WHAT ARE WE FEEDING ON?

I. Our Spiritual Associations

We learn, think about and entertain thoughts about things we care about and love; and this attracts spiritual associates who are like-minded. The Lord grants that good spirits and angels are associated with a person, "while evil spirits are invited by the person themselves” (Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell 295).

The Lord allows each person to have association with good and evil spirits because this maintains our freedom to choose between the influence that each kind exerts. It is this ability to choose in spiritual matters which enables us to regenerate. 

The important thing to remember with this teaching is that we attract spirits who associate with either heaven or hell by the things we love, think about and do. In turn, once those associations are made, the spirits exert a powerful influence on us to continue thinking either false or true thoughts, and doing either good or evil things.  So, according to this spiritual reality, the things we put into our minds have a direct and dramatic impact on our spiritual lives.

II. Spiritual Gravity

…The Lord creates from His love through and by means of His truth. In simpler terms, the Lord's intention and will (His love), which are to love everyone and bring them to heaven for eternity, are carried out by means of Divine instructions (His truth).  ...Acting according to the laws of "spiritual gravity,” truths desire to come to life in action; and things that we love desire and seek out the instructions or means by which they can come into being. 

The same dynamic is at work with evil and falsity. Falsity desires to make itself real and known in an evil act, and evil loves desire and seek out the false instructions which enable it to come to life.

While this concept may seem abstract and esoteric, its application is extremely practical and important. The bottom line is this: if we fill our minds with truths from the Word, and then think about them with the intention of using them, there is a kind of internal energy (the Lord's unceasing influence) that moves us toward using them in good acts.  And if we have a good love, that same kind of internal energy seeks for ways to become real in our lives through the truths of the Lord's Word.

Unfortunately, the same principle holds for what is evil and false. If we fill our minds with false ideas and harmful imagery, these ideas and memories don't just lie harmlessly inert; they continuously desire to express themselves in an evil act. And if we have an evil love, it will scan and search for the false food it requires to maintain itself and grow in our lives.

III. The Danger of [What Is] Evil and False

The Word teaches that when we choose to inundate ourselves with evils, especially those that spring from false thinking, we actually close the spiritual degree of the mind. Those who have closed off the spiritual degree of their minds have also closed themselves to the light of heaven.

"In such persons, not only does the spiritual degree itself become closed, but also the higher region of the natural degree which is called the rational, until at last the lowest of the natural degree, which is called the sensual, alone stands open, this being nearest to the world and to the outward senses of the body, from which such a person afterwards thinks, speaks, and reasons" (Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom 254). 

IV. Conclusion

From these teachings it seems clear that the ideas and images we implant and encourage in our minds can have a dramatically negative impact on our spiritual welfare. At its best, falsity is damaging. At its worst it leads to evil, which condemns if accepted, indulged and fostered.  Even though we may not be able to completely control the constant bombardment of negative stimuli from the world around us, each of us is responsible for what we do with it once we are exposed to it.

And the less of it we invite into our minds, the less we will have to contend with.  When we notice negative thoughts and images creeping into our minds, as they will do, we should ask the Lord for help in shunning them. [EDM: For the Lord loves us, and desires nothing more than to lead us this way!]  (NCL 2000, edit)