Tacco: "I sell water filters and have a customer who orders every year for his restaurant. When I got his order this year the company didn't have the unit so I had to get it from somebody I never met. The person sent the unit to the restaurant and was to give me the commission, but the check took three weeks to arrive and I became filled with doubt that it would arrive at all.

"I had to go through a very difficult period of not trusting this man who I never met except by phone. Having no written contract between us, he could decide to hold the commission for himself and I would have no way to claim it. When the hundred dollars arrived, it really made me think about what the basis of my relationships is. I pondered that I have had many relationships, business and otherwise, where I became consumed with this fear of my trust being taken advantage of -- giving then being slapped down.

Do I wish to calculate and judge, or am I willing to just let go and accept whatever happens and go on from there? I was reflecting on how willing am I to keep giving unconditional love. David and I talked about how Heavenly Father could easily be bitter, experiencing what His children are and have been doing, yet that's not our experience of Him. I learned a lesson here."

Good morning. Your experience brings up a very important problem of all human life, no matter what the culture or age. This problem of trust reflects a much deeper problem, and I will go into it this morning. David or Tacco, why do you think that people have such a hard time to trust?

Tacco: "Thirty years ago, in my German class in university, we read the book called Kinder Liebe, (Child's Love). That short book said that the innocent child is a hundred percent open in terms of giving love, but as the child grows he learns that some people that he gives a hundred percent to don't return it in the same way. And so the maturing child learns whom he greets and with whom he has to be careful. Then, even in terms of falling in love jealousy creeps in; he starts asking, "Are you for me? Am I for you exclusively? Are you for anybody else other than me?"

"In response to this question You ask, Heavenly Father, I think people have a hard time in trusting because of past experiences of being hurt or betrayed."

What you have said, Tacco, is very central and straight to the point. I would like to expand on that: First let Me get back to the basic purpose of your life. Once you are born on this earth you have a destination: growing through childhood, adolescence, and on into maturity. You are to develop from a being who is nurtured and receives love to one who is able to fully nurture and give love -- from one who is very much in the objective or receiving role to one who eventually moves into the subjective or giving role.

This does not mean that once you have reached the stage where you become the nurturer you become the source of your love. You are always in the objective place because, as you've experienced especially in the past few years, your own ability to nurture has a greatly to do with your relationship with Me, your ability to receive from Me. But you go from the point of having parents who represent (ideally speaking) the love of God, to becoming a parent yourself in a direct relationship with Me. However, as you can see in this world, many of you were crippled along the way of growth to your full nurturing capacity. When you were very young you experienced an abuse of authority over you: you were hurt by someone you trusted who promised and didn't come through, either by word or by physical action.

Many of you are still caught in the realm of past abuse, even while your physical bodies grow to maturity and take on all the characteristics of being able to bear a child. You become stuck in some realm of pain because the elder that you trusted betrayed that trust and hurt you. So even as you physically continue to mature, internally, spiritually, you remain very much stuck in one place.

You will see the world through the eyes of your painful experience. Until that pain can be resolved it tends to govern every relationship in your life, especially the ones that are very crucial -- intimately with your spouse and children, and on the external level, a boss, leader, or anyone who is in the role of nurturing or giving something to you.

Resolving this pain is not just a matter of forgiving the one who originally abused you. More fundamentally, it is a matter of learning to be in touch with the more original part of yourself -- that part which essentially represents the very core purpose of your life (which is to grow freely from child to adult, in spirit as well as in body, from the one to whom all is given to the one who can freely give). And the essence of this giving is love -- maturing into the person who can truly give in love. And as I have often stated, this means to freely come into a relationship with Me.

How terrible it is when those who are placed in a nurturing role toward a child fail to realize that they are being seen to represent Me by that child. The child may not be conscious of this, but you see how absolutely he will look at his parent with such a deep and open trust and dependence. His heart is wide open. And yet when the parent is wrapped up within his own pain and hurt and has not been able to form that bond of love with Me, then this pain is passed to the child, and it goes from generation to generation to generation.

I know this is nothing new for you to hear, but I have to say it again. Because when you look at it from My eye, instead of My children reaching outward and looking toward Me, I see them caught in a world that is constantly turning in on itself and wounding it's offspring. I can say, "turning inward," but it's a cyclical thing -- a very unhealthy cycle -- and it needs to be broken. This is why I am trying so deeply [sigh] . . . to speak very directly in this day and age.

There is a very clear reason why books like Conversations with God, or your experience, or the experience of others that you are meeting, has to do with very direct input from Me. There are those who believe and continue to hold onto the concept that I am not to be communicated with except through certain doctrines or beliefs, churches or mediators. This makes Me very sad because here you see still the little child that is looking to the parent to represent God to them: A human race which is unable to grow to the point where one can look at another and say, "Yes, God can work fully through me...fully through you."

This is still seen as arrogance by many of your people. Indeed, this power has been misused in the past. Many who have claimed to represent God directly abused that position. But I want you to know that this is a different day and age. If you say, "I can't trust anyone who claims to speak on behalf of God or claims to be a channel for God," then aren't you simply reacting out of your own hurt from the past? This is the time to clean that up.

If someone on the street comes to you and says that he's having a direct experience with God, it's not the time to walk away judging him as crazy. Again, there is your hurt child living through you saying, "I've been hurt before and in making such a claim this person will betray me again." No, it's the time to be open, to listen and observe. There is nothing preventing you from walking away if that person does speak nonsense, or from having an incredible experience with Me through another whose experience is genuine.

I want to have a direct voice in today's human affairs, because this whole cycle, this huge problem of trust, has to be broken. And you see, even if you say that you have indeed forgiven those who hurt you in the past -- who misrepresented your God and those things you held most high, even if you say you've forgiven them -- this is not the final point. The final point is how to find within yourself that original healthy child of open arms, open eyes, open heart who can continue that most essential path of growth to maturity, who can become the adult, the nurturer and the lover, the one who cares.

Forgiving those who hurt you has no real substance until you can find this being within yourself. Without this step such forgiveness is basically legalistic. Ultimately, to forgive is to open that true and original person within yourself. Without this your forgiveness is only half completed, and it is the less important half at that.

Even if you cannot yet forgive those who have hurt you in the past, if you will take the path of finding that truer part of yourself, that inner self who is truly in harmony with the path that is most godly, then without a doubt you will come to the moment of forgiving. No one will have to tell you; you'll recognize your lack of forgiveness has more to do with your own inability to be in touch with who you truly are than just with whether another is guilty or not.

Like you, the object of your forgiveness is a person who walked in darkness, asleep to his own potential, unable to be in touch with himself and therefore unable to live a true life. As you awaken you will begin to see these people differently. You will realize that you are looking at a long row of human beings sleeping on a floor. You'll recognize that their actions are not dictated by true, godly awareness but by the dreams of those who have lost their awareness: bad dreams, in which they hurt one another and hurt themselves.

When you see this, your awakened state will desire to reach out to help them to awaken. You will try to help them awaken just by being who you are and by your interaction with them day by day. Was this not the life of Jesus Christ? Is this not the life of anyone who takes on that role of spiritual leadership?

Recognize that it is of no benefit to you to remain in that role of the little child who was hurt and betrayed by people who didn't keep their word, who were dishonorable, and who abused power -- you who physically grew but were subsequently betrayed throughout your life. Don't continue to walk on that path; on that path you will be unable to see the world in any other way. And by remaining in that betrayed role you will not become the nurturing person that you can be. You become a very unhealthy type of martyr.

The healthy martyrs of the past -- such as Jesus Christ who died on the cross blessing, loving and forgiving -- were nurturing and giving even as they were being murdered. But the misnamed martyrs that I so often see in the world are the ones who look at the world through eyes of essential cynicism, and will recognize that the world is impure and wrong and will betray. They only see themselves as crucified and can never love. If you are such a martyr you may feel that you would not hurt another and would not betray. But in essence you are already betraying because you are not bringing forth the self that is truly you, and so you do not give the world the benefit of your nurturing and love that is there within you. Is this understood? By omission you become the betrayer, even as you point the finger at those who commit the betrayal of commission.

(I know that was long and wordy. I could say it more simply but David's present mentality is in a certain line; he's feeling very obedient to Me. I could say it more simply but his consciousness is rather interesting this morning. There's some German influence there that wants to say everything.)

The question that comes is, "If I am to trust all of these people in the world who seem to be asleep, then how do I protect myself?" You may absolutely believe in them, and know that they have that sonship and daughtership of God within them. But if you just trust that while they themselves are not aware, then you still can be hurt badly by being taken advantage of, financially, or emotionally, or in any number of ways.

This is another kind of martyr -- the one who innocently, without blaming, goes through the world seeing the greatness within each, and becomes hurt in the meantime. It is a form of foolishness on your part if you look for goodness in another, and then proclaim yourself saintly because you don't judge him (because you know that he is simply not seeing his own potential), yet you allow the person to misuse his relation to you, continuing childish patterns that he has followed in the past.

This is a matter of your wisdom. You need to have that eye to see the potential of everyone, to understand that essential brilliant core of divinity that is within each, but you need to also have the wisdom not to let him continue the wrong, unconscious action in his relations with you. At some point, you may need to speak clearly, and even shock him. At another point you may need to simply walk away, recognizing that the person has no interest or desire to change his pattern of life at this time, and you do not want to be a victim of his continued thrashing and misuse. You need to have wisdom.

In essence, I too, am governed by this reality. There are those I cannot approach at this point because they are so wrapped up in their unconsciousness and destructive bad dreams that they have no interest in changing. I must wait until that moment when they are startled awake by their own mis-actions, then I can come to see if they are ready to awaken. You, too, need to exercise that wisdom. Is this person ready for a higher, deeper level of relationship? Or shall you wait?

In some cases, especially in the realm of day-by-day business, you will be connected with those who have no desire on the spiritual side, the side of the most essential path of growth. Then you yourself must judge whether you want to continue those relations or not. But I would say to you, recognize that each person is coming finally to that point of awakening, and it is not yours to walk away just because they don't seem ready.

If they are hurting and destroying in that lack of awakening, then you must walk away. But simply to walk away from anyone who doesn't seem ready for an opening to God or the spiritual path, this is arrogance. I don't walk away, for I await each moment that their eye may open simply a little bit. And then I'll tickle them under the chin to see if their eye will open wider, and if they look at Me there may be a potential there for awakening.

You, too, are in a role of serving that potential in yourself and in each other. You are not to be the judge and not to be the one who looks only for the "enlightened souls" to commune with. You are indeed a servant. You are indeed your brother and sister's keeper, as you are the keeper of yourself -- looking for that core, looking for that beauty of the awakening soul. Nothing more and nothing less. Keep this in your mind. Many times those who have begun to open up to the spiritual path become too narrowly focused and unable to deal with those around them because of the narrowness of their focus.

See each and every person as the one who has the potential to become a fully awakened son and daughter of God. That simply is the truth. See them as you would see yourself. Remember once more that I said to distance yourself and walk away only when you see that you will be hurt by someone who is absolutely unready to awaken and still lives in the realm of his bad dream. Then you have to judge and keep your distance. But it is not yours to judge simply if a person is not yet opening their eyes. Do you understand?

This matter of human trust is a very big one. The world will have to move on to become the nurturing parents. You live in a generation, particularly at this point in the 90's, where the bankruptcy of modern thought is becoming so clear. The leadership of your nation is doing the world a great favor right now in demonstrating that bankruptcy by refusing to take responsibility for the parental role, misusing power and authority. Those in your nation and throughout the world who have an eye to see have a chance to awaken to a greater understanding of responsibility, and of truly returning to a pure and simple relationship with their God, with the divinity within themselves. I long for this day!

You look at the world and think that it's falling apart, but I look at the world as it's shedding an old skin that needs to be dropped and left behind. A snake simply crawls out of his old skin, and there's a beautiful, fresh and tender skin underneath. However painfully, your world is crawling out of its old skin. Do not identify with the old skin but look at the bright new skin beneath. This is the time for you to nurture and love and care for yourself and for one another. However great your purpose, however magnificent your vision, if that heart of love and that heart of nurturing -- that pure new skin of the spirit -- is not exposed, then I am very sorry for what will come on this earth. The action of love is the essence of it.

I close by repeating, don't be caught by the hurt of your childhood; seek deeply for your essential self and lay aside your past as you come to know who you are, and day by day you will become the nurturers. This is simply the normal way of life that I speak of. It's nothing very special, but on the other hand it is a miraculous thing. For Me too. For Me too.

I'll leave you with this and I'll ask Tacco to pray.

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