http://www.youtube.com/user/StartLoving4#g/c/B539F17E459802AC
D-15 'If you're not massively sacrificing you're not Loving' SL - YouTube
It's a mystery to me how I can arrive at several months shy of 60 years old and only be just 'getting' something like this, understanding something like this. On the other hand it's what's driven me all my life. I believes there were things to understand that I was not learning elsewhere. and I had some sense I had to find out, for my own joy, and to execute my own responsibility as a human being. If you're not breathing, you're not living. If your heart's not beating, you're not living. If you're not drinking liquids you're not living. If a plant is not inhaling CO2 it's not photosynthesizing. It's not living.
If you're not massively sacrificing, you're not massively loving. Teresa of Calcutta has given the best definition of love that I've ever encountered. And I've studied it academically, love that is, more than anyone you'll ever meet. She said, and this is a slight paraphrase, 'love is that which cannot remain passive in the face of suffering. Love is that which does not remain passive in the face of suffering.' Trillions of dollars, quite possibly, a year are spent that totally obscure and pervert the word love, so it's understandable that neither I nor you still grasp what the word love means. And yes, what I'm saying is entirely disputable; have at it friend if that's what you wish to do. But if you wish to grasp the neurological, psychological truth; if you wish to understand, by infinite measure, the most sacred and promising and awarding of human capacities, that capacity which is distinct from all others, which for me, deserves the word Love, as opposed to all else which is in the category of lust, self-service.
Teresa is correct, love is that which cannot and does not remain passive in the face of suffering, real or potential. This is what explains Gandhi. This is what explains King. This is what explains, Eleanor Roosevelt, Diane Wilson, Col. Ann Wright, Oscar Romero, Phil Berrigan, Liz Hourican; all of those who have retained their full humanity and exercise it. If you are not consuming massive amounts of suffering, and sacrificing your selfish alternatives for the Joy of serving our neediest brothers and sisters, you are not loving. You are lusting. I did not just say one is superior to the other. That's for you to decide. But they are clinically, objectively opposite ways being.
This is a significant clarification for me. Suffering and sacrifice are words that have been troubling to me, and I didn't quite understand why; I'm understanding more now why. Mothers that we would consider healthy, when they talk about their child, do not center on the pain of childbirth. They center on the Joy, although they might not use that word, of sacrificing their lives and they wouldn't use that word, or say it. They do it for the advancement of their child, for the joy of that. That's what we are designed do. So I've been very troubled by the word sacrifice and suffering. When Jesus life is explained, for example, because what has been so clear to me, is what characterized the life of Jesus was not suffering but loving. What I was blind to was the suffering was inseparable in the same way that consumption of CO2 is inseparable from the life-giving of photosynthesis, generating oxygen. They're inseparable. They're inseparable. They are totally inseparable. Now Lust, flees from suffering. Lust calls Love that which is devoid of suffering, and full of pleasure, intoxication. That's Death, literally, Living Death - Death of the Soul - emptiness of the Soul l- which almost 300,000,000 of us in this country are devoted to we, that we in the US see as a virtue, as desirable, that walking Death, that Living Death. In the movie, the brilliant movie, The Matrix, do we really think that ever Neo and the others were able to inspire the, what, hundreds of millions or billions to leave the Matrix? I don't know. They, actually, probably many of them, if not the vast majority, were perfectly happy with their living Death, the same way hardly any alcoholics ever recover; any alcoholics ever recover, because they're unable to see the hellishness of their existence.
If you or I are not massively sacrificing, in those seconds where we are not, we are not Loving, neither are we exercising our capacity for Love; neither are we Loving beings; we are Lusting beings. I didn't just say which one was superior, that's for you to decide. But it's for me to point out the distinction. And for me, I'm too greedy to want to be Lusting. I have too much enlightened greed. Thank God to my biological father, and the man, Jesus, who I experienced truly as a young person. I was gifted with close contact with both my dad, and Jesus as a result, and was gifted with greed for a life that is Loving, the only source of Joy. And that by definition is not a life 'of' suffering, not a life 'of' sacrifice, but a life that sacrifice's'; a life that metabolizes suffering. Yes, we know people to wallow in suffering. No that's just another form of lust, clearly. But Love metabolizes suffering; that is it's food, that is what it ingests, for the Joy of it.
Love metabolizes suffering the joy of it. No, not in some sadistic or masochistic sense. Clearly there are people that are able to metabolize suffering exactly for sadism, or masochism. But the people we admire as the most healthy metabolize suffering, too make it go away, as the is the engine, as the reason for exercising their own Love. Oh, it's so easy to deny what I'm saying. It's so easy to ignore what I'm saying. And I will never try and force it on you. To some of you I will continue to offer it. To most of you, you will continue to demonstrate to me that you want not to understand. Until you through some wonder change, unless and until through some wonder change, and want to know, I'll always be your brother, but I'll not enable your capacity for denial by trying to step into the breach, if you continue to willfully and aggressively indicate you wish not understand. I'll not harm you in that way, out of Love.
