Do we love God?

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surrendersacrifice

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God forgave us by sacrificing his own life, so that, we, who betrayed him may have peace and joy for all eternity. He told us that if we love him we would keep his commandments by loving one another as he has loved us.
Therefore, do we love God, if we:
1) refuse to forgive others as God forgave us?
2) have hate, greed, revenge, pride and lust in our heart?
3) refuse to sacrifice our own interest in order to bring healing to those who hurt and betray us?
4) refuse to stay faithful to our marriage covenant when there is hurt and betrayal?
 
1 John 4:8: "God is love."

To love love is absurd.

Forget everything about laws, about what should and shouldn't be.

You just concentrate on loving more and more each moment.

The very fact you're alive proves God accepts you.

Do not worry about others.

Worry about yourself.

Philippians 2:12-13: "Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose."

Do not think you are saved merely because you believe.

The very fact you're alive proves you are already the expression of God, there was never anything to be saved.

Realizing this is the only true salvation, seeing you are God is the only path to eternal life - for God is the eternal being behind all life. This is the Good News, that you never had to do anything, you are blessed merely being alive.

This also means, however, that even those you feel are sinners, that need to be saved, they too are God manifest.

Hence do not judge, you do not know the full picture yet.
 
Matthew 9:12-13: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Religion is fundamentally about teaching man how to love unconditionally, yet the very act of trying to convert condemns him, you call them sick by the mere suggestion.

All are already acting in love, some misguided but love is all that ever moves. You can call them to a more full love if you even know it yourself, but you cannot create love in them. The very fact God is in them shows they already have love, it is only whether they let love act or ego act.

Acting in any way contrary to love IS sin.

The only law Jesus gives is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighor as yourself". The prior is for building love in your own heart, the latter is saying to share it rather than keeping it for yourself.

1 Corinthians 12:12-27 is also something beautiful to understand, for it shows the correct meaning of "as yourself":

Unity and Diversity in the Body

12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[a] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

As you do not call your hand something other than your body, so each man should be taken as part of one body.

It is not possible to be other than part of this body in this universe - first chapter of John tells us this.

All have their part.
 
AdvaitaZen said:
1 John 4:8: "God is love."

To love love is absurd.
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That's absurd! One can certainly love the idea of Love.

Do not worry about others.
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Now there's a message! This in the moment nonsense is just that, nonsense. Don't you care about another? Don't you plan for the future? Don't you plan for the future of the one's you love and care about?

The very fact you're alive proves you are already the expression of God, there was never anything to be saved.
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The fact that you exist does not prove anything about a god, it just proves that you exist. If you need to assign a meaning to your existence by some divine intervention then so be it, but it is not necessary.

Realizing this is the only true salvation, seeing you are God is the only path to eternal life - for God is the eternal being behind all life. This is the Good News, that you never had to do anything, you are blessed merely being alive.
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I would agree with you here, except I know you are referring to god as One and that we are all a part of this One . . . and that I do not believe. We are all individual gods in the making.

This also means, however, that even those you feel are sinners, that need to be saved, they too are God manifest.
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Sin, Need, Saved . . . not in my world, those are simply constructs designed by man to control other men.
 
Do I love G!d?

Yup..I also love gravity, oxygen, my sphincter...all the things that allow me to exist here in 3d...

G!d is.... expressed in all there is.... and is the underlying principle...
 
Etu Malku said:
That's absurd! One can certainly love the idea of Love.

Now there's a message! This in the moment nonsense is just that, nonsense. Don't you care about another? Don't you plan for the future? Don't you plan for the future of the one's you love and care about?

The fact that you exist does not prove anything about a god, it just proves that you exist. If you need to assign a meaning to your existence by some divine intervention then so be it, but it is not necessary.

I would agree with you here, except I know you are referring to god as One and that we are all a part of this One . . . and that I do not believe. We are all individual gods in the making.

Sin, Need, Saved . . . not in my world, those are simply constructs designed by man to control other men.
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Your post just represents a man living from mind.

Future exists only in the mind, as does past. Beliefs exist only in the mind, just a sequence of sounds you think correspond to something in reality. The mind cannot become a God, what the mind resides in is already God, what thoughts arise from, what they dissolve back into, it is already God. This is individual, but you do not know the meaning of the word. Individual means not dividable, and existence is that.

You do not know your own nature, and so these statements are understood. I can only hope one day you realize truth, rather than just believing you know it.
 
seattlegal said:
Or to control oneself.
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Who would control what?

You can only control where energy is directed. What comes and goes is not within your control, for they do not originate with you.

The whole exercise of the Buddha is to see that thoughts are not originating with you, and thus you do not have to give them attention. You can fight as much as you want to rid yourself of thoughts, it is impossible because it is a thought trying to remove a thought. By the time a thought has come, it is already there, so you cannot control its arising.

Of course, the ego wants to think it can, but the ego is itself just a thought.
 
Also, you can certainly love the idea of love.

The idea of love is just another thought.

Never mistake something about to be the real thing.
 
AdvaitaZen said:
Who would control what?

You can only control where energy is directed. What comes and goes is not within your control, for they do not originate with you.

The whole exercise of the Buddha is to see that thoughts are not originating with you, and thus you do not have to give them attention.
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LOL!
Dhammapada 1
9. Whoever being depraved, devoid of self-control and truthfulness, should don the monk's yellow robe, he surely is not worthy of the robe.
10. But whoever is purged of depravity, well-established in virtues and filled with self-control and truthfulness, he indeed is worthy of the yellow robe.
11. Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential.
12. Those who know the essential to be essential and the unessential to be unessential, dwelling in right thoughts, do arrive at the essential.​
You can fight as much as you want to rid yourself of thoughts, it is impossible because it is a thought trying to remove a thought. By the time a thought has come, it is already there, so you cannot control its arising.
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More Dhammapada 1

1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.
3. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.
4. "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.
5. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.
6. There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.​
As per the above quote, a little discernment goes a long way when it comes to your thoughts. Extinguishing mind and all thoughts is the way of non-discernment--contrary to the middle way between unprofitable self-indulgence and unprofitable self-affliction. See Buddha's first discourse after his enlightenment:
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion


Of course, the ego wants to think it can, but the ego is itself just a thought.
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It is mode/type of thinking, not a thought, imo.
 
seattlegal said:
As per the above quote, a little discernment goes a long way when it comes to your thoughts. Extinguishing mind and all thoughts is the way of non-discernment--contrary to the middle way between unprofitable self-indulgence and unprofitable self-affliction. See Buddha's first discourse after his enlightenment:
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion
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If anatta is true, who will discern?

Will emptiness discern between different expressions of emptiness?

It is absurd, I wish you'd stop quoting the Dhammapada at me.

It will cause me to rip apart Buddha and I love the man so :(
 
seattlegal said:
You don't believe in sin, I don't believe in perfection. lol.
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Perfection needs imperfection for comparison.

Both are of the mind, yet it is mind that sins.

If you live as love, sin does not come.
 
seattlegal said:
It is mode/type of thinking, not a thought, imo.
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A mode/type of thinking is not founded on a particular thought?

The ego is based on the thought "I am the body/mind", all else stems from this. We want for the bodymind all that is true of our nature, and so all kinds of activities and motivations arise. We want the bodymind to be meaningful, great, all desire stems from this. We desire to belong to something bigger than this, and so nationalism or religion comes.

In reality the whole is within what we are, nothing is inherently evil in our actions and motives, but it is from a wrong perception so much evil occurs through them. It is as though we actually know what we are, but cannot quite figure it out consciously, so we strive in different ways to touch it again.
 
seattlegal said:
I had no idea I was so powerful. :rolleyes:
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You share only the mundane in Buddha, you have not crossed the river.

You acquire knowledge where knowledge is the least purpose.

Yes, trying to share such basic common sense as if it were great knowledge will cause me to hate Buddha, for it is not knowledge. These things should not even be considered, for they flow from a loving heart, yet are made to be a law in this book.

Understand Buddha, where he speaks from, and you can drop his text.

Light the flame of love, keep it burning hotter and hotter, and you will be a light for all.

First the candle must be lit, but you still are thinking how to do it. You still want to learn from a book about life, but life must be lived to be understood.

Where has Buddha quoted any text? No, rather he goes on invalidating them.

Now we take his words in the same way people of his time took the Vedas.

Love cannot be found in a book.

Life cannot be found in its words.

Understanding can bring us to the bank of the river, but only courage can jump in.

Drop all thinking and see.

Then your life becomes a living scripture, and only the living can help the living.
 
Life is here and now, it cannot be anywhere else.

Find out what is here.

Yes, thoughts can be here, much can come and go.

What is the constant?

If you can find this out, dive into it, seek its source.

You will enter the heart of life, of love.

Deeper still, you find emptiness, absolute void.

You cannot see yourself, yet you have entered that.

From here wisdom comes, but it is not intellectual.

Understanding all is truly illusion, including what you thought yourself to be, what fear can come?

Instead, we go on accumulating this and that, some knowledge, some jewellery, a car, a house, a family, we go on trying to make ourselves more and more meaningful.

All we ever do is increase the fear of death, for we know in death all must be dropped.

In wisdom we see we never had anything to start.
 
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