2002-01-27. Soul Expectations
Nashville #140
Topic: Soul Expectations
Group: Nashville TeaM
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Opening
Ham: Greetings, children, I am Ham and I welcome you each here this evening. Tonight, we shall discuss levels of expectation.
Lesson
Expectations
Every human has ideas concerning their own abilities and the ability of the world to grant or award rewards and punishments which are expected. Every human being in some sense creates a future based upon these assumptions. But of course, this is all very arbitrary and relative.
One’s earliest expectations are concerned with existence. You exist and expect to exist. This is raised in accordance with one’s own enlightenment. At some point comes the questioning of existence. One questions one’s own expectations, “Do I have the right to exist?” And, with the realization of the inevitability of death, one questions the length of one’s existence. These two developments in the maturing personality create a kind of crisis and begin consciously or unconsciously a life long search for values and existence beyond one’s self, beyond one’s own level of being.
Philosophy, Faith
These questionings, these first attempts to create a living philosophy, are very important. And this kind of crisis of identity, this question of who am I and what kind of person shall I be, comes up over and over during life. Always is the personality integrating experience and values, always do you reach form a philosophy of living that transcends, somewhat, one’s daily reality. Once one decides to make a leap of faith, once one has evidence of things unseen to the point of saving faith, there is truly a kind of crisis of rebirth and once this gulf is traversed there is no going back.
The personality on the other side of that chasm, the personality of the believer, no longer doubts the reality of transcendent values, no longer questions the validity of life beyond the death of the body, no longer is the existence of the Father of personality questioned nor the reality of his love. The believer then begins a long process of reorientation. The world in which that person once felt as an outsider, alienated and alone, is now transformed into his world.
When one’s inner core, one’s soul, is certain about love, certain about God and his love for that person, then the world is an easy place to live in. No longer does it seem random and heartless but ordered and purposeful. Not every thing makes sense or is understandable, but that person has faith that things are understandable and they do make sense. It was once said, “and now we see as through a glass darkly”, and knowing this is a tremendous comfort. It implies that some day things will be clear, that there is a world on the other side of the glass which is understandable, benign, and welcoming.
Human beings constantly make the mistake of trying to understand all of reality and you create elaborate philosophies designed to explain it all which are quite interesting, to say the least. Many things can be known and can be completely clear. There are many other things, especially concerning the suffering of innocents and so forth, which cannot and should not be something explainable. To the one who believes, at some point there is simply a faith that some purpose exists and there is a humility in observing that it is not understandable or explainable from this vantage point. It is like having faith that there is an ocean on the other side of a mountain, an ocean you cannot see but you believe it to be there.
Life is filled with mystery and part of the joy of faith is accepting its mysteries. The mind always wants to create patterns of thought which make it comfortable. But the mind that is subordinate to spirit is calm in accepting the things which it cannot explain. This peace of mind, this serene acceptance of reality is the mark of religious living. The religious person accepts reality as it is but fully expects that reality to change for the better.
Inner Life
Religious living places complete confidence in the loving nature of the eternal Father and on the one hand sees human suffering and accepts its reality but on the other hand has complete confidence that that suffering is not in vain and that the Father’s love ultimately assuages all human suffering. Religious living is fully connected — past, present, and future. There is a certain acceptance of one’s own life and realities in the present, the past which created these realities, and full and complete expectation that these realities will improve. One’s evidence of this is one’s own experience. Life always tends to improve for the believer, not in outward circumstances, but in the inner life.
As one progresses in the spirit, the inner life becomes fully as important as the outer life and eventually more important. By the inner life, I refer to one’s relationship with God or all spiritual reality. Eventually, that relationship becomes more important than anything else in life and all the rest of life tends to mirror or reflect one’s inner life. Yes, there will be problems, yes there will be material ups and downs. But, for the life of the believer, everything seems to be steadily improving regardless of the circumstances in the outer life.
The believer’s expectations are so high that they transcend this world. The believer brings the values of the spirit to bear on everyday reality in the material world. Things which to a pilgrim in an earlier state, even an unbeliever, that seem to be lightly regarded become extremely valuable to the person of the spirit. The value of life, the wonder of reality, the value of love, the value of other human beings, all these things increasingly are raised in the life of the believer.
When the believer contemplates a flower, its beauty, the wonder of its creation, its reflection of love in the world, he or she knows that the wonder of this little flower is worth more than all the gold in the world and the believer accepts its mystery and wonder with the expectation that it is knowable , that it is knowable on a level of experience and in that sense God himself is the flower, he experiences it all.
Closing
I hope this lesson is helpful. Sometimes life is so difficult and you are all so brave and strong and true to your beliefs that often my desire is to relieve some tensions of the mind, to open your hearts to spiritual acceptance very simply.
