[ 3 ] Then I opened my mind and said, “You don’t understand it,
because your thinking is based on the way things appear, and thinking
that is based on an appearance is mistaken. You have this mistaken view
because you believe that everything we intend and think, and everything
we do and say, is inside us and therefore comes from us, when in fact
none of it is inside us except a condition that enables us to receive what
flows in. We are not life in itself; we are just organs that receive life. The
Lord is life in itself, as in fact he says in John: ‘As the Father has life in
himself, so he has also given the Son to have life in himself ’ (John 5 : 26 ;
see also 11 : 25 ; 14 : 6 , 19 ).
[ 4 ] “There are two things that constitute life: love and wisdom, or
what is the same thing, goodness related to love and truth related to wis-
dom. These two qualities flow in from God. We receive them as if they
were ours. In fact, because we feel them that way, they emanate from us
as if they really were our own. The Lord grants us this feeling so that
what flows in will have an effect on us, and be accepted and stay with us.
All that is evil also flows in, not from God but from hell. We feel pleasure
as we take evil in, because we were born that way. Therefore we receive
no greater amount of goodness from the Lord than the amount of evil we
have removed as if we were removing it on our own. It is our repentance
and our faith in the Lord that does this removing.
[ 5 ] “Love and wisdom, and goodwill and faith, or (to put it even
more generally) the goodness of love and goodwill and the truth of wis-
dom and faith, flow in. Things that flow in seem to us to be totally our
own, and therefore they go out from us as if they were our own. The
truth of this can be clearly seen by analogy with sight, hearing, smell,
taste, and touch. Everything that is perceived by the organs of these
senses flows in from outside us but feels like it is inside us. The same is
true for our organs of inner sensation, with just one difference: things
that are spiritual and intangible flow into our organs of inner sensation,
while things that are earthly and tangible flow into our organs of physical
sensation.
“Briefly put, each of us is an organ that receives life from God.
Therefore we become receptive to goodness depending on how thor-
oughly we stop doing evil. The power to stop doing evil is something the
Lord grants to every one of us. He gives us the ability to intend and to
understand. Whatever we do intentionally, based on our understanding
(or to put it another way, using our free will and following the reasoning
of our intellect) becomes a permanent part of us. The Lord uses these
§461 goodwill & good actions 553