Loving the Lord with All Your Heart, Might, Mind, and Soul

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself.” — Jesus Christ

“I am Thine. Save me.” — Mirabai

“In loving God, you become love itself.” — St. Catherine of Siena

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I’ve been wearing the same copper bracelet for years, and I’ve never really thought much about it. It just always felt good on my wrist, almost like it belonged there. There’s writing on it, and I remember noticing it a long time ago and assuming it was Sanskrit. I think I liked the idea that it meant something spiritual, even if I didn’t know what that meaning was. It felt enough to just wear it. Also, I heard somewhere that copper is good for you for some reason.

This week, I was at the gym with my trainer, and we started talking about the bracelet. I looked down at it and said that I didn’t even know what it meant, which was kind of funny considering how long I’ve been wearing it. So right there, in the middle of my workout, I took a picture of it and ran it through ChatGPT. When the description came back, I actually laughed a little, because it wasn’t Sanskrit at all. It was Shema Yisrael. And at the end of my workout, I found myself half joking and half not, saying out loud, “Hear me, O Israel.” It was one of those moments that feels light on the surface but stays with you after.

When I looked more closely at what it meant, though, it didn’t feel light at all. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” I’ve been wearing that on my wrist for years without consciously knowing it, and at the same time, it feels like something I already knew in a different way. And honestly, the first thing I felt when I realized what it was… was Kathy.

Because She said this so many times: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might, mind, and soul, and like unto it, love thy neighbor as thyself.” She repeated it often enough that it almost becomes something you think you already understand. But in that moment, it didn’t feel like that. It felt alive. It felt like She was right there with me.

It made me think about how often that happens, not just with something like this, but with the teachings we hear over and over again. There are certain things we’ve heard so many times that they lose their impact. Not because they aren’t true, but because they’ve become familiar in a way that no longer asks anything of us. Kathy spoke about this directly when she said that we hear these things so frequently that they become like a rosary bead. We move past them without really hearing them anymore.

When I thought about it later, it felt different this time. Not because I’ve never thought about what it means, because I have. I remember when Kathy first said it that I really thought about it. I’ve always paid attention to the things She repeated often because the Great Master said in one of his books that repetition is how students learn great truths from their Masters.

At the same time, I don’t feel it every time I hear it, and that’s exactly what Kathy was pointing to when she said we hear these things so often that we almost stop hearing them. Seeing what Shema Yisrael means within the Jewish faith, and how central it is, how deeply it’s held and repeated, just hit me differently. It felt magnified in that moment, and honestly, it felt like Kathy teaching me from inside. It’s lived and remembered in a way that keeps it real.

Kathy also talked about how Jesus paired this with loving your neighbor as yourself, and she pointed out something that shifts the way you see both. If you are truly loving God in that complete way, then loving others isn’t something separate you have to remember to do. It comes from the same place. She said that this isn’t just symbolic or something we repeat. It’s real. God, the Creator of everything, is Love, and that presence is not somewhere outside of us. It is inside. She emphasized this in a way that makes you realize how easily we overlook it.

She said to trust in the Creator and to tell yourself that you will be able to talk to Him inside. That changes the entire feeling of what this commandment is asking. It’s no longer about reaching outward toward something distant. It becomes about placing your attention, your mind, and your heart inward, where He already is. Maharaj Ji said that if we keep our attention, our mind, and our heart in the Lord, we will enjoy this whole world, but if we forget Him, this same world becomes a source of misery. That doesn’t feel like a rule as much as something you can observe directly. Where your attention rests changes everything about how you experience what is in front of you. Or, as Kathy often said to us, "Where your attention is, there is your heart also."

Seeing that bracelet differently now doesn’t come from it changing, but from understanding what it represents. It feels less like something I’ve been wearing and more like something I’ve been carrying without fully recognizing it.

To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might, mind, and soul is not something new. It’s something we’ve heard many times, but realizing that I’ve been wearing this saying—something that was so important to Kathy—on my wrist all these years without knowing it makes it feel very real and reminds me of the importance of thinking of God in all that I do. It also reminds me that even when I don’t feel Her, She is always right with me.