or to put it another way, once it is aware that love and wisdom come
from Jehovah God through the sun that surrounds him. The heat radiat-
ing from that sun is essentially love, and the light radiating from it is
essentially wisdom. From this it becomes as clear as day that love and
wisdom are united at their source—namely, God, who is the origin of
that sun.
This point can be visualized [by thinking] of the sun in the physical
world. It is nothing but fire. Heat radiates from its fieriness; light radi-
ates from the glow of its fieriness. At the outset, then, heat and light are
one. [ 2 ] As they radiate, however, they are separated, as you can tell from
the fact that some objects they strike take in more heat and some more
light. A more extreme separation occurs in us. With us, the light of life
(intelligence) and the heat of life (love) are distinct. This separation exists
because we need to be reformed and regenerated, and this will not hap-
pen unless the light of life, or intelligence, teaches us what we should
want and what we should love.
It is important to know that God is continually building a partner-
ship between love and wisdom in us, but if we are not facing God and
believing in him, we ourselves are constantly separating the two.
The greater the partnership within us, then, between these two
things—the goodness of love or of goodwill and the truth of wisdom or
of faith—the more we become an image of God and are raised toward
heaven and even into heaven where the angels are. On the other hand,
the more these two things are separated in us, the more we become an
image of Lucifer and of the dragon and are cast down from heaven to
earth and then below the earth into hell.
When love and wisdom have a partnership in us, we become like a
tree in springtime, when heat joins equally with light to make the tree
bud, flower, and bear fruit. On the other hand, when love and wisdom
are separated in us we become like a tree in winter, when heat withdraws
from light, making the tree bare and bald of all its foliage.
[ 3 ] When spiritual heat, or love, withdraws from spiritual light, or
wisdom, or equally when goodwill withdraws from faith, we become like
humus that rots and becomes acidic—worms breed in it, and if seedlings
come up at all, their leaves are covered with little leaf-eating grubs. Then
enticements to love evil, which are really cravings, burst forth in us.
Rather than controlling and restraining them, our intelligence loves
them, takes care of them, and feeds them.
singke
(singke)
#1