Thursday, February 09, 2012

AC 1937 - self-compulsion and a new will or heavenly proprium

AC 1937 [6]
Whatever a person does from love appears to him as freedom.
But within that freedom,
when the person practices self-compulsion,
setting himself against evil and falsity
and doing what is good,
heavenly love is present
which the Lord instills at that time
and by means of which
He creates that person's proprium.
It is the Lord's will therefore
that this proprium should appear to the person to be his own,
though in fact it is not.
This proprium
which a person receives in this manner during his lifetime
by means, as it seems, of compulsion,
the Lord replenishes in the next life
with limitless forms of delight and happiness.
Such people are also by degrees enlightened,
or rather are confirmed,
in the truth
that their self-compulsion has not commenced at all in themselves
but that even the smallest of all the impulses of their will
has been received from the Lord.
They are also led to see that the reason
why their compulsion had appeared to commence in themselves
was that the Lord might give them a new will as their own,
and in this way the life belonging to heavenly love
might be imparted to them as their own.
Indeed the Lord's will is to share with everyone that which is His,
thus that which is heavenly,
so that it may appear to be that person's and to be within him,
though in fact it is not his.
A proprium such as this exists with angels,
and insofar as they accept the truth
that everything good and true comes from the Lord
the delight and happiness belonging to such a proprium exists with them.

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