Relationships and Irreconcilable Differences

Irreconcilable differences begin to accrue as soon as a person forgets that being entrusted with someone’s trust, love, self-esteem, growth, and happiness is a privilege and not a birthright. It is a precious gift to love and be loved.

Once we give something a name, we have given it a definition. Once we have defined it, it no longer has room to grow. What we call a relationship and what we call marriage must grow to meet who we have evolved into. When my first husband and I returned home from our marriage I did not recognize him. He had become a ‘husband’, which bore no resemblance to the man that I had been engaged to. I, on the other hand, did not know how to become a ‘wife’. And, I have to add that the husband he became was his father, a man that I would never have married. So even if I had known how to become a wife, I would have had to become his mother to make the institution function. We did not form a relationship, we entered an institution with strictly defined roles, at least, the ones that worked for my husband.

When two people enter into a committed relationship they create an extension of themselves, a midpoint where they unite. So, the relationship is not a thing, or an institution as marriage is called, but a place where lovers join, share, love and grow together. It is the third entity. It is the form of the bond through which their love flows, through which they share themselves and experience each others growth from that sharing and that bonding. This does not describe most relationships and it does not describe most marriages. The reason begins in childhood.

Children have their first and most important lessons in relationships in their family homes. They learn by watching their parents with each other, they learn by watching their parents with themselves and their siblings, and they learn through their interaction with their siblings. One of the first challenges that we are faced with when we enter into an adult relationship is that it is destructible. The relationship with our parents and siblings is indestructible, for better or for worse – they are always there. Even if we run away, they are still always there till death do we part. The relationship between parents and children is the only relationship that is relatively certain to be till death. Yet, somewhere in our subconscious minds we form, and act based upon a belief that a few words repeated before an official creates the same unbreakable bond. It does not and it has not for a very long time.

Divorce statistics show that eighty percent of marriages that end in divorce do so because of irreconcilable differences. Any relationship, including marriage will last as long as the needs of those involved are being met. This makes sense, but understanding those needs, grasping the importance of those needs and realizing how the survival of a marriage can hinge on the smallest thing is a little more difficult. This is because the smallest slight, or cruel word said in a fight never leaves the relationship. It never leaves the memory of the one who was slighted – never – ever, no matter what the person says. Put a person under hypnosis and you will find that throughout that person’s entire life there was not a leaf that blew by that is not remembered. We are, for better or for worse, memory keepers. No one knows for sure where all of the memories go, but what is a fact is that if the incident is repeated, the original one flies out to meet it and grow.

They say God is in the details, well, a relationship is strengthened or weakened by the details, the little tiny details and sometimes no one is aware of its condition until it snaps. One partner says, “What did I do”, the other partner says, “I don’t know, just a lot of things”. It is just a lot of little things. So many people think that the work ends when you say “I do”. This may be when we stop working, but it is also the time when the things that must be worked on begin to accumulate.

From the beginning of any relationship, we need to understand that if we have, ‘fallen in love’, then we are under the influence of a heavy intoxicant, maybe the heaviest. We are not in our right minds. The more that we struggle to see beyond our need for the next fix of the other person’s energy, the better chance we have at success. Clarity is the most important thing in having a successful relationship, make your needs clear – especially to yourself. My hand is a zillion times more mine than my husband will ever be. When it comes to another human being, we can’t take the word ‘mine’ too literally. No one abandons a relationship that makes them happy. No one cheats on a relationship that fulfils his or her needs. No one can be held down, held back, or controlled indefinitely. The only way to guarantee that the one you love is going to be there is to seek to make that person feel important, appreciated, loved, and most of all respected.

There are always two complete individuals and the relationship. The part of you that enters the relationship is the part of you who thinks first of the other – first my love, then us, then me. If you do this there will be times when you sacrifice what you want for your partner, but there will be equal times when your partner does the same for you. You don’t need to be in a relationship to worry about yourself, you can do that alone.

Forget about being right and never even consider winning. In a relationship if one person wins the fight, both lose the war. Sometimes we want our partners to think the same way as we do about everything. Only, if they really begin to do that we begin to feel that the person we fell in love with has been possessed by a member of the Stepford community. And sometimes if they don’t, we fear that we will lose our partner to someone who thinks the way that he or she does. If you are on opposing sides of an issue, respect the other’s right to see things from a different perspective than yours. If you have left your ego, and your baggage outside, an explanation, or saying, “These are the reasons that I feel this way…” may or may not convert the other person, but at least that person will have an understanding of why your beliefs are what they are and understanding in itself should make honoring your right to your beliefs easier.

Some beliefs, often religious or political are never going to become one. However, they are deeply charged with emotion and should not be criticized, discussed perhaps, but never critically. If there are little things that your partner needs that to you seem ridiculous – honor them. You will have you own share of ridiculous needs to be honored.

At some point in a relationship we realize that we do not want to continue without the other person. Not too long after that we have our first fight and realize that this unbelievable, one of a kind, made in heaven relationship is not indestructible. This causes that monster fear to raise its head. We become possessive, and jealous. At which point we remarkably do everything possible to alienate the person that we feel we can’t live without. We forget the most important thing, for some reason that can be articulated, this other person decided that he or she wanted to commit to us. What is important here is that whatever made that person, come to that decision was something about who we were, and what we did. It was never a specific thing, it was a mode of behavior, a way of being – what comes from the heart that beats inside of us. If you love someone and want to keep that person by your side till death do you part, be who you were when that person fell in love with you, and even more, when that person chose you to commit to.

We want to go to heaven but we don’t want to die. We want a guarantee that our partner will never leave us, but we don’t want to do the work to make them stay. If you are not sure as to what you should do, or if you have been fighting for so long that you have forgotten, ask your partner this, “What was it that made you want to spend your life with me?” “What can I do to make you want a life with me as badly as you did in the beginning?” This is not asking who else you should become, or, who else you should act like, it is asking what part of who you are that you have not been lately, or you could be more of.

A Little Story

They stood at the edge, all of them this time, staring at Him, in awe, in wonder, in pain, and asked, "Why?" This is not the why of a mother, who lost her child, or the why of a grieving lover, or even the why of a dying man before his last breath, but the why of mankind lost, the why of mankind hopeless, and He answered:

When I lay dying on the cross, you watched, in pain, in horror perhaps, but you watched, what did you learn? Perhaps many things to pass down in words, that became no more than words recited in many different tongues, in many different ways not but lived? Did you live those words? No, you did not. And how many chances did you have to act, how many chances did you have to change? Do you remember the greatest sins?

You have ears, but refuse to hear, and you have eyes but refuse to see? You learned nothing. You learned nothing through plagues. You learned nothing through holocausts. You have learned nothing through every suffering body that I have inhabited since the cross, you chose not to see, you have decided that you are not your brother's keeper, you are selfish, you limit love by how it limits you. I hear not your cries for you heed neither my works, nor my suffering, my love does not touch you, do not ask now why God has forsaken you, ask why you have forsaken God. Should this Day of Judgment come? Is there a need for these admonitions? Look around you, look within your hearts - covered with indifference. Were I to say that I grant you one more chance, what would you then do? I tell you now, that you would forget this moment and go back to your selfish petty lives.

You would continue to praise my name, not for my words, but for my appearance. I am the homeless man on the street that you walk over. I am the AIDS victim that you scorn. I am the innocent mother and child who is murdered because I was there when you dropped a bomb. I am the child who is aborted by a mother only because you refuse to get involved and give help. Instead, you picket; you make noise, but do not inconvenience your lives to save me, to nurture me, to welcome me into your own home. When you turn away from the earth, for greed, you turn away from me, when you turn away from the hungry; you turn away from me. I am not only Love, but I am those who need love. I am not a religion – I am the Word. I am the Life that the Father has breathed into every living creature on the earth. I am the Blood that runs through the veins, and the heart that beats with the sounds of life in all beings. I am neither to be worshipped, nor to be preached. I am to be lived – as I lived and died for you. Why should you be saved? When I said on the cross, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do", I sought forgiveness for your ignorance - that ignorance, is a luxury, that you no longer have.

There is enough food on this planet for all to be fed. There is enough money on this planet for all to have shelter and abundance. Why is there starvation? Why is there hunger? Surely, it is not because God does not give. It is because no sooner can God provide than the greedy consume. What do you need? How can you measure your worth by the money in the bank, the millions that you may amass? Do you know what you are amassing?

It is not money that you amass, no, it is the bodies of the starving children, for whom that money was intended by God to feed. Perhaps if poverty were as visible to you, as it is to God, it would cause you as much pain as it does Him. Yet, you move to neighborhoods where you do not have to see, and where you do not have to hear. God does not have that luxury. In Gods neighborhood, all suffering is seen, and all cries are heard. How much is enough for you? No one deserves more than another does; no one earns more than another in the eyes of the Lord. There is no extra until not one child goes hungry. Keep your money in your bank, and keep your time for yourself, but do not look to God to cure the ills of your world. The only ill in your world is your greed.

There will not be salvation for you until you stop blaming, stop judging, and begin pointing the finger at yourselves. Search within for the courage to Love at any cost, to accept that yes, you are not only your brothers keeper, but you are your brother, for your brother and you are God.

Save yourselves, save your souls for this day will surely come, and not by God's doing, but by your own. Remember it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Do as you choose, this is the planet of choice, but take responsibility for what you do. Fool yourself, but do not try to fool the Lord. God created man in His own image, stop trying to recreate God in yours.

Lessons Not Learned

“Look at yourself, Look at what you are and measure it against what you imagine you are and what your conscience tells you, you must be. Be shocked, America! Be stunned, be overwhelmed by what you see, and feel at the center of your being the purifying fire of remorse.” Frederick Douglass

This is a small world. And perhaps it is the shrinking of the world that will ultimately bring us the era of peace that has been prophesied; it is, after all, this small world which has brought us to the entrance of war.

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?” Frederick Douglass

You see, this shrinking world, has dragged the poor, the slaves, and the under privileged into the ‘grand illuminated temple of ‘liberty’, a temple into which they may only enter carrying a tray of food to serve, a broom to sweep, a new brick to lay, or through the medium of television. While the wealthy are spared constant images of poverty flashing into their homes over the airwaves —the poor are not afforded the same courtesy. The wealthy have claimed ownership of the world’s resources. Lush fruit trees grow in the back yards of the poor but they may only labor in the fields collecting the harvest, they may not eat of it. The poor go hungry and children die of starvation even in the wealthiest country in the world.

The ability to communicate and to see what goes on in every country affords the oppressed a view of lives which they would not have otherwise known, and it is through those images of wealth that the poor are faced with the clear reflection of their own poverty. The world is overburdened by mans inequity and mans psyche is overburdened with pain. People see that there are opportunities they do not share, and yet, those opportunities are advertised as basic human rights. They see that all they need to advance in life is a good education, but they will almost never be afforded that education.

Now, the technological advances that have turned an entire planet into a neighborhood where to wealthy unknowingly parade their wealth before their neighbors who have nothing. Every revolution on the planet has been seeded by this. I have heard many people who had grown up poor, before the world became so small, say that they did not feel poor or feel badly about being poor because everyone else was in the same position. It is when the poor must endure not only their suffering but the constant exposure to those who are greedy and wasteful that the poor, feeling a loss of value, rebel against those who hoard the wealth. Without a sense of self-worth, without a sense of value, man finds little left to live for and often is vulnerable or unconsciously seeks out a cause to die for that in some way will give value to their having lived.

We live in a world of uncomfortable neighbors who, were it not for technology, would not be so forced into acknowledging the circumstance of the other. Along with creating animosity that had not existed before, between nations and people who really would not have known each other in such intimate terms, it has also created a way to kill each other with a minimum of effort and a maximum of emotional detachment. Yet, there is something else, something much more important that the shrinking world has made manifest. It has forced mankind to come face to face with its own hypocrisy. This hypocrisy is no less evident in a country whose Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This country can state this in its declaration of independence while at the same time supporting slavery and the annihilation of its native peoples. In an industrialized and technologically advanced world it is necessary to have a workforce that is at least minimally educated. Because of this necessity, those who once suffered oppression without the education which would awaken their awareness of being oppressed, are now informed of the inequity in which they exist.

The ignorance which once shielded the division of classes is being technologically erased and so society can no longer sustain the division. We live in the information age, the age of knowledge and knowledge breeds discontent. What you know can hurt everyone. Without ignorance, the hypocrisy of inequality is exposed. Without knowledge, those with vision can only dream, but, with knowledge, those with vision can and do change the world. Ignorance veils the truth, but once exposed, the truth does set us free.

"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world." Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is an inevitable truth that whatever we use to selfishly build ourselves up, will one day be used to tear us down. At whatever moment we make the choice to use any of God’s gifts to advance one over another, we have secured the weapon of our own demise. What goes around comes around, what is sent out will return. The technology that the few have used to covet the resources of the earth which belong to all is that same technology which is exposing this misuse and forcing mankind to look at what we are, as Frederick Douglass said, and measure it against what we imagine ourselves to be.

Technology has made secrets more difficult to keep and it will slowly but surely make abuses profitless. Those who we have elected to govern us, have used our trust to place themselves in positions that change them from representatives of the people to representatives of only themselves. Ours has declined into a government that represents the interests of those that govern and not those who are governed. If those in congress voted for the people to have the same rights to health insurance and pensions that they themselves enjoy, then we would have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. At present, in the United States, we have a government of those in power, by those in power and for those in power.

We study history so that we do not repeat it. And yet, repeating it is all that we ever do - new set same play. When will we come to the understanding that we own nothing, we are entitled to nothing above that which every other human being on the planet is entitled. We are permitted the use of the earth’s resources so long as we understand and accept the responsibility of that use. When resources are limited they must be equally shared. History has shown us over thousands of years of wars, revolutions, and natural disasters that what we do not share will inevitably be taken away.

When AIDS was used to judge the lifestyles of homosexuals, it was loosed upon those who judged. We are waiting for Judgment Day, unable to see that it has been here for many years. The world looks more and more like a comic in the New Yorker magazine depicting Big fat pigs with cigars stepping on little ant sized people. Those who are the guiltiest of the injustices that are inherent in greed are distorting religion, particularly Christianity to justify their actions. How can anyone call themselves Christians and not live as Jesus Christ lived?

During his 40 days in the wilderness he was given a test. It is a test we are all given, particularly in the country. He could have had mansions and servants traveling the world in luxury but that was not the wealth that he chose, who could choose that wealth today and call themselves a Christian, maybe a Christian wanabe in some lifetime, but not a Christian. The basic tenet upon which almost every religion is built is that we are to love our brothers as ourselves, do unto other as we would have others do unto us. I have to believe that only by losing everything will those who hoard everything ever learn. That they do not see what they are doing because if they saw, they might change only to save what they have and not learn the lesson of giving.

“And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed." Isaiah 6:9-10

Many individuals on earth who share the dream of One World are joining together to reach out and aid those who are still in the dark. We are learning that our survival is intricately connected with the survival of everyone else on the planet because they are our neighbors, we are no longer a world — we are a neighborhood. One person cannot have a net worth of several billion dollars, while millions of children around the world starve to death. The world is now a neighborhood and those children are our neighbors’ children. If we do not protect our neighbors’ children, eventually it will be our children who need protecting, and we will be alone.

“A certain heathen came to Shammai and said to him, "Make me a proselyte, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Thereupon he repulsed him with the rod which was in his hand. When he went to Hillel, he said to him, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; all the rest of it is commentary; go and learn." Judaism. Talmud, Shabbat 31a

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Albert Einstein

Releasing our Baggage

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Empty the boat of your life, O man; when empty it will swiftly sail. (From the Dhammapada (aphorisms of the Buddha)

I was faced with a choice regarding the quality of the life that I would live. I could be unhappy; looking at the seemingly unending list of tragedies that seemed to enter my life, not to mention all of the great adversity that I myself invited. Or I could look at the fact that for every dollar I lost I found five dollars, and for every dollar that was stolen from me, I was given ten dollars. For each sadness there was greater joy. I could live the life of one who is miserable because for every win there is a loss, or as someone who is grateful because for every loss there is a win.

These are the decisions that I felt I had to make in order to turn a painful life in to a joyous one. During my dark night of the soul, my most painful time, I had to find a way to be happy and at peace regardless of the circumstances in my life or more importantly, in my history. I decided that I would not rely on life for my happiness. Basically I decided that because I had to go on through anything that came my way, for the sake of my family, I needed to take control of my present. I had to take control of the quality of my life, and the only way to do that was to refuse to allow my past experiences to dictate my living.

To take control of our lives is to begin eliminating the baggage that we carry with us from our past. It is this baggage; my sad childhood is one suitcase and within it are the complexes that were left with me from it. My bad marriage was another and within it was my feeling of being a failure as a woman. Rejection from my friends was another bag, which contained my feelings of self-loathing. All of this baggage seemed to have no bottom.

Each moment that I lived seemed to jump back into the suitcase that most resembled it. With all of that baggage, I literally could not go anywhere that I did not have clothes in my suitcases to fit. Since I carried those suitcases with me, I lived out of them. If I was looking for a man, I put on my abused woman outfit. If I was looking for a job, I put on my desperate worthless outfit. I could only venture in my life where I was equipped to go. That equipment was whatever clothes I had in my baggage. I only went into experiences; or rather I only related to experiences that I had from my past. I could dress for them. In other words I knew how to dress for them because I could relate them to my history and therefore I could relive them. In order for me to move forward, to begin fresh, I had to travel light. Let go of my past experiences and my past habits and come only with myself.

Our baggage limits us. We feel unable to avoid living out of the baggage that we carry. Only when we let it go, can we shop for new perceptions to live through. The key is to keep that wardrobe only so long as it fits where we are. When we move on, we leave it behind and take only what is necessary. What we take is us. We need to understand that each situation is different. Each situation is new. We need different perspectives, and different solutions. In order to truly realize the totality of each new experience, we need to start fresh. Once we learn to leave the past where it was appropriate, we will see each moment as it is. Our lives will be fuller because we are experiencing it as it happens. In order to truly release our past, and leave our baggage behind, we must come to terms with it. We must always close the past, not just walk away from it. We need to put it where it belongs intentionally.

We have to truly release ourselves from guilt and regret. Because when we come to the realization that perhaps, we are in some way responsible for the unhappiness that seems to follow us, we add the blame of carrying it to the other baggage that we are carrying.
So even when we read all of the steps that show us how to move forward, we add to our burdens that guilt, or the loss of self worth that we feel for not releasing those things that cause us pain. In this way we only cause ourselves more pain. It is essential to understand that everything that we did was OK. Everything is appropriate for the situation in which it was created. Our past actions and our past emotions are fine as long as we leave them where they belong.

Even if we fall backwards, or take a long time to stop, that is OK too. We have not done anything wrong because we cannot do anything wrong. Even when we act out of negative emotions or negative intentions we are still learning and still teaching lessons. So long as we are here we are in progress. God will not judge where we are or what we have done until we are finished and there is no more left to do. So long as we have breath in us, we have a chance. We are learning. As a child learns to speak, and says one of those cute things that are not exactly right, it is not wrong, it is all in the process of learning. We need to release ourselves, and go even further, we need to praise ourselves for acknowledging the need to change. We should praise ourselves for making the attempt. If we intend to grow, intend to improve, and intend to become better human beings, those intentions show that we are growing. They show that we are learning and becoming who our souls are striving to become. Just as we do when we graduate to a new grade, we need to take with us the knowledge gained, the lessons learned and leave the textbooks of our struggles behind.

The Value Of Man

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"And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the multitude were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. And calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, 'Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.'" (Mark 12:41-44)

In the transitory material world, the value of a man or woman is based upon how much he has amassed. Yet, in the Spiritual World, the value of a man is based upon how much of what he has amassed, he has given to those in need. We are all here to contribute what we have, and who we are. What is expected of us is dependent upon the level of evolution of our souls. A young soul is here to contribute to building of material structure. Young souls translate the spiritual concepts into material form. They immerse themselves in the material world, without them, and all of their apparent superficiality there would be no material world from which the spiritual may emerge. All life is symbolic. A caterpillar represents the soul. The cocoon symbolically represents the material world and the ego. The young soul dissolves into ‘both’ while here on the earth. Remember the cocoon is hard, and it is dark. The caterpillar is lost to itself inside of the cocoon, however, for a time in the beginning it is also safe.

Without knowing why, the young soul is drawn to the material world so opposite from its spiritual origin. Just as the caterpillar is compelled to leave the world of the familiar to create and enter the cocoon. They build the ego structure. The young soul learns to depend upon the material world and all that it has to offer. It learns to be greedy, lustful, and all of those non-spiritual drives that form the walls of the ego structure. Once the young soul has mastered the material world, the ego has no more to learn and so it has no more to give to the soul. The cocoon is complete. Now the soul, once enclosed by the ego must consume the knowledge of the ego and transform the material back into the spiritual and the ego back into the soul. At which point, it becomes a butterfly free of the world. As the young soul begins to find it is no longer nourished by the world as it had once been, it seeks that which is higher than the world. On this part of the journey the soul seeks spiritual nourishment, and still guided by the ego, it seeks this in the world that it knows, the world outside of the self. Thus, it sees God outside of itself. It only does what it knows to do. It recreates spirit in form. It worships God in the image of man, a superman – but still with the feelings and emotions of man, of a father creator. It has not yet seen the world for what it is, but it knows that it needs something more than it sees, or at least above the world that it sees. In order, to reach the God that is above the world it creates religion as a stairway up to that God.

As the process continues, the soul becomes immersed in emotional situations desperately seeking fulfillment of the need to merge, to fully feel at one with something that it does not yet understand. Severed from the ability to identify and merge with the things of the world, it now hungers to identify as one with another. Through the pain and suffering of this part of the journey the soul matures. It begins to find that nothing and no one can satisfy its ‘hunger’ or its ‘emptiness’. Nothing outside of itself can reach into the emptiness within itself and fill the growing void. Again the soul seeks God, but now it can no longer be a God that ‘communicates’ from without nor ‘dictates rules’ from without nor ‘has a home’ without. It must find God within - hear the voice from within and become filled from within. Now the soul finds itself betrayed by the world, betrayed by its things unable to find another soul who can fulfill its expectations and nonetheless, forsaken by its religion. Then, certain of God, certain that what it needs can be found, the mature soul begins to change the direction of its quest from without to within.

Finding less and less value in what it posses, it begins to give. The more that it gives, the better it feels. Without knowing it, the soul has begun the process of turning form into spirit - material into spiritual - and as it does this it finds itself nourished and ‘made full’ in a way that it could never have imagined. The mature soul begins to see beauty, miracles and perfection in the spirit of the world and the spirit of each living spirit on it. And so it releases its attachment to having, and to holding and finds its only joy in giving and sharing. Miraculously, the love, respect, self-worth and value that the soul has spent lifetimes seeking in the world are found in an ever-flowing Source – the God Self within. Diamonds are hidden within coal. The greatest joy in the world is hidden within our fear. Why do we not give more? It is because we fear not having enough.

Once I had a job where I worked very hard. I did my job and my manager’s job. When it came time for the end of the year review, the person in charge of giving out the raises gave me a $2000.00 a year raise and gave him a $5000.00 a year raise. When I complained, he told me that although looking at the amounts it seemed that his raise was greater than mine, if I looked at the percentage increase in his income compared to the percentage increase in my income I would see that my work had been given much greater value. At first, I thought it was a really good line. However later I realized that it was true in everything. In the marketplace, money is money, and one hundred dollars does not buy as much as one-thousand. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. However, when it comes to giving, the value lies not in the face value of the gift, but in how much of what you have to give, you want to give to a person - or to the world.

We live with God within us: we are of God. When we give, to whomever we give, we are expressing how much we care - how much of ourselves have merged with our Spirit and how much of ourselves are yet with the world. That amount has no figure on it, there is no great sum that shows how giving and loving a person is, there is only a great percentage of what we have. If a person has only a penny and selflessly gives that penny, it becomes a mustard seed and grows not only in the works it performs but in the heart and soul of the person who gave it. If a person has a million dollars and gives one thousand to others, the gift will supply its market value and little more. It has little spiritual energy, and it will end up taking more from the giver than it gives. When you give all that you can to those in need, you will be given more than you can contain in love and self-worth.

Contrary to all of your fears, what you give is returned to you ten-fold because you gave beyond what your ‘worldly self’ could release, and you placed your God before the world. No one ever needs to know what you did, nor does anyone need to praise what you did, because the praise flows from within and the gift grows nurtured by Spirit as do you. Here is a true story:
A sobbing little girl stood near a small church from which she had been turned away because it was "too crowded."

"I can't go to Sunday School," she sobbed to the pastor as he walked by.

Seeing her shabby, unkempt appearance, the pastor guessed the reason and, taking her by the hand, took her inside and found a place for her in the Sunday school class.

The child was so happy that they found room for her, and she went to bed that night thinking of the children who have no place to worship Jesus.



Some two years later, this child lay dead in one of the poor tenement buildings. Her parents called for the kindhearted pastor who had befriended their daughter to handle the final arrangements.

As her poor little body was being moved, a worn and crumpled red purse was found which seemed to have been rummaged from some trash dump.

Inside was found 57 cents and a note, scribbled in childish handwriting, which read: "This is to help build the little church bigger so more children can go to Sunday School." For two years she had saved for this offering of love.

When the pastor tearfully read that note, he knew instantly what he would do. Carrying this note and the cracked, red pocketbook to the pulpit, he told the story of her unselfish love and devotion.

He challenged his deacons to get busy and raise enough money for the larger building.

But the story does not end there...

A newspaper learned of the story and published. It was read by a wealthy realtor who offered them a parcel of land worth many thousands.

When told that the church could not pay so much, he offered to sell it to the little church for 57 cents.

Church members made large donations. Checks came from far and wide. Within five years the little girl's gift had increased to $250,000.00-a huge sum for that time (near the turn of the century). Her unselfish love had paid large dividends.

When you are in the city of Philadelphia, look up Temple Baptist Church, with a seating capacity of 3,300.

And be sure to visit Temple University, where thousands of students are educated.

Have a look, too, at the Good Samaritan Hospital and at a Sunday School building which houses hundreds of beautiful children, built so that no child in the area will ever need to be left outside during Sunday school time.

In one of the rooms of this building may be seen the picture of the sweet face of the little girl whose 57 cents, so sacrificially saved, made such remarkable history. Alongside of it is a portrait of her kind pastor, Dr. Russel H. Conwell, author of the book, "Acres of Diamonds".

As a soul matures, it finds that all that it clings to and becomes addicted to, in the world, only makes it emptier and hungrier. The emptiness and hunger is only satisfied by letting go, and giving. This turns matter into spirit. It turns what is transitory into what is permanent. The soul learns that only by emptying can it become filled, only by giving can it receive. Then happiness is replaced by joy and the journey to find self-esteem and self-worth finally ends.