Monthly Archives: September 2012

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART XLIV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:34-40).

In yesterday’s post we completed our look at the words of the Buddha that had been at the head of our essays for many days. It is interesting to note how the end of the Buddha’s words on the wakefulness of a master fit so neatly in with our ending theme as we brought the idea of serving the Lord down to the level of serving our fellow man. We highlighted the idea that  we should do for others whatsoever we would want others to do for us as our way of looking at the ideas of serving the Lord and we take this from the sayings of the Master which we have again posted today and as the new lead saying for our essay. From the word translated as beggar in the Buddha’s writings we came to the definition of One who supplicates with humility and one who asks or entreats earnestly, or with humility¹ which we equated with the Gospel ideas of asking in prayer and in His name and we cited verses to explain our point.

While the overall theme is for us the ideas behind the Master’s instruction that we serve, let us first explore a bit more of these words of the Master on asking, or, from the Buddha’s perspective, on being the beggar. The Master tells us that:

• “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? 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 7:7-12). We should see asking, seeking and knocking as different perspectives on the same thing which is one’s desire to be closer to God through his own Soul and this whether one realizes the effect or not; this is essentially the idea of focus and attention given to the things of God and not an actual asking or knocking but ALL of these are ever seeking. Yesterday we painted this as In both verses we should see that the communication is between the consciousness in the personality and the source of that consciousness in the Soul, the Christ Within. Here we should see the idea of the consciousness in the world as it works out in the aspirant and the disciple or the master as not merely asking but demanding the Light from above, from the Soul, and this demand is made through right living and right focus. This is the fire of his vigilance and this is our understanding of asking. The  fire of his vigilance is from the words of the Buddha and are telling us of the focused intent of the beggar as he guards himself from the things of the world. We should see that right living and right focus are the way to implore the Father to give to the consciousness of the man in form and we reach the Father through our own God Within. We must remember that the things that we ask for and that we seek are spiritual things and not things of the world as some doctrine would have us to believe and the knocking is on the strait gate that opens up into the Kingdom of God. We should see also that these things are things of the disciple and the aspirant who is ever asking, ever seeking and ever knocking.
• At the end of the Parable of the Friend at Midnight (In the Words of Jesus part 148) we find these words from the Master in Luke’s Gospel: “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:9-13) We should note two things here; first that it follows the parable with the conjunction ‘and’ which links these thoughts together and we should see the link is in the asking. In our previous exploration of these verses and the parable to which we attach them we took the idea of asking much more literally than we do today. Then, we marked it as asking the Lord and though we did understand this to be to ask the Lord Within from the perspective of the consciousness in form who has some Soul contact and desires more, we did not state it as such. We have however come a long way in the ensuing essays, nearly 300, and we do speak more frankly today. Today we say directly that when the Master tells us about asking God we understand that this is, directly in awareness or indirectly, the asking of our own God Within, Christ Within, our own Souls. And, we can understand today that this asking IS demanding the Light from above, from the Soul, and this demand is made through right living and right focus. How can we put this more clearly? When a man feels the prompting of his own Soul and begins the change in focus from the petty affairs of the personal self to the affairs of the Soul and the Christ Within which are the affairs of God, we can say that the man is asking and seeking and knocking and from the perspective of the sincere man this is his demand and it is offered in accordance with his own progression of right living and right focus. This is to say that right living and right focus are not stagnant things in time and space but they are things of growth and the closer a man comes to True discipleship, the more right his living and the more right his focus and these thing continue to grow through stages of discipleship as we see in the Life of the Apostle Peter as it is painted for us in the gospels. In the last point above we made the statement that these things that we ask for are spiritual and not carnal; here in Luke’s Gospel the Master makes that point for us in saying that it is the Holy Spirit that we ask for and that we receive. The second point here in these verses is that they do follow the parable whose meaning and intent is simply that the man to whom the visitor comes and the neighbor to whom the man goes both give and they give because they are asked by friends and by neighbors. There is no mystery in this parable which leads us to the sayings above, there is just the lead into ask and you shall receive; what is hidden, is how to ask and the parable tells us that this is done boldly.

We should note that in the words from Matthew’s Gospel above the ending is our Golden Rule which follows the sayings on asking and seeking and knocking by way of ‘therefore’, as a continuation, and in this we should try to see the connection to the reality of living in the world. The Master ties ALL things together for us and we can see here if we try the idea that as we receive from the Soul, the Christ Within, those things that we need, we should ever be prepared to offer the same to ALL. As we want to be treated from the perspective of the Soul in form conscious of his divinity, we should be prepared to treat ALL and this would encompass ALL that the Master instructs in the Sermon on the Mount and we should see this reality as the Soul in form who keeps His words and this becomes a great circular reference. We, as aspirants and disciples KNOW His words and we do them and this includes the Love and the serving and we do this understanding that we would that men would do these for us because they are the fulfillment of the Master’s words. And to this let us add what we say earlier regarding serving which is just a more progressive way of saying this same thing: we should do for others whatsoever we would want others to do for us …… this too can be seen as the law and the prophets and the reality of the Life of the disciple.

We did not go where we intended today and we will pick up on serving in the next post.

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 has now been with us for many days and in this we should be able to see and to understand the two levels of understanding from the perspective of the man in form; the one who sees only those things that are presented physically and the other who is “born of the Spirit” and sees Truth.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit (John 3:3-8)

Today’s Quote of the Day is in regard to the new birth which Nicodemus did not understand and which many today do not understand either. The words of the Master tell us of a total commitment to the Lord as the way to the Kingdom and these verses say that as well. This total commitment is being born again. The differences in language aside, we should try to see the relationship between these ideas of being born again which is the essence of discipleship for it is only in discipleship that one can Truly see the Kingdom. These are much misused ideas because they are seen from the perspective of the man in form and no from the perspective of the Soul living through form.

• ¹ Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• ⁵ The Dhammapada Translated by Thomas Byrom