Learning & Love
You have to be wrong to learn.
It's impossible learn, if you're always right. We know this from science - learning new skills requires feedback. It REQUIRES error and error messages. It requires being wrong and acknowledging the wrong.
A religion that doesn't expect to be wrong ever, does not equip its followers to learn, that is, to grow. Without growing, its followers remain babies. And tantruming babies are never helpful.
Religion should teach its followers to risk, to try, in order for them to learn. They will learn faith, by practicing their doubt.
Love always wins & will always find them (and us). Always. It is the biggest truth and is, therefore, the greatest commandment.
You can't love others if you don't love yourself, because you bear the image of the Divine. If you can't see it in yourself, you can't truly see it in others. You are an heir to the Divine, in the blood line.
To not love yourself is either to not love God or to not know God. You know God by knowing yourself.
The awareness of the vastness of God will arise because you will see God in all the uniqueness of others. Everyone is unique. Everyone bears the image of the Divine. How vast God is! 8 billion expressions & that's just he expression of humans, not to speak to the diversity of plants, animals, planets, landscapes, sunsets, beaches, fields, valleys, weather systems, and cloud patterns. How vast God is!
Me seeing myself as connected to God doesn't make me puffed up and proud (although it might make me more angry sometimes…and we all know that are many, many things going wrong int he world that we need to be more mad about. Anger sparks action. Anger sparks and sustains justice). Rather than being bigger than I ought, I'm now finally on my way to being as big as God called me to be (in the uniqueness of what God has called me and gifted me to do). And I'm way more humble with meditating on God in me & sustaining me than thinking myself tattered & small. I humbly stand in front of the God of the universe and how vast it is. I go around looking at all these other people doing their part.
I have to meditate on this because there's the ex and that one co-worker that I'm just not sure are in cahoots with God. But we know this struggle is all ego - the part of the self that puffs & pretends & self-protects - the part that must die to bring resurrection.
Resurrection! Yes, resurrection is what we're all waiting for. In my "rest & receive" (which is my current learning) will come the resurrection which is not the old life back again, but instead a new life, a transformed life. The old Elle is dead & the new is born.
This is the gift of life - the many lives we get to live within our lifetime. But sadly so many are asleep and don't change. I'm reminded of the Kabbalah. We can keep going, if we want to. And that is the mystery.
What do those that want it look like? This is what we all want to know, so that we can know if we are right, which brings us squarely back to religion. Jesus didn't say religion is the greatest, nor Christianity. He didn't say he is. He said love is.
May I learn and change to better & better love - myself, & consequently others. Here's to risking being wrong in the pursuit of higher love and integrating all the lessons along the way. Here's to acknowledging when we're wrong and letting what needs to go, go and what needs to die, die.
How are you doing? Are you with me? Are you up for it?
What are areas that you need to be right?
How many lives have you lived?
Do you celebrate the change in your life and others?
Do you expect your love ones to change?
May you always see the blessing.
-esb