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There's an old saying that says, "When the student is ready the master will appear." The idea is that the student must incorporate everything they've already been taught into their life before the next master will come to teach them the next steps. We see something similar in the Word, where Jesus opens the eyes of Peter, James and John to a new spiritual reality, but now they have a difficult time trying to synthesize what they've just been taught with everything they've always believed. (note - Todd offers his apologies for an error; where he mistakenly says in this audio that the "spiritual serves the natural"... he meant to say, "natural serves the spiritual.")

(References: Apocalypse Explained 64, 405; Arcana Coelestia 6394; Matthew 17:14-20, 17:24-27)

10229. 'And you shall take the silver of expiations from the children of Israel' means the purifying truths springing from good that are the Church's. This is clear from the meaning of 'the silver' as truth springing from good, dealt with in 1551, 2954, 5658, 6112, 6914, 6917, 8932; from the meaning of 'expiations' as purification from evils, dealt with above in 10218, so that 'the silver of expiations' is truth that purifies; and from the representation of 'the children of Israel' as the Church, dealt with in the places referred to in 9340. The words 'truth that purifies' are used because all purification from evils is effected by means of truths, see 2799, 5954, 7044, 7918, 9089. The implications of all this are that by himself a person thinks nothing but evil; for by himself he does not think about God nor about good and just behaviour towards his neighbour, unless it is to his own advantage. Nor indeed does he think about heaven and eternal life, only about the world and life there. As long as this is a person's state of mind his thought springs from what is below him and not from what is above him, thus from hell and not from heaven. To think what is good therefore a person's thought must spring from heaven, so that his mind must be raised in that direction. This is accomplished solely by means of truths such as exist within the Church, derived from the Word; for those truths teach about the nature of God, who the neighbour is, the existence of heaven, the reality of eternal life, and in particular what evil and good are. When these truths pass into the mind its inner levels are raised above the self, and are accordingly drawn away from those things below the self, thus away from evils. From this it may be recognized that all purification or removal from evils is effected by means of truths, which are therefore called purifying truths.