“Some one has said that we should read the Bible only from one standpoint, to know the Lord Jesus Christ; and if one studies the Bible for any other purpose he will not understand it. The Bible begins with Jesus ( Gen. 3:15), and ends with Him. In fact it is a revelation of Jesus Christ. The revelation of “God in Christ” – II Cor. 5:19. Christ is not only the central fig
ure of the Bible, but the “First and the Last.” – Rev. 1:8; 22:13, Isa. 41:4; 43:10.
Day: February 28, 2017
Healing of the spirit – How?
Some people wonder whether human beings can change. Another way of putting it is to ask whether they can find spiritual healing. I would suggest that the answer depends on our view of human nature. We all know that there are differences in the temperaments of children. Some cry more easily and some sleep less soundly. As the child grows older individual differences in personality begin to emerge, like extraversion, and nervousness.
Personal Orientation and Need for Healing
We all seem to have a different mix of good and bad human inclinations. The good tendencies include having to some degree a sense of humour, friendliness and helpfulness. The bad ones seem to revolve around self-orientation.
We each have physical senses that can perceive the things around us. And so we have learned to become aware of being a separate, self-contained individual with a mind and body of our own apart from other people and other things. When we are only aware of the world around us from the point of view of self, then we are susceptible to developing self-concern and even becoming self-centred and selfish.
Self-orientation taken to extreme means we experience difficulty not only in a sense of isolation when relationships don’t work out but in other ways; self-consciousness becomes painful shyness, self-concern becomes neurotic worry, and self-indulgence becomes greed. That’s when we need spiritual healing.
Inflow of Inner Healing
I believe there is a spirit of inner life unconsciously flowing into our hearts and minds. It has a positive and a negative side. The positive side can be seen in illuminating ideas we sometimes have, the creative energies that can take hold of us, and the sense of wonder that sometimes inspires our respect and admiration for the beauty in nature and in other people around us. These are heavenly states.
The negative aspects of this inflow however are the irritable and anxious moods that sometimes can come out of the blue, the sense of boredom and apathy that can take hold if we are not careful, and the impulses to say and do what is bad.
We can experience hellish states of mind when self-orientation causes us to be engulfed by such a negative inflow. Then anger, depression and fear may have taken hold over us for a while.
Balance of Healing and Negative Inflow
The heavenly and hellish inflow is in balance and so we are free to tip our lives in either way. We are responsible for tuning into the good or the bad once we recognise their different qualities.
The academic discipline of psychology has demonstrated many factors that affect individual behaviour. Our actions may be constrained and our attitudes affected by many causes, however we feel we make our own personal choices and there seems deep down within the human spirit to be an inner freedom to think and feel as it wishes.
For example every adult mind has to some extent good sense amounting to a higher rational understanding. One is free to exercise this in preferring the general teachings of religion or the deterministic view of science, in primarily looking towards the needs of oneself or towards the needs of others, and in trying to act on what one wants or on what one sees as right. We are free to turn towards the positive or negative spiritual inflow that surrounds us every moment of our lives. The positive inflow is one of spiritual healing and the negative one of spiritual disease.
Healing of Character
Children mature as they grow older and become aware of the family values and cultural norms to which they are exposed. However, the process of spiritual maturing continues in varying degrees in different people beyond adolescence. As we exercise our inner freedom in adult life, the desires that rule our lives become more consistent and we begin to form for ourselves our own character.
Some people grow in good sense and caring attitudes whereas others remain self-centred. Some gain a sense of fulfilment from leading a useful life contributing to the welfare of their family and community whereas others lack inspiration to live a life that goes beyond the values of materialism with its priority given to seeking bodily comforts and social status.
Practical Healing Suggestions
I believe we all have a potential for experiencing spiritual healing and thus the inner life of contentment, joy and peace that comes from turning away from self-orientation. My practical suggestions for achieving this are to:-
- Find out more about ourselves and what religion teaches about the best way to lead our lives,
- Seek an enlightened understanding about such matters,
- Acknowledge the need for personal change,
- Resolve to change our personal priorities,
- Make the effort to resist old ways
- Learn to trust in the divine power to create a new heart and mind within our lives.
Copyright 2013 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
Personal change — Is it too late?
It’s never too late to make a personal change – or so my mother used to tell me. But sometimes I feel I’ve missed the boat. Others have said the same thing. The more we indulge our weaknesses, the more our flaws seem to take hold; and the more we avoid those difficult challenges, the more dissatisfied with ourselves we become – and wonder whether ingrained personal habits can ever be broken.
Stopped making personal change?
Some of us may realise that we’ve stopped moving along our path in life. Stopped making any personal change. For the warning signs have appeared – a medical complaint caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, a developing coldness due to the neglect of one’s close friends, a loss of interest and energy for something we should be doing that we know deep down is important.
Not moving along life’s path is literally true for me. In my case it is a canal tow-path near my home which I should be using for much needed daily exercise. They say, ‘A healthy mind needs a healthy body’, but mine is getting to be no longer ‘fit for purpose,’ sadly through a long time of overindulgence.
Reasons for no personal change
Sometimes I think I’m just naturally lazy and so have been quick to forget about the problem. And when I’m shaken out of my complacency, I only make an effort to make personal change in stops and starts.
Perhaps that’s the trouble with our failings – we don’t like to dwell on them. Our mistakes sometimes need to have catastrophic consequences before we wake up and take notice; before we see the need for something important to make a personal change about.
We may want to find peace and contentment. The trouble is such feelings are denied us as long as we turn our backs on what we see to be the truth; the truth that we can cause harm to our body by neglecting it, or the truth that we can do damage to our most valued relationships by not nourishing them.
Need for personal change
Going out for a daily jog – or in my case a regular brisk walk every day, perhaps in cold wind and rain – may not seem like a deep issue; but something on the surface of life like this can be a spiritual matter if we do not follow our inner conscience. If I do not take control of my body what chance have I of taking control of my life? I do make the effort but somehow I seem to need an extra lift to keep at it. To make that personal change I really want.
Unaided personal change
To be honest, and I know it sounds pathetic, but after many years I’m beginning to wonder if I can win this battle unaided – not to mention a few other personal trials I’m facing. Many alcoholics accept that the fight to beat the demon drink cannot be won through one’s own efforts alone and have surrendered to what Alcoholics Anonymous term a ‘higher power.’ When the going gets really tough and we realise we are just not strong enough to make that very important personal change and find a way through, then perhaps we likewise can humbly ask for help from the spiritual force in which we believe.
As the Christian mystic HT Hamblin pointed out, our seeking must ultimately be not through mental effort, but through acceptance and surrender, ‘turning the heart to the Christos’. This means accepting the ‘disciplines and chastenings’ of life, working through them and learning as much as possible from them and then leaving the outcome entirely in Divine Hands.
In other words, seeking a way through our troubles and failings is usually something to do with moving away from self – from self-indulgence and self-importance. We may all be complacent about some of this but how much happier we could become by both facing the need to change and asking for help – however long it takes in relation to different aspects of our character.
I’m focusing on just one issue at the moment, but I’m becoming aware of other ways my life needs turning round. I don’t know if all my troubles will be cured but I believe I can only do what I can do and leave the rest to God’s Power.
Copyright 2013 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
First published as Facing the Cold Wind and Rain in New Vision Magazine March/April 2010.
Mary and Martha – Are they in you?
Ever noticed someone in your team not pulling their weight, whilst you are working hard to get the job done properly? I remember one day when my side of the family were visiting us. I was expecting my wife to do all the practical things that needed doing whilst I just sat chatting. I even asked her to get the coffee for us. No wonder she got a bit shirty with me. I suppose I was just being a brother and son rather than doing the practical jobs of a husband and joint host. I’d got the balance wrong. This reminds me of the story of Mary and Martha.
The story of Mary and Martha
The biblical story of Mary and Martha comes to mind. Two sisters have Jesus Christ as a visitor to their home. With which of these two ladies do you sympathise? Martha who was concerned to prepare a meal and make their guest comfortable or Mary who wanted to sit at the spiritual teacher’s feet listening to him. No wonder Martha complained to him about Mary leaving her to do the work by herself.
Mary and Martha in us
If we don’t do the laundry or other jobs around the house then we just get smelly clothes, cobwebs, long grass and weeds. It’s all very well for people to say you need to stop and take a break or else your batteries will become drained. At the end of the day, the dishes still need to be done and the car maintained. They won’t do themselves.
Regarding Mary and Martha, people have often felt that Jesus was favouring one and being unfair to the other who was doing all the work. Many of us faced with the demands of family and work just have to get on with it. Yet Martha seems to have been brought down a peg for doing just that. What could he have meant when he said that Mary had chosen better? How can it be right to neglect what needs doing?
“Perhaps Martha isn’t being brought down or put in her place, so much as being given the opportunity to sit down and get some space.”(Sarah Buteux, Swedenborgian minister)
I would suggest that there is a Mary and Martha in each one of us. Having a Martha active in your psyche is positive when you lead an active useful life. But negative when prioritising the outward side of life and as a consequence being upset by worldly cares – getting hot and bothered when over-concerned with doing things well or not missing out on some detail.
Mary and Martha and a vision
Emanuel Swedenborg reported having a vision of a large room. with furniture there and a long hallway leading from it. Through this he said he saw a woman, small in stature and ugly, who was going out. When he asked what the vision meant he claims he was told (presumably by angels) that it was about those individuals who when alive in the world had over-zealously devoted themselves to household chores. Apparently after death they occupy dwellings like this in the spirit realm and remain engrossed in their domestic concerns neglecting ‘like Martha’, the spiritual dimension.
When you are taken up with what you are doing, how often do you find yourself trying so hard to please and giving everything you have, to see that the work gets done? But then finding at the end of the day that the joy you should have felt, the peace you should have earned, and the rest you so deserved, is just out of reach. Rather than fulfilment, you feel only stress and frustration. Perhaps that is the time to remember the Mary and Martha story.
Mary and Martha and the need for being still
For many people into day’s Western culture, it is common to become so absorbed in the work of the world, that one’s inner contemplative self is lost. I would say that to connect with this deeper awareness we need times of letting go of all “doing,” — just allowing ourselves to “be.” In his book The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle writes of an incessant mental noise in our ordinary consciousness which prevents awareness of an inner realm of stillness.
Many people recognise the need to create time for a meaningful connection with the deeper side of being, reflecting on the values and things we hold sacred, and being mindful of the situations we are encountering. In this way the pace of life can reduce.
Mary and Martha and spiritual practices
There are all sorts of ways of creating time for being in touch with the deeper side. The regular habit of taking the dog for a walk along a country path is conducive to this. It’s hard to be distracted by worldly cares when one is playing the piano or singing a song. Some people reserve a few minutes quiet time for reflection perhaps over a morning coffee before the working day starts or sitting on a bench in the park or whilst waiting for the train to commute to the office.
The skill of stilling the mind can be acquired through regular meditation. One type of meditation is focusing on one neutral thing and neglecting to attend to all other sensations and thoughts that enter consciousness. This is said to clear the mind and opens it to a higher state. Another type of meditation is allowing one’s awareness to be led by a series of visualised images often of a sacred nature.
In these ways we disengage from the worldly worries that are associated with what we do to earn a living, maintain a home, support a family etc.
Religious perspective on Mary and Martha
Every religion teaches the need to slow down in order to connect with the self, with others and with a higher force. The Bible says
“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)
In the Mary and Martha narrative, Mary was seeing things from a higher perspective than that of the world. Does she not represent a point of view that accepts there is a divine hand supporting all our good actions and intentions? An awareness, I would suggest, that experiences hope and encouragement no matter what challenges and adversity one has to face. To my mind this is a state of spiritual being that never shirks the work to be done. It reminds me that the world around me, with its requirements, is not a burden I have to bear but a gift to help me grow inwardly.
I believe that the story of Mary and Martha prompts us to create moments when we can reflect on our spiritual understanding of the ‘Divine within’ rather than being caught up by the demands of the world. In so doing we are said to find the tranquillity of ‘peace that passes all understanding’
Copyright 2016 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author Heart, Head & Hand
Posted on14th February 2016CategoriesLatest post, Spiritual awareness, Spiritual healing
Im ashamed to die until i have won some victory for humanity. 