Swedenborgian Community Interfaith Podcast

I entirely relate to worrying about money. With debt, current obligations, and future ambitions, it can seem inescapable. That’s what makes Christ’s open and interreligious teachings so poignant for us, in a way he’s striking at a source of a lot of our frustrations, personal and interpersonal. Like the teachings of the Buddha, Krishna, and others, many of Christ’s teachings do this: strike at the heart of what keeps us away from our heart and the peace inherent to it. If we follow his pointings, we find that our “burden is light,” but how might we follow something so at odds with the way our minds so often work?

Christ’s words about never making oaths or promises can be a bit unsettling. We should never make a promise? What about promises already made? That’s why I think it’s no accident that he couches these statements between telling men of the time that they shouldn’t divorce their wives, and a missive on staying non-violent. He wasn’t trying to encourage us to “do whatever we want,” but instead, to let go of our calcified assumptions. To let go of the oaths and endorsements that only continue our blindness and suffering.

Anger can sometimes be a natural, healthy reaction to something, just as fear, happiness, and other feelings can be. But when the tie of anger binds our hearts (often, without us knowing it), by our returning to it again and again – stoking the flames and identifying with the feeling toward any one situation, we don’t allow ourselves the peace of our inner transcend-essence and the natural joy that can arise no matter the circumstances. Like with any feeling or thought, it is our identification with them that keeps us circling out of presence and peace into rumination and anxiety. Instead, using the ancient practice of Self-realization, may we let go of our hold on our mind’s unhelpful habits, and find the peace of our inner stability and the natural spaciousness of our loving hearts.

A meditation on your inner light, the light of consciousness shining from Divinity.

“You are the light of the world.” These empowering words were spoken by Christ, not as an elitist view of his “Christian” followers, but as a description of the very nature of each of our spirits – especially when we allow ourselves to shine. Like the Buddha, Krishna, and the voices of God across the ages, Christ seemed to have made it his mission to point to the Great I Am inherent within each of us, our rootedness in Divinity and its angelic light. He tasked us, as many sages do, to turn to this light within, noticing continuously that it is from this very light that we see our issues, attachments, conditioning, and both the good and the bad times. From there, we can let our light shine in all its cascading beauty, as it naturally should. Read more on this topic: https://swedenborgiancommunity.org/blog/light

On Father’s Day we celebrate our fathers and fatherly figures, celebrating how Divinity shines through the diverse expressions of masculinity and fatherhood, just as it shines through femininity and motherhood in infinite ways as the source of these qualities (as well as gender-neutral expressions). Indeed, the Christian Bible often describes how Christ used “Father” to denote God when speaking with his family and friends two millennia back, although it is hard to say if these ancient Jewish people used the term more broadly at the time. Christ seemed to be expressing how close we are to God by using this important familial distinction, emphasizing that we are all children of God, and expressing that God is the seed of all life – particularly, the source of “the light of the world” and love itself. And, like a good father, this day in particular rejoices in the empowerment of freedom and the light of love in many diverse ways, as we also celebrate Juneteenth and New Church Day today.

Often, we lose the thread of childhood bliss, as though the pressures of adulthood were more important than remaining in contact with the peace and childlike play and joy we had as a kid. But who could blame us for thinking this way, when it is often as a child that we are encouraged to iron out our natural, playful self – that is if it even survives the early traumas in our life – to better meet the demands of society? Funny thing though, the childlike state of awareness itself can never be ironed out or killed, just seemingly layered over with “personality,” “responsibility,” as well as other limited, defensive constructs that keep us circling in anxiety, fear, and appropriated id-entity. We are called to reawaken to our childlike state of being, of life, love, joy, and presence, by turning to something very simple and important, but beyond words or works, that we intuitively know the moment we’re born: “I am,” not “I am this and that, name, thought, and form.”

In this video we explore the inner meaning of Revelation 12. There’s a reason that the book of Revelation is often associated with a mushroom or hallucinogenic trip, because the images found throughout Revelation seem to come straight out of one. What’s further interesting about the book written by John when he was “in the spirit,” is that the images of the book of Revelation are all references to other moments of the Bible but blended into a psychedelic mixture. Our reading from Revelation 12 today is one of the most iconic images from that trippy book, describing a woman clothed in the sun who is set upon by a seven-headed red dragon. And like many images in Revelation, although it resembles a crazy dream, the parable that it expresses invites us to overcome our personal dominating, distracted, destructive demons to allow our creative, heavenly Self and God to shine through.

A meditation to empower our higher Self through letting go of our identification with the lower self.

It says that John was “in the spirit” when he had the visions described in the quite trippy book of Revelation, and the images described there (often about the future, as well as a new heaven and a new earth) bring to mind hallucinogens as well as the visions of my favourite mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. For many, especially for many Christians, the book of Revelation has been a tough nut to crack, and many of its most famous elements are misconstrued due to things like Left Behind and other narratives that play up added stories about the antichrist. The book has been interpreted on many levels (even by my grandfather, who wrote a book on how it’s a hidden critique of the Romans!), but these interpretations often lack a good throughline or cohesiveness with the rest of scripture, seemingly missing the opportunity to tie the clearly metaphorical Revelation with the metaphors found throughout scripture. However, there’s one interpretation that does just that, in fact, this interpretation (written in 1766 by Emanu

Our mothers treasure our lives in their hearts, often there as a listening ear and a loving, wise presence. Even if we can’t relate to that statement, the motherly love and light of the universe is with us whether we know it or not, not part and parcel with our very own consciousness and inner light. The motherly ones in our lives often feel like a warm hug with their caring and spacious personalities, and often this is because they truly do treasure us – we have much to learn from that kind of life and that kind of love.

When I think of Easter I think of celebrations of life with vibrant colors and the diversity of community expressions of joy – and even for those of us not Christian or perhaps still wondering about religion, spirituality, and God, I think there’s a profound message of awakening and resurrection in the Easter story. Christ himself hadn’t set out to “start a religion” but to return us to our natural state in unity with love and God (known by many names and many stories), inviting us to a type of resurrection of spirit, society, and life. Even as we count Christ dead in modern culture due to the ignorance and horrors sometimes offered by those who take his name, I think we’ll find he’s not down for the count.

Our spiritual teachers have a very important job to do and when they are fruitful in helping us awaken to Spirit and Love we can’t help but rejoice, this is because intrinsic to the Spirit of God (known by many names) is joy. We recently saw a joyful and historic teaching moment when one of the world’s foremost spiritual teachers, Pope Francis, along with various Catholic bishops met with indigenous people from Canada over the course of a few days. During this visit, the indigenous peoples shared their stories and the lasting impact that residential schools and other colonizing efforts have had on them and their friends and family. The trip ended in a heartfelt speech and apology from the Pope, affirming the indigenous peoples’ experiences and expressing how much he’s learned in those few days, vowing to be a partner in decolonization and with indigenous peoples. In this example, we see that even the Pope has a learning journey and that often our best teachers are the most overlooked, as the humble and oppres

A meditation to unveil our true natures

It says in the scriptures that God gives light to everyone and is the true light. This clearly metaphorical phrase, although perhaps also literal, seems to point to a number of things that we call light: truth, wisdom, understanding, spiritual insight, perception – which all come back to the most fundamental light of all, the light of consciousness itself, without which none of these could be perceived. Despite being so prominent in the Christian scriptures, delving into this line of thinking and further inquiry seems to often take a backburner to more surface understandings of Christ, which can keep God at a distance from us while also limiting our understanding of the shining unity at the core of most religions. Even more pluralistic approaches can miss this important point, that God is the pure light of consciousness itself – at no distance from our seat of perception – and that coming to better know this Alpha and Omega of our lives can awaken us to all to our birthrights as children of God, not stepchild

The 18th-century sage, Emanuel Swedenborg, has greatly influenced many impactful, peerless thinkers and influential progressive radicals (from Immanuel Kant and Helen Keller to Emerson, Blake, and William James), but he himself is little known to modern history. And although there are countless biographies of the ground-breaking scientist-turned-mystic, there is one important aspect of his history that I think could use a little more exploration and emulation, his spiritual awakening. His deep meditative approach to his quest for the seat of the soul resembles the types of inner inquiry that many ancient and modern sages invite in order to awaken from spiritual slumber, into what a Swedenborgian may coin “angelic flow,” or “Christ-consciousness,” or just plainly, Buddha.Read more: https://swedenborgiancommunity.org/blog/secretLearn more on our website: https://swedenborgiancommunity.orgGive: https://swedenborgiancommunity.org/my-gift

War is on our doorsteps more often than we admit, as it’s a small world and it is always at war. But a type of war often churns in our minds as well, springing from a similar cause: ignorance of our true nature and our oneness as the Self. Vladimir Putin’s atrocious war on Ukraine scrapes the barrel of degradation and even toys with catastrophic nuclear destruction, and yet shares in the root cause of a false idea of self – one that seeks to defend from, attack, control, relish in, judge, fear, and subjugate all things that touch its fancy, as this is the nature of this inverted wisdom itself. Yes, our minds jump from one ignorant type of modality to the next as there is a time for all these things when we stay centered in non-centeredness. Often these things feel out of our control – types of impulsive, habitual drives leading some of us even to murder – and many of these traits can be written off as normal as it is the common modality of our unawakened minds. But, in a way, this offers a solution in and of

A Meditation to Relieve Stress and Anxiety: Awaken Within

Today we pray for Ukraine, hopefully, no matter our tradition and country. We pray for peace, healing, safety, wholeness, sanity, an end to wars and needless violence (in Ukraine and otherwise). But prayer sometimes leaves us asking, what is it fundamentally? Is it an inner monologue toward God, an effort to manifest something? Of course, prayer is often what we make it. Scripturally, prayer tends to be described as an effort to unburden our issues before God and find connection with Divinity, as well as seeking reconciliation, healing, unity, resolution, and peace – even for our enemies. In many religions, there’s a shared approach to prayer that includes both personal beseeching as well as various other types of meditative approaches that may include mantras (like with the Lord’s Prayer or many Hindu prayers) or praise and thanksgiving. Whether it’s beseeching, praise, mantric, or more silent prayers, these are designed to help us let go of our issues and our mind’s wanderings and open toward the transcende