Love your neighbor: The Eleventh Commandment?

I once heard a person addressing a large audience stating that "love thy neighbor as yourself" was the 11th Commandment instituted by Jesus.  I was shocked how ignorant people are of their Bibles.  It brought to mind just how much we don't understand or apply this verse and this also adds to our ignorance.  Let’s read it in the Torah, 1500 years before Jesus.

Leviticus 19:18b
Love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the L-rd (Ha-Shem).

This particular verse is very different from the surrounding passage.  It ends with a declaration from our Creator - I AM THE L-RD or I AM HA-SHEM.  Why?

Here is another verse to contemplate first.

Genesis 1:26
Let’s create humans in our likeness.

We are created in our Creator’s image.  Understand that "our likeness" is not hinting to multiple or multiplicity of gods.  It is in reference to attributes of our Creator that It has revealed to us and placed within us.  This means that through these similarities we are assured of a relationship with our Creator DIRECTLY.  It is like plugging our mouse into the computer.  As long as the mouse is created to work in the mouse port of the computer, it will communicate with the computer.  However our relationship is more.  We can understand and learn of our Creator via the attributes It has revealed and shared with and within us.

Genesis 2:8b
And breathed into his (the human) nostrils a breath of live.

It is essential to understand that our Creator did not waste It creative energies.  Thus we are of value to our Creator.  We are not abandoned, forgotten, or forsaken.  To do so It would be rejecting and abandoning itself.  Does that make sense?  Rather the opposite is true.  The breath of life in us is part of the Creator's soul within each and every one of us!  This gives us LIFE!  La'Chaim!!

Note that in Hebrew the word for love has an attribure of giving not taking.

Now reread Leviticus.

Leviticus 19:18b
Love your neighbor as yourself.  I am the L-rd (Ha-Shem).

It should be clear we are to not only to love ourselves (without an ego), for the Creator made each of us as an individual, but those around us for they too are just as unique (special).  Collectively we are the recipients of the same breath of our Creator and thus we are all part of a universal soul.

A piece of our Creator is within each of us.  To love ourselves and others is to LOVE OUR CREATOR.

May this be a blessing to all that read it! 

Shalom