WHAT ARE THE COMMANDMENTS ALL ABOUT?

12) What are the commandments all about?

A commandment, on the sensory level, is an order. You better do it or else. On the psychological level (spiritual level) a commandment is a teaching. If you will look at them, you can see that they are teachings. But a pharisee (being an authority or an authority worshipper) gets hold of them and twists them into an order. For example, the commandment says, “Love one another.” So we go around pretending and professing to love one another, but soon the knife is in the back. I love you, but… I love everyone, but when it comes down to the one person, then we find out how much love we really have. On the spiritual level, to love is to understand and have agape. 

A commandment says, “We should...” Can you love because you should? No. And this is just the beginning of the Pharisseeism. Christ shook up the Pharisees by saying that they paid tithes on all the herbs but forsook the weightier matters, which were the understandings of the teaching so that it can apply to the evolvement of the inner man.

You can keep the sensory level of the commandment if you want and sometimes that is very nice. But as far as the inner man is concerned, it is beside the point. Understand the teaching behind the command and you can evolve considerably. I commend or recommend

From Workshop - Bible Q &A - Phoenix, AZ - 1970

Headlines pg 17

All the "thou shalt" and "thou shalt 

not," ideas were originally designed by 

wise men, to turn the violence inward in 

the individual, to create conflict and 

thereby increase the necessity to be 

knowing self. 

• 

The real aim for the thou shalt and 

thou shalt nots, having been long forgotten, are now used as reasons for the protection and expansion of the power of institutions. 

• 

This is turning the violence outward 

again, the individual against the controlling establishment. 

The Way Workshop

Man through the ages has cried to his god to give him instruction. “Tell me what to do, Lord, and I will do it.” This prayer has always been answered by a wise Father, not an indulgent Father.  The commandments were given many, many, many years ago. Man looked at them and went out and tried to do them. When he didn’t, he merely felt guilty. He didn’t look to see why he couldn’t live up to them, what there was within himself that couldn’t do all the work. So he struggled on, put on an outward front, never seeing that these commandments gave him reasons that would make him look within if he was but awake. It is like a parent, that when a child asks for a gift, he gives him a way to earn the gift and more. When man sees that he doesn’t love either his neighbor or his creator he begins to find out why he doesn’t - if he is a wise man. If he is not a wise man, is a literalist, he is tolerant of his neighbor, expresses words about God and his inner state, goes on in darkness.

(transcript also found, in edited version, in Headlines, pages 22-30)

With the previous entry along with these excerpts, we see that commandments are also called decrees and thou shall/thou shall not...