Timeless Series: A Spiritual Compilation

By Clayten Tylor

This is a collection of seven previously published books on spirituality. The series starts with The Feeling, to vivify our body to spiritual Life. Next, is Love & Light, and ten attunement exercises to experience the Limitless Light. Then comes Conjugial Love: Our Path of Return, where we learn to Will the affection of mutual-love for spiritual healing. After that we read Timeless Life: The 365 Day Self-improvement Plan, to learn how to invoke an out-of-body sensation of being infinite and eternal. From there, we take on The Great Work: Obtaining Inner Power and Virtue, to discover the happiness and delight from willing what is good. We then graduate to The Affection of Love: How to Invoke an Influx of Spiritual Good, and practice invoking an influx of Conjugial Love for our own spiritual regeneration. Finally, we read Good & Truth: The Art of Spiritual Balance, to unite the inner and outer self, to discover the centre-point of spiritual balance within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312077546

Book preview

Table of Contents

Timeless Series: A Spiritual Compilation

Copyright © 2023 Clayten Tylor

The Feeling

Copyright © 2017 Clayten Tylor

Conjugial Love (Diagram)

Dedication

Life-Path Analysis

Ten Spiritual Exercises

Acknowledgment

The Preface

Introduction: the Feeling

Human vs. the Divine Ego

The Word, is a Feeling

Separation Exercise #1

Chapter 1: The Darkness Within

The Love of Self

Sensual Love

Love & Honesty

Initial Light

Rational Silence

Fortune & Gain

Providence: Man's Tree

Silent Soul

Permission: Self-Love Exercise #2

Internal vs. External

Chapter 2: Light Within

Love of Darkness

Conscious Thought Exercise #3

Light as Food

Covenant of Love

Radiating as a Use

Revelation & Enlightenment

Love & Earth

Chapter 3: Sound of Love

Creative Love

Lower unites with the Higher

Resonating with Sound

Sound Pleasure

Glowing Light

The Balance

Uniting Polarities

The Creatress

Virgin Love Exercise #4

Sensual Love

Chapter 4: Love-Temptations

The Birth of Conscience

Motherly Essence

Attack against Love

Regeneration Begins

Immature Love

Abstinence Exercise #5

Heavenly Essence Exercise #6

Chapter 5: The Divine Ego

Divine Order

Conscious Love

Spiritual vs. Sensual Love

Silent Memory

Hereditary Mother

Self-Love Exercise #7

Fatherly Love

Brotherly Love

Chapter 6: The Divine Natural

Body as a Spiritual Church

Charity as a Spiritual Feeling

Our Body of Love

Radiating Love

Acting As If Exercise #8

Alternate vs. Mutual Love

Will & Understanding

Chapter 7: The Divine Feeling

Priestly Vow

Feeling Humility

Faithful Love

Power of an Image

Image as Spiritual Love

Ancient vs. Hereditary

Idolatrous Love

Ten Commandments

Four Civic-Loves

Three Moral-Loves

The Lord's Prayer

Chapter 8: The Celestial

Two-Way Communication

Celestial Ruby Sphere

False Self-Ability

Celestial Marriage

A Likeness is the Work of Love

Celestial Nakedness

Celestial Essence

Perception as a Feeling

Chapter 9: The Virgin Birth

Spiritual & Celestial Good

Back & Forth Affection

Up & Down Affection

Expanding Affection

Internal vs. External

Equilibrium Exercise #9

Heavenly Love

Chapter 10: The New Love

The New Essence

Truth Causes Fear

Being & Existence

Reaction & Reception

Peace is Union

Son of vs. Son of

Prayer vs. Praying Exercise #10

One Body

One Mind

Universal Love

The Oneness

Spirit vs. Soul

Ark of Love

Last Chance at Love

Polarity Order of Love

Living Your I Am

Abbreviations & Bibliography

Love & Light

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Preface

Ten Practices

Introduction

Remembering Dreams (Exercise #1)

Useful Garden

Light is Darkness

1 Sphere of Light

Acknowledging Love (Exercise #2)

Perceiving Love

Denying Love

Casting Hell

2 Hell is Our Feeling

Heaven & Hell are Feelings

Thoughts Create Hell

Expanding & Contracting

Measuring our Use

The Ego (Proprium)

Purification

Terror & Dread

Inundation of Temptations

3 The Heartbeat

Separation of Heaven from Hell

The Devil & his Crew

Intention (Exercise #3)

Profaning Holy Things

Logic is Hell

Sacrifice is False

Zeal vs. Anger

The Dread of the False

Lust causes Falsity

Distinguishing Good & Truth

Freedom through Influx

The Influx of Peace or Anxiety

Love as Peace vs. Lust as Anxiety

4 Spiritual Senses Guide us

Sense of Smell

Sense of Sight

Hearing Love

Sense of Taste

Touched by Love

Love as a Jewel

Demons Within (Exercise #4)

Primogeniture

Self-derived Intelligence (Exercise #5)

Acknowledging Good

5 Here Now

Birthing Love from Lust

Effort

Safety in the Ark

Wisdom & Intuition

Casting-out the False (Exercise #6)

Mind-Chatter Puffed-up

Mind becomes Transparent

Two become One Mind

6 Heaven or Hell a Choice

Faith Created Anew

Feeling & Silence (Exercise #7)

Lust & Falsity

Selfishness is Hell

Lust is Self-Love

Pride in our Love of Self

Self can be Saved

Faith is Power

7 Entering Hell

Mates in Hell (Exercise #8)

Letting Spirits Be

Devil & Satan

Power & Wisdom

8 The Equilibrium

Elevated Feeling

Love on Earth

Heart & Breath (Exercise #9)

Love & Innocence

Two Gates

The Eight Ways

Compassionate Soul

9 Measuring Goodness (Exercise #10)

Language of Love

Communicating Love

Love & Faith Become One

Faith Must Become Love

Spiritual Rainbow

Our Aura

Twelve Colors

Twelve States

Twelve Feelings

Common Mother

Summation: Our Daily Exercise

Abbreviations & Bibliography

Glossary of Terms

Conjugial Love

Copyright © 2019 Clayten Tylor

Path of Conjugial Love (Diagram)

Acknowledgment

Dedication

Preface: Conjugial Love

Preface: A New Age

Preface: Memory-knowledge

Preface: Inmost Delight

Introduction

Author's Rant

Annoying Quotations

Three Wise Astrologers

Chapter 1: Our Inner Crow

Regenerate vs. Unregenerate

The Will to Good

To be Corrected

The Inner Dog

Chapter 2: Mere Copies

The Dog Kingdom

Making Ourselves Less

Feeling of Eminence

The Mammon

Preparation of the Natural

Three Conditions

The Search

Chapter 3: Redemption

Future Cities

Spiritual Food

The Flow of Love

The Human Principle

Effects of Influx

Effects of Influx on Identity

Profaning Love

Christian Doctrine

Marriage of Charity

Justice and Judgment

Good and Truth

Rational Mind

Chapter 4: Good and Truth

Mystical Marriage

Ultimate Boundaries

Ineffable Name

Giving a Present

Will and Understanding

Concept of Survival

Abstaining

Affection of Truth

Freedom from Ourselves

Thoughts from Perception

Growing Conjugial Love

Receptive to an Influx

To Love

Celestial Love is Within

Chapter 5: Age of Aquarius

The Lost Feeling

Honing Talents

Seven Days

Empathy is Dangerous

Communicating Love

Degrees of Use

Mind-Chatter vs. Power

Universal Love

Self Survives

Death & Re-Birth

Rising Above

Inner Change

Esoteric Exercises

Practice #1 — Birth of the Limbus

Exercise #1 — Love to the Lord

Exercise #2 — Love to the Neighbor

Practice #2 — Days of the Week

Sunday: Sun Center

Monday: Moon Center

Tuesday: Mars Center

Wednesday: Mercury Center

Thursday: Jupiter Center

Friday: Venus Center

Saturday: Saturn Principle

Saturday: Saturn Center

Practice #3: Morning, Daytime, Evening

The Morning State

The Daytime State

The Nighttime State

Pisces-Age First Names

Pisces-Age First Names List

Abbreviations & Bibliography

About the Author

Timeless Life

Copyright © 2020 Clayten W. Tylor

Timeless Life Path (Diagram)

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Preface: Spiritual Largess

Preface: Conjugial Love

Preface: Spiritual Development

Preface: Feeling Bad

Introduction

1 The Psychic Body

The Spiritual Science of Fat

Awareness of the Astral Body: Exercise #1

Recognizing our Self-love

Self-Love is a Mirror Reflection

Developing a New Self by Acting As If

Transitioning into a Spiritual Light Body

Conscious Thought is Love as Food

Everything is a Suggestion

2 The Spiritual Body

The Birth of our Spiritual Body: Exercise #2

Regeneration: 365-Days of Sexual Abstinence

Adoration as a Self-Improvement Exercise

3 The Celestial Body: Radiating Joy

The Nameless Self: Exercise #3

Awareness of our Celestial Body

The Constitution of Conjugial Love

4 The Spiritual Constitution: The Seven Inner Metals

The Seven Articles that make up the Constitution (Church)

Metal Substances of the Days of the Week

Uniting The Seven Substances

Sunday: The Collecting Feeling of Gold

Sun: The Gold of Regeneration

Monday: The Uniting Feeling of Silver

Moon: The Mirror of Silver

Tuesday: The Exiting Feeling of Iron

Mars: Aligning the Iron Filings

Wednesday: The Transparent Feeling of Mercury

Mercury: Making The Mind Transparent

Thursday: The Rewarding Feeling of Tin

Jupiter: The Tin Begins to Spin

Friday: The Luminous Feeling of Copper

Venus: Our Copper is Purified

Saturn Becomes The Inner Center

Saturday: The Administrative Feeling of Lead

Saturn: The Lead of Cosmic Consciousness

The Sabbath Finds Equilibrium Within

Having a Clear Intention

Our Intention is Our Inner Life

Pain Binds Us To Love

The Hierarchy Of Love

Feeling Infinite and Eternal

The Eternal Moment: The Three Higher Elements

The Airy Feeling of the Morning

The Fiery Feeling of the Daytime

The Watery Feeling of the Nighttime

6 The Motions of Building a Spiritual Body

Identification with our Animal Nature

Responsive Nature: Acid or Alkaline

The Divided Feeling of Self

One Moment Of Conjugial Love

7 Polarity: Willpower & Desire

Balancing Light & Dark

Cerberus: The Guard Dog at the Gate

8 The Affections of Good and Truth

Using Color as Regeneration Therapy

Colors Speak To Us

Opposite Colors Guide Us

Colors Suggest Magical Feelings

Being Taken For Granted

Colors Also Regenerate Us

Truth By Trial

The Inner Church of a Regenerate

Seeing Spiritually is Seeing Differently

Everything is Regenerated Always

Shame vs. the Innocence of Heaven

Full-Body Consciousness

Fatness, The Feeling of Conjugial Love — Part #1

Fatness, The Four-Fold Feeling — Part #2

Fatness, The Feeling of Charity — Part #3

Fatness, Reception into the Three Heavens — Part #4

The Spiritual Limbus — Exercise #4

Expanding The Limbus Feeling

The Feeling of Faith

Setting Goals by The Sign of The Moon

#1 Aries: The Constituting Feeling

Defining our Goals: the Key to Happiness

Ruling our Thoughts and Emotions

#2 Taurus: The Triumphant and Eternal Feeling

Intuitively Guided Actions

Yoking Our Desire-Nature

#3 Gemini: The Disposing Feeling

Discrimination: the Sense of Smell

#4 Cancer: Feeling of the House of Influence

Cancer: The Key To Receptivity

#5 Leo: the Secret Feeling of All Spiritual Activities

Esoteric Leo: The Law of Suggestion

#6 Virgo: The Feeling of Will

Esoteric Virgo: A Purified Response

#7 Libra: The Faithful Feeling

Esoteric Libra: The Law of Equilibrium

#8 Scorpio: The Imaginative Feeling

Esoteric Scorpio: Separateness is an Illusion

#9 Sagittarius: The Feeling of Probation

Esoteric Sagittarius: Our Key To Relationships

#10 Capricorn: The Renewing Feeling

Esoteric Capricorn: The Power of Sensation

#11 Aquarius: The Natural Feeling

Esoteric Aquarius: Forming a Single Mixture

#12 Pisces: The Corporeal Feeling

Esoteric Pisces: Building A Finer Vehicle

Abbreviations & Bibliography

Moon Signs 2023-2024

Moon Signs 2024-2025

The Great Work

Degrees of The Human Mind (Diagram)

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Preface

Exercise #1 Seek & Find:

Introduction

Exercise #2 Acknowledgment as Worship:

Chapter 1: Soulful Feeling

Exercise #3: Mercy

Adoration

Exercise#4 Mutual

Chapter 2: In Search of the Soul

Exercise #5: Moderation

Chapter 3: The Source of Imagination

Exercise #6: Temporary Vow of Celibacy

Chapter 4: How to Feel Good

Vivification Exercise:

Exercise #7: Using a Mirror for Self Healing:

Chapter 5: Perceiving Good

Exercise #8: Kundalini Rising Practice

Chapter 6: The Mystical Marriage

Exercise #9: Meditate for Thirty Years

Abbreviations & Bibliography

The Affection of Love

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Introduction

Chapter One: Two Motions of Love

Chapter Two: Being Good

Chapter Three: Acknowledging Love

Chapter Four: Accepting Justice

Chapter Five: Trusting Divine Justice

Chapter Six: Awareness

Chapter Seven: An Influx of Good

Chapter Eight: Magnetic Memories

Chapter Eight: Magnetic Memories

Chapter Nine: Temporary or Eternal

Chapter Ten: The Seven Substances

Chapter Eleven: Signs and Miracles

Chapter Twelve: Celestial Feeling of Love

Chapter Thirteen: Feeling Balanced

Chapter Fourteen: Building a Foundation

Act #1: To Smell.

Act #2: To Taste.

Act #3: To Chew.

Act #4: To Swallow.

Act #5: Digestion.

Act #6: To Excrete

Chapter Fifteen: A Spiritual Life

Chapter Sixteen: Regeneration – What to Expect

Chapter Seventeen: Eternal Life

Chapter Eighteen: Our Usury Nature

Chapter Nineteen: Mankind's Destiny

Chapter Twenty: Death or Resurrection

Chapter Twenty One: Innocence

Chapter Twenty Two: Unity

A Personal Note about Blessedness

The Unity of the Feeling

Chapter Twenty Three: Truth Enlightens

Chapter Twenty Four: Good Heals

Abbreviations & Bibliography

Good & Truth

Copyright © 2023 Clayten Tylor

The Art of Spiritual Balance (Diagram)

Acknowledgment

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: Cognition

Chapter Two: The Touch

Chapter Three: Silent Light

Chapter Four: Extension

Procedure #1 : Archetypal Love

Chapter Five: Vivification

Chapter Six: Enlightenment

Chapter Seven: World Soul

Chapter Eight: The Marriage

Chapter Nine: Preparation

Chapter Eleven: Smelling

Chapter Twelve: Good Use

Chapter Thirteen: Innocence

Chapter Fourteen: Secret Doctrine

Chapter Fifteen: Truth Excites Evil

Chapter Sixteen: Inner Balance

Chapter Seventeen: Discipline

Chapter Eighteen: Spoils of War

Procedure #2: Silencing the Mind.

Procedure #3: Changing our Inner Rhythm.

Procedure #4: Zapping it with Light.

Procedure #5: Planning our Approach.

Procedure #6: The Ultimate Inner Power.

Chapter Nineteen: Pleasure

Chapter Twenty: The Feasts

Abbreviations & Bibliography

Timeless Series: A Spiritual Compilation

by

Clayten Tylor

image0000

Copyright © 2023 Clayten Tylor

Timeless Series: A Spiritual Compilation

First Edition

ISBN#: 978-1-312-07754-6

Imprint: Lulu.com

Standard Copyright License

The Feeling

by

Clayten Tylor

OEBPS/images/image0001.jpg

Back Cover Text

This book is an Esoteric interpretation of Emanuel Swedenborg’s spiritual writings. It is written from a sinner’s perspective as a personal memoir meant to impart spiritual guidance by example. It is a hands-on self-help book on how to birth the Divine Feminine Essence of Love from within.

The author traces the Divine back to its original source as Essential Love and Essential Innocence, which begins in the body as a sensual feeling of love, and through the process of regeneration it becomes the Word of God. By sharing the spiritual feeling of the Word as love, it becomes a blissful union with the Divine within as the feeling of the New Church.

The New Church is the perception of an influx of spiritual love flowing from within as happiness. But it also has a two-fold purpose: For when the feeling of love from a sensual life has been transformed into the spiritual feeling of love, and when done on a mass scale, it ultimately manifests as the true purpose of the New Church, Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem, the Brotherhood of Mankind as the feeling of Heaven on Earth.

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Copyright © 2017 Clayten Tylor

Ninth Edition

ISBN 978-1-365-97840-1

Standard Copyright License

A special thank you to the Swedenborg Foundation for their generous approval to use their copyrighted material quoted in this book.

Conjugial Love (Diagram)

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Dedication

Dedicated to: Emanuel Swedenborg, (1688-1772) – My Savior.

I will admit that this book has far too many quotations from Swedenborg. Yet, the reason I used so many of his quotes was that I needed to prove what I was writing, was true. Often with subjects of spirituality, we like to take the spirit out of the word spiritual. My use of too many quotations is a way to bring the feeling of the spirits and the angels back into the words, spiritual, and celestial.

I like to smell while I breathe. Smelling while breathing opens the spiritual mind and stops the mind-chatter. We need a quiet mind to understand spiritual quotes. Sometimes, as an example, when my mind is quiet and I smell a beautiful perfume, I can feel as if an Angel just swept by me. I want to thank Swedenborg for that way of thinking. By thinking of life in this same way, makes it easy to read difficult subjects, or to come up with ideas and solutions not possible to imagine through the memory.

I like to think of the term spiritual, as being guided intuitively. Intelligence is an aspect of breathing; as is spirit, understanding, and wisdom. The most noticeable thing about death, is the loss of the breathing function. Yet, there is another breathing function. It is the spiritual breath that results from death, but also by breathing deeply while reading something with a spiritual meaning.

The spiritual breath awakens as a rhythm between the in-breath and out-breath. The rhythm of the breath, affects our ability to discriminate and to understand difficult subjects. This book and Swedenborg's quotations, are a way to develop that spiritual breathing function, and to bring the discrimination to recognize a good idea, merely by the feeling of it. The next good idea, could be in our next in-breath.

We want to open the rational level of the mind that results from smelling while breathing-in the spiritual breath. We are trying to draw out the feeling of conjugial love that is already within us. Not only that, we just need a quiet mind to attract it. This is all I am going to say about the innocence of wisdom, the breathing function of Spirit, as truth, knowledge, and light. The rest of the book gets devoted to the Breath of the Soul, as beauty, charity, love, and goodness.

Life-Path Analysis

For: Emanuel Swedenborg – January 29, 1688

To understand someone, I like to start by undertaking a life-path analysis of their date-of-birth using Numerology. I will calculate one for Swedenborg, but I suggest that you follow along by doing one on your own birth-date. In this way you prove to yourself the spiritual guidance left behind like bread-crumbs along our Path of Return.

Emanuel Swedenborg was a Christian mystic and visionary of the spiritual world. He was born under the Sun-sign of Aquarius, in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 29, 1688, into a wealthy Lutheran family. His writings, particularly his concepts that heaven is a communion of souls, and that dreams contain spiritual guidance, are both significant keys to understanding our present new Age of Aquarius, which signifies the feeling of mutual-love on earth.

Swedenborg's birth-date adds-up and reduces to a single-digit destiny number eight. This is the most fortunate of nine possible life-paths, and can indicate wealth and genius. Indeed, Swedenborg did not ever need to worry about money. The number eight signifies good (A. R. 739).

During our early years, our life gets ruled by our month, of birth. In Swedenborg's case, his birth month is January, which corresponds to the number one, highlighting a pioneering period in his life. It was during this time that he studied geology, botany, zoology, and mechanical sciences. It was also when he wrote his scientific and technical works, which included his inventions and theories on physics and algebra.

Our middle years get ruled by our day of birth. Swedenborg's day of birth is the 29th, which reduces to the number two, and bestows a socially diplomatic influence. During that time, he met Sweden’s King Charles XII (1682–1718) and his sister Ulrika Eleonora (1688–1741) who in 1719, ennobled his family, changing their name from Swedberg to Swedenborg.

This name change for the family was a life-altering influence, particularly for Emanuel Swedenborg. It changed the life-expression of his full name from 6 4 1, which indicate caring, but highly independent person, to a 3 9 3, signifying love and the desire to express it as a feeling. The number three in The Tarot, by Paul Foster Case is the Luminous Intelligence, to indicate the radiating aspect of the feeling of love.

In Numerology, we cannot begin to contribute to society in any meaningful way until after six cycles of nine, after the age of fifty-four. Until that point, we are too full-of-ourselves, overly self-centered. It was at that time when Swedenborg had his spiritual feelings awakened, He began to attune to an intuitive source within, the beginning of his visionary period that greatly influenced the world.

The latter part of our life gets ruled by our year of birth. Swedenborg's year of birth reduces to the number five, which imparts a willful influence. It is best expressed by traveling and trying new things. Spiritually, it signifies the power of the Will to-do-good. This is intriguing considering the number five signifies remains (5291); and they represent the feeling of love, as the means of communicating with heaven.

This book intends to follow the same spiritual path that Swedenborg took, through the realm of the affection of love. By developing our intuition, we too will arrive at the same goal, and to personally experience an influx of conjugial love.

Conjugial love, is a term Swedenborg uses to describe the Essential Love. It is through the direct experience of perceiving a spiritual influx of conjugial love flowing through our body that we are then able to communicate with heaven.

Essentially, this communication is not difficult if we think of the Divine as the feeling of conjugial love. A personal conjugial love experience is the verification of that feeling as a cognitive knowing. The sensation of knowing is the esoteric signal to the subconscious mind to begin the cellular transformation that will enable us to communicate with heaven.

The oft-misunderstood quote: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing holds an important secret: do not make the same mistake and pretend that you can perceive conjugial love without actually having the spiritual experience. When biblical Christians revealed their secrets, they were fed to the lions. It was because their oppressors could not feel the same depth of love as they did. By pretending that you can feel conjugial love when you cannot, tells your own subconscious mind to also just make-believe. Therefore, it does nothing, and you will forever be waiting for your own cellular transformation.

Sorrowfully, because of the sensation that falsity causes in our own body when we are dishonest with ourselves, we can never know the true feeling of conjugial love. For conjugial love gets experienced through the spiritual feeling of innocence, which is void of the twisted sensations that falsity causes.

Swedenborg said that a new church arises. Yet, he also said that it would be a different church, based on the inner knowing. Consequently, the falsity will eventually burn itself out. It is the result of just pretending to be able to feel conjugial love. The entire battle of man against man was the result of hiding this knowledge of the spiritual feeling of conjugial love.

Therefore, I can see the New Church as being the true feeling of love, coming through the subconscious mind. This will enable each of us to feel a direct conjugial love experience for ourselves. Thereby, to truly feel mutual love for all of humanity.

This was Swedenborg's vision for the Aquarian Age: the repatriation of the feeling of Conjugial love. Not another religion, not another building as a church — but a feeling as the affection of conjugial love, as mutual-love on earth.

Ten Spiritual Exercises

The evolution of Conjugial love, from a celestial feeling of spiritual light into physicality as a sensual affection encompasses a multitude of complexities. This book contains ten exercises to help experience those complexities. They are the layers of sensual-love that together make up the pure affection of a conjugial love experience. However, to perceive its celestial purity as a sensual affection, one must first remove the layers of misconceptions regarding the sexual feeling of self-love.

The ten spiritual exercises are layers, or different sensations of love. When layered one upon the other in a particular order, the result is a blissful feeling. If you are unable to complete one of the ten exercises, put it aside while you keep practicing. Eventually you will experience that particular love-sensation, because conjugial love is an expanding living feeling based on the layering of all ten of the different sensations of sensual-love.

Ancient wisdom has taught this knowledge of layering. The Divine Name translated as the Lord in the Bible, and Jehovah in the revised versions gets designated by various names, such as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Thus, each name has its own separate spiritual feeling as a layer of the One.

Nevertheless, humankind's outward search for this secret knowledge has led us astray. Our search will be inner, for the spiritual feeling of conjugial love. It is composed of layers of different affections of love, and of being loved in return.

The reason I am writing this tell-all book that includes the ten spiritual steps is that I wish someone had told me earlier in life. For when these ten exercises get practiced as a sensual rhythm, they attune us to the blissful feeling of conjugial love within.

It is important to experience the sensual affection of each one of the ten balancing exercises to perceive the totality of the spiritual feeling of conjugial love. It is in the act of doing each exercise in their order, which transforms our sense-of-self as our ego to perceive beyond our personal feeling, and to live spiritually.

Ten Spiritual Exercises:

  1) Separation from the Ego

  2) Recognizing Self-Love

  3) The Holy Supper

  4) The Virgin Birth

  5) 42-Days of Sexual Abstinence

  6) Heavenly Essence

  7) Reflection, a Mirror Perspective

  8) Acting As If

  9) The Sabbath: Equilibrium Within

10) Adoration Praying; Humiliation Prayer

Acknowledgment

I am eternally grateful to my wise friend, Kasandra, for her insightful influence and companionship during my midlife crisis, when she sensed my inner suffering, and handed me the following quotation by Keen.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;

For I will be with thee thy troubles to bless

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

Kasandra was the Western representative for Information Swedenborg, Canada. She first introduced me to Swedenborg's writings with his quotation God is Love, and from that moment on, we began a back and forth intellectual exchange that continued three hours a day for the next fifteen years.

Kasandra affected me deeply as a friend, and through our mutual love of Swedenborg’s writings, we shared our deepest concepts of what God could be. It was a comforting theology at a time when there were no answers to what I was experiencing.

Kasandra's love for God brought me much peace and understanding as I struggled to make sense of my own overtly religious spiritual experiences happening to me at that time.

Swedenborg wrote the quote God is Love over two-hundred and fifty years ago. Yet, it was Kasandra who helped me to get comfortable enough with religion so that I could expand on Swedenborg’s spiritual concepts from an esoteric perspective. I was often guided by his visitations through his theological writings.

Although Emanuel appeared to me in my dreams and wanted me to write a book about my personal spiritual experiences, it was Kasandra who always encouraged me to be myself when it came to the topic of religion. The seemingly unimportant personal stories used to explain Swedenborg's religious concepts, are in the hope that you will find a similar narrative in your own life. Thereby, be able to perceive the Divine as the feeling of conjugial love more easily.

The Preface

Swedenborg's writings were my anti-depressant medication during my midlife crisis. How a person with my background — having had no traditional religious education and raised by a single parent, non-believer Mother — could ever have been introduced to Swedenborg's spiritual writings was only by a miracle.

My peers were all drugged or drunks, and most of them materialistic and angry. The wild birds were my true friends. They would follow me on my runs, and occasionally land on my windowsill to encourage me in my quest for truth. I can hear them talk to me now from miles away. They helped me to open my inner hearing. Yet, Swedenborg's writings brought acceptance to that bird-level awareness of knowing.

Swedenborg's writings also brought order, logic, and reason to my life. His was a sensible religion, in the sense that it awakened new feelings within me. It was his religion, but he allowed me to understand and interpret it in my own New Age way.

The only caution with having your mind fried with spiritual knowledge is to stay grounded and not be led-astray or confused while the inner world gets revealed. It was revealed to me, first through outside forces, such as the birds, and then through the synchronicity that happened everywhere in the little things. Only later was the inner world revealed through my dreams and visions.

OEBPS/images/image0005.jpg My first vision happened in my living room at two o'clock in the afternoon. It was a vision of a tall, glowing white Guardian Angel. Just the feeling of its Presence brought me to my knees crying and kissing its feet. It was the first of many visions. Although, I do not know what this vision was, I think that it might have been what is described as seeing the burning bush, because it created in me a burning desire to be a better person.

Any other person would probably have been diagnosed as a mental patient as I would have been if I had ever tried to describe any of my visions to a doctor. Just mentioning the idea of seeing God, would have had me committed. Over time, I changed the terminology as I understood the experience more fully: it evolved from I saw Jesus, to the Guardian Angel.

During that time, I knew that my logical mind could not understand or interpret correctly the visions that I perceived. Although, it may have been a hallucination, and I was crazy, I did not tell a doctor. Had I done so, I am sure that I would have become another statistic, one of the many millions prescribed anti-depressant medication for feelings of unhappiness. Then, I may have missed my own enlightenment experience, something meant to happen to everyone during the middle years of our life.

It has taken me twenty-five years to understand the visions and the feelings I experienced when I turned forty. I do not think that I would have interpreted any of my visions, which changed me for the better, unless I had understood them as I do today, as spiritual experiences, and not as a mental disorder. I should note that I wrote a cookbook about seaweed and lost most of my friends in the process — so imagine telling a doctor that I thought I saw God.

I felt that I could talk to Swedenborg through his writings, and that I understood him differently than most people. This is because of my understanding of Numerology and knowledge of numbers from a spiritual perspective. Everything about Swedenborg's life captivated me. I was interested in everything from the spelling of his name, to his family’s name-change and the feelings associated with this process, as I too felt different after I changed my name.

Similarly, when my friends got married and changed their names, I noticed how they too became different: I could see the spiritual influences of the new numbers in their lives. I could see how a numerically difficult name, being popularized by a movie star, could create a whole generation of extreme egotists. I could also see how thinking a certain way about yourself can change how you appear to others. Now, I understand why the disciples got new names — they felt different inside.

My wise friend Kasandra once said to me, look at that person over there. I answered, yes? She replied, "No, really look at them, because that, is how they feel about themselves." This new awareness of the spiritual feeling of numbers and their correspondences allowed me to better understand and accept others. Not to necessarily like them. That came later with the opening of my heart, a process that involved much inner searching for the feeling of the soul.

Swedenborg's writings taught me the spiritual meaning of planets, personal desires, and personality traits. I am an Astrologer, and his extensive work on these subjects had even a deeper meaning. This is because the Divine appeared to him as the Sun, signifying celestial and spiritual love, the light of the Sun is its Wisdom, and the heat of the Sun is its Love. Just knowing that about the Sun means the spiritual feeling of love, can animate us into being more than just human.

I soon understood that it was our personal response to an influx of spiritual love that determined whether our life here on earth felt as heaven or hell. I began to imagine my own physical body as spiritual light. By symbolically imitating the feeling of the Sun, I too could become a radiating center of spiritual light, a flame of the vivified burning bush. Thereafter, I began to feel better about my life.

Swedenborg's orderly approach to writing had an immense effect on my own thinking. Yet, my personal skepticism constantly looked for errors or inconsistencies in his writings, like how one can tell when something does not add up with numbers. Well, with Swedenborg's writings, everything adds up to the spiritual feeling of one glorious vibrating whole number.

The spiritual realm contained in Swedenborg's writings helped me find explanations to things not spoken about in our society such as sex and death. When several friends of mine died too young, it was his philosophy that allowed me to see the workings of faith, when love appeared all around me as a spiritual feeling. I learned to project that feeling of spiritual love at times when I felt as though I could not possibly make another depressing hospital visit. I had the sense of being able to radiate that luminous feeling of love, out like the Sun, which helped me be less uncertain.

Although, Swedenborg kept his personal life somewhat secret, his writings revealed to me the feelings that he must have experienced in order for him to have witnessed the spiritual realm. This led to a conscious freeing of my own creative energy as it developed into a source of concentration that grew.

Concentration, is needed to understand both Swedenborg and the feeling of the inner spiritual realm, and to accept the hugely disparaging, apparent disorder of the outer world.

I would like to note that I have never been happy being in a physical body. I could not understand why I was alive, as it felt to be a great punishment. To me, this was the most important question that I had to find an answer to, before I could ever be happy. Most of my friends seemed to love life, or at least pretended to. Yet, when I outlived them all, I felt that too was a punishment.

Physical existence is like that, but a spiritual life, actually is reversed, which has helped me understand that as we become more spiritually responsive, we are also more sensitive to the collective suffering with others. As human beings, we can never be spiritually content as individuals until everyone else is happy first.

If starvation and poverty is a collective cry from the Divine for charity, why can we not hear it? Humankind is at the phase where greed and ownership is making us more insular. Yet, we cannot really own anything, certainly not our spiritual feeling of life, because it is only formed by the affectionate act of charity.

Nowadays, when it is said, the meek shall inherit the earth, everyone thinks that it real estate. Yet, the spiritual earth is actually the result of an influx of the feeling of a conjugial love experience, as a momentary blissful union with the Divine.

To inherit the earth is to embark on another life, when we are in possession of the true earth. This book is an attempt to help the average person feel a conjugial love experience as a blissful union with the Divine. Spiritual love is accessible to all, both the sinner and the saint.

Therefore, it is by the discovery of our true inheritance, the spiritual earth, as the real affection of love within that we can then birth the feeling of the living soul. This is the exegesis of this little book about conjugial love.

Nevertheless, we are embarking on a dangerous journey of self-discovery filled with great peril and misunderstanding as we try to distinguish the true Earth, the real Love, from the false love. We are also assured that everyone by the mere fact of being a human, has been given the ability, to achieve this task. The task is to arrive at a sensual feeling of heavenly happiness, as a result of the affections of love and charity. Thus, the person who is not regenerated, is called a void and an empty earth (17).

Swedenborg also says that absolutely everyone can perceive the exalted feeling of heavenly happiness, merely by the potency given to us by love (D. L. W. 413).

To better focus this topic so that we can embark on this beginning together and experience the feeling of love spiritually, we must understand that the potency that we are seeking is the internal spiritual affection of goodness.

Thus, the states of this love are innocence, peace, tranquility, intimate friendship, full trust and a desire shared by the disposition and heart of each to do the other all the good they can (C. L. 180).

Essentially, this is a beginning of a spiritual life of feeling happiness for others. It is accessible to everyone, because the difference between the feeling of a sensual existence and the spiritual life of heavenly happiness can be learned.

This feeling of heavenly happiness that we are seeking is an inner marriage of the spiritual and celestial affections of radiating love with the light from within by becoming luminous. Heavenly happiness is the act of feeling loved spiritually.

Heavenly happiness is essentially an internal affection of goodness caused by an influx of spiritual love flowing into the body. The term feeling is used throughout this book to distinguish it from the word emotion. Our emotions must be at peace to feel spiritually. To feel spiritually is to love. Emotions get programmed to love only ourselves. Affections get programmed to love others as ourselves. Whereas, spiritual affections, feel all as One.

Throughout this book, the word feeling is used to define both the spiritual affection that results from willing mutual-love to others, and the celestial sensation that is perceived by sending love to the Divine. By blending these two love-feelings together in a synchronicity to the inner spiritual rhythm of Divine order, the two affections become One, as the feeling of a personal conjugial love experience with the Divine.

Introduction: the Feeling

OEBPS/images/image0006.jpg This little book is just about the feeling of spiritual love and happiness. Yet, I felt it was necessary to use terminology acceptable to both the religious and the atheist reader. However, that kind of logic was in the hope of changing the atheist into becoming a believer.

I thought about changing the word God, to Love; or even to something like Godd, just to overcome the dogma connected with it. Yet, that would be missing the point, because the traditional words, best resonate with the feeling that those particular vibrations spiritually represent. By this, I mean that the spiritual understanding of any word, such as God, comes from the actual vibration of that particular spelling. It is the inner vibration, as a spiritual feeling that gives life and meaning to the words.

Our personal name also causes an inner vibration as the spiritual feeling of our sense-of-self. Our name gets linked with knowing the inner nature or quality of our individual spiritual essence. Through a name we can determine the inner nature and quality of a person or thing.

Therefore, unless we can feel the internal sense of the word, we can never know the truth. The truth does not appear, except to those guided from within. Therefore, we will need to examine the internal spiritual feeling of words, such as God and Christ, Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, to reveal what they represent spiritually, without their dogmatic religious interpretation.

All of this religious terminology is just the means to take us to a state of mind where we can actually approach the true sense of a name — its spiritual essence — and briefly become it as a feeling. We want to be able to feel like God, to be like Christ, and to know first hand the truth of what these words mean.

Also, throughout this entire book, my use of the term man is always meant to mean both male and female. The same dual-gender meaning applies to the Divine Human, God-man, and the internal man.

The terminology that we are forced to use to communicate, is merely an intellectual language. Yet, what I am going to explain is not an intellectual concept, but a perception of a spiritual feeling. The feeling is the most important perception of all of our physical senses, for the taste, smell, hearing, and sight, are all a result of it.

Although, we have only language to convey this inmost feeling, I want to stress that this affection cannot be understood with just words, because it is the communication of the heart, and the intellect puts up great resistance to this intuitive knowing.

OEBPS/images/image0007.jpg The real language of spiritual love is the feeling aroused by pictorial symbolism, divinely inspired imagery that flows from within when the time is right for it to be revealed. If you have any resistance to religious terminology, then try to understand the particular word as I do, from a numerologist's point of view, not as a spiritual feeling, but as a sound vibration.

That said, you do not need to know anything about the spiritual meaning of numbers, to perceive the feeling of conjugial love. The best thing that you can do is to become aware of the spiritual feeling that certain words instill in you as an internal love-response. Pictorial imagery begins to be revealed, first by a celestial feeling, and then as a spiritual knowing.

The esoteric feeling of any word such as God, vibrates as the perfect meaning of everything that it represents spiritually. That precise word, gets needed to communicate to you that exact spiritual feeling. If reading or hearing a particular religious phrase upsets you or does not make you feel good, then that response is not in the actual word, it is in you. Our judgments block the feeling of knowing.

Likewise, by correspondence, the spiritual plane of the Divine gets felt to be reversed to the physical world. All religious symbols require that we turn and back ourselves into them, to act as if when we want to experience them spiritually. When we act as if, we re-unite with the spiritual essence of a thing. Therefore, we must first act as if, by putting ourselves in its place, and truly understand by experiencing it.

In addition, if you are accustomed to terminology such as love and wisdom, it would appear in the spiritual world reversed. Similarly, a color like red would appear as its after-glow as green. Moreover, if something irks you, such as a word like feeling or God, then you will not delight in the understanding of it. It is the delight of love that unites us to a thing that we desire to become.

In addition, if you are accustomed to terminology such as love and wisdom, it would appear in the spiritual world reversed. Similarly, a color like red would appear as its after-glow as green. Moreover, if something irks you, such as a word like feeling or God, then you will not delight in the understanding of it. It is the delight of love that unites us to a thing that we desire to become.

As human beings, we are created by our resistance to the flow of spiritual love through us. Thus, the experience of living in a body can be painful by feeling separate from love. Yet, the feeling of separateness is necessary for the birth of the spiritual awareness of Oneness. Our painful separation and all personal suffering gets based on an illusion arising from a misunderstanding. This is how the spirits rule over us.

Another thing to mention to help you understand where I am coming from is that I believe that everything is an aspect of memory, conscious energy made of mind stuff. Thus, if you believe in reincarnation then that too is just memory. Everything, including all knowledge gets contained within, and we want to enter the memory to feel the Love and then the Light flow through us.

Consequently, we must get past our personal memory to be able to attune with the Divine memory. In order to experience the feeling of spiritual love, think of it as a spiritual memory of a celestial feeling of being truly loved. The memory is the entrance into the spiritual feeling of heavenly happiness. We want to reach the inner center, where it is the most beautiful. That center, is an image in our memory.

Our personal memory is the collection of our most intense feelings of love as images. The intensity of our ruling love veils the feeling of our soul as an image essence. It follows us to eternity, unless we deal with the memories, no longer appropriate.

Think of your soul, as the essence of a spiritual fountain expressing the desires of your ruling love. Desires are feeling-premonitions of what is to come. They signify, what is possible with faith. Faith, is to believe that it shall be done.

Therefore, we must relax with our spiritual goals, if they are to manifest. To develop our spiritual self, we do not have to achieve anything special except to recall the feeling of the divine occasionally as a present state of being. Then, act on our own intuitive guidance to get it. Thus, to manifest any desire, it helps to think of it as a feeling from our past.

To manifest a spiritual knowing as faith, it would help if you imagine the Divine in this same way, as a loving feeling of affection from the past. Then all you have to do is remember that same spiritual feeling to trigger an influx of conjugial love from the Divine.

However, first we must reverse our position towards the idea that time and space are necessary constructs to manifesting our desires, or to healing, or to knowing the Divine. Once we do that, and make the shift from the intellectual self into our intuitive feeling-self without time and space, then all of these explanations about terminology will be redundant. Once we feel It, we will be It, for we are It now.

Essentially, try to feel the spiritual affection, and automatically you will love yourself. If you can feel your spiritual self, automatically you will love the Divine. It is the same with manifesting all your material goals — just love-them into the eternal now.

Also, forget about time, for it gets related to pain, which is concern about the future. Only love gets experienced without time. Only love gets predestined. Yet, we are all predestined to love, which first, needs to be the feeling of mutual-love on earth.

Thus, purgatory is a fable invented by Roman Catholics (T. C. R. 475.3, Rose). Yet, as a selfish lonely feeling, purgatory does still exist within. Especially, when we worry about the future and close off the feeling of love from within.

Thus, our greatest influence over time, space and the outer events in our life is not only by how we respond to the things that we like or dislike, but also by adjusting that response to a more loving feeling. This is because, if we dwell on something that we dislike, a similar negative feeling arises, which causes the event to repeat itself. This is how we are purified, first by the temptations that attract us, and then by the fermentation that separates us.

Conversely, if we dwell on the feeling of love as a corporeal sensation within our blood stream — presto, negative thoughts subside, mind-chatter becomes silent, and a spiritual love-affair begins as an affection throughout our entire body. It is the spiritual feeling of the soul coming forth as a pictorial image that saves us from ourselves.

Therefore, be cautious about negative thinking or worrying about the future. The sensation of worrying, not only blocks all of our worthy desires from manifesting, but also the inmost soul-feeling awareness of the spiritual feeling of love.

Human vs. the Divine Ego

Swedenborg's use of the Latin term proprium is translated own. It is our ego, the sensation of our false awareness of having a separate sense of self. It is our hell. Spiritually, it is everything that we are. It is our feeling-response to the vibratory influences of the spiritual energies flowing through us. Our victory is to fight and overcome our own false identification, and begin to be reformed.

Much has been said about the temptations that result from trying to live up to the increasingly awakened spiritual feelings produced from a conjugial love experience. It is difficult to deal with the experience of spiritual love when it starts to grow from the inside, because it is backward to physical life. Most people are cautious about admitting to these spiritual feelings, because we associate them with being the perception of the feminine affections of love, and they make us feel weak.

I propose that the term proprium was a word used to highlight the ego's trans-formative process from a sensual feeling of selfishness, to an awakened intuitive sensitivity of Oneness. If we were to bring that to light, we could thereby acknowledge that just as we have a separate feeling of self, so too does God. Yet, in the perception of Oneness, all sense of separateness vanishes.

Therefore, when reading the words proprium and own in the following quotes, replace them with the term feeling, to see for yourself that they make a lot more sense.

Man's own [feeling]is the love of self and the conceit of self-intelligence (S. S. 60).

Man's own [feeling]is twofold, one infernal, and the other heavenly. Man receives the infernal proprium from hell, and the heavenly proprium from heaven (3812).

Man's proprium [feeling] is all evil and the false, originating in self-love and the love of the world (210).

The Lord is not conjoined by the proprium [feeling] of man, but removes that, and gives him a new proprium [Feeling] from himself, in which He abides (A. E. 254).

For Man's proprium [feeling] is, as it were, destroyed, when it is vivified or made alive (731).

The Word, is a Feeling

The esoteric sense of the Word, is an affection felt as the joy and happiness of conjugial love. As an esoteric vibration, conjugial love is the Divine in its celestial essence as a feeling. The Word then, is the Divine's Presence as a spiritual feeling of luminous love as knowing.

The Word gets perceived first as a spiritual feeling of love that vibrates within the physical body as Divine Truth. It is perceived when man's life acts in accord with love and charity. Then the Word, is revealed as the affection of being able to love, spiritually.

Thus, the Ancient Word was not written, but revealed to each individual, and inscribed on their hearts (2896).

The Word, as a spiritual feeling, first comes about when we read, understand and then perceive. It is the feeling of the affection of spiritual love, which opens the perception of knowing.

Thus, illustration flows into the natural man, by the affection of truth, when it is initiated in good (2185).

This spiritual perception begins as an inner communication. It can appear like the light of the Sun, but it is the opening of the way to the things in our inmost sense of self.

Thus, the mystery of the Word, is the contents of its internal or spiritual sense (4923).

The mystery is finding the spiritual feeling of love within. To experience the mystery of the spiritual affection of love, let us do a quick exercise to symbolically separate from our possessive feeling of the ego. We are going back through our memory into the feeling of the Divine name, in the womb as our vibratory beginning.

However, please do keep in mind that merely reading the following words will not help you understand the esoteric feeling of the exercise, for only by having the actual spiritual experience will it convince you.

Yet, being able to feel the presence of the Divine name is not something that we can convince others of either. Thus, we will need to learn to share the spiritual feeling of love, to radiate the sensual affection to a greater and greater radius. This is how we transform the sensual vibration of our ego into an innocent, silent affection of spiritual love, the primary principle of the feeling of conjugial love.

Separation Exercise #1

In Numerology, the feeling of our personal name, defines our personality and its psychological characteristics. It influences how we respond to life. The vibration of our name, makes us feel separate, including from the Divine.

Thus, the Name of God signifies the Word (T. C. R. 298); for the Word holds the feeling of everything that the Divine is. Your name also holds the feeling of everything that you have ever experienced in this lifetime. Your name represents everything that you identify with being you. The possessive cupidity feeling gets linked with being evil. Yet, it is only meant to be an immature expression of self-love.

Consider if we were to take away your ego, your so-called evil, the feeling of self-love with its sense of separateness, even for a few minutes, who would you be? Especially since Angels have no name (1705); and Man's spirit is in a more perfect state when separated from the body (Sp. Ex. 129).

So let us try a spiritual visualization, which I call the ego separation exercise. This is how the feeling of spiritual regeneration begins.

OEBPS/images/image0008.jpg Exercise #1: Start by putting your sense of self, and all the memories of who you are as a person, onto an imaginary chair in the corner of your room. Spiritually, look at that distant sense of self. Who is the aspect of your consciousness reading this? This you, is the higher level of the mind: a state without mind-chatter, your spiritual self. This level of the self, is the feeling of spiritual love, but before it is fully love-conscious, before it has been manifested in our aura as the affection of the Divine, made flesh.

Now, let us imagine that the other self, the one in the opposite chair, is a search-lamp. Imagine its light as the feeling of love, lighting-up the lives of others. Yet, no matter how bright it becomes, it is still going to burn-out, because it is seeking love outside itself as a means to feeling happiness. It might get married, or receive an academy-award and feel good for a short time, but those are all outer forms of love, mere reflections of the real affection it is seeking.

The possessive aspect of our self, our ego, our love-of-self cupidity feeling, eventually has to learn to be affectionate, without needing a temporary form of love. Therefore, if we are ever to be spiritually happy, we must permanently reprogram our response to life by being lovable always — and not just when things are going well.

Now let us imagine that the spiritual you, the one reading this, is the self-less feeling of love flowing through that other self. If I was to ask you, "why don't you increase the feeling of love and give that other self everything that they want? You would say, if I did that, they would just continue as they are, they would not change, they would only buy more things, or look for another lover, etc."

So, how do we get the other self, to become an awakened recipient and to start to work together? It is done by bringing the possessive self back into you and have the two of you re-unite. That is it! It is the only thing necessary to begin the process of becoming awake.

The feeling of separateness begins the process of being united and reborn. The sensation of being separate from the Divine, begins the process of spiritual regeneration. It results in a self-less affection of immortality, and with it, the knowledge of the survival of the spirit after death as a feeling of love.

The feeling of the Divine flows from Itself to become you. Through the feeling of the in-fluxing flow of spiritual love, Unity takes place. This is what actually takes place every night when we go to sleep. The possessive sense of self, partially separates and hovers above the physical body in the self-less feeling plane to dream to repair itself. When it returns to consciousness, it is because of a reflex action that the body, too, is repaired.

The process repeats itself again and again. You can wear your body out during the day, and it will repair itself night after night by a spiritual attunement. Our soul eventually awakens through time and dream, as we are being reborn into the truth of who we are, fully aware of the feeling of the one true Self.

It is the spiritual vibration of our name, which causes us to feel possessive. Our name creates the cupidity sensation of ownership, the subtle contracting feeling of self-love, with its accompanying stress and tension that wears our body out. Alternatively, it is the self-less affection of the Divine as a feeling, which repairs us when we sleep.

Therefore, when we become permanently spiritually awake, and we no longer feel separate, we can repair our own physical body at Will. This is done by attuning with this deeper cellular feeling of oneness, the selflessness of conjugial love.

The insecurity that is caused by the feeling of separateness threatens each of us. Imagine if we could feel the sense of separateness while a spirit was possessing our thoughts and feelings. We would immediately be able to overcome them, overcome every negative thought and feeling. Now imagine, if we could all feel our sense of Oneness. There would be nothing to overcome.

Thus, evil spirits do not want us to wake-up and to be able to sense the spiritual feeling of love. They do not want us to know that we are not separate from love, because when we wake up, those negative evil spirits within, will naturally be gone. This waking up is the only way to rule over our own thoughts and emotions.

Thus, to awake denotes to be enlightened (3715) as illumination is attributed to the holy ghost, effected through the medium of spirits and angels (D. L. W. 150).

Chapter 1: The Darkness Within

I would like to describe a reoccurring dream I had, which represents the ego's possessive feeling of self-love. It precedes the first of seven stages of what is described as the process of regeneration, when the new intellectual principle and the new will-principle are formed (5354).

Spiritual regeneration is the process that will lift our ego out of its selfish, darkness feeling of self-love. It is done by the celestial self-less feeling of conjugial love. Thus, Conjugial love is the conjunction of love and wisdom (C. S. L. 65).

OEBPS/images/image0009.jpg Even though dreams denote foresight (5091); in this one, I lay motionless, paralyzed and unable to move. A silent darkness pervaded all space and surrounded me. At the skyline, where the dark sky touched the earth, it was as if a wire, was stretched across the horizon, and held taut by two unseen figures positioned off to the side and out of sight. Every few minutes the two unseen figures would pluck the wire and create a pulsating vibratory sound that resonated throughout the entire universe. It made my body feel paralyzed, as if it were encased within an endless, silent, vibrating darkness.

The darkness represents our emotional needy feeling, the emptiness that precedes the first state of spiritual regeneration. The first state is called a void, emptiness, and thick darkness (6-13). Thus, needy signifies one who is not in good (A. R. 95).

The reason darkness precedes the first state is that Good is not known as to its quality, but by relation to what is less good, and by opposition to evil (D. P. 24). Thus, it is important to be born into the proprium or ego's dark state, and perceive the light, as the first stirring of the feeling of spiritual good. Thus, black signifies proprium (A. C. 3994).

Similarly, it was not until after I turned forty years old that I began to remember the silent-darkness dream, and the feeling that it caused within me. It was not until then that I also realized that it had been a reoccurring dream, which began when I was young, and had happened more than a thousand times during my lifetime.

At first, the feeling of being touched by the Divine always appears as darkness to the wicked. The sense of touch