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..:: Love ::..
By
Alan Schneider
The Old Testament of the Christian Bible
indicates in the Book of Genesis that Jehovah spoke the words
“Let there be Light!” into the formless void of the primordial
proto-universe as the First Act of Creation. What is not expressly
considered in this passage, but is considered at great length in
the Mystery Teachings, is God’s motive for bothering to Create at all.
The consensus among scholars of the Mysteries is that the Divine Motive
for accomplishing all of Creation was Love. God is Love,
and Creation is Love as well. Divine Universal Love is the
essence of the Logos. Even the Name of God in the Old Testament,
Yahweh – I AM – written as YHVH in post-Babylonian Hebrew, is an
implicit reflection of the nature of Creation – yes, God simply is
omnipresent in all of Creation, but this Presence is dynamic, not
static. That dynamism results from, and continually expresses, God’s
Love and Light pouring out into a condition which would still be a
primordial void without that ongoing manifestation of the Divine
Presence. The Logos is simultaneously a Condition, an Action, and a
Manifestation of Universal Divine Love.
The culmination of this Power of Love from the current
observational perspective of the Physical Plane is our human
consciousness of the world, the universe, and society. We are more
than merely physical – we are a dynamic combination of body, mind,
and spirit that reflects the dynamism of the Love at the
Center of Creation – the Logos as the Divine Expression of the I AM
Presence. All that we are, and all that any form of consciousness
is, from the Creator downward and outward across all of the Planes of
Expression, is the direct result of the universal Power of Love.
In the first chapter of my manuscript, Doors In Disguise,
entitled Samadhi, I described the Logos as having the manifest
appearance of an omnipresent field of intense, pure White Light, the
spiritual essence of Unconditional, Perfect Love, and the Ultimate State
of Being of the Supreme Absolute Truth. When this Divine Presence
is translated to the physical sensory mode of knowing, the turbulence of
the Physical Plane can be very deceptive, however, there is a
single unifying factor in human awareness that dispels this
deception – our emotional response to the three levels of
manifestation of body, mind, and spirit. Do I love my body, mind,
and spirit, or are my feelings more ambivalent, or even negative,
towards any one or all of these? We must live in all three
perceptions of existence as the consequence of our nature as integrated
organisms, and we must experience feeling response to our
perceived condition in all three areas as well. It is perhaps the
greatest challenge of living to comprehend our nature as the expression
of Divine Love, shrouded in physical perception as the many layers of
Illusion that we often mistake as reality, when the only reality
is the Supreme Absolute Truth of the Logos. God is Love,
and we are called forth for all the days of our lives to recognize and
appreciate this gift of Love in the physical world, the mental world,
and, above all, in the spiritual world.
The generally consistent nature of physical perception makes
the consideration of emotional response in the world of physicality a
reasonable place to begin our analysis of love. The arbiter of physical
experience is the body, our vehicle of expression for the term of
incarnation, and woe be it to anyone who does not come to peaceful,
positive terms with this most basic level of existence! Loving the body
of flesh can be a most challenging condition to institute and
experience, because, in the words of the Buddha, all of life is
suffering. Nonetheless, this is where self-love and self-acceptance
begins. Because I am my body at the most fundamental level of
experience, all other perception in the two additional modes of mind and
spirit will be adversely affected by any imbalance or negativity present
in the emotional orientation toward the body. And the Karmic “accident”
of inheriting a beautiful body is not necessarily a curative
circumstance here – life still amounts to suffering in this case, just
of a different type of suffering, on a different level. All pleasure,
even that of orgasm, remains transitory, and beauty must fade either
abruptly, through injury, or eventually, with age. The attractive
frequently find themselves challenged with many addictions as the price
of their pleasant appearance, and are the recipients of legions of
unwanted attention from unpleasant, or otherwise undesirable, suitors.
I have suggested here that the appearance in history of
humanity is the direct result of the action of Divine Love radiating
throughout the universe. And the physical essence of our humanity is the
body. Why is this necessary? What is the purpose of the body if its
occurrence is so problematic? If all life is suffering in one form or
another, what is the justification for physical existence? Ironically,
the answer to these questions can be found in considering the element of
human experience apparently most distant from the body – the
human spirit – in a word, the Soul.
For this author, the Logos is reality, transcending
all other modes and interpretations of experience. The Logos is the
essence permeating all other expressions of truth – the Brahman lying
behind and beyond the physical illusion of Maya. And this is a
spiritual condition of Truth – existing at the foundation of
perception in the form of the First Vibration of Existence – OM.
From this vibration occurring at the highest spiritual level, the
subharmonic of the individual Soul is released as the personal
expression of the Logos. The Soul experiences its reflection in the form
of Karma, the physical expression of the Logos manifest on the
Physical Plane as external reality. This external reality appears
to be universal and objective, but is, in fact, personal and subjective,
the personalized gift of God for each Soul. In this sense, God
manifests life itself through the Soul, and as the Soul.
What we superficially perceive as “life” is God pouring God into God at
the level of the Supreme Absolute Truth. The physical vehicle of
personal Karma is the body as experienced through the physical
senses and central nervous system. This is why we must know and
experience the body – it is the carrier of the gift of Karma for the
Soul, without which Mirror of Light we could never realize our true
nature as Divine Beings radiating forth from the Logos. Karma is God’s
blessing of Love to the Soul, and through the Soul to the mind and
body.
So it is that we have the primary initial (and ongoing)
responsibility to learn to love the body, regardless of what
circumstances it encounters and thrusts upon us in life, because this
body and its experience of the world is God’s most direct and tangible
gift. This remains true even in the light of the Buddhist observation of
life’s essential nature as suffering – we must learn to view physical
existence expressed in the body as God’s blessing of life, and strive to
love and appreciate it. After all, even the existence of suffering is
still a gift, particularly when compared to the possibility of oblivion
threatened by the specter of physical death! Through Karma, the Logos
gives the Soul everything it needs to experience while linked to the
expression of dense form on the Physical Plane, including the limitation
of the body and senses. Perhaps this condition of limitation is the
point of existence – what is the meaning of omnipotence and omniscience
without the experience of constraint and limitation? Perhaps this life
is God’s gift of limitation to God! Such being the case, we absolutely
must learn to love the physical vessel of the spirit.
Loving the body entails acknowledgement of the adversarial
nature of evolution. Competition and strife are the defining processes
that have shaped the world as we know it today. The preemptive
requirements of this love are understanding and accepting the transitory
nature of physical existence as the background condition of physical
caring and compassion. In spite of all the love and thoughtful
maintenance we give it, the body must eventually wither and
disintegrate, once its usefulness as a vehicle of Karma is spent. Thus,
the wisdom of enlightenment is a key element in self-love at the
physical level. The essence of this wisdom is seen in discipline
and conservative practice – one who lives to excess will probably live
to regret it. The body requires patient caregiving, not the
whimsical indulgence of every youthful appetite. “All things done in
moderation, and none to excess” is a moral guideline of great relevance
in the practice of enlightened physical maintenance and upkeep! Of
course, Karma is the ultimate influence at work on the Physical Plane,
and will determine whether a given human being even reads these words,
let alone implements them in life, but we can so hope and hold forth.
As we move on from the body to the mind, and the theater of
mental and emotional events, we inevitably encounter that great
librarian of experience – the ego, sitting atop the pyramid of
social perception on the Physical Plane. All of the sensory experience
of the body is evaluated and interpreted by the ego as either
fundamentally good or bad (i.e. desirable or undesirable), based on its
coefficient of pleasure or pain. This interpretation takes place at the
point of experience, and is cross-referenced within the matrix of memory
thereafter. Knowingly or unknowingly, the ego is the servant of
Karma, although it prefers to think that it is the master, not
only of Karma (which it may never even have heard of), but of
all life. As is the case with the body, we must learn to love the
mind (and the ego as the neurological focus of the mind), whether we do
so initially, and consciously, or not. This is a love that specifically
does not amount to the indulgence of ego gratification, but
begins with the mental application of the same principles of discipline
seen in the mature, responsible love of the body. The ego must be
trained to accept the truth of its condition – in every sense as mortal
a form as the body that supports it, and a social pilot mechanism
reflecting human evolution as a social phenomenon, never really existing
as the lofty independent entity it believes itself to be. If the Logos
is the source and center of Creation, then all lesser forms of
expression, and particularly those associated with physical (the body)
and mental (the ego) Karma, must be placed in an appropriate
perspective for the sake of the total organism.
Once we have attained a balanced, realistic practice and
perception of self love on the Physical Plane, we can, if we wish,
extend that perception to the social sphere, and include significant
others, our community, our country, and even the world and universe,
within a total environment of love, compassion, and concern. But all of
this requires a stable foundation in the personal love of the self,
by the self. In sufficiently fortunate cases, the presence of a
comparably loving home and upbringing will certainly tend to facilitate
the development of this condition, but it must become the goal of the
individual who wishes to live in health and harmony with the world, even
in the case of abusive circumstances. Such is the nature of personal
Karma, including many adverse social conditions, which can neither be
evaded nor avoided as the Will of the Logos, and the gift of the
Logos as the Soul, to the Soul.
And we have arrived, once
again, at this juncture, in the spiritual segment of the
body/mind/spirit model of human existence. Either the spiritual
expression of human nature exists, and originates with, and within,
the Logos as its highest mode, or life as we know it is a meaningless
statistical accident in a mechanical universe that has no “ghost” – no
spiritual essence – anywhere – not a Holy Ghost, not a ghost in the
machine, not anything. It is inconceivable to me that we could have
occurred as the sentient, aware consequence of an evolution taking place
in a random, directionless, meaningless universe. This certainly is not
the universe I find myself in, however vexing the circumstances of my
personal life may occasionally be. To me, the Soul is the ultimate
personal expression of God, and is manifest in everything everywhere,
even the rocks and trees, but especially in myself and other human
beings. If the outpouring of Love on the Cosmic scale is the manifest
nature of the Logos, then the outpouring of Love on the Planetary scale
is the comparable nature of the Soul. It is our responsibility as
Enlightened, Loving Souls to nurture this condition in ourselves and
each other at every social level, up to and including the Planetary
condition and all of the organisms dwelling here. Even if, and possibly
particularly if, this life is a transitory statement of sentient
consciousness, we must strive in every way to live as compassionate
beings existing selflessly for the greater good of the world. This mode
of compassionate self-sacrifice is the final manifestation of love at
the level of the Soul, as human consciousness regains the perception of
the original Love radiating from the Logos as the Truth of
Consciousness!
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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