LOVE AND NOT-LOVE

[Liberal Catholic]

LOVE AND NOT-LOVE
by Marie Poutz

For a number of years I had been sorely puzzled over the problem of
right and wrong.

Questions which I could not silence had been repeatedly forcing their
way
into my consciousness: Was there really anything like right and wrong?

Had morality a place in the plan of God for the universe?

The agony of the questioning was all the greater because it came when
my thought turned to Those who had transcended humanity (The Holy
Saints and Spiritual Masters), for They seemed to condone what
the Commandments given by some among Themselves forbid men to do; it
seemed even in some cases as if those whom They chose to admit into
their ranks earned that
privilege by apparent mistakes and wrong-doing.

And we read of the Christ blessing Mary the sinner and rebuking Martha
whose faithful work made it possible for Mary to sit at the feet of
the Lord.

Are then moral laws given to men solely for the purpose of keeping the
little ones quiet?

As my landmarks grew dim in the darkness, an overwhelming pity for the
little
ones filled my heart, and a grim determination to sacrifice all to
help them,
even my conscience, if necessary.

But one day, in meditation, Light came.

I heard within myself these words: " When confronted by moral
problems, men
still centered in the little ego ask: Is it Right? Those who have
transcended
the little ego, and view things from the Greater Spirit ask: Is it
Love?"

As the meaning of these words began to unfold, I saw how the Higher
Vision no
longer deals with moral problems in terms of right or wrong, but in
terms of Love and Not-Love.

The human moral code makes a horizontal division: the clean above, the
unclean
below; but the Divine moral code makes a vertical division: the clean
and the unclean on the Love side, and the clean and the unclean on the
Not-Love side.

On the Love side, not only the beautiful spiritualized emotions that
grace
evolved humanity, but also the primitive and untransmuted stages of
those emotions, debauchery, profligacy, theft, the love of the
drunkard for his liquor - all, in short, that has in itself the
element of love for something or
someone, the yearning of union with the self without.

On the Not-Love side, we find not only pride, anger, hatred,
condemnation,
self-love, murder, but also spotless purity, too white to suffer the
proximity
of mud, and perchance deeds of heroic self-sacrifice, unwarmed by
love, done because it was right.

Further than that the Not-Love may not go, and those who have reached
that
stage, have to be swept into the current of Love which is the
fulfilling of the
Law; but who dare say how many ages it may take, and how many lives of
suffering
and agony?

Hence those who are already on the Love side, however soiled their
manifestation
of that Love may be, are on the more direct road to the Highest, their
possibilities of rapid transmutation are greater, and Those who Know
how quickly the sinner may become the saint, have always blessed and
absolved the Magdalen
and the publican.
In Their sight, the immoral man who lives a life of kindness toward his
fellowmen is greater than the man of irreproachable conduct who looks
down upon his brother with the cold eye of criticism and contempt-not
because They condone immorality, but because They Know what flower of
great price will soon
grow out of the mud and send forth the fragrance of God's very Love.

And people whom I knew began to classify themselves.
Men and women whom I had condemned were on the side of Love; others
whom I had admired, were on the other side in spite of their splendid
achievements, because of their lack of sympathy
and understanding.

Now I understand the parable of Mary nad Martha and I am at peace, for
I believe
that I have caught a glimpse of the measuring standard of Those more
than men (the Holy Saints & Spiritual Masters).

And when confronted by the moral problems of daily life, I am humbly
learning to ask...

IS IT LOVE?

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