Radical Love

"...enlightenment is the moment we realize that we are made of love. At that moment, all fear of living disappears. For grace comes to the heart when it realizes what it is made of and what it has risen from. In that moment, grace comforts us, that no matter the joy or pain along the way, we are already part of where we are going."        -Mark Nepo - The Book of Awakening Radical love was the cornerstone of the uncommon life and teachings of Jesus. While every major religion espouses love's virtue, the depth and unflinching nature of the love that Jesus personified and revealed is in a rarified league of its own. Most of us cannot conceive, let alone achieve, a love so pure and uncompromising. So exemplary was Jesus demonstration of a love-centered being that many can believe only that Jesus was God who became a man, rather than the reverse transformation. Yet Jesus clearly invited all to follow him in this way, declaring that his attainment was within reach of all of us (John 14:12). He pointed to the kingdom of heaven within, an inner dimension of being, as the ground of our true nature. Herein lies the source of such humanly unimaginable qualities and potentialities; such unfathomable love that stands up to all opposition and doesn't flinch.   Our difficulty in loving the way Jesus loved is not a deficiency in our hardware, but much like my computer experiences, stems from operator error. When it comes to our relationships, we mostly deal with each other externally. We react, judge, assume, compare, criticize, resent, expect, infer, using the surface mind, the ego, which sees itself as separate from everyone, and everything, and most of all, separate from the One that unites us in Love. The sense of separation we feel from God and one another is the common bane of our human experience; the root cause of our struggle to love unconditionally. The uncommon love that Jesus demonstrated was rooted in an unbroken awareness of his unity with God, with equal awareness of the divine within every person.   For Jesus, the scales of judgment were completed removed from his eyes, so that he perceived the pure loving wholeness and innocence in everyone around him, friend or foe. He knew at depth, what we aspire to know, that we all are cut from the same spiritual cloth, that beyond all appearances to the contrary we are the holy progeny of the one life, love, and power we call God. It is only in such consciousness that we can follow the radical teachings that implore us to "love thy neighbor as thyself," "pray for those who persecute us" and "love thy enemy." This is the highest calling of spiritual life taking us to a precipice that offers an unobstructed view of the Light that enlightens everyone, while putting our "little self" at risk of a great fall. It begins with the premise and then takes practice. When I hold to the truth that I cannot be separate from the love of God, I am more likely to risk loving more radically, more wastefully. Expressions of love, like ocean waves that rise, cannot be separate from the sea that formed them. Knowing this requires us to go deeper to access that dimension of ourselves that is guided by the indwelling spirit of love, and from that awareness, we can rise above appearances and see our brother or sister as they really are. Then, like the wave, we can settle peacefully back into the sea of love, the illusion of separation vanquished by our willingness to trust loves promise.   In this season, that celebrates peace on earth and good will among all people, let it be more than a song on our lips, let it be a reality that lives in our heart.