8857. It is similar with love to the Lord. When that love is dominant it is present in every aspect of his life, as when he loves his monarch or loves his parent. While he is in their presence love towards them shines from every part of his face, is heard in every syllable of his speech, and is apparent in every one of his gestures. This is how to understand the command ¹ to have the Lord unceasingly before one's eyes and to love Him above all, with all one's soul and all one's heart.

სქოლიოები:

8865. How to understand 'reigning universally' becomes clear from what has been stated and shown above in 8853-8858. What reigns universally with a person is that which is present in every idea of his thought and every desire of his will, consequently which constitutes his actual mind or life. That which reigns universally within a person should be the Lord, for that which reigns universally within the angels in heaven is the Lord, and they are for this reason said to be 'in the Lord'. The Lord starts to reign in a person when he not only believes that everything good and everything true comes from Him but also loves it to be so. Angels not only truly believe but also perceive it to be so, and that is why their life is the Lord's life within them. The life of their will is the life of love coming from the Lord, and the life of their understanding is the life of faith coming from the Lord. All this shows what is meant when it is said that the Lord is the All in all of heaven, and that He is heaven. When the Lord reigns universally with a member of the Church, as He does with angels in heaven, the Lord is within every truth and good of faith residing with him, just as the heart is within all the blood vessels, since they derive from it their origin, and the blood which is their life.

[2] In addition it should be recognized that the kind of spirits or the kind of angels who are present with a person is determined by the nature of what reigns universally in him. The reason for this is that what reigns universally is the being (esse) of anyone's life, 8853, 8858. All the cheerfulness and all the contentment a person has, even when thinking about other matters, springs from it. For in it the angels and spirits present with him reside and so to speak have a dwelling-place; their gladness enters the person and creates the cheerfulness and contentment. The person does not realize that they are the source of it because a person does not know that his life flows in, or that what reigns universally constitutes his life, or that when something touches this core of his life the effect is like that which visual objects have on the pupil of the eye, that is, pleasure when they are beautiful and pain when they are not beautiful. The term 'universally' is used because it implies every single thing within the whole, so that what reigns universally is that which exists in each individual part, see 1919 (end), 5949, 6159, 6338, 6482, 6483, 6571, 7648, 8067.

7887. 'Even on the first day you shall remove yeast from your houses' means that there must be no falsity whatever in good. This is clear from the meaning of the first 'day' as the beginning of that state, day' being state, see just above in 7881; from the meaning of 'yeast' as falsity, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'house' as good, dealt with in 2233, 2134, 2559, 3652, 3720, 7833-7835, 7848. From these meanings it is evident that 'on the first day you shall remove yeast from your houses' means that from the very beginning of that state there must be no falsity whatever in good. So far as good is concerned, the forms of it are unendingly various; and they derive their specific quality from truths. Consequently the good has the same quality as the truths that enter it. The truths that enter are rarely genuine. Instead they are appearances of truth, and also falsities, though not however opposites of truths. Even so, when these falsities enter good - which happens when a person leads a life in accordance with them - as a result of ignorance, ignorance that has innocence within it, and when the person's end in view is that of doing good, they are regarded by the Lord and in heaven not as falsities but as the equivalents of truth. And according to the character of the person's innocence they are accepted as truths. Such is the way that good obtains its specific quality. From all this one may recognize what is meant by the explanation that there must be no falsity whatever in good.