That from the Lord proceed two universal spheres for the preservation of the universe in the state created, of which the one is the sphere of procreating, and the other the sphere of protecting the things procreated. The Divine proceeding from the Lord is called a sphere because it goes forth from Him, surrounds Him, fills both worlds, the spiritual and the natural, and brings into operation the effects of the ends which the Lord predestined at creation and for which He provides after it. All that flows out from a subject and encompasses and surrounds it, is called a sphere; as, for example, the sphere of light and heat from and around the sun; the sphere of life from and around a man; the sphere of the fragrance of a plant around it; the sphere of the attraction of a magnet around it, and so on. [2] But the universal spheres here treated of are from and around the Lord, and they proceed from the sun of the spiritual world in the midst of which He is. From the Lord through that sun proceeds a sphere of heat and light, or, what is the same thing, a sphere of love and wisdom, for the bringing into operation of ends which are uses. This sphere is designated by different names according to its uses. The Divine sphere looking to the preservation of the universe in its created state by means of successive generations, is called the Sphere of Procreating; and the Divine sphere looking to the preservation of the generations in their beginnings and afterwards in their progressions, is called the Sphere of Protecting what is procreated. Besides these two, there are many other Divine spheres and these are named according to their uses, thus differently, as can be seen above (no. 222). The operations of uses by means of those spheres are the Divine Providence. (Conjugial Love 386)
Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said to Joshua, “Choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” So Joshua did as Moses said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called its name, The-Lord-Is-My-Banner; for he said, “Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Exodus 17: 8- 16)
On the surface, this is a story about how the Lord protects us from those things that seek to harm us. It demonstrates how when we give priority to the things of the Lord, then spiritual struggles are overcome but when we turn away and look towards ourselves instead, then evil reigns. The name Amalek in the Hebrew means people gathered up and since Amalek is a descendant of Esau who represents the good of earthly truths (Arcana Coelestia 3300), here in the negative sense, we have a gathering of all those things that have descended from the evils of them. That is, from the loves that have been built up from the appearances of the senses. And hence in the Amalekites we have a gathering of all those things that support the love of self, the love that I am a self.
Now I’ve long struggled with the concept of the Lord protecting us from ourselves. Not the principle that we should and need to be led out of our love of our self but more so because the idea of protection seemed to suggest that the Lord was working on the defensive. Like He was working reactively to a situation to accommodate for our inadequacies and to steer us away from what effectively is self-harm and harmful to others. Which on the surface, this story also portrays. And it’s not that this isn’t a good thing because obviously it is, but it had always made Him feel too finite for me, too self-conscious and self-aware. Too much like He was weighing up the situation and deciding just how much of His love and wisdom He was going to hand out in any moment. That He was limiting how much of Himself was able to be accessed. All of which contrasted with what I knew from the Word about the nature of Divine Love- that it is unchanging and therefore doesn’t accommodate. And that it doesn’t work on the defensive either but rather it is the form of our mind, of the structures and patterns of our thinking, feeling and beliefs that determine what we receive or don’t receive.
It was only recently, from a situation which arose in my role as parent, that I was able to find an affectional ‘in’ to this concept of Divine protection, which didn’t feel finite, and which married with what I understood from the Word. The experience itself was something that a parent often finds themselves in – it was seeing that my child was engaging with thinking and feeling patterns which I judged were not of the Lord. My initial reaction was that these influences would do him harm and therefore this needed to be pointed out to him since he was now a teenager and thus of an age where he could self-reflect and make choices based on this. And, that he needed to have the vessels which carried these influences removed from his environment. So externally, to all appearances, I was doing the very thing I had been struggling to understand regarding the Lord. I was seeking to protect him from further exposure and thus harm to himself and potentially to others. And I was responding on the defensive to what I considered an offensive move from the things that opposed the Lord.
But as I examined the state more deeply, I realised that the love of protection wasn’t the love that was driving the response. The thing driving it was very simple at its core. I just had a desire for him to be in the Lord. To be in good. And so wanted to turn him to look towards where I deemed that to be. The effect however was that it then implied boundaries as to where the Lord wasn’t and for my young adult child, part of those boundaries would be determined by his willingness to accept and see what I was pointing to. The protection then became one of the by-products of the love – like one of the consequences of its existence, or like one of the things that was outflowing from the nature of what it was, its nature being, again very simply, to draw what is of itself to itself.
For love is receptive of each and all things that are in harmony with it; it longs for them, seeks them, and drinks them in as it were spontaneously, for it desires unceasingly to be enriched and perfected by them. (Heaven and Hell 18)
Because this is the nature of love, the consequential effect of its existence means that everything in creation is continually being drawn away from what love is not, away from what is evil. So, for a finite mind, for us, this means that Divine Love is seeking to continually draw us away from the idea that we are an autonomous self because this is the root of all evil. This idea forms a counter love to Divine Love and is generated from the appearances of the senses which would have us believe that we are able to function and exist independently from the Divine Life. And this is the very definition of what evil is.
Evil and sin are a separation and turning away from the Lord (The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 170)
… evil itself consists in disunion. This is plain from good, for good is conjunction… The good of love to the Lord conjoins the man with the Lord, and consequently with all the good which proceeds from Him… But with evil the reverse is the case. … The evil of the love of self disjoins the man not only from the Lord, but also from heaven; for he loves no one but himself, others only so far as he regards them in himself, or so far as they make one with him. Hence, he diverts to himself the attention of all, and entirely averts it from others, most especially from the Lord (Arcana Coelestia 4997)
… if any man suffers himself to be so far misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but is Life, he cannot be withheld from the thought that he is God. A man’s feeling as if he were life, and therefore believing himself to be so, arises from fallacy; for the principal cause is not perceived in the instrumental cause otherwise than as one with it. That the Lord is Life in Himself, He Himself teaches in John: As the Father hath life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself (5:26) He declares also that He is Life itself (John 11:25; 14:6). Now since life and love are one (as is apparent from what has been said above, n. 1, 2), it follows that the Lord, because He is Life itself, is Love itself. (Divine Love and Wisdom 4)
Love is perpetually working to elevate the sense of self up out of the closed, natural mind and to open into the reality that instead of being self-sustaining, it is sustained as a self – by the Divine. Love then continually seeks to awaken us to the existence of Itself and the self then alternatively, as a historically constructed concept of mind, continually resists this.
Whenever man looks to himself in the good that he does he is let into what is his own, that is, into his inherited evils for he then looks from good to himself and not from himself to good, and therefore he presents an image of himself in his good, and not an image of the Divine. (Heaven and Hell 558)
The resulting state of stasis or if you like, equilibrium, from these two opposing loves means that we are each held in any moment in a type of placement of mind and in this placement, mental and spiritual boundaries are created or come into existence for us. We may not be aware of them, but it is in that hovering point between where we are held in the continual drawing of Love to what is of Itself that is within us to Itself, and the counter of what resist this in the opposite direction – that these boundaries arise.
Good is from creation, both good in its greatest degree and good in its least; and when this least becomes nothing, then from the other side arises evil. There is therefore no relation between them, nor any progression of good to evil, but only a relation and progression of good to greater and less good, and of evil to greater and less evil, the two being opposites at each and every point. And since good and evil are opposites, there is an intermediate between them wherein is an equilibrium in which evil acts against good; but because it does not prevail, it stops in the endeavour (Conjugial Love 444)
The boundaries appear to then form a kind of protection in that they offer a sense of a hermetically sealed sphere in which the sense of being a self can exist as a something in our awareness. Without these boundaries which arise from the equilibrium, we would find that the self has no shape, no form, no sense of being anything, and if there is no sense of being anything – then we would have nothing in or through which we might experience conjunction with the Divine Love which of course would be contrary to its nature.
… as love viewed in itself seeks no other end than to become one with him whom it loves, so the Divine love seeks no other end than to unite itself to man and man to itself, even until It is in him and he in It. (True Christian Religion 838)
These boundaries aren’t impenetrable though, they are more like a cell membrane in a human body which acts as both a barrier and a filtering system, allowing some dissolved substances or solutes to pass, whilst blocking others. So, the boundary is semipermeable and contributes to the overall health of the cell and in its ability to maintain a state of homeostasis. The homeostasis is this case being brought about by the letting through of concepts of Divine Love that can be integrated into the sense of self without leading to a complete disintegration of its functioning. And so, this membrane of mental and spiritual concepts serves in the maintenance of our sense of being a self and hence of being a something in which we might experience reception of Divine Life.
Now the quality of this membrane-like-boundary determines the quality of the awareness of self that forms within it. And we can look to the illustration of the Lord’s protection as an example.
When a child is young the parent actively constructs and monitors the environment so that the child is kept safe and nourished in the things that it needs to be healthy and to grow. The parent is in a role of protector and nurturer.
When the child starts to develop self-awareness, the parent begins to educate and make the child aware of the factors that are involved in the construction, monitoring, and modification of the environment. The child starts to develop an awareness of why it needs protection and how this might be done. The parent is now in a role of both a protector and educator.
Once the child begins to demonstrate an ability to construct, monitor and modify its own environment the parent in parallel starts to action less of these. And so, the child is given increasing opportunity to practice an awareness of protection for itself.
This latter stage continues until such a time where the child, now an adult, takes responsibility for its own environment. The parent’s role as a protector ceases and they assume more of a role of a companion through the ups and downs of the grown child’s life.
Of course, this is the ideal development for the child and parent relationship but in practice, the role of relinquishing the responsibility of a protector can be a challenging one for a parent. It can require the constant reminder that this role for the child now needs to be let go of, so that it may continue to develop as an adult. And that the parent does not have control nor ownership of the child’s life anymore and that in fact that were only ever a custodian.
So, we come back now to how this might illustrate the quality of the membrane boundary within which the sense of self comes into conscious awareness.
In the first stage of development the young child is viewed as something that needs protecting. It is largely unaware of its environment and the influences within it and so the parent is seen as something that exists to both protect and nourish it. Upon reflection, we can all see examples of this in our own relationship with the Lord as He who has protected and nourished us when we have been in states of ignorant innocence about spiritual things. We might look at the sense of self that had been active in these states as something that was completely dependent on the Lord’s hand in all that it led us through. We might see where it steered us away from things that could have been harmful to us and others and feel moved by His mercy in how He carried us through difficult situations. In this state, the sense of self is perceived as something that needs protecting.
In the second stage where the child is developing an awareness of the protection that the parent provides, the parent is seen as something that needs to educate the child. This might relate to those states in which we see the sense of self in the role of acquiring knowledge about the Divine Love, of its nature and the principles that govern its operation. In this state the Lord is seen still seen as a protector but increasingly also seen as the source of all wisdom and as that which can educate us about spiritual life. We might also liken this stage to those states when the Word starts to become something that is seen as an important source of knowledge in our life and increasingly something with which we must engage with and listen to and try to apply what it teaches.
In the third stage of development the parent begins to allow the child independence in their decision making. However, as this stage progresses there can be a lot of back-and-forth struggle because of resistances within both the child and the parent. States of regression are also part of this process. Slowly though, as the child becomes mature and more skilled in its ability to examine, judge, and respond to situations, the parent incrementally relinquishes the responsibility of being the child’s protector. The parent in this stage thus is seen as something that is moving towards a state of acceptance that there is no longer a child that needs protecting.
This last stage particularly seems to reflect the ongoing work of spiritual life. If the child represents the sense of self within the membrane boundary and the roles and responsibilities of the parent reflect the concepts that we carry about the nature of the Divine that make up this boundary – then we can see how this last stage illustrates the resistance of the self to accept that it actually has no self that needs to be protected. That instead the experience of the Lord protecting us is reflective of how we understand the nature of Him and the nature of the self.
For if there is a belief that the self is an independent autonomous thing, then it would follow that the Lord protects it so that it can subsist and experience life. The Lord in this state actively constructs the boundaries and looks after them so that we do not dissolve into nothingness. There is a beautiful child-like stare of innocence in this idea, but it is also based on the thinking that the self is a something and that we would be destroyed if it were to be removed.
With the corporeal and worldly man, his Own is his all, he knows of nothing else than his Own, and imagines, as before said, that if he were to lose this Own he would perish. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
On the other hand, if there is an acceptance that there is no self and that this is an experience that arises from the meeting of Divine Life with the belief that I am real then although there is still a feeling that I am independent and autonomous – there is a new way of being in relationship to it. And a realisation, at least intellectually, that there is actually no self to protect although there is still a struggle to live from this from this concept.
With the spiritual man also his Own has a similar appearance, for although he knows that the Lord is the life of all, and gives wisdom and understanding, and consequently the power to think and to act, yet this knowledge is rather the profession of his lips than the belief of his heart. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
And at the complete opposite end of the child that needs protecting is again something that appears as child-like innocence where there is a forgetting that there is a self at all. But this is not because it is unaware of the Lord’s presence – but quite the opposite. This state is only focused on what the Lord is asking of it and does this without even a thought presenting to question it because the active love is so at one with the Divine Love. The love that it receives is felt as what is the only self. We might see an example of this in those states where we forget our own existence for a moment or two because the focus is so at one with what is His, in the service of His love. There is effectively nothing that identifies as my self and so nothing which requires protection. There is just what IS. THE Self.
But the celestial man discerns that the Lord is the life of all and gives the power to think and to act, for he perceives that it is really so. He never desires his Own, nevertheless an Own is given him by the Lord, which is conjoined with all perception of what is good and true, and with all happiness. … for in their Own are those things which are the Lord’s, who governs their Own, or them by means of their Own. This Own is the veriest celestial itself, whereas that of the corporeal man is infernal. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
Sometimes an angel does not speak from himself, but from the Lord, and he then does not know but that he is the Lord; but then his externals are quiescent. It is otherwise when his externals are active. The reason is, that the internal man of the angels is the Lord’s possession; and so far then as there are no obstructions on the part of what is their own, it is the Lord’s, and even is the Lord. (Arcana Coelestia 1745)
If we return now to where we began with the story of the victory of the Amalekites, we may also see these three examples of self, and of the movement from protector to educator to the one and only self.
Moses in general represents the historical Word (Arcana Coelestia 6752), the Word as we interact with it in its literal sense of person, place, time, and space. In fact, the name in the Hebrew relates to what is plucked or drawn out which points to its function in that the things of the historical knowledges serve as a basis from which more interior things can be accessed. And we see this need to move more interiorly with the Word into higher things illustrated in the story both in the fact that Moses has gone up to a hilltop and when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed. For when the things of the Word that are able to hold and manipulate (i.e. the hand) are raised and drawn up out of what is lower towards heavenly things, then person, place, time and space are read as spiritual states. They are elevated into what is more interior where they can be applied to the life of our mind and spirit, and so have true agency to draw us away from the reign of self-love, which is a love grown from believing the appearances of the senses to be real, from believing that we are a self, independent from Divine Life. The power of this agency is also emphasised in the fact that in Moses’s hand was the rod of God, a rod representing an extension of this idea of the power of the Word when drawn into what is more interior (Arcana Coelestia 7026). But this is only the beginning of our development. For we might intellectually see how the practice of removing person, place, time, and space has the power to protect us from falling into negative states, but one truth is not enough to overthrow the Amalekites. Without regular practice of it in life so that it moves beyond the intellectual into the willingness of the heart, there is no way the sense of self will give up ownership of its life. And so, the inability to let go of the self is also reflected in the belief that there is a self that the Lord protects.
“If he were to lose this Own he would perish” and so “Moses’ hands became heavy”.
In order for a transformation in the sense of self to take place, regular engagement with the Word must occur. A solid foundation upon which to rest and have connection with the lowest things of the earth, the things of the senses, is needed. This can only be done through the accumulation of truths that have become known by the practice of them in our life. And this is the education that the Word as the Lord offers us whilst the sense of self still sits in a placement of mind where it believes it needs protection. And this education through practice, is the representative image of the stone that was provided to support the historical Word.
“so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it.”
The as-of-self effort to compel oneself to work and practice, to hold up the hands whilst resting on the rock as it makes contact with the earth beneath it, can be seen in the description of the spiritual man…
With the spiritual man … although he knows that the Lord is the life of all, …. this knowledge is rather the profession of his lips than the belief of his heart. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
It is said to be an as of self effort because whilst there is a recognition that the Lord is one’s life as a principal truth that the Word teaches, there is a struggle to actually live in this. And so, the as of self effort pays homage to the principle but also acknowledges the effort that the self feels as its own.
And just like the child that matures and becomes more skilled in its ability to discern and make decisions, so too does the mental and spiritual concepts that make up the boundaries of the membrane of the self-cell change as the Word is practiced.
Faith in God enters into man through a prior way, which is from the soul into the higher parts of the understanding; while knowledges about God enter through a posterior way, because they are drawn from the revealed Word by the understanding, through the bodily senses; and these inflowings meet midway in the understanding; and there natural faith, which is merely persuasion, becomes spiritual, which is real acknowledgment. Thus the human understanding is like a refining vessel, in which this transmutation is effected. (True Christian Religion 11[3])
And so, the quality of what is within the membrane boundary is also perceived differently as the quality of the membrane boundary changes. What seems telling in the final image of Moses up on the hill in his overseeing of the battle between the Amalekites and Israel is that he doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all by the end of it. What started out as his effort to raise his hand, moved from him getting tired and needing a rock to sit on, and now in this last image he also needs support to hold up his hands.
And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. (Exodus 17:12-13)
So, now both his feet and hands are supported. His feet being the place where he, as the Word in us, might stand and have contact with the lower things and the hands being the place where it has the power to manipulate and have agency. Thus, conveying the idea that any power that we have to do anything is an illusion – that the effort that the sense of self feels is what flows through it as a vessel of reception of Divine Life. Any effort that was perceived prior to this state seems to be dissipated by this last image like a final light being shed on the situation. And indeed, this is brought out by the root word of the Hebrew of the two names of the men holding up Moses’s hands; Aaron meaning bringing of light and Hur meaning white which both carry with them the idea of enlightenment.
The battle against the Israelites, who represent the spiritual church (See Arcana Coelestia 4286) culminates in Joshua which means Jehovah saves, being enabled to defeat the Amalekites, the things of the love of self, with the edge of the sword. The sword represents the power of Divine truth to assist in state of struggles and cut through falsities (Arcana Coelestia 2799) and so the lived truth about what Divine Life is resolves the battles of the spiritual church and moves the state into one that is celestial.
But the celestial man discerns that the Lord is the life of all and gives the power to think and to act, for he perceives that it is really so. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
… the internal man of the angels is the Lord’s possession; and so far then as there are no obstructions on the part of what is their own, it is the Lord’s, and even is the Lord. (Arcana Coelestia 1745)
He never desires his Own, nevertheless an Own is given him by the Lord, which is conjoined with all perception of what is good and true, and with all happiness. … for in their Own are those things which are the Lord’s, who governs their Own, or them by means of their Own. (Arcana Coelestia 141)
In this state, there is no self that needs protecting. There is only the Lord’s self, felt as what is own. In this state of mind, of spirit, there is no memory of Amalek.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” (Exodus 17:14)
But being finite, with a semipermeable cell membrane of self, states are always in flux. And once this state passes there is a return once more to the as of self effort in the work and practice. However, the memory of the process serves as a reminder that the Word as the Lord is always fully present. That His Love is ever constant, perpetually drawing what is of itself towards it.
And Moses built an altar and called its name, The-Lord-Is-My-Banner; for he said, “Because the Lord has sworn: the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. (Exodus 17:15-16)
References:
Esua represents the good of natural/earthly truth.
There are two things which constitute the natural, as there are two that constitute the rational, nay, that constitute the whole man, one of which is of life, and the other of doctrine. That which is of life belongs to the will, while that which is of doctrine belongs to the understanding. The former is called good, and the latter truth. This good is that which is represented by Esau, and the truth by Jacob; or what is the same, the good of life of the truth of the natural is that which is represented by Esau, and the doctrine of truth of the natural is that which is represented by Jacob. (Arcana Coelestia 3300)
Moses represents the historical Word.
There are two people primarily who represent the Lord with respect to the Word, namely Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the Lord with respect to the historical books, Elijah with respect to the Prophets. In addition to those two there is Elisha, and lastly John the Baptist, who is therefore the one who is meant by ‘the Elijah who is to come’, Matthew 17:10-13; Luke 1:17. But before one can show that Moses represents the law of God, one must say what the law of God is. In a broad sense God’s law means the whole Word; in a narrower sense it means the historical section of the Word; in a restricted sense it means what was written through Moses; and in a very restricted sense it means the Ten Commandments written upon Mount Sinai on tablets of stone. Moses represents the law in the narrower sense as well as in the restricted sense and also in the very restricted. (Arcana Coelestia 6752)
A rod is an extension of the idea of the hand representing power.
And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. That this signifies that these things were from Divine power, is evident from the signification of “rod,” as being power (n. 4013, 4015, 4876, 4936) thus “the rod of God” denotes Divine power. (That “rod” denotes the power of the natural, and “hand” the power of the spiritual, and that the natural has power from the spiritual, thus that by “rod” is signified power when it is in the hand, see n. 7011.) (Arcana Coelestia 7026)
Israel represents the spiritual church.
These things have been stated in order that it may be known what “Israel” denotes. But in the supreme sense “Israel” signifies the Lord as to the Divine celestial spiritual, and in the internal sense signifies the Lord’s spiritual kingdom in heaven and on earth. The Lord’s spiritual kingdom on earth is the church which is called the Spiritual Church. And because “Israel” denotes the Lord’s spiritual kingdom, “Israel” likewise denotes the spiritual man, for in every such man there is the Lord’s kingdom; for a man is a heaven, and is also a church, in the least form (n. 4279). (Arcana Coelestia 4286 [4])
A sword represents.
A “sword” in the internal sense signifies the truth of faith combating, and also the vastation of truth; and in the opposite sense falsity combating, and the punishment of falsity. (Arcana Coelestia 2799)