Lord and to love the neighbor is to love what is good and true, and to do this from the will, when they ought to know that one evinces love by willing and doing what another wishes, and it is this that brings reciprocal love and conjunction, and not loving another without doing what he wishes, which in itself is not loving; also that men should know that the good that goes forth from the Lord is a likeness of Him, since He is in it; and that those who make good and truth to belong to their life by willing them and doing them become likenesses of the Lord and are conjoined to Him.  Willing is loving to do.  That this is so the Lord teaches in the Word, saying,

     He that hath My commandments and doeth them, he it is that
     loveth Me; and I will love him and will make My abode with
     him (John 14:21, 23).

And again: 

     If ye do My commandments ye shall abide in My love (John
     15:10).

17.  All experience in heaven attests that the Divine that goes forth from the Lord and that affects angels and makes heaven is love; for all who are in heaven are forms of love and charity, and appear in ineffable beauty, with love shining forth from their faces, and from their speech and from every particular of their life.{1} Moreover, there are spiritual spheres of life emanating from and surrounding every angel and every spirit, by which their quality in respect to the affections of their love is known, sometimes at a great distance.  For with everyone these spheres flow forth from the life of his affection and consequent thought, or from the life of his love and consequent faith.  The spheres that go forth from angels are so full of love as to affect the inmosts of life of those who are with them.  They have repeatedly been perceived by me and have thus affected me.{2} That it is love from which angels have their life is further evident from the fact that in the other life everyone turns himself in accordance with his love-those who are in love to the Lord and in love towards the neighbor turning themselves always to the Lord, while those who are in love of self turn themselves always away from the Lord.  This is so, however their bodies may turn, since with those in the other life spaces conform to the states of their interiors, likewise quarters, which are not constant as they are in this world, but are determined in accordance with the direction of their faces.  And yet it is not the angels that turn themselves to the Lord; but the Lord turns to Himself those that love to do the things that are from Him.{3} But more on this subject hereafter, where the quarters in the other life are treated of.

  {Footnote 1} Angels are forms of love and charity (n. 3804,
  4735, 4797, 4985, 5199, 5530, 9879, 10177).