Uses are the tangible, expressed forms of love to the neighbor. We can think of things we might do to help a neighbor, and we can want to do something to help, but it’s not until we deploy the thoughts and act on our will, that we actually perform a use.

Doing actual useful service completes the trilogy of end, cause, and effect -- the action being the effect. Further, the primary theater for charity is not the giving of alms to various people or causes, though that is important, but to do our job "honestly, rightly, justly and faithfully" (as it says, in "Divine Love and Wisdom" n. 431), as best we can, not because it helps us but because it helps the common good. And because this is what the Lord requires of us.

Heaven is called a kingdom of uses because all angels are busy doing useful tasks every day, and angels love it so, because these tasks are perfectly suited to the angel doing them, allowing each person to delight in what he is doing every day to his or her heart’s content. (See Heaven and Hell 403.)

One of the key descriptions of heaven in the doctrines is that of a single grand human being, not because of shape but because of function. Modern science has learned a lot about the human body. We can know that we are made up of billions of different kinds of cells, brain cells, muscle cells, bone cells, and on and on, and that all these cells are busy little shops, taking in raw materials from the blood and turning out products the body needs and sending them around. We can see that each cell in our body is analogous to a society of angels, as we are told that there are societies in the provinces of all parts of the body performing the spiritual correspondent of what the various body parts do in an anatomic or physiologic way. So just as our cells all perform uses in our body to keep the whole body healthy and active, so do all angelic societies, and within those individual angels. Thus heaven can continue to exist, grow and perform its uses toward those of us still down here in the material world.

A similar kind of picture, though in a more imperfect way, shows how a political entity, a country, or state, or city can operate with all the various jobs contributing to a vibrant commonwealth, with people trading goods and services and doing all the things that make a community live. But it works better when all the citizens are led internally by love to the neighbor rather than love of self.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 454, 997, 4222, 4984, 7038; Divine Love and Wisdom 65, 213, 297; Heaven and Hell 64, 387, 403, 517 [2])

517. Teaching in the heavens differs from teaching on earth in that [there] information is not consigned to memory but to life, since spirits' memory is in their life. They actually accept and absorb whatever agrees with their life and do not accept, much less absorb, what does not agree. This is because spirits are affections, and therefore have a human form that resembles their affections.

[2] Since this is their nature, they are constantly breathing in a desire to know what is true, for the sake of constructive living. The Lord in fact sees to it that we love the constructive activities that suit our gifts. This love is intensified by our hope of becoming angels. Further, since all the activities of heaven focus on a common use, which is the welfare of the Lord's kingdom (which now is our country), and since we fulfill our distinctive individual functions to the extent that they focus directly and intimately on that common use, all the countless distinctive and individual functions are good and heavenly. This means that for each of us an affection for what is true is united to an affection for usefulness to the point that they act as one. A true understanding of use is sown in this way, so that the truths we learn are true perceptions of what is useful. This is how angelic spirits are taught and prepared for heaven.

[3] There are various ways in which an affection for the truth suited to usefulness is instilled, many of them unknown in the world, primarily by depictions of useful activities. These can be presented in thousands of ways in the spiritual world, with such grace and charm that they permeate spirits all the way from the deeper levels of their minds to the outer levels of their bodies and therefore affect the whole person. As a result, spirits virtually become their constructive lives; so when they arrive in the communities their instruction has prepared them for, they are in their own life when they are engaged in their useful activities. ¹

We may gather from this that awareness, which is an outward form of truth, does not get anyone into heaven. Rather, what gets us in is the useful life that is granted through knowledge.

Footnotes:

3646. So far as influx and correspondences are concerned, it is similar with animals as with men. That is to say, with an animal there is an influx from the spiritual world and an afflux from the natural world which hold it together and give it life. But the actual operation of that influx and afflux varies according to the forms which animals' souls take and consequently which their bodies take. It is like the light of the world which flows into varying objects on earth to the same degree and in the same way yet acts in differing ways within differing forms. In some it produces beautiful colours, in others horrid colours. Thus when spiritual light flows into the souls of animals its reception is completely different, and the effect it therefore has on the activity of their souls is different from its reception and the effect it has when it flows into the souls of human beings.

[2] For the souls of human beings exist on a higher level and in a more perfect state, and are such that they are able to look upwards, and so to heaven and the Lord. Consequently the Lord is able to join them to Himself and grant them eternal life. But the souls of animals are such that they cannot do other than look downwards, thus merely to earthly things, and so can be joined only to these. This is also why they perish together with the body. It is their ends in view that show what the life possessed by man is like and what that possessed by a beast is like. Man is able to have spiritual and celestial ends in view, and to see, acknowledge, and believe them, and to have an affection for them. But beasts can have none but natural ends in view. Thus man is able to dwell in the Divine sphere of ends and purposes which exist in heaven and which constitute heaven, whereas beasts can dwell in no other sphere than that of ends and purposes which exist on earth. Ends are nothing else than loves, for the things which people love they have as an end in view.

[3] The reason why most people do not know how to distinguish their own life from that of beasts is that the two are externally alike. Both are interested in and set their hearts solely on earthly, bodily, and worldly objects. Such people also believe that their life is similar to the life which beasts possess and that like these they are going to become nothing at all when they die. For what spiritual and celestial things may be they do not know because they are not interested in them. From this comes the insanity of our own times of people comparing themselves to animals and not recognizing any internal distinction. But anyone who believes in the existence of celestial and spiritual things, that is, who allows spiritual light to flow in and influence him, sees quite the reverse, and also sees the extent to which he is superior to animals. The life of animals however will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with as a separate subject.