Monthly Archives: February 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part XXII

“But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:1, 8-12).

We spent our time yesterday on the above saying as a part of our journey through the saying by the Apostle John that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). We discussed the ideas found within “one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” as this relates to the Soul of man, his Master and his Christ Within and we engaged upon a new realization regarding the idea of Self. This is an important point which we should consider frequently in an effort to understand the complexities of Life. In short, the Self is the consciousness, the thinker and the doer. When embedded in the personality Life, the Life of the form on Earth, this Self is awash in the world of things and, as we have said before, this world becomes all that the Self knows from his years of infancy, childhood and young adulthood and whatsoever other part until he hears the call of the Soul and heeds. At some point he may hear the call of the Soul and then begins a most difficult part as there is then constant decision as to which way the Self will go as the consciousness, the thinker and the doer; will he heed the call and think and do as the Soul, the Christ Within requires or will he continue on, awash in the world of things which is usually the more attractive and the easier to achieve and this because it is what the Self knows best. This is the journey of the Prodigal Son (In the Words of Jesus part 102) and there is some additional insight into this in the Parable of the Rich Fool (In the Words of Jesus part 109).

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son we can see the ‘other brother’ who stays at home doing, not the will of His Father in Heaven per se, but rather doing what it is that has made him comfortable, what he has known to do. The other son, apparently wanting and needing more, strikes out into the unknown and falls into the ways of the world far beyond what he had been comfortable with and what he knew. He hears the call of the Soul however by way of dissatisfaction with his Life after spending ALL to find that illusive happiness. He realizes that this is no Life to live and decides to go back to the Father’s house where he will at least be comfortable. The story here as we are portraying it is that this son goes back because he wants to be there in the Father’s house and not just because it is where he started out; he sees the ills of the world and decides on the way of Life. His brother may always be where he is in his comfort zone and may never heed the call; there is nothing to move him on unless he too gets to that point of wanting and needing more.

In this interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son we can see the impetus of the Self wanting and needing more and we can liken this to the call of the Soul. The result may be misinterpreted into diving further into the ways of the world seeking happiness and whatever that may entail; this is part of the great illusion and of the glamour of emotion which so much of the Master’s teachings rail against. This call may be ignored and the man may stay his whole life in the comfort zone that he knows and he may be rich or poor in doing so as this desire not to change runs the full spectrum of social and economic states. Or, this call may be heeded and understood as the prompting of the Soul through the activity that is created in the Self, in the consciousness, by the Christ Within. There are also to be seen an infinite range of possibilities included within this all and, it should be also understood that there are those who in any particular Life are destined to live in any one of these frames of reference. However, this being said, it is always within the ability of the Self to break out and seek the way of Light as this is ever the destiny of man and the ardent desire of the Soul. In saying this all we should also come to the recognition that ALL are not suited to discipleship just as ALL are not suited to living totally enmeshed in the world and through this understanding we can come to a perspective of understanding and respect for the situation that any man finds himself in; this is brotherhood, this is Love.

Our next segment of this saying by the Master is “one is your Father, which is in heaven” and in this we should see two things that are common among our posts. First is the correspondence between Father and Spirit on the personal level. There is our Father God and He is in Heaven but at the same time there is the Spirit, our correspondence in man to the Father and he too is in that Kingdom of God and of Heaven that is within us. Can we see the lack of time and space in this? If the Kingdom is within each of us then the Kingdom can be said to be everywhere and to understand this or even get a glimpse of the meaning we must consider that this is not a physical place. Think of these terms together: Spirit, Soul, Consciousness, heaven, God, infinity and eternity and perhaps we can see a tiny bit of the reality of this all. Intentionally hard it is to understand all of this, even to see these words together or to understand them individually; this is why the Master calls this ALL a mystery and tells us as disciples that “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11). Ponder on all these things and, as we come closer to being His disciples, as we move forward in our walk with the Christ, they do become clearer and more readily discernible. Remember here also His other words: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:35); in this we can know that All things are in His words.

Aside from the hidden ideas within His sayings that “one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” and “one is your Father, which is in heaven” which lead us to understand that the Christ and the Christ Within are each one’s Master and that in this state, as the Soul, we are Truly all brothers, plus our understanding of the correspondence between the Spirit that is the True man and the Father, both of which exist in the same heaven within each of us, there are the outer meanings as well. Remember that the Master is speaking to men in form who may not be disciples and thereby not privy to even the existence of a hidden meaning. To these he is saying that in one’s own view of others he should not see any as his master except Christ and see no man as his father except his Father in heaven and that one should no purport himself to be either. Looking around the world today do we see how even the churches have ignored this by putting their own doctrinal standards above the words of the Christ and convincing themselves that they are right in doing so. Now we understand that this is essentially meaningless but still it is against the intent of the Master and the kind of thing that He says negatively against the Pharisees. Understanding this as men in form, the Master gives more instruction and this is on being humble and telling us that we should not be looking for this stature, as Rabbi or Master or Father, but should approach ALL as a servant of ALL; teaching and instructing as would the Rabbi and the Master and even the Father, in humility and without position. The opposite is self serving and prideful and this is exceedingly hard to overcome even after the Light of the Soul enters into the personality consciousness. The Master’s instruction is clear to ALL; those that see and those that do not yet see are shown here the folly of pride and exalting nature of humility. Finally, regardless of the perspective from which this saying is viewed, as aspiring disciples or as the man in form, the fact of brotherhood is firmly fixed in His saying that “all ye are brethren“. In this is no mistaking the hidden meaning from the outer one as they are essentially the same on all levels of existence.

In this is a measure of the True nature of Love and its working out in GoodWill and benevolence. From the God that is Love through the Son who brings that Love to us we must see the overall equality of ALL men with none seeking to be of any more importance than another but all acting, as would the Christ, as the servant and the teacher and the bringer of the Good News of the Gospel. Aside from the more apparent understanding of our interrelationships with each other that we find in the Sermon on the Mount regarding one’s refraining from hate, lust and adultery and from doing for others so as to gain or look right, we find in these subject verses a deeper understanding of Love in the form of controlling the way that one appears to his brother and it is in this that we can and should find a deeper understanding of discipleship and another step on the Path to His Kingdom.

Presenting again our chart of the Aspects of God we are drawing attention to a potency of the Son and of the Soul that we have not discussed in any of our Aspects or Attributes of God and that is the potency that we call Wisdom. We should ever remember that there are no real dividing lines as in this linear portrayal of God that is our chart; first, all is ONE and second, the separations are only in the differentiation of the aspects that are the Trinity. Love, for example, permeates the Holy Spirit and  and the Light of the Holy Spirit emanates from the Son and ALL are included within the Father. The Father is Life itself; GOD IS. The Son is the Christ, the manifestation of God, the cohesive Love that holds ALL together and is the creator of ALL that appears in time and space. The Holy Spirit is the energy that is this creation itself; it is the vibrant activity of Light, energy as we can understand it, and can be seen as the Path upon which our consciousness exists. None of these ideas is absolute as we are speaking of that Boundless, Immutable, Infinite and Eternal Presence that is our GOD and, by correspondence, our Spirits. None of these ideas propounded for each of the Aspects can be separated from any other in Life as we can view it; the LIFE, the manifestation of that Life and the appearance of that Life are, from our viewpoint, ever ONE.

When we speak of Wisdom we speak of a word that is much confused but which is aptly structured for us by the Apostle Paul who tells not what Wisdom is but how, like Love, it is differentiated by that sense of Higher and lower. Paul tells us that “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). and in this saying we should see that what is called wise from a worldly perspective is not the Wisdom we speak of at all. This Wisdom that we see here in our chart is intimately tied to Love and can be seen as the single effect of the Christ and the Christ within. The “wisdom that is from above” , as the Apostle James tells us, “is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17). Can we see here the relationship to Love? In worldly terms wisdom is The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity¹. We should be careful here to understand this in the right way; assuming that we are speaking about what James calls the “wisdom that is from above“, then this this definition makes good sense for us as it is a ample depiction of the KNOWING that comes from the Soul, the Christ Within. However, if we are speaking about worldly wisdom, while the defining terms are yet true the man knows only of the things of this world albeit in a rather positive way and in this we can also see what Paul is telling us regarding the spiritual profit of this wisdom; that it “is foolishness with God“. We should remember also the words of the Master who does not speak much on Wisdom but who tells us that “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light” (Luke 16:8). In this instance the Master is relating the wisdom of this world to the craftiness of “the children of this world” insofar as they are wise in their doings to maintain their position in the world; this is covered in the Parable of the Unjust Steward (In the Words of Jesus parts 95-96) and is a lead up to the Master’s point that “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Overall we should see that there is wisdom of this world just as there is Love of this world and there is also Wisdom from above and the Love of the Christ and the Christ Within; we should also see that these are married together and inseparable in form and in purpose and that they flow forth from the Soul on the same ray of Light.

In closing today let us look at Wisdom from the perspective of Solomon who is renowned for his personal Wisdom and in his words we should be able to find many parallels to the ideas on Love from the Prologue of the Gospel of John. Speaking of Wisdom, the Wisdom that is from God, Solomon says:

“The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death” (Proverbs 8:22-36).

This is the eternal Wisdom, that Wisdom that is a Potency of the Christ and of the Christ Within and which is forever entwined with the Love that is the Christ. We will continue with this point in the next post and perhaps get to our last point on the direct sayings regarding God from the bible.

• God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1)

Note on the Quote of the Day