30. It is because the very essence of the Divine is love and wisdom that we have two abilities of life. From the one we get our discernment, and from the other volition. Our discernment is supplied entirely by an inflow of wisdom from God, while our volition is supplied entirely by an inflow of love from God. Our failures to be appropriately wise and appropriately loving do not take these abilities away from us. They only close them off; and as long as they do, while we may call our discernment "discernment" and our volition "volition," essentially they are not. So if these abilities really were taken away from us, everything human about us would be destroyed--our thinking and the speech that results from thought, and our purposing and the actions that result from purpose.

We can see from this that the divine nature within us dwells in these two abilities, in our ability to be wise and our ability to love. That is, it dwells in the fact that we are capable of being wise and loving. I have discovered from an abundance of experience that we have the ability to love even though we are not wise and do not love as we could. You will find this experience described in abundance elsewhere.

334. I have also said that the working of divine providence continues forever, because all angels grow more perfect in wisdom forever. Each of us does so, though, on whatever level of desire for what is good and true we had when we left this world. This is the level that is perfected to eternity. Anything beyond this level is outside an angel, not within, and whatever is outside cannot be developed within. This is the meaning of the good measure, pressed down, shaken, and overflowing, that would be poured into the laps of people who forgave others and were generous to them (Luke 7:37, 38 [Luke 6:37-38]), people who are living good and caring lives.