To fulfill any commandment, one must understand what is required of them, what exactly and how exactly they must do it. One must grasp the meaning of every word of the commandment and the whole commandment as a whole. To fulfill the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself,” one must know: what does “love” mean, who is “neighbor,” what does “as” mean (“as yourself,” “like yourself”), who is “I” (= “yourself”), whom you must first love to love your neighbor in the same way (if “as” is understood in the sense of quantitative comparison, and not ontological consubstantiality)? Therefore, “to love” means to wish-desire Happiness-Bliss for the one you love and to do everything you can, everything that depends on you, so that your Beloved achieves Happiness-Bliss (= the Kingdom of God)! “Neighbor” is every person (and angel), and primarily those people who are close to you in space and time (those you see, hear, touch, feel, hear about, remember, know about, etc.). About “as” (as yourself, as oneself), we will say a bit below (also see Part I). To love your neighbor (Other) you need to be able to love yourself (to love your neighbor = to love yourself). And the one who tries to love themselves, tries to be a true “egoist” – will come out into the open spaces of hypostatic personal being as communion (unity-perichoresis with Others). Therefore, the first thing a catechumen, who is given the commandment “Love your neighbor (every free hypostasis – every Other) as yourself,” should do is to find out: who is “I,” who is that “I” (“self,” “oneself”), whom (or what) I should love?! Who am I?! At first glance, this is a rhetorical question with an obvious answer (I am I – what is there to ask?!). But only at first glance does everything seem unequivocal and obvious, for when you start to think seriously, it turns out that not everything is so simple with my “I”.
“Know yourself!” – a task that every philosopher sets before themselves. What (who) is a person? Some philosophers walked around the crowded market at midday with a lantern in their hands, looking for a person!? Who am I (who are you)? The first thing we must note is that “I” and “mine” are different realities; everything I can call “mine” is not “I”! Everything that belongs to me is not “I”! For example, the hand is mine, but it is not “I” (if the hand is amputated, “I” remains), the head is mine, but it is not “I,” the body is mine, but it is not “I,” whereas the mind is mine, the will is mine, the feelings are mine! Who is that (“I”) to whom all this (soul and body, as the sons of this age say; everything = all reality outside of me, my “I”) belongs: my body, my soul, my desires, my dreams, my consciousness, my feelings, my world, my God… Who is the owner, who is the one who says “mine”?! Humanity would never have thought of the answer to this vital question if not for the Merciful God, Who sent His Beloved Son into the world, Who proclaimed and revealed the Gospel – God is Love, God is a Person-Freedom, God is the consubstantial Trinity of Loving Hypostases, therefore man, the image of God, “I,” the hypostasis of man – freedom (which is called to acquire the likeness of God, that is, to become Love; man is a consubstantial “billionaire” of created hypostases)! I, Hypostasis, Person – cannot be defined, given a definition – it is a complete mystery that becomes apparent (knowable) only in communion with Others (“You” – hypostases-persons). I = freedom, and freedom cannot be limited, defined (by the definition of freedom), because what we define, outline, put boundaries on, fix – is no longer freedom. Freedom (I, hypostasis-person) is always uniqueness, unrepeatability, unpredictability (“The Holy Spirit breathes where He wants, and you do not know where He comes from or where He goes,” so a person acquires freedom, becomes a person-hypostasis (becomes free) only in the Holy Spirit, only in Christ, in the Body of Christ, when a person becomes a Christian – the Catholic Church of Christ, the Church of the Holy Spirit)!
I am known only in relationships of love with Another I (You). Philosophers say: I think – therefore I am; but Christians: I love – therefore I am! My “I” exists only in communion with Another(s). Outside of communion, my “I” is dead, it “does not exist.” The created person-hypostasis, “I,” inherits from parents a sinful, selfish nature that lies-dwells in evil, sin, lawlessness! “I” realizes itself as a slave, a prisoner of its selfish, godless, passionately existing nature; and the heavy fall-delusion of the person is to identify with “one’s own,” “mine,” when everything concerning nature is transferred to oneself (“I” – hunchbacked, nosed, imbecile, cripple, monster…). This is my nose – like this, this is my crippled nature, this is my passionate natural will… but this is not “I” (hence the commandment: deny yourself, stop identifying yourself with your selfish nature, desire salvation from this body of death, from sin, from hell-prison of egoism-self-isolation-alienation, from the necessity of natural (selfish, painful – because a healed, healthy nature is not felt, it does not bother us, it does not impose its passionate, painful, selfish-selfish desires-wants on the hypostasis, “I”). “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” asked the apostle, and, being delivered in Christ by the Holy Spirit, glorified God the Father!