<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">Ham 09-21-03</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">(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). </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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 </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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 </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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? </font></p>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1"> </font>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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?
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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? </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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? </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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.
</font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">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. </font></p>
<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1"><br>
</font>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="$mailwrapcol"><font
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" size="+1">--
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
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: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:David.Schlundt@Vanderbilt.edu">David.Schlundt@Vanderbilt.edu</a>
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
Beauty is that which attracts the soul,
and that which loves to give and not
to receive
Kahlil Gibran
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
</font></pre>
</body>
</html>