God, Love, and You

Jesus’ Greatest Commandments:

• 1) And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.

  2) And the second, like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

  Mark 12:30, 31

In a recent teaching from Jesus, he said, “You cannot love others until you love yourself. Before you can love yourself you must love God. It is not possible to love yourself or anyone else until you love God – because God created you. But before you can even love God, you must accept Him. And you can’t accept yourself until you accept God first.”

I must admit, I did not fully grasp this concept. Love is complicated anyway and can be very difficult to understand. But stated this way, love is circular – and it made no sense to me whatsoever. I had to go back and challenge Jesus – if you will – on this message. I needed clarification. I needed to know how love, the way it is stated here, was possible and why it was necessary.

Lorraine: Jesus, I can’t make sense of your message about love.

Jesus: That’s because you’re not thinking it through. You’re not using the correct thought process. Let’s break it down. You must first accept the concept that without God there is no you.

Lorraine: I accept and understand this concept.

Jesus: If you accept the concept that there is no you without God, you must then accept the concept that without you there is no God.

Lorraine: I can’t even wrap my brain around that one.

Jesus: You are a part of God. God created you in his own image. Therefore if you do not exist, neither does God.

Lorraine: Can I assume that the “you” in your statement does not refer to me specifically, but to all human beings?

Jesus: Yes.

Lorraine: OK then, if people didn’t exist, there are still other living organisms on the planet that do exist. And if they exist, so does God.

Jesus: Yes, but, there is no “you” to experience those living organisms. Why would they exist if you didn’t? If you don’t exist, they don’t exist, and therefore, God does not exist.

Lorraine: If a tree falls in the forest and you’re not there to hear it, does it make a sound? Same thing, right?

Jesus: Basically, yes. But, if you don’t exist, God would not exist, and therefore, the forest would not exist either. No tree would be there to fall. And if no tree is there to fall, there would be no sound.

Lorraine: OK, I got it. I think.

Jesus: Let’s put it another way. If you don’t exist, there is no need for other living organisms to exist. and God is, therefore, no longer a necessary being either.

Lorraine: I don’t know if I agree with you on this. You’re saying, if I don’t exist, there is no need for the forest to exist, and if we both don’t exist, there’s no need for God to exist. Right?

Jesus: Yes – conceptually.

Lorraine: OK, but before there were humans there were animals – like dinosaurs. There were no human beings on earth during this time. Yet, you’re saying without us there is no need for any other kind of living organism on the planet. And therefore God would not exist. How do you explain life on this planet before man?

Jesus: My child, God created all that he created so you could exist. The plants, the trees, the grass, the oceans, the land, the air, and all its living creatures were created so you could exist.

Lorraine: OK, I concede. But this has taken us away from the original topic of discussion – why is it not possible to love yourself without loving God?

Jesus: No. We did not stray from the original topic. Let’s continue. As you pointed out, there were many other beings before you – all created so you could exist – all created by God. So without God, there is no “you.” And without “you,” there is no God. So how can you love yourself without loving God first?

Lorraine: That is very profound.

Jesus: Yes, I would agree.

Lorraine: Are you saying that if you don’t love God, you don’t love yourself, and it’s not possible to love someone or something else?

Jesus: No. You can love a dollar, but that does nothing for you. You can love a car. That also does nothing for you.

Lorraine: So, until I love myself and love God, loving someone else or something else is not important.

Jesus: Not exactly. Loving others is very important – but you are not the one who is being loved.

Lorraine: Why is it so necessary to be the one who is loved, more so apparently, the loving others?

Jesus: If you are not the one being loved, you have no purpose being on Earth.

Lorraine: Why would you say that? There are a lot of people on this planet who do not feel loved.

Jesus: That is the purpose of life – to love and to be loved.

Lorraine: Conceptually, this is very difficult. I can’t get past the reality that many people walking this planet are not loved. If our purpose in life is to love and be loved, why are the unloved here?

Jesus: You only need one person to love you – YOU!

Lorraine: I guess that brings us right back to where we started.

Jesus: Yes, but we’re not quite done. You need to love you. If you love yourself it does not matter who else loves you. There are plenty of people on the Earth who are loved but who do not love themselves and they are most unhappy. If you love yourself you automatically love God. If you love God you are well on your way to loving yourself.

Lorraine: Why, if you love God, do you not automatically love yourself?

Jesus: Because you have memories – thoughts, feelings, fears, anger, resentments, and all sort of things coming up from your past that stand in the way of you loving yourself for who you are and what you are. So, it’s a little harder to love yourself even if you do love God.

Lorraine: How do we get past these memories so we can love ourselves?

Jesus: You must not allow the memories to block you from your purpose on the earth. You must push the fears, the anger, the resentments, etc. away and let your true spirit shine through. The spirit does not want to hate. It wants and needs to love – but free will can and often does hinder the way you process your surroundings. Good can be turned into bad or evil just by thought alone. Memories of the past come to the conscious level when a stimulus is presented. If the stimulus elicits a good memory, the thoughts and emotions will be good or positive – and if an action occurs, it too will be good or positive. But if it elicits a bad memory, the thoughts and feelings will be bad or negative. And if an action occurs, it too will be bad or negative.

Lorraine: I think I finally get the point.

Jesus: There’s one more point to cover. That is WHY you exist. You exist for the sole purpose of expressing love and accepting love. For this purpose you are God. You experience God. You are one with God. God loves. Period. He creates through love. He is the creator of heaven and earth. All he has created is love. So why should you not love?

Lorraine: So we exist for the sole purpose of giving and receiving love.

Jesus: Exactly.

Lorraine: Then why do so many people hate?

Jesus: Because of the memories that are stored in the subconscious. When a stimulus presents itself, the memories that are stored in the subconscious get triggered. They then move to the conscious level where physical and emotional responses are generated – which can be either good or bad.

Lorraine: Aren’t people taught to hate?

Jesus: Yes, but that learning is stored in the subconscious as well. When the thing they were taught to hate presents itself, their hate comes to the conscious level and is expressed as hateful thoughts and feelings.

Lorraine: So in order to be more like God we must deny our negative thoughts and feelings?

Jesus: Not deny – push them away. Just because you have negative thoughts and feelings doesn’t mean you should act upon them.

Lorraine: Then why do we have to have these memories if they make us act and feel negative? I think this is a very good question, don’t you?

Jesus: It’s not only a very good question; it is an age-old question. You have memory recall. It is part of God’s plan. You must accept this for you cannot change it. You cannot deny your thoughts and feelings, but you must not allow the negative thoughts and feelings to control you. This is the true test of being like God.

Lorraine: We all have negative thoughts from time to time. And we all act upon them from time to time too. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t. So that means none of us can be God-like.

Jesus: No. I disagree. Many people are very good people who do not think negatively or act negatively. This does not mean they don’t backslide from time to time. But they are more God-like than those who always think negatively or act negatively. Thought alone is not enough to stop you from being God-like. Acting on the negative thoughts does.

Until next time…

Peace.