Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART XCVI

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α

GoodWill IS Love in Action

ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α

HAPPY

THANKSGIVING

We have left the following ideas from the Apostle John’s Gospel in our daily essays for many days now and the time has come to discuss these in some detail so that we can move on and have some other ideas take this lead place in our daily post. In the last post we discussed the reality of discipleship from the perspective to the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians; words that the apostle incorporated into his dissertation on the Power and the importance of Love. We noted how the apostle, according to his own words, grew in spiritual stature from a child to a man, or as he repeats it, from KNOWING in part to KNOWING “even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12); we noted also that through this progression in his Life, he was able to see more clearly the reality of the Life of the True man, the Soul. In this we discover that Paul’s message of “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” and our speaking of illusion and glamour are one and the same and that it is our spiritual focus, leading to our spiritual growth, that will allow us to dissipate the fog and the mists of illusion and glamour and allow us to see the reality of our own Souls clearly……”face to face“.

This above is the fulfillment of what Paul calls elsewhere his and our being “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) and this deliverance is affected by our understanding and our fulfillment of the teachings of the Master as in our sayings from John’s Gospel below. We must remember here that the Master is speaking to His disciples directly and only His disciples and that the criteria that the Master sets for being one is accomplished in the lives of these men to whom he speaks and to whom He tells that “whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do“. The power in this saying is incalculable and even beyond our imagination and at the same time we must remember that when a man reaches this High Calling of discipleship, that his thoughts and his motivations and ALL that he does are Christ-like and concerned ONLY with Love and Service and the Kingdom of God. Any fanciful ideas of a mere mortal grounded in the ways of  the world of things receiving what he asks by prayer or even by tagging on the doctrinal ‘in the name of Jesus‘ are just that, fanciful ideas.

This is not to say that there are not miracles and that there are not instances where people can achieve by prayer what they had not been able to achieve, it is just to say that to expect these things of the world IS NOT in the reality of scripture. Some doctrine has equated the idea of expect to their understanding of faith and there is likely much in this that we do not understand; it is likely connected as a lower correspondence of Life in the world to our understanding of the True faith which is KNOWING. However there is no universal working out of this in the world; it is hit and miss and one can find the apparently more spiritual man failing in his prayer while the less or even the non spiritual man succeeds. This leads to questioning, bad feelings and even the judgement that the one not receiving is ‘doing something wrong’ while the reality is likely that a certain ‘worldly’ strength in emotion or mind can bring the difference in worldly things; this is not spiritual strength. Whole schools of thought are created surrounding these ideas of positive thinking and scientific prayer and other related methods but the True direction here is rather misplaced as it is focused upon the world and the things of the world.

The Truth of spirituality is not found in these things of the world nor in the power of one’s carnal mind or emotional fortitude, the Truth is found in the simple words below as they go together with the idea of asking in His name…..”If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever“. Reflecting again on the words of Paul that chronicle his own advancement spiritually and are his guiding Light to us ALL, we should see that it is in his keeping the Master’s words that this is accomplished. From our understanding of the entirety of the teachings of the Christ, we KNOW that whatsoever we perceive that the Jesus is telling us of Himself, He is equally telling us of our own Christ Within because, as He tells us, they are ever ONE when we are able to reach out in Love. This is His continuing message below saying that “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live , ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.“

Understanding that the Comforter IS the activity of the Christ Within in one’s Life and in the world gives us the ability to see the reality of His words; that it is the Christ Within in Life that brings the Power and the Love, the Holy Spirit, into our consciousness in the world. This IS the manifestation of the Christ to the man in form. We see again as well the reality of the criteria which is ever that we keep His words and the result of doing so which is the ONENESS of the consciousness of the man in form with his own Soul which is ever ONE with God. If we can imagine that it is the Christ Within that is saying these words, we can get yet another glimpse of the reality of the True man: “ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you“ and the result will be for us as it is for Paul; that “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you“.

In its completeness this bit of the Master’s words from John’s Gospel is the story of the disciple who realizes that he is one. Here the Master tells us that in return for being a disciple, for Loving Him and keeping His commandments, we will receive the assurance of our righteousness in the Power of the Holy Spirit which is the activity of the Christ Within in our Life. While in the text we can see that there is a personal message here from the Master to the gathered disciples, we should try to understand that the happenings that the Master speaks of are the natural happenings in the Life of one who realizes the Truth and sees clearly the Good, the Beautiful and the True; we should remember that he is speaking to men who lived here on this Earth more than 2000 years ago and whose approach to God was likely overwhelmingly devotional. They were not thinking on these things and perhaps could not think these things through. But the message is timeless and we as aspirants to that same discipleship do not have the Master to guide us personally except through our own Christ Within. This is the same that His disciples then have but they have not the wherewithal to understand it until after He is gone.

For us today the same dynamics are at work in our Life as were in theirs. They follow the man Jesus who is the Christ and we follow the Christ Within by His word. The results are the same, the Comforter is the same, the manifestation of Christ in our Life is the same and the price of entry into this “glorious liberty of the children of God” is the same as well…..that we keep His commandments. And, if we keep His commandments as disciples and aspirants, we will recognize the cost of discipleship as well. In their entirety, the Master’s words below are a Pathway to the strait gate that opens into the Kingdom of God, it is the Pathway to union with Christ through our own Christ Within.

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it. If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live , ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:13-26).

We close today with the thought that in fulfilling the words of the Master above, which is simply keeping His words, that we find ourselves in that place where Paul writes from in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. A place where he recognizes his own spiritual growth from a child to a man, from KNOWING in part to KNOWING full, from the fog and the mist of illusion and glamour to the clarity of seeing one’s own True self “face to face“. We say again here that his is our goal and this is our objective and we will achieve it.

Aspect of God	Potency	Expressed as Fire	Aspect of Man	In Relation to the Christ
GOD, The Father	Will or Power	Electric Fire	Spirit or Life	Life
Son, The Christ	Love and Wisdom	Solar Fire	Soul or Christ Within	Truth
Holy Spirit	Light or Activity	Fire by Friction	Life Within the Form	Way

We repeat our Thanksgiving poem and bit of history one more time:

Today IS Thanksgiving 2012 we are reminded of the True purpose of this day by its very name…..THANKS—GIVING and this should be a day in which we Truly give thanks for all that we do have regardless of how little or how much it may be. And, we should ever realize that as aspirants and disciples of the Lord that we Truly have much in a Life that is filled with spiritual endeavor and the peace and harmony that comes in our realization of some of the more hidden meanings in Life. This realization is for us a large part of our understanding of forsaking ALL as we come to realize that those things of the Earth that we tend to strive towards and for are of no value and carry no True meaning to our True self as the Soul.

From the more Earthly side we should note that while the origins of the Thanksgiving holiday are rather obscure, it is nonetheless an American tradition that dates back to colonial times with declarations of days of thanksgiving to mark the nation’s successes. In the mid-19^th century a movement began to create a Thanksgiving Day in November which was declared as such by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. During this time Ralph Waldo Emerson penned these simple words below which, based upon his own beliefs, are not intended to embrace any particular religion.

Thanksgiving

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

Wishing you all a very

HAPPY

THANKSGIVING

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.:

Today we post a World Prayer that is also included in the Prayers and Meditation section with some explanation of its source and its use. We are entering a time of the year which we can consider more sacred by way of the newness of Spring which should reflect in our newness of Life. This is the Festival of Easter and a time of rejoicing; not only for the Resurrection of the Lord from the Christian perspective but also for the teaching that is incorporated in the Master’s sacrifice 2000 years ago and in His continued sacrifice. We should remember His parting words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20)

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.

From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888