Our dualistic mind is consumed by counting and measuring how moral you and I are. It weighs everything and moves toward quick resolution and easy closure. It is very judgmental. That is why all great spiritual teachers say, “Do not judge.”
We have to deliberately choose to hold onto positive thoughts. When a loving, positive, or unproblematic thing comes our way, we have to savor it consciously before it can store itself in our “implicit memory;” otherwise it will not stick.
In some ways, the Gospel of love is so hard to live because it is so very simple. The mind seems to insist on making everything complicated. It is so biased toward fear and negativity that the common way we try to get control is to descend into some right-or-wrong system of morality. We always have an excuse not to sit at the table with “both good and bad” (Matthew 22:10). We would rather slouch in the corner and criticize, all the while feeling moral and superior.
We need an alternative orthodoxy that invites us all to sit at God’s One Abundant Table. We have too often assumed that people were very simple and so we had to make the laws complex to protect them from themselves. Jesus, however, recognized that people are endlessly diverse, complex, and mysterious, and it is best to make the law very simple.
John 13:34 “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.”
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