LOVE

LOVE

The younger generation of students at The M'TAM School of Kemetic Philosophy and Spirituality at The Earth Center have been progressing in their journey toward spiritual growth and understanding. One topic that the newer students have been tackling is the concept of love and its meaning and origin in the life of modern man. The following are examples of student responses when asked to write on "love".

My personal concept of what "love" is has changed many times during the course of my life. As a small child, I learned that "love" was the appreciation I had for the people who cared for me: "I love you, Mommy" and "I love you, Daddy" were trained responses given when cued to do so. 

As I got older, I learned to assign this emotion called "love" to everything around me. I learned to "love" people, places, inanimate objects - even food! And along with learning to "love" these things, I also learned about "hating" things as well.

While I grew, I began to view "love" as an all-encompassing positive energy - like a life force of some kind. Even my own spiritual goals were based upon achieving this emotion perpetually, as though true human enlightenment could only come from maintaining/projecting this feeling all of the time.

What I have now learned is this: "love" is a conspiracy. "Love" is a concept that does not exist. Before "love", people were just good. Human beings treated one another well because that was the right thing to do. The seventy-seven commandments did not (do not) leave room for anything other than goodness. There was definitely no need to tell people you "love" them, because the notion was demonstrated daily by the qualities exhibited by people toward each other, toward the Earth, toward their ancestors, toward the deities, etc.

"Love" was introduced to humanity as a God - or rather - as a demon (a demon is a God with no history; a foreign God, or in this case, a false God). This goddess was called Venus. But what this "love" Venus was said to represent was actually just desire. In fact, in Medu, the word that we translate into "love" is actually desire in its more accurate meaning. Women would go to the temples of Venus in order to get the men that they wanted.

In a human being's life, everything is based on quality. Within this quality is where one can find the goodness we call love. When we extract this "love" from the human behavioral experience, we are left with the opposite - hate. This is one reason the concept of "love" is so dangerous - when we find ourselves acting with "love", we will also be able to act with "hate".

Another reason "love" as a concept is so dangerous is that "love" will give us a reason to do anything. We will even use "love" to justify any evil thing we may do. We lie, cheat, manipulate - even kill for the sake of this "love". This should be a red flag that something is wrong with this concept because the only place that has anything closest to "love" is found in the seventy-seven commandments, which forbids these actions and behaviors.

- A.T., Hat Myee of The Earth Center

I grew up in a Christian environment that equated their God with love. My father a mean-spirited man) was a Southern Baptist minister who preached sermons on hell, damnation, collard greens, and cornbread. He preached about a God who loved you very much but would strike lightning if you did not do his will. At an early age, the circuitry in my brain had been crossed, and I was disturbed and confused by the contradiction of God acting like a human, particularly like my father, whom I tremendously feared. I concluded that I did not embrace or desire to worship this God. My thoughts left me feeling guilty and hopeless because, in the church's eyes, I was a sinner and damned to hell. However, I believed that there was more to this idea of God/love, therefore, I continued to ponder the true meaning. and this took me on a journey to find love.

Approximately 20 to 25 years ago, I woke up early one morning, grabbed a pen and paper, and wrote ten pages on love. I wrote that God/love was one and the same, limitless or absolute, without conditions or prejudices, everything positive, reflecting the essence of humanity, etc. I pondered how we as humans, born in a world full of hate and void of a spiritual upbringing that emphasized material and worldly gain, could love like God. How could we drop our titles and labels such as mother, father, sister, brother, friend, etc, and love all humanity equally? How could we do that when we have been so conditioned to separate ourselves into families, ethnicities, classes, etc? How, when we have separated the entire world into minuscule parts and pieces and labeled each one? Would it be possible for us to treat the bum on the street as a "loved one"? Could everyone, including our so-called enemies, be our best friend instead of arbitrarily designating or entitling one person? Could this wonderful scenario be possible? Even when we think we are conveying unconditional "love" it eventually digresses into conditional when unrequited, even though we may not hold grudges. An absence of spirituality and its obligations limits our lives.

After writing the paper, concluded that I could never love, because if love is God, how could I be God? But of course, I do possess some basic Godly qualities. I decided that I would use my idea of God/love as a role model to strive towards learning true love. I also believed that once one truly learns to love or be like God, she would no longer exist on an earthly plane but would be breaking bread with Gods. Until then, we could only express some a,b,c's of love.

My perception of love changed. I have been taught that the Euro-American idea of love was introduced as a means of corruption. Prior to this, people followed the seventy-seven commandments, which made the invention of such an idea unnecessary. Love was as natural as the rising and setting of the sun, a pure state of being. Due to the heartache and suffering of the world, it became obvious to me that love's understanding had been destroyed by society. It was surprising to me that the word love did not exist in ancient times, and that it had been devised to separate, corrupt, and destroy humanity. I had thought because of our lack of spirituality we did not know how to implement God's love and that was the cause of the chaos. I now understand that the Greeks introduced the word love. It stirs up emotions and we as people love to feel emotional. It builds egos and separates people, places, and things, allowing us to feel as though we are different, special, or set apart from others. It plays on our state of unconsciousness. Even when we think we are being good, we are only doing good. In essence, the way that love was introduced into our society fuels erratic emotions, corruption, and destruction. If the seventy-seven commandments were followed, there would be no discrepancy in our love. We would mirror our wants, needs, and desires.

- D.T., Hat Myce of The Earth Center