O Jehovah, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth; You have set Your glory above the heavens! Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, You have ordained strength, because of the ones distressing You, to cause the enemy and the avenger to cease. When I look upon Your heavens, the work of Your fingers: the moon and the stars which You have fixed; what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him lack a little from God; and have crowned him with glory and honour. You made him rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all under his feet: all flocks and oxen, and also the animals of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, all that pass through the sea. O Jehovah, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1-9)

….the style of the Word is the Divine style itself, with which no other style, however sublime and excellent it may seem, can be compared, for any other style is as thick darkness compared with light. The style of the Word is such that there is holiness in every sentence, and in every word; indeed, in some places, in the very letters; and consequently the Word conjoins man with the Lord, and opens heaven. There are two things which proceed from the Lord, Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, or what is the same, Divine Good and Divine Truth; for Divine Good is of His Divine Love, and Divine Truth is of His Divine Wisdom. The Word in its essence is both of these; and since it conjoins man with the Lord and opens heaven, as has just been said, therefore the Word fills the man who reads it from the Lord, and not from himself alone, with the good of love and the truths of wisdom-his will with the good of love and his understanding with the truths of wisdom; thus man has life through the Word. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 3)

The truths in the Word’s literal sense are in part not naked truths, but appearances of truth, and are seemingly images and metaphors taken from the kinds of things found in nature, thus which have been accommodated and suited to the comprehension of simple folk, and even to that of little children. However, because they are correspondent terms, they are the receptacles and abodes of genuine truth. They are like vessels enclosing such truths and containing them, like a crystal goblet filled with vintage wine, or like a silver dish containing tasty foodstuffs. Or they are like garments clothing them, as swaddling cloths clothe a baby, or a pretty dress a maiden. They are also like the facts known by the natural self, which embrace within them the perceptions of and affections for truth belonging to the spiritual self. The naked truths themselves which are enclosed, contained, clothed and embraced are those found in the Word’s spiritual sense, and the naked goods are those found in its celestial sense. (Doctrine of Sacred Scripture 40)

That in the Word a “sucking child” signifies innocence, is also evident from other passages; as in David: Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou founded strength (Ps. 8:2; Matt. 21:16); where “babes” denote celestial love, and “sucklings,” innocence. (Arcana Coelestia 3183{3})

Psalm 8 is a joyous Psalm of exultation and praise. It expresses the joy that comes in life when we hold things in a spiritual perspective. For when the Lord is given His rightful place in us as the very centre and focus for our life, then a wonderful reordering of the mind can begin. The joy that accompanies the Lord’s love is able to find its place, from the inmost part of our minds right out into it lowest or most external reaches.

This involves having our external natural mind brought into subjection or obedience to the spiritual and celestial things that make up the internal spiritual mind. Hell, the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach, is when external things rule over internal things and heaven, is when internal things of love and wisdom rule over external things. We know this in the practicalities of our own experience. When we become overly concerned about external things, we invite states of worry and anxiety and move from trusting in the Lord to trusting in ourselves. The native proprium has all sorts of mental tricks to keep us from admitting our state of disconnection from the Lord but at the end of the day, the joy of heaven can only be experienced by working in a genuine spiritual practice of self examaination and repentance. This is what spiritual work is and it never ends. It is something we need to do on a daily basis: of making a conscious effort to bring the things of heaven into our lives.

So can we with all sincerity say with the Psalmist…

O Jehovah, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth…

This statement of praise is a recognition that the Divine presence as goodness or love is supreme and should rule in all the things of our life. The two great commandmanets, the heavenly loves, are love to the Lord and to love to the neighbour. From the perspective of Spiritual Christianity these loves have a very practical application, for to love the Lord is to live from Word, to take its truths and apply them in our life. And to love our neighbour is to seek to promote what is good and true in our interactions with others, these goods and truths being the very presence of the Lord in our life. This is why the two great commandments are really one, for when we are looking to support the development of what is good and true in our interactions with others, then we are loving the Lord and the neighbour simultaneously. But our ability to do that effectively will be directly related to our practice of working with the Word in our life. For it is fom the Word that we gain the ability to be sensitive to what is heavenly and what is not; the truths of the Word shine a light on our states. And so we have a responsibility to be working with the Word so that that light might shine within our mind and allow us to examine the life of our thoughts and affections, and to call out those things that are not in keeping with what we understand to be of a higher spiritual quality.

The phrase, O Jehovah, our Lord…is an expression of the spiritual truth that Divine Love is our Lord. In this statement the word Jehovah refers to the Divine love and Lord is Adoni which means master or ruler, and refers to the Divine truth. In this simple statement we see the universal truth that love is one with wisdom; that the Divine Being makes itself known to human consciousness by means of truth which descends to the very external reaches of those who make love to the Lord and love to the neighbour the primary pursuit of their lives. Because love, in order to be real must become expressed and the means it does this is through truth. It is precisely because truth gives expression to love that makes it true. Something that is claimed to be true yet does not bring us or others into closer contact with love, is not really true at all.

The way in which love becomes real is through its expression and our ability to see what is loving and true is a matter of perception. The Divine love and the Divine wisdom is fully present, but our ability to see it has to do with the structure of our minds. And the structure of our minds has to do with the quality of the truths that we have worked into our life. The things that we focus on, the beliefs we hold, and the values that we live from, all form the ground or the basis from which we can see. And so if we are building our minds with truths from the Word through their application to life, then we open up the possibility for new perceptions of love to be received. We can begin to see that love is indeed all around us. That we are, in wonderful and remarkable ways, held by it. As we come to see this truth, so we find ourselves held in more secure states of mind in which the difficulties we inevitably have to face in living our lives in the natural world, no longer appear to be as troublesome as they once did. Because being secure in the Lord’s love, enables these once difficult states to be manifest in our lives and seen more clearly for what they are.

When we are in a conscious state of being held in the Lord’s love and care then we find that life can become something transforming. We see that we are never left alone; far from it. We find that the Lord is very real and makes His presence felt as we draw back from states of anxiety and worry that the cares of the natural life seek to be fulfilled. To draw back from negative states of life so that we can have a separation from them, is what it means to move to a more internal state of mind. But in order to do that, we need the help and support that the Lord as the Word gives us in the form of the goods and truths that are found there. These are designed to to hold the Lord’s presence and so create a new level of life and mind within us that we can draw from when the natural mind seeks to dominate what is spiritual.

This ability to draw from what is of the Lord, what is of the Word, is open to all if they are willing to work with the Word as the basis for their life. No one need be overwhelmed by anxiety or worry. No one need be overwhelmed by negative forms of emotion to the point of hopeless despair. There is hope. The last thing the Lord wants is for anyone is to feel abandoned. Divine Love desires for everyone to be able to say with the Psalmist,

How majestic is your name in all the earth.

The natural mind will read earth here as applying primarily to the natural creation or the earth as we behold it with our natural eyes. And yes of course we experience scenes of majestic beauty in the natural world that can take our breath away. And these certainly can provide us with a sense of the Lord’s presence, beauty and power to, as it were, lift us out of ourselves into what is other for a moment in time. But really, such experiences point to a deeper reality, to something we can have in the earth of our external mind into which what is higher from the Lord, seeks to find its expression.

When we see the power of truths to bring about changes in our external patterns of feeling and thinking, we are in the experience of the transformative power that the Lord’s name has on those who seek to live from the Word – for His name becomes a majestic thing! But the transformative power of the name of the Lord has nothing to do with mouthing His name like a mantra or magic incantation. For the name of the Lord is everything that gives expression to His love and wisdom in a form that human beings can connect with. And the most powerful expression of the Lord’s name is the Word itself. When the truths of the Word are taken into our minds and used to examine the life and activity of our thoughts and affections, and we respond to the challenges it makes upon us to think from what It teaches and not from how we feel – then we see the Lord manifesting in our external conscious awareness. This is truly a remarkable thing and it is in this experience of the power of the Word to change the earth or ground of our external mind, that gives rise to this expression of praise…

How majestic is your name in all the earth.

Can we say this with sincerity? How majestic is your name in all the earth? Do we know the power of the Lord in the most external reaches of our life? Do we know the power of His name, the Word?

The next part of the verse is an acknowledgement that the power to transform our sense of self, through lifting it out of lower states of selfish and worldly concerns, is sourced in the Divine who is above the heavens …

You have set your glory above the heavens…

The name of the Lord in the earth is the Word for this is the Divine love and wisdom in its most external form; it is the Lord in His Divine Human, the Lord incarnate. The truths of the Word are taken into the mind through reading it and hearing it and in this way the name of the Lord becomes present in the earth of the natural mind. It becomes majestic in all the earth when we obey it and so live from it. The Word is not of a worldly origin, it is not a human invention despite how it appears on its surface. It is the Lord in the fullness of His power to save us. Worldly wisdom, or the ‘wisdom’ of the natural mind cannot see this. It looks on the Word and sees something simple, unrefined, unsophisticated, and full of contradictions.

But this very simplicity of its presentation in its external form is the height of Divine wisdom. In taking the form it does, it keeps the way of salvation open to those who are able to receive spiritual things due to their willingness to live from them and yet closes the way to those who come to it in the pride of their own intelligence and reasoning. To those who come to the Word in humility, heaven is opened and the glory of the Lord is seen within it. To those who place their strength in their own powers of reasoning, the way is closed because they look at the Word and see nothing in it of any value. This is expressed in the next verse where it states…

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, You have ordained strength, because of the ones distressing You, to cause the enemy and the avenger to cease.

Again, as with the word earth, the natural mind thinks naturally and literally in terms of the phrase out of the mouth of babes and sucklings. But all expressions of the Word are spiritual and are to be understood in relation to heavenly realities. Babes and sucklings or infants refer to the highest of heavenly influences, and speak of what is of a celestial quality. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity on numerous occasions illustrate this in that angels of the highest heavens appear as young children from a distance to represent the innocence that they are in. This innocence is the innocence of a profound wisdom which arises from their willingness to be led by the Lord alone. It is this quality of a willingness to be led by the Lord alone that is meant by loving the Lord. And in the spiritual heavens that sit below the celestial heavens this celestial quality flows down and becomes embodied in qualities of spiritual life that are described in the Word as love to the neighbour.

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that the whole of the Word is nothing else but the doctrine of charity, in other words it teaches nothing other than how to love the Lord and love the neighbour. This fact is captured in the expression…

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, You have ordained strength, because of the ones distressing You, to cause the enemy and avenger to cease.

The term mouth in Scripture, being that from which truths are voiced, means spiritual teaching and the terms babes and sucklings mean celestial love and innocence. Therefore, the spiritual meaning of this verse is that it is by means of teachings to do with loving the Lord and loving our neighbour that the Lord ordains the strength or the power to resist what opposes the heavenly life becoming more fully expressed in our life. From this we can see that the phrase the mouth of babes and sucklings is referring to nothing other than the Word itself which on its surface has a child like quality that is easily dismissed when we fail to appreciate its origin being sourced in the Divine Itself. Within this innocent child-like appearance is the Divine Love and Wisdom in all its fullness and glory. Here indeed is the Lord!

O Jehovah, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!

O Jehovah my God, I seek refuge in You; save me from all who pursue me, and deliver me, lest he tear my soul like a lion, ripping, and there be no one to deliver. O Jehovah, my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid evil to one at peace with me or I have plundered one oppressing me without cause, let the enemy pursue and overtake my soul; yea, trample down my life to earth, and lay my honour in the dust. Selah. Arise, O Jehovah, in Your anger; be lifted up at the rage of those distressing me; and awake for me! You have commanded judgment. And the assembly of the peoples shall surround You, and over it You will return on high. Jehovah will judge the people. O Jehovah, judge me according to my righteousness, and according to my integrity on me. Oh let the evil of the wicked come to an end; and You will establish the just; for the righteous God is a trier of hearts and reins. My defence is on God, who saves the upright of heart. God is a righteous judge; and God is angry with evildoers every day. If he will not turn, He will whet His sword; He has trod His bow, He made it ready; yea, He has fitted for him instruments of death. He will make ready His arrows for pursuers. Behold, he writhes with iniquity and he will conceive mischief; and he has fathered falsehood. He dug a pit and bored it, and has fallen into the ditch he made. His mischief shall return on his own head, and his violence shall come down on his own crown. I will thank Jehovah according to His righteousness, and will praise the name of Jehovah most high. (Psalm 7:1-17)

Those who trust in the Lord are constantly receiving good from Him; for whatever happens to them, whether it seems to be advantageous or not advantageous, is nevertheless good, for it serves as a means contributing to their eternal happiness. But those who trust in themselves are constantly bringing evil on themselves, for whatever happens to them, even if it seems to be advantageous and fortunate, is nevertheless bad, and consequently acts as a means contributing to their eternal unhappiness. (Arcana Coelestia 8480)

…those who have a perception of the Lord’s presence also have a perception that every single thing that happens to them is conducive to their own welfare and that no evil influences can reach them. This is what gives them the peace they enjoy. Without such faith or trust in the Lord no one can ever attain that peace, nor accordingly the bliss which joy brings since that bliss resides within such peace. (Arcana Coelestia 5963)

Last time we spoke about the use and necessity of temptation in the spiritual life and how, when in states of temptation, we cannot avoid the experience of anxiety that arises from doubt. Doubt is rooted in false beliefs that we are more often than not unconscious of. These false beliefs lie sleeping within our unconscious and awaken when we are vulnerable, coming forth like a lion or wild animal looking to tear apart what is living within us. And what are these living things which the lion in this Psalm seeks to tear apart? It is the goods and truths of the Word that are being implanted as our soul, as we live our faith through a personal commitment to the Word as the basis for spiritual work.

When we experience anxiety and doubt in the spiritual life it is a sign that our focus has shifted from the Word as our saviour to ourselves and our own resources. When this happens our internal associations shift and we open ourselves up to spiritual influences that deny the Divinity of the Word, and the Lord’s Human. In other words, we become subject to feelings and thoughts that dismiss the Word’s power to deliver us. In this state we see the Word merely as a book and not as the Lord in His Divine Human. Genuine truths urge us to look to the Word as the Lord’s Divine Human, but this is difficult for us to see because of the dominance of natural thought which renders us susceptible to doubting this glorious truth of Spiritual Christianity.

But this truth, if we can grasp it, has the power to open the Word up for us in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. The dawning of such an insight would see a fundamental shift in our attitude and relationship to the Word, as we begin to realise that here is the Lord in all His fullness and glory. We can ask the question then – Do we trust the Word as the living presence of the Lord in our life? Do we trust it with our life needs? Or do we prefer to look to ourselves and others for our needs?

The Psalmist, while clearly struggling with life, sets the example. For if we are to be saved from what is opposed to the spiritual life and so a fuller sense of being able to trust the Word with our life, then we must look to make the principles of the Word the centre and focus of all our inner and outer activity…

O Jehovah my God, I seek refuge in You; save me from all who pursue me, and deliver me, lest he tear my soul like a lion, ripping, and there be no one to deliver.

The phrase O Jehovah (or Lord) my God... refers, in its inner meaning, to the Word alone. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that the names used of God in the Word refer to His nature and depending on the specific term or phrase, the emphasis is on the operation of Divine Love or the Divine Wisdom or both combined. This can be confirmed in the meaning of the terms in their original language. The name Jehovah, or Lord, in Hebrew means Being Itself. Literally the name Jehovah means, Who Will Be-Who Is-Who Was. So by Being Itself, we are to understand the Divine Love which is the substance that underlies all that exists. So whenever the name Lord or Jehovah appears in the Scriptures, we are to understand the One and Only Being or the Divine Love.

The way this love is communicated to us is through the Divine Wisdom. The Divine Wisdom is the Divine Love expressed in a form that can become visible in such a way that we can grasp something of it with our understanding. It is described in John’s Gospel as

… the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. (John 1:9)

and that

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (1:4)

So it is that this light enlightens every human born into the world. Without wisdom there is no genuine expression of love, so wisdom can be thought of as the means by which love is made known to human consciousness. In place of the word wisdom, we can just as easily use the word truth. The point here is that if goodness or love is to find its expression then truth or wisdom is needed to light the way for our actions so that love is then able to be brought forth and manifested outwardly. And wisdom or truth corresponds to the idea of judgement, power and rule in the Word, where power is understood to be the ability to make love real and tangible to human consciousness.

So where the term Jehovah or Lord means the Divine Love, the term God or Elohim (the Hebrew word translated God here) means the Divine Wisdom or the power by which we are made aware of the presence of the Divine with us. This is why the light is described in John’s as the life of human being for through the light of the Word, we are brought to an understanding and experience of what genuine love is. So, Wisdom is what Love uses to create the means by which people can be brought into contact with the Divine Life, and so be raised from their death into a genuine spiritual life and practice.

The term in the Old Testament, Jehovah Elohim or Lord God, as it is rendered in many English translations, carries the exact same meaning as the term Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The term Jesus, or Yeshua means Jehovah Saviour and as we have seen, the name Jehovah speaks of the Divine Love. The term Christ is a title denoting power, authority, or rulership and so refers spiritually to the Divine Wisdom or truth which, in the spiritual life, are those principles from the Word that are to govern our inner and outer activities. So both terms, Lord God and Jesus Christ mean exactly the same thing, and refer to the One Divine Being who is Divine Love and Wisdom which has its full expression in the Word and is understood to be the Divine Love and Wisdom incarnate. So whether we say Lord God or Jesus Christ, from the perspective of Spiritual Christianity we mean the Divine Love and Wisdom, or the Divine Good and the Divine Truth, or the Word.

The natural mind does not grasp this. To this level of mind the term Jesus Christ refers to a material flesh and blood human and it can’t extract itself from the natural idea of a person when reading of Jesus Christ in the Word. The spiritual mind however, doesn’t view being human in terms of material flesh and blood. To think spiritually means that the thought rests in what constitutes the spiritual idea of being human which has to do with the qualities of love and wisdom. So when the name Jesus Christ is read or heard and it falls on the plane of the natural mind, the thought is captured in ideas associated with a historical person in time. However, when this same name is heard or read, with attention given to the spiritual idea, no thought is given to person, but rather is centred on the idea of Divine Love and Wisdom expressed as the Word.

The Psalmist’s cry then, O Lord my God, I seek refuge or put my trust in You… is an acknowledgement that if we are to live a spiritual life then we must place our trust in the Word and what its spiritual sense teaches, because this alone is able to save and deliver us. So let’s think about this word trust and the idea of trusting the Lord our God or the Word. The Hebrew carries the idea of fleeing to the Lord for protection. How do we flee to the Lord for protection?

Those whose religion or spirituality is grounded in natural thinking will pray with the lips to a God conceived of as a natural person, looking to Him to manipulate things to change the situation or circumstance they find troubling them. Those whose spirituality is grounded in spiritual thinking, approach the Lord very differently. Their response is not to pray words from the lips and hope for relief, but rather to look to their understanding of spiritual principles or truths with a view to examining their life to find what leaves them open to negative spiritual influences. They do this from an understanding that all spiritual effort must be made as if of themselves while acknowledging that it is what they have acquired from the Word that gives them this ability. In the practice of Spiritual Christianity, prayer is never separated from doing the work of self examination and responding in our actions from this; these are what are called acts of repentance.

We find this work of self examination, or the searching of the heart expressed in verses 3-5.

O Jehovah, my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid evil to one at peace with me or I have plundered one oppressing me without cause, let the enemy pursue and overtake my soul; yea, trample down my life to earth, and lay my honour in the dust. Selah.

We are also shown here that living the spiritual life requires the cultivation of a willingness to witness the suffering that is associated with the process of having what needs to be exposed brought into the light and dealt with. The Psalmist is saying that if he has acted from anything that is contrary to the spiritual life then let it be brought down into the dust. This reveals the level of trust which we need to develop in the Word if we want to be led by it in living a spiritual life.

Trusting in the Word requires us to take its injunctions seriously. We aren’t trusting the Word if we are not looking to it with a view to order our lives, our affections, thoughts and actions. The Word says many things that are hard for the natural man to accept as true, but it is the very nature of spiritual truths to challenge what we hold to as our truth.

To take Spiritual Christianity as the basis of our spiritual life we have to be prepared to accept that what the Word teaches is in fact true. Only then will we trust it to lead and guide our spiritual development. If we don’t accept it as being from and of the Lord then we will sit outside of it as a spectator. We will make the truths and principles that if offers us subject to our own judgement and reasoning, picking and choosing what we will accept and what we will reject. Trust cannot be developed without taking risks. To trust the Word is to live from it and it is only as we choose to live from it that the trust we invest in it through our willingness to let go of our ownership on our life, can be proved. Spiritual Christianity as a spiritual practice requires us take a risk on the Word. It is only in committing our lives to it that we will see its Divinity and discover that it is in fact what it claims to be.

My defence is on God, who saves the upright of heart.

O Jehovah, do not rebuke me in Your anger; nor chasten me in the heat of Your fury; have mercy on me, O Jehovah, for I am weak; heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled and You, O Jehovah, until when? O Jehovah, return, deliver my soul; save me for Your mercy’s sake. For there is no memory of You in death; who shall give thanks to You in Sheol? I am weary in my groaning; I shall make my bed swim in all the night; I melt my couch with my tears. My eye is dim because of grief; it wastes away because of all those distressing me. Depart from me, all workers of iniquity, for Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping. Jehovah has heard my plea; Jehovah will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment. (Psalm 6:1-10)

…temptations involve feelings of doubt regarding the Lord’s presence and mercy, and also regarding His salvation. The evil spirits who are present with man at such times and who are the cause of temptation do all they can to infuse a negative outlook, but good spirits and angels from the Lord in every way disperse that doubting attitude, all the time preserving a feeling of hope and in the end strengthening an affirmative outlook. Consequently, a person undergoing temptation hangs between a negative outlook and an affirmative outlook. Anyone who gives way in temptation remains in a doubting, and sinks into a negative, frame of mind, whereas one who overcomes still experiences feelings of doubt; yet he who allows himself to be filled with hope remains steadfastly in an affirmative outlook. (Arcana Coelestia 2338)

In our exploration of Psalm 2 we saw that the Lord is never angry with anyone, and that in Him, who is Divine Love and Wisdom, there is nothing that even resembles fury. So the Psalmist’s cry, Jehovah, do not rebuke me in Your anger; nor chasten me in the heat of Your fury, is not a statement concerning the nature of the Divine. Instead it is a statement which captures the nature of the doubts that enter a person’s mind when in the midst of spiritual temptation, because for a temptation to be temptation, there must be doubt. So, the truth of this verse relates to the spiritual fact that when we enter into states of feeling distressed or anxious, thoughts then arise which cast doubt on what spiritual truths and principles offer us. For spiritual truths teach that the Divine is love and wisdom, and that from love by means of wisdom the Lord governs all things down to the smallest detail of each and every one of our lives, and that it is an impossibility for the Divine to be angry or furious with anyone. Now we may say that we believe this on one level but often we find another belief at work in how we respond when we are actually in a state of spiritual temptation. When states of anxiety grip us and we feel distant from God, false ideas flood in and the truths which we hold are twisted in our minds. For example, if God is the cause of all things then when something unpleasant occurs we can easily slip into thinking that God is unhappy with us, that we must have done something to earn his anger and displeasure, and so interpret what’s happening to us as some sort of rebuke or chastisement from Him.

We need to be aware of how the mind works when we are faced with states of difficulty in the spiritual life because this kind of understanding is able to sustain us in times of doubt, even though it may feel as if we are falling apart. In basic terms, our mind is motivated to find the reason for things. We are constantly in the question of why which becomes obvious when we are in difficulties. Why is this happening? Why me? are common human responses to adversity in life. And this is just the same in our inner life when we experience challenging states of mind – often our first response is to unconsciously begin to look for why we are feeling the way we are. This automatic unconscious nature is something that we need to be aware of because what is operating and capturing our attention at this point are the reasoning functions of the lower mind.

This level of mind is open to lower spiritual influences that are opposed to the spiritual life. Reasoning from this level of mind is based on an acceptance that how we feel is true, which opens the gate for thoughts to arise that look to confirm and justify the feeling, and so to justify the love that is driving it. We then fall into forming conclusions, like the Psalmist, who is in a state of having lost sight of what truths teach, and concludes wrongly that God is bringing these difficulties upon him because he has offended Him is some way.

Spiritual Christianity asks us to step into a practice of conscious attention in life. This involves learning how to bring spiritual or higher truths to bear on our lower states of life so that we are able to be more conscious of when lower levels of mind are active and casting doubt on what spiritual truths teach. The more aware we are of how this level of life captures our attention so that we lose sight of truths, the better prepared we can be in being able to work with the Lord in order to have them managed.

We also need to realise that the only way we can be strengthened in spiritual principles from the Word, and so in the spiritual life, is through experiencing spiritual temptations or difficulties, along with the doubts they draw out. This idea of drawing out doubts is a very important point. Temptations do not cause us to doubt, they merely highlight states of doubt that already exist in us due to the false beliefs that we hold onto and cherish. The process of temptation is the means by which these false beliefs are brought into our conscious awareness, drawn out, so to speak, into the light that truth offers so that we may see them and acknowledge them for what they are. The appearance is that temptation causes us to doubt because our experience of the process is that the doubt follows on from temptation. But this is an appearance. Doubt exists because of the false beliefs that we hold onto, and so inner conflict arises when the truths we are seeking to live from are attacked by the falsities that exist in our lower mind.

The spiritual meaning of verse two reveals a growing understanding of what belongs to the process in the midst of temptation.

…have mercy on me, O Jehovah, for I am weak; heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones are troubled.

One of the goods that results from temptation is the implanting within us of a sense of our utter dependence on the Word as the Lord for our life. For even though the work of struggling with doubt feels like ours, it’s all the work of the Lord and the process of coming to experience this in these difficult times is what instills the very truth that the Lord as the Word is who He says He is. This truth is the Divine in us and it is this which fights for us and pushes back against the things that are opposed to the spiritual life. This is why the Psalmist says,

have mercy or be gracious to me O Jehovah for I am weak

Here is an acknowledgement that in and of ourselves we are unable to lift one finger in support of our spiritual development but are utterly dependent on the truths of the Word to direct us. The call for healing, …heal me, O Jehovah, for my bones tremble…again speaks of how limited our own understanding of things is. Since all things in the Word describe spiritual realities in natural terms and the bones of the body forms its support structure, we can think of the bones as the basic mental structures around which our mind or sense of self is formed. The trembling of bones then represents the fragility of our sense of self when falsities and doubts attack those spiritual principles and truths that have yet to be fully integrated.

Commitment to Spiritual Christianity as a life practice may not be the most attractive pursuit from a natural perspective, as can be seen from our reading of the Psalm, but its appeal is not to what is lower in us but to what is higher. When we respond to truths, a higher level of life is awakened within us but our sense of self that is attached to what is lower resists this. This lower self seeks to undermine and pull down the higher levels of consciousness that the Word offers us. In the work of regeneration, the process of seeing this activity of the lower mind ultimately works to strengthen what is spiritual as our sense of self is extracted from these lower realms of mental life and planted in the goods and truths of the Word as the Lord instead.

When we know this, then we can be strengthened in this knowledge which is seen in the Psalmist’s final response to his predicament…

Depart from me, all workers of iniquity, for Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping. Jehovah has heard my plea; Jehovah will receive my prayer. Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment.

Here we see that the experience of struggle and temptation has led to a new found confidence and trust in the Lord – that He does hear us and receive our prayer when we yield to truths as the basis for our spiritual life. Not that the Lord sets conditions on our being heard but spiritually, we have a sense of being heard, when adverse conditions recede and more favourable conditions begin to advance. The natural lower mind interprets favourable changes in its conditions as its prayer having ‘finally been heard’, but the spiritual higher mind knows that the Lord always hears. The spiritual mind also knows that whether the conditions are experienced as unfavourable or favourable, patience must be exercised so that the process might be seen through to completion and that the enemies of the spiritual life might be turned back at the precise moment which corresponds of course, to the Lord’s perfect timing.

Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back, ashamed in a moment.

Give ear to my words, O Jehovah; consider my meditation. Attend to the voice of my cry, my King and my God; for I will pray to You. You will hear my voice in the morning, O Jehovah, I will set myself for You in the morning, and I will look up. For You are not a God enjoying wickedness; nor shall evil live with You. The boasters shall not set themselves before Your eyes. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those speaking lies; Jehovah will despise the man of blood and deceit. But I, in the plenty of Your grace, I will come into Your house. I will worship in Your fear toward Your holy temple, O Jehovah. Lead me in Your righteousness, because of my enemies; make straight Your way before me. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is engulfing ruin; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue. O God, hold them guilty; let them fall from their own counsels. Drive them away in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. But let all who put their trust in You rejoice; let them shout for joy forever, because You cover them. And let those who love Your name be joyful in You. For You, O Jehovah, will bless the righteous; You will surround him with favour, as with a shield. (Psalm 5:1-12)

In regard to the proprium of man, it must be observed, that it is nothing but evil, and the falsity therefrom. The voluntary proprium is evil, and the intellectual proprium thence is falsity; and this proprium man derives principally from parents, grandfathers, and ancestors, in a long series back, so that at length the hereditary [nature], which is his proprium, is nothing but evil successively accumulated and rendered compact. For every man is born into two diabolical loves, the love of self, and the love of the world, and from these loves all evils and falsities proceed, as from their own fountains; and because man is born into those loves, he is also born into evils of every kind. More may be seen concerning this in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem (n. 65-83).

Because the proprium of man is of such a nature, therefore the Lord, from His Divine mercy, has provided the means by which he may be withdrawn from his proprium; these means are furnished in the Word, and when man acts in accordance with them, that is, when he thinks and speaks, wills and acts, from the Divine Word, then he is kept by the Lord in things Divine, and thus is withheld from his proprium. And as he perseveres in this course, as it were, a new proprium as well voluntary as intellectual, which is altogether separated from his own proprium, is formed in him by the Lord; thus man becomes as it were created anew. This is called his reformation and regeneration by truths from the Word, and by a life according to them. (Apocalypse Explained 585{2,3})

Truths must by definition be true. Yet the internal struggle in spiritual work is coming to accept what the Word teaches concerning the nature and quality of self. We only have to note the resistive feelings and thoughts that arise when we hear teachings which state that in and of ourselves we are evil, and that because of this, we are in fact in desperate need of salvation. In one sense we can say that religious teachings exist so that we can be saved from ourselves, from our ‘self’. You cannot read the Word sincerely and miss the constant repetition of the themes of the Lord working to redeem and save the human race. Redemption and salvation is the Lord’s love in action. So if we think we have goodness in ourselves then we do away with the need for the Lord to save us, or in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, to deliver us from evil or more literally from the evil one.

This evil one we need deliverance from is the hellish proprium, the sense of being which lives from the belief that it possess some intrinsic or innate goodness. For it’s a belief that ultimately leads us away from seeing any need for the Lord in our life, and so it separates us from Him. This separation from the Lord occurs as a result of believing that we have life in ourselves. As soon as this belief gains ascendency in us, we become disconnected from the only One that can hold the evils and falsities back from dominating our states of life. All beliefs that attribute aspects of the Divine nature to self, separate us from the moderating influences of heaven and so the Lord, because heaven and the Lord can’t be in ideas or states of life that deny that what the Word teaches is true.

We need to see that the appearance that we have life in ourselves is just that – an appearance. The Lord alone is life, the Lord alone is good, the Lord alone is truth and we are what is other than the Lord. So in and of ourselves we have no life; we are spiritually dead. We have no good; we are inclined to every evil. We have no truth; we believe the appearances of the senses over truths. We live from what is false believing it to be true. To say that we are good, or that we have truth, or that we have life, is to attribute aspects of the Divine nature to ourselves and make ourselves gods. The finite cannot and does not possess qualities that belong to the Infinite Itself, if it did it would be the Infinite; it would be the Lord, which is impossible, for we are not God.

So, when the Lord declares that there is none good but God in Matthew 19:17, and then follows this by saying but if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments, He is saying that we need to accept what truths teach concerning God and our self. If God alone is good, then nothing else can be described as being good and this includes our self. Does this make us evil? Well, let’s see what the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity say concerning the view held by those with angelic consciousness…

The situation is this: No understanding of truth or will for good resides with anyone, not even with those who belonged to the Most Ancient Church. When people become celestial however, they do seem to have a will for good and an understanding of truth residing with them. But in reality it is the Lord’s alone, a fact they also know, acknowledge, and perceive, as is the case also with angels. This is so true that a person who does not know, acknowledge, and perceive it has no understanding of truth and will for good whatever. With every man, and with every angel, even the most celestial, his proprium is nothing but falsity and evil, for it is well known that in the Lord’s eyes even the heavens are not pure,* and that all good and all truth are the Lord’s alone. But to the extent that any man or angel is capable of being perfected, he is in the Lord’s Divine mercy perfected, and receives so to speak an understanding of truth and a will for good. His own possession of them however is only the appearance. Everybody is capable of being perfected, and consequently of receiving this gift of the Lord’s mercy, in so far as the deeds he actually performs in life will allow, and in a manner consistent with the hereditary evil implanted within him from parents.* Job 15:15 (Arcana Coelestia 633)

All false beliefs are a refusal to accept truths and so opens the state of the mind to evil. The spiritual life involves learning to accept what truths teach instead of how we think things should be or what we want to believe or how things appear to us. If we are working to do this then the Lord is able to be our saviour but if we refuse to accept that truths are actually true, we close ourselves off to heavenly influx and open ourselves up to being molested by hellish influences. In practical terms, such influences are present in our misreading of situations, circumstances, and relationships, in which we become overly anxious, or judgemental, or defensive.

All negative emotions are the effects felt in our senses that flow in from the hells. This inflow has its presence in us through our not believing what truths teach, despite what we say we believe intellectually. For it is through believing our senses view on things, rather than what the Word teaches, that separates us from experiencing the peace, joy, contentment, wellbeing, and happiness of heaven. If we recognise this simple spiritual fact, then our experience of negative emotions and thoughts can become a prompt for taking up our responsibility to do spiritual work. Such work involves reflecting on the state presenting itself in our consciousness with a view to finding the falsities that feed and energise these things in our mind.

The struggle to accept what truths teach over the conclusions and inferences that we draw from our senses is a constant theme reflected back to us throughout Sacred Scripture. There is an alternation between darkness and light, between what is being experienced in the struggle on the one hand and what is understood to be true on the other. The tension created in these alternate states centres on what is to be believed. This is the experience of those who are in the spiritual life, this expansion and contraction, the dark states and the light, turmoil and peace. This is the breath of spiritual life as we move from learning to doing, from knowing to being and then back again.

Psalm 5 is filled with truths concerning the proprium as something weak and as those things which belong to the mercy and goodness of the Lord as what can deliver us from it. Everything in the Psalm relates to our inner mental world, so where it speaks of,

boasters, enemies, those who speak lies, the man of blood and deceit, of those who have no faithfulness in their mouths, whose inward part is an engulfing ruin, whose throat is an open grave,

its important that we see this as teaching about what lies within us and not as a comment on the historical enemies of king David. Spiritual Christianity does not view the Word as a statement on historical events or personalities. If we view it this way we will remain detached from its relevance to our own inner life.

The Psalms are the Word of God and as such forms a spiritual text that deals with spiritual realities. The purpose of the Word is not to convey historical information, its purpose is to reveal spiritual realities that human beings cannot discover for themselves. What we are faced with here is actually a description of what is operating within the human mind, that is, within every human mind, including yours and mine right now. This Psalm is a living spiritual text and captures the current cry of all those who recognise this truth and know without any shadow of doubt of their need for a saviour.

Give ear to my words, O Jehovah; consider my meditation. Attend to the voice of my cry, my King and my God; for I will pray to You. You will hear my voice in the morning, O Jehovah, I will set myself for You in the morning, and I will look up.

Living a spiritual life and engaging in a spiritual practice is what true prayer is. For prayer is nothing else than making spiritual efforts to constantly reorientate our attention and focus on what is higher and beyond ourselves, so that we might live from the truths that the Word offers us. To set ourself for the Lord in the morning is to recognise that the Lord is continually making His love and wisdom available to us. It is to see that unless we prepare our faculties to consciously receive His love and wisdom, we will stand little chance of resisting the power of lower emotions and thoughts from overwhelming us. In practical terms, to ask the Lord to hear us, to set ourselves in the morning, and to look up, is to study and apply the Word to our life so that our sense of the spiritual realities might be made conscious in our awareness.

This Psalm conveys the purposefulness with which those who sincerely seek to live the spiritual life live from – by looking to what truths teach to be their guide and who don’t lean to their own understanding. For it is from truths that they see, that within them dwells no one good thing; that the proprium is filled with violence and hatred towards the goods and truths from the Word and they know that within them are false concepts and ideas. These false ideas like to boast that they are good and know what’s best for them, that they can work their own life out for themselves and that they don’t need the Word. But when truths are offering light, then the sense of self can recognise that negative emotions arise from falsities in thinking and that these are able to are take root because of an indulgence in the false concepts that the natural mind takes delight in. Truths allow us to see that this attachment manifests as a struggle to let the Lord into areas of our life so that He might break what binds the sense of self to evil and falsity. Truths know that this battle is the Lord’s and so makes the following acknowledgement freely…

For You are not a God enjoying wickedness; nor shall evil live with You. The boasters shall not set themselves before Your eyes. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those speaking lies; Jehovah will despise the man of blood and deceit.

A state of mind ruled by truth doesn’t become paralysed by a false sense of guilt for it sees the inherent nature of the proprium and so is able to accept that what the Word teaches about it is in fact true. From this knowledge, this state of mind knows of its need of the Lord’s grace and so is blessed with heavenly freedom. In this way, it remains in the security of His house, which is the sphere of Divine love, and worships in His holy temple. This temple is a structure of doctrine built from spiritual truths, so to worship in His temple is to come to the Word and take what it teaches regarding how to love the Lord and our neighbour and to live from this.

But I, in the plenty of Your grace, I will come into Your house. I will worship in Your fear toward Your holy temple, O Jehovah. Lead me in Your righteousness, because of my enemies; make straight Your way before me.

Until we can acknowledge our enemies within, as those things that are opposed to the Word and the heavenly life, we will not look to spiritual truths to lead and guide us. We need to come to see for ourselves the truth of these truths – that the self that believes that it is independent of the Lord, is described as follows…

For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is engulfing ruin; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.

Once we are able to see this and acknowledge it as a matter of life, we will then give the Lord leave to work to have our sense of self removed from hellish spiritual influences. This willingness is seen in the words of the remaining verses, which are not just words, but reflect an attitude to spiritual work that needs to be present if we are to be regenerated and saved. Here we see the spirit of acceptance that truths are indeed true…

O God, hold them guilty; let them fall from their own counsels. Drive them away in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against You. But let all who put their trust in You rejoice; let them shout for joy forever, because You cover them. And let those who love Your name be joyful in You. For You, O Jehovah, will bless the righteous; You will surround him with favour, as with a shield. (Psalm 5: 10-12)

And then there came over me the desire of knowing how man can do good from God, and yet as of himself; therefore I asked them that were eating the figs how they comprehended it. They said that they “could not comprehend it otherwise than that God operates it within in man and through man, when he does not know it; since if man were conscious of it, and thus should do it as of himself, which is also to do it of himself, he would not do good, but evil. For all that proceeds from man, as from himself, proceeds from his proprium; and the proprium of man is evil from birth. How then can good from God and evil from man be conjoined, and so proceed conjointly into act? The proprium of man also, in the things of salvation, continually breathes forth merit; and as far as it does this, it takes away from the Lord His merit; which is the highest injustice and impiety. In a word, if the good which God operates in a man by the Holy Spirit should flow in into man’s willing and thence his doing, that good would be altogether defiled and also profaned; which, however, God never permits. A man can indeed think that the good which he does is from God, and call it God’s good through himself, and as if from himself; but still we do not comprehend this.”

But I then opened my mind, and said, “You do not comprehend, because you think from the appearance, and the thought from confirmed appearance is a fallacy. You are in the appearance and the fallacy from it, because you believe that all the things which a man wills and thinks, and thence does and speaks, are in him, and consequently from him; when yet nothing of them is in him except the state of receiving what flows in. Man is not life in himself, but is an organ receiving life. The Lord alone is life in Himself, as He also says in John: As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself (John 5:26). (Apocalypse Revealed 875{10&11})

Answer me when I call, my righteous God. You enlarged me when in distress. Have mercy on me and hear my prayer. O sons of men, until when shall My glory be for a reproach? Will you love vanity? Will you run after a lie? Selah. But know that Jehovah has set apart the godly for Himself. Jehovah hears when I call to Him. Tremble and do not sin. Speak within your own heart on your bed and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in Jehovah. Many are saying, Who will make us see any good? O Jehovah, lift up the light of Your face on us. You have put gladness in my heart, more than in the time their grain and their wine grew. I will both lie down in peace and sleep; for You alone, O Jehovah, make me dwell in safety. (Psalm 4:1-8)

…count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the proving of your faith works patience. But let patience have its perfective work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-4)

Jesus said, These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world ye have affliction; but have confidence I have overcome the world (John 16:33). Here…”peace” means internal delight from being joined with the Lord, from which comes heaven and eternal joy. “Peace” is here opposed to “affliction,” because “affliction” signifies infestation by evils and falsities, which those have who are in Divine peace so long as they live in the world; for the flesh, which they then bear about them, lusts after the things of the world, from which comes affliction; therefore the Lord says, “that in Me you may have peace; in the world you have affliction;” and as the Lord in respect to His Human acquired to Himself power over the hells, thus over the evils and the falsities that with everyone rise up from the hells into the flesh and infest, He says, “have confidence, I have overcome the world.” (Apocalypse Explained 365)

How do we react when things don’t go our way? We often find ourselves in situations where we feel limited, restricted, or without any obvious way out with things closing in upon us. Part of committing to a spiritual approach to life means that we commit ourselves to living from principles that draw our focus within, which is where our focus has to be if we want our external circumstances to be transformed. For what we think are the issues in our lives are more often than not simply the effects of something deeper that we are not yet able to see. It is easier to blame others or our circumstances for our states of discomfort than to examine our own motivations in the light of spiritual principles and to take responsibility before the Lord for our responses.

No one likes experiencing emotional states that bring discomfort and suffering into their lives. However, such states are a fact of life, discomfort and suffering are unavoidable aspects of our life in this world. Our plans don’t always work out the way we would have liked them to, our relationships my not run as smoothly or end up as fulfilling as we once hoped for. Or we may look at our lives at times and wonder how we got to where we are, what was it that brought us to make the choices we made in life?

The real question for us is not about how to avoid unwanted states of life, because these are going to present themselves whether we want them to or not, but rather what is our response when we find ourselves in such states of life?

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity offer new perspectives from which every event, relationship, situation or circumstance can be transformed into something that can serve in our spiritual growth and development. These doctrines teach that we always have a choice in regard to our responses. We can look to our self as the centre of our universe and drown in our own efforts to control and fix the things in our life that arent working out the way we think they ought to…. or we can look to connect with the Divine, who is the true centre of all that is, and work with Him through making the spiritual principles found in the Word the basis for our life so that our mind can be restructured from the inside out.

Genuine spiritual principles are transformative in nature; Spiritual Christianity is a transformative spirituality. It can transform any situation, circumstance or relationship into a positive spirit-led experience, the effects of which will reverberate to eternity. A conscious ongoing commitment to a spiritual life means that one can enter into the very mode of life that our whole being is created to live for and from. Our reason for being here is to realise our spiritual potential, to move beyond the confines of the illusionary world of our senses so that we can be reconnected with what is higher and become a vessel for the inflow of the love and wisdom of heaven.

Without spiritual principles to guide us we end up viewing the cause of our problems or difficulties as lying outside of ourselves. We become susceptible to falling into a victim mentality as we look at these things and regard them as forces over which we have no control. We may fall into the “if only syndrome”. If only my circumstances were different, if only I had more money, if only she or he would treat me differently all would be well, I would be happy. But wishful thinking can’t provide us with what we seek, it merely keeps us from facing up to the need to take responsibility for our spiritual lives. This responsibility involves working with the spiritual principles that the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity offers us and using them to reflect on our inner life as we go about our outer daily life.

These principles are the most valuable thing any human being can come to possess. They have the power to make all things new if we are willing to honestly and faithfully take them into our life and live from them. What we will find is that they have the power to open us up, expose destructive patterns of thought, restructure our minds, and bring into being what is truly human. In a word, they have the power to make us whole. They do this because they give us a way of understanding the Word that brings us into contact with the Lord who is at the centre of it, and of all that is.

When we draw close to the Word we enter into the light of the Lord’s love and that light penetrates to the very depths of our soul. It asks of us the hard questions, it exposes our fears, our unwillingness to let go of the very things that wreak havoc in our lives, and it asks us to trust it, to allow it to do its work. It’s not an easy path, for we are attached to much that links us into the hellish things of the natural man, but if it’s true freedom that we seek… then this is the path we must be prepared to choose.

Firstly, there needs to be an acknowledgement on our part that we are in need of the Lord if we want to become spiritual. This acknowledgement, from the perspective of Spiritual Christianity, is to acknowledge that the Word is Divine, not with the lips, but in our willingness to put aside our self-devised ideas about what’s best for us and to look to the Word to hear what the spirit of truth is saying. Taking hold of the Word and living from it, is what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. To say we believe in the Lord but not be in the Word or to believe that it is Divine, is to delude ourselves. We have to be in the Word for the Word to be in us, and it is only through the Word being in us that we can awaken to opportunities for real positive spiritual transformation in our life.

In all the Psalms there is this unqualified acceptance of the Lord and a looking to Him for our life. Psalm 4 opens with the Psalmist looking to God asking to be heard.

Answer me when I call, my righteous God.

When we are struggling in life we tend to believe that God is somehow distant from us but we know from the teachings of Spiritual Christianity, that God is never distant from anyone and that any sense of distance which we feel is a reflection of our own state of life and not a comment on God’s apparent indifference. We distance ourselves from the Lord’s presence when we allow negative or selfish states to grip our lives.

You enlarged me when in distress. Have mercy on me and hear my prayer. O sons of men, until when shall My glory be for a reproach? Will you love vanity? Will you run after a lie?

These states reflect a narrowness in our perception that centres on ourselves and when we are self-centred, our perspective alters and we lose sight of the truth that God is ever with us, waiting for us to open up to Him so that He can help us.

Those who are in a spiritual practice know this is true, and they know that times of struggle and temptation are times of opportunity to gain further insight into the negative states and false beliefs which exists. So if we can approach such insights with an openness and a willingness to work to have what is constricting in life removed, we will find that the times of distress offer opportunities for enlargement.

When we look to the Word as the Lord in times when we feel distressed and are able to see our negative states of mind and take responsibility for them, then the conditions which we find ourselves in are able to be transformed – for they become the means by which the Lord is able to teach us something about ourselves. In these moments of clarity in which we see what stands in the way of our spiritual progress, we find that the struggle we are experiencing can be transformed into something that can lead us into new possibilities of being. So what we find is that we develop an attitude to distress that is able to recognise that such states open up the possibility for our enlargement. In this attitude, we are able to see the mercy of God in the difficulties we have to face.

But if we don’t incorporate a spiritual practice into our lives, we will not see how we are bound by false beliefs and destructive patterns of thinking, and will remain locked up in the thoughts and feelings that tell us that our external conditions and relationships seem to be against us. We will not look to learn what our reactions to situations and circumstances in life say about where our sense of self lies and we will stay trapped in the idea that change only needs to happen in others or what is outside of the self. Such views are not spiritual ones but a natural and those who are living a spiritual life know that remaining in a natural perspective leads to despair and frustration. Fulfilment in life can only be found through reconnecting to the Source of life. Therefore in the Psalm, in verse 4 we are admonished to:

Tremble and do not sin. Speak within your own heart on your bed and be still.

and in verse 5 we are told to

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in Jehovah.

All things in the Word correspond to spiritual realities, so the speaking within our own heart on our bed means that we are to take time out to consider our life and motivation. The spiritual life involves the purification of our motives through the application of truths from the Word. Just as the physical body rests on a physical bed so each of our minds have structures of thought on which our sense of self rests. These thought structures that we rest in constitute our philosophy of life. We all have beliefs about ourselves, our world, and about God that define our sense of who we are. These beliefs are tied to what we value and if we have a spiritual level to our life, our core values will be those that are concerned with loving the Lord and living in the truths of the Word, loving the Divine and practicing from our understanding of truth. And it is in these truths that the mind rests as its bed or foundation.

Those who offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in Jehovah are those who take spiritual truths and live from them for no other reason than that they consider this kind of life as being the right kind of life to be lived. They engage in a spiritual practice because it’s what the Word asks of them. They don’t do it for any particular reward or outcome but are content to trust that the Lord will direct and guide all things to what is good, loving and true despite what presents itself in external life. They know that in times of struggle, thoughts will arise from within that will cause them to question the path they have chosen. They know the many doubts within that are voiced in the words of verse 6…

There are many who say, Who will make us see any good?

But they are not easily shaken for they know that their God is in full control of all that happens to them, they know the truth of verse 8 that says…

I will both lie down in peace and sleep; for You alone, O Jehovah, make me dwell in safety.

They have learnt that happiness is not about having things go their own way, its not about ease of life, or a life without difficulties. They know that suffering is an opportunity for the mercy and goodness of God to reveal itself. They have learnt the invaluable lesson that happiness is found in trusting in the Lord whatever the situations or circumstances they find themselves in. For spiritual happiness comes with being able to accept whatever is presenting, knowing that every event is an opportunity for inner transformation when viewed from what truths, from what the Word who is the Lord, teach.

For You alone, O Jehovah, make me dwell in safety.

O Jehovah, how my adversaries have multiplied! Many are the ones who rise against me. Many are saying of my soul, There is no salvation for him in God. Selah. But You, O Jehovah, are a shield around me; my glory, and He who lifts up my head. I cried to Jehovah with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy mountain. Selah. I laid down, and slept. I awoke, for Jehovah kept me. I am not afraid of myriads of people who have been set against me all around. Arise, O Jehovah! Save me, O my God. For You have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone. You have broken the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to Jehovah. Your blessing is on Your people. Selah. (Psalm 3:1-8)

The Lord alone resists the evils with man by Himself and not through any angels of heaven, because to resist evils with man is a work of Divine omnipotence, Divine omniscience, and Divine providence. It is a work of Divine omnipotence, because to resist one evil is to resist many, and even to resist the hells. For every evil is joined with innumerable other evils, and they cling together like the hells with each other; for as evils make one so do the hells, and as the hells make one so do evils, and no one but the Lord is able to resist the hells so united. It is a work of Divine omniscience, because the Lord alone knows what man is and what his evils are, and what their connection is with other evils, thus in what order they must be removed that man may be inwardly or radically cured. It is a work of Divine providence, that nothing may be done contrary to the laws of order, and that what is done may promote man’s eternal good; for Divine omnipotence, Divine omniscience, and Divine providence have respect in every least particular to what is eternal. (Apocalypse Explained 1166{2})

In the spiritual life, we need to be able to draw a distinction between how things appear on the surface and what the Word teaches with regard to how things actually are. One of the most difficult things for us to appreciate is that our experience of the outer world is really something couched in appearances of reality. And it is because we tend to place so much weight on how we experience things externally, that we tend not to give a second thought to the conclusions and inferences that we draw.

For example, if we encounter a situation in the external world and we find that we experience a particular set of feelings and thoughts, we quickly draw the conclusion that the event is the cause of our internal state of mind. However, we all know from experience that our internal state has a bearing on how we view the situations which we encounter in the outer world; the same event can be taken in completely different ways depending on our state of mind at the time. This should form a caution for us that things are not always how they appear and that the conclusions which we draw are often based on a very limited view of things.

Our physical eyes can’t see the spiritual forces which underlie and motivate the shifting inner states of mind that we experience on any given day. We fluctuate and move between feeling heightened and up on top of things to the other end of the pendulum of feeling low and depressed. Our minds constantly wander in and out of day-dreams which have no basis in reality, and in moments of consciousness we may catch ourselves thinking in ways that shock us. So, we all experience a constant stream of thoughts and affections passing through our minds in any given moment and it’s an incredible thought to realise that all this activity enters us via the world of spirits. That our very thoughts and affections are the effects of activity in the spiritual world working to ground itself on the lower planes of existence in our personal, mental awareness.

Our minds are composed of two faculties called the will and understanding and our life is so intertwined with these faculties that we virtually become whatever we feel and think. We become so identified with our feelings that we unconsciously allow them to dictate our thoughts and behaviour. What we need to realise is that we are not our feelings, and that these states are a general sphere which reflect the quality of our spiritual associations in the world of spirits. When we identify with our feelings, in other words when we believe our feelings to be one with who we are, we attract spiritual associations of the same quality as the feelings we are experiencing. This not only strengthens the feelings by making them more intense, but it also strengthens our attachment to them as something belonging to and coming forth from us.

This is why it is never wise to allow negative emotions to have free expression through us. It’s a fallacy that giving vent to negative emotions somehow gets rid of them. It doesn’t. All it does is give temporary relief while inviting stronger associations with negative spirits of emotion, who feel a person’s venting as their own delight. For it is this promise of delight, of our allowing negative emotions to get the better of us, that attracts and strengthens negative spiritual associations, which then further impacts on our general disposition or mood.

Our will and understanding are provided by the Lord so that they can be filled with heavenly affections in the case of the will, and truths in the case of the understanding. Without truths from the Word, human beings remain totally immersed in their proprium or the self-centredness of the ego. This native sense of self is totally identified with the feelings and thoughts that arise from its connections with spiritual communities, particularly those which exude an atmosphere of self-interest. Such spiritual influences deny the existence of the Lord and have a hatred of all things to do with living a genuine spiritual life. While we live in denial of this level of life, we live entrapped by it. And if we can’t see the activity of evils and falsities present with us then we will not see any need to practice self-examination and reflection. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity teach that self-examination from an acknowledgement of the truths of Divine revelation, is what a genuine spiritual life is founded on. And is what repentance, i.e. a transformation of mind, is all about.

There are two things that are the essentials and at the same time the universals of religion, namely, the acknowledgment of God and repentance.(Divine Providence 340)

It is a common maxim in every religion that a man ought to examine himself, to do repentance, and to desist from sins; and that if he does not do so he is in a state of damnation. (Doctrine of Life 64)

The need to be in this practice of inner work is vital because the tendencies in our native proprium are relentless in their efforts to deaden the influence of what is good and true. The Word as the Lord alone is able to do this work in us as we saw in our reading from Apocalypse Explained 1166{2}) earlier. If we are not using the Word as the basis for our life, we are effectively give the hellish influences the upper hand – and we end up believing the false conclusions that they constantly breathe forth into our sense of self.

We see these principles played out in the Psalm,

O Jehovah, how my adversaries have multiplied! Many are the ones who rise against me. Many are saying of my soul, There is no salvation for him in God.

If you are engaged in spiritual work, then you will be well familiar with the sentiments expressed in these words of the Psalmist. They also capture the representative imagery found throughout the Gospels when the Lord was faced with the murderous hatred of those who sought His life. This imagery points to the inner reality of those things with us that the Word battles against. As truths become active with a person through their efforts to live from them, it appears that their adversaries have multiplied. These adversaries though are nothing other than the evils and falsities that belong to their proprial or native identity.

Of course nothing has actually increased, this is an appearance. The reality is that the native proprium in and of itself is nothing but evils and falsities and the more the light of truth shines for a person, the more evils and falsities come to light. This can be overwhelming at times, which is why we are inclined to deny the need for doing this kind of work. It’s uncomfortable because it cuts into the false image of external goodness that the proprium likes to hold itself in. But if we are to be freed from negative emotional states and self-centred thinking then we have little choice but to take hold of the Word and use it as the Lord intended it to be used.

This means that we have to be willing to develop and strengthen a personal spiritual practice in our life. A practice that goes beyond just listening to and reading spiritual material. Such activities are useful but in and of themselves are not enough – there needs to be a determination to apply what we learn to the inner life of our feelings and thoughts. Until we engage in the life of spiritual practice, we remain on the surface of things. It is only when we are prepared to take this step towards the internal application of truths from the Word, that our regeneration can truly begin.

For this to occur we need to undergo a preparation. This preparation involves taking hold of the teachings offered in the Word, at the level we are at, and learning how it can be used to support moving forward in the spiritual life. So that when we become discouraged by how things appear on the surface, when we are tempted to believe how we feel rather than what the Word teaches … we will have grounded within us what’s needed to resist those elements that say there is no salvation for us in God. Through the truths that we have taken into our life we will be able to say with heartfelt conviction that despite the appearance…

You, O Jehovah, are a shield around me; my glory, and He who lifts up my head. I cried to Jehovah with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy mountain.

Such a cry is the cry of the Word worked into our life through our spiritual practice. It is not us; it is the voice of the Son, or the Divine Truth, who is able to resist the hellish influences on our behalf. It feels like it comes from us, but this too is an appearance, for it is the Word alone who is able to speak with authority and protect us from the onslaughts the hells make through the evils and falsities of the native proprium. The holy mountain is an image of Jehovah’s love for the salvation of the human race. The Lord is ever attentive to those who seek Him in the work of regeneration.

I laid down, and slept. I awoke, for Jehovah kept me. I am not afraid of myriads of people who have been set against me all around.

We need not be afraid for the Divine Love and Wisdom itself is focussed on our salvation so that when we fall into the sleep of temporarily believing the appearances, of feeling lost, alone, or helpless, feeling distant from the Lord – we will awaken to the care that the Lord has exercised over our souls in those dark times to preserve what is of Himself with us. Therefore, we will learn in passing through these states of spiritual sleep and wakefulness, that the Lord keeps us safe. For while the native proprium, the sense of self which we have acquired through our natural life, may consist of myriads of falsities, He has provided for us a new sense of self which is built upon the goods and truths of His Word – which is a heavenly proprium. This new proprium is provided by the Lord and is acquired through working with Him to have our sense of self removed from the evils and falsities of the hellish or native proprium.

As the Lord looks to arise in this new mode of life to break the hold of the old, so we, along with the Psalmist will be able to say…

Salvation truly belongs to the Lord…

Why have the nations raged and the peoples are meditating vanity? The kings of the earth set themselves; yea, the rulers have plotted together against Jehovah and His Anointed One, saying, We will break their bands in two, and throw off their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall mock at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger, and He will terrify them in His wrath; Yea, I have anointed My king on Zion, My holy Mount. I will declare concerning the statute of Jehovah: He said to Me, You are My Son. Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance; and the uttermost parts of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall smash them like a potter’s vessel. And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all the ones seeking refuge in Him! (Psalm 2:1-12)

“To have power,” in reference to “over the nations,” means to scatter in reference to evils; thus there is an adaptation of words to their subjects. It is said that evils will be scattered by the Lord, for the Lord scatters evils by means of truths. He first discovers them to man by means of truths, and when man acknowledges the evils, the Lord scatters them. …the Lord alone does this… “Nations and peoples” are often mentioned in the Word, and those who know nothing of the spiritual or internal sense of the Word, believe that peoples and nations are to be understood. But “peoples” mean those who are in truths, or in the contrary sense those who are in falsities, and “nations” those who are in goods, or in the contrary sense, those who are in evils. And as such are meant by “peoples” and by “nations,” so abstractly from persons “peoples” mean truths or falsities, and “nations” goods and evils; for the true spiritual sense is abstracted from persons, spaces, times, and like things, that are proper to nature. (Apocalypse Explained 175a)

The second Psalm opens with a universal question that all those in the spiritual life have asked many times…

Why have the nations raged and the peoples are meditating vanity?

This question comes from out of the struggle to live a life in keeping with what the Word teaches. For no sooner than we make an effort to have what is spiritual rule over the habitual ways of thinking and feeling that belong to the natural man – then things are stirred up within us. There are spiritual forces that have a vested interest in the false sense of self that we carry, and so seek to keep anything which supports it in place. So when we choose to not walk in the council of the ungodly, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful (Psalm 1), through walking, standing and sitting in the light of the Word instead, then all that is opposed to the Lord within the natural mind resists this. We enter then into a inner battle, to let go of the old and accept the new.

As negative emotional states begin to be stirred up within us, they bring to light the destructive patterns of thought which stand against promptings to affirmatively respond to our understanding of the Word. These thoughts fill our minds with vain reasonings that justify the native sense of self and what it values and loves. At times we can feel swamped and lost in the midst of this battle. We find that there is a part of us which seeks to change; to be rid of defensive ways of relating to others; to be freed from negative emotional states. But no sooner than we acknowledge the need to make positive changes in our life – we are caught up in all too familiar habitual responses. Unwanted feelings dominate our being and negative inner self talk fills our headspace, or as the Psalm puts it, the inner nations rage and we get dragged down into vain thoughst that populate or people our natural mind. Confronted with this we may well ask the question…

Why do the nations within us rage and the peoples within us get caught in vain meditations, when all we want is to live a life in obedience to the Word?

The difficulty of course lies in the fact that while we may want to live more fully in the Word, the identity that we have constructed for ourselves through our life in the world is not interested in spiritual things. This identity, that for much of our life we have called our ‘self‘, is really a false persona which holds that the things that present to our external senses are what are real. It’s a sense of self that places us in the world around us and keeps us identified with it. It prevents us from seeing that the real world where changes have to take place, as far as eternal spiritual things are concerned, is the world within us, the world made up of various beliefs and attitudes that we have taken ownership of as our ‘self‘.

This false persona is easily recognised for it is that within us which is concerned with getting its own way. It is constantly being offended, loves to put itself above others, spends its time in mindless inner talk that has no grounding in what’s truly important from an eternal perspective, and is obsessed with its petty likes and dislikes. This self is frequently distracted by whatever is presenting in the moment and as such has no real permanence. This can be seen in that it is constantly shifting from one opinion to the next in an effort to get the most out of the situations and circumstances that it finds itself in.

The Word is provided so that we can have built within us a new, permanent real sense of self for such a self can only develop when it is founded on spiritual truths. So when light from the truths of the Word begin to reveal the state of the native sense of self, then the evils and falsities of the natural mind that make up that self become disturbed and gather to resist any exposure that will uncover its disordered state. This false persona is what is meant here by the nations that rage and the people who meditate vanity.

In verse two we read that the…

The kings of the earth set themselves; yea, the rulers have plotted together against Jehovah and His Anointed One,

The kings of the earth that set themselves against Jehovah are the false beliefs which form arguments to keep negative attitudes in place, particularly when we are challenged by the Word to commit ourselves more fully to living a spiritual life. The rulers that have plotted together are the selfish attitudes which seek only the interests of the native self and blind us to seeing the need to persevere with the Word and use it as the guide for our daily life. These elements, we are told, conspire against Jehovah and His Anointed, against what is genuinely good and true. For the Divine Good is what is meant by the term Jehovah and the Divine Truth is what is meant by His Anointed. These together are the Word for the Word itself is the Divine Love and Wisdom in human form and as such, it alone is able to deliver us from the evils and falsities that make up the false self that we are so often identified with.

This presence of Jehovah, the Lord, in the Word when it is being applied to life, is the reason the inner nations rage and the people meditate vanity. But verse 3 tells us what is required if we are to live a spiritual life, we are to…

break their bands in two, and throw off their cords from us.

In some translations this reads as if it is the kings of the earth and the rulers saying they will break and throw off the things of the Lord but the word saying has been added for it is not in the original Hebrew. And so the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity make it clear that it is those who are being regenerated who are speaking, not the false beliefs and selfish attitudes. In The Inner Meaning Of the Prophet and Psalms 252 when commenting on the inner meaning of this verse it reads,

but men should separate themselves from these, because they are nothing before the Lord

Also in the prophet Isaiah we are told that a true spiritual life involves loosing the bands of wickedness (58:6).

To not be able to see that it is the Word alone which is capable of doing this for us, is to be lost in the vain plots of our ego or proprium. But those who look to the Word and see that when they are identified with their proprium this separates them from the Lord, are those who experience its power to break their bands, to disconnect with what keeps evil and falsity alive and active within them. The things of the natural man that make up the false persona are nothing but dust before the goods and truths of the Word. But for us to see this, so that it has a real impact on the quality of our life, we have to be in the Word as often as we can and be working with it in our daily life. Then we shall see that those things that seemed to have so much power over us are powerless in the face of its truths. This is the idea contained in the next verse which reads…

He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall mock at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger, and He will terrify them in His wrath;

Of course, the Lord mocks no one nor is He ever angry or wrathful. The Lord is Divine Love and this love is constant and never changes. So the idea of anger or wrath in relation to the Lord is said from the perspective of what is evil and false for when love approaches, it is felt as something negative and destructive of its life. Similarly, the feeling of being mocked or laughed at is how evil and false states of mind experience goodness and truth when it enters and exposures them. Such are the warped perceptions of the native proprium in the face of the Word.

In verse 6 the Lord declares:

Yea, I have anointed My king on Zion, My holy Mount.

This king is the Divine Human of the Lord, which is the Word, for the Word is the infinite Divine presenting Itself in a form that can be received into finite human minds. It is said to be anointed on the Zion, a holy Mount because the Word is founded on, and comes forth from the Divine Love which, being the highest or most elevated form of love, is described as a holy mount, a holy mountain.

This truth is a remarkable statement. The Word has the Divine Love as its foundation and so must give expression to this. How wonderful then are the truths of the teachings for Spiritual Christianity that make this ever clearer for us. Of the Word the Lord declares in verse 7…

You are My Son. Today I have begotten you.

Today refers to the perpetual moment. This is every moment, for in every moment we are given the opportunity to draw from the Word Divine truths born of Divine Love which are called My Son. These are born in the minds of those who seek the Lord in the Word and who love it by meditating upon it day and night (Psalm 1) as they use it in their daily life.

Psalm two teaches that those who are engaged in genuine spiritual work know what to ask for. This is because this kind of work develops a person’s spiritual perception and when we are more acutely attuned to the Word, we will hear the Lord’s voice speaking through our thoughts and meditations saying….

Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance; and the uttermost parts of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall smash them like a potter’s vessel. And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling.

The Word instructs us here what we are to ask for. We are to ask for the nations as our inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for our possession. This of course speaks of things within us, not of actual nations and parts of the earth in the external, material world. Our inheritance and possession is of a spiritual quality and spiritual things are the internal things of the mind. So to ask for this is to be in the effort to have the principles of the Word rule over all the emotional and intellectual states of our minds. To break them with a rod of iron is to live in the power of natural truths of the Word understood in the light of the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity, for these are able to break down, false perspectives and self centred motives. The Word is able to smash and scatter (AE 175) the false vessels that have been built up in the natural mind over the course of our life.

And now be wise, O kings; be taught, O judges of the earth: Serve Jehovah with fear; yea, rejoice with trembling.

We are to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. This means that our lives are to be dedicated to what is good and to confess what is true. To serve the Lord with fear doesn’t mean to cower before Him, rather in the spiritual sense it means to pursue only what is good or loving. This state is one which holds within it a holy fear of anything that would corrupt or destroy what is of the Lord within us.

In the final verse, the very basis for a healthy spiritual life is revealed. If we seek wholeness then we must…

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. (Psalm 2:1-12)

The Son, as we have seen is the Word, Divine truths that come forth from the Divine love, and to kiss another is to be joined to them. Therefore to kiss the Son is to have our life united to the Word. That part of us that is not responsive to the Word feels truths as something opposed to it and this is described as anger. God, when viewed through the proprium, is seen as a judge who holds us guilty, who only seeks to condemn us and take away our liberty and pleasure. As we saw earlier, where anger and wrath are attributed to the Lord, what is described are not qualities of Divine Love but are instead a description of how those lower things in us see the Lord when the light of truth shines on what is opposed to the heavenly life, on what our proprium finds delightful and entices us into.

To seek the Lord then is to work to have the influence of these lower things broken in two so that the evils and falsities that bind us might be smashed and scattered like a potter’s vessels under the rod of iron power of the Word This happens for those who put their trust in the Word and lean not to their own understanding…

Blessed indeed are those who flee to the Word for refuge…

Blessed are all the ones seeking refuge in Him!

Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of scorners. But his delight is only in the Law of Jehovah, and he meditates in His Law day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivulets of waters, which will give its fruit in its seasons, and its leaf will not wither, and all which he does will prosper. Not so are the wicked, but they are only as chaff which the wind drives about. On account of this the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For Jehovah is knowing the way of the righteous, and the way of the wicked shall perish. (Psalm 1:1-6)

‘Being blessed’, when it has reference to [a person], means being enriched with spiritual and celestial good and [they are] so enriched when the things residing with [them] are re-arranged by the Lord into a spiritual and celestial order, and so into the image and likeness of Divine order. The regeneration of [a person] is nothing else. (Arcana Coelestia 3017)

…it is said, to walk, to stand, and to sit, because these follow one another, for to walk pertains to the life of thought from intention, to stand pertains to the life of intention from the will, and to sit to the life of the will, thus to the esse of the life. Counsel also, of which to walk is said, regards the thought; way, in which one is said to stand, regards intention, while to sit in a seat refers to the will, which is the esse of a man’s life. (Apocalypse Explained 687)

Everyone wants to be happy. What is not so clear is what happiness is or how a true state of happiness can be found. The first thing to realise is that as far as holding a spiritual perspective of life is concerned, happiness is not found in factors outside of ourselves. People, material things, favourable circumstances, money, power and authority, may all induce feelings of delight and pleasure but delights and pleasures in and of themselves are not necessarily indicative of an underlying state of spiritual happiness. They are simply delights and pleasures, and these can just as easily flow in from hell as they can from heaven. What follows on from this also is that unhappiness and other forms of negative emotions are not caused by material things or people or circumstances outside of ourselves either.

This is something difficult to grasp because we are so conditioned to attributing causal power to things in the outside world, believing the conclusions that are drawn from our physical senses. The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity however, state clearly that the external world is a world of effects and that it is the spiritual world or the inner mental world where causes are to be found. If we would but take hold of this single truth our world would change radically. We would see that all the effort we put into changing our external conditions in the hope of finding happiness is futile and that the only path to true states of happiness rests in having our beliefs and desires transformed. We would see that the most important focus in life are the things that belong to the inner world of our mind. That it is our perspective that has to change. And that the spiritual work of using truths to examine our lives with a view to removing false ideas and trivial self orientated desires, has the capacity for profound transformation.

The opening verse of this Psalm clearly states how we can cultivate genuine happiness. To be happy or blessed is a by-product of living life with integrity. It requires that we live responsibly and with an inner accountability to what we know to be true and good; in other words, we must be in an effort to live our lives with a conscience that is based upon our understanding of the Word. Now the Psalm points out in its literal reading that this has to do with the company that we keep. We read that a man who doesn’t walk in the council of the ungodly, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scorners, is someone who is happy. So we see that what we surround ourselves with and engage with, has a bearing on our state of life, on our state of mind.

You perhaps will have noticed that this Psalm conveys its teaching using a three-fold structure and that in its opening verse it offers three dimensions that need to be fulfilled if a person is to experience spiritual happiness. So let’s look at this in a little more detail…

Firstly, we have three bodily activities described: walking, standing and sitting. These three bodily activities are coupled with three conditions that need to be met; we are not to walk in the council of the wicked or ungodly, we are not to stand in the way of sinners, nor are we to sit in the seat of the scornful or scorners. Each forms a triplet of related terms.

1. walk – counsel – ungodly

2. stand – way – sinners

3. sit – seat – scornful

The doctrines for Spiritual Christianity point out that in the Word there is a law of three and that it represents what is full or complete. So while we can look at what is taught here in terms of the external company that we keep and apply the teaching to that level of life, it also has a deeper meaning. For each activity of the body mentioned here, walking, standing, and sitting has a correspondence to spiritual states of the mind. When viewed in this way, the company that we keep is understood to be related to the states of our thoughts and affections. We move from people ‘out there’, to the thoughts and affections that we choose to dwell in or keep company with within.

We often speak of being on a journey in life, or the road in which we walk. Symbolically we all intuitively know that this doesnt literally mean a road that we are physiclly walking on but instead refers to the basic philosophy of life that we adhere to and so how our desires and intentions find expression. These can be either natural or spiritual. If they are grounded in natural life, then our thinking will be governed by the wisdom of the external world which is opposed to genuine spiritual wisdom. For the external world perspective would have us focus on what is outside ourselves as the source or cause of our interior states of life, and so our focus will be on material things, people and circumstances. The thought constructs formed by this level of mind tell us that we can be empowered through acquiring things. It offers us a life in which we are encouraged to look to our own prudence and take pride in our own intelligence and ability to govern and control outcomes. It is an attitude built upon running with what feels good rather than what the Word teaches is good. So to walk in the counsel of the ungodly is to walk according to that inner voice that flows from out of our native proprium or ego, which looks solely to the interests of the natural man, that is, the natural mind. But the Psalm teaches us that if we seek true happiness then we are not to walk where our natural inclinations and desires would lead us. And we can only do this if we are prepared to give up our sense of pride in our own ability to manage our lives and to walk in humility by looking to the Word as our guide instead.

The next part of the three activities referred to in the Psalm is standing – to not to stand in the way of sinners. The term to stand refers to what we ‘stand for’, the principles on which we stand and will not be moved. Where walking refers to the activity of our mental life, standing has to do with the quality of our motivations or intentions and these can be examined through our responses to what life confronts us with. The native proprium, the sense of self that is based in the belief in itself only, would have us stand in the path of sinners as it offers its justifications and rationalisations against any prompts to call out selfish attitudes and behaviours. Sinners don’t see their sin or where they miss the mark as far as loving the Lord and the neighbour go and so this state of mind, when confronted with its selfishness, is quick to find excuses to avoid having to undergo the painful process involved in self-examination. This condition exists within each of us, because in essence it describes the hellish proprium’s nature to stand in the way of spiritual teachings, particularly when these teachings point out what needs attending to.

The next area dealt with is that of sitting in the seat of the scornful and of the three bodily positions mentioned in this Psalm, sitting is the most settled or stable. It reflects what is at the core of the other two bodily attitudes. So where walking has to do with the activity of our life and standing has to do with our motivations, sitting in the Word corresponds to the will, for this is where the very life of a person is settled.

Now the natural will, the will that we start out with, is not a true will. It’s a false will that draws its life from things which captivate the attention by offering externally based pleasures and so draws us away from making a commitment to real spiritual efforts. The native sense of self that forms from this will constantly offers us these false loves and delights, trying to convince us that these are real things. When this will is active, then the mind is held captive and is seated in what scorns the Lord. But the Lord as the Word offers us liberation from this, and the promise of a new will that can form as we respond to and live a life from spiritual truth.

So these three bodily activities describe the three dimensions that we need to give attention to in cultivating a spiritual practice through which, true states of happiness can be found. We are instructed that we are not to walk, stand or sit in those things that are opposed to the spiritual life. That the true happiness the Lord offers is available to us if we are prepared to attend to these dimensions of our inner life. We can begin with attending to the way in which we walk, to examining where we place more value in material world concerns and loves over spiritual ones. As we attend to the external aspects of life we will find we can then begin to see those habitual patterns of thought that tend to justify a self centerd life. These thoughts reveal the intentions that sit behind the activity of the native sense of self. This is how things progress in the spiritual life. Until we make an effort to change the disordered aspects that exist in our external life, we remain unaware of the underlying intentions behind the thoughts and beliefs that we use to justify and keep negatively charged attitudes alive. But once we look to change our habitual negative patterns of being, we are brought face to face with the thoughts, beliefs, and intentions that keep them in place. This opens up the opportunity to expose the intellectual pride that these behaviours stand on and in doing so, have them cast out to the periphery of our mind so that what is good and true from the Word is implanted in the centre of our focus instead. This type of practice of the Word, of using its truths to examine where we walk, sit and stand, starts to develop a deepening perception within as we become all the more sensitive to the persuasive power of the natural mind and the native sense of self that lives from it.

When we enter adult life and first come into contact with spiritual truths, we awaken to see that the loves in this natural level of life that we have been living from are evil, are wicked. The realisation of this fact comes as a shock, but we need to see that by evil is meant whatever separates us from the Divine. Evil sounds like a strong condemning word to the natural mind. But anything that keeps us from acknowleding the Lord as the source of our life, is evil. We need only ask ourselves – How we would rate our love for the Word? Do we make efforts to study and live from it? For the Word is the Lord. This is where He is to be found. If we want to cultivate a love for it and to have our minds implanted with spiritual and celestial things, then we have to be prepared to live from the truths it teaches. The ideas and principles it offers are designed to reform the structures of our beliefs so that we can be given new desires and values, a new will. It is only in living from these principles that we cease to walk in the council of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners and sit in the seat of the scornful.

The Psalm emphasises this transformation that is possible through the Word…

delight is only in the Law of the Lord, and he meditates in His Law day and night.

The phrase day and night refers to every state of life. So when the Lord is loved, when the Word or law as the presence of the Lord in our life is applied to all our states of mind, then

the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

The evil or wicked loves and thoughts, those that turn our mind away from Him, become like chaff which the wind drives about as they are removed to the outskirts of the mind to be supplanted with the things of the Word instead. So if we are willing to ‘as if of self’ work with it and use it for the purposes that it has been given, then the mind can become transformed into something heavenly, into something that has eternal, everlasting life. This is what it offers…

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivulets of waters, which will give its fruit in its seasons, and its leaf will not wither, and all which he does will prosper.