Love Is All There Is!
Love Is All There Is!
"I'm in love!" These words express one of the most deliciously wonderful human experiences. "I'm in love!" Just close your eyes and ask yourself: what does it feel like to be in love? The feeling is a memory inside you which you can call forth. Give yourself permission to feel it. "I'm in love!"
Perhaps the only greater, even more marvelous experience which human beings hope to achieve can be expressed by the words, "We're in love," which describes a joining in love beyond seemingly individual identity. Two who seemed separate find out they are one: "We're in love!"
But what if there is available an even more breathlessly wonderful experience yet? What if there is an indescribably out-of-this-world-experience in which not only two but everything is experienced as joined in love? What if an experience is possible in which all there is ... all there is ... is love?
Among most Christians, in fact among most peoples of the world, there exists a very strong association between opening to love and opening one's heart center. It's certainly true that Jesus Christ or any advanced spiritual teacher will for very good reasons help students to open first their heart before other spiritual centers are opened.
What very good reasons? Only heart energy is powerful enough to be relied on to transmute what we often call "negative energies" which might possibly be experienced in the other centers.
If you opened your soul or solar-plexus center before your heart was substantially open, you might be overwhelmed with the pain of a world filled with sickness and death, and maybe even drift into deep depression. But if your heart is wide open, the pain of your world is converted easily and harmlessly.
If you opened your third eye before your heart is happily open, you might experience the projections of every person who ever lived in panic or terror, fear projected into the form of mental pictures, and you might become so disoriented as to be labeled "crazy" by your world's way of seeing things.
If you opened your reproductive center before your heart was properly open, you might find yourself flailing wildly to escape a quicksand pit of sexual lust while every temptation you create for yourself pulls you in deeper.
Yes, there are teachers who do not focus on opening the heart first, and you will of course be guided to spend time with the teacher who is right for your individual opening as long as you still consider yourself separate from "other" individuals. But the teacher who means the most to you, whether you know it or not, is Jesus Christ; or an advanced teacher of God under the direction of Jesus Christ who opens first your heart.
Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your being. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor who is yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40)
Love with all your being? Not only your heart? Not merely your heart and soul?
Love your neighbor who is yourself?
Most Christians might beg some further explanation.
Although his teaching has been partially lost to mainstream Christians through centuries of mistranslation, Jesus teaches that beneath all surface appearances there really is only One; and whether we have learned to call it God or Love or I AM, the One is everywhere present.
In introducing his new revelation for the 21st Century, A Course in Miracles, Jesus says:
"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance."
(ACIM: Introduction to the Text)
Throughout his revelation Jesus emphasizes that there is only one mind, one being, and if you were aware of who you really are and who your brother really is, then you would be aware of oneness:
"The law of Creation is that you love your creations as yourself, BECAUSE THEY ARE PART OF YOU." (ACIM Text Chapter 9)
And what happens if you are able to say to everything in your world: "I am in love with you!" "Trees, I am in love with you. Buildings, I am in love with you. Fire hydrants, I am in love with you. Garbage cans, I am in love with you. Republicans, Democrats, evangelicals, Mormons, atheists ... I am in love with you." Whispered wordlessly in your mind to everyone you meet, to everyone you hold eye contact with: "I am in love with you." Dare you see what happens? Dare you allow the Holy Spirit's love to move you towards the perfection Jesus Christ says is your natural inheritance?
Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." (I Corinthians 13:4-9)
Earthly knowledge passing away? This sounds like Jesus in his first few lessons in A Course in Miracles. Lesson 1: "Nothing I see means anything." Lesson 3: "I do not understand anything I see." Lesson 5: "I am never upset for the reason I think." Lesson 24: "I do not perceive my own best interests." Lesson 25: "I do not know what anything is for."
Yet even as Jesus leads us more and more into a spiritual life, he continues to emphasize that all spiritual gifts received are of little help until love is perfected. Again, Paul says it wonderfully in his letter:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (I Corinthians 13:1-3)
We have nothing without love because love is all there is. We are nothing without love because love is the only reality of who I AM.
This month let us enjoy being in love with each other and see what happens as we hold the following thought in mind more constantly than we ever thought possible:
Thank you, Jesus Christ, for giving our world A Course in Miracles!
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