"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me."
--_Matthew_, XI, 29
There are those who believe that it is difficult to live the life
which leads to heaven, which is called the spiritual life, because
they have heard that one must renounce the world, must divest himself
of the lusts called the lusts of the body and the flesh, and must live
spiritually. They take this to mean that they must cast away worldly
things, which are especially riches and honors; that they must go
continually in pious meditation on God, salvation, and eternal life;
and must spend their life in prayers and in reading the Word and pious
books. But those who renounce the world and live in the spirit in this
manner acquire a melancholy life, unreceptive of heavenly joy. To
receive the life of heaven a man must by all means live in the world
and engage in its duties and affairs and by a moral and civil life
receive the spiritual life.
That it is not so difficult to live the life of heaven, as some
believe, may be seen from this: when a matter presents itself to a man
which he knows to be dishonest and unjust, but to which he inclines,
it is only necessary for him to think that it ought not to be done
because it is opposed to the Divine precepts. If a man accustoms
himself to think so, and from so doing establishes a habit of so
thinking, he is gradually conjoined to heaven. So far as he is
conjoined to heaven the higher regions of his mind are opened; and so
far as these are opened he sees whatever is dishonest and unjust; and
so far as he sees these evils they can be dispersed--for no evil can
be dispersed until it is seen.
--_Heaven and Hell, nn._ 528, 533