Yanni's Blog

This is Part IV of a four part blog. Please see my blog post of 08 20 07, 08 22 07 and 08 27 07 to read the passage from I Corinthians 13 that I am commenting on and to get a context for what I am speaking about in this blog post.

Given the imperfections of our ego minds, this is such a hard lesson to fathom. We keep being diverted into getting as many things “done” as possible in our lives and being better than another at doing one thing or another, rather than staying focused on learning how to “be” ourselves; and in “being” ourselves truly love, appreciate, accept and be present for ourselves and for one another.

You are not defined by what you “do,” but by who you “be.” And at the core or essence level of who you really are is simply and purely Love. You are Love and he/she, that is another, is Love. We are all Love. This, I believe, is the message Jesus wished for us to learn.

He didn’t care how good we got at doing anything, no matter how spiritual it was, [speaking in tongues, healing, prophesizing, etc.] all he cared about was whether we knew how to really Love. And Paul in his letter to the Corinthians was inspired to help the Corinthians get their priorities right, too.

How about you, are your priorities right? Are you looking within to find meaning and purpose in your life, or not?

And if you are looking within, great, but are you making a big deal of how good you are at some aspect of it? Or are you just quietly, but very powerfully allowing Love to lead the way in your life?

It doesn’t matter what you “do” or “have” in life. All that matters is who you “be” and how you “be.”

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all things will be added to it.”

This is Part IV of a four part blog.

Posted by Yanni at 4:00 AM | Permalink

This is Part III of a four part blog. Please see my blog posts of 08 20 07 and 08 22 07 to read the passage from I Corinthians 13 that I am commenting on and to get a context for what I am speaking about in this blog post.

We have incarnated, from my point of view, onto this planet in order to learn how to give and receive Love, period! We are put through the crucible of this life and many other earthly, challenging lifetimes in order to learn that, no matter what, “Love is the Answer.” If we can finally understand that our purpose in life is all about learning how to love ourselves and another as we would wish them to love us, we have gotten what unconditional Love is all about and why we incarnated on this planet.

Earth is a training ground for learning how to love unconditionally. We are all faced with numerous trials and tribulations in this regard and if we rely on our minds to find a solution or an answer, we are forever lost. But if we seek for answers within, there in the Silence, where the mind has stopped all its incessant ruminations, we get to hear the “still, small voice within.”

And it is there where we know who we really are and how to Love. There the bigger picture is revealed. There we see the Divine Timing, Order and Plan for all that transpires in our life and can be at peace no matter what!

There we are held in the “Embrace.” There we “no longer see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.” It is there where we get the strength and inspirations to Love ourselves and another fully and unconditionally. It is there that we realize that our value does not lie in any external things we do or have, but in the internal qualities of Love that we develop.

So, what treasures are you storing up for your transition to the spirit world or for your transition to “Heaven,” earthly ones that will vanish or internal ones that will bring you eternal joy and happiness?

This is Part III of a four part blog.

Posted by Yanni at 4:00 AM | Permalink

This is Part II of a four part blog. Please see my blog post of 08 20 07 to read the passage from I Corinthians 13 that I am commenting on and to get a context for what I am speaking about in this blog post.

As well, for this “new” religion to spread the way it did, despite all the strong persecution from the establishment, it had to be such a transformative experience that it would inspire people to risk “life and limb” to spread the “Word.”

So, early Christianity certainly was a religion that touched many people very deeply. The gatherings of early Christians were very “spirit-filled,” that is, charismatic and Pentecostal. People spoke in tongues, channeled, did healings, did prophecy, performed miracles, etc. It was quite a rich, emotional atmosphere that was created.

In the passage above St. Paul was writing to the Corinthians in order to help them to understand that all the phenomena that they were experiencing were good, but that they must not lose sight that the whole point of all this was the underlying Love that made all these miraculous things possible. To lose sight of that would be to lose sight of the whole message and mission of Jesus and it would also be losing sight of the whole purpose of the early Church that was emerging after Jesus’ Resurrection.

We all get so caught up in the phenomena of life and lose track of the essence of it all. In other words, we get caught up in the glitz and glitter of life and miss out on its real meaning. We get caught up in all kinds of surface external events and miss out on the internal aspect of things. We get caught up in “doing” all kinds of things, but miss out on just “being” true to our selves and “knowing” ourselves and what our real purpose in life is. We easily allow ourselves to be distracted.

This is Part II of a four part blog.

Posted by Yanni at 4:00 AM | Permalink

This is Part I of a four part blog.

Though I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not Love, I am a noisy gong or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Though I give away all I have to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The quote above from I Corinthians 13 is probably my favorite quote in all of Western literature.

What I would like to do here is to first give a context for why St. Paul wrote what he wrote in Corinthians and then offer commentary on the actual passage.

After the Resurrection of Jesus a man named Saul was walking on the road to Damascus whereupon he had had a vision of the resurrected Jesus. In this encounter Saul, who previously was fiercely persecuting Jesus, had a major conversion or a metanoia experience and became a convert of Jesus. It was here as well that his name was changed to Paul.

Paul then went on, along with Peter, to be one of the two major foundational personalities in the spread of the emerging “new” religion, Christianity. In its early days Christianity was a very charismatic and Pentecostal religion. In order for it to spread as quickly and widely as it did, it needed to be a religion that had a deep profound affect on its followers.

At the beginning of the Christian era most people were illiterate and there certainly were no radios or TVs to spread the message. The message had to be spread by its power and it had to strongly touch the populace very deeply. It had to be “an experience they wouldn’t forget” so to speak, so that it would indelibly be etched in their hearts and minds.

As well, it had to be a very potent experience for them to change their religious affiliation to a “new” religion. Remember, they were living in very parochial, closed-minded times and changing one’s religion was no small thing to do. There was a lot of social pressure not to “leave the fold.”

This is Part I of a four part blog.

Posted by Yanni at 4:00 AM | Permalink