LECTURE
GOD IS LOVE
© The School of Truth
Source p. 141, June / July 2006 - The Path of Truth
Many of you have already discovered, and all of us will sooner or later have to realise, that love and gratitude play the major part in our daily living.
When I started out in Truth I knew I had embarked on a voyage of discovery. I was very conscious of my own shortcomings and often doubted that I would ever be able to emulate the Christ way of living and forgiving or build up within myself the Christ understanding of the all-encompassing presence of God's good in man. But I began my spiritual journey with a very open mind and if I had felt constrained to join any particular religious group I should not have hesitated to do so, but I was and still am convinced that God does not concern Himself with rites or ritual.
The creed a man adopts depends largely upon where he lives. If that is in Europe or the Americas he is likely to call himself a Christian, if it is in Asia he probably becomes a Muslim, or Hindu, or Buddhist, and it would be absurd to imagine that only those who have accepted the Christ teachings are able to find the consciousness of the Omnipresence of the Father. God, Who is Love, constitutes all mankind, and can no more fail to love all His children, irrespective of the religious groups they have chosen, than could an earthly father vary his love of his children according to their names.
The more I come into contact with people the more I learn from them about the nature of God, for it is only God in man that inspires our love of our fellow-creatures and makes possible the sacrifices that one person often makes for another. I know of a case where a woman loved her husband, a confirmed drunkard, for thirty years. He beat her, cursed her and made her life a hell for all that time. When I asked her how she had withstood such misery she answered simply "I love him" and it was obvious to me that this was not simply emotional dependence but genuine caring. Devotion such as this is of God, of that God Whom the Master calls "Father", Who takes all His children, of whatever colour or creed, under the shadow of His protecting wings.
If we would be like Him we too must be ready to help wherever we can, must forgive seventy times seven and must refuse steadfastly to parley with adverse conditions, to admit of God and evil, of good and bad, for as long as we do this we shall be as houses divided against themselves. Sickness, poverty and unhappiness will dwell there because of our consciousness of separation between ourselves and our Creator.
Why are we so hard of heart? Why, instead of accepting the simple Christ teachings, do we stray from the way pointed out in them and so find hatred, enmity and jealousy on our path? In order to uncover God within us we must take on His qualities. And, since He is Love, it is only when love and thanksgiving fill our lives that we know of His presence within ourselves. When that happens all is easy, His spirit directs our thinking, feeling and acting. We can no longer be classified according to a religious group because our "works" become our outstanding feature.
There is only one true yardstick by which we can truly measure one another, and that is by the Love that flows from us to all mankind.
God is not an entity who loves us, but is the universal Love That creates all things animate and inanimate, that constitutes everything real. It is this Divine aspect That, when we accept It totally, fills Itself full in us so that nothing unlike It can remain. When I am in any doubt as to the course that I should take I do not ask myself, as my own father taught me, "What would Jesus do?" I cannot speculate how God fulfilled through the personality of Jesus would act, but I can and do ask myself what Love would do.
I know that Love harbours no bitterness or resentment, that It never retaliates, is not selfish or possessive, that It is the very Substance that fills my heart with peace, eliminates all my fear, becomes to me my health, protection, happiness and prosperity - the Sum-total of my being. If It is all this to me, it cannot be less to those of you who are victims of disease and fear, or who lack the bare necessities of life. So will you not for your own sakes learn to love Him, and by this Love be set free?
Once you have experienced this liberation you will not need to struggle and strain, or try to find Him by way of books or people. When your hearts are filled with Love, It also fills your bodies with radiant health and brings into material manifestation whatever you may need or truly desire. It becomes unnecessary for me to set forth all the metaphysical aspects of Truth if I can teach you the one aspect - that Love is not only God and All-good, but everything that is real in humanity and all creation. If I can accomplish this, my mission is fulfilled. Each person exists in the Oneness Which is every other person. There is no such thing as separation. Whatever we are, whatever we have, we remain members one of another. The one spiritual and material Love that is God permeates the saint and the sinner, the leader and the prostitute, and ultimately all, to gain true control of themselves as they become conscious of the Christ-spirit dwelling in them.
We are all at different stages of unfoldment, which is to say that Life or Love has emerged to a greater degree in some than in others, but that does not mean that some are "better" than others. All are examples of the one Life externalised on this plane of consciousness. God is the Love within you that makes all things new. It is the insight that can see in the behaviour of an apparent enemy the opportunity for the expression of Good. It is the invisible Quality That enabled the woman of whom I spoke to say "Even though he beats and humiliates me, I love him."
Love is the hand of God that pours out your good upon you. His hand is also your hand and is eternally open. If you keep your hand closed you exclude Love from yourself and experience negation - in the form of sickness in body, unhappiness in mind and heart, and poverty in your affairs. Love is the Power That overcomes all obstacles and brings victory over self and circumstance.
If you want to fly a kite you need the resistance of the wind. If you wish to grow spiritually, mentally and emotionally, you must have opposition. Those persons and conditions that you look upon as enemies are in fact helping you to find the consciousness of your good. It is not easy to see things in this way. I found it very difficult at first. I knew that I ought to love and bless those who despitefully used me, and I tried to do so, but as I forgave them with my lips there was no forgiveness in my heart. All of us have to put off the human and take on the Christ-likeness, in Which we have no option but to pray for the prosperity, success and good of all who seem to be our adversaries. It is they who keep us on our toes, prevent us from becoming mentally lazy, enable us to see that we and God are a majority. Love is the only power in the universe, and those who do not live in tune with It have no power at all.
Let us never lose sight of this Oneness. Let us remember that there is no separation, that we are all invisibly united in Love, so there is nothing and none in all creation for us to fear. But it is by way of our dilemmas that we discover the Omnipotence That constitutes us. It is when we see the most dreadful conditions removed, the most appalling problems resolved, by Love that we become willing to forsake all else and follow in His train.
Not very long ago I saw a case of chronic cancer and one of tuberculosis, both given up as hopeless by doctors, healed, not because of any understanding of metaphysics, not through any deep knowledge of God, not because the persons involved belonged to The School of Truth, but because of the power of Love working in and through them. It made no difference through what religious group these sufferers had been taught about Love - the Power was there to dissolve the conditions the instant the effort was made. Believe me it was not easy, but we were privileged to be able to help them.
It is our job to try to teach you who are seeking after God, to realise Him. We do not want to make you dependent on us - we want you to learn to stand on your own feet. All of us have an immense amount to overcome in our mental, emotional and physical beings and it is not easy for us to learn to be kind, forgiving, tolerant and understanding. But, if we would succeed in building up our awareness of God as all the harmony and good that our hearts desire, we must begin to Love.
We in The School of Truth cannot live your lives for you. We can stimulate your faith, urge you on to greater effort, but in the end it is you yourselves who must attain the awareness that there is no separation between you and your good, because it is only when this awareness has become an unshakable conviction that this good, God, permanently manifests as health in your bodies, peace in your minds, happiness in your hearts, and material success in your affairs.
The time comes inevitably when each of us has to stand foursquare by ourself, when we walk alone with God. None but God can give you surcease from the pain and heartache that at some time or another come to each one of us. He is the only Cause operating in our lives. Negation is not brought about by any power outside of Deity, it is due to our sense of separation from Him, and the only way we can overcome this is to flood our situation with Love, to release Love Which constantly wells-up within us.
A dear old lady once said rather wistfully to me "In God's good time I'm sure it will happen" to which I replied "But when do you think that is?" His time is this moment. She was still living with an attitude of separation from Him hoping that in the future He would look down upon her and release her from the condition that was troubling her. She did not realise that in Him is no time, that we live in everlasting Nowness - Which is Love in our hearts.
Despite the fact that many people scoff at Love, believing it to be a quality of the weak, I have found It to be a practical, physical, material Power That acts when called upon by us. When we release Love we set free cosmic Mind That creates and maintains the universe, seen and unseen, including you and me. So it is not strange that It can remove a condition or move a personality or a group of individuals as if by magic. I wonder how many businessmen realise how very greatly they can expand their enterprises by introducing Love into their relationships with their clients, customers and employees? Love is the magnetism that draws God's body temples towards Him, just as a candle attracts the moths. From the moment the businessman changes the basis of his management from this-for-that to a spirit of universal helpfulness, he no longer has to strive and strain, constantly to be on the guard against competitors, but is able to serve in the peaceful realisation that this cannot fail to bring success.
Love is our Shepherd and as, with our hearts full of thanksgiving, we learn to love both God and man, all fears of sickness, poverty and unhappiness are dissipated and we enter truly into the Glory of the Lord.
The above is an edited version of a lecture that was published previously in The Path of Truth (Ref. POT 6207)
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