Love of The Neighbor and Love of Self are Opposite Loves

Selection from Divine Providence Emanuel Swedenborg

• Love of the neighbor wishes well to everyone from itself, while love of self wishes well to itself alone from everyone.
• Love of the neighbor wishes to serve everyone, while love of self wishes everyone to serve it.
• Love of the neighbor regards everyone as its brother and friend, while love of self regards everyone as its servant, or as its enemy, if he does not serve it; in a word, it regards itself only, and others scarcely as men, holding them in heart in less estimation than its horses and dogs. And because it regards them as of so little account it thinks nothing of doing evil to them; and this is the source of hatred and revenge, adultery and whoredom, theft and fraud, lying and defamation, violence and cruelty, and other such evils. Such are the evils in which man is from birth.

(from Divine Providence 276)

The Acknowledgments In True Worship

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

All true worship consists in adoration of the Lord, adoration of the Lord in humiliation, and humiliation in one's acknowledgment that in himself there is nothing living, and nothing good, but that all within him is dead, yea, cadaverous; and in the acknowledgment that everything living and everything good is from the Lord. The more a man acknowledges these things, not with the mouth, but with the heart, the more he is in humiliation; and consequently the more he is in adoration, that is, in true worship, and the more he is in love and charity, and the more in happiness. The one is in the other, so conjoined as to be inseparable.

(from Arcana Coelestia 1153)

Doubting During Temptation

Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

In all temptation there is somewhat of doubt concerning the Lord's presence and mercy, and concerning salvation and the like things.

Those who are in temptation are in interior anxiety, even to despair; in which they are for the most part kept, to the end -

that they may be at length confirmed in the fact that all things are of the Lord's mercy;
that they are saved by Him alone
that with themselves there is nothing but evil

in respect to which -

they are confirmed by means of conflicts in which they overcome.

After the temptation there remain from it many states of truth and good to which their thoughts may afterwards be bent by the Lord, which would otherwise rush into insane things, and draw away the mind into opposition to what is true and good.

(from Arcana Coelestia 2334)