HELPING OTHERS - Keys to the Ultimate Freedom

星空

As we are approaching Christmastime again, I would like to say a word on love. As you know, the real love, the divine love, is a feeling of givingness with no expectation of receiving something for it in return. When we attain to this, we see and feel nothing but the most enthralling love everywhere and in everyone. We taste the sweetness of God and are effortlessly locked in harmony with Him. We are intoxicated with a joy that defies description.

Loving God, loving All, loving everyone is the easiest and most natural way to attain full realization. It requires no give up, as it is an expanding of our inner feeling of love to encompass and embrace all, everyone, everything living. Expand your love, for your family, for your friends, for those of your country, for those of the entire world. Expand it until there is no more room for expansion and then remain eternally intoxicated and one with God!

Love is basically an attitude. To express this attitude, we do so at Christmastime with greetings and gifts. As you give, do so from the bottom of your heart and discover hat it is the giver that is most blest. Having been away from you for sometime and knowing that you have been meeting and communing weekly, has anything come up that you might want me to clarify?

Q: We just said what we individually thought, and in that way we reached for a better understanding and I think it helped.

Lester: All right, reached for a better understanding, see if I can tie in there. We're moving toward a Goal that is unlimited. We must become totally free. We have been moving in ups and downs; and our lives have become much better and happier. Yet as we feel there is a distance to go, right? To date, as a group. I would say that you have mastered much of the principles as applied to life. You've learned how to let go of a certain amount of limitation; you Ive learned to accept the positive; you've learned to accept the power of thought; you've learned that you are the creator in your life; and of course the thing that goes along with that is that you have increased your capacity to love. As we expand our consciousness, our love automatically increases. Likewise, as our love increases, so does our understanding and wisdom, have so far gained are not all- satisfying; that even though life has become happier, it still isn't full, complete. Anyone take any is sue with me so far?

Q: Not a bit.

Lester: All right, the path we're on is from here on until we make the goal, -total Freedom. That's the first point I'd like to make. Second, we can do this in this lifetime! Generally it takes many, many lifetimes for the great majority of those seeking to make it. However, we can do it this lifetime, for two reasons: First, we are an unusual group, i.e., rare are the ones wanting this quickest, most direct way. Second, we have the right direction to make it this lifetime. Then, if we ever come back in the future it will be by choice, not by necessity. Those of us who very much want to help others might come back just to help others. But that's a matter of individual choice. The main thing is to achieve the ultimate state.

Now, becoming master over life is really a basic and necessary step through which we learn that rather than victims in life, we are the masters. Then after we master the ways of making our environment the way we want it, we look beyond. No matter how happy we make our life, so long as its involved only in everyday living itself, it will never fully satisfy us because our rea1 nature is that of being infinite. Are there any questions on that?

Now I'll go into what I think should be our direction in the future. We must become more universal. We should let go of our own livingness to the point where we can live outwardly more for others. If we are universal beings, we must behave like universal beings. Every human being is me is the way we should You are me is the attitude ee should have towards other people.

I used the word attitude. We can't help people much by giving them things; there's just too much needed and we do not have it. But we can give them that which is much more than things. We can begin to give them the wisdom that we are getting. Our attitude should be one of wanting to help everyone who wants help.

Never help those who don't want it; that would be imposing on them. We should try to help just those who cross our path and ask us. We don't have to extend ourselves looking for people as they will just fall into our experience. They'll ask us questions and as we give them the answers, we'll find that certain people will feel that we are giving them the right answers, that we are helping them and they will ask for more. And it's really an obligation to help those who come to you sincerely seeking the right direction. Remember, You are me.

The irony is that we begin to live more expansively, thinking less of our little self and more of the other one, we really help ourselves. The worldly see it differently. They would probably interpret it as we helping the other one. But there is no other one to help but ourself, and we actually get the greatest benefit. By helping others we help ourselves toward the Goal. We will never make it unless we have an attitude of love and a feeling of compassion, of oneness with everyone, with a wish that they too know .what we know.

So, to repeat, we have gotten to the point where we have learned how to better control life and make it happier. Now we should try to make it happier for others who want it. This does not mean stopping our own growth; that we never do. We keep working for our own further growth, - by helping others. Any questions on that?

Q: I feel that I have to work for a living and I've got to pile up so much money or so much goods and that if I give some body else something, well then I won't have. Isn't that basically wrong?

Lester: Yes.

Q: Because, in reality, I don't have to work for a living, isnt that the first thing I have to know to get rid of that idea that I have to work for a living?

Lester: Yes. However, we should feel that we would like to give away what we have; and this is the way you'll feel later on. You'll just want to give away everything; you'll have to control yourself. The world is in such a state that people think all they need is things, and if we try to provide things, we're not really helping them; we're confirming that they cannot provide for themselves. It's not things that they need; it's understanding. Just look at the wealth and the accompanying unhappiness in our country today.

Q: That is a little different slant which is very important. Giving them things without giving them the power to be the thing they really want is not giving them anything..

Lester: Yes. Comparatively, things are small when wisdom is gained.

Q: But you see, I don't demonstrate this. We have come to the point where we have an easier life, a happier life,-I feel I can talk for all of us, - but certainly, at times, we sure fall on our faces.

Lester: Some of us do, but why?

Q: Because we think limited thoughts?

Lester: We're trying to be happy in the business of everyday livingness itself only, aren't we?

Q: I, speaking for myself, would say, Yes. When a deal goes through, I'm happier than when it doesn't.

Lester: Right. Try to not be the doer. Let go and let God. Be happy at making others happy.

Q: Because, in Truth, all there is, is God perfection. But I put my fingers in and mess it up, don't I?

Lester: Yes, you do. But you don't have to.

Q: Just let go and let God?

Lester: Yes, why don't you do it? Why don't you let go and let God?

Q: I would say habit is in my way.

Lester: It's habit. all right. but why allow the habit to run you? Youre living in a world of separation; there are you and people and deals. If you see the Oneness, you begin to live for others; you see them as you.

Q: But the others that I see come to me because they want things. I never had anybody come to me and say. I want peace.

Lester: That's your consciousness. Expect to meet people who want peace. Then peace seekers will come into your experience.

Q: You spoke of love and compassion. Define what they mean.

Lester: Love is only understood when you love. Basically, it is the attitude of givingness, with an understanding of and an identifying with others. Compassion is understanding what the others are experiencing without sharing their misery and with a wish to promote its alleviation.

Q-: Love as far as I feel then, should be wanting for others the same as I would want for myself with no feeling of I am limited.

Lester: Yes.

Q: This group is trying to rise high.

Lester: All right, what should we do now since life has become happier? The next step is to live more outwardly, more expansively; live for others, or, live more for others. This, in another way, is seeing G J everywhere and in everyone. Feel that everyone is you because there is only one Beingness, -you. There is only God and God is All. Therefore, that which I am, my Beingness, is God!

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(This Session was recorded in Los Angeles in 1965. The following are statements and aphorisms recorded at different times. )