mythology

Guardian angel – Do I have one?

Spiritual Questions & Answers

Discovering inner health and transformation

guardian angelIt would be nice to believe there is someone like a guardian angel watching over you protecting  against harm. But the sceptic will soon say this is just wishful thinking. Fairy godmothers are for children’s fairy tales like Cinderella and not for educated adults.

Warnings claimed to come from a guardian angel

On the other hand it is claimed there is support for the notion of guardian angels in the experiences of individuals.  There are those who claim their lives have been protected by what they say is the intervention of a dead loved one.

Warnings have been sensed that turn out to have prevented such things as house fires, industrial injuries, undiagnosed health problems, motor vehicle accidents, and harm from criminals.

Two cases involving a guardian angel?

For example Catherine was asleep at her home in New Brunswick when she heard someone call her name. It was her great grand-mother who had been dead for almost a quarter of a century. Catherine woke up and looked out of the window where she could see the barn was on fire. As this was adjoined to her home, by the time she and her sons had got out of the house that too was up in flames.

Jan’s example of a guardian angel

Another example is that of Jan who lives in Arizona. Her son had become very ill and she had him under the doctor’s care. In the middle of the night she suddenly found her husband Ronny standing at the foot of the bed.

She was told “Take Wally to a dentist or he will die”. She surmised Ronny must have communicated via telepathy for he had lost his life eight years previously in a car crash. The next day the dentist examined her son and said he had a systemic infection because some of his teeth had been injured in an accident. The boy recovered with the proper treatment.

History of the concept of guardian angel

Of course none of this proves we are being watched over from a hidden realm. Perhaps it was simply the individual’s subconscious awareness at work. But the more stories you hear the less sceptical you feel.

The belief that God sends a spirit to watch every individual was common in Ancient Greece and was alluded to by Plato in Phaedo.

And the Bible reflects the belief that angels can be guardians for people:

“He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (Psalm 91:11)

There seems to be a bit of an angel craze going on these days and the idea of an angel might put you off; especially if you understandably reject a mythical notion of angels as androgynous beings with wings.

Swedenborg’s perspective on the concept of a guardian angel

Emanuel Swedenborg provides an alternative description of angels: they are said to have no wings but are in a human male or female form. We are told that all angels are now spirits in a heavenly realm — walking, talking, reading, writing, and holding down jobs — although they were all were once born and died in our material plane of life.

And he says one of these jobs can consist of being with a person; exercising constant vigilance to protect your spiritual welfare and leading you towards a higher happiness if you wish to follow.

Furthermore Swedenborg says they do not impose themselves on you but help you gently not going against your will and principles. According to this view they act as a representative of the heavenly state of life stirring up your feelings of kindness to others and your interest in searching for the truth as well as illuminating your insights.

In other words the claim is they are your guardian angels in so far as they protect you from what is bad and false coming from harmful spirits.

Copyright 2012 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of  Heart, Head & Hands  Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems

http://www.spiritualquestions.org.uk/

Posted on16th February 2012Authoreditor18CategoriesConsciousness, Spirit awarenessTags,, , , , ,, , , , , ,, , Leave a comment

Do spiritual symbols mean anything today?

One example of a spiritual symbol is the image of a tree of life.  This is a universal symbol – appearing in ancient wisdom. We find it across cultures, religions and mythology. It turns up as the Yggdrasil (the world tree) of Norse religion, as part of the Jewish Kabbalah and as an Armenian religious symbol, to mention just a few examples.

What does the Tree of life mean to us now?

The Tree of Life appears in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and also the last – the book of Revelation. At the beginning and the end. It’s almost as if it’s the framework into which the rest of the Bible fits.

We find the Tree of Life at the beginning at the centre of a garden and at the end at the centre of a holy city that descends from heaven. Swedenborg’s interpretation of this spiritual symbolism helps me relate to this; it reflects my changing relationship with the Divine; it is different at the beginning from what it becomes or grows into at the end.

For me, the bits in-between are a depiction of my spiritual wanderings and challenges to reach a spiritual maturity; a deeper connection with my experience of what is spiritual and a living relationship with the Divine Creator.

What is the beginning of our life like?

God has no beginning but we as his finite creations definitely do begin at a point in time. Our beginnings start in an experience of unity and connection, in the oneness of the Divine, yet it is necessary for us to develop into conscious independent individuals in order to choose to return to the forgotten, lost unity and connection of the One Life that creates, loves and sustains us.

This wonderful unity and connection with all that is living, I see in the beautiful Garden of Eden. This undoubtedly idyllic and innocent picture relates to what we experience in the infancy of our spiritual life. It is in the centre of this Garden where we discover or experience the Tree of Life.

Trees are powerful symbols of enduring, substantial mental and spiritual attitudes.
For me, the Tree of Life symbolises the perception that we are all united and connected by the Creative Love that gives life to all. To have this at the centre of one’s life is to perceive that the One Life can be experienced in many facets in other people and the world of nature; the One in the many.

What is the journey through life like?

Another tree appears in the Garden – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and this is very attractive to us. What sort of perception do we gain from eating its fruit? Its presence gives us a choice; do we decide what is good and true for ourselves or depend purely on it being revealed to us by God? We have minds of our own; surely we can decide for ourselves what we should do?

It is almost inevitable that we turn away from dependence on the Divine to choose and develop our own sense of identity, our ego. Life is then identified as being in the separate individual, myself, because that is what I experience. Therefore I no longer wish to be a part of the Garden of Eden experience which is about being receptive and dependant on Divine revelation.

So I embark on a long spiritual journey passing thought many trials and challenges in order to learn about myself and be self-sufficient.

A part of this quest for enlightenment is expressed in the following quotation from an article in Chrysalis magazine entitled Odyssey by David Garrett:

The loneliness of “coming to oneself” is acutely painful. At some point, in a mysterious way, the seeker dares to consider the possibility that the loneliness and the failure are because the quest was attempted entirely by his own efforts….For the first time, the seeker becomes experientially aware of an inner source that is deeper and more resourceful than the ego. As he/she turns to it, the feeling of being stuck recedes. The cold and barren world tingles and warms. The inner earth sprouts green shoots. Each time she/he consciously relates to the inner wise one, life quickens. When he /she ignores it, vitality ceases.

What is the end of my life like?

There is the possibility of discovering afresh the ‘tree of life’ perception in one’s spiritual maturity – but not in a garden. Now it is at the centre of a city. The Holy City at the end of the Bible is always descending from heaven, therefore I am once again open to Divine revelation coming from a God-given rationality, structured yet full of vitality and dynamism. This is an integration of all that has previously taken place in my experience and comes from heart, mind and service to others.

At the end of the journey one can re-discover what had been lost, and make one’s way back to the beginning to the Tree of Life – but it is different yet paradoxically the same. Perhaps what is to be discovered is always the same, eternal and enduring, but the change has taken place in oneself. This reminds me of the T.S. Eliot poem, Four Quartets, as follows;

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of the earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well….

Copyright 2010 Helen Brown

Is Scripture a Fairy Tale?

 

Is the Bible the inspired Word of God? Or, are they the stories of simple people, who lacking scientific sophistication, had to rely on their imagination to make sense of the cosmos. Look at the biblical passage below:

Babel, the ornament of kingdoms, shall be as God’s overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah; the tziim shall lie there, their houses shall be filled with ochim, and the daughters of the owl shall dwell there, and the satyrs shall dance there; the ijim shall answer in her palaces, and the dragons in the palaces of her delight. (Isa. 13:19, 21, 22)

The Holy World contains stories of talking serpents, fearful giants, satyrs, and great dragons. These are also the sorts of creatures that one expects to find in mythologies and fairy tales. To say that something is a myth or fairy tale is to imply that it has no ontological status—that it isn’t something real. Why then would an all-foreseeing and infinitely wise Creator make use of such fantastic creatures knowing full well that these stories would eventually come under the scrutiny of the post modern world?

Can entities have real existence independent of what the physical world shows us? Can creatures exist within the laws of higher orders of reality? And, could these creatures be relevant to our everyday lives by having a real causal influence on what happens in the world?

We often describe Hitler as a monster. Yet, physically, he fully possessed the same human features as everyone else. So where does the hideous disfigurement reside?

When we see someone perform self-less acts to help others why do we say to that person “How big of you to do that?” And, why do we often refer to a selfish individual as a “small person?” What kind of non-physical metrics are we instinctively applying to the stature of people that we deal with everyday?

Why are the people we encounter in life seen on the one hand as being sharks, snakes in the grass, parasites, or wolves in sheep’s clothing, and on the other hand, seen as being innocent as doves or gentle as lambs? Isn’t it obvious that these images help to portray qualities that we are detecting from people’s true inner realities?

Therefore, are we abandoning modern scientific positivism and degenerating into superstitious goat-herders by such imaginative forays? If we can make use of this symbolic representation to express a more real picture of things operating underneath the surface, why can’t God?

In terms of salvation, isn’t it this inner reality of the human heart and mind that religion seeks to address and offer its guidance?

Posted on February 2, 2008by

http://www.provinggod.com

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