Direct perception of the inside of the platter and cup, not blind faith

It is hoped that people will come to see the Heavenly marriage and infernal adultery and correspondences heads or tails in all things in themselves, the universe and the Word; to see these things of the heart and thoughts, the platter and cup, directly; and not have blind faith.

For it is He who tries the heart and the reins (Psalms 7:9), that is the kidneys. And what do the kidneys do? They filter blood. They are a crucial stop on the train line of urine. And urine is water one expels from the body. 

What is water? What is blood for that matter? They are truth, and if you see them both together in the same verse they are higher (more inward) and lower (more external) truth. 

That is to say, the correspondences in such an instance -- in this case blood and water -- comprise a cluster of predicates of the understanding of truth. It is thus that they resolve into the hierarchy of the particular predicate cluster, as in their incidence in the Wedding at Cana. 

But back to urine. Urine, to borrow the Lord's teaching on this topic, is that which "goes out in the draught"; for both solid and liquid wastes go out in the draught.

Now, one measures a solid with a bushel. And one measures a liquid with a hin.

These are the standard measurements employed by the Word to indicate states good or evil (solids, bushels) and true or false (liquids, hins). We are back to the heart and the reins. We are ascending and descending on the ladder of the Lord: these correspondences and their interrelation.

We are back at the kidneys, and the kidneys are processing blood. They are processing a choice between spiritual falsehood and spiritual truth, rejecting the falsehood in the draught. 

What is the draught of which the Lord speaks in His Sermon on Evil Thoughts? (Matthew 15:11-20). It is the solid and liquid waste of evil rejected from the spiritual body in the vessel of purification of the heart; and of falsehood rejected from the spiritual body in the vessel of purification of the thoughts.

This is the cleaning of the inside of the platter and the cup, the trying of the heart and the reins, the passing of every metal of desire and of truth through the fire and the water.

This is the valley of decision, and the central task of life, and the way in which the good works we outwardly do become inwardly good also. This is the eating of bread and the drinking of wine in an infinite sequence of states of the platter and the cup and their gradual, painful purification and their threshold into eternal abundance and peace and living, intelligent joy, the Friend, the God Man; and all those who are in a network of love which is Him on horses clean and white.

"And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it" (Psalms 90:17).

This is the sequence of influx, the sequence of states of platter and cup; of heart and reins; of passing through the fire and the water. This is the perfection without end in the hands of love so vigilant that He sees the effect of every detail in our lives for countless states; when we with our furthest foresight barely grasp the state of the will and the understanding and their interrelation in which we presently find ourselves. 

He is love that does not sleep, the orchestrator of our gradual regeneration, the one who drives out the nations and peoples of Canaan before us; by providing the purification of the heart and the reins, the removal of sins and errors in those vessels which jam the entering in of the joy of our Lord.

"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full" (John 15:11).

These things has He spoken to us that the blocks on fullness of joy in the heart and the thoughts may be removed by our own free will and apparent effort even as we consciously regard Him as "the Lord our righteousness" (Jeremiah 23:6).

We both act determinedly and acknowledge that He is our very determination .

"I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land" (Exodus 23:29-30).

We will not face the purifications of the heart and thoughts, the inside of the platter and cup, all at once; or we would be essentially torn apart. We will face the trials by fire and water, the floods of bitterness, in a sequence called the order of regeneration. 

It is an order particular to our spiritual needs and calculated to remove blocks on joy by maximum shaking up of these; that the unsettling put-up-or-shut-up of our determination to keep the royal law to love God and the neighbor may clear a clean space for the love and wisdom and consequently the blocked joy to take their vacated places.

This will not be done in a year but in the course of many different tests of will and understanding and overcoming and not overcoming. 

"Then said I, Ah, Lord Jehovah! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, Ye shall have peace; whereas the sword reacheth unto the life" (Jeremiah 4:10).

Yes, we shall have not peace but the sword. The sword of the Word will make it so that " sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful" (Romans 7:13).

Thus was Mary foretold: "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:35).

For Mary is bitterness, and bitterness is the sword and the fire and the water and the trying of the heart and the reins and cleansing of the platter and the cup. 

God grant you direct perception and not blind faith.

Amen!