"Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." So says Jacob, after his dream, in Genesis chapter 28:16.

Fear is an emotion. Like all emotions it can be best understood as a passive experience - it's something that happens to you. We are not our emotions. We might feel joy, or anger, or sadness, or fear, but those are experiences that we feel. It's like feeling something rough or soft or painful or hot or cold. We're not cold or hot or painful. Those are things we feel. All of our feelings are passive in that way. This is an important thing to remember because too often we can identify ourselves as our emotions.

Fear is that kind of passive emotion. It's something we experience. And the Heavenly Doctrine, in Arcana Coelestia 3718, tells us about different kinds of fear and why we experience what we experience. Think about any emotion for a moment. Any emotion is experienced of some affection that we have for something or someone being stimulated or stirred in a particular way.

If you love a child, for example, and that child is given something wonderful and they laugh, you experience the emotion of joy. If that child is harmed then you experience the emotion of sadness or anger. And when a child is threatened -- a child that you love -- you might experience the emotions of fear and anger.

Fear is when something that we love or have an affection for is threatened, is in danger -- that's when we experience fear. A simple illustration of this is why people are afraid of heights. They have an affection for their own health, and for their own life. And when they're at the top of a height, look down, think they might slip and fall, then naturally they think, I could lose this thing that I love -- me! It's a normal thing. They are not their fear. But they are their affection behind that fear. They do genuinely love themselves. And they are that love. It's an appropriate love that they have for themselves. This is why so often our fear does tell us about who and what we are. We are not our emotions, but our emotions tell us who we can or can't be.

In our reading we heard about two kinds of fear, holy fear and un-holy or natural fear. Natural fear is like the fear we just talked about, the fear that you have that you might be harmed. It's the fear that keeps most people in line. It's the fear that you might get a ticket if you speed. It's the fear that any kind of punishment or harm might come to you or to those you love, and it's felt as fear. The Writings say it's felt primarily in the body and in the natural man. You can imagine this fear; it's an unpleasant, physical feeling. It can tighten your stomach and send chills up your spine. We have physical things that we identify with fear, such as darkness, cold, screeching noises, a note out of key. These are the things that trigger the physical feeling of fear. They are all natural feelings of fear.

Holy fear, we're told, doesn't feel the same as natural fear. It doesn't feel physical in that way. We're also told that holy fear is when we have a fear of harm coming to something good or true outside of oneself. Returning to the example of a child: If you love a child and you're afraid for that child to be hurt, that's a kind of holy fear, and you might feel that fear as a knot in your stomach. But this is still a natural sort of holy fear and is not true spiritual holy fear.

We're told that good holy fear, spiritual holy fear, is felt as awe. In a moment we'll discuss love to the neighbor as it relates to holy fear. But first think about times when you have experienced awe or wonder -- Divine awe -- maybe you've been up early in the morning and you saw a sunrise and you thought, My God! What a beautiful sunrise! Literally thinking, Wow! The Lord made this amazing thing! And I've been given the blessing and the opportunity to see it. You are awed by that creation. That sense of awe is the feeling that accompanies holy fear.

But it's even more than that. A breathtaking sunrise is an example of a natural experience, a trick of aesthetics. Think to the moments in your life when real spiritual experience (not something visual) brought you awe. Maybe at your wedding. Or at the birth of your child. Or the death of a loved one, if you were there at their side. In these moments of real spiritual meaning when we experience a sense of awe and wonder, we think My God! We know that something more than our life has occurred here. We are struck by that wonder. Jacob experiences in his dream. That awe is what he's feeling when he wakes up. He realizes that the Lord is in this place. And he had not known it.

Often in our lives we'll have a sense of clarity, a moment where we truly understand that the Lord is God of Creation and is behind all the most meaningful moments of our lives. Maybe it is one of those important life experiences mentioned earlier -- your wedding or the birth of a loved one or the death of a loved one -- or maybe it's another important event, where acknowledgment and recognition of the Lord becomes clear and powerful, almost overwhelming.

We all acknowledge that on the average Tuesday morning, for example, when we wake up, awe is not the feeling we have. What should we do in those moments? How do we capture that sense of awe and clarity?

What does Jacob do? He sets up an alter. As we discussed with the children, you can set up an alter to the Lord in those moments of clarity and awe, when you feel a spiritual holy fear. You can do this with a mind meld, with your imagination, building literally an alter in your mind, setting up a stone and pouring oil on it. These images from the Word have powerful correspondential spiritual truth behind them. And your application of these kinds of images in your imagination can help order your mind.

The Heavenly Doctrine tells us time and again that we should meditate on the Word. This process applied to the story of Jacob's dream is the kind of thing that the Word is talking about: meditate on it. Really think about it.

If you're sitting there in front of a beautiful sunrise and you suddenly realize truly what it means for the Lord to be guiding you and your life, pause, close your eyes, set up an alter and pour oil on that alter, and pray to the Lord. Realize that He is with you.

These images have even more power when they are physical and tangible. This is why it is so useful to come to church. It's why we have an alter with the Word on it. It's why it's useful in your home to have an alter with the Word, a place set aside to remind you of the awe and wonder of the Lord.

Think back now to our original example of our love for a child. People love putting photos up of their children on Facebook. And when you go into a retired person's home, one of the things you may see are pictures everywhere, in the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the living room, on the refrigerator, why? These are physical reminders of the things that are important to that person. They are like alters to the objects of their affections. We put up pictures because we want to be reminded of the things that mean the most to us, and because we want to be reminded of those people for whom we have great affection and love.

Because we're natural, because we're here on earth and we're not perfect, often we'll experience a fear for the well being of those people. We feel this as worry in our stomach or chills up our spine. We might think, Oh, no, what could happen to my son or my daughter or my husband or my wife or my cousin? That fear can happen.

There is another fear. It is the spiritual holy fear of awe and wonder, for instance, when we can look at a picture of a loved one and we can say, My God! He has given them into my life. They are the son or daughter of the Lord, and they've been put into my life. This is like the true holy fear of angels. Angels do not worry about bad things that happen to other people. Their stomachs do not knot up and chills do not come up their spines, because they have faith and confidence in the Lord. And what's more, they know where their power lies.

We too can have that faith and confidence in the Lord, and that feeling the angels have, if we remember where our power lies.

We do not have the power to prevent terrible things from happening to the people we love. We cannot prevent terrorist attacks, or firebombings, or accidents or serious illnesses. We cannot. We can only do our best to mitigate against them.

Where then does your true power lie?

The answer to that question has to do with fear. True holy fear -- the fear that we as individuals might cause harm to those we love -- the fear that a parent has, the terrible fear, that maybe they are parenting poorly, that maybe they've done something wrong. It's the fear that we can have at work when we worry, "Maybe I've offended one of my colleagues." Or it's the fear we can have in our relationships and friendships when we think maybe we have offended someone or caused someone harm, or maybe we might. That is true holy fear, because in that we can trust the Lord. We can ask the Lord for help in being a good friend and worker and parent and spouse. We can know and have confidence that shunning evils as sins and loving the neighbor is in our control and within our grasp. That's where we can have awe and wonder at the gift the Lord has given us.

Remember the Lord told Jacob that he would be a blessing to all nations. Remember we, each of us, can be a blessing to everyone in our lives.

In keeping holy fear, we acknowledge that we are the one who has power over our own sins. That is where our true power lies. We can shun sins. We can do better. The Lord has given us this power. This is the blessing we can be: we can treat our neighbor with love and kindness and honesty and faith. When we love the neighbor, we love God.

Have confidence. Set up an altar to the Lord in your mind, and the Lord will make you a blessing to all nations.

277. (Verse 6) And in the midst of the throne, and roundabout the throne, were four animals full of eyes before and behind. That this signifies the guardianship and providence of the Lord to prevent the interior heavens being approached except by the good of love and of charity, that lower things thence depending may be in order, is evident from the signification of in the midst of the throne, as denoting from the Lord; for He who sat upon the throne was the Lord, as may be seen above (n. 268); and from the signification of roundabout the throne as denoting the interior or higher heavens, these being most nearly roundabout the Lord; and from the signification of four animals, which were cherubim, as denoting the Divine guardianship and providence to prevent the interior or higher heavens from being approached except by the good of love and of charity, which will be explained in what follows; and from the signification of eyes, of which they were full, before and behind, as denoting the Divine providence of the Lord; for eyes when said of man signify the understanding, which is his internal sight; but when eyes are said of God, they signify the Divine providence, as may be seen above (n.68, 152). And because eyes there signify the Divine providence of the Lord to prevent the higher heavens from being approached except by the good of love and of charity, therefore those cherubim were seen full of eyes, before and behind. The reason why lower things, which are the lower heavens, and also the church on earth, depend on that providence of the Lord, that they may be in order, is that the influx of the Lord is immediate from Himself, and also mediate through the higher into the lower heavens, and into the church; therefore unless the higher heavens are in order the lower cannot be in order (concerning which influx see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 277, 278).

[2] That cherubim are here meant by the four animals is evident in Ezekiel, by whom similar things were seen at the river Chebar, which are described by him in chapters 1 and 10, and in the latter are called cherubim (Ezekiel 10:1, 2, 4-9, 14, 16, 18, 19). Concerning them it is said,

"The cherubim lifted themselves up; these animals which I saw by the river Chebar. These animals that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; I understood that they were the cherubim" (10:15, 20).

These four animals which were the cherubim, are thus described by the same prophet:

Near the river of Chebar "appeared the likeness of four animals of which this was the aspect: They had the likeness of a man, and they had each four faces, and they had each of them four wings: This was the likeness of their faces: the four had the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side, and the four had the face of an ox on the left side, the four also had the face of an eagle. The appearance of them was as burning coals of fire, like the appearance of lamps; it went up and down among the animals, so that the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. Over the heads of the animals was an expanse according to the form of a wonderful crystal: over the expanse which was over their head, was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it; from the appearance of his loins and downwards I saw as it were the appearance of a fire, and it had brightness round about, as the aspect of a rainbow that is in the cloud; this was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah" (1:1, 5, 6, 10, 13, 22, 26-28).

By these representatives is described the Divine of the Lord in the higher heavens, and His providence to prevent them from being approached except by the good of love and of charity; and in that description are contained all the things mentioned in this chapter of the Apocalypse concerning the arrangement of the heavens, and they are signified by the throne upon which sat one in appearance like a jasper stone and a sardine; also by the rainbow about the throne, by the lamps of fire burning before the throne, and other things, which it would therefore be needless to explain, particularly in this place.

[3] It shall now only be shown that by cherubim in the Word are signified the guardianship and providence of the Lord, to prevent the higher heavens from being approached except by the good of love and of charity, that lower things may be in order. This is clearly manifest from the account of the cherubim placed before the garden of Eden, when man was driven out; concerning which it is thus written in Moses:

"When" Jehovah God "had driven out the man, he made cherubim to dwell on the east of Eden, and a flame of a sword turning itself every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24).

What is meant by the man and his wife in these chapters may be seen explained in Arcana Coelestia, namely, that by the man is there meant the Most Ancient Church, which was a celestial church; and a celestial is distinguished from a spiritual church in this, that the former is in the good of love to the Lord, but the latter is in the good of charity towards the neighbour, as may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell 20-28).

From the men who constitute those two churches on earth the two higher heavens are formed; when, therefore, the celestial church, which was the most ancient and primary church on this earth, declined and began to recede from the good of love, then it is said that cherubim were made to dwell on the east of the garden of Eden, and a flame of a sword which turned itself every way, to guard the way of the tree of life. By the east of Eden is signified where the good of celestial love enters; and by the flame of a sword which turned itself every way is signified truth from that good defending; and by the tree of life is signified the Divine which is from the Lord in the higher heavens, which is the good of love and charity, and heavenly joy therefrom. Hence it is evident that by cherubim are signified guards to prevent those heavens being approached except by the good of love and of charity; and on this account it is also said, "to guard the way of the tree of life." (That the east signifies the good of love, may be seen in Arcana Coelestia 1250, 3708; that Eden signifies wisdom therefrom, n. 99, 100; that sword signifies truth fighting against falsity and dispersing it, thus truth defending [see above], n. 73, 131; that flame signifies truth from celestial good, n. 3222, 6832, 9570; that the tree of life signifies the good of love from the Lord and heavenly joy therefrom, may be seen above, n. 109, 110).

[4] On account of this signification of cherubim there were two made of solid gold placed upon the propitiatory upon the ark, concerning which it is thus written in Moses:

"Thou shalt make cherubim, of solid gold shalt thou make them, from the two extremities of the propitiatory; from the propitiatory thou shalt make the cherubs, and let the cherubim be expanding their wings upward, covering with their wings the propitiatory; towards the propitiatory shall be the faces of the cherubim, and thou shalt put the propitiatory upon the ark. I will meet thee there, and I will speak with thee between the two cherubim" (Exodus 25:18-22; 37:7-9).

By the ark and the tabernacle were represented the higher heavens; by the ark, in which was the testimony, or the law, was represented the inmost or third heaven; by the habitation which was without the veil, the middle or second heaven; by the propitiatory, hearing and reception of all things of worship which are from the good of love and of charity; by the cherubim were signified guards, and by the gold of which they were made, the good of love. It is therefore also evident that the two cherubim represented guards to prevent the higher heavens from being approached, except by the good of love and of charity. (That by the tabernacle in general was represented heaven, where the Lord is, may be seen in Arcana Coelestia 9457, 9481, 10545; by the ark, the inmost or third heaven, n. 3478, 9485; by the testimony or the law in the ark, the Lord as to the Word, n. 3382, 6752, 7463; by the habitation which was without the veil, the middle or second heaven, n. 3478, 9457, 9481, 9485, 9594, 9596, 9632; by the propitiatory, the hearing and reception of all things of worship which are from the good of love and of charity from the , n. 9506, and by gold, the good of love, n. 113, 1551, 1552, 5658, 6914, 6917, 9510, 9874, 9881).

[5] And because by the cherubim were signified guards, therefore also, there were cherubim upon the curtains of the habitation, and upon the veil (Exodus 26:1, 31).

And it was for the same reason that Solomon made, in the oracle of the temple, cherubim of olive wood, and set them in the midst of the inner house, and overlaid them with gold, and engraved all the walls of the house round about with figures of cherubim, and palm trees, and open flowers, and that he ornamented the two doors in the same manner (1 Kings 6:23-29, 32-35).

By the temple also was signified heaven and the church, and by its oracle, the inmost of heaven and of the church; by the olive wood of which the cherubim were made was signified the good of love, and similarly by the gold with which they were overlaid. By the walls upon which the cherubim were engraved were signified the ultimates of heaven and of the church, and the cherubim there signified guards. By the doors, upon which also were cherubim, was signified entrance into heaven and the church. It is therefore evident that these cherubim signified guards to prevent heaven from being approached except by the good of love and of charity; and because of this signification of cherubim, they also signify the Divine providence of the Lord, for those guards are from the Lord and are His Divine providence. (That the temple and house of God signify heaven and the church may be seen above, n. 220; hence the oracle signifies their inmost. That olive wood signifies the good of love, may be seen in Arcana Coelestia 886, 3728, 4582, 9780, 9954, 10261, and likewise the gold, see above, n. 242. That doors signify approach and admission may be seen also above, n. 248).

[6] Similarly, the new temple is described as ornamented with cherubim; concerning which it is thus written in Ezekiel:

"Cherubim and palm trees were made, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; thus was it done to all the house round about; from the ground unto above the door were cherubim and palm trees made, and the wall of the temple" (41:18-20).

The palm signifies spiritual good, which is the good of charity (as may be seen, Arcana Coelestia. n. 8369).

[7] Because the Divine truth from the Divine good is that which protects, therefore the king of Tyre is called a cherub; for by king is signified Divine truth, and by Tyre are meant knowledges (cognitiones); and hence by the king of Tyre is signified intelligence, concerning which it is thus written in Ezekiel:

King of Tyre, "thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering. Thou cherub, the spreading out of one that protects; I have placed thee in the mount of holiness of God; thou hast walked in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways in the day that thou wast created" (Ezekiel 28:13-15).

(That by a king is signified Divine truth, may be seen above, n. 31, and by Tyre knowledges, in Arcana Coelestia 1201. That by precious stones are signified the truths and goods of heaven and of the church, see n. 9863, 9865, 9868, 9873, 9905, which are called stones of fire, because fire signifies the good of love, as may be seen, n. 934, 4906, 5215, 6314, 6832). Because the king of Tyre signifies intelligence from Divine truth, and this guards or protects, therefore the king of Tyre is called the cherub, the spreading out of one that protects.

[8] Because the higher heavens cannot be approached except by means of the good of love and of charity, that is, cannot be approached by worship and by prayers unless they proceed from that good, therefore the Lord communed with Moses and Aaron, when they entered the habitation, between the two cherubim that were upon the ark (Exodus 25:22); as also is evident in Moses:

"When Moses entered into the tent of assembly he heard a voice speaking unto him from over the propitiatory that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim " (Num. 7:89).

Because it is the Divine proceeding from the Lord which provides and guards, therefore it is said of the Lord,

That He sitteth upon the cherubim, as in Isaiah 37:16; Psa. 18:10; 80:1; 99:1; 1 Sam. 4:4; 2 Sam. 6:2.

[9] Because the subject treated of in this chapter is the arrangement of all things for judgment therefore also the cherubim are here treated of, that the guardianship and providence of the Lord that the higher heavens may not be approached except by means of the good of love and of charity; for unless this had been done before the Judgment, the very heavens themselves, in which were the true angels, would have been endangered, because those heavens which were about to perish (concerning which see Apoc. 21:1) were not in the good of love and charity, but only in some truths. For there were there those from the Christian world who were in the doctrine of faith alone, which some had confirmed from a few passages of the Word, and by that means had obtained some kind of conjunction with the ultimate heaven; but this conjunction was broken when that heaven, which is called the former heaven, had passed away. It was then ordained by the Lord, that hereafter no one should be conjoined with the heavens unless he be in the good of love to the Lord and in charity towards the neighbour; this is what is specifically meant by the things that now follow in this chapter. Whoever, therefore, believes that the heavens can hereafter be approached by the worship and by the prayers of those who are in faith alone and not also in the good of charity, is much deceived. The worship of these is no longer received, nor are their prayers heard, but the love of their life alone is regarded. Wherefore if the love of self and of the world reign, in whatever external worship they may have been, they are conjoined to the hells, and are also borne thither after death, and not in the first place to some heaven that is about to perish, as was previously the case.