How God Is Present In Our Process Of Rebirth | NCE Spotlight

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:


2960:2


Ephron said, “The field I give you; and the cave that is in it—to
you I give it” (verse 11). These words meant that they wanted to
prepare themselves on their own, so far as the requirements of
religion and faith went, or in other words, to reform themselves.
This is what the first stage is like for people who are reforming
(see §2946). When they learn more truth, or more about the faith,
however, they reach a second stage, in which they agree [to let
the Lord reform them] but still want to do it themselves. That is
the stage the current verse focuses on, but a third is soon
depicted, in which they really believe that the Lord reforms
them.


[2] . . . the reasons why they still want to reform
themselves—even when they progress in their knowledge of truth
(or faith) and acknowledge that the Lord does it—are these: The
cloud of ignorance breaks up only gradually. It takes time to
confirm and strengthen the truth. And goodness is perfected as we
absorb knowledge of the truth. Real goodness, which forms the
receiving ground for truth, enables us not only to acknowledge
but even to believe that the Lord is the one who reforms us. This
stage is the third, and a fourth follows it: We actually perceive
that the Lord does the reforming. There are not many who reach
this stage during bodily life, because it is an angelic one, but
people who have been reborn enter it in the other world. 


3286:2–3


[2] With human beings the case is this: When we are being reborn,
the Lord instills goodness—benevolence toward our neighbor—into
our rational mind, and into this benevolence, or goodness, he
introduces truth brought up out of our earthly self. At that
point our earthly level has not yet been reborn, and we can
recognize the fact from our inner or rational self’s frequent
battles with our outward or earthly self. As long as they fight,
our earthly part is not regenerate, and when it is not
regenerate, the truth we have in our rational part is infertile.
As in general, so in every particular: on any issue over which
our rational thinking conflicts with our earthly thinking, the
truth in our rational mind is said to be barren.


[3] The main thing on which the work of regeneration hinges is
the effort to bring our earthly self into correspondence with our
rational self, not only as a whole but also in particular, and it
is through our rationality that the Lord reduces our earthly self
into correspondence. His method is to instill goodness into our
rational mind, plant seeds of truth in the soil of that goodness,
and then through rational truth reduce the earthly plane to
obedience. When it obeys, it corresponds; and the more it
corresponds, the more we are reborn.


2979:2, 3


This is how matters stand with the rebirth of spiritual people:
First they learn the true ideas that belong to faith, and from
then on the Lord maintains in them a desire for truth. The
goodness that faith calls for, which is charity toward their
neighbor, is instilled in them at the same time, but in such a
way that they hardly realize it, since it hides within their
desire for truth. The purpose is for truth, which belongs to
faith, to unite with goodness, which belongs to charity. As time
passes, their desire for the truth belonging to faith grows, and
they look to truth for the sake of the goal, which is goodness,
or (to put it another way) life. This they do more and more. In
this way, truth is instilled into goodness, and when that
happens, their life becomes steeped in goodness that accords with
the truth instilled into it. So they act (or seem to themselves
to act) out of goodness. Up till this time, the truth
constituting faith is the most important consideration to them,
but afterward, the goodness constituting life is. When the two
switch, the person has been reborn.