Love Is Profitable: The Vision Of The Christ

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

It is quite obvious that there are many benefits when we love others as ourselves. We profit by the self fulfillment love provides us, and others profit also. Love is a win win for all involved. If we are to take Jesus at his word, it is God's will that we love all people. It is love that fills us up as individual givers, and others too are filled as receivers of that love. The greatest visionary of all time, Jesus the Christ's only desire was to do his Fathers will, and to help us as a people realize together a world where love reigns supreme in the hearts of all humanity.

 

 

I'm sure you have all heard Martin Luther King Jr's "Mountaintop" Speech. If you haven't, it is worth watching, and if you have, it is worth watching again. One of the most memorable parts of that speech is when he said the following: We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!"

 

 

This speech resonates deeply within those of us who live our lives having seen the promised land from afar off, but who know that we might not get there with humanity as a united people. For those of us who live our lives with the thought of future generations being the beneficiary of our labors, live our lives for this end: Peace on earth and good will toward men. We do not live for personal reward, yet we are rewarded with love and with the knowledge of the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham so many years ago. We have faith in that promise, thus our actions reflect our faith. Even if we never enter into the promised land ourselves, we can die knowing we did our part to help fulfill God's will for mankind. What keeps us going is to do the will of him who sent us to accomplish his work. This is our food, our sustenance, and just as we are reaping the labors of those who came before us in this present age, so shall our descendants reap our labors tomorrow.

 

 

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

 

 

[JenellYB]

Excellent allegory. As Moses was given to glimpse the promise of the land for the people, was he given what he needed to continue working with diligence toward getting the people there, even if he knew he may never see ot himself, might die before they got there, so too was MLK given to glimpse the promise of the future for the African American race in this country, this society, to continue working with diligence toward it even knowing he mat not see it himself. And how prophetic his choice of words in that speech, he was neither and old man nor a sickly man, that should have been anticipating a soon death, yet it was as if he knew that he would not physically, as a man, be one of those that would step across the Jordan onto the soil of the new land, the new era for his people.

 

I think much in terms of "macros" and "micros" in many things, often in a sense similar to those Russian stacking dolls, where one successively opens a larger doll to find as smaller one inside. In that light, so much in the course of human evolution and development within the individual, personal level corresponds to levels of collectives, societies, cultures, up to the entirity of the human race. Even possibly, on yet even further, extending into all creation and the cosmos.

 

Something I've formed something of such a connection to is how the biblical narrative provides allegory to the stages of development in the evolution of human consciousness. This was kinda where I was goinng in my Christmass mediations that wound up falling off track somewhere along the line.

 

As Adam and Eve emerge from the cosmos in the garden, first the element of man, as traditionaly metaphor for the male element of humanity, rational, material, earthy, self-sufficient element, and then complimented by female, traditionally metaphor for the intuitive, emotional, nurturing element, I see metaphor for the emergence of "self-awareness" within human kind. The "fall", and expulsion from paradise, as the emergence of "self-conciousness." As higher animals may posses "self-awareness", their lack of "self-consciousness", the ability to percieve themselves as both subject and object, to be able to take consider upon how their actions affect their future, and even their state of existence/non-existence, they have no concerns or worries for possiblities beyond what is immediately aparant. Thet eat the food they find today, go on to look for the nest food, without thought to how long that might take or whether or not they might not even find any food at all. Those that do store up food for later times do so out of instincts, not the same reasoning process as human that understands why the food is being stored.

 

In the giving of the Law to Moses, is signified the emergence of "other awareness" as it directly related to our own survival and getting needs met. In the command to love God, was recognition of forces beyond our selves in making choices, taking actions, to secure our needs. How we are toward the "I am", the everything, the environment in which we exist, has a direct bearing on what we get out of it. So it matters how we are toward that "everything", that whole matrix of reality, the cosmos, as we know it.

 

And in the command to love others as ourselves, is there emergence of an clearly defined area of concern within that "everything", of how we are toward others relevant to what we can expect out of others. While in a simplistic sense, the specific laws exampled in the commandments represent the idea of a social contract, that gives us some assurance that if we treat others well they will be obliged to do the same toward us, there is an even more basic level understanding that not just in our deeds, acts, but how we ARE toward each other matters greatly. In this, emerges the capacity to "take the role of other," so as to experiennces for ourselves something of how our actions toward others might make them feel, and want to respond. That is beyond mere social contract, that if I seduce your wife you will feel justified in seducing mine, it moves into having some idea of how you would feel toward anothher if they did that to you, so as to understand WHY they would react negatively toward you as a result.

 

But while "other awareness" can let us imagine how WE would feel of someone did that to us, so as to have some understanding how that one would feel and why they might react as they would, it doesn't actually move us to FEEL, EXPERIENCE, what they ARE feeling, expereincing. We can only imagine what WE would feel if the situation was reversed. It is the emergence of sympathy/empathy.

 

I think with the birth of Jesus and the story of His life and mission here on Earth, there is the emergence of "other consciousness", toward actually feeling, experiencing, in our own self, what the other actually does feel, experience. It is the emergence of compassion, of actually feeling it with them. It is more than just recognizing and acknowledgling anothers' pain or joy, it is experiencing it along with them, as our own pain or joy. In the completion of compassion, what we do to another really is to do it to ourselves. In becoming not merely aware of others as like us, we become one with them. In becoming conscious of others, we become aware of them as part of the same body as ourself. The hand no longer simply knows abstractly that the foot is part of the same body, but just as the baby learns when it touches its toes and experiences both sensations from fingers and toes at once, both are part of ourself.

 

When we arrive at that development, loving others is no longer loving them 'as', or like, or the same, as ourselves, but actually loving ourselves! I think that is the next stage of development in the evolution of human conciousness, as its emergence was marked by Jesus coming iinto the world, the message He brought into the world. Clearly neither previous stages of development in human consciousness just suddenly emerged fully developed within all individuals all over the world, there was a conception, a birth, a process of growth, spread, at least until a critical exponetial point was reached, before it explored into the norm for the entire human race. Here I cite Jesus' words, Luke Ch 12:49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

 

Is this the fire of which he speaks? Is this also the coming of something as the lightening that begins in the east and spreads toward the west? (Mat 24 and Mark 17)

 

To return to your allegory here, Moses to MLK, of one having been to the mountaintop, having glimpsed the promised land, even if one may not enter oneself, as a goal to work toward, consciously, for those singular or few ones that have been given such a glimpse of something ahead? Here, I reference ot the whole of the text from which the one line is excepted...Mark Ch.12:31-59. Does this passage speak to those among us that may have been given just such a glimpse of a promised land up ahead, to know that, even if we know also it may be beyond our natural lifetime that humanity fully arrives?

 

I, for myself, believe that it is. And that some among us are given to have glimpsed it from the mountaintop.

 

Jenell

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Absolutely wonderful insights, Jenell! I can't add a thing to your thoughts. You have hit the proverbial nail on the head!

[JenellYB]

Your own insights provided me with an excellent springboard into them! Teamwork!

 

Jenell