1998-09-27-Living To Love

Session

Opening

Welmek: Let us continue with the purpose of live: to learn, to live and to love. We shall discuss “Living to Love.” Think for a moment, what does that mean – to live to love? How has it helped you in your life to discover the meaning of this and how might your friend discover it for him or herself? I will give you a few moments to gather your thoughts and we will continue.

• NOTE: After all the students have responded, Welmek summarizes the comments and adds a lesson.)

Lesson

Love

Love is the dominant feeling in the universe. Unfortunately, while it is natural, while it does flow unconditionally from the source—from God, most humans must experiment, must learn through experience to find and give love. Let us think about what is love. Your text defines it well, “Love is the desire to do good to others,” (56:10.21) and we could add “and to yourself.” In order to find love, you must search, you must experience, you must experiment. Perhaps as a child you received love from your parents or from friends. As you grow older you seek love from your brothers and sisters, you find moments and opportunities of love from them. But to truly know love in the very deepest sense, you must seek the real source of love. This would be the search to find the love with. When you tap that eternal source of love, you know without question what love is because it is now something you can feel throughout your whole being. Just as your physical mechanism senses through your eyes and ears, your soul has a way of knowing and it is through its own sensing it feels. And when that soul feels love, it knows the truly reality of what it has felt. It is an inner way of knowing. If you have not experienced it, it cannot be proven. But all of you here know whereof I speak.

What does it mean to do good to others? What does it mean to love God, to love yourself, and to love others? When you experience what you call your romantic love, is it not your desire, as you think about this person much of your day, to find ways to please them? You do little things for them, you exchange sexual favors, and all of the other ways you have in your culture show this love. This is something you think about—how can I please this person? So how is it that you can please God? If God is the source of all things and each of us are mere mortals, we can give God what He has given us. But you cannot love someone whom you do not know. So you must take that time to learn about God -- to learn to know God. By taking time each day you develop a relationship with God. You can worship God, and when you feel God’s love, it would be a natural outpouring of love from God.

What does it mean to do good to yourself? Well, to find that source of love within is the most worthwhile thing you can do for yourself. Why do so many not do it? Because they allow the barriers of anger, lack of forgiving themselves or others, laziness, complacency, self-absorption….all of these are barriers. The love of God is all around, it is humans who put up these barriers. You must break through these barriers. It is easy, one need only to ask and you will receive. But you must ask and you must experience and you must try to seek God’s love. That is the greatest thing you can do, because until you find that love within yourself, you will struggle to be able to love others.

You may find one or a few that you can love, but to love all…to see all as your brothers and sisters, this will be a greater effort, this will require finding that love within. And what can you do for others? Love is the greatest service one can give. In the universe, that is your constant purpose, that is your constant desire. How can you find a way to do good for them? What is it that they need? Do they need help with some physical task? Do they need someone to listen to them? Do they need someone to play with them? Look at the person and ask what is it that they need. Sometimes they are not sure themselves. You must look deeply within them, you must as you say read between the lines, you must intuit what it is they need. For sometimes they know exactly what they need at that moment and it may be nothing more than help with a particular task. On your world there is a wealth of opportunity to serve…to love.

At my level, we love, but because everyone is progressing, it is not always easy to discern how you can help, for after all they all know how to go within and find the greatest help of all. But we do find ways, we are still growing, we are still learning, and we still have needs. So we find ways in those opportunities to help each other. We come here to this planet and to the other planets of rebellion and we seek to help you. We come here out of love, out of desire to do good for you. It is our way of serving, it is our way of loving, it is our way of deepening our experience of love.

Every individual offers you an opportunity to learn; what can you learn from it? Maybe you can learn more truth, maybe you can see more beauty and help you to feel more love. But everyone has something to offer you. If you spend each day first seeking this well of love, let it flow through you, let it fill you. Then, as you go through your day you feel that love with you and you look for opportunities to share that love, to serve others, to find a way to help them. Then you are living the way of the universe. For the way of the universe is to live each day to love.

Dialogue

Process

Personal question answered regarding not feeling motivated to perform service and feeling guilty about it. Welmek’s response:

And so to do your best right now and to look at any problem, you need to know its past and its destiny. Do you glimpse the destiny that I have portrayed to you of the universe dominated by love? And within yourself, can you not sense what that might be like? And in your past, were there moments when you did not feel love at all, and perhaps not even glimpse what we now talk about? And so, you are in process, are you not? Somewhere between your past and what you see as the glorious ideal that you now begin to see as you walk this path. Therefore, each day is a wonderful experience to learn, to learn to live in this love more. Some days you will feel that you have accomplished more, others days you will feel that you have not accomplished much. But is this not the process of learning? Do not judge yourself. Simply ask yourself, am I trying…am I trying to understand…am I trying to live to love more than I did a year ago or ten years ago? If your answer is “yes” then you are doing what you are supposed to be doing…then you are following God’s way…that is the path of life.

I do not mean to suggest to you that you are at a point where you would radiate the love that the Master would radiate. I understand…I am not at this point either. But I understand that is my goal and it is something to strive for. Does your book not tell you it is not so important what you are as what you are striving to become? Do not be hard on yourself. There will come a time as you grow in this understanding of yourself and as you feel more love for yourself, that you will naturally have the desire to share this with others. But you must understand that others do not always respond. Were there not even those that the Master could not reach and closed themselves off? You can only do your best, you can only try. The difference is whether during your day you still feel connected to this source of love. If you still feel this connection, then you can seek inner guidance as to what might be best for this person or you can simply allow that love to flow to through you. Imagine this other person surrounded in the bright light of love. You can do this without ever saying anything to this person. Throughout your day when you are busy and are absorbed in your tasks, when there are break moments, when there are times between tasks, reconnect. The more you can retain this consciousness throughout the day, the more peace you will find, the more serenely you will get through your day, the less stress you will feel at the end of the day. This is the goal, this is the process, it is not easy to achieve. It is particularly not easy to achieve on your world in the jobs you work with the stresses you face.

Perfection

Personal question about not being perfect and feeling unworthy of receiving God’s love. Welmek’s response:

It is a matter of time and it is a matter of perspective. You are given this concept of being perfect. What does it mean to be perfect? What would it take to do everything right? So, you see your expectation is somewhat unrealistic isn’t it? My sister, let me say to you, you will never, never know everything. You will never be perfect in all ways. You will become perfected in one way, and that way will be to always seek the will of God, the way of God. Your motivation is what becomes perfected. That is the only thing in us humans that becomes perfected. Now, let me ask you, do you have some control over this idea of seeking to find the divine way, seeking to follow the divine path, and to find this love and peace? Is it a choice you can make to pursue this? And so, in your own way you are becoming perfected because you are making choices and you are choosing this path to follow. And so you are on the only path that is available to you. In no other way can you be perfect. You must eliminate this thinking from your mind. Following God’s way is the only way you in which you can achieve perfection. It does not mean that you can know everything.

Take this into stillness with you, take this concept when you are still, bring up this concept of perfection in your mind’s eye and at that time ask the Father to clearly help you understand this idea, this concept of perfection. And while it is there in your mind’s eye, allow the thoughts to enter to help you see perfection in a new way. Let me ask you, have you ever experienced any one who is perfect in any way on your world? And so, you expect perfection from those who cannot be perfect in ways in which you wish them to be perfect. So how can you win? How can they win? It comes from the fact that you have a concept of perfection.

But until you understand perfection from a spiritual level, it causes great confusion, because when you look at the level of the material world, then you think that other humans should be perfect in the way they act or think, in knowing all there is to know about something. You see, you apply this concept of perfection at levels that it cannot manifest. But when you apply perfection to the spiritual level, then there is a way, there is an opportunity for it to be, and that is for you to pursue this path in doing God’s will. It does not mean that in every situation you will always know what is right, but it means that you will pause and you will seek the right way to relate to others.

This is also part of this concept that your text talks about exchanging your mind for the mind of the Master. What does that mean, what did the Master do? He said, “Father, not my will, but yours be done.” He sought God’s will in each of the things he did. That does not mean that you will always have a clear or perfect answer or know the perfect way. It only means that your motivation to seek the best way is real and genuine. And gradually it will become perfected in the sense that it is what you will always seek.

Expectations

Response to a comment by a student: Yes, you see it is the transference, it is the “born again.” All humans seek love. When they do not know to seek it from within, they must seek it from without. They seek it through acceptance from their parents, brothers and sisters, their loved ones, their spouses. But you see, all of these people are human and fickle and imperfect. And no matter how much you do, how much you attempt to please them, it may never be enough. There may be some other reason they withhold their love from you and you cannot find that reason, so you constantly seek to find why. This inner innate desire to find love was given to you intentionally, because you must find love in your life. But the mystery is that you cannot find it only in other people, you must find it in God. You find this unconditionally loving parent who says to you “I love you, you are my child. I only ask that you share your love with me. I don’t expect you to be perfect. I expect you to make mistakes. I accept you and all of your imperfections and I accept you as long as we share this relationship, this love.”

So now, when you find this source of love, then you know you have it—it is permanent, it is ever lasting, eternal. That is your anchor, your foundation of love that you build upon from within. When you have this, it is your foundation. The fickleness of the love and acceptance from others, perhaps frustrating and disappointing at times, but also wonderful and enjoyable, is part of the world of change. And no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you do for someone, tomorrow they might say “that is not enough, I want more.” So you might never be what they want you to be. So you must let go of that to some degree. It does not mean that you should not try to please others, to be a good person, to be loved by them, to seek a relationship of love, it does not mean that you should not try to do well or please your boss. But it means there are limits and not to seek your only source of acceptance and love from people.

You will set up unrealistic expectations, you will set up an expectation of yourself whenever you do not get the love that you seek, that somehow you are failing, somehow you are not yet perfect yet. That will create feelings of unworthiness and insecurity within you. And you will not love yourself if that is the way you see yourself. Your self can not be created from the images of others. It must be created from the true image of your real self, the God within. When you see that real self, all the rest is shadow and change. But that is the dilemma. God has given you a concept of perfection, a concept of love and an innate desire to seek and achieve these things. Where do you seek them? Who is the measure of how successful you have been? You must transfer that acceptance from without to within, and when you do that you have been born again. You have begun to seek the real you, your real self.

Balance

You are still in the physical world and you will still want and need a certain degree of love and satisfaction and success. These things are natural, you should continue to strive to achieve them. But you must lessen your expectation, lessen or change or transform this concept of perfection from without to within. And as you do that, and I know you are doing that, you will find that what can be almost obsessive for many people will lessen, then you will live your life more in balance. When you are dominated by the images and perceptions of the outer world, you are out of balance. When you are dominated by living only in the spiritual inner life and do not deal with the real world and your brothers and sisters, experiencing them and with them and through them, you are out of balance. It is not wise to retire to monastery for all of your life. You need experience and interaction with others. So you must find balance between the material and the spiritual, between you inner and outer lives. And this is part of the secret, the mystery of leaning to walk day in balance. Of learning to live, learning to love, living to learn and living to love.

Do you understand what I say? Let me add one more thing. Most humans feel this sense of unworthiness because they are not perfect—perfect in their physical appearance, perfect in their intellectual acuity, they are not perfect in the way the world wants them or they think the world wants them to be perfect. And as you make this transition, you will see that that is not a realistic expectation on the part of others for your worth and value to be measured. Therefore, your worth and value should not be measured by others, but should be measured from your sense of awareness of who you really are, your real self. But at the same time as you lessen this expectation of measuring yourself by the judgements of others, you must, in turn, not look for perfection in others. Is that not only fair? You will not find other humans who are perfect, so do not expect that from others.

Comment from student regarding learning about spiritual growth from interacting with others. Welmek’s response:

You must bring these up during your stillness. You must look at them. It may take several times, but each time you will chip away, you will polish rough spots, and you will wipe away the clouds of confusion. And the window of reality that you begin to see which includes your expectations of others will become clearer. As you do that, your relationships with all that you meet will improve.

Experience

Student’s comment about needing interactions with others in order to learn to become more loving. Welmek’s response:

Yes, look at your text…what is the universe but one vast school--world after world, new experience after new experience. Some of your brothers and sister, when they discover their budding spirituality, think that all they need do is turn to the God within and it will answer every question that there is. But that is not true. This fragment of God that indwells you is your pilot, your guide. It will guide you through experience into understandings you must obtain. If it were not so, then you would not need to do anything, to experience anything. You would only have to turn within and say, “what is the answer” But, the answer comes through the sorting, and the analysis, and the evaluation, and the building blocks of experience.

Closing

In the universe we are all teachers and learners. At one moment you teach, the next moment you learn. I teach you, but I learn from you because you add to my experience. Let us all seek together the only way in which we will find perfection, and that is to simply share our inner life with God, to do the will of God, to find the way of God. And this simply means that in each situation seek to find the love, the love that is the desire to do good to others--what is in their best interest, how you can serve them. In serving them you love them, in loving them you serve them. Good day my friends.

Note

Welmek is the teacher for the Indianapolis group. Over the next few weeks, I will be submitting transcripts from past lessons, which are now being transcribed. Several years ago, Welmek began a three part instructional program. In his method, he taught us to speak from the spirit. He would pose a question to the group members, and each would need to respond in a three-part answer: 1) how would we define the topic, for example, faith; 2) how this has helped us; and 3) what the other person to whom we were to respond could do to find this for him or herself. Our answers were limited to three minutes and we were instructed to look deeply into the eyes of the person to whom we were responding. These instructional sessions were very helpful and informative.

The forthcoming lessons are taken from his instruction to the Indianapolis group. The instruction has been transcribed with the initial comments of the group members deleted.

This lesson, "Living to Love" was part of a six lesson series that Welmek gave on the purpose of life. Welmek summarized this purpose as three-fold: To Learn, To Live and To Love. He extrapolated these three purposes into combinations: Learning to Live, Learning to Love, Living to Learn, Living to Love, Loving to Learn, and lastly, Loving to Live. While I am transcribing these in no particular order, what he did was extremely effective in helping us to see the simplicity in the purpose of life, particularly as it relates to being an ongoing adventure of constant growth and change. How blessed we were to receive them, and I hope you enjoy them as well.

In Michael's love,

Donna Painter