Sex is sex, right?
Not quite.
There’s sex, and then there’s sex.
“What?”
Okay, there’s biological sex, and there’s spiritual sex. From the outside they look pretty much the same. But on the inside, they’re completely different.
That’s because they come from two different kinds of love.
For more on two different kinds of love and sex, please click here to read on.
Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.” (Genesis 17:9)
One of the things I love about Emanuel Swedenborg’s view of the Bible is that it does several wonderful things at once: It harmonizes the Old and New Testaments so that instead of saying different things, they converge on the same meaning and message. It shows us how every story in the Bible is also a story about the Lord Jesus’ inner life—what he was doing inwardly while he was here on earth. And it also shows how the very same stories that are about the Lord’s life are also about our own inner life, so that the Lord’s life becomes the pattern for ours.
The story of God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17:1–10 and the story of Jesus calling his first disciples in Mark 1:14–20 (which I invite you to read using the links) are a particularly good example of how Swedenborg’s view of the Bible harmonizes the Old and New Testaments. If you look at them outwardly, they seem to be about two entirely different things. One is about God making a covenant of circumcision with Abram, and changing his name to Abraham. The other is about the Lord Jesus beginning to preach, saying, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news,” and also about him calling his first disciples.
These stories seem to be about two entirely different things. But if we look deeper, through the lens of spiritual understanding that Swedenborg offers, both stories are really about the same thing. They are about our relationship with God, and what we must do to have a good relationship with God. They are also about our relationships with one another, which depend on our relationship with God.
For more on our covenant with God, please click here to read on.
“I’ve been spiraling for years and I tried to hang myself in my hotel last night.”
That is the title of a message posted on Reddit two weeks ago by a professionally successful, financially secure 45-year-old man in a loving marriage. Here is a link to the original post.
This gentleman is not alone in his suffering.
In its March 2025 report on suicide, the World Health Organization estimates that approximately 720,000 people worldwide die from suicide each year. The WHO further states that suicide is the third cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds. In the United States, the Minnesota Department of Health states that among suicides, males comprise 80% of the deaths. Statistically, far more men commit suicide than women. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the number one method of suicide is the use of a firearm. The second most common method is suffocation by hanging.
Suicide is a tragic and serious global crisis. And for millions of people, suicide ideation—thinking about committing suicide—is a profound personal mental health crisis.
But suicide is not just a secular mental health crisis. It’s a spiritual health crisis. What drives people to suicide? How does it relate to our spiritual life and health? Can God and spirit give us any help in facing this scourge on human life? In this post we examine these questions, and more.
If you, or someone you know, is thinking about committing suicide, please reach out for help. There are people who love you and care about you, and are ready to help and support you through this difficult time. There are also psychiatrists and counselors who stand ready to provide professional help and guidance. Don’t go it alone. Get the help you need before it’s too late.
For more on the spiritual side of suicide, please click here to read on.
There’s a common notion these days that underneath it all, everyone is well-intentioned and good. On the other hand, some cynics believe that everyone is selfish, even if they may outwardly appear to be altruistic. Some people even think it would be a good thing for everyone to put self-interest first. (I see you, Objectivists!)
But human life, and the human psyche, is more complex than that.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) identified four types of love that drive human life. Here they are in the traditional Christian and biblical language:
Love of the LordWe’ll put them in more contemporary language, and describe each one more fully, in a moment.
No two people have the exact same love driving them. These are the four general categories of love, but they are differentiated into as many different specific kinds of love as there are people. No two people are ever the same, and no two people are ever motivated by exactly the same love.
What we love most of all determines everything about our life and character. This is what Swedenborg calls our “ruling love” or “primary love,” and it is our true inner self. Everything else about us arranges itself around the primary, central love that drives us.
Once we understand the four different kinds of love, and the concept of a person’s ruling love, human society and the people around us start to make a lot more sense.
Let’s take a closer look.
For more on our four primary motivators, please click here to read on.
On November 18, 2014, Mats “Ibelin” Steen ceased his daily thirty-minute run through the villages, fields, forests, hills, and valleys of a virtual world. From then on, he could do his daily run through the villages, fields, forests, hills, and valleys of the spiritual world, in his spiritual body.
His physical body had long since ceased any running in this earthly world, taken down by the Duchenne muscular dystrophy that he had had from birth, and that took his life at the age of twenty-five.
His parents, Robert and Trude Steen, grieved their firstborn son’s death. They were especially devastated that he had never been able to experience friendship and love, and make a difference in other people’s lives. He had been confined to a wheelchair throughout his teenage and adult years. He increasingly avoided outdoor activities and social events. They were sad to see that he spent most of his time alone at his computer, playing video games.
It was only after their son’s death that they learned, to their complete surprise and amazement, that Mats had indeed experienced all those things—and so much more!
Because that’s when the messages started pouring in from his friends.
For more on video games and heaven, please click here to read on.
The angel of the Lord said to Hagar: “You are now with child, and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards all his brothers.” (Genesis 16:11–12)
What’s a future Patriarch to do? Eighty-five years old, his wife long past childbearing age, and no children to serve as his heirs! You can read the whole story in Genesis 16.
Abram’s wife Sarai had an idea: Hagar, her female slave, was still young. She could bear children in Sarai’s place. These children would be considered Sarai’s children, so that Sarai could build a family through Hagar.
Abram had no better idea, so he consented to his wife’s plan, slept with Hagar, and she became pregnant. In those days, a woman’s worth was measured largely by the sons she bore for her husband. So as soon as she had conceived and was pregnant, Hagar, though she was a slave, began to look down upon Sarai, her mistress.
This was unbearable to Sarai. She already bore the shame of being childless. She could not brook the further shame of being held in contempt by her own slave woman. She promptly blamed Abram for her troubles—even though the whole plan was hers in the first place.
For more on Abram and Ishmael, please click here to read on.
What do the Ten Commandments, psychics, the CIA, and social media have in common?
We’re glad you asked!
It is the Ark of the Covenant, which is currently trending in the podcasting and social media realms.
Some content creators recently discovered declassified U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents from the 1980s about a U.S. Army program known as the Stargate Project. This project was a foray by the Army into harnessing psychic powers for (among other things) locating objects. And one of the objects they sought was the biblical Ark of the Covenant.
What exactly is the Ark of the Covenant?
For more on the Ark of the Covenant, please click here to read on.
After eight years of radio silence, we are reviving our YouTube channel. Our first new video offers three announcements about Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life:
Here is the short version:
Over time, we expect to improve the quality of our videos. But you have to start somewhere!
Though the articles here on the website can go into greater depth, we hope you’ll enjoy brief presentations in video format of many of the new posts here. Our goal is to return to our former practice of putting up at least one new post per week, usually on Sunday. Where appropriate, we’ll also put up a YouTube version.
See you next Sunday!
This post will be a little different from most of the articles we publish here on Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life. It is the final paper I wrote for my high school senior philosophy class when I was seventeen years old. I’ve updated the punctuation a bit and fixed a few typos, but otherwise it’s exactly what I turned in to my philosophy teacher almost five decades ago.
Though I haven’t changed anything substantive in the paper, one point does require correction. Swedenborg is often credited by his followers with proposing the nebular hypothesis of the formation of the solar system decades before either Immanuel Kant or Pierre-Simon Laplace. However, though some elements of Swedenborg’s theory may have made their way into the development of the nebular hypothesis, in Swedenborg’s system, published in 1734 during his earlier scientific period, all the bodies in the solar system spin out from the central sun. However, in the nebular hypothesis, the solar system condenses from a vast cloud of dust and gas. Planets, asteroids, and so on were never part of the sun (specifically, originating in a crust that built up around the sun) as Swedenborg theorized.
I should also mention that this paper was written before gender-inclusive language became the academic standard.
If this article isn’t your cup of tea, feel free to skip it. However, for some readers it might still be of interest all these years later. First, it shows one way in which Swedenborg’s thought made its way into the broader currents of present-day human ideas through the famous and influential philosopher Immanuel Kant. Second, much of Kant’s description, summarized in the paper, of how spirit and matter interact comes directly from Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven), and may therefore be fruitful for readers of this blog.
Please enjoy (or not!) this production of my youth.
For more on Kant and Swedenborg, please click here to read on.
Survivalists, aka “preppers,” are people who prepare themselves in various ways in case of a supply chain interruption, natural disaster, or the breakdown of the current economic and social order.
Recently a survivalist whose YouTube channel is called “City Prepping” waxed philosophical:
It’s all about building foundations for your future self and your future life, he says. His parting line:
Remember: your future depends on what you do today.
That’s sage advice, not only in preparing for future natural disasters, but in preparing for spiritual disasters as well.
For more on spiritual prepping, please click here to read on.
Lee & Annette Woofenden
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Great Truths on Great Subjects
By Jonathan Bayley
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