ON LOVE; PART DCCCXCVII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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FIRST IS THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS: “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 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 12:29-31).
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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. While this IS from an older definition of Charity, which IS rendered in the King James Bible from the same Greek word agape which IS generally rendered as Love, we should amend our own definition here to include the idea that in the reality of Love a man will accord to ALL men ALL things that he would accord to himself and to say that Love IS our thoughts and attitude of the equality of ALL men regardless of their outward nature or appearance…that ALL ARE equally children of Our One God
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PLUS THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12)
We ended the last essay with the beginning of the Apostle Paul’s words on Love and we should remember here that this IS a carryover from the previous topic that he had been writing about….the gifts of the Spirit. In the reality of his words we should see that his transition IS not only one of subject but IS also to show the deeper ideas of the importance of Love as the expression of the man in the world. The view that the apostle IS speaking about these gifts as that they ARE of True significance IS the way that doctrines DO approach his words while they leave off the reality of His words on Love as well as the significance of the transitory idea that tells the reader: “But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way“. While it IS likely True that the ideas behind the apostle’s words on these gifts ARE important in the Life of the man who Truly seeks God, we should realize here how that there IS a duality at play….the same type of duality as IS at play in ALL aspects of spiritual Life. And this IS the point of the apostle’s idea that interjects both Love and the reality that without Love ALL us for naught into His dialogue on these gifts which we read again saying:
“But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:1-3).
The duality here IS in the apostle’s words that show that the man who DOES have such gifts, such abilities as are called the gifts of the Spirit, DOES NOT have them on a spiritual level if these ARE not a part of that Love that he must express to the world of men. We should see here how that what Paul claims IS True for himself IS True for ALL men and while this shows us that such things ARE possible for men in the absence of Love, we should see that these ARE NOT the reality of the “spiritual gifts” and that the appearance of these gifts in one’s Life IS then carnal. When we remember here that Love IS the reality of keeping His words as the apostle also tells us saying that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10) and again that “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14), we can then better understand the complexity of our own spiritual reality. In this view we can see that the appearance of these gifts in the Life of the man who DOES NOT keep his words or strive to DO so ARE but psychic powers that ARE NOT necessarily under the control of the Soul….these ARE NOT Truly “spiritual gifts“.
We should see here that the apostle goes beyond psychic phenomenon however as he includes such things as constitute the outward appearance of Love in giving and forsaking as well as the rites and the rituals of religion which ideas should be taken from his reference to giving his “body to be burned“. While many doctrines see this idea as Paul’s support of martyrdom, this IS an illogical reference as ARE the references to men who burned themselves alive in those days. We should remember here as well that the apostle IS speaking to men who DO strive to keep the words of the Master through Paul’s teaching to them and while it IS likely that the ALL DO NOT DO so, this IS his target audience. It is to these men who strive to keep His words that Paul shows the reality of these gifts and it IS this view that IS supported by his words above on Love as it IS in Love that one DOES keep His words. It IS this reality, the reality of keeping His words as the precursor to the True “spiritual gifts” that Paul shows us that IS the message of these words to the Corinthians and we should try to see how that the apostle goes on to define such Love in words that are similar to his words to the Galatians on the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22).
It IS these ideas of the reality of Love that ARE important to the man who Truly seeks God as these ARE his own measure of His success; it IS by the measure of one’s expression of this Love, one’s expression of the “fruit of the Spirit“, that one can have a measure of the True “spiritual gifts” and we should try to see in these gifts the deeper meaning of the grace of God. It IS this grace that IS the revelations and the realizations of a man in this world whose focus IS upon the things of God and it IS this grace that IS those “spiritual gifts” which ARE expressed to the world as the “fruit of the Spirit“. And ALL of this must be resolved into the reality of the Presence of God in one’s Life; the reality that the Soul, the God and the Christ Within, ARE become the guiding Light of the conscious Life in the world. This IS the reality that we have been discussing in Jesus’ words from the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John where we should clearly see how that the Presence of God comes to the man who keeps His words and in this we should ever see the man who Loves as the Master teaches us. We read Jesus’ words again saying:
“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:a 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” (John 14:15-24).
In these words we have the reality of the unction of which the Apostle John tells us and which IS alternately rendered as the anointing and, as we have discussed, this Greek word chrisma is the noun which should be seen in the same way as christos which IS rendered as Christ and which IS literally translated as anointed. While this idea is confounded in the doctrinal approach to Jesus as the Christ, the greater reality can be found in the apostle’s usage of these words: Jesus IS the anointed and we have this same anointing as the Christ Within. It IS the realization of this anointing, the realization of the Christ Within as the guiding Light of the conscious Life in the world, that IS the Presence of God that comes to the man who will keep His words. We should remember here how that the apostles DO NOT understand the way that the Master presents this idea of His Presence and it IS in Jesus’ answer to Judas’ question that we see only a repetition of His words which clearly say that the Presence of God comes to the man who will keep His words.
For us it IS this the realization of this Presence that the Master shows us as this Presence IS that unction and IS ever the True man, the Soul, the God and the Christ Within whose Truth is obnubilated by the vanity, by the illusion and the glamour, of Life in form in this world. And this IS the Master’s teaching: it IS by Repentance that we come to see the reality of the Kingdom and the Truth of the Inner man and it IS by Love, by keeping His words, that a man comes to realize the Kingdom and the Inner Man which becomes the expression of his conscious Life in this world. This brings us back again to the duality with which we started this essay and we should try to see that while this IS similar to the duality that the aspirant and the disciple faces as he sees in both directions, as he sees the carnal Life and the spiritual Life, this duality IS on a lower rung. This sense of duality IS that which we see in Paul’s ideas where a man may believe that he has found such realization as the Presence of God and the grace and “spiritual gifts” but has NOT yet come to that point keeping His words and of Love which ARE the KEY to such realization. This sense of duality sees the carnal as the spiritual and IS founded in the ideas behind the Apostle James’ words saying: “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).
These ideas go back again to Paul’s words on strongholds which we have been discussing over the last several posts. In this view we should see that it IS the thoughts and the attitudes that are developed in the absence of keeping His words that become the strongholds of many and which pose as the Truer spiritual ideas, that pose as the True “spiritual gifts“. In this sense the duality IS NOT seen by the man as he mistakes the psychic and carnal powers for the True “spiritual gifts“. Conversely, in the sense of duality that is the Life of the aspirant and the disciple, there IS an awareness of the duplicity of thoughts, attitudes and actions. This higher sense of duality is framed for us by our Tibetan brother who tells us of the disciple saying: “He has tasted the joys of life in the world of illusion and has learnt their powerlessness to satisfy and hold him. Now he is in a state of transition between the new and the old states of being. He is vibrating between the condition of soul awareness and form awareness. He is “seeing double” “**. The duality that we find however on the lower rung IS the result of one’s own thoughts and imaginations as this IS rendered in the King James Bible, a duality that IS NOT recognized by the may. This IS what we see then in the apostle’s point: duality; a duality that expresses itself as carnal strongholds which pose as that they ARE the things of God. We read the apostle’s words again saying:
“the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
As the apostle IS speaking to the aspirant and the disciple, the man who has the higher duality at play in his life, he IS showing how that it IS by spiritual discernment that one can KNOW that whatsoever imagination, that whatsoever “high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God” must be captured and made to be in accord with the Master’s words which IS to bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ“. It IS this view of the sense of duality that can be the stronghold of the aspirant and the disciple and it IS in one’s own measure of revelation, one’s own measure of spiritual discernment, that he has such weapons which ARE “mighty through God“. Here then we can see more clearly the plight of the man whose focus IS NOT yet Truly on the things of God, the man who IS NOT striving to keep His words and we should understand that this afflicts ALL men who DO NOT yet see the Truth of keeping His words as the KEY to ALL spiritual realities, the KEY to ALL revelations and realizations of the Presence of God in one’s Life.
And this IS our point about the strongholds that doctrines create in the minds of men as they pose as the Truth of the Master’s words. Here the man IS faced with the same carnal or doctrinal imaginations and thoughts but here the man DOES NOT have the weapons that come to the man who keeps His words, the man DOES NOT have the reality of spiritual discernment as he IS yet the “natural man“. And this IS the rub: this man believes through these imaginations and thoughts, that he IS in accord with the Master’s words by way of his doctrine which he has built into that stronghold and which IS become his castle in the sky. This man DOES NOT see that he DOES NOT have the weapons because the doctrines that he relies upon tell him that he DOES; this man DOES NOT see the deeper reality of the Master’s words that tell him clearly that he must be in True accord with the words of the Master….that he must be keeping His words. This man DOES NOT see the reality that keeping His words IS the ONLY cause for his being “mighty through God“; that this IS the precursor for the realization of the Truth of the Presence of God which IS the True and ONLY weapon and the armour upon which he can stand.
Such men then remain in bondage while they believe that they have found the Truth; they remain imprisoned by their own strongholds of belief while their doctrines tell them that they ARE free. And while the Master teaches us about the reality of the Kingdom, how that it IS in DOING “the will of my Father which is in heaven” that one “shall enter into the kingdom of heaven“, most doctrines have diluted this Truth to the convenience of the imaginations of men. And it IS to the point of this delusion that comes in the illusions of Life in form that the Master completes His words saying “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:21-23). We should see here how that this IS ALL related, how that Paul’s comments on the worthlessness of what IS presumed to be “spiritual gifts” show us the reality that it IS only in keeping His words that these gifts ARE real. We should see as well how that the Master’s words cut to the same conclusion: that men may have the presumption of gifts and that they may DO what they perceive as “many wonderful works“; but ALL is for naught if that man IS NOT DOING “the will of my Father which is in heaven“.
This IS the reality behind these other words from Jesus as well; these words that paint for us the nature of the disciple and which also paint for us the reality of Truth and of being made free. It IS in keeping His words that these things come to a man; it IS in keeping His words that one is the True disciple and it IS in keeping His words that one “shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free“. This Truth IS the realization of the Presence of God in one’s Life and this freedom is one’s deliverance “from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21)….and this IS ALL seen in that spiritual discernment that comes by measure to the man who strives to keep His words. We repeat again the Master’s words on this:
“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:31-34).
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect |
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.
Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate.
Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted.
Live in joy, in peace, even among the troubled.
Live in joy, without possessions.
Like the shining ones.
The winner sows hatred because the loser suffers.
Let go of winning and losing and find joy.
There is no fire like passion, no crime like hatred,
No sorrow like separation, no sickness like hunger,
And no joy like the joy of freedom.
Today’s Quote of the Day is from the Dhammapada (on JOY)5; a collection of the sayings of the Buddha. These words and ideas ARE much the same as those we discuss in our In the Words of Jesus essays. And what is this freedom but the release of our hearts and minds from loving this life in this world and attaining the Presence of God. This word Joy has many meanings as DOES the idea of Love, but in the context that it IS used here we should see the idea that Joy IS Love, Joy IS health, Joy IS peace and that Joy IS without the burdens placed on a man by the illusion and the glamour of the ways of the world. We should try to see that it IS the antithesis of these ideas in hate, in affliction and in troubles that ARE among the possessions of the carnal man, that ARE among the “evil treasure of his heart” (Luke 6:45) according to the Master.
And it IS in the second stanza above that we see the basic psychic ideas that can eliminate the harm caused by such “evil treasure” as a man looks past himself and at the welfare of others which IS the greater reality of Love as the Master teaches us. It IS in losing such possessions, losing such carnal thoughts and attitudes, that one can truly find the “joy of freedom“….this IS the Truth of deliverance.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts
- 5 The Dhammapada Translated by Thomas Byrom
- ** A Treatise on White Magic or The Way of the Disciple by Alice Bailey ©1951 by Lucis trust
