THE FIRST FIVE YEARS – Chapter II

From the Bob & Ann Journal Dialogues

Chapter II
Love is Eternal

With angels as one of the earliest subjects of the Journal Dialogues, another prominent theme weaving in and out is the true or eternal nature of love. The entry below bears the heading “Grand Conjunction,” dated May 24, 2006, just a few days over two months from Bob’s transition.

I was at my daughter Anna’s in Paso Robles, still recovering from knee replacement surgery, and out for a walk up 17th Street when I began hearing an Inner Voice. The voice was one familiar to me for as far back as I could remember, and known to me as “Jesus”. It would be a diversion to here tell how as a child I came to know Jesus, but suffice it to say he was a constant, invisible companion all through my childhood, only gradually fading into the background of my life as adolescence approached.

The Inner Voice was now assuring me that I was to receive “my soul’s sincere desire.” I knew this referred to the continuation of my relationship with Bob. The assurance concerned the eternality of our love. The voice was explaining that a “grand conjunction” was to take place, beginning that day and over the next nine months. I counted ahead to February 24th/25th, 2007. And then, for a reason I still cannot explain, I asked: “Jesus, are you to be my initiator?” And immediately the words:

Yes, and as already has been given, you with Bob’s help, will write about this “rebirth”. It could not take place without his agreement to go ahead and safeguard your passage. Your souls will never again know separation. Had you been able—applying everything you knew from human knowledge—to succeed in holding him back, this grand conjunction by which two souls are made one could not take place.

The Inner Voice continued

Let there be no more vain regrets. Instead, giving thanks, call upon me with your every breath, for when you do I am here with you, and where I am your beloved is also.

You will learn to live in two dimensions, two vibratory frequencies at once. This will be gradual and over the next nine months.

I then asked how important it was for me to be at Murray Creek? And the answer came:

You only need be there as you are physically able to, and as guided you will visit and help wherever needed. Have no fear about loneliness. My presence and Bob’s increasingly will be realized. You will not be alone.

I finished my walk and, on returning to my room at Anna’s, recorded the above dialogue with the Inner Voice I had identified as Jesus.

Next I searched my laptop computer for the words “grand conjunction.” But what came up was limited to astrological references. I next expanded my search to include “two souls” and “conjoined”. It was then that numerous references came up to Emanuel Swedenborg, about whom up to this point I knew next to nothing. nor had I ever heard Bob refer to him. A Wikipedia link offered that one aspect of Swedenborg’s writings were on the subject of “Conjugial Love” which, although he had never married, was his last great work, written near the end of his life.

At the time, this recalled for me and from my over forty years of Jungian studies, that Jung’s last great work was titled Mysterium Coniunctionis. Both “last works” were undertaken during their authors’ last seven years of their eighty-four-year lives.

From time to time the subject of Swedenborg would come up in the Journal Dialogues with Bob. Time and again Bob would seem to be urging me to see what else Emanual Swedenborg had written on the subject of eternal love and, coincidentally, on the subject of angels, the two themes seeming very much to go hand-in-hand. A example is this oft quoted passage:

And lo! Instantly there appeared a chariot descending from the highest or third heaven, in which I saw one angel; but as it approached I saw therein two . . . And lo! It was a husband and wife; who said, “We are a conjugial pair.” (C L 42)

It was in this way I learned that Swedenborg, an Eighteenth Century scientist who, around his fifty-sixth year, had became a consummate mystic and one of the most gifted seers the world has known, and who was firmly convinced that the depth of the relationship between a husband and a wife carried over into the Afterlife “in whatever state it was at their death in this world. Thus a couple in true spiritual love remain together in that state in heaven for eternity.” (C L)

I chose to believe the Inner Voice that had promised our two souls were undergoing a process described as a “grand conjunction” by which we were being “conjoined”—made one—never to be separated again. Because I received this from the Inner Voice before ever reading Swedenborg, his writings only confirmed that to which my heart had already borne witness.

And yes, I have questioned whether or not I am delusional, nor do I fault anyone for concluding such. From my earliest memories of myself as an only, lonely child I did hear inner voices and see into worlds no doubt invisible to eyes of my elders. Nor would it surprise me to learn that many or even all children, when they are very young, are natural seers. Wordsworth, as in his Ode to Immortality, clearly believed so.

I suspect the difference between someone who is delusional, or is mystically inclined, or simply intuitionally gifted is not always clearly discernible. All three are more perfectly at home in inner than in the outer worlds. And yet, in my own way, I am a child of the Age of Reason, and easily swayed by what my five outer senses tell me. But I believe also in what my inner senses tell me. For instance, I cannot ever remember not believing that Jesus was an ever-available inner presence. And then, when I was twenty-eight years old, I did experience what I can only describe as a vision—the only genuine, full-blown visionary experience I have ever had. But for me, as I imagine for most, one is enough to last a lifetime.

Obviously, these Journal Dialogues that I am persuaded it is time to begin sharing from will have a limited field of interest, to say nothing about credibility. Still I do so in what I believe to be obedience to the Inner Voice that assures in doing so I have Bob’s help as well as his higher perspective on such matters as “the rebirth of soul” and the present human need for a higher perspective on life here and beyond.

About ann

When Bob and Ann Elliott purchased their sixty acre Murray Creek property in 1974 their purpose was to establish a retreat center for Inner Healing. This was the beginning of Creative Living Center and later the home of CLC Press which gradually evolved into an on-line means of sharing what they were learning and experiencing about the processes of becoming whole. Ann was born in 1929 in Holden, Missouri. Her parents were both journalists and co-published the local newspaper. They had met in Mexico City where her father was on assignment for a Washington DC newspaper and where her mother was doing advanced studies at the University of Mexico. When Ann was six they separated and she moved to Kansas City where her mother began a long career in radio and television. In high school Ann was sent east to Penn Hall in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. And that is where she met Bob who was attending Mercersburg Academy, the nearby boy's prep school. Bob was born in 1927 in Washington, DC. His mother had been a librarian in Hammond, Indiana before coming to Washington during World War I where she met his father, a young Marine who became an attorney when the war was over. Bob attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington through eighth grade and went on to Mercersburg, and from there, near the end of World War II, into the army. The war over, he began pre-law at Northwestern where Ann was studying journalism and doing secretarial work for her mother who was then Woman's Editor of American Broadcasting Co in Chicago. In the fall of 1947 Ann and Bob were married and the following spring left for Stanford University where Bob finished his undergraduate and went on to earn his law degree in 1952, by which time they were expecting the second of what would be their six children. During Bob's years at Stanford Ann studied and worked in the field of design. This led to her interest in symbolism, and the study of symbolism awakened her interest in spirituality, a combination that led to an interest in Jungian psychology at about the time Jung's writings were beginning to appear in English. It was through the writings of Christian Jungians such as John Sanford and Morton Kelsey that Ann became interested in the psycho-spiritual approaches to inner healing. Eventually she would connect with the three grand women founders of the San Francisco based Guild For Psychological Studies, all of whom had studied with Jung in Zurich. Together the three--Elizabeth Boynton Howes, Sheila Moon, and Luella Seibald--had established the Four Springs retreat center in Northern California where they conducted seminars based on "The Records of the Life of Jesus of Nazareth" according to a modified Socratic method. Ann participated in the Records and other related seminars at Four Springs during the 1980s. In the meantime, Bob was equally involved in pursuing his special interest in music as a means of furthering and deepening meditation. He was also studying shamanism with Michael Harner and the Institute for Shamanic Studies, and with Ira Progoff through his Intensive Journal Workshops. All this time, of course, he was carrying on a busy law practice in Lodi, California, some forty miles commute from Murray Creek. From 1984 until his retirement in 1998 Ann served as Bob's legal secretary. Ann, with both of her parents writers, had been writing off and on for a number of years, with numerous writings on symbolism published in magazines and journals, as well as two books on the use of symbolism in Christian education. In 1996-7 Parts I and II of Return to the Whole were published on the C G Jung Web Page, and this was the beginning of web publishing for Ann as a means of sharing the synthesis of ways to inner healing and wholeness she and Bob had experienced and been sharing throughout their years at Murray Creek. With their retirement in 1998 Ann began writing and editing full time, with her in progress "opus" being the series titled Return to the Whole, and including the full length book titled Higher Ground, offered here in its entirety. In 1992 Ann learned she was eligible to "test her vocation" as an Anglican Franciscans and after an inquiry and formation of some five years was, in 1997, professed. These are the TSSF initials that follow her name--The Society of Saint Francis--and for which order she now serves as a formation counselor. Additionally she is a Benedictine trained spiritual director and serves in this capacity also to whomever is willing to make the narrow, winding trip out Murray Creek Road.
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