The Lord is life itself. We are recipients of life. We give life unique forms because of our unique shapes as receptacles, and through free will we can choose how fully we will receive life. But we don't have life of our own. It follows from this that the more we turn toward the Lord and receive life, the more alive we will be; and the more we turn away the more dead we will be. It also follows that believing life is our own – with all the loves, the thoughts and the power that entails – is actually the antithesis of life.

This is the state of those in the deepest hells, who reject everything of the Lord, even His existence, and claim all life as their own. They are, in fact, only alive because the Lord forces life on them in the amount necessary to sustain existence.

This is, in a sense, what is represented by the rib – which is human, and is alive, but only in the most limited way. When the people of the Most Ancient Church (Adam) wanted to lead themselves and sense life as their own, the Lord had to use that most dead aspect of them to grant their wish. He had to use that bone, which represents our most hellish potential, what we would be if we were to reject the Lord completely.

But then the Lord did something miraculous. He turned that bone into living flesh, into a new person: the woman Eve. This represents that the Lord built that most dead, most hellish aspect of us up into something which felt life as its own, but could acknowledge that life actually came from the Lord, and could thus again be a recipient of life. It wasn't quite as pure as before; people could no longer commune directly with the Lord. But they had what they wanted instead: a sense of self.

The Writings call this – both the rib and the woman – by the Latin word proprium, essentially meaning "as of self." The rib represents the proprium on its own, which is hellish. The woman represents the proprium given life by the Lord.

(Referencias: Arcana Coelestia 151, 152, 153, 154, 155)

153. It is said that the rib was built into a woman, and not as previously, when regeneration was the subject, that the woman was created, or formed, or made. The word 'built' is used because building means reconstructing that which has fallen down. This is how it is used in the Word, where 'building' has reference to evils, 'raising up' to falsities, and 'renewing' to both, as in Isaiah,

They will build up the waste places of old, they will raise up the former desolations, and they will renew the waste cities, the desolations of generation upon generation. Isaiah 61:4.

'Waste places' here and elsewhere stands for evils, 'desolations' for falsities. The expression 'to build' is applied to the former, 'to raise up' to the latter, and this distinction is also carefully observed in other places in the Prophets: in Jeremiah,

Again I will build you, that you may be built, O virgin of Israel. Jeremiah 31:4.