also reforms and at length regenerates the natural man, and implants in
it truths in the place of falsities and goods in the place of evils.
This the Lord does through spiritual love, which is a love for truth and
good. Man is then placed in the midst between two loves, between the
love of evil and the love of good; and when the love of evil recedes the
love of good takes its place. The love of evil recedes solely through a
life according to the commandments of the Decalogue, that is, through
refraining from evils there enumerated because they are sins, and
finally shunning them as infernal.

In a word, so long as man does not refrain from evils because they are
sins the spiritual mind is shut; but as soon as he refrains from evils
because they are sins the spiritual mind is opened, and with that mind
heaven also. And when heaven is opened man comes into another light in
respect to all things of the church, heaven, and eternal life; although
so long as man lives in this world the difference between this and the
former light is scarcely noticeable, and for the reason that in the
world man thinks naturally even about spiritual things, and until he
passes from the natural into the spiritual world spiritual things are
enclosed in natural ideas; but in the spiritual world spiritual things
are disclosed, perceived, and made evident. (A.E., n. 970.)

So far as man refrains from evils and shuns and turns away from them as
sins, good flows in from the Lord. The good that flows in is an
affection for knowing and understanding truths, and an affection for
willing and doing goods. But man cannot refrain from evils by shunning
and turning away from them of himself, for he himself is in evils from
his birth, and thus from nature; and evils cannot of themselves shun
evils, for this would be like a man's shunning his own nature, which is
impossible; consequently it must be the Lord, who is Divine good and