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Between Heaven and Earth

Stages of faith: the evolution of love

Hi Everyone,

I would like to share this with you; comments are encouraged. 🙂

These are just some thoughts I’m having recently. They are not complete, and not explained by the best of words. I realize now that I tend to change, and so do my beliefs and understanding. Which I now understand as beneficial as opposed to how I was taught. So, these will change as well!

I believe that we are all called to advance as much as we can on the road of spirituality, and in relation to the stages of faith, to reach the highest stage and the best understanding that we can reach in our life time within stage 4. What I’m going to express here is influenced, or has been mentioned, by Scott Peck. I have read at least three of his books. And he has helped me a lot.

What was hinted upon but not completely explained by our discussion of the stages of faith is that there is not only an advancement in faith but there is also an evolution of love. Stage 1 love is selfish, and basically non-existent. Stage 2 tend to love only because God tells them so. Sadly, they don’t understand what love is, so even though they may have access to higher truths (such as Jesus’s teachings), they don’t really understand what these mean. Their love is shallow, and many children of stage 2 people fail to grow up and so they get stuck psychologically as children. Stage 3 love is a little bit more advanced, they make good neighbors and parents, they don’t necessarily need God to tell them to be so or to tell them to love and they still do it. There is still an ulterior motive of “I want to feel good by loving”. Their individualism though inhibits them from seeing the other and from opening up. Stage 4 love is advanced; it is mystic, which is the best definition of Love. They struggle over their actions and inactions. They see Jesus’s teachings more clearly. They understand the first Beatitude “ Blessed are the poor in spirit”. They love in a complicated, hard, agonizing moment by moment decision making but also by opening up and accepting people how they are. Their love is experiential.

On that note, I would like to mention that a while back I had a discussion with Kiran about the difference between preachers and teachers. I told him that I get annoyed by people preaching at me. At the time I could not explain to him fully the difference between the two. I can now. Stage 2 are preachers, while stage 4 are teachers. Stage 2 did not experience love, they just “heard it” and then they combine their understandings and readings and “spit it out”. A teacher is someone who has experience and has agonized over that experience. They understand love by believing they don’t understand it. I have to say that I see that stage 3 fit the preacher category as well.

When we also discussed it we said that it was totally fine to get “stuck” in any of these stages. But if someone believes they want to know more truths, to know how to love better, then obviously it is not ok to get stuck. So Why do people fail to advance through the stages?

My main concern is stage 2 and 3 so I will stick with those. I feel that people get stuck because they are hurt. However, they either don’t know it or don’t know how to deal with it. For stage 2 they find structure fulfilling because, as Dr. Weaver mentioned, it is a big castle that protects them. They are insecure. Through their past experiences or through their stage 1 rebellion they have suffered the lack of genuine love. And to hide such insecurity they bury themselves with an intricate network of beliefs and rituals. They think that this act will heal their insecurities, but it is only a cover up. Only when such insecurities are healed a person can advance to stage 3.

Interestingly, stage 3 are stuck because they are hurt as well. Maybe in a slightly different way than stage 2 though. I can speak of this myself. Even though it took me time to realize, I have been hurt by stage 2 people. Whether they know it or not, they do so ( hurt others) in the name of God or religion. This obviously causes stage 3 to rebel against those things. This is where stage 3 get it wrong. For some reason, instead on putting the blame on those specific stage 2 individuals who hurt them, they tend to blame God or religion (or a book). They see the mistake on God’s part not being clear enough about himself so that people who believe in him can do so “better”. Stage 3 feel that the people who hurt them are only victims of a disillusioned God who doesn’t know better. I’m not sure why this exactly happens, instead of blaming the people which would be much more objective than blaming God.(Maybe because they believe in humanity more than the supernatural?) So as it happens, a stage 2 is baptizing the whole world in the name of the father the son and the Holy Ghost, a stage 3 is baptizing the world in the name of science, abandonment of belief, or a waking up from disillusionment. The problem is, because they are hurt as well, they are still in the baptizing mode.

Stage 4 is a paradoxical stage of science and religion/belief. To get there a person has to reconcile both these entities. Such thing won’t happen unless feelings of hurt are dealt with completely and objectively.

Michael

3 responses to “Stages of faith: the evolution of love”

  1. David Ellis Avatar
    David Ellis

    Michael, you make some very interesting points. With regard to the stages of love, are you talking about the “love thy neighbor as thyself” type of love? It seems to me that the love between (for example) parent and child or husband and wife can be real in people at any stage of faith. But I agree with you if you are talking about neighborly love.

    1. Msalsa89 Avatar
      Msalsa89

      Unfortunately David, I’m talking about all “forms” of love, even the ones you indicated. I’m saying unfortunately because I know it is sad. I wish it wasn’t like that.

      It’s not easy to understand what love is, which makes practicing love only the harder. Maybe it is easier to tell what love is not. The love that people see between husbands and wives, and between mothers and children, is not love. It is probable that most people now understand that the infatuation period between two newly met and wed has nothing to do with love. It is an ingenious survival mechanism that magically attaches two completely different, unrelated people (which probably increases their children’s fitness and reduces the probability of genetic diseases) for an enough period of time to insure successful reproduction. Thus this period lasts about 18 months. After that period, differences arise, and the two are forced to make a decision. If they failed to reproduce, divorce is the easy route. If they did, then they can either resent each other and themselves for the mistake they did, or they can work through their marriage. To do so, it requires huge amounts of work. I’m going to make it simple by saying that they have to reach stage 4 community together to be called real love.

      The same applies to motherly love. When a child is born the love that the mother feels is also a mechanism to protect the child and insure its survival. The love that the mother has to her child is very similar to the infatuation love between two lovers; it is an imposing of the mother’s self and personality on her child. When the child starts developing their own personality differences arise, the mother is shocked at that behavior and child indoctrination begins (which is hardly love).

      I’m not saying that mothers and fathers don’t know how to love their children completely, or that all husbands are wives have failed to love. For the most part, they do not practice love consciously. It is more like a hit and miss situation. Their attempt at love is the attempt of a novice archer at hitting his target.

  2. Harry Thompkins Avatar
    Harry Thompkins

    What truly interesting thoughts you have expressed, Michael. I have been trying to apply them to myself. At first I did not see them applying to me but the more I looked at love and hurt the more I understood that they encompass a huge spectrum of emotions and human insecurities that apply to me as well.

    Yet it seems that some people are born with a sense of compassion and selfless love. I don’t know if it is how they were raised or genetic. Or maybe it is just my assumption that they were this way their whole life; but nevertheless they exhibit comfort with people from all 4 levels. Most of these individuals that I know are in level 4.

    Your thoughts concerning love and hurt that you credited as coming from Scott Peck seem very plausible. What dawned on me as I was thinking about this subject is that it is scientifically measured. Which leads me to think about myself and the majority of us uneducated folks. Our beliefs were formulated by a family influenced sense of duty to adhere to a faith system out of familial love and obligation. Many of us in this category are dysfunctional or come from a dysfunctional background, which would reflect the reasons we are in such categories described by Scott Peck. We who are uneducated do not apply scientific principles of measurement to our faith or our relationship to others.

    It seems to me that if we did measure our faith system and our relationship to humanity, we would move to a higher level. But that takes a willingness to be educated and a self-assuredness that everything will be OK when we do search for the truth.

    The problem with a good many of us is that we do not really care about the truth. We are too fearful to move forward because we base our beliefs in Magic and the so called “safety in numbers.” It is said that where there is true love, there is no room for fear. Love is fearless and freeing.

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