Recreating Ourselves in the Image of the Master (Talk 5 of 6) - A Talk by Tom Price

You all forgive me? No. Okay, that's okay. That's okay. I forgive you. And we also talked. What have we talked about so far? I forget now. We talked first about joy and radiance, isn't that right? And to have a joyful face. I don't see everyone with a joyful face. I want to see a smile on everybody's face right now. And now I want to see you turn to your left and right and radiate that smile to everyone here in this room. Okay, that's what we talked about. And now I want you, I want you all at the same time to turn and shake the hand of the person on your left. You see.

[Applause]

No. Okay, okay. Some people figured out how to do it. Okay. Because that's what, but how will I said, he said, knit to yourself together, didn't he say that? He said, knit yourself together. So that wasn't just a little test to see if you could knit yourselves together. And then this morning, we began our session on how out of AHA thought, how he taught the faith. How many of you, when we started discussing this, thought that perhaps maybe the way in which you have been teaching is not exactly the same way out of AHA has been doing? So how many? One, two, three, twenty-eight, fifty, a hundred. Yes. You see, because sometimes we have to look very carefully when a Baháʼí says, "Look at me, follow maybe as I am." We have to look very carefully at what he does. And I pointed out to you that it's always difficult when you try to do a job and you have the wrong tool. You know, I've done this many times. I have the wrong tool and I'm trying to use the screwdriver to hammer in a nail, and I just can't do it. Or even worse, I'm trying to use a hammer to pull hair out of my head instead of tweezers or something like that. You know, it's just the right tool works so much better. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had the right tools. And we started to look at them. And the first thing we found is that you have to get your FILL. You have to get your FILL. And that must be done first. And what does FILL stand for? First, I listen and love. Until you do that step, you cannot do anything else. As soon as you meet someone, if you're teaching them, and this doesn't matter, any form of communication with a person, any kind of teaching or education or whatever, the first thing you do is listen to the person and you love the person. The second is you need to consult the FBI. And what does FBI stand for? Find the beauty inside that person. And when you find the beauty inside that person, what are you actually finding? You're finding God. Because any good quality in a person is God himself. Next, you must have the right DNA, which means that you, you do not argue. It doesn't matter what they say or what they believe. Do not resist what they say because everybody is right according to their own frame of reference, their own point of view. You need to see it from their point of reference, their frame of reference. And later, you might be able to change their frame of reference through a very interesting technique that we talked about by using analogies. Then you have to be that. How many of you can be BAD? One, two, three. Exactly. And what does BAD mean? Be a doctor. And what does a doctor do? He listens first. He listens first. He or she listens first and then figures out what is needed. You also have to find the BOB. You have to find the BOB. And what is the BOB? Build a bridge. And how easy is this to do? It's very easy. And then you finally can speak. But when you speak, you need to talk like HELL. How many of you can talk like HELL? Yeah, I know a few of you can do that. But this is the new kind of HELL. What does it stand for? Humility, extreme kindness, lowliness, and love. And once we learn to talk in this manner, our words will have an effect. And if we don't speak with humility, extreme kindness, lowliness, and love, our words have no effect, even if they be true. Then we talked about a few other principles. And I think we spoke quite a bit about speaking over someone's capacity, didn't we talk about that already? And this is a very interesting point. Baháʼu'lláh even said that if you speak words beyond someone's capacity, in fact, you could turn them against the Faith. Your goal is to attract them towards it. And you have the exact opposite, according to Baháʼu'lláh. Then we talked about teaching with analogy and using analogy. And we realize that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá used analogy quite often. And that when you teach with analogy, it's not threatening to the person because rather than directly telling them the truth that they have to accept, you're explaining truth over here, and they can see the truth for themselves and apply it to themselves. And so we talked a bit about this. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was so gentle with people when he conveyed truth. One time he said that when you speak, you should speak as mild as mother's milk. You know, this is a kind of words. And I remember reading a story of Harland Over when he was in the Holy Land and he had been told by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá that after he finished with the Holy Land, he was to go travel teaching to India. And he didn't want to go to India. He was scared too. You know, in those days, can you imagine how frightening and foreign India might have seemed to an American? And he didn't want to do this. He was scared of it. And at the end of his pilgrimage, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said to him, "I would like for you to go back to America." To return to America. And Harland said, "But ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, I thought I was going to India." And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said, "So did Christopher Columbus." And and this is so gentle. It's kind of he's using analogy but also so gentle. He didn't say, "I realize that you're just a chicken, you know, and you're not ready to do this or anything like this." He just made a gentle analogy. So sweet, the way he conveyed truth to people. And so this is a very interesting thing that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had this wonderful method. Now, because he was a doctor, the way in which he taught and the stories we read, it's difficult to work out whether or not we should copy any particular thing he did at anytime. Because I want to ask you a question: How many different ways are there to teach? How many different ways? Who can tell me how many different ways you think there are to teach? I asked somebody in another school and they said they thought there were 10 ways. And somebody else said they thought there were 2 ways. And somebody once said there's an infinity of ways. So now, okay, we have, we have two ways, we have ten, we have. And you think there's one way to teach? You think there's? Okay, Lana thinks there's one way to teach. So what's the answer? Well, let me just read what Shoghi Effendi says. Well, we'll go with Shoghi Effendi. You want to do that? Okay. So he says this: "There is no one method one can follow all through, but there should be as many ways of approach as there are types of individual seekers." Isn't that interesting? There are as many ways of approach as there are types of individual seekers. Sometimes we tend to think, "Oh, when you teach, you must always do this," or "When you teach, you must always say that." Or we even try to tell people, "This is what you must always do." And yet, here Shoghi Effendi says, "There are as many ways of teaching as there are types of individual seekers." He goes on to say, "Flexibility and variety of method is therefore an essential prerequisite for the success of every teaching activity." Now, why do you think first you have to listen and love? Because how are you going to be flexible and adaptable if you don't first listen? In other words, the person is the one that dictates the teaching method, not you. We think that we have a teaching method that we've decided upon and we're going to use it. And here Shoghi Effendi says, "No, the person dictates the teaching method." And you figure out what it is by listening and loving. There was one particular Baháʼí who also had to go travel teaching to India. And this time ʻAbdu'l-Bahá made him go with a different Baháʼí. And he was scared to death as well, by the way. There was a lot of travel teaching to India. And they, in the early days, it was one of the first areas that the Baháʼís traveled to. And so he went to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and said, "ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, please tell me how to teach the Indians. Tell me what to say." And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said, "When you go to India, look into their eyes. Look straight into their eyes and then love them." He says, "And then see my face. And then open your mouth and speak, and the words will come to you." And the interesting thing is, this person thought about what to say. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá didn't tell him what to say. He didn't tell him what to say. He told him what to do. And he told him to look right into the person's eyes and to love them. Because he wanted to listen and love and find the beauty inside. Then he said, "See my face." He put himself in there. Said, "See my face." Then, "Open your mouth and the words will come to you." And you may want to try this sometime. Because I remember when I was first a Baháʼí, I heard John Robarts say that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said, "Before you speak, always see my face. See ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's face." And he read a quotation from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá which he said, "Before you're about to give an address, always see my face and then speak." And John Roberts said, "I did that today before speaking to you." And so we all felt that he was seeing this. So when I heard that, ever since that time, whenever I give a concert that I'm conducting, I always put ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in my choir. And so for my whole life, every time I'm conducting, I put ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in the choir. He's usually right over there. And there's a brass section. And I just say like that. And every now and then, if a soloist is going a little out of tune, I look right at ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. I just, I say, you know, help him do out of tune. And occasionally it works. But the point is, is that it's very calming to us and it helps us. And I even have, I'll show you when I get to my next talk. Now that I have iPads, I just put ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's photo on the iPad. In the old days, in my notes, I had to write a little picture just with two eyes and stuff, which reminded me to see ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. And I'm not a very good artist. But now in the iPads, we have this. But you may want to try this too. In other words, there are forces, there are spiritual forces that we can draw upon which are far more powerful than merely just memorizing things by rote. That we can become a channel. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá has used me this way. But interestingly, he said, "You first have to look at the person and love the person, and then call on me." In other words, he's not just going to guide you if you're not going to do a few things. You have to put yourself in motion to listening and loving the person. Then perhaps he will be able to guide you. You know, you can't steer a car that's not in motion. If you take a car outside and it's parked and it's not moving, does the steering wheel do anything at all? No. But as soon as the car is put into motion, then the steering wheel can work. And God cannot guide us if we don't first put ourselves in motion. And I believe in teaching, that's listening and loving the person. Because that's what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said. Now, you cannot then learn how to teach by copying one story about ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Rather, you have to look at the totality of the way in which he taught and see what are his methods. Because quite often, the method of teaching requires that you get them to speak. Remember, it says, "First, I listen and love." That's the first quality. But not everybody, not everybody is just going to speak. Sometimes they may be quiet. And so you have to have skills to enable them to speak. Sometimes they will ask a question. And we hear one word and we merely pounce with the entire Baháʼí Revelation. We pounce on them because we latched on to one word. And when someone asks a question, the best thing sometimes to do is to ask them a question about that question rather than immediately try to answer it. Because quite often, when someone asks a question, there's a lot more to it. You know, when someone asks a question, there can be a lot more to it. It's like the tip of an iceberg. And who can tell me what size is the tip of an iceberg in relation to the iceberg? I'm sorry, exactly. It's 1/10. It's a scientific law that the tip of an iceberg always tells you how big the iceberg is. It's 1/10. It has to do with the weight of water and ice and its relative weight. So many times when someone asks a question, say, "Oh, there's a whole iceberg there." I know there was a captain of a ship that underestimated the tip of an iceberg. Okay. And fortunately, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá did not take the ticket to go on that ship. But he saw the tip of the iceberg and he underestimated it. And unfortunately, the ship went down. We do this sometimes when we teach. We underestimate the tip of the iceberg and we don't first try and assess what's going on. So you need to have skills to enable people to keep talking. And it's interesting that when someone says something, if you say, "What can you say?" You can say, "Have you thought about this before?" Or, "What do you think about this?" Or, "How do you feel about that?" Or, "I can see this is very interesting." You, you have to have various skills to enable them to talk. Because you want to listen in love and listen and love. You have to be interested in what they're going to say, not what you're about to say. And if you do this, people respond. Because people love it when you are interested in them. When you're genuinely interested in them, not that you're just immediately now thinking about yourself. And so this is an important skill that we can learn. The way ʻAbdu'l-Bahá taught. Remember, Shoghi Effendi said he was "wakeful and attentive in his early intercourse." I love that statement. Wakeful and attentive. Because I always think of a cat. And I think how wakeful and how attentive a cat is when he's first looking at his prey. And it's not that these people are prey, but the point is, is that it's that it's that the cat chose such attention, such care in watching the behavior. And this is what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says to do. So this is a great skill that we have to acquire. Sometimes when someone asks a question, perhaps you don't even need to answer the question. Because your skill might say, "Well, maybe that's not really what they're asking." Sometimes people will ask a question, and the face value of the words of the question might be one thing, but maybe the thing they're really saying is, "I want you to think I'm important," or "I want you to think I'm intelligent," or "I want you to think I went to university," or something. In other words, that's what they're really asking me. That's the translation. But the face value might be something else. And instead, you ask to the face value and you actually negate the very thing they're asking by not giving them respect or attention or love. Sometimes they ask a question and they don't even want the answer. You see, there's, there's so many different things. Let me read you a story from Muriel Ives' "Barrow knew Hall's Recollections about ʻAbdu'l-Bahá." She says, "As an example of the methods of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's teaching, my father was having difficulty understanding the matter of detachment. Just what were we supposed to become detached from? We were taught not to become isolated and detached as were the monks in a monastery. It was also an obligation to work and support those depended upon us. So where did detachment fit into this picture?" One day, Father asked ʻAbdu'l-Bahá about this. They were walking up Broadway after a meeting. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá made no answer. After walking a few blocks, Father repeated his question. Still no answer. They reached 76th Street, where the Kidneys lived, and turned left to West End Avenue. They mounted the outside steps. And Father asked for a third time. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá reached the front door and opened it and started in. He went to the inner stair and up to his room. Father padded along after him. They reached the second floor and turning up on the third, Father followed doggedly behind. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá finally entered his room, and Father closed in on his heels. And there the Master turned and said, "Mr. Ives, are you interested in detachment?" Father's face turned scarlet, and he was silent. He couldn't say he was, and he didn't want to say he wasn't. Isn't that interesting? He wasn't really interested. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wanted to know first. He didn't want to waste his time or his breath. Sometimes people ask things, and it's not really what's in their heart. In other words, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he quite clearly understood what was in people's hearts. And you think that we can't have the same intuition? I don't think so. I think that if you listen to people and you love people and find the beauty inside them, you know what is their true capacity and what they're interested in. And so this means that teaching is entirely about love. It's entirely about humility. It's entirely about lowliness. In fact, all of the qualities that everyone has been guessing that I haven't talked about, they're all encompassed in teaching. There is not one virtue that we cannot find in this. But teaching is all about love. But once you get to this quality of love and you start to teach, we find ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had many other qualities which I find fascinating. The first is that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was extremely scientific in his method of teaching, which is remarkable because he is a religious teacher and he's teaching religion. And it strikes me that when Shoghi Effendi was writing an introduction to the Baháʼí Faith for the Baháʼí World, the first time a brief synopsis of the Baháʼí Faith was to be published in the Baháʼí World, he wrote a beautiful few paragraphs which says, "The Baháʼí Faith is..." And even to this day, it's still used by the House of Justice as a brilliant, small summary of the Baháʼí Faith. And it begins with one sentence which says, "The Baháʼí Faith is..." And then it lists only five things that the Baháʼí Faith is. Only five things that the Baháʼí Faith is. And sometimes I ask groups larger than this, "Can you tell me what are Shoghi Effendi's first five things about what the Baháʼí Faith is?" And no one has yet ever guessed one of the ones if they don't know this passage. And it is "scientific in its methods." One of the few said, "Okay, you want to list the five things that are the Baháʼí Faith. What are you, the top five? Would you have put 'scientific in its methods' in the first five? Would it make your top 10? But it make your top 20?" And yet, it made Shoghi Effendi's first five. He said, "It's scientific in its methods." Now, what is the scientific method? And why is it that Shoghi Effendi was attracted to this quality in the Faith? Scientific method means that there is a way in which truth is explored. Truth is explored in a particular way, in which truth is studied. And then there's a certain method whereby we verify this truth. And one of the problems that religion has is with language. Truth is not easily conveyed because you say one word, it means one thing to one person, and another to another, and another person to another. And in fact, many religious arguments just end up on differences of understanding of language. Have you noticed this? Even in Baháʼí meetings, sometimes we get hung up on language. We talk about, you know, "With this word, what I think it means that, I think it means that." When in reality, we should only ever be talking about what we mean. But ʻAbdu'l-Bahá seemed to always define his terms before using them. Notice this. He always defined his terms. And he always listed things. So if he wanted to talk about love, he said, "There's four kinds of love." If he wanted to talk about unity, he said, "There's seven kinds of unity." If you want to talk about the powers of the human soul, there's five powers of the human soul. I found so many of these that I finally made a list. And I called it "A List of Lists." It's a list of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's lists. And I have dozens and dozens of them. And I keep finding them. And I find it interesting because when ʻAbdu'l-Bahá does this, he then makes it so easy to explain what he's talking about. For example, when he says there's three different kinds of religion, he calls them "faith." And we talked about this last year. He says there's three different kinds of faith. One is the religion of your family or your background or your nation or or whatever. And he says that's weak, traditional faith. But it's one kind of religion. You know, people that follow religion from this type. Yes. He says there's another kind of religion, and that is religion where the person who comes to believe the Messenger of God reads their teachings and accepts them. He says that's good. But there's a better kind of religion, and that's the religion of practice. The religion where you actually do what the Messenger said. And this is the third kind of religion. And so now we have three completely different concepts. And so now when ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says, "Religion," and he says, "It's good and we need religion," someone else over here doesn't say, "What do you mean we need religion? That's what's causing all the problems." Because ʻAbdu'l-Bahá has now defined what he means. And true understanding comes. In science, we call this "taxonomy." Taxonomy means that first you define the full range of the things that you're doing and make lists. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was very taxonomic in his method. And all those that study science understand that this is a quality that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had. He didn't use words without making it clear what they meant. Study some answer questions and you'll realize that he is the most scientific person that you could read, bar none. He just expressed things simply so we don't understand that. But remember, Albert Einstein, who was a great scientist himself, said, "If you cannot say something simply, you don't know it well enough." And so the art of being able to say profound things simply is also a scientific principle. Now, Shoghi Effendi listed eight qualities of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's teachings for the way in which he taught. He said he had eight qualities. And let's look at these very carefully because he says that if we want to teach, we have to do a number of things. He says, "First, we have to have sufficiently had individual regeneration." In other words, you and first need to regenerate yourself individually. Because you cannot set anything on fire if you yourself are not on fire. So he says, "Having attained sufficiently the individual regeneration, which we've been talking about, which he says is the essential requisite for teaching, let us arise to teach His Cause with righteousness, conviction, understanding, and vigor." Righteousness, conviction, understanding, and vigor. He says, "Let this be the paramount and most urgent duty of every Baháʼí. Let us make it the dominating passion of our life. Let us scatter to the utmost corners of the earth, sacrifice our personal interests, comforts, tastes, and pleasures, mingle with the diverse kindreds and peoples of the world, familiarize ourselves with their manners, traditions, thoughts, and customs, arouse, stimulate, and maintain universal interest in the Movement, and at the same time endeavor by all means in our power, by concentrated and persistent attention, to enlist the unreserved and active support of the more hopeful and receptive among our heroes. Let us bear in mind the example which our beloved Master has clearly set before us." And so now Shoghi Effendi lists the qualities that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had while teaching. So let's look at these eight qualities. They're quite similar to some of the six things here, but this is Shoghi Effendi's list and that's mine, okay? But anyway, let's look at this. He says, number one, the first quality ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had, he said, is "wise and tactful in his approach." Wise and tactful in his approach. Now, what does wise mean and wisdom mean? ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said that wisdom means that you speak according to the person's capacity and not beyond it. That's what wisdom. So in his early approach, he's wise. What does tactful mean? Yes, you choose your words carefully and you, you say things that do not in any way offend the person. Wise, you don't go beyond their capacity. Tactful, you try never to offend them. So he says, "Wise and tactful in his approach." He says, "To wakeful and attentive in his early intercourse." And I love this because now every time I'm teaching, I'm not thinking about what I'm going to say. I'm thinking about, "Go into my wakeful and attentive mode." Let's all practice that right now. You're just walking down the street, okay? And then suddenly there's someone else in the face, and you go into your wakeful and attentive mode, just like a cat. Okay? You go into that wakeful and attentive mode. And why are you going into that wakeful and attentive mode? Because suddenly now you are looking for what? You're looking for bridges. You're trying to diagnose. You're trying to find the beauty inside that person. That's why you're wakeful. That's why you're attentive. So that's the second quality. The third, Shoghi Effendi said, was "broad and liberal in all his public utterances." And this is a fascinating statement by Shoghi Effendi that he's pointing out that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had a different approach to public speaking than he did to individual teaching. He's pointing out a distinctive feature of the way in which ʻAbdu'l-Bahá worked to large gatherings as opposed to individuals. Why do you think ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was different in his public speaking, according to Shoghi Effendi, than he was to the individual? Why do you think so? Who can answer that? The group would be diverse. Yes, because now we're being a doctor. And as you know, a doctor has specific remedies for certain people. And it's not appropriate, necessary, to give the same medicine to everybody. But there are certain things that are generally good for everybody. There's certain things that are generally healthy, maybe that you need to drink water or get exercise or or something like that, that are generally healthy that a doctor can prescribe to masses of people. And there are other things that are very specific. So he says here that when ʻAbdu'l-Bahá spoke, he was "broad and liberal in his public utterances." Therefore, he's making it clear that there are certain Baháʼí teachings that are kind of like "drink water and get food." There are things that are good for everybody. And these are the things that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá used in his public utterances. And so this is very interesting. We can study ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's public teaching and the way he spoke, and we can see, "Okay, these are the broad and liberal things in the Baháʼí teachings that are generally useful." And then we can see that, "Okay, these other things we teach in the private way." So this is a very interesting thing that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had a difference in the way in which he taught publicly and which he taught individually. Broad and liberal. And I'll leave that to you to decide which Baháʼí teachings are broad and liberal. The fourth, he said, "cautious and gradual in the unfolding of the essential verities of the Cause." Cautious and gradual. What does cautious mean? Careful. What does gradual mean? Slowly. Does it mean not at all? No. Good. Does it mean that you don't teach at all? But it's gradual. Now, a lot of us are not that cautious and not that gradual. In fact, sometimes someone just says one word, "What is the Baháʼí Faith?" And suddenly you blast them with both barrels of the shotgun, okay? And there's no, no cautiousness there. There's no gradualness at all. And think how gentle the sun is at dawn. What would happen if suddenly it went from night and then there was noonday? Is this right? Have any of you ever had that happen to you where you're in total darkness and the light just hits you suddenly? It's terrible, right? And so this is very important. I mean, we have to be very careful. I mean, I told a story about the horse that was sick. And you know, there was another story about a guy that was driving past some farms. Actually, it wasn't too far from here in Tennessee. And as he was driving past the farm, he noticed that there was a pig with a wooden leg. And he was very surprised. So he pulled his car over and he said to the farmer, he said, "I noticed you've got a pig there with a wooden leg." And he says, "Well, that's the darndest pig you ever saw." He says, "That's the darndest pig." He said, "That pig can speak five languages, he sings beautifully, he's been coaching my child in school, and now he's getting straight A's. And just last night, he was on national TV on The Tonight Show performing." And the man said, "That's amazing, just amazing. But I still don't understand about the wooden leg." He said, "Well, you know, a pig like that, you don't eat all at once." And you see, the thing is, is that sometimes, sometimes some of us try to feed people the whole pig all at once. How many times have you seen people come up and they ask a simple question, and we try to give them the whole pig? And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá didn't, he didn't eat the pig all at once. He gradually unfolded the teachings according to their capacity. And to find somebody's capacity, you need to just give them a little bit and see how they respond to it, see how they take to it. If they're looking at their watch, or if they're yawning, or if they didn't even get it, or if they ask you a question that implies that they didn't get it, then don't keep feeding them the pig. Okay? Their capacity is all that matters. Everybody is on their own path to God. And it's not for us to decide how fast that path is to go. No, we only want to take them from where they are closer to that path. And if that takes a month, a year, a lifetime, or never at all, that's not our job. Our job is to listen and to love them. So ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was cautious, and he was gradual in the unfoldment of the essential verities of the Cause. V. Shoghi Effendi says that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was "passionate in his appeal, yet sober in argument." And I find it fascinating that Shoghi Effendi would notice this. That some people are quite passionate in the way they speak. You hear, you know, some people like that. They're quite passionate the way they speak, and it's all passion, and sometimes it leaves us cold, which is ironic because we say, "It makes no sense. It doesn't appeal to my intellect." It doesn't. And there's other people that are sober, and they have absolutely no passion. And what does sober mean? It means serious, it means logical, and so on. And have you ever met people that are very sober in their argument but have no passion? It's no good, is it? Have you ever met people that are very passionate and have no logic and seriousness and sobriety? It's interesting, isn't it, that these are two sides of a coin, just like two wings of a bird. They need to be balanced. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá somehow found this. He somehow found this. I go to some Baháʼí conferences where the talks are brilliant, but there's no passion at all, and I find it leaves me lacking. And sometimes I hear people that have great passion, and they don't have this serious side as well. And Shoghi Effendi was drawing our attention to the fact that we, as Baháʼís, need to be able to have both. So those of you that are leaning in the sober side, try to put a little more passion into your talk. Try to balance yourself like the female and male balances. Those of you that have a little passion, maybe you should look at a little more logic and serious and see if you can bring the balance. Most of us have one balance, one way or the other. If you can find both, you will be like ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, according to Shoghi Effendi. To be passionate in your appeal, yet sober in your argument. Six. They said, "confident in tone." ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was confident in tone. And confidence is an interesting quality because Shoghi Effendi talked over and over again about this being the essential quality of teaching. In fact, in one place, he said, "The Baháʼí teacher should be all confidence. Therein lies the secret of his success." Because when you are confident, it's not because you're confident in your abilities. It's because you're confident that God is assisting you, and that you feel this power of assistance. And the confidence comes from there. Because what does Baháʼu'lláh say is the source of courage? He says, "The source of courage and power is the promotion of the Word of God." When you teach, that's how you get courage. But sometimes we have no courage to teach. And so it becomes an endless loop that nothing happens because we have no courage to teach. And he says, "Well, the way to get courage is to teach." And so confidence gives you the understanding of the cyclical process that when you teach, God will assist you, then you have confidence to teach more, and you feel that power. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was confident in his tone. I don't like it when I hear people that aren't confident. Have you ever had people? They talk and they stand there, they're nervous, and they're not confident. It does not convey anything. So this is something ʻAbdu'l-Bahá talked with, according to Shoghi Effendi. Seventh, he said, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was "unswerving in conviction." Unswerving in conviction. He had absolute conviction of what he was teaching. And eighth, he said, "dignified in his manners." That he taught with dignity. And there are many ways that this can be interpreted. I don't want to say, you know, this is dignified and that's not dignified. But I think some of us know when things are not so dignified. I think we understand this. So Shoghi Effendi then concludes by saying, "Such were the distinguishing features of our beloved's noble presentation of the Cause of Baháʼu'lláh." And so this is why I had to include as one of the six, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's methods of teaching. Would you agree that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's method of teaching has to be one of the things that we have to learn to emulate? I think that if any of us decided to go home and do these six things, that we would find our teaching would change overnight. That it's not so much that we are good teachers or bad teachers. It's only the extent to which we just copy the example of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Sometimes we think, "Oh, that person's naturally a good teacher and I'm not." But in fact, it's only that maybe that person has a few more of these qualities or has learned to do them. But I don't think that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi and Baháʼu'lláh would make it mandatory for everyone to teach if everyone couldn't do it. That would be so cruel, don't you think? To say everybody should teach. In fact, Baháʼu'lláh says, "Make mention of Me on My earth, that I may mention you in the next world." And stuff. And then you can't do it. Wouldn't that be so, so terrible? So basically, he's telling us how to do it. It's right here in black and white. Get your FILL. You consult the FBI. Have the right DNA. That find the BOB. And talk like HELL. It's just six things. Memorize those six things. Save them to yourself as you're teaching, and you will find that your teaching will change. I want to read you a statement from the Báb. He says, "It is better to guide one soul than to possess all that is on earth." And as soon as I'm reading that, I'm saying, "Hold on, Báb, you sure about that? It's better to guide one soul than to possess all that is on earth?" Okay, over here, let's put everything that's on earth. Okay? Let's put all the wealth and all the money and all the nations and all houses, everything else. Just put it over there. Now, over here, just put one soul that we have guided to the Faith. And the Báb is saying, "This one is not worth as much as this." How can that be? How can that be? So the Báb explains. He says, "For as long as that guided soul is under the shadow of the Tree of Divine Unity, he and the one who has guided him will both be recipients of God's tender mercy, whereas possession of earthly things will cease at the time of death." I say, "Oh, now I get it." This is if, over here, not going to last very long. This thing here is going to last forever, as long as that soul is guided. So this is an eternal thing, and this is a temporary thing. So often we don't realize how temporary this life is. This life is so temporary. In fact, I want you to imagine you go into a doctor's office and there's some magazines on the waiting room table. Have you ever seen those magazines on the tables like Golf Digest from 1982 or something? Is some ridiculous magazine? And let's say you go into this doctor's office and there's a rule that you can't take the magazines out of the waiting room. And you reach for a magazine, and somebody grabs it away from you. And you reach for another, and they grab. And then everybody's fighting over the magazines. And somebody has five magazines and you can't even read them, but he's still holding on to them. This is what life is like. We're fighting over magazines in the waiting room. That's all we're doing in life. We're fighting over magazines in a waiting room where we're going somewhere else, have something important to do. The doctor's about to call us. Okay? The doctor's about to call us, and all we're worried about is fighting about the magazines in the waiting room. And that's what's going on in the world. I just look at the world and I say, "This is a big waiting room with a lot of old magazines that none of us even want, and we're fighting over them." And so this is what the Báb is telling us. He's telling us that all of this stuff over here is not worth as much as guiding one soul. And so this is a remarkable passage. And he continues to say this: "The path to guidance is one of love and compassion, not of force and coercion." So now he's telling you how to do it. He says, "It's better to have this and to have that." And the path to it is love and compassion. Notice he didn't say the path to it is knowledge and facts and details. The path to this, to gain something that's more valuable than all possessions, is through love and compassion, not to force and coercion. This has been God's method in the past and shall continue to be in the future. "He causeth whom He pleaseth to enter the shadow of His mercy. Verily, He is the Supreme Protector, the All-Generous. There is no paradise more wondrous for any soul than to be exposed to God's Manifestation in his day, to hear His verses and believe in them, to attain His presence, which is not but the presence of God, to sail upon the sea of the heavenly kingdom in His good pleasure, and to partake of the choice fruits of the paradise of His divine oneness." So basically, we know now that this is the thing. This is the greatest gift of God, according to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. I want to read you that whole passage. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says, "Whosoever and whatsoever meeting becometh a hindrance to the diffusion of the light of the Faith." Have you ever been to any meetings where maybe there's been a little of hindrance to the diffusion of light? Never happened? One, two, three? Never ever happened. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says, "What to do whenever that happens? Whosoever and whatsoever meeting becomes a hindrance, he says, let the loved ones give them counsel and say, 'Of all the gifts of God, the greatest is the gift of teaching. It draweth us unto the grace of God, and is our first obligation.' Of such a gift, how can we deprive ourselves? Nay, our lives, our goods, our comforts, are we to offer them all as a sacrifice for the Abhá Beauty and teach the Cause of God?" Isn't that a beautiful statement? Because basically, God is just so nice to us. God is so, that he gives us this gift. I mean, I mean, it's nice anyone gives you a gift, but he certainly doesn't have to give this gift to us. If God wanted to, he could zap the whole world and make them Baháʼís. I mean, he's all-powerful. I'm sure he can do it. I'm sure he can do it. But for some reason, he allows us to do it. How, how wonderful does a child feel if a parent gives the child one of the parent's jobs to do? How respected, how loved, how honored the child feels. And this is what God does to us because He loves us so much that he lets us do His work. He lets us do His work. And it seems to me that if we're given the Faith, and remember, we were given it. I don't think that you're a Baháʼí because you're just, you're so great and you're so smart and you discovered it first. Baháʼu'lláh says, "And the longer I mature, prepare thy grace have raised me up and led me unto Thee, who otherwise I might." In other words, you are sitting in this room here today because God has chosen you. You are here because God has given you this gift. And he's given you this gift. He says, "Can you please give it to some others?" And if you take that gift and just hang on to it, then he's not going to mention you in His world. That's what he says. So this is the main teaching that to not teach is the most selfish act one can do in all of creation. In all of spiritual creation, there is no act more selfish than to have been given this gift by God and then not to give it to others. And so all I want to tell you now is that you can partake of this gift. This gift is sitting under your Christmas tree right now, and it's the greatest of all the gifts of God. It's the largest present. You can go home and you can unwrap that present and partake of that gift right now. If you study the way ʻAbdu'l-Bahá taught, he gave us the method whereby we can partake of this greatest gift of God. So that concludes the session on teaching, which we began this morning. Tomorrow, we're going to go on to the sixth quality of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. And you thought the first five were good, but they were nothing compared to this one. The sixth quality of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is, I saved it for last. It should have been the first. And I don't know if you're going to be able to guess it. But tomorrow morning, you do not want to miss the sixth quality of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. So we'll go on to that. I hope that you enjoyed the first five. We may have a little time left. How much time do we have? Okay. I finished quite soon because teaching was done. But yesterday, people complained to me bitterly that they don't forgive me for not allowing time for a discussion and questions. And I apologize for that. But there's a lot of material in this course. And so I'll give you a little bit of time now. Think very carefully because you may never get time like this again. And if there's anything I've said, first about joy and radiance, secondly about seeing only the good in people, thirdly about forgiveness, fourth about unity, and now fifth about teaching, specifically ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's teaching, if there's those things you would like me to clarify or discuss right now, please raise your hand. Yes. What we're talking about in teaching is not to necessarily convert. First of all, everybody is in God's hands. All we are trying to do is become on fire ourselves and to share that fire with others and ignite others to what extent we're able to do that. But Baháʼu'lláh says.

Leave them onto themselves. Whosoever desires, let him turn aside from this counsel, and whosoever desires, let him choose the path to his Lord.

I like to think of it like this: the Universal House of Justice member, a huge chance, said that he found that he was never successful in teaching as long as he was trying to make Baháʼís. Then suddenly, he found he was successful when he tried to find Baháʼís. He said this subtle shift in mental attitude: that teaching has nothing to do with converting people. It has to do with finding people, finding souls that are ready and waiting for this. And so, teaching is the act of searching for people that have a common interest, that are attracted to this, not trying to beat your head against the wall with people that are not. They're trying to find the highest. So you go out and you engage people in meaningful, distinctive conversation about important things to the world. And many people, they only want to talk about shoes and movie stars and all kinds of things. That's fine. And then someone, they eat it up, just like someone that's dying of thirst and you have some water and they drink it. And then you have found a Baháʼí. And then teaching is the act of love, the act of joy, the act of sharing your love for the Faith with that person.

Now, the House of Justice has so blessed us because they understand that teaching is not just about converting and facts. It's about enjoying and sharing the love of service and doing something in the world. So they have created an entire new system whereby we cannot invite people to become Baháʼís, but to invite them to start serving humanity in our core activities, in our study classes, or invite them to start worshipping God in a regular way in devotional gatherings. So teaching has nothing to do with trying to convert people or coerce people or get them to think something that you'd have. No, it's the act of finding those people that are attracted to life. They're attracted to life, just like soil is attracted to the plant. And you find them. And now the House of Justice has given us this entire mechanism whereby we can partake of this greatest gift of God. This is why we have to be so grateful to the House of Justice for giving us the five-year plan, for giving us the means whereby we can enjoy this greatest gift of God.

And so I would say, absolutely, teaching has nothing to do with trying to convert people. We don't convert anyone. All we do is we bark like dogs. That's all. You're laughing when you say "bark like dogs," but the reason I say that is that there was a great teacher of the Cause, his name was Haruna. And he came over to America. And he was a fantastic teacher. And he came to Philadelphia. He converted hundreds of people in India in the 1890s. You go to Philadelphia now, and you can't even do that. Okay? And he was able to, he went to Washington D.C., and he went to Chicago. He was a remarkable teacher. The power of God flowed through him. And then he got this idea that maybe it was because of his own work that he was doing it. And so he told other Baháʼís, "You take the East, and I'll take the West." Because he felt that this was his Faith. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he dispatched another teacher to America. His name was Mr. Abu Faisal. He sent him to America. And you would have thought, "Well, how could it possibly? Every single American Baháʼí became a Baháʼí through this." ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is there in prison. You can't come across. What are we going to do? So Mirza Abu Faisal, who was the most humble man you have ever met, go and read any story of him, and you'll make you cry because he had greater intellectual power than anyone in the Faith, and yet he had greater humility.

So he comes over to America and he says to the believers, he says, "I want you to imagine you're in a desert at night, and it's totally dark, and there's clouds, and you cannot see anything in the sky. You cannot even see the hand in front of you. It's completely dark, and you're in the desert at night, and you don't know where to go." And he says, "Suddenly, you hear in the far distance a dog barking." And so you go closer to the dog barking, just by the sound. And you get closer and closer. The dog barking gets louder. And then, as you get very close to the dog, you see behind the dog, you see the whole city, the city lights." And he says, "At that point, you don't need the dog anymore. You can see the city yourself, and you can go." And he said that, "Mirza Abu Faisal and I, we are nothing but barking dogs. We're just barking dogs. Everybody has the capacity to see the truth for themselves. We're just barking dogs." And that's all the teaching is. It's just the barking of dogs. Yes, with all humility and some of your sense of humor. There's 200 people in this room. Tell us how we... Yes, yes.

What did Shoghi Effendi say? He said, "To act, to persevere, to act and to persevere is to achieve ultimate victory." Yes, that's what Shoghi Effendi said. In other words, these are the two essential qualities that we're talking about. First is action, and second is perseverance. These two go hand-in-hand. In other words, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said that all things are achieved "kam-kam," "ruth-davish." That means little by little, day by day. But ʻAbdu'l-Bahá made it very clear that if you do not do it daily, the dailiness is the essential component of it. If you do not do it daily, then you will not achieve things. Shoghi Effendi said that life is like rowing upstream. He said, he said, "As long as you're rowing, you're getting somewhere. But as soon as you rest on your oars, you go downstream." And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá used a different analogy. He said that the bird, as long as it's flying, it will soar. But as soon as it stops flying, it goes straight down. So this is why Shoghi Effendi used the term "persevere" to both act and to persevere in your action. These two things are all that you need, according to Shoghi Effendi. He didn't say anymore. He just said, "To act and to persevere, and you'll achieve ultimate victory." You have this in the palm of your hand today. You act today upon these things, and tomorrow you persevere, and you do it again. And the next day you persevere, and you do it again. It's just the mere combination of action and perseverance that leads to achievement. This is true in all fields of endeavor in life, not just in the Faith and in teaching. In any field of endeavor, it's the mere combination, the interplay of action and perseverance that Shoghi Effendi was so brilliant to put that in just two words: "Act, persevere." And I'm sorry that I didn't mention that if I didn't. I hope you'll forgive me. Okay. I hoped... Yes. Back here. Okay. Well, better late than never. But I thank you so much for sharing that because I feel the same thing. Even right now, even if I'm saying these things, I look at ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and I say, "Oh my gosh, this has been staring me in the face all my life, and I didn't realize that." I'm doing these things. It's quite interesting. Sometimes you realize that you're doing something, you just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. What do they say? The definition of insanity is that you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well, perhaps if you're not getting the results that you would like in your teaching, maybe you should stop doing whatever you're doing and do something else. And since you're going to do something else, how about doing there's something else that we see here that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was doing?

I find this interesting in relation to singing. That many people are very self-conscious about their singing, and they've come up to me and they say, "Oh, somebody once told me 20 years ago that I sang bad, and I've never sung ever since because I was hurt by it." And I'm thinking, "This is very interesting because it's very easy to change the way you sing." And so in my singing classes, the first thing I do is I make people make sounds of everything they can make. They have to imitate a horse, or a chicken, or a dog, or a cow, or something like that. And they realize that there's many different ways to produce tone. And then I tell them, "Okay, now you have to impersonate famous singers." And I give them really strange singers like Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson and people that I give them to cross, you know. And they all come back and they impersonate the way these people, and they sound exactly like it. And I say, "Well, isn't it interesting that you have the ability to change the way you sing in all kinds of different ways, and yet every time you sing, you always sing the same way, and you hate the way you sing?" And then finally, the penny drops. They say, "Oh, I see. Yes, change is possible. I have it within me."

And this is interesting because ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he was once asked, "How did he become noble?" And he said, "Imagine what a noble person is like. Imagine what a noble person acts like, and then just behave in that manner, and then you will suddenly find that you are noble." And when I first read this, I said, "ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, how are you telling me to fake it? Is that what you're telling me?" It's kind of like felt like, you know, George Burns said, "He said, 'In show business, the most important quality is sincerity. Once you learn to fake that, you've got it made.'" And so I thought maybe that's what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was saying to do, just to fake nobility. And then I thought about it, though, and I realized that no, you are truly noble. But ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says, "Noble have I created you." So you're not faking it. You're just bringing out your own higher nature. You're just doing something that is in your nature. And then you realize you have it. And I think all of us, when we read these things, we realize we do have these abilities to listen to people. We have the ability to love people. We have the ability to find bridges that we can build with people. We just don't realize that we can do it. And so I'm glad you mentioned that. Thank you very much. You had courage to say this. Everyone else could have probably said the same thing that you just said. So thank you very much for sharing that with someone else. Sure. And your motive should always be that you're loving the person. If love is your goal towards everyone, your motive will always be pure. Furthermore, do not feel that you have to make everyone a Baháʼí. Always think, "I'm only trying to find Baháʼís." There are plenty of people out there. Shoghi Effendi said, "There are waiting souls in every city." So that's all you do. And you can also pray that God will guide you to those people. Pray that God... We read all these remarkable stories in the Faith, how May Bolles was in Paris, and then ʻAbdu'l-Bahá told her to stay, and then suddenly, miraculously, Thomas Breakwell came to her. All these stories about these remarkable things that it appears like a miracle. And we think, "Isn't that remarkable for them?" And we don't think, "Well, can we also be recipients of these kind of miracles ourselves?" Is it not possible? Were they just in tune with this spirit of service, and they attracted these divine blessings? And are they not also available to us? Or maybe they're happening to us, and the Thomas Breakwells are passing us by, and we're not even in tune with that. This is something that we need to think about too. Over here, there was one... Yes.

Well, let's get something even clearer than that because I really like what you say. First of all, Baháʼu'lláh didn't come so that people could label themselves Baháʼí. That's not the reason why He came. He came so that the world would change, that people would transform, that people would serve humanity. Someone is far more of a Baháʼí if they're serving humanity than they are if they're wearing a Baháʼí ring or attending meetings or whatever. This is the only thing that makes someone a Baháʼí. In fact, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said, "Someone who has never even heard of Baháʼu'lláh, but is acting according to His teachings, is already a Baháʼí." And someone could have called himself a Baháʼí for 50 years, but if they don't act according to the teachings, they're not a Baháʼí. And then he added, he said, "An ugly man can call himself handsome, but he fools nobody." And immediately, I was, I was upset for two reasons. Now, just in one sentence, I said, "I said, 'Thanks a lot, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá,' you know." You know, it was just like he wrote that for me. And so the point is, the point is, is that we're not trying to make people become a Baháʼí and label themselves. This is why the Ruhi Institutes is so brilliant. We're trying to get people to serve humanity. Forget about labeling yourself Baháʼí or not. If you are serving humanity, if you are causing the progress of human civilization, that's all we want. Join us in that. If you want to label yourself a Baháʼí or not, that doesn't matter to us because we've got plenty of people that label themselves Baháʼís, and it doesn't necessarily change the world. The only thing that changes the world is service. And this is the thing that we're calling people to. We're not converting people to the Faith, we're converting people to service and transformation. This is why we need to not underestimate this process of the House of Justice. It has unlimited potentiality.

I just want to quickly share a quote that just changed my whole perspective on teaching and how I see teaching taking place from other people and how I perceive the way that I should be teaching. And the quote is that, "The sole purpose of all manifestations of God is that hearts might come to know each other and souls become intimate." Mm-hmm. That's the purpose. "To knit yourselves together." I loved it when you tried to knit yourselves together. I said, "Shake the hand of everyone on your left." Okay, I want you all to do that again and see if we can learn there's a way to do it. See, now you're knitted together. Isn't that great? I love that. That's the whole purpose. And also, while you did it, you had a smile on your face. So thank you all very much. Tomorrow, we have the sixth attribute of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. [Applause]