new church life: march/april 2017
The Word reveals much about this spiritual consociation that results in
the thoughts that come into our mind. From our mental observation we are
completely unaware of the fact that we are actually in association with angels
and spirits every moment of every day.
Perhaps the dramas we experience in our dreams, when our rational mind
is inactive and quiescent, offer the clearest testimony of this fact. Spirits are
then at liberty to reach into our memory and impose their fantasies upon us,
causing us to feel their influence as our own.
When we awaken, our rational mind becomes reactive again and dismisses
the experience as a fantasy not of our own making. Dreams are examples of the
influence that spirits have upon our mind.
Angels and spirits are also with us during our wakeful hours, but again
we are completely unaware of their presence. If our thoughts are in harmony
with the Lord’s order, we are then in association with the angels of heaven,
and they cast their love and happiness upon us. But if our thoughts are turned
away from the Lord in favor of selfish or merely worldly ends we fall under
the influence of the hells. They are the source of all the evil lusts that the
Lord referred to in our lesson: “murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15: 19)
So what do w e do with evil thoughts that periodically invade our mind?
When we experience wicked or unkind
thoughts it is easy to mistake the
enticement we feel as though it were
our own, causing us to feel unworthy
and guilty. This is where the words
of the Lord can bring us comfort and
relief, for He says that it is “not what
goes into the mouth that defiles a
person.”
Remember that the mouth
corresponds to thought. The thoughts
that come into our mind are not in
themselves attributable to us. They
come upon us from the spiritual world.
Evil thoughts are breathed into our
minds from hell. Good and pleasant
thoughts come through associate
angels in heaven when we think in
accord with the teachings of the Word.
So we read in the work on Divine
Providence that: “If a person were to
If our thoughts are in
harmony with the Lord’s
order, we are then in
association with the
angels of heaven, and
they cast their love
and happiness upon
us. But if our thoughts
are turned away from
the Lord in favor of
selfish or merely worldly
ends we fall under the
influence of the hells.
132