I’ve dove deep into the mystic landscape of the Semitic Traditions as of late. Mostly, because I am an ultra dork who loves meditative practices, but… and this is a huge but… they’re not very practical for the average person. So, let’s remedy that and take a very practical look at what I consider to be the heart of Wisdom.
LOVE ONE ANOTHER
That’s literally it. We could end this blog right here so long as we make love our mantra and keep it dear to our hearts. No fancy intonations based on the study of dead languages. No complex discourses on the mysteries of scripture. Just love free from all the window dressing.
WHAT IS LOVE?
As a noun, it’s “a feeling of deep affection.” It’s the sort of fondness that grows from spending time with those we genuinely enjoy.
As a verb, love is “to have a deep affection for,” implying it something we express for the other person and put into action. That’s when love has moved past mere chemical reactions and becomes an expression. It’s something we show our loved ones as opposed to keeping it within us.
THE GREATEST LOVE
To love beyond the limits of those we are close to is the ultimate goal of it’s expression. Kahlil Gibran would tell us “Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.” This is the pinnacle of all mystic understanding. We are striving to be expressions of love for life and everything within the experience of life- the planet, the people… the experience of love itself.
“I want to fall in love with the clerk at the gas station.” I mean, that’s great in theory but sometimes I get angry because that lottery ticket custo needs a whole 20 minutes to scratch their addiction and the clerk is just too patient with them. Well… isn’t that precisely the type of love one should look to express? Patience, kindness and understanding.
That Greatest Love seems almost impossible to attain some days. We start feeling like we’ll never express love in the way Dr. Martin Luther King Junior did. Dr. Kings went beyond his immediate circle and encompassed his enemies as well. See, we consider the Gandhi’s of the world to be these mythic beings beyond our reach because we forget…
THEY WERE HUMAN TOO
All any of us can hope to do is be better today than we were yesterday. That’s how we make the world a better place.
Mystical Mindstate 