Transcription
[Music] Hey everybody, is this from heaven? Pumped to have you here today. This is a show where we trust, figure out life, and figure out our own minds by taking a stroll through Swedenborg's writings and annotating our way to what enlightenment, better understanding. Internet TV. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to follow Jesus's two great Commandments. Maybe you've heard of Jesus before. Somebody, let me tell you a funny story. Somebody walks up to him and asks, "Hey Jesus, what's the most important stuff?" And he gives you these two Commandments. What does it mean? How is our spiritual value in it? We're gonna dig into that today and the steps to get you there. We got to look at divine DNA. We're gonna look at our vital core. Even if you say, "I don't want to hear anything about Jesus," don't you want to know about your own vital core? And then the great Commandments, and what are these two things above play into those? It's all the mystery of news from heaven. And why, why go through all this? It's because what we are trying to do is create a system that is gonna take human beings and liberate them from the negative world we live in, the negative mental chat, or everything that gets us down. We want to bring you up. We want to introduce you to the idea that there is a truth. When you actually look at the structure of reality and how things are, it's actually good. It's not like the picture. This is a shiny sun, by the way. It's not like the picture your mental clouds are trying to paint for you. The truth actually does. Not that I'm getting too biblical, this episode, the truth does set you free. If you're enjoying this program, that all have been watching it for a while, don't forget to like and subscribe and click that bell. That's what gets the whole thing going. Leave comments. How is this stuff working for you? How do you get out of your mental clouds? We all need to work together on this. Two great Commandments. What are they? If you're not familiar, like I said, somebody said to Jesus, "What are the two? What's the most important stuff?" You got all these religious Commandments and all these rituals, and this is how you build the tabernacle. What's the most important thing? And this is what he says. He says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your, with all your minds. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself." And both of those sound good initially, but are confusing. And we'll get into some of the confusion about them. What do they mean? What do they really mean? And what, what does it mean to love God? And what does it mean to love your neighbor? You love everybody? Do you love people when they're walking on you and they're not respecting boundaries? What does it mean to love people?
All right, let's dig. And get to the link in the description. You can download Heaven and Hell. You can follow along and critique me as I go. This chapter heading begins, and I quote, "The Lord's divine nature in heaven is love for Him and thoughtfulness toward one's neighbor." All the limits of the highlighter. Is it wide enough for a title? Right away, right away, the plot didn't just thicken, it got. What was the other thing? It got super duper intense. Because not only do we have, we have these two great Commandments about loving God and loving the neighbor, and Swedenborg's saying that the divine nature in heaven, the thing that makes heaven, this thing everybody's aspiring to heaven, is these two. What? What we're being commanded in these two Commandments. How could that play out? Right away, these are making a strong appearance. And if it's heaven, remember, that's something you can have in the mind. Heaven is primarily a state of how you interpret life and what your motivations are. Secondarily, it creates that afterlife that people live in. And what you would traditionally call heaven. But according to Swedenborg, this is something we can be pursuing now. We get insight on how to follow this stuff. How could you, how could you not want this? Okay, sorry. All right, I'll calm down. In heaven, the divine nature that emanates from the Lord is called divine truth. So right away, I'll tell you, this is our divine DNA. This divine truth, it's this divine nature emanating from the Lord that informs everything. For reasons that will be given below, so stay tuned. This divine truth flows into heaven from the Lord out of His divine love. So we've got, we're starting to get a sequence here. We'll do left to right rather than top to bottom. We got the Lord, and we got a flow already. There's always a flow. All right, so we're going into heaven from the Lord. Oh, hey, heaven's not quite right. And right out of His divine love. There he goes. It's like we've got to travel all the way from heaven down to here to really get that edge going. Divine love and the divine truth that we're setting up terms. We love setting up terms that derives from it. So we've got divine love, right? That's, that's the burning passion to make everyone happy and joyful. That comes out of God. But then there's this divine truth that derives from it. Are like the sun's fire and the light that comes from it in our world. So you think about the actual sun itself, that's this huge nuclear or whatever reactor, I don't know, fission, fusion, something like that. That's what's, that's where the essence of this love is. And then that light that it spews out, these photons that make life possible in a lot of ways in a world that's like the truth coming out. Okay, the love is like the sun's fire, and the derivative truth is like the light from the sun. By reason of correspondence, fire means love, and light means the truth that flows from it. And correspondence is not just metaphor. That if you're seeing fire, you're seeing a picture of, in some cases, good love. In some cases, harmful love. The sun too can represent either one. But you are, what, what love does for the spirit, fire, or in this case, fire is, you know, the word doesn't quite encapsulate everything Swedenborg is using it. But obviously, the sun is not fire technically, but it's the same kind of thing. By reason of correspondence, did that this enables us.
Okay, so why did we went to that paragraph? We drew our stomach, drew our arrows. We're learning how to follow these commandments that are going to ostensibly improve life. Or why would they be recommended by Jesus, our best bud? By reason of correspondence, fire means love, and light means the truth it flows from it. Third time I read that. Enables us to determine the character of the divine truth that emanates from divine love. So what are these light rays from God? In its essence, it is divine good united to divine truth. And because it is united, this is the key to God. Why are there these two Commandments in the first place? Why aren't just one commandment? It's always, always with love. Love is the uniting of two things. God being the source of all love is the will to unite. And that's why we think it's cool and people connect and unite. It gives life to everything in heaven, the way the warmth of the sun united to its light makes everything fruitful on earth in spring and summer. But you can have light. And as he says in this next sentence, it's different when the warmth is not united to light. When the light is therefore cold, then everything slows down and lies there, snuffed out. So what we're saying, look around. If you think this is an abstract principle and you feel like we just walked through a paragraph or two and I don't know what we're talking about, the takeaway message is this huge, I want to say meta-process. I don't know if I'm using that meta-clause or prefix appropriately. This thing that's happening at the highest level, is the executive levels of reality. You can see an image, you can see a manifestation of that. Just go watch how things grow, watch the cycle of the seasons. And there's renewal around here. It's spring right now. So as I started to see these little flowers come up, and little kids are excited because snowdrops are coming out, there is something in that of the Lord's continual reaching out to us. And that happens in little ways in our mind. Because don't we go through these seasons where at times it feels like it's just all darkness, everything is going wrong externally, that things we wanted didn't pan out. Internally, it's going wrong. We're getting more fears and confusion and doubt. And everything we try, our spiritual practice, we try to reach out using our, our usual methods, we watch that Netflix specials that we usually lift our spirits, nothing, nothing. But then something happens. It's not always an obvious shift, but somehow the things that used to worry us don't anymore. They just don't have the same fight. Life seems more hopeful. We're seeing, what is that? Well, that's the seasons. We're rolling through these seasons in ourselves. The divine good we have compared to warmth is the good of love within a month, among angels. And the divine truth we have compared to light is the means and source of this good of love. And just a return to our margin, we have this love and truth. Zooming out into heaven, it doesn't stop there. That good among angels, you know, this is the chain, this is the delivery system. It's like God is the warehouse, heaven is the truck, and then it gets to us. When you're getting out of your negative head, whether it's because this love through the vehicle of truth surf style, this chain and warms us and reminds us that life is good.
All right, going down. The reason the divine in heaven, which in fact makes heaven, is love, is that love is just saying this, man, I'm on it. Spiritual union. You want it. What is love, baby? Don't hurt me. Love is spiritual union, guy from '93 rocks. Barian from that song, wherever it came from initially. Love is spiritual union. Isn't that interesting definition? You would think love is a feeling. Love is when you feel what oxytocin. When you would love is spiritual union. That, that's you. The effect is how you feel. But the nature of the thing, real love is spiritual union. What does it do for us? It unites angels to the Lord. You always think angels and the Lord, they pal around, they're buddies. Of course, they are. What's keeping them so tight? Why are they able to form? I'm not gonna scroll back up to it. But why are they able to form that chain of taking the love from the divine and bringing it through to us? Because they are united by love. And it unites them with each other. You might think, of course, if these little dots aren't all these beautiful angels, of course angels are connected. Well, you know, it might go without saying, but it's the, it's not connected because of their always holding hands. This is, this is what makes heaven a unit that can perform a function rather than just being a place to dwell. Is that the love is connecting, like the, like the circulatory system in the human body connects everything together. It does this so thoroughly that in the Lord's sight, they are like a single being. So, and I don't know what kind of beautiful micro-over me by that is. But to the Lord, heaven can look like a single person. Maybe you've heard that in Swedenborg before, that God can see heaven as a single individual. Why can, why can you do that? It's because it's the same way that you can look at this computer screen and see me. And I can see you. Well, I mean, not technically see you. Don't have to put tape over your webcam. It's fine. And I just look like I'm one thing, even though I and everybody are a collection of trillions and trillions of cells and all these different organ systems and everything, and even microbes and things that are working as one unit. It's the connection that makes one thing out of these huge multiplicity of things. And so it is, it's the love in heaven that makes heaven like a single being in the Lord's eyes. And that is why heaven is that can be such a useful tool and such a cohesive, interconnected, beautiful experience. That's how heaven is heaven because it's united by love. It's got this spiritual union. It does this so thoroughly that in the Lord's sight, they're like a single beam. Further, love is the essential reality of every individual life. Love is pulling a lot of weight here. Not only is love spiritual union, but it's also the essential reality of every individual life. You may think, what am I made of? Am I worth anything? Made of love. You made the greatest thing that's ever been possible to exist. Is that a sentence? And we're starting to get here. I can just feel the vital core coming up. Our next keyword, because love is the essential reality. Is it gonna make another appearance? It is. Therefore, the source of the life of angels and the life of people here. So you share something in common with angels. Is that, you know, which angels? According to Swedenborg, would just be you after you've shed your body, provided you love what's good and true. We right now are running a similar program. We just got ourselves a like a physical avatar that we're in. Anyone who weighs the matter. So this is not just something that Swedenborg had to go learn through taking spiritual trips. This is something you can, if you just think on it, you'll understand that love is our vital core. Yeah. So love does a lot of stuff. And love being spiritual union. So another way you could look at it is that spiritual union is our vital core. That you just want, we are in some ways the essence of who we are is how we network with those around us, what we mean to them, what they mean to us, the good and loving things we do for each other. Could this be starting to set the stage for why Jesus, when asked, said the most important stuff is to love God and love the neighbor? But still, what does that mean? I got a feeling this coming right now. We grow warm because of its presence, its meaning, love. And cold because of its absence. And when it is completely gone, we die spiritually, if not physically. We do need to realize, though, that it is the quality of love that determines the quality of this life. You ever go crazy when people will say, "Oh, just love. I'm full of love." But the way that they're acting doesn't seem like love to you. And don't, doesn't anybody who's doing anything bad love something? Don't they love the benefits they're getting? Don't they love their own self-image? So everybody loves stuff. But it's only the certain kind of love that gives us this amazing interconnected experience. And only a certain kind of love that really follows these two great Commandments, which we're getting to right here.
Here are the two Commandments. There are two. And look at how we lead into these. There are two quite distinguishable loves in heaven. So when you're in this mass here with all these other angels, there's two distinguishable, meaning you can set out, oh, that, that kind of this happening here, this kind of love is happening there in heaven. What are they? We have love for the Lord and love for our neighbor. Where have I heard that before? Oops, I went too far. We have the love for the Lord is commanded here, and the love for our neighbor is commanded here. So not only are these two nice things to do, why did Jesus distinguish between these two? Why are there two? It's because heaven is composed of these two parts in union. These are like technical directions for how to achieve a state of mind that's called heaven, that you can go to while you're still working in this earth. But what's the difference between those? It's not what you think. Love for the Lord is characteristic of the third or central heaven. So there's a whole heaven that's centered on love of the Lord. While love for our neighbor is characteristic of a second or intermediate heaven. Both come from the Lord, and each one makes a heaven. But that's, you might think that that's a little bit strange because if you have these different heavens, which by the way, Swedenborg talks about the heavenly or celestial heaven, then the spiritual or intermediate, and then the outermost or natural heaven. He's talking about these two having these different loves. Is it just that in highest heaven, everyone's just all about God? All they think about is God? And when they, they were gonna make a Valentine, it's always, "Here, God, you're my Valentine this year." And that, that's a certain society. And then in this spiritual heaven below, everybody cares about each other and are loving each other. Or either of those complete? But also, couldn't you argue that the loving each other is is better than the loving God? Because God's already got a lot going on. You know, he doesn't need to, you really need that many adoring fans, whereas we can feel very lonely. And your love to a single person can make a big difference. It's something you miss here. Let's explore further. In heaven's light, it is easy to see how these two loves differ and how they unite. But we, this can be seen only dimly in our world. And here we're gonna get into some very striking definitions of what these are. And important to load into your mind if you're going to go through Swedenborg's stuff, because this changes how you read a ton of his material. In heaven, loving the Lord, this is our definition of loving the Lord. Does not mean loving Him for the image He projects, but loving the good that comes from Him. This is earth-shattering news. Loving God. Well, it may contain thinking about God, the like divine person, and feeling appreciation for the power of God and the love of God. That's not primarily what loving the Lord is. When Jesus is saying the most important thing is to love the Lord, He's not saying just, you know, show me that you think I'm awesome. It's loving the good that comes from Him. And that good, if we look back at our heavens here, that good is the very thing that's making it so all these spiritual people love each other. And, and it would go back even farther. I'm just thinking about all these margins, man. Is this, that's really, really worth coming back to? But when you have this interconnected love fest here, the thing that allows people to express love and create this union, that is the good. The good is, I'm inspired by a way to help, the useful service, you know, all the ways we show affection to each other. That's coming out of good. Because God is love for people. So to love, if you think you really love somebody, don't people carry on someone's legacy by saying, "We're gonna have a day for Martin Luther King Jr." and what we're doing on that is trying to continue on the ideas that he was championing. Isn't it what you love the Lord? It's not just, you know, yes, you really write a lot of fan mail to God. You do what the Lord loves. Much. The Lord loves doing good. So then it's almost like loving the Lord is the slot. You'd think loving the neighbor would be in loving the good. And how do you love it? What do you mean? Just like I love when people are nice. I want to think about people being nice. Loving the good is intending and doing it from love. So doing, in a nutshell, how do you follow this first commandment? You love what is good and constructive to other people, and you do it because you want to make them happy, not because you want to raise your status. That's what it takes to follow the first of these two great Commandments. Now, where does this leave loving the neighbor? Isn't that sort of under love of God? Let's continue further. Loving one's neighbor does not mean loving companions for the image they project, but loving the truth that comes from the word. That's a very perplexing definition. It seems like it's sort of downgrades it from in loving actual people to loving ideas. But I would assert that if you just say, "Love everyone," in that simple commandment, "Go out and love everyone," doesn't it get really complicated really fast? Because you can extend love to somebody who is taking advantage of that love. You can, you know, go and say, "I'm gonna do something to you that I think is really loving," and the person doesn't want that. Isn't it essential in order to be able to really love people effectively and do what's good for them? Because you could say, "I'm gonna love you by giving you whatever you want," and that's not helping them long term. Don't you have to go out there and know the truth about how to effectively serve people? Isn't that essential to loving the neighbor? So to wisely love is the essence of loving the neighbor. The, the love of the Lord is the desire and the intent and the act to help. Loving the neighbor is loving the means and loving, loving getting it right. That's what if you're gonna love your neighbor as yourself means. We loving yourself? Oh, I want to do this thing because it's what I want to do. But loving the neighbor as itself means, wait, let's make sure I'm doing what's actually true, what actually is effective, what actually is the right thing to do. That, that matters just as much as something that seems fun for me. And loving the truth as much as you even love yourself. Loving what is fair and right and honest as much as you love yourself. That's how you follow these two. And then we're starting to get this complete heaven in the mind. Loving the truth isn't ending and doing it. So when you learn a concept, the more you can put it right into action, that's loving the truth. We can therefore see that these two loves differ the way good and true differ and unite. The way these two unite because again, as we said at the beginning, all of this stuff, all these Commandments, why are there two instead of one? It's about the uniting of the two. Why is there us and then the Lord? It's because through love and truth, we are supposed to unite. Why are there different people? Why is there there's one person? It's all about uniting. And these are the two keys that you have to unite these two Commandments in order to unite with other people. And it's just a, a union chain out into eternity. Because that is what creates this love. They bind this together and makes us happier and happier forever. That's the news from heaven. How'd it go? Did you like it? Does this lift your mood? Do these concepts work for you? Let me know in the comments. Does this arm you? Something we learned about these, the way to follow these, and why God would think that's important? And the reality that represents of all these people that are united in heaven. Does that lift your storm clouds? Does that break them up? Does that make you happier and freer and more able to love the truth and love good? Let me know in the comments. Did you pick up something? Pardon me. Did you pick up something that I didn't think of? About these two? How can you apply it? It needs to not just be truth in the mind, needs to be loving it, like truth in the action, which is loving the neighbor. Leave a comment. Like and subscribe. That's what helps this show get going. Hopefully, this carries out into your life and brings good weather in the mind to you and the people that you care about. And we go from vague commands that we don't know how to obey to these are awesome life tips that obviously have the right impact. And of course, you'd want to do it. And that we all do it. And the world gets to look a little more like that goal to me. But I drew that represents heaven. So till next time, thanks so much for hanging out. [Music]