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What we liberate
in others, we also liberate in ourselves. This is a phenomenon and
little understood. Indeed, this is the only way to real and lasting
freedom. Jesus alluded to this when he said, "my yoke is
light." His yoke is the golden rule, that may be restated as:
you are to love others more than you love yourself so that they, in
turn, will love you more than their self, and this outward turning
of love, when practiced by enough people, will kindle a great and
unimaginable transformation in the world.
Service to others
is not transforming when it is done as duty or when it is performed
as a social or intellectual ideal. As long as service is conceived
as service per se, it causes few changes; it may be the highest of
pagan philosophies but it can never move into the realm of spiritual
realities, nor can it transform individuals or the world.
Those who have
children know the inimitable power and glory of selfless love. Few
things in life change a person more than a loving parent-child
relationship. The parent proper hardly conceives that which s/he
does for the child as "service." It is done rather with
great yearning and desire in the heart. It is joy and happiness. The
parent desires greatly to give itself to the child, to do everything
possible for it. Certainly s/he would die for the child. Few are the
parents who do not wish at some point that they could take on the
child’s suffering or even give their own life for that of a child
who is in desperate straits.
It is the bond of
unselfish love that permanently attaches the child to the parent,
not just in this life, but for eternity – not genetics. Parents
who adopt infants come to love them just as much as
"natural" children. The bond of love is the most powerful
in the universe, one that will endure and grow forever. That bond is
in fact a kind of proof of life after death, for those with the
wisdom to discern such truths. Love is not stopped by death. When
loved ones die, we do not love them less. Often indeed we desire
that we could love them even more than we did, and the bereaved not
unusually dream of ways that they could have given greater love to
the departed. Love survives death, and this same love is insurance
that s/he who desires to continue in love will indeed have that
opportunity.
Love is of the
essence of God and that is an immortal essence. Jesus so loved the
world that he was resurrected, in fact this love was so great, that
he was resurrected in such a manner that he was visible to, and able
to continue his ministry of love with, those close to him and they
saw him and knew him. Jesus’ love was to some degree frustrated
during his life, but it was so great that it overflowed into the
immediate days of the resurrection. His life exemplified the golden
rule, which is to know each person as our loved one, even as our
child. For we forgive our children of all manners of trespasses,
which indeed are as nothing. To yearn for each person, to desire to
love them – such love is transforming.
It is sometimes
said that we cannot learn to love others until we learn to love our
self. There is a certain truth to this, but it is not the highest
truth. The highest truth is to learn to love God first, even before
our self. All else comes from that. For if we love God, then love in
us is energized, and we are led to touch others with it, to give it
to others. For love is only made "real" when it is in
transit, when it flows from one person to the next. Love exists only
to be given; it can never be kept. First we give our love to God,
then he pours forth love to us to give to others. As we give to
others, then love is reflected back to us. In this sense it is not
necessary to love the self first, or even at all.
But what does it
mean to give love to another? What happens? When, in true and
selfless service, we do unto others with love, in fact we are
liberating them from those multitudes and multi-forms of ties that
chain them to this so-called material existence, that bind their
souls so that they cannot leap up towards God, that narrow the
corridors of their minds so that they are aware only of very small
parts of themselves and their environment and little of their true
potential which is spiritual.
The purpose of
living is to free the soul of its ties and encumbrances so that it
may rise to God. The spirit of love is freeing. Great liberty is in
the kingdom of heaven. The souls of kingdom believers are greatly
expanded, as is their vision, their hearing, their senses, their
imagination, their expressive ability, their love.
But the truth
also is that we cannot free our self. We cannot be the architects of
our own freedom. We cannot unchain our own souls by our self. Even
as the lone soul opens itself up to God, in it relationship to God,
it is not freed. God points the way to freedom – Jesus lived the
freedom – he is the way and the light. No man can unbind his own
chains. There is in fact very little that any person can do for
himself – what we can do, are designed to do, is something for
others. We can liberate others. Jesus said the way and the light is
a narrow way, and indeed it is, because there is only one way to
progress towards God and one way only. And that is to channel love
– not service, not some intellectual ideal but real love – to
another person. When a person is the recipient of the "direct
current" of love, then something is liberated in that person.
It may be the least of chains that bind them. Yet this smallest of
liberations in them, this smallest of relief from the heaviness of
chains that constrict them, sets them on a new path. For what really
happens is that, as love comes to a person, it begins to make a
"clean heart" and a "clear mind" within so that
love may flow through him or her. This love, received from another,
at first may be the tiniest trickle. Yet it begins its work within.
It feeds the soul, and the soul grows. It establishes channels for
flowing. And these channels always lead to the expression of love.
This is how love transmutes. Love cannot be "kept." It is
useless if it is stopped from flowing. So, as we receive it, it
seeks above all things to find a pathway to another person. So, we
are "liberated" to express love [from] our self to
another.
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