[tmtranscripts] Ham on progress

[David Schlundt]

09-07-2003

Ham: Greetings, children, I am Ham and I welcome you here this day. The 
effort you have each made toward spiritual growth and self-improvement 
is known on high. It is true that the Father's spirit respond to the 
tiniest flicker of faith. How much more do you receive for your tenacity 
and faithfulness in the face of many trying circumstances.

The opportunities for you each will expand in your lives as your 
capacity for service enlarges with your faith. Your lives have been 
sufficiently rugged to spur you toward spiritual questing. And spiritual 
questing, the yearning to know God and to be like him, is the foundation 
for your souls. It is for less robust souls to be content within your 
earthly organized religions and it is the failure of these religions to 
recognize and nurture spiritual questing and growth that remains their 
greatest weakness.

Human beings have constantly failed to grasp the essential spiritual 
nature of religious teaching. Always does the more advanced teaching 
become polluted with evolutionary religious thought. But, you my 
children have indeed broken free from the tradition bonds of this world. 
You have begun to sense the reality of spiritual freedom, even if you 
are afraid to stretch your wings and really explore the freedom that is 
before you.

Spiritual freedom is a difficult concept for human beings to grasp. Over 
many centuries the human mind has been locked in chains of the fear of 
God and unconsciously endeavoring to appease this fanciful tyrant, this 
judgmental parent who is critical of his children in your minds. You are 
correct in sensing that releasing the concept of Hell and eternal 
damnation is a great leap forward and though the Master never taught 
such folly, it was so deeply ingrained in the minds of his followers...

Q: He said one time about taking the brush and throwing it in the fire 
and pruning the plants that did not produce, but maybe they mistook that.

Ham: Yes, that is a misunderstanding like many of his parables. The 
separation of the wheat from the chaff was meant to illustrate that the 
spirit retains what is good and releases that which no longer serves 
within each individual life. He did not mean that some people are only 
chaff. The indwelling spirit retains and sorts and keeps everything of 
value, that was his meaning. Human beings often try to be their own 
sorter. Humans often try to judge themselves and judge what should and 
shouldn't be. But this is the job of the Father's perfect spirit.

Human beings still endeavor to appease God by following strict rules for 
behavior. Human beings still try to appease God by sacrificing or giving 
alms or tithing which is all tied to the primitive idea of sacrifice. 
Human beings try to understand God's laws and to work within that 
limiting concept in order to gain God's favor. All these things had been 
swept away in the master's life and teachings, but subsequently were 
brought back by tradition and the compromises that were made in order to 
spread the master's words. But, the Master's seeds are still sprouting. 
They are still growing a new in each heart and will find unique 
expression there.

Your world is trembling on the brink of great changes. There will be a 
great deal of religious soul searching and spiritual decision making 
over the next several generations. Your religions are still wrestling 
between the concept of God as judge as given my Moses and the concept of 
God as Father, protector, and friend as given by Jesus. The difference 
in these concepts will be crucial to the story of your world.

You, my friends, have been taught much greater and enlarged truth. You 
have absorbed the perspective given in your book and you have been 
diligent students of the teachers words. This give you a vastly superior 
understanding over that of your fellows. Each of you has a part to play 
in the spiritual upstepping of this world. Doubt not what I have told you.

Each of you has grown in faith, grown in patience, grown in diligence. 
But most of all, you have grown in love. And children once more I will 
say to you, that loving yourselves, accepting fully your positions as 
God's children, these things are not accomplished over night. This world 
is harsh and filled with harsh punishments, harsh people, and it is 
difficult to do as the Master did, to be soft hearted and loving with 
those who cause you harm.

It is not an easy road, this learning to love. It is not a way of 
timidity and shrinking back. Courageous loving requires the robust 
exercise of faith. It requires grasping after the unknown value, but it 
is faith which guides the human mind within that unknown and it is faith 
that you must learn to exercise completely. Use up your reserves and you 
will find you still have plenty. Don't be afraid to live by faith. Don't 
be afraid to relinquish your hold on the ego in order to grasp that 
unknown value that only faith tells you is there.

What are your questions?

Q: Is there any ways you can help use distinguish between a hard task 
and a barrier our spiritual helpers put in front of us to move us in 
another direction. Do you have any help?

Ham: Yes my son, if this were an easy answer, it would help in the 
spirit. The difficulties are often deliberately designed to be part of 
your growth, those that you work through and those that are not possible 
to work through both. You cannot tell the difference until the final 
outcome, otherwise your would be short circuiting your own growth. If 
there is something which you can honestly say you have done your best, 
you have reached the limit of your human abilities and your praying 
abilities, and still the result is not what you would have wanted, then 
this barrier has served and you can rest assured in your human efforts. 
But, when there is something which all human effort has not been 
exhausted, which you would simply like to escape from, this may be the 
type of barrier that will reappear later in life because if it was not 
worked through the first time, your lessons were not learned so it must 
be worked through again. The difference will only be found in your own 
heart and you will know as time plays out which is which. I cannot be 
any more specific than that.

Q: That helps, thank you.

Q: Do you have anything for Rebecca?

Ham: Certainly. My daughter, you do well. Continue upon the path we have 
laid before you. You do well in your perceptions and your analysis. Work 
persistently and for a while look neither to the left nor the right but 
stay focused and you will find your self moving forward rapidly. Be at 
peace in this work for you do well.

Q: Jarad?

Ham: My son, you do well also. You are finding a different role in being 
the supporter rather than the one supported and for a while this is 
necessary. In every true partnership, support is crucial in both 
directions. You are finding within yourself a natural, nurturing 
character, an ever more Christ-like attitude and a gentleness of spirit 
that has long been submerged and smothered since childhood in the 
mistaken ideal of the masculine that has been your persona. The cultural 
shackles that propel people into false ideals of themselves are 
unfortunate. It is good to explore all aspects of yourselves. For the 
male and female, both exist within each body, and finds expression in 
different ways. You do very well my son. Have peace.

Q: Do you have a message for Charlie B?

Ham: My son, you do well. The Master has said be gentle as doves and 
wise as serpents. By this he meant to caution believers to use common 
sense and to be wise in the ways of the world as well as gentle in the 
spirit. Listen well to these words.

As always, my love and my prayers go with you each. 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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