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The Greatest of These is Love

The Greatest of These is Love

1 Corinthians talks about love. In 13.2 it says: And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

It is pretty clear that there is nothing more important than the expression of love. Most of us save true expressions of love for those we are closest to, and yet, that is not what this verse is telling us. Nowhere are we told to love only those who are of our blood, or those who have personalities we like. It doesn?t suggest that we save our love for special people or special occasions.

The kind of love spoken of here is a universal love. Just as God loves us all without special favor, raining His love on the unjust as well as the just, we are to love everyone in that same way. In T-1.V.3:2-3, the Course tells us:  God is not partial. All His children have His total love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike. The trick of course, is how to express our love in this way. I can?t begin to tell you how you should accomplish this, I can only tell you how I try to do it.

The most basic tenet of the Christian religion is that God is Love. I also know that God created me like Himself, so I must be love also. The Course says: You are the work of God, and His work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. T-1.III.2:3 Then why do I have so much trouble expressing myself as love? It is a lot easier to tell you of those times when I fail to express my true nature as love than it is to come up with examples of love. It really shouldn?t be so hard to do. I must be making some basic mistake, putting up some block to my awareness of my true nature that prevents me from seeing the value of love.

Who am I supposed to love? Everyone that God sends my way is someone I am supposed to love. All of these people are lessons in love; opportunities for me to remember who I am. If I express love to you, I am teaching myself that I am love. I am removing one of those blocks to my awareness of my true nature.

I will be given many opportunities for practice. There are lifetime relationships such as I have with my children. These relationships are rich in opportunity. I am so deeply bound to my children that the ties are virtually unbreakable, so I have to find ways around our seeming differences and disagreements. If this were any other relationship I might be able to run from it rather than repair it, so it is very good that I have lifetime relationships because if I could run, I probably would. Then I would rob myself of the chance to learn that I am love.

I have long term relationships. These relationships, while not lasting a lifetime, are sustained and have their own teaching and learning values, and there is usually enough time to learn to use love to work out conflicts. Then there are short term relationships like the ones I have at work with people who come and go. There are shorter lessons to learn with these people, but it doesn?t mean that they are not just as important. One lesson well learned is enough.

Then there are the people who just pop into my life briefly. They are given me so that I can teach love and learn love. Someone pulls out of traffic right in front of me. I can make a rude gesture, or I can smile in understanding. After all, I have done the same thing because I was in a hurry, frustrated, or just misjudged my timing. One response teaches me that I am love, the other doesn?t. Each lesson, no matter how simple or how brief, is of equal importance in its value as a teaching aid.

So, now I am clear about who I am to love. I am to love everyone that God sends to me. How about the ones I don?t actually meet? The people I see on TV or read about in the paper? Surely they don?t count? But, yes they do. Even if I don?t verbally express my thoughts, they still count.  The Course says: What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. T-31.VI.1.5 What I think is who I am, so I can?t discount these opportunities.

That is a lot of people to love, but on the other hand, there is nothing to figure out. I can?t confuse the issue by arguing that some people deserve my love and others don?t.  I have one rule only to follow. If they are here in my life, they are here for me to love.

Then there is the question of how to love. I have often been mistaken when I thought I was being loving and really that wasn?t the case. When my son, Toby said he wanted to go sky diving, I wanted to convince him not to. I felt that it was the loving thing for me to protect him. Or was it? Perhaps I was trying to protect myself from fear. Perhaps, the loving thing to do was to teach him to be fearless and faith filled. I could teach fear or I could teach love.  Doesn?t the Course tell us that:  Perfect love casts out fear.  If fear exists, then there is not perfect love. T-1.V.5:4-5

Nor am I talking about love in a romantic or physical sense. In fact, we call a lot of things love, when often we could more accurately replace the word love with desire or want. I might tell you that I love chocolate, and I do feel pretty strongly about chocolate, but that isn?t really love.

I have thought that strong feelings I?ve had for certain people was love, but it was really neediness. I thought I loved them, but what I felt was a need for their approval and affection. I thought they had something I didn?t have and that I wanted. That isn?t love either.

Let me give you an example of this. One of the things I was attracted to in my ex husband was his ability to socialize with so many people. Everyone liked to be around him. He was fun and had lots of friends. I found that intriguing because that was never true for me. I wasn?t very good at socializing and wasn?t what you would call a fun kind of person. I probably wasn?t the first person you would think of if you were looking for someone to liven up your party. I really wanted to be like him in that way.

This is not the only thing I liked about him, but it is a good example of the kind of thing we look for in others and hope to make part of ourselves through our union with them. The problem with this is that when the other person fails to produce this special behavior, or when you decide it isn?t important to you anymore, you become disillusioned with the relationship. Suddenly, you decide the other person isn?t what you thought they were, and you are ready to throw them over for someone with something more to offer. This isn?t love. This is a bargain that went bad. It may have been an unconscious bargain, but it was a bargain none the less. In 905: Special Relationships vs Holy Relationships, we read: If the truth were to be known it is saying, ?I?m looking for you to help me feel more special to make up for the feelings of lack and unworthiness I experience in myself.?

Another way to see this is in co-dependent relationships. I was in a relationship with a man who was emotionally immature. He needed someone to support his need to remain so. I needed someone who could support my need to feel worthy and important. So that was our bargain. It was such a good fit. He could be forever an emotional child, and I could be forever needed. It felt right and good. We called it love.  Then, I grew out of that need, and suddenly the relationship was one sided.  It became clear that what we had called love was really mutual need.

Love is not really an emotion, either; it is a decision. Contrary to romance novels people do not fall in love and fall out of love. People decide to love and they decide not to love. If I am experiencing an emotional response to someone, that is not love. It is something else, probably having to do with a sense of need on my part. The emotions that accompany this decision are not love. They are related to our perceived needs. If we are getting our perceived needs filled by our partner we feel strong positive emotions. If we don?t feel fulfilled by the other person, we feel strong negative emotions that can run from disappointment to rage.

I have decided to love everyone because it is what I must do to experience the peace of God. This kind of love is often referred to as Universal Love. It is unconditional love. We often speak of unconditional love as if it were a kind of love. Actually, unconditional is the only kind of love. If my feelings about someone are conditional, then they are based on something other than love.

I have a friend who is in and out of treatment for drug abuse. Do I love her any less because she does not stay clean? No, because that would be putting a condition on my love. If my partner were unfaithful to me, would that be reason to stop loving him? No, because, once again, I would have put a condition on my love. If my child grew up and moved away and seldom came to see me or contacted me, would I stop loving that child? No. My love has no conditions.

I don?t say to my friend that I will love you only if you are clean and sober. I might be sad to see her hurt herself. I might ask her not to bring her drugs into my life. But, I would not love her any less. I might decide that I did not want to share a home with an unfaithful partner, but that doesn?t mean that I would stop loving him.  I might feel very sad to lose the company of a beloved child, but I would not stop loving him. Love, real love, has no conditions.

Now take unconditional love and apply it universally. If I apply this same kind of love to everyone, I am loving as we are told to love. So, how does this work in my daily life? Well, this is where it gets a little tricky. When the towers came down, universal love required that I love the terrorists who crashed the plane into them. This was hard. I wanted to hate them. But I cannot. 1 John 4:20 says, ?If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?? I at least wanted to put some pretty basic conditions on my love of these people. Quit killing people, or I won?t love you. Is this asking too much?

I am certain that the world was full of people who did evil things when Jesus was here. In fact, if you read your history you know there were some terrible people, but Jesus did not say, love only those who do good. In fact, he went to some trouble to emphasize that we should love everyone in every circumstance. He said: But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. Matthew 5:44

So, I must love Osama Bin Laden. Does this mean I must condone his actions? No, but I must separate his actions from who he is. I do not love what he does and if I could stop him, I would, but he is a child of God and so I love him. This is spiritual love. It is loving each person exactly the same and with no conditions.

Love is Universal and its laws are universal. If I am not expressing love always and in every circumstance, then I am not expressing Love. If I am not expressing Love, then I don?t know who I am. Because God created me like Himself, if I don?t know who I am, I don?t know who God is. It becomes clear why love is the most important principle of all; why none of the others mean anything without love.  Love is the key not only to my understanding of who I am, but to my understanding of my creator, and to our relationship with each other.  As it says in I John 4:8 : He who does not love does not know God, for God is Love.

I would like to share with you this ?Prayer of Patience?.  I wish I could give credit where credit is due, but I don?t know who wrote it.
 
Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night could be a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed, disinterested young man who can’t make change correctly is a worried 19-year-old college student, balancing his apprehension over final exams with his fear of not getting his student loans for next semester.

Remind us, that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job)! is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking annoyingly slow through the store aisles and blocking our shopping progress are savoring this moment, knowing that, based on the biopsy report she got back last week, this will be the last year that they go shopping together.

Lord, please remind us each day that, of all the gifts you give us, the greatest gift is love. It is not enough to share that love with those we hold dear. Please remind us to open our hearts not to just those who are close to us, but to all humanity. Once again reminding us to be slow to judge and quick to forgive, show patience, empathy and love.
 

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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MY MIND IS NOT IN MY BODY

My Mind Is Not In My Body

I used to be embarrassed by how much trouble I had with some of the simple spiritual concepts. It seems I work on the same issues forever. This became especially noticeable when I started writing. I found that I was writing about the same thing over and over. But I can see with the progression of the writing that this is just my learning curve.

I have written several times about my efforts to control my weight. I felt kind of funny writing about it at all. After all, I shouldn?t care what my body looks like. It is just an illusion. There are lots of things more important than my body size. Perhaps I should concentrate on some of those things and relegate my body to the unimportant pile.

But no, I don?t think so. I think everything I encounter in my illusion is an opportunity to practice forgiveness. I don?t think my body is important; I don?t think anything in the illusion is important, except as how I choose to use it. In that way all things are equally important, and to line them up in any other order is a mistake. On one side I have the Atonement, forgiveness. On the other I have tools with which to work toward Atonement.

After years of dieting and fretting over everything I eat, I decided to use this issue for spiritual growth and started asking the Holy Spirit to show me a new way to see it. It has seemed like a slow process to me, but I understand that I have a lot of ingrained beliefs about food and my body that I have been unwilling to relinquish all at once. I have made some progress, though.

My most recent step up the ladder has been a decision to give up all dieting of any kind. I am asking the Holy Spirit to guide my eating. My prayer is something like this: ?I don?t know what anything means. I won?t decide for myself. I ask the Holy Spirit to decide for me.? I do not do this perfectly. Sometimes I forget all about my new intention. I eat without asking first for help in choosing. I worry about what I ate and how it will affect my body. I forget that I don?t know what my body should look like and that I have surrendered that outcome to the Holy Spirit. But, the more I do remember, the easier it becomes and the more automatic it is.

It is interesting to see how this works. I never seem to want the same type of food twice in a row, and I don?t eat very much unless I am not paying attention. It feels good to eat like this and it feels peaceful. I had not realized how much at war I was with my body. I am learning that we can choose peace in everything we do, even in our eating choices.

I am also receiving insights as I am willing to consider them. I trust that this is moving along at the speed that is best for me. I accept that if I could be aware of all truths at once I would, and that if I don?t know everything at once, then it is because I need to take it a step at a time. The trust feels peaceful, too. I like it better than warring with myself about how fast I should be learning and what it meant that I wasn?t living up to that expectation.

One day recently I was talking to the Holy Spirit about my body. I was thinking that I would be more comfortable if I lost a few pounds and wondering if this is something that I could do without dieting. The thought that came to me is that my mind is not in my body. My body is in my mind. My body is just a figment of my imagination. It has no power of its own.  My body cannot do anything without my mind. It cannot get sick or get fat unless I make that decision. Workbook Lesson 152 says, ?Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose.

Of course I can be thinner. What am I thinking? If my body is in my mind, then all changes to the body are made in my mind. Losing weight has nothing to do with what I eat. It is a natural result of what I think. It is a decision I make. I decided that my body will be this size, so now I change my mind and decide differently. It may take me a while to become comfortable with this new thought and to picture it in my body because I am not used to making these decisions consciously, but it is really no different than what I have always done unconsciously. So, why do I get sick? Why do I get fat? Could this really be what I decided? Am I insane?

Well, in a word, yes. I did decide this and I am insane. As long as I continue to see the world through the eyes of my ego, I will continue to be insane because the ego is insane. Once I accept the premise that I am acting insanely because I am acting through the ego, all becomes clear. (Well, a lot of it becomes clear.)

I think I choose sickness and death over healing and life all the time. If I am still in the illusion, I can be sure that I am doing this at least some of the time. Sometimes when I make this choice, I do it in a very obvious way. I decide that if I eat certain things I will get fat or get sick and then? I eat them. Is that insane? Did I just choose illness and eventually death? Well, yeah, obviously I did.

Other times, my choices are not so obvious. I choose to use my body for attack. I attack my brother and I attack myself. I do this verbally, mentally, physically, with my beliefs. In the past I have attacked my partner with words in the heat of an argument. I have thought unkind things about someone and thought it didn?t count because I didn?t voice the words. It was still an attack and it attacked me first. I haven?t attacked anyone physically in a while, but when my kids were little I spanked them when I ran out of imaginative ways to get their attention. I have attacked those I love the most with my beliefs when I didn?t trust them.

All of these attacks on others is an attack on myself. If I don?t trust them, I am teaching myself that I am not trustworthy either. If I attack them in any way, I am teaching myself that I am vulnerable. Attack is always against my self and it is always seen in the body. So, I am constantly attacking my body. When I decide to attack, I am deciding on illness and death.

How do I correct these errors in thought? The Course tells us to remember that only the mind can create and that creation belongs at the thought level. Just knowing that my body is only a realistic representation of a thought in my mind is helpful in getting me started on this.  It is a truth that can be hard for me to hold in my mind. The body seems so real and is so compelling. When I feel pain in my body, it is very hard to remember that the pain is really in my mind.

Of course that is the purpose of the body. It is the home of the ego and is supposed to keep me engaged so that I cannot remember that I am a powerful and very holy Son of God. My body does, indeed, engage my attention. Hardly an hour goes by that I don?t lavish some attention on my body. It seems to call out for my care and love (or hate-the ego doesn?t really care as long as it has my attention) all day long.

For most of my life I thought that how my body looked depended mostly on what I put on it and into it. I thought the condition of my body was a reflection of my weakness as I failed at one diet after another. I thought that I was my body. I thought I was weak. That is what I was teaching myself with all those failed attempts to control my body through the manipulation of form. I was teaching myself that I was weak, helpless, and less than. It was a perfect ego set up; seek but do not find. Try and fail.

It was all because I was listening to the wrong voice. My mind is so powerful, but I have been denying that power by listening to the ego as it tries to convince me of my fallibility. I convinced myself that I have no control over my body as I listened to that voice. It is time for a new Voice. The Holy Spirit speaks to me of my power, of my holiness, of my invulnerability and I can hear this Truth if I choose to listen. How the Universe must chuckle at the idea that the Son of God is somehow imprisoned in this little body.

I?ve been dreaming such a life. The most powerful force in the universe, standing on a little scale hoping the needle went down today instead of up. Gulping down pills thinking they would protect this body illusion from harm. Queuing up for a flu shot (Gosh, I hope they don?t run out before I get mine) to protect against microorganisms so tiny they can?t be seen with my eyes and yet capable of slaying this body I have come to call myself. Truly, this is a nightmare. But a nightmare is just a dream after all, and a dream is not truth.

My mind is not in this body. This body is in my mind. This body is just a mistaken thought. The Course tells us that health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.  There is a way to use the body that will lead me back to God. All things the ego has made for its own purposes the Holy Spirit will use for God if I let Him. I invite the Holy Spirit into my mind and I ask that He heal my thoughts. I will step back and let Him lead the way in this as in all things.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

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