Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART LVIII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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Our centered banner has not changed in many days now and yet we seldom discuss the reality that it should bring to us as aspirants and as disciples of any degree. What is says is that in ALL our interactions and ALL of our endeavors that their should be the constant expression of GoodWill. We KNOW the word from our posts and we should KNOW that it is generally split into the two words that comprise it Good and Will; GoodWill as a single word does not appear in our 1828 and 1913 editions of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionaries 1 but it does appear in our more current on-line dictionary from Random House. Here, it means: 1. friendly disposition; benevolence; kindness. 2. cheerful acquiescence or consent. 3. Commerce . an intangible, salable asset arising from the reputation of a business and its relations with its customers, distinct from the value of its stock and other tangible assets 7. Perhaps its inclusion today is based upon its legal use in commerce; this is expanded upon in the World English Dictionary as 1. a feeling of benevolence, approval, and kindly interest. 2. ( modifier ) resulting from, showing, or designed to show goodwill: the government sent a goodwill mission to Moscow; a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. 3. willingness or acquiescence. 4. accounting an intangible asset taken into account in assessing the value of an enterprise and reflecting its commercial reputation, customer connections, etc 10. None of these ideas Truly capture the essence of the word GoodWill as we intend its meaning to be although it does mean most ALL of what is stated. For us the ideas engendered in this word GoodWill are not simply the Will to Good as this requires definition as well but in this word we should see the essence of the Master’s words on Love and, especially the Golden Rule. Love in Action is treating ALL men, in every interaction, in every encounter, with the Love that Christ teaches in these two ideas that are frequently in our posts and which today we borrow back from the Quote of the Day section.
Love in Action is our expression of Love to others, it is a constant, natural and spiritual endeavor; it does not mean that as a personality one must like ALL men nor does it mean as suggested above that we treat others with willingness or acquiescence and it is not merely our expression of a friendly disposition or of benevolence or kindness although GoodWill may express ALL of these. GoodWill IS Love in Action is the battle cry of the aspirant and the disciple and encapsulated in its meaning is found the reality of the Master’s teachings on Love; here we find the True meaning of:
“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“ (Matthew 22:37-39).
This is the epitome of GoodWill from the perspective of everyman. The first part is the repetition of the Commandment of the Lord to the Jews in the Old Testament which for us, in these modern and less emotional and less superstitious times, should convey the idea that WE ARE as GOD IS and this idea of the Love of God includes that basic understanding of our relationship with Him, that we are part and parcel and that we DO understand that, as the Apostle Paul tells us, “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Can we see in these words a better understanding of how it is that one should “love thy neighbour as thyself“? Yes we can understand this from the perspective of Life in form, that we should see ALL and treat ALL others as we would treat ourselves but on the Higher Side, from the perspective of the True man, the Soul, we should be able to see another reality in our own being ONE with God through our own sense of God Within an in this the Love of God is also Love for one’s own True Self. Of course our normal view of Love is of no value here as we need to see this in the same Light as the ideas that:
- “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 4:16).
- “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
- “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment” (1 John 4:17-18).
- “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). AND “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” (John 14:15, 23).
Looking at our list above, we are hard pressed to find a place for our common understanding of Love and this has ever been our point. There are not other words that we can use to make these same claims above but there must be a way to divide the ideas of Loving God from loving pizza and perhaps the best way to elucidate this is to see Love in the context of God and our fellow man as the active principal as seen from a spiritual perspective. It is likely that the only persons who can express this Love as we see in our list are those among us who can let the Light of the Soul be expressed through form and personality as it is in this Light that the Love and the Power flow. This is a reality and shows the importance of a man’s ability to properly understand who and what he Truly is and it is in this understanding which operates regardless of religion or religious affiliation that a man can begin to better realize the promptings of the Soul.
Additionally, the force of this Love is found in the lives of those who can realize that they are not this form and here we should be careful for there are likely many who have an inkling of the Truth but who at the same time do not understand because they were never told and they have not taken the time to hear the ‘still small voice‘ although they KNOW it is there and that it speaks. In the reality of not being this form in the world is the reality that a man is more, that he is the Christ Within, the Soul, even if he has never heard these words and hence we can see the idea of aspirants and even disciples who are not in tune with their Souls from the spiritual perspective but are in tune nonetheless; we can see people who profess a certain religion and who at the same time sense the ONENESS of ALL religions. There are NO limits on a man’s ability to realize his own Soul and there are many paths by which a man can focus upon his True self and the Life of the Soul and it is in this focus that the Good, the Beautiful and the True flow into the Life in form; it is in this focus that a man can realize divinity according the the nature of the form that he has provided for himself and in accordance with any karmic responsibility that he may carry.
Seeing our list above should tell us of this difference between the normal human idea of Love and this one that is Truly Spiritual and which can be a True sign of our own place in the scale of ‘spirituality’ as well as our own view of others. Here we should see this Love as the first and foremost of the fruits of the Spirit and, as the Master tells us, that it is “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). From our perspective as disciples and aspirants we see a bit deeper into His words, understanding the Truth that “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” but we should also see that in bearing some fruit we are accomplishing much and, again, the first and foremost of the fruits IS Love. In our list we see that “God is Love” and this Love is incomprehensible to us as is the Truth behind the idea that “For God so loved the world“. Perhaps however we can see these in comparison to the idea of to “love thy neighbour as thyself“. The relationship here is found in the sense of UNITY that IS in the Kingdom of God, that place or rather that state of being, where our Souls do Truly reside. When we see ALL as ONE this idea of Love comes easier to our understanding as we can come to realize in the personality and through mind what we Truly are….parts of the ONE whole; part and parcel of God.
We could say that in some ways this realization of the reality of Love is a key to our being able to express any degree of Soul Light here on the Earth for no matter what one believes that they have accomplished spiritually, no matter what their own opinion is of their relationship with God, if one is not “rooted and grounded in love” the reality will come to naught. This is not to say that without Love there is no Soul Light; as we say above there are many ways of expression and many are not specifically spiritual when viewed from the perspective of man in form. Most Great discoveries and timely inventions, even cures for many of the diseases of man, are expressions of the Light of the Soul of a man whose Soul’s duty it was to express it. These things are a great mystery, one of a great many mysteries, but in the panolpy of men and forms and place and role, many there are who may come into incarnation with a purpose that does not involve the spiritual side of Life and whose overall outward expression is unseemly in respect to the way we expect to see one who is expressing a Soul quality. In the long journey through Life, incarnation after incarnation, which we endure as the whole of the creation evolves, there are likely many twists and turns and things that are put in motion under the guidance of those who Guide the race of men and ALL in some way under the supervision of the Christ who acts through the Christ within the whole of the race of men helping to move us ALL to the final goal. Much of this is beautifully said by Paul in His prayer for us ALL as disciples of the Christ saying:
“That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
In our list above we also find the idea of perfect as in John’s telling us of “perfect love” and how Love is made perfect by our realization that “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him“. That “perfect love casteth out fear” is easy to understand in the reality of expressing the Light of the Soul through form and realizing the Truth of one’s existence; here we come to understand that things like fear only have power in the minds of men focused upon the things of the world. Finally we have in our list the reality of Love for God which according to the teachings of the Master is only True of those who keep His words and in this vein we repeat again that the first and foremost teaching of the Master, the Greatest Commandments, are regarding this Love. He clearly tells us this saying: “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).
While we have said much about Love here today we did not say what we set out to discuss. We began with GoodWill and Love thy neighbor and the Golden Rule but did not follow this path as we excursionsed into a better understanding of Love and its Power in the Life of a disciple, an aspirant and most ALL people who are trending in that direction, even when this is not realized. In the last essay we posted some words from H.P. Blavatsky which speak of this same relationship between the Love that streams forth from the Soul and the love that we exhibit and understand as men in form. This artilcle speaks on these things in a more practical manner than we generally do and there is a good deal of revelation regarding the ability of a man to become a True disciple and still live in the world. We have had this theme on our agenda for quite some time, being able to fulfill the requirements set forth by the Master for discipleship and the Kingdom, but have yet to Truly get to it from the perspective of these modern times. We will get to this in the near future as there is no reason to try to understand this without the needed revelation which we cannot yet say that we have. Getting back to the article from the last post, we should understand the True meaning of the word occult and of occultism as it is conveyed in this article and this movement of Theosophy which, like most all religions and philosophies, is not presented today as it was intended by the originator. In its purest form occultism is the esoteric science of understanding God and one’s relationship to Him, much like the purpose of our blog. We concentrate on the presentation of the Christ while Theosophy and kindred philosophies look at this from a more obscure scientific nature which is right and True in its purest forms but which, at the same time, is not for ALL men to study and to understand. Our presentation here is mostly along Christian lines as we interpret the words of the Master in a way that can be seen and understood by the occultist as they would be able to see the synergy of ALL Truths. Our presentation is intended for those who are looking for a non-doctrinal approach to the reality of the Life of the True man, a reality that is expressed by the Master and by His apostles but which is misconstrued and misinterpreted by the focus of the doctrines of the churches on the old and stale interpretations of their words from the early Church Fathers and the Reformers as well.
Remembering what we said in the last post regarding the substitution of words in the article by Ms. Blavatsky, we re- post this here again and put off until the next essay what we had planned to be for today, the second part of the article. The first part with changes then:
How then can it be thought possible for a man to enter the “straight gate” of occultism the Kingdom of God when his daily and hourly thoughts are bound up with worldly things, desires of possession and power, with lust, ambition and duties, which, however honourable, are still of the earth earthy? Even the love for wife and family–the purest as the most unselfish of human affections–is a barrier to real occultism discipleship. For whether we take as an example the holy love of a mother for her child, or that of a husband for his wife, even in these feelings, when analyzed to the very bottom, and thoroughly sifted, there is still selfishness in the first, and an égoisme à deux in the second instance. What mother would not sacrifice without a moment’s hesitation hundreds of thousands of lives for that of the child of her heart? and what lover or true husband would not break the happiness of every other man and woman around him to satisfy the desire of one whom he loves? This is but natural, we shall be told. Quite so; in the light of the code of human affections; less so, in that of divine universal love. For, while the heart is full of thoughts for a little group of selves, near and dear to us, how shall the rest of mankind fare in our souls? What percentage of love and care will there remain to bestow on the “great orphan”? And how shall the “still small voice” make itself heard in a soul entirely occupied with its own privileged tenants? What room is there left for the needs of Humanity en bloc to impress themselves upon, or even receive a speedy response? And yet he who would profit by the wisdom of the universal mind, has to reach it through the whole of Humanity without distinction of race, complexion, religion or social status. It is altruism, not ego-ism even in its most legal and noble conception, that can lead the unit to merge its little Self in the Universal Selves. It is to these needs and to this work that the true disciple of true Occultism discipleship has to devote himself, if he would obtain theo-sophy, divine Wisdom and Knowledge.**
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Aspect of God |
Potency |
Aspect of Man |
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Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
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Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
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Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
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.:
So that we do not forget that the reality of this ALL is still LOVE which is our Truth regardless of whatever other realizations may come to us in Life, we present here again the Apostle Paul’s words followed by our own understanding of this reality:
….but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:8-10).
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)
We should remember always to link to this Greatest Commandment that other saying of the Master that gives to us the practical understanding of how to love one’s self plus the practical instruction on how it is that we CAN Love our neighbour; He tells us:
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them
(Matthew 7:12)
Unlike so much of the Master’s sayings that come to us in the form of parables and for which we can only surmise that we have the spiritual presence to understand, these sayings are very straightforward and they are the key to many of the promises of spiritual life; they are the very key to the Kingdom of God. To these sayings we add our adopted definition of the Greek word agape (agapao) which is translated into the English words Love and Charity and which is:
‘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’
- 1 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
- 7 Dictionary.com Unabridged based on Random House Dictionary – 2011
- 10 Dictionary.com. Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers
- ** Lucifer Magazine May, 1888
