[tmtranscripts] Ham on the nature of living truth

[David Schlundt]

Ham 09-21-03

(We began our session but forgot to run the tape right off, so Ham 
picked up right after announcing that tonight's lesson would be about 
The Nature of Living Truth).

All right. We can begin again. The subject is Truth, and our first 
illustration was truth as living water. Truth as the spiritual water 
that quenches the thirst of the searching, the parched soul. The human 
being who searches and searches until that thirst is relieved, that 
questing is at an end of finding.

Truth is more than facts. More than the correlation of facts, more than 
the mind itself. Truth is the living spirit of God and the 
representative of truth, the experience of truth in your world is the 
experience of the Master himself. He does not represent truth, he is 
truth. His spirit is living truth.

All these things are part of your growing awareness, part of your 
orientation toward truth and away from falsehood. Many things in life 
can be thought of as temporal truths, that is truth that is upheld over 
a period of time. The olden Greek philosophy which colored the world 
view of the West over many centuries was kind of a temporal truth: the 
earth exists as a flat plain; above the earth are the heavens, the realm 
of perfection; below the earth is the realm of eternal corruption and 
hell and damnation--man existed in the realm of choice on earth where he 
was a participant in his eternal future. Some of this world view holds 
true, other parts do not. And so, most of your thinking is conditioned 
by other assumptions that can be considered temporal truths, the static 
level of basic reality perception. But spiritual truth is growing truth, 
expanding truth, liberating truth.

Spiritual truth can penetrate beyond the commonly accepted realms of 
thought. Spiritual truths combined with faith sees a world in which 
God's relationship with man is ever deepening and expanding and 
elevating. The tender relationship of father to child that the Master 
expressed and embodied in his life revealed expanded truth and expanded 
relationship of man to God and God to man. Through faith you now feel 
God as your closest friend, your confidante, your lover, closer than 
anything imagined previously. The

Master himself, the truth, the way, and the life--opened up another link 
to God through his personal friendship, his spiritual closeness, his 
constant and unwavering upholding of truth. He is like a magnet, and 
your souls are ever oriented toward that magnet, that drawing power of 
truth. He is the living water. He is the refreshment that once you have 
partaken, you shall never thirst again because his truth is ever renewed 
within you.

For the true believer, there is no waiting for his return for he exists 
here now within each heart, friend to each soul, an ever-present help in 
times of uncertainty, travail, and the ever changing fortunes and 
unconstancy of life. It is said that there is nothing you can ultimately 
depend upon except this mighty protector, this wonderful friend. Life 
itself is ephemeral compared to the rock of his eternal nature. Riches 
take up wings and fly away. People come and go, are born and die, all 
the knowledge of humankind is but a grain of sand upon an eternal 
shoreline.

As you increasingly become more devoted to his word and appreciative of 
his value, then do you absorb that value and that truth and that light. 
And so then you become living guideposts to those who flounder in the 
material world, those who are lost and confused, those who are weary and 
downhearted. As you grow in your relationship with the living sprit of 
the Master who was Jesus of Nazareth, who is Michael of Nebadon, as you 
love him, as you adore him, as you worship him, so also do you partake 
of him. "I am the bread and the life," said he.

As you partake of his truth, then you become a well of living spiritual 
water. You become a distributor of the bread of life. You become a 
co-worker in the fields with Christ and there is nothing higher a person 
can aspire to. No higher calling. No greater work. It is not required as 
liberated sons and daughters of God that you should be tethered and tied 
to what was known as religious law. Rather, the joy and righteousness 
that comes in close association with him naturally breeds righteousness 
of behavior, naturally gives right thinking and honest intention.

This is not to say that you will not make errors, that you will not 
stumble, that you will not even become blinded by the light of truth 
from time to time, forgetting your way--no. But it should give you 
confidence in yourselves, confidence in your relationship to God, that 
you can know his will for you. That you can lead a righteous and 
spiritual life, that it is possible as you are, wherever you are, 
whatever you are doing.

The Master came to sweep away the old requirements that produced a dead 
righteousness, an unthinking adherence to rules. He requires instead 
that each act, each thought, each intention be free. And in that freedom 
to find truth

Humankind ever struggles with this unpredictable creative force called 
free will, for it is employed in the service of good, but also it is 
employed in the service of selfishness, in the service of personal gain 
and selfish aggrandizement. It is employed in the oppression of others. 
But mankind makes a huge error when it sees freedom itself as evil. 
Without freedom there is no righteousness. Without freedom, there is no 
faith.

And so, my children, cease to limit yourselves by guilt, and through the 
many and various ways you have to punish, limit, and chain yourselves to 
the thoughts of others. Freely create your lives in partnership with the 
same Jesus of Nazareth who told stories to little children, who 
comforted and healed the sick, who ministered to the poor and oppressed 
as well as the wealthy and self-satisfied.

Freely create your lives from this point on in free creativity, in free 
and true righteousness. Let your love of him spill out into the world 
without regard to where it should be channeled. Let your love for him 
color all your associations, let your love for him rearrange your 
thinking, clean out the old, and let the fresh air of freedom enter.

Live your lives free of fear, for fear is the great oppressor. Fear is 
the great fraud. Fear is the great holder of potential evil. Live each 
day to its fullest, not carrying more nor less than you are able. 
Fulfill your duties to other human beings to the best of your abilities 
and rest in peace when evening comes as you settle back into his arms in 
restful sleep, the sleep of the just, the sleep of the pure at heart. 
Are there any questions at this time?

Q: May I have a personal message, please, Ham? A: Yes, my son, you do 
well. Continue to seek that total orientation toward spiritual truth. 
Allow yourself to be pulled more and more toward the Master's spirit. Be 
careful not to let your old ideas about him come between you. Human 
beings are still a little afraid of the power of the spirit and so 
Jesus, for many people, is a manageable one, he is the Jesus of 
childhood, the baby Jesus at Christmas time, the redeemer, the static 
point in history when sins were paid for, somehow. They reduce him to an 
intellectual concept rather than spiritual reality that he is. It is 
always hard to break through those old conceptions, those old colorings 
of what the Master's spirit is and how he relates to human beings. Keep 
this in mind when dealing with others who may not be ready to take that 
faith leap from the Jesus on the cross as the dead conception and Jesus 
the living spiritual friend. You, my son, are working through many 
things and much of this work is still the cleaning away of the old. Do 
this with him. Ask him to help you when you are ready. Is this helping 
your understanding?

Q: May I have a personal message, please? A: Certainly. My son, you also 
do well. You are a man of great conviction. A person who seeks after God 
with a whole heart. And when you have wholehearted searching, sincere 
yearning for God, then surely and steadily your mind and your soul will 
be filled with his spirit. Do not worry or doubt yourself. Find Jesus as 
your spiritual companion and friend, this will open the way of the 
spirit. The love within you seeks after his love. Allow this 
consummation to take place unimpeded by the mind. And then, as always, 
it will be one step at a time. Is this helping?

Q: Do you have any counsel for me, Ham? A: Certainly. My son, you are 
doing very very well. You are also a man of great sincerity and great 
spiritual longing. The Master responds to the tiniest flicker of faith. 
How much more must he respond to the sincere asking of his beloved son? 
A man of great faith and boundless courage. Your old life is gradually 
falling away. Your new life is gradually springing up and taking shape. 
Remember that you are being gradually transformed to be a spiritual rock 
for the Master. Like Peter, you are sometimes filled with conflicting 
and equally passionate desires, equally passionate motives, equally 
conflicting as well. And like him, you will be transformed into a rock 
of steadfastness--the one who is unshakable in faith as Peter was. Or 
became. Be at ease with yourself, know my son that you are doing your 
best in every way and that the Father's will shall unfold in your life. 
Is this helping?

Q: Yes, please. May I have a message? A: Of course my daughter. You are 
going through a long journey that began with the deaths of your parents. 
This process of revisiting them in the mind requires many years to get 
through. The parental influence on each person is terribly profound and 
not always for the good. The love you hold for them, notwithstanding, 
there are many old tapes still running in the unconscious that are part 
of what you assume to be true about yourself. And part of gaining 
freedom of the spirit entails the working through of those old phantoms 
and the acknowledgment of them and the releasing of them. Then, when you 
think you are free, they come again. And reveal themselves in a deeper 
level of consciousness, or unconsciousness, as the case may be. Much of 
the burden that you place upon yourself comes from the unconscious 
effort to fulfill parental expectation, and for you, that expectation 
was beyond anything human. Your perfectionism, your dissatisfaction with 
various aspects of yourself, these are all stemming from these larger 
than life figures, towering still. As you break out these old mental 
patterns, you will have freedom. And you must ask yourself: "is freedom 
what I really want, or do I really want to fulfill that old need?" Is 
this making sense? Lighten up on yourself. Embrace the living spiritual 
friend, the ever present one who understands completely everything. 
Embrace him. Work with him. And the old problems will gradually of 
themselves be washed away in the renewing waters of living truth. That 
is all.

Q: Anything for Rebecca? A: Yes, my daughter. Be at ease in all ways. Be 
assured of your worthines to work alongside the Master in his fields. 
Allow him to guide the way. Allow his voice to come through yours, and 
remember that the burden does not lie with you. This is very hard for 
you to understand, for as a child you shouldered overwhelming burdens 
from the first and your childhood was lost in the assumption of 
responsibility at a very early age. Remember that the Master had a 
carefree side--a side of mirth and humor and story-telling and laughter. 
And as you work with him, partake of this side as well. Allow yourself 
now to be a child, to follow rather than lead, to depend rather than be 
depended upon. Work on this, for it is very important. That is all.

Q: Myself? A: Yes my son, you are also working through old patterns, old 
loneliness, old isolation which still haunts you, still threatens you. 
But my son, you must understand that you have passed through that valley 
and are now not alone any more. And never will be again. Be at peace, 
all is well.

Q There is one further question from Norbert. A: MY son, it is good for 
you to continue as a gentle servant and to find yourself at ease with 
the world. There is nothing further to add this evening, rather my love 
and my prayers go with you each, that is all. Farewell.


-- 
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David G. Schlundt, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
Vanderbilt University
301 Wilson Hall
Nashville, TN  37203

Phone: (615)322-7800
Fax: (615) 343-8449
Email: David.Schlundt at Vanderbilt.edu
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Beauty is that which attracts the soul,
and that which loves to give and not
to receive

Kahlil Gibran
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