Ladder of fire, ladder of love: taking Jacob's Ladder seriously

 The "tranquility of peace" is the same thing in the Writings as "Sabbath day rest"; it refers to the second state of regenerating humans. The first is by means of truth to arrive at good, like learning it is good to forgive and doing it because it is accepted as truth, this necessity of forgiveness. The second state, the Sabbath day rest, involves being in a good state from which truths proceed; such as foremost forgiving others because it nurtures or at least does no harm; from which proceed insights born of practical compassion. That is very briefly and in a nutshell. Truth helps us to arrive at alignment with love, which love once it dwells in our hearts bears truths like children. 

2nd camera angle: "'according to generations' means according to the order in which they are begotten and proceed one from the other, that is to say, good from truth and truth from good. For there are two states which the person undergoing new birth from the Lord passes through, the first being a state of truth, the other a state of good. While in the first state the person is led by means of truths towards good, but in the second he is led by means of good. This second state is the state of heaven with a person" (Secrets of Heaven 9845).

A parallel to this pattern may be drawn with the stages wherein someone refrains from crime out of fear of punishment and wherein someone refrains out of fear of hurting.

"Watch and pray!" God said. Watch your compassion, like the angels that have power over fire in themselves.

Watch your eye, your understanding. There is practical use to seeing these together and apart which will encourage you to go further and take Jacob's Ladder seriously.

Not for nothing did He say that angels ascended and descended on the ladder of Jesus, who is above the Heavens and with those in the lowest Hell, love and wisdom in person and refracted through a series of dirtier prisms.

This comparison to ever dirtier prisms paraphrases extracts from the Writings, in passing.

The ladder upon which they ascend and descend is the ladder of good and truth in their generations and in their gradations. Your forgiveness has children. Your refusal to be up oneself has children. Their children have children. They divide and multiply and replenish the earth.

These are the angels that have power over fire in themselves, observing their own compassion and participating in its nurturance. (edited)

Don't take Jacob's Ladder on blind faith. Take it seriously, as seriously you would a portal to another world. It will not require any blind faith if you but look for the marriages and adulteries of will and understanding in the Word and in your life.

There is a ladder of fire all the way up to Heaven, and the Word is a superhuman sequence of marriages and adulteries designed to aid in noticing and navigating that ladder.

Ladder of fire, ladder of love. It is the same. To have power over fire in oneself is to ascend and descend on the Son of Man, it is the same. The Word shows us Jacob's Ladder from so many camera angles, "here a precept, there a precept", and it is written that we will never perfectly practice it, never fully understand it.  But it's there, in person, and God Himself: He is the ladder of love, and with those in Heaven as also with those in Hell.

Example of adultery 1: 

Jeremiah 43:2 - King James Version (KJV)

<2> Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the proud men, saying unto Jeremiah, Thou speakest falsely: the Lord our God hath not sent thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there:

sin : error:: proud men : Thou speakest falsely

We know pride is a sin and equivalent to self-love. We also know that pride causes spiritual darkness and senility, for look what happened to proud Nebuchadnezzar! In his case, the adultery consisted of pride anti-married to beastly stupidity.

In the above example, the adultery consists of pride anti-married to an utterly false understanding of not so much Jeremiah as the use of what he was recording.

Example of adultery 2: 

Mark 15:31 - King James Version (KJV)

<31> Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save.

sin : error :: mocking : "He saved others; himself he cannot save"

In this example, chosen because it involves a false statement which the author of the narrative -- that's God, of course -- wants to bring to our attention, we have an adultery of mocking and misunderstanding. How often have we heard of villains being overconfident and misjudging their adversaries? 

And, too, those who hate others or see them merely as a prey or narcissistic supply will say rather sharp things to one another, won't they? Let's look at that one next.

Example 3 of adultery: 

Luke 16:14-15 - King James Version (KJV)

<14> And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him. <15> And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

sin : error :: covetous : derided him [eg their understanding made light of serious business of Heaven; for those who deride caricature and diminish others sharply, seeing nothing there but foolishness and being themselves foolish for it].

One would suggest that you deliberately consider covetousness in people around you and in general. See if you can detect a tendency to scoff at anything which does not concern finances and similar. See if you can locate a subtle but concrete connection between these things. Because there are such connections to be drawn, and these have more utility than miracles for your soul. 

It does to note that this example can only be noticed if you are consciously looking for it; otherwise, a rung of Jacob's Ladder, the ladder of growing in God's love and schooling of love, goes unnoticed! We don't want that, not if we can prevent it. Why fail to avail ourselves of something so intricate and useful? It can only be meaningful to you as religion if it is worthy of a superhuman compassion and conception in living practice, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Example of adultery 4: 

Daniel 12:10 - King James Version (KJV)

<10> Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.

sin : error :: the wicked shall do wickedly : none of the wicked shall understand

This scarcely wants explanation for those familiar with this sturdy rubric ordained by God. It makes perfect sense, literally perfect sense. Once someone can see this, they can see a lot more than otherwise would be possible.

A recent news story out of Turkey caught one's attention for its noteworthy barbarism. One hesitates almost to believe that it transpired, but a certain Turkish man took out a life insurance policy on his pregnant wife, who was beaming in the last selfies she took with him before he kicked her off the cliff.

Note the adultery, the anti-marriage,; being that of self-love to the point of callous cruelty with a distorted understanding of his wife as a mere token, a mere fungible asset to be efficiently converted into currency.

Photos of them are like watching a predator looking at Bambi. He does not see his probably more loving wife than he deserves, nor does he see their (unborn) child. He sees a sort of money order, nothing more. The adultery of sin and error, in this case of self-loving covetousness and cruelty with seeing even his wife as a mere thing, shows through this circumstance very clearly. And we can find it in many other places in life and the Word. 

People who are addicted to 'fresh' sexual partners, by some mysterious coincidence, also have a distorted understanding of others as either of 'little use'' or as a sort of human version of a condom, to be used once or close enough and discarded.

All of this is to say that the different types of sin and error matter. And of course, the different types of love and wisdom matter also! There are marriages of forgiveness with fresh understandings of why it is better to forgive than to burn with vengefulness. These are the generations of the regenerating, who will grow in love forever.

"Blessed are the peacemakers", God said. Are they loving enough to be peacemakers at first? No, they begin in evil and darkness. Do they become loving enough to be peacemakers all at once? No, it grows over time in them, with many retreats and advances, innocent mistakes and willful ones. And what are the generations of a peacemaker, of one specialising in conflict resolution? If someone resolves conflicts, being a loving negotiator and go-between, then they grow in the love of resolving conflicts and arranging negotiations between difficult people or in thorny circumstances. 

Love takes many forms and performs many useful functions; but you will always find it wedded to understandings which support those forms and functions. What negotiator would take no note whatever of psychology and relationships? If they cared about those whom they negotiated for, then they would diligently seek with oil in their lamps to find out everything useful that they possibly could.

Remember, above all things, not to forget the oil of love of God and the neighbour, of doing what is good out of nurturing love and not for a reward, while you are climbing that ladder of fire. Fire is love, oil is love. You will not get far on that ladder of fire if the fire of love dies in your heart, like it did with the foolish virgins... Speaking of which, God said they were foolish... Might that be in an adultery with some sin, being a negative state of the understanding? It just might. The lack of love in their hearts was anti-married to that foolishness... There, yet again, we have Jacob's Ladder, encoded copiously everywhere in the Word, in a dazzling variety of forms and with a compendious array of uses to those watching over fire in themselves.

"Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone and is granted to those who love truths because they are truths, and who apply them to the uses of life; with others, there is no enlightenment in the Word. Enlightenment comes from the Lord alone, because the Lord is in all things of the Word. Enlightenment is granted to those who love truths because they are truths, and who apply them to the uses of life because they are in the Lord, and the Lord in them. For the Lord is His own Divine Truth; and when this is loved because it is Divine Truth-and this is loved when it is applied to use-then the Lord is present in it with man" (Sacred Scripture).

The Word is a textbook for people growing in love. If people attempt to use it for some other purpose, it's like putting coca cola in the fuel tank of your car.

Unfortunately, much of what gets called religion does something quite as sticky to your soul. If you think about it, what possible good are all those fantastical interpretations of the End Times doing? What are all those raptures this and political milleniums that doing around the house? the temple? the regenerating human? 

These marriages and adulteries have been brought to your attention due to the relevance that Jacob's Ladder has in deadly earnest to the highest faculties of the human being. But the sign of false doctrine and prophetical interpretation is that they paint the sky with lurid colours of catastrophe but don't actually assist with practicing love. They even stoke fear, some of these End Times fantasies that get people so afraid of being damned for getting a barcode on their hand or whatnot; whereas the practice of love entails casting out fear, as we know from John's epistle. "By their fruits shall ye know them", God says. Well, you can feel a clean conscience about using the Word to grow compassion and understandings supportive of compassion. I scarcely know where one would begin to use the Word for any other reason. Of course, reasons exist. People think of the Word as only an intellectual game, or as a source of reputation. These are traps into which people fall. It is your responsibility and mine not to fall for them and to delight in the practice and nurturance of love, which is forever usefulness itself.

Synopsis: Why read the Word if you don't even want to become a more loving person? Why teach others about the Word if not to highlight that about it which nurtures their becoming more loving people? Everything else is stage props and scenery. I like a lot of those cool sights and sounds, but this growing in love stuff is the meaning of life. People who don't get that dwell in darkness forever, and this is a fate I want to avoid and hope that you are willing to avoid also. Godspeed.

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One should note that those "raptures this and political milleniums" one referenced above are a tiny bit unfair, but this serves as an opportunity to note something about false beliefs: some of them do lend themselves to reform of life, and that is why it would be unfair of one to simply dismiss expectancy of an imminent invasion by a very material army of angels. If that makes someone stand up straighter in their chair, and more importantly to avoid the worst things and excesses, then it has done something around the house. One will have to modify future rhetoric to make this clearer and to be less dismissive of the Old Church.

When people believe in reincarnation, the Writings say, this is not technically true; but it lends itself to reform of life, and anything which does not retard reform of life or hopefully benefits it will do the butler well.

Why the butler? The butler lived to pour another glass. The baker however was basically hung up and eaten by the birds. I refer to the episode in Joseph's incarceration when the jailed butler and baker both had a dream. This episode is very complex, and one can only suggest reading it in full while doing one's best to note the salient point: the butler could still go to Heaven despite believing the moon was made of green cheese, effectively. But the baker, who represents evil in the actual will and behaviour, becomes food for birds; that is because we can believe mistakenly concerning spiritual life, but we cannot live a directly evil life.

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Now then, as to those "birds"...

We have often seen how the process of choosing Heaven or Hell looks a lot like what videos you habitually select as refracted through the Youtube recommended algorithm. In the Writings, the "evil genii" of Hell are said to be nourished by our giving in to evil and writing evil on the book of our lives, like that baker did. Hence the buzzards on the field of the slain angle. 

That, in passing, is the interpretation that the Writings give to the verse in Revelation above.

...A lot of people kind of gather that there's some truth to Monsters Inc...

The years pass, and sometimes very unexpected things become clearer with age, wrinkling, and maturation. One of those things is that Monsters Inc. the film has been mysteriously useful to evangelism for a while. Scrutinizing it, one does not find the usual unhealthy element. There is a clear presentation of a spiritual reality which has a certain purity to it. It just goes to show that God is busy in all sorts of corners.

"And all the birds were filled with their flesh. This symbolically means that by their lusts for evil, which they had made their own, they fed, as it were, the demons of hell" (Apocalypse Revealed 837)

One will just append the rest of it, since it's not only useful but also just fascinating: "Birds symbolize falsities emanating from hell, and because caught up in those falsities are demons of hell that are present with a person in his falsities that are products of his love, therefore these demons are here symbolized by birds. A person who is caught up in such falsities also becomes such a demon after death. That useless and harmful birds, especially unclean and rapacious ones that feed on carrion, symbolize falsities that are products of a person's love, may be seen in no. 757 above.

Flesh here symbolizes the evils attendant on the lusts that are inherent in a person (no. 748). To be filled with that flesh means, symbolically, to be as though fed by those lusts and to draw them in with delight. For the demons of hell that are caught up in the same lusts for evil eagerly inhale and fill their nostrils with them, and with the life attendant on them, because of the lusts emanating from these people's thoughts and respiration, so that the two also live and dwell together" (ibid).