The following of Jesus is not the same as following the teachings of a church. Nor is it the same as sitting and resonating with the scriptures. You do not just follow the teachings of your garage and its mechanics nor get by with the meditational absorption of the owner’s manual. No. You have to drive the car.

"…and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes…" Hosea 12:10

The Originator is speaking through the imaginative realm of a poet seer. The imaginative realm is not “just his imagination.” When the mind is opened to the cosmic, opened beyond animal fantasies of food, sex, and entertainment, when boundaries fade away, vision comes. Mystery unfolds, words come. From where do they come except from beyond? Beyond the skin boundary, beyond the narcissistic gaze of self reflection, beyond the chit chatter of self talk. Beyond.

When we open our eyes to our inner universe with its hopes, its dreams, its fears, its gods and demons (which we now call psychological complexes), and we then open our eyes to the outer universe with its grass and trees and animals and stars and galaxies, we find that we are a gateway between the two. We are a gate between the inner and the outer universe. 

Many believe that we go to a heaven or hell after we die. Heaven is viewed by many as a place of effortless repose. Hell is viewed as a place of effort and torment. What if our situation right now is that we have already died, that this reality right here, right now is heaven and hell? Swedenborg indicates such. In his visits to the afterlife, he found that many folk did not know they had died and kept themselves in their old familiar state of semi-darkness or gloom though they had the opportunity to expand into the Light.

I remember my Mom sitting in the pre-dawn morning reading the Bible with a cup of coffee by her side. I would often sit with her, sometimes with the Bible, sometimes with other readings. This morning, I am continuing the practice.