1999-11-14. Pain Within
Nashville #80
Topic: Pain Within
Group: Nashville TeaM
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Opening
Ham: Greetings, children, I am Ham and again I welcome you each here this evening. Tonight, we shall discuss honesty.
Lesson
Honesty, Pain
Self-honesty is something which is very difficult for humans to achieve completely. There are always areas or aspects of one’s personal behavior or life experience that are painful to examine. Human beings are very adept at avoiding these areas. It is easier to slough something off, to dismiss a comment without looking at it than it is to bring yourself to face those sides which are difficult to acknowledge.
Usually, these areas have pain at their center and so you will often do almost anything to avoid experiencing that pain including being dishonest with yourselves. It is hard to reveal our pain to ourselves and to acknowledge our weakness in the face of it. You also know that facing your inner pain and honestly acknowledging it to yourself is what is required to eliminate it. Most humans have a center of pain that is like a big black stone that you do not acknowledge, that you walk around and pretend it isn’t there. Why is this stone there? Who put it there? The answers lie buried deep in your past, deep in your childhood experience.
Usually, the dishonestly comes in a form that says, “I do not have this pain, it is not a part of me and I do not have to deal with it, especially not now. I am fine and there is no problem.” Even though this pain causes you to do things you wouldn’t normally do, but when you get near the pain you must go around it and how people go around it varies and varies in different situations. Sometimes it’s an inability to admit that you might be wrong, sometimes its an inappropriate lashing out at another person, sometimes it’s just stubbornness and the need to control your environment, sometimes it’s the begging for attention, especially attention from strangers. Often times, human beings turn to drugs or alcohol and then the inappropriate behavior is excusable. So, at the center of this is pain, and the fear of pain is causing you to distort your personality. Human beings have a very difficult time admitting to weakness. If you admit you have pain, you admit you are weak.
Most human beings were reared in home environments that were not completely loving and were not completely supportive. So you grew up feeling a painful need for something and since that need wasn’t fulfilled you feel you are undeserving and this is very deep, this feeling of insecurity with who you are. So, early on as children, you learned to deny that that pain and that need was there. You were not given the option of bonding your inner self, your innermost being, with the Father in heaven who is all love and all forgiveness and all supporting. You simply felt that if you didn’t receive the love you craved in the home, that you must bury that need and try to forget about it. And, most of you have done this since grade school.
But, you are given this special core need for love especially so that you can connect your being with the Father’s loving spirit who dwells within you. He is constantly working to release than inner center. It is an essential part of soul creation. You remember that you morontia soul is created through your physical being and mind as it is joined with your divine inner spirit and his greater mind and being. He can loosen the inner painful areas, he can bring you into situations where you must acknowledge them, but it is only for you to release this pain and let it be obliterated in the Father’s love.
We have focused for several weeks on reaching up to the Father and making this a conscious effort. As the Father reaches down to you, it is largely outside the realm of your consciousness. So, as he is loosening these painful rocks, these areas of denial, it can suddenly spring into consciousness that these areas are even there because remember that you have decided that they weren’t and have lived your life accordingly for many years. The sudden up-welling of an inner pain can be quite disconcerting. But, what you are seeing is the culmination of the Father’s inner work on you behalf.
Remember that the Father wants to connect every bit of himself to every bit of yourself. But, this must be eventually conscious so when you are in denial about something, you are consciously blocking that connection between you and the Father, or even unconsciously, for eventually these things are buried deep within the conscious mind.
Most of you have established yourselves in the world. You have connections and reputations to uphold. When you let go of this inner core pain, you must acknowledge two things. One is that “I am weak”. Two is that “I am nothing of myself”. When you really do this and you let go of the facade of who you pretend to be and realize that yes, there really is nothing else this is a freeing and liberating experience after the pain has passed. Because if you can say, “I am really nothing but that’s ok”. You let go of all the expectations you have of yourself, all the roles you have to play, all the people you have to please, everything. You are just in a state of being-ness with God, as if there were only the two of you in the universe.
Truly, it is that everything you have and everything you are is of God. Everything that is real is from him. Everything that is not real, is from you. Human beings early on in early childhood make decisions about who they are. You might make the decision, “I am shy” or “I am a clown”, or “I am no good”. All these things are decisions you made as a child. As an adult, you must let go of the childish things and go back to “I am nothing, but it’s OK”. Are there any questions at this time?
Dialogue
Q: When you say we are nothing, but it’s ok, I take it that we are nothing without God and that’s OK.
Ham: Yes.
Q: This inner pain of which you speak, can you be specific about how we are to lose it other than identifying it?
Ham: Really, identifying it is your only job and it will come out by itself when the Father feels you are ready, you can do this with him. Just acknowledging that you have pain, has to come when you are ready to experience it. Then, once you do you will realize that it wasn’t all that bad and you have been carrying around a big dark stone for many years unnecessarily. When you get through those core pains, there is a feeling of great relief, joy, and lightness and many possibilities open up that were blocked before. In essence you become more of who you really are.
Q: Yes, lately I have been when meditating trying to find feelings like anger and resentment and put them in a bucket and hand them off and say here you take care of this. Is this a way to eventually find this pain?
Ham: Absolutely, yes.
Q: it makes me wonder where I am in that process Ham?
Ham: Well, all of you have many levels and as you release the pain in one level, you feel very relieved and light and joyous. Then a few months later, it surfaces again on an even deeper level. So, this is more of a continuing process than it is something that is done and over with and that will never recur. You are doing very well son. There are still some deep levels that you haven’t acknowledged, of course, as there are in all of you. But, this will come in its time and none of you should feel as if you have to hurry, this is a process that takes time.
Q: It sounds like to me you are saying its new levels of the same old wound?
Ham: Yes.
Ham: Last week our lesson was on and you turned it to the group and you asked us each to talk about our particular poison. What was our obstacle to being free enough to connect to the Father. Is this core stone or stones of pain related to the obstacle that we were talking about last week that we were trying to get at.
Very good this is an astute observation my daughter.
You often speak of these things as being instilled in us as children largely by our parents, are there not other factors or is this strictly a familial phenomenon.
Ham: No, it is not strictly confined to the family. But, of course most early experience is family connected and these early experiences form so much of the foundation on which you build later, throughout your life. So, when the foundation is faulty, it is that which needs to be cleansed or corrected and this changes everything else that is built upon it. Is this helping your understanding?
Q: Yes. I just wonder if we bring in any predilections or if we are blank slates that these things are worked on?
Ham: No, you bring predilections. All little children, babies, are sensitive to their environment, but they are all sensitive in slightly different ways. So, when you were born, you brought with you the certain character substrates and as these react with the environment, with the family home, you begin the process of character development. But, personality is that uniqueness that is unchanging underlying it all. Is this helping?
Q: Yes, this is definitely broadening my scope.
Q: I was trying to remember some phrases of the urantia book on acquired propensities of the races and racial memory to go with her question.
Ham: Yes, of course the genetics of the physical body carries with it that substrate that unique sensitivity to the environment which is the bedrock of your development. Is this helping?
Q: yes.
Motherhood
Q: We’ve talked so much about faulty relationships with fathers and failed fathering, but recently I have become aware in my own life of how my mother over-loved me, smothered me, and one of the tasks in my life is to transcend that. Recently I have become aware of my own anger here. Can you talk about mother love and how it can go awry in the family dynamic?
Ham: This is quite a subject. Yes, females, because they carry the child and give birth, usually feel much more connected with that child as though that child is an extension of themselves. It is this tendency to possess that you are speaking of. Often mothers forget that children must develop their own attitude towards things, their own sensitivities, their own experiences, and treat a child as though that child were just a part of themselves that must be protected. The child becomes symbolic of the most vulnerable part of themselves, the child represents them in that vulnerability.
So often mothers over protect and over nurture their children so that rather than being a source for comfort and nurturing the mother becomes controlling, manipulative, and greedy. See this as a natural tendency, not something that you should blame your mother for but something that you should sympathize with and relate to. No parents are perfect, only the Divine parents are able to give you exactly what you need. Your earthly parents are trying to fulfill their own needs through you and this is where the problems are. Is this helping?
Q: Ownership instead of love?
Ham: Well, it’s deeper than that, it’s a very deep connection that others feel with their children.
Q: The way our parents treated us is the outcome of their own pain and denial and their attempts to cope with that denial.
Ham: Yes.
Q: Both of my parents disliked their children immensely and yet wanted us to be like them.
Q: Sometimes I feel I should be more ruthless with my mother for my own spiritual development and I get confused about these feelings of loyalty and responsibility, especially now that she is aging, but instead I get mad at her. These feelings of anger, you talked about it earlier when you talked about acknowledging our anger and pain. Are these feelings, these frustrations, a sign of the process?
Ham: Well, there was a time in your life when you needed to set limits on your mother’s involvement, your mother’s manipulation. And this was not completely accomplished and now you want to finish that and yet you still feel conflicted in doing so. You have spent most of your life trying not to hurt your mother’s feelings. I would say that for your sake, for your development, you need to set these limits, and yes there might be some temporary hurts but they will pass.
Q: Thank you.
Control
Ham: I’ve been traveling a lot lately with my group and I have found it very difficult to stay calm and relax and I have felt this overwhelming need to control everything around me and find it very difficult to relax given these feelings. Can you help me deal with this?
Ham: Yes, working with others in a close, high pressured situation is always difficult. And, you have legitimate desires and legitimate concerns. But, you are having trouble figuring out what boundaries there should be on what you should control and what you should not. Sometimes it is hard to quit controlling when you are controlling a lot of things, it is hard to suddenly stop and put a limit on it and you feel like it has to be all- or-nothing like you must either control everything or else throw up you hands and forget about it.
I would suggest that you and your group sit down and decide who is going to be responsible for what and the areas that you are not responsible for, you don’t have to control, and the areas that you are responsible for, nobody else needs to control those. This is a hard thing to decide because everybody wants to do the same things and doesn’t want to do the other things. But if you can do this, and work out an arrangement where everybody knows their limitations then you won’t feel like you are controlling other people and they won’t feel offended by what you do need to control. Is this helping.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. And before I forget, thanks for last weeks message because it greatly helped me.
You are very welcome daughter.
Growth
Q: A few weeks back you said in our lesson that we would be working on specific things that had to do with standing in the way of our spiritual progress. And you seemed to indicate that these obstacles or pains that we have been discussing were going to be coming up in these times. I certainly know they have been coming up with me in the last few weeks. Is that your general forecast for us, that these things that are the obstacles will be rearing their heads?
Ham: Always where there is growth is there some pain involved and you have been going through some rapid growth and these inner problem areas have been coming up for you and you have been going through it very well. Remember, you have had many years of denying that any of those things were there and so when they do break loose and come into your consciousness, it can be pretty shattering, pretty hard to accept. But, you are doing very well and remember that this is just growth, this is part of your spiritual development and is not a punishment or something that you have to go through to make up for some things from your past. It is not that at all.
Q: I understand that.
Ham: Yes, but internally you tend to feel that life experiences are either a punishment or a reward and most often they are neither, they just are. Is this helping your understanding?
Q: It certainly is. Thank you.
Personal Counsel
Q: There is a long list of people to ask for messages for. The first is Cathy and her mom.
Ham: Ameilia, daughter, you are very strong because you are very resilient, you are very flexible and you can bend with adversity. You mother, however, is strong in another way and she feels she has to be totally and rigidly strong or she will break and fall to pieces. Show her by your own example how to bend and how emotions are a good thing and not to be feared.
Q: Aunt Deloris.
Ham: Certainly, daughter, you have come through much experience, many trials and testing, many ups and downs. All these experiences have given you a greater self- knowledge and a greater understanding of others. Don’t be afraid to accept these understandings, to accept your true self and to love yourself. In other words, you have come to far to stop now. Go ahead with your quest and accept all the love that the Father bestows upon you.
Q: Cousin Nickie? Ham: Yes, daughter. You also have some inner resentments, inner pains to deal with and these are coming to the surface now. It is my hope that this lesson will be helpful and that you can open your heart to the Father’s love now and in eternity.
Q: Esmirelda?
Ham: Yes, daughter, let hope be your watchword for this week. There is an inner hope springing forth in your breast that is a gift from the Father. Hope and faith are joined together. Be at ease with this newfound feeling and continue in faith.
Q: Elena? C Ham: Yes, daughter, you have some inner anger that is bubbling to the surface from time to time. This is masking an inner pain and again I hope this lesson will be a help to you.
Q: Rebecca?
Ham: Yes, daughter, you have some inner resentment that is surfacing at this time. Go ahead and take some time to think about this emotion. You will find an early childhood experience that causes you to resent others at times like they’ve seen you naked and you are pulling the screen back around you to keep their gaze away. It’s OK daughter to feel this pain and these feelings. You are doing very well. Be comforted by the Father’s love.
Q: Jarad?
Ham: You are doing very well son. You are allowing the Father’s love to flow through you and to be a part of you. Yes, you have some inner pain, feelings of unworthiness, that are surfacing and resentments from early childhood. You rejected your mother’s love early because there was a feeling that you didn’t deserve it and so you would reject it rather than pine for it. Is this helping?
Q: Yes, I would like to know how that I have managed to love her because I would like to use the same thing for my dad?
Ham: When you see your father again on the mansion worlds, all these things will be healed.
Q: I have always admired the great distance he came.
Ham: Yes, but not as far as you have come.
Q: Ham, Mark was wondering if he could get a personal message this evening.
Ham: Of course, son. You are making great spiritual progress and you have always been devoted to self- honesty. There will be times when uncomfortable feelings will arise and when you are ready, you can examine them and feel the pain that is behind them, but don’t feel that you have to push it.
Q: Joe would like a message too please Ham.
Ham: You do well my son. The road you are walking upon is one that is ordained for you. You are following the Father’s will so long as you remain true to yourself. You do well son, be at peace.
Q: Ham do you have a personal message for me tonight please.
Ham: You are making good progress son in allowing the love of God that is within you to find expression in the world. This indeed is the purpose of life and that which gives life meaning. Go in peace, for you do well.
Q: Ham, do you have a personal message for me?
Ham: Certainly, daughter. You have more love in your life than you acknowledge. Allow yourself the freedom to let love in. Love is not threatening, love is not desiring to take anything from you. So, be more trusting of the love in your life and be trusting of your own impulses to love. Is this helping?
Q: Yes, thank you.
Q: Ham I would appreciate any feedback you have for me.
Ham: Of course, son. You are going through some growth now as well and growth is always somewhat troubling and disconcerting. But, you are doing very well. Allow yourself to feel emotions that have been long buried. Go ahead and explore your inner life without fear or worry that what you will find is so terrible that you can’t live with it. That is all son, you do well.
Q: Charlie B.
Ham: Son, you do well. You have the blessing of angels upon you and yet you persist in seeing scarcity where there is abundance. Embrace your angels and give thanks for all that you have which is truly very, very much.
Closing
I am very glad to be a teacher and very humbled by your trust. Once again, I thank you for coming and until again we meet, my love and my blessings are upon you, farewell.
