Divine Encounters Episode 055 | Near-Death Experience Story
Curtis Childs says he was 18 or 19, depressed and constantly worried, when he began to read Swedenborg and felt he had found a lever to pry himself out of the pits he was in. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari what Swedenborg described happening right after we die, from waking among loving angels to a world of spirits where love pulls us toward the people and places that fit who we have become.
Key Takeaways
- Curtis says he found in Swedenborg a description of how the mind works, at a time when he was struggling with depression and negative thoughts at 18 or 19.
- He explains that Swedenborg, a respected scientist and inventor, began recording dreams and visions in his mid 50s and later wrote about 30 volumes on the afterlife.
- According to Swedenborg, as Curtis describes it, we are already in the spiritual world through our spirit, and our spirit has the same features as our body.
- Curtis says that in Swedenborg’s account, love works like gravity in the afterlife, drawing people who love the same things into communities.
- He says Swedenborg described heaven and hell as psychological states: “Heaven is the joy of doing what is good to other people.”
- Curtis says nobody is forced to go anywhere in the afterlife, because freedom is what makes real love possible.
- He describes Swedenborg’s idea that “this life is like the womb to the spiritual world.”
| Guest | Curtis Childs |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 055 |
| What this episode is | A conversation about Swedenborg’s visions of the afterlife, not a first-person near-death story |
| How Curtis found it | At 18 or 19, depressed and worried, he turned to writings his parents had read |
| What Swedenborg reported | Waking in the spiritual world, guided by loving angels, with his body slowing down |
| Key ideas | Correspondences, love as gravity, communities, heaven and hell as inner states |
| Time in the afterlife | Not like time and space here; it follows your inner state |
| The message | The ultimate purpose of life is a world where everyone is cared for |
Before: Struggling and Searching
Alex opens with his usual question, and Curtis answers honestly. He had been going through some struggles. He had mental health issues. At 18 or 19, he says, like a lot of people at that age, he was depressed. He had negative thoughts and was constantly worried. He says he was just a mess.
Around that time he remembered a name. His parents had read Swedenborg, and he knew the writings were around. But in that period, he says, he began to realize that this was describing his own mind and how it works. It felt like a lever that could pry him out of the pits he was in.
If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
Who Swedenborg Was
Curtis spends time on the man himself, because it matters. Up until his mid 50s, he explains, Swedenborg was a successful renaissance man and polymath living in Sweden, a world power at the time. He was an assessor of mines, overseeing a lot of Sweden’s mining industry, which Curtis says was one of the most important industries on the planet.
He was an inventor, too. He designed equipment for the Swedish military and for mining. He was a well-respected scientist who wrote huge works on anatomy. Curtis credits him with founding the scientific branch of crystallography, being the first to suggest the nebular hypothesis and starting the first scientific journal in Sweden. He was also part of the Swedish government’s house of nobility.
He was so well known, Curtis says, that newspapers would report when he arrived in London. The record of his life from his mid 50s to his death in his 80s is thoroughly documented.
From Travel Journal to Visions
In his mid 50s, Curtis says, Swedenborg kept a travel journal, which in those days made sense. Boats could sink. There were pirates. You wanted to keep track of where you were headed.
But in that journal he began to record his dreams and analyze them, which Curtis points out was before dream analysis was a thing. He says psychology has since been influenced by Swedenborg. The dreams grew more vivid and strange. Then he began to have experiences outside the dream, in the hypnagogic state as he woke, where he would see something or talk to someone. He wrote down each one and what he thought it meant.
At some point, Curtis says, a couple of powerful visions changed the course of his life. Something seemed to snap open. For the last three decades of his life, he was having these experiences at will every day, and he catalogued them. In that time he wrote about 30 volumes.
Curtis notes that because Swedenborg was used to writing long scientific works, his afterlife writing reads that way too. It is organized and descriptive. Sometimes it tells stories. Sometimes it is like a physics lesson on how the afterlife works. For more on this kind of experience, see our glossary entry on the spirit world.
Waking in the Afterlife
Curtis describes a story from Swedenborg of waking up in the afterlife. Unlike many near-death accounts, he says, Swedenborg’s body was not in physical danger. He says Swedenborg reported being shown what it is like to wake up there, while kept in a state of consciousness that allowed him to recall and write it down.
At first, Curtis says, Swedenborg felt his body shutting down and his breathing slowing. But he could feel his spirit breathing, and it started to rise. Then there was a pull, and his spirit left his body and went through a series of awakening steps in the spiritual world.
Curtis explains one idea this rests on. According to Swedenborg, all of us are in the spiritual world right now. You have a body, and you have consciousness, and your consciousness is your spirit. That part of you already exists in the spiritual dimension. Your spirit has eyes, just as your body has eyes.
The Angels Who Sat With Him
When Swedenborg woke, Curtis says, he was surrounded by what he called angels. Curtis is careful about the word. In Christianity it sometimes means specially created beings who live only in the afterlife. For Swedenborg, he says, an angel is a person who lived here, died and crossed over.
He was surrounded by really loving angels, whom he called celestial angels. Curtis describes them as people particularly devoted to love. They made sure that no disturbing thoughts or feelings came into his mind during the transition. They shepherded him, protected him and sat with him until he began to stir in the spirit.
Then, as his mind stirred, other angels came who were more mind focused. Swedenborg said, Curtis recounts, that “it seemed like they pulled a covering off of my left eye.” That was when he received the gift of spiritual sight.
Our glossary entry on angels gathers other ways people describe them.
Everything Is a Symbol
Curtis explains that everything in that world is symbolic. He gives an example from film, since he knows Alex’s background. In a scene where a hero finally grabs the sword, the sword means more than a sword. Swedenborg called that a correspondence. A sword, he says, is a symbol of the truth and the power of the truth.
Curtis offers Aragorn’s sword in The Lord of the Rings, which he has been rereading, as a modern example. It matters so much, he says, because it stands for the kind of power truth can have in your life.
So the spiritual world is full of symbolism, and he suggests our appreciation for symbols in stories is the spiritual world seeping in.
Love as Gravity
After the covering comes off, Curtis says, it is a choose your own adventure. Angels will show you anything. You follow your heart and gravitate toward people who love the same things you do.
Love on the other side plays a role like gravity here, he explains. In the physical world, gravity is why you are in your chair and why the Earth is round. In the spiritual world, love does the same kind of thing. People who care about the same things gravitate to one another, which forms spiritual communities. That, he says, is why you end up with your soul mates, your people.
Love is the primary force that shapes everything there, he says, because the afterlife is spirit based, made of love, thoughts and what we experience in consciousness. So it is similar to our world, yet fundamentally different in how it is organized.
If this theme speaks to you, you may enjoy our glossary entry on soulmates.
Curtis also says “Freedom is a hugely important thing.” Once you wake, you are free to go and pursue what you want to love.
A World Built From the Inside Out
Because the spiritual world is consciousness based, Curtis says, even your surroundings reflect what is inside you. He points to dreams. People dream of a house that is theirs but does not look like their house. In nearly every school of dream interpretation, he says, a house is a symbol of the mind.
When he dreams that the attic is expanding, it feels as though he is learning something new. In the same way, he says, “the home that you’re in is a reflection of your mind and heart.”
There is also less of time and space, Curtis says. It is more about your psychological state. If you are excited or eager, time seems to go faster.
Heaven, Hell and the World of Spirits
When you die, Curtis explains, you start out in what Swedenborg calls the world of spirits. He talks about heaven, the world of spirits and hell. Curtis says “Heaven and hell are psychological states.” This, he says, is where Swedenborg diverges widely from the traditional Christian understanding, even while using similar terms.
“Heaven is the joy of doing what is good to other people.” And “Hell is the joy of harming other people.”
The world of spirits is the midpoint, where you get to the core of what you want to love. The question, he says, is: “Am I going to be committed to ego, or am I going to be committed to love?” Mixing the two would be painful for you and for everyone around you.
People take different amounts of time. Some know right away. Others need to sort out who they are. Curtis stresses that “nobody gets forced to go anywhere.” Your own love leads you. You spend time unpacking who you have become, then find the community of people who love and believe as you do, and your timeless life there begins.
Curtis offers this as Swedenborg’s account. Next Level Soul shares it as one person’s perspective, in the same way we share any individual’s story. For related background, read our entry on heaven.
Usefulness, Past Lives and Spirits All Around
The thing that makes human life interesting, Curtis says, and the afterlife too, is the joy of doing something good for the human race. You cannot just live in a cave and meditate, he says, or sit with a pile of money. The only thing that stays fresh is “the joy of doing something meaningful and useful.”
Curtis also describes how Swedenborg might explain past life memories. The spiritual world, he says, has a fluidity of mind, with much more effortless transfer of information and feeling. In a community there, you start to think like those around you, and you can share feelings directly. He says that we are constantly surrounded by spirits, because consciousness reaches us from the Divine through the spiritual world.
Spirits interact with us through our own memory, he explains, and can sometimes leak, so that you experience someone else’s memories as yours. He tells a story of his wife’s friend vividly recalling a shared outing that turned out to be an episode of a television show. The feeling of having been somewhere can come from outside. Our entry on reincarnation explores how others see it.
This also explains children, he says. Little ones are spontaneous, open and joyful because their spirit is among celestial angels. As we grow, our spiritual company changes, and so does what we experience.
This Life Is Like the Womb
Curtis shares a favorite image. In the womb you develop for nine months. You do not set up who you will be, but you set up the foundation. Then you are born. So, Swedenborg says, “this life is like the womb to the spiritual world.”
He adds that choosing the good requires real freedom. Love has to be freely chosen. If you tell your kids they have to visit you, it does not work. In his telling, Swedenborg described a great sorting to restore balance so that we would keep the freedom to choose what we love. Curtis says that to him it was a last ditch effort that really worked.
He closes with what he strives for. He says the ultimate purpose of life is to create a world in which everybody is cared for in every way they need, and to take joy in doing that. He imagines a world where we would not be happy unless every kid has a table of friends to sit with and everybody has their health. The constant effort toward that, he says, is better than anything he can think of.
How This Fits With Near-Death Themes
This episode is a little different. Curtis is not telling his own near-death story. He is sharing what he finds in Swedenborg, who describes being shown the afterlife while his body slowed down. Many near-death accounts mention loving beings who stay close, a sense of being guided, and a sense of freedom. Swedenborg’s writing, as Curtis describes it, puts structure around those themes.
For the wider context, start with our complete guide to near-death experiences and the glossary entry on the afterlife.
Questions to Sit With
- Curtis says Swedenborg’s description of the mind helped him when he felt stuck. What idea has acted as a lever for you?
- If love works like gravity, what are you being drawn toward right now, and who is being drawn toward you?
- If your home were a reflection of your mind and heart, what would it say about you today?
This week, do one small thing that is meaningful and useful for someone else, and notice how it feels in your body.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Curtis says Swedenborg described the spirit as already present in the spiritual world, with all the features of the body.
- He says love acts like gravity in the afterlife, gathering people into communities.
- He says heaven and hell are inner states shaped by what we love.
- He says nobody is forced to go anywhere, because freedom is essential to love.
- He says the ultimate purpose of life is a world where everyone is cared for.
Please enjoy my conversation with Curtis Childs.
Guest Links: Connect With Curtis Childs
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Curtis Childs?
Curtis Childs is the guest of this Divine Encounters episode. He says he was depressed at 18 or 19 when he began to study Swedenborg, and he talks through Swedenborg’s account of the afterlife.
Is this episode Curtis Childs’s own near-death experience?
No. Curtis shares what Swedenborg described. He says Swedenborg’s body was not in physical danger, and that he was shown what it is like to wake up in the afterlife.
Who was Swedenborg, according to Curtis?
Curtis describes a successful scientist, inventor and mining official in Sweden who, in his mid 50s, began recording dreams and visions, and later wrote about 30 volumes about the afterlife.
What did Swedenborg say happens when we wake in the afterlife?
As Curtis describes it, loving celestial angels surround you, shepherd you and make sure no disturbing thoughts reach you, until you begin to stir in the spirit.
What are correspondences?
Curtis says Swedenborg used the word for symbols with meaning. For example, a sword stands for the truth and the power of the truth.
How does love work like gravity?
Curtis says that in Swedenborg’s account, people who love the same things are pulled together into communities, much as gravity pulls physical things together here.
What are heaven and hell, according to Swedenborg?
Curtis says they are psychological states. Heaven is the joy of doing what is good to other people, and hell is the joy of harming other people.
What is the world of spirits?
Curtis says it is a midway place where you sort out what you truly love, whether ego or love, and then find your community. Nobody is forced to go anywhere.
How does Curtis explain past life memories?
He says that in Swedenborg’s view, spirits around us can leak their memories into ours, so we may feel we have lived something that came from elsewhere.
What does Curtis say is the purpose of life?
He says it is to create a world in which everybody is cared for in every way they need, and to take joy in doing that.
Is this proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares these accounts as perspectives told in the person’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what such reports mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What the afterlife means
- What the spirit world is
- Dean Brinson on the astral world and levels of heaven
- Michael Tamura on preparing the soul for transition
- Jim Bruton on the in-between realm after death
- David Bennett on meeting his ancient soul family
- Father Nathan Castle on helping souls cross over
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
Curtis Childs 0:08
I had been going through some struggles. I had some mental health issues. It was like 18, 19, like everybody does at that age, I was depressed. I had all these negative thoughts, and I was constantly worried about things. I was just a mess. And it was around that time that I had heard of Swedenborg before. My parents had actually read Swedenborg. I knew what that it was around. But it was in that time when I began to realize, oh, this is describing my mind and how it works. This is actually a really powerful like, what a lever that could pry me out of these sort of pits that I'm in. Swedenborg up until his mid 50s, just a successful renaissance man, polymath guy. So he was in Sweden, which was a world power at the time, and he was doing everything. So he was a assessor of mines, which was Sweden's mining industry was one of the most important industries on the planet. He was in this position where he was overseeing a lot of the mining there. He was an inventor. He had invented military equipment for the for the Swedish military, as well as mining equipment, all kinds of things there. But he's also a very well respected scientist. Had written these huge principias on anatomy. Founded the scientific branch of crystallography, first person to suggest the nebular hypothesis, first scientific journal in Sweden. He started that he was part of the Swedish government house of nobility, so on and so on and so on. Very smart guy, and very well known to the point where, as I understand it, he would show up in London. Let's say the newspaper would say Swedenborg came to London. The entire thing is documented from the time when he was in his mid 50s to the end of his life, in his 80s. In his mid 50s, was keeping this travel journal just because he's saying, I'm going from London to Amsterdam or something. And it was just keeping track of that. Back in the day, it was dangerous to do that. You could your boat could sink. There was actually pirates. There's a lot going on. So you want to keep track of your travels and where you're headed. But in that, he starts to record his dreams, and he starts to analyze his dreams, which was back before dream analysis was a thing, actually. Nowadays, psychology has been very influenced by Swedenborg. He started to write down his dreams, and they got vivid, er and more strange. And eventually he started to have experiences that were outside of that dream box, like just in the hypnagogic state when he was waking up, he would see something or talk to someone, and he writes every one of them down, and writes down what he thinks the interpretation is. And then at some point, he has a couple of really powerful experiences and visions which really changed the trajectory of his life. And something seems to have, like snapped open, because from then on out, for the last three decades of his life, he was having these experiences at will every day and catalog the entire thing. So it's between then and the end of his life, he wrote 30 volumes worth of material that he's accustomed to writing big, long, scientific work. So his afterlife stuff reads just like that. It's very organized, it's very it's both descriptive, like he will tell stories, but he's also very philosophical and will tell it's like a physics lesson on how the afterlife works and why people see what they do when they go where they do is it from the story of him waking up being shown what it's like to wake up in the afterlife. He wasn't his body wasn't in physical danger like you have with a lot of near death experiences. But he says that he was shown it, but kept in a state of consciousness enough that he could recall it and write it afterwards. And he said that at first he could feel his body shutting down, and his breathing slowed a lot, but his spirit, he could feel his spirit breathing, and that started to rise. And then he said, it felt like there was a pull, and his spirit left his body, and then went through this series of awakening steps in the spiritual world. According to Swedenborg, all of us are in the spiritual world right now. You have a body, and then you have consciousness. And your consciousness is your spirit. So that part of you exists in the spiritual dimension, or he called it the spiritual world. So that's the terminology I like to leave the spiritual side of life. You're already there in terms of the spiritual part of you. And he said that your spirit has all the features that your body has. So you have spirit. Your Spirit has eyes, just like your body has eyes. So to him, initially, he was surrounded by what he calls angels. But I know in Christianity that word sometimes means these specially created beings that only live in the afterlife. But to him, angels, that just means people who had been living here and who have died and crossed over to the other side. That's Angel. He's surrounded by these really loving angels. He called them celestial angels, which those are people who are particularly devoted to love, and they made sure that when he was experiencing this transition, that nothing, no disturbing thoughts or feelings came into his mind. They were kind of shepherding him, protecting him, and just sitting with him there until he was starting to stir in the Spirit. And then from there, new kinds of angels came up to him because his mind was starting to stir. And so there's, there's angels that are more mind focused. And so those he said, he said it seemed like they pulled a covering off of my left eye, and that's when I received the gift of spiritual sight. Because everything is symbolic. There's so much symbolism in the afterlife, I think that's part of why I know that. I know you. You started, and are still in film. And in movies so much there's like, here's the scene where the hero finally grabs the sword, and it's like, there's just, it's meaningful beyond this, oh, now he has a sword. This is like, there's meaning in this moment. Swedenborg would call that a correspondence, because to him, a sword is a symbol of the truth and the power of the truth. So when we see somebody, when you know King Arthur, or I've just been rereading Lord of the Rings, so I'm thinking about that a lot, oh yeah, like Aragorn has got that sword. And why does it matter so much? Because this is a symbol of the kind of power that the truth can have in your life. So the spiritual world is full of that symbolism that we actually get our appreciation for it by, sort of that spiritual world seeping in. So they pull the covering off of his left eye, and then from there, it's kind of choose your own adventure. So you get angels are there, and they'll show you anything you want do anything, but you get to follow your heart then, and you kind of gravitate toward people who love the same kinds of things that you do. So love on the other side plays a role similar to the what gravity plays here the gravity. So that's a correspondence as well. So in the physical world, why am I in this chair? It's because of gravity. Why is why is the earth around? It's because of gravity. I'm not a physicist, but I think that's the basics of how it is. So gravity is what pulls you to where you are there. Love does the same kind of thing, so people who love and care about the same sorts of things will gravitate toward each other, and this forms spiritual communities. It's the reason why you end up with sort of your soul mates, or your people or something. Because love, love, there is absolutely a primary force that shapes everything, because that whole afterlife is spirit based, rather than physical based, and Spirit is love and thoughts and things we experience in our consciousness. So it's like both similar to the world we have here, but yet fundamentally different in the way that it's organized and what it does. So after you wake up, you then are free to go. Freedom is a hugely important thing. You're free to go and pursue what kind of things do I want to love and what and what kind of people do I want to hang out with? And then from there, there's as many different, you know, afterlife situations as there are different people, because everyone is is unique. And the the spiritual world, because it's spirit based, so because it's consciousness based, even your surroundings are a reflection of what's inside you. So the kind of house that you have, you know how people will have dreams, and in dreams, they'll be in this house, and you'll be like, well, this is my house, but it wasn't really my house. It didn't look like my house. And almost, from what I can find in almost every school of dream interpretation, house is a symbol of the mind. And I know if I have dreams where, oh, like the attic is getting expanded. It just feels like, Okay, I'm I'm learning something new. I'm thinking of something so there the things that are in you, so the kind of things that you love and the things that you think about, that creates the environment so that the home that you're in is a reflection of your mind and heart. So when you die, you start out in what he calls the world of spirits, which he talks about heaven, the world of spirits and hell. Heaven and hell are psychological states. This is another way in which he wildly diverges from the traditional Christian understanding, yet still uses similar terminology. Heaven is fundamentally a state in which you enjoy doing what is good to other people. Heaven is the joy of doing what is good to other people. Hell is the joy of harming other people. In the spiritual world, after life, things get sorted out. So the world of spirits, he says, Is this midway between heaven and hell, where you have a chance to really get down to the core of what you what you want to do and what you want to love, and then you go and you kind of commit to one or the other. Am I going to be committed to ego, or am I going to be committed to love? Because those two things need to be separate. Because if you're committed to ego, but still have some good love and you and stuff, that's actually going to be painful for you and the other people you're interfacing with, and then, if you're committed to what's good, but bring ego along, that's going to be painful. So So you have this chance, and everyone takes a different amount of time there. Some people just know right away, like, No, I'm going to heaven. That's what I want to do. Some people, they have to sort out and find out who they are. But nobody gets forced to go anywhere. You go your own love leads you to go where you want to go. So you get into the world of spirits. You spend your time figuring out who you really want to be, basically unpacking and uncovering who you've become throughout this life on earth based on what you loved and what you believe and how you acted on that. And then you go and you find your community, because where are the people who are most living the same kind of life that I am, and not just live like we all like to, you know, play golf, but like what, who loves the same kind of thing that you love, and who, who has the same kind of belief about life that you do? And those people, like I said, that gravitating force of love pulls you in to this community, and that's where you. Get to begin your eternal life, or your meaning, your your timeless life in the spiritual world, there's not time and space the same way that there are here. It sort of seems like it, but it's really more about your psychological state. So if you're excited about something, you're eager about something, it will seem to go faster. But so you get into these communities, and then you start to play your part in the bigger I talked about the human body. It's like each each little cell is like one of those communities that starts to do, do what you do. And to Swedenborg, the thing that makes human life interesting, as well as the afterlife, is the joy of doing something good for the human race. So it's we were talking about. You can't just go live in a cave and meditate, get bored of that, and you can't just have money. You can't just sit there and have a ton of money. The only thing that's like evergreen in terms of the joy it gives is the joy of doing something meaningful and useful. Because back in his day, I don't think that reincarnation was he does kind of offer a sort of solution to the idea of, why do so many people experience past lives sort of unprompted because to him, okay, so spiritual world has a lot of characteristics to it, and one of them is lack of time and space. One of them is the gravitation of love, but in the other one is the fluidity of mind, so there's a much more effortless transfer of information and feeling there. Here we can talk you, and I can talk and it can go into this microphone and go all the way through the servers and get there, and people can listen and then try to picture what it is I'm talking about. If you go into a community in the afterlife, you start to think sort of like they do. You're influenced by their talks about auras, like the emanation of your life in mind going out from everyone. So you're able to do that, and you're also able to share feelings. He talks about people who are feeling a certain kind of joy, being able to just really tangibly and directly pass it to somebody else. So there, and not only that, that we we actually were constantly surrounded by spirits, because we actually couldn't have consciousness, that the link of consciousness goes from the Divine through the spiritual world ends up in the physical world. So we're constantly surrounded by spirits. Actually, our spirit, even now, is traveling from community to community based on the way we change in our life. When with the reason why little kids are like they are, that why are they so spontaneous and open and joyful and free? Is a distinctly different phase from what I remember, of it than what we have now is because when you're little, your spirit is around those celestial angels, or the deepest angels that Sweden talks about. As you grow up, your spirit changes, and it starts to go around more spiritual or intellect oriented angels. And you have to have that if you're going to be able to build a mind and grow, but your The point is that your your spiritual company, changes what you experience, and there's enough permeabilities usually, when your your mind interacts with spirits, you do so out of your own memory, so that you they they don't bring in what they've experienced from their life into the interaction. They actually take on some of your memory and from there influence you in certain ways, hopefully, to do what's good sometimes though, the equivalent of a leak or something where you can actually experience someone else's memories as your own. So it would be like my wife's friend one time was describing to my wife and her friends, remember when we did this thing? Remember when you were over there and we went to this, and we went to that, and they were all trying to remember what she was talking about. And finally they were like, oh, no, that was an episode of friends that you're talking about that didn't happen like you think it happened. So that that can the idea that you can get a feeling that you've been somewhere, just even through the crudeness of media, but that there is the possibility for you to experience someone else's memories, and so you feel like I've lived that life now. So to Swedenborg, it was like, No, this is it's like the womb. Like you develop in the womb for nine months. And there you set up the big you don't set up who you're going to be, but you set up the basics, like the foundation of who you're going to be. And then you're born, and you go and live your life. So this life is like the womb to the spiritual world. So you don't define who you're going to be forever. So we had to take, like this master kind of sorting, take these people, put them, put everything in order, so that people can't harm each other, and that there's freedom restored so people can choose. Spiritually. There's this whole complex process that Swedenborg describes over many, many books of what was going on there, but essentially it was to create balance again, so that we would have the freedom to choose what we want to do and what we want to love and who we want to be, because that's essential. You can never choose anything good if you don't have a free choice. Because you think about love, if anyone says, Hey, let's love me, or else there's no love there, like it has to be freely chosen. If you say to your kids, like you have to visit me, it's not, you know, it doesn't work. So the nature of love is that it can only happen when both parties are free to accept it. So people have to have the choice to love what's good or not. And that was that was going to go away if Jesus didn't make a move right then. So it was kind of like the last last ditched effort, but it really worked. So God is love and love is love, is you? Moment. So the everything that that I strived to try to become, is to try to imitate and emulate that humanity, and the thing that I recognize in other people, that I love, that that is all kind of a reflection of this, this God who is, is a person, is somebody that that I can love like I love other people. The ultimate purpose to life is to create a world in which everybody is cared for in every way they need to be cared for, and to take joy in doing that, we would all be in this state where it's like, no, we're not happy unless every kid has got a table of friends to sit with. Everybody's got their health. And just the effort toward that, the constant effort toward that, is, I can't think of anything better.
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