The religion of Christianity is based on these words of Jesus as his summation of all scripture:
.You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
(from the Gospel of Matthew, New Revised Standard Version)
Although simple words at first glance, it takes a life time to understand and truly live these words. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote Four Degress of Love way back in the 12th Century. I have not yet found a better understanding of how to live these two commandments of Jesus Christ.
The First Degree of Love: Love of Self for Self’s Sake “Love is a natural human affection. It comes from God. Hence the first and greatest commandment is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” But human nature is weak and therefore compelled to love itself and serve itself first. In the human realm people love themselves for their own sake. This is implanted within us for who ever hated his own self?…
The Second Degree of Love: Love of God for Self’s Sake “When we are free from trouble we are happy but in our pride we may conclude that we are responsible for our security. Then, when we suffer some calamity, some storm in our lives, we turn to God and ask his help, calling upon him in times of trouble. This is how we who only love ourselves first begin to love God.”
The Third Degree of Love: Love of God for God’s Sake In order to arrive at this we must continually go to God with our needs and pray. In those prayers the grace of God is tasted and by frequent tasting it is proved to us how sweet the Lord is. Thus it happens that once God’s sweetness has been tasted, it draws us to the pure love of God more than our needs compell us to love him… When we begin to feel this, it will not be hard to fulfill the second commandment to love our neighbor….We have obtained this degree of love when we can say, “Give praise to the Lord for he is good, not because he is good to me, but because he is good.” It should be noted that in this third degree we will stand still for a long time.
The Fourth Degree of Love: Love of Self for God’s Sake Blessed are those who experience the fourth degree of love wherein we love ourselves for God’s sake. Such experiences are rare and come only for a moment. In a manner of speaking, we lose ourselves as though we did not exist, utterly unconcious of ourselves and emptied of ourselves…..During those moments we will be of one mind with God and our wills in one accord with God. The prayer, “Thy will be done,” will be our prayer and our delight. Just as a drop of water mixed with a lot of wine seems to entirely lose its own identity….so it is like for those who melt away from themselves and are entirely transfused into the will of God. This perfect love of God with our heart, soul, mind and strength will not happen until we are no longer compelled to think about our bodily needs…this is why in the present body it is difficult to maintain. But it is within God’s power to give such an experience to whom he wills, and it is not attained by our own efforts. When this happens, we will experience the joy of the Lord and be forgetful of ourselves in a wonderful way. We are, for those moments, one mind and one spirit with God.
(From the treatise On the Love of God by Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1152 C.E.)
thesoulpurposedotorg 
I was given a link to your Website by Kathy Estey–I am her daughter. It is an exciting project you have begun here, and I intend to return. I, too, consider myself a mystic, and have been walking the path for many years–since I had an experience in April 1989 which opened my spirit and set me to searching. I would love to share that experience with you, if you would like to read it.
The question that comes to my mind…or I should say my spirit…immediately upon reading this has to do with the nearly ubiquitous use of the male pronoun in reference to God. I find my spirit shrinks from it, even though I realize it is metaphorical, and that God is truly beyond gender classifications. It’s just that, being a woman and having experienced discrimination because of that all my life, I have a very difficult time getting past that “He” and “Father,” etc. How do you do it? It isn’t that I wish for God to be referred to as female…I guess I wish for a more open concept. One that doesn’t take for granted assumptions that have been used to keep half the human race bound to subjugation for centuries. Does this make sense?
I hope I am not being too forward in asking this on our first “meeting.” 🙂 Thank you. ~Yvonne (aka Robin Crow)
This has been a struggle in the past for me as well to some extent. When I preach I try to avoid using pronouns at all about God. For some reason, when listeing to others speak of God or reading others works, my mind quickly translates the pronouns for me so that I don’t even notice them anymore. Like you, I wish there were a gender neutral pronoun other than “it” to use when commnicating with words.
The orthodox forms of Christianity encourage prayers to Mary whom they consider as divine as Christ. She is referred to as Theotokos. I use a Russian orthodox prayer book in my daily practice which means a sense of both the feminine and masculine are in balance for me as I pray. I find that balance of male and female true of all of the mystical tradtions I have investigated. God is not neutral but both. But S/He doesn’t quite do it for a sense of awe, does it?
No, indeed! 🙂 Thank you for your thoughts.