The Word offers the psychological space needed to transform external life (6 mins)

​Believing the self is God Divine Love and Wisdom (Ager) 4​. The Lord, who is the God of the universe, is uncreate and infinite, whereas man and angel are created and finite. And because the Lord is uncreate and infinite, He is Being [Esse] itself, which is called “Jehovah,” and Life itself, or Life in itself. From the uncreate, the infinite, Being itself and Life itself, no one can be created immediately, because the Divine is one and indivisible; but their creation must be out of things created and finited, and so formed that the Divine can be in them. Because men and angels are such, they are recipients of life. Consequently, if any man suffers himself to be so far misled as to think that he is not a recipient of life but is Life, he cannot be withheld from the thought that he is God.  Arcana Coelestia 123. By virtue of his perception the celestial man acknowledges that every single thing is the Lord’s. The spiritual man acknowledges this too, but in his case it is something oral, because he has learned it from the Word. The worldly and bodily-minded man neither acknowledges nor admits it. Instead he says that everything residing with him is his own, and imagines that if he were to lose it, he would perish completely. Attributing cause to effect Arcana Coelestia (Elliot) 6322. To all outward appearance the external senses, such as sight and hearing, flow into thought and initiate mental images there. For the appearance is that external objects activate the senses, first the external senses, then the internal ones, and speech too. But no matter how convincing that appearance may be, it is nevertheless a misconception. For what is external, being gross and material, cannot flow in and activate what is internal, which is pure and spiritual; that would be contrary to the nature of things. It is the power of the inward senses, a power belonging to the spirit itself, that perceives things, and it does so by means of the power of the outward senses. It is also the power of the inward senses that disposes an outward sensory organ to receive impressions of objects at its bidding. So it is that outward sensory organs – such as that of sight, which is the eye – instantly adapt themselves to all the objects of the senses. Nothing of this could happen in sensory organs without the inflow they receive from within; for all the fibres and small appendages, which are very many around each sensory organ, are instantly attuned to the nature of the object. Indeed the organ itself is also immediately conditioned to conform.  Arcana Coelestia (Elliot) 5084{3-4}) . It is an illusion of the senses, a purely natural one, that the power which seeds have to grow into trees and flowers and to reproduce themselves was conferred on them when creation first began, and that that initial conferment is what causes everything to come into being and remain in being. People may be told that nothing can remain in being unless it is constantly being brought into being, in keeping with the law that continuance in being involves a constant coming into being, and with another law that anything that has no connection with something prior to itself ceases to have any existence. But though they are told all this, their bodily senses and their thought that is reliant on their senses, cannot take it in. Nor can they see that every single thing is kept in being, even as it was brought into being, through an influx from the spiritual world, that is, from the Divine coming through the spiritual world. This gives rise to another illusion of the senses, a purely natural one, that single entities exist called monads and atoms. For the natural man believes that anything comprehended by his external senses is a single entity or else nothing at all. It is an illusion of the senses, a purely natural one, that everything is part of and begins in the natural creation, though there are indeed purer and more inward aspects of the natural creation that are beyond the range of human understanding. But if anyone says that a spiritual or celestial dimension exists within or above the natural creation, this idea is rejected; for the belief is that unless a thing is natural it has no existence.  Interaction of the Soul and Body (Whitehead) 17{15}. Ends are in the first degree, causes in the second, and effects in the third. Who does not see that the end is not the cause, but that it produces the cause, and that the cause is not the effect, but that it produces the effect; consequently that they are three distinct things which follow in order? The end with man is the love of his will, for what a man loves, this he proposes to himself and intends; the cause with him is the reason of his understanding, for by means of it the end seeks for mediate or efficient causes; and the effect is the operation of the body from them and according to them. Thus there are three things in man, which follow each other in order, in like manner as the degrees of altitude follow each other. When these three things appear in act, then the end is inwardly in the cause, and the end through the cause is in the effect, wherefore the three coexist in the effect. On this account it is said in the Word, that everyone shall be judged according to his works; for the end, or the love of his will, and the cause, or the reason of his understanding, are together in the effects, which are the works of his body; thus the quality of the whole man is in them. They who do not know these things, and do not thus distinguish the objects of reason, cannot avoid terminating the ideas of their thought in the atoms of Epicurus, the monads of Leibniz, or in the simple substances of Wolff, and thus they close up their understandings as with a bolt, so that they cannot even think from reason concerning spiritual influx, because they cannot think concerning any progression; for the author says concerning his simple substance, that if it is divided it falls into nothing. Thus the understanding stands still in its first light, which is merely from the senses of the body, and does not advance a step further. Hence it is not known but that the spiritual is a subtle natural, and that beasts have a rational as well as men, and that the soul is a breath of wind such as is breathed forth from the breast when a person dies; besides many things which are not of light but of thick darkness.  Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments in online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to maintain a focus on understanding the Text’s application to the inner life while reinforcing key LP principles highlighted in the exchanges.