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From the Logopraxis Workbook
The Logopraxis Life Group Meeting: 2.How To Meet – Loving the Neighbour & Practising Charity
To be in the effort to hear the Lord in another person is one aspect of what it means to love the neighbour, or what is of the Lord in another. To listen consciously is not about judging whether their state is of the Lord or not. It is about attending to the thoughts and affections within our own state, in response to what is being shared. We’re watching for the thoughts and affections that want to judge, condemn, criticise, praise, analyse and solve rather than simply listening for spiritual principles or truths found in what’s being shared.
When these self-crediting qualities and condemning tendencies are observed and acknowledged then it affirms that what the Word teaches us about the nature of the self is true. That the self, when left to its own loves and inclinations, will always own what flows into its awareness without the Word reminding it that it is instead a conduit of life. That it does not have agency but is instead a mere agent, a vessel. However, knowing this about the self intellectually and then seeing it as something active in our direct experience, are two very different things.
When an illustration of the nature of self is illuminated before us in the application of life events and circumstances then it also affirms the Word’s presence in our mind as the manifestation of the Divine Human. For it is experienced as a living truth bought down into our conscious awareness to be amongst those states of life that constitute our earthly existence. It is a living truth then because it communicates the perpetual striving of the Lord’s love to expose what is opposed to the life of heaven, so that what is of heaven might become the basis for our life. So that it might become the basis from which we feel, think and act.
In that moment that we truly recognise that what the Word has pointed to and called out is the hellish self, it is effectively shunned. This self is the self that exists separated from the Lord and it believes that it is the source and owner of the life that flows into it. It believes that it is God. The act of shunning the loves of this self as sins, that is, as that which misses the mark of what the Lord’s love is and strives towards, is the true meaning of charity. For then in that act of our recognition of this self and in seeing how what the Word teaches is saving us from it, the Word is actively acknowledged to be the Lord. It may not always be a conscious acknowledgement, but it is a lived acknowledgment
Third Round posts are short audio clips taken from Round 3 comments offered in the online Logopraxis Life Group meetings. The aim is to keep the focus on understanding the Text in terms of its application to the inner life along with reinforcing any key LP principles that have been highlighted in the exchanges.
