Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCCIX
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•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•ΑΩ•Α
Of all that the Master told us, He considered this as the Greatest of Commandments. So much of what we are to understand as aspirants or as believers is found in the precept that we must KEEP HIS WORDS:
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).
We ask ourselves WHAT THEN IS LOVE?
In a general sense love is benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow men, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.
We add to this THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST which can serve to both give us an understanding of what it means to Love oneself and how it is that we can Love our neighbor:
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them“ (Matthew 7:12).
So much of man’s understanding of God is based in the illusion and the glamour of Life in form in this world; this IS that vanity that the Apostle Paul tell us of in his Epistle to the Romans as he tells us that: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). We have oft discussed these words and write them here again today to help to emphasize our reality that we ARE here in this Earth, we ARE subjected to this vanity, this delusion that we call Life in form and in which we believe almost exclusively in what we see and what we hear. Through the years of growing from a newborn infant to a mature adult we are, as the creation and the creature, nurtured in the ways of the world which seem to be, for each successive generation, leading us further and further from the our True reality as Souls while at the same time plunging us deeper and deeper into the illusion and the glamour in which we live. And this has happened to mankind as a part of that Great and Awesome Plan of God and, as the apostle writes, this IS NOT by our own design but by the reality of the Plan. We should note here that this idea of “not willingly” should be seen from the perspective of the Life in form that we enjoy in this world and not from the spiritual perspective of the Spirit of man which is manifest as the Soul with the purpose of expressing the uniqueness of individual Life. It is in this existence, beset by the illusion and the glamour of Life in this world, that man has created the various conventions of religion that, while based upon the teachings of an Avatar of Truth, a Son of God if you will, quickly become more about the man in the world that the teachings of Truth. This IS the vanity at play, this is the tendency of man to interpret the unimaginable into human terms and to take teachings of difficulty which seem contrary to Life he KNOWS and wants to KNOW it and dilutes and changes the teachings to suit living in this world. And it IS what IS created by those who take authority, those who claim to speak for God or for the Avatar, that becomes religion and most times becomes many different approaches to the same religion. Hence the doctrines and the rites and rituals and the pomp and the ceremony that are intended to honor God but which we KNOW are of no use as we read Paul’s words to the Greeks at Athens which we studied several posts back.What the apostle says, when viewed in the broadness of Truth, tells us of the futility of ALL things thought to honor as well as the erection of buildings and statues as was the way of honor in that day; Paul says:
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device” (Acts 17:24-29).
In our last look at these words we centered our attention on the ONENESS of ALL under the Providence of ONE GOD as these words from Paul clearly tell us; today we are looking at the idea that Our God that “made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth” does not need nor even want the doctrines, nor the rites, nor the rituals, nor the pomp, nor the ceremony, nor the elaborate buildings and cathedrals. One could ask why, with these words from the apostle whose writings form so much of church doctrine and that tell us of this reality that He IS NOT “worshipped with men’s hands” nor should man “ think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device“, that we continue on this same path after more than 2000 years. In Paul’s words “man’s device” we should be able to see the broadness of his approach but we have not; we should have seen the Truth and the reality of “haply they might feel after him, and find him” but we have not except in those ways that our created doctrines which ARE “man’s device” address our approach. Of course the Truth IS in His words and it IS NOT overly hidden; in fact much of it is clearly stated as the sayings at the top of our essay that tell us of the importance of the concept of and the expression of Love. Paul’s words to the Romans also give us our release from the burdens of the vanity, the illusion and the glamour, but man does not see this as he is trapped by these powerful forces in the world which hide from us ALL, except in our most vulnerable and introspective moments, the reality that no matter what we have it IS NEVER enough or it IS NOT actually what we wanted or thought it would be. Our release is also in this Plan of God as His expectation that we “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. Now we have covered these words many times and analyzed the nuances of the words that are rendered from the Greek and we will not do this again today as our purpose in using these words it to show the reality that we “shall be delivered” and that these words from Paul that many relate to the theory of ‘original sin’ are in Truth a two verse analysis of the way of man in the world.
The KEY to this deliverance IS of course as the Master tells us; Repentance. That decision to change our focus away from the world and onto God, away from the self and the self in the world and onto the True Life of the Soul and the things of God. And here again we must say that this Repentance IS impossible without one’s affirmation, at least in principal, that he must have Love for ALL as the Master instructs us in the verses at the top and in so much of what He and His apostles say throughout the New Testament. It IS those who can accept these words and commandments on Love and can envision themselves as possessing this Love that can Truly Repent and begin on the Way of the disciple which IS the journey home to the Kingdom of God. This IS NOT the Way of doctrine and this IS NOT the Way established by the conventions of men whose pomp and ceremony and whose rites and rituals are thought to bring one to ‘salvation’. This IS the Way of Love and the way of that Repentance that leads us to that Transformation from a man in the world who decides to focus his Life on God and the God Within, to the aspirant working ceaselessly on keeping His words, and finally to the disciple and it IS in the fullness of discipleship that we are Truly “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. There IS NO other way and here we must say again that this Way IS NOT for ALL men today as many ARE NOT ready to leave behind the “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in” (Mark 4:19) as we read in the Parable of the Sower which delicately sets forth some greater understanding of the spiritual Life of men in the world. We must note here that it IS unfortunate that in this vanity, in this illusion and this glamour, men continue to believe that they ARE the “good ground” and ARE entitled to the Kingdom while they ignore that KEY point that we explored again in the last essay….DOING. We noted yesterday that each of the synoptic gospels has a version of this “good ground” which Vincent ties together for us saying: The three evangelists give three characteristics of the good hearer. Matthew, he understandeth the word; Mark, he receiveth it; Luke, he keepeth it 4 and we should understand here that ALL three are the nature of the “good ground” and that ALL three are a part of DOING. And this tendency to think more of oneself is spoken against by Paul saying that: “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Romans 12:3). Again, unfortunately there are many who do think highly and who believe that these words are intended for another man; these do not yet see the delusion as shown by the Apostle James in his saying that we should “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22) or the lie that we see in the Apostle John’s words that tell us on Love that “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20) and in more general terms that: “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 3:4). These unfortunate deceptions and lies are based in that same vanity, that same illusion and glamour and seemingly affect the man who does “think of himself more highly than he ought to think” to the greater degree.
We also have created a sort of doctrine that we use to make sense of the Truth as we are able to see it and we too believe that our doctrine is True though the reality IS that there IS a Truth that we have not yet reached and, while we are hopeful that our doctrinal pronouncements are more in line with the Master’s words of Life, we ARE NOT a suitable judge. There IS no Truth collaboration available to us save the input of our OWN Souls, the Wisdom from above, which we must measure against our available tools from the writings of the Master and His apostles. A large part of our doctrine, if we should call it that, is found in our view of God and of the Avatars that have come among us according to His Plan and it IS in this understanding of the Godhead that we can better understand the reality of the Teachings of the Ages and our own place in the scheme of things as well as the importance of understanding the Truth of Love as the Expression of God, even the very Nature of God, and thereby our Nature as well seeing that we ARE part and parcel of the Lord “that made the world and all things therein” and we add here ALL things without as well. In the ideas of infinity and eternity we should be able to find, as a race, a better understanding of the Godhead and the ‘personality’ of that One Boundless, Immutable, Eternal and Infinite Presence in whom, as Paul tells us, “we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This idea of ‘personality’ DOES NOT Truly exist in the realm of God as this is a carnal idea that paints a picture of the nature of each individual man in this Earth and IS the combination of the form and the attendant mind and emotions as expressed by the man in the world. God IS NOT a man nor IS He in the world as we can imagine that idea; He IS rather the subtotal of ALL the lives that exist within Him and in the enormity of this Universe, this Creation of God, we should be able to understand that in relation to Him we are but as specks of dust in the wind; infinitesimal parts of the Great and Awesome existence the we humbly call God.
Here, in the understanding of God as a single being, is much of the problem of humanity as this approach is at best untenable and while this view may be important to the understanding of some, it should not be the rule of doctrine as it has become in many parts of the world where some believe that God IS a man or can be a man as IS also the view of many about Jesus the Christ. It IS NOT our purpose to detail our understanding of God here in this post other than to set forth our thinking which we have done in different ways throughout our series of posts on this blog and today we close with these thoughts. First, God IS NOT a man and we believe that any who are reading this blog have already come to that conclusion. Second, that Jesus IS God is a Truth but in the same way that we can say that ALL of us ARE God and of which the Master quotes the Old Testament saying that “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High” (Psalm 82:6); this IS repeated in part by the Master as He tells those who think Him blasphemous: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him” (John 10:34-38). We should understand that the Master speaks here of Himself and of ALL men who can so realize. Third, we should understand that in these words as well an in ALL such sayings that reveal His nature as “the Father is in me, and I in him” ARE His revelation of the God Within, not only in Him but in us ALL and, hidden in His words IS that reality of Life in form as the Life of the Spirit manifest as the Soul of man. Finally for today we should try to see the greater reality that we ARE, ALL OF US, seeking the Path to our release from this existence in this Earth scheme, not a selfish release but one of duty and purpose according to His Plan, and that the many that have found the Path and the release ARE those who stand ready to help the rest and a list of these would range from newest disciple, to the Avatars of old as the Buddha, Krishna and even Jehovah, all the way to the Great Avatar of Love who we call the Christ. This IS the working out of the Plan as ALL beings move ever toward greater and greater realization of the Truth that we call God. These last ideas ARE the subject, on a higher level, of this saying that we should see as the Way of the Disciple.
He who faces the light of His Soul and stands within its radiance is blinded to the issues of the world of men; he passes on the lighted way to the Kingdom of God. But he who feels the urge to pass that way, yet loves his brother on the darkened path, revolves upon the pedestal of light and turns the other way.
He faces towards the dark and then the seven points of light within himself transmit the outward streaming light, and lo! the face of those upon the darkened way receives that light. For them, the way is not so dark. Behind the warriors—twixt the light and dark—blazes the light of the Kingdom itself.**
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect of God |
Potency |
Aspect of Man |
In Relation to the Great Invocation |
In relation to the Christ |
|
GOD, The Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN |
Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
Heart of God |
Truth |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
Mind of God |
Way
|
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.
We reprise this Quote of the Day from previous posts along with our comments at each use of this. In these words we should be able to see the way of the disciple and not in that day only but in this day as well and we should understand that the Love and the Power to accomplish these things that are spoken of by the Master are within our grasp as well as these ARE the Power of the True disciple.
And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. (Matthew 10:7-10)
From our original use of this as our Quote of the Day we have: These are words that we saw in a recent post as the Master’s words sending off the twelve to preach and to heal among the people. It is said that He gave them the power to do so and in this we can see that He gave them the confidence to accomplish what they did. Through the purity of one’s Life in form does the power of the Soul, the Power of God, flow through his very being and it is in this flow that also comes the Faith and the KNOWING. Is there a lesson here in this saying for those who desire to walk in the footsteps of the Apostles of the Master; as Disciples of the Christ?
In our subsequent use of these words we said: Today’s Quote of the Day is from the Master’s instructions to His disciples as he sent them forth and in this we should see our own instructions which are that we do the works of God, that we teach the Truth of the Kingdom and that we serve our fellow man. What it is that we receive from the Christ Within, what is revealed to us is FREE, we must give again FREELY and it is of great importance that we must be in a attitude of forsaking, leaving ALL the things of the world behind, bringing with us only the humble nature of a True Son of God.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
- ** Modified from the Tibetan’s words in Discipleship in the New Age – Volume II by Alice A Bailey; © 1955 by Lucis Trust
