“…nothing is appropriated to man but what is done from an affection, which is of the love…In a word, whatever does not enter into freedom into man does not remain; because it is not of his love or will, and the things which are not of a man’s love or will are not of his spirit…”—Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell
“That is the great difference we have to ask: from where does it come? Is it from self, or a Greater Love? That—more than law, customs, appropriateness—is the driver of divinity, blessedness, good, or evil. It an be the same act, with same observable effects in world, but guide to entirely different spiritual ends. For affections are of the soul, of spirit, and not of cognitive creation. They are an influx received within the soul.
To what element of spirit do we submit? From what nature of spirit are we driven to act? Do we act for self-gain? Self-reward? Self-satiation? Or do we act from something else, for something else, a different drive even when we cannot define—for it is not of us?
There exists the difference, and only our souls can know.