A friend was saying that he was talking to his ten-year-old son the other day and mentioned that moderation was a good thing, only to have the son reply: “Except in love, Dad.”
Out of the mouths of babes. Although we know the “babes” here right now are anything but babes. Does this not illustrate how the new generation will lead us?
I wanted to mention what I think are some of the exceptions to the notion that all must be in moderation or balance. I do so not pretending to be a spiritual teacher because I’m no such thing. Just a person who loves writing on these themes.
I need to go a little ways back by saying it’s my suspicion that a universal law is a universal law simply because God says it is or commands it. It’s my view that God’s speaking alone causes changes in the universe, in the rules of the game, in the universal laws, etc. Sri Ramakrishna described the situation this way: “He who has made the law can also change it.” (1)
Therefore there can be any number of exceptions to any situation, as God wills. His (her, its) will is apparently irresistible.
In a pre-recorded interview with Archangel Michael, he explained that the Mother can call a person back from many dimensions. It isn’t necessary, he says, that they go through all dimensions in their return to God.
He added that they actually do go through all dimensions, as it turns out, but at the speed of love. The point is that the Mother and Father can create or change any situation they want. That’s the nature of the world we live in.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are exceptions to the counsel to observe moderation in all things.
Krishna talked about one exception and I’ve referred to this quote before.
“I am all that a man may desire
Without transgressing
The law of his nature.” (2)
So God is all we can desire without incurring karma.
If we desire God, we don’t have to be moderate in that desire. We can desire God with wild abandon and ecstacy and it won’t harm us.
I believe that exception extends to the divine qualities as well as God, God and his (her, its) divine qualities being one and the same. So I think that desiring love, bliss, etc., immoderately also will not harm us.
Jesus hinted at this as well when he said:
“Thou shalt love the Lord the God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
“This is the first and great commandment.” (3)
All thy heart, soul and mind seems to suggest loving God to whatever degree one wishes and the strength of that desire is not harmful.
Granted that the Buddha’s Middle Way is a path of moderation and balance, the Middle Way seems to relate to the care of the body and mind.
You remember that the Buddha had been an ascetic and was starving his body. When he heard the music teacher say to his student not to tune the vina’s strings too tightly because they would break or too loosely because they would not play, he had a realization that the Middle Way was the best path to what he considered the supreme enlightenment. And it probably is.
Equanimity is also said to be the royal path to God. But equanimity is meant towards the things of the world, not towards God.
Indians particularly reverence the ecstatic saint. St. Francis was called God’s fool for his ecstatic love of God. Ecstacy is not a harmful state and yet it is anything but moderate or balanced. And the ecstatic saint is hardly equanimous towards God.
So there are exceptions to the counsel that moderation is best in all things or that balance is always to be preferred. Not apparently in our longing for God.
Footnotes
(1) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 817.
(2) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 71.
(3) Jesus in Matthew 22:37.