Thanksgiving - Giving and receiving with Love

Being the Thanksgiving talk is giving and receiving with love. I like a title like that because I think the title already says something. In other words, it's giving us something to believe in. It is giving us something to have faith in before we even have a talk in itself. It is saying, in essence, that we must learn how to give and receive, that and receiving is interesting, with love. And I think we must learn what this idea of love is. This is our Thanksgiving talk. We always give the Thanksgiving talk on the Sunday previous to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Although this Thanksgiving we will be having some special meditation during our own family celebration here in regards to those who have no other family who may share this particular spiritual experience with. Now, this morning I would like us together to take our memories off into a journey. Let's go on a journey together. We will each be seeming to go on a separate journey, and yet we will be meeting at a central point, a sort of junction, this junction which makes us a one, which makes us a togetherness, really, as most of us know who come regularly let's go on a journey with our minds with our consciousness with our memories let's go back to our earliest remembrances and let's see what life has done for us what life has done to us and just how well we have understood the experiences of life so that we can walk out today with a lighter heart, a more beautiful spirit, a more complete understanding of the richness of livingness, and perhaps be able to share together something more of what Thanksgiving means, at least spiritually speaking, of whatever else we want to say about it, or whatever other meaning we want to give it. Let's go back then in our memories to our childhood.

Now some of us going back will say, I don't want to remember my childhood. I was sad. Others will say, oh I want to. That's when I was happy. Others will say, oh I want to because that's when I had wonderful time others will say no I don't want to because that when I had some of my most unhappy my most poignant my most lonely times and periods we will vary as to how we look upon the childhood and the various memories or certain periods or portions of childhood nevertheless let's go back together no matter what we think our childhood was or was not no matter what we think our parents were or were not let's go back and pick up a little thread of something and what is the thread that we can all share. It is the thread of consciousness. It is the thread of memory. It is the thread of experience.

This we all share, no matter what particular details the experience has touched.

Now then, let's ask ourselves, was it worth it? That is, whatever it is I am today, Whatever it is I feel today.

Whatever it is I understand today.

Was it worth it, going through that line of experience that was and is what I consider me?

Let's think. Let's analyze.

Now, if any of you present this morning happen to be in a state of sadness that is more sad than average sadness, or happen to be in a state of regret that is more intense than an average regret, then you might be looking back to that time in childhood and looking along the thread without having to pick out all the details and saying, no, I have been mistreated. I'm not glad. I don't see it.

I've been uh one of the stepchildren of life or god some of you might say that to yourself but if you are saying it I'm going to ask you to take a second look before we're through with our talk we have to have a second look in other words I'm going to ask you to start looking at life and experience from another level of values and although most of you have already done this and done it very much more than once this is something we have to do over and over again over and over and over again in order to transmute our values so that they can remain more steadily with that which we consider the true riches of life and that which we can always and eternally be grateful for and this being the Thanksgiving talk remember we want to know what gratitude really is or is not what perhaps we do have to be thankful for and these things that we have perhaps overlooked when searching in our minds our hearts our souls our lives for areas of gratitude now one of the things of course about gratitude happens to be that it is involved with a feeling that someone or something did something for us or gave us something.

And along with that, unhappily, so many of us have feelings of obligation, which we consider of prisons, chains, which we consider walls locking away the light from our minds, our hearts, our souls.

We know that. We've all had some such experiences.

Certainly, in our youth, we've all interpreted some of our experiences in this manner. But let's take that second look, whether we have arrived at a point where we know that being grateful is something other than what we have thought or not. Let's take this second look so that we can enhance whatever gratitude might or might not mean in and through levels that should have eternal meaning and will in time. Let's look back and enhance our consciousness and discover how rich we are. Rich in terms of true richness, of course.

All right now, some of us, when we went back in our memories to our childhood, immediately grasped at certain conditions, incidents, which was sad, unhappy, frustrating.

And perhaps we said to ourselves, is this something to be grateful for?

My darlings, take a second look.

Is it something to be grateful for?

Now some of us may have had an overwhelmingly happy childhood.

Naturally, you have no problem being grateful for this, or do you?

You know, sometimes people have been happy, and they're still unable to feel this outpouring.

And we will have something to say about what gratitude is and is not in a moment.

Nevertheless, let us go back to that in our childhood, which we consider one of the acts of injustices that life has brought upon us if we do not think deeply or which we look upon as an outworking of miserable miserable karma and this is philosophically better of course but it still hasn't got the spirit that we are seeking let's go back then and think through these various experiences and traumas because you know we've all had traumas in our childhood it's inevitable it is inevitable even if we have had happy childhood we certainly have had traumas now then these traumas these unhappy experiences and or even the happy ones what did they do to to us and for us. We have to start there. What did they do to us and or for us, or both?

Naturally. They helped to develop our awareness. What is awareness? Awareness is the ability and the capacity to react to life, relationships, and relationships I don't mean just with people.

You know, you have a relationship with the breeze, if you're aware of it. After all, it does ruffle up your good hairdo, which might make you cuss. And it also makes love to you if you don't care what it does to your hairdo when you can enter into the spirit of this breeze isn't that right of course the women can appreciate this little a bit more perhaps than the men who figure a calm and a little dip with whatever hairdo they've got very quickly alleviates the uh lovingness of the breeze which they may interpret as something other I'm sure we've all had times or periods where we wanted to send the breeze you know where, depending on how strong it was, how warm or cold it was, and what it was doing to our particular physical condition at the time, whether it be a hairdo or anything else. Nevertheless, this awareness, Awareness, this is what we're pointing for.

The ability to be aware of a breeze. The ability to respond to temperature, cold, warm, in between. Of course, I am not spiritual enough to appreciate cold temperatures yet, but give me time, we have eternity.

But I'm very grateful to the Lord of life for the ability and capacity to respond this is the point the ability and capacity to respond to whatever happened this is awareness and the degree of awareness that we have actually then relates to how much attention we gave or were able to give the experiences that started from childhood on. Of course, it has to do with past incarnations too. But we don't have to worry about the past. As the Christ principle said to us so many years ago, let the dead bury the dead. We're taking care of the present. And whatever it is we are in the present, this very present has to do with what we've been and the way we've reacted to the past whether it be a thousand incarnations ago a hundred incarnations ago we don't need to worry about past incarnations if we take care of our reactions now we're taking care of all past conditionings by transmuting and the transmuting of anything that took place yesterday, whether that yesterday was a thousand or a million yesterday's ago or one yesterday ago, has to do with how much response, how much attention, how much aliveness we can have in this very instant. Giving and receiving is really a matter of the capacity to respond to what is taking place every second of our lives. For example, you are receiving impulses, vibratory impulses, from life every split second of every moment of your life?

How much awareness, how much depth of consciousness is there in the incoming of these experiences?

Are you paying attention or not?

We think of the past, alas, so often, especially when that past has been sad or frustrating.

And we think it's because our mothers and or our fathers or sisters or brothers or whatever relationship or other human beings or conditions we think that is what they did to us that this is what has conditioned us into sighing and being unhappy about various conditions Has it ever occurred to us that whatever unhappy and frustrating conditions we have had in childhood, which really is a recapitulation, incidentally, of past incarnations as far as our psychological evolution is concerned, have we ever thought that this is the greatest gift of life that is?

The important point here then really is in learning how to be grateful how to have an outpouring from our within to all it comes within our fears how to pour out a gratitude and love to life, to people, to conditions, for everything that has ever been. And I repeat, to everything that has ever been. Now those who think that yesterday should have been nothing but gladness, I wish to point out to you there is no such thing as a capacity and ability to remain at a height of happiness and receptivity until we have reached a point where we are able to recognize who and what we are and what it is in us that is experiencing what it is in us that is aware and is able to see that the pains of yesterday the personality problems within ourselves and other people these are the the growing aspects of life, in other words, these are the gifts of God to our own higher soul. Everything that ever happened to you has been a gift from God. And you are the higher soul, remember, a spark and expression of divinity or deity. And the whole growing necessity has to do with your ability to become aware of the glory of consciousness itself.

You are able to look up at a sky and see a star that sparkles, or that doesn't sparkle quite as much, and it is therefore a sister planet or a brother planet. You are able to feel this breeze that we react to so differently. But imagine the miracle of being able to experience that breeze. You are able to feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. You are able to listen to music, to voice, to infinite numbers of sound. In other words, you have awareness. You are able to react either in an infantile manner, which is just as much of a miracle, incidentally, as in a mature manner. The point is you are able to react to conditions according to whatever at the moment you have and have managed to develop you are able to react. Now then, this ability to be conscious, to be aware, to be aware of differences of colors, of sound, of touch, of taste. That taste will take care of Thursday, even more than usual, of course. This ability to be aware and to participate in experience.

Experience. Isn't this a miracle beyond comprehension? And haven't you realized, I know most of you have at least the time, haven't you realized that it is because you were able to experience your rejections, your frustrations, your unhappiness as a child? And remember, when I say as a child I include past incarnations because we are always children uh when we define being children as being younger yesterday than we are today so we have always been more childish that's different from childlike more childish yesterday than we are today in as much as we're all in the expanding growing process of evolution so yesterday takes place of any degree or amount of yesterdays you want any amount of incarnations everything grows and expands but what has given you your growth and what has given you your expansion would you even remotely know compassion had you not suffered would you even remotely have a yearning for attaining conscious union with god had you not known sorrow would you even remotely know what gratefulness is had you not known lack in whatever area that lack may be if you had it as a child believe me you didn't get it for nothing you earned it when you were even younger even though we may say you earned it in past incarnations It's still one being, which is you, a spark of divinity.

This is what you are.

So perhaps instead of hunting around in the usual way, we who come to this temple should look at yesterday in a different manner. We should look upon every yesterday as something to be grateful for.

And only then will we know what it is to be able to give and receive with love what is giving now there are some people little beauty of soul who still are very careful that they'll give give almost anything they can except risk their own hearts or souls in loving all out that's fine no doubt the higher soul is saying to them you cannot take the repercussions of this kind of risk yet should the object of your all-out love turn out to be something you imaged because of you're not yet having evolved into enough discrimination, you're liable to break down and land in a mental institution, or perhaps your relatives will wish you had landed there, so they wouldn't have to put up with the neurosis that you express as a result of your frustration.

Therefore, we have a basic idea here in our hearts, really, which we must look into, and that is, if we feel we are not yet ready to go all out in love, we should also realize that we have no right to expect anybody else to go all out in love towards us.

But those of us who are careful not to risk ourselves, aren't we perhaps the first ones who look suspiciously at everyone else and say, do they really love me or don't they?

What are they doing or saying or in what subtle way can I see that they are really rejecting me? What are we doing then? We are hunting for rejection. We are not realizing at all that the greatest gift of life is the ability and capacity to love without fear of repercussion.

Yes, of course we're going to be hurt. But look, my darlings, we're going to be hurt anyway until we attain the ability and capacity to remain centered in that part of our beingness which has such complete understanding perception and contact with the universal love that whatever personal aspect of God is not yet able to respond we will just surround them with a little extra love a little extra compassion and we will release release them to deity for further growth. When we achieve the ability and capacity to let God love in and through us fully, which is what really happens, then we will start learning how to... Well, we won't really start learning how. This is not the proper way to put it, we will discover that the pains of narrow infantile attachment are not ours, and it isn't because we're afraid to be attached. This is the point. When we're afraid to become attacked, we are just going to stop growing in that area for the time being until we gain a little more courage, as Tarot Key Number O is continuously indicating.

Therefore, to want to give, to say, oh, I love humanity and I want to give humanity all sorts of things, and this we should, we should love humanity and we should want to give, to say, I love human beings who have a certain situation or condition and I want to give to these particular human beings. This is very good and wonderful. It is certainly a more highly developed state than those who are only looking for receiving, that is, receiving in a special way. But bear in mind that you cannot be a complete giver until you've developed the capacity to give.

And you have not remotely developed the capacity to give until you are willing to give of yourself.

What are you giving when you give of material things?

Yes, material things are an expression of something else.

But there are some people and we know it well there are some people who look at those who will give material things and they say this person is full of love look here is the evidence yet some people will give of material things in order to avoid giving of themselves cells now this does not mean they should stop giving of material things mind you because in the universe we have to learn that spirit and matter are not two separate things they're two sides of one coin matter is condensed spirit and spirit is expanded matter there is only one livingness and that is deity and consciousness but there are some of us who having achieved a certain desire to give will give of material things but we still are very careful we do not risk our hearts and souls and so what do we do we keep ourselves from developing a depth of capacity to really express the livingness of the all life temporarily nothing remains as is although to us in one incarnation it seems that it does there are others who foolishly express their own selfhood all over the place in other words they give emotionally above below sideways way sideways backwards in other words these are people who are so eager to give of themselves yet not having discovered the principle of discriminant giving of selfhood they try to give in areas where there's still no capacity to receive and so it's like trying to pour a quart the bottle into a half a cup and then we get frustrated and we blame these people and we say how can these people be so evil they're not evil they're just young if they've got a half cup capacity why should we expect them to receive our quart full of consciousness or love there again we We have not yet understood the principles and been able to learn how to be grateful for the capacity to give when we need to feel hurt or rejected.

I want to give you something that I hope will comfort you always.

You have never been rejected, not any single one of you right here, never.

Though you may look back to that childhood we mentioned and say my mother rejected me she had to say terrible things about me my father did he did or didn't do certain things or my sisters or brothers or husband or wife or lover you have never been rejected what you did was expect from a cup of consciousness a quartful of expression. And this was just not yet having grown to an ability to understand and be aware.

And here is where the great value of ability to give of selfhood comes beyond all riches.

We may be wonderful and loving souls, but if we have to protect ourselves or over-protect ourselves, we are not going to learn our giving and receiving.

We're not going to be able to develop the capacity to see what can take a half cupful full of us and what can take a quart full of us. And until we do this, we're going to be frustrated and feel rejected. And isn't it kind of silly to feel rejected because a half cup full of vehicle was only that size? Isn't that immature? No one ever rejected you, darling.

No one ever failed to appreciate you. We are learning how to give and receive on a level that is in harmony with reality. And we are going to learn it, whether we want to or not, not incidentally, because evolution has us. We are a spark of deity, and whether we want to or not, we are going to learn this. Some of us will take a little longer than others. This perhaps is the only difference, and some of us are going to just hang on to misery longer than others. But we are going to learn how to let the heart sing every single day of our lives. And what is it that makes the heart sing, knowing what giving and receiving with love is? You give with love when you give of yourself. And when you give of yourself, it may or may not include physical things.

But you could give physical things and yet keep your selfhood safe you see the difference but when you give of yourself you will give physical things if you have those physical things to give in other words there's a difference those who give of their real selfhood are willing to risk being disappointed, are willing to risk being rejected, are willing to risk making mistakes, because they know that through these apparent rejections, mistakes, they are really learning how to understand how to be able to give in measured fullness, which is the evolution of consciousness itself and the ability and capacity to express the love of life and the life of love in any and every way what is giving with love it is wanting everything and everyone to have exactly what they're able to receive we must not and should not expect those who have not achieve the ability to receive a certain amount or degree or weight we should learn to recognize that these are the children of life as we are and that in that particular area this is all the capacity they have at the moment or this is all the courage they have to receive at the moment You know, some people deliberately put extra things into their cup of life to make sure that they don't have to receive more from others than they can handle.

They're afraid of getting involved. This is fine.

We go through experiences, but the thing we have to learn to be grateful for is the fact that we are able to go through experiences and develop understanding, insight, and perception. Do you realize what a miracle it is to have consciousness at all, to be able to be aware of anything?

Do you realize what a miracle it is that the heart can yearn? Do you realize what a miracle it is that the heart can be full of pain as well as full of joy?

And we must learn to be able to say thank you, Lord of life, cosmic being, higher soul, for everything that happened to me yesterday and yesterday and yesterday.

Because without it, I could not have had whatever richness I have today.

We have to learn to stop looking upon yesterday as a mistake, because we've never made a mistake.

No matter how unhappy the outcome, all we've done is have the experiences we've needed to help develop a deeper cup of consciousness for more capacity to love and give.

This is what we have done in our evil or apparently evil moments as well as our so-called beautiful ones, because the repercussions of our evil again have taught us things, even though it may have taken many incarnations. We must learn that in order to be able to give that which is truly meaningful we have to be willing to risk and receive pain and incidentally when we are do you know what happens what we really receive is joy and fulfillment because we're not subtly giving ourselves the negative anymore and whatever pain comes is so meaningless as compared to the joy of responding to the beauty of life did you notice how beautiful the sky was this morning as you came here today if not notice it when you go out watch it you could not react with ecstasy to beauty had you not known ugliness you could not react to the beauty of love had you not at some time or other and often known its opposite that would seem to be hate you could not know what it is to be grateful I do not known what seemed to be lack and what is gratitude gratitude is the willingness to receive receive from God all that is necessary to become more of a channel for that one life.

And are you willing to receive? I ask you. Are you willing to let another human being help you personally? Are you really? Or do you like to dream of only helping other people? Now you are not remotely achieving the richness of deity if what you want is to be only a giver and not a receiver because if all you want to be as a receiver then what you want to do is cheat your sisters and brothers your fellow sparks of god from giving isn't that so So you want to cheat them of the joy and the fulfillment of giving.

Now can you realize how much richer life is and can be if you are able to receive from whoever has the need to give and say, you are a spark of God loving me and expressing expressing this love in, for, and with me? Do you realize that not until you can be a loving receiver can you truly become a completely outgoing and loving giver for, with, and through deity? You have to be able to be both. And the idea of, well, I don't want anything for myself I only want things for others is a lot of nonsense you want to give others the joy and the fulfillment of loving you otherwise you're cheating that part of you that you're responsible for the most and then how can you expect to develop your fullest capacity for love and giving To want to give is divine. To be grateful for the capacity to give is even more divine.

To have the capacity to receive and to know that what you are receiving is from deity, no matter what channel it takes, is even more divine. In other words, if God is love, be grateful for every human being and every experience that has come to you that has given you more life, whether it has been sad or not at the moment. Be grateful for everything that you have received, and say to yourself, because everything I have received has given me the capacity to give.

And furthermore, be sure that you don't put that horrible yoke of gratitude.

Sounds terrible? The horrible yoke of gratitude upon yourself or another that comes from the lower levels of the personality be sure that your thankfulness that your gratitude is coming from deity and going to deity in your consciousness because people who feel a yoke or or prison of gratitude because of what someone else did for them, or vice versa.

Poison the free, loving, giving and receiving.

When you know that anyone who did anything for you was a channel for God, your gratitude will reach a level so that you will love them forever and forever ever if you don't already do so but whatever they did for you and incidentally if they injured you they did it for you as well as if they seemed to help you all of it has been a gift of life to life from life and this yoke of gratitude is usually an inability to recognize that love has been giving to love love has been giving to love in other words my lameness for example was a gift of love because had I not had this gift of love and I was able to dance before remember had I not had this gift of love I would not have been forced into the deepening of my cup of consciousness, I would not have been forced into seeking answers to some of the riddles of life and experience, and therefore I would not remotely have had the capacity to give and to receive, had I not had the gift of becoming lame. Now then, I hope you have had such gifts in the past.

To the degree that you can enter into the true spirit of gratitude to the Lord of life for everything. When you are able to be grateful for every yesterday, you will not have to go through the type of experiences that actually prohibit your expressing of the fullness of your selfhood. You will have passed through the adolescence then. Of your soul and you can do it incidentally vicariously once you achieve the capacity for it I say that the fact that you are here shows you have either done it or you can do it vicariously and that you are ready now to walk with gratitude towards life no matter what is occurring so that you can start bringing to all humanity and to all life the beauty and the fulfillment fulfillment which is awaiting us, but we have to lift our hearts and be able to be these gracious receivers and to know that all things have been and are a gift of life to life. Let's go out then when we leave the temple today, holding in mind that everything that has ever happened to us has been the gift of love to our heart, our soul, our minds, our bodies.

Let's say thank you for the consciousness and the awareness that this has brought me. Let's say thank you for the depth of responsiveness to life that I now have.

And let's say thank you to everyone we thought, was our enemy or that ever rejected us let's say thank you to all beings and all creatures to all times and all climes let's say thank you for awareness and then let's see how much miracle can opens up that we never even remotely were aware of before I'd like to finish this thought with the little Thanksgiving prayer that I wrote for our Thanksgiving season and then we will continue with the pro with our Thanksgiving service Thanksgiving prayer let my eyes behold thy face, adorning thee through every race. Through creatures living neath the earth, through tree and flower that give thee birth, through feathered bird upon the wing, sun, sun, rain, earth, sky, through everything, let my eyes behold thy face.

Teach my ears to know thy voice, to hear thy word and thus rejoice in rustling leaves and thunder wild, in sound of creature, laughing child, child, in tender speech, in melody, ah, let me listen thus to thee.

Let me touch the heart of life, that I may soothe its anguished strife, caress and comfort tenderly the yearning souls that walk toward thee. Be grateful, God, am I this day, That Thou hast taught me how to pray.