In-Love-Ness

Dave Brisbin 1.4.26 The hardest thing to comprehend about Jesus’ Way—what I call the Fifth Way—is its utterly stark difference from the first Four Ways we use to get from here to there in life. They are as far apart as east is from west, which never meet or change direction at the poles like north and south. You’re just always going west until you turn and face east. The Fifth Way is like that. If you haven’t stopped and consciously turned to face it, you’re on one of the other Four. We know the Four Ways well. To acquire what we need and want in life, we can yield to, manipulate, exit, or destroy the challenges we face in any combination. In gentler language, we can compromise, influence, set boundaries, or disempower…completely healthy and necessary in life, but always beginning at the point of need, in a world of scarcity in which we scratch out our living. Jesus isn’t denying that this is the way the physical world works. He works within it himself. But if where we ultimately want to go is not of this world, then a completely different vehicle is needed. A jet is the greatest method of travel across the earth, but if where you want to go is even a low orbit, you must get out of the jet and into a rocket capable of escape velocity. The Fifth Way is that rocket, taking everything we know about life and turning it on its head. It’s the only Way to the Father because the Father has nothing to do with scarcity. When we experience abundant presence, that God is all poured out around us, nothing withheld ever, then our Four Ways become not only instantly irrelevant, but a block to the connection, oneness, love that is God. As long as we’re working for what we already have, we’re not living the abundance that already is. The Fifth Way is not another method of acquisition, but a relinquishment of anything, everything that obscures the abundant truth… We’re not here to acquire something to make us whole or acceptable. We’re here to fall in love with love itself, the all-poured-out-ness of in-love-ness. The relinquishment, the letting go of in-love-ness is the difference…no longer aching for what has always been freely given.