ON LOVE; PART DCLXII
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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.
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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).
In the last essay we continued with our post James look at Love and while we have NOT yet posted the apostle’s own words on this matter which we should see from his perspective of the “royal law” as the expansion that he gives this concept of Love as he combines the reality of Love with the universality taught to us by the Christ. In yesterday’s post we expanded our own view of the relationship of Love and mercy as we try to take this idea of mercy out of the more nebulous understanding afforded to it by doctrine and the most limiting definitions give by commentators and by the lexicon which tells us that mercy IS limited to the poor and the afflicted; we read in the lexicon that the Greek word eleos means: mercy: kindness or good will towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them of men towards men: to exercise the virtue of mercy, show one’s self merciful; of God towards men: in general providence; the mercy and clemency of God in providing and offering to men salvation by Christ; the mercy of Christ, whereby at his return to judgment he will bless true Christians with eternal life 2.
The view that mercy IS for the poor and the afflicted DOES NOT fit into the reality of the way that this IS expressed for us in the Gospels, nor it this the way that the original ideas from the Old Testament Prophet Hosea are seen through this same lexicon that DOES NOT reference this idea that it IS to the downtrodden that mercy IS given. From the Hebrew word that IS rendered as mercy in the prophet’s words that Jesus repeats saying: “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13), we find the greater reality of: kindness, lovingkindness, goodness, kindly, merciful, favour, good, and goodliness 2*. It IS from this original reference that we should take the Master’s meaning and here we can try to see Jesus’ message to the scribes and the Pharisees: that they should have shown this lovingkindness to men instead of the substitutionary sacrifices and rituals of the law. Here we can interpret the sayings of this prophet and others in the understanding that the laws of Love, that are the basis of the Old Testament as well, should be understood and followed by the Jews and especially by their religious leaders. ALL of this IS lost however in the technical reading of and the practice of the institutions and traditions created by men to accommodate their own ideas regarding the law. It IS in this light that the Master tells these leaders to “go ye and learn what that meaneth” and then later saying again that: “But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless” (Matthew 12:7).
As we discussed in the last post, these ideas can be seen in the Master’s interaction with the woman caught in adultery and in the list of woes that the Master uses to show the Pharisees and other religious men the error of their traditions and their ways. These had become more for themselves and their sense of church than the original intent of the law as being for God, and through Him for His people. We see the greater good of the idea of lovingkindness in this word that IS rendered as mercy in both languages as the intent of the sayings IS the same. In these sayings the specificity of the downtrodden, the poor and the afflicted, DOES NOT mean anything in the context of the whole idea nor in the right understanding of God whose word IS to Love thy neighbor without specificity. And we can expand this yet further so as to see that mercy, the lovingkindness that men should express, IS the expression of the Love that the Master teaches us to give to the neighbor, to ALL men….to the world. And we should further expand our thinking so as to include in this idea of mercy the reality of GoodWill and the component parts of understanding and forgiveness.
We should be able to see the ideas that we have here in the expression of Love as the same ideas that would be reflected in the deeper idea of mercy as it would come from God, that this would be the reality of His lovingkindness and His expression of the Love the IS God. Here we should see this Love reflected in the Truth of part and parcel, that ALL are an indispensable part of the Greater Whole that we humbly call God. While this reality is better understood in relation to the Soul, the True man, it DOES reach out to the created world as well and this should be seen in the Master’s words saying: “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). While this saying invites us to imitate the Way of the Lord and to see the evil and the good, we should see as well the Truth of the mercy of God as ALL things come to ALL men; and we should see the evil and the good in the greater reality of those whose focus IS upon the things of the world against those who focus upon the things of God. Here, if we compare this idea to the more nebulous parts of the ideas from the Greek lexicon above, we can see the Truth of the Universal Love of God as compared to the doctrinal bent that this IS reserved to Christians and even just True Christians as we read above.
God’s Love and His mercy ARE universal in their effect upon ALL men and the greater understanding of this IS in regard to our being able to see past the carnal and into the spiritual, to see that the spiritual man IS the True man and that this Life in form IS but a temporary excursion into this world; it IS here that we can gain the ability to express the divinity which we ARE to the world of men. This expression of divinity IS our expression of Love by the Truth of mercy and while we may NOT be able to understand the greater purpose we should KNOW that there IS one in this Great and Awesome Plan of God. Of this we get a glimpse in the Apostle Paul’s words to the Romans which we often discuss saying:
“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. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:20-23).
For us this IS the story of our presence here in this Earth and our glimpse of the purpose in the idea of “the redemption of our body” which we can see as the glorification of the very matter of the world as we work to bring about the change of the Transfiguration. As the Soul can increasingly express his own divine nature through form, every cell of the body that he uses, every molecule and every atom, gains a greater share of the divine Light that IS our God and our Soul and, while we CAN NOT understand this, we certainly can see the reality in the brief glimpse we get from Paul. We must of course be able to see Life in a clearer way and apart from the form and the personality through which that Life IS expressed. Here we should try to see that the Love and the mercy of God ARE NOT special considerations but ARE the working out of the Plan of God; it IS His Love that holds ALL things and allows ALL things and it IS His through His mercy that we have a part that we can realize and in which we can grow. And the ideas of macrocosm and microcosm can be repeated here as we hold a psychic key to that same Love which holds universes in their place and which, from the perspective of the True man, holds his small universe in its place. God pours His Love through ALL things and we, as Souls, must learn this same thing: to pour the Love of the Soul, the Love that IS the Soul, through his phenomenal forms in the three worlds of mind, emotion and form. In this rather hazy esoteric view of Life IS the realty of expression and the Truth of the Redemption that Paul speaks of above.
This pouring out of Love, which IS a quality and a potency of our God Who sees ALL things as part and parcel, from the Soul and through the form must however have a purpose, it must flow through, and in this sense it IS only when this Love IS a man’s expression in the world that the fullness of it can grow. This expression IS our goal and our objective in Life in this world and it IS in attaining the fullness of this that we can see “the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body“; until then we wait as Paul does in his words above. We should remember here that the sense of this adoption IS NOT along the doctrinal lines but in the reality of the union of the man in the world with God which IS accomplished through the union of the Soul, the True man, and the expression of the man in the world. Here we must try to see that the man in the world IS ever expressing something and that when this expression IS the things of God as KNOWN by the Soul, the union of adoption IS complete. This is the reality of the idea of adoption as Paul uses this and as Vincent has helped us to understand as he tells us, quoting Mr. Merivale, that: the adopted son of God becomes, in a peculiar and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father 4.
The overriding point here IS that this expression of Love IS universal and it IS this expression itself that IS mercy and in this idea we can see the reality of the Trinity at work. “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), this IS His state of being IS Spirit which IS how the Master defines Him saying “God is a Spirit” and here Vincent helps us by clarifying the idea saying: God is a Spirit (πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός); Or, as Rev., in margins, God is spirit. Spirit is the emphatic word; Spirit is God. The phrase describes the nature, not the personality of God. Compare the expressions, God is light; God is love 4. In this same way man IS Spirit as well and we should see this in the completion of the Master’s words from the Gospel of John; we read: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). While the understanding here is a bit muddy, the idea IS sound as this IS telling us that it IS the Spirit that IS man that touches the Spirit that IS God and it IS in this realization that we can commune, pray and worship as ALL of these ideas are the same.
There IS a great mystery at play in the realities of Life and this IS True of the Life that IS God and the little lives of the Spirits of men; God IS and we ARE is likely as much as we can say and understand. Our next reality here IS in understanding that it IS this IS ness, this being, which manifests in the psychic reality of the Mind of God and it IS in this reality that the Souls of men exist; here we must understand that there IS no separation, that the Mind of God IS God and it IS this that we see as the manifestation of which we generally speak. Spirit IS manifest as Soul and in this idea of Soul, of the Psychic Reality of God, we find the mystery of the Christ, the Son of God, on a Cosmic level of which every Soul IS a part. God IS Spirit and God IS Love; the True man IS Spirit and the True man IS Love. It IS through the Son of God, the Christ as a Cosmic Principal, that this Love IS manifest as the cohesive quality that Keeps ALL Things and here we should see this same idea at work as the Soul of man, as the manifestation of the individual Life in the Kingdom of God whose cohesive quality Keeps ALL Things within his sphere. Finally there IS the expression of this Love in time and space, the activity if your will, and it IS this expression that we call mercy that IS the Holy Spirit; here the correspondences remain, as the Holy Spirit of God IS the expression of the Love that He IS, so the Holy Spirit IS the expression of the Love that the True man IS in time and space, in this world.
None of this should be confused with the physical manifestation that we can see and feel; ALL of this is psychic in nature and here we should try to see the idea that the Will of God, the Will to Love, pulsates through every atom of existence in ways that we CAN NOT even imagine save for that part in which we ourselves have a role. The Life that IS the Spirit of man and which IS manifest as the Soul gives Life to the physical form and consciousness to the emotional and mental nature and when this Life IS withdrawn, when the cohesive quality is taken away, it IS the individual cellular and molecular lives that continue on their own in a state that we see as decay. Similarly we can see this same happening in the psychic aspects of mind and emotion when the consciousness that IS the Soul IS withdrawn in the afterlife; but of this we KNOW little. It IS the Life and the consciousness that IS the True man and whether we refer to this as the Spirit or the Soul, the reality IS the same. Here in this state of being, in the Life of the Soul, the expression of Love simply IS and this expression IS the Holy Spirit as this relates to the True man and, again, we should understand that there IS NO separation.
In Life in the world however there IS separation as the human form plays host to the Soul and here we have our reality in this Earth. The Life IS the same, the consciousness IS the same but the activity of the consciousness IS different, it IS governed by the the predominant focus of the Life itself as consciousness. It IS in this light that we have previously said that the consciousness IS lent to the personality Life in the world and it IS the direction of the consciousness that IS the great variable; a direction that IS governed by one’s focus. The objective of the Soul is the expression of the True divine self through the personality in the world while the objective of the personality IS to seek whatsoever comforts and pleasures that seem to suit the needs of the complex creature we call the man in the world; and we should understand that the personality has the edge in this world as it IS in the ways of the personality and of the world that the man IS nurtured and this IS his initial experience as well. It IS through the prompting of the consciousness, that IS lost in the personality, by the Soul to achieve his objective that the change of focus can and will occur and this IS a difficult endeavor as the forces of the world and the personality are strong and there IS little that can teach a man the Truth.
The objective of expressing the Truth of Life, the Love and the Power of the Soul in the world, IS ever with us but it is clouded over by the very sense of self that must be overcome. It IS this expression of Truth that brings a man to the Kingdom of God and it IS a glimpse of this Truth that brings a man to Repentance, to that change in focus that puts the Kingdom within his reach. This glimpse IS found in the prompting of the Soul and it brings with it the Love and the mercy by measure as the expression of the man in the world and this expression, this activity is the Holy Spirit at work.
This IS ALL very complex and it was not our intention to go this far into these inner workings of Life as we see them in the Master’s words and in the realizations and revelations of our own Souls. The Life of God IS Truly Cosmic and far beyond our ability to understand it and while we may NOT be reporting the ultimate reality, we are showing the integration of ALL things and the correspondences through which ALL of Life DOES work out. It IS this working out of the Plan of God that brings the Love and the mercy that flows from God into our view and it IS the working out of the Plan of God that allows us to understand the realities and to use these most potent forces in this world of men.
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.
This Quote of the Day is the antithesis of glamour and illusion. In this mantram are the thoughts about ourselves and our brothers in the world that can diffuse those forces that hold a man in the world of things and prevent his spiritual progress.
Mantram of Unification
The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate;
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.
Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the Soul control the outer form, and life and all events,
And bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of the time.
Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.
The Mantram of Unification is a meditation and a prayer that at first affirms the unity of all men and the Brotherhood of Man based on the Fatherhood of God. The first stanza sets forth several truly Christian ideals in Unity, Love, Service and Healing. The second stanza is a invocation to the Lord and to our own Souls asking that from the pain (if there can truly be any) incurred in focusing on the Spirit and not the world will come Light and Love into our lives and that we begin to function as Souls through our conscious personalities. We ask that the spiritual control of our lives will bring to light for us the Love that underlies world events; a Love that the world oriented man will not see working out behind the scenes and also that the Love that we bring forth, individually and as a world group, can be seen by all and ultimately in all. Finally, in the last stanza we ask for those things that are needed for Love to abound. Vision and insight so that we can direct our attention properly; revelation of the future in the sense that all can see the Power of Love in the world; inner union so that we do not fall back into the world’s ways, that we faint not; and that a sense of separation, the antithesis of brotherhood, ends as we know it today. Let Love Prevail, Let All Men Love.spiritual control of our lives will bring to light for us the Love that underlies world events; a Love that the world oriented man will not see working out behind the scenes.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 2 New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- 2* Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
