Monthly Archives: May 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CXVIII

My Soul has Purpose, Power and Will; these three are needed on the Way of Liberation.

My Soul must foster Love among the sons of men; this is its major purpose.

I, therefore, will to love and tread the Way of Love. All that hinders and obstructs the showing of the Light must disappear before the purposes of the Soul.

My will is one with the great Will of God;. that Holy Will requires that all men serve. And unto the purposes of the Plan I lend my little will.

Just as there were men on every wrung of the ladder in Jesus day, there are men in this same position today; the ladder may be in a different place and it may even be considered a different ladder but nonetheless there are men on every wrung. In yesterday’s post we looked at this from a perspective of the Master’s teachings and we came to find, albeit rather loosely, several different levels of men to which and of which the Master spoke and a brief itemization in today’s terms would likely here be helpful. We can draw then our own individual understandings of how this relates to the world today; we all do see ourselves and others by our own Light as we are ALL likely under some degree of the influence of worldly illusion and glamour. We speak here only from the perspective of spiritual response as to go further would take us deeply into the psychology and sociology of the race.

• First there is still today a large group of what we may call the unthinking masses and in unthinking we refer only to the idea that they are motivated by emotion and lack or don’t use the ability to critical thought. They are led by propaganda and touched emotionally by the by the promises of religion for eternal Life and salvation as well as the here and now aspects of prosperity and healing.
• We also have another large group from the thinking masses who, rather than use their ability for critical thought to reason out what they may hear, maintain a similar emotional response. They accept, as does the group above, the ideas and thoughts of God as presented to them by whatsoever religion or sect or denomination appeals to them or attracts their interest and this is largely based upon the culture into which a man is born and his nurture. In both of these groups the response is based upon faith as it is defined for them by the commentators and interpreters of scripture with whom they are aligned. These people can also be led by propaganda and touched emotionally by the by the promises of religion for eternal Life and salvation as well as the here and now aspects of prosperity and healing. The difference here is that the former group is rather grounded in their emotional response while this group reverts to it by choice.
• We then have the next group of thinking people who do not tend to rely on emotion and who at the same time find it difficult to affiliate with the ‘faith‘ precepts of the churches and who may be regarded as searchers; as men looking for Truth. These are however afflicted by the illusions of mind as the prior groups are afflicted by the glamour of emotion although there is a crossover effect involved in each; the thinking man has emotions and the emotional man has mind. Members of this group lead more secular lives as they cannot find a religious perspective that suits them albeit they are likely not looking or they are looking in the wrong place.
• In each of the groups listed above there are those who can and do see the Light of the Soul, the prompting of the Christ Within, and who respond to it. This supersedes any and all other religious components and although they may maintain their affiliations or lack thereof, they are seeing beyond the others and it is by their efforts that changes in spiritual understanding and the establishment of new understandings are effected. The Love and the Power of the Soul works through ALL humanity. It is important to remember that behind all these forms there is the same Soul or rather an equal Soul as is man’s reality, as is man’s True form; ALL men are the same and it is only in the illusion and glamour that grips the personality that he is deceived into thinking that one man can be better than another or, as in the list we have here, that one group can be above or better than another. Perhaps it is also worthwhile to remember and to understand that while a man may be in one of these groups above or in any of the ones that follow below today, that he may find himself in a different and seemingly lower group in another incarnation based upon a wide range of causes and effects that we know as karma.
• Moving on we come next to another group of thinking people who function freely in the world of thought, who are the entrepreneurs, the politicians, scientists and educators to name but a few of their worldly functions. We must remember here that there are no hard and fast lines of demarcation between any of these groups and that men from any can function in these roles although it may not be the norm. The intermingling of the attributes of form along with the emotional and mental apparatus that a man has creates for each a unique combination; add to this the Soul’s own ability to  effect the Life of any individual and we have the apparent complexity of the race of men. There is much truth in the common idea that no two are alike and with more than six billion persons on the Earth at this time, we should be able to see and to understand the diversity which must be ALL resolved into ONE by the True disciple. This is a largely secular group that is well versed in the ways of the world as this is their field of expertise and most spend little time in spiritual pursuits until such a time as there is an awakening and a repentance that moves them closer to the Path to God. If this move is through the devotional and emotional response to God and doctrine then this person can be seen in the last group above and if this is along mental lines the men in this group also, as above, become searchers who are looking for some spiritual idea that can make some sense to them. These approach God from a far more scientific perspective, if we can use this term, and seeks a doctrine founded in reason rather than in devotion. We do not here mean any of the doctrinal Christian sciences as men from all the above groups can be found in these as they appeal to and attract any individual but we could guess that this approach would appeal more to these thinking men than a purely devotional one.
• Our next group includes those thinking men who do also function freely in the world of thought but who are, at the same time, somewhat aware of the Higher calling of the Soul, the Christ Within, even if they do not recognize what it may be that keeps pointing them toward spirituality. These men are, as are all these groups, entrenched in the world of illusion and glamour but they sense the futility of it all. The difference between this group and the prior one is in the motivating forces under which they live. The former group is largely personality led and their concentration is for the most part on the things of the world while this current group, while also motivated by the personality, are feeling the pull, the draw, of the Soul and spend much of their energy trying to find some way to understand and to use the Light of the Soul that creeps into their daily lives. For these men Life is much more frustrating and they can begin to see and understand the precept of the Master regarding focus; that no man can serve two masters. These men know not where to turn and if they are left without instruction will likely gravitate to the state of those of the previous group but, with instruction they can flourish in their spiritual pursuits.
• These next groups find their start within the groups above and most likely in the last one; these are the aspirants who realize themselves as such although there is no such name attached except there be some teaching that reveals it. These have a longing for the spiritual Life and they feel the pangs of doing whatsoever they, in their culture and society, consider as wrong. Few are likely born into this sort of a Life; most grow into it in stages and in fits and starts though with some instruction in Truth the way can become easier. These men have the benefit of not being overly attracted to the things of the world although they too can be waylaid by the illusion and the glamour of the world of things. In this grouping can be found the esotericists, the occultists and the Theosophists who choose to study God from one or more of a variety of perspectives that fit into these terms. As in ALL of the groups mentioned, there is no restriction as to religion or belief; ALL are covered including many of the ideas that border on atheistic. We could set out names here but would like fail to mention or even know of some and so the idea of ALL should here suffice. The only criteria here is in one’s ardent desire for and focus upon the things of God and that sense of service and of Love and of Brotherhood that make a man one who understands and practices GoodWill in ALL that he does. These are men in ALL walks of Life as well; they may or may not be involved with any church and are likely a mediating influence when they are. They recognize the precepts of the affirmation above even if they have never seen it nor heard about it; they follow in the teachings of the Christ even if they are not Christians nor see the sense in being one based upon the doctrines to which they have been exposed. They can, or at a minimum are trying to, see ALL men as ONE Great Human Family in the Earth; they are on their way to that total commitment to righteousness and justice, to Love and to brotherhood that is the hallmark of the True disciple.
• Our last grouping here is that of disciples and about this little can be said that we have not covered in much detail in our posts. It is the objective of ALL of the Master’s teaching that we become disciples which is evidenced by the purity of the Life of the Soul being expressed through the form and the personality of a man. The Master is quite clear on what it means to be His disciple and this fact is rather ignored or watered down by the church inasmuch as it is, as the Master tells us, a most difficult thing to attain. It is this attainment that brings a man into the Kingdom of God in any particular Life in form and another for which the Master sets our for us the difficulties. In the illusion and the glamour of religion and of doctrine man is made to see the easy way of attaining this state of being accounted worthy of the Kingdom and the whole of this is seen as some event in the afterlife which is attainable by some confession or affirmation or ritual. The reality is, as we KNOW, that we come into the Kingdom during an incarnation in form and we do so, from the Christian perspective, by following the Master and keeping His words. In doing these things we no longer look to the world for anything; we look to God, to our own Souls and to our own Christ Within; we no longer try to serve both God and mammon, we serve God only which is a thing accomplished by service to our brothers and through our expression of the Soul Quality of Love expressed as GoodWill. The story of the disciple is the story of the Apostle Peter as we discussed yesterday and in more depth in previous posts. He likely started out on the very first group above as there were not a lot mentally inclined people in this time over 2000 years ago. The nature of the Jewish religion in that day was for the many to live one’s Life according the religious precepts and the traditions that they engendered in their society and it is likely that Peter was well schooled in these things. We are made to understand by the bible stories that the Apostles John and Andrew were with John the Baptist as disciples and that they left him to follow Jesus. While there are several renditions of the calling of the disciples as we discussed in the last post, we get today’s information from the Gospel of John which tells us: “One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone” (John 1:40-42). Marrying this to yesterday’s text from Luke’s Gospel we should be able to see the spiritual direction of Peter who is brought to Jesus by his brother, lends the Master the use of his boat, and becomes a follower, all in what seems like a rather short time. From this point on Peter and the others forsake ALL and follow the Christ and, as we KNOW from the Master’s speaking on the matter, this is the requirement of True discipleship; that one turns away from the world.

While this stage of discipleship may be the final goal of the man in form, for this must be accomplished in form, in an incarnated Life so far as we can understand it today, this is not the FINAL step. Within this state of discipleship is a steady growth as we see in the Life of Peter and a very broad range of degrees of discipleship and this idea of degree can be found as well in every one of the stages that we have listed above. This is the journey of the Soul in form; through what we are told are countless incarnations each of us progresses and proceeds from stage to stage until the ultimate goal is reached and this is happening concurrently with the evolution of the form of man or, as we should say, the evolution of the body and personality nature. We should not be so hung up on the ideas of the evolution of the human animal body alone from whatever to whatever; while this is all intriguing and fascinating it is of no use to us today. Does the human form come originally from amphibious creatures as some say? we do not know. Does the human form progress from the form of the ape and the chimpanzee? we do not know. More importantly, we should not care as this body is not the man, it is but his form; the reality of our study of evolution should be from the time that the form became a suitable host for the incarnating Soul; able to function in self consciousness and with the added attributes of emotion and even rudimentary mind. ALL of Life in form is evolving and an open minded look at the history man through the bible alone will show that this is a Truth.

We came upon these discussions on the stages of realization from by looking at the ONENESS that is the Truth of man and of God and we came upon this from our discussion on the Will of God. We did get a bit lost in this and never did get to the the idea that the Holy Will requires that all men serve which is where we were going when we took this journey over the last several posts. We will try to get back to this in the next post and here we should realize that our service is to God and this is done through our service to the race of men in Love. The accomplishment of this in the world requires that a man understand his essential ONENESS with all and in this ONENESS the overall objective of making this a reality in the world of things though the expression of the Life of the Soul through form; this can be said to be the Will of God and one of His tools us evolution.

We will continue with these thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.

Keeping the Lord’s Prayer as our Quote of the Day we should try to reflect upon the importance that it places upon our recognition of our Father God and of His relationship to us. He is not my Father or your Father, he is OUR FATHER, a fact that applies to every man who can ever read this or say these words. There is NO criteria to this Fatherhood, it is for ALL and for ever. The Master goes on to tell us where our Father is….He is in heaven and here we should remember and understand that no matter how hard some might try to distinguish between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven, they are ever the same and to see this we need look no further than to merely look at the gospels with an open mind and at verses like:

• “Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying , The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15).
• “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

Realizing this sameness we need only to move on to one of the most profound and the most ignored sayings of the Master throughout the gospels: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

The prayer tells us where the Father is and the Master tells us where the Kingdom is and if we could, individually and as a church, put these things together we could look at ourselves, our spirituality and the entirety of His words in a very different Light.

We will continue with our look at The Lord’s Prayer in the next post.

Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done,

in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation;

but deliver us from evil.

[For thine is the kingdom,

the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.]

Amen.*

We will leave this prayer for a few days and try to get a better understanding of it and then move on to The Great Invocation which is, as we are told, given to us by the Christ as well. More than 2000 years separate the receipt of these invocations by the world of men and their language and tenor reflect the changes in the nature of man and his societies over this course of time. The Lord’s Prayer and a brief interpretation are included in the Prayers and Meditations section of the front page of this Blog.

• *     From the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; this version is from the Book of Common Prayer of 1662