1998-09-25-Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

Session

Opening

• Sharing and Prayer

Daniel (BobS): My greetings to all of those here gathered. This is Daniel. My thanks to all of you who have made the effort to attend our meeting here tonight. I especially am heartfelt to those who, at some sacrifice, work this into their schedules. The evening we have planned for you tonight we hope and pray will be a significant spiritual growth factor, for that is what we are about, as your teachers, to assist you to grow spiritually. Now with these words of introduction, I turn the microphone over to Aaron.

Aaron: Greetings, friends. This is Aaron. Tonight it is our pleasure to rally the troops and to perhaps inspire each of you to the opportunity of vocalizing the insights coming to you. Recognize that perfection is attained through eons of imperfection, trial and error, effort. Therefore we encourage you to apply yourselves toward this opportunity to engage material with spiritual through the realm of mind in an effort to produce a beneficial result of spiritual outpouring that may enlighten your fellows and produce a sense of growth even within yourselves. I will hang around and be present, enjoying this opportunity to encourage you. Thank you, friends.

Lesson

Human Condition

Alkon (Bill/Isaac): Good evening, my friends, I am Alkon, Isaac's personal teacher. This evening I have been included in the format in order to share my concerns and wisdom. I wish to emphasize the distinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin. This distinction is of great import, for it is of the nature of Deity. It is natural for you, as mortals, to think from the outside in and to attribute to yourselves and your fellows motivations which are directly connected with actions. And depending on the degree of evil, of error, or of sin in a person's actions, are they judged by their fellows, and by themselves sometimes, as comprised of an evil or sinful self.

Your culture has emphasized a false doctrine, the so-called "depravity of mankind." It has encouraged irresponsibility by declaring that the evil and the error that you do is due to your nature, inherited from your progenitor, Adam. With this philosophic background, it is easy for everyone to accept this false judgment and condemn themselves and others when their actions are deemed to be in error or possibly even in sin. We who are part of this Teaching Corps have as one of our major objectives the disenfranchisement of this intellectual fraud and spiritual poison from the culture of this planet. Therefore have we been teaching you that your nature is not essentially evil, fallen, etc., but that there exists in your minds that very fragment of Deity, your Thought Adjuster/Mystery Monitor. I will not reiterate all of this which you are already clear about.

Now that you understand that your essential nature is good and not evil, how then do you handle erroneous or sinful behavior in yourselves or others? The free will of the personality is capable of making wrong choices. Most of the time these are made in ignorance, so we term them error or evil rather than sin. But there are those times when persons do deliberately choose to do that which they know is the way of darkness - not God's will., and in rebellion against their maker. Because your personalities are not basically evil but are basically good, there is a slight weight given to the altruistic, to the God-aligned choices by your Indwelling Monitor and by the Spirit of Truth which pervades your soul as well.

Judas

Nevertheless, individuals being imperfect in this state and even in the morontial state, continue to make errors. The feeling of judgmental rejection which you experience towards yourself and towards others is an erroneous conclusion. Firstly, the judgment is imperfect. It is not your job to make judgments, for you are an individual, and judgments are only made by groups. Secondly, you are erroneous when you reach these conclusions for there is implied in such a notion the false doctrine of the fallen and basically evil nature of men and women. Remember our Master loved Judas the betrayer. He loved him because he was his child. He loved him because his personality was a gift of the Father of Personalities. He loved him and waited patiently in hopes that Judas would see the error of his ways. You have been told that Judas has now found, in the morontial experience, his true path. And though his name has been the source of great consternation throughout the Universe of Nebadon, he is a reclaimed son.

My friends, I share with you these things so that you may continue this process of self- and other-forgiveness, and take it to the completion of Supremacy. You do well. I am proud to be involved with mortals of such high resolve, with such sincere dedication. Thank you for your listening ears and your open hearts.

Gratitude

Minearisa (Cathy): This is Minearisa. I congratulate you on your heartfelt exercise last week and, to continue with Alkon's presentation of defining distinction between the sin and the sinner, I ask you to participate one more time in an exercise. In your quiet time, as you dialog with celestials and your Heavenly Father and Mother, you often ask for things such as, for example, "Please, God, help me to have more patience, for I know I am not patient enough with myself." My point this evening is to get the point across that when you make such a statement, what you affirm in your conscious, and more importantly your subconscious existence, is that of lack. I do not have enough patience, I do not have enough love, I do not have enough tolerance. So when you make these statements what you are doing is reinforcing in your own consciousness the fact that you lack what it is that you desire the most. And by putting those thoughts into concrete ideation, you tend to reinforce the fact that you lack them.

An alternative approach is to give thanks for the tremendous strides you have made in the areas of patience, love and tolerance. To express in gratitude that which you already have amplifies those qualities you wish to have more of. So tonight my assignment is to repeat last week's challenge, but this time I would like for you to talk to that person who has wronged you, or whom you have wronged, from a position of gratitude - from a position of elevated spiritual consciousness. For example, you would be acting and reacting to that person from a more understanding level. You would be acting and reacting less out of fear, less out of ego-hurt, and more from a position of understanding the intentionality of the other person rather than your perception of the hurtful word or the hurtful deed. I hope this is clear. I release this TR again to participate.

Dialogue

Cathy: I was really struggling to get that out. Did that make sense?

BobS: Yes.

Exercise

Forgiveness

Cathy: I'll try it. Mom, I know that you had a physical addiction to cigarettes. And all those times in the car when I was getting sick and you were making fun of me for choking, I know that you didn't mean to do that, and you didn't understand how much I hated it because it was something that was pleasurable to you. And you didn't understand that it made me gag and made me worry about your health. And I've also come to understand that the addiction was one of the only ways that you could be you, that you were unique and you were different. You were the last of ten kids by a Baptist preacher. God knows you needed, in a socially-acceptable way, to say "Screw you!" And I think that was your way. I still miss you and I'm still really mad that you're not around to see your grand kids grow up, but that was your choice. And I respect that. And I think if you had it to do over, you might have hung around long enough to see me divorce the guy you really hated. I think you would have really enjoyed that. I love you. I'm done.

BobD: I know I'm sitting here trying to think how I'd go about saying what I'd need to say. It seems like I've already done this with the people I try to think about someone that I haven't talked it out with in person.

Cathy: It must be nice to be that perfect!

(laughter)

BobD: Okay. Cathy

(laughter)

The people that I've had issues with anytime in recent history I've actually talked to personally. I don't feel a sense of issue with any particular person at this present time, and as far as past history, I don't know, grudges tend to last a year or two with me, they don't tend to go far back so in trying to think of somebody that I haven't already done this with, I just can't come up with one.

BobS: You want some of mine? I would talk to a girl, now a woman, named X. I remember the incident as though it was yesterday. Back in the seventh grade. You sat behind me and a couple of seats to the left. And one day out of the blue you tell me you love me. And I couldn't deal with that! I put you down and made fun of you, must have hurt you terribly. You moved shortly after that and I lost track of you. But I still remember that day as if it was yesterday. And I ask for your forgiveness and hope and pray your life has gone well and that you've found someone else more worthy than me, and have had a wonderful life and family.

(long silence)

Bill: I want to relate, rather than do the exercise, something about myself and my father. My father was very hard on me as a child, and that is not just my opinion as a child, but that is the opinion of many adults who talked to me about as I grew up and especially as I became an adult. And they themselves were unable to explain the reason. The result was that I felt incompetent in many ways because I was always corrected for my mistakes and sometimes called names, and so forth. I went through a similar exercise to this many times in my 's and 30's and 40's and made a lot of progress in forgiveness. But the crucial fact for me was the understanding I gained from a psychiatrist friend of mine. He explained to me that the reason my father treated me this was that his mother died when he was 4.

And he as a little boy assumed responsibility for that. When he grew up and had his own son he projected that self-hatred on to me, rather than keep it in himself. And that explanation relieved me of the great question about "Why did this happen to me?" It had nothing to do with me as a child or as an adult. Now I've never told my father this, and I'm not sure that I can, not because I'm afraid to, but I don't know whether he would understand, but I would be willing to actually do that. I did confront him once about how I felt unloved and it made him extremely defensive - so much so that he wanted to have a fistfight. I know in his heart that he did the best he could. And we don't have this relationship anymore, I'm not that little 4-yr-old. Things are much better. I just couldn't bring myself to try to act that out in front of you all tonight, but I wanted you to know I've been thinking about this. I'll practice it in private and report back.

(long silence)

Closing

Alkon(Bill): My dear friends, this is Alkon again. As you practice your meditation in your quiet time this week and as you talk with that one with whom you are or have been offended with or whom you have injured, look past the behaviors that have offended you - the words, the actions - and see that essence of sonship/daughtership in the other person. At the same time, see it in yourself. Let your Thought Adjusters communicate their love and your love, one with the other. At the same time, this is not a condoning of error or sin. This is not to say that in forgiveness you dispense with assessment of wrongdoing. Objectionable, immoral, self-centered, controlling behaviors (and you all know what these entail) are not the will of God. They are evidence of imperfection, immaturity, and free-will decision. The behaviors are still to be condemned. They are not to be OK'd because ultimately, evil that results in sin and iniquity is self-extinguishing. It shall not last for all time.

You have all made the decision to proceed to Paradise, and you are all betrothed to your Adjusters. Your engagement is wonderful to behold. As you proceed in your growth and as each person gives over to the First Source and Center their free will to comply and to joyfully do the will of God, so will this whole Master Universe one day be completed in perfection on the level of the Supreme and even on the level of the Ultimate.

On behalf of the other teachers, I now draw our meeting to a close. Enjoy your spiritual adventures this week, and we look forward to our next contact with you all. Be at peace. Good evening.