Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 05, 2020 • 48 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The Teachings of Jesus
Don’t you think it’s rather funny
That I should be in this position?
I’m the one who’s always been so calm, so cool, no lover’s fool,
Running every show. He scares me so.
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)
The divine love that Jesus taught is the only kind of love that has the power to raise our personal consciousness vibrations. It’s the only kind of love that has any positive spiritual effect at all!
This essential fact is the center and sum of what Jesus tells us in the Gospels, and it is strongly reinforced in A Course in Miracles. When we remove what was added to the Gospels by the Council of Nicaea in 325, we have what we are told by people that we used to think were dead is the core of what Jesus taught us while He lived on earth. And then reportedly Jesus Himself led the group that channeled the Course in the nineteen-sixties. A Course in Miracles is essentially a very advanced version of the basic advice about spiritual growth that Jesus gives us in the Gospels.
The Lord’s Gospel teachings make it plain that it isn’t enough to simply try to be more loving to friends and family. He says, “if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (MT 5:46-48). The Lord’s stated goal for us is nothing less than the spiritual perfection of the Godhead! But He tells us that level of perfection is attainable only when we have internalized the universal love that He came to earth to teach. In A Course in Miracles, the team around Jesus makes this point more explicitly. The Course calls our love for only certain individuals “special loves,” and it tells us that “special loves” are as counterproductive spiritually as are “special hates.” Wow.
Jesus also insists that in order to live God’s perfect love, we must never judge another human being. In fact, being judgmental of others is such an ego-based, low-vibration attitude that it makes our spiritual growth impossible. And seeing how fiercely judgmental so many modern Christians are wont to be gives us a pretty good explanation for why Christianity has failed so miserably at elevating human consciousness toward the spiritual level of the kingdom of God.
We now know that what Jesus taught is a deep and transformative kind of love that permanently raises our personal consciousness vibrations. And we now understand that Jesus is right, and none of the things that Christians have been attempting for the better part of two thousand years has really done much to improve anything. It is long past time for humankind to listen to Jesus a lot more closely.
One of the Lord’s goals for us is to build a more universal morality, a better distinction between right and wrong. For all of human history, all versions of morality have been rules-based. And since every rule is human-made, morality has always been a matter of opinion. We might know in our gut that we ought to do something or not do something, but if there is a bright-line moral rule that is different from our instinctive view then it can be very hard to tell right from wrong.
Since this inability to arrive at one universal morality has been such a longstanding daily problem, a number of attempts have been made to come up with a more universally acceptable set of moral standards. For example, the hot spiritual book of the Sixties was Situation Ethics – The New Morality. Traditional Christians 
hated it! That book’s premise was that love is the ethical standard that trumps every rule; but since it failed to distinguish between divine love and the special loves that Jesus warns us against, all the critics of that book were likely right. At its base, it just threw away the rules without putting any sort of universally acceptable moral standard in their place.
We cannot achieve a love-based morality that will free us altogether from human-made rules unless we can first internalize the divine form of love that Jesus taught.
I think the reason why the Lord’s teachings are so effective when we actually apply them is that the sort of love He came to teach is actually our essential nature. When we get beneath all the special loves and hates and all the ego-based negativity, we already embody that perfect universal love. Clear away the mess, and our personal consciousness vibrations begin to rise naturally! And the easiest way to make that happen is turning out to be nothing more than the close application of the Gospel teachings of Jesus. Simply by concentrating on ever more perfectly living the love that Jesus taught, we can raise our own vibrations enough to make this our last necessary earth-lifetime. And if sufficient people worldwide will work to raise their own consciousness vibrations, we can indeed bring the kingdom of God on earth.
I have been experimenting for more than a decade now, and I have told you something of how different special loves and universal love actually feel. As I got to the magical moment when I realized that prevenient forgiveness works, I also developed the sense that I was loving my family a whole lot less. This bothered me at first, but soon I saw that in fact my love for my family hadn’t changed. Instead, I had simply stopped differentiating them from all the rest of humankind. It was all people that I loved now, all children and everyone I passed on the street! And my new love for humankind felt highly pleasurable, as all forms of love are pleasurable. It was cooler, not possessive at all in the way that special loves often feel possessive, but still it was as rapturous and intense as any love that I have ever experienced. In a sort of muffled, human way, I can envision that this must indeed be the way that the Godhead loves all of humankind.
So now, based upon the teachings of Jesus, we know that what matters to God is not any of the things that we might do. All those Ten–Commandments–style rules were human-made; and the more we have progressed spiritually, the more we have seen exceptions to the rules. Thou Shalt Not Kill (except to protect innocents); Honor Your Father and Your Mother (unless they are harming others); Do Not Steal (except to feed a starving child); and Do Not Bear False Witness (except in 1942 Germany, when you have Jewish refugees in your closet). It has been many generations since we stopped considering the Old Testament rules to be black-and-white governors of our behavior, but rather we now routinely consider those rules to be no more than good suggestions that can be overridden when the facts get complicated.
In the same way, the Old Testament’s sexual laws are human-made and culture-based. So once we have mastered divine love, we will be able to ignore them all. From a spiritual perspective, there is nothing inherently sinful about any kind of sexual behavior! We can morally have sex in every possible way, whether inside marriage or outside of marriage, with or without a partner or three of any combination of genders, and in private or in the middle of a public street.
We know now that God doesn’t put much emphasis on what we do. No, what matters to the Godhead in all our actions, and matters very much indeed, is just two things:
So morality has become a more personal process. There are no longer any rules! But instead, before we take action in any situation, we must weigh on our internal scales of perfect and selfless love both what our reasons are for doing it, and how what we are planning to do might affect the other people around us. Always having to be sure to do the love-based thing might seem to be a complication, but trying to follow the old rules was even worse! Before we ever did anything, we had to mentally check to see whether there were applicable human-made laws. Then we had to look for any love-based exception (like a murderer going after your family, or saving the refugees in your 1942 closet). Then, since we still would be acting in violation of those human-made laws, we would fret about whether there might be some way to do the right thing without violating those laws. We might well carry even our well-thought-out and apparently justified but still non-legal choices on our consciences forevermore!
The key to an entirely rules-free morality that is based in love alone is simply learning and internalizing the perfect divine love that Jesus taught. And then we can altogether and forever entirely banish every rule from our minds!
You may have been wondering what all of this has to do with sex. In fact, the sexual decisions we make are some of the most complex and intensely emotional decisions of all, and inevitably they can affect other people in what are often traumatic ways. Reasoning through some sexual decisions is the best way for us to better understand and begin to implement the Lord’s love-based morality. 
So next week we will consider how we can best apply divine love’s true measure to some of our thorniest moral decisions of all….
Yet, if he said he loved me,
I’d be lost, I’d be frightened.
I couldn’t cope, just couldn’t cope.
I’d turn my head, I’d back away, I wouldn’t want to know.
He scares me so. I want him so. I love him so.
– Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, from “Jesus Christ Superstar” (1971)
Dear Roberta, thank you as always for this deeply thoughtful look at how divine Love affects us and all of existence. Indeed this Love is not the only way to grow spiritually, it is spiritual growth itself!
At the same time, no wonder so many wandered away from Jesus saying, “this is too hard.”
I once heard about a man who lamented that he didn’t ever think he could Love God above all because he loved his family too much. He missed the irony that, as you have pointed out, by Loving God above all he would find he loves his family more—and everyone else too. Loving God really is All there is.
Your last sentence is missing a word : “Loving LIKE God really is all there is”
Dear Francois, I think Mike really did mean that sentence just as he wrote it! Beneath all the illusory separations, nothing exists except for God, and God encompasses all there is.
Dear Mike, well said! I think the thing that is hard for so many to grasp while we are in these individual bodies is that there is one Mind composed of all minds, so in fact we are not separate from God. People cannot get the picture of the cranky Big Guy with a beard and thunderbolts out of their heads! But that kind of God never actually existed. Changing our view of the Godhead was one of the reasons why Jesus came. And now, so joyously, we are coming to see that once we can get rid of all the negativity that we ourselves have created, divine love really is all there is!
As Usual Roberta a great Essay. If I may, I’d like to share how I have for a long time now to use as a Rule of thumb to travel through this life of experience.
I use as my General direction the following: Do whatever one wants; Do no harm to any person thru Thought, Words or Action.
I had a very difficult time at first in loving everyone and then the thought came to me the word I was having great difficulty with defining was ” LOVE”. It finally came to me if I redefined love to “ALLOWING” this might work. This has worked for me for if I ALLOW then automatically there are no judgements and it pretty much shuts the EGO down. Up and downs; sure but manageable; then I practice forgiveness; first for the other person and then forgiving myself for the transgression.
Just another perspective; it’s not right or wrong, just another path to explore..
Thanks Roberta
Skip
Dear Skip, we really do need a different word for divine love. And you’re right: living divine love does feel something like a peaceful “allowing.” When I was getting rid of the ego, I had to do the forgiveness-ball exercises to retrain my mind; but you likely were ahead of me! What you have found is not even another path: it is the one path, but you simply found your own particular shortcut 🙂
Forgiveness and perfect love:
To forgive, and yet see that as a magnanimous gesture, inferring that you are ‘owed one’, is just reconceptualizing the whole business with sanctimoniousness
Rather:
Forgive as if it never happened, forgiving your reaction to the perception that arose at the time of said transgression might be helpful.
It might begin to heal the wound on the mindscape and allow us to move on as there is now nothing to see!
Then there’s unconditional love for all beings!
To be a ‘non conceptual being of light’ seems a lofty, worthy and yet perfectly achievable aim, if we take one humble step at a time. It does have a nice ring to it!
Once the benefits of this practice become apparent, motivation becomes fuelled with tangible, spiritual ascendance up to where the air is clearer and the view is panoramic and glorious.
Dear John, thank you for pointing out that the only forgiveness that really works is prevenient forgiveness! And it isn’t really so much that forgiving might make someone feel smug, or as if you’re “owed one.” It seems to be more that forgiving any significant wrong after it has already happened is simply much too hard! It requires dealing with all the resentment and anger, wrestling it down and killing it, then letting it go. And meanwhile, something else turns up that also needs to be forgiven, so you spend your day just dealing with doing forgiveness the hard way.
Prevenient forgiveness, on the other hand, simply unwinds all the things you have taught your ego and your monkey-mind are problems to be resented. When you no longer see anything as a slight or a wrong, and you no longer are reacting to anything, then you no longer have anything to forgive! It turns out to be amazingly simple. And beneath all those wrongs that you no longer see as wrongs is your genuine nature, which is the divine love that Jesus taught.
This re-teaching our minds that there never is anything that we should see as a wrong against us actually takes maybe a month or two, if you are persistent. That’s how lazy your mind actually is! And once you have done it well, the effect seems o be permanent. I talk about it in The Fun of Growing Forever. It’s easy!
Great post. Thank you Roberta.
This is where things begin to get difficult. I have had three people, not relatives, in my life that were toxic to myself and others. I tried very hard to understand where they were coming from, but these were people that worked very hard to make your life as miserable as possible. As miserable as they felt? I’ll never know, but the best I could ever do was remove them from my life. Sympathy, understanding, maybe even empathy, yes. Love? Much harder. Maybe even impossible.
Hi A.C.
Divine LOVE flows to us and through us. We don’t have to have love for an individual to send love to them.
“We don’t have to love them in order to send them love.” That’s true! The thing is that love of the sort that Jesus taught is non-personal and universal – it isn’t related to the object of the love, but rather it is an aspect of the lover, almost like rays of light that are given off to everyone indiscriminately. Or, as you put it, Divine love flows through us. Well said, and a wonderful point!
Dear Roberta, I love your explanation of “the sort of love that Jesus taught”. Thank you also, for reminding us to avoid sources of negativity.
Dear AC, thank you for pointing out that not everyone is sweet and loving! There are indeed toxic people, mentally unbalanced people, deeply negative folks that you simply cannot be around. And as you raise your personal vibration toward ever more perfect love, it becomes harder and harder for you to be anywhere near these people. What I have seen in the most spiritually advanced people I know, and what I am discovering in myself, is that when someone affects you that way, all you can do is withdraw. Even if they are deeply in the wrong, you can’t interact with them enough to try to help them figure it out; so you just withdraw. I know someone who is very good at reaching out to help from a distance, and he amazes me since I can’t do that. Not yet. But from a distance, yes, you can send them love and forgiveness. We likely should talk about how best to do that. Great point!
Thank you, Roberta! To love as Jesus loved is a true blessing. It is treating every person as possessing divinity. This is like a story in the “Road Less Travelled” by Scott Peck. A brother visiting a failing monastery said “One among you is the divine one.” They all began treating each other as if it might be true. And the monastery revived… and thrived. Such love as taught in A Course in Miracles is behind forgiveness, and leads as you said to “forgiving events before they happen.” This is earth-changing. I can forgive the car that cuts me off before it happens! Such love and forgiveness redefines “sin”… sin is no longer hurting another (hurting another is a mistake and part of that person’s spiritual journey, if we seek God’s forgiveness and let it go). “Sin” is living outside the unity of divine love, ignoring God’s calling to humanity to embrace divinity in creation, and it fits in the concept of alienation from God.
What does it mean to love God? Is it not to love as Jesus taught? In seminary it is taught that scripture needs to be evaluated by the “rule of love.” If a passage does not resonate with God’s love, it should not be relied on as the basis for ministry. In hospice workers see many people who call themselves Christian come face-to-face with death harboring regrets… regrets over business dealings, or past mistakes (perceived sins), or attachments to worldly concerns. To let go of mistakes (through seeking forgiveness) releases these concerns to the love that Jesus teaches. It is part of loving ourselves and forgiving ourselves.
The ancient Egyptians taught that the heart should be light as a feather to journey into the afterlife. How do we get to this state? We learn the love as you, Roberta, are teaching, to forgive in advance, to release mistakes as learning and not sin, to move beyond guilt and feelings of failure and embrace life as a beautiful thing, a time of great learning and experience, and a place to practice the love of God. Then the heart is light as a feather.
The concept of ego and “special relationship” you mention is difficult. Ego needs to fade into the background as the unity of all life asserts itself. The “special relationship” must not supplant the love of God. It can be divine if it is treated appropriately, with love as Jesus loved, and with recognition it is secondary to the love of the divine. No earthly being can be trusted as God can be trusted. In the final analysis we are both alone and apart of all humanity.
I remember the controversy over Situation Ethics. It is a difficult concept when one is young with hormones raging. There are other avenues of learning about situation ethics and love. The lessons brought back by near-death experiencers who experience life-reviews portray a realm where love reigns supreme, where all life is related and pulsates with the light of the creator (life force, God) (as you have portrayed in your books.) Another avenue is the reality in quantum physics of quarks that are made up of thousands of shards of light… the difference between animal and plant may simply be in these shards of light. And maybe the spiritual realm around us is simply atoms lacking electrical charge.
God has granted humanity thirty extra years of life (longevity in 1900 was 47 years and is now 77 years) – we need to use this time to grow in spirit and love and wisdom. Thank you Roberta for all you are doing and teaching. The world needs your wisdom and courage.
Oh my dear Dr. Webb, you have written an entire blog post, and a wonderful one! Thank you for this. I had to read it twice and then skim it a third time in order to be aware of all its treasures.
I especially want to point out your saying that often at the end of people’s lives they regret having done things in this lifetime, and those who feel these regrets most deeply tend to be traditional Christians. I have heard that from others, too, who are present for many hospice deaths. One woman who is an expert in the care of the dying told me that many Christians are terrified as death approaches, certain that they haven’t lived lives that were good enough for them to get into heaven. How tragic is that?!
Dear Charles, all of us together are doing this work, and spreading the glorious truth of God’s infinite, perfect love. There truly is nothing whatsoever to fear! Both now, and forever more.
Hi Roberta. How does one function in a world of rules and laws if one is going to live without rules? On the other hand, how would one have the freedom to follow this way of love in a Mad Max world with no rule of law, seeing as so few people have achieved the kind of spiritual balance you are discussing this week? It is a bit of a conundrum. In Jesus’ time there was much brutality and injustice, but at least they did have the so-called Pax Romana (bought at a terrible price just the same.) It reminds me of the story recounted in all three synoptic gospels in which Jesus is tested in order to be trapped, but says, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” It was a tricky path. I can see why Jesus advised to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” No wonder most people prefer the simplistic certitude of cut and dried rules, and some of Jesus’ followers felt his way was too hard – and as you say, human sexuality has to encompass some of the hardest aspects of all!
Dear Scott, you raise a terrific point. We know what Jesus came to teach us, and we know God’s will for humankind, but there are so many people in the world who are ignorant of all of it! How do we navigate this maze of ignorance, and still hold to God’s perfect divine love? Of course, your first question is an easy one, and you have already answered it: we need to obey the governmental rules, and do it with a heart full of divine love. Wise and innocent at the same time!
I had trouble understanding at first why Thomas made sex the center of this series on morality and living in divine love, since sexual morality is only a part of it! But I realize as I tackle next week that he is right, as usual. Developing a more genuinely love-based way of looking at sexual morality is one of the hardest things we ever have to do!
Roberta and everybody, I am not surprised. Sexual morality interferes with and confused our understanding of Love, it seems regardless of generation or culture.
Dear Mike, I think that’s true. The old Christian understanding of even sexual activity within marriage was that it was somehow sinful, unclean, something to be ashamed of. And that attitude goes back to orthodox Judaism, where women are made unclean by their menstrual cycle until after they have had a ritual bath. The Apostle Paul said that celibacy is preferable to a normal sex life, and from almost the beginning of Christianity priests and religious were supposed to be celibate (although that requirement was often ignored). It is little wonder that our attitude toward our own sex lives is so often cloaked in shame! Just imagine how much more loving all of humankind could be if we treated sexually expressing love as the natural and beautiful thing that it actually is!
I imagine that is the topic for next week!
Dearest Roberta,
I am enjoying the idea that loving everyone and transforming into a being of love, doesn’t mean knowing everyone and understanding their individual psyches. It doesn’t mean trying to like someone enough to start being able to love them. Instead, you say love is like rays of light sent to everyone indiscriminately. The point is not the object of this kind of love; the point then, is the emitter of that non-personal, universal love. That’s a very different understanding to what is commonly held to be true.
So the flow of love is a river that gives light to anyone in the path of, sitting beside, swimming in or boating on that river! It flows through us to all others downstream. It follows then, that the main thing is the ‘becoming’ itself; becoming a being through which Love’s river may flow.
Such love then, would be intimate since this river water nourishes each person, and also detached because the flow is moving and does not stop to tarry or stagnate anywhere. What an amazing love; both personally intimate and yet detached enough to reach everyone. And here we’re talking of a river that never ceases or falters; that never falls to a trickle or fails at source.
And in this becoming a being of love, is it not the stubborn ego that is washed away? Then the ego’s worries about sex and sexuality, fear of dying, failures and doubts about being forgiven will be washed away with it.
I love this blog and the way it swerves, runs and turns in the comment section. Roberta, I too have seen people who were terrified of death because they doubted they would be saved. I found that quite disturbing, especially as they were such good people! When I first really saw such fear in a certain dear, kind and compassionate old lady, who lay so unwell in a hospital bed, I felt just how wrong her fear of dying was. I had this strong feeling that she, and everyone else, needed to be liberated from such binding, heavy shackles. And it occurred to me that the strongest, most egregious shackles are the ones that we cannot see.
And my dear, I consider it a great act of love that Thomas and your good self are working to free people from such deep, painful and soul binding fear! 🙏🏼❣️🌅
Oh my dear Efrem, I have read the discourse on the river twice over, but still I think I don’t understand it. I’m sorry! Sometimes I feel like a visitor here, marveling at the wisdom and complexity of what others are saying.
But the need to banish the fear of death I do understand, and very well indeed! We have dedicated whatever I have left of this lifetime to freeing as many people as we can from the perfectly unnecessary and counterproductive fear of death and everything to do with death. We are going to expand this ministry by quite a bit! More on this later….
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. 😌 I love your river analogy Efrem. It struck me because that river of love, spirit, consciousness, life, etc has to be one of the most common recurring symbols in my own dreams in recent years – no surprise I guess, considering that I spend a lot of time contemplating the sorts of topics we discuss here. The subject of higher love in this blog of Roberta’s makes me think of the word relationship. These days, it is mostly associated with romance and sex, but originally that -ship suffix was about the state or quality of being connected to each other in so many other ways too. Although it’s etymology isn’t nautical, that -ship suffix makes me think of how “on the surface,” we all feel like ships passing in the night, but deeper down, that river (or ocean) of consciousness beneath our keels connects us all together and makes us in fact one. That is more or less the secret of the ages as far as I can tell. 1❤
Hey Scott 👋
Love that ‘Row, row, row your boat..’ song! When I was young we used to sing it in four part harmony. This involves the voices of four kids coming together and forming one song. There is the connection; there is the relation ‘-ship.’
I guess I’m nudged to see as one reality, ‘that river of love, spirit, consciousness, life…’ that you mention.
You know, when reading about higher love in this blog, I kept seeing a certain picture in my mind’s eye. It was William Blake’s (1805) ink and watercolor print entitled, ‘The River of Life.’ It is exhibited in the Tate Gallery in London. This print is a most arresting work, depicting beautiful souls within the Heavenly river of life. Before long the river of life became the river of love in my mind’s eye. It’s funny how a single image held in the mind can generate a flow of ideas…
And I think concerning the secret of the ages, you’ve nailed it. 👍😉🌊
Hey Efrem,
Just wanted to let you know I am very much interested in William Blake’s work. I admire his poetic work, but it is his artwork that I think has the most mystical nuance and beauty. For anyone who is interested in Blake’s art, a quick internet search will lead you to the whole body of work which, given the overall topic these few weeks, I will also add quite sensual.
Hey Mike 👋
Ditto. I am moved by the mystical William Blake’s artwork. Such a unique style and body of work seems to come right out of the Universal Unconscious. I second your invitation to everyone here to have a look at the works of Blake.
He was strong in the Creative Force that gives rise to our world. Stark exuberance and depth of insight blended with an ever present, childlike innocence gives his artwork an exquisite resonance. Blake is amazing in his energetic, ‘imaginative’ brilliance.
And yeah Mike, there is quite a sensual beauty to the whole thing. 😉🙏🏼🌅
Dear Mike and Efrem, for someone who died almost two hundred years ago, Blake’s work is amazingly modern! I’ll bet it tickles him that people are still enjoying both his poetry and his art so long after his death 😉
Oh dear Scott and Efrem, I’ve been trying to understand why a lovely image that makes sense to two people whose thinking I so often admire still doesn’t make sense to me.
All I can think is that the image of water flowing, with a lot more going on under the surface, isn’t actually the way consciousness works. It’s not like water, with a normal gravity to it so it flows downward, and it is interesting and valuable all the way down. Instead, it’s more like air, but with a gravity which is all a strong pull upward! As we learn to jettison negativity, we rise naturally, like a balloon; and the higher we go, the more perfectly we love and are loved.
But does that make sense to you?
All, in the realm of fluid dynamics, liquid and gas behave in fundamentally the same manner. Like Roberta, I tend to relate better to the air metaphor. I like the water metaphor too. Both are metaphors for the way Divine Creativity works on All that Is. There are other metaphors—infinite metaphors. It’s important to bear in mind the ancient wisdom (I am paraphrasing), “In an infinite fluid dynamic, who is closer to the edge?”
And speaking of sex (which we are), both air and water serve as apt inages. (My lover leaves me as a puddle on the floor!😉)
Oy. 🙂
Dear Roberta, Scott, Mike and everyone,
I wonder what C.G. Jung would have said here. As one of the more enlightened founders of psychology, he might say that we are talking in the language of the Universal Unconscious (IE: of the Creative Force, God).
Perhaps we are just applying the elements of earth (incl. gravity), water, air and of course, light here. Maybe we are each applying these elements to our own perspective; to our particular take on Higher Love in this context. 🌅
Roberta, you see that this love allows you to rise up, up and up into the air, as we lighten vibrationally. I see what you mean and it is wonderful. Oh to be lighter than a feather, lighter than air! 🎈🎈🎈🎈
I am seeing this Divine Love passed along; flowing from person to person like a river: If each of us emits this higher love to those we meet, and if people share love (and teach The Way to others) who in turn do the same, then the river of love will move across the earth. (Yes in this image the river has gravity because it involves spreading higher love across the earth, and the earth has its gravitational pull.) 🌊🌊🌊🌏
Maybe we are each looking from a different perspective at this wonderful love, which underpins all the natural elements and even creation itself. And I’m really enjoying this blog and the subsequent chat that focuses on such a vital, spiritual subject. It is such a refreshing change from limited thinking so prevalent in this world. 😉
Oh my dear Efrem, this work of raising all human consciousness, and quickly, is the most urgent and important work that any of us can do, and yet so few people in the world still at this point understand it! Even we don’t yet understand it entirely, but still we see the urgency of it and so we try hard to do the work even as we still are trying to better understand what that work even is. I want so badly to help you continue to find the means to grow as you are growing spiritually so well! But we are plucking the Lord’s truths from a dung-fertilized garden that should have flowered long ago, but for the deep negativity of that dung. And we still can’t fully understand. All we can do is to trust in the Lord’s promise that if we will follow Him and seek, in the end we will find….
🙏🏼❣️🌅
Hi Efrem, Roberta, and Mike. That William Blake painting is beautiful and mystical. I had never seen it before now, so thank you for turning me on to his work. Roberta’s air metaphor is one I like too – spirit can be likened to breath or air, like prana. I wasn’t planning to share this but it seems so appropriate here. This little poem/riddle was spoken to me as I was waking, in two parts on separate mornings. It seems to incorporate all four elements:
How do you get to the fire that will never cease?
Breathing an island, rooted in peace.
It makes me think of the Tree of Life, in addition to an island. Are those roots above, or below, or both? Is the outbreath and inbreath of spirit constantly recreating our reality moment by moment? While in bodies we are like hybrid beings, rooted both in the material world and the world of spirit, but what is that source, that “fire,” that is beyond any manifestation? Is that what we call Love, for lack of a better word? I don’t read or write poetry as a rule, so this was definitely out of left field for me. 😄
Oh my dear Scott, you are so spirit-filled and so deep in your thinking! I am quite the opposite, so all of this befuddles me. But thank you so much for sharing it!!
Hey Scott 👋
I love your poem! It crosses the border into the truly mystical. The breathing in and out of Spirit that creates our reality every moment is magnificent! My friend, why not try your hand at writing more poetry? Your inspired abstraction, no doubt beautifully guided, would be a treat of contemplation to be read and shared.
🌅👍🙏🏼
Thanks Efrem. That is very nice of you. I’ll put the intention out there, and maybe they’ll hit me with another one at some point. Last time it was like hearing it read by a man with a fairly deep voice. One ineresting possibly related incident last night was that as I recalled Roberta’s kind “spririt-filled” comment while cooking dinner, my TV turned itself off right at that instant. 😳
Dearest Roberta,
Just wondering if when Jesus from the cross pronounced “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” that this is an archetype of prevenient forgiveness and perhaps of universal love.
Yours,
Cookie
Dear Cookie, I think you’re right about this. I had never thought of it this way! Clearly, Jesus – as a spiritually perfected being; as an aspect of the Godhead – had no self-protective human ego. He never had taught Himself to be outraged by anything that others might do, so He never had to forgive anything. He forgives that way, clearly! And those who successfully practice prevenient forgiveness have no trouble forgiving just as the Lord forgave. And when He forgave from the cross the very people who had done Him so much physical harm, He was showing Himself to be a prevenient forgiveness Maestro!
I love it Roberta: ‘prevenient forgiveness Maestro.’ That’s just perfect! 👌🏼😉
Heh. Thank you, dear Efrem. Sometimes Thomas gives me these surprising little turns of phrase!
Hey David 👍
This is an amazing idea! I feel it is truly inspired. As you say, this is an archetype of prevenient forgiveness and universal love. Our Lord was teaching us, even on that terrible day.
Only perfect Love could do this!
Thank you brother. 🙏🏼🌅🕊
Dear Cookie and Efrem, what surprises me in what you say here is that I had never before noticed that of course Jesus displays the very qualities that we are realizing are central to human spiritual growth! Of course He would, but still it feels very neat indeed to put that all together.
Of course Jesus has no trouble forgiving, because He never had a human ego! That is the very essence of prevenient forgiveness: we have to learn it, but He is already there. And He achieved the highest level of divine love even long before His birth as Jesus, so of course He would be full of love and compassion for everyone. A normal person would have been frustrated out of his mind to be spending all those decades among people who were such dullards by comparison! But although Jesus does become somewhat exasperated on occasion, the Temple money-changers are the only ones who provoke Him enough that He briefly loses control. It isn’t only what Jesus says that makes us see how very advanced He is spiritually, but it is also the way He lives!
I don’t know why, but that tickles me. I never had seen it before. Thank you for pointing it out!
It is Saturday morning and just about time for the next installment. People may not see this. But it is important to contemplate, truly come to realize, what our Eternal Being means.
We were never born. We never die. We are “taught” to long for the “afterlife” and our “reward.” We are not incarnations. There is only Eternal Life. It is important for us to come to understand ourselves in this way. Then the Creative Force and Awareness that we call Love—and can experience as an emotion, but is actually more fundamental than anything else we call emotion, including sexual or romantic love, which can aid or get in the way of our seeing ourselves as such Beings (our choice) begins to be understood.
Hey Mike 👋
I’m reading your comment on Sunday morning (Eastern Australian Summer Time). 😉
And I’ve realized that a real gem of wisdom can appear at week’s end. Reckon you’ve nailed it my friend.
👍💎🙏🏼
Efrem,
♐️➡️🏹🔄💘😉
Again!
Dear Efrem, Mike has nailed it indeed!
Dear Mike, well said! What you say here – these realizations – summarizes nicely the purpose of all that we do here. I call it “living in an eternal frame.” It’s a shift in thinking to this much bigger picture, where you realize that “eternal life” isn’t just words, but it is your identity at its core! I think it likely that you can’t make that leap until you have a lot of basic afterlife knowledge, and also an understanding about how to elevate your consciousness vibrations and grow spiritually. Our planned move to an online program has been delayed for a year because of the 2020 chaos, but we are looking now toward mid-2021. And our goal for it is that it will help millions of people to as efficiently as possible achieve that leap into living in an eternal frame!