of. Woman as a whole, and in her every part
and particle, is truth in her inmost, and this truth is covered over with love,
which forms her exterior.
You can
picture this to yourself as a diagram:
What an
amazing scientific revelation! How beneficial it would be for society if this
revelation were understood rationally. Since
man and woman are reciprocals of each other in general they must also be in particular,
which means not a single thing in a woman can be like a thing in a man, and
vice versa. (xx)
This can be
understood rationally if you think of marriage in a physiological sense, which
it is. Marriage is something sanctified and Divine since it is the vehicle of
the seminary for heaven, and this is the highest purpose or use for creation. Unity
is the conjoint operation of two things together so that the result is a new
conjoint object that is superior to the composing parts. Man as an individual
and woman as an individual are not human units, but only potential human units.
A human unit is the conjugial pair that from a distance is seen as one angel
(xx). The closest maximum unity is achieved between two distinct individuals.
Since not one thing in a man overlaps with one thing in a woman, they remain
most distinct. Therefore, when they unite, their unity will be more perfect
(xx).
Conjugial
unity is so perfect that it demands that not a single thing in a man can be
like a single thing in a woman. An exception would reduce the perfection.
This
applies to the body and the mind. Not a single fiber in a man can be like a
fiber in a woman. Not a single thought a man has can be like any thought a
woman has. Not a single affection a man has can be like an affection a woman
has.
You can see
the perfection of conjugial love when you consider from the Writings, what
happens when a man meets a woman and they fall in love and get married. The
woman takes within herself the man’s thinking style and reasoning process. This
is the same way as she takes his seed through her birth canal and gives it life
in her womb. That child born of her represents the husband’s intelligence in
the wife. She is now no longer an individual woman but a married woman, which
means that she has within her, his seed, his intelligence, his ideas, his
manner of thinking. She has a replica of her husband’s mind within herself so
that she always know what he is thinking!
Now it’s
the man’s turn. His job is to take his wife’s affections within himself just as
she took his cognitions within herself. As a conjoint self, the couple has
become just one. She acts from his thinking
within her and he acts from her affections within him.
Thus they
form a superior human being called the celestial mind or conjugial couple. This
is the plan of creation, now revealed!
Consider
the second diagram of the spiritual physiology of marriage:
The marriage on earth of a regenerating couple is called Phase 1, while
their marriage once they get to heaven, is called Phase 2. Conjunction in Phase
1 is external, also called spiritual. Internal conjunction in Phase 2 is
celestial. In the external conjunction while regenerating on earth, the husband’s
intelligence (“truth, wisdom) is conjoined to the wife’s affections (“love, good”). The wife’s affections are within him as a result of
loving them more than his own affections. This gives the surrendered husband a
new will from the wife. And it gives the conjugial wife a new understanding
from the husband. In this mode they grow more and more into a spiritual unity
while on earth. After they are reunited in heaven, they begin the conjunction
of Phase 2. Now they are both interior people having cast off whatever was not
part of their love and affections. The external truth and wisdom of the husband, are gone. The external love and good of the wife, are gone. What remains in the spirit-body of the angel
couple is the interior—his celestial love and her celestial truth. As these
unite, they become one angel more and more to eternity (xx).
Unity is
only possible between truth and good, which is the
same thing as saying, between wisdom and love (xx). This unity is called “the
marriage of good and truth” (xx). For the celestial couple, the husband is the
good and the wife is the truth (xx). Their conjugial unity is the result of the
universal unity between good and truth in the Lord. Marriage is holy because it
is an image of the marriage of good and truth in the Lord (xx). Marriage on earth is holy only when the
husband’s truth unites with the wife’s love, which is nothing else than her
affections. In other words, when the husband loves to act
from her affections more than from his own.
The
surrendered husband loves to meet his wife’s requests because that’s how he
reciprocates in conjoining himself with her, as she is conjoining herself with
him. The man who rebels and hates the feminine sphere perceives her wishes and
instructions as demands, as nagging, as taking away his freedom, as going too
far, as power hungry, as misguided, etc. I have felt all these feelings and
they are general to men, because biological and cultural.
A Christian, because he knows the Lord, has the Word, and
since the Lord places the church in him through its means, it is obvious that
he is more able than the non-Christian to be reborn, so becoming spiritual, and
to achieve truly conjugial love, since these go together. (CL 339)
A husband is a form of truth, and his wife a form of good,
and that good cannot love any other truth than its own truth, nor can truth
love any other good in return than its own good. If it were to love another, the inner
marriage that forms the church would die, and the marriage would become merely
external - the kind of marriage that idolatry corresponds to, not the church.
(CL 76)
Here it is
revealed how the “inner marriage” or internal unity,
can be achieved. The husband loves his wife as his own good attached to
his truth. Not his own good attached to his own truth—for this is the
life of an unregenerate single man, or an unregenerate married man who avoids
internal unity with his wife. To take his wife’s good as his own means to
love to act from what is in her will more than what is in his own will.
This is Rule 1 as discussed throughout this chapter.
[3] Take as
another example conjugial love. The good which comes first and is introductory
is good looks, or good manners, or outward compatibility, or similarity of
social class, or aspiration. These forms of good are the first intermediate
ones of conjugial love.
After this
comes the joining together of minds (animus) in which one wills as the other
does and finds delight in doing that which is pleasing to the other. This is
the second state, and although those initial forms of good are still present
they are no longer kept in view.
Finally there follows a uniting involving celestial good and spiritual
truth. That is
to say, one believes as the other believes, and one is moved by an affection for good as the other is moved. When this state
is reached both together experience the heavenly marriage, which is a marriage
of good and truth, and so experience conjugial love since conjugial love is nothing
else.
At the same
time the Lord is flowing into the affections of them both as into a single
affection. This is a good which flows in down a direct line, whereas the
previous kind of good which had flowed in down an indirect line had served as
the means of introduction to this good. (AC 4145)
Note the
statement: “At the same time the Lord is flowing into the affections of them
both as into a single affection.” The expression “into the affections of them
both as into a single affection” refers to what might be called the conjoint
self.
Why must
the husband surrender to his wife before he can achieve the conjoint self?
Because:
He hates
giving up his prerogatives and superiority status
He loves to
have dominion over her
He has
justified his superiority by philosophy or religion
He doesn’t
trust women’s abilities
He hates
the sphere of conjugial love she has within her
He
ridicules or gets enraged at the idea he should act from her will
He
justifies the falsity in his mind that it should be a kind of equity
arrangement—he has his roles and his places assigned by society and religion,
and she has hers.
What
about the idea that the wife often doesn’t know as much as he does about many
things, and so it wouldn’t be prudent or rational to let her make the decisions
instead of him.
You will
see that this is not a real danger, only an imagined one. It’s a doubt about
women being able to be reasonable and practical. It’s the generalized gender
bias that men have about women from inheritance and from culture. This biased
reasoning says, How can you trust women to make the right decisions about so
many things where men are used to making the decisions—etc. These are the
doubts that come from not valuing women. The external philosophy of equity that
men try to impose on women is nothing but a ploy. And unless men awake from
this subconscious acquiescence, they will be men no longer, for the
unregenerate man turns into a sub-human worse than any beast (TCR 564). Man’s
salvation is regeneration of character, for which the wife is a Divinely appointed and essential instrument. This has
been justified by many quotations from the Writings in Section 1 above.
Many
intelligent men will admit to this: that the wife is essential in their life.
And yet they do not ordinarily mean essential for their inner life, but
essential for their outer life. By their outer life they mean their
intellectual and economic power and their achievements and awards, including
successful children. Many men admit that without their woman they would not
have achieved what they did. And also, that they could not be
content in life without being in love with this woman. These are
noble legends. He may have convinced himself easily enough that he believes
them sincerely. If indeed it had been the truth, his woman would have been in
the fullness of her being, conjoint to him from within. But instead, she has
been offered a fake marriage life, one that has the trappings of external
propriety, success, and happiness, but not the real life and
animation that is supposed to be within these outward achievements and
enactments.
The outward
married life remains an enactment until it grows a spiritual reality within. This
is the spiritual union held together by each being the other’s all in all in
their willing and thinking. Can she achieve this without his reciprocation?
No, not in the least, for spiritual love requires reciprocation to become alive
and real.
He is
satisfied with the outer success, but she languishes from within. He is content
to wait and let time pass, endless years and decades to her, waiting for her
real man to enter her.
And so what
is to be done?
The
surrendered husband is a practical proposal. It is just another way of saying
the Doctrine of the Wife, which is discussed at length in the preceding
section. Women are intelligent and wise from within from heaven from the Lord. They
will not do anything that is contrary to conjugial love. This is their
highest love and all other loves are placed below and subdued under its command
and absolute rule. This is woman’s wisdom: the certitude they feel from within
as to whether something is this way or that way in relation to her husband. This
is a Divine perception women receive from the Lord regarding their husband (CL 166). It is a perception of seeing the husband’s spiritual mind and
content, his inner affections, loves, and reasoning through them. She knows
this thoroughly, fully. More than he ever will—until he knows
it from her, when he is united to her.
The wife
will know when to make a decision, and when to let him make it. She would never
override him except for one reason: she can see the danger he cannot see. So it
makes total sense that he should listen to her and really believe from within
that she has this perception from the Lord. This is the religion of the
But, but
what if she makes mistakes? What if she is uneducated? What if she’s got
weaknesses, blindnesses, even neuroses and addictions? The answer is: And what
if he has these things? Husbands make many many mistakes, do they not? Is there
somebody there to remove him from the office of decision maker and over rider
of her opinions when events prove her to have been right and he
to have been wrong? No of course not. He makes mistakes as he goes along and
the family lives with it. The point is that if he’s willing to live with the
consequences of her mistakes she will gradually improve and be at least as good
as he used to be—with his help. This is the point. Perhaps he needs to educate
her views when ignorant, just as she does that for him. After all, he is free
to do as he wants at any time whatsoever. His acting from her will is purely
voluntary. He has the exercise that power at any time. Again the point is this:
is he after dominion over her or after internal union? This he must answer
for himself moment by moment.
It makes
sense to think that the Lord is managing this process as closely as any other
in the universe. The Lord longs for the husband to want to be united to the
wife. The Lord calls the two together, “One flesh,” and “His Church.” (CL 178)
The husband-wife conjoint self makes the one angel that is the Church to which
the Lord is married.(CL 62). Not the husband by
himself, ever, even if he comes to the gates of heaven in Aaron’s robes. The
only admittance to heaven for a male man is as a conjugial husband (CL 50). The
only.
And so is
this not the most important work a man has—to prepare his mind to be a
conjugial husband? Which is why a religious discipline is
needed, as discussed throughout this chapter.
The natural
world tends to be male dominated, but not because of men’s superior intelligence
to women. It is a “man’s world” because the unregenerated natural mind operates
by the corporeal principle of “might makes right.” The feeling from which this
idea issues is at the level of animals and men’s affections are at the animal
level of operation in the unregenerate state. But when they begin to be
regenerated their internal mind is opened and receives feminine intelligence
through his wife from the Lord. This softening and humanizing of the man shows
that man on his own is only a half-man:
And when
they become one, then taken together they are man in
his fullest sense. But without that conjunction they are two, and each is like
a person divided or half a person. (CL 37)
(For more
on the spiritual psychobiology of gender see Note 16 at end).
For years
now I’ve made it a habit to keep notepads all around the house and write down
many of my wife’s observations. I can accurately state that her perceptions and
insights form the starting point of the many rational and spiritual ideas I
elaborate in this and related articles. I’m especially stimulated by the way
her observations contain nonobvious connections to other things, revealing to
my sight relationships that raise the level of my understanding and
explanations. This cross-gender intellectual borrowing and sharing process
creates a more interior spiritual dimension in our relationship. The wife’s
interior wisdom from the Lord descends into the natural-rational intelligence
of the husband where he builds it into an outward shape that has many new uses.
In this way
it has become true that I think from my wife, which is Rule 1 in conjugial
development (see Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1). If
you ask her she would tell you that this is the ideal to which I am officially
committed, but that my actual adherence to it is variable. Therefore I continue
to struggle, turning to the Lord for strength to persist. And He always gives
it, if only I would take it from Him.
The
Husbands
would do well to explain this to their wife. They need to show them how their
conjugial efforts are grounded in the Writings and that this is the cornerstone
of their salvation. Only through religion can the
Now my
husband, remember what struggle you are in. This is your life, our eternity.
Come now, gather your spiritual strength and your religious motives and go
forth in victory over your ego and arrogance. Compel yourself to act from me,
my standards, my guidance, my will. For only this is from the
Lord in our marriage and what is from you is hell itself. I will help
you if only you will help yourself. Give up your rebellion and act like I say
to you. Etc.
I’m sure
you can understand the intended meaning in this representation and apply it to
the particulars of your unique life situation. The wife is to fight for you
with all that the Lord gives her, and you are to fight yourself by compelling
yourself voluntarily to act from her. This is the spiritual discipline for
conjugial husbands.
For many
years I’ve been keeping track of my interactions with my wife and my behavior
as a husband. This has helped me greatly to become actually aware of attitudes,
opinions, and behaviors that I have developed from socialization and culture
that are opposed to the development of conjugial love (see Note 16 at end). I
noted the many unexamined ways that I insisted on my male prerogatives which a
“man’s world” bestows upon men. Husbands interrupt when wives talk and instead
of listening they give premature advice. Husbands determine the majority of
topics being transacted by refusing to address issues raised by the wives.
Husbands raise their voices and make scary faces when they disagree or are angry
about this or that. These are maladaptive methods men use to intimidate women
whose sensitivities are threatened and injured by this manly harshness. A
crucial mental discipline for
Making
lists is very helpful. Keeping cumulative records is what makes into a discipline.
What makes it into a spiritual discipline is being motivated to use the
records for self-change efforts in conjugial cooperation. Whatever the husband
does consciously for the sake of preparing himself for conjugial love is a
spiritual discipline.
Those who
enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view in their marriage; but the
reverse is true of those who do not.
The reason
why those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view is that eternity
is contained within this love. This is because this love increases for ever in
the case of the wife, and wisdom increases for ever in the case of the husband;
and as these increase and develop, the couple plunges deeper and deeper into
the blessings of heaven, which lie hidden in their wisdom and also the love for
it. So if the notion of eternity were torn away, or by
any accident slipped from their minds, it would be as if they were cast down
from heaven.
(…)
It is much
the same with marriages on earth. When couples there love each other dearly,
they think of their partnership as eternal, and pay no attention to its being
ended by death. But if they do think of this, it upsets them; though they are
revived by hope, when they think of it continuing after death. (CL 216)
Keeping
self-witnessing records conscientiously is a discipline. Consulting the wife’s
perceptions about the records for the sake of conjoining their perspective, makes it into a spiritual discipline. It is
painful due to our inborn pride and runs against the grain of our culturally
received male chauvinism and male prerogatives. Resistance to the process is strong
and motivation falters. Overcoming these constantly opposing forces is the
discipline. The results are very beneficial and promote conjugial friendship
and unity. This makes it into a spiritual discipline.
6. Divine Truth Within Which Is Divine Love
Married and
pre-married men can practice many conjugial disciplines that relate to their
relationship to a wife. Pre-married men can practice by viewing every girl or
woman as someone’s wife. In addition, Christian women have conjugial love
implanted and imprinted by nativity (CL 216, 457). The reason only Christian
women have this is that conjugial love is only from the Lord and so He alone
must be acknowledged in order to receive it (CL 71). Nevertheless the women who
are not Christian can also be in conjugial love in the afterlife, when they are
instructed regarding the Lord and are willing to receive it (HH 512[3]). The
The Lord’s
perfection lies in this: that in Him infinite things that are distinct make a
one (DLW 223). The
This unity
cannot be understood outside the intellectual sphere of the Writings. To
understand it rationally one needs to apply several things to it: the law of
discrete degrees (DLW 186), the Lord’s Proprium that angels use for themselves
(AC 8409), the organic composition of the will and understanding (DLW 373), the
perfection of unity from discrete elements (DLW 201), the character of
temptations (natural, spiritual, celestial) (NJHD 196), the gradual character
of regeneration (CL 146), conjugial simulation (CL 282), what chastity is and
is not (CL 138), the wife’s interior perception of their husbands which
husbands do not have on themselves (CL 166), and other things besides. In the
context of these ideas from the Writings physical and mental disciplines can
serve to strengthen a man’s suitability for conjugial union.
The focus
is on the husband because conjugial love is not inscribed on men from birth as
it is on women. It is revealed that men are promiscuous from birth like animals
(CL 48) and if they are going to enter heaven they must regenerate into a
celestial human being. Only this interior human can unite in perfection with a
wife who has conjugial love implanted in her soul.
Conjugial
love is lodged with chaste wives, but their love still depends upon their
husbands.
The reason
is that wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish
to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in their will they
constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to unite themselves
with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But it is different
with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to
receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive it, the more
readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail to receive it,
their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait.
This
happens in the case of chaste wives, but it is different with the unchaste.
These considerations will establish that conjugial love is lodged with wives,
but their love depends upon their husbands. (216bis) (see also CL 457)
Physical
and mental disciplines by men performed for the purpose of conjugial motives,
as defined in the Writings, are spiritual disciplines. But
not otherwise.
From what is
implanted in them, wives wish to be wives and to be called wives. To them, this
is a name of beauty and honor and for that reason they love the bonds of
marriage. Moreover, chaste wives wish to be wives not in name only but
actually, and because this is effected by an ever closer tie with their
husbands, therefore they love the bonds of marriage by reason of the stability
of its covenant; and this the more, as they in turn are loved by their husbands
or, what is the same thing, as the men love those bonds. (CL
217.) (See also CL 457)
Self-witnessing
is at the basis of these disciplines. (See Note 20 for more on self-witnessing
techniques).
The
The
distance or externalization is a process of becoming more and more inert, that
is, less and less life which is the inmost substance of every object. This
inmost of every object and particle is the life of existence in a created
reality. The word “distance” in this context must be taken as a correspondence
for the exteriorization process of creation by substance and intermediaries
(xx). The originating substance in sequential order becomes the inmost
substance in simultaneous order (xx). The originating substance of created
objects is the substance that emanates from the spiritual Sun. This substance
is called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love” (xx).Therefore the inmost
of every object or particle in the universe is “Divine Truth within which is
Divine Love.”
This inmost
substance called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love,” is living in
itself, or life in itself. It is an uncreate substance that belongs to the
Lord, and is infinite, since infinite distinct things are contained in it as
one. You can see that this substance is be source of
infinite distinct or unique things in the created universe. This momentous scientific revelation gives
the human race a far higher consciousness of reality than was possible before.
The level
of thinking, reasoning, and understanding the workings of the universe is
immeasurably increased by this revelation. One important implication is that
the universe is rational. The universe is rational since it is created from
truth, within which is good. Truth is the inmost substance out of which a thing
exists! What an amazing revelation of reality! For instance, a rock, the brain,
and a feeling are all created out of truth as a substance of love. Truth
creates not from itself but from love or good. Still, it is not love that
creates but truth from love. This is what makes the universe rational, and what
is rational is both human and alive. Rational defines the human (xx) because
the human mind is created an organ for the reception of rational truths from
the Divine. When these rational truths are appropriated, loved, and lived, they
become our heaven in eternity. But without rational truths appropriated to ourselves
by loving them, there can be no heavenly life in us, but only infernal, for all
life in human beings is either heavenly or infernal (xx). This is the result of
the fact that all things of truth are heavenly, while all things of hell are
falsifications or distortions of truth.
This is the
same as saying that the living function or quality is hidden more and more
within, and doesn’t show in its effects. Animals are less externalized and the
life within is visible and obvious. Human minds are the least externalized of
the created things, especially the consciousness or rationality of human
beings. The minds of women are more interiorized than the minds of men. The
male human is more externalized than the female human.
Every man is created that he may live for ever. In the
treatise THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, Parts Third and Fifth, it is shown that in
man there are three degrees of life, called the natural, the spiritual and the
celestial, and that these degrees are actually in every man; while in beasts
there is only one degree of life, which is similar to the lowest degree in man
called the natural. From this it follows that man by the elevation of his life
to the Lord is in such a state above the beasts that he is able to understand
what pertains to the Divine Wisdom and to will what pertains to the Divine
Love, and in this way to receive the Divine; and he who can receive the Divine
so as to see and perceive it in himself cannot be otherwise than conjoined to
the Lord, and through this conjunction cannot but live for ever.
(…)
In order that every man may live for ever, what is mortal
with him is taken away. His mortal part is the material body which is taken
away by his death. His immortal part, which is his mind, is thus unveiled and
he then becomes a spirit in human form, his mind being that spirit.
(…)
As it has been granted me to speak with angels I will also
say something from my own experience. I have talked with some who lived many
ages ago, with some who lived before the Flood and with some who lived after
it, with some who lived in the time of the Lord, with one of His Apostles, and
with many who lived in later times. They all appeared like men of middle age,
and they said they did not know what death is, but only that there is
condemnation. Moreover, all who have lived well, when they enter heaven, come
into the state of early manhood they reached in the world and continue in it to
eternity, even those who had been old and decrepit men in the world. Women,
too, although they had been shrunken and aged, return to the flowering period
of their age and beauty.
(…)
Thus every man is created that he may enter heaven. This is
the end of creation; but all do not enter heaven because they become imbued
with the delights of hell which are opposite to the happiness of heaven; and
those who are not in the happiness of heaven cannot enter heaven, for they
cannot endure it. To no one who enters the spiritual world is it denied to
ascend to heaven; but when one who is in the delight of hell enters heaven his
heart palpitates, his breathing is labored, his life begins to fail, he is in
anguish, distress and torment, and he writhes like a serpent placed close to a
fire. This is so because opposites act against each other.
(…)
Nevertheless, they cannot die, as they were born men and
thereby with the faculty of thinking and willing, and consequently of speaking
and acting. However, as they can live only with those who are in a similar
delight of life they are sent to them; thus those who are in the delights of
evil and those who are in the delights of good are sent to their own
appropriate companions. It is indeed granted everyone to experience the delight
of his own evil provided he does not molest any who are in the delight of good;
but as evil cannot do otherwise than molest good, for there is inherent in evil
hatred against good, therefore lest the wicked should inflict injury they are removed
and cast down to their own place in hell, where their delight is turned to what
is the reverse of delightful.
(DP 324)
7. Is The Surrendered Husband Feminized?
In earlier
drafts and articles I used the term “feminization,” as in “the feminization of
marriage” or “the feminization of the husband” and, “the feminization of the
universe” and also, “the feminization of the Church.” I have a note to myself
to go back to my earlier articles and edit out the word “feminization” from the
sub-titles as this might be a kind of red flag to some people. While discussing
the matter with my wife I suddenly got the sense that it might be an
unnecessary stumbling block. Some men might not be able initially to shake the
negative implications of this word when applied to a man.
Yet the underlying idea in the
feminization of marriage, husband, universe, or Church, is that conjugial love
is returning to earth (xx). Conjugial love is feminine. When the husband is feminized it means
nothing else than that he has acquired conjugial love, which is now part of
him. It cannot mean that his traits have become feminine since it is a Divine
Law by creation that not a single thing in a man can be like a single think in
a woman (xx). The man before being feminized by conjugial love is the same man
as afterwards, except that he now has conjugial love as part of him whereas he
did not before that.
8. The Conjoint Mind Is Both Masculine And Feminine
The Lord
has now revealed the scientific fact that a man by himself is an incomplete
creation and is still to develop to maturity. The mature man is created into
perfection when he is no longer an individual man, but a structural or organic
part of his wife, so that the two together are one angel (xx). Only as an
angel-husband is a man in his created perfection. It is just like the surgical
reintegration and attachment of a man and a woman in which her lungs are
removed and her heart is attached to his lungs. And his heart is removed and
his lungs are attached to her heart. This integrated new body corresponds to
the conjoint mind of an angel-couple, which therefore has both masculine and
feminine characteristics.
The
Doctrine of the Wife, through Rule 1, creates the conjoint mind. Through Rule 1
the husband’s will, which corresponds to his heart, is removed, and it is
replaced by the wife’s heart to which he keeps himself cleaving by conjugial
love and the motive to acquire it. From the perspective of the husband, thinking
and acting from his wife’s will, which corresponds to her heart, is to lay
aside his individual independent will, which was entirely masculine. Henceforth
his masculine understanding is to operate from a feminine will, just as his masculine
lungs would be purified of impurities and poisons by the feminine heart to
which he is now joined. To be a conjoint mind means that the husband thinks
from his wife’s will or affections, and the wife
thinks from her husband’s understanding or thoughts. He is feminized while she
is masculinized, even though they each retain their full gender, gaining
everything, losing nothing.
What does it mean specifically to
say that the husband loves to think and act from the wife’s willing more than
from his own willing?
Consider
how you might describe your daily behavior. You act in accordance with your
thinking, which is from your willing. In other words, the motives and
affections in your will select and direct those thoughts that serve its
affections and motives. The thinking is therefore from the willing, and the
acting is from both of them together. This is the way we operate prior to being
a conjugial husband.
As we are
reformed by the Doctrine of the Wife, and struggle daily and hourly to follow
Rule 1, we begin gradually to change from the operation just described. Now we
inhibit and weaken and suppress our own affections and motives in interacting
with our wife. Instead, we begin to compel our thinking to fit the wife’s
requests and needs. This is gradual because we do not hear her requests except
in a weak sense at first, gradually gaining strength until we can actually hear
the request she had been making for years. Then we sometimes compel ourselves
to think in accordance with the request, but sometimes we choose not to, and
then we slide back, to the chagrin and suffering of the poor wife. But
eventually we get better at it, more honest in our attempts, and at last our
wife begins to say new things about us, things that a conjugial wife says to
her conjugial husband who has become her bosom friend.
The more we
think from the wife’s willing, the more our mind is conjoined to her mind. When
our thinking is done from her willing, our doing will be called the works of
conjugial love. This is what the Lord has Commanded by
saying that the man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife
(xx). “Father and mother” refers to the man’s own willing and thinking, since
willing relates to good, and “father” represents good, while thinking relates
to truth, and “mother” represents truth or the Church in us. We leave our own
“father and mother”
by laying aside our own willing, and the independent masculine thinking that
goes with that willing. And in its stead, we hook ourselves into our wife’s
willing by knowing her affections and hearing her requests. This is the meaning
of the promise to “honor” her which we solemnly make at our sacred wedding. “To
cleave to the wife” signifies to honor her by reforming our thinking to fit her
willing, and then acting by the new thinking from her willing. In this way we act agreeably to her and she
can conjoin herself to our new mind even more than before. this is a continuous process over the years. Happy is the
couple on this earth that is immersed in this process.
Conjugial
love is the highest of all loves and uses in the universe (xx), for which all
other loves exist, for which all created objects exist. Conjugial love is
called a celestial love (xx). This highest of all loves is received from the Lord
in the inmost of the wife, and conjugial love in the wife becomes the source of
conjugial love for the husband (xx). It is in the husband only to the extent
that her heart is in his, that is, to the extent that
he has appropriated to himself her affections and now thinks and acts from
them. Thus, he is in the state described by Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife.
This is meant by the elevated husband.
Conjugial love in the man is
therefore the exchanging of his old masculine will and affections for her
feminine affections, which are her will, her love. Her love is now in him and he
thinks and acts from her love.
All
thinking and acting is from love (xx), and he either acts from his own love or
from her love in him.
To be able
to act and think form her love requires that he appropriate her love, that is, make
her affections to be in his will. This appropriation, or interiorization, is
achieved solely by loving them, for only loving something can be appropriated
to a human being. Once appropriated, it remains forever. Now he is a new man,
for the man is his intelligence, and this is such as his love is (DLW xx). Now
he acts from a higher love than before because woman’s love is higher than
man’s, her love being celestial, while his love being spiritual, and the two
are as far apart as the noonday sun light is from the midnight moon light (xx).
Man was
created into a perfect order. He arrives in this perfect order when he becomes the
elevated husband. He achieves this higher existence by exchanging the hereditary
and acquired masculine affections in his will with the feminine affections of
his conjugial life. Her affections are higher because she is the only one that
receives conjugial love directly from the Lord (xx). The Lord provides that the
husband also has conjugial love, but not directly from Him, but directly from
his wife. This appropriation to himself of the Lord’s conjugial love in her, effects
his elevation. And this appropriation of her love as his own makes him hers,
for he now is what his love is, purely hers. His new thoughts are now created
by this new will, which is his wife’s in him. These new thoughts are higher
than his thoughts before the makeover of his will. Now the wife takes these new
thoughts into herself as she does his seed through the thighs (xx). This is her
delight of unity that is indescribable according to the celestial wives who
talked to Swedenborg about it in a rose garden (xx).
Chapter 2, Section 5
5. Rule 1:
The Regeneration Discipline Of Acting
From The Wife
The
Doctrine of the Wife is a Spiritual Doctrine that can be summarized in the form
of a correspondence expressed in the natural-rational expression called Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first
and only rule is that husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more
than from self.
(See Chapter
9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
Every man
always acts and thinks from his love. The understanding thinks form the will
(xx), and such as the love is in the will, such is the intelligence in the
understanding (DLW xx). Prior to regeneration, the husband acts and thinks from
his own loves in the will. As he undergoes regeneration he learns more and more
to act and thin from his wife’s loves which originate in her will, but which he
has appropriated to himself by loving them more than he loves his own
affections. Clearly, the consistent application of Rule 1 will guarantee that
the husband acquires a new will. This is what it means to say that the Lord
created Eve as an help mate to Adam. Were Adam to
continue thinking and acting from his own love, he has no choice but to fall
into self-love. Loving one’s own intelligence is the serpent of hell (xx). So
the Lord provides that the wife take the husband’s intelligence into herself as
she takes his seed through the thighs (xx). And the Lord provides that the
husband take the wife’s affections into himself by cleaving to them, which is
to love them and to do them. Now they can each love their reciprocal in the
other, which is the conjugial unity from within, namely a unity of minds or
spirit.
Note that
Rule 1 eliminates all elements of dominion from the couple. At first the male
mind abhors this notion. All sorts of oppositions arise to make this a hard
rule for him. Its felt hardness or pain comes from its opposition to the
numerous male prerogatives that we receive from culture and which we like and
don’t want to give up. The corporeal self is not about to give them up without
a fight to the death. This is the death of the unregenerate corporeal self we
have from birth. This animal mind is turned against the interior rational or
human (TCR 564[2]). It must die (AC 1408). And in its place the Lord creates a
new corporeal that is obedient to the interior human and suitable for conjugial
union.
Consider
what the Lord is saying to us about conjugial unity:
Marriage in
heaven is a conjunction of two into one mind. It must first be explained what
this conjunction is. The mind consists of two parts, one called the
understanding and the other the will. When these two parts act as one they are called one mind. In heaven the husband acts the
part called the understanding and the wife acts the part called the will. When
this conjunction, which belongs to man's interiors, descends into the lower
parts pertaining to the body, it is perceived and felt as love, and this love
is marriage love. This shows that marriage love has its origin in the
conjunction of two into one mind. This in heaven is called cohabitation; and
the two are not called two but one. So in heaven a married pair is spoken of,
not as two, but as one angel. (HH 367)
As husbands, our eternal life in heaven
depends on learning to love to be conjoined to our wife in an internal union,
not external. How do you figure you’re going to acquire this love? None of us men have it from birth and all our upbringing and culture
has led us to oppose this kind of union and to fight against it, yeah, to
desire to destroy any vestige of it that we can see in our wife. Women are born
with conjugial love, implanted by the Lord from nativity (CL 223). But men must acquire it through the
wife—there is no other source.
So it stands to reason we’re not going to
heaven if we do not suffer ourselves to acquire this love from the wife. Rule 1
is the regeneration discipline that can get us there! The Lord has Commanded that we do everything in our power to get there!
The celestial husband is called the elevated husband. This is the Lord’s
purpose an intent in creating him. The elevated
husband has reached into the creation of his perfection and is a true image of
the Lord. His wife’s heart is in him and directs his thoughts and drives his
acts. The Lord’s conjugial love enters her will and by making her will his own,
the husband is appropriating conjugial love. There is no other salvation for
man but through his wife. The man cannot approach the Lord directly to obtain
this love and therefore he remains at a distance from the Lord without this
love in him.
And since this
love can be in the husband only by his interiorizing her affections, you can
see that Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife becomes the only means of salvation
the Lord has provided for the husband who is forming the New Church mind in
himself.
You can see from the passage above that “In
heaven the husband acts the part called the understanding and the wife acts the
part called the will” (HH 367). It is said that the wife acts the part of the will
because it is her will in the husband that animates his acts and thoughts. It
is said that the husband acts the part of the understanding because it is the
understanding that acts, but it acts not from itself but from the will (xx).
1. Achieving Internal
Husband and wife in heaven make one angel—I
call this the conjoint self. The angel couple is a husband and wife, two
distinct individuals, each with their own mind and spirit-body, each with their
own daily duties and activities with others in their angelic society (xx). Outwardly
it appears that the elevated husband acts from his own will as he goes about
his daily activities with other husbands, making decisions, dealing with
visitors, etc. (xx) But this outward appearance does not make apparent what is
going on in the interior mind of the angel husband.
The following Number gives a description of conjugial
love by means of the correspondences expressed as a Memorable Relation in CL
75. I will add some comments after each segment regarding its correspondences.
The purpose of figuring out the correspondences is to apply the Letter to one’s
regeneration. If we merely read the Memorable Relations, remaining in its
literal meaning, and not considering its correspondences, we do not know how to
apply the Number to oneself. Yet the Word is given for
our regeneration. By figuring out the correspondences we can gain a clearer
understanding of what the Number is discussing from a spiritual perspective
rather than natural-rational. On the surface it appears that this Memorable
Relations is about a visit Swedenborg made to the heaven of the people from the
The Spiritual Doctrine we extract according
to this internal series, is the means by which we are
to be regenerated. Therefore we need to see each expression as a
correspondence, and that constitutes the first step of extracting the Spiritual
Doctrine (see Volume 2 for more details on this process).
The first experience.
I was once
meditating about conjugial love, when my mind was seized with a desire to know
what this love had been like in the case of those who lived in the Golden Age,
and also in the following ages, which were named after silver, copper and iron.
(…) At once I found an angel beside me, who said: 'I have been sent by the Lord
to be your guide and companion. First I shall guide and accompany you to those
who lived in the first era or age, known as golden. (…) I was in the spirit, so
I prepared myself for traveling, and we set our faces towards the east. As we
went I saw a mountain, the top of which was higher than the level of the
clouds. ... (CL 75)
Swedenborg represents the
To “be in the spirit” means
that we are being regenerated by the Spiritual Doctrine, not the Letter. To “set the face to the east” signifies to obtain the Spiritual
Doctrine, for this is the Lord (xx), and the “east” in the human mind refers to
the Spiritual Doctrine we have acquired from the Letter. “To see a mountain” in
the east signifies the Lord’s presence in the Spiritual Doctrine, for He is
called a Mountain. That the top of the mountain “was higher
than the level of the clouds” signifies that the Spiritual Doctrine is from the
spiritual sense within the Letter. It is the Letter that is called a
cloud (xx). Above also means within (xx) and therefore the expression “higher
than the level of the clouds” means the spiritual sense within the Letter.
Continuing with the Number:
We went across
this plain and saw tents upon tents to the number of many thousand extending as
far as the eye could see before us and to the sides in all directions … When
these men saw us, they hurried up to us and said: 'Where do you come from, and
how have you come here? Your faces are not those of the people of our mountain
... (CL 75)
The expression “to go across a plain”
signifies a change of state. The expression “to see tents
upon tents” signifies to be conjoined to “holy things of love, namely, the
walking uprightly, and working righteousness” (AC 414). The expression “to
the number of many thousand extending as far as the eye could see before us and
to the sides in all directions” represents the universal presence of conjugial
love in all creation. It is said that Swedenborg’s “face is not the face of the
people of the mountain” by which is signified that the
Since I was
thinking that I wanted to know about marriage among the most ancient people, I
looked in turn from husband to wife and back again, and observed that their
faces showed how they were almost of one soul. So I said: 'You two are one.'
The man replied: 'We are one. Her life is in me and mine is in her, so we are
two bodies, but one soul. The union between us is like that of the two cavities
in the chest, called the heart and lungs. She is my heart and I am her lungs.
But since by heart we understand here love and by lungs wisdom, she is the love
of my wisdom, and I am the wisdom of her love. Her love therefore forms the
outer covering of my wisdom and my wisdom is inwardly inside her love. As a
result, as you said, the unity of our souls is to be seen in the look of our
faces ... (CL 75)
The expression “wanting to know about
marriage among the most ancient people” signifies readiness to be regenerated for
the sake of conjugial love. Conjugial love in its interior is the unity between
the husband’s understanding and the wife’s will. “Her
life” refers to the wife’s will (“she is my heart”), while the husband’s life
in the wife refers to his understanding (“I am her lungs”) which she
appropriates as belonging to her love (“she is the love of my wisdom”).
This organic unity between husband and wife
is the celestial state in which conjugial couples are.
The second
account:
One time, while
speaking with angels in the spiritual world, I was filled with a pleasant wish
to see the
The expression “while speaking with angels
in the spiritual world” signifies that the
I saw inside
that the building was divided into two sections, and yet the two were still
one. It was divided into two sections by
a transparent partition, but it looked like one room because of the partition's
transparency, which was like the transparency of the purest crystal. I asked why it was arranged like that.
The building represents the truths of
Doctrine arranged in their order. The two sections represent the Letter and its
spiritual sense. That “the two were one” signifies the spiritual sense within
the Letter makes a one. That they are separated by a transparent partition
means that those who are enlightened by the Lord when reading the Letter can perceive
the spiritual sense within it. The Letter in the understanding represents
reformation, while the spiritual sense represents regeneration.
The
receptionist said, "I am not alone.
My wife is with me, and though we are two, yet we are not two but one
flesh."
“My wife is with me” signifies that the
affections in the will are regenerated by means of the truths in the
understanding. When the understanding is reformed and the will is regenerated,
they form a marriage or union, so that they act together, as one.
To which I
replied, "I know you are wise, but what does a wise man or wisdom have to
do with a woman?"
This signifies the desire to know how the
will and the understanding make a unity.
At this, with
some feeling of annoyance, the receptionist's expression changed, and he
stretched out his hand, and suddenly, then, other wise men were present from
the neighboring buildings. To them he
said with amusement, "Our visitor here says he wants to know what a wise
man or wisdom has to do with a woman!"
They all
laughed at this and said, "What is a wise man or wisdom apart from a woman
or apart from love? A wife is the love
of a wise man's wisdom." (…)
After these and
several other similar views were expressed, one of the wives appeared through
the crystal-like partition, and she said to her husband, "Speak, if you
wish."
And when he
spoke, the life in his wisdom from his wife was perceived in his speech, for
her love was in the tone of his voice.
Thus did experience bear witness to the truth expressed.
(CL 76)
The transparent partition in their dwelling
place portrays how the two minds—husband and wife—act as one. The dwelling
place (house, tent, palace) represents the mind in
which there are many things that are our own. Husband and wife live in one
dwelling place that they share and each consider as their own. The partition
represents the fact that husband and wife are each an individual, permanently
distinct. The transparency of the partition makes it disappear as if it wasn’t
there. This represents the fact that husband and wife act as one conjoint self.
How is this possible? It is explained how: he acts from his wife’s will and she
acts through her husband’s understanding. Another way of saying this is that
her will and his understanding make up one conjoint self. That is, when the
husband thinks, he does it from the wife’s affections and motives, and
therefore when the husband acts, he acts from the wife. His thoughts are
nothing but the outward form of her affections (xx).
It is not possible for an angel husband to
act from his own will—without immediately losing all his angelic happiness and
wisdom (xx). Picture yourself as an angel husband in the afterlife: you will
then love to act from her will more than from your own will, or else you could
not be there. Now ask yourself: How am I going to learn to love to act
from her will more than from my own, since right now I do not have this love
and striving? The answer is that we must go through a
spiritual discipline to teach ourselves to love this new love—if indeed we wish
to become an angelic husband and live with our true love in eternal bliss. The
only other alternative is to live in hell in an infernal marriage with a
concubine we hate (CL 464). What a choice!!
It is not known at this day what marriage love is, or whence
it is ... Marriage love is willing what another wills, thus willing mutually
and reciprocally ... Those that are in marriage love dwell together in the
inmosts of life ... It is such a union of two minds that from love they are one
... For the love of minds, which is spiritual love, is a union ... (HH 367)
Moreover, such a conjunction of husband and wife in the
inmosts of their minds comes from their very creation; for man is born to be
intellectual, that is, to think from the understanding, while woman is born to
be affectional, that is, to think from her will; and this is evident from the
inclination or natural disposition of each (HH 368).
From all this it is evident that love truly conjugial is the
union of two persons in respect to their interiors, which belong to the thought
and the will, thus to truth and good; for truth belongs to the thought, and
good to the will.
For one who is in love truly conjugial loves what the other
thinks and what the other wills; thus he also loves to think as the other does,
and he loves to will as the other does; consequently to be united to the other,
and to become as one man.
This is what is meant by the Lord's words in Matthew:
"And they twain shall be one flesh, therefore they are
no more twain, but one flesh" (Matt. 19:4-6; Gen. 2:24).
(AC 10169)
It’s
important to understand that internal union with a wife is made possible by the
permanent and absolute duality in the psychobiological distinctness between man
and woman. The body could not function as itself were
it not constructed out of the circulatory and respiratory systems acting as
one. These two systems are distinct and permanently different from each other.
Only then can they achieve a perfect union as an integrated body. The conjoint
self of the married couple is a new construction by the Lord, who out of two
separate individuals, human male and human female, He creates a perfect union
of one angel. The distinctness of each, which is not a
perfection by itself, becomes a perfection in a conjoint self. This new
entity has a will and an understanding, and the will is that of the wife and
the understanding is that of the husband. United they make a functioning
angelic mind.
There is no
status differential or equity in this kind of union. Is the heart more
important than the lungs? Neither can function without the other. In the body,
the heart rules, and the lungs cooperate. The heart corresponds to the will in
the mind and the lungs to the understanding. In the conjoint self the wife
rules because she is the will. The will always rules the understanding just as
the motive always drives the plan, and the two together engender the outward
act or sensation (DLW 214). This is why it is necessary for us husbands to teach
ourselves how to act from the wife’s will. This has
got to become our permanent discipline while we are in the physical body. In
the afterlife, we will do so spontaneously and irresistibly. But here, we at
first hate it, which is why I said that we “must be willing to suffer
ourselves” to learn to act from our wife. The Lord gives us power in our
religious disciplines, the ability as-of self to carry it out. Hence it is a
commandment that we disregard our hatred for conjugial love and to simulate
loving it for as long as do not love it (see Chapter 9, Section 4 below).
There is no
conjugial love possible until the husband becomes willing to love his wife’s
thinking, reasoning, willing, and doing. This is what makes the interior union!
Clearly then all regenerating husbands must practice in doing this even if they
don’t feel like it or even if they can think of many reasons why not to. They
ought to think rationally about it and compel their natural mind to obey and
conform to this sacred commandment. They ought to simulate this behavior while
they’re learning to love it. It stands to reason that if the Lord commands us
to love Him and neighbor we have no choice but to teach ourselves how to even
if we don’t feel like it. This is true human liberty. Similarly, when the Lord
commands husbands to love their wife’s willing, thinking, and doing we have no
choice but to compel ourselves to do so even when we don’t feel like it.
Everyone,
whether man or woman, possesses understanding and will; but with the man the understanding
predominates, and with the woman the will predominates, and the character is
determined by that which predominates. Yet in heavenly marriages there is no
predominance; for the will of the wife is also the husband's will, and the
understanding of the husband is also the wife's understanding, since each loves
to will and to think like the other, that is mutually and reciprocally. Thus
are they conjoined into one. This conjunction is
actual conjunction, for the will of the wife enters into the understanding of
the husband, and the understanding of the husband into the will of the wife,
and this especially when they look into one another's faces; for, as has been
repeatedly said above, there is in the heavens a sharing of thoughts and
affections, more especially with husband and wife, because they reciprocally
love each other. This makes clear what the conjunction of minds is that makes
marriage and produces marriage love in the heavens, namely, that one wishes
what is his own to be the others, and this
reciprocally. (HH 369)
So to learn
to love this state it would be wise and prudent and good for us to practice
conjugial disciplines. At the forefront of our mind will be Rule 1: that we
are to learn to love to act from the wife more than from self. At first we
oppose this idea in our mind as all sorts of objections come in. O.K., I agree
to love her thinking and willing, but where does it say I have to act from her
thinking and willing? Wouldn’t that turn me into a zombie? Am I not responsible
for my own thinking and behaving? How can I act from another and still be
required to account for my own actions? Besides, what if she is wrong about
something? Wives have to regenerate just like other people and God knows how
many women are messed up. Should I just go along with her misconceptions and
weaknesses? Isn’t this the wrong way to love her? Etc. etc.
When these
objections come into us, the first reaction we should have is to say: All
right, whatever the answers are, the Lord will enlighten me. One thing is for
sure: I will not depart from the commandment which is that I teach myself how
to love her willing, thinking, and doing. This I’m going to do no matter what.
Then within this context of reaffirming the positive, we can go to the second
step—demolishing the objections with rational arguments based on what we have
taken up from the Writings into our mind. Once again this shows the crucial
importance of studying the Writings daily in order to accumulate all the
knowledge we need to take care of these natural dilemmas and resistances.
I have been shown how the delights of marriage love advance
towards heaven, and the delights of adultery towards hell. The advance of the
delights of marriage love towards heaven is into states of blessedness and
happiness continually increasing until they become innumerable and ineffable,
and the more interiorly they advance the more innumerable and more ineffable
they become, until they reach the very states of blessedness and happiness of
the inmost heaven, or of the heaven of innocence, and this through the most
perfect freedom; for all freedom is from love, thus the most perfect freedom is
from marriage love, which is heavenly love itself. (HH 386)
2. I’m Commanded To Not Disagree With Her
To
summarize the answers that are to be given to
objections to Rule 1: I’m commanded to love her thinking and willing. That
means her reasoning and choices in relation to our marriage and our
relationship. Obviously it doesn’t mean in other things since the special
perception she receives from the Lord has to do with all things about her
husband’s interior mind, not about his external knowledges and skills. A wife who is given the freedom by her marriage to open up her
conjugial love, loves her husband’s thinking more than she loves her own.
She is and feels herself to be the very love of his thinking (CL 193). Love
compels her to learn and adopt this thinking, and to think from it. So we
husbands need not worry at all that our wife will want to expand her sphere of
thinking to override us in our forensic and intellectual expertise. All the
objections fall to the ground when we hold this thought: Rule 1 applies to all
things of our marriage and relationship.
Now what
does it mean to love her thinking and willing? Does it not mean to want to
conjoin with it and to be as-if it? Can you love your wife’s thinking and
willing simultaneously as you disagree with her on any thing? When such a
disagreement arises in your mind, as it so often does in the course any day
with her, can you love her thinking even as you disagree? No, for one can have
only one love spiritually, and one serves either one or the other as master
(Mark
And
finally, the third step, is to keep track by
self-monitoring as to when and how often you fail the commandment.
- How often you show her that you
disagree (overtly or, tacitly by moodiness, refusal, secrecy, etc.)
- How often you hurt her (by
avoidance, intimidation, abuse, unkindness, neglect)
- How often you fail to show your
appreciation (her appearance, her sweetness, her contributions to your
happiness, her work, her loyalty, her passion)
To the
extent that we permit ourselves to disagree, hurt, or abuse our wife to that
extent we do not love her, do not love her willing and thinking, and therefore,
hate her, and hate her thinking and willing. We are then no longer free but
driven by the lust for dominion and hell. Yes, to allow ourselves to show
disagreement with our wife is to hate her. This the
Lord tells us:
That which is done from love truly conjugial is done from
freedom on both sides, because all freedom is from love, and both have freedom
when one loves that which the other thinks and that which the other wills.
From this it is that the wish to command in marriages
destroys genuine love, for it takes away its freedom, thus also its delight.
The delight of commanding, which follows in its place, brings forth
disagreements, and sets the minds at enmity, and causes evils to take root
according to the nature of the domination on the one side, and the nature of
the servitude on the other. (AC 10173)
It took me
many years to learn to comb my hair the way my wife likes to see it. My habit
from adolescence was to plaster it down flat on both sides of the part. She
would rearrange my hair, combing it so it has “body” rather than being flat.
She especially insisted on this when we went on camera or were
being interviewed with pictures for the media (see Note 17 at end). Why did it
take me years to learn to fluff my hair and give it body in the way she thought
I should look? The reason is that I preferred to act from myself rather than
from her. Thus, I was not her true friend but my own friend. And this applies
to many things that are revealed when you lead a life of self-witnessing
discipline. Find out what she doesn’t like that you do routinely, and change
it.
Do not
argue or ask for justification “first.” Just go ahead and do it for the only
reason that the Lord commands us to learn to love acting from the wife more
than from self. We need to understand why the Lord gives us this commandment,
for He wants our involvement with the rational as-of self to assent from
freedom and love of obeying Him. And the reason we should learn to love to act
from wife more than self is that only in that way can the two be united into a
conjugial union. The Lord commands us to do those things that will allow Him to
give us more from Himself, so as to make us happy from Him. This is love (HH
399).
Chapter 2, Section 6
6. Giving Up
Male Prerogatives As Contrary To Conjugial Unity
Male
prerogatives built into our mind from heredity and socialization enter into every fabric and setting of society: the home,
the workplace, recreation, dating, marriage, family, religion, drama, song.
Men, their mentality, reigns everywhere, and if women gain a political or
economic position within the male system, their behavior is sanctioned in terms
of whether or not they act consistently with the male system. This maleness of
society is maintained by both men and women in the external world. But in the
internal where women have freedom, it is different. The difference is described
by the Lord as follows:
That in itself the intelligence of women is modest, elegant,
pacific, yielding, gentle, tender; and the intelligence of men in itself is
grave, harsh, hard, spirited, fond of license. That such is the nature of women
and such the nature of men, is very manifest from the body, face, voice,
speech, bearing, and manners of each. (CL 218.)
Since
intelligence is the very face of the person and reflects one’s character (AR
433), it is clear that men are born and raised opposed to the nature of women.
As a result men hate women, subjugate them, seduce them, use them, abuse them,
and abandon them. A woman to survive has to feign male traits and behave like men—toughness,
seductiveness, rebelliousness, corporeality, independence. But these external
personality traits that women feel compelled to put on, are discontinuous with
their internal character and therefore women end up living in stress and
suffering, unable to flourish internally, suppressed and suffocated in their
genuine femininity. This deep dilemma women face in a male dominated world, a
man has to understand and take to heart where compassion and friendship lie.
The male discipline of conjugial love is a helpful tool for overcoming the
built-in male orientation that keeps us in the animal state below our true
human.
The
departure point of the husband’s conjugial discipline is to acknowledge all of
the above and to feel responsible for it. The sin that stands in the way is the
man’s accommodation to the male prerogatives he is given by birth and culture. Even men who are ardent supporters and admirers of women and
women’s causes in society, may still harbor, deeply embedded within them,
opposition to women. Consciousness of where these oppositional forces
are hidden in our mind can gradually increase under the discipline.
Self-witnessing is the only tool I know that develops this consciousness (see
Note 20 at end). And it does it only to the extent that the man is willing to
abide by Rule 1 discussed frequently above--that husbands are to learn to love
acting from the wife more than from self. Self-witnessing our numerous daily
interactions with our wife reveals the numerous areas of resistance we feel
when trying to apply this rule. Consider the quote that appeared in a previous
section:
It should be known, moreover, that, so long as man is in
knowledges only, and not in any life according to them, he is in his proprium
and led by self; but, when he is in a life according to them - and to the same
extent - he is elevated out of his proprium, and is led by the Lord. This man
does not perceive, but still it is so; and so far as man is led by the Lord, so
far is there good in him, or good is what he wills and thinks. But it should be
thoroughly known, that nobody can live according to the knowledges from the
Word, except from them he reflect upon his thoughts, intentions and deeds, that
is, examine himself, and abstain from evils and do good as from himself:
otherwise, there is no reception by man; and if there is no reception, there is
no conjunction with the Lord; therefore, neither can he be led by the Lord. (SE
5945)
Since our
mind is beset with numerous resistances to our regeneration we need to monitor what
they are, when they occur, and how we manage them in response. The resistances
are arranged in a large hierarchy and every man has to learn what his is. Near
the top are the arrogant affections for feeling superior to women, which can
only be accomplished by putting them down in our mind. When a woman speaks, a
man doesn’t listen, interrupts, and dismisses. This is the external result of
his internal arrogance towards the woman. When these chauvinistic and
undignified brow-beating strategies fail to silence her, they either remove
themselves from the wife’s sphere or they put on a fake exterior within which
there is an inward hatred for her and desire for revenge and punishment.
The
retaliation is carried out either overtly by violence and intimidation, or
covertly by passive aggression which they refuse to admit. Thus the wife is
neutralized, defeated, and rendered useless for his regeneration. No internal
union can be established as long as this process goes on. And no regeneration
can take place. His salvation and his eternal future is
now threatened. He must stop and back out of this strategy. He cannot silence
and suppress his wife without closing up the interior union between them. He
needs a conjugial discipline to save himself as of himself (AC 47, 233, 1712,
2877, 5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). The Lord
is knocking at the inner door, waiting for the man to turn to Him. Rule 1 is a
way to let Him in because this is His Divine Commandment to all husbands who are
forming a
But Rule 1
can only be believed by the man if he sets it into the center of his religion.
For years I tried without this requirement and I failed, to the immense
distress of my wife. But then I made it into a doctrinal issue which I called
the Doctrine of the Wife (see Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4). Rule 1 can only be
acknowledged in sincerity and power if the husband enlists the wife as a
witness of the covenant he makes between himself and the Lord. This is not a
private thing between the man and the Lord. It is a partnership covenant with
the wife that is sealed in the man’s love and worship of the Lord. This
empowers the wife to fight like a brave warrior for the life of her husband.
Nothing less is at stake—his eternal life. He has to come to the realization of
the truth that he cannot regenerate by himself so as to turn his character into
something that is suitable for conjugial union. Only those men who turn
themselves into this can live in heaven. All others live in hell. And this is
why the wife is fighting for his very life. This drama is powered and closely
supervised by the Lord Himself.
The first
phase of the discipline then, is for the husband to establish the conjugial
context and motive in his mind. This takes time and goes through a process
powered by the Lord who allows spiritual temptations in which the husband feels
reeling and screaming. He alternates between states of rage and obedience. When
obedient, his wife is encouraged and makes herself available
and lovely for him. When he is mean and rebellious, his wife is discouraged and
turns away from him inwardly. This painful dance goes on for as long as he
takes.
The second
phase of the discipline is entered when the wife perceives that her husband is
firmly grounded in his acceptance and dependability on Rule 1-- to love acting
from the wife more than from self. Now begins a new struggle in which she
patiently and bravely intervenes in her husband’s mental life. This requires
more daily and hourly attention than several babies and children need from the
mother. Everything but everything about her husband needs to be modified and
guided to life and sanity: his facial expressions, his manners, his
dependencies, his habits, his hobbies and interests, his reasoning process.
Her total
guidance and her consistent demands are at first hated by him. He feels
suffocated, suppressed, dealt with badly. It’s crucial for the success of the
discipline to keep track of all this inner resistance. I started keeping lists
and arranged them in inventories. I consulted my wife and she was always able
to add new ones to the list. Keeping track over months and years allowed me to
see how I cycle backwards, but also, how I progress forward. I kept wanting to
make exceptions, to convince her that she is exaggerating, that she is not
recognizing all the good parts, that she is trying to go too fast in our
process, that there are things which stay as long as I am in this sinful body,
that it will be different in heaven, and so on. None of this helped me. I found
with amazement that my wife’s determination in changing me was greater than
mine in resisting it.
Phase three
then began—no more fights. I acknowledged myself defeated and, O so happy and
blissful. Now came the long process of sincerely
becoming what she wants me to be as her conjugial partner. Resistance melted
away as soon as she took a stand on anything. When she was challenged by
something I thought or failed to think, or something I did or failed to do, she
was able to maintain conjugial contact, to continue perceiving that I was
dedicated to following her side rather than mine. The problem issue was a
matter of incompetence rather than vicious or gross rebellion, as before. Not:
I don’t want to do this, but, How do I do this. In
this way I gained in strength and integrity, and she gained confidence and a
measure of peace.
My new
mental outlook and motive changed the way I talk to her, behave towards her,
think of her, and love her. When I show my face to her, a smile of pleasantness
comes over it. When I address her inappropriately or with a harsh tone, I feel
instant repentance. It shocks me. When she tells me I’ve been neglecting her in
this or that, I take immediate notice and desire to make amends. I look around
to survey her setting and use my personal services or forensic skills to make
things easier for her. I come to her rescue feeling responsible for her state
of mind. I attribute all negativity to my failures and none to her. I do not
demand or accept equity or equality between us, putting her ahead of
everything. I do not use religion to put her in her place and claim male
doctrinal expertise or supremacy on this or that issue. I give her all my
private thoughts and excuses I want to make for myself so that she can use the
knowledge as weapons against my reluctances. Thus she is winning the battle and
I can look forward to eternal life in her heaven. This makes it all worth it.
And to fail is horrible and scary to contemplate:
By this is
meant, that if a man knew the hour of his death, he would prepare himself, not
indeed from the love of truth and good, but from the fear of hell; and whatever
a man does from fear remains not with him, but what he does from love remains;
therefore he must prepare himself. (AE 193)
Repentance is the first stage in the development of the
church in a person. … the church enters into a person
when he is being regenerated. Everyone is regenerated by abstaining from sinful
evils, and shunning them as anyone would on seeing the hordes of hell seeking
with torches in their hands to attack him and to throw him upon a pyre. (TCR
510)
Chapter 2, Section 7
7. The Equity
Model Versus The Unity
Model Of
Marriage
Contemporary
secular psychology advocates equity between married partners as the desirable
balance in their relationship. Equity has an economic-political aspect, and a
psychological aspect. Equal opportunity for women and men,
and equal pay for equal work. Though this is not practiced in the
majority of venues, it is the ideal that is upheld as right, and it is the law.
In the psychological arena equity refers to the 50-50 model of sharing duties
that ideally applies to workmates, roommates, couples living together, and
married partners and their family. Everyone does their share as expected of
them or as formally assigned by some procedure, and this has to reflect
equitable and just proportions. No one should have to do more than any other
relative to their share. The husband and the wife are told to negotiate some
sort of equitable arrangement that gets the work done, each according to
expectation or assignment. Who does the dishes; who takes out the garbage; who
balances the check book; who remembers dates; who cares about appearance; who
drives the kids somewhere; who gets to relax and be served; and so on.
Every day
brings thousands of such mutualities of service and communal decisions. The
occasion that gives psychologists to advocate the equity model is the sad
statistic that the majority of married couples don’t get along well and there
is much open or hidden anger and resentment between them. It is believed that
the equity model might be a solution because a common symptom is that of the
women complaining about the husbands with a long list of what they are not
doing that is their share to do: helping with house tasks, helping with
children, with cleaning, with guest lists and family dates, knowing when to
initiate sex and when not, doing enough to comfort her, helping her with
problems, letting her to take a vacation from routines by taking over, taking
more responsibility for many things, and so on.
The theme
in the complaints wives have of their husbands seems to be that they are not
doing enough. Therefore psychology says to the husbands: you’ve got to do more
in this relationship to make it work, and you need to increase all the way to
50-50 equity. This belief is based on the nonduality between husband and wife.
It is a natural idea, not spiritual or rational. The principle of equity in
husband-wife relations is so ubiquitous that it may be the most pernicious of
all nondualities opposing conjugial union. The race of men is more corrupted
than women because power by itself corresponds to a corporeal love that tends
to corrupt the natural mind while it remains in an unregenerate state. The
principle of equity in marital relations merely maintains the power advantage
of men and this becomes their stumbling block on which they sacrifice conjugial
union.
The duality
of conjugial love is contrastive with the equity principle. Consider Rule 1 as
discussed before:
RULE 1:
The first
and only rule is that husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more
than from self.
(See Chapter
9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
This idea
is based on the absolute duality between husband and wife. Their relationship
of unity must be based on distinctness and its perfection is that not a single
trait of the husband overlaps with any trait of the wife. Instead, the traits of each is in a reciprocal relation, and this is what
allows their perfect unity. Clearly then, making rules of nonduality between
them could not work. Rather than looking for equity arrangements the husband
must strive to learn what Rule 1 states: to love to act from the wife more than
to love to act from himself. This orientation is based on acknowledging and
honoring the absolute duality between them. He is to act from her half of the
time, and the other half of the time from himself. This would be equity.
Rather, he is to act from his wife 100 percent of the time. This is the meaning
of Rule 1. If the husband would do this, the wife would not have any
complaints, the psychologist would not be involved in mediation, and they would
have peace and happiness together as a foretaste of the true peace and real
happiness of heaven.
But is this
possible? Is it even advisable? Show me where in the Writings this comes from.
And the
answer comes from above: Study the Writings yourself and search and see if you
can find doctrines that teach Rule 1. (See Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4).
The male
|
Husband MUST DO All the Time |
Husband MUST NEVER DO |
|
always
offer do it for her always
let her decide whenever she wants to always
think of her as perfect for you always
gladly try to perform any request she makes always
allow her to interrupt you (sentence or activity) always
show attention to her always
take her side on anything with anyone always
allow her to complain without restriction or demanding reciprocation always
allow her to throw a temper tantrum by not getting angry at her and not
getting into a bad mood |
never
attach more importance to your point of view than hers never
think your topic is to be handled before hers never
choose something against her wish or preference never
pressure her to go along with you or to change her mind never
want to change her or think it never
prefer to be with someone else (friend, family) or alone (activity) never
complain about her or to her never
show impatience, anger, or disapproval relating to her never act
like you’re not available because busy with something “more important” going
on never
interrupt her when she is talking or doing something (wait for a proper
moment when her focus is available again) |
When you
look at this list does your mind protest and want to
say, But what about the wife? Doesn’t this apply to her too? Shouldn’t they
each be doing these things? Etc.
This desire
to balance the sides for husband and wife comes from nonduality in thinking
about them as equal or in a continuous degrees rather
than discrete. The
What
happens when the husband backslides from these absolutes in the Table? Here are
some of the results:
q
He allows himself to think of her as
a nag or bitch or idiot.
q
He thinks and/or says denigrating
things, criticizing her
q
He feels and shows anger, rage, and
often threatens her
q
He refuses her when she makes
certain requests
q
He
picks and chooses which requests he agrees to depending on his preference,
convenience, or philosophy
q
He asserts his turn to choose and
makes her watch a movie she doesn’t want to
q
He neglects her in many ways and
denies it
q
He is willing to see her stressed or
distressed and not do much about it
q
He wants to retain some independence
in areas he picks, giving her no say in the matter
q
He makes many mistakes that
inconvenience her and feels little repentance or the desire to make up to her
q
He is romantically lukewarm at
times, or frequently
q
He relaxes into male prerogatives,
taking advantage of her obedience
q
He chooses when he is to prevail
regarding choices of residence, career, budget, friends, family, schedules,
recreation, housework
The
nonduality model of marriage destroys the development of conjugial love and
creates the various plagues listed above. In this fallen state the husband is
totally ignorant of his wife’s sweetness and passion, for his negative
behaviors suppress the expression of the conjugial in her, turning her life
into something harsh and unfulfilled. And yet husbands could enjoy this
heavenly sweetness and passion if they only strive to follow Rule 1 and allow
their wife to coach them in the process. It’s a choice they make between
eternal life or spiritual death, between heavenly bliss and infernal misery.
Regeneration is an awesome task and self-witnessing disciplines are useful in
helping the husband to learn to cooperate with his wife. It is this work of
learning to cooperate with the wife that constitutes the arena for his
regeneration. Every error brought to his attention must arouse the desire to
repair and modify so that the progress is cumulative.
It stands
to reason that there is no regeneration for the husband by himself, separate
from his wife. The husband cannot accomplish this task by himself or from
himself, but only from the Lord by his wife. He must appeal to the Lord daily,
hourly, and by the minute, to receive from Him the motivation and persistence
that it takes to succeed (see next page).
|
Self-Witnessing
Exercise for Husbands—fill in today, and a month later, then monthly. Make a
chart at the end of the year. Date:____________________ |
I knew it |
I do it
every day several times |
I did not
know it |
|
YOUR SWEETHEART WIFE WANTS YOU TO: |
|||
|
Watch her
walk away from you with romance in your eyes |
|
|
|
|
Notice
the work she does all the time by mentioning it with appreciation |
|
|
|
|
Appreciate
her style in everything and let her know with each thing separately (“That’s
really cute.” “I really love that.”) |
|
|
|
|
Laugh at
her jokes and wit and show you’re having a great time |
|
|
|
|
Admire
her wisdom, intelligence, and perspective on things |
|
|
|
|
Show that
she is your favorite in everything (person, friend, lover) |
|
|
|
|
Frequently
express enthusiasm and passion for everything about her (“You’re so great!”
“You’re really wonderful.”) |
|
|
|
|
Give her
things (presents, mementos, notes, nicknames, surprises) |
|
|
|
|
Treat her
all the time like she is special |
|
|
|
|
Each time
she needs it: console her, reassure her, protect her, look after her |
|
|
|
|
Look for
opportunities to touch her, hug her, hold hands, etc., (once an hour at least
while you’re together) |
|
|
|
|
Look for
ways of communicating with her when separate (short phone calls, notes left
around for her to find) |
|
|
|
I call
these behaviors “sweetheart rituals.” If it seems that they are somewhat exaggerated
consider how people in love act together. Consider how you were together in
that first flame of passion, even if it only lasted two weeks. It was a
foretaste of heavenly union (CL 275). It is required that we prepare our mind
for heavenly life. This is our regeneration process. The Lord can create a
heavenly mind in us to the extent that we cooperate with Him. This is our
cooperation: that we strive to follow “sweetheart rituals” all the time and
allow ourselves no exceptions, ever. If we fail to follow any particular
sweetheart ritual, we must immediately repent, reform, and modify.
Repent,
reform, and modify. This is our breastplate of honor and virtue from the Lord.
Repent, reform, and modify your behavior towards your sweetheart wife every minute
you spend with her. Consider that conjugial love is not a status you achieve
but a doing you maintain. If an angel husband in heaven would stop doing their
celestial sweetheart rituals, he and his wife would be catapulted out of
heaven, causing her great shame and distress.
Above
all consider that conjugial love is the closest love to the Lord! Conjugial love is above all other
loves and closest to the Lord (CL 222). There is no other way to get close to
the Lord except through conjugial love. If there were another way, then this
other love would be at the top, not conjugial love—and that love is then a
usurper and a robber (John 10:1). Thus, we have no other choice but to learn to
love sweetheart rituals above our own preferred male rituals from inheritance
and hell.
Chapter 2, Section 8
8. The Spiritual
Discipline Of Sweetheart
Rituals
It is a
natural process for love between partners to start with passion and romance
during the dating period and the special initial phase following the wedding. Secular
psychologists within the scientific orientation of nonduality (or monism) have
tracked the expected decline in “romantic love” setting its waning at around
seven years into the relationship (see Note 18 at end). Popular culture already
had phrase for it--“the seven-year itch.” But careful observation of one’s own
marriage would reveal that husbands begin to decline in their romantic heat
almost immediately after the initial fuse is satiated. And this comes just
days, weeks, or months into the relationship (not years). This miserable
outcome is due to the “scortatory love” that is rooted in the man’s natural
mind (CL 426). Though a man may try to hide it by overt declarations of
faithfulness, his wife or sweetheart, knows it and
perceives it easily, to her deep and utmost distress!
This is the
way with most men since they don’t undergo reformation until adult life,
following years of unregenerate attitudes towards women, sex, and pornography
(AE 803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]).
By the time the New Church mind begins to
be formed through reformation the person has lived several decades of willing
and thinking scortatory loves, ideas, and behavior, imbibing and absorbing
the cultural environment, loving it and being as one with it. Scortatory
love is roaming love of the sex (CL 112). Only men have it spiritually, thence
biologically, though women can also acquire it into their outward personality
from culture and society. But men have it in their inner character given the
long historical line of the love of dominion over women. Men are born with this
love that turns into roaming love, which is the scortatory
delights of “free love” or casual sex with any female.
Women have
a contrastive inner spiritual inheritance, and therefore biological as well.
Women inherit the spiritual love of marriage (CL 169). This is the inmost
desire women are born with, namely the desire to conjoin from within with a
husband to eternity. This is the woman’s fullness of being and she works
tirelessly to achieve it with a husband who has an inborn aversion for that
union. The is the harsh labor of love that woman was given to accomplish—to try
to unite herself to a husband who inwardly is an angel but outward acts like a
devil. If you think this is an exaggerated idea of my imagination then show
me where is the husband who doesn’t torture his wife?
Who is
torturing his wife and why? Every husband, because he hates conjugial love,
delights in torturing his wife in numerous endless ways—to name just a few
general areas:
How he talks, stands, looks, eats, does
gross things with his body in front of her, neglects the basic things of
sweetheart rituals, yells at her, criticizes her, scares, abuses her,
disregards her opinion, belittles her mind, rejects her, gets angry and enraged
at her, embarrasses her, isn’t loyal to her, doesn’t the details of her life
because he doesn’t care, and so on.
Thus I
stand convicted, along with other husbands. There is no equity excuse possible
for any of us. It is hypocritical and self-serving to say, Well, I don’t do
most of those things, and some of them only sometimes.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is the motivation for “doing it sometimes.”
This motivation is either from heaven or hell, either good or evil (TCR 115; AC
904). There are no in-between motivations. And a single connection to hell that
we maintain voluntarily, reserving for ourselves the right to keep that single
tie to hell, is our total perdition. There is no partial perdition. An angel
cannot survive in heaven if it has a single contact point to hell. You can see
this easily. So now it applies to us here, as well. Every
The Lord
gives her special perception to perceive this angel in her man (CL 166). Behind
the devil, she sees the angel she loves. But how can she get to the angel when
this devil is surrounding him and guarding him? At her intimate approach to
him, he snarls at her, seduces her, abuses her, and abandons her, to start
fresh with another victim. This is the man we are born to enact and live until
our reformation. When the wife is exhausted by her miserable treatment he gives
her, she suddenly comes back to life from within as she sees her man undergo
the struggles of reformation. And she is happy to renew her difficult struggle
for winning conjugial love with this man, who is now undergoing regeneration.
He cannot do it on his own, for when he deserts her for a few hours in one or
another angry state of mind, he reverts to animalhood—harsh, competitive,
self-centered, dishonest, irresponsible, out of balance in everything, lacking
empathy and compassion for anyone, isolated on top of a self-created mountain
of ice and wind storms.
But the
second he turns back to his wife, repenting, apologizing, making up with
animation and sincerity, that very instant he revives from within, he gets to
descend from his icy mountain into her sweet arms and the protection of her
conjugial love, warmth, and healing of wholeness.
These
things happen because they are spiritual necessities, hence biological
realities.
If a man
concentrates his love upon his wife, by shunning adultery as sin, then love
with its potency increases daily; but if men take from that love and consume it
with harlots, conjugial love becomes like chaff, and dies.
[I mentioned] about a woman, that she said, that it is
impossible to love one's wife, because it becomes usual. But the angels said
that she is mistaken; and that what is usual, when love is truly conjugial, is
the plane in which enjoyments form themselves, from
within, as upon a rose bed; and that every separate rose becomes a plane in
which interior enjoyments are formed and variegated, and this to eternity. (SE
6110)
The
Suppressing
our will and accepting His will means that we suffer Him to regenerate us
through the innumerable temptations we are to face, struggle against, and
conquer with His power, not with our own for we have none. We must therefore
consciously ascribe the power to Him, imploring Him that we might accept it,
for He is always willing to give it. We accomplish this not by mere prayer
and by dint of imploring sincerely, with reflection, and many times over, for
this is but the first step and cannot lead to success until we take the
subsequent steps the Lord wants us to take, has commanded us to take. And the
second step is to acknowledge that we need a discipline to learn and to apply,
so that our cooperation with the Lord may be adequate for our continued
regeneration (DP 114).
I may
suggest here the discipline of establishing sweetheart rituals as one area of
illustration. The details I mention may apply variously to particular couples.
This is something that every husband needs to find his way around in his own
relationship—what is appropriate, what is impractical, what seems to work, how
often to perform it, in what specific style, and so on. The things I mention
may serve as samples of what might be considered. Though wives will have a deep
interest in reading this, they will see that it is not addressed to them but to
husbands. It’s the husbands who need to plan, perform, and monitor
sweetheart rituals. The wives will respond and react in their own way and
on their own pace, guided by secret knowledge and
perception they have from the Lord, either consciously or unconsciously.
So the
first principle the husband needs to apply is that it is he that is required to
initiate and perform romantic rituals. He must not make his wife’s response or
reaction a condition for starting and continuing to perform the sweetheart
rituals. His mind must be cast into an absolute duality: I am preparing myself
to become a conjugial husband or I am not. I am doing this in every act or in
none. He must not allow anything in between because that smacks of a
nonduality, of a continuum from slightly or sometimes to often to most of the
time, etc. A discrete jump is required from the natural concept of “conjugal”
to the spiritual concept of “conjugial” (the extra “i” marks the discrete
difference). The
I have spoken
with spirits about the changes of state of man's life, that it is inconstant,
and that he is borne upward and downward, now toward heaven and now toward
hell. But they who suffer themselves to be regenerated are being borne
continually upward, and thus always into more interior heavenly societies.
Extension of sphere into these societies is given by the Lord to those who are
being regenerated, especially to those who are being regenerated by means of
temptations, in which resistance is made to evils and falsities; for the Lord
then fights through angels against the evils and falsities; and in this way the
man is introduced into the societies of these angels, which are more interior
societies; and into whatever societies he has once been introduced, he there
remains; and from this he also receives a more extended and elevated capacity
of perception. (AC 6611)
The
husband’s performances may jump around, this she will learn to live with, but
in the meantime, he must never take back his commitment to conjugial union.
The commitment to one hundred percent sweetheart romance must never relapse
because this is a thing of faith for the
The
performance of sweetheart rituals starts with self-witnessing. We need to make
a list of all the sweetheart rituals we can think of. Many of them are those
that we practiced in the initial phases of the relationship. Some we know from
observing other couples, either in real time or as portrayed in movies and
novels. The list should be lengthened whenever the Lord reveals to the husband
one more ritual he can perform. And so it grows, and with it love between them
and for each other.
1. Sweethearts
Spend All Their Time Together
Observe the
time you spend together. Sweethearts spend as much time together as
circumstances allow. They don’t voluntarily choose activities that do not allow
them to be together. When they are separated by the daily role activities they
think about each other constantly and long to reunite. If both are near phones
the man in love calls up his beloved several times and they “steal” moments
from whatever they are separately engaged in doing at the time. They do not talk
about business or duties but about love, romance, longing, and desire. They
hang up with regret, because they are forced to, not because they want to. Husbands
must practice this approach as a deliberate plan or discipline. It’s
crucial to keep track:
When is the
last time I communicated with her? How many hours and minutes? How many
opportunities for communicating have I let slip by? How many hours and minutes
since the last time I thought of her, longed for her? What else can I do on top
of what I’m already doing? Can I send an email note? Can I bring some surprise
home with me? What words of romance and love do I have prepared for our moment
of reuniting? Etc. etc.
When he
arrives home he doesn’t enact being tired and wanting to be served by his wife.
Instead he enacts being animated and exalted by being reunited with her. He
touches her and holds her and sits close to her, smiling, beaming. He offers to
serve her, to pamper her. He stays on her topics as long as she desires. He
never turns on the TV to shut her up or out. He doesn’t leave her to go play
with men and be with men instead of being with her. None of this comes
naturally. The natural is to hate this, to see it as subservient to women, as
losing manhood, etc. But the spiritual we want to become and are from within,
rejects this anti-woman he-man level of thinking. We can see rationally that
voluntary enactment of sweetheart rituals are from heaven and prepare us for
life in heaven.
Husbands
must take care of the temptation to use workload as an excuse for neglecting
sweetheart rituals. This is easier if one takes up a radical and categorical
orientation with respect to what is always to be on top of one’s workload and
recreation—the sweetheart. She must be the reigning love in the
Depending
on life’s circumstances some couples can spend many hours together every day
and some only a few. Whatever the case is, when they are together the husband
must perform his sweetheart routines hour by hour, and minute by minute. This
is “quality time” together, making the most of it, as the conjugial demands it.
As always, the husband must monitor his actions towards his wife:
How many
times has he smiled and called her sweet names during that period? How many
times has he touched her, kissed her, cuddled her, held
her hand? How many sweet sentences has he spoken to her—complimenting her,
praising her, acknowledging her accomplishments, her loyalty, her beauty, her
sweetness? How many times has he brought her something to enjoy—a drink, a
sweet bite, a flower, a surprise? How many times has he offered, Is there anything
I can do for you, sweetheart? Etc. etc.
Sweetheart
rituals are continuous non-stop performances of conjugial love. When the wife leaves the room and
returns a couple of minutes later, the husband has to take official note of it.
Hi, Sweetheart, you’re back. His body has to demonstrate the readjustment, for it’s one thing for him to lie, sit, stand, or work at
something while he is alone, and a totally different thing to do these things
while she is present. So the ritual of acknowledging her coming back must be
overtly marked by visibly readjusting his body and his focus.
Romantic
love is spoiled and temporarily destroyed by the slightest negativity a husband
lets out in the presence of his wife. His self-witnessing must include the bad
things he does:
How many
times has he frowned in her presence, or worse, has spoken harshly towards her,
or worse, has expressed cold or anger towards her? How many times has he said
NO to her for anything? How many times has he neglected her, caused her to cry,
to feel abandoned, betrayed, unloved, abused? How many
times has made her frustrated, anxious, doubting, intimidated, forced,
pressured, manipulated? Etc. etc.
To the
unregenerate mind these sweetheart rituals may seem exaggerated and impossible
to learn and perform consistently. All sorts of objections present themselves
to the mind to prevent, to impede, to sabotage. Even the committed conjugial
husband may lapse into temptations of doubt and delusions about being unable to
reach such lofty standards of conduct. All this must be overcome by imploring
the Lord and reflecting that one has no choice for there is no other way the
Lord provides for our regeneration and preparedness for heaven. We must compel
ourselves to perform the sweetheart rituals whether we feel like it or not (CL
282). Make your feeling irrelevant in deciding whether to do or not. Do
not allow yourself a choice or an exception. If you fail to perform in any one
instance, then monitor, reflect, repent, repair, and go on. But we must not
fail in our commitment and in our orientation. For this is what drives the
whole thing.
It is primarily
men who adopt simulations of conjugial love or outward shows of friendship for
the sake of peace and tranquility at home. This is owing to their natural characteristic
of doing what they do by an exercise of the intellect. Because the intellect is
a thinking faculty, it occupies itself with various matters which disturb,
distract and trouble their spirit. Consequently, if they were to find no peace
at home, eventually their vital forces would languish, their inner life would
sink almost into a state of death, and thus the health of both mind and body
would be ruined. Men's minds would be
assailed by the fears of these and many other dangers if they did not find
havens of refuge at home with their wives to calm the turmoil of their
intellect.
[2] Besides,
peace and tranquility soothe their minds and dispose them to receive favorably
kindnesses offered by their wives, who spend every effort to dispel from their
minds the clouds which they keenly observe in their husbands. And this also makes their wives' presence
agreeable.
It is apparent
from this that a simulation and seeming display of truly conjugial love for the
sake of peace and tranquility at home is both necessary and useful.
To this we add
the further note that simulations on the part of wives are not the same as
simulations on the part of men. Even if they appear similar to them, they are
expressions of real love, because women are born forms of love for the
understanding of men. They accept their husbands' displays of favor graciously,
therefore, if not in words, still in heart. (CL 285) (see
also CL 282)
This
passage shows that conjugial simulation is taught by the Lord and therefore it
is to be taken as a commandment for husbands. A husband who is angry with
his wife or treats her badly is breaking the Lord’s commandment. There is
no salvation possible when we reject any of the Lord’s commandments. A Divine
commandment doesn’t require perfect performance, for this idea is not from
rational spirituality. A husband cannot take refuge in the idea that no one can
be perfect. The commandment requires first, that we acknowledge it as Divine;
second, that we sincerely try to practice it, and third, that we immediately
repent and reform when we fail to perform it. The Lord commands that we be
perfect, “like the Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt.
2. The
Commandment Of Conjugial
Simulation
For Husbands: The Commandment of
Conjugial Simulation:
When you
feel positive, act positively.
When you
feel negative, act positively.
Freedom is
to compel our self to follow this commandment. Slavery is to follow it or not
depending on how committed we feel at the time. When we are put off or angry we
don’t feel like acting positively towards our wife. If we then act negatively
we are in slavery to self-love. But if we then compel ourselves to act
positively out of our commitment, we are in freedom. For freedom is to obey the
order imposed by the Lord while slavery is to obey self (AE 774[4]). Slavery
leads to hell, but freedom leads to heaven. Clearly then we are much better off
by obeying this conjugial commandment!
Observe the
various objections that occur to our mind as we consider whether to accept
this:
How do I
know it is a commandment? Where does it say that?
Or: This
can’t be true—it sounds too extreme.
And what
about the wife—does she have to stop nagging and acting negatively towards me?
I’m only
responding to her pushiness and lack of balance. How can I act positively when
I’m seething inside? Haven’t you heard of venting and unhealthy it is to keep
strong emotions inside?
Doesn’t it
count that I almost never lose my temper with her? Wouldn’t this be playing the
hypocrite? How can we ever work on our problems this way? Wouldn’t this stop
all progress? Isn’t it undignified? Couldn’t it be bad for her?
Etc. etc.
These
resistances are natural and stem from our conditioning to equity orientation
discussed in Chapter 9 Section 6. This is a concept from nonduality. The
enslaving nature of it can easily be seen from the perspective of duality.
While equity strives to destroy categorical distinctions between husband and
wife, non-reciprocity strives to maintain the duality into which men and women
are created (CL 90-2). Absolute distinctness must be maintained for every
component of a man that functions analogously in women. For only absolute
distinctness between elements can produce perfection in their unity (DP 4). The
conjugial union exists only in perfection. Equity destroys the conjugial union,
forcing man’s philosophy over women. Conjugial union works if man voluntarily
chooses to do everything for his wife without expecting that she does things
for him. She already is going to do what is necessary for the conjugial union,
but he is not. So he can’t afford to practice equity because it destroys his
ultimate goal of unition with his wife.
Overcoming
all resistances is achieved when the husband first, rejects nonduality (or equity)
and second, adopts non-reciprocity (or duality) as the operating procedure for
himself as husband.
Then
conjugial simulation becomes an essential tool for making progress. Without it
we botch the whole thing right from the start. This is because wives are so
affected by the negativity of their husband that they feel like they’re dying
and they want to die (xx). What’s more, it lingers in their interior mind long
after they are able to recover externally and favor the husband with their
grace and sweetness. These pleasant things they give out despite their
lingering internal injury. And the husband who takes these gifts with delight
is enjoying stolen kisses he does not deserve. He is a thief and robber because
he tries to climb in some other way than what the Lord provides (John 10:1).
And he fails should he persist, and many are those who do.
Therefore
we gain freedom from the slavery of equity and anger the very moment we commit
to non-reciprocity:
“I will always act to please her and I will
not demand that my wife does so too. If I should feel that she is acting
negatively, I will act positively. If I feel that she persists in acting
negatively, I will act positively. If I feel annoyed or mad like hell, I will
act positively. I will be pleasant in face and voice, mild in my speech, quick
in responding when she wants a response, quick in listening when she wants me
to listen. I will not allow myself to think anything negative about her or her
behavior. I will instantly contradict and reject all such thoughts and
conclusions in my mind. I will monitor them carefully so they do not run
themselves off automatically or subconsciously. I will ignore whatever I think
is negative in her attitude or conduct and I will hold before me the positive
that I can see in her everywhere.”
This is
conjugial freedom. This is sanity. This is rationality and spirituality. The
Lord can give it whenever we think and act from His commandment. This is the
freedom of angels, and their peace and bliss (HH 386). Conjugial simulation
acts to absorb the compulsive reactivity in the equity philosophy: eye for an
eye, insult for insult, negativity for negativity, imperfection for
imperfection. When we simulate pleasantness the compulsion to react negatively
is absorbed by the corporeal mind. It is a perceptible experience. I feel it
distinctly and painfully. My interior dialog with myself as it is happening
says:
Wow, it’s
amazing how the explosions just get absorbed and I only feel them for a
fraction of a second. I watch myself go through the motions—I smile and stay
quiet instead of interrupting her. I nod instead of shake my head. I stay close
instead of bouncing away, putting distance between us. I watch my hand reach
towards her and touch her arm or shoulder slightly. She moves away, still
disturbed, heated up. She wants me, she needs me to appease her and put an end
to her misery. How heartless can I be to prolong this for her.
I make myself agree. I think of conciliatory things to say. I do not remain
silent or sullen, passive-aggressive. I reassure her that I am now with her. I
console her by apologizing endlessly and promising profusely. At last I watch
her calm down, as she begins to feel safe again. She is so grateful she has
already forgiven me, but she thinks it wiser not to give me too much praise
because it sometimes blinds me with pride or self-satisfaction (lulls me back
into the ego).
This is
conjugial simulation. It is as far from playing the hypocrite as heaven is from
hell. Conjugial simulation leads to peace between the partners while the
husband catches up to his wife in commitment and love. The wife does not need
conjugial simulation because she is oriented towards internal union while he is
oriented towards external partnership. Everything she does in relation to her
husband is marked by non-reciprocity and duality right from
the word go. If some wives appear not to do this, it is just an outward
illusion, for inwardly they have conjugial union inscribed in their interiors,
in every single element of their interiors, in their willing and thinking.
Hence it is that equity in the husband’s mind is destructive while
non-reciprocity is saving.
When a wife
sees that her man is compelling himself to enact decency and friendship towards
her, she doesn’t think that he is being hypocritical, but brave. She thinks of
him as a hero. Women appreciate a man who is strong enough to lay his male ego
aside and act, not from his own will, but from the woman he loves and respects.
She may hope and trust that his enactment will eventually be his preference and
issue from his love of union with her mind. But in the meantime, she considers
it a good sign that he is willing to enact it out of a love for his religious
commitment. This gives her inner hope that some day her husband will get rid of
the devil and step out and be the angel that she can see within him.
Chapter 2, Section 9
9. Conjugial
Intimacy Disciplines
It’s normal
for the religious husband to wonder about the number and gravity of his
sins—his weaknesses and faults, or his long standing stubbornness about
changing parts of his personality for the sake of his wife. There is a
nonduality hidden within this thinking. It is the idea that sins are arranged
on a continuum of gravity, with abominable sins and a lawless life on the one
end, and on the other, these little weaknesses or stubbornness we still hold on
to. After all not even angels are pure and perfect (SE 883). This nonduality
leads to further things allied to it like the balance idea or equity idea (see
Chapter 9 Section 6). The balance idea is the notion that if you have lots of
good things you do and just a few bad things, the good outweigh the bad, and
we’re O.K. spiritually. In other words, our salvation is secured so long as
those little sins don’t get bigger or more numerous. You can see that this
contains nonduality at its core. It denies the absolute duality between
committing sins and not committing them. It further denies the duality of angel
and devil in the idea that angels are not perfectly pure. This is a false idea
of what the Writings say about the personality of angels.
What needs
to be kept in view is that the personality of angels is not their own
personality but the Lord’s Proprium that they borrow (AC 8409). They act from
that Proprium through their independent and free understanding. The conscious
life of human beings is situated in the understanding, even though the cause of
all thinking is in the will. The cause of the thinking of angels is not their
own will but the Lord’s Proprium and will therein. Angels therefore act as-if
from themselves in consciousness but from the Lord’s
Proprium in the will of the angels (HH 591). Clearly then the threefold self of
an angel is entirely pure—their willing, their thinking, and their acting. This
is why angels are called holy. When we take our focus off this idea, we can
then think about the historical biography of an angel since angels and devils
are the people on earth who pass on. We also need to recall that loves are
spiritual substances and the will is a spiritual organ made of these
substances. Whatever you once love, becomes permanent
because its fabric becomes your self like the cellular synapses that make up
your brain. If you cut out the cellular synapses, there is no brain left. In
the same way if you cut out loves from the will there is no will left, and
without that, there is no conscious or voluntary life whatsoever. One cannot
cut out former loves or eliminate them to eternity (DP 78). But they can be put
to sleep or rendered completely inactive if the individual admits in its stead
the Lord’s Proprium and will in it. In this state one cannot act from one’s own
will. It is as if gone forever.
Angels are
people who suffered themselves to be regenerated while
in the physical body. Obviously they were born with hereditary evils they had
to overcome and be reborn and reformed in character. Every angel has had to be
reformed from animal and evil to human and good. The good is being able to love
to act from the Lord’s Proprium. The former evil they now hold in the greatest
aversion, so much so that they would much rather instantly die or disappear
from existence than have even one of their earthly sins back again. This
aversion is so strong that it keeps every former sin or lust in a coma at the farthest
reaches of their biography and influence. They have this powerful aversion not
from themselves but also from the Lord. Clearly then all they have to do is
cleave to the Lord’s Proprium through the love of acting from the Lord.
You can see
from these considerations that there is an absolute duality between committing
sins and acting from self and not committing them and acting from the Lord.
Therefore
the balance theory of nonduality is false and good deeds do not cancel out bad.
So if you ask this question, you already know the answer:
What about
the really small things like if I don’t floss regularly, or if I have little
hair sticking out of my nose, or bushy eyebrows, or have food spots on my shirt, and act a bit clumsy due to a few extra pounds…—
these little things of anyone’s life. Surely they don’t send people to hell.
It’s not the same thing as being lawless, an adulterer, and being cruel and
avaricious. Where is justice and fairness in this? Etc.
You know
the answer from what was said above about the angels. There is only heaven and
hell for our final lot in life (HH 491). Hell is for those who love to act from
self, while heaven is for those who love to act from the Lord. There is nothing
in between, even though within each discrete degree there is a never ending
continuum of love and its strength and purity. So there are innumerable hells
arranged in order from least grave (highest) to most grave (lowest or deepest).
And there are innumerable heavens from highest (celestial angels) to lowest
(natural-spiritual angels). There is no overlap. Consider what would happen if
you arrive at the stage in your regeneration when you’re entering your heaven
and your conjugial wife is with you. Now you still have with you a few of these
little loves that caused you to have hair sticking our of your nose or ears,
and having bad breath from not flossing regularly and not brushing your tongue.
What is going to happen as you are receiving the Lord’s Proprium in your will?
All the old lusts you now hold in aversion are rendered permanently comatose—except
for those you do not hold in aversion.
And there’s
the big problem.
You have no
protection from the lusts you do not hold in aversion. They are your connection
to hell, either a light hell or a deep hell. Can the Lord’s Proprium enter in
such an unclean will? No. The only other alternative available is that mild
hell you’re still connected to. Out you fall from your heaven into the lower
regions of your mind called the hells. Now you’re in big trouble. Whether or
not you get back to heaven now depends on whether or not you suffer yourself to
give up those little sins. Some who get there do give them up, and some do not
(xx). Friend, don’t take that gamble. Get rid now of the hair sticking out of
your nose and all those other little things that your wife vigilantly warns
against and that you stubbornly continue to ignore.
One reader
responding to an earlier draft of this book wrote:
Bad breath, flossing, sweetheart rituals, etc. This is all excellent stuff. And since I have read it, it’s amazing
how conscientious I have become about these matters. This is great stuff. And I
really enjoy being clean and fresh for my wife. I have even started cleaning
the sink when I get through shaving, wiping my splatters off the mirror when I
get through tooth-brushing, double checking that the toilet seat is down and
clean after I use it, etc. It is something that my wife occasionally comments
on, but which I never pay much attention to. So, thanks for the heads up!
And, oh yes, I
am much more inclined to get ready for her and be there for her when she comes
into the room—shutting off the computer entirely and giving her my focused
attention. I am doing it now, and I feel so good about it!
There are
many such little sins and they are embedded in inherited male stubbornness. It
stands to reason therefore that we should be using a discipline to help us be
efficient in this process. Monitoring what the wife says is the first
essential. Self-witnessing our daily life is the second essential (see Note 20
at end). We need to keep lists of what she says about our little sins and what
we witness ourselves about them. The wife will point out to you the physical
manifestations from what she can notice, but you will point out to yourself the
thoughts that accompany them. You have to catch yourself in the mental sequence
of disregarding and ignoring her. This is where you’ll find the outside form of
your loves. For such as your love is, such is your thinking,
consequently such are you (DLW 368).
I mention
nose hair and flossing in this section, which is called conjugial intimacy,
because it is one of the many unregenerate behaviors adult men retain as if
they were male prerogatives from heaven rather than from hell. Take for
instance flossing regularly, which is necessary for most people to remove the
food between the teeth, which if left there, cause bacteria that destroy the
teeth and create bad breath. You might think that bad breath is not such a big
deal, yet it is so offensive to conjugial union that the Writings mention it as
a legitimate cause for separation in marriage (CL 253). Why? Because
bad breath is offensive to conjugial intimacy. If it is the cause of
some unavoidable medical condition or life situation, the wife can overcome her
revulsion of being close to him, but if it is caused by choice, could the wife
overcome her revulsion? Not in her interiors, but only in her externals. She
can overcome in her interior when it is not a matter of his choice since she
knows that this will disappear in heaven. But if it is by choice, then it
cannot be changed by heaven, thus, she cannot accept it temporarily and
overcome her revulsions.
Take
another example: men get used to shaving in the morning so that they may be
presentable to the world. But if you shave only in the morning, what happens to
your face when you get into bed with your wife at night? Your rough face
offends her tender skin. Is she condemned therefore to sleep with a pineapple
all her life on this earth? The husband who cares about his wife more than the
public will shave at night, before going to bed. The husband who doesn’t care,
can he be in her heaven in the afterlife? If she is of a mentality to withhold
her complaint about some of his little sins the responsibility is on him to
discover them and practice holding them in aversion.
Take
another little sin: clumsiness in close physical contact with the wife. As
couples lie together in physical bodies they are weighted down by gravity. It’s
natural for a man to be clumsy and do things that hurt her physically. He is
heavier than she is, and more muscular. He has to watch his elbows from bumping
into her sensitive parts, especially the breasts. He must take care that his
nails are short and filed so as not to injure her sensitive skin. His hands
must be clean when he approaches her. If he lies against her or on top of her,
he has to maintain muscular control so that he doesn’t weigh
her down anywhere, or make her feel trapped. The point is: these are the
little things that he must monitor and adjust, each
husband in accordance with what is comfortable and pleasant for his wife.
When the
husband kisses his wife in a physical body, what happens to her breath? It is
mostly cut off. He needs to monitor that and become skilled. She will
graciously forgive him for having to learn, but she has to see progress over
time. And this will come only if he has made it into a discipline—which starts
with a religious commitment and continues with progressive self-modification
procedures. Use your rational mind to invent effective ones for yourself. To
help stimulate your awareness, here is a short list of little sins that impede
progress in conjugial union: (see next page)
|
Oral
hygiene (brushing tongue, teeth, flossing) Body
hygiene (cleanliness and odor) Clothes
(old and crumpled) Nudity
(shirtless in public, shorts on the wrong occasion, visibly not wearing
undergarments) Habitually
interrupting the wife who is speaking Ignoring
house cleanliness rules (leaving clothes in the wrong places, not picking up
after self, sloppy food behaviors) |
Accepting
in ourselves the enjoyment of sexually explicit materials Laughing
at scortatory jokes Using
swear words Using
sexist language Saying
disrespectful things about women Communicating
with an ex-girlfriend Embarrassing
the wife in public (talking too loud, yelling, making a scene) Neglecting
repairs she wants done Etc. etc. |
(For a
longer list, see Chapter 9 Section 1)
Chapter 2, Section 10
10. Overcoming
Threats To
Sweetheart Rituals
Married partners together, or conjugial love, is the very
image and likeness of God (adultery destroys it). Hell is infuriated when those
there perceive the sphere of conjugial love, - from experience, as it were, out
of heaven. When adultery is thought permissible, it exists in endeavor in the
whole body. (SE 6110)
In the
unregenerate mind and prior to reformation, romantic love among marrieds has a
half-life of three to four years, according to research by psychologists
(Hatfield, Elaine and xx). It is gone after seven or eight years, and replaced
by love for duty, loyalty, conscience, avoidance of failure, love for children,
fear of change, and so on. These are external motives in the natural mind in
comparison to romantic love which is more internal, more permanent, and
spiritual. Romantic love is given by the Lord to a man and a woman at the
beginning of their relationship. During this initial and brief period, the
couple experiences the feeling of internal union. The Lord accomplishes this
through connecting their spiritual mind to the angels who are in conjugial love
(xx). How long this special state lasts depends on the couple, almost always on
the man. This is because conjugial love is part of the inner constitution of
women but only of the outer constitution for men (CL 156). And since the outer
constitution of men contains hereditary loves for adultery and promiscuity, the
conjugial love that is there cannot survive for any length of time. It is as if
absent in the mind of men.
Declining
romantic love in marriage is therefore attributable for the most part to
husbands. This is not recognized in secular therapy where the nonduality of
equity reigns in counseling and professional advice-giving (see Chapter 6). In
this case, equity takes the form of “they both share the blame.” I watch the
many TV programs that feature couples therapy or counseling by the most popular
health professionals in the nation. What strikes me each time is how the
husband gets away with silence and hiding behind the chair, while the wife is
up front taking all the criticism and advice from the experts. This is equally
true with the female experts. The wife is always picked as the focus of what’s
wrong with the union. She is the one who is told to lower her demands, to
accept him as he is, or to change her approach to him. Why this bias? Because
this is a man’s world, a male oriented intellectual climate (see Chapter 9
Sections 1 and 2).
This
unregenerate orientation and motivational climate hates the conjugial
and only tolerates the conjugal. “Conjugial” means an internal union in
accordance with the reciprocally constructed spiritual constitution of the
husband and wife. In the conjugial, the husband learns to love to act from the
wife more than from himself (see Chapter 9 Sections 1 and
2). This motivation creates the internal bond between husband and wife. But the
unregenerate man is inherently opposed to acting from his wife. He wants to act
from himself only. This he calls freedom. Hence the wife can only establish an
external “conjugal” bond with a husband who remains in that state.
To live by
the Doctrine of Conjugial Love is to be regenerated and this lengthy
psychobiological process involves engineering a reversal of the normal
declining romantic love. As time passes by the man erodes the initial romantic
love until nothing is left but external friendship, mutual aid, and social
company. These external and convenient benefits do not contain conjugial love
in the internal which remains closed until the husband reforms and begins regeneration.
Using spiritual disciplines to help our regeneration is an effective way for
husbands to cooperate with the Lord in their regeneration. This is required
since regeneration is proportional to this conscious and willing cooperation
(DP 114).
Sweetheart
rituals were described above as illustrations of this cooperation. To perform
the sweetheart rituals effectively we need to understand and struggle against
many threats from within. The corporeal mind hates non-reciprocity and loves
equity (see Chapter 9 Section 6). It wants very much to hold on to male
prerogatives. Male superiority feels good, it’s nice, it’s
so convenient. Besides, it’s society. It’s the way it is. Etc. Even more
intense resistance wells up when the discipline is applied to the little things
of life that are hardly ever mentioned in divorces or psychology books for
marital relationships.
For
instance, linguists and sociologists have analyzed video and audio records of
interactions between men and women (Tannen xx; Lakoff xx). Men choose most of
the topics that get discussed. Men interrupt twice as much as they are
interrupted. Men talk longer stretches, often hogging the conversational
minutes. More interiorly, men show anger, refuse requests, and criticize more
than women. Men do almost all the violence and abuse. Men tend to quit “working
on the relationship” while women try to hold on. Women are loyal and faithful,
men break the promise and cheat. Inwardly men are adulterous, promiscuous, and
consumers of pornography. (See Chapter 7 Section 4).
Men are
proud of being issue oriented and task involved when they talk to women. They
hide from themselves the obvious fact that they force the relationship to
remain external and defeat the woman’s endeavor to develop an internal union. A
woman is relationship oriented since it’s so clear to her that the internal
relationship is the only one that is permanent and successful. They feel that
they are up against a brick wall in his will when he repeatedly stays focused
on the issue or task and refuses her requests that he switch orientation to the
relationship. She wants to resolve feelings; he wants to avoid that. Thus they
struggle against each other. The struggle can stop only when he gives in, for
she can never give in and still save the relationship. Giving
in to her means to begin acting from her will, reasoning, and goals.
This restores the internal state of conjugial preparation for celestial union,
which is perfect (CL 61). Then for the first the man becomes a human and is no
longer a mere animal. The beginning of the human in him is the rational from
the Heavenly Doctrine.
Consider
how men go along with male prerogatives. They are content in playing third or
fourth fiddle in the marital orchestra of raising children, running the household,
and managing social relationships. If compelled by equity norms to “help around
the house” husbands will try to make it as little as possible without ruining
their reputation of fair-mindedness. Also, they do not readily take full
responsibility of even the share they agree to. Forgetting to take out the
garbage, he gets sullen when she reminds him, and then still doesn’t do it,
waiting for another reminder. This is a representative of man’s involvement in
household partnership. Another is to insist on doing things according to their
own standards, even if it fails the standards of the wife. There is no honest owning up to their utter refusal to do things
from the wife’s standards.
Once again,
monitor the objections you feel swelling within you as you contemplate what is
being said here.
What about
my wife? Why should she do things from her standards instead of mine? Why do I
have to do things from her standards while she gets to do things from her
standards? Where is the logic in this?
Insisting
on equality in all things in the husband /wife relationship destroys the
conjugial union. This union is based on fundamental, discrete, and eternal
differences between men and women. This is what we mean by “duality.” Remember
that women love the bonds of marriage, and constantly strive to establish an
internal union with their husbands. This effort is from the Lord along with a
perception of how to bring this about. Men have no such perception and
therefore must trust the wife’s insight about their relationship. Even though
this may seem ‘one-sided’ in the wife’s favor, it’s the way the Lord has
arranged it. We can choose to resist His Providence concerning marriage, and
never realize our conjugial potential. Or we can accept this miraculous
provision with gratitude and enter more and more deeply into the eternal, ever
unfolding delights of conjugial love.
In our
daily study of the Heavenly Doctrine the Lord gives us the higher understanding
by which we can clearly see that in a conjugial union husbands always act from
the wife. The
moment they stop, they fall out of conjugial union, to their great distress
(xx). It’s only during the period of reformation and early regeneration that we
doubt the Divine requirement of acting from the wife. After that we can see it
constantly before our mind because it becomes an orientation. Sweetheart
rituals and conjugial simulation, as discussed above, maintain this orientation
on a permanent basis. What makes these disciplines spiritual is the motive of
conjugial love. Anything done consciously from this motive is spiritual to the
extent that our idea of conjugial love is rational rather than natural. And it
is rational to the extent that we think and will according to Doctrine that is
in our understanding from the daily study of the Writings.
A man cannot be withdrawn from evils and falsities except by
means of the truths and goods that are with him from the Word (AC 9468)
Self-witnessing
is a necessary activity to detect male prerogatives in the little things we do
since childhood and so automatically that it’s easy to deny to ourselves that
we do them. This self-subterfuge cannot stand against self-monitoring motivated
by spiritual Doctrine. The Lord opens our eyes to see them and waits for us to
reject them and at last to hold them in aversion. Then He liberates us from
these natural plagues in our character. To illustrate, I’ve observed in many
ways how the culture of male prerogatives exerts a bear’s hold on my physical
behavior in the presence of my wife. One particular practice is especially
distressing to wives and puts a strangle hold on conjugial development. I will
discuss it under the topic of turning cold in the body.
Chapter 2, Section 11
11. How To Avoid Turning
Cold Against The Wife
When an
unregenerate man is exposed to his wife’s conjugial heat he feels seared and
beaten down. This is in his internal mind of which he may not know much. In his
conscious lower mind he feels it as resistance, anger, hate, resentment, and
the desire to retaliate, lash back, break free. This
is the source of so much wife abuse by husbands. They perform abuse according
to their sub-culture and station in life, some physically violent and others
mentally and treacherously by domination and scheming. Male prerogatives are
also used as weapons to keep women in an external rather than internal
relationship to themselves. To allow an internal relationship is threatening to
a man because it feels like he has to give up all his power, not just some of
it, or half of it, but all of it. This is because the wife’s conjugial heat
takes over his whole being and consumes him as a single individual who can have
an independent life of his own.
The only
thing that can protect him from the excruciating pain is his doctrinal
commitment, and then only to the extent that he applies it to any situation. To
the extent that his commitment wobbles to that extent his mind will be invaded
by conjugial cold (CL 241). His body and his behavior will play out all the
forms of destructive negativity. As she talks to him the cold in him gets him
to turn away from her and to increase the distance between them. He will not
look at her, and when he does, he will avoid her eyes. All his enthusiasm for
her is gone. He doesn’t find her charming and entertaining. Her ideas are all
wrong and contrary to his. He can hardly stand her, and often he loses control
and acts violently or with open derision and lack of respect. When she talks
and he nods at her he will reduce the frequency and amplitude of the movement.
His “Mm. Mm.” is intended to withhold more, lest she go on longer. He hates her
and is in rebellious suffering. He refuses her, denies her, suppresses her,
starves her with lack of affection and legitimization, the things she craves
the most from him in that sorry state. He makes her furious, drives her
mercilessly to lose emotional control of herself. She does and feels
humiliated, miserable, defeated. He then feels victorious,
the victory of hell which is his destruction. Over and over again he
performs this interaction until all is destroyed. What then remains is an
external relationship in which the internal is closed.
As this
marital devastation is happening he is given by the Lord numerous opportunities
to witness the atrocious negativity in himself so that
he may become aware of all its little details, and consciously reject them one
by one, and over and over again since they occur in numerous forms and
variations. It is a gradual process he must suffer himself to go through, if he
wants to be saved.
Conjugial
cold descending into the husband’s body shows to the wife as his sullen silence
and slow down of his reactions to her. She sees him becoming less reactive,
less animated to her. It’s as if he turns into dry wood (xx). There is a
calcification of his demonstrations of love for her. She shudders at the
coldness billowing out from the hell of hatred he is in. It is his inherited
hatred of conjugial heat, a heat that strives mightily to eliminate his
independent willing. She does everything to get him to will from her so that
his affections are filled with her all. She must be the all in all in his will
and there must be nothing left of his own unregenerate scortatory will. It is
not a before-after continuum like a physical makeover. It is a discrete ascension
to a higher place in his mid where the Lord must create from scratch a new
conscience, a new human character. This new creation is the conjoint self:
wife
willing from the Lord (xx), husband willing from the wife (xx), and the two each arranging their
independent understanding in accordance with their will.
It is the
Lord who wills in such a husband, through his wife, and this is what creates
their perfect celestial union. This is “the man” for the sake of whom the Lord
created all things in heaven and earth.
Desiring in my
thought to learn about the marriages of the most ancients, I looked now at the
husband, now at his wife, and in their faces I observed the unity, as it were,
of their souls. So I said, "You two are one." The man replied:
"We are one; her life is in me and mine in her. We are two bodies but one
soul. The union between us is like the union of the two tents in the breast
which are called heart and lungs, she being my heart and I her lungs. But here,
by heart we mean love and by lungs wisdom. Thus she is the love of my wisdom
and I am the wisdom of her love. Therefore her love veils my wisdom from
without, and my wisdom is in her love from within. Hence, as you said, the
appearance in our faces of the unity of our souls." (CL 75:5)
Here it is
said by the angel husband that conjugial union exists when “she is my heart and
I her lungs.” When a husband learns to love to act from his wife more than from
himself, then the wife is his heart, and he is her lungs, that is, the love of
his wisdom. To be “two bodies but one soul” refers to the conjoint self.
A husband
who read an earlier draft shared this section with his wife. He wrote down her
reaction and e-mailed it to me:
When the wife
is in tune with the Lord, and the Lord is speaking to her heart, she conveys
that to her husband. He must listen and interpret what she says. He must strive
to see the good in what she is saying, and hear it as ‘she means to help me.’
He then uses this information to examine himself and to grow from it. But he
must formulate it for himself in his understanding and determine how it will
impact his life. He then puts it into his will. It is his will—his new will
(not her will) that is being developed. This is what is meant by the words ‘She
is my heart.’ The Lord speaks to the woman’s heart and she conveys that to her
husband. She is his pipeline to God—through her heart, through her heart
message. The heart message does not always have words—that the task of the
understanding. And that’s how the man develops his new will.
1. The Fallacy That Men Want Sex More Than Women
Today I
happened to come across a Marriage Seminar program on a Christian TV channel, showing
couples sitting in the audience. If I may reconstruct some of what the leader
said, it would go as follows:
What we need to understand is that a man and a woman are
different. A recent national survey asked women how important to her was sex,
and she ranked it as number 13, with gardening as number 12 [audience laughter].
Now you ask any man and he’ll rank sex as the number one on the list, or number
two or three, but it’s always up there with the highest. A man will say to his
wife, Honey, let’s have sex, and she’ll say, What we
need is being close, holding each other, snuggling. The man answers, Honey,
what we need is sex. And she says, What we need is to
sit down, get ourselves comfortable, have a conversation, relax, put on music,
talk some more. And he says, What we need is sex. [audience laughs].
You see a man is different from a woman. That’s just the way
it is. A man wants to have sex every time, every day, whenever. But a woman
wants closeness, and just holding, and intimacy. A man has to respect that.
Etc.
What’s
terribly wrong with this attitude is that it makes it out to be as if men want
sex while women do not, or that women are less interested in sex than men, and that
this is a biological difference. The opposite is the case, as can be shown from
the Writings. This false notion of men wanting sex and women not so much or not
at all, is a legend invented by men who are motivated
to punish women in one way or another. The fact is that men hate the conjugial
sphere and are excited by the scortatory sphere of roaming lust, which is a
purely corporeal affection. The truth is that all the sex in the world comes
from women, not men (xx). That is, all the desire and motive for sex is
initiated by women, and men have none of it except from women.
Swedenborg
reports a fascinating scientific experiment he was given to perform in the spiritual
world (xx). He was talking to angel husbands who doubted this truth that sexual
interest and desire originates in their wife, not in themselves. Higher angels
then approached by the Lord’s permission, and the sphere of women was removed
from the men. They felt instantly different. They had absolutely no sexual
desire, no interest in women. They got so disturbed at this that the angels
immediately restored the sphere of the wife to each angel husband. Immediately
that this was done they felt relieved, sensing their sexuality once more.
This
experiment proves that sex originates from women, and that men have none of it
unless they get it from women. You can see how wrong and hurtful the idea is
that men want sex all the time while women do not. In a conversation with angel
wives, Swedenborg was told by them that they hide this truth from their husband
(xx). Since in this spiritual society the husbands were spiritual-natural, they
did not distinguish between some appearances and the truth within those
appearances. The Writings explain that husbands from higher spiritual societies who possess spiritual-rational ideas, and celestial
ideas about the wife and sex, know the truth from the Word that all their sexual
feelings originate from their wife. And this knowledge does not disturb them as
it does those husbands in the lower societies who think with spiritual-natural
ideas. On the contrary, the idea that all their sexual feelings originate from
the wife, makes their wife even more precious to their mind.
How then
are we to explain the natural appearances that men want sex more than women
want it? There are at least four reasons for this that we can find in the
Writings:
1) women playing hard to get on account of the men’s impotence
otherwise
2) men lusting for scortatory sex but turning cold to their wife
3) women needing to be prepared, but not men
4) women’s preparation requires inward friendship and trust
Men’s natural
desire to have a woman increases as access to her is denied, and decreases as
it is allowed (xx). This attitude is hereditary and infernal, and hates the
sphere of conjugial love, that is, sex with only one of the other sex.
Eventually this attitude leads to impotence and a dislike, and even hatred, for
the sphere of women generally, for whom they no longer feel any desire or friendship.
Women have learned that if they resist the man’s advances, he gets more hot and wants her even more. But as soon as he can have
what he wants freely and any time, he loses sexual interest in that woman. This
is the pattern of an unregenerate man (xx). As a result, women play hard to get
to prevent their man from turning cold toward them (xx). This maintains the
false legend that men want sex more than women do.
Men’s
sexual pattern is like a firing rocket, quickly enflamed, explosive, and short
lasting (xx). But a woman’s sexual pattern is from inward out, and so more like
the slow steady rising of leavened dough under heat (xx). Women need extensive
preparation for receiving her man into herself. She must first feel close to
him by means of affections of trust, friendship, and liking. Her sexual
feelings begin in her chest and gradually descend towards the waste and hip. To
the extent that the man is then willing, to that extent she is eager to receive
him. A man must therefore suppress and inhibit his natural explosive tendency
that starts directly in his groin and remains there until consummated or
exhausted. Since men are regularly abusive to their women, it is difficult for
women to be adequately prepared. The men then falsely interpret this slowness
as disinterest or reluctance, giving the false appearance that a man wants sex more than a woman.
Unregenerate
husbands are unwilling to give their wife adequate preparation for sex. To
perform this duty properly would require that a man act from his wife’s affections, and this is what he hates the most to do. Hence he
turns cold when he sees what the wife wants and needs, unwilling to grant it to
her. Women’s responsibilities outside the sphere of domestic uses increases stress
that must first be relieved by the husband before she can receive him within
her in an appropriate and genuine union. The husband has to accept his responsibility
in relieving the wife’s stress that originate from her
forensic duties outside the home. Only after this stress is relieved, can he
begin to prepare her for sexual union. Pampering and massage, food and
laughter, pleasant surprises, romantic themes, being charming and gallant—these
are the preliminary methods a husband needs to use before he can even begin to
prepare his wife for sexual union. To get her involved in sex before this kind
of adequate preparation is a kind of marital rape. The result is that she feels
used and discarded by the man who says he loves her.
Also, men
are verbally abusive to their wife on a regular daily basis, and afterwards are
unwilling to make up for it properly. As a result she carries the disturbance within
her for a long time until it eventually diminishes and vanishes, which takes a
long time given the spiritual biology of women. While this is going on they
cannot be adequately prepared for sex since for them, sex begins in the bosom
with friendship, trust, and respect. This sexual biology of the wife is created
by the Lord for the sake of her husband, since this is what a man needs in
order to be able to be conjoined to the wife. Men must therefore honor this
biology as something holy from the Lord and must compel themselves to give
their wife adequate and proper preparation for sex. The truth is that women crave
sex all the time and pray to the Lord that their husband would finally “get it”
and figure out what they need to do to prepare the women for this physically
healing and spiritually regenerating treatment. Angel couples have sex every
day all night since they cannot prevent themselves from it, such is the irresistible
attraction for inward unity between conjugial partners, and this irresistible
inward attraction they have for each other has to exteriorize as sex when they
are alone together. (xx).
Angelic sex
in heaven, and likewise conjugial sex on earth, is a rational love, not
sensuous or corporeal. It starts from above the waist as intimacy and
friendship towards each other, and only then descends below the waist.
How wrong
are those who think that sex and rationality are opposites, or even,
independent, when the truth is that conjugial love, and all the sex that flows
from it, is necessarily spiritual-rational. This is proven in many ways,
rationally and empirically, in Swedenborg’s book titled Conjugial Love (CL).
Chapter 2, Section 12
12. Spiritual
Psychobiology Of The
Conjoint Self
When a
husband refuses to act from his independent self, there is born the conjoint
self in his spiritual mind and in the spiritual mind of his wife. This new
birth is from the Lord through the angels and consists in the opening or
activation of the spiritual mind which until then was not a part of our own
mind. Husband and wife now act from the common conjoint self they share in the
spiritual union. It is now only that their marriage is first made spiritual.
Until then, it was natural, regardless of the couple’s religious involvement in
the
This
“acting from his wife’s will” is acting into his own understanding which
remains totally free and independent. It is only his will that is substituted
for his wife’s will. This way the two make a one (CL 157).
It would not be so if his wife’s will were to act into his corporeal mind and
body. He would then be a slave to her and have no will and understanding of his
own. Thus he would be a zombie not a free human being. And zombies cannot be in
heaven. But he retains his maximum freedom when he chooses freely out of his
own love and understanding. And he can choose to act from his own will or to
act from the will of his wife through his understanding. “It is the
understanding which acts from the will, not the will which acts by means of the
understanding.” (TCR 105)
It is the husband’s conscious understanding
that acts in conjugial union, not the wife’s will by means of his understanding
(which would turn him into a zombie). Clearly the conjoint self is possible only if the husband
loves to act from his wife’s will more than to act from his own independent
will. For if he doesn’t love it more, he cannot choose to act from it, for love
leads us to act in accordance with it, and this in an absolute sense in the
afterlife. Everything therefore hangs on this: the husband’s persistent
religious motive to strive to make this new love his actual love.
To love to
act from the spouse is the internal union of conjugial love. The wife by
nativity or spiritual psychobiology already loves this more than she loves
acting from herself as an independent individual. Therefore the pace of growing
in the internal marriage union is set by the slower pace of the husband who is
born to be licentious and promiscuous. He has to be willing to give up these
unclean delights and receive far greater delights, but which he cannot actually
see yet.
It’s
important to maintain the absolute duality between the understanding and the
will, in the same way that the body must maintain the dual function of heart
and lungs in order for it to work as a unity (DLW 407). When a man loses his
independence and freedom in his thinking he is no longer free or human. This is
because rationality only occurs in freedom. Domination of one over the other
removes freedom of thought. This is why a wife cannot force a man into
conjugial union. If she has the persuasive power to remove his freedom and
independence of thinking she will still not be in a conjugial relationship with
him. Women know this from within and so do not attempt it, for the most part
(xx CL 291[?]). Acting from the wife is therefore acting from her will through
his independent and free understanding. The result is that his understanding
gradually becomes realigned so as to be in conformity with her will.
This
process is gradual and cumulative over time so that a discipline is required in
the meantime, as was suggested with sweetheart rituals and conjugial
simulations. The husband compels himself to act outwardly from the wife in
conformity to her standards and requests, while internally he feels resistance
and negativity towards her. Thus he makes progress until at one point his free
and independent understanding is in full agreement with his acting from her. He
is then a reformed husband and capable of being prepared further for conjugial
union. From then on it’s easy in comparison because the wife’s conjugial heat
no longer burns him. He is no longer cold but warm and her heat feels sweet and
blissful.
Act precedes,
man's willing follows; for that which a man does from the understanding, he at
last does from the will, and finally puts it on as a habit; and it is then
instilled in his rational or internal man. And when it has been instilled in
this, the man no longer does good from truth, but from good; for he then begins
to perceive therein somewhat of blessedness, and as it were somewhat of heaven.
This remains with him after death, and by means of it he is uplifted into
heaven by the Lord. (AC 4353)
The idea of
a “conjoint self” is extremely helpful to husbands. It helps them rationally
see how they need to change to become conjugial. During reformation and at the
beginning of one’s regeneration struggles the mind is infested with submerged
nondualities, especially in relation to women and one’s wife. Men inherit an enormous gender arrogance and then culture chisels it
into a system of male prerogatives and cruelties against women. Men treat women
as an inferior caste to themselves. Some men learn to hide this orientation and
cover it up with all sorts of superficial niceties in order to get their pleasure
with women and dominate them, use them for all sorts of purposes throughout
life. Other men do not hide their disdain and hatred of women and show it in
various vulgar, stupid, and abusive way. New Church
men start at this level, as everyone else.
It stands
to reason that a spiritual discipline is going to help a husband to as-of-self
extricate himself from this sink hole of nondualities that oppose the dualities
that the Lord is endeavoring to establish in him. A man’s feeling of gender
superiority is a nonduality in disguise. It places man and woman on continuum
of traits like strength, rationality, stability, entitlements, independence,
precedence, etc., and judges men to be on the high end and women on the low
end. Once in a while they admit that a few men are effeminate and cowards—not
real men. Also, that a few women are as capable as most men—though the best are
still men. You can see that this is a nonduality, rigged to promote the
domination of women by men.
The
The
discipline of building up a conjugial self gives the man a fantastic
opportunity to train himself to love acting from the wife (see Chapter 9
Sections 1 and 2). He can see rationally that there is his normal regular self
full of woman-hatred and his new conjoint self that is formed not by him, not
by society, but by the Lord through heaven. The conjoint self is conjugial,
hence celestial, hence genuinely human, holy because
it is the Lord’s Proprium that rules in it. The conjoint self is built up
gradually to the extent that the husband learns to love acting from his wife.
After the husband officially declares his commitment to the conjoint self as a
religious discipline, there come various phases of combat he must engage in and
overcome (TCR 587). The initial phases are combats against all the nondualities
that justify gender superiority in the man’s mind.
For example
a husband will stake out certain areas of activity and either openly or by dire
implications, will persuade his wife to allow him independence in those areas.
This stubborn stance is maintained despite the husband’s cooperativeness and
even pleasantness in those other areas where he allows his wife to “meddle” or
“butt in” as they disrespectfully put it. Again this is a nonduality that
becomes a stumbling block to any progress whatsoever in building up the
conjoint self. The man wants to make this into a continuum measured by
percentages, as he says to his wife in his head: “I will give you 95 percent of
my life—which is a lot more than most men give their wives. But 5 percent I
need to keep so that something of myself is left that
I can recognize.” And when the list is made, it is obvious that it is a giant
heap whose tip only may be said to be 5 percent of the total.
The
conjoint self is not a percentage of traits of mixed origin. It is entirely
made up of traits of conjoint origin only. There is a categorical and absolute
duality between a man’s self and the conjoint self. No portion or fiber in the
conjoint self can be built that is not from this one source: An act performed
from the husband’s love to act from his wife more than from himself. Any act
that doesn’t have this love in it is excluded by necessity. Clearly, no gender
superiority is possible in the conjoint self, not a single one.
At first we
simulate our behaviors to look like we’re acting in harmony with the wife’s
known wishes, expectations, and requests. Privately, we don’t like it even as
we enact the conjugial simulation (see Chapter 6 Section 7). But we compel
ourselves to continue, to not break form, from a religious motive that is far
higher and stronger than the inherited nondualities in our mind. We reaffirm to
ourselves that we do this, or we go to hell. No other motive can be above this.
So this vanquishes all other motives. If you don’t have this motive, you better
acquire it if you desire heaven more than hell. This motive will deliver you
from hell and lead you to heaven.
The religious
motive in the conjoint self is the power that keeps it growing.
The areas
of self staked out as “They stay mine” are numerous for husbands:
q
Family—parents, joint children,
children from a prior marriage
q
Friends—childhood buddies, best
friend, the man who saved my life, drinking buddies, sports team members, out
of town visitors, etc.
q
Hobbies—weekly golf, chat room,
recreation, entertainment, sports, etc.
q
Personality traits related to
Politics and Profession
q
Etc. etc.
1. Conjugial
Husbands Are Loyal To The Wife
The
conjoint self has no area of independence because this is contrary to the
absolute duality between independent self and conjoint self. A mixture or
commingling is not allowed by the Lord as it would be most injurious (xx). All
the husband’s loyalties must be subordinated to the supreme loyalty to his
wife. This is the Lord’s Commandment that the man “cleave
to the wife” (Gen. 2:24). The husband needs to love this above all other
things: To act from his wife rather than from himself. This is why I call it
the supreme loyalty. This loyalty of the husband for the wife is the same as
the loyalty he has for the Lord. The loyalty he has for the Lord remains in his
natural mind unless it is practiced and applied to those things the Lord designates
and commands (xx). And the Lord designates conjugial love as the highest of all
loves (CL 222) and commands the man to cleave to his wife and to be one flesh
with her, that is one mind (CL 278). Hence it is that
his supreme loyalty to the wife is actually his supreme loyalty to the Lord.
And in no other way can the husband make the Lord supreme in his love and be
what He calls “my friend” (xx).
The
attitude of “don’t try to change me” and “don’t try to change him” is heard
everywhere as advice given to women by health professionals and social gurus.
Women are so intimidated and influenced by this anti-conjugial intellectual
atmosphere that they begin to doubt themselves and their true role. And the
situation is so rigged that when the wife eases up on her conjugial role, he
appears to improve, their relationship is lighter and smoother and he is more
pleasant to live with. This result tends to reinforce in her mind the
hypothesis that a man has to have his portion of independence and rigidity in
certain areas, since that’s how they come and that’s how they are. But this is
not so. The wife must not give one inch in the battle against her husband’s
ego, in the battle for the conjoint self. For without this, she doesn’t walk
away with him and into heaven. She will have to do that with another, when she
gets there (xx).
The wife
has one powerful tool to work with: her husband’s religion. I don’t
think it can be done any other way. Religion occupies the highest place in the
human mind (TCR 601), therefore it rules all motives
beneath it. If the religious motive is not invoked and held before the husband
constantly and without let up, what other power or force is there to overcome
his fully corrupted mind? He will then win most of the battles, but lose the war
in the end. Without the wife, the husband cannot regenerate, as shown
repeatedly throughout this article. He either acts from the wife or from
himself. When he acts from the wife, the conjoint self is built up, and when he
acts from self, the conjoint self is being destroyed. Whatever conjoint self
can be built up, that is the angelic spirit-body that lives in heaven. To the
extent that the husband reserves and puts aside anything about himself for
himself and by himself, and loves it, to that extent he is incapable of living
in his conjoint self, hence heaven. This is because a love you take with you
into the afterlife cannot be removed (DP 277a).
We should
all carefully ponder this, and hold the thought before us every hour of the
day. Thus can we be continually in the Presence of the Lord.
The
discipline of conjoint self requires our full attention. The wife needs our
help in her awesome task as personality coach to her husband. First, we must
continually legitimize this role in her mind by thanking her for doing it on a
daily and hourly basis. Tell her the truth you believe, namely, that without
her doing this you cannot make it (to heaven, that
is). Tell her this is your highest religion. Only this declaration repeatedly
made can fully reassure her. Allow her to use this declaration against you, so
that she can remind you in some situation where you’re giving her a hard time:
“Husband, are you now denying your religion?” She must have this tool to
influence you and hold it over your head, or else you will find ways of
defeating her. So this is first.
Second, you
need to help her against yourself. Give her the information she needs about
your thoughts so she can use those against you. She cannot read your thoughts,
she can only sense and perceive your affections, whether they are for her or
against her. So you need to tell her what you’re thinking about the situation
at issue. Then you need to listen what she says about what you tell her. She
will not like what you think. She will want to have you think in accordance
with how she thinks, and how she thinks you should think. This is your
lifeline, your narrow door, where you must end up. Don’t waste her time and
energy by arguing about it. She will never change her mind. You can only wear
her down so she can’t oppose you for awhile. So tell yourself to make your
objections brief and mild, then switch. Switch
instantly and fully, not by half steps. I found it much easier to go over her
side in one categorical jump, not in gradual increments. She will appreciate it
and love you for it. Then you can experience the sweetness of your conjugial
wife—the deepest softest most intelligent thing imaginable, and beyond.
One day my
wife mentioned that when she expresses concern about her long list of things to
get through, I never say, “Anything I can do for you, honey?” I was shocked at
myself, feeling convicted by the truth of her remark. I resolved to say this
sentence to her every day, “Anything I can do for you today, sweetheart?” That
was my reformation regarding this area of my life. In the first phase of my
regeneration regarding this portion of my character, I noticed a furious debate
in my mind by the many spokespersons around the conference table of the selves.
“But I don’t feel like offering my help. I’m really busy today.” Or, “It’s
O.K., she can get through her list, there is no pressure. She doesn’t really
need my help. We each have got our own list of tasks to get through.” Etc. I
had to merely compel myself to ignore all of this drivel and force a smile on
my face, and to assume a pleasant voice, and say it. My heart would palpitate
during the one-second delay of her answer. I thought, “Maybe she’ll say, Oh, it’s O.K. honey. Thanks for the offer.” But instead, I heard
the dreaded sentence, “Yes, as a matter of fact there is something.” My heart
sank into my socks, and I compelled myself to keep smiling and say out loud,
“Sure, honey. What is it?”
Almost
always, after she made her requests, I had occasion to say to myself, “That’s it? That sounds like very little. I can do
that in less than a hour, then I can get back to my
computer.” As I get through the task I reflect on my reluctance, my feeling of
doom and despair at such a little thing as helping my wife out with her list of
tasks. After all, what are these tasks on her list? They are things that belong
to our domestic life. What gives me the right to unilaterally allocate tasks
she is to do, and tasks I am to do. Who elected me
leader? What is my warrant for ranking “my work” as having priority over “her
domestic work.” This idea is from the unregenerate
self in which the man is dominant and decides where the equity line is (see
Chapter 9, Section 6). Yes, I recognize it. It is my downfall. I have again
departed from the Lord’s Presence, turning my head away, towards myself, which
is allied with the hells.
Not
surprisingly, when I complete the tasks, I can see more clearly why it was the
right thing for me to do. By doing them as a “volunteer” for “her tasks” our
relationship is elevated to the conjoint self. This is what she wants most out
of it.
But it
doesn’t go smoothly all the time. One day she says, “Can you do the laundry? I
won’t have time and we’ll need the pajamas tonight.” I hear my voice in a
reassuring tone, “Sure babe, anything for you.” I make a mental note, “Better
not forget!” At some point I have to get up from the computer and go do the
laundry. I have to make sure I check the pockets for tissue paper, and the
bright things for any spots that need to be treated. I have to make sure I hear
the dryer buzz so as to fold the clothes while they’re still warm (so they
don’t crease!). I have to remind myself to fold them the way she does it,
therefore the way she likes it. She has reasons for everything—and I
acknowledge that they are rational. I’m getting impatient as I fold the clothes
and it takes longer to smooth them out before folding. I have to repeat things.
I’m getting
enraged inside. Rebellious. Why do I have to do this?
Who cares if they’re creased—they’re just for bed. Etc. I recognize the
symptoms of rebellion against the conjugial. Our cat Minsky comes around,
watching me fold the clothes. He seems to be saying to me: “Are you going to
come to the dish with me afterwards?” I ignore him in my rage, or worse: I
think, “No way are you getting food. Not again. I’m busy now. No time for
play.” I tell myself to repent and some serenity comes back as I continue
folding. The Lord wants me to do this. The Lord is commanding me to do this. At
last all her clothes are folded. I leave mine for later. I turn my back on
Minsky. I rush back to the computer. An hour later I go back to the folded
clothes. I discover I had forgotten to fold two of her shirts. Now they looked
full of creases. It’s really true what she says that they get creased if you don’t
fold them while still warm. Now it takes me much longer trying to get the
creases out. In the meantime Keo, our other cat, sat on the clothes I had
folded. Now I had to redo some of the folding.
I finish my
task and reflect upon it. These rebellious feelings and thoughts, what are
they? They are the thoughts I have that correspond to the affections beaming
into my will from the spirits. Good spirits or evil? That’s always the first
thing that must be settled. Obviously evil in this case because these
affections are struggling against the conjugial which evil spirits hate more
than anything else. I am the one who insists on maintaining connection with
these spirits because of my delight in their affections. What is my
delight? No doubt it is the delight of dominion, of ruling over my wife. It is
as delight that is inherited by men and reinforced by culture. Now I’m holding
on to this delight, enjoying myself in myself, narcissistically. Ruling over a woman. Ruling over my wife.
Even as I submit voluntarily to her request, I rebel inwardly against it. I
won’t do it the way you like it done. You can do it yourself if that’s what you
want. I’ll do it my way, and that’s enough. Etc. This is from dominion from the
love of self. The affections of the evil spirits that I delight in cause
corresponding thoughts in my understanding—and these are the things I perceive
and am aware of.
These
attachments I have to delights brought on by the influx of evil affections must
be detached from my personality. This process of extirpation is done by the
Lord by means of the temptations created by our attachments to delights from
evil affections. The temptations are created by the Doctrine in our
understanding, or the conscience. A temptation involves facing two things
simultaneously: the delight of evil and the truth in our Doctrine. The
Doctrine of the Wife, which I acknowledge (see Chapter xx, Sections xx and xx),
requires that I strive to act from my wife, not from my love of dominion. Now
I’m creating a false scorpion of nonduality in my mind by acting like we’re
both natural minds and only my external conduct is to count. But the Doctrine
says that the conjugial is interior, which means not my external conduct alone
but what are my feelings, loyalties, and thoughts—are these internal things
what she would want them to b? Is this not what will create our union in
heaven? Can I maintain these rebellious thoughts and feelings even as I claim
to her my inmost friendship and love? Is love not the desire to make her happy
from myself, and is not myself what I think and feel? Etc.
I feel
satisfied. I thank the Lord for giving me insight and victory. I rededicate
myself to my highest ideals—that they are possible and practical:
The reason why
the Lord spoke of His conjunction with men as of His conjunction with the
Father, that is, of His Human with the Divine which was in Himself, is that the
Lord is not conjoined with man's proprium, but with what is His own. The Lord
removes man's proprium, and gives from His own, and in that He dwells.
(…)
Because the
Divine of the Lord received by angels and men constitutes heaven and the church
in them, they are one with the Lord, as He and the Father are one.
"Be ye
perfect, as your Father in the heavens is perfect" ([Matthew 5] verse 48).
(AE 254)
Chapter 2, Section 13
13. The Regeneration
Discipline Of Conjugial
Massage
Conjugial
disciplines are joint projects couples undertake to cooperate with the Lord in
being prepared for conjugial love in heaven. By way of illustration I can make
a few observations about my involvement in a conjugial massage discipline. This
was in response to pain management efforts involving the usual areas—hip, small
of back, knee, foot, shoulder blades, neck, scalp, fingers. Millions of people
in our generation take a variety of popular over the counter drugs to manage
these pains. Being somewhat rational about it, we decided it’s better to use
non-drug approaches to pain management in our life. We learned about Bonnie
Pruden’s Trigger Point Therapy from her popular book some decades ago. We also
learned to practice Yoga, to avoid bad positions, to walk straight. Still, this
would not be enough, and we tried acupuncture, which helped my knee problem,
from a judo practice injury I sustained in my 20s. and
never relinquished until the acupuncture. But it issues remained with neck,
shoulder, thighs, hips, as a result of which we learned about “deep tissue” body
work massage. A combination of these things more or less keeps us in a
functional state physically, allowing us to enjoy and appreciate the Lord’s
abundant gifts.
People
sustain pain areas, marking the event with a permanent muscle tightening. I
think of it as ”sensorimotor memory.” I assume that it
is within the corporeal mind, thus the lowest region of the natural mind. This
region is turned outward towards the physical world which it apprehends and
reacts to through the body’s sensory organs racing to the brain where they are
organized into information chunks that the corporeal mind can actually sensate
to. This synchronous reactivity with the physical world gives our mind the
ability to have sensations and perceptions of the world and ourselves in it.
Sensorimotor memory is an accurate recording of this interaction process
between the body in the physical world and the mind in the spiritual world.
Sensorimotor
memory keeps track of this flow of information between the natural world and
the spiritual world. The sensorimotor memory is situated at the precise
interface between the spiritual world and the natural world. The interface between the spiritual and natural
worlds takes place in no other place than the human mind.
For "the face" signifies the affections (n. 4796,
4797, 4799, 5102, 5695, 6604), consequently those things which belong to the
face signify such things as belong to the affections, and correspond to their
functions and uses; as the "eye" signifies the understanding of
truth, the "nostrils" the perception of truth, those things which
belong to the mouth, as the "jaws," the "lips," the
"tongue," signify such thing as relate to the utterance of truth (n.
4796-4805).(AC 9049)
Sensorimotor
memory is etched in frozen lines on the face and hands of an individual. An
individual’s eyes reveal interior affections because affections lead to
sensorimotor acts when not prevented (xx). These sensorimotor acts are etched
in the sensorimotor memory. Similarly, the many falls we tale as children, and those as adults when we sustain an injury.
Each and every one of these pain moments are recorded in sensorimotor memory.
Whatever lives in the mind strives to live in the body. Sensorimotor memory lives
in the muscle-bone-cartilage system of the body (xx). The wrinkles on the face
are accumulations of items of sensorimotor memory recorded from the face’s
expressions, or acting out, of our daily willing and thinking. Despite the
impressive amount of information in sensorimotor memory, spirits and angels are
able to “go through” its content very rapidly as they meet each other in the
world of spirits (xx). And angels are able to go through the deeper layers of
the mind of spirits, seeing there a record of their willing in daily life,
whether each item is infernal or heavenly (xx).
The excellence
of our sensorimotor memory is of tremendous use to the physical body for it is
what controls the body in physical training. We learn to talk, walk, write,
run, dance, type, play musical instruments. We learn how to drive a car and
replace a tire, how to navigate inside the house and on the streets. Our eyes
know where to look when, to obtain the information we want at any point. We do
many muscular movements spontaneously and in reaction. This entire world of the
corpus is kept in order and in going condition by the sensorimotor mind. This
mind is turned outward towards the world and identifies with the world. Thus,
it is turned away from the spiritual world and heaven, and is in opposition to
it since the Fall of the human race on this earth.
To be in
opposition to heaven means that the sensorimotor memory is unwilling to be
rearranged into a different order than it is born into since the Fall. The only force that will
compel it to accept rearrangement is the power of the Word which we take up
into the mind and used it to effect the rearrangement. As we do this, to that
extent the Lord then turns the sensorimotor mind around, so that now it is
facing upward to heaven. This means that we are committed to reformation by
means of the power of the Letter of the Writing sin our mind.
2. The
Sensuous Mind Turns Itself Away From The Rational
After
reformation, the sensuous mind is rearranged according to the dualities of the
Writings, and this compels the corporeal mind to realign itself with the
sensuous mind. This realignment is effected by correspondences. The sensuous
mind takes up sensuous correspondences from the Word and instruction. For
example, it is universally taught that the mind is corrupted by immoral
behavior. In other words, a corporeal concept “corrupted” is applied to a sensuous
concept “immoral behavior.” The corporeal concept is not the same as the
sensuous concept, but they are related to each other by correspondence. The
idea of “immoral” is a discrete degree higher than the idea of “corrupt.” In
this way, the two lower levels of our natural mind are tied to each other by
means of correspondences.
In the
Writings it is revealed that the sensuous correspondences are within the
corporeal meanings, and that the corporeal is the effect while the sensuous is
its instrumental cause (xx). Thus, “corrupted” applies to the body and physical
things, but its origin is the sensuous correspondence of “immoral.” We also
have the historically known expression of “healthy mind within a healthy body”
and sometimes “spirit” appears instead of mind, the two being the same. The
word “healthy” has an external literal meaning, which applies to natural things
like the body; and it has an internal meaning which applies to spiritual things
like the mind or spirit. A healthy body is a correspondence from a healthy mind.
The latter precedes the former since all spiritual things precede natural
things as cause precedes effect (xx).
One of the
great scientific revelations in the Writings is the information that successive
degrees from firsts to lasts, are present in simultaneous
degrees from inmost to outmost (xx). For instance, the effect cannot exist
without the cause being in it (xx). As long as the effect is observable, its
cause lies within it in simultaneous order. When we look at the sock we put on,
we are making use of an object that is called the natural effect or, ultimate
lasts. The sock on my foot could not exist without the motive to produce socks
for retail merchandising, coupled with other motives in a sequence, such as my
motive to go to the store for buying the sock, and my motive for keeping it
handy and clean so I can put it on today. Each of these motives acted together
in a coherent whole in order to get this sock on my foot. None of these motives
can be removed without making the sock vanish from my foot—is this not so? It’s
a rational necessity.
Hence it is
that angels and spirits can go through each other’s memories and affectional
biographies—the past is always within the present as cause is always within the
effect. Also, no one goes to hell for past sins and evil deeds. People go to
hell for the past that is with them in the present.
Such as the past is, such is the
present, consequently such is the future!
The
In the
Angels
enjoy food delicacies that appear on their tables while sitting down for meals
and celebrations (xx). Celestial gardens have fruit trees of magnificent
appearance and taste (xx). Angels enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the art and architecture
designed and instantiated for them by the Lord (xx). The homes of angels are palaces
of art, beauty, and functionality (xx). Precious stones and jewels are
everywhere (xx). Fabulously elegant and royal clothes appear in their closets
from the Lord on many occasions (xx). And best of all, angels enjoy conjugial
love, sleeping in its embrace every night (xx).
The
In popular psychology
today, Jung’s nonduality continues to be a very strong influence. Our culture
is immersed in the idea that the sensuous self deserves a separate life from
the rational self. Therapists encourage people to dissociate the hold that conscience
has on the sensuous. Conscience is the rational and moral dictating to the
sensuous, and the rebellion of the sensuous leads to immoral behavior,
materialistic science, and self-serving justifications for maintaining infernal
sensuous involvements or servitudes. But the truth has been revealed by the
Lord in the Writings. The sensuous is the very containant of the rational, and
one completes the other, and neither can live without the other (xx).
The
scientific reality is that every object or property is created into its own
order and hierarchy, from the spiritual Sun to the last ultimate on the earth,
and the entire chain of existence is maintained from Firsts to lasts, through
intermediaries at discrete levels connected by correspondences. Hence it is not
possible for the sensuous to exist and function without the rational within it,
animating it by correspondences form above. For the rational level of the
natural mind is a discrete degree above the sensuous, and looks down on it, and
sees it, thus controls it.
This is how
it was with the celestial races on earth called the
One
consequence of the loss of the rational was this thinning out of existence in
heaven instead of a fuller life than on earth. Another consequence was the
notion that becoming rational meant that we must lose the sensuous. Popular
psychology and literature fostered this idea by creating personality tests that
were interpreted as identifying and individual’s type, whether sensuous or rational,
or a balance between the two, or a dominance of one over the other. This
fallacious model ignored the truth which was that the rational is within the
sensuous or else the sensuous could not operate and function.
What
happens then when the sensuous is closed off to the rational? How can it then continue
to function?
3. Creation Of The Natural-Rational
Mind
After the Fall, the new spiritual race had a split mind. The will and
the understanding were no longer locked together by correspondence. People now
inherited evil affections, that is, they were born with shackles to the hells.
They had to regenerate before passing on, in order to have a mind that can live
in heaven. Regeneration involved (1) elevating the understanding through truths
from Written Revelation and (2) using this higher rational perspective to
purify the will from its infernal affections. Note therefore that the
understanding had to gain independent existence from the will.
But this is
only a general description, and is an appearance of the sensuous mind. To the rational
mind, there can never be an actual independence of the understanding from the
will because it understands that the understanding is of truth and the will is
of love, and truth is nothing but the outward form of love (xx). From this the
rational mind can see that when the understanding is elevated by means of
truths from the Word, this elevation process cannot take place without a
motivation in the will. In order for us to do any thinking we must first do the
willing. We must will our thoughts! Willing creates thinking, and no thinking
can come into existence without willing. Remove the willing, and there is no
thinking. You can see this in your voluntary acts. Remove the motive to move
your hand, and it stops moving. Lose the motive to eat, and you starve
yourself. Action without willing is not possible.
Similarly,
action without thinking is not possible (xx), though the appearance to the
sensuous mind is that sometimes we act by impulse, without thinking. But this is
a fallacy of the senses. Similarly with sensation. It
appears to the sensuous mind that first we sense some smell in the air, and
then we think about what it indicates. Or, it seems as if we first see a friend
on the street and then we start thinking about him.
But the
scientific truth, revealed in the Writings, is that sensation itself is an act
of thinking. It is not the sensory organs that sensate but the understanding.
The understanding senses, or sensates, the pattern of information chunks coming
from sensory organs into the brain. The sensorimotor portion of the mind then
sensates in correspondence with the physical patterns induced in the brain from
the organs. The activity of sensating is an activity of the mind that involves
(a) the readiness or motive to sensate, and (b) the organization and content of
sensuous correspondences in the understanding. Thus both the affective and the
cognitive mind are involved in the process of experiencing a sensation.
It is not
necessary that we be aware of these organic operations in order for them to go
on according to the Lord’s created order. Hence the sensuous mind can turn
itself away from the internal operations of the will and understanding, and it
can continue to operate, seemingly by itself. But this is an appearance which
gives a fallacious description of reality when confirmed and built up into a
doctrine, philosophy, or scientific theory. The rational continues to mediate
between the spiritual and the natural worlds, but unconsciously. The unconscious
operation of the rational mind is called “influx” in the Writings.
Influx is
from the Lord. It refers to the mechanism or intermediaries the Lord uses to
maintain the operation of the sensuous mind and the corporeal below it. Despite
the Fall, society and culture have continued to
develop into more and more advanced forms of human civilization and ideas.
Although the rational was cut off form the sensuous, the interconnection was
duplicated by unconscious spiritual influx, which kept things going progressively
in society and the human mind.
But in
order to be regenerated and be capable of living in heaven, the individual had
to regain conscious rational control over the sensuous. This was possible by
the opening of the conscious rational mind in two organic phases, one external,
the other interior. The external portion of the new rational
mind is called the natural-rational; the interior portion of it is called the
interior-natural. Prior to beginning regeneration, we must undergo reformation.
This involves the opening of the natural-rational mind by means of the
understanding of the Letter of the Writings. Then, the
opening of the interior-natural mind within that, to the extent that we apply
the understanding of the Letter to our daily willing and thinking.
With the rational
mind now open at both the external and interior sides, regeneration can begin
and proceed until the end. The sensuous mind is reformed, and along with it the
corporeal. Now we enter into combats with the hells as they fight to retain our
shackles to them. We struggle and suffer through many ups and downs and
reversals, but make steady progress because it is the Lord who fights for us,
if only we are willing.
The
regeneration of the sensuous and corporeal mind requires systematic involvement
that the Lord calls “cooperation,” warning us that without it we cannot be
regenerated (xx). Systematic cooperation in fighting against our infernal
affections and delights requires the use of spiritual disciplines. Conjugial
disciplines involving the physical body and health are also necessary.
Sensorimotor
memory can be altered by physical reconditioning of the muscles, ligaments, and
bone alignment. We do this normally, almost without thinking, when we pull or
tear a muscle or joint. We spontaneously decrease its use while it’s repairing
itself, after which we start using it gradually, and finally back to the way we
used it before the injury. Pain is a common sensation for injured muscles or
joints. Millions of people every day take pain medication in the form of over
the counter drugs. Pain is the conscious sensation of the sensorimotor mind.
The mind has three portions: affective (will), cognitive (understanding), and
sensorimotor (sensations). Pain is the cognitive activity that accompanies
sensation.
One
significant source of daily pain is chronic contraction of muscle fibers. These
contracted states are set off by bumps, falls, and minor injuries that every
individual accumulates over the years and decades of life. Body work massage
involves locating the contracted and congealed muscles and pressing on them
forcefully in order to encourage them to release somewhat. By pressing
forcefully or smashing the area for periods of 6 to 12 seconds, there results a
loosening or breaking up of the congealed and cramped muscles and sub-cutaneous
materials. The pressure is applied differently depending on the sensitivity of
the area. For example, the hips and shoulders can take a lot of pressure from
the tip of the elbow. Using oil allows the elbow to run smoothly over the long
line on both sides of the spine, depressing the tight musculature and causing
it to relax its grip of tightness. One can use the side of the elbow for the
back of the thighs, and the knuckles and fingers for everything else, including
the scalp, the facial musculature, the hands, and the feet.
This
process when done regularly greatly reduces the kind of body pains that cause
millions of Americans to spend billions of dollars annually trying to relieve
it with chemical drugs, whose side effects, when taken excessively, can be
serious for many people.
This kind
of “deep tissue” body work is very painful at the beginning. One might even use
the word excruciating. But because it is fully controllable, it is something we
can learn to endure for the sake of the release and benefits. It is fully
controllable because the pressure is applied gradually, increasing steadily
over the seconds until it reaches the maximum to be applied to that area. You hold
it there for a few seconds, then you gradually release. So it’s about a
six-second build up, a six-second hold, and a six-second release. If I’m being
worked on I indicate the strength of the pain vocally. As the pain builds up,
my moan gets louder, and if my moan dramatically increases, it’s a sign for the
other person to stop increasing the pressure. This kind of verbal or non-verbal
signals can be worked out to achieve maximum control over how much pain you
want to stand for on that session in that area. It varies. On some days I can
stand for a lot of pain using slow breathing and relaxation, or at times,
panting breathing. It’s common to want to tighten muscles when feeling pain,
but one can learn gradually to inhibit that habit response to pain. Tightening muscles when sensing pain adds to the chronic tightening
and cramping of muscles.
The pain
that is applied in the deep tissue body work immediately subsides when the
pressure is released and unlike injuries or workouts, the treatment does not
cause pain afterwards. Instead, there is a release of pain and a feeling of
well being and thankfulness. My wife and I decided to turn this into a joint
marital discipline for the sake of our conjugial development. And this is when
the merely health activity (natural) was turned into a health activity within
which there was something spiritual for one’s regeneration.
Specifically
what turned it into a spiritual discipline is the motivation which activated
us, which was not merely a health involvement, but a health involvement that we
can do jointly as a couple for spiritual purposes. Further, it was more
intimate and personal than other types of joint involvement like cooking or
doing the household budget together. The medical reason was there, but this
could have been taken care of by a health professional (as it had been before).
We had an independent reason that was religious, namely, our desire to
cooperate with the Lord in helping us grow together as a conjugial couple. This
religious motive always looks around the couple’s life to locate secular
activities that can be turned into religious ones. This is the life of
religious discipline, in my view. And so we pegged “deep
tissue body work” as another convenient “method” for forming our conjoint
conjugial self.
Since I was
practicing the discipline of self-witnessing (mentioned above; see also Note 20
at end). I was able to monitor my thoughts and feelings before, during, and
after each of our sessions. In this way I became conscious of all sorts of
temptations that I had to overcome by imploring the Lord to give me the
victory. This is the core of spiritual discipline in the
By the
Lord’s mercy I was allowed to overcome these temptations and move to a second
phase of the discipline. Now that I was able to “make myself” participate at
our weekly appointed time, I underwent doubts as to my ability to do a good job
at it. The routine we decided on involved that I should lie on the massage
table first and my wife would work on my body. Then (after about one hour) we
switched places. When my wife was doing the work I could see how well she did
it by how she manipulated the muscles. There are all sorts of details to learn.
There is an optimum amount of pressure to apply; if it is too little, there is
less medical benefit; if it is too much the treatment turns into screaming
torture. Also one needs to learn what “instrument” to use on the area: elbow,
knuckles, fingers, arm, knee. One needs to learn the
rate of pressing in, the length of holding it, and the rate of releasing. When
it was my turn to work on my wife’s body I did it all wrong. She was
long-suffering and patient with my ineptitudes—and very didactic.
All sorts
of temptations assailed me like the
Now I’m
experiencing temptations in terms of “little things” which to me indicates
celestial rather than spiritual temptations. Some of them relate to performance
anxiety by which I perceive my lack of skill in some areas due to lowered
motivation, commitment, or love and the desire to be of use to the neighbor.
Selfishness and arrogance become impediments that I must overcome by turning
again and again to the Lord for help. I must not let my mind wander from
commitment to better and better performances, and thus services. I must not
short change my service and hurry over some areas and thus neglect them out of
laziness. I must not chit chat and disturb her quietude. I must pay attention
to extra things like the music I put on—it should be to her pleasing and
relaxation. I must not use more oil than is necessary because she doesn’t like
it as it closes up her pores. I should be able to anticipate her wants—whether
she is cold and needs an extra covering, or whether she is too hot. I must not
end the session with painful things but with pleasant and light. Etc.
Deep tissue
work relieves pain and improves functioning but there are also less severe
forms of massage that can be physically enjoyable and offer similar
opportunities for practicing conjugial discipline. I continue to marvel how few
couples we’ve ever met give each other massage treatments on a regular basis.
One lovely use of it is for a husband to help his wife relax deeply before
falling asleep. Care must be taken not to use it for pressuring the wife to
have sex, either by direct suggestions or implied ones. This use is different
and the two must not be mixed up or else it loses its first use relating to
helping the wife to fall asleep.
The fact that
married couples avoid regular massage with each other may be due more to
husbands than wives. For falling asleep men prefer sex, when it’s not lengthy.
To distinguish between sex and massage a man must elevate his consciousness
above the corporeal and sensuous, thus to the rational where the spiritual
lurks close by. If a man is reluctant to do that, he will oppose the idea of
giving his wife a massage to prepare her for sleep. This is my tentative
hypothesis why so many couples do not use massage. The conjugial husband is
able to overcome this problem because his mind is in the rational when he
thinks about his marriage.
The form or
type of massage can be adjusted to each purpose or conjugial use. Besides deep
tissue work there is also massage for relaxation, for preparation for sex, and
massage for putting to sleep. I especially recommend the latter for husbands to
take on as a regeneration discipline. Think of how much more heavenly peace can
enter your wife’s life by your discipline. Women are more assaulted by this
earthly world than men, especially the added stress they experience from a
masculinized culture and society, as all countries on this planet appear to be
since historical beginnings. It was otherwise in the earliest civilizations on
this earth known as the
5. The Masculine And Feminine Mind
Since
everyone has a will and an understanding, it is clear that men and women are
constructed out of both masculine and feminine organs. A man’s understanding is
masculine and primary in his life, while the love that is within the
understanding becomes secondary in his vision and priority. Therefore a man is
internal love in the will that is covered over with external truth. Before a
man’s eyes, there stands truth, and love is behind it. Before a woman’s eyes
there stands loves, and truth is behind it. A woman’s understanding is her
masculine part since truth is masculine and she takes truth into her
understanding just as she takes the male semen into her womb. A woman is
described as truth covered over with love, while a man is described as love
covered over with truth. Love is received in the organ of the will while truth
is received in the organ of the understanding. The marriage of good and truth
is the basis of the universe and its creation and maintenance by the Lord (xx).
Therefrom it is that marriages are holy when a man representing truth unites
with a woman representing love so that the one can have form the other what it doesn’t
by itself.
Women have
truths just as much as men. Let there be no mistake about that.
What’s
being said here is different. It’s important for
understanding how a man and a woman form an angelic unity from within, a unity
which is eternal, unbreakable, and forever growing daily.
The wife
takes the husband’s semen into her womb, nurtures it, until a child is born.
This is the result of their love or union. This is the highest use in the
universe, for which all creation was made is being maintained by the Lord. This
use is the building up of the heavens in the Grand Human with more and more
people form all the planets. The more populous a society of heaven is, the greater is its joy and creativity. This is because
everyone’s good and truth, which is unique from the Lord, adds itself to the
society so that each shares and becomes aware of the good and truth of everyone
else. This is true within a society and reverberates to other societies in a
chain of sequence by which the societies are aligned in the Grand Human. You
can see from this that babies being born on the numerous earths is the highest
use for that earth since every baby is born for heaven to be an angel. Since
the Fall, every baby is born for heaven, but can only
get there by regeneration of the adult. Children who
die before growing up, do so in heaven and have a special innocence not shared
by those who arrive as regenerated adults.
Because of
this supreme spiritual use, a wife represents the highest possible wisdom and
love for a human being. Divine Wisdom or Divine Truth is represented in the
Word by the feminine: women, wives, girls, virgins, daughters, mothers, grand
mothers, aunts, sisters (Faith 59, xx). The Church is called a mother and a bride.
A woman giving birth represents the Lord bringing Divine Doctrine or Truth to
the Church in the minds of men. Thus all truth has the feminine as its mother,
since love is the origin and life of all truth. The surrendered husband is the
regenerated husband who is elevated to a celestial mind, called an
angel-husband (xx). Divine Love in the Word is represented by the masculine:
husband, priest, father (xx).
Everything that pertains to the will, in the
Word is represented as love or good. Everything that pertains to the
understanding, in the Word is represented as truth or wisdom. In the celestial
mind, love is primary, which is why Father and Husband represent love. But in
the spiritual mind, father and husband do not represent love, but truth
instead. The spiritual state is a lower state than the celestial. A man then
becomes elevated when he represents love, which is done when he acts from his
wife’s will. Then his mind becomes a celestial mind, otherwise it remains
spiritual, and this mind cannot regenerate (xx). The regeneration of those who
are spiritual angels in the Second Heaven is also achieved by love, but to a
lesser extent because they value love of truth higher than love of good (xx).
The celestial angels of the Third heaven value love of good more than love of
truth. And good is in the will, hence feminine. The celestial angels put love
of good (celestial mind) ahead of love of truth (spiritual mind).
From all
this you can see that the “feminization” of man and society is nothing else
than the elevated man. The elevated man is feminized because celestial is above
spiritual. Man is born spiritual and in order to regenerate,
must become celestial. This is an elevation. Regeneration elevates from
spiritual to celestial. To give truth priority over love is spiritual, but to
give love priority over truth, is celestial. To become
a celestial mind, or elevated husband, the man must turn himself inside out, as
it were. Much of our disagreements with our wife, by which our regeneration is arrested,
revolves around this dilemma for a man:
(a) putting truth considerations
above love considerations
vs.
(b) putting love considerations
above truth considerations
Alternative (a) is masculine and
inborn, leading to damnation. Alternative (b) is the method of regeneration,
leading to salvation.
For a
husband who is forming the
The fact is
that when truth is made primary and love secondary, it is not truth but appears
to be. This is obvious when you consider that truth and love cannot exist
separately (xx). Therefore all truth that is genuine and real,
is nothing but the external activity or appearance of love. Love is always
within genuine truth, and what is within, is a discrete degree above or superior
in excellence of creation (xx). When a man adopts Rule 1, or the Doctrine of
the Wife as his regeneration discipline, he does nothing else than turn
everything inside out of himself. His inmost portion is love, so this must come
out and be first. His outer portion is truth, so this must align itself with
love and be married to it as a one, so that the husband’s truth is nothing else
than the wife’s externalized love. In this way he can have what is hers from
the Lord, and she can have what is his from the Lord. This union is created
when the husband thinks from the wife’s will (Rule 1).
The use of
massaging one’s wife to sleep every night is a supreme use by which the husband
wills and thinks from her feminized love, her good, and her needs. To adopt it as
a regeneration discipline means to acknowledge that it
is a Divine commandment. Every truth we understand from the Writings is a
commandment for our life. Massage is mentioned once in the Writings, when
discussing the
Chapter 2, Section 14
14. The Regeneration Discipline of Heaven On Wheels
Recognition of sin
and a person's self-examination are the beginnings of repentance (TCR 525)
It is easy
for the
Prior to my
reformation I drove in a style one can call being a rushing maniac. It was a
morally bankrupt way of driving in which the usual claims to being a civilized and
reasonable person, fell off my personality prior to entering the car and
settling myself behind the wheel, ready to be this other person. He was crude,
gross, aggressive, hostile, arrogant, lawless, foolish, unfair, risky, lacking
compassion and respect for other human road users. As usual in all matters of my regeneration, my wife played a courageous
and definitive role in making me look at my driving personality from the
perspective of the Writings.
I went
through a three-step process that later in our book, I defined as the AWM
approach to driver self-improvement:
(A)
Acknowledging that my aggressive driving is a sin
(W)
Witnessing myself in the act of committing the sin
(M)
Modifying my act
The
acknowledgement step is the most difficult. We run off automatic denial
routines to prevent us from making this acknowledgement. First, we deny that
our driving is aggressive. Assertive, maybe; impatient maybe;
but not aggressive. Second, we deny that driving styles are sins. For
instance, only ten percent of my students, when taking the aggressive driving
course, at first are willing to define tailgating as a moral issue. By the end
of the semester, that percentage rises to fifty percent. Despite my efforts,
half of them still reject my idea that aggressive driving is immoral, and from
hell. They are unwilling to admit that other road users have human rights that
must not be violated. They mostly define driving as competition, and therefore
the rules of competition allow you to fight for your place, for your comfort,
and the freedom of individual style.
The
morality that characterizes the thinking level of driving is at a corporeal
level suitable for the Letter of the Old Testament. The law of talon is the
operating procedure. Drivers who operate in a stupid manner are offensive, need
to be punished, and no longer deserve respect or dignity. We give ourselves
permission to compel another driver to go faster than they want to by
tailgating them, especially when they block our way and refuse to switch lanes.
We give ourselves permission to think offensive and denigrating things about
another driver. We give ourselves permission to feel rage and hatred towards
other drivers who show their inconsiderateness and put us in danger or prevent
us from doing what we want. We find a way of justifying ourselves in these
hostile feelings, thoughts, and actions on a daily basis while we are in
traffic with others.
The first
step of Acknowledging is therefore the hardest to make. This step is equivalent
to the reformation of the
1. Becoming A Reformed Driver
Time had
come for me to meet my higher destiny. At age 42 I was at the height of my
external career, which is that of a tenured full professor at a university with
a respectable reputation in my field of psychology. I was also at the height of
my internal career, which was to become an avatar—the self-sufficient
accomplished man who has risen to the top of the intelligence scale of his
race, needing no God or superstition, himself as the sole arbiter of what’s
right, true, and good, possessing full self-control over his weaknesses,
unstoppable and limitless in his potential extensions.
That’s how
foolish and blind I was when I had reached the top of the ladder I was climbing
on since adolescence when I first started formulating the idea of my
superiority to everyone else, needing no God, being above morality, above
religion, above culture, art, and aesthetics, above the human race.
How
amazingly insane! And yet I was fully convinced with total certainty that I was
this avatar.
Then, for
no reason I could see, all of a sudden, there was a slow but steady and building
feeling of anxiety rising from inside to my awareness. What’s this! I was
immediately alarmed and shaken. I thought I had put all these weaknesses of
human emotions to the side, leaving me in a solid steady state of smooth
sailing on the river of life conquered. This anxiety, what was it, what did it
have to do with, who was it? My legs led me to the bookshelf in our living
room. My hands removed the Jewish Prayer Book that I had kept as a childhood
memento, with my parents’ handwritten inscription on it. As an avatar, I
thought it would be chicken for me to try to hide my religious background. It
turns out there was a purpose for it that I had not anticipated. I opened it
and began to read the Hebrew sentences I could not fully understand. I could
read everything phonetically. I could read the same verses in the old European Orthodox
accent and characteristic sing song intonation, or I could read it in modern Hebrew with an Israeli accent and sentence pattern
intonation. But I could not have translated more than 10 percent of the
sentences! The rest was totally meaningless!
After a few
days of this, I got tired of it. I was unmoved. Then the next time my hand
reached towards the bookshelf it got hold of the American edition of the Jewish
Prayer book, that had been a gift from a friend of the family, but which I had
never actually read or used. But now I noticed with delight that the right hand
side was in English and was a translation of the Hebrew on the left hand side.
How amazed I was to be able to read those familiar prayers with 100 percent
meaning rather than 10 percent. It was like a dark sooty wall that had just
been professionally cleaned up, turning out to be a large clear window pane
giving access to the landscapes in the
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who
sanctifies us with his commandments, and commands us to light the candles of
Shabbat
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe who
sanctifies us with his commandments, and commands us concerning washing of hands
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe who has
chosen us from among all people, and exalted us above every tongue and sanctified
us with His commandments
I am the Lord, your God, who lead
you from the
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world
that He created as He willed.
May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled mighty, upraised, and lauded be
the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He beyond any blessing and song praise and
consolation that are uttered in the world.
May my mouth declare the praise of God and may all flesh
bless His holy name forever. We will bless God from this time, forever, halleluiah.
Give thanks to God for He is good, for his kindness endures forever. Who can
express the might of God? Who can make heard all of His praise?
Beware, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn and serve
other gods, and worship them Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, they
should make themselves tzitzit (fringes) on the corners of their clothing
throughout their generations, and give the tzitzit of each corner a thread of
blue.
How amazing
that I should have recited these words in Hebrew as a young child, not knowing
their meaning, and how amazing that as an adult I never was exposed to their
meaning, or perhaps, I kept myself from being exposed. I found in these words a
new relationship from within, a new comfort that took care of the angst that
had bothered and threatened me. I was not alone, like Atlas. I was just a
created human being, a mortal, an individual with limited vision and power
within limited spheres of action and decision. How relieved I was I no longer
had to be an avatar and a god.
I had never
taken time out to get to know this old God of my childhood. But now, there He
was, and there was I, now an adult. So now it was God and me, tete a tete, as
it were, person to person, like Rabbi Baal Shem Tov whose legendary magical feats
and stories enlightened my childhood years with the exciting youthful visions
of adventure and mystery. Along with “der leimene golem”—the Jewish version of
a Hollywood Frankenstein set in
The words
in English reverberated in my mind, over and over: “Blessed art Thou Lord our
God King of the universe.” I recited the familiar Hebrew incantation, bored
into me by childhood indoctrination: Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech Haolam.”
And I thought of the meaning in English: “Blessed art Thou Lord our God King of
the universe.” One so familiar and meaningless; the other so
new and alive with meaning. But now they have come together in my mind
and it was very exciting, because enlightening. I turned the concept around in
my mind: “King of the universe.” Why a king, I wondered. I suppose that’s how
they used to think in the olden days. God is a King. I thought of the word
“Lord”—Adonai. It means Master. God is King and Master. I did not yet know or
reflect on the truth that when Jews read Adonai the Old Testament Hebrew
actually spells out Jehovah.
During
these months of religious revival it never occurred to me that to meet God I
needed to reform my life. I continued to think like an avatar, but now, a
religious avatar. I became a pious man in the order of my own construction. I
thought of God as a loving super-natural intelligence who wants to interact
with individuals who are especially high in intelligence and are able to
apprehend Him and His Truth. My old search for truth continued as before, but
this time the truth was centered in God. I was interested in God because I was
interested in truth, and God was part of this truth. I was very far from the
idea that my intelligence is held together and operated by God from within, and
without that, I would fall into a thoughtless heap of protein cells and
whirling atoms vibrating off electrons and mesons. God and me
still hadn’t met one on one, face to face. God was not yet something real in my
mind.
After a few
weeks of this new enchantment with Jewish memories from my childhood, my hand one
day reached for the red covered edition of the Holy Bible on the shelf, next to
the other “religious” books I had kept. I turned the pages to the New
Testament. I was surprised at my boldness, feeling trepidation. What’s going to
happen to me? I had never done that. I swiped the Gideon Bible from a hotel
room years ago, for no reason I could think of except that I was a book
collector in those days and filled my library with books I might look at but
never really did. But that day I started reading the New Testament, something
forbidden to a Jewish boy—except perhaps as literature. But literature was not
my reason for reading it. It was just to see, out of personal curiosity, what
this forbidden thing was. I had broken
the barrier of being birthed in the Church, though I was an ignorant infant.
I read
through the Four Gospels and the Acts, and the Epistles, and the Book of
Revelations. What amazed me to no end was that the New Testament was a
continuation of the Old Testament. Isn’t astonishing that I didn’t know that? My
brother who is almost 50 years old today, still
doesn’t know it. The fact is that if you hear something you’re disinclined to
hear, you haven’t heard it, and you don’t know it.
The rest are to him as shades, all as it were, rejected far
to the sides, so that he sees and hears, and does not see and does not hear (SE
2850)
As I read
through Matthew I did not come to any part that I could react to as foreign or
unacceptable to my Jewish training. Likewise with Mark.
And Luke and John. The same with the
rest. The Book of Revelation made no sense but it just sounded very
familiar and similar to Ezekiel, Isaiah, and some of the Psalms. I loved the
personality of the Lord and His disciples. Very Jewish, I thought. I approved
of Paul and his Jewish logic—much like the Talmud of the Rabbis. One thing put
me off: all the passages that talked negatively about the Jews. I felt it
should have said “the leaders of the Jews” or “the officials of the Church” but
not “the Jews.” I felt it cast the Jews in a bad image and maybe this was part
of the source for anti-Semitism—the Jesus Christ badmouthing His people. Still,
I continued to think that the Jews were superior because they are the “Chosen
People of God.” Reading the New Testament and seeing it as a mere continuation
of Judaism, I was willing to accept the Christian religion by subsuming it
under the Jewish religion.
I thought
of myself as a Christian Jew. Still a Jew, but a kind of a
Jew, namely a Christian Jew. I felt myself superior to Christians who
were after all of the Gentile stock, while I was of the Jewish stock,
descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I was proud of my name “Jakobovits”
which was the name of my adoptive father. It means Son of Jacob. Later, after I
became a
Even then,
though I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, the idea of repentance remained
dead in my mind. When I read the word in the Bible, or heard it in a sermon, it
never applied to me. I had nothing to repent of since I was not a sinner. I
hardly ever lied, and then only if I had to get out of trouble. I did not steal
or murder or swear falsely in court. I did not commit adultery, and what was in
my private thoughts could not hurt anybody. I had compassion for people in
distress. I was supportive of societal institutions. I was impartial and fair,
except in a few instances here and there. So basically repentance is not
something that applied to me.
True repentance means
not only examining what one does in one's life, but also what one intends in
one's will to do. (TCR
532)
About two
years later, when I started reading the Writings, I discovered what repentance
is:
Recognition of sin and a person's self-examination are the
beginnings of repentance.
No one in the Christian world can fail to recognize sin. For everyone there from childhood is taught what is evil and from
boyhood what is sinful. All youths learn this from their parents and
schoolmasters, as well as from the Ten Commandments, the first text put into
the hands of everyone in Christian countries. As he grows up, he learns this
later on from sermons in church and instruction at home. It is fully taught by
the Word, and moreover by civil law and justice, which say the same as the Ten
Commandments, and other parts of the Word. Sinful evil is nothing else but evil
directed against the neighbour; and is also directed against God, and this is
sin.
But the recognition of sin is useless, unless a person
examines what he does in his life, and observes whether he did such a thing in
secret or openly. For up to this point all that is mere knowledge; and then the
arguments of the preacher are merely a noise in the left ear, which goes
through to the right ear and so out. Finally it becomes no more than a thought,
a piety on the part of the lungs, in many cases mere imagination and a chimera.
But it is quite the reverse, if a person, recognizing what is a sin, examines
himself, finds one in himself and says to himself, 'This evil is a sin,' and
fearing everlasting punishment abstains from it. Then for the first time the
preacher's teaching and oratory in church is taken in with both ears and
reaches the heart, so that he turns from being a pagan into a Christian. (TCR
525)
At this
point I had to take a look at my driving personality from the perspective of my
religion. All my life I operated on the assumption that I was my own boss, my
own ruler within. I decided what is right, true, or good. In hindsight I can
see that I was unable to distinguish between truth and
good, nor between right or wrong except in terms of my own judgment. There was
no higher authority in my mind. God and the Word was something I had to figure
out, decide on, and act—all from myself in accordance with my understanding.
My
reformation began when I tied the concept of sin to the concept of evil. Isn’t
astonishing that it took me till age 42 to figure that out? But then I was
shaken to the core of my being as the thought struck me: “if a person, recognizing
what is a sin, examines himself, finds one in himself and says to himself,
'This evil is a sin,' and fearing everlasting punishment abstains from it.” (TCR 525). I suddenly realized with consternation and fear
that I was a candidate for hell! Hell was not just for others, bad people. I
was those bad people as long as I had evils in me. Hell means evil; evil means
hell. If I have evils, I’m tied to hell, and headed that way unless I break the
shackle by getting rid of the evils.
4. Driving Like The Lord Is My Passenger
I began the
discipline of driving before the Lord. My car was to be a heaven on wheels in
traffic. My feelings for other drivers had to be charitable, consequently there
was to be no tolerance for hostile or denigrating ideas about the neighbor. To reform myself as a driver was the most
difficult project I had ever undertaken. I suspect it will be difficult for
many men who are struggling to regenerate. The key to my success was my
listening to my wife. The plain things that she could see and perceive about my
driving habits were hidden to my eyes, or perhaps I should own up to the fact
that I kept them hidden from my view—which is not hard to do. Men are experts
at it from longstanding practice as part of their cultural masculinity. Having
my wife as guiding light for my driving took about a dozen years of resistance
on my part. I made her suffer for all those years when I drove like I wanted
to, even though she was my passenger. I would not modify my driving
q
to please her
q
to make her happy
q
to reassure her
q
to make her feel secure and safe
q
to make her feel that she has some
control over the driving situation
q
to feel compassionate for her stress
and fear as a vulnerable passenger
q
to honor her dignity as a human
being who has inalienable human rights
q
that should not be violated by her
husband who claimed to be her friend.
None of
these reasons had any power over that man that I was then, mean, selfish, and
foolish. And it’s amazing that I was then at the height of my professional and
scientific career. And my search for truth for I thought of myself as a good
man regardless of my driving emotions, driving thoughts, and driving acts. My
state of foolishness, or spiritual insanity, was so deep that I operated under
the principle that my feelings and thoughts behind the wheel were not relevant
to my salvation, to the question of whether I am a good person or evil. To my
mind evil had to do with the other person, not me. I was not evil,
therefore my feelings and thoughts could not be evil.
But eventually
I was willing to see myself from my wife’s perspective. This is what saved me.
The first
step therefore was this acknowledgment. It is the acknowledgement that I am
such as she sees me, consequently such as she tells me. This put the burden on
my accepting, or trusting, what she tells me about me as a driver, DESPITE MY
THINKING THAT THE OPPOSITE IS THE CASE. This is the most difficult step in the
entire driver reformation process. For years I would merely deny what she says,
or else, ignore, and attribute it little credence. It was her fears speaking.
It was her unreasonable demands speaking. It was her weaknesses speaking. It
was her exaggerations speaking. It was her unwillingness to adapt speaking.
Through this mental discounting activity I set her opinion aside, along with
any responsibility I had to her as a husband who claimed to be a friend and a
decent man. This demonstrates the depth of the foolishness any of us can wallow
and remain, were it not our fear of hell and our desire to enter the conjugial
bliss of heaven.
After I acknowledged
that I was a selfish, immoral, illegal and dangerous driver, I began monitoring
my willing and thinking on each trip. I drove alone daily and I carried a tape
recorder for several years, speaking my thoughts out loud, later listening to
the tape. I then began to see myself more objectively. Everything on the tape
seemed familiar, recognizing myself; but the cumulative effect of listening to
half an hour of it, was illuminating. I saw the depth of my depravity as a
human being. I could no longer pretend like before that I was a decent and good
man. I was not better than my relatives! This is what struck me deeply. I
operated by higher standards of morality and thinking than my relatives, and
yet I was degenerating to their level of savagery and grossness from which I
thought I had freed myself.
Of course
this was a personal reaction. It wasn’t just like my relatives, but like the
entire culture and society. If you consider driving scenes depicted in cartoons
and movies you will immediately see that what they portray is evil, that is,
they portray doing evil to the neighbor while driving a car. Mostly they get
away with it. These scenes train the sensorimotor memory, engraving it with
that style of evil driving. This is then reinforced for several years by the
adults that drive us, who are verbally abusive and spew out a hostile
philosophy of other drivers. Children imbibe this subconsciously, along with
the style of driving the car, its start and stop motions, its acceleration,
changing lanes, going over the speed limit, competing, acting like a bad loser,
and many such things that we imbibe and acquire and make it part of ourselves
as drivers, ready to serve us when we get our driver’s license.
There are
good drivers out there among the 125 million on the road every day in the
I had to
start thinking about my driving according to my doctrine of fairness and
morality. I wanted to be a gentle driver more than an efficient one. This is
what allowed me to listen to my wife. As an efficient driver I had a delight
for making up time lost, or getting there faster than before. Later I called it
being a rushing maniac. Eventually the addiction is so strong that one begins
to feel a kind of panic when not moving. One begins to dread “getting stuck” as
in “Don’t get stuck behind that truck.” or, “Speed up to make the light so you
don’t get stuck.” Under this negative motivational pressure the driver begins
to take risks, and sometimes excessive risks, the result of which is to crash
and injure someone, besides oneself. I was shocked at
myself, saying: “How can you pretend to a decent person yet you’re willing to
take a risk of injuring another person.” My wife would frantically whisper from
her passenger side: “
5. The Conjugial Discipline Of Partnership Driving
Now when my wife and I are in the
car together, we are committed to driving as two instead of as one.
Since we
both prefer that I always be the driver, my wife [the passenger] is given by
mutual consent the right to react to my mistakes and to tell me what makes her
uncomfortable. I agreed to do this out of a religious motive after I felt a
crisis of conscience when I took to heart what my wife had been complaining
about: I drive scary and aggressively. For many years I denied the charges as
untrue and dismissed her complaints as excessive. She had no choice but to
endure the torture and degradation. Later my research uncovered the fact that
the majority of men in
I give
thanks to the Lord for shaking me out of this terribly sinful practice we all
tend to learn as children from our parents and the media, and then begin to
unconsciously practice it ourselves when we become drivers. Realizing all this,
I decided to undergo a self-modification program of my driving personality,
what may be called my “driving personality makeover.” It was a religious work
of daily discipline. Religious because I clearly saw that I
was continually sinning by continuing to accept my driving habits and
attitudes. During the first phase of my temptations I was enraged (in
hell). I resented my wife’s constant interventions—which she did in accordance
with our mutual agreement—thinking of them as her exaggerations and neuroses. I
would deny: “No, I didn’t do that.” I would minimize: “That’s not a big deal.”
I would punish her: I refused to talk to her for the rest of the trip. I would
alter my driving style for a few minutes, then revert.
This went on for several more years.
But I
continued hanging on to our Partnership Driving Contract, being mortally afraid
that if I didn’t I was rejecting the Lord. This religious motivation saved me
from continuing the evil habit. The second phase then ensued at some point and
I felt totally motivated to change and to honor my agreement with her. I now
welcomed her interventions. I actually felt safer letting her determine the
level of risk I should be taking (or not taking).
q
“Slow down!“
q
“Don’t threaten the pedestrians.”
q
“Put your signal on.”
q
“Stay in this lane.”
q
“Wave at that driver for letting you
in.”
q
“Fix your face—you look like you’re
mad.”
q
“Smile at the gate attendant.”
q
“Let’s leave sooner.”
q
“Let’s stop to ask for directions.”
q
“Don’t block the exit.”
q
“Don’t drive so close.”
q
“Stay in this lane.”
q
“Don’t take the turns so fast.”
q
“Think ahead where you have to
turn.”
q
“Is somebody honking at you?”
q
“Use the gear on the down slope.”
q
“Aren’t you going a little too
fast?”
q
“Stop driving like a cowboy drives
his horse.”
q
Etc.
After years
of discipline I can say today that I’m a reformed driver, loving traffic
instead of hating it, being supportive and helpful to other drivers rather than
competitive and nasty. But the temptations continue, when for example I’m late,
and I must then appeal to the Lord to save me once more. Thus it goes on.
Disciplines
have tremendous uses for building up the external (natural) vessels in our will
and understanding. The more we can develop this natural-rational mind, in its
will and in its understanding, the more we create suitable vessels to receive
the interior rational truths that infuse these mundane activities with
spiritual things (NJHD 51). It’s important to remember that building up the natural-rational
mind can be done for either a secular or religious motive. The Lord supplies power to the secular motive as well as the
religious, for this is a matter of spiritual liberty that is eternally
guaranteed by Him as part of everyone’s humanness. Though the secular motive
can drive perfectionism and self-mastery in any discipline, it can only do so
in a continuous fashion, trapped inexorably within the natural discrete degree.
But the religious motive for being disciplined produces self-mastery and
expertise in mundane activities that are in a form suitable to be external
“vessels” capable of containing spiritual motives and meanings.
The
expertise produced by the secular motive is not called a “vessel” for spiritual
things because it is restricted to the ultimate (natural) discrete degree.
Producing expertise and self-mastery in daily routines by means of a religious
motive is empowered by the Lord in a new way which allows the activity to
contain a spiritual discrete degree. This interior area is called the ”ground” within which the Lord implants spiritual/celestial
truths and new spiritual motives. But the secular products of self-mastery and
expertise, even though they may be indistinguishable (in appearance) from the
religious, are called the “earth” and this is not yet ready for implantation by
the Lord (AC 566).
Chapter 2, Section 15
15. The
spiritual discipline of shopping together
Why do
women like to go shopping together? It’s because they act like friends to each
other and women need that, depend on it for their mental balance. Yet it stands
to reason that for conjugial couples the husband should be the wife’s best
friend, otherwise how can they form a perfect unity? If the wife has to depend
on other women to achieve balance it’s only because the husband won’t play that
role in a sufficient degree. But he must learn how to be his wife’s best friend
if they are going to be a couple in heaven. But the
Writings tell us that wives in heaven also have meetings with each other (e.g.,
CL 293).
It is only
with one wife that truly conjugial love can exist, and consequently the same is
true of truly conjugial friendship, trust, potency and the linking of minds
that makes the two one flesh. (CL 333)
Since truly
conjugial love links the souls and hearts of two people, it is also combined
with friendship, and through this with trust, both of which it makes conjugial.
These are so far superior to other kinds of friendship and trust,
that just as this is the leading love, so these are the leading kinds of
friendship and trust. For a number of reasons, some of which will be revealed
in the second account of experiences at the end of this chapter, the same is
true of potency, from which the long duration of this love follows. It has been
shown in the Chapter on this subject ([VIII] 156-183) that truly conjugial love
makes a married couple one flesh. (CL 334) (See also CL 216)
Clearly,
the idea that women need women friends because their husbands can’t be that, is true only of unregenerate husbands. The pure
friendship a woman needs can best be provided by her husband for he alone can
enter into the inmost friendship that both are capable of. This inmost
friendship is at the same time romantic and sexual, while the others are not.
Hence it’s superior excellence and use for the wife and for the husband.
These remarks have been made so that you may acknowledge
that conjugial love of such surpassing quality exists, and it does so when one
woman alone is loved out of the whole sex. Can any intellect, sufficiently
trained to see the connections between matters, fail to deduce from this that a
lover, if he is constant in soul and at the inmost level in loving her, would
achieve the everlasting blessings which he promised himself before he gave his
agreement and promises himself when he does so? It was shown above that he actually
does achieve them, if he approaches the Lord. and
under His guidance lives a truly religious life.
Can anyone else come into a person's life from on high, and
confer inward heavenly joys on it, and pass them on to the following stages
-the more so, when He also at the same time confers constant virility? (CL 333)
Clearly
then, the
Learning
how to shop with one’s wife is a discipline that provides the husband with many
opportunities to play the role of being best friends. In the early phases of
this discipline the husband assumes that merely by going shopping with her
accomplishes the goal of becoming best friends. But this is not the case.
Self-witnessing of his sorties with her reveals this to the sincere man. What
does he do? He drives her around and walks with her into the shops. She loves
this and appreciates it, as long as he does it from her standards and not his
own. He will then be properly attired, patient and pleasant, and avoid
embarrassing her or worrying her. He will take charge of the packages and give
her the feeling that he would rather her not carry
anything. It’s a luxury for her to have her husband take care of these side-issues
so that her shopping could be as pure an experience of delight as possible. A
wife is constantly oriented to receive what the husband wants to give her by
which he hopes to make her happy. This is one way she returns his love:
“Darling, I will let you make me as happy as you want to.”
Her
attitude is rational since love is the desire to make the other happy from
oneself (DLW 48). The happier he wants to make her from his services, the more
he loves her. And the wife is happy from her husband, he sees in her happiness
the goal of his desire. This makes his happiness. When the wife sees her
husband’s happiness, she sees in his happiness the fulfillment of her goal to
make him happy from herself. And he is happy from her since his happiness stems
from seeing her happiness that is from him. In this way they are entwined and
enmeshed in a crescendo to bliss that is only limited by what each can support
without bursting.
You will
note that this celestial happiness is not a feeling of contemplation or celebration
or reflection or expression. Rather it is a doing for each other. Conjugial
love is not a status achieved or bestowed, but a continual doing for each
other. The inner union of the two depends on this reciprocity of wanting to
make the other happy from oneself. This motive cannot exist in the unregenerate
or natural man. In the state prior to our regeneration we are all natural and
think externally about our wife. In that external state we allocate our love on
a continuum—she gets it sometimes, I get it at other times. Proof of this is
that the wife is never sure of her husband for he will suddenly blow the deal
by doing something that hurts her—get angry, get nasty, get obstinate, get
embarrassing, get unreliable. This hurts her conjugial which constantly strives
to weave a conjoint web of fibers so that they may be united in will and
understanding. This see-saw action is typical of alternating states of
regeneration by which the Lord is regenerating us (AC 847).
Eventually
the love battle ceases and the husband is at last oriented the same way as his
wife—toward internal union. Much remains that needs to
grow up before it can be functional, but the wife is patient from the Lord, and
waits for him to mature. But she can keenly feel the difference between before
and after. It’s completely obvious to her when she sees him not questioning her
judgment every minute which he used to do before.
Also, when
she sees him genuinely repentant after making her feel
bad with some response or reaction. When she points something out he is doing
to distress her, he no longer digs in his heels, refusing to acknowledge it.
Instead, he is profusely apologetic and sweet about it, and enacting instant
turn about. To her this is proof that he has changed. And she is willing to
believe this, hoping in her heart, that he will not relapse and break the bond
once more. Wives are always turned to the Lord and in their inner self they are
asking, “How long, Lord? How long?” By which the wife
is expressing not her impatience or complaint, but her inmost desire to fulfill
the Lord’s love through her conjugial union with her husband.
Since this
love comes from doing to each other, let us go back to the discussion on
shopping with your wife as a religious discipline of doing.
Observe
when into the outing you begin to feel tired, and when you begin to let it show
so she can see it. You yawn, you slow down, you look for chairs to sit on, your
eyes get glazed over, your face looks severe. All
these signs she takes note of, and she begins to worry. Pretty soon she feels
she must end the process lest her husband get angry or resentful. This
martyrdom approach on the part of the husband is the opposite of what he has to
achieve if she is going to end the shopping spree with the gladsome feeling
that she’s been out with her best friend.
Therefore
you must inhibit all these signs of boredom and compel yourself to put on all
the signs of enthusiasm and animation. This is what women friends do to each other and why they
need one another. By being together they experience a release of energy and
enthusiasm. They achieve this by mutual stimulation and reactivity. So you must
learn the steps and cumulate them so you make progress. A wife is very patient
and very gracious when she perceives her husband involved and interested in
learning her things. What does she do when she is shopping? You need to observe
her and learn compatible responses to her actions.
Does she
sit down like you want to? No. She keeps running, looking, comparing. Look at
her face: Does she look bored or sullen? No. She is excited and enthusiastic,
constantly being surprised or disappointed, and is affected in a continuous
unending stream of animation. This is what you must match. Make sure you are in
good physical shape so you’re not actually tired and can keep up without giving
out the signs that bother her. Observe how she looks at clothes on the rack.
She doesn’t spend time looking at the wrong sizes. She first notes how the
sizes run on the rack, then looks only in her size. You can help here for this
is pretty easy. Learn where to look on the garment or on the rack. Stick close
to her side. Do not go off on your own so she has to wonder where you are or if
she’s lost you. Listen to what she says. She carries on a constant stream of
relevant comments. Learn what they are:
q
The size (is it in her range)
q
The color (is it in her category of
what she would wear)
q
The sleeves (short, three quarters,
full length)
q
The collar (with, without, round,
scalloped)
q
The length and shape (does it cover
the butt, is it too tight)
q
The texture (is it scratchy, too
thin, too thick)
q
The fabric (denim, seersucker,
cotton, silk, wool, stretchy)
q
The ensemble (does it go well with
what matching pieces)
q
Etc.
I learned a
lot by listening to her and watching the Shopping channel where these details
are discussed with each item. I enjoy watching the Style channel with my wife,
along with the Food channel, and the many decorating and remodeling programs.
Never refer to or discuss the price, unless she raises the issue, and then just
listen. Let her decide to mention it or not, and do not volunteer your opinion.
Only hers counts anyway. Your opinion would be an unwanted intrusion. Friends
don’t intrude. If she hesitates, always encourage her. If she decides against
it, never try to change her mind. Try to go in the fitting room with her, if
store policy allows it. This is a wonderful treat—you’ll discover why if you do
it. Once inside, don’t just sit there. Make yourself useful. Hang up the
clothes she’s finished with. Help by unbuttoning and take the garments from her
as she takes them off. Control your voice so it remains subdued. You don’t want
her to worry and wonder if she’s making a spectacle. Be prepared to go out and
find another size. For this you must keep track where the pieces come from on
the various racks. And if you can’t find it right away, do not make her wait.
Consult the salesperson.
You must
exercise your discipline to be sufficiently animated at all times. For
instance, when you approve of some garment, accessory, or jewelry, be sufficiently enthusiastic. What is sufficient? You have
to magnify your approval and praise way beyond the point you think is enough.
You can’t just say, Very nice Honey—as if you’re talking about a jar or bottle.
This is Her! Your conjugial Sweetheart! So you have to
continue, not stop there.
Very very nice. Oh, yes, really. Wow, amazing how the two go together. It just looks
like something ordinary when you look at it first but then when you put it on
it takes on life. (Try to touch the garment at this point.) Very
impressive. How it fits together with your skirt! You’ve got a good eye, you picked out just the right shade. Look at them
together, it’s amazing, they make a kind of harmony, I can see it, yes. Excellent. Good show Honey. Yes.
That kind of thing. Choose your own style. You can never overdo it, but you can
easily under do it. Sometimes we might want to balk at what seems to us like a
gross exaggeration. “It’s insincere. It’s fake. It’s manipulative.” But the
truth is that these judgments and complaints are resistances from the
unregenerate male ego. The proof is easily to be witnessed in your wife’s
reaction and mood. Note carefully how she is acting and what she is expressing
as you spin off all your gracious speech acts. You are making her feel good.
She is not asking you, “Are you sincere?” She is
accepting it. Because it is you, her husband doing it, she feels legitimized as
who and what she is. She feels safe. She is grateful for it and she loves you for
it in her inner bosom.
Above all
remember that these little enactments you do with her must all be
“celestial”--pleasant and compatible, gracious and harmonious. One bad move of
impatience or disagreement throws the whole thing off like a break in the singer’s
voice at an important concert. It’s useless to think you can get away with a 99
to 1 split (99 pleasant things and one unpleasant). Of course she is forgiving
and reasonable if you make a mistake, as long as you tenderly make up for it
immediately, meaning pronto (not five minutes later!). Keep in mind what it is
that she needs and wants from her best friend while shopping:
Animation (don’t lag behind, don’t take time to respond or react when she’s waiting for
it)
Joint focus (know what she is referring to, look at the garment,
the store, don’t get lost)
Appreciation
(show her you enjoy looking at her, tell her she has a good figure, praise her
taste, how that lime color goes well with her skin)
Confirmation
(always agree, nod vigorously, smile constantly, make your eyes big, say mild
things that are not controversial, expand on her statements instead of taking
them in another direction)
She will
feel that you are best friends when she feels legitimized in each of these
areas. Then suggest some fun thing to do when it’s over. Go for lunch or coffee
and don’t forget the cake. Postpone getting back to the usual topics of work,
house, children, and socials. Think about what friends do: they get each
other out of these usual topic routines. When you get home do not break the
contact right away by sitting down in front of the television or your computer.
Stay with her, it’s not over yet. She wants to unpack everything. She desires
you to be a witness to her excitement. She wants to start all over again with
each garment she brought home. She wants to try them on again before she wants
to take the labels off (in case she has to return something). Be there as an
audience. She wants that. Be animated and say something about each thing. Let
her calm down at the end of it all. Give her plenty of time. Genuine friends
don’t hurry one another, only sloppy friends do that. At last there comes a
point when she can let you go do your things. She know
all along that’s what you really feel like doing. She tries to hold on to you
for a while longer. Observe your own resistances at her mannerisms that are
calculated to keep you a little longer with her, and to herself. For that’s what she is feeling, if you haven’t spoiled it for her
by then. She is feeling the irresistible and delicious desire to conjoin
herself with you from within.
You are
then a happy and fortunate man, for she will bestow upon you her sweetness, her
passion, and her pure friendship. But the shopping ritual is not over yet. You
have to memorize while you still remember where a particular garment was bought
and other details about it. You have to recognize the item when she wears it
and mention where it was bought or some other detail about it. Friendship is
not on and off, like thirst or sexual arousal. It is on all the time. And it is
heaven on earth.
THE CONJUNCTION
OF SOULS AND MINDS BY MARRIAGE
MEANT BY THE
LORD'S SAYING THAT THEY ARE NO LONGER TWO BUT ONE FLESH
An inclination
and also a capacity for conjunction as though into one was
implanted in man and woman from creation, and man and woman still have this
inclination and capacity in them. That
this is so appears from the book of creation, and at the same time from what
the Lord said. In the book of creation,
which we call Genesis, we read:
Jehovah God
fashioned the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman, and He
brought her to the man. And the man
said, "This one, this time, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman ('ishshah), because
she was taken from man ('ish). For this
reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they
shall be as one flesh." (Genesis
2:22-24)
The Lord also
said something similar in Matthew:
Have you not
read that He who made them from the beginning...male and female..., said,
"For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cling to his
wife, and the two shall be as one flesh"?
Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. (Matthew 19:4-6)
(CL 156r)
Chapter 2, Section 15
15. Wife
takes precedence over the children
For the
Knowing
this psychobiological condition the husband will see it rationally, not from
ego. He will see that he is “dead” set against it in his natural man, which is
unregenerate and filled with anti-conjugial and anti-feminine hatreds. This is
why reformation is necessary before regeneration can begin in adult life (AE
803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]; TCR 587). Reformation is
the husband’s realignment of his loyalties so that at the end of the struggle
of reformation he will put the wife on top. He will justify doing it by his
rational explanations which he obtained from the Writings in a similar way to
what I have written in this book. Now that he has put the wife at the very top
of all loyalties, and he is prepared to enforce this principle as a Divine
commandment, then he has completed his reformation. He is now ready to begin
regeneration. From then on the Lord works with him very closely and the man
knows it. His life is changed.
His wife is
now in charge of his willing and thinking, and he loves it. And if doesn’t love
it yet, he simulates loving it, and he persists and he looks to the Lord for
relief. Relief comes at some point when he lets go of the left over loyalties
for parents, children, and family that compete with the top loyalty in his
mind. Now they are below the loyalty he assigns to his wife. Now she can
continue her assiduous work of revealing to him his hidden weaknesses and
affections. Thus he makes progress toward regeneration and the Lord is able to
conjoin them more and more interiorly. These interior conjoining are celestial
and permanent. There is no way back; no way to undo them. Their very life now
depends on what’s in the conjoint self that the Lord is creating for their
heavenly union. The Lord would not create any interior union between them if
they weren’t going to be permanently conjoined.
The
husband’s unwillingness to reorder his loyalties from the unregenerate state is
a major impediment to his regeneration. Today a significant percentage of
children are raised in divorced families by a stepmother or stepfather. Health
professionals call it “step parenting” and “blended families.” The focus seems
always to be on the stepmother and the husband’s children from a prior
marriage. Movies commonly portray the meanness with which children treat the
stepmother. No one respects the stepmother and she gets to be blamed by
everyone, including the professional counselors who do not call it “blame” but
refer to it as the stepmother’s “adjustment problems” that she has to overcome.
Always left out of the equation is the real culprit—the husband and father
who hides behind the furniture when his wife is being abused by his children.
He does not come to her rescue as he ought to, and the male oriented society
allows him to get away with it. Here is one typical complaint:
I have been in a relationship with my husband for 14 years.
We were married this past year. Long story as to what took so long, don't ask.
My stepdaughter is 17 and soon off to college. She is good in school and I have
no issues with her mom. The problem is that I can't get close to her. She will
not look me straight in the eyes when speaking and tries to ignore me alone and
in front of others. Her dad is over reactive when I have a conversation about
all of this. I care for her and have always done things for her and tried to be
a nice as I can towards her. She recently told her dad that she doesn't like me
and she doesn't know why. She refuses to go to counseling. This stuff hurts and
I don't know what to do with it.
The other part of this is her dad will not allow us to sit
down and talk about it. Instead he sought out a close friend to work with his
daughter and try to get through this. I am just really so burnt and frustrated
with it all. I just want us to all get along and like/love each other and
appreciate today –
(“Stepparent Discussion Web” On the Web at www.cyberparent.com/disstep/disstep_frm.htm
Accessed in May 2002)
This man’s
cowardice is typical. I did it for years to my poor wife. She was devoted to
the care and welfare of my two children from a prior marriage. She did her best
in all sincerity and duty. She treated them with compassion and rationality,
but they paid her back with plenty of sassy talk, insults, rebellion,
uncooperativeness, and worst of all, trying to marginalize her in the family’s
decisions regarding everything. She did not count in their estimation since she
was not “family” by which they actually meant “blood.” This attitude was
reinforced and legitimized by their biological mother, my parents, my extended
family, neighbors, and even her own parents and
siblings. No one wants to respect a stepmother.
The most
remarkable and disturbing aspect of this gross injustice and mean attitude
towards stepmothers is that the husband will allow it to happen around him and
will give himself permission to “stay out of it.” I did it. For several years after
my remarriage I had the cruel attitude of allowing my wife and my two children
to “work it out” with each other. And even worse, I allowed the children to
come in between us in all sorts of objectionable ways. One destructive rule I
had was that “the children come first.” If my wife and I were having a tete a
tete, they were allowed to interrupt when they felt like it. When my wife was
speaking, they were allowed to interrupt her. When my wife and I decided to do
X, they were allowed to interfere and change things to Y. When they openly
accused my wife of X and Y, I let her go through the process of defending
herself as I was playing the neutral observer part. Even when the children were
not present, my prejudice in their favor led me to deny my wife her requests or
point of view on any matter regarding them.
Conjugial love
is the linking of minds; if therefore the mind of one goes in the opposite
direction to that of the other, their link is dissolved and together with it
their love fades. (CL 252)
The main office
which confederates and consociates the souls and lives of two partners, and
gathers them into a one, is their common concern in the education of their
children. In this the offices of the husband and those of the wife are
distinct, and at the same time conjoint. (CL 176)
1. The
Parenting Relationship Is Temporary And External
When I
started reading the Writings in my early forties, I began to learn the real
truth about parents and children, and about husband and wife.
The nature of
the love of infants and children with the spiritual, and its nature with the
natural, is manifestly perceived from parents [in the spiritual world] after
death. When they come there, most fathers call to mind their children who have
passed away before them, and the children are presented
to them and there is mutual recognition. Spiritual fathers merely look at them
and ask as to their state, rejoicing if it is well with them and grieving if it
is ill; and, after some conversation, instruction, and admonition respecting
heavenly moral life, they separate from them. But before separation, they teach
them that they are no longer to be remembered as fathers because the Lord is
the one only Father to all in heaven, according to His words (Matt. 23:9); and
that they themselves never remember them as their children.
But natural fathers, as soon as they realize that they are
living after death and recall to their memory the children who had passed away
before them and who also are presented to them according to their desire, are
at once conjoined with them, and they cling together like a bundle of sticks.
The father is then in continual delight at the sight of them and from
conversation with them. If it is told him that some of these children of his
are satans and have brought injury upon the good, he
nevertheless keeps them in a circle around him, or in a group in front of him.
If he himself sees that they inflict injury and do evil deeds, he still pays no
heed and does not dissociate any of them from himself. Therefore, lest so
harmful a company continue, they are of necessity sent together into hell.
There, in the presence of his children, the father is put under guard and his
children are separated, each being sent away to the place proper to his life.
(CL 406)
First, I
was amazed to learn that parents and children are not necessarily together in
the afterlife because they have a different spiritual constitution, as the
above quote indicates. The reason is that in the spiritual world incompatible
affections prevent co-presence (HH 194). In the natural world the external
environment compels people to be together physically regardless of whether they
inwardly have the same affections or opposing ones. Not so in the spiritual
world. This put things in a different perspective for me regarding loyalties
because I could see that my children were resisting the affections to which my
wife and I were committed. I continued to be the same father outwardly to them,
but inwardly I was not connected to them. The Lord commands us to be “spiritual
fathers” and not establish inward connections with our children who inwardly
resist and reject our spiritual affections, ideas, and loyalties.
Clearly,
the wife is more of a neighbor to us than children, and therefore we ought to
love the wife more than our children (see Chapter 9 Section 15).
I also
learned from the Writings that it is an unregenerate and hurtful attitude to
elevate “blood” to an important consideration in human relationships. It is
based on false reasoning and evil motives. It was instructive for me to
contrast the three portions of the Word with regards to how they each treat of
the subject of “blood.” In the Old Testament, the level of thinking was
corporeal, so that blood ties became paramount in relationships and politics.
Blood was imbued in their mind with spiritual significance, on account of which
the Lord permitted them to have a religion that involved blood rituals such as
sacrificing animals and sprinkling of the blood on the altar, the ground, and
the clothes as a sign of holiness and Divine acquiescence (AC 10057). At that
level of thinking, the worship is external, ritualistic, representative, not
genuine and spiritual. The worship or religion becomes spiritual only when the
external worship has an internal acknowledgement in it (AC 1094).
This is not
the case when the outward ritual or performance is considered to be the
essential of the worship or its sacredness. In that level of thinking, to love
the neighbor means to love those who are of one’s blood. The Lord in the Old
Testament frequently complains about this mentality calling it a religion of
the lips only, and frequently lamented that He does not want sacrifices but
obedience from them—which they would not suffer themselves to do (1 Sam.
15:22).
The New
Testament brought a more interior worship and the meaning of blood was altered.
Now the neighbor was to be anyone who is in need of charity. Blood relations
were no longer determinative. Blood sacrifices ceased as a form of worship.
What was internally in the mind became more important spiritually than what the
body did. Furthermore, the union between husband and wife was reaffirmed as
sacred and eternal. That relationship became spiritually more important than
the relationship between parents and children. This new level of thinking
weakened or eliminated among Christians the despotic power of the extended
tribal family. Nevertheless the secular nonduality of society continued to
maintain and foster “blood ties” as exemplified by inheritance laws and the
common belief that “blood is thicker than water” or that “You don’t say no to
family.”
These cultural slogans reflects the attitude that familial loyalty ought to be put
above other loyalties in relationships. Today in
The
Writings put inheritance, blood, and family on an entirely new basis. In it we
learn that children inherit from parents both good and evil. The good in our
children is to be loved, but the evil is not to be loved. If we love the
children as to their person, that is, because of the blood tie, then we love
both the good and the evil in them. It is forbidden in the
But blood
ties do not count in the afterlife (CL 250). The spiritual family is among
those who share the same love for the Lord and acknowledge the same truths (AC
3815[2]). Love of the neighbor is to be exercised in proportion to the quality
of good in the neighbor, not at all in proportion to blood, genes, tradition,
ethnic background, or culture (see Chapter 6 Section 7). And above all, the
Writings reveal the true relationship between husband and wife, that it is the
highest and holiest of all loves (CL 61, 270). There is never a doubt in the
The same
applies to one’s parents. The wife comes before the parents. What about the
Fourth Commandment of honoring parents? Here is how the Writings discuss it:
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER, THAT THY DAYS MAY BE
PROLONGED, AND THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH THEE UPON THE EARTH.
So reads this
commandment in Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16. In the natural sense, which is that of
the letter, "to honor thy father and thy mother" means to honor
parents, to be obedient to them, to be devoted to them, and to return thanks to
them for the benefits they confer, which are that they provide food and
clothing for their children, and so introduce them into the world that they may
act in it as civil and moral persons; and introduce them also into heaven by
means of the precepts of religion, thus providing both for their temporal
prosperity and their eternal happiness.
All this
parents do from a love which they have from the Lord, in whose stead they act.
In a relative sense it means that if parents are dead, guardians should be
honored by their wards. In a broader sense, to honor the king and magistrates, is meant by this commandment, since these
provide for all in general the necessities which parents provide in particular.
In the broadest sense this commandment means that men should love their
country, since it supports and protects them, therefore it is called fatherland
from father. But to country, king, and magistrates honor must be rendered by
parents and by them be implanted in their children. (TCR 305)
This
passage teaches that parenting is from the Lord and that we ought to honor the
Lord in what parents do by taking care of children. There is no warrant in this
passage of loving the parent from person rather than from the good in the
person. Our loyalty to parents is to be no other loyalty than our loyalty to
the Lord. As indicated by the earlier passage quoted above regarding parents
meeting their children in the afterlife: “Spiritual fathers merely look at them
[their children] and ask as to their state, rejoicing if it is well with them
and grieving if it is ill; and, after some conversation, instruction, and
admonition respecting heavenly moral life, they separate from them. But before
separation, they teach them that they are no longer to be remembered as fathers
because the Lord is the one only Father to all in heaven (CL 406).”
The
parent-child relationship is therefore not a permanent one. It depends on
whether their spiritual affections are compatible. In this life the
compatibility of natural affections determines the closeness of
relationship with grown up children, but in the afterlife the natural
affections fall away as the deeper inward affections come out to the
surface. Now it becomes visible what are the real affections parents and
children have of reach other, and they may be compatible or in opposition, in
love for one another or in enmity and hatred. It was all along these deeper
affections for each other that lay hidden within, but not dormant. The affections
we have in the interior man pull the strings, as it were, while the outward man
plays the part that leads to the interior man’s real affections and real
delights and real values and perspective.
The
Writings describe the family relationships that existed on this earth during
the civilization of the “
After many
generations, however, there arose a new and deadly lifestyle philosophy
represented in the Old Testament by Adam eating of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil (DP 241; AC 202). This refers to the severing of
one’s spiritual ties to the Lord and His commandments, replacing it with ideas
and notions concocted by the natural self separated from the spiritual mind.
This new deadly lifestyle philosophy is represented by the snake. This is the
voice in us of the corporeal self that is incapable of forming thoughts at the
rational level. At this level of consciousness we are informed only by the
sensuous input from the physical environment. All our ideas and concepts are
formed into a material shape and meaning, not rational. Hence we deny the
reality of the spiritual mind and world, plunging ourselves into spiritual
darkness. In that state we live our life in a demented style bringing to
society wars, crimes, and sicknesses, and worse of all, calling these things
true, while the genuine truth is called falsity, and rejected.
2. Moses, Paul,
And Swedenborg
Phases Of Marriage
The
ancients wrote the details of this history down in the language of
correspondences, still known in those days, and Moses copied a portion of it
from ancient sacred texts (De Verbo 15; SS 103). The Garden of Eden story, when
read through genuine correspondences, is the history of the race’s mental
evolution of consciousness, its high rational state by creation, and its fall
to the low state due to their confirmed rejection of rationality. This
affects us directly today since individual biography recapitulates racial
history. We inherit everything that precedes! (xx)
This conclusion also follows from the fact that the Word has layers of meaning,
the inmost being about the Lord’s Mind, the intermediate about the history of
Churches and their civilizations, while the outmost is about the “church within,”
meaning the conscious mind that directs our willing and thinking in daily life.
These three layers of meaning occur together, one within the other, as
specified by the literal words, that is, “contained in
them as vessels.” Since there is this objective parallelism of the internal
series in the Word, it follows that individual biography recapitulates racial
history.
What then
happened to the
The
theistic science facts revealed in the Writings will allow future research to
develop a genuine psychology of the mind with its laws of development. What we
then can do for children will be immeasurably better than what we do today to
help them regenerate. Only by regeneration can the inward evil we are born with
be removed by the Lord. But He can do this only to the extent that we clean up
our outward act as-of self, that is, live a life of good in accordance with our
conscience. For the
That by the
"Nephilim" are signified those who through a persuasion of their own
loftiness and preeminence made light of all things holy and true, appears from
what precedes and what follows, namely, that they immersed the doctrinals of
faith in their cupidities, signified by the "sons of God going in unto the
daughters of man, and their bearing unto them." Persuasion concerning self
and its phantasies increases also according to the multitude of things that
enter into it, till at length it becomes indelible; and when the doctrinals of
faith are added thereto, then from principles of the strongest persuasion they
make light of all things holy and true, and become "Nephilim."
That race,
which lived before the flood, is such that they so kill and suffocate all
spirits by their most direful phantasies (which are poured forth by them as a
poisonous and suffocating sphere) that the spirits are entirely deprived of the
power of thinking, and feel half dead; and unless the Lord by His coming into
the world had freed the world of spirits from that poisonous race, no one could
have existed there, and consequently the human race, who are ruled by the Lord
through spirits, would have perished.
They are therefore now kept in a hell under as it were a misty
and dense rock, under the heel of the left foot, nor do they make the slightest
attempt to rise out of it. Thus is the world of spirits free from this most dangerous
crew, concerning which and its most poisonous sphere of persuasions, of the
Lord's Divine mercy hereafter. These are they who are called
"Nephilim" and who make light of all things holy and true. Further
mention is made of them in the Word, but their descendants were called
"Anakim" and "Rephaim." That they were called
"Anakim" is evident from Moses:
There we saw
the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, of the Nephilim, and we were in our own eyes as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes (Num.
That they were
called "Rephaim" appears also from Moses:
The Emim dwelt
before in the land of Moab, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim,
who also were accounted Rephaim, as the Anakim, and the Moabites call them Emim
(Deut. 2:10-11).
(AC 581)
Every
This
initiated my “Paul phase” of religion and marriage. I made the wife’s
subservience to me a matter of religion. My wife should obey my wishes
regarding everything, especially my ideas of loyalty to the children. My second
and current wife, as a stepmother, was put in double jeopardy, once as a woman,
and once as “not their real mother,” or, the more politically correct phrase
“not their biological parent.”
When I started reading the Writings and making it the basis of my
thinking, I entered the “Swedenborg phase” of being a father and husband. Now for the first time my
primary loyalty to my wife became a religious commandment. I had to repent
of the awful years of injustice and cruelty which I forced her to endure. I had
to retrain myself in how I talked to her in front of the children, on the phone
with the children, and when they were not present but were the topic between
us. It took years for me to retrain my habitual speech acts so that what my
wife said about the children could now count in my mind. I gradually began to
see my children in a different light, in the spiritual light of the Writings,
which gives a revealing perception of the children’s unregenerate nature and
character. I saw them as selfish, egotistical, ungrateful, rebellious,
disorderly, disrespectful, disdainful, and disinterested in what we as parents,
thought was important. They acted like we were under
their ultimatum—“You accept us as we are or you won’t be a significant part of
our life.”
No doubt
this is how I was as a grown up child to my parents. Unregenerate children,
when they become adults, are unregenerate adults, and unregenerate adults are
filled with hidden inherited evils that cannot be removed until reformation and
regeneration, midway through life. The evils we see in our children are often
the evils we have ourselves, which we pass on to them by heredity and
lifestyle. We are not to love these evils in ourselves or in our children (TCR
469).
By looking
to the Lord I was able to free myself from this spiritually pernicious
attachment to the idea of “blood ties.” I love my children in proportion to
the good they love and the truth they value. It is only their good that I
am to love. To the extent they do not love and value what my wife and I love
and value, to that extent our love for them is curtailed. Parental love is not
unconditional love since this would be harmful to the children’s mental and
spiritual development. When parents love themselves in their children, they
are willing to accept the children’s faults and habits of misdemeanor and
insensitivity. They are therefore internally tied to their children, the
result of which is that in the afterlife they are connected and inseparable
from each other (CL 406). If the children turn out to be unregenerate while the
parents have undergone reformation and regeneration, then the parents are in
big trouble! They cannot leave their children who cannot enter heaven. They are
lambs tied to a wolf (xx).
You can see
what unimaginable horrors and suffering the parents are then going to undergo.
This is done under the supervision of the angels (xx). Eventually, after much
agony, the parents are willing to let go of their internal ties to their
children. Thus freed, they can enter their eternal happiness in heaven.
3. Blood-Love
For Children
Is Spiritually Hurtful
Let
therefore parents beware that they ought to love their children not as “blood”
or “as to person,” that is, loving them as part of themselves in them. A
documentary I recently saw on television showed the sad fate of runaway
children living on the street. Some of the parents were interviewed on camera
and said, “He is my own flesh and blood. A piece of my soul knocked off. Of
course I love him. Yes, I want him back. He is bad, disobedient, robs people,
uses drugs but I love him. He is mine.” And other such
things. The point is not that they wanted their child back, but the
reasoning in their mind that they cannot but love themselves or their own in
their child. This mentality is spiritually hurtful.
Rather than
this, let parents follow the Lord’s commandment as to the ways we are required
to love our neighbor: not as to person, but as to the good in the neighbor (HH
390). The good in each neighbor is the Lord Himself, regardless of the
individual’s acknowledgment or knowledge of this fact. The Second of the
Two Great Commandment is: Love your neighbor. Prior to the Second Coming of the
Lord it was hidden from the world that “love your neighbor” doesn’t mean love
your neighbor as to person, that is, according to blood ties, religious ties,
national ties, friendship ties, or any other tie that exists socially between
one person and another. In the Writings the Lord has at last revealed that His
Commandment means to love the good in the neighbor (TCR 416). The reason is
that loving the good in the neighbor is to love Him. And the more we love
Him the more He can bless us with good, which is His desire and longing, His
Love.
You can see
from this that the Two Great Commandments are both about loving the Lord. The
First Great Commandment is that we must love Him more than anything else. The
Second Great Commandment is that we must love the good from Him that is in
every individual. Thus, by obeying both commandments it is the Lord alone that
we love. Even the Lord must not be loved as to Person, meaning as to His
Natural Body by itself, without loving the things in it (D.WIS. 10, DP 94). The
angels love the Lord by loving first the Lord’s Rational, and thence the Lord’s
Natural. To love the good and the true is to love the Lord’s Rational.
If on the
other hand we love the neighbor as to person we do not love the Lord. We love
the person, and the person’s proprium or selfhood, and this is a devil from
birth, dead, offensive in every way to heaven, and unable to be regenerated
(xx). Loving this devil is to hate the Lord. There is no in between! The
reformed and regenerated self is no longer the old proprium, but a vessel for
the Lord to dwell in. It is filled with good, and therefore we can and must
love it. Now you can see in what trouble parents may be who love their children
because of blood, that is, because they see their own inner person in them. And
not just from blood, since they may be adopted children, but from upbringing
and the habits of willing and thinking parents inculcate in the children as
part of themselves in them.
To love the
good and the bad in one’s children is egotistical, not altruistic. It is
anti-social for it hurts the community when justice and favoritism is practiced
out of loyalty to blood or self-interest, instead of loyalty to the common good
of society. The same can be said about friendships that develop into internal
ties (TCR 446). It is only with our spouse that we can enter into an inner
tie. This is because heaven can be entered only as a married couple that
formed themselves into a conjugial union (see the discussion in Chapter 9
Section 1).
My feeling
of duty and compassion remain for my children, but not my unconditional loyalty
or permissiveness to them—which is what I think they would prefer as a sign of
unconditional love and acceptance. It was the same with my parents during the
last two decades while they were still in this world. They often complained to
their other adult children about my filial “coldness.” I feel I should have
been more compassionate and steadfast in the little rituals of respect like
sending birthday cards, photographs, and more phone calls. I do not at this
time feel a longing to see them again in the other world. But I can imagine
that they might want to see me, and in that case I will see them and express my
respect for what they had done for me, that is, for the uses they were
motivated to teach me and the sacrifices they endured for my sake. Will my
children desire to see me in the afterlife? I do not know the answer.
A reader of
this document reminded me that there is such a thing as inherited goodness, not
just inherited evil, and this is something we should honor in our parents since
all good anywhere is from the Lord alone:
For the good into which man is born he derives from his
parents, either father or mother; for all that which parents have contracted by
frequent use and habit, or have become imbued with by actual life until it has
become so familiar to them that it appears as if natural, is transmitted into
their children, and becomes hereditary. (AC 3469)
In honoring
this good in our parents we must not honor them as to person because love of
neighbor is love of the good in the neighbor (see also Chapter 6 Section 7).
The
What
protects the
Another
common danger zone in parent-filial love ties is what we do about feeling
favoritism and exclusivity for one child rather than another. In the
unregenerate state we sometimes express guilt feelings about loving one child
more than another. The guilt comes from doing something spiritually injurious
to the child one favors or loves in person more than another. Our behavior
helps to strengthen the child’s implanted seed of blood loyalty. That child
will go on and practice this orientation with friends and later with their own
children. I discussed just above what trouble those people get into from doing
this. Instead we must obey the Lord’s commandment, and we are required to teach
our children the same. We do this by loving the good in them, not the person.
Besides
favoritism, another danger zone is exclusivity according to person. Secular
psychology has impressed upon our culture the practice of spending “quality
time” with each child alone. In general, this is a potentially good practice,
depending on how the parent interprets and enacts “quality time.” Parents may
be tempted to turn quality time into exclusivity relationships. This means
acting like what they have together is exclusive of others rather than merely
intimate or close. What is being accomplished when a parent maintains this kind
of exclusivity with a child? It creates an inner spiritual tie between them,
person as to person. This is injurious because all inner ties must be
exclusively reserved for the conjugial spouse (CL 214).
No
person to person love is allowable in the
For
additional discussion specifically on religious phases of development
in the
Chapter 2, Section 16
16. The spiritual
discipline of metanoid television watching
If they are
not elevated together, love or the will is defiled in and by the intellect.
This follows, since if love is not elevated, it remains impure, as we said in
nos. 419, 420 above. And as long as it remains impure, it loves things that are
impure, such as the practices of vengeance, hatred, deceit, blasphemy, and
adultery. For these are then its affections, which we call lusts, and it
rejects things having to do with charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness, and
chastity. (SE 421)
Consider
the five practices of “defiled” affections listed here: “vengeance, hatred,
deceit, blasphemy, and adultery.” Does that remind you of anything in relation
to watching television? These are the practices portrayed for hours on every
day and night on TV, or, which is similar in content, movies people take home
every week from their neighborhood video rental store. It’s the same with the
blockbuster movies shown in thousands of theaters every week and viewed by
enthusiastic crowds of millions every week end. The TV news programs regularly
show the rankings of these blockbusters every week end. The top three always
bring in between 20 and 50 million dollars per week end. It is the same with
the top ranking novels nationally, each being bought by millions weekly. It is
the same with the video games being played by millions of children and
teenagers. A total blanketing of the people’s intellect has taken place in
Western Christian nations. The practices of defiled affections have become the
entertainment of the age.
Note that
these defiled affections are called lusts, and that they reject the five
purified affections: charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness, and chastity. A
spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of the people is going on. The arena
of entertainment is the portrayal of the battle of evil and good in our
minds—this is the battle of nonduality and dualism:
vengeance, hatred, deceit, blasphemy, and
adultery
and
charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness,
and chastity
Nonduality
wants to line up all ten items on one continuum from left to right as a
realistic image of the human mind. This is the level of thinking of the natural
mind. But the rational mind sees an absolute and discrete duality between the
five evil affections and the five good affections. The evil affections are from
hell but the good affections are from heaven. All human affections are either
from hell or from heaven (NJHD 237). Therefore, the discipline of watching
TV and movies consists in remaining conscious of this dualism. Similarly with all the forms of entertainment and mass media
exposure.
I observed
that I watch TV in two distinct mental states—conscious and unconscious. In
general people give high preference ranks in entertainment value for shows,
movies, novels, and games that are absorbing. What is being “absorbed” in a
dramatic presentation? It consists in losing oneself, so to speak, and living
in the excitement of the drama. Obviously this is a spiritual phenomenon having
to do with how the spirit or mind is animated.
But the
individual does not think of the spiritual aspect but of the corporeal
aspect—the excitement, the sensations, the emotions, the fascination, the
surprise, the scare, the sensory information or vista, etc. These are corporeal
events and bring consciousness down to that level. The rationality drops away
because it is considered to be in the way. People enjoy sitting in the dark in
a theater or nightclub and becoming absorbed in another world that does not
require rationality, salvation, and God. It’s almost as if they declare Time
Out from reality that is heavy and disturbing. They want to forget for awhile
the worries and the realities. It is felt like a relief. And so on. These are
the reasons we learn to give for why we are consumers of entertainment.
I observed
that when I get absorbed in a scene on TV, even for a minute or two, the event
or dialog later replays itself over and over in my mind, and I get involved in
modifying, enriching, expanding, or continuing some scene in various ways. I
asked myself what drives these compulsive imagings and memories?
It seems that the explanation may have something to do with being “absorbed” a
word that means
to take in and make part of an
existent whole; to suck up or take up (a
sponge absorbs water); to engage or engross wholly (absorbed in thought)
Almost all,
if not all, entertainment is filled with portrayals of evil things, regardless
whether it also portrays virtuous things. When we are absorbed in a book,
movie, or song our mind sucks up the negative content that portrays infernal
loves and falsities. Once these are in, they “make part of an existent whole”
and this the natural self. The natural self is
unregenerate and contains evil things and good things, though in separate
layers for the Lord will not allow them to be mixed (DP 16). The evil things
and the good things become part of the “existent whole.” Now the evil things
with their falsities start having their deleterious effects in the natural mind
by stimulating certain thoughts, expectations, and attitudes that multiply
quickly into enormous stumbling blocks, so that our spiritual state after the
absorption is worse than before. We now have more impediments to beginning our
reformation and getting on with our regeneration. It is very common for people
to remain in their hereditary evils and to acquire new ones on their own (TCR
469; SE 2424). Absorption in entertainment and physical pleasures make it
harder for the
The more
rational way of watching, reading, or being a consumer of entertainment is to
be aware of the content as it comes in, and to assess its status in relation to
your formulated standards. Processing all incoming information needs to go
through an evaluation filter that involves two parallel levels of thinking, one
above the other. There is a dual activity going on: one is the self being
absorbed in the content, that is, being unconsciously entertained; the other is
the self above who acts as the critic or commentator. The self who consumes the
content and is delighted by it, is corporeal. The self who filters, identifies,
and evaluates the incoming content is rational. The Writings reveal the
existence of these two levels of the natural self (AC 1914).
A name for
this way of consuming entertainment or cultural content might be “metanoid
watching” or “metanoid reading,” and even “metanoid participation” (as in
parties and games). The word metanoid is constructed from Greek and means
"to stand beside oneself." I saw this word in R. D. Laing (The
Politics of Experience.
I later saw
that my earlier idea of metanoid perception was a reduced version of what the
Writings describe as follows:
The interior
can perceive what takes place in the exterior, or what is the
same, that the higher can see what is in the lower; but not the reverse.
Moreover they who have conscience can do this and are accustomed to do it, for
when anything contrary to the truth of conscience flows into the thought, or
into the endeavor of the will, they not only perceive it, but also find fault
with it; and it even grieves them to be of such a character. (AC 1914)
Clearly
this type of internal self-monitoring is quite common and is part of the normal
repertoire of mental skills people can perform. Since childhood we learn to
internalize the authority that comes from the command of others—their orders,
exhortations, expectations, orientation, philosophy, ethics, and political
attitudes and values. Once these mental systems are internalized, they run
themselves off in our mind and constitute our own daily mental life. The things
that are called “standards, principles, or rules” have motivational value that
we strive to achieve in our actions and conduct. When we talk about conscience,
we are referring to these internalized standards or rules. These activities in
our mind are higher than those involving corporeal things of pleasure, delight,
popularity, power, and consumption.
Our
conscience, or the standards and rules we hold, looks down upon the corporeal
activities and evaluates them in terms of the standards and rules it has. The
usefulness of conscience is its metanoid functioning. It is like light from
above that illumines with a rational light. Seeing things from principles and
standards is to see them more rationally, more deeply, more realistically.
Those who systematically destroy their conscience also destroy their
rationality. They still appear rational to others, but only when they are in
their external self and socializing or working with others as a team. But
inside, they are raving mad (xx). This they hide from others. But when they
arrive in the afterlife, they cannot hide it (xx).
1. Teaching
The Metanoid
Self-Witnessing Technique
I teach the
metanoid self-witnessing technique to college students who take my psychology
courses at the university. The latest application of it was in regard to
watching television with a notebook and keeping a record of scenes that portray
a rapid alternation between rage against others (blame, violence, revenge) and
against self (depression, cynicism, self-deprecation). I call this the
“emotional flip flop” to which we are conditioned unconsciously and which we
practice in our daily life. The students find it enlightening to watch their
favorite programs from a metanoid perspective. They are surprised that they
unconsciously consume such extreme forms of deceit and violence on a daily
basis. In an earlier course the technique was successful applied to driving
behavior. Students were instructed to keep a record of driving scenes while
watching TV or movies, and to create several rating scales called “DBB Ratings”
(Drivers Behaving Badly). Students found it surprising to realize how much
dangerous and illegal driving behaviors and aggressive emotions that they are
exposed to on a daily basis. Both sets of reports are available on the Web—see
Note 17 at end).
The content
of entertainment TV, movies, and novels is hostile to the
Every scene
we watch or read must be classified as “this is from hell” or “this is from
heaven.” The categorical dualism of the Divine Doctrine we have in our mind
needs to be applied to the content of incoming information moment by moment. We
need to label each evil thing and put it, with its falsities, into the hell-bin
(or category), so that each good thing, with its truths, could be let into the
heaven-bin (or category). No scene we watch or read can be left unclassified
regarding their origin as infernal or celestial. I observed that when scenes
succeed each other that portray violence, vengeance, deceit, adultery I cease
to enjoy them. My metanoid criticisms of them spoil the fun for the corporeal
self that wants to get involved unchaperoned by the rational and the moral. And
so it loses interest and fascination. Great—I can change the channel. And then
repetitions of this take the fun out of watching and reading. Great—I can do
something more productive and rationally more interesting. In this way the
religious discipline of entertainment and reading keeps our involvement with
corporeal evils to a minimum. We can still be informed and cultured, but not
defiled and overwhelmed.
A person's
purification is accomplished, moreover, wholly through truths that are matters
of wisdom. And a person's pollution is brought about wholly through falsities
that are opposed to truths of wisdom. (DLW 420)
It stands
to reason that we ought to teach our children to watch, read, and participate
in this rational way. The cumulative unconscious defilement of hours every day
for years takes a tremendous spiritual toll, retarding regeneration and
impeding it, turning it into a heavy burden instead of light (xx).
At the present day too those belonging to the Church who
have filled their minds with worldly and also earthly ideas and have acted in
such a way that the truths of faith have become tied up with them are sent down
to the lower earth, where they likewise have battles to fight. These battles
continue until their worldly and earthly ideas have been separated from the
truths of faith and other notions have been introduced, of such a nature that
they cannot be linked together any longer.
Once this has been accomplished those people are raised from
there into heaven; for until such ideas of theirs have been removed they cannot
possibly be in the company of angels, since those ideas are full of darkness
and defilement that do not accord with the light and purity of heaven. Those
worldly and earthly ideas cannot be separated and removed except by means of
battles against falsities, battles which take place in the following manner:
Those on that lower earth are molested by illusions and by falsities based on
them which emanate from inhabitants of the surrounding hells; but the Lord
employs heaven to rebut those illusions and falsities and at the same time to
introduce truths. These truths seem to reside with those undergoing the
conflicts. (AC 7090)
We should
take this warning seriously. We should not allow our mind to absorb
unclassified raw content because it mixes and commingles with the dualities of
our Doctrine. Note the method that must be employed to pry apart this
commingling. We are kept in the lower earth, which is near hell, and are
“molested by illusions and by falsities” from the hells below. Note the method
of overcoming: heaven in our mind “rebuts those illusions and falsities.” This
is an image of metanoid perception as discussed above. When we do it as-of self
while on this earth it is far less painful and invasive than if we wait till the
afterlife for cleaning out the pollution in our mind.
Start
monitoring your mental activities and you will see. I noticed that years of
naïve and “absorption” watching and reading instilled in me the wrong standards
and expectations in many recurrent daily situations:
q
How long things take (like getting
over things, or getting to know one another, or learning to do something, etc.)
q
How much fun is normal to have, and
when (like at parties, or fornication, or gaining recognition, etc.)
q
When to laugh at something (like
jokes, wit, scortation, malice, etc.)
q
How to walk, stand, wear clothes,
smoke, cuss, etc.
q
What emotions to hide and what to
simulate
q
What pretenses to make and how to
maintain them
q
How to collude with others in
falsities, lies, and bullying
q
How to influence others by
projecting status, worth, authority
q
Etc.
These
distortions of reality were induced upon my mind by absorption of cultural
content, that is, by automatic modeling and imitation. They made me to be an
inauthentic person from which I suffered and was impeded in getting to my
reformation, which only started when I was already a man of 40. The
culture of entertainment is inherently exploitative and hostile to the
individual’s spiritual welfare. There are two specific dangers. One comes
from the distortions and the other from its content. The distortions are
inherent to the medium of presentation that is filtered through editing. Real
time fixed camera documentaries of events and biographies would be interminable
and impossible to use for instruction and entertainment.
This
is why what we are watching are inherently distorted
from reality. Now if we allow ourselves to get absorbed we imbibe the
distortions and we now have in our mind all sorts of ‘irrealities’ that
clash with reality and cause us to stumble, to impede our regeneration. These
impediments are in the threefold self: affective (in the affections and
lusts), cognitive (in the thought sequences, imaginings, and
reasonings), and the sensorimotor (facial expression, pace and style of
movement, non-verbal style of interaction). This threefold self is an inauthentic
personality—full of irrealities, deceptions, insincerities, self-involved
affectations and poses). Spiritual paralingusitics and spiritual
psycholinguistics may be important new directions for theistic science (see
Note 1 at end).
“Metanoid
watching” may be a skill well worth teaching in
In terms of
content the effect of absorbed involvement is devastating to the
Our
Clearly
it becomes crucial that we watch and consume entertainment and culture with a
metanoid monitoring mechanism in place all the time. Which means: to act like
you’re making a documentary of the movie or show you’re watching, or the book
you’re reading.
Chapter 2, Section 17
17.
Summary of anti-absorption techniques
For every
characteristic which parents have acquired from frequent practice and conduct,
that is, which they have taken into themselves by their own actions in life
until with them they have become so habitual as to appear natural, is passed on
to their children and becomes hereditary (AC 3469)
When we
absorb the entertainment culture we are creating many mental habits that become
routine in our life. These media based scripts and mental maps of human
interaction have appearances of good but within, there is only evil and falsity
(AC 3469). All affectional and cognitive products that issue from the
unregenerate media minds must necessarily have evil and falsity within.
Absorbing them creates delight in a multiplicity of evils and falsities. These
become fixed spiritual fibers in the organs of our will and understanding. We
will pass it on as a spiritual inheritance to our children, and we will be
inexorably tied to them in the afterlife. It makes sense therefore to make use
of anti-absorption techniques or disciplines. The following I discovered in my
self-witnessing practice (see Note 20 at end). Undoubtedly this is a small
sample.
1. Metanoid TV watching
q
Carry on a commentary of what you
see with others present
q
Turn off the sound when violence or
sex is portrayed (they’re not real in any event, increasing their delusional
power over you)
q
Turn off the sound during
commercials
q
Channel hop without the sound
q
When you’re watching because you’re
trying to relax and fend off pressure, you can watch without the sound on—it
still occupies the mind, giving you the relief, but in a different way. You’re
trying to figure out what’s being said rather than getting absorbed in what is
being said when the sound is on.
2. Watching TV with your children
Watch with
your children and get them involved in metanoid perception by asking questions
about what’s going on: Do you think that man is really driving? Do you think
that man is really on fire? How do you like the way that actor acts like he is
in pain? Isn’t that a very bad thing to do—to lie to your Mom? They’re not
really drinking alcohol, you know, other wise they couldn’t continue their part
on the show. Etc.
3. Reading novels, etc.
Have a pen
in your hand when you read a novel or other reading material, and use it as you
turn the pages. You can write in the margins, on top and at the bottom. You can
underline various ways: words only, entire line, straight line, wavy line.
Marginal notes can be question marks, exclamation points, check marks, double
checks, double question marks, etc. These markings represent various comments
and reactions you have as a reader. This is metanoid reading.
4. Games and sports
When you
play games instruct your metanoid self (called the “external rational”) to
whisper counter-absorption prompts to your sensuous self that is tempted to get
absorbed: “The Lord wants me to love my neighbor. If my neighbor wins instead
of me, I will be content.” Or, “Why is it so important for me to win this play
thing? Is this desire from heaven or from hell?” Or, “Am I increasing risk for
my neighbor by the way I play? Am I being arrogant about my neighbor?” The
purpose of these prompts is to prevent mental absorption, or what is commonly
referred to as “getting into it.”
5. At
parties and celebrations
When you’re
at parties or group celebrations let your metanoid conscience perform a running
commentary on what you’re feeling and thinking, minute by second. Let your
metanoid self be your Angelic Witness “make a movie”
of your sensorimotor self and make it to obey its dictates in every detail—like
a good soldier or stage player:
q
What should my eyes be doing, and
not doing?
q
What should my face look like?
q
How far should I stand? What is
appropriate? What is too close?
q
Should I hug or not? How should I
hug? How should I not hug?
q
If kissing is expected as greeting
among social acquaintances, do I really need to follow that norm? What
alternative could I substitute?
q
Am I dancing and moving
appropriately? What would my judgment be if I saw a video of me doing this?
q
Am I laughing and making jokes and
having great fun? Do I overdo it? Is it really necessary for me to do it?
What’s behind it—is it from heaven or from hell?
q
Am I sitting in a corner detached?
What is the appropriate thing for me to be doing? If I’m going to enact loving
my neighbor, what am I to do here and now?
q
Keep track and remember each time
you express verbal disagreement with someone—Ask
yourself if you can become more skilled at expressing yourself so that you
withhold yourself from expressing disagreement in most situations.
I’ve been
ignoring for years my wife’s observation that my disagreeing transactions are
numerous in each encounter episode I have with people and her. The reputation I
had of myself is that of someone who is affable and
rarely feels the need to express disagreement. At last I compelled myself to
monitor my verbal exchanges and to keep track of how often I would disagree
with someone. Within just a few hours I knew the answer—and it convicted me. I
realized that the way I expressed disagreement was different from the way I saw
my father do it. Him I judged in my mind, and I told myself many times I’m not
going to be like him. Little did I suspect that I was only sinking into a more
subtle and more terrible form of performing disagreement, one that comes from
my being with deeper darker evil spirits. I allowed
myself to take credit for being a congenial person who does not feel the need
to express disagreements But my wife could easily
perceive that the opposite was the case.
And so I
felt I should re-tool my conversational style, acknowledging first that I am a
type of guy called “in your face person” which we’re told in the Writings is a
personality trait represented by the quarrel between Ishmael and Isaac (AC
1889). The mind is composed of spiritual levels of willing and thinking. In
accordance with progress in our regeneration, we go through stages of
humanizing, rationalizing, and feminizing ourselves from birth to the angelic
state.
(9) The intelligence
of women is by nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle,
while the intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant,
argumentative, and given to intemperance. (CL 218)
Lower
levels of willing and thinking are evil from heredity (not creation).
Reformation is the struggle to make the lower level obey the higher level.
Regeneration is the building up of a new positive or angelic personality that
performs its willing and thinking from conscience or rational principles. The
Ishmael phase is our state when we are in our own self-intelligence. The Isaac
phase into which we step next, begins at reformation, namely, when we become
motivated to let the Writings define what is rational, not our natural-rational.
To the extent we compel ourselves to do this, to that extent the Lord can proceed with opening our spiritual mind, which begins the
long arduous process of character regeneration.
Be it known
that in every man there is an internal man, a rational man which is intermediate,
and an external man, and that these are most distinct from one another.
(Concerning this subject see what was said above, n. 978.) (AC 1889)
He [Ishmael] shall be a wild-ass [onager] man. That this
signifies rational truth, which is described, is evident from the signification
of "a wild-ass," as being rational truth. In the Word there is
frequent mention of horses, horsemen, mules, and asses; and as yet no one has
known that these signify things of the intellect, of the reason, and of memory-knowledge.
…
(…)
[2] It seems incredible that rational truth when separated
from good should be of such a character, neither should I have known this to be
the case unless I had been instructed by living experience. …
(…)
The man whose rational is of such a
character that he is solely in truth-even though it be the truth of faith-and
who is not at the same time in the good of charity, is altogether of such a
character. He is a morose man, will bear nothing, is against all, regards
everybody as being in falsity, is ready to rebuke, to chastise, and to punish;
has no pity, and does not apply or adapt himself to
others and study to bend their minds; for he looks at everything from truth,
and at nothing from good. Hence it is that Ishmael was driven out, and
afterwards dwelt in the wilderness, and his mother took him a wife out of the
This makes
it obvious that it is forbidden for me to continue in the natural-rational of
my self-made intelligence called my Ishmael state. First, I had to trust my
wife—not something easy to do for the husband prior to his reformation. The
only way I was able to do this is to realize that she is the Divinely
designated wife for me and that the Lord is giving her an interior perception
of my affections which He does not give to me (CL 166). Things then
started happening dynamically to the extent that I was not backing out or
backsliding on my sacred resolution—which I did, many times as my poor wife had
to endure. But persistence and sincerity led to a visible upward trend, even if
slower than it should have been to save my poor wife from so much daily
hassles. To live with a wild-ass is a terrible fate that wives must endure for
the sake of the conjugial, like the pain and discomforts of pregnancy and
childbirth. Women graciously endure it and do not complain because they are
animated by conjugial love for their husband.
The
actual meaning of regeneration is the taking charge of our willing and thinking
in daily life, that they should comply with the Heavenly Doctrine in our
understanding.
Chapter 3
Additional Regeneration Disciplines
It is said in the Word, that everyone shall be judged
according to his works; for the end, or the love of his will, and the cause, or
the reason of his understanding, are together in the effects, which are the
works of his body; thus the quality of the whole man is in them. (ISB 7)
These are
briefer treatments of additional spiritual disciplines for helping to form the
Always do
your work as if TV cameras are all around, recording everything for all to see.
It’s an issue of “truth in advertising” regarding the reputation you enjoy as
someone who has respect for others. Do not touch their food with your hand,
pretending you used a serving spoon. Do not give them a drink from a bottle you
drink from. Etc. Volunteer to take over certain things on a
permanent basis so that people depend on you for it. Examples:
q
Washing all dishes after meals.
q
Washing pots, utensils, counters,
etc. while someone is cooking or afterwards.
q
Preparing lunch bags for others.
This includes shopping for the ingredients.
q
Be responsible for maintaining and
adding items to the weekly grocery shopping list.
q
Go shopping with whoever does it for
the family and help find and carry things.
q
Volunteer to prepare meals and
insist on cleaning up after yourself.
q
Offer to mop the floor when needed
(extend the offer to vacuum the carpets).
q
Etc.
After
several years of the discipline of washing the dishes and cleaning up the
kitchen, I find amazing mistakes and ignorance about basic things in my willing
and thinking. Recently Diane pointed out that I’m doing the last wipe of the
pan with the sponge before putting it away. What about contamination by the
sponge? I denied that the sponge is contaminated by bacteria since I squeeze it
dry under running water with each dish. After seeing that I’m continuing to
disagree, she fetched the hydrogen peroxide bottle and I poured some on the
sponge, just like we had seen it done on TV. It bubbled and frothed! The truth
of the evidence convicted me! I apologized to her with a kiss and she walked
off no doubt in conjugial victory. Since that hour I use a paper towel for the
final wipe off and wash the sponge itself at the end of each use. How could I
be so blind as to assume that the sponge itself needs no cleaning?
2. Laundry And Housecleaning Disciplines
Doing it
Folding the
clothes the way she wants it and while they are still warm
Knowing
where they go in the drawers
3. Daily Disciplines
Of Studying
The Writings
Our ability
to cooperate in our regeneration requires that we study the Writings as often
as possible. I believe that daily study is necessary. Find different way of
doing this. For instance:
q
Read the volumes systematically so
that you get through each Work, one by one, from the first page to the last.
Keep a marker so you can start each time from where you left off. The point is
not how fast you can get through but whether you do it daily.
q
Keep a note book or cumulative
folder with your thoughts as you read, or when you’re done, or at any time
you’re inspired by an idea. Mark it with a reference to the Number in the Work
so you can go back to it when you want to.
q
Consult your notes and make summary
statements. Try representing the content in the form of lists, tables, and
diagrams. Use your school literacy to do an effective job.
q
Learn to use New Search, either on
your computer, or on the Web. Spend time searching the Writings by subject or
topic. Do it until you’re skilled. Try to enjoy it or else, act like you do.
Use your skills to study and develop topics of interest.
q
If you read articles and collateral
works about the Writings, check the references to the passages—are thy really
relevant and do they actually support the claims being made?
q
Acquire audio books of the Writings
(General Church Recording Library) and practice listening under appropriate
conditions. I found that it’s excellent for listening during my physical
workout, in waiting rooms, on airplanes, while driving, and especially when
going to sleep.
q
Enroll in group study and lessons
about the Writings.
4. Monitoring
What’s In My Mind
We do not
know accurately what’s in our mind until we monitor ourselves by taking
systematic samples through self-witnessing. Some cumulative record of these
samples needs to be kept in some form—notepad, audio recorder, form sheets that
list items you can circle, etc. These records should specify how many minutes
you spend thinking and daydreaming about various subjects, and in what
way—e.g., with anger, with denigration, with compassion, with humor, etc.. Also, what are the topics you discuss with others. Also, how many minutes you spend
watching TV and movies, and what type of content it has. Also, how much
time you spend with your wife doing what specific activities and talking about
what specific topics. Also, how many times certain events occur: a fight with
her, a disagreement, having a good time together, how many you made her laugh,
how many times you kissed her, or praised her, and the like.
Obviously
this is not an easy or insignificant task in terms of involvement and effort.
One way to make it more manageable is to specialize in certain topics or
activities depending on what seems to impede your progress in conjugial union.
It may be helpful to share the data with your wife so that she can give you her
advice.
5. Monitoring
What’s On My Face
The
Writings reveal that the face is a mirror of our thoughts, feelings, and mood.
For example:
The face, with the ancients, signified internal things,
because internal things shine forth through the face; and in the most ancient
times men were such that the face was in perfect accord with the internals, so
that from a man's face everyone could see of what disposition or mind he was.
They considered it a monstrous thing to show one thing by the face and think
another. (AC 358)
The
“disposition” of the mind in the celestial or regenerated individual projects
itself by correspondence to the physical features of the body and face. While
we are regenerating in the physical body we struggle to hold in aversion our
inherited “face” which denotes the evils and falsities in our unregenerated
mind. It makes sense therefore that we watch our facial expressions so that we
can become conscious of what our inherited evils are (CL 202).
As I got
older (I’m now 63) my face wants more and more to settle into a few caricatures
of my uncles and cousins whom I haven’t seen for decades. My wife was the first
to sound the alarm when she briefly met one of my uncles in his 50s and
afterward began noting that my face made certain expressions that were almost
identical to those of my uncle. As is normal for me to do, I dismissed her
idea. Of course there is a resemblance—I noted that myself, but I rejected the
notion that my expressions were a near copy to his. After all, I was modern,
educated, enculturated, and he was still somewhat from the old country in his
ideas and orientation. Nevertheless, as my wife kept up her conjugial anti-face
campaign, I started looking at my face at other times than the morning shaving
routine.
1. Look at
your face in the mirror. Completely relax it. This takes a little while. Tell
yourself what our Yoga always says in rest pose: “Let go of all muscles that
create expression. Let your flesh fall off your bones.” Observe your face at
rest. Monitor your reactions and thoughts. Repeat this exercise on different
days for awhile. It will give you a baseline familiarity for your facial
expressions.
2. At different times of the day, look for opportunities to see
your face. When you’re in the bathroom, or other place where there are mirrors
around—department stores, restaurants, restrooms. You can also carry a mirror,
of course, though the size limits the view to a portion of the face. Doing this will allow you to get to know what your face is doing.
Others see it clearly so we need to know what others can see. This is called
objectivity on oneself.
3. When you
have occasion to look at your uncles and cousins monitor their facial
expressions by being conscious of them rather than merely being reactive in
sudden memory (see Chapter 8 Section 1).
Get to know
their expressions so that you’ll be able to recognize these expressions in your
face. You can have a similar focus when you see photographs or videos of them.
Explore the kind of emotions you experience as you recognize yourself in them
and them in you. At first I was sort of proud and reassured. It gave me a belongingness, and upon occasion I might even feel some
close connection and love for them. But this was followed by a feeling of
embarrassment when I became educated and enculturated and was inspired by the
feeling to put my origins behind me and to be the new modern man. I thought I
had put them away from me, until my wife started telling me that my face was
them.
4. Search
the Writings and talk to the Lord about your face. There may be a difficult
conflict for you to overcome here on account of our inherent attachments to
family and race. There is a nonduality to fight and get out of the way of
regeneration. This is the corporeal idea expressed in popular logic as “blood is
not water.” Every institution in our society raises family loyalty to a virtue
and patriotic duty. And this is indeed commendable. But in the
First,
familial ties are for the most part not recognized in the afterlife (AC
3815[2]). Parents do not know their offspring and vice versa except at initial
stages of arrival when we are still in the external natural memories of our
life in the physical body. And this makes sense because everyone can know that
their thoughts, opinions, feelings, emotions are often not like those of their
parents and family. Hence conflict, disputes, and anger, which are quite
common. Since our interiors are therefore different and even opposed to our
family members we are not going to be with our families in the afterlife where
only those who are interiorly similar can be present to teach other (HH 193).
Second, the
Writings reveal that the hereditary line is totally mixed so that we inherit
and pass on innumerable evils that tie us to the hell societies in everything
we do all day long (CL 202). From our families hereditarily we only have the
infernal and the animal (AC 1438). Anything genuinely good must be acquired for
ourselves by rebirth and regeneration. You might be
vexed at this and naturally think in protest: “But what about the good things I
have from inheritance? Like my desire to be a perfectionist. My
compassion for people in need. My loyalty to religion
and patriotism. My muscular body build. Most of
us in our family have these things.” Perhaps. But in
any case we need to remind ourselves that whatever good we receive from any
source is not from that source but from the Lord alone. Therefore we ought not
to attribute spiritual value to what we inherit in the unregenerate natural
mind.
These two
important points allow us to free ourselves from the bondage of the family
face, to the extent that we take them to heart. This means monitoring when we
are prejudiced on some issue and automatically favor our family or our race. We
must systematically undo these harmful connections in our mind. They are
harmful because they impede our regeneration. The target goal in our
regeneration is to leave all that is in our mind from natural sources, and
replace it with things from spiritual sources only. Then our external mind,
still natural, will be in the Lords’ order and obedient to spiritual
affections.
When our
mind reflects our spiritual affections, our face is no longer similar to our
inherited family face. It is a new face to go with the reborn
character. This new face is celestial and is similar to the faces of the angels
in the heavenly society in which you live (AC 4797; HH 47).
Remember
that your face-control program is going to be successful to the extent that you
let your wife give you feedback at any time she is moved to do so, and then
only to the extent that you take her feedback to heart and do not dismiss it as
exaggeration or imagination. This I have been guilty of for years.
The face is
an external vessel for representing the mind’s life and spiritual orientation.
It stands to reason that building a new face for yourself ought to go together
with building your reborn character. Further, as the
face solidifies with age into family caricatures, the new spiritual affections
we are trying to foster have nowhere to settle, and like Noah’s dove must
return to the
Similar
things as were said concerning the face need to be applied to the way we laugh,
the way our voice sounds by which it is recognized by others, and the style of
body activity—gestures, posture, sitting position, and moving.
6. Monitoring
What Are My Eyes Doing
Everyone
knows the old adage that the eyes are the window to the soul. It is preserved
in our linguistic socialization so every individual is cultured into that idea.
In our unregenerate state we do not know what kind of a window this is. We
imagine that it’s like partition between two places, one called the soul and
the other called the eyes. We realize that eyes are out there in the open while
soul is in there, hidden from observation. Yet somehow by looking at the eyes,
we imagine, one can see into the soul. These are natural ways of thinking about
it.
But when we
gain in understanding of the dualities in the Writings we realize that there
must be a correspondential relation between the soul which is in the spiritual
world and the eyes which are in the natural world. The eyes react by
correspondence to what is going on in the soul. This is why we can say
rationally that the eyes reveal to outside observation what type of willing and
thinking is going on in the mind. Have you ever tried to look at someone in the
eye and see what they are willing and thinking? My own observation has been
that this approach yields almost no results. I cannot know what another is
willing, intending, thinking, or reasoning no matter how much I stare in their
eyes. The closest where I do have some success is babies and infants.
So there
must be another way of understanding the statement that the eyes are the
windows to the soul. The solution lies in thinking about our own soul and
our own eyes rather than another’s. Yes, our own willing and thinking is
very obscure to us, we hardly know a very tiny fraction of one percent of it.
This is not very much. For instance, if we think two thoughts per second, say,
and are awake for sixteen hours, we’ve had about xx thoughts on that one day.
How many of them do we know what they were? Very few. And fewer for yesterday, and how much the year before, and the
decade before? You can see that we get to know a tiny fraction of one
percent even when we have an introspective personality. So we must conclude
that our willing and thinking is largely unknown to us. This is why it is
referred to as the “unconscious” or the “subconscious” (xx).
Now back to
our eyes. It’s a feasible task to monitor our eye movements for brief periods.
We can do this more easily than we can witness our willing and thinking. Now
the old adage applies perfectly: monitoring what my eyes are
doing reveal to me what I’m willing and thinking.
I have
found this to be an informative discipline in some specific situations. I have
gained more specific knowledge of my unruly affections and imaginations. When I
drive my eyes used to constantly rove around to pick up things of interest—what
other drivers are doing, what they look like, what expressions they have, what
they are doing with their hands. When a car passes me I had to look to see who
is doing this to me. When I passed a car that was moving slower than traffic, I
had to look at the driver to see who is this person
doing such an annoying thing. As I used to walk to my office from the parking
lot, my eyes roamed around at will. Whatever I had an
affection for, the eyes were obedient in delivering it to my attention
and focus. Passers by: I would look at their body parts, their clothes, the
condition of the clothes, the folds on the clothes, the shape of the fingers,
the kind of shoes they wore—everything that I felt a delight in.
In
restaurants my eyes would focus and stare at how people put food in their
mouth. It seems that I had an endless collection of affections that were satisfied
through control of the eyes. My wife would have to remind me from time to time
as we were sitting at table: “Honey, you’re staring.” I was embarrassed, but
only for a moment. Mostly I was fascinated by the difficulty I had in
controlling my eye movements. I asked how she accomplished it and she answered
that she had to train herself to accept the idea that it was rude and an
invasion of privacy. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” I’m still
working on the problem, at age 63.
When I was
in my adolescence there was a song popularized by Dean Martin that had a
refrain: “Standing on the corner, watchin’ all the gals go bye” etc. This was a
delightful idea to me. I used to pick dark sun glasses to wear so that I can
willfully look at whatever I pleased without being detected. Instead of shame,
I felt power. I was my own god. I was alone in my mind. I was the ruler in that
domain. I did what I pleased. Then in my early forties I began to read the New
Testament as a book of God. And I was amazed to read in there that what I did
in my mind was no different from committing adultery with the body. Until then
my colleagues in psychology encouraged their clients in adulterous fantasies
which they claimed are beneficial for a healthier or zestier sex life for
married partners who did not cheat on each other. But mental pornography and
fantasy adultery was not considered cheating. But now, since the Lord commanded
it, I knew I had to reform. And then I discovered how difficult it was to keep
my eyes from being taken over by illicit affections.
The mere conclusion in the mind, that adultery is not sin,
renders a man an adulterer; - [shown] from those things which have been said on
this subject in The Doctrine of Life. Every conclusion in the mind constitutes
endeavor in the body, which is the essential act.
I told
adulterers, that, in heaven, there is perpetual potency; and they said, if they had known this in the world, they would never have
committed whoredom, so that they might come into heaven. But I said, that, in
heaven, it is permitted to love only the married partner, in hell to commit
whoredom at pleasure; [and I asked] whether, in this case, they would wish to
be in hell, or in heaven; but I was unable to extort a reply from them.
(SE 6110)
I continue
my struggles by which I can corroborate the statement that my eyes are a window
to my affections. I discovered thereby many disorderly and evil areas in my
mind. Besides scortations, as mentioned above, I became aware how critical my
thoughts are, moment by moment, as I’m in the company of others. For instance,
as I sit in the doctor’s waiting room, my eyes detect something about somebody
and my affections respond with criticism, ridicule, envy, superiority,
arrogance, lack of compassion. The eyes are responding to the affections, and
these come to my awareness through the thoughts they produce. Now I assess
those thoughts and I find them disorderly in various ways, depending on the
unregenerate affection.
By keeping
a record of your eye movements and the affections and thoughts that accompany
them, you are creating a map which is the spiritual geography of your mental
landscapes. Now you are armed to be effective in your regeneration disciplines.
So far as anyone indulges in the lusts of the flesh. He is a beast and a wild animal; but so far as he takes delight in the
desires of the spirit he is a human being and an angel (TCR 328)
7. Holding In Your Stomach
It may seem
far fetched to discuss this familiar phrase as a spiritual discipline. But
recall that EVERY natural event or act comes into existence by means of the
spiritual event or act that corresponds to it. A stone cannot fall, an atom
cannot whirl, an earthquake cannot happen without the
spiritual cause within it, to which the natural event corresponds. Similarly,
you could not raise your hand to the mouth, could not swallow or digest
something, could not put on your pants, were it not for the spiritual event to
which these little actions correspond. Think of this amazing scientific fact!
Every movement of your tongue, eyes, and fingers—which are active every second,
are nothing but natural effects of a spiritual cause that is within them as
cause is within the effect, or, as cause is prior to the effect, since what is
prior in successive order is within in simultaneous order (xx).
So then,
now consider, the familiar thought of “holding in my
stomach.” The act of holding in the stomach requires a spiritual cause. For
instance, when I was in my college student years in my early 20s the self-regulatory
thought of “hold in your stomach” was motivated by corporeal vanity. I saw in
my mind images of body-building models from magazines and movies. I was too
naive to realize the role of editing in movies and photographs, and compared my
stomach, thighs, and biceps to theirs, coming far short to what I thought would
be attractive to the girls who then would find me irresistible attractive, come
up to me saying, “O can I touch your firm stomach.” How insane the unregenerate
man appears from hindsight!
In my 30s
and 40s my motive for holding in the stomach had risen from corporeal to
sensuous. It felt better when I had strong abdominal muscles. Also, my clothes
had a better fit. And I could lift things or stand erect without feeling
exhausted or hurt afterwards. In my 50s and beyond my motive became
natural-rational. I saw a bulging stomach as the sign of a spiritually insane
lifestyle. In our youth we hold in the stomach out of self-love and the desire
to be admired and found physically attractive. When we get married and grow
middle-aged, men no longer care about their physical attractiveness as much as
other things and “let themselves go.” This means they let their stomach bulge,
an act of letting go of physical discipline, thus of a healthy lifestyle. Our
stomach is therefore a sign post, a signal of our spiritual life.
The stomach
reflects and represents the order or disorder in our natural mind. Such as is
the willing or thinking we do every day, such is the stomach from without and
within.
The stomach
represents our natural mind. From without it represents our lower
mind—corporeal and sensuous. From within, the stomach represents our higher
mind—the natural-rational mind.
The world of spirits, which is in the midst between heaven
and hell, and into which every man first comes after death, and is there
prepared, corresponds to the stomach, in which all the things put in are
prepared either to become blood and flesh, or to become excrement and urine,
the latter having a correspondence with hell, but the former with heaven. (AR
204)
The
expression “holding in the stomach” refers to the outside of the stomach, hence
the lower mind. To “hold in” the lower mind means to control it, to manage it,
to compel and coerce it to obey the higher rational mind. The expression “to
let it all hang out” means the opposite of “to hold in your stomach.” One voice
is from hell, the other from heaven. Those in the hells who are connected to
our natural mind congregate at our stomach and act into it. The passage above indicates
that the stomach is a correspondence for the spiritual world, and especially
the portion of it where we first arrive, a few hours after the time to the
physical body has been broken by the Lord.
The passage
also points out the parallelism between the body’s duality of “to become blood
and flesh” vs. “to become excrement and urine.” The expression ““to become
blood and flesh” signifies to be regenerated for life in heaven. The expression
“to become excrement and urine,” signifies to remain unregenerate, such as one
was born, that is infernal. To put things in our stomach therefore represents
to acquire ideas and experiences in daily life. As the
popular saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” A protruding stomach cannot
be held in despite determined effort. The spiritual cause of the protruding
stomach is the state of disorder of our natural mind. It is filled with
nondualities that allow and permit the protruding stomach. For example, men of renown
in society are admired for their accomplishments equally whether they have a protruding
stomach or not.
This shows
the operation of the human level of thinking which is in the lower or external
mind. Here, the spiritual does not exist. Not even the moral, since moral
thinking and concerns about God and the afterlife, are rational concerns. These
concerns operate only in the higher self, or higher portions of the natural
mind called the natural-rational mind.
The relationship
between our afterlife and holding the stomach in,
becomes obvious when we consider the correspondences just discussed. In order
for stomach-control, outward and inward, to become a regeneration discipline we
must apply the Spiritual Doctrine we extract from the Letter of the Writings to
it (see Volume 2). Stomach-control must first be acknowledged as an image of
our regeneration. What it takes to control the stomach is the very thing that
is needed for regeneration, namely, the application of the Letter of the
Writings to our willing and thinking all day long.
To control
the outward appearance of our stomach we need to undergo reformation, and to
control the inward content and operation of the stomach we need to undergo
regeneration. The outward control of the stomach represents the control of the
outward mind, which is called the organ of understanding (xx). As described in
Volume 1, reformation is the activity of rearranging everything in our mind
from nonduality to duality, using the Writings exclusively as the defining
meanings. This application of the Writings to our beliefs and reasonings
creates a new natural mind that is like the stomach Adam and Eve had in their
pristine earthly paradise, prior to their disobedience. This is not a
protruding stomach but an aesthetically pleasing one, shaped to maintain the
ideal human appearance and anatomy.
the human
body is a perfection of rational creation. The Lord’s infinite wisdom designed
the human body and the Lord’s infinite power keeps its created form, as
evidenced by Swedenborg’s observations as to the beauty and perfection of the
appearance of angels. Angels have a spirit-body that is the ideal for the
perfect physical body on earth. An angel’s stomach does not produce any waste!
The gross eliminations of the physical body are not a necessary part of life
that has been tied to the physical body by creation. If the human race were to
return to regeneration, and have offspring as regenerated parents, the
generations of the future will be celestial minds, and they have an ideal physical
body—ideal and perfect in appearance outwardly, and in operation inwardly. Thus
there ought to be now waste, and the environment will
offer no substances for producing waste, as it does now.
What we put into our stomach is a
spiritual decision that has consequences to eternity for our personal fate.
Is this not
a scary thought, given the lifestyle of our culture today?
Controlling
what we eat and holding the stomach in successfully, are very important
regeneration disciplines for the formation of the
The method
of self-witnessing is essential for success given that everything in our lower
self, as aided by the forces of the hells, oppose our attempt to gain control
over the outward appearance and inward content of our stomach. The stomach
belongs to heredity. Initially. And our task is to wrest
it from this infernal enrooting. We can win only with the help of the angels
that the Lord sends to rescue us and deliver us from this hereditary and
cultural entrapment. But angels can only
enter and empower rational loves.
Therefore
we must first acquire rational loves through reformation. This is represented
by controlling the outward appearance of the stomach. We do sit ups. We buy
exercise machines. We run. We dance in aerobic groups or to a video of it.
These are the sensuous attempts from the sensuous mind that is above the corporeal
mind but below the rational mind (see the anatomy diagrams of the mind in
Volume 2). The corporeal mind doesn’t wish to control the appearance of the
stomach by means of exercise to build abdominal muscle and by means of burning
calories to trim the stomach from its unsightly and deadly glob of fat,
accumulated by eating excessively of dead animals and sugar products. Instead,
it makes more sense to the corporeal level of thinking to take drugs, to have
liposuction, or the surgical removal of portions stomach or the stapling
together of its parts. The corporeal mind is averse to discipline, while the
sensuous mind loves discipline.
Rational
loves are above the sensuous. All spiritual ideas begin in the rational mind.
Ideas have love within them and in fact, are nothing but the outward from of
love (xx). Rational loves are ideas within which angels can enter and empower
us to control the natural mind. Every sentence and expression in the Letter of
the Writings, is a rational idea. They are natural-rational
correspondences for spiritual ideas. The angels that empower us to control the
stomach depend on finding an entry point into our mind, and this entry point is
constructed out of natural-rational ideas WHEN WE CONSIDER THEM
CORRESPONDENCES.
This I consider to be most important
and critical, as you can see by my capitalizing the idea!
This
subject is discussed in detail in Volume 2. Here we only need to make the
connection to stomach control as regeneration discipline.
Why is it
so crucial that we consider stomach control a correspondence for a spiritual
event or idea?
First, this
is the condition for a discipline to be a regeneration discipline rather than a
natural or moral discipline. The spiritual can only be understood in rational
ideas, and rational ideas are laid down in the natural-rational level of
understanding. Our understanding of the spiritual cause of any natural event
depends on understanding rational correspondences (xx). There is no other way
the Lord has provided. We cannot climb up to the moon on an airplane, balloon,
or upward moving air current. We cannot have a spiritual understanding of
spiritual topics except by understanding correspondences. So the first step in
creating a regeneration discipline out of holding in the stomach,
is to see it as a correspondence.
I have
discussed above what the stomach corresponds to, and what holding in
corresponds to, both in terms of control of external appearance and inward
content or operation.
For decades
now I have exerted stomach control as a regeneration discipline. As the years
pile up I have a deeper rational understanding of my struggle and victories. To
be effective, I need to think about the correspondence of what I am doing in my
willing and thinking around the stomach. For example, when I clean up the kitchen
after serving a meal, my wife sometimes has one or two bites left on her plate.
In the early years I thought this was ridiculous—Why not just finish it off.
This “Garbage in, garbage out” philosophy I had from inheritance and
upbringing. Now as I think of correspondences, I admire her rational stance. It
is like that of angels who eat the most delicious foods instantiated by the
Lord on their tables—never to full stomach, which they consider a gross involvement
of the mind and not at all compatible with the celestial state (xx).
After I
stopped denigrating her for her celestial behavior, I still continued to
practice the “Garbage in, garbage out” philosophy of eating, and popping the
bites into my mouth before holding the dish under the running water. I’m aware
of the shamefulness or spiritual opprobrium of this habit, as shown by the fact
that I sometimes turn around as I’m about to do it, to make sure no one is
watching me. I hate the thought of my looking that way, stuffing my mouth with
wet hands, eyes darting like a vulture in the air to see the next bite I can
pop, or like a dog of the prairies sniffing the air for carcass. Sure enough,
I’m 10 lbs. overweight. Right now as I type this, my mind is searching with the
ceaseless search for food, for snacks, for something to place in my stomach. My
stomach is trying to gain control over my mind even as my rational tries to
gain control over it. It s a battle for the soul, that is, for my fate in heaven
or in eternal hell.
One of the
rational strategies I use to control my stomach is the discipline of
half-portions, discussed elsewhere in this Section. Another involves
substituting a healthy low-calorie snack for chocolate, ice cream, cake,
cheese, or leftover chicken and pizza. I like fruits and nuts as worthwhile and
satisfying substitutes. I learned from my wife to stop buying larger and larger
sizes in pants and underpants. Let the discomfort of their tightness be a
constant reminder and motivator to stop stuffing my stomach.
The most important
strategy I discovered is superior to all the diet programs in this country,
whose populations spends many billions a year on controlling the stomach—and
without any lasting success. What I
discovered is this rational truth: To control my stomach I must value being
hungry.
A very
obvious scientific and practical principle, but not followed. Instead the
opposite principle is followed, namely, how not to feel hungry.
Feeling
hungry is aversive, unpleasant. From inheritance and upbringing I have
developed a panic button which gets pushed at the first sign of feeling hungry.
I start looking around thinking “I could eat something.” It’s animal. So I had
to undergo reformation regarding the feeling of being hungry. From it being an
aversive experience, I had to engineer feeling it as a good pleasant experience.
When I feel hungry I reinforce my lower self by saying, “Good. I’m losing
weight right now. Thank you Lord.”
And so my
struggle continues. Stomach control is the very symbol of my regeneration. My
willing and thinking in relation to my stomach control struggles, seeks to be rational
and spiritual by thinking of its correspondences in as much detail as possible.
Sometimes you’ll need to keep a record of what you put in your mouth in the
course of the day. Also, what your emotions and thoughts are
prior to eating something, during eating, and afterwards.
Monitoring
what our mouth is doing while eating is a very important aspect of holding in
the stomach as a regeneration discipline. My wife eats slowly compared to me.
My plate is cleaned off as she gets through half of it. Therefore what she does
with her mouth and mine while eating are very different. The Doctrine of the
Wife requires me to love to act form the wife more than from self (see Section
1). It’s not compatible with my Doctrine to love mouth activities that are
contrary to her loves. Will I be able to share a table with her in her heavenly
mansion? Not if I love to do with my mouth one thing and she is aversive to it,
or loves another thing. For instance, I love to swallow a larger bite than she
does. My observation of this has revealed that I have a
unregenerate corporeal affection for greater pressure on the walls of the
throat and the back of the mouth cavity while swallowing. She has learned to
give that up as not comely and heavenly.
Many such
details in our daily corporeal routines need to be monitored, identified,
analyzed, deconstructed, judged, inhibited, and at last, detested.
Look for
opportunities to hang around while your wife gets dressed. It’s an awesome
ritual that is fascinating to observe with respect and friendship. It allows
intimacy and discussion on clothes, etc. This is on her mind, so it should on
yours too, don’t you think—in view of all that has been said about sweetheart
rituals? (see Chapter 9 Section 7). Then if you’re
there, doing nothing, just hanging around her, she will say to you “Zip me.”
That’s your victory, savor it, for she has elected you
to intimate friendship, so precious from a conjugial wife.
The same
applies when she gets undressed. Hang around, be pleasant and light, don’t
introduce topics—let her choose all the
topics when you hang around her. But be animated and interested in your
responses. Your victory will come when she says: “Unzip me.” What a privilege!
If this seems a bit exaggerated, you don’t have to trust that opinion. Perhaps
it seems strange because unfamiliar, or perhaps some prejudiced assumption
wants to nix the idea. Do not be deterred, but valiantly let your rational
loves dictate what your sensorimotor behavior will be. Compel your lower
yourself to obey since it has no vision of a rational reality such as is
described in the Word of the Second Coming. What does this lower self know
about conjugial love except as something to be ridiculed or feared?
9. The Discipline
Of Junk
E-Mail
Most people
I know use email. The volume of increase in exchanging messages is astonishing.
Tens of millions of people send out billions of messages to teach other daily.
Business minds are finding all sorts of ways to use this steady exchange
traffic so that their many email messages enter your mailbox daily and hourly.
Now it’s up to you what your move is. Some are good moves, some are not.
One is to
read everything, then decide to answer, delete, or
save in a folder. The second is to look at the Subject line and delete without
looking at the messages whatever seems like “junk” mail, as these unsolicited
and illegal messages are called. This choice is better, while the first
contains risks you need to be aware of.
One type of
risk is a colossal waste of time. Another is that you fill your external mind
with scortatory images which many of the messages contain. Your rational mind
is then going to have to fight against and eliminate these scortatory images.
To do so is a Divine Commandment and is a necessary part of our required
regeneration (AE 734). This is because every scortatory image is from hell and
if we delight in it in any way, we are tied to that infernal society where the
scortatory delight issues from in endless billows into the natural mind, and
pollutes it. This makes it much harder to regenerate, and from a ”light burden” it becomes heavy to bear (Matt.
Another
risk is to expose yourself to all sorts of business
deals and investments that you then have to figure out what to do about. This
is relevant to those who are active on the Internet in various ways. In my case
I have an active presence being the author of a book on Road Rage which
frequently puts me and my wife (the co-author) in news articles whenever the
topic is discussed around the country and the world (see Note 17 at end). I’m
known on the Web as DrDriving and receive dozens of email daily. I have to sift
through what is a request for advice (“Dear DrDriving”), what is junk mail, and
what are business propositions. I’ve become skilled in not reading more than
what I need for each message.
Here is one
example of an email I received this morning:
Subject: Please Reply (Help)
Pleading for your help!!
Dear Dr. Leon James,
Following the sudden death of my husband General Damu Taraba
the late former head of state of
My finger
hits the delete button at the word “August.” The total amount of time the
message was on the screen was about two seconds. As the screen changes I catch
in the corner the words “300 million dollars.” When I first got this kind of
letter I read most of it, but subsequently, I delete all others like it as
quickly as I identify them. Pretty soon one gets to recognize the various types
of junk mail, especially if you monitor the process analytically. You can
simply assume that every junk email or “spam” message is about getting money
from you. This is the bottom line purpose of all spam. Millions respond to
spam, which is what keeps them coming. It’s a business balance sheet issue.
Therefore we need to develop a spiritual discipline to keep in check the normal
and cultural attraction we feel towards an offer which seems will bring us
financial benefit.
Here is
just a sample of the spam I got today that I automatically delete after reading
the Subject Line or part of it. It takes me less than one minute to process 40
or 50 messages in this way:
Don't get caught by rising interest rates.
Growth Stock of the Week: (OTC BB:GTWY)
Returned mail: User unknown
For Parents who buy School Uniforms for their kids
Give me a call
Looking for some CHEAP videos?
Rebuild your credit with Gold
LOSE WEIGHT NATURALLY!
No Spam! No Pop-ups! With a FREE NowBox.
Leon James / Status: Winner
Leon, New Human Growth Hormone Releaser, as seen on NBC, C
Perfect Golf Gift for Dad
Joke Email - The Morning After the Night Before..
Unbelievable Prices On Cell Phones
And Accessories
Reply Requested {thisisjustfor4u!}
Leon, Your Credit has been Approved!
$150 Free!! Play Now!
Attract The Opposite Sex Instantly!
URGENT ASSISTANCE
NEEDED
Look, my
beautiful girl friend
Your Disney
Vacation Awaits!
Viagra
Delivered
See The
Sexiest, Naked Celebs Here !!
Your Free
Amateur Videos
Something
different!!!
There are
several steps to take in order to turn email behavior into a spiritual
discipline. First, you need to work out in your mind in what way this is a
religious issue. This is the first step for all spiritual disciplines discussed
in Volume 2. The nonduality view is that “It’s theoretically possible that at
least one or more of these offers could be genuine or would be worth taking
up.” This belief is what I would call “the con” which was portrayed in the
movie The Sting (xx). This belief is what keeps spam going. So let’s
leave spamming to the industry, and let us make a rational decision in freedom,
that we are not going to ever respond to anything when it comes to you in that
modality or arena. This is a behavior rule that protects us from invasion and
trouble.
But there
are other aspects to email use that can be placed under discipline. People are
relying on email communication more and more so that it enlarges the scope of
our daily self-witnessing opportunities (see Note 20 at end). When I compose an
email message I remind myself to keep in mind the highest use in the exchange—which
is to love my neighbor. This means first and foremost that I am to avoid doing
evil to the neighbor. Nothing I write should give offense or express any
negative emotions or intentions. If I decide it is incumbent upon to answer a
message I remind myself to do it fully. What is it that the neighbor wants to
know—I must give that information or point to where the information can be
taken from. When I have to write email about a service
problem (e.g., tracking an order on Web shopping) I must suppress the desire to
complain or use any strong language that merely shows how a person feels and
doesn’t contribute anything practical to the exchange. Email venting is to do
harm to the neighbor.
I also
remind myself that I have to present enough information, not too much, not too
little. It often helps to answer various pieces of an issue separately—marked
by blank lines or a separator line (I like to use all +++++ as it reminds me of
the cross, and the Lord). It also helps to copy and paste selected pieces that
speak to the relevant portion. I resist the easier way of merely pasting or
retaining the entire message at the bottom. I do this also, but then in
addition, I select and paste just the relevant portions in the reply, as I
address them. When you choose the “Include Reply” it pastes the entire message
up front. You can then delete the portions as you go along, making sure you
answer all points.
10. How To Handle Junk Phone Calls
I have a
firm policy with telephone calls. I quickly establish the purpose of the call
(“Who do you want to talk to? Can I take a message? What is this about?”). I do
not respond to “Hi, how are you today?” I get to the point within seconds: “I’m
very sorry, but we do not accept telephone solicitations. Please send it to us
in the mail.” The salesperson at the other hand sometimes accepts this,
sometimes attacks from another angle: “We are not selling anything. We just
want you to know that you can upgrade…” At this point I know I need to be very
categorical in order to be effective: “I’m sorry to interrupt you. But we do
not accept telephone solicitations. Please send it to us in the mail.” With
some salespeople even this second insistent repetition does not get them to
quit. My limit is one more time, and then I hang up.
I have the
occasion to monitor myself with these phone calls several times every week. My
wife said after one of these calls that I sounded pretty mean. I was taken
aback (as normal for me). My first reaction to her observation: “I was not
impolite. These people are sharks. They just put on the nice person act for a
few seconds, and if they perceive they won’t get to me, they become nasty and
even say profanities as they hang up on me. So I’ve got to be pretty forceful
and unequivocal, don’t’ you think?” I felt myself justified in not loving my
neighbor. Was this a case of me not loving my neighbor? I reflected and
consulted the Lord’s Word. I asked the Lord: “Lord enlighten
me about this.” And the answer that came to me was that I consult the Lord’s
Word for only there will He speak to me about answers.
I read
passages in the Writings about loving the neighbor and how to do that (see
Chapter 6 Section 7). I then clearly saw that my wife was wise in her
observation. She was telling me not to be mean. She perceived I was, and she
knew from her wisdom that this is an infernal act. She intelligently figured it
out that I can achieve my goal of effective junk call management by being nice
rather than mean. Being mean was not part of the effectiveness. So now I saw her
real message: Get rid of any behavior that is mean to
people. I saw that this was the religious motive. I saw that this is what the
Lord said to Peter who had asked Him how many times one should forgive the
neighbor:
Then
Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my
brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
(Matt. 18:21-22)
From this comes
the signification of the number "seventy" which comprises seven ages;
for an age, in the Word, is ten years. When anything most holy or sacred was to
be expressed, it was said "seventy-sevenfold" as when the Lord said
that a man should forgive his brother not until seven times, but until seventy
times seven (Matt. 18:22), by which is meant that they should forgive as many
times as he sins, so that the forgiving should be without end, or should be
eternal, which is holy. (AC 433)
And so:
When I’m being not nice to junk phone calls I’m being mean. And this is infernal.
And it cannot be justified by their behavior or intent—as clearly said in the
passage above. Therefore I have no other choice but to be nice even as I
continue to be effective. Now I have the religious motive and the
discipline is spiritual. I continue to struggle. Further, I extend the practice
to other areas, like phone calls by students “who should be emailing or asking
in class.” I can see that whatever I’m thinking about the “foolishness” of
others, there is no justification for not loving the neighbor. I cannot allow
them to control my religious duty. The love for one’s neighbor cannot be lifted
or suspended, but it needs to be accommodated to each situation rather than
give everyone the same treatment (see Chapter 6 Section 7). No one deserves insults
or rudeness, and so I must find ways of being nice but firm. Even in the worst
case scenario when I have to hang up on the caller, there is no need for me to
feel anger or annoyance, or to do it by adding a verbal insult. “Sorry I must
hang up now.” is adequate enough.
There are
many opportunities through an average day to keep relearning this lesson. For
years I carried a tape recorder in the car and spoke my thoughts aloud behind
the wheel (see Note 17 at end). I was quite amazed at how I sounded on the tape
when I played it back—blasphemous, insulting, critical, denigrating,
fault-finding, prejudiced, irrational, emotionally
unintelligent. I knew I had to change and wowed to become a reformed driver. I
first used secular methods of self-modification from my field of social
psychology. My success was limited. I reduced overt expressions most of the
time since I became convinced I was flirting with dangerous situations. One
never knows what the other driver is going to do if you enrage him. More than one
thousand drivers are seriously injured every year in road rage violence in the
What gives
me the right to denigrate my neighbor? The Lord commands that we forgive as
often as the neighbor sins against us (see Chapter 6 Section 7). This means
that I’m hating the Lord when I’m hating the other driver.
And I won’t pretend that these things are anything but hating: “I’m only
retaliating when provoked” ,“I’m only defending my
rights” , “I’m only thinking it so I can feel better” , “It’s just the way it
is in traffic, a hell hole” etc. If I lapse in any one instance, I must repent
and resolve to avoid it. But I must not allow it as an exception. Not one such
affection against the neighbor can be kept if one steps through the heavenly
gate. So I must keep struggling. Striving to be a reformed driver is to remain
a religious discipline with me.
11. The Spiritual
Discipline Of Eating
Half-Portions
A Christian
email correspondent who was reading the Writings (somewhat) asked me what sins
he can keep and still go to heaven. My answer was none. Take for example the
question: Can I go to heaven if I’m overweight?
My thoughts
led me to this: It must depend on the motive or purpose. Every
affection that is not from heaven, without a single exception, cannot
enter heaven which is protected by the substances involved.
To no one who
enters the spiritual world is it denied to ascend to heaven; but when one who
is in the delight of hell enters heaven his heart palpitates, his breathing is
labored, his life begins to fail, he is in anguish, distress and torment, and
he writhes like a serpent placed close to a fire. This is so because opposites
act against each other. (DP 324)
Every affection is either from heaven or from hell (TCR 115; AC 904). The infernal
affection cannot enter into the sphere of heaven any more than a small brick
can enter into a larger brick and occupy the same space with it. The spiritual
coils of fiber that make up an affection are either turned one way called the
heavenly way, or turned in the opposite way, called the infernal way. Ask yourself:
is being overweight from heaven or from hell? It is from hell because it is
disorderly, hurtful, and opposed to a heavenly personality.
Clearly
then we cannot enter heaven if we are overweight when we retain an affection
for being overweight.
It is said in
the church that no one can fulfill the law, and the less so since anyone who
sins against one commandment of the Decalogue sins against them all. But this conventional maxim is not as it
sounds; for it is to be understood in this way, that anyone who purposefully or
deliberately acts against one commandment acts against the rest, since to act
purposefully or deliberately is to deny altogether that the action is a sin,
and anyone who denies the existence of sin regards it as nothing if he acts against
the rest of the commandments. (CL 528)
Look at
yourself in the mirror and look at the numbers on the scale and compare them to
what they should be for a man your build. The excess in pounds is called being
overweight. Consider that what you know about being overweight—that it is
unhealthy and makes you sick and less able to function effectively. The Lord
commands us to be prudent (Matt.
I was
overweight since my days in college. I went through several weight-loss /
weight-gain cycles. But I was able to break this cultural pattern when I made
it into a religious discipline. I first acknowledged that infernal affections
will keep me from heaven, even one infernal affection,
as long as I consciously went along with it without constantly fighting it.
This one infernal affection will cling to my spiritual mind at the entrance of
heaven, and keep me from entering into its sphere. Then I got scared. So I was
going to get myself with the range of the a medically
recommended weight for my built. I lost the weight and from a 200-lb.
overweight man with slacks size 42 I went to a 160-lb. man wearing size 32. And
I’ve kept this shape for the past ten years without any relapse.
I use two
techniques that work. First, to never give up managing and
feeling fully responsible for my weight. This I maintain as a Divine
Commandment for the Lord commands us to be prudent in all things (xx), and to
be overweight is not prudent. Second, to eat half portions.
This is the
simplest of all diets since you don’t have to change what you eat if you’re
already eating healthy, as I was. My problem was that I was “feasting every
day” and eating more frequently than was necessary. So merely by compelling
myself to eat half the normal plate, I started losing weight steadily. At home,
it’s a matter of serving half a portion and not having seconds or things on the
side during preparation (I’m the cook and clean up man). In restaurants, my
wife and I learned to stop after one-third of the plate, then
request it to be packed. This is a great boon to a short-order cook like me as
it gives us two more fine meals on the next two dinners at home, with my job
being merely to add some fresh steamed vegetables.
Portion
control is to be exercised in all things we place in our mouth. We love ice
cream and double-double chocolate cakes and brownies. Portion control means two
bites freely enjoyed, and then we must ask ourselves whether it’s time to quit.
The essence of control is to avoid going overboard, since the corporeal self
wants to keep going. It feels like tearing yourself
away and it is painful. But the rational mind looking down marvels and laughs
at this corporeal slavery. Thus control is retained in the mind and our
regeneration proceeds unimpeded.
Once in a
while we lapse or slide back and either alone, or in company, we break all the
rules and eat all that we feel like, giving in to the delicious slavery. After
that it’s crucial that you compensate on the next day or two and eat less than
the usual half-portion. This keeps your weight down and teaches your corporeal
self that you’re in control after all. Compensatory eating combined with
half-portions is an effective program of permanent weight control.
But this is
not all. I had to follow a self-witnessing discipline to monitor not just how
much I ate but how I ate. All sorts of infernal affections are associated with
overeating. I observed such things about myself. For instance, I would eat as I
walk, which is dangerous because food particles can get stuck in your trachea.
So I had to control that. I would put food in my mouth before I swallowed what
was there, increasing the rate of eating. And especially, I noted as I was trying
to resist the habit, the sensation I received from swallowing a large amount
going down “the gullet” was more delightful than small bites. This attachment
is infernal because corporeal without obedience to the rational. I had to learn
to eat like my wife who had taught herself these things while a young woman.
She will not eat that last bite on the plate if she judges she had had enough,
whereas I want to throw it in my mouth instead of the garbage. I feel a sense
of regret letting go of it. It’s a delight I will not have—says my unruly
corporeal self.
Eating
slowly and chewing well must be combined with eating half-portions and
compensating for each occasion of excess. The appetite control in food behavior
becomes a religious discipline that puts us well ahead in our regeneration.
12. Arrival
And Departure
Rituals With The Wife
Remember
what it felt like to see your girl when you were in love and dating her? That
should be the baseline level for how we must treat our wife if we are going to
make progress in conjugial union. If you are home and your wife arrives, be
prepared for this momentous event. For a few minutes prior to her arrival walk
around the house and arrange things into proper order, the order she picks when
she is at home. Every room should be orderly and clean. Be sure this includes
yourself—shave, wash your body, clean your mouth, put on clean clothes. If
others are also in the house, prepare them for the arrival in a similar way.
Then wait. Look for her to arrive. When you hear the car or see her walk closer
or she opens the door, be there. Do not be engaged in some activity so that you
have to interrupt it and then turn your attention to her. Jump up and greet her
at the door.
Do not
block her way at the door by standing there. Do not hug her before she is ready
for it. Observe carefully what her usual routine is when she arrives. Do not
make comments about her being late or about her not calling or about her being
away for so long. Do not inundate her with house topics, messages, or schedules.
Understand that she needs to transition.
A wife is a
complex human thing. When she leaves the house she has to set her entire
existence and inner readinesses to a different level or measure. A wife outside
the house has to protect herself from strangers and strange events and topics.
When she arrives home it takes a little while to undo, unwind, and soften up.
She has to make herself vulnerable again and available to her husband and
children. This takes a little time. She does the unwinding by going through her
normal arrival rituals. Do not interfere with them. Part of this unwinding
ritual is to have you around without your active input. She doesn’t want you to
walk away and go do your thing. She wants you to accompany her with a
cooperative, helpful, and pleasant disposition.
She goes
from room to room, inspecting and doing. She asks a few questions—make the answers informative but brief. Details,
later. She makes some comments—Why didn’t you
do this or that. Never get defensive or offensive. Let her say it. Give her
leeway. Smile a lot and nod your head. Keep explanations at a minimum. Act like
she is your sweetheart and you’re so happy again. Help her with her clothes, if
she asks, otherwise just stand or sit there, and admire.
Slowly but
steadily your wife reconnects herself to the house sphere, to you, and to her
children and pets. The arrival ritual is then over.
Now the departure ritual. When she leaves the house and you stay home, arrange your
activities so that you are “on call” as she starts to prepare. Do not ask her
when she is leaving. Do not ask her are you going to do this or that, are you
going to take this or that with you. You can help her by doing these things in
a subtle way. Only intervene when there is something obviously wrong or she
miscalculated or forgot. Do not let her fall into mistakes or mishaps. Save her
by monitoring in the background and noticing.
Be with her
as she gets dressed, but do not be in her way. She likes to consult you about
her clothes. Be helpful, sincere, knowledgeable. When
she is ready to leave the house, be there. Hold the door open for her. Kiss
her, bless her, and tell her you’ll miss her and will be waiting eagerly for
her return. As she walks away or as the car drives away, wave at her. As she disappears
in the distance or around the corner, bend your body out of shape so you can
catch one last glimpse of your beloved.
As you walk
back inside, you will feel good, complete, right, happy.
This is what she gives you for what you give her.
13. The Spiritual
Discipline Of
People who have
been both cruel and adulterous like nothing more in the next life than filth
and excrement. To them the stink of these is most sweet and pleasant, and they
prefer such odors to all other delights. The reason why lies in their
correspondence. Those hells lie partly beneath the buttocks, partly beneath the
right foot, and partly in a frontal direction, deep down. These are the hells
to which the path through the rectum leads. Once a certain spirit was brought
there, from where he spoke to me. He said there was nothing else in sight but
latrines. Those there talked to him and led him to various other latrines,
which were very numerous there. (AC 5394)
The
discipline of oral hygiene and flossing was discussed in several sections in
this chapter. The discipline of enemas is even more prone to our resistance,
given our cultural training. Yet the practice of medicine is based on regular
and repeated assessment of body fluids and excretions. Part of my yearly annual
involves giving them urine, blood, and stool lab samples. Enemas are a limited
part of the practice of modern medicine. They are used prior to certain
procedures such as colorectal inspections, childbirth, certain types of
cancers, and some others. But they are not on the recommended list of home
hygiene. All sorts of legends and superstitions adhere to it, like the idea
that your intestines will get used to it and stop working on their own. Another
is that it depletes the good bacteria culture in the colon, leaving yourself open for infections. Also, that it is painful,
gross, embarrassing, etc.
I have been
practicing the discipline of a weekly enema for many years. It is a religious
discipline because I connect it to my hygiene duty. I must keep my body clean,
my mouth clean, and my colon clean. They stem from the same motive of the
prudent servant who takes care of the body’s health. I have spoken many times
about it to an expert in the field: a colonic therapist whose services I have
used every six month for the past 30 years. A colonic introduces water into the
upper regions of the colon and intestines and requires a machine set up and
operator. An enema is self-administered using an enema bag sold at drug stores.
It takes about 45 minutes to complete an enema from beginning to end.
After the
water is introduced by gravity flow, it is let go on the toilet. Out it comes
along with much fecal material. It is advisable to flush repeatedly so that you
minimize spreading the offensive odor through the air to the rest of the house.
But before you flush, you should stand up and inspect briefly what is in
the bowl. Notice the sickly smell, the awful color of the water, the twisted
gaseous ugly excrements, and the quantity. This only need take a few seconds, then you quickly flush it away. But the inspection leaves a
profound effect of disbelief and disgust. And in my case I find it helpful to
remind myself as I sit back down for more of it: O how gross! This came out of
me! This is in me every day! This is what’s in people and they refuse to take
enemas! This is what makes me sick! This stays in my body and oozes out poisons
that are then absorbed back into the blood stream—O how gross! This represents
the hells! The evil spirits love this stuff! (see AC
2755).And so on. The purpose of this thinking is to reinforce the religious
issues involved.
Enemas
reduce offensive flatulence, besides relieving bloating, and eliminating
poisons. Passing gas is something many couples get used to doing with each
other. Also, roommates, locker room buddies, and surreptitious releases that
befoul the air of the room. Who did this? We hide our cowardice, saying
nothing, looking innocent. What right do we have to offend the smell and
quietude of others around us? Where is the love of neighbor if we allow
ourselves to pass offensive gas and even, make a joke of it.
It’s human to fart! The point is: enemas take care of the degraded festering
putrid materials in the intestines. The Writings say that offensive
body odors is a legitimate cause of separation in marriage! (CL 253) How
sexy can it be for your sweetheart if in her mind she is thinking, “Is he going
to fart on me again?”
The discipline of enemas are best practiced as a couple. The two
look out for one another, making sure one of them isn’t skipping it, which is
so easy to do, given the built in cultural resistance and negative connotation.
But in addition there may be spiritual reasons that go deeper into the causes
of an anti-enema society. I understand that in some European countries and in
Incredibly
to me, physicians tell patients they’re not constipated if they move their
bowels once every two days. But to convince yourself
take an enema every day for a week and you will see no abatement in the
foulness that comes out day after day. My high colonic practitioner tells me that
it’s not uncommon for him to see during a colonic irrigation treatment, feces
come out that have impacted and been in the colon for several years. The longer
they were there, the more black they turned. In colonic irrigation a double
tube is inserted into the rectum, with clean water going in one and the
resultant wash coming out in the other. This goes through a glass tube allows
observation of what passes out.
Who exactly
constitute the province of the Intestines in the Grand Man will become clear to
some extent from those who correlate with the stomach. For the intestines are a
continuation of the stomach, and the functions performed by the stomach
increase in them and are intensified right through to the end of the intestines
- to the colon and rectum. The spirits in the latter are therefore close to the
hells which are called the excrementitious ones. In the region of the stomach
and intestines are those on the lower earth. Because these have brought with
them from the world forms of uncleanness clinging to their thoughts and
affections, they are therefore detained for a while in that region until such
forms of uncleanness have been wiped away, that is, cast away to the side. Once
these have been cast away to the side those people can be raised up to heaven.
People on the lower earth are not yet in the Grand Man, for
they are like food which has been sent down into the stomach but which, until
it has been purged, is not introduced into the bloodstream and so into the
body. People contaminated with even worse earthly defilements are below those
in the region of the intestines; but the actual excrement passed by the
intestines corresponds to the hells called the excrementitious hells. (AC 5392)
It is
obvious from this that the
Those who in
the life of the body have made mere pleasures their end and aim, loving merely
to indulge their natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity,
caring only for themselves and the world, without any regard to things Divine,
and who are devoid of faith and charity, are after death first introduced into
a life similar to that which they had in the world. There is a place in front
toward the left, at a considerable depth, where all is pleasure, sports,
dancing, feasting, and chatting together. Hither such spirits are conveyed, and
then they know no otherwise than that they are still in the world. After a
short time however the scene is changed, and then they are carried down to a
hell beneath the buttocks which is merely excrementitious; for in the other
life such exclusively corporeal pleasure is turned into what is
excrementitious. I have seen them there carrying dung and bemoaning their lot.
(AC 943)
Note
well: I’m not saying that
It says
here, and elsewhere, that those people turn into excrementitious spirits who
“have made mere pleasures their end and aim, loving merely to indulge their
natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity.” The issue I’m
raising is whether or not a person is of this sort who cares not about cleaning
the colon. In other words, is there a relation between:
“loving merely to indulge their
natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity” (AC 943)
and
“being a person who cares not about
cleaning the colon” (Leon James)
It stands
to reason that there is a relationship here. There is a rational connection
between lifestyle and the state of our intestines and colon: What we eat; how
much; how often; how well we chew; whether we are overweight; whether we are
physically active enough; what our toilet training was like and what
impressions it left on us; and other such things that are related to how our
colon is functioning. The
"WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE"
Would you like to feel healthier, have more energy, be more regular and less constipated without using a single
drug, laxative, vitamin or protein drink? Let me explain how you can accomplish
this.
The source of many of today's commonplace health problems
are being traced to the colon, also known as the large intestine (diagram). Our
high fat, low fiber diets of hard to digest foods are clogging the very canal
that was designed to eliminate them. The longer this waste stays in the body
the more toxic and encrusted it becomes. Our bodies are being poisoned because
the moisture that is absorbed from the colon has to pass through this toxic
waste that has attached itself to the lining of the colon. This toxified
moisture is then distributed throughout the body poisoning our vital organs and
deteriorating the body's own immune system. The resulting toxemia can become a
chronic condition but for most of us it means constipation, sinus problems,
allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, migraine headaches, immune
related illnesses, colds, flu, etc. Also the risk of colon cancer seems to be
increasing everyday with no known cause or cure. Doesn't it make sense that
meat and other waste that has been trapped inside your colon for years could
become so rotten, putrid, and toxic that it begins to slowly poison your organs
and your entire body, possibly even causing colon cancer. Wouldn't you rather
be proactive and safe now rather than reactive and sorry later? Other symptoms.
Now there is a
way to thoroughly cleanse the colon of this waste that has been collecting
there for years and what's even more exciting is that you can do this in the
privacy of your own home by using my Home Colonics Kit. The safest and easiest
method of colonics is the gravity flow method.
(“A Safe Gentle Irrigation and
Cleansing of the
I don’t
sell these devices and I have not used them myself. I use the old fashioned
enema bag (water bottle), a method I learned form my mother as a child. But
whatever you decide to use, remember that you’re doing it for religious or
spiritual reasons, as well as heath reasons.
14. Acknowledging
The Lord’s Co-Presence
Prayer, regarded in itself,
is speech with God (AC 2535)
Whenever I was
praying our Lord's prayer, morning and evening, almost every time I was raised
up, in different ways, into the very inward realm, and in fact [this raising
up,] together with the change, was so perceptible that nothing could have been
more so. (SE 258)
A mental
discipline that is indigenous to Christians is the practice of talking to the
Lord and acknowledging the Lord’s presence before us even as we go about doing
our daily tasks. Many people automatically and somewhat unconsciously say “O
God” many times in the course of a day. But this is not a discipline but a
cultural habit. Having been raised in an Orthodox Jewish family I found it
relatively easy to say my morning/afternoon/evening prayers, as well as saying
a different prescribed blessing (“Brocho”) for particular activities such as
washing hands, eating particular foods, using the bathroom, hearing the
thunder, noticing a rainbow, putting on new clothes, kissing any doorpost that
had a “mezuzah” case nailed to it, and many more in the hundreds.
This
discipline was relatively easy because it was inculcated in us as an invariant
routine so that it ran itself off without much thought accompanying it. I did
not even have to interrupt my thoughts and secular concerns even as I was
reciting the prescribed prayer. Of course I realize now, being a regenerating
New Church mind, that this type of prayer keeps the person at a safe distance
from God, so that prayer and religion don’t influence the inherited loves and
delights, which are infernal.
These
devotional activities are carried out in Hebrew (called “Holy Language”), a
language mostly incomprehensible to the majority of Jews of all denominations
(who are Yiddish speakers besides the country’s vernacular where they live). I
was taught to read Hebrew prayers phonetically and very fast, with a sing song
chant, but the emphasis on comprehension of the sentences was not so much
emphasized or even required (“The Holy Name knows what you’re saying”). These
ritualized vocalizations were accompanied by the requisite body-shaking called
in Yiddish “shockle” (=shaking). The shaking was an aid to concentration. It
was taught that if you concentrated “all the way” you come before the Almighty.
There were
saints in every generation, known for their great concentration ability. One
sign of concentration is that if someone calls your name while you’re shaking,
and bowing, and yelping, or crying out to the Almighty, you’re so much into the
praying, that the physical world disappears and you can’t hear your name being
called. and other such things are taught to young
boys, as I was.
But after I
abandoned this lifestyle as an adult and came to see myself as a Christian
person, it took many years to teach myself the discipline of consciously
acknowledging the Lord’s co-Presence minute by minute while I was awake. And if
not minute by minute, I thought I did well if I could remember Him at least
once an hour. Even this I could not do. Hours would go by and I was absorbed in
my day, then suddenly, the consternating thought: I’ve forgotten about You,
Lord! You were present all these hours and minutes and seconds, making things
happen all around me, connecting my days, and foreseeing my future, which You desire to be life in heaven. My forgetting Your
Co-Presence, Lord, is sheer insanity! It is insane to suppose that things
happen by chance or by human planning. The moment an angel thinks this, he
feels himself cast out of heaven (xx). We are told that as angels we have the
Lord constantly before us, no matter which way we turn (xx).
This mental
discipline only started in earnest several years after I started reading the
Writings when I became imbued with the fear and regret that I was not
sufficiently loving the Lord and acknowledging that He is ceaselessly present
as a Divine Guide and Therapist overseeing the sequence of my thoughts, bending
them this way and that, hiding things from my awareness until I’m ready to deal
with them, and bringing me into contact with this or that spiritual society to
excite this or that emotion in me.
Failing to continually acknowledge
His co-participation and co-presence is thus being like a sleep walker who
lives in non-reality and does not see or talk to the people around.
To
acknowledge the Lord’s Co-Presence in a practical way, rather than merely
theoretical way, we need to act it out in our willing and thinking. As
mentioned, praying or talking to the Lord is a way of actualizing or acting out
our theoretical acknowledgment of His Omnipresence. An additional way is to ask
Him a question when we are wondering about something we’re trying to figure out
and can’t quite see the precise answer. It’s useful to remember that talking to
the Lord is not like talking to another human being. The Lord knows what we are
going to say prior to us knowing it. This is because He is the regulator of all
that a human being says since saying something is an event and He manages all
events by His Omnipresence. Asking the Lord a question can be done with the
innocence of childhood (xx) or with the innocence of wisdom (xx). Children in
all innocence talk to the Lord as they talk to an adult or powerful person.
When we are regenerating as adults we are called “wise” because we are committed
to act from the Letter of the Writings, which we have taken up as Doctrine in
our understanding and thinking.
To talk to
the Lord from the innocence of wisdom is to ask Him a practical question to
which we desire the answer, right at that moment in the sequence of our
activity, or of our willing and thinking.
This mental
act acknowledges the Lord’s Co-Presence in an actual way. It is a practical
thing to do to ask a partner a question when something comes up in their
teamwork. “Do you have their number?” or “What time did he say he’s going to
call?” To ask the Lord like a wise man would, we want to avoid asking Him a
type of question for which He has a stated policy not to answer. This makes
sense. It’s childish, not wise, to ask the Lord anything at all. The wise man
honors the Lord with happy obedience to His stated policies, otherwise known as
the Divine Commandments in the Letter of the Writings.
Everything
we understand from the Letter is a Divine Commandment when we act the wise man.
With regards
to asking the Lord questions, we must figure it out with what we already know. I
would suggest that we think about the distinction the Lord wants us to learn
between sensuous and rational consciousness (see the discussion in Chapter xx
Section xx). For instance, the difference between His First and Second Coming
is the difference between knowing Him through our sensuous mind and knowing Him
through our rational mind. The rational is a discrete degree above the sensuous
and therefore is a far higher and deeper way of knowing Him. The New Heavens
the Lord created in His Second Coming were created out of the interior-rational
truths contained in the Writings.
The
Doctrine of the Lord is in our natural-rational mind from our understanding of
the Letter of the Writings. The details of this Divine Doctrine in our mind are
the cognitive vessels at the natural-rational level of thinking about the Lord.
Within these natural-rational vessels, the Lord inflows with
spiritual and celestial correspondences in the interior-natural mind, which is
located within the natural-rational mind. In this way, the Divine
Doctrine in our natural-rational mind becomes animated and alive by means of
the spiritual-rational within the interior-natural (or spiritual-natural) mind.
This is the conscious level of thinking about the Lord when we are in the state
called “wise” by the Lord.
What kind
of question would we ask? What do we dare to do? Isn’t it easier just to
prostrate ourselves before the King of the universe and not pretend we have
questions and answers to figure things out about His creation? The point is that the Lord wants us to ask
Him questions—the right kind of questions.
One obvious
type of question to avoid asking is something that gives us information that
human beings give each other in the course of their interactions. A wise man
would not speak to the Lord saying, “Lord, what time is it?” or, “Lord, what
that man’s telephone number?” or, “What’s the least congested way I can get
there?” or, “Should I buy this car or that car.” These are not questions
related to our rational consciousness of the Lord. Remember that the purpose
the Lord wants us to ask Him appropriate questions is for our sake, namely that
we might gain a more interior understanding of the Lord. This is what He longs
for and for which He has created us, namely, an interior-rational consciousness
of Him. This is the way the highest angels in the Third Heaven know Him. This
is the way He makes Himself known to us in the spiritual sense within the
literal of the Writings. The Literal sentences of the Writings are mere
correspondences of Him. He enlightens us to the actuality of Him by means of
giving us perception of Himself within the literal correspondences of Him in
the Letter.
15. Talking To The Lord Is To Apply The Letter To The Letter
The Lord speaks with every man, for whatever a man wills and
thinks that is good and true, is from the Lord.
There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two
angels. The evil spirits excite his evils, and the angels inspire things that
are good and true. Every good and true thing inspired by the angels is of the
Lord; thus the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently
with one man than with another.
With those who suffer themselves to be led away by evil
spirits, the Lord speaks as if absent, or from afar, so that it can scarcely be
said that He is speaking; but with those who are being led by the Lord, He
speaks as more nearly present; which may be sufficiently evident from the fact
that no one can ever think anything good and true except from the Lord.
(...)
[3] The presence of the Lord is first possible with a man
when he loves the neighbor. The Lord is in love; and so far as a man is in
love, so far the Lord is present; and so far as the Lord is present, so far He
speaks with the man. (AC 904)
Since the Word was written the Lord speaks with men by means
of it (HH 305)
The Lord speaks with the man of the church in no other way
than through the Word, for He then enlightens man so that he may see truth, and
also gives him perception to perceive that it is so (AC 10290)
The Lord
speaks with the
Therefore
the Lord has provided that His conjunction with the human race shall be through
correspondences. In the Word the Lord speaks by pure correspondences. In the
Word of the Writings the Lord speaks in rational correspondences. This is an evolutionary
step beyond the Word of the New Testament where He speaks to the human race in
sensuous correspondences. And this was an evolutionary step beyond the Old
Testament where the Lord speaks to the human race in corporeal correspondences.
The consciousness of the human race was therefore raised by means of the level
of correspondences by which the Lord gives His Divine Truths. This is the only
source the human race for understanding rationally the science of reality. This
theistic science has now been given to the human race through the Writings. The
mystery of religion and Divinity has evaporated, has been dispelled. Mystery
was but a “spell” cast upon the race by its worst elements, those led by the
human ego elevated to the level of a god to itself.
After many generations of suffering
under the delusions of mystery, superstition, and magic, the human race has
been freed of all mystery by the rational scientific revelations in the
Writings.
The Lord
can now speak with the race through rational correspondences.
This is an
immense step forward in human evolution, incalculable in its awesome and
dramatic consequences.
Rational
correspondences constitute the content of our natural-rational mind. This is
the highest portion of the natural mind. The culmination of human achievement
in science and art is the work of the natural-rational mind. And its power is
so great that the endless future won’t be too daunting for its understanding.
This is the level of human thinking and reasoning by means of rational
correspondences of reality or the Lord.
A man can
declare himself an atheist. He points to his secular humanistic and scientific
achievements and claims them for himself: “My own intelligence has accomplished
this. My own intellectual struggle and victory over
ignorance.” He may be awarded a special prize of recognition by this or
that segment of society. And yet the reality behind this appearance is that the
man is insane when he thinks within himself (xx). He acts, thinks, and talks
sane when he is with others, but inwardly he maintains a parallel life of
insane thinking and imagined acts which he carefully hides and cannot be
detected. But when this man arrives in the afterlife, he can no longer hide
anything that he harbors within his will (xx). The insanity then bursts forth
from him and he has to be restrained in a hell with others who have a similar
insanity (xx).
How can a
man who is insane within himself be so intelligent as to win prizes of
achievement for his original work?
The answer
is that neither the achievements of the sane man within, nor the achievements
of the insane man within, are attributable to the man’s intelligence and
intellectual effort.
The Lord
maintains everything in its perfect order by means of correspondences in a long
chain of causation from the spiritual Sun to the ultimates in the natural world
(xx). Hence the expression in the Word of “From Firsts to
Lasts” (xx). The Lord leads society, leads knowledge, leads performance,
and therefore determines achievement. Only the Lord is the actual power and
wisdom behind these events in the ultimates. But the Lord grants the
appearances of self-leading for the sake of the human race, that each
individual might feel self-mastery, self-efficacy, self-confidence, self-determination—for
without these no one would feel free, and without feeling free nothing of love
can be appropriated to self, hence no cumulative life is possible, no human
life.
The
achievements of science and art are therefore the details in the biography of a
society than the Lord brings out. The moments of reality are put together and
held together by the Lord through the chain of correspondences from Firsts to
Lasts. Nothing
whatsoever in the successes and achievements of science and art can be attributed
to the self-intelligence of those involved. You can see therefore
that the man who has insane thoughts and feelings within that he hides from
without, can be one of those contributors of science or art, or business, etc. Swedenborg
has observed this insanity in spirits when they are experimentally taken from
their sane external into their insane internal (xx). Spirits cannot stay for
long in their external state because their internal state is overpowering and
dominates.
All these
things are said to show that the unregenerate mind lives in an insane state of
mind from within and it has this from hereditary infection of the spirit of
every individual born on this earth. It is similar with the
You can see
that the unregenerate New Church person and the unregenerate Old Church person
and the unregenerate atheist person have all three something in common, namely,
being in the unregenerate human state. The
Lord has made it crystal clear in the Letter of His Word: the unregenerate
person is entirely infernal regardless of background or belief system (xx).
This is the
deeper meaning of Nunc Licet, namely
that from now on there is no need for an intermediary mechanism of salvation
such as there was in the sensuous revelation of Himself in the New Testament. Now all intermediary mechanisms of religion, baptism, initiation,
worship, sacraments, prayers—which were required before, are now no longer required.
Now the Lord talks to every individual’s rational mind. Now the individual is
the actual Church in which the Lord is the priest and preacher. This is
accomplished through the Letter of the Writings. Now anyone from anywhere
anytime can pick up a copy of the Writings and save himself from eternal
damnation by following the rational revolution in its pages. Salvation is then
obtained if we compel our willing and thinking all day long to conform to this rational
paradigm. Anyone can now do this anywhere on the planet, without equipment,
facility, permission, or instruction. This is all that is required for
salvation, for eternal conjugial bliss in heaven as an angel couple.
16. Rational Consciousness Of The Lord Now Conjoins
The demystification
of religion is the greatest boon to the human race on this planet.
This one on
one conversion of an individual regardless of birth or belief is the new
hallmark or crown of the generations to come to eternity. This is the spiritual
meaning of Nunc Licet.
“Nunc” is
Latin for “now” which signifies the new state of the human race as a result of
the new rational consciousness the Lord has made available through the Word of
the Writings. “Licet” is Latin for “it is allowed” which signifies spiritually
that it is required. When the divine creates a new way for being conjoined to
the human race, this new way then becomes the required way, the only way for
conjunction. “Nunc Licet” in the internal sense therefore signifies that rational
consciousness will henceforth be the only way for being conjoined to the Divine
Human. The New Heavens that have been created at the Second Coming are made of
these new spiritual-rational truths, also called rational loves, since love is
always within truth.
Now it is
required that we enter into the mysterious of faith in a rational way. Only rational
consciousness can henceforth conjoin us to the Lord. This rational
consciousness is what enlightens the
This new
mode of conjunction of the Lord with the human race depends on the evolution of
our rational consciousness of Him. This is the purpose of the Second Coming,
namely, to establish the rational truths for this new role for the human race--the
rational consciousness of the Lord. Today, it would be injurious for our spiritual
life for the Lord to speak with us through a living voice such as was heard by
the people in the Old and New Testaments. It would be injurious of our
spiritual life for the Lord to appear in the clouds of our skies and gather the
faithful about him, catching them in the air, and taking them off to a new
place of living. By sensuous consciousness of Him the human race was advanced
to a higher plane of thinking than was possible before the Lord’s First Coming.
At that time He announced that He must come again after departing from them. To
depart from them meant that He would no longer be present to them in a sensuous
way. He said He would be present with the human race by means of the Holy
Spirit. This was the rational consciousness by which He was planning to bring
about the final step in the creation of the human race. This step was to attain
a celestial mind prepared for the highest heaven possible.
These final
heavens are the completion of the human race, its final evolution. These heavens are in the
So to ask
the Lord questions as a wise man is to apply the Letter to the Letter.
17. Rational Consciousness From Applying The Letter To The Letter
Before we
are wise, we read the Letter of the Writings in its sensuous, as a child,
addressing the Lord in His Divine Corporeal. We are not wise because one cannot
actually talk to the Divine Corporeal, but only to the Divine Rational within
the Divine Corporeal. In the innocence of childhood we do not know, and could
not believe, that the Letter of the Writings is in itself dead, and that the
literal understanding we have of it is an understanding of mere natural
correspondences of the Lord’s Divine Rational. But when we become like a wise
person, we address our focus and question to the Lord’s Divine Rational which
is within the Divine Natural of the literal meaning.
And to apply the Letter to the
Letter is to address the Lord’s Divine Rational.
This is
then how a wise man talks to the Lord and asks Him questions of the appropriate
kind. This kind of communication with the Lord constitutes conjunction with Him
to the extent that we love this way of communicating with Him. What is applying
the Letter to the Letter but to see Him rationally? The Letter of the Writings are correspondences of Him in the external rational degree
and when we inquire about these natural-rational correspondences we are
inquiring about His Divine Rational. It is His Divine Rational truths that are
laid down within the Letter of the Writings. Interior-rational truths are laid
down within external rational truths. Correspondences are called external rational
truths. When we think and reason about the Lord by means of our natural-rational
thinking, we are seeing Him as His Divine Natural correspondences appear to the
human race.
By asking
what these correspondences stand for we are asking the Lord to enlighten us
regarding His Divine Rational. We must never ask anyone else about these
correspondences regarding His Divine Natural. We must not consult our own
intelligence, nor must we consult the intelligence of a teacher, priest, or
writer. We must ask the Lord alone, and that is the Letter of the Writings, for
the Lord speaks to the
We are
conjoined to the Divine Human of the Lord when we see the Letter of the
Writings as correspondences of Him and inquire of Him what these
correspondences stand for. This inquiry process is nothing else than the
process of extracting Spiritual Doctrine form the Letter of the Writings. The Spiritual Doctrine is in our
interior-natural mind, is of spiritual and celestial origin, and is Divine.
This new
spiritual consciousness is the understanding of interior-rational truths by
means of higher correspondences of the Divine Human.
Applying
the Letter to the Letter is asking an appropriate question of the Lord. The
Lord then always answers. When the Lord answers us, we are enlightened, for the
Lord answers by giving heavenly light and when we understand by heavenly light
we are spiritually enlightened. Enlightenment is therefore nothing else than
understanding interior-rational truths by means of higher correspondences.
As
discussed elsewhere, there are lower and higher correspondences that we can be
conscious of while we are regenerating. Lower correspondences are the natural-rational
truths of the literal meaning of the Letter of the Writings. Higher
correspondences are the interior-natural truths we understand when we are
enlightened. The content of enlightenment is therefore the perception of higher
correspondences called interior-natural truths.
You might
wonder: if these interior truths are also correspondences when do we get to the
state where we see the actuality rather the higher and higher correspondences
of the actuality?
The answer
is that the idea “truth” and the idea “correspondence” are parallel ideas and
can practically be taken to mean the same thing. If we see higher
correspondences, we see higher truths. That is, if we understand the
correspondences for higher correspondences, we understand ever more
interior-truths. When we are angels we continue to grow daily
in wisdom through the Letter of the Writings (xx). How is this daily
increment achieved? By seeing the new truths received each day as
correspondences. In this way, the new truths we receive today will be seen in a
still more interior light tomorrow. This progression from interior to more
interior is achieved by means of the vehicle of correspondences. Such is the
process of enlightenment that it can increase day by day to eternity.
18. So Far As The Lord Is Present, So Far He Speaks With The Man
It is
written that “the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently
with one man than with another” (AC 904). When I read this Commandment, I
wondered how was I to acknowledge this Divine intimacy?
I could say
prayers at mealtimes and study the Writings daily, and this I was able to do.
But not so much talking to Him and actually acknowledging and being rationally
aware of His presence and teamwork as the day unfolded. I kept forgetting to do
it and hours would go by before I realized in shock that, in my conscious
awareness, I had totally ignored His Co-Presence and Co-Participation. And so I
keep my practice up and amazing to say, I’m only partially succeeding after
decades of trying. But this is the spiritual
discipline of it—to keep striving for progressively better performance in the
face of opposing forces from interior sources.
The angels
never for one instant forget the Lord’s presence before them and they see the
Lord amidst the spiritual Sun no matter which way they turn or walk (DLW 131).
This is the attitude we can strive to achieve in our life of discipline as a
regenerating
The Lord speaks
with every man, for whatever a man wills and thinks that is good and true, is
from the Lord. There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two
angels. The evil spirits excite his evils, and the angels inspire things that
are good and true. Every good and true thing inspired by the angels is of the
Lord; thus the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently
with one man than with another. With those who suffer themselves to be led away
by evil spirits, the Lord speaks as if absent, or from afar, so that it can
scarcely be said that He is speaking; but with those who are being led by the
Lord, He speaks as more nearly present; which may be sufficiently evident from
the fact that no one can ever think anything good and true except from the
Lord.
(…)
[3] The presence of the Lord is first possible with a man
when he loves the neighbor. The Lord is in love; and so far as a man is in
love, so far the Lord is present; and so far as the Lord is present, so far He
speaks with the man. Man knows no otherwise than that he thinks from himself,
whereas he has not a single idea, nor even the least bit of an idea, from
himself; but he has what is evil and false through evil spirits from hell, and
what is good and true through angels from the Lord. (AC 904)
This is an
astonishing scientific revelations about the human race, totally unsuspected by
scientists today, and if they’re told about it, totally unbelievable to them. I
call it our membership into the vertical community of spirits and angels, in
contrast to our membership in the horizontal community of counties and nations
on the planet. We are never alone in our
mind! Entire societies of thousands of people are connected to our thoughts
and affections through the one or two “subject spirits” that are directly near
our spirit-body (xx).