6
Ako'y bumaba sa mga kaibaibabaan ng mga bundok; Ang lupa sangpu ng kaniyang halang ay tumakip sa akin magpakailan man: Gayon may isinampa mo ang aking buhay mula sa hukay, Oh Panginoon kong Dios.
Jonas 2:6
Ground
“Earth” refers to the externals of a person or a community -- their everyday thoughts and actions -- in a broad, general sense. “Ground” refers to the parts of our external lives that are ready for cultivation, ready to be put to use. Cultivation, of course, involves loosening up the soil (breaking down our distracting habits and thoughts) and planting seeds (true concepts and ideas that spring from a desire to be good). As those seeds start growing, we begin to be truly useful. In short, then, “ground” in the Bible can mean a person or community that is receptive to the Lord's teaching. It can also mean a person or church that has received the Lord's teaching and is putting it to use.
Heaven and Hell #33
33. It needs to be quite clear that it is the inner nature of angels that determines which heaven they are in. The more the deeper levels have been opened, the more inward the heaven they are in. There are three inner levels of every angel and spirit, and of every person here as well. The people whose third level has been opened are in the central heaven, while the people whose second or first only has been opened are in the intermediate or the outmost heaven.
The deeper levels are opened by our acceptance of divine good and divine true gifts. People who are actually affected by divine true gifts and let them directly into their lives - into their intentions and therefore into act - are in the central or third heaven, located there according to their acceptance of what is good in response to truth. People who do not let such gifts directly into their intentions, but into their memory and from there into their discernment, intending and doing them as a result of this process, are in the intermediate or second heaven. People who live good moral lives, though, and believe in the Divine with no particular interest in learning, are in the outmost or first heaven. 1 We may therefore conclude that the state of our inner natures is what constitutes heaven and that heaven is within each one of us, not outside us. This is what the Lord teaches in saying,
The kingdom of God does not arrive when we are looking for it, nor do they say, "Here it is," or "There it is." Behold, you have the kingdom of God within you. (Luke 17:20-21)
Footnotes:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] There are as many levels of life within the human individual as there are heavens, and these are opened after death depending on the way the individual has lived: 3747, 9594. Heaven is within us: 3884. So people who have accepted heaven within themselves in the world enter heaven after death: 10717.
