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grounded in a mystical, interfaith-Christianity inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg
You are the Space that God Shines Through
The once-famous scientist turned mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, wrote that during his explorations of the spiritual realm evil spirits could not attack and control him only because they found him to be nothing. Why is there such a trend with sages, this tendency to report on their “nothingness”? And how might it speak to us in this moment? Perhaps, inviting us to look past all the “somethings” we tend to identify with (in thought, body, and form), and returning our attention back to the very “empty” peaceful space that we are always looking from.
Let Go of Resentment to Find Peaceful Inner Space
Anger can sometimes be a natural, healthy reaction to something, just as fear, happiness, and other feelings can be. But when the tie of anger binds our hearts (often, without us knowing it), by our returning to it again and again – stoking the flames and identifying with the feeling toward any one situation, we don’t allow ourselves the peace of our inner transcend-essence and the natural joy that can arise no matter the circumstances. Like with any feeling or thought, it is our identification with them that keeps us circling out of presence and peace into rumination and anxiety. Instead, using the ancient practice of Self-realization, may we let go of our hold on our mind’s unhelpful habits, and find the peace of our inner stability and the natural spaciousness of our loving hearts.
You are the Light of the World
“You are the light of the world.” These empowering words were spoken by Christ, not as an elitist view of his “Christian” followers, but as a description of the very nature of each of our spirits – especially when we allow ourselves to shine. Like the Buddha, Krishna, and the voices of God across the ages, Christ seemed to have made it his mission to point to the Great I Am inherent within each of us, our rootedness in Divinity and its angelic light. He tasked us, as many sages do, to turn to this light within, noticing continuously that it is from this very light that we see our issues, attachments, conditioning, and both the good and the bad times. From there, we can let our light shine in all its cascading beauty, as it naturally should.
Is “Father God” a Distant God?
On Father’s Day we celebrate our fathers and fatherly figures, celebrating how Divinity shines through the diverse expressions of masculinity and fatherhood, just as it shines through femininity and motherhood in infinite ways as the source of these qualities (as well as gender-neutral expressions). Indeed, the Christian Bible often describes how Christ used “Father” to denote God when speaking with his family and friends two millennia back, although it is hard to say if these ancient Jewish people used the term more broadly at the time. Christ seemed to be expressing how close we are to God by using this important familial distinction, emphasizing that we are all children of God, and expressing that God is the seed of all life – particularly, the source of “the light of the world” and love itself. And, like a good father, this day in particular rejoices in the empowerment of freedom and the light of love in many diverse ways, as we also celebrate Juneteenth and New Church Day today.
Grow Up, Into Childhood
Often, we lose the thread of childhood bliss, as though the pressures of adulthood were more important than remaining in contact with the peace and childlike play and joy we had as a kid. But who could blame us for thinking this way, when it is often as a child that we are encouraged to iron out our natural, playful self – that is if it even survives the early traumas in our life – to better meet the demands of society? Funny thing though, the childlike state of awareness itself can never be ironed out or killed, just seemingly layered over with “personality,” “responsibility,” as well as other limited, defensive constructs that keep us circling in anxiety, fear, and appropriated id-entity. We are called to reawaken to our childlike state of being, of life, love, joy, and presence, by turning to something very simple and important, but beyond words or works, that we intuitively know the moment we’re born: “I am,” not “I am this and that, name, thought, and form.”
Exploring Revelation: Dispel Your Dragon to Find Your SELF
There’s a reason that the book of Revelation is often associated with a mushroom or hallucinogenic trip, because the images found throughout Revelation seem to come straight out of one. What’s further interesting about the book written by John when he was “in the spirit,” is that the images of the book of Revelation are all references to other moments of the Bible but blended into a psychedelic mixture. Our reading from Revelation 12 today is one of the most iconic images from that trippy book, describing a woman clothed in the sun who is set upon by a seven-headed red dragon. And like many images in Revelation, although it resembles a crazy dream, the parable that it expresses invites us to overcome our personal dominating, distracted, destructive demons to allow our creative, heavenly Self and God to shine through.
Exploring Revelation: The Two Witnesses
Imagine if the biblical book of Revelation were a true, literal prophecy. It would mean that one day we as a species will battle a seven-headed dragon, as well as locusts with human faces, and will also be confronted by two “witnesses” who prophesy to the entire earth, killing anyone who tries to harm them with fire from their mouths. Not only that, but once these witnesses are martyred, the entire earth rejoices over their deaths, to eventually be stunned to silence when the witnesses are resurrected and then fly into heaven in a cloud. But what if these messages were not meant to be taken literally, but were symbolic parables connecting to a rich tradition of symbolism found throughout the entire Hebrew scriptures – from the seven days of creation to the final holy city descending from the sky? What if they, like the seven days of creation, were meant to invite us to listen to our higher internal witnesses, the love and truth at our core, and allow all our delusions to be stunned into silence and to fall away for the heavenly light of resurrection, peace, and renewal (no matter our religion)?
Exploring the Spiritual Depths of Revelation
It says that John was “in the spirit” when he had the visions described in the quite trippy book of Revelation, and the images described there (often about the future, as well as a new heaven and a new earth) bring to mind hallucinogens as well as the visions of my favourite mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. For many, especially for many Christians, the book of Revelation has been a tough nut to crack, and many of its most famous elements are misconstrued due to things like Left Behind and other narratives that play up added stories about the antichrist. The book has been interpreted on many levels (even by my grandfather, who wrote a book on how it’s a hidden critique of the Romans!), but these interpretations often lack a good throughline or cohesiveness with the rest of scripture, seemingly missing the opportunity to tie the clearly metaphorical Revelation with the metaphors found throughout scripture. However, there’s one interpretation that does just that, in fact, this interpretation (written in 1766 by Emanuel Swedenborg) is the very same book that opened my eyes to the depth of scripture and its interconnectedness with the heart of other traditions. Moreover, he describes how, just like Jesus’ metaphorical parables, the entirety of Revelation is an allegory for human transformation, inviting us to allow a new heaven and a new earth to descend into our very lives in this very moment.
The Treasure of Our Mothers
Our mothers treasure our lives in their hearts, often there as a listening ear and a loving, wise presence. Even if we can’t relate to that statement, the motherly love and light of the universe is with us whether we know it or not, not part and parcel with our very own consciousness and inner light. The motherly ones in our lives often feel like a warm hug with their caring and spacious personalities, and often this is because they truly do treasure us – we have much to learn from that kind of life and that kind of love.
Turn to the Infinite Light of Love to Find Resurrection Today
When I think of Easter I think of celebrations of life with vibrant colors and the diversity of community expressions of joy – and even for those of us not Christian or perhaps still wondering about religion, spirituality, and God, I think there’s a profound message of awakening and resurrection in the Easter story. Christ himself hadn’t set out to “start a religion” but to return us to our natural state in unity with love and God (known by many names and many stories), inviting us to a type of resurrection of spirit, society, and life. Even as we count Christ dead in modern culture due to the ignorance and horrors sometimes offered by those who take his name, I think we’ll find he’s not down for the count.
The Joy of Uncovering the Divinity Within
Our spiritual teachers have a very important job to do and when they are fruitful in helping us awaken to Spirit and Love we can’t help but rejoice, this is because intrinsic to the Spirit of God (known by many names) is joy. We recently saw a joyful and historic teaching moment when one of the world’s foremost spiritual teachers, Pope Francis, along with various Catholic bishops met with indigenous people from Canada over the course of a few days. During this visit, the indigenous peoples shared their stories and the lasting impact that residential schools and other colonizing efforts have had on them and their friends and family. The trip ended in a heartfelt speech and apology from the Pope, affirming the indigenous peoples’ experiences and expressing how much he’s learned in those few days, vowing to be a partner in decolonization and with indigenous peoples. In this example, we see that even the Pope has a learning journey and that often our best teachers are the most overlooked, as the humble and oppressed have some of the most potent messages to learn. The very light of our own being is similarly too overlooked and disregarded, but hopefully, we can change that just as the Pope is seeking to continue to listen and learn.
Humanity’s Natural State? Children of God (Known by Many Names)
It says in the scriptures that God gives light to everyone and is the true light. This clearly metaphorical phrase, although perhaps also literal, seems to point to a number of things that we call light: truth, wisdom, understanding, spiritual insight, perception – which all come back to the most fundamental light of all, the light of consciousness itself, without which none of these could be perceived. Despite being so prominent in the Christian scriptures, delving into this line of thinking and further inquiry seems to often take a backburner to more surface understandings of Christ, which can keep God at a distance from us while also limiting our understanding of the shining unity at the core of most religions. Even more pluralistic approaches can miss this important point, that God is the pure light of consciousness itself – at no distance from our seat of perception – and that coming to better know this Alpha and Omega of our lives can awaken us to all to our birthrights as children of God, not stepchildren.
Swedenborg’s Secret to Awakening to the I Am
The 18th-century sage, Emanuel Swedenborg, has greatly influenced many impactful, peerless thinkers and influential progressive radicals (from Immanuel Kant and Helen Keller to Emerson, Blake, and William James), but he himself is little known to modern history. And although there are countless biographies of the ground-breaking scientist-turned-mystic, there is one important aspect of his history that I think could use a little more exploration and emulation, his spiritual awakening. His deep meditative approach to his quest for the seat of the soul resembles the types of inner inquiry that many ancient and modern sages invite in order to awaken from spiritual slumber, into what a Swedenborgian may coin “angelic flow,” or “Christ-consciousness,” or just plainly, Buddha.
War Springs from Ignorance
War is on our doorsteps more often than we admit, as it’s a small world and it is always at war. But a type of war often churns in our minds as well, springing from a similar cause: ignorance of our true nature and our oneness as the Self. Vladimir Putin’s atrocious war on Ukraine scrapes the barrel of degradation and even toys with catastrophic nuclear destruction, and yet shares in the root cause of a false idea of self – one that seeks to defend from, attack, control, relish in, judge, fear, and subjugate all things that touch its fancy, as this is the nature of this inverted wisdom itself. Yes, our minds jump from one ignorant type of modality to the next as there is a time for all these things when we stay centered in non-centeredness. Often these things feel out of our control – types of impulsive, habitual drives leading some of us even to murder – and many of these traits can be written off as normal as it is the common modality of our unawakened minds. But, in a way, this offers a solution in and of itself: all of our issues spring from our embodied ignorance of our shared Divinity, and can be tackled at their core with God’s sword of peace and truth (no matter our tradition), if we employ it.
The Purpose of Prayer
Today we pray for Ukraine, hopefully, no matter our tradition and country. We pray for peace, healing, safety, wholeness, sanity, an end to wars and needless violence (in Ukraine and otherwise). But prayer sometimes leaves us asking, what is it fundamentally? Is it an inner monologue toward God, an effort to manifest something? Of course, prayer is often what we make it. Scripturally, prayer tends to be described as an effort to unburden our issues before God and find connection with Divinity, as well as seeking reconciliation, healing, unity, resolution, and peace – even for our enemies. In many religions, there’s a shared approach to prayer that includes both personal beseeching as well as various other types of meditative approaches that may include mantras (like with the Lord’s Prayer or many Hindu prayers) or praise and thanksgiving. Whether it’s beseeching, praise, mantric, or more silent prayers, these are designed to help us let go of our issues and our mind’s wanderings and open toward the transcendent light of love, joy, and peace within, helping us turn into conduits of peace, especially when we allow all four meditative, prayerful modes transform our minds.
Come Into Harmony
Coming into harmony with the universe and our Higher Power sounds aspirational and nice, but I think many people believe it’s beyond human capability or, at least, their own. Sometimes when we assess our mental or spiritual situation it may seem disheartening due to our lingering issues, or we may feel that there’s too much chaos going on to ever tap into a true beingness at harmony with the play of the natural realm and God. The trick, though, seems to be realizing that the part of us that says it’s impossible and feels at odds with things isn’t us and really isn’t even a friend, it’s a voice that we feel is intimate but it’s also an illusory manifestation of us not understanding our true selves. Instead, we must turn to Beingness itself within to learn our true nature and give up our attachment to listening to that false teacher we’ve come to call “me.”
Find Trust in the Light of Awareness
When you tell someone you trust them it usually means that you don’t believe they are lying to you or hiding anything of importance to you. However, people can change or surprise us, and so we can’t know that the person we trust will always be trustworthy to us, and so the statement “I trust you” comes with a natural caveat: “for now.” Even those whom we trust implicitly may drop off the face of the earth or can’t always be there when we need them available. But there’s a force in the universe that can always be trusted, even trusted with our full attention as well as our betrayals, and which when trusted will enable a life of peace and natural flow beyond our current understanding, at least, according to Christ, the Buddhas, Krishna, and others.
Turn Inward & Find Your True Self
Cause and effect often seems like an easy concept, aim the bat and hit the ball, the ball flies away – however, this is only because we summarize. If we were to truly start to describe the causes of that effect the explanation may never end: you would have to describe the history of the bat, where does the wood come from, how was it formed and sanded? What about the ball - why didn’t the ball fly into space and how does gravity work? What about the person hitting the bat, what are all the histories and causes that allowed a being made of star-stuff to stand there, breathing air, hitting a ball with a bat using hands and arms? Indeed, a true account of the causes of any one simple thing we do would have to be an account of much of the history of the universe itself, and if it needed to include a description of human motives, we’d have to further acknowledge that we hardly know the roots of our own motives at times, let alone someone else’s. That said, awakened beings throughout history (and some not so awakened) have attributed their actions to God, saying that the Divine is the root and cause of everything they do and say. How are we to understand this in such an infinitely complex world of cause and effect, and could it inform our own living?
Be Baptized in the Spirit Known by Many Names
As we start to awaken to the Divinity at our core, it’s typical that we begin by realizing there are greater truths out there than we may have thought, and come to centre on a specific set of spiritual truths that are helping to wake us up, deepen our walk, and that have spoken to us in a way that may make more sense to us than others we’ve heard about. According to the 18th-century scientist-turned-sage, Emanuel Swedenborg, these spiritual-natural truths are represented by John the Baptist in the well-known biblical story – calling us to let go of our sins and be baptized, promising that there are greater truths, a greater connection to Jesus, to come. Indeed, Swedenborg believed that all the Biblical stories (or any truly scriptural story, for that matter) represent more universal things than we often give them credit for and are not limited to describing one religious walk, he supported these claims by exploring all the ways our scriptures keep saying just that!
You Are the Peaceful Perceiver of Your Mind
We all have so many preconceived notions about what religion or spirituality is, that at times our heads get in the way of us realizing the core of these teachings – which ultimately aren’t meant for heady pondering, but for a felt realization in our hearts as we open ourselves to the inexpressible light of peace, love, and wisdom already at the root of our consciousness. God, known by many names, seems to repeatedly focus on the importance of us centering on the open, loving heart at the core of our being, as well as on our letting go of the ruminating attachments that keep us distracted from that. God(dess) also warns us not to take these peaceful teachings and, in turn, use them to badger or dominate ourselves or others – saying as Christ, “The Sabbath was made for the good of human beings; they were not made for the Sabbath.”