Purpose of Proverbs Translation

The writings of Swedenborg can be pithy and difficult to read in our age. They were originally written in Latin. What I have done here is reflect on sentences and attempt to boil their meaning down into easily understandable "proverbs".

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Links to Other Blogs


http://divineprovidenceproverbs.blogspot.com/

This is my simpler modern English re-write of half of the Christian mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg's book Divine Providence. His complicated older English style paragraphs are condensed into a moreso proverbs-like expression.



http://many-social-networking-tips.blogspot.com/

These are some tips on how to use several social networking websites.



http://socialmediaaction.blogspot.com/

This is an action plan for promoting business websites to make sales in three social networking community websites: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.




This is a larger blog teaching quite a few detailed Google skills:  Little-known details skills, Google Chrome web browser, Google Maps, Google Earth Free, Google News, Picasa photos utility, Gmail, Google Notebook, Blogger.com, Google Documents, etc.

Friday, February 4, 2011

13 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

There is a correspondential relationship between everything mental and everything physical.  D.P. 181

The Lord arranges the inner forms and workings the way we arrange the outer ones.  D.P. 181

Spiritually-minded people acknowledge God and divine providence, too.  D.P. 182

Strict materialists cannot raise their minds above the material world and see the signs of divine providence in its outward appearances.  D.P. 182

If you think that was is dead can give you life, you are out of your mind.  Life must come from life.  D.P. 182

From our own inherited evil we are constantly hungering for the deepest hell.  D.P. 183

The Lord through divine providence is constantly leading us away from hell and drawing us out of it.  D.P. 183

By heredity, we want to become powerful and rich to the extent that these loves are not held in check.  D.P. 183

Divine providence quietly and gradually takes away this excessive love of wealth and power.  D.P. 183

Divine providence uses various rational, civil, and moral means to lead us away from excessive love of wealth and power.  D.P. 183

The Lord never leads us away from striving for high positions or from gaining wealth, only from an obsession with striving for high position simply for the sake of eminence, or for self-seeking reasons, solely for display or for its own sake.  D.P.  183

Achievement becomes something we seek for service primarily and for ourselves secondarily, and not for ourselves primarily and for service secondarily.  D.P. 183

The Lord always humbles the proud and raises up the humble.  D.P. 183

We have these evils by heredity and more:  fraud, vengeance, blasphemy, etc.  D.P. 184

Many people who became powerful and wealthy in the physical world focused solely on themselves in the next life at first talk ab out God and divine providence as though they sincerely believed in them.  But when the see it clearly and therefore see their eventual lot in hell, they join demons there.  D.P. 185

The Lord uses divine providence to subtly lead us away from our love of pleasure.  D.P. 186

Everyone who accepts inflow from heaven and recognizes divine providence (especially spiritually reformed people) upon seeing events in their amazing kind of sequence, virtually sees providence from a deep recognition and confesses it.  D.P.187

We cannot see divine providence from this world, only from heaven.  D.P. 187

People who have convinced themselves of the supreme value of the physical world and human prudence would not acknowledge providence.  D.P. 187


12 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

What makes us human is the goodness of our love and the truths of our wisdom.  D.P. 172

Being taught from the Word is being taught by the Lord himself.  D.P. 172

What we learn in the Word in this world is small compared to what we’ll learn as angels.  D.P. 172

The wisdom of angels is present throughout the Word, in every detail.  D.P. 172

The only ways the Word can be taught is through parents, teachers, preachers, books.    But these are not our teachers, the Lord is, He’s using them as means.  D.P. 172

Divine truth and divine love is given to evil people and good people.  D.P. 173

We cannot be inwardly organized by the Lord except to the extent that outward matters are set in order through our own efforts.  D.P. 174

We cannot sense or feel anything of the working of Divine Providence but spiritual people still can know about it and acknowledge it. D.P. 175

 Superficial views and consequent illusions blind our discernment and our discernment cannot gain any sight unless the illusions that lblind it and the distortions that becloud it are dispelled.  D.P. 175

To have a sense of self and be human we must have a sense of worth so our choices of evil or good will matter to us.  D.P. 176

We all think because we are free and we all think freely.  D.P. 176

The evil that is ours does not instantly accept the goodness that the Lord is giving, and the goodness from the Lord does not rid us of our evil instantly.  D.P. 177

We are not granted foreknowledge of events so we can keep our ability to act in freedom and to act rationally.  D.P. 178

If an outcome were foreknown we would have no hope as we see or await a result.  D.P. 178

Our human mind is constantly engaged with purposes, means, and results:  1.  The impulse of our volition is the originating purpose; 2.  the thinking of our discernment is the effectual means; 3.  the action of the body, the speech of the mouth, or our physical sensation, is the result of the purpose that is achieved through thought.  D.P. 178

No one is allowed to know the future but we can draw conclusion about the future on the basis of reason.  D.P. 179

A desire to know the future is innate in many people, but since this desire originates in a love for what is evil, it is taken away from people who believe in divine providence, and they are given a trust that the Lord will take care of their fate.  D.P. 179

Because we mismanage outward matters like eating and drinking we must not be given control of inner matters which are infinite like the two hemisphere of our brains, nerve fibers, organs, and our blood.  D.P. 180


11 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

Simple and wise people talk similarly but think differently.  Both talk as though the sun rises and sets; but the wise know that it stands relatively immobile.  D.P. 162

In the spiritual world space and distance is an appearance but reflect differences in feelings and in thoughts.  D.P.  162

The reality of heaven to angels has not to do with themselves per se but with their level of acceptance of divine love and wisdom from the Lord.  D.P.  163

The Lord himself governs heaven the way a soul governs its body.  D.P.  163

How much are we and the angels united with the Lord and vice versa, the Lord united to us?  To the extent that we accept love and wisdom from the Lord.  D.P.  164

In fact, each of us is assignbed a place in the Lord—that is, in heaven—according to the quality of that union or acceptance of him.  D.P.  164

In our uniqueness we are given a specific livelihood, (yes, we work in heaven until noon Swedenborg said), responsibilities and needs.  D.P.  164

We are not deprived of our freedom, so we are led and taught within the limits of our personal acceptance of the Lord, love and wisdom.  D.P.  164 

People who do not accept divine love and wisdom are separated from us rather like feces and urine are excreted.  D.P.  164

We are led b y the Lord through an inflow and taught by being enlightened.  D.P.  165

The reasons we are taught by the Lord by being enlightened is that being enlightened is connected with our wisdom and discernment.  D.P.  165

Our discernment, the sight of our inner self, is enlightened by spiritual light.  Our eyes, the sight of our outer self, is enlightened by physical light.  D.P.  165

Physical light comes from the sun of the physical world and is dead, while spiritual light comes from the spiritual world’s sun and is alive.  D.P.  166

There are three levels of light in the spiritual world:  1.  Heavenly( rich and flame-like in the third heaven), 2. spiritual (Brilliantly clear in the middle heaven), 3.  spiritual-earthly (In the lowest heaven which is like daylight in our world; it like our summer light for good people and like winter light for evil ones).  D.P.  166

The light of the spiritual world has nothing in common with the light of the physical world.  They are as different as life and death.  D.P.  166

There is light in the three levels of hell, too.  1.  In the deepest hell it’s like of glowing coals, 2.  In the middle hell it’s like that of a fireplace, 3.  In the uppermost hell it’s like that of candles or moonlight.  D.P.  167

All the people in the spiritual world see just as clearly in their own light as we do in our own daylight.  D.P. 167

When angels of heaven look into hell, they see nothing but pure darkness there.  When spirit of hell look into heaven, they see nothing but darkness there.  Heavenly wisdom is like darkness to people in hell; and conversely, hellish insanity is like darkness to people in heaven.  D.P. 167

Each one of us will come into our own light after death.  We have no sight in any other.  D.P. 167

In the spiritual world, we are all spiritual even in respect to our bodies.  D.P. 167

There are not many people who know anything ab out the enlightenment that envelops the discernment of people who are being led by the Lord.  D.P. 168

There is inner and outer enlightenment from the Lord.  Likewise, there is inner and outer enlightenment from ourselves.  D.P. 168

The inner enlightenment from the Lord is our sensing on first hearing whether what someone is telling us is true or not.  The outer enlightenment occurs in the thinking we do on that basis.  D.P. 168

The inner enlightenment from ourselves comes strictly from our own convictions.  The outer enlightenment from ourselves comes simply from the information we possess.  D.P.  168

10 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

People who are rational from enlightenment hear truthfulness instantly.  D.P.  168

The enlightened know that love is the life of faith and faith gets its life from love.  D.P. 168

The enlightened sense that they do what they intend and love to do; so loving is doing.  D.P. 168

The enlightened know that what we love, and do and intend is because of our beliefs so faith is also doing.  D.P. 168

Irreverent people cannot have a love for God or faith in God.  D.P. 168

God is omnipotent, hence everything good comes from God.  D.P. 168

The light of heaven enlightens inner rationality from the Lord.  D.P. 168

Knowing what is good and true from experience comes from outer enlightenment.  D.P. 168

Outer enlightenment sees the reasons that support it and dismisses seen illusions that undermine it.  D.P. 168

Inner enlightenment from ourselves sees things from not good and not true views like bribed judges.  D.P. 168

Bribed judges rationalize their decisions by laws and arguments to look fair.  D.P. 168

Bribed judges can see some unfairness, but they don’t want to see it, so they veil it over and even blind themselves.  D.P. 168

People construct their own ideas and confirm it by people in authority, or famous people, friends, or family.  D.P. 168

These are blind reasons or confirmations because they are based on distortions which close sight, while truth opens it.  D.P. 168

Some only see from the feeble light of their own convictions.  They cannot see truth nor fairness from a love of fairness.  D.P.  168

Outer enlightenment from ourselves is thinking and talking solely from memorized things.  One cannot come to any conclusions on one’s own.  D.P. 168

The light from spiritual enlightenment can be seen in the spiritual world.  D.P. 169

Don’t live in faith alone and not in charity nor be impressed with your own intelligence.  D.P. 170

Deeper levels of your rationality would be opened if you were brought into a community where there is real faith and real intelligence and wisdom.  D.P. 170

Being taught through the Word, and teaching and preaching from the Word is being taught directly by the Lord alone.  D.P. 171

All the teachings of the church should be based on the Word.  D.P. 172

The Word comes from the Lord and is about him.  D.P. 172

The Word is not reduced by being taught indirectly in sermons from the Word.  D.P. 172

The Word is actually divine and is able to communicate something divine and instill it into our hearts.  D.P. 172

Thinking from the Lord is thinking from the Word and even thinking by means of the Word.  D.P.  172

Union with the Lord is abiding in him and his words in us.  D.P. 172

All parts of the Word touches some part of heaven.  D.P. 172

“The Word” means divine wisdom coming from divine love.  D.P. 172


9 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

The Lord is the only source of our life.  D.P. 156

It is the intentions of our life that are led by the Lord.  It is the intelligence of our life that is taught by the Lord.  D.P. 156

We are not deprived of our sense of living on our own, because that is what makes us human.  D.P. 156

It can be proved that our life comes from the Lord alone and not from us.  D.P. 157

Every thing in us that has to do with love and wisdom comes from the Lord as the source.  D.P. 157

This single, essential reality is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.  D.P. 157

Can anyone fail to see and admit on rational grounds that there is only one essence that is the source of all essence?  D.P. 157

The sun of the angelic heaven is the one substance and form.  In created things (and created living beings) that essence, substance and form comes out variously.  D.P. 157

Everything about us that seems to be alive involves our volition and our discernment.  Everyone sees this on rational grounds.  D.P.157

We intend what we love and think about what we discern.  All our volition has to do with love and all of our discernment has to do with wisdom.  D.P. 157

Nothing that is good and true can come from any other source than from the one who is goodness itself and truth itself.  D.P. 157

Everything that moves us or occupies our thoughts comes from the Lord.  D.P. 157

Everything good and true within us that originates in us is not really good or true, only what comes from the Lord.  D.P. 157

All think that God is present wherever we happen to be which is why we pray to God as present with us.  D.P. 157

Everyone who prays to God is asking at heart for guidance—because God is able to guide.  D.P. 157

God is one in essence and in person. This God is the Lord.  The essential Deity called Jehovah the Father is the Lord from eternity.  The son conceived by Deity from eternity and born into the world is the Divine-Human One.  The Holy Spirit is the Deity emanating.  D.P. 157

The Lord created everything from his own self and not from nothing.  D.P. 157

Angels of the third heaven know that their life comes from the Lord and not from themselves.  D.P. 158

The more closely we are united to the Lord, the more clearly we seem to have our own identity, and yet the more obvious it is that we belong to the Lord.  D.P. 158

For some years Swedenborg had been granted the same kind of sense of being closely united to the Lord, and the same appearance of having his own identity.  So he was convinced that he didn’t intend of think anything on his own.  D.P. 158

The life of good people and evil people come from the same source.  Both warmth and light flow from the sun of our world.  They flow into poisonous and good fruit trees.  The forms into which the warmth flows make the difference, not the warmth itself.  D.P. 160

It is the same with the light.  Light is diversified into colors depending on the forms into which it flows.  There are beautiful and cheerful colors, and ugly and depressing ones.  Yet the light is the same in either case.  D.P. 160

The inflow from the spiritual world’s sun is spiritual warmth that is essentially love.  The spiritual light is essentially wisdom.  The forms into which they flow make the difference (our minds).  D.P. 160

The life of animals is a life of merely physical impulses.  D.P. 161

The Lord is in the whole angelic heaven the way our soul is in us.  He is in every community of heaven and likewise in every individual angel there.  Likewise, our soul is not just the soul of our whole being but the soul of every part of us.  D.P. 162


8 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

Our inner and outer thought processes can act separately as well as together.  D.P. 145

Dishonest people talk and act on the basis of their outer thought in ways that differ from their deeper thought and intent.  D.P. 145

Honest people’s inner and outer thoughts act together as they say and do what they think and intend inwardly.  D.P. 145

When we think of evils as sins and therefore try to refrain from them the inner thoughts fight against the outer thoughts and forcibly make them consent.  D.P. 145.

The “pleasures in what is good” are the benefits that arise from our caring.  D.P. 145

We are slaves when we are in our sins and liberated by the Lord when we accept truth from him through the Word.  D.P. 145

The inner self is full of desire for honesty, while the outer self enjoys cheating.  D.P. 146

Once the battle is won, the outer self delights in honest that is true caring.  Gradually thereafter our pleasure in cheating becomes distasteful to us.  D.P. 146

Sins include adultery, promiscuity, vengefulness, hatred, blasphemy and deceit.  Love of being in control due to our sense of self-importance is the head of them all.  D.P.146

We are locked in our earthly mind when we are locked in our compulsions to evil and their pleasures.  D.P. 147

As soon as we realize that our evils are sins against God and divine laws, and try to refrain from them, the Lord opens our spiritual mind.  D.P. 147

Every young person who intends to have a job, go into business, or hold some office wants to be set free throughout their apprenticeship so they can make their own decisions.  This is compelling themselves.  D.P. 148

The Christian religion has closed the door on intelligence, and the theology of faith alone has sealed it shut.  D.P. 149

The dogma that theological matters are beyond our grasp and that we should therefore not use our rationality in our approach to them is the iron wall.  D.P. 149

Not many people look into themselves and see their sins.  D.P. 149

Our outer self has to be reformed by means of our inner self.  D.P. 150

Whatever the Lord teaches, he enables us to perceive rationally.  D.P. 150

The two ways to perceive the Lord’s teachings:  1. seeing its truth within ourselves as soon as we hear it, 2.  through rational analysis.  D.P. 150

Seeing the Lord’s teachings in ourselves happens in our inner self.  Seeing them rationally happens in our outer self.  D.P. 150

It is our intelligence that is seeing through our eyes and hearing through our ears, not the reverse.  Things seen do not enter into our eyes.  Things heard do not enter our ears.  D.P. 150 

The inner self is not reformed simply by gaining knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, not, that is, simply by thinking.  D.P. 151

We are reformed inwardly by intending to do what our knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom tell us.  D.P. 151

1st step of reformation:  Not intend evil because it is from hell.  And intend good instead because it is from heaven.  D.P. 151

2nd step of reformation:  Intend to stop doing wrong.  D.P. 151

Unless we do what we intend, there is a lack of real intention inside that eventually becomes unwillingness.  D.P. 151

The only way to look into our spirits is to see what we are thinking.  Especially see what we are striving for which is our intentions.  D.P. 152

Thinking on the basis of our intentions is both intending and doing.  (If anyone has looked at someone else’s wife so as to ust for her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  [Matthew 5:28])

Evils are to be avoided as sins, otherwise they are not forgiven.  And if sins are not forgiven there is no salvation.  D.P. 153

Most people only think about faith and about (false) salvation because of their faith alone.  D.P. 153

The idea of salvation by faith alone closes the eyes so completely  that people read the Word without seeing love, caring and doing.    D.P. 153

We should b e led and taught by the Lord, from heaven, by means of the Word, and teaching and preaching from it.  D.P. 154

To all appearances, we are leading and teaching ourselves, while actually its by the Lord alone.  D.P. 154

If we convince ourselves of the appearance and not of the truth along with it, we cannot get rid of our evils as sins.  D.P. 154

People who convince themselves of both the appearance and the truth worship the Lord because He is raising them above their illusory sense of self-importance.  D.P. 154

We are given a profound sense that we are being led and taught not by ourselves but by the Lord.  D.P. 154

The rational processes of individuals who entertain both the appearance and the truth are spiritual.  D.P. 154

The rational processes of people who entertain the appearance but not the truth are bound by the material world.  D.P. 154

We are led by the Lord and taught by being enlightened.  D.P. 154


7 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

What is inside resists compulsion from the outside so definitely that it turns the other way.  D.P. 136

Our inner nature wants to be in freedom and loves its freedom.  D.P. 136

When something free feels that it is being controlled, it withdraws into itself, so to speak, and turns in the opposite direction.  D.P. 136

If we think that we are not in control of ourselves, we think therefore we are not living our own life.  D.P. 136

We should act in freedom in accordance with reason.  D.P. 136

It is harmful to compel people to worship God by threats and punishments.  D.P. 136

The ones whose worship has no inner substance is all on the surface.  D.P. 136

Compulsory worship pens in our evils, so that they lie hidden like fire in bits of wood buried in ashes that keep smoldering and spreading until they break out in flame.  D.P. 136

Worship that is not compulsory but completely voluntary does not pen in our evils.  D.P. 136

What is inside is like a master and what is outside is like a servant.  D.P. 136

Everything that makes up our discernment and volition is first given form by things that come in through our physical senses, especially sight and hearing.  D.P. 136

Self-compulsion is not contrary to our freedom and rationality.  D.P. 136

Compulsory worship is physical, lifeless, dark, and depressing.  D.P. 137

Compulsory worship is physical because it engages the body but not the mind.  D.P. 137

Compulsory worship is lifeless because our life is not in it.  D.P. 137

Compulsory worship is dark because our discernment is not in it.  D.P. 137

Compulsory worship is depressing because the joy of heaven is not in it.  D.P. 137

When voluntary worship is sincere it is spiritual, living, bright, and joyful.  D.P. 137

Voluntary worship is spiritual because there is a spirit from the Lord in it.  D.P. 137

Voluntary worship is living because there is life from the Lord in it.  D.P. 137

Voluntary worship is bright because there is wisdom from the Lord in it.  D.P. 137

Voluntary worship is joyful because theree is heaven from the Lord in it.  D.P. 137

Nothing becomes part of us except what we do in freedom and in accord with reason.  D.P. 138

Whatever is done by our own volition by means of our own discernment becomes part of us.  D.P. 138

No one is reformed in states that lack freedom and rationality.  D.P. 138

The states that lack freedom and rationality include:  states of fear, emergency, mental illness, serious physical illness, ignorance, and intellectual blindness.  D.P. 138

Fear takes away our freedom and rationality, or our “freeness” and our “reasonableness.”  D.P. 139

Fear closes the inner reaches of the mind; but love opens it.  D.P. 139

When our inner mind is closed we do very little actual thinking.  D.P. 139 

Being fearful we only are conscious of what is impinging on our feelings or our senses.  D.P. 139

Fear can never occupy our inner thought processes.  D.P. 139

Often the fear that occupies our outer thought processes is primarily a fear of losing rank and losing wealth.  D.P. 139

Outward civil and ecclesiastical penalties regard the laws that prescribe penalties only for people who speak and act contrary to the civil principles of the state and the spiritual principles of the church.  D.P. 139

These penalties do not refer to thinking contrary to those principles.  D.P. 139

Inner thinking is closed when it is wholly identified with the outer thinking.  Then it is not functioning on its own, but is governed by the outer.  D.P. 139

People can be on fire for the salvation of souls even though the fire is a hellish one.  D.P. 139

People can create their own religion which confers their own sense of eminence and splendor, and being revered as demigods and as rulers.  D.P. 139

No one is reformed by thinking of God and pleading for help in a state of emergency.  D.P. 140 

“Fearing God” means fearing to offend him, and sinning is offending.  D.P. 140

Without fearing God our love is insipid, only skin deep.  It occupies our thoughts only, and not our intentions.  D.P. 140

“States of emergency” means states when hope is threatened by danger, as happens in battles, duels, shipwrecks, falls, and fires; the sudden, threatened loss of wealth or of employment and its prestige.  D.P. 140

The reason no one is reformed in a state of mental illness is that mental illness deprives us of rationality.  D.P. 141

A healthy mind is rational, a sick one is not.  D.P. 141

“Mental illness” refers to things like depression, imagined or illusory guilt, hallucinations, mental anguish, mental anxiety and pay brought on by physical disorders.  D.P. 141

When the mind focuses on these earthly issues, it goes mad.  D.P. 141

When we are seriously ill and thinking about death and the state of our souls after death, if we had been reformed before we fell sick it can strengthen us.  D.P. 142

When we are completely withdrawn from the world, we cannot be reformed.  This holds true for people who renounce the world and all its dealings and devaote themselves totally to thoughts of God and heaven and salvation.  D.P. 142

It is pointless to think that we can repent or accept any faith while we are seriously ill.  Our repentance then and our faith are all talk and no heart.  D.P. 142

The reason no one is reformed in a state of ignorance is that our reformation takes place by means of truths and by means of our living by them.  D.P. 143

If people do not know what is true, they cannot be reformed.  However, if they long for truths because they are drawn to them, then they are reformed in the spiritual world after death.  D.P. 143

When our discernment is blind, our volition is blocked.  D.P. 144

If religion teaches a blind faith, it blinds our discernment just the way ignorance does.  D.P. 144

When our discernment is blinded by compulsions to evil it justifies the evils.  D.P. 144

Don’t let your discernment become stupid because of its debauchery.  D.P. 144

6 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proberbs

Three kinds of visions:  1. Divine visions are portrayals in heaven, 2. Demonic visions are magical events in hell, 3.  Imaginary visions are illusions of a lost mind.  D.P. 134a

Visions are not in the body but in the spirit.  Not while we are physically awake.  D.P. 134a

John was in the vision of the spirit when he wrote the Book of Revelation.  D.P. 134a

Visions are visible from heaven to the sight of your spirit and not to your physical sight.  D.P. 134a

It was foretold in Daniel 9:24 that visions would stop when the Lord came into the world.  D.P. 134a

Demonic visions are by spirits who inspire deceptive passions and visions.  D.P. 134a

Conversations with the dead may end up releasing pent-up evils erupting in blasphemy and profanation.  D.P. 134b

When we are allowed to talk with spirits (rarely with angels of heaven), they talk with us in our own everyday language and use only a few words.  D.P. 135

Good spirits never take away our freedom to think rationally; and they do not teach, either.  D.P. 135

Only the Lord teaches us and through the Word, (when we are enlightened).  D.P. 135

Swedenborg had been talking with spirits and angels for many years.  D.P. 135

The Lord was constantly before Swedenborg’s eyes as the sun in which he dwells, just as he is for angels.  D.P. 135

There are many things that we sense to be true upon hearing them, simply because they are true.  D.P. 136

Truths not supported by rational considerations can be undermined by arguments bassed on deceptive appearances and eventually denied.  D.P. 136

Can anyone be forced to believe and to love?  D.P. 136

Nor can we be forced to think what we do not think.  D.P. 136

We can be forced not to speak maliciously against earthly authority, everyday customs, the holy values of the church.  D.P. 136

These are compelled by threats and punishments.  D.P. 136

This inner level can be called our animal inner nature.  Our human inner nature dwells on a higher level and cannot be thus compelled.  D.P. 136

 

5 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

When we are about to repent we need to turn to the Lord alone.  D.P. 122

There is only one God, and the Lord is that God.  D.P. 122

The Lord instituted the Holy Supper, assuring forgiveness of sins to those who repent.  D.P. 122

During the (Holy) Supper or Communion, each participant is kept focused on the Lord alone.  D.P. 122

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.  D.P. 123

Since (the) threefold nature in a single Being exists only in the Lord, it follows that any union must be a union with him.  D.P. 123

The Lord, heaven, and eternal life are real.  D.P. 123

The Lord gives us the bliss of eternal life, since this is the nature of divine love.  D.P. 123

We cannot be united to the Lord and thus reformed, regenerated, and saved until we are allowed to act freely and rationally.  D.P. 123

Anything that is in accord with the Lord’s divine wisdom is also in accord with his divine providence.  D.P. 123

Two secrets of angelic wisdom:  1.  The Lord never acts in any detail of our being by itself unless he acts in all the details at once.  2.  The Lord acts from the center and the boundaries at the same time. 

Our spirit, the mind that is in our body, has a complete human form.  After death we are people just as much as we are in this world.  The only difference is that we have cast off the skin that made up our body in this world.  D.P. 124

The whole angelic heaven is like a single person in the Lord’s sight.  D.P. 124

The Lord acts on each of us most directly on our minds, and through them on everything in our bodies.  D.P. 124 

No one could have been saved unless the Lord had come into the world.  D.P. 124

The Lord from eternity or Jehovah came into the world and put on the clothing of a human nature (there in outermost form) in order to be present in first and last things at the same time.  D.P. 124

This enabled him to save those people whom he could save.  D.P. 124

Our center is our life’s love, and our boundaries are the contents of our outward thinking.  D.P. 125

The Lord cannot work … unless he works with us.  D.P. 125

This means that in those matters where we make (good) choices the Lord is working.  D.P. 125

We should abstain from evils as sins and turn to the Lord.  This is the only way the Lord can set aside our life’s love, (which is hellish from our birth,) and transplant a love for heavenly life in its place.  D.P. 125

Once the Lord has transplanted a love for heavenly life in place of a love for hellish life,… (we have) eventually genuine care in place of cleverness, and wise thought processes in place of malicious ones.  D.P. 126

Teachings about Life for the New Jerusalem tells which good qualities take the place of evil ones.  D.P. 126

We come to love truths of wisdom to the extent that we abstain from evils as sins and dislike them; we have faith and become spiritual to the same extent.  D.P. 126

What is repentance, the forgiveness of sins and consequently salvation?  It is:  1. explore ourselves, 2. see our sins, 3.  admit them, 4. confess them to God, 5. stop committing them.  D.P. 127

Open the Word and read it and you will see this clearly.  D.P. 128

We should not be compelled think and intend and so to believe and love in matters of our religion.  We should guide ourselves and sometimes compel ourselves.  D.P. 129

Our spirit or mind has complete freedom to think, intend, believe, and love.  D.P. 129

We can be compelled to say that we think and intend something or that we believe and love something.  Unless this is or becomes a matter of our own desire and our consequent reasoning, it is not something that we really think, intend, believe and love.   D.P. 129

We can be compelled to speak in favor of religion and to act according to religion.  But we cannot be compelled to think in its favor as a matter of our own faith and to intend it as a matter of our own love.  D.P. 129

Everyone is obliged not to speak against religion or to violate it in action, but still no one can be compelled to think and intend in its favor.  D.P. 129

No one is reformed by:  1. Miracles and signs, 2. visions or by conversations with the dead, 3. by threats or by punishment, D.P. 129

The Lord leave(s) us to convince ourselves by rational means of the truth of anything that has become a matter of faith for us because of the (a) miracle.  D.P. 130

If what we are looking at is something true, we could compare it to a good-looking, vibrant young woman or young man.  D.P. 130

(A) kind of blindness and deafness is imposed on our minds by miracles.  The same holds true for any conviction that is not looked at rationally before it becomes a conviction.  D.P. 130










A faith caused by miracles is not real faith but only second-hand belief.  It has no rational content, let alone spiritual content.  D.P. 130

Don’t have faith which is actually an outer shell with nothing inside it.  D.P. 131

When the only thing that prompts the acknowledgment, the worship, and the devotion is some miracle, then we are acting from the earthly level … not from the spiritual level.  D.P. 131

The Lord only enters us from the inside, that is, by means of the Word and by lessons and sermons based on the Word.  D.P. 131

The Lord did miracles in our presence when he was in the world:  even so, we crucified him.  D.P. 132

Good people have no desire for miracles but they believe the miracles in the Word.  D.P. 132

Good people base their thinking on the Word and therefore on the Lord and not on miracles.  D.P. 133

Evil people can actually be constrained and compelled to faith and even to worship and devotion by miracles.  This lasts only a short while.  D.P. 133

Evil people wind up calling miracles a sham, a trick, or a natural event.  This enables them to return to their evil ways.  D.P.  133

People who go back to their evil ways after being worshipful profane what is good and true in worship.  D.P. 133

If miracles happen for people who do not believe in the miracles in the Word, they would be happening constantly.  D.P. 133


4 Citations from Divine Providence book by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into proberbs

Don’t refrain from evil deeds just being afraid of the laws and for your reputation.  Do so because they are sins against God.  D.P. 101

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.  D.P. 101

Life constructs a belief system for itself and constructs a faith for itself.  D.P. 101

It is the unceasing effort of the Lord to united us to himself and himself to us and give us the joys of eternal life.  D.P. 102

Don’t trivialize your neighbor having no fear of God yourself.  D.P. 104

Don’t in your inner thinking argue against: 1. our civil laws, 2.  against the virtues of moral living, 3.  against the theological issues of spiritual life.  D.P. 104

Don’t be driven by your compulsions to evil but want to seem to the world that you are not.  D.P. 104

Have your private thoughts be the same as the thoughts you are expressing.  D.P. 104

It’s flatterers and hypocrites that have two levels of thought.  They can control themselves and prevent their inner thinking from being seen.  D.P. 104

We can reflect on our outer thought from the vantage point of our inner thought and decide whether it is evil or not.  This is how we can see anything evil in ourselves and be reformed.  D.P. 104

There are two kinds of ruling love:  Heavenly love versus Hellish love.  Heavenly love is love for the Lord and for our neighbor, and hellish love is love for ourselves and for the world.  D.P. 106

When we just love ourselves and the world we intend good to no one but ourselves.  D.P. 106

When we love the Lord and our neighbor we intend good to everyone.  D.P. 106 

In Heavenly love we love good people.  In Hellish love we love evil-oriented people.  D.P. 106

Hellish love attracts us to what is evil and false (compulsions); whereas Heavenly love attracts us to what is good and true (predilections).  D.P. 106

If you in your spirit regard evils as permissible you will have cravings for evil.  D.P. 108

There are hypocrite priests who, while preaching love to the neighbor, trivialize the neighbor having no fear of God.  D.P. 109

There are judges who make decisions on the basis of bribes and friendships while pretending to be advocates of justice.  D.P. 109

There are business people who are dishonest and deceptive at heart while they act honestly for the sake of their profits.  D.P. 109

Even adulterers talk about the chastity of marriage sounding rationally.  D.P. 109

One can see in the smallest details of the hypocrite’s façade the self-centeredness, love for the world and wiles aimed at getting a reputation for decency with profits in mind.  D.P. 109

With heavenly love people their inner and outer thinking act in unison when the talk.  D.P. 110

Good people act thoughtfully, “clothed with robes of passion” for both theological truth and good deeds of daily life.  D.P. 110

Evil compulsions combine with deviousness and intrigues to make up their own thought processes.  D.P. 111

Once evil deeds are considered permissible, then the pleasures of the evil deeds unite.  D.P. 111

Consent is the same as action.  D.P. 111 (Matthew 5:28:  “If anyone has looked at someone else’s wife so as to lust for her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”)

In the spiritual world our cravings for evil and their pleasures look like fires, hence the term “hellfire”.  D.P. 112

If our cravings for evil are not healed they spread like floods.  D.P. 112

The more thieves steal the more obsessed they are with stealing.  It’s the same with cheating and cheaters, with hatred and vengefulness, with hedonism and gluttony, with promiscuity, blasphemy, etc.   D.P. 112

The love of power for self-aggrandizement grows to the extent that restraints are relaxed.  The same holds true for the love of possessions.  D.P. 112

We cannot sense the compulsions that underlie our own evils.  Their pleasures seduce our thinking.  We only discover this from some other source that they are evil.  D.P. 113

Madness and distortion rule the realms of evil-oriented people.  D.P. 113

False imaginary constructs and arguments based on illusions  are used to make distortions seem true and to be accepted as true.  D.P.113


3 Citations from Divine Providence by Emanuel Swedenborg simplified into provberbs

The Lord cannot rid us of (the) evil (in our outer nature) without our help.  D.P. 114

In all Christian churches the accepted teaching is that before we come to take Holy Communion we should:
1.     Examine ourselves
2.     See and admit our sins
3.     Repent by fraining from them and rejecting them because they come from the devil.
Otherwise our sins are not forgiven, and we are damned.  D.P. 114

When people hear sermons on salvation by faith alone, they dismiss the Holy Communion vow.  D.P. 114

All Christian churches share the basic conviction that we need to examine ourselves, see and admit our sins, and then refrain from them; and (that) otherwise we face not salvation but damnation.  D.P. 114

Think about this, then, with some clarity of mind and if you are religious you will see that repentance from sins is the pathway to heaven.  D.P. 114

You will see that faith apart from repentance is not really faith and that people who are without faith because they are without repentance are on the road to hell.  D.P. 114

Some people accept a faith separate from charity.  D.P. 115

Paul lists the laws of faith and says that they are in fact deeds of charity.  D.P. 115

(In the Word) are lists of evil deeds (which) people who do them cannot enter heaven.  D.P. 115

Whatever we hear, see, think, intend, say, and do seems to belong to us completely.  If it did not seem like this, we would not be able to accept divine truth, decide to do good, or internalize love and wisdom.  We would have no charity and faith.  D.P. 116

Does it not seem exactly as though we ourselves think about what is good and true in spiritual, civil, and moral matters?  D.P. 116

We should do what is good and think what is true.  D.P. 116

We are to expel evils.  D.P. 116

Many people do not know that they are involved in evil.  They do not do evil things outwardly.  They are afraid of civil laws and of losing their reputations.  D.P. 117 

Avoid evil deeds on religious grounds because they are sins and are in conflict with God.  D.P. 117

Examine your thoughts and intentions.  D.P. 117

Don’t believe that the law does not condemn sins.  Pay attention to them.  Don’t doubt whether there are such things as sins.  They are sins in God’s sight.  D.P. 117

Natural moralists believe that everything depends on our civic and moral life.  D.P. 117

Natural moralists (only) cultivate a reputation and a name for decency and honest for the sake of position or profit.  D.P. 117

Struggle against sins.  D.P. 118

Don’t only prevent sins from being visible in the world  D.P. 118

The Lord cannot cleanse us until we have done our part.  D.P. 119

Cooperate with the Lord. D.P. 119

We are forms of hell when we are in the grip of our compulsions and the evils they cause.  D.P. 119

The Lord is constantly pressing us, urging us, to open the door.  D.P. 119

There are infinite things in the inner state of our minds.  D.P.  120

Our thought or our inner self is our actual spirit.  D.P. 120

Our senses tell us nothing about the way our minds or souls work.  D.P. 120

We do not know how the Lord is at work in our minds or souls.  D.P. 120

Don’t believe:
1.     Simply believing what the church teaches cleanses us from our evils. 
2.     (Just) doing good cleanses us.
3.     (Just) knowing, discussing, and teaching about churchly matters cleanses us.
4.     (Just) reading the Word and devotional literature cleanses us.
5.     (Just) going to church and listening to sermons and taking Communion cleanses us.
6.     (Just) renouncing the world and being resolutely devout cleanses us.
None of these cleanses us unless we examine ourselves, see our sins, admit them, accept responsibility for them, and repent by not committing them any more.  By the Lord’s power.  D.P. 121

Don’t do 1-6 for credit or hypocritically.  D.P. 121


2 Citations from Divine Providence by Swedenborg simplified into proverbs

Only people who love their neighbor as themselves can  avoid doing any violence to any soul whatever.  D.P. 94  (Divine Providence book section 94 by Emanuel Swedenborg, 1877, Sweden)

The “Ten Commandments” of Moses are separated into two parts:  1.  Loving our neighbor, 2.  Loving the Lord.  If we don’t want to do #2 we won’t be able to do #1.  D.P. #95

Without discernment and volition we would not be human beings.  Discernment is distinguishing right from wrong.  Volition is wanting to do right and not wrong.  D.P. 96

The Lord gives us Freedom which is why we can want to do right or want to do wrong.  D.P. 96

The Lord’s gift of rationality is how we know what is reasonable.  D.P. 96

Evil-oriented people misuse their ability to discern what is true and intend what is good.  D.P. 96

Our discernment and intention from the Lord lead irrevocably to eternal life, heaven’s life from the core of our being to its outer limits.  D.P. 96

Act from freedom and in accord with reason.  D.P. 97

Don’t do evil out of a love for doing evil.  D.P. 97

Don’t justify doing or thinking evil.  That is a kind of slavery, imitation of reason, distorted reason and a façade made up of rationalizations.  D.P. 97

The Lord leads us away from evil-orientation through our freedom.  D.P. 97

The Lord plants good things in us.  D.P. 97 

Idleness distorts or shuts down the deeper levels of the mind.  D.P. 98

Some people resolutely deny the Lord’s divine nature and the holiness of the Word all the way to the end of their lives.  D.P. 98

Atheists by arguments based on visual evidence attribute everything to the material world and nothing to Divinity.  D.P. 98

Real freedom and real rationality are difficult for people who convince themselves of false religious principles. D.P. 98

Children’s and youth’s minds are opened only gradually at the deeper levels by maturity.  D.P. 98

When you don’t want to understand you turn back to your own thoughts and you stop understanding.  D.P. 99

How do you attain to real freedom and real rationality?  Abstain from evils as sins. 

The Lord cannot fully enter us unless what is His opposite, evil and false, has been banished.  D.P. 100

Banish the devil so the Lord can enter and banish hell so heaven can enter.  D.P. 100

We’re in hell when we engage in evil pursuits.  D.P. 101

Don’t convince yourself of a faith that is devoid of caring.  D.P. 101

If we don’t know what evil is we inevitably wind up loving it because of the false pleasure it offers us. D.P. 101

He or she who neglect thinking about evil is constantly involved in it.  D.P. 101

Don’t think our evils are hidden from God and would be forgiven if they came to light.  D.P. 101 

Refrain from evil deeds.  D.P. 101

Why not even think in our spirit of doing evil deeds?  Because whatever we think in our spirit in this world we do after we leave this world when we become spirits.  D.P. 101