new church life: november/december 2016
mentor do it? How could anyone see
such detail at such a distance?
The Heavenly Doctrine suggests
to us: “Thought from the eye closes the
understanding, but thought from the
understanding opens the eye.” (Divine
Love and Wisdom 46) Of course this is
speaking primarily of having a spiritual
perspective. But can you see that there
is a sense in which it is true even on a
strictly natural level? Our naturalist with
extensive training and vast experience
has a great storehouse of understanding
about the natural world. His eyes are
opened to see a myriad of exquisite little
details in the natural world all around us
that we are likely to miss.
If this is true even at the natural
level, imagine the details to which your
eyes could be opened if you acquired
extensive training and vast experience in looking from the spiritual perspective.
You could then, in the words of the poet, “see a World in a Grain of Sand and a
Heaven in a Wild Flower,” and you could, “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
and Eternity in an hour.”
These are, of course, broad and metaphorical claims. And we might picture
that it would take years to get to this point. But even with the more limited years
we have in high school and college a profound shift in perspective can still take
place.
Let us go back to the claim that the world did not change in obvious ways
in 1757. If we look with keener sight, we may notice that although the state of
this world did not change in the course of a day, and it did not in the course of
a year, not yet in the course of a decade, the world in which we live today has
been transformed during the last 250 years in ways that it was not transformed
in all of the human history that went before that.
So on the one hand the principal change was not to change our outward
condition but to allow for a freer state of thinking and a shift in the motivations
from which we can act. And yet, on the other hand, this change over time has
produced dramatic differences in the outer world as well.
The events reported in the Heavenly Doctrine and its teachings made possible
the new spiritual age. So in one sense, they have already changed the starting point
for everything. But as time goes forward the revolution will reach further specific
The events reported in
the Heavenly Doctrine
and its teachings
made possible the new
spiritual age. So in one
sense, they have already
changed the starting
point for everything.
But as time goes forward
the revolution will
reach further specific
areas of our lives.
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