The Circle of Care
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- By John Eagles, November 2, 2006.
- This page is part of an ERW course, Divine Principle, section The Triune Ideal.
One major goal of religious life is to reach some kind of perfection of our individuality. People strive for perfection of all kind of aspects of their being. When you are a sportsman or -woman your goal for perfection may be to become a champion in your sport. When you are a scientist you may strive for perfection of your knowledge in a certain field.
Always when you want to reach perfection of yourself pursuing a goal, you need mind-body unity. Dependent on what kind of purpose you have, your mind makes a plan for how to reach the goal and your body must execute that plan. When you are not really determined to reach a goal, your efforts may already fail at the stage of the mind, because not having a clear goal you may never manage to make an adequate plan. When the plan is there, your body has to do it. Each champion must sacrifice much and be very disciplined, reaching a high degree of mind-body unity.
The highest goal we can reach in life is to be a person of love. I believe that this goal of love was not made by us; it has been injected into our being by our Creator. God is love and as God's objects, we also strive for love.
Love is a tremendous force and more than any other force, love can make our mind and body to unite. The result of the force of love being expressed into our mind and incorporated by our body is that we become a united being. We do what we want and we feel united with God and the entire cosmos. There is no higher goal to pursue than to learn and develop to be a loving being.
Some people strive for mind-body unity as a goal in itself. They chastise their body and make it do what they want. They make a plan to wake up early in the morning and to work hard all day. They set high goals for themselves to be reached and push themselves and the people around them to help them reach that goal. What they achieve is the discipline of mind-body unity, but their path may actually lead them to a false kind of individual perfection. Once they reached such perfection it may be very difficult to find the way back to a more original kind of mind-body unity.
Love is so internal that it is hard to translate that into clearly defined external goals. You can set a goal to earn a certain amount of money, or to reach the power to become the first person of a nation, but you can't clearly point out how much love you want to reach. That's why in a sense it is very hard to explain what i want to explain.
The main thing that can be said is to pursue love. To express love and to learn to express it more we can tell ourselves to care. By caring for all and everything around us we practice love and we increase our own love. Loving is not something that is just given to us. Loving is something that must be learned as well. We learn to love by practicing love. We practice love by caring. We can tell ourselves to take care of the world around us.
All entities in the cosmos are connected. The soul of the cosmos, or God, has expressed in so many entities in the cosmos. We cannot meet all these entities, no one can meet all people who live in the world, but we can determine ourselves to take care of all people whom we meet and all living beings and things around us.
All that exists is bound in one great circle. All is connected to God, and animals need plants, plants need water and sunlight and minerals, we all need the earth, we need the angels and other spiritual beings who lived already long before our arrival. All people need each other. All and everything is connected in one great circle of love. Love is what binds all entities in the cosmos because everything that exists was created from God's love.
We can become part of that great circle of love by an effort of care. The circle of care is the great circle of all entities in the cosmos and we join that circle of care by making a determination to care for all people we meet, to care for God, to care for the Earth, for the plants, for all animals, for all things.
When you feel depressed, there is no better way out than to just begin to care for all that is around you. Don't forget to care for yourself. It does not need to be egoistic to do that. When you are a parent, you want your children to take well care of themselves. In the same way, God and all who love us want us to take well care of ourselves. Take care of your body, take care of your house, take care of your clothes, take care of your friends... and join The Circle of Care. It's the best way of perfecting ourselves and reaching the highest degree of unity inside of ourselves.
