Love, idolatry and becoming the master's vessel

It is natural to want to be important, to feel appreciated, to elicit a positive response from other people. The thing is, we have to look at how we go about it, and whether our intentions are based on idolatry and self-idolatry, or love. Both idolatry and love are ruby ray initiations. Idolatry is a result of selfishness and love is a result of selflessness. Idolatry comes from a place of being alone and love comes from a place of being all-one. When we are looking at ways to be important, it is actually because we feel alone, so we pursue external validation and external authority.

We are important, but not in the sense that importance is defined through idolatry or self-idolatry, or through the meachanism that says, “You're one up,” or “you're one down.” What is important about us is our soul, our connection to our higher self and our personality, as long as it is making choices that lead to a permanent spiritual reality.

Personalities are like the costumes we wear as the character in a particular play. When we come into a new life, we put the former personality back up on the hanger and don a new outfit. We must forgive ourselves for our past life personalities and their mistakes. We must stop idolizing them and making them and their mistakes more imporant than what they really are. They are like costumes hanging in the dressing room. Only when we make our ascension are they reintegrated into our being in a permanent way. We have to stop shaming ourselves by giving them more power, because this becomes the activation of a husk. The not-self, of course, wants us to do so, like the big Tibetan mask parades that masquerade.

So we have to look at the idolatry that we have for our present and past-life personalities, and how we assign to the personality more importance than it really has. We also have to look at the idolatry that we project onto our higher self and sponsoring master, and how we, in turn, feel unworthy. Idolatry of the higher self and idolatry of the master isn't love.

Think about this. How would you love the master without idolatry, and help the master meet his or her needs? How would you serve him when he walks into your living room, into your life and your heart, without idolatry? Jesus said it when he said, “This which ye do to the least of the brethren you do unto me.” The challenge is we have to serve without resentment, without pride, without thought of self-gain and all of those dweller motivations. This takes the “zing' out of service and makes serving feel heavy, until we get to that place where we move into the bliss of selflessness and all-oneness.

Yes, we are important, but we must be careful not to yield to the flip side of the equation that says, all is all right. It's like the song lyrics, “How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful, how could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole?” This is true for the soul in her innocence, but we have to be completely on guard with the not-self, the dweller-on-the-threshold who is our own creation, and for which we are 100 percent responsible.

Our dweller is not wonderful and we must take full responsibility for our human creation which keeps tripping us up. That is being adult. We understand that we are important in the sense that we are stepping out of the carnal mind so we can be vehicles for the Christ mind.

We stop idolizing the master, as well as other people, and then trying to tear them down. That is iconoclastic behavior, the tearing down of idols that we had previously erected. We have to look at what is authentic and real.

There are so many distractions and opposing factors to the quality of love, projected at us all the time, and welling up from within as records that must be transmuted. We experience fear, doubt, the sense of injustice, of being done to and taking offense. We have envy and jealousy and fatigue and discouragement.We have the stress of coping and the need to feel secure and protected. In the face of all of this, we must learn to expand love and give more love, not less.

The Five Dhyani Buddhas will help us. The Buddha Vairochana brings to us the all-pervading wisdom of the Dharmakaya to consume in us the poison of ignorance. The Buddha Akshobhya brings to us mirrorlike wisdom to consume in us all anger, hatred and hate creation. The Buddha Ratnasambhava brings to us the wisdom of equality to help us overcome spiritual intellectual and human pride. The Buddha Amitabha brings to us discriminating wisdom to help us overcome all cravings, covetousness, gredd and lust. The Buddha Amoghasiddhi brings to us all-ccomplishing wisdom that consumes in us the poisons of envy and jealousy. Now combining their strengths as Vajrasatva, the buddhas bring to us the diamond will of God to free us from fear, doubt and non-belief in God.

Love is the universal language that cuts through all different levels of consciousness. It is where we are counted on. It is where we are important. Look then, at the different areas of your service and see where you infuse the greatest love, not self-love but love. That is the greatest quality, as the apostle Paul said.

Jesus told his disciples, “Love one another as I have loved you.” How did Jesus love us? Jesus loved the real self. He did not condemn the soul/personality and rescued Mary Magdalene. Simultaneously, he was fierce in confronting the not-self and often rebuked Peter and the other disciples. He honored Zaccheus for his earnestness and went to visit him in his home. And as he was walking to his crucifixion, he was thinking about the initiations his disciples and followers would also have to face in the next two thousand years and was concerned and invested in their long-term victory. He also had no idolatry for himself and said, “These things that I do ye shall do, and greater because I go unto my Father.” The relationship was real and down-to earth, even as it brought heaven closer.

Now it is our turn. Can we really love the master without idolizing him, and invite him in for a cup of tea, or to sup with us? Can we be adult with the master and relate with respect, consideration, love, devotion, friendship and the willingness to roll up our sleeves alongside him? Can we relate without idolatry, without giving in to the lower impulse to tear the master's work apart or to tear ourselves down?

People will come to us for a love that is greater than ourselves but we have to open the door and prime the pump. Jesus was an example of that love and the multitudes flocked to him. When this contact with the master is made and sustained, we will truly be important. We are important already because we have the free will to facilitate this all-important event. When this connection occurs however, our vibration changes. We become all-one. We become selfless, meaning “less” the lesser self, and in that moment, the greater self comes in.

We don't have to put out all this effort to try and be important anymore. We feel the all-oneness and it no longer matters whether we are important or not. All that matters is that we stay connected and true and authentic and dependable and trustworthy and loving.

We have become the Good Shepherd.