Anyway, I wanted to let you know that Rev. Clark Echols has recently posted a bunch of new stuff to his blog, Clark Echols' Swedenborgian Opinions (glendalenewchurch.blogspot.com). I've only had the chance to read one his new posts so far so that's the one I'm going to tell you about.
"Gold and Shadow" is a post about making sense of and dealing with what we have from the Lord and our selfish stuff. "Gold" and "shadow" are both terms from men's work and Clark relates them to the New Church concept of the proprium. (Incidentally, in the passage he quotes, he uses a new translation that uses the word autonomy for proprium; what do you think?)
I really appreciated Clark's perspective on how to deal with our darker, proprial stuff. Here's a teaser:
I realized the emptiness produced by a dilemma. On the one hand, if I label my shadow as a worthless piece of "refuse" (trash) I will have to lie to you in order to hide this part of myself because, of course, I want to look good and and I want you to like me (which you wouldn't if you saw what I was REALLY like). On the other, if I don't lie and show you that I am a worthless piece of refuse, again, I have come to believe, you will see me for what I am and will reject me and not like me.
The way out of the dilemma is to....
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