1993-08-08. Giving Thanks
Nashville #6
Topic: Giving Thanks
Group: Nashville TeaM
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Opening
HAM: Greetings. I am Ham. I want to thank you all for coming this evening. Our lesson tonight is about giving thanks.
Lesson
Curiously enough, it is an obvious duty shared by all beings, spiritual, morontial, and material alike. When you arrive upon the mansion worlds you are instructed as to the morontial techniques of thanks-giving. It is our intention, therefore, to give partially this same instruction to you here. It is a technique for gauging progress by and through the fullness of your awareness about its necessity and the attitude of completeness with which miss thanks-giving is offered to God. Easy it is to become complacent in this duty and offer rote symbolic gestures such as prayer over meals, still and all, these daily reminders are helpful in channeling thought toward Him to whom you owe all of your existence.
Easy it is to pray with heart felt intensity when one needs something. That same heartfelt intensity is generally harder to muster when giving prayers of thanksgiving. Yet it is most important in balancing one’s spiritual life to practice offering heartfelt thanks. Our suggestion is to daily offer a separate prayer of thanks apart from other spiritual observances. To daily exercise your soul in thanks-giving begins the preparation for true honest, complete worship. For truly dedicated worship is never reached except through the avenue of thanks-giving.
Generally humans are wont to give thanks under certain conditions, the receiving of certain “portents of divine favor”. This practice is little better than primitive barbarism where one thanks the gods for luck. Advancing religion must make room in it’s practice for expanding concepts. When we give thanks to God without reservation, implying dependence upon human wants or perceived needs, then does this spiritual act begin to verge upon worship. Practice purifying your prayers of thanksgiving. Practice opening the soul to His light by actively removing human barriers. The act of thanks begins to open the soul’s unique song to heaven, to God, which in worship becomes a symphony.
Learning to daily give thanks, heartfelt thanks, will undoubtedly expand your understanding of reality in ways which we will discuss in the future. Always give thanks throughout your days as you do, but also set aside a little time to purify your thanks. You will find spiritual rewards by it. Eventually this discipline will grow into a craving and then will you know that you are becoming possessed of a vibrant and maturing morontial soul-reality. Goodness will enter your existence with a divine flavor and grace will give abundance of hope.
No longer will the soul experience the weariness of human shackles, rather will it learn to sing the song of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Greatly improved will you find yourself in many ways which were troublesome before, and day by day will the richness of the beauty of life begin to reverberate around you. Truly a universe citizen is being born, an ambassador of the highest reality and the bearer of good cheer to all who come in contact with him.
(A note: I am consciously aware that the use of the pronoun “he” for humankind in general is troublesome to some of you. However, I have purposely chosen to follow the grammatical rules of the language, and as such it is limited and is vastly limiting of my expression. Do not, therefore, take offense at this practice for it has meaning which transcends your words. However, I will apologize for giving offense.) To continue…
Humankind needs new spiritual ‘practices which your limited attempts at worship have not yet provided. One of our intentions is to help you establish these new and broader, more widely appealing, practices within your small groups. All of you have begun the practice of stillness which has led to a great spiritual quickening among you. The practice of thanks-giving will further this development when used with your established practice of the stillness. These initial spiritual practices needn’t be too rigid nor need they be established at the same regular times, though often it is helpful to order one’s life around established regular daily practices. For example those who regularly practice the stillness in the morning may practice thanks during the evening or visa-versa. These small but helpful practices greatly aid spiritual striving and they are suggested in this spirit of aid.
Closing
That is all for this evening. Always remember to give all that you need and so it shall always be.
