ON LOVE; PART DXC
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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 explored some of the ideas presented in James’ words regarding the tongue where we centered on the idea that his use of this word in no way means ONLY the physical tongue any more that speaking in different tongues does. Nor does this word imply ONLY what one says in words and this we have seen throughout James Epistle and most ALL of the New Testament where speaking IS ofttimes the fullness of a man’s expression as this stems from his thoughts and his attitudes and become his words and his actions. There ARE many ways for a man to speak and this IS the same idea that we find in the Master’s and His apostle’s sayings on hearing and on seeing, neither of which ARE ONLY accomplished by the ear and the eye. Both of these words, hearing and seeing, are in regard to perception and can be carnal or they can be spiritual and in the latter of course by degree. These ideas of seeing and hearing can go all the way to the concept of believing as we should read in James’ words that we recently discussed saying “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22), which IS intended to be seen in that light. While one may believe this and that about “the word” according to his doctrines, if he DOES NOT DO what he believes then this IS deception. And there IS more to this idea as there IS in the other ideas of seeing and the tongue; here in hearing we should see the idea of Truth, of the Truth of His words which may be diluted and changed by doctrine and then ignored by the hearer who KNOWS their veracity but DOES NOT DO them….he too IS deceived.
These ideas are ALL very complex when they are applied spiritually but they are complex as well in their carnal understanding as it IS here in the world that the Truths are assuaged by the mind and the emotions of men and their doctrines so that the reality of the Master’s words saying “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark 4:23) ring loudly but go unheard. The seeing and the hearing of a man govern what it IS that enters into his consciousness and these can come from most any source, physical, psychic, and divine, and the ideas in the Master’s words here are to show forth the divine, the reverberation of His words as reflected in one’s own focus upon the things of God. There IS NO easy way to depict these ideas and here perhaps the example of Love will suffice: The Master teaches us Love, He says Love thy neighbor, and we hear this with our ears from the preacher and we read in in a multiplicity of places, we may even see this in a movie about His Life; there IS NOT likely a Christian who DOES NOT KNOW these words. So we hear His words with our ears, and these ARE the words of the One we call Master, yet we DO NOT hear them in our consciousness except in the way that they are interpreted by doctrine and by our own minds and emotions; these words ARE NOT reflected in our focus because our focus IS on the lower forces of the mind and the emotions. The man however who IS focused upon the things of God, will hear and see these as reflected through his consciousness which IS focused upon the Soul and things divine; for this man these words have a different meaning and this man Truly hears; this man DOES have “ears to hear” and these ARE NOT his physical ears.
This IS NOT the way that most doctrine views these ideas and this IS because they DO NOT view Life as that a man IS a Soul living through form; they DO NOT see the reality of the Christ Within and it IS in their carnally oriented views of Life that they discount ALL these ideas and see ONLY the physical ear, the eye and the tongue as the subject of the words of the Master and His apostles. It IS in this vein that the Master tells His disciples and His True followers of the Truth of His speaking in parables; we read:
“And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them” (Matthew 13:10-17).
Can we see the reality here? That the disciples are hearing the same words as the rest but that they hear them as spiritual words acknowledged by their own Souls and this through their focus upon the things of God while the rest hear with their physical ears and carnal minds and DO NOT understand the things that He IS Truly saying. And can we see the reality that even these words are parabolic as there ARE so many men yet today who believe that they KNOW the Truth of His words but who actually ONLY KNOW what has entered into the physical ear and has been processed by the carnal mind. It IS the disciple here that IS blessed, it IS the disciple that hears and understands in his consciousnesses, his heart, which IS focused upon the things of God. This focus IS the result of that True faith that James’ speaks of, that faith that results in works and it IS these works that become the man’s fruit, his expression to the world, and the product of his tongue as it represents that expression.
This IS the greater reality of the tongue, the ears and the eyes in their spiritual correspondence; on the one hand we have spiritual perception which IS revelation and realization of Truth and on the other we have spiritual expression which is the fruit of a man’s Life and the words that come in that True faith which IS found in right focus upon the things of God through the Soul, the Christ Within. This ALL brings us back again to the idea of blessed as used by James as the expression of the man whose focus IS True. Two different Greek words are used here for bless; the one here from James is rendered by other versions as praise while the one used above by the Master is rendered by other translations as happy and our point here is that in both of the ideas intended by theses words there IS a deeper meaning. If we can try to see these ideas in the same way as those words above, ear, eye and tongue, we can understand how the range of meanings can work here in the idea of blessed. This word however IS more difficult to discern; as disciples, those who Truly followed the Master ARE blessed according to the Beatitudes for their divine expressions and according to the sayings above because of their ability to rightly hear and see divine expression and perhaps here the divine expression IS the blessing. We can see this idea in James’ use of this Greek word makarios as he uses it for the man whose divine expression allows him to endure temptation in “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation” and as he uses it to distinguish the man who continues in the word in which we can also see this divine expression as we read: “But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:12, 25). We should remember that words are a picture of ideas and the picture of makarios may NOT have a more adequate single word in English than this idea we are presenting; that the reality of blessing IS one’s ability to express divinity and we can see this as well in this from the Master in response to the woman who offers blessing upon Jesus mother: “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it” (Luke 11:28). While happy may be an appropriate idea for these ideas, it IS ONLY appropriate from the carnal perspective of the onlooker as the man who IS blessed is well beyond happy.
These ideas of expression however do not work the same way for the other Greek word rendered as blessed; in eulogeo there IS a different dynamic to be seen. Here in James’ use we see it as man blessing God which idea in itself is odd and here the more worldly idea of praise is seen by many. We read this word in the Master’s sayings several times; it IS used in the place where we should “bless them that curse you” (Matthew 5:44) which is intended by the Master to be a act of Love and it IS used by the apostle to describe Jesus action in the blessing and breaking of the bread as he feeds the multitudes. We see it used as well in the song sung by the multitudes as Jesus arrives at Jerusalem in all the gospels and in the same words used by the Master reflecting upon his own absence until the not believing Jews would say the same; Jesus says: “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39). We find this word used by Luke as well as he describes the last moments with Jesus in the end of his gospel where we read: “And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:50-51). Luke uses this word again in the Book of Acts to say: “Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities” (Acts 3:26). Paul uses this word rendered as bless as well repeating the Master’s admonition above to the Romans saying “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not” (Romans 12:14) and he relates this to faith as he says to the Galatians “So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (Galatians 3:9). Perhaps here, in the past tense of blessed, we can see the idea of a Godly nature and in the affirmative sense we can get the idea of seeing the Godly nature within a man. While this does not work smoothly in all uses, it seems to be better than the idea of praise which has no True spiritual meaning.
When we can bless those that curse us we ARE likely among those who see clearly and who ARE expressing some degree of the Love and the Power of the Soul and in this view we DO see those that we bless as divine, as the same as we ourselves. Also, when we see reference to the Lord as blessed, we can see as well His divine nature in that word and again, this would be from the one who can realize this sense of divinity which the Jews to whom the Master spoke DID NOT; they DID NOT see that He had “cometh in the name of the Lord“. And can we see this idea in Luke’s words in how that by His display of divinity the Master be “turning away every one of you from his iniquities“. We do not cover ALL uses of these words and, as we say, there are some that ARE more difficult to discern than others. And this IS our point in this journey through these words today; discernment. There ARE many words in the New Testament that have meanings that ARE NOT discerned because they are used with a spiritual intent and it IS ONLY when they ARE viewed in this way that one can understand the use of the words by the writer. We KNOW what the Master means in using ear and eye for hearing and seeing in the gospels but the carnally focused man will NOT see this; he will only see the outer carnal meaning and this IS ofttimes True whether that meaning makes good sense of not. This is True of the James’ writing as well as we have seen in his use of words like tongue, speaking and rich where his intent IS NOT the carnal tone that is understood by many.
Then there are the words that are ill-defined and improperly translated in our view; words like the those rendered as wrath and “shadow of turning” and others that we have commented on in our recent posts on James’ Epistle. Some of these are words that seem to be selected by the apostle simply because they are unique and the more difficult to discern that other choices which could say the same things that we see as his intent. Last there are other words like those rendered as bless and blessed and blessing; words that are assigned this nebulous definition along with the ideas of praise and happy as we cite above; words that have become a part of doctrine but which have no firm meaning in the material world and which ARE NOT properly discerned by those who SO NOT yet see nor hear as the Master uses these ideas. Faith also should be seen in this same class of words and sin and evil also as we have often discussed.
It IS important that the aspirant and the disciple see the reality of this use of words and try to discern the True intent of the writer and while this IS a thing that one would think that most disciples would have accomplished, we should note that the Master speaks several times to His disciples lack of True understanding. We DO NOT pretend here to have the answers nor DO we have the right discernment in ALL these ideas but we can say that our view IS of a spiritual nature and NOT a carnal one. In these last essays on James we may appear to be taking a harsh stand against doctrine as seen in our words but it IS NOT our intent to be harsh as we only seek to show forth the spiritual Truths of the words of the Master and His apostles as opposed to the way that these are presented to the world at large. This IS most easily seen in James words about the tongue that we have been discussing and how so many see this as the physical organ and as the words that it produces rather than the entirety of a man’s expression in the world. This worldly view of James’ use of the tongue may NOT be responsible for the whole of the misunderstanding of these verses on teaching but it certainly DOES NOT help is the right discernment of the apostle’s intent which itself IS NOT seen as it IS; as against the teaching of doctrines over Truths. And this IS the rub; that one generally can not see those things clearly that are against himself: the deluded CAN NOT readily see the illusion and the doctrinally minded CAN NOT see those ideas that ARE against the doctrines.
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.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)
This is called by some of the church the Great Commission and so it is. It is however hardly understood and at times grossly misapplied. Somewhere in the centuries that have passed since the Master left us we have come to think that the meaning of this is just to preach the word through any particular doctrine and baptize according to any particular belief. Vincent tells us that the word translated as teach here should be seen as make disciples of 4 and the lexicon bears this out. There is nowhere in scripture an actual defining understanding of the concept of baptism and we generally think of it as the immersion into or the pouring on of water and that somehow this clears us of sin. This is but an outward sign however of real spiritual undertaking by the conscious man and it is only when a man is ready to commit to the Master that a baptism can be considered real. We will leave this as the Quote of the Day for a few days and try to find in it some true meaning. Keeping in mind our four points, we should ponder on this.
The Master is speaking to disciples and not the multitudes and these are those that do believe on Him and follow Him and keep His words. Hard sayings for man in the world but claimed by many nonetheless. There IS a reality in the idea that the disciple should be “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” which IS His words that ARE to be kept and in this light we add these ideas from the Buddha: “Love yourself and watch – today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, Then teach, and so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing – straighten yourself” (Dhammapada; on Yourself)5.
