Supreme Love is the total substance of our highest, deepest, broadest, most cohered and righteous Self; it is the stuff of Light and Life everlasting. Supreme Love suffers long and is kind. It does not envy. It does not reject or condemn. It does not boast. It is not arrogant. It is not rude. It does not seek its own way (rather, it performs its own way). It is not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity; it rejoices in the truth. Supreme Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Supreme Love never fails.[1] It comes from God along with deep understanding and complete approval of the REALITIES, ways of being, and knowledge contributed by fragmented selves. It is initiated in the place of the soul. It draws from the place of the flesh/body. It can be extended out from one individual to other individuals and to whole communities. It can extend even beyond communities and promote iterative measures of healing and salvation for the entire world. This occurs through Supreme Loving.
Supreme Loving happens when our thoughts, words, and actions align with the Supreme Love we hold and nurture in the places of our spirit, soul, and flesh/body. Supreme Loving is orchestrated by one who embodies a Supreme Lover Identity.
Supreme Lover Identity is a Supreme way of being. It can replace other ways of being (including, but not limited to Main Chick, Side Chick, Bonnie, Bitch, and Victim). It is informed by a commitment to the knowledge of Supreme Love. It generates new, Supremely centered REALITIES. It is the heightened, deepened, kinetic aspect of Self; it is who we are when we subsume the wholeness of Supreme Love and perform Supreme Loving from the inside out. This means doing Loving in all relating, perceiving, and enacting of Self (for the benefit of Self, Others, and communities). This Identity evolves at the quintessential nexus of our highest and deepest awareness (which is Christ Consciousness; see Lesson #271 in A Course in Miracles). Supreme Lover Identity is active in its manifestation. When forming and formed, this Identity impacts all that is done in thought, word, and deed with supremacy. See the following chapters of The Revelations of Asher that introduced this identity: This book is different: An introduction, and, Introducing a Supreme Lover Identity (Or, Why this work is so real).
Now, to answer an important, recurring question:
Is Supreme Love the same as self-love? Are they similar?
No. It is important to note that Supreme Love and self-love are not synonymous, although they are related. Self-love is basically bound to the place of the flesh/body and that is all it sees and talks about (e.g.: “I’m Black and I’m proud!” “My hips are beautiful.” “My nose is cute.” “My hair is a crown.”). Self-love has to do with looking at one’s flesh/body (and the sociocultural lineage that flesh/body is attached to) with affection and respect. These actions are important. Yet, they are insufficient in the social and emotional justice work of Self-awareness, Self-actualization, and pursuits of equitable, benevolent regard and intimate relating. This insufficiency, the result of self-love’s flatness and limitations, is why self-love doesn’t make anyone smarter or necessarily stronger. While self-love is Self-centering (as Supreme Loving tends to be, at first), it unfortunately does not move from that juncture; so, self-love is stunted, its productivity is shallow and often, ultimately, unsatisfying.
For example, when self-love prompts ways of looking at/seeing the flesh/body and affirming appearances through the use of flattering language, the flesh/body might feel temporarily at ease. Therein lies the crux. These ways of looking and talking can make one feel good and yet not know goodness. For example, self-love says, “Look at my skin. See my eyes? Touch my hair. I am pretty. I am special. I am worthy.” Yet, the flesh/body does not know what these words, strung together, really mean, neither does it experience an irrevocable anchoring in such statements as “truths.” So, depression does not lift. Anxiety does not still. Lessons are not learned.
This lack of knowing is easy to recognize because when merely practicing “self-love,” one can be very quickly thrown off by insults (e.g. “You’re ugly. That’s cheap. Nobody wants you. I never liked you.”). This happens because self-love anchors self-worth in the physical and everything that is physically dying or rotting or rusting out can be torn down or torn up. Anchoring Self-worth in such things is futile and bound for dissolution. Self-love does not survive the common tumults of life: aging and car crashes, house fires, empty bank accounts, and disease. Self-love is the wind; it is breath, washing over appearances and all that is perishable. That which is eternal cannot be so thin, so fragile.
Supreme Love (as substance) and Loving (as action) are not like that. They are not self-love. They are more than wind and breath. Supreme Love and Loving are bones, flesh, and blood. They are light and energy too. They have marrow and substance. Supreme Loving is supernatural. It bears a deep, equal, affectionate consideration for both mess and miracle, for the material and ethereal (as they occur in the places of one’s spirit, soul, and flesh/body). This Loving leaves nothing out. This Loving and Identity defy logic and look like insanity to those who do not practice them. Yet, they offer the highest wisdom and security that we can aspire to. They look like weakness and can be perceived as bizarre. Yet, they are actually the biggest power and mightiest strength we can imagine and embody as human beings. This supremacy depends on our being endowed with certain inalienable spiritual rights, soul sensibilities, and flesh/body intelligence.
Why? Because Supreme Loving involves total regard, absolute reverence, radical acceptance, relentless (com)passion in/for/with selves and it cannot be interrupted or dissuaded. Supreme Love patiently, consistently, enthusiastically embraces everything that is commonly rejected in the soul and flesh/body, or regarded with fear and disdain. Supreme Love includes All Things. In its fullest form, the Supreme Lover Identity does not depend on outward circumstances or material things to stand. It bounces back from trials, tribulations, blows, rejections, abandonments, wear, and tear, and abuse. It grows anew after pruning, bigger, and better than ever. While it does influence the flesh/body (as self-love does in its limited sense), Supreme Loving is not bound to flesh/body as a misty or stagnant thing might be. No. Supreme Loving is alive. It moves in Supreme Lover Identity. It’s fueled by Supreme Love.
You can be a Supreme Lover today. You can heal the terrors in your soul and launch a revolution in your life.
Jeanine Staples is Associate Professor of Literacy and Language & African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her book, The Revelations of Asher: Toward Supreme Love in Self, is an endarkened, feminist, new literacies event (Peter Lang, spring 2016). In it, she explores Black women’s terror in love. She produces research-based courses and methodologies that enable marginalized girls and women to realize internal revelations that fuel external revolutions.
Dr. Staples’ next book details the evolution of her acclaimed undergraduate course, The Philadelphia Urban Seminar. In it, she explores Supreme Love in schools. She shows how she generates curriculum and methodologies that incite anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ableist pedagogical stances among teachers interested in urban education and equity for all people in schools and society.