[column width=”1/1″]
The one-hundredth episode of our weekly webcast Swedenborg and Life was broadcast in front of a live audience in Pendleton Hall on the campus of Bryn Athyn College in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. The audience ranged from locals who were experiencing the show for the first time to die-hard fans who drove from as far away as Washington DC! In addition to the live audience of more than one hundred people, many more watched the show live and tuned in afterward to be part of the experience.[/column]The episode, “3 Simple Ways to Love Everyone,” focused on how to think about people from an angelic perspective. Host Curtis Childs started from a simple example: a smartphone. By itself, a smartphone can be a useful tool, but it doesn’t achieve its full potential until it connects to the Internet. Similarly, we don’t achieve our full potential as human beings until we connect to the divine design and think about others in loving ways.
During the show, Curtis offered three techniques for doing just that:
- “I want this person to be happier than I am (in a good way).” Think of an individual—someone you like, someone you struggle with, or someone you don’t know at all—and spend some time imagining what would make them happy. How would that change the way you act toward them?
- “This person is not [attribute].” We tend to generalize about other people, especially when we’re angry about something they did. “He’s a jerk.” “She’s just lazy.” But behind any given action is a real person with a life and a history, who may have just been having a bad day. What happens when you imagine a person as more than just a single dimension?
- “This person has a future.” Every person has a place in the design of the universe, a contribution that only they can make. Maybe right now it’s not obvious what that is. But what happens when you start to visualize where that person is going in life and what makes him or her unique?
See the whole episode on our offTheLeftEye YouTube channel, where you can watch the previous ninety-nine episodes and tune in every Monday night at 8 p.m. Eastern to see the latest.