Awake and Alive

The loveless heart may have all the religion and all the knowledge, yet it is dead. As the Bible says, "God is love." God is in the heart of each person, and the heart of each person is the highest heaven. When that heart is closed by the absence of love, then God is closed. When this heart is open, God is open, and one is alive from that time. ~~~ "Gathekas #22, Aims and Ideals", by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)

This teaching comes from the Sufi tradition, yet the Apostle Paul suggests the same wisdom. In I Corinthians 13 he reminds us that among all the spiritual virtues, the greatest is love. We can have hope, faith; we can give all we have to the poor but unless we are open to God’s leading, Spirit’s Voice, we are in fact “dead”. In that state, unawakened and asleep, motivated by personal desires and false self, God’s love which is infinite, unjudging and compassionate is not something we can live into or fully embrace. The path of living as deeply as we can with an open heart is not easy, but only by learning to keep our heart open can we truly become alive. By repeatedly waking up, recognizing what binds us to our false self, and gradually through practice, practice and more practice, letting go and allowing the space to be filled with Spirit, can God-with-Us manifest in this time-space reality. (Thanks to Monk Gail O for the original quote).