CL 267 - the Lord wants to keep us safe

CL 267 [2]
For everyone . . . is withheld from the lust of evil
and kept in a state of intelligence
according as he looks to the Lord
and at the same time is conjoined with Him.


(Conjunction happens when we live by the Ten Commandments
because He told us to, and when we shun evils because they are
sins against Him.)

CL 266 - What is useful service but love of the neighbor in act?

CL 266 [3, 5]
So they continued, saying,
"The positions we hold are positions we admittedly sought,
but for no other purpose than to be able to perform useful services
more fully and to extend them more widely.
We are also surrounded with honor, and we accept it,
yet not for our own sake, but for the good of the society.
. . . the services we render
come from a love of them within us from the Lord.
This love, moreover, gains its bliss
from its communication through useful service with others.
We know, too, from experience,
that the more we perform useful services from a love of them,
the more this love increases,
and with it the wisdom on which the communication depends.
But the more we keep these services to ourselves
and do not communicate them,
the more the bliss dies away . . ..
The whole of heaven, in short,
is nothing but a world of useful service,
from the firsts to the lasts of it.
What is useful service but love of the neighbor in act?
And what holds the heavens together except this love?"

Everyone who believes in the Lord
and refrains from evils as sins
performs useful services from the Lord.
But everyone who does not believe in the Lord
and does not refrain from evils as sins
performs the services he does from himself
and for the sake of himself.

CL 249 - human beings were created

CL 249
Human beings were created to be useful,
because useful service
is the containing vessel of goodness and truth . . ..

CL 238 - marriage and the church

CL 238
. . . the origin of the church and the origin of conjugial love
have the same seat in a person,
and that they are locked in a continual embrace.

. . . conjugial love depends on the state of the church in a person,
consequently that it stems from religion,
because it is religion which forms that state.

CL 233 - Do you not know . . .

CL 233 [2]
"Do you not know that to live rightly is charity,
and to believe rightly is faith?"

CL 220 - thinking

CL 220
. . . the intellect can think that something is good,
thus thinking as true that this something is good.
It is different with the will.
This does not think about goodness and truth
but loves them and does them.

CL 211 - becoming wise

CL 211
For a person becomes wise
as the inner perceptions of his mind are opened,
because by their opening
the thoughts of his understanding are raised into a higher light
and the affections of his will into a higher warmth
- the higher light being wisdom,
and the higher warmth a love for wisdom.


Note: This is not gender specific here. The whole book is talking about marriage, but right here, the Latin is not gender specific.

CL 194, 200 - putting aside inherent natures and becoming truly human

CL 194
. . . it was enjoined on man that he leave father and mother
and cling to his wife(Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:4,5).
[2] The father and mother a man is to leave mean,
in a spiritual sense,
the inherent nature of his will
and the inherent nature of his intellect
(the inherent nature of a person's will
being to love itself,
and the inherent nature of a person's intellect
being to love its own wisdom).
And to cling means to commit himself to love of his wife.
These two inherent natures are evil and deadly to a man
if they remain in him,
but the love arising from the two is turned into conjugial love
as a man clings to his wife, that is, as he acquires a love for her.

CL 200
. . . in a marriage of truly conjugial love,
each partner becomes more and more deeply human,
for that love opens the deeper aspects of their minds,
and as these are opened,
a person becomes more and more human.

CL 184, 185 - character, changes, time

CL 184
The state of a person's life is its character.
Further,
because every person has in him two faculties which form his life,
faculties which are called intellect and will,
the state of a person's life is its character
in relation to his intellect and will.
It is apparent from this that
changes in one's state of life
mean changes in its character in respect to
elements having to do with the intellect
and elements having to do with the will.

CL 185 [3]
Changes in the state
of these two life forces or faculties in a person are unceasing,
continuing from infancy to the end of his life,
and afterwards to eternity;
and the reason is that there is no limit to knowledge,
even less to intelligence, and still less to wisdom.
For there is an infinity and eternity in the range of these,
arising from the Infinite and Eternal who is their source.
Hence the ancient philosophical tenet,
that everything is capable of being divided to infinity;
to which should be added
that everything is similarly capable of being multiplied.
The angels assert
that they are perfected in wisdom by the Lord to eternity,
which means also to infinity,
since eternity is an infinity of time.

CL 183 - useful service

CL 183 [3-4]
Love cannot rest unless it acts, for love is the active force in life;
nor can wisdom exist and endure
unless it does so from love
and together with love
whenever love acts,
and to act is application to useful purpose.
Therefore we define application to useful purpose
as the doing of good from love through wisdom.
Application to useful purpose is what good is.

Since these three elements - love, wisdom, and application to useful purpose -
flow into people's souls, we can see why it is said that all good is from God.
For all action from love through wisdom is called good,
and action includes also application to useful purpose.

CL 170 - the delightful states resulting from a marriage of good and truth

CL 170
. . . conjugial love originates from the marriage between goodness and truth,
and this marriage comes from the Lord.
Moreover, it is the nature of love to will to share with another,
indeed, to confer joys upon another whom it loves from the heart,
and to seek its own joys in return from doing so;
and this being the case, infinitely more, therefore,
does the Divine love in the Lord will to confer joys upon mankind,
whom He created to be recipients
of both the love and the wisdom emanating from Him . . ..

We list these states as
innocence, peace, tranquillity, inmost friendship, complete trust,
and a mutual desire of the mind and heart to do the other every good,
since innocence and peace have to do with the soul,
tranquillity has to do with the mind,
inmost friendship has to do with the breast,
complete trust has to do with the heart,
and a mutual desire of the mind and heart to do the other every good
has to do with the body as a result of these.

CL 162, 177 - the growing and uniting of married love

CL 162
When friendship and mutual trust join together
with the first love in marriage,
conjugial love results,
which opens the partners' hearts and inspires in them
the sweet enjoyments of love,
and this more and more deeply
as friendship and trust are added to the original love,
and as that original love enters into this friendship and trust
and they into it.

CL 177
Married partners become proportionately one person
in the measure that their conjugial love grows.
And because, in heaven, this love is genuine,
owing to the celestial and spiritual life of the angels,
therefore two married partners there are called two
when they are referred to as husband and wife,
but one when they are referred to as angels.

CL 158 - the union of the will & understanding

CL 158
. . . there is a very close union between understanding and will,
and that the union is such
that the one faculty can enter into the other
and find delight from and in that union.

CL 145 - spiritual wisdom

CL 145
A person from being natural only gradually becomes spiritual.
For a person becomes spiritual as his rationality -
which stands in between heaven and the world -
begins to draw its life or soul from what flows in from heaven.
This occurs as he becomes affected by and is delighted with wisdom
(the wisdom spoken of in no. 130 - see *). . ..

Spiritual wisdom in itself is such
that it grows warmer and warmer with the love of becoming wise,
and because of this, it increases to eternity.
This takes place as it is perfected as though by processes . . .
which are accomplished by
purifications and separations of the intellect
from the misconceptions of the senses,
and of the will from the temptations of the body.

*CL 130
Regarded in its fullness, wisdom has to do with
concepts, reason and life at the same time.
Concepts come first;
reason is formed by means of them,
and wisdom by both concepts and reason together -
and this when a person lives reasonably or rationally
according to truths formed as concepts.

CL 121 - What is the wisdom of life?

CL 121 [1, 4]
Regarded in its fullness,
wisdom has to do with concepts, reasons and life at the same time.
Concepts come first;
reason is formed by means of them,
and wisdom by both concepts and reason together -
and this when a person lives reasonably or rationally
according to truth formed as concepts. . . .

Since wisdom is . . . a matter of life first and consequently of reason,
the question arises, what wisdom of life is.
In brief summary, it is this:
to refrain from evils because they are harmful to the soul,
harmful to the civil state, and harmful to the body,
and to do good things because they are of benefit to the soul,
to the civil state, and to the body.

CL 125, 127 - correspondences

CL125 (6)
A husband does not represent the Lord and his wife the church,
because husbands and their wives both together form the church.
It is a common saying in the [Christian] church
that as the Lord is the head of the church,
so the husband is the head of the wife. *
If this were true, it would follow
that the husband represents the Lord and the wife the church.
But the truth is that, whereas the Lord is the head of the church,
people - both men and women - are the church,
and still more so husbands and wives together.
(Quoting Ephesians 5:23. Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3.)

CL 127
. . . conjugial love corresponds to an affection
for genuine truth and its chasteness, purity and holiness;
that insemination corresponds to the power of truth;
that procreation corresponds to the propagation of truth;
and that love for little children
corresponds to the protection of truth and good.

Now because truth in a person appears as if it were his,
and good is joined to it by the Lord,
it is evident that these correspondences are correspondences
of the natural or outer self with the spiritual or inner self.

CL 120 - the Lord and the church

CL 120
. . . the Lord is the source from which all good and truth flow,
and it is the church which receives this good and truth
and puts them into effect.

CL 115 - there is no such thing as good alone or truth alone

CL 115 [3]
. . . everything which exists in the whole of heaven
and everything which exists in the whole world
is nothing but a form of the marriage between good and truth,
since each and every thing
was created out of
and into
a marriage of good and truth . . ..

Good alone or truth alone has no reality,
but they take form and become real
through a marriage of the two,
the character of the resulting form
being determined by the character of the marriage.

Divine good and Divine truth in the Lord the Creator
are good and truth in their very essence.
The being of His essence is Divine good,
and the expression of His essence is Divine truth.
In Him, moreover, good and truth exist in their very union,
for in Him they are infinitely united.
Since these two are united in Him, the Creator,
therefore they are also united in each and every thing created by Him.
By this the Creator is also conjoined with all things created by Him
in an eternal covenant like that of a marriage.

CL 94 - from knowledge, to intelligence, and finally, to wisdom

CL 94
. . . as a person advances from knowledge to intelligence,
and from this to wisdom,
his mind also changes its form accordingly,
for it opens up more and more
and becomes more closely connected with heaven
and through heaven with the Lord.
Consequently the person becomes a greater lover of truth
and more devoted to goodness of life.

CL 83 - union

CL 83
. . . good does not exist apart from truth,
nor truth apart from good,
consequently
there is an eternal marriage between them . . .