Feb 03, 2016

Prayer of St. Francis (22)

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be loved as to love. (3)

“God is a verb
not a noun.”
                                       R. Buckminster Fuller

We will continue to look at the lines “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be loved as to love.” from the Prayer of St. Francis, and how our ability to give love opens us to greater love.

The Ego

When we learn to love, whether to love another or to love ourselves, we stretch our ego outside the ego’s comfort zone. Our ego is that self-centered part of our being that looks after our comfort, urges us to control all situations and others, and is the part of our internal fabric that tends to build on the discomfort of others in our presence.
Now our ego has a positive part to play in our life, as it is the part we need to grow in the first part of life to be able to function in society, learn a career, earn money, and just be able to survive. Once we achieve that, the ego, which is very strong at that point, will attempt to take over our life and dominate others, have its own way, and in general create a miserable life for us, in the cloak of money, power, and control. (By the way, there are many ways that the ego works on this, in many styles, from the dominate to the seemingly servile.) We spend all of our lives trying to overcome the initial burst that the ego has put us through.
The ego does not want us to learn to love, for love awakens all that the ego has tried hard to suppress to gain its strong functionality. The ego does not want us to express compassion, does not want us to give joy, does not want us to be able to join with any deep success any one else outside of ourselves.
And above all, the ego refuses love. To love, we have to fulfill all the points that St. Paul talked about, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong.” (1 Corinthians 4-5), and these are the very points that drive the ego nuts.

Moving Beyond the Ego

As we start to shift our focus, and think about these traits that express love, and start to try to implement them in our life, we find that our ability gradually shifts to be more open and more giving, often much to our surprise,, and to the chagrin of our ego, who will often try to stop us from being “a nice person”, as it tends to lower the power of the ego.
But as we start to try to be more compassionate and forgiving, we will be surprised at the amount of compassion and forgiveness that enters into our life; that is, we find ourselves being loved in concrete forms that we did not expect.
We find, much to our surprise, as we start to learn the process of loving by actually loving others, we find ourselves being loved in return. We find, to our even greater surprise, that as we learn to love deeper and deeper, the expressions of love in return become more profound and richer.
So why don’t we continue this path more stridently and on a constant basis? Simply because we have to love first, for even though love has been surrounding us, we have not recognized it, and only upon expressing love to others do we see the love that surrounds us, and always has, much to our surprise. To learn to love first is a conscious decision we have to make, and often it is a frightening decision to make: Do I take the risk to Love?
Every time we take the risk to love opens us up to greater Love than we have experienced before. Always. Even when the love we offer another may be rebuffed, usually because the other is unable to accept love due to the pain in their lives, we become more open to love and grow in Love.
Only by loving others are able to accept the love of another.
There is no other way.
And we will find Love blazing forth with the intensity of our Beloved if we only look with the eyes of Love at the Face of God that is presented to us in the form of others.

“It’s only by forgetting yourself
that you draw near to God.”
                                 Henry David Thoreau

Questions to Ponder

Look into the eyes of a child. Ponder the visage of a child asleep. Allow your heart to feel the innocence of a child. Do these exercises increase your levels of compassion, gentleness, and the inner sense of Love?

Meditation

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
If this meditation post has been helpful, I would appreciate it if you would pass it on or share it.