The 23rd Psalm is one of the best-known and most-loved literary works in the world, and it may well be the best poem ever written. It is also a fine example of the power of figurative language: We read deep things into the vision of ourselves as sheep, led to green pastures and good water by a kind shepherd. It’s empowering to feel the confidence to go fearlessly into the valley of the shadow of death, and to feel the love and caring of a table prepared by the Lord and a cup so full it overflows.

What people don’t know, however, is that this language actually has precise internal meanings, and that when we see them there is an even deeper beauty in the poem. That’s because what it actually describes is the path to heaven, and the fierce desire the Lord has to lead us there.

The first step is to let the Lord be our shepherd – to accept His teaching and His leadership. The green pastures and the still waters represent the things He will teach us for the journey. Then He begins working inside is, setting our spiritual lives in order, so that we desire to do what’s good and to love one another. That’s represented by restoring our souls and leading us in the paths of righteousness.

But we will still face challenges. We still live external lives, out in the world, and we are subject to desires that arise in those externals, in our bodily lives. That’s the valley of the shadow of death. But the rod and staff represent truth from the Lord on both external and internal levels, ideas that can defend us against those desires.

And if we keep following, the Lord will prepare a table for us – a place inside us that he can fill with love (the anointing oil) and wisdom (the overflowing cup). Thus transformed, we can enter heaven, with love for others (“goodness”) and love from the Lord (“mercy”) and can love and be loved to eternity.

One of many beautiful things about this is the fact that it is the Lord who really does all the work. In the whole text, the only action taken by the sheep is walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Other than that, they follow the Lord, trust the Lord, accept the blessings of the Lord. And that is really true! In external states (in the valley) we might seem to be doing the work ourselves, but internally, spiritually, we simply need to give ourselves to the Lord and let Him bless us.

The underlying idea here is that the Lord created us so that He could love us, in loving us wants us to be happy, knows that our greatest happiness will come from being conjoined to Him in heaven, and Himself wants nothing more than to be conjoined to us. So everything He does, in every moment of every day for every person on the face of the planet, is centered on the goal of getting that person to heaven. He wants each and every one of us in heaven more than we are capable of imagining. We just need to cooperate.

(Verweise: Apocalypse Explained 375 [34], 727 [2]; The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms 273)

970. And they became blood, signifies that it was destroyed by falsifications. This is evident from the signification of "blood," as being truth falsified (See above, n. 966); therefore that "the rivers and fountains became blood" signifies that the faculty of understanding the truths of the Word was destroyed by falsifications. Every man has the faculty of understanding truths, for it is this faculty by which man is distinguished from beasts; and this remains with every man, even with the evil, since it is the spiritual part of man and the most essential means of his regeneration. For man is regenerated by the Lord by means of truths, and if he were not able to understand truths he could not receive them and thus be reformed; for to receive what he is not able to understand does not profit. That this is so has been proved by experience in the spiritual world. There was a discussion among the spirits whether everyone has the faculty of understanding truths; and an infernal spirit was taken as a witness whether he could understand the truths of heaven, and it was found that he understood them when he heard them just as well as a good spirit, and yet that he was not willing to understand them, for he turned away from them because they were opposed to the evils and the falsities therefrom that were delightful to him. And it was said that man through that faculty has conjunction with the Lord, since that faculty is proper to man. That faculty is said to have been destroyed by falsifications, because those who have falsified the Word are not willing to understand truths themselves; and those who are not willing are as it were not able, although they would be able if they were willing. For the mind of such rejects truths, and like one deaf does not hear them so long as it clings to things opposite. But when these opposite things are removed it is as if the ears of the deaf were opened. All this has been said to make known what is meant by the destruction of the faculty of understanding the truths of the Word by falsifications.

[2] It has been said above that communication with heaven is not given before the evils and the falsities therefrom with which the natural mind is stopped up have been removed; for these are like black clouds between the sun and the eye, or like a wall between the light of heaven and the dim light of a candle in a chamber. For so long as a man is in the dim light of the natural man only he is like one shut up in a chamber where he sees by a candle. But as soon as the natural man has been purified from evils and falsities therefrom he is as if he saw through windows in the wall the things of heaven from the light of heaven. For as soon as evils have been removed, the higher mind, which is called the spiritual mind, is opened, and this, viewed in itself, is a type or image of heaven. Through this mind the Lord flows in and enables man to see from the light of heaven, and through this He also reforms and at length regenerates the natural man, and implants in it truths in the place of falsities and goods in the place of evils. This the Lord does through spiritual love, which is the love of truth and good. Man is then placed in the midst between two loves, between the love of evil and the love of good; and when the love of evil recedes the love of good takes its place. It is solely through the life according to the commandments of the Decalogue, that is, through refraining from the evils there enumerated because they are sins, and finally shunning them as infernal, that the love of evil recedes.

[3] In a word, so long as man does not refrain from evils because they are sins the spiritual mind is shut; but as soon as he refrains from evils because they are sins the spiritual mind is opened, and with that mind heaven also. And when heaven is opened man comes into another light as to all things of the church, heaven, and eternal life; although so long as man lives in this world the difference between this and the former light is scarcely noticeable, and for the reason that in the world man thinks naturally even about spiritual things, and until he passes from the natural into the spiritual world spiritual things are enclosed in natural ideas; but in the spiritual world spiritual things are disclosed, perceived, and made evident.