to him. It is the same with all other sins, with
adultery and whoredom, revenge and hatred, blasphemy and lying. The most
difficult battle of all is with the love of ruling from self-love. A
person who subdues this love, easily subdues all other evil loves, for
this is their summit.

147. Let it be told briefly how the Lord casts out lusts of evil
occupying the internal man from birth and in their place bestows
affections of good when a man on his part removes the evils as sins. It
was shown earlier that man possesses a natural, a spiritual and a
celestial mind, that he is only in the natural mind as long as he is in
lusts of evil and their enjoyments, and that during this time the
spiritual mind is closed. But as soon as a man on self-examination
confesses evils to be sins against God because they are contrary to
divine laws and accordingly resolves to desist from them, the Lord opens
the spiritual mind, enters the natural by affections of truth and good,
enters the reason, and by the reason puts into order what is disordered
below in the natural. It is this that strikes the man as a battle, and
strikes those who have indulged much in enjoyments of evil as temptation,
for when the order of its thinking is inverted the lower mind suffers
pain.

Inasmuch as the battle is against what is in the man himself and what he
feels to be his, and no one can fight against himself except from a more
interior self and from freedom in it, it follows that the internal man
fights against the external and does so from freedom, and compels the
external to obey. This, then, is compelling oneself, and, clearly, it is
not contrary to liberty and rationality, but in accord with them.

148. Everyone desires to be free, moreover, and to be rid of the unfree
or servitude. The boy under a master wishes to be his own master and thus
free; so every man-servant under his master or maid under her mistress.
Every girl wishes to leave the paternal home and marry, to do freely in a
home of her own; and every boy who desires to work, enter business, or
hold some position wishes to be released from his subordination to others
and to be at his own disposal. All of these who serve willingly in order
to be free compel themselves, and in doing so act from freedom according
to reason but from an inner freedom, by which outward freedom is regarded
as servant. We add this to confirm the fact that self-compulsion is not
contrary to rationality and liberty.