A couple of months ago, I found myself chatting with a rabbi about love.
"I don't believe in self-love," he said when I suggested that, for me, this was love's most important expression. "I just don't think it's possible," he added.
This is a loving man, uncompromising in his compassion for others, yet certain that there's no reason to direct any of that heart energy within.
I was reminded of that conversation recently as I skimmed through some inspirational e-mails that had been forwarded to me. Although filled with love and spirit, although advocating oneness and self-awareness, they described "ego" with language that was neither loving nor spiritual.
Some advocated the ego's destruction. Others were less harsh, suggesting only that it be ignored.
It seems to me that both the rabbi and the e-mails' authors are preaching the same message — and it's one that is the antithesis of oneness.
We speak of oneness in many ways — all peoples coming together...a return to wholeness or source...a complete experience of God...enlightenment...
Yet if everything outside us is merely a reflection of what exists inside, there can be no oneness in the world unless and until there is oneness within.
Nations cannot experience unity while their citizens remain fragmented. Families cannot experience wholeness when prodigal daughters and sons are not welcomed home. Souls cannot be reunited when, individually, they are not whole.
And if oneness cannot exist where love is absent, then love cannot be present without unconditional self-love and self-respect.
Self-love is not self-indulgent and selfish. It's Self-full. It's an act of Self-respect.
Self-love doesn't mean loving only the attractive aspects of our beingness. Nor does it mean loving only our divinity and godliness. Self-respect cannot exist when we are engaged in beating up, diminishing or ignoring any aspect of ourselves, including the darkest, most shameful and most frightened or frightening.
I usually try to avoid using the word ego because it carries so much negative baggage. Over the years, from Freud on, it has been bashed, trashed and smashed, declared redundant or ridiculous and judged a hindrance to ascension.
Yet here's the thing: Ascension, or whatever word you choose for this indescribable journey we're on, is not like packing for a vacation, where some outfits come and others are left behind.
Unless everything comes, there is no oneness. There is only fragmentation as we judge some parts of Self worthy of the journey and others not.
The Greater You, whatever it is, has no meaning if it doesn't take in All of You.
So what do we do with those aspects of ourselves we would rather not acknowledge, those aspects that act up or act out, those aspects that are in fear or in shame? What do we do with the ego?
Do we ignore them? Do we destroy them? Do we hide them in the darkest corner of our darkest inner closet?
Or do we love them without condition? Do we treat them as part of the Holy Family of our Oneness?
"Wait," I hear you argue. "Don't we have to to get rid of those lower-vibration aspects of ourselves? How can we keep them onboard and still move forward, still experience the New Earth, the Kingdom of Heaven Jesus spoke of?"
Spiritual growth is not about removing any part of ourselves.
When you break your arm, do you chop it off and wait for a new one to grow in? No, you allow loving care to trans-form it, to change its form from one of brokenness to one of wholeness.
Love is the most powerful agent of transformation in all of creation. Creation itself is an act of profound love.
What we love, we trans-form through our love.
When we love the ego/human/personality/child self, we free it from the fears that have caused it to act up or act out in our lives. When we love the parts of us that are in shame, addiction, self-destruction or judgment, our love obviates the need for those behaviors.
Love — of all, including all of Self — is the glue that keeps us whole, that keeps us holy...that propels us into the inner oneness that makes possible all expressions of oneness in the world.
We cannot be love in the world, unless we love the world within.
So take a minute and look within. Find those parts of you from which your love has been withheld. Whatever they are, take them in your arms and enfold them in love. Welcome them back into your Holy Family of Oneness.
Be One. In love.
The Wondrous Tapestry of You
Imagine a tapestry, a wonderful symbol of the oneness that you are.
Look at it, in your mind’s eye. Imagine pulling out threads that somehow don’t look good to you.
Pull out too many and the whole wondrous piece of work begins to unravel, begins to look frayed and shabby.
Instead, take all those threads that have become unraveled or that you have pulled free from the tapestry. Take those golden threads of your beingness and reinsert them.
Pull each thread off the floor, out of the closet, out of the deep, dark basement of your sewing kit. Hold it in your hand. Acknowledge it. Love it. Watch it transform.
This is the Age of Synthesis. Welcome it. Embrace it. Be it. And see Heaven on Earth, which is the great cosmic tapestry, come into consciousness.
See it emerge — triumphant, resplendent — a heavenly creation finally acknowledged by you, its creator as the beautiful thing it is, you are...all are.
— excerpt adapted from "The Book of Messages: Writings Inspired by Melchizedek"
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