Section One: Your Job is You, page 117

Golden Rule: “Do for others as you would like them to do for you.” (Luke 6:31)
Don’t try to change your partner, change yourself.

The beginning of Swedenborg’s book on Married Love is all about people who thought heaven would be one thing, but found out that it was not.
We often think relationships will be one thing, and we find out that they’re not.
We often think relationships are about having the same interests, or perpetual romance, or whatever. But in reality, relationships are about serving others, not yourself! And at the same time they’re about changing yourself, not your partner.

page 119

Loving oneself has it’s proper place, it’s just that it’s proper place is beneath a love for the neighbor and God:
“Since in the perfect man the love of heaven holds the highest place, and forms, as it were, the head of all that follows from it, the love of the world being beneath it like the chest beneath the head, and the love of self beneath this like the feet, it follows, that if love of self were to form the head, the man would be completely inverted.” (TCR 405)

No one is unworthy of love.

page 120

If you don’t think of yourself as lovable (as one of God’s children) then it will be hard for someone to love you.
Love is not just about generously giving, but it’s also about gratefully receiving.
Look for the good in you, and use it for good
Parable of the talents.
“To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who are unfaithful, even what they have will be taken away.” (Matt 25:29)

page 121

“I’m not talking about conceit, I’m talking about a healthy respect for yourself.”

Shift focus from complaining about others to appreciating others:
“People who have goodwill hardly notice the evil in another person, but instead notice all his or her good and true qualities, and they put a good interpretation on the bad and wrong things. All angels are like this. It is something they have from the Lord, who bends everything bad into something good.” (AC 1079)

page 122

Opportunity to share in your happiness.

What is loving?
Love is “wishing to be one with someone” (TCR 43)
Love is “devoting oneself to another’s happinss” (TCR 43)
Love is “being loved by another, thus essentially conjunction” (DLW 47)
Love is “feeling the joy of another as joy in oneself” (DLW 47)
Love is “genuine when wisdom is united with it” (CL 65)
Love is “the joy that resides in serving another for loves’s sake and not one’s own” (AC 548)
Love is “doing good for another when the possibility exists, and doing it with all one’s heart” (AC 6073)
Love is “loving the good and truth in another” (HD 106, TCR 417)
Love is “being charitable towards another, not for the sake of reward but for the sake of good, and the good in the other.” (LJ 39)

“Your ability to generate feelings of love is unlimited, and when you love you are in complete and utter harmony with [GOD]”