2004-10-03-A Life of Service
Nashville #212
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Life of Service
o 1.2 Group: Nashville TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Ham
o 2.2 TR: Rebecca
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Lesson
o 3.2 Personal Counsel
o 3.3 Closing
Topic: Life of Service
Group: Nashville TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Session
Lesson
HAM: Greetings, children, I am Ham and I am very happy having you here this evening. You each are making consistent and fairly steady progress in your spiritual lives. Each of you consistently engages in spiritual self-examination and spiritual self-reflection. You are also growing in your individual ability to effectively pray because your spiritual priorities are growing in importance in your lives. Prayer then becomes an effective tool in orienting the mind and the will toward the spiritual rather than allowing the physical stresses of life the upper hand. When you have true spiritual priorities they orient all of your thinking and all of your life’s decisions toward the spiritual priorities.
The life of the spirit then begins taking on a life of its own, so to speak so that when you are giving your life to the spirit, the spirit gives your life also to you. A life of selfless service is that which is most exciting and rewarding. When you actually succeed in removing the factor of narrow self-interest from your thought process, then greater purposes can invade your will. This is the purpose the Master gives you, it is not the purpose you design for yourself. To be willing to be used for the Master’s purpose creates the thrilling possibility that some minor interaction, some chance encounter, may be a turning point for some person you don’t even know.
Those who are certain about God’s power do not seek to create power of their own but rather seek to be instruments of God’s power instead never knowing the outcome, never deciding such things. Those who are certain of God’s power can rest in quiet certainty about all things in life. To the one certain of God’s power, man’s power looks tiny and vain. So for those happy people who rest their hearts in certainty, the pressures of life grow smaller because the great certainty of God’s love overshadows all else.
The kingdoms of the world are temporary things. The great riches of the world count as nothing in the kingdom of heaven for in that kingdom, the humble street sweeper who gave God’s love to all he encountered did more and is counted greater in the kingdom than the most powerful human on earth.
Of course the Father desires that you should use the talents he has given you, that you should each develop what you have and grow in the spirit through the use of your God-given abilities in doing good and serving your fellows in the world. The Father loves all his children and desires for all his children to love him and to bring for his love. Human beings always, as all children do, must test their own strength. You must come to the end of your own human efforts before turning to the spirit. But happiness is only found by turning to the spirit first rather than last. Happiness and contentment are only arrived at by making your lives a process of dedication to your highest ideals and those highest ideals always reside in the spiritual realm, even in the Father’s person.
Each of you is always going through a process of moral decision making both in your personal conduct as well as other broader issues and orientations. This moral decision making must continually be fine tuned because the decisions you made yesterday have to be made again in a slightly different way today and made yet again in an even more different way tomorrow. All of this moral decision making brings you closer to the Master’s ultimate will for you. If you forgive someone today, you may still have to forgive that person tomorrow and still another the day following. There is never a point when all decisions have been made for the progress of eternal life consists in progressive decision making and continual adjustment of one’s self to God and to God’s creation. All of mankind’s progress comes from the gradual adjustment of society to ever advancing ideals.
Each generation must rediscover Jesus and his life. You must reorient your society to an ever expanding conception of God’s will for mankind. This constant process is the steady advancement of each individual mortal. The Father loves mankind as a whole, yes, but he loves each individual completely and the Father values each human being equally. The choice of eternal life is in your own hands for the Father to trust his children with their own ultimate destiny decision is testament to the profound love the Father gives to each individual personality. Each individual gradually comes to exalt every more true and lasting values. Each human life progresses in this way and so the glittering fools gold of youth is gradually and painfully replaced with true spirit value and a gradual deepening and appreciation of value in others. Let us go now to addressing each of you this evening.
Personal Counsel
Rebecca, you are doing very well my daughter. Do not be concerned or worried about yourself. Continually fling off the old insecurities which are a false refuge. Cling instead to truth and the Master’s hand and allow him to guide your way rather than ever thinking that you must plan for your future rather you must be open to your future instead.
Amalain, you are also doing well my dear. You also have a tendency to over involve your own emotions and personal feelings with things that are outside of your control. In this way you can kick yourself over something that isn’t your fault, but you can pretend it is. You must instead release this need to experience guilt and to be responsible about things you can’t be responsible for. Similar to Rebecca, both of you were made to feel to much responsibility as children and you willingly took on guilt and shame for the family as a whole. You cannot continue this process as adults. You must release these old cycles of guilt and the assuaging of guilt through penance. The Master has said many times, give me your burdens. Now is the time for you to do this. The sins of the world are not on your shoulders. Is this helping your understanding my dear?
Q: Yes, thank you.
HAM: : My daughter Julia. My dear, you are also learning to let go of the old patterns of childhood as well. You have long felt yourself to be at some level outside the family, outside the family of humanity even and now you are beginning to adjust to the feeling of being chosen and worthwhile and valued. Your orientation in life is changing and this will change your life in profound ways. But this change will be internal before it is external. He who saves his life shall lose it, while he who loses his life for the Master’s sake finds it. You are beginning this process of losing the old life and you will gain a greater life. You are doing very well my dear.
Howard, my son you also do well. You are truly coming to a new orientation as well and you are beginning to find your own values, your own truth. Much of your life has been a process of elimination, rejecting some things while not finding some thing better to replace those things your rejected. Still you are straddling two realities. You are trying to be ever mindful of the Master’s presence while also being rebellious of the Master’s presence as well. So you are still going back and forth on some personal level. But, truth is more powerful and the Master’s love makes certain demands.
One of those demands is that you should develop and nurture ever greater levels of self-respect and self-acceptance. Man gains self-respect through devotion to higher purpose. Devotion to self, by the self, results invariably in self-debasement. The spirit demand always your total self. Devotion to God cannot be split or parsed. You are moving though toward ever greater levels of decision making and this process will inevitably result in ever more complete personal devotion to a personal God, even though now this is still through a glass darkly for you. It will not be for long. Is this helping your understanding?
Q: Thank you very much, yes.
HAM: : Jarad, you are also moving ever more completely toward total unselfish commitment to a higher calling. You must release the attachment to outcome in your work for like the man who sweeps the streets giving his message to love, you do not know the effect of your work in the world and you can never know it. This knowledge is for the Father. The effort is yours and the results belong to the Supreme Being. This is something your must internalize and make your own. Fear not, my children, for you all do well.
My son Brodan, you are also gradually but certainly moving toward this same orientation. For likewise, you do not know the effects of your work in its entirety and gradually it is dawning upon all of you that you cannot know those things which are impossible for you to know.
The Father holds all things in his awareness. Each of you influence the future in innumerable ways you will never comprehend. Part of maturity is the gradual acknowledgment of all that you cannot know. It is also the gradual acceptance of things you cannot control. Human beings have a hard time accepting they are not gods and each of you is going through this gradual acceptance. Release then your attachment to specific outcomes. You may have goals, of course, but you should not be so attached to specific goals that when the Father tries to give you something greater, you do not understand and cannot accept it.
Progress in the spirit is made by the progressive acceptance of God. Coming along with that it the progressing acknowledgment that you are not God. And though this seems to be self-evident and simple, human beings are so constituted as to be capable of great internal self-deception so that they can believe themselves to have god-like wisdom. This is the trap that each generation must avoid. Making human beings into God helps nothing and causes untold suffering needlessly. Constantly keep sure of the fact of God’s sovereignty over all things human and you will find life much sweeter and easier to bear as it is. Love each other my children and do not tire of loving. Love when it is hard. Love when it is impossible and you will find God.
At times when Rebecca grows weary, the words seem to lean toward conclusion, sometimes prematurely.
Yes my son, this lesson you are undergoing is one of releasing control. For you have also taken on too much of the sins of the world to your shoulders and you have also walked in the valley of guilt and shame at length during your lifetime. But, you are now growing into a realm of greater balance and greater inner peace. You have reached now a new level of feeling at home in the universe and of knowing yourself to have been a purposeful creation of God. Human beings in the modern world have grown up thinking of themselves as accidents in time, as though your existence is just a chance event without purpose or planning or reason. You have even looked upon those who claim to be purposefully created sons of God as having to feel this way out of emotion despair. But this is not so.
One comes to understand the greater dimension of life not from weakness and despair but from the robust decision making of the spiritual life. Accepting truth is never easy when the old concepts were comforting in the past. When they are being replace by greater spiritual concepts and awareness, there is always some pain associated with letting go of the old. But you, my son, are doing this and you are ever reaching for the greater and more profound spiritual concept and orientation in life. Never shrink from this and do not be tempted to turn backwards. The spiritual life is like the brass ring that must be stretched for and reached for. It is never simply given. Is this helping?
Q: Yes, thank you so much for everything.
Closing
HAM: : You are welcome my son. Are there any further questions? Very well my children, all is well. Be at peace.
