This is Part 5 of 5 of a sermon on Mark 12:28-34 by the Messenger Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered on Palm Sunday, April 15, 1984, at Camelot. It is published in Pearls of Wisdom Vol. 27 No. 23 – May 28, 1984.
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself
These four points can be considered the four quadrants of your cosmic clock. And so, when you think about it, all of thy heart is all of thy sacred fire, all of the fire of the etheric body; and all of thy mind is the mental body, and all of thy soul is the astral (desire) body, and all of thy strength is the physical body. Therefore, all of thy members pointing Godward is the key to self-mastery—the key to walking the earth as the master of one’s own Presence because one is a part of the I AM Presence.
But all of this cannot gain the kingdom without the second part of the great commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. And there is none other commandment greater than these two—the first and second.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. When one is in love with God, when one loves the I AM Presence as we have discussed—with all of thy heart, with all of thy soul and mind and strength—then one turns one’s gaze to the neighbor, to the friend, to the relative, or to the stranger, and with the same gaze that one has loved God, one loves His manifestation.
You see how strong the image of God must be, that you can turn and look at any individual and see that same I AM Presence shining there, incarnate, and love that one as one loves the I AM Presence, thy True Self.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. How can you love thy neighbor as thyself if you do not know who “thyself” is? If you think you are a bundle of nerves or a disorganized, disjointed, or emotional person, if you think you are sick or dead or this or that or the next thing, then you are going to love your neighbor as an emotional, sick person—the same one you think you are.
If you think you are greedy or deceptive and manifest those qualities, you will always be seeing them in everyone else. If the self that you are is allowed to be the selfish self, then you will see the selfish self in the neighbor and you will say, “That person doesn’t deserve my love. That person doesn’t deserve my gift.” And so you withhold the gift because you are looking at a flesh-and-blood person, you are looking at a mortal. You are separating the parts. You are forgetting the compassion that God has for the soul that is gone astray.
When you enter into judgment, criticism, and condemnation of others, you cannot love them as thyself; you are guilty of being disobedient to the second commandment that Jesus gave us. And where can you go? Where can you go as a ministering servant? Where can you go as an apostle? How can you be the Christ? How can you be the example if, when you look at someone, the person feels uncomfortable because he knows that you are critical or you are envious or you are jealous or whatever?
So, the whole moment of our religion can be lost if we do not fulfill the second commandment. If we come into the sanctuary and give our devotions to God and then go forth and withhold the intensity of our love for God from his creatures, where is our religion?
You see, this is the Alpha and the Omega of our path. The Alpha is our connecting with the Spirit, the powerhouse, the Source where we have all-power in heaven and earth to do the will of God. But the Omega is the fulfillment of the Alpha—it is the anchoring of all of that love in Matter. It is the drawing down, therefore, of our love for God and the giving of it to the part of God that needs the love most: the soul that is gone astray, the soul that is apart and caught, as the one lost sheep in the brambles, and must be personally fetched by the shepherd—you the shepherd, you the embodied Christ, you the embodiment of your Christ Self.
It is not an impersonal love. It is very personal and very attentive. That little lamb can only hang on so long, caught in the brambles at the edge of a cliff. It will need water and food or it will die. It cannot extricate itself. You must go after it because it is God. This is the reason: it is a part of God and a part of you because you are the very living, breathing nature of God. This is a part of your Self, the Universal Self, that is gone astray. And that one is more important to you than all the ninety and nine who are pursuing the Path and entering in.
Please realize that if our religion and all of the teachings of the ascended masters do not equate in us as a greater love for all people than we ever had before, a greater love than any other religion teaches or inculcates, then we have lost the message of the Great White Brotherhood, of every ascended master, of their mission and of their path. We have lost the message! And we have nothing to teach if we are not the living flame of Love in action.
Therefore, we come into the science and the understanding of Love—Love that binds the unreal, binds the demons and the devils, takes care of predators that prey upon the sheep. Love is a vast science. It is Chamuel and Charity delivering the judgment that confounded the people—Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. <14> Realize this: that Love is the power of protection.
Love gave birth to all of the seven rays of Christhood—all of the paths of the chohans of the rays whereby they teach us how to get home to God. Love is the foundation of every effort. And when you have love, you attract the Holy Spirit that makes you a professional and an expert at what you are doing, because you love so much you want to do it right. You want to know how to do it better, and therefore it makes you a good student—and it makes you a good teacher because you love those who do not yet know. It makes you a good disciplinarian because you know that love is the fruit of the Tree of Life which Maitreya will give in initiation, and those who are going to receive the fruit of love must have the discipline of the chakras.
So, you see, to fulfill the first and the second commandment requires the path of the teachings of the ascended masters—to truly fulfill this Word. And this contains all of the law and all of the prophets. <15> All is fulfilled.
Let us not substitute human sympathy, human possessive love for this understanding. Love is giving to God and to his sons and daughters and children all of the love that he has ever given you. And it is lawful for you to give this love to your loved ones and to strangers so long as you recognize that you are not pouring it into the flesh-and-blood vessel, but to the Sun behind the sun. The Sun behind the soul is the I AM Presence and the Christ Self of the one you love.
You can pour infinite love into the vessel of your co-worker, and it will not be spilled or misused if you seal it in the heart of the Christ Self of that one and implore that Christ Self to use that love to heal and elevate and raise up that one. But if you give God’s love to the human creature who has the propensity to misqualify that energy, to squander it, to take it for granted, to take it and turn and rend you, then you are unwise. For Jesus said, Cast not your pearls before swine. <16> And the swine is the carnal mind, the untransmuted self.
Therefore, go to the heart of the Mediator and to the portion of the soul that is one with the Mediator. Represent the Mediator and go after the soul, and call it to its cosmic integration in God—all of the parts of consciousness coming back to the Whole. This is the effect of loving people.
When you love someone truly, do you know how it makes them feel? It makes them feel that they want to be who they really are. It makes them feel that they want to be worthy of God’s love. God’s love is so wonderful and beautiful, it inspires people to transcend themselves, instead of knocking them down and condemning them in the old order of condemnation.
When someone wants to be who they really are because you love them—as a parent, a teacher, a wife, a husband, or any human relationship—when you love and love, and they desire to be who they really are because of it, it is a leaven that raises the entire planetary body. All life is raised when one person decides to be who they are—because you have decided to love as God loves.
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