Love is Our Awareness of Unity
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
1 Corinthians 13:1-10
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
Matthew 5:43-48 (group reading for live service)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Read the written message below with music videos
When we are close enough to someone that we feel a deep bond, we often call that love. When we feel a type of growing unity or a falling of barriers between ourselves and another, we often call that “falling in love.” We more fully appreciate someone’s beauty, and we find that we want to do more and more for them. The sages tell us that this love that we are feeling is in fact our fundamental nature, but it is sensed when we start to release our sense of division. Often, we do this (or this is done) for a select few in our lives, and when we find we can’t trust someone or they walk away from us that sense of division springs back and our sense of unity, of love, is diminished. However, our greatest spiritual teachers, like Christ, Rumi, and Krishna, invite us to release our general sense of division and our false idea of ourselves, uncovering our always fully present and natural love for others “as ourselves” in the process.
Christ’s message was one of unity, but unlike many Christian perspectives, I believe that the type of unity Christ was pointing us to was in our diversity. We see this in his ministry, hanging out with prostitutes and other outcasts, as he preached a return to our intrinsic love as “the light of the world.” Christ and others pointed to this light within us and strived to remind us that it was the very light of the Great I Am, saying that we should find unity with it. It’s no surprise then that so many other sages invite us to meditate on that very sense of “I am” in our quest to return to God, to find awakening, salvation, peace, or whatever we call it.
Why is this often described as the secret of awakening? Because our sense of “I am” is something that ties all of us together. We all are aware. But what is awareness? What is this consistent light of life that illuminates all the changeful things in life? We have very little knowledge about the most consistent thing in our experience, and yet all too often we think of the “material” world as the stable thing and awareness as the flickering light, all too soon to be snuffed out. However, even in our science we’ve discovered that the material universe’s reality is dependent on consciousness!
And so, even though the light of love is always with us, we spend very little time getting to know it, turning to it, and uncovering its fundamental nature. Instead, as our scriptures tell us, we have developed a deep sense of division and remain yoked to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” judgmental and anxious. Our very idea of who and what we are leads to this division, because instead of knowing the seat of awareness we define ourselves as “things,” our minds and bodies, which of themselves are ideas and experiences appearing in awareness itself. And again, according to quantum physics, even these have no reality without our consciousness.
If you think about it, without the ideas and conceptions that divide us, we are all “the light of the world” (as Jesus said) itself. Without difference in nature, only in passing experience. Unfortunately, the more we identify with our sense of division, the more preposterous this may seem. And instead of embodying the love at our core, the love that not only unites us in love but was also never divided, we embody our false ideas of division, leading to a need to control (we think for good reason!), dominate, and condemn. This leads us to hurt others and ourselves, even though we may think we have the greatest of intentions.
This is why Christ called on us to find “unity” in the Father, because the source of our very being is shared by all of us. It is wise beyond words, it is loving beyond conditions, we often call “it” God. To find the Father in our experience we have to start letting go of our divisive thinking, something that our thinking mind naturally does when we come to identify with our mind (instead of the awareness that perceives our mind). As 1 Corinthians 13:10 states, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.” The parts disappear not because we stop perceiving life, but because we stop thinking about it as different parts and instead see the whole of it as God, as Divine.
I can think of many times in my life when perceiving my unity with someone has dropped my barriers and allowed something more loving, more fruitful to shine. If nothing else, feeling more at one with someone helps us to fell less defensive, without a need to prove ourselves or force them out but still erect safe boundaries if necessary. Not only this, but a general sense of unity removes us from the workings of our anxious thoughts and reveals a space within that inherently knows its eternal nature because it knows that awareness is always present, always here in the now, and that any other sense of time is just imagination and a term to describe memory and the changefulness of experience.
The great mystic Emanuel Swedenborg wrote about how the most heavenly of loves is love for the Lord, and that its opposite is love for our false idea of ourselves, which leads to a love of domination. Swedenborg believed that “all things are made of God” and that God shone as a spiritual sun within each of our lives, enlightening our spiritual awareness and mind. Without knowing our deeper nature better, we miss the link connecting us with all living beings, we miss the sun of love within. And even when we know that the light of life is shared between all, it isn’t until we get to know that light that its love can be perceived and shared.
And so, it is our responsibility to remember to let go of our investment in our divisive minds and our judgmental thinking. If we look, we can start to see that our very nature is awareness itself, which starts with an awareness of “I am.” This sense of “I am” starts before our knowledge about our bodies and histories, ideas and imagination. It is so subtle as to be called humble, and yet it is the very power of life itself, empowering both our good thoughts and our bad. As Jehovah said, “I am that I am.” As we turn to this “I am” within, our sense of vulnerability diminishes, and our feelings of isolation and ego fail. Even our best intentions are revealed to be flawed in their centeredness in division, and our need to profit, horde, and control dissipates. We find that we are all fundamentally whole and unified, even when some act broken and divisive. And we can start the true work of communal reconciliation, listening, and healing that this world desires because we love all others “as ourselves” and we can’t help but want our self to feel loved.
Peace is you,
Cory