If I’ve said some of these things before, now may be a good time to say them again. Some version of this post may be a good, new, final chapter for The Way of Peace.
The final stage of seeking Peace of Mind is to love All.
All that is. All that happens. All people, no matter how despicable. Every living thing. Every non-living thing.
This pertains somehow to activity of the root chakra.
I hold that God is What Is; or, God is All.
God is infinite. But what does that mean? To be truly infinite, God must be infinitely infinite. There cannot be any limit to God. There cannot be any thing that is not included within God; if there were, God would not be truly infinite.
Then, all things are included within the being of God.
This view is called panentheism; not pantheism, but panentheism. There is supposedly some difference between the two, that I don’t really understand. But panentheism finds God’s presence in all things.
In you. Your being is a portion of God’s being.
It pertains also to God’s omnipresence. God is present to every electron spinning around an atom. Jesus said, “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” The God who is close at hand like that, as opposed to the God who is distant from us, is called “immanent,” as opposed to “transcendent.”
I have never understood how some folk regard God as more present in some places than others. God’s omnipresence means that no place can truly be “God-forsaken.” There is no activity in which human beings can engage, to which God is not present. Even in the most depraved human acts — God is there.
Prayer is not a matter of calling upon someone who is distant from us, to do things for us; but, rather, a matter of energy transfers within the being of God. This is my understanding of Ambrose Worrall.
Related: Prayer primer
Jesus said the Great Commandment is to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. Without examining all of Jesus’ references to God, I take this one as meaning, to love All.
LOVE All, not “LIKE” All. Just as with humans, where my calling is to love even those I don’t like; so also with events and situations, there are those I cannot like, but still need to love.
So, then, I make a distinction between loving All and worshipping All; All that is a part of God. I can find it within myself to love a dirty diaper, for the sake of the human being who produced it. I am not going to worship that diaper.
There is more I could say. In this view, of necessity, God’s being includes the entire material world; but that is not “the end” of God, or else, again, God would not be truly infinite. God’s being, then, must include not only all that is, but all that is not; not only all events that have occurred and do occur, but all that can occur. The principles by which things exist and events occur, can be referred to as “God’s will,” that is, natural law; these also are a part of God, and are to be loved.
M. Scott Peck spoke of the “stretching of ego boundaries.” If my ego boundaries can stretch enough to love all human beings, to love all sentient life — they can stretch further, to love all that is.
This I seek to do.
Comments