Begin a new life. This is the hardest part—we have to put our intention into practice. It’s all right if we don’t always succeed, as long as we learn from our mistakes. The important thing is that we never stop trying to do better.
It’s important to remember that this part of the process does not end with prayer. It begins with prayer. After prayer, we must do all we can to work towards the spiritual goals we have set for ourselves. We must, of course, believe that God of our understanding is working the miracle of inner change within us. But we must also believe that it cannot happen without our cooperation and do the necessary work. Our real efforts become the fulfillment of our prayers.
“It is amazing but true that it is easy for any of us to rebuke someone else who is intending to do evil and say, ‘Don’t do that—that’s a sin!’ And yet it is difficult for us to say the same thing to ourselves. The reason is that saying it to ourselves requires a movement of the will, but saying it to someone else requires only a low level of thought based on things we have heard. . . .
“All people who do good actions as a religious practice avoid actual evils. It is extremely rare, though, that people reflect on the inner realms that belong to their will. They suppose that because they are involved in good actions they are not involved in evil actions, and even that their goodness covers up their evil.
“But, my friend, to abstain from evils is the first step in gaining goodwill. The Word teaches this. The Ten Commandments teach it. Baptism teaches it. The Holy Supper teaches it.
“Reason, too, teaches it. How could any of us escape from our evils or drive them away without ever taking a look at ourselves? How can our goodness become truly good without being inwardly purified?
“I know that all devout people and also all people of sound reason who read this will nod and see it as genuine truth; yet even so, only a few people are going to do what it says.” (True Christianity #535)
Reformation and regeneration are so closely linked that it’s easiest to think about them together, like a ramp that gradually proceeds from one level to another as opposed to two distinct steps. And in order to understand the difference between the two, it’s important to understand two key concepts from Swedenborg’s theology: the will and the intellect (also translated “volition” and “discernment” or “understanding”).
The intellect performs the activity we associate with our brain: we see or hear information, we remember it, we think about it and draw conclusions.
The will is the part of our mind that moves us, that urges us to action. In the context of regeneration, you could think of our old, unregenerated will as the egotistical part of ourselves that wants everything for itself, that wants all its desires to be satisfied, that doesn’t care about anybody else. Part of the process of regeneration is reforming the old will, or, as Swedenborg says, subjugating it so that a new will might be born within us.
The will and the intellect, together, form the mind. Our intellect is the part of us that restrains our old will from running amok. We don’t always succeed in resisting our most basic urges, but we try because we’ve learned from our parents and from society in general that certain things are wrong, and we’ll be punished if we’re caught. Swedenborg tells us that in order for regeneration to begin, we have to first learn what’s right and what’s wrong, and then decide intellectually that we’re going to change. That’s the repentance stage.
What follows is a struggle between the old will and the new intellect (or our new understanding). Our old will doesn’t want to change, and at first we have to force ourselves, with God’s help, to do the right thing. This is the reformation stage: we do good deeds, but it’s difficult. We may make excuses to be lazy, to walk past someone who needs help instead of stopping, to say no when we know we should say yes (or vice versa!). But the little voice in the back of our mind keeps reminding us to do better.
The more we do what we know is right, the more we act in a loving way, the easier it gets, and the more we want to be good. Gradually, our old will is replaced with a new will, one that comes from the Lord, and our intellect is raised up, higher and higher as we continue to think in increasingly more spiritual ways. This is regeneration.
This process continues throughout our lifetime—and beyond. “Our regeneration does not happen in a moment. It gradually unfolds from the beginning all the way to the end of our lives in this world; and after this life is over, it continues and is perfected” (True Christianity #610). In fact, it’s not possible to be fully regenerated while we are still in our physical bodies, because no matter how much good we have at the core of our being, our human nature will always try to lead us astray. But Swedenborg says that people who begin the process of regeneration are in the company of angels while still on earth, and after they die they go to join those angelic communities. There the process of human perfection continues.
This is true even of people who aren’t Christian: if a person is good and loving in this world and strives to set their ego aside in order to help others, that person is bound for heaven regardless of their faith.
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