How You Feed Angels

A thought for you to consider: any thought, desire, or deed that comes from love feeds beings who live in higher worlds. If you merely think: "That man reeking of cigarette smoke is a magnificent son of God," you are feeding angels. If you just have a feeling of love for your husband, you are giving water to those in the spiritual world that would otherwise be famished. And this helps them, in turn, nourish us. It is not unlike the reciprocity of breath between plants and animals.

This is also true for less pure kinds of love. Sexual desire does indeed feed angels, but that doesn't mean sexual sin isn't sin.  For sexual sin is an example of love in "arrested development," and if you don't develop it now, you'll be stuck with a heavy bag of karma that will need to be worked out in some other realm or epoch (this is what Purgatory means in some spiritual traditions). Every porn addict wants to experience love, and they assume it belongs only in the genitals when, in reality, that love ascends from there to the heart. And lest you think you need to be married to experience this, mystics report that the intense exchange of love that marriage embodies can also be acted out in everything you do. Transmute sexual desire into your love for everyone, for everything, for the gods, in the same way that sex in marriage gradually become merely an expression of something higher. For every act of love is an act of intercourse between heaven and earth, and like intercourse tends to do, it makes something where there was nothing. So, love!

The gods feasting on the kind words you gave to someone on the bus today.

This interdependence applies to all stages and kingdoms. Just as humans and animals depend on the world of plants, so do the gods depend upon mortals. Greek mythology expresses this poetically, saying that from the mortals the gods receive nectar and ambrosia, both words meaning love. Love comes into existence through human beings, and love is food for the gods. The love engendered by mortals is breathed in by the gods. This may seem very strange, yet it is a fact more real than, say, electricity. At first love appears as sexual love and evolves to the highest spiritual love, but all love, the highest as well as the lowest, is the breath of gods. It might be said: if this is so then there can be no evil. But it must be remembered that, just as wisdom is born of error, so love can only evolve and reach perfection through conflict. However, love will be guided by the wisdom that is the foundation of the world. - Rudolf Steiner

The gods need us as much as we need them; we work for and alongside each other. A quirky story about the energetic reciprocity between the human and divine realms comes to us from Mesoamerica. The Huichol Indians tell a marvelously strange story about the journey of the souls of the deceased. The soul must trudge along to the garden of the dead, carrying with it a bag filled with the genitals of everyone it had ever made love with during life. Periodically tiring, the soul attempts to hide its burdensome bag on the side of the road, prompting a divine voice to chastise, “You wanted to enjoy yourself in that other life, now you must carry all of that on your back to arrive here.” Upon finally arriving at the dancing ground of the dead, the soul is welcomed by a cheering crowd of ancestors gathered around a central fig tree bursting with ripe fruit just out of reach. The soul must then reach into its bag of genitals and toss each at the tree, knocking down the fruit. A festive feast ensues. “This inspired little story conceals a profound belief that human (for lack of a better term) ‘energy’ is needed by the divine world as much as divine energy is needed by the human.” This story has intriguing twists and ambiguities. At first we might think it is telling us the soul is being scolded by Irish priests for past pleasures. But rather it is saying that after a hard journey, past pleasure creates a feast for the spirit world. Apparently, the dead depend upon the erotic life of the living. One implication is that all liaisons—all energetic, erotic encounters—are eternal. Although the extremely promiscuous may not make it to the garden for quite a while, there is no moral judgment implied by the story, but simply a practical question of how large a bag we can haul. - Caroline Casey, Making the Gods Work for You

The angels who are with a person perceive individually the particular qualities which are present from the mind in an action. Spiritual angels perceive those qualities which are present in it from the intellect, while celestial angels perceive those qualities which are present in it from the will. This appears to be a contradictory statement, but still it is the truth. It should nevertheless be known that those elements of the mind which are applicable to a subject presented for consideration or under consideration are at the center, while the rest are positioned round about according to their relevance. Angels say that they perceive a person's character from a single act, though in a varying likeness of his love according to its determinations into affections and so into thoughts. In a word, every action or every work of a spiritual person is, in the sight of angels, like a flavorful, useful, and beautiful fruit, which when opened and eaten yields flavor, utility, and delight. - Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom 279