Easy to feel left out

In religion, we can often feel left out. We can easily feel left out when one teaching is stressed more often than another. Marriage is one such example. Single, divorced, widowed, or separated can easily feel that big chunks of the Lord’s Word and teachings are irrelevant to them. We can feel left out or feel less than others because we don’t meet certain expectations of relationships. However, reading what the Lord teaches with attention to what He is describing and leading us to, which is the birth of new spiritual states within us, we find that everything in the Lord’s Word applies to each of us.

Heavenly Marriage

As I prepared for a marriage weekend recently, I was researching the topic of “Heavenly Marriage”. I was repeatedly reminded of the deeper inner meaning, or internal sense, of what the Lord’s Word is trying to teach. The simple but powerful teaching is that the spiritual journey or rebirth within each person is the Heavenly Marriage. This is something no one can be left out of. In its simplest form, we don’t need a partner to be reborn. And within each person is the possibility of a heavenly marriage, the marriage of us with the Lord.

We see things anew when we can shift our focus away from worldly ideas and onto inner spiritual principles.

Within each person is a marriage of “male and female”. When you read terms like male and female, your mind is probably pulled into thinking in earthly terms of gender and the different sexes. However, allow your mind to leave behind what is earthly and instead think about the inner realities of the spiritual states within. Then when we search for the Lord’s Word’s inner meaning, we see the following marriage within.

“The understanding in the spiritual man they therefore called male, and the will female, and when these acted as a one they called it a marriage.”

Secrets of heaven #54 – emanuel swedenborg

When thinking about marriage more deeply, we recognise that the Heavenly Marriage exists within the life of our two minds, inner and outer. When they work together as one mind, there is a heavenly marriage.

Read for a deeper meaning.

I recently started reading the book Secrets of Heaven, or Arcana Coelestia by Emanuel Swedenborg, with my Logopraxis Life Groups. Reading the deeper meaning of Adam being put to sleep and Eve being created from his rib was fascinating. I found myself constantly fighting against my mind’s tendency to bring the story’s focus into the earthly physical world and kept on losing sight of the deeper meaning being explained.

Reading the Lord’s Word for its inner meaning requires much attention. In its deeper meaning, Adam and Eve is the story about how, in the Lord’s Mercy, He gives us a sense of self-life in our outer mind and how He designs it to be married to our inner spiritual mind. I encourage you to read it (start reading at Secrets of Heaven n.147) because it speaks to the marriage that the Lord constantly draws each person to, the marriage of our inner and outer minds into one whole.

Feeling left out because you are not ‘smart’?

Another reason we feel left out is not feeling smart enough because we find ourselves getting stuck in theological terminology and can’t find ideas to translate them back to something we can grasp. Here is a passage from the book Secrets of Heaven that explains the deeper meaning of the terminology of “man & wife” or “husband & wife”.

 In the Word “man and wife,” and also “husband and wife,” are often mentioned; and when “man and wife” are mentioned, by “man” is signified truth, and by “wife” good; but when “husband and wife” are mentioned, good is signified by “husband,” and truth by “wife,”

Secrets of Heaven #4823 – Emanuel swedenborg

Good and Truth are two terms we can easily brush over but not understand. Simply put, goods relate to our intentions or motivations, while truth relates to things of our thoughts.

In the above quote, we get the image of the marriage within each person that the Lord is pressing for us to receive. The marriage of goodness and truth, the marriage of our intentions and thoughts, our inner mind with our outer mind. When there is a union of minds, our intentions and thoughts are in our words and deeds, and we experience delight. We are whole and are one-minded, reflecting the image and likeness of the Lord. In short, we are in Heaven.

When good united to truth flows down into a lower sphere, it forms a union of minds; and when into one still lower, it forms a marriage: wherefore union of minds from good united to truth from the Lord, is conjugial love itself.

Secrets of Heaven #2728 – Emanuel swedenborg

No one is left out

Everything good and true that the Lord gives, He gives to all in the same measure. He withholds nothing from anyone, including the peace and joy of married love. Regardless of our earthly marital status or knowledge of the Word, we are all called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

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