TLIO Interview With Jim (Part III)

Turn Love Inside Out
Interview with Jim (Part III)

Jim, why should people listen to you about love?

I start each day as a beginner. Anything I say about Love on this site is likely just scratching the surface. A Buddhist friend recently cautioned me that when I point to the moon, not to confuse my finger for the moon. In other words, whatever I say about God or Love is a finger pointing to these realities but not the realities themselves. Truly knowing God or Love is something deeply personal and spiritual; it’s not simply a matter of passing along information and concepts.

So, I am just a nobody sharing my own life journey and what I’m discovering and experiencing. I hope anything I say will encourage others to desire Truth and be open to Love. Any Truth I’ve discovered or been awakened to is not original to me, and I take no credit for it. Truth has been presenting itself since the beginning of humankind; no Truth is really “new” Truth. If it’s Truth today, it has always been so. For me, the more I have grown in Love – understanding Love as God’s identity, accepting Love as my identity created in God’s image, discovering the source of Love within myself where Love’s presence dwells, abiding in Love, and allowing myself to be and give Love without condition – the more motivated I’ve been to open myself to God.

Has Christianity been a help or hindrance for you in receiving, embracing, and being Love?

I write a lot about this in upcoming Wide Open Spaces. On the one hand, I could easily say that the “Christianity” I bought into was mostly a hindrance to my receiving, embracing, and being Love, and I share several examples of this in the book. And yet, it was the dissatisfaction and suffering this “Christianity” produced inside me that led to my discovering Truth, which as Jesus said, “sets us free.” My journey in and through counterfeit Christianity is all part of my story of freedom, and so I don’t regret or judge it. As you can see, I put “Christianity” in quotes because much of what I once passed off as “Christianity” didn’t seem to line up too well with the life and message of Jesus Christ.

Jesus once said, “I am the way.” Let me just give you one small example of how the “Christ-way” has become a significant aspect of my life. Jesus’ way of life was one of dependency on the Father. In other words, the Christ-way is an abiding way. In every moment, I have a choice. If I want to, I can go out into the world and strive to get acceptance, worth, peace, joy, love, life, purpose, and freedom. Or, I can receive these from God’s presence within me, which is available unconditionally and all the time. To know or experience God’s presence inside is to be at peace, to be free, to be joy, to be love, to be whole and lacking nothing. Why would I go out into the world and scratch and claw for pseudo versions of these, when I can have the real deal by simply abiding in God’s presence within me? Jesus demonstrated this kind of abiding life with every breath.

Jim, is unconditional love and acceptance a license for people to not change?

The heartache and suffering of our world stems from our alienation from the deepest truth and the springs of spiritual life within us, and our estrangement from God. Paul wrote in Titus 2:11, “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It (the grace of God) teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” So what transforms a person to no longer live according to worldly passions of greed, lust, pride, and hate? According to Paul, the answer is “the grace of God”—the unconditional love and acceptance of God.

How people change is a paradox. Human logic says if we love and accept people unconditionally, it will encourage them to continue destructive behaviors. According to Paul, it’s actually what enables or empowers them to say no to these behaviors. Withholding unconditional love from others deprives people access to the only power, the only force, the only reality, the only possibility that can transform their lives and the central truth that gives meaning to all of existence. When I am consciously aware of and dependent upon God’s unconditional love and acceptance of me, it is much easier for me to extend this love and acceptance to others. This is another principle of the abiding way: you can’t bear love if you yourself are not abiding in Love. Love isn’t something you create; it’s something that when you plug into it, it overflows from you.

Even as overflow, it’s not always a human bed of roses. True love has a certain grit and staying power to it. Despite his disciples being stubborn and slow to learn, Jesus patiently stuck with them to the very end. People of his ethnic and religious roots rejected him, his closest friends betrayed him, but Jesus continued choosing love. His last words to humanity before his death, spoken after they nailed him to a cross of their making were words of love, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Many of the first Christians met the same fate as a result of living the abiding way, and died as martyrs.


(photo by beatdrifter)