Love is the only power!

In the early 80s, when I entered my touchy-feely self-growth phase, I came across a recording by Rabbi David Zeller titled Love is the only Power. The lyrics are:
Love is the only power
Love is the only way
Love, Love
Our love
Watch our circle grow.

The song was sung in round with the lyrics repeated over and over. To me, the profound beauty is a simple take on the age old adage “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm has a listing of the various forms of this adage in the world’s major religious tradition. Virtually every major religious tradition expresses this adage in some form.

It seems to me that if people actually practiced this injunction, there would be no wars, poverty, famine or disease. There was a story circulating on the net this week, written by Joe Vitale, about a therapist, Dr. Len from Hawaii, who worked in a hospital ward that housed the criminally insane. The place was horrible. Therapists who worked there kept quitting. The staff fought among themselves. Some patients had to be chained for fear they’d attack the staff. Within a few months of Dr. Len started working there, the inmates started to heal: they required less medication and chained prisoners were allowed to walk about freely. In time, the ward was shut down because the patients healed so much they were able to be released. When asked how he achieved such a marvelous feat, Dr. Len said that he forgave the part of himself that helped create the situation. He would look at the patients’ records and repeat to himself, “I’m sorry” and “I love you.” Mr. Vitale points out that this is the ultimate taking responsibility for the creation of the world.

God-Realization is the goal of spirituality. Spirituality is an experience of the Divine presence. God-Realization and Self-Realization are the same thing. Tat Twam Asi, the Hindu expression meaning Though art That, means you are the thing you’re looking for. Maslow’s state of self-actualization is the awareness of the perfection of the One. If we all came from the same source, than we carry that source is within us. Waking up then means scraping away what we’re not to allow what we are to emerge. Waking up, too, means that we share the world’s consciousness. Anything we see in the world, good or bad, is some aspect of us. It can’t be otherwise.

There are some doctrines that are awaiting the return of the Messiah. Rabbi Zalman Schacter, a very inspiring rabbi said that we live in an age where we need to realize that the messiah is you. Unity says that you are the Christ. I believe it’s time, if one is a serious spiritual seeker, to stop seeking and start Being.

Honestly, I don’t want to forgive some of the stuff I see in the world. I in no way think that war or torture or deception are part of my consciousness. And yet, according to the principles of cognition, I can’t perceive anything that’s not part of my consciousness.

So as someone who wants to change the world, I’m spending more time forgiving myself for any and all hate, anger, fear, etc., etc. I’m forgiving myself for thinking that a world without love can even exist. And the miracle is that the more I do that, the more love I see.

The old metaphor that still works is that of a garden. Imagine the world is a garden and ask yourself what you want to cultivate. Do you want beautiful roses, then that’s what you have to focus on; do you want rotting vines, then that’s what you focus on.

Joel Goldsmith, a brilliant healer who lived in Boston in the 1950s who healed thousands and thousands of people never knew the names of symptoms of the people he healed. He would just go within and acknowledge and join with the one power in the universe.

There was an old quote by Eleanor Roosevelt about how one candle shines away the darkness. What would our world be like if we all just shone the light of love and really did do unto others what we would want to have done to us?

With love and peace,
Sorah Datri Dubitsky