The quality of our outer thinking is determined by the quality of our inner thinking (Continued)

We can see what this governmental structure is like to some extent from comparisons.

As for heavenly love with its desires for what is good and true and the perceptions they prompt—the pleasures of those desires and the thoughts that the pleasures prompt—these can be compared to a tree with all its branches, leaves, and fruit. The life’s love is the tree; the branches and leaves are the desires for what is good and true and their perceptions; and the fruit is the pleasures of those desires and their thoughts.

As for hellish love, though, with its desires for what is evil and false, its compulsions, and the pleasures of those compulsions and the thoughts that they prompt, they can be compared to a spider in the middle of its web. The love itself is the spider; the cravings for what is evil and false and their deeper deceptions are the web of threads right where the spider sits; and the pleasures of those compulsions with their vicious schemes are the outer threads where flying insects are caught, wrapped up, and eaten.

from Divine Providence, Section 107

2. The quality of our outer thinking is determined by the quality of our inner thinking

I have already explained that our quality from head to toe is determined by the quality of our life’s love. I need to begin at this point, then, by saying something about our life’s love, since until that is done I cannot say anything about the desires that, together with our perceptions, make up our inner human nature, or about the pleasures of our desires that, together with our thoughts, make up our outer human nature. There are many loves, but there are two that are like lords or rulers: heavenly love and hellish love. Heavenly love is love for the Lord and for our neighbor, and hellish love is love for ourselves and for the world. The two kinds of love are as opposite to each other as heaven and hell, because when we are caught up in love for ourselves and for the world we intend good to no one but ourselves, while when we are caught up in love for the Lord and our neighbor we intend good to everyone. These two loves are our life’s love, but they come in many different forms. Heavenly love is the life’s love of people whom the Lord is leading, and hellish love is the life’s love of people whom the devil is leading.

No one can have a life’s love, though, without the derivatives we refer to as desires. The derivatives of hellish love are attractions to what is evil and false—strictly speaking, compulsions; while the derivatives of heavenly love are attractions to what is good and true—strictly speaking, predilections. There are as many feelings of hellish love (strictly speaking, compulsions) as there are varieties of evil; and there are as many feelings of heavenly love (strictly speaking, predilections) as there are varieties of goodness.

Love dwells in its desires like a lord in a manor or a ruler in a realm. Their lordship and rule is over the elements of our minds, that is, of our volition and discernment, and through these over our bodies. Through its desires and consequent perceptions, and through its pleasures and consequent thoughts, our life’s love rules over the whole person. It rules over the inner level of our minds through our desires and their perceptions and over the outer level of our minds through the pleasures of those desires and the thoughts that result from them.

from Divine Providence, Section 106

Everyone has an inner and outer level of thinking (Continued)

The inner level of our thinking comes from our life’s love and from the feelings and consequent perceptions that this love prompts. The outer level of our thinking comes from items we have in our memory that are useful to our life’s love as supports and as means to its ends. From early childhood to young adulthood we are absorbed in the outer level of our thinking because of our impulses to learn, which at this point constitute our inner level. Some elements of desire and resulting tendencies [to action] seep through from the life’s love we have inherited from our parents as well.

Later, though, the way we live shapes our life’s love, whose feelings and consequent perceptions make up the inner level of our thinking. Then our life’s love gives rise to a love of means; and the pleasures and the information those means elicit from our memory make up the outer level of our thinking.

from Divine Providence, Section 105

Everyone has an inner and outer level of thinking (Continued)

To see that everyone who is old enough has an outer and an inner thinking, an outer [and an inner] volition and discernment, or outer and inner levels of spirit that amount to outer and inner levels of self, we need only look closely at the thoughts and intentions of other people on the basis of what they say and do. We may also look at our own thoughts and intentions when we are in company and when we are by ourselves.

People can talk cordially with others on the basis of their outer thinking and yet be hostile to them in their inner thinking. They can talk about love for their neighbor and love for God on the basis of their outer thinking, and do so with feeling, when in their inner thinking they are trivializing their neighbor and have no fear of God. People can talk thoughtfully and with feeling about the justice of our civil laws, the virtues of moral living, and the theological issues of spiritual life, and yet when they are by themselves, moved by their inner thinking and its feeling, they can argue against our civil laws, against the virtues of moral living, and against the theological issues of spiritual life. We do this when we are driven by our compulsions to evil but want it to seem to the world that we are not.

When they are listening to what others say, many people are thinking, “Are their private thoughts the same as the thoughts they are expressing? Should I believe them or not? What are their intentions?” Everyone knows that flatterers and hypocrites have two levels of thought. They can control themselves and prevent their inner thinking from being seen, hiding it deeper and deeper within and virtually locking the doors to keep it hidden. We can also see quite clearly that we have inner and outer levels of thinking from the fact that we can see our own outer thought from the vantage point of our inner thought. We can reflect on it as well, and decide whether it is evil or not.

We may attribute this characteristic of the human mind to the two abilities we are given by the Lord, namely, freedom and rationality. If we did not have outer and inner levels of thought, these abilities would not enable us to sense and see anything evil in ourselves and be reformed. In fact, we would not even be able to talk; we would only be able to make noises like animals.

from Divine Providence, Section 104

1. Everyone has an inner and outer level of thinking

Our outer and inner levels of thinking mean much the same as our outer and inner selves, which is the same as our outer and inner volition and discernment, because volition and discernment are what make us human. Further, since volition and discernment come to our consciousness in thoughts, we can speak of outer and inner levels of thinking.

Since it is not our bodies but our spirits that intend and discern and therefore think, it follows that this outer level and inner level are outer and inner levels of our spirit. Our physical behavior, whether in speech or in action, is nothing but an effect of the inner and outer levels of our spirits, since the body is simply obedience.

from Divine Providence, Section 103

It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Put Aside Evils in Our Outer Nature, Regarding Them as Sins and Doing So in Apparent Autonomy, and That This Is the Only Way the Lord Can Put Aside the Evils in Our Inner Nature and in Our Outer Nature Alike (Continued)

All this leads to the conclusion that it is a law of divine providence that we should rid ourselves of our evils. If we do not, then the Lord cannot be united to us and bring us to himself in heaven. However, it is not generally known that we need to rid ourselves of evils in our outer nature, and do this in apparent autonomy, or that the Lord cannot rid us of the evils in our inner nature unless we do this, apparently on our own.

Several principles, then, need to be presented in the light for rational consideration in the following sequence.

1. Everyone has an inner and an outer level of thinking.

2. The essential quality of our outer thinking is determined by the quality of our inner thinking.

3. Our inner nature cannot be cleansed from compulsions to evil as long as the evils in our outer nature are not banished, because these outer evils stand in the way.

4. The Lord cannot rid us of the evils in our outer nature without our help.

5. Therefore we need to banish the evils from our outer nature in apparent autonomy.

6. Then the Lord cleanses us from the compulsions to evil in our inner nature and from the evil practices themselves in our outer nature.

7. It is the unceasing effort of the Lord’s divine providence to unite us to himself and himself to us in order to give us the joys of eternal life; and this can happen only to the extent that our evils and their compulsions are banished.

from Divine Providence, Section 102

It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Put Aside Evils in Our Outer Nature, Regarding Them as Sins and Doing So in Apparent Autonomy, and That This Is the Only Way the Lord Can Put Aside the Evils in Our Inner Nature and in Our Outer Nature Alike (Continued)

However, many people—especially people who have convinced themselves of a faith that is devoid of caring—do not know that they are in hell when they are engaged in evil pursuits. They have no idea what evils really are, because they give no thought to them. They say that they are not under the yoke of the law, which means that the law does not condemn them. They also say that since they cannot contribute anything to their own salvation they cannot rid themselves of anything evil, let alone do anything good on their own.

They are people who give no thought to the evil within themselves and who are constantly engaged in it because of this neglect. I explained in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on Faith 61–68 that they are the ones the Lord referred to as “goats” in Matthew 41–46 [25:32–33, 41–46], telling them to “Go away from me, cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

If we give no thought to the evils within us, that is, if we do not examine ourselves and then refrain from doing them, we wind up inevitably not knowing what evil is and then loving it because of the pleasure it offers us. This is because anyone who does not know about evil loves it, and anyone who neglects thinking about evil is constantly involved in it. People like this are like blind people, people who cannot see, since thought sees what is good and what is evil the way the eye sees what is beautiful and what is ugly. We are caught up in evil if we consider and intend it and if we think it is hidden from God and would be forgiven if it came to light. This is actually thinking that we are free of evil.

If we do then refrain from evil deeds, we do so not because they are sins against God but because we are afraid of the laws and afraid for our reputation. We are still doing them in spirit, though, because it is our spirit that thinks and intends. As a result, whatever we think in our spirit in this world we do after we leave this world when we become spirits.

In the spiritual world where we all arrive after death, no one asks what our faith has been or what our beliefs have been, only what our life has been, whether we are one kind of person or another. They know that the quality of our faith and the quality of our beliefs depend on the quality of our life, because life constructs a belief system for itself and constructs a faith for itself.

from Divine Providence, Section 101

It Is a Law of Divine Providence That We Should Put Aside Evils in Our Outer Nature, Regarding Them as Sins and Doing So in Apparent Autonomy, and That This Is the Only Way the Lord Can Put Aside the Evils in Our Inner Nature and in Our Outer Nature Alike

On the basis of reason alone everyone can see that the Lord, who is goodness itself and truth itself, cannot enter us unless what is evil and false in us has been banished. What is evil is the opposite of what is good and what is false is the opposite of what is true, and there is no way that opposites can mingle. No, when one approaches the other, there is a battle that lasts until one gives way to the other. Then the one that gives way moves off and the other takes its place. There is this kind of opposition between heaven and hell, or between the Lord and the devil.

Is it reasonable for anyone to think that the Lord can enter where the devil is in control, or that heaven can be in the same place as hell? With the rationality given to everyone who is sane, can we not see that the devil must be expelled for the Lord to enter, that hell must be banished for heaven to come in?

This opposition is meant by what Abraham said from heaven to the rich man in hell:

There is a huge, fixed chasm between you and us, so that people who want to cross to you from our side cannot, nor can you cross over to us. (Luke 16:26)

Real evil is hell and real goodness is heaven, or in other words, real evil is the devil and real goodness is the Lord. Anyone controlled by what is evil is a miniature hell, and anyone controlled by what is good is a miniature heaven. How, then, can heaven enter hell when there is such a huge, fixed chasm between them that you cannot get from one to the other? It follows from this that hell must at all costs be banished so that the Lord can enter in with heaven.

from Divine Providence, Section 100

Our Knowledge of What Is True and Good Does Not Become Faith until We are Engaged in Caring. Once We Have A Faith That Is Born of Caring, Though, That Knowledge Becomes a Resource That Gives Form to Our Faith

Right from earliest childhood we are eager to know things. Because of this we learn a great many things, some of which will be useful to us and some of which will not. When we grow up, we get involved in some occupation and absorb information about it; and as we do, the occupation becomes a way for us to be useful, and we begin to love it. This is how our love of being useful begins; and this love leads us to also love the means that allow us to do our occupation and make it effective.

This process applies to everyone in this world because we all have some occupation to which we progress, beginning from the service we envision as a goal, through the means, to the actual service that is the result. However, since this service and its means have to do with life in this world, loving it is an earthly type of love.

from Life / Faith (New Century Edition): Teaching for the New Jerusalem on Faith, Section 25

About Free Choice

“We are an organism that receives life,” I responded. “God alone is life itself. God pours his own life into this organism and every part of it, just as the sun pours its heat into a tree and every part of it. God grants us to feel his life in ourselves as our own. God wants us to feel this so we can live according to the laws of the divine design (that is, the commandments in the Word) as if we did so under our own initiative, and arrange ourselves to receive God’s love. Nevertheless, although God constantly keeps his finger on the pointer of the scales to keep us in check, he never violates our free choice by forcing us.

from True Christianity, Volume 2, an excerpt from Section 504