The Greatest Commandment

Jesus said in Mark 12: 29-31, "The most important one [commandment] is this: 'The Lord our God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

What did Jesus mean by "the Lord is one"? The person who asked him what the greatest commandment is replied in the next verse, "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him." That means there is no duality. God is everywhere, everyone, and everything. God is in the flower that blooms in the morning, the sun, rain, and earth that nourish it, the bees that gather nectar from it, and the person that delights in its beauty and fragrance. God is in you and me. There is no other, no duality, no separation, no division. No Christian and Jew and Muslim. No believer and unbeliever. We are all one. We are all God.

That is why the second commandment is equally as great, for our neighbor is ourself. When we realize that, in essence, we are all one in God, it's easy and natural to love our neighbor, even if our neighbor is an atheist, belongs to an opposing political party, or has opinions and practices that are contrary to ours. That's why we can continue to love them, even if they slander us, assault us, steal from us, and kill us.

Jesus also said in Matthew 5: 44-45, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." God is in the sun and rain, the sun that warms and burns, the rain that quenches growing crops and the rain that washes crops away in floods. God is in the evil and the good, the just and the unjust. Love the sun and rain unconditionally. Love all unconditionally.

Again, this is easy to do when you see your divine Self in the sun and the rain, in your neighbor and your enemy. Jesus said in Matthew 11:30, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." He was referring to the burden of all the laws that people had to live by. If you followed the greatest commandment, if you truly grok what it means, you don't need to follow all the laws; you will no longer be burdened by the multiplicity of rules and regulations or by the heaviness of negative emotions that come with duality.