Rev. Thom Muller
I spoke with spirits concerning worms that become butterflies; that they are representations of heavenly life, to wit, that they should be little worms, lowly, creeping on the ground, eating herbs, thus the vilest things; and that meantime they are prepared for a certain representative heaven suitable to them; to wit, that thus through the chrysalis state they are turned into winged and beautiful insects, and then are elevated from the ground into the air, their heaven, [and] fly, and apply themselves to their roses, [and] eat the must thereof; celebrate their nuptials; lay eggs; and so enjoy their felicity: that these are representations of the reformation and regeneration of humble men was sufficiently manifest; and that these things were continued to their posterity, and that they represent the eternal with man. Then the discourse was concerning other things, as well in the animal as in the vegetable kingdom, in general; that nothing is ever given in those kingdoms that does not represent the Lord’s kingdom with indefinite variety.
–Spiritual Diary §2475 (1)
Swedenborg identifies three major stages in our dynamic of spiritual transformation, which are commonly translated, from the Latin, as repentance, reformation, and regeneration.
In our modern cultural vernacular, the word repentance justifiably often evokes negative feelings. Swedenborgian Theology teaches that God cannot even frown at our sight. So why the seeming self-deprecation? The process of repentance is an inner process, not meant to appease or apologize to some angry or judgmental deity (both anger and judgmental-ness are NOT attributes of the Divine, but of us). Repentance is the beginning of an inner putting-things-in-order. An intimate, personal process.
In the Divine, anything of the love of self is utterly inconceivable -that such things (as humility or Thanksgiving) should be done for God’s own sake-; but they are for the sake of our-selves; for when we are in a state of humility we can receive good from the Lord, because he has then been separated from our self centered love, which is the obstacle. Therefore the Lord desires a state of humility and gratitude in us for our own sake; because when we are in this state the Lord can flow in with heavenly goodness.
–Secrets of Heaven §5957 (2)
In other words, when we are in a state in which we consciously identify the divine attributes in our inner lives, as well as those things that are holding us back from fully receiving and embodying the divine inflow, such as anger, fear, resentment, prejudice. This preparatory stage is the process of repentance
In Swedenborg’s esoteric reading of scripture, he points to John the Baptist as a symbolic representation of this state. A state that occurs within us. That’s that second stage, the stage of reformation. And there’s a very important aspect to this process. Notice that when a caterpillar enters the the cocoon stage, it is something that happens to the caterpillar, not something it has to earn, and not something it needs to know exactly how to do. It’s a matter of the caterpillar placing itself in the right spot to be a recipient of just the right amount of warmth and light. Likewise, the process of re-formation, while it may seem to us like we’re doing it on our own, follows a very intentional divine design. It’s a gentle, gradual, nurturing process.
This idea really helps me because as I’m sure we all know, it can be hard, if not impossible for us to always know what the most regenerative thing to do might be… “How DO we live a life that is both loving and truthful? How can we possibly grow spiritually, grow into kinder, wiser people with this toxic family member, or friend, or coworker? How can we cultivate compassion at the sight of such injustice?”
Swedenborg claims that that uncertainty is ok. It’s not something to be afraid of. Because while we may think that we’re on our own, we are actually guided and nurtured by a divinely instituted growth process. As long as we take that first step, that step of situating ourselves in a receptive position, we will have gentle guidance and help as to how we can truly undergo that process of inner transformation, re-formation.
Bringing things back to our concrete human spiritual psyche, Swedenborg emphasizes the formation of spiritual insight, the reception of divine wisdom. This is not necessarily an intellectual exercise, there being a major difference, and not necessarily a correlation, between “natural wisdom” and “spiritual wisdom”. It’s a kind of understanding that we might liken to “spiritual aha-monents”.
You might be able to relate to this, there’s a beautiful kind of wisdom, of understanding, that we reach when we are actively growing spiritually. Profound insights about the nature of life, the nature of divinity, and our own angelic nature. We start creating an inner framework that compliments and affirms our active embrace and embodiment of love and wisdom. And this transcendent, angelic understanding of spiritual truth is not static, it is not lifeless. Once again, there’s an alchemical union of love and wisdom within us, where the knowledge of God’s love becomes enlivened by our active, conscious experience and manifestation of God’s qualities. That is the process of regeneration, of re-birth, re-enliven-ment. It’s a holistic process that involves both our understanding and our will to live that understanding. Our loosing “Our-selves” in God.
Swedenborg is very much a neoplatonist in his conceptualization of ultimate reality. There is a core at the center, God,the Spiritual sun, Love and Wisdom, and various outward emanations from that center. And the center is both the source of all emanations, and the ultimate reality of being. It’s a very clear hierarchy. The further you move inward, the more you move towards one-ness, the more connected you become with the spiritual world and ultimately with the divine. And like so many others in that tradition he saw our spiritual journey as a journey not parallel to, not in service of, that center, but as a decidedly inward journey, slowly opening our being and our self-realization up to the inner, the spiritual, the angelic, and recognizing that reality is a matter of degrees, and the more outward we go, the more we focus on the me and the mine and the when and the where, the less we are in touch with ultimate reality.
Swedenborg believed that we exist, right now, on all of those planes, in all of those dimensions, it’s just that our identification is fixed on the outer layers. It’s basically in reverse order where we view our own mind-body experience as the ultimate and most real, the spiritual as a somewhat removed reality, and the divine somewhere on the unreachable outskirts.
The process of repentance, reformation, and regeneration is a reversal of that flawed perception. Regeneration is when the transcendent encounters the mundane to the point of union. When the small Self, the proprium, “loses itself” in the absolute, in God. While we may not experience it as rapturous or ecstatic, it is the ultimate mystical experience because it is the actual, literal experience of union with God, or acting not from our “human” desires or ideas, but as a literal vessel and embodiment of the divine. This, by the way, is the definition of an angel.
(1) Swedenborg, Emanuel. The Spiritual Diary. London: Swedenborg Society, 1902.
(2) Swedenborg, Emanuel. Secrets of Heaven. West Chester: Swedenborg Foundation, 2022.
Rev. Thom Muller is pastor at the Swedenborgian Society of the East Bay at Hillside, an Urban Sanctuary, in El Cerrito, CA, as well as senior editor of Our Daily Bread. His passions include the intersection of spirituality and psychology, interfaith theology, and the Western esoteric tradition. A native of Germany, Rev. Muller was ordained into the ministry of the Swedenborgian Church of North America in 2016, upon receiving his theological education at Bryn Athyn College and the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA.