359. One person can live like another in outward form. As long as there is an inward acknowledgment of the Deity and an intent to serve our neighbor, we can become rich, dine sumptuously, live and dress as elegantly as befits our station and office, enjoy pleasures and amusement, and meet our worldly obligations for the sake of our position and of our business and of the life of both mind and body. So we can see that it is not as hard to follow the path to heaven as many people believe. The only difficulty is finding the power to resist love for ourselves and love of the world and preventing those loves from taking control, since they are the source of all our evils. 1 The fact that it is not so hard as people believe is what is meant by these words of the Lord: "Learn of me that I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls: for my yoke is easy and my burden light" (Matthew 11:29-30). The reason the Lord's yoke is easy and his burden light is that to the extent that we resist the evils that well up from love for ourselves and the world, we are led by the Lord and not by ourselves. Then the Lord resists those things within us and removes them.
Bilješke:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] From love for oneself and for the world come all evils: 1307-1308, 1321, 1594, 1691, 3413, 7255, 7376, 7480 [7490?], 7488, 8318, 9335, 9348, 10038, 10742; which are contempt for others, hostility, hatred, vengefulness, cruelty, and deceit: 6667, 7372-7374, 9348, 10038, 10742. We are born into these loves, so our hereditary evils are in them: 694, 4317, 5660.
