ON LOVE; PART DXXVII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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“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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“Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40).
In the last essay we continued our discussion on forsaking as this is found in the gospels and which we understand IS a great key to the Kingdom of God and to discipleship. We centered for some time on the idea of judgement and how this IS contrary to the teachings of the Master and especially contrary to the Great Commandments at the top of our essay and the Golden Rule. We should understand that among the things that we must forsake, judgement IS a major undertaking. Man’s trend to judgement IS of course based in that same illusion and glamour that IS responsible for most ALL that ails men in the world as we judge ALL things against ourselves or our family, our group, our religion, our nation, our culture, our race, and this list could go on and on. And this judgement cuts in many ways as we see people as different from us and whether we dislike, or hate or if we are jealous or envy, a man does look at his neighbor in judgement and this regardless that he may even understand that he IS doing such. The resolution to this human failing IS the Golden Rule and its implications of Love for ALL men equally; in the Golden Rule a may accedes to ALL others ALL that he may have or desire for himself. We must remember that although some men do see this in a reciprocal way, there IS NO intent of this in the Master’s words; this idea of reciprocity is a function of the creation of those doctrines that can cover a man’s inability to assent to this rule…there IS NO sense of reciprocity in this Golden Rule. We should note as well that even worse than the idea that this IS a reciprocal rule, is that same sense of judgement as so many DO NOT want others to have what they have nor feel as they feel and, at times, do not even want others to see as they see.
There IS much generality in these ideas and they do, like ALL things spiritual and psychological, work our in Life by degree; for some passing thoughts and for others causes of action and reaction. In this we can see that more modern idea of Keeping Up with the Joneses which is an idiom with meaning even to those who may never have known it. The meaning here can be understood as: “Keeping up with the Joneses” is an idiom in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one’s neighbor as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to “keep up with the Joneses” is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority**. This form of judgement and this failure of the Golden Rule IS of course much more complex than just the material side of Life as this IS a major driving point in the most constant striving of the man who focus IS in the world as he seeks to attain more and better than he has and to teach this ideal to his children and, by example, any who may look at him with envy. Here we should understand that this failure of the Golden Rule IS as well a failure of the Great Commandments and IS a failure of Love. We should see here that it IS in Love as the Master teaches us that we can find the cure for this, a cure has its roots in forsaking; ALL of these ideas are inseparable. The Golden Rule in its three forms reads thus:
- “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
- “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31).
- “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Secular Version).
There ARE of course many variations of the secular version of the Golden Rule but the gist of them IS generally the same. There as some that DO view this as that it is intended to be reciprocal and this is even called by some the Ethic of Reciprocity. In our view there is nothing in these words that Truly offer this idea and the reality of ALL three versions IS the same which IS to accede to ALL others ALL rights and ALL privileges….ALL things which we would want ALL others to accede to us. We have offered Emmet Fox’s words on this from his Fifteen Points several times and we include this again as this IS the way that this rule must be seen; Mr. Fox tells us that:
I PRACTICE, the Golden Rule of Jesus instead of merely admiring it. He said, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” The important point about the Golden Rule is that I am to practice it whether the other fellow does so or not***.
This is the True essence of this as it was offered by the Master and we should see these words in conjunction with the second part of the Great Commandments; “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself“. In these IS the reality of Love and in this reality of Love is the Truth of forsaking from the perspective of judgement as we take these ideas and relate them to every thought, attitude and action that we have or do in the world. Here we should remember and understand that most ALL of forsaking IS found in our ability to control our own thoughts and attitudes as the actions DO follow upon these. The whole of forsaking IS a complex undertaking as in the end the man in the world, the Soul expressing through his form, will see nothing else as worth of his attention except for the eternal Will of God and then his own part in service to the Plan. We should remember here that we ARE to do this step by step, day by day and even moment by moment as we focus upon the Truth of the things of God; in this steady Transformation of one’s Life, a man moves ever closer to that salvation and that deliverance, that freedom from the clutches of illusion and glamour in the world of men. This deliverance IS the destiny of ALL men.
In the lives of the apostles we note that they have ALL forsaken ALL for the sake of the Kingdom of God and their expression of this in the world and while we should emulate them, we should not feel inferior to them as we should remember that these men that played their role in the success of the Master’s mission were already close to their own spiritual reality. It IS in their stated mission that they were able to walk away from ALL things at the Master’s call…they had been this way before. In this view we DO NOT KNOW our own place in the scheme of things as our Truth is swallowed up by the years of nurturing and living apart from the Truth of God. Many of us may be at on the verge of our own spiritual achievement and while the apostles had the direct call of the Master to answer to, we have only the call of the Master Within whom we can only hear by Truly listening to that still small voice of Truth. This listening and heeding the call IS the result of Repentance which begins our Transformation and it IS in this that we can realize, perhaps not consciously, our own relative place of spiritual achievement by those things that we can and do KNOW as Truth; the man in this position will see Life differently than the man who has not realized his place. We should understand here that this IS the result of Transforming and not the cause; the cause is found in Repentance.
In ALL of this we are essentially alone with our own thoughts and attitudes and the still small voice of Truth; it IS each man individually who must Transform himself into the disciple and the Way of this Transformation IS Love. It IS one’s realization of the Truth that comes to us in the Light of the Soul, the step by step enlightenment, that sustains our striving toward that strait gate which opens into the Kingdom of God. And it IS this Truth that overwhelms our desires, our wishes and our dreams as regards the self and the self in the world and this IS the great dividing line: those temporal things that benefit the self in the world against those things that reflect the Truth of God and His Love. It is in the reality of the step by step nature that we can endure this Transformation as each step along the way makes the next step easier and the objective more clear; it IS in this Transformation that the words of the Master and His apostles ring ever the more True as we come to see the True intent of their words and come to understand the reality of sayings such as: “know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4).
We close today with some ideas on the Golden Rule as it exists in other cultures and religions; here we can see that this Love of God IS spread across ALL the world and in ALL times.
Christianity: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:1).
Confucianism: “Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state” (Analects 12:2)
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” (Udana-Varga 5,1).
Hinduism: “This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you” (Mahabharata 5,1517).
Islam: “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself” (Sunnah).
Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary” (Talmud, Shabbat 3id).
Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss” (Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien).
Zoroastrianism: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself” (Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5).
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.
We repeat here a Quote of the Day that we spent much time with over the course of our essays. In this affirmation we find the Truth of discipleship as we have been ever been expressing and here we can relate our themes of the last few days; “take no thought” for the things of the world and that we approach the Kingdom and discipleship in the nature of the little child, in humbleness, meekness, unashamed in any way and unassuming. The message that this imparts for us today IS that it IS the Soul that is at work in the world of men as it expresses to some degree the purpose, power and the will through Life in this world. These words are from a meditation offered to his students by our Tibetan brother and in which we find greater understanding of the message of the Master. This IS Truly the way of the disciple.
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.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- * From TeachingValues.com Bozeman, MT as adapted from The Christopher Newsletter.
- ** Wikipedia contributors, ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 24 June 2013
- *** From The Fifteen Points by Emmet Fox; © 1932 HarperCollins Publishers Inc
