With true love there can be no sacrifice, in as much as the service to the beloved gives man greater joy than service to self. If love does not make one forget self in bringing happiness to another, then one has never known love. If love does not reward itself through loving, then it is not love. And if the dedication of the individual to loving the infinite Divine Source of Self is not a simple, natural, and direct affection, untouched by creeds and dogmas, he/she has not yet learned the most powerful aspects of love, that of humility and compassion. Love is allowing oneself to quietly disagree with others without the need to prove them wrong. Love is allowing others to disagree with you without separating from them.
Man must gradually penetrate through every mask which hides his love for God, Creator, and Source of all energy. Man has permitted himself to obscure the power that comes of loving God by justifying hate and prejudice. He is unable to penetrate appearances or to find good in those things with which he has previously been in discord. Too many people claim spiritual insight and still live in an attitude of constant criticism and condemnation because of their own disillusionment and failures. The love of the Divine can fail only because man does not truly experience it. Once it is experienced, it cannot fail. There is no prejudice within love. The more simple and direct way to spiritual progress is through kindness, in which we sense our individual potential for good. Thus, our life of wisdom begins not just in study, but in kindness, in the gentle recognition that there are attitudes available to us if we hold them with discipline and cultivate their seeds with integrity. These attitudes will reduce confusion and make possible the peace of the soul.
The life of a mystic begins with this great love of God which in itself overcomes all confusion, both of the body and of the soul. The soul loves God. If man's ego separates him from his soul's love of God, man feels split and isolated. There is only one way to heal the split and isolation. The way is often too simple for man's mind to accept as real and profound. However one's soul is not found in the mind but within the heart. The mind is only an instrument of the heart, whose role is to fulfill those aspirations that our heart finds meaningful and fulfilling. When our soul is free on Mother Earth, we love our Sacred Self, others, and our world. We give up the need to divide others and classify them as good or bad. We give up prejudice and the need to condemn. We feel loving compassion for our self and our fellow man who is suffering, and wish all human beings well on their arduous journey towards Self-Enlightenment.
Mystics examine their lives as wisely as possible, identifying confusion and resolving that this confusion must gradually be removed. The solution is not in neglecting responsibilities, but by guiding every action with a new method of understanding. It is far more important to our ultimate good that we shall learn patience than that we shall escape from the causes of impatience. It is more important that we gain one of the greatest aspects of love, humility, than to gain dominion over the minds or the attitudes of others. There is only one path that leads man out of misery, and that path is the practice of humility, patience, and trust in Spirit. The end of learning is not that we shall know everything, but that we shall be patient with everything; not that we shall gain all things, but that we shall discover the vanity of that which is not true; not that we shall be the masters of men, but that we choose to be the servants of love and wisdom. Mystics think with their eternal mind, feel with their eternal heart, and become one in the service of the eternal work. Only in these things does man find his completion. The natural and spiritual journey of man is simply a movement out of loneliness into the presence of the only One who can ever understand. It is the return to our Divinity within our hearts. It is a love of sharing that which is true and good. It is bringing that depth of understanding into our lives which by itself can delight the soul. If a child proves to be a wonderful person and rich in values, the soul of the parent is truly delighted. For the thing that gives the true parent the greatest joy is to know that the soul of their child is good and happy, and has found peace. The Mystic moves out of loneliness into love, out of separateness into unity, and out of the fear of life into the love of God. This motion is the fulfillment of all things, and in it all other things are perfected. While man is lonely, he is frightened, and in his fear, he seeks to build defenses. He seeks any consolation, right or wrong, that will give him a moment of escape, a second of joy in a world of uncertainty. But there can be no loneliness in God, and, when the soul has returned to its home in the lotus of the heart, it is mature, complete, and secure. It then becomes natural to organize his material concerns and responsibilities from his inner life. He will meet them and fulfill them, and always from an expanded state and depth of understanding. His works, deeds, and thoughts will be kinder. He will be moved by the love of God, and the love of God will move through him.
Man's search for Spiritual and Self-knowledge is his tremendous effort to overcome ignorance, and that ignorance is separation from God. No matter what else we may want to call it, ignorance is a state of separateness from that totality which provides and is a feeling of Unity, Oneness, and Deity. Our immortal Self is the soul and who each of us really are. Ego, our temporary personality, travels through lifetime after lifetime in the dark, until the whispers of the soul are heard through one's inner hearing. And when the soul has once been heard, it cannot be silenced. Our souls will shake, rattle, and roll our lives to make sure we are at the right place, at the right time, for the right reason. Our lives may change and frighten us to death in the process. However, the alchemy of enlightenment will always be present and active. We will become stronger and our lives will always be better and more fulfilling. One's soul loves goodness, wisdom, harmony, beauty, and understanding. If we do not feel this in our daily lives, our souls will begin to move us in new directions with more meaningful values. Man's unconditioned surrender to his own love of God is surrender to his own soul. Feelings of unity are joyful to the soul. Separation is a pain, a shock, and a stress. Each time we actually give up a prejudice or harsh judgment towards another, that has perhaps become so much a part of our lives; we embrace unity, goodness, wisdom, understanding and our kinship with all of life. We embrace Love as all powerful. We can recognize the supreme fact that it is not important whether we are right or wrong. The desperate effort to defend the attitudes or convictions we hold is a false loyalty and can only bring further sorrow and tribulation. A house divided falls. We all have one common bond. We are Man, created in the image of God! We are spiritual children becoming who we are. We are many, we are One. We are all in different stages of spiritual enlightenment. We wish each other the very best and the smoothest path possible. We love one other. We feel compassion or the sorrow and suffering of our brothers and sisters. We allow our healing love to touch each other and the waters of Mother Earth so they may flow purely and provide health to all. We use our healing thoughts and feelings to cleanse Mother Earth of her toxins because we love her. She is born of Spirit as we are. We care about her. We care about our fellow man. We care about ourselves. Our soul is free and it is not necessary that other people agree with us. We will not separate from them as brothers and sisters for such a silly reason. We are more than that! I Am that I Am! I Am free to Love and Be Loved. And, so it is!
Man is only able to create receptivity to the experience of God in his own life. Man cannot demand this. Man cannot insist that this must happen, nor can man storm heaven with a creed or doctrine. The individual, by themselves, must enter into the silence that arises out of the simple acceptance of the love of God.
If and when man attains the dedicated purpose of being the living instrument of the Divine Will, he becomes ensouled with the dynamic energy of the Divine Being. Under these conditions, he is strong. True strength comes when we gain that strange dynamic which preceded creation, and from which all things come forth, the silence of the heart of God. This silence is the root of sound, and from it pours forth the colors and shapes that fashion our world. For out of the silence of the Infinite comes the clamoring of the finite. Yet this clamoring is not as strong or as great as the silence from which they came. There is no strength in clamoring, nor virtue in much noise. The virtue lies in life itself, in the richness of the power by which all living is possible. Man is divided only because he has never learned to love anything better than self, and because of this, he has never given the full devotion of his own nature. And so, by the simple act of grace, man shall learn to love, not because he expects to be loved, but only for the privilege of serving and the right to be humble in the presence of his Beloved. Then he will move away from all complexities and will become fully united. And in this union with God, he will find the end of loneliness and the beginning of the golden sun of hope. He will then find all solutions in the silence of great loving, as his own soul unites with universal power. Empires rise and fall, but love is eternal. The maturing of Love is one of the grandest works of man.
My promises and commitments to self, my fellow man, and Mother Earth in 2009:
- I vow to allow others to disagree with me without my need to separate from them.
- I vow to allow others that do not agree with me to live in the world.
- I vow to agree to be able to disagree with others without attempting to prove them wrong.
- I vow to be an instrument for love, harmony, and unity, rather than chaos and divisiveness.
-Patricia Hayes, Healing Arts Journal, January 2009
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