Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt. (Matthew 2:13-14)
The third dream here in the Gospel of Matthew is yet another warning. The name Herod means hero – a description which we would typically think of in a positive light; but in this story the sense of hero carried by the ruler is an unwanted one, for it seeks to destroy what contains the Holy Spirit. The hero is fearful of this Child because it has been predicted that one day He will grow up and become a king and destroy him. Joseph then is advised to move away from Herod and take the Child and His mother to Egypt. Now the word Egypt means double straits, a strait being a narrow passage of water connecting two other larger bodies of water together. Egypt then can be thought of as a place in which things can be connected to one another. And so, the Lord advises a move away from the sense of the hero that is fearful to a place instead where things can remain connected, and where the new king can flourish and develop.
Again, we see in this a lovely parallel with what we are seeking to engage with in the Text. We are looking and listening to hear the Holy Spirit in what we are reading, and this requires that we move away from the old ways we have applied when reading the Word. We are instead moving to a place in which connections can be made so that the Text speaks to our inner life and communicates the Lord to us. There may be a sense of unease or fear in this – perhaps because it’s new, and because the sense of self can be indignant in its own intelligence and may seek to dissuade us from engaging with the Text in a way that allows the Lord to be heard.
In Module 2 we looked at using the In Me tool to assist in making these connections; and in this module we will take that a step further and examine the quality of those In Me states, specifically those that relate to spaces, places, landscapes and time. *Note: We will not be looking at the people (or anything that relates to them i.e. what they are doing or wearing or saying or thinking) in the descriptions in this module- this will be dealt with in Module 4.
We will be working with the same three texts that we used in Module 2 but in this exercise now you will be asked to specifically highlight or mark up the descriptions and movements relating to spaces, places, landscapes and time. You would have likely placed IN ME next to most of them in the previous module but start again by marking them up in the text now.
Here is an example with the above text from Matthew:
Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt. (2:13-14)
Your turn… Mark up or highlight any references to spaces, landscapes and time … we’ve done the first few to start you off.
Genesis 28:10-16
Now Jacob … he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven …and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said: “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also, your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread abroad to the west and the east, to the north and the south; and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
Reflections
- Write down what you’ve marked up in a list, and your list will include all of the spaces, places, landscapes and movements within these spaces, and then also descriptions of time that you identified. e.g., that place, set up on, earth, reached, heaven and so on …
- What feelings and thoughts surround each of these?
- How do they differ from each other?
- How do they connect with each other?
- How do the changes and movements from one to the other feel?
- How might these reflect states or functions of your thought and feeling life?
- Read back through the dream now and see if anything new is offered in how it might be speaking to you about your inner life, as states in you. What might it be offering to teach you?
- What questions are you left with?
Now do the same with the text from Arcana Coelestia and also your dream, using the reflection questions above to work through with each of them.
Arcana Coelestia 1977
I was put to sleep and dreamed that a ship laden with all kinds of delicious and savory things to eat had arrived. The cargo was not in sight but rather was hidden. On the deck stood two armed guards, and a third man besides, who was captain of the vessel. The ship was pulling into a kind of covered dock.
Your Dream
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Before Moving on to Module 4 …
As always, give yourself time between each module to sit with all that you have worked through so far. Keep journaling your insights and thoughts.
Support In Your Work
This type of inner reflective work can give rise to states of resistance or conflict, as well as opening up many questions. If you would like to talk with someone to explore this more, then you can Contact Us.
Further Reading
As regards dreams, it is known that the Lord revealed the arcana of heaven to the prophets, not only by visions, but also by dreams, and that the dreams were as fully representative and significative as the visions, being almost of the same class; and that to others also as well as the prophets things to come were disclosed by dreams; as by the dreams of Joseph, and of those who were in prison with him, and by those of Pharaoh, of Nebuchadnezzar, and others, from which it may be seen that dreams of this kind, equally with visions, flow in from heaven; with this difference, that dreams occur when the corporeal is asleep, and visions when it is not asleep. (Arcana Coelestia 1975)
It is worthy of mention that when after waking I related what I had seen in a dream, and this in a long series, certain angelic spirits (not of those spoken of above) then said that what I related wholly coincided, and was identical, with the subjects they had been conversing about, and that there was absolutely no difference; but still that they were not the very things they had discoursed about, but were representatives of the same things, into which their ideas were thus turned and changed in the world of spirits; for in the world of spirits the ideas of the angels are turned into representatives; and therefore each and all things they had conversed about were so represented in the dream. They said, further, that the same discourse could be turned into other representatives, nay, into both similar and dissimilar ones, with unlimited variety. The reason they were turned into such as have been described, was that it took place in accordance with the state of the spirits around me, and thus in accordance with my own state at the time. In a word, very many dissimilar dreams might come down and be presented from the same discourse, and thus from one origin; because, as has been said, the things that are in a man’s memory and affection are recipient vessels, in which ideas are varied and received representatively in accordance with their variations of form and changes of state. (Arcana Coelestia 1980)
I may relate one more instance of a similar kind. I dreamed a dream, but a common one. When I awoke, I related it all from beginning to end. The angels said that it coincided exactly with what they had spoken of together; not that the things seen in the dream were the same, for they were wholly different, being things into which the thoughts of their conversation were turned, but in such a way that they were representative and correspondent; and this in every particular, so that nothing was wanting. I then spoke with them about influx, as to how such things flow in and are varied. There was a person of whom I had the idea that he was in natural truth, which idea I had gathered from the acts of his life. There was a conversation among the angels about natural truth, and on this account that person was represented to me; and the things he said to me, and did, in my dream, followed in order representatively and correspondently from the discourse of the angels with one another. But still there was nothing precisely alike, or the same. (Arcana Coelestia 1981)
Extra Exploration
Here are some extra passages in the Word that you might like to explore looking at spaces, landscapes and time. You might also like to consider incorporating the In Me tool as well:
Ezekiel 32: 2-8 (Ezekiel’s visions)
“Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him: ‘You are like a young lion among the nations, And you are like a monster in the seas, Bursting forth in your rivers, Troubling the waters with your feet, And fouling their rivers.’ “Thus says the Lord God: ‘I will therefore spread My net over you with a company of many people, And they will draw you up in My net. Then I will leave you on the land; I will cast you out on the open fields, And cause to settle on you all the birds of the heavens. And with you I will fill the beasts of the whole earth. I will lay your flesh on the mountains, And fill the valleys with your carcass. I will also water the land with the flow of your blood, Even to the mountains; And the riverbeds will be full of you. When I put out your light, I will cover the heavens, and make its stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, And the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of the heavens I will make dark over you, And bring darkness upon your land,’ says the Lord God.
Revelation 22: 1-5 (A scene from the holy city, New Jerusalem)
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.