AC 2041, 2045, 2049 - The Loves of Self and the World

AC 2041 [2, 3]

There are two so-called loves and their desires
that obstruct the influx of heavenly love from the Lord;
for when these loves reign
in the interior and in the external man,
and take possession there,
they either reject or suffocate,
and also pervert and contaminate,
the inflowing heavenly love;
for they are utterly contrary to heavenly love . . ..
But insofar as these loves are removed,
so far the heavenly love flowing in from the Lord
begins to appear, even to give light in the interior man;
and so far he begins to see that he is in evil and falsity;
next that he is actually in uncleanness and filthiness;
and finally that this has been his proprium.
Those who are becoming regenerate
are those with whom these loves are being removed. 

Be it known that heavenly love is continually
inflowing into a person from the Lord,
and that nothing else obstructs and impedes it,
and causes its reception by the person impossible,
except the desires of these loves
and the falsities derived from them.

AC 2045 [2]

The love of self is the source of all the evils
that destroy civic society.
From it, as from an unclean pit,
spring all hatreds, all revenges, all cruelties,
even all adulteries;
for he who loves himself,
despises, vituperates, or hates,
all others who do not serve him,
or do him honor, or favor him;
and when he hates,
he breathes nothing but revenges and cruelties,
and this in proportion
to the degree in which he loves himself,
so that this love is destructive of society
and of the human race.

AC 2049 [2]

Those are purified when they reject filthy loves,
and live with one another in charity;
for then they live in truths,
since all truths are of charity . . ..
Those who live in these truths
readily imbibe the truths of faith,
if not in the life of the body,
yet in the other life,
because the truths of faith
are the interior truths of charity,
and they then love nothing more
than to be admitted into the interior truths of charity.
The interior truths of charity
are those in which the Lord's kingdom consists.