We can’t all escape to a cave and spend our days in silent contemplation. Life doesn’t wait. The dishes need washing, emails need answering, and worries—well, they never quite go away, do they?
Our constant desire for certain outcomes—comfort, success, recognition—often brings anxiety. Why? Because when these desires are blocked or threatened, we feel agitated. Tense. Even angry.
The 18th-century spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg observed that there are, essentially, three kinds of love that drive us—and, when disturbed, rob us of the chance to have peace of mind and the enlightened thoughts that accompany it.
First, love of self. We seek security, reputation, health—and we suffer when these are shaken. Losing a job, a diagnosis we didn’t expect, or just feeling unnoticed by others—these things rattle us.
Second, love for others. The media reflect a widespread horror at the plight of starving people in an overseas famine and those suffering destruction of their homes due to a natural disaster or genocide. Our hearts go out to them, and we feel disturbed by the pictures we see on the television news.
Third—and this one’s harder to spot—we love our beliefs. Our ideals of what’s good and true. So when someone mocks our politics, challenges our ethics, or belittles our faith, we can feel deeply shaken. We may even feel guilty when we fail to live up to our own values.
Religions around the world, despite their differences, all seek to guide us how to find enlightenment.
In mainstream Christianity, enlightenment comes through faith in Christ, repentance, and serving others in love.
In Buddhism, it’s mindfulness, right living, and the letting go of attachments.
Islam encourages obedience, remembrance of God, and the reading of scripture.
Hinduism teaches discipline, self-inquiry, and devotion to the divine.
Emanuel Swedenborg offers a striking idea—one that can be seen in all these faiths: that enlightenment isn’t something we achieve by our own intelligence. Rather, it’s something that flows into us—from a higher, Divine source—if we’re truly open to it.
Deeper understanding will come, but only when we get our priorities right: get what we love in the right order. As someone with a Christ-centred faith, I like to say joy comes from putting Jesus and his teachings first. Jesus is the J of joy. It also means putting others before yourself – the O for others and the Y for yourself. Hence the word joy. J for Jesus, O for others, and then Y for yourself.
In line with one of the New Testament stories, the mind is like a patch of soil. What grows depends on the quality of that soil. This means our willingness to nurture what ideas have been planted.
Some minds are like the hard, compacted soil —closed off, indifferent to spiritual ideas. Truth simply bounces off.
Others of us are like shallow ground that is not deep enough for roots. Quick to grasp new ideas, excited even such a person becomes a rapid convert to ideas found. If like this we may become quite emotional or argumentative in their favour. But a superficial interest, in discovering what is meaningful, is not deep enough to survive the trials of putting ideas – say about mindfulness, self-restraint or compassion – into practice.
Then there are the thorny places—those of us too tangled up in the demands of ego, status, and comfort. No space left for deeper truths to grow.
But then… there’s good soil. A heart open to light. A life willing to practise patience, self-restraint, and compassion—not just think about them.
Swedenborg believed that when we live like this good soil, we begin to notice something remarkable. That the chaos of life, in hindsight, forms a pattern. Those moments of pain led to growth. Those missed chances brought new directions. That Providence, perhaps, was quietly stitching together our story all along.
And maybe, just maybe, we experience peace—not by controlling everything, but by letting go. Letting go of self-importance. Letting go of fear. And trusting, instead, the gentle current of Divine wisdom.
There’s a verse in the Gospel of Matthew—one that’s echoed across spiritual traditions:
“Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened.”
And perhaps, in that moment of quiet seeking, we begin—just a little—to awaken and open our eyes to let in the new light of understanding.
Copyright 2025 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of The Great Questions of Life
