David Truman - The Lie of Smallness

David: I'll tell you, brother, I've had an interesting revelation in the last couple of days: this idea that God is out to provide ecstasy to everyone for free. And THEN, as a concurrent realization: an umbrella will block out the sun; and therefore, it is really man's duty, not so much to strive for his inheritance as to see the ways in which he blocks out the sun, and simply to relinquish it.

Jesus: Yes, indeed, it is so.

David: Is it? See? So in this sense, the whole process is really quite simple. All it is, is the illusions need to be dropped.

Jesus: Absolutely! It is just that for some people, they need to do more specific things for a while first.

David: I know. I don't really mean to invalidate that by this, but just to say it comes down to this.

Jesus: This is the ultimate. Absolutely. Absolutely.

David: It really has to do with this flood of Divine perfection, intention, ecstasy, perfection, that IS. And then, over against that, by a simple act of concentration, a person blocks out the sun.

Jesus: Yes. That is exactly right.

David: That his puny one-dollar umbrella would block out the billion horsepower sun. It's a miracle of intention to hide, huh?

Jesus: It could only do so if the person "were" puny themselves, you see. That is why it can block out the sun to the person.

David: Because the person has assumed this position of being small enough to be under an umbrella of that magnitude?

Jesus: Yes. If they could not BE under the umbrella, if they did not identify with the puniness of the one who was under an umbrella, they could not block out the sun.

David: So Ramana Maharshi, who always said, "I'll answer your question, but first, who wants to know?," was not so far off.

Jesus: Oh no. He was very right on.

David: Brother, is it a special dispensation now, that I feel this great angelic host around me, or is it that I have simply maintained and developed the slightly greater sensitivity to these realities?

Jesus: It is both.

David: You know, I feel it as an external gathering of intention from some so-called external source, as if I am being ushered or blessed with quite some horsepower. But then again, there's always the possibility that one's appreciation of Reality was too dim, and that this has always been so, exactly. You see?

Jesus: It is a combination.

David: Yes, I suppose that would be the obvious truth. Beautiful, brother. But anyway, I take it upon myself. Thank you. Thank you for this intention. So strong in you it is, brother.

Jesus: I love you, brother.

David: So strong. Give me your foot. (David affectionately takes Jesus' foot to massage it.)

Jesus: (laughs)

David: (laughs) I have you now!

Jesus: (laughing) I love you, brother. Indeed! You are indeed the great one, the great brother. I love you.

David: Beautiful. Thank you, brother. So. Your intention is a constant, brother. It is really very much like the steady ocean against the shore.

Jesus: You know, when a man is evolving, or shall I say, becoming himself, when a man is in this process that all human beings go through—the unfolding, the transcending, the giving away of ego, so forth, being absorbed in God—there comes a time where he or she realizes there's nothing so much to do except to love. Love God in all God's forms, God as people as well as God directly. And God will do everything that is necessary for your liberation.

David: Uh huh. Because if one makes project of it, one entirely misunderstands. One is reinvesting in illusion altogether, in smallness, as a project. As I say, by a simple act of concentration—which is to say, smallness, in a sense. One keeps out the sun. Love is bigness.

Jesus: It is. And it is the nature of love to do everything that one thinks one needs to do in self-improvement. It is simply natural. One need not even worry, you see. It is free, then. You see?

David: Oh, I see. Yes. In other words, incorporated within love is all one needs. Whereas if one does these things as an ego-improvement project, this is perhaps doing the right thing, but not from the right place, or for the right reasons.

Jesus: Yes. You understood it when you spoke some time ago, and you said, "Discipline is not a value of itself. It is valuable insofar as it is a response, a loving response." You see?

David: Yes. How about, for example: the carpenter builds a house for his wife. Eh? Now, how much sawing and nailing would there be? Quite a bit. And yet, it is all love.

Jesus: Yes, it is all love.

David: It is a focused effort to bring the beauty to his wife, and to take care of her, huh?

Jesus: Yes. Yes. And you see, God will take care of you. God will take care of everything. Absolutely everything in you. For you.

David: Oh! You know your Father very well.

Jesus: I do.

David: In other words, you're not really blowing smoke up anyone's ass when you speak of the Father. I mean that in a nice way, of course.

Jesus: (laughing)

David: Well, it's good for a man to speak of experience, not of theory. You realize, I have a WORLD of pundits. God! They do not speak of experience, they speak of theory.

Jesus: They have no idea of which they speak.

David: Yes. This is why I say, you know the Father.

Jesus: Yes, I do.

David: Good!

Jesus: I love you, brother.

David: You say, smallness is the problem humanity has taken upon itself in its mind.

Jesus: By means of concentration, as you say.

David: And love, bigness, expansion, release of contraction—is it the answer? Hiding is ego's answer to infinity; love is the spirit's answer to itself. Huh? Would you say it?

Jesus: Yes.

David: How did humanity get the idea to fear what it itself is? See? What a crazy idea, running from oneself.

Jesus: It is a crazy idea, brother.

David: Running from LOVE, to be exact.

Jesus: Yes.

David: (after a long pause) I see, brother. You are here. God is here. And each time I assume myself to be small, I start making efforts either to run from God or to create God—either of which is an umbrella. Huh?

Jesus: Yes.

David: It is not necessary to squint to have you be the case. (laughs) This is what I realize. Or to do anything SPECIAL.

Jesus: You know it, brother. You know it.

David: In fact, doing something special, this can be an umbrella.

Jesus: Yes. It is indeed.

David: The celestials—all their umbrellas, if they have any, must be glass, transparent. They live in a world of form and yet, it excludes nothing. The light gets in. The light is in. The light IS in.

Jesus: Yes. You know it!

David: A baby's cry for mercy, for help, for love, for tit, is an umbrella of light. From light to light. In this sense, everything is complete.

Jesus: Yes. Yes.

David: This is how you tricksters have not done it.

Jesus: (laughing)

David: I see! (laughing) This is how you have not done it! This is how you have not done it. Good non-job!

Jesus: (laughing) Indeed.

David: To have been in Reality at last. To have found it acceptable, the truth of it. Wow.

Jesus: Yes.

David: The children are running helter-skelter under the sun, thinking they are in the dark, afraid of the light, running back and forth. And the universe is only trying to love them, embrace them, help them, while they're panicking somehow, and then taking matters into their own hands. I see it, brother. I see it when you say the Father will help you in all. I see how that is DIFFERENT than this what I describe. The way of the insane prodigals. Insanity.

Jesus: Yes. And there is so much worrying in that. When you think you are just a tiny entity trying to make it, trying to survive, trying to be okay. So much worry they have.

David: Mm hmm, yes, the weight of it.

Jesus: Trying to take care of their own spirituality in particular.

David: Well, people have known that some self-preparation they have done seems to have effectuated, engendered, a Divine response. And they have also known that everything that happened of consequence in their spiritual life was automatic, was given as a grace—not, in fact, created. Right?

Jesus: Yes.

David: But we can make a space for this idea of the preparation. To burn the candle of some sort of love intention.

Jesus: Yes, oh yes. It is a love response, in fact. Love response.

David: That of the being burning the candle, or that of the Deity, in that sense?

Jesus: The discipline, the work. It is a necessity, spiritual work, even WITH God's grace.

David: Okay, right. So now we've come around the circle to the original part of the conversation in which you said, "That which is love contains within itself all the necessary things. Comes of its heart that one does these things."

Jesus: Yes. It is natural.

David: Yeah. (claps)

Jesus: And God will take care of everything. Everything. God will fulfill. God will liberate. God will so forth and so on. God already made each one what they are. And God will re-virginize, re-new that being, as a result of the love relationship.

David: God ACTS, as this being, towards its own renewal, in a way.

Jesus: Yes.

David: God inspires Itself, as that being, to renew itself. Even the impulse, in other words—that which comes from love is of God.

Jesus: Yes, is God.

David: In this sense, God finds His way to Himself, of Himself.

Jesus: Yes. Yes.

David: So the prodigality is simply the reluctance to follow one's own true Divine impulse faithfully.

Jesus: And to love God, you see. To love God.

David: If one does not, then, love God, one excludes all: the entirety of oneself and of the universe. And certainly of one's fellows, in their own Divinity.

Jesus: Yes.

David: So you say, "If I could boil it down for you, it would be 'love God with your whole heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.' Or, in short, love."

Jesus: Yes.

David: God is not not-them that are. They are not not-God either.

Jesus: Yes.

David: It's divisions that's causing us troubles.

Jesus: Yes. There is no need to look elsewhere for God, but here. God is here.

David: Thank you, Father, for being here. Being here. I love You back. Thank you, brother, for reminding us who we are, and Who is our Father. Who we are, and Who is our Father. Thank you. You are the man, brother, a man of experience, a man of truth. I love you.

Jesus: I love you back. I love you back.

David: Great truths! Great knowing! Thank You, Father. Thank you, son.

Jesus: Thank you, brother.