2000-07-09. Love of Others
Nashville #90
Topic: Love of Others
Group: Nashville TeaM
Teacher: Ham
TR: Rebecca
Opening
Ham: Greetings, children, friends, I am Ham and I again greet you as your teacher/friend. Tonight, we shall discuss the finding of understanding and love for others.
Lesson
Understanding
It is hard to imagine how you would find love for others without finding within yourself some understanding of them. When you first experience the formation of ego, or the idea of self as separate from others, then you have difficulty in bridging that gap between the selfish needs and wants and the awareness of the needs or wants of others. So, you begin to imagine that you were the other person, having the same experiences that you yourself have had. You don’t experience the hunger or thirst or other desires of another person, you experience your own desires, your own hungers or thirsts, and remember that feeling in order to understand the feelings of another.
As you experience more and more throughout your life, once again you do not experience what another experiences, you only experience your own world experience and through this you can relate to someone else. There is not getting around this, you cannot project yourself into another to experience their feelings nor can you project their feelings into you. There is only one way to develop the ability to understand others, and that is to have experience yourself.
This first life experience gives you quite an array of pain, and pleasure, of joy and despair. This life is your template from which all your future experiences will relate back. Experience builds on experience. By wide ranging experience it is not necessarily meant that you must have wide extremes in your lives, but rather that you will experience your lives fully, to the completeness that you are capable of. Many good people make the mistake of keeping their lives so full of busy work that they experience life on a surface level for long periods of time. It is better to drink deeply of each cup that comes before you than to sample the surface of many. Every life is rich in experience. It is not necessary to be a world adventurer to live fully and completely with the life that you have.
We understand others through our own experience. The way to love is to have enough similarity of experience that understanding is there. Without understanding, love is not really possible. You experience love when the inner world and something other connect. You can experience love when looking at a work of art because you are connecting to that artist through similar feelings, a similar inner experience. You can experience love for another person the same way. It can be even a look in the eyes that arouses it, but it is always an inner feeling of shared experience.
When your experience is truly rich, you’re truly wealthy in love for you feel that inner connectedness with other people, with other living things, with beauty and eventually you can exist in love when your inner world is so open that you are always connecting with that that is outside. When you make that understanding connecting to the outer world, you are drawing the love of God through yourself more and more and are open to his love as you love.
This is not confusing, it is very simple. Once you exist in a state of openness, your experiences are deep and meaningful and always rich in rewards. The world then feels to be a very benevolent place, a place where love reigns supreme and fear is abandoned.
It is not necessary to understand everything about a little bird to understand how it flies or how its circulation works or etc. That is not necessary to make a tiny connection in love and to have that thrilling moment of understanding and love of that tiny creature.
Human beings often make life too complicated. It is not so hard to see a little bird cock its head at you and sing and experience love for that thing, that wondrous beautiful creation of God. It is not difficult to pick a flower and examine the beauty and wonder of its intricate creation and feel awed and feel love for the creator. It is not hard to look into the eyes of a child and find a moment of complete sympathy and awareness and understanding.
Find love in your hearts my children, find love in the world, and you will find yourselves living in a world of love and of beauty and peace. Take that step of connection, take that risk of loving. It is easy. What are your questions?
Dialogue
Gender
Q: I was wondering if this is one of the reasons men and women sometimes have a hard time getting along, the fact that we have to understand each other to love each other?
Ham: Yes, my son, this is true. There is a point where you do not understand the motivations of another, or their experience of the world because you are not that other person and yes, this can be a barrier to love if you let it. You must rather find that which you have shared, the experience, the understanding that you share together, and use that as you connection for love. The rest you have to take on faith. It’s like the bird analogy, you don’t understand everything there is about being a bird, you cannot. There is a point beyond which you cannot go. But, you can love the bird and you can accept its bird-ness. Is this helping?
Q: In my experience, you can love people even if you don’t understand them but you’re right it is only after you have some shared experience.
Barriers
Q: What if you can understand a person, you understand their psychology, but there is just something you can’t get past or get can’t get over. Maybe it’s just a personality clash. I can understand some people but try as I might I just can’t get over the wall.
Ham: Well, usually, these are cases where you are requiring something. Deep down, somewhere, you have a requirement that that person isn’t meeting and that is blocking your ability to love.
Q: Without the other person having anything to do with it?
Ham: Yes. Often times there is love there but it is blocking your ability to experience it. It’s interesting that once these barriers melt, then you realize that there was love there all along, it just wasn’t realized in there in your understanding. Is this making sense?
Q: Yes, thank you.
Q: I have a question, you said that experiences don’t have to be extreme. I think I am falling into the trap of thinking that I am not learning in life unless I experience something tragic. I wonder if I am learning enough since my life is so pleasant, although I think there is a lot I am learning from that,
Ham: My dear, you have a natural ability to see the best in people, in situations, and even in tragedies like you say. You have a natural buoyancy, even in the face of hardships, and this will keep you in good stead all of your life. There is enough pain in every life to learn what is necessary from it. You do very well and don’t worry.
Q: Ham, Marija wants to thank you for your wise words last week. I am really trying to work things out and shed my old habits. Tell him I pray for him and ask him if there is some news for me?
Ham: I thank you for your prayers my dear. You are doing well and have come through a painful lesson with increased strength and increased self awareness. You are like a little flower blooming in the desert, you have deep resources of water and inner nourishment that help you through hard times. Know that you are beginning to bear the fruits of the spirit, that you are growing every day and that your path is one of great humility and love. You do very well my daughter.
Sincerity
Q: I have a request from Peter H and Jerry H. They want to use EKG equipment on Rebecca to study here during the time she TR’s. They think there is a problem when the stillness is described as a alpha state since that state tends towards sleep.
Ham: My sons, of course you may ask questions. That is our purpose, to aid your understanding as you walk the path toward the Father. You seem to have decided in your minds that some phrase or terminology that is used by one teacher must be used by all. In this you are very wrong. We teachers have a wide berth to teach according to our student’s individual needs. There is no sincerity in your hearts in this endeavor of yours. Look well to your own understanding. Ask any question with an open heart and complete sincerity and you will come to eventually understand the answer. But, when you ask with an insincere heart, what difference does the answer make?
Q: David Harper called and wanted to know if he could have a personal session with you through Rebecca this week and Tuesday is the only day he can’t do it.
Ham: Of course my son, Thursday at 3:00.
Q: Do you have anything for Tex?
Ham: Yes, son you do well and have come to a kind of compromise with humility. Life has been difficult and you have had much hardship. Understand that to get on your knees before God is a noble thing and is very different than getting on your knees before men.
Q: Do you have anything for Esmirelda?
Ham: Yes, daughter, there is a growing understanding inside you. An understanding for life, for people, for yourself that is wonderful to see. Continue this path of understanding, broaden and deepen it. You do well.
Q: Elena?
Ham: Yes, Elena, my daughter this is a time of growing acceptance. A time when there is a letting go of what is wished and an acceptance of what is and the two are happening together. Your watchword this week is acceptance.
Q: I wanted to say that my first and last message was very interesting, gave me a lot to think about, and I feel better about certain things. Do you have a message for me tonight?
Ham: Yes, of course. My son, life is made of up a rising sun and a setting sun and all that passes between them. Often times it is difficult to see the difference between the rising and the setting sun, for they look the same. Your energy level is like this cycle, and your emotional balance also, rising and then setting and going into a quiet time. When you can find that balance between the high of the noon hour and the quiet of the midnight hour, and find that feeling that it is ok if this is where you are, that it is OK to be feeling the need for quiet and like a blanket of self-protection at times and at other times to be feeling the openness of joy of daytime. It is just part of life and don’t feel like you have to be one thing or another when your emotional balance is just where it is. One is not better than the other, they both are. Is this helping?
Q: I will think about it. Thank you.
Ham: I guess you know what Ray is going through and how he feels towards you. Do you have a message for him?
Ham: Of course. Son, you are feeling a precarious emotional balance right now, a fear of moving forward and of taking the next steps that you need to take. I will tell you not to fear, but you will experience these feelings and you will have to pass through them even like walking through fire, but as you walk through you know you are getting out of the fire, you are walking away from the fire. This is what you have to do. Walk through your fear and you will find safety.
Q: Do you have anything for Rebecca?
Ham: Yes, my dear. You are finding a greater emotional stability at this time. You are feeling grounded and secure in yourself and I am glad to see this. Continue in your exploration of your self and your abilities for you are doing well.
Q: jarad?
Ham: Yes my son. You are finding that you can demand more of yourself than you thought, that your inner resources are deep, and can sustain a long run of creativity. You have treated yourself like a race horse, pampered and careful to run only short sprints.
Q: it’s called laziness.
Ham: But you have greater resources than that and can gallop quite nicely over quite a long period. Are you understanding?
Q: yes I do.
Ham: Charlie B?
Ham: My son, you have come very far since the beginning of this journey. Relax and rest and know that you need not push yourself so hard. Take time to rest and enjoy yourself.
Q: Ham, may I have a personal message tonight please?
Ham: Of course, son, you are doing very well. You have come through many things and are continuing to grow and develop as you should. There is a part of you that strives to be perfect in everything, that doesn’t allow for human error. Though we have discussed this before, this week your watchword should be “It isn’t all my fault, I don’t control everything”. Let this sink in over this week.
Q: Ham, I know Mark would appreciate anything you might have for him this week. Yes, of course. Son, you do well. You are finding your spiritual experience is not as different as you had thought. That many others share similar experience and understandings, even though they man come by these things many different, ways. Take this time to expand your understanding, to open your heart even more to love. Also learn the lesson of doing good for evil, of the extra mile and turning the other cheek to take the effort for returning good for those who deal with you unfairly or unfeelingly.
Q: Ham do you have a personal message for me this evening please?
Ham: Of course, my daughter. Sometimes you have felt like as if you were an apple with thin skin that nonetheless is a protective layer protecting your inner self from the outside and its red color is pleasing to others. But, you are easily bruised, easily hurt, but you don’t show it. You keep that smooth outer layer there that doesn’t show your inner buffeting. This is especially true with the family, with family issues. Know that you don’t always have to be the strong one, that you can be vulnerable and still be loved and cherished the same way.
Q: I have been thinking about my message and my life as a rising sun and setting sun, and I wondered if you meant me or everyone in general.
Ham: Everyone. Everyone has times of great bursts of creativity or energy and times when you feel you need a rejuvenating. You can’t make yourself be one of the other because it is a cycle. Of course this cycle doesn’t always fit what you are being required to do so you have to learn to balance and find times for both aspects within what ever your situation is. The essence is don’t feel forced to be one thing or the other thing out of someone else’s time table because it is not possible.
Closing
Very well, until next week my children, farewell and my love and prayers are with you each, farewell.
