Spiritual Sunshine

The image of the bloody, fiery God from Revelation 19 can be a bit shocking at first. Why is the social justice and love wielding Christ so horrific in this vision, and why does it say, “He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself?” We find that although the Lord focuses on compassionate awareness and care, he doesn’t shy away from emphasizing the bloody and hurtful injustices in...

Blessings in life abound, but it can be difficult to perceive them when we’re too caught up in self-awareness instead of selfless awareness. Selfless awareness is less “humbling one’s self” than it is realizing that our identifications with our perceived intelligence, our bodies, and our circumstances are a lie we’ve been telling ourselves. Instead, as some Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians believ...

The cross is an interesting branding symbol for most of Christianity – as it’s the instrument of the murder of God, according to the Christian scriptures. But whatever our faith and despite our feelings about the cross, the image of it can serve as a heavy metaphor for the weight that we each carry, with compassionate strength and patience enabled by God(dess). Christ himself asked us to continue...

We’re told that any journeying to God(dess) or God’s journeying toward us is just a metaphor since there’s no true distance between us and that Holy One that transcends any religion. But I think both are helpful parables as they describe how we often feel and other truths of the process toward wholeness and peace. Indeed, it seems to us that we have to work at finding peace within, even though it’...

Join us as we continue to explore the mystical book "Divine Love and Wisdom" by Emanuel Swedenborg from the 18th-century. We discover how God(dess) shines within everyone, uplifting spiritual light and heat: wisdom and love.

Sometimes it feels like we’ve been left out to dry. We feel exposed and let down, vulnerable, depressed, and undersupported. And unfortunately, often we are undersupported and underappreciated – on an earthly level. But funny enough, as we lean into the compassionate warmth and the enlightening truth of God in our lives, we can find that we feel spiritually protected, cared for, and more and more...

We dive into Emanuel Swedenborg's thoughts about God using his book, "Angellic Wisdom on Divine Love and Wisdom."

The ancient Tao Te Ching states, “The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao, that is what gives her her radiance.” We see an important example of one who becomes one with the Tao, the uncreated life force that gives rise to everything, in Christ – who not only says as much throughout the gospel, “I and the Father are one,” but who also literally shines like the sun when his inner self i...

In our first 201 class, we explore what the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg believed about scripture, the Bible, and the Word, and what makes these sacred.

We can all feel trapped at times, whether due to a pandemic, a work environment, a relationship, or an internal oppression or depression; most of us know something about feelings of imprisonment. Our society is slowly coming around to inviting more tools to help us through these situations and moments. And yet there’s an exceedingly long way to go and many improvements we can make to better enable...

I think we can often find the essence of Divinity, no matter our belief tradition, in our romantic and loving relationships – although sometimes we can allow our yearning for love or sexual connection to bring us out of the moment and away from healthy connection. Indeed, many ancient spiritual teachings (including many Tantras) encourage us to engage with life itself, our every moment, with prese...

We continue our exploration of the interfaith spirituality that retains the 18th-century interfaith-Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg's name today. Find more videos on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/swedenborgiancommunityonline Learn more on our website: https://swedenborgiancommunity.org Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SwedenborgianCommunityOnLine Find us on Inst...

The idea that we should “stop and smell the roses” is an ancient and popularly expressed one, and yet, it can be incredibly difficult to take it to heart! Many of our religions and spiritualities tell us this in a variety of commanding and detailed ways – expressing how we should rely on God(dess) and our own God-given present awareness to navigate our days and not get ahead of ourselves. But how...

Learn about the famous mystic Emanuel Swedenborg and Swedenborgianism.

There’s an interconnectedness in scripture that is often lost to us when we read it purely literally, a tendency of both Hebrew and Christian bibles to use recurring images and symbols to point to deeper spiritual truth. This multilayered structure is often made plain by the gospels themselves, but in our desire to use scripture for our own purposes and avoid personal reflection we never seek thes...

The process of spiritual transformation takes time and patience, as they say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” But often our spiritual teachers tell us that the infinite Divinity that we each express in our own finite way has always existed, and so why does our reception of it seem to take so long? Why does becoming our “best self” tend to be riddled with setbacks, process, and seeming disappointment...

Called "The Mystic" by Emerson in his Representative Men series, Emanuel Swedenborg explores what he thinks the Trinity is in our final exploration of his book, "The Lord." We also explore how his thoughts may apply to other faith traditions typically considered to be polytheistic. Learn more on our website https://swedenborgiancommunity.org Our community's affirming Swedenborgian spirituality, in...

There’s a deep, living tradition within our scriptures themselves. One that speaks to love and a transformation of heart and action, even if the text itself is sometimes weighed down by its characters’ bad habits and hurtful decisions. This is similar to the slow awakening of today’s modern acceptance of cultural and identity diversity, which corresponds to a reawakening of the heart of many of ou...

Merry Christmas! Our community's affirming Swedenborgian spirituality, inspired by an interfaith, mystical Christianity, is centered on love and openness. It has deeply influenced the likes of Helen Keller, Carl Jung, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), William Blake, Henry James, Robert Frost, DT Suzuki, and others.

Christmas and the holidays are an interesting time of year because no matter how seemingly nonreligious we become in Western society, we still love celebrating it and getting festive! I think this is because no matter our beliefs, there’s something compelling about the joy of the season, about the joy that comes when families connect, when we dress and celebrate festively, when we collectively lis...

I find it interesting that despite the miracles found throughout holy texts, most of us don’t seem to see many miracles today (besides those “normal” ones of life itself!). If we look seriously at the spiritual insights that our scriptures try to present metaphorically (the reason why they’re often carried as communal parables), and particularly, at what kind of miracles these texts are trying to...

We continue our exploration of the book "The Lord," by 18th-century interfaith-Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, and specifically, what and who the Holy Spirit is. Download the book here: https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NCE_TheLord_portable.pdf Our community's affirming Swedenborgian spirituality, inspired by an interfaith, mystical Christianity, is centered on love and openne...

There’s an empowering, interreligious message at the centre of our Moses tale today, and also one that is repeatedly uplifted by Jesus Christ in the gospels: “be still,” “accept peace,” “quiet your mind and know God.” Any practicing Buddhist or Christian Monk will tell you that this is at the heart of how Divine Awareness deeply advents into our minds, and yet, when we read scripture, we often mis...

God’s message of social justice, hope, and life sometimes gets watered down in our various understandings of the world’s scriptures, which is ironic since even the most esoteric sections of holy text point to the Divine’s mission of uplifting and empowering the entire world in spiritual health. One example, Daniel chapter 7 of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, describes Daniel’s visions of beasts r...

We explore Emanuel Swedenborg's viewpoint that Jesus is Jehovah in the flesh and that there is only one person in the Trinity. Follow along in this book discussion by downloading "The Lord," here: https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NCE_TheLord_portable.pdf Our community's affirming Swedenborgian spirituality, inspired by an interfaith, mystical Christianity, is centered on love and...