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".

Friday, February 4, 2011

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


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