 Hello. I'm here to introduce myself. This is not a formal part of the program as you probably already understood. And there seems to be plenty of room for the super youth, the extra youthful feeling adults and so on. I'm very happy to see how you just provided an opportunity so we could all get together. And you may have a few questions which I'll give you a chance to ask. I could start with a few remarks if you like it. It would be nice if one of you feels like saying a prayer, that you come and say a prayer. As long as you know how to read, that's... Thank you. Ah, appropriate for the day we're living in, he's going to read an e-text prayer. That's very good. It is digital. Okay. Probably. How many of you have been in the youth class in Haifa? Some of you have. We've had a class there for young people for the last 30 years. And it's very good if we get together and talk sometimes about where life is going, you know? In a conference like this seems very suitable for that. Especially you're talking about human nature. And each of you, I'm sure it makes you ask questions of yourself about who am I and where am I going? What am I going to do with myself? How can I be helpful? And I don't see that I have anything to offer anybody. Or I have a lot to offer everybody, depending on your point of view. We've come to the faith. Many of you, some of you have come to the faith on your own. Many of you are from Baha'i families, so you're Baha'i Zadez. And that also requires that you make, at some stage, you make the faith your own. And the fact that you're participating in a conference like this, I think is a good indication that you at least face that direction. We saw in Haifa how young people, the kids would become on fire. They would somehow become inflamed at certain stages. Maybe they had to serve for a little while. That suggests that as you engage in the activities of the plan, even if you have to push yourself a little bit, you pray and you make efforts, that sacrifice will attract confirmations to you and start in kindling the light of your inner being, so to speak. Because if we're to enjoy these favors that Baha'u'llah has brought, we have to do our part. Shoghi Effendi used to say there are four aspects to our Baha'i life. One is prayer. Another is meditation. Another is study. And the fourth is action. Well, you can see these three are very much to do with our inner lives. And that's what makes the action effective. And Baha'u'llah you've seen in the Tablet. He says that first we should teach our own selves and then arise to teach others. And Baha'u'llah says how can the poor give to the poor? You have to enrich yourself first, a bit. I don't mean in a way that you're 50. It means you have to think about what you're doing in terms of praying, taking small steps, engaging in the institute process, and then in the various activities that are called for. As you do that, your enthusiasm, your joy in meeting each other, the concept of Baha'i life begins growing in you. And one thing you want to be sure is to be serious about prayer. Be serious about understanding and reading about it if you need to, but then not letting go of the obligatory prayers. The obligatory prayers have a terrific influence in the overall development of a human being. And you don't want to let go of them. And Abdu'l-Baha'i has a little Tablet. He says the only excuse for not saying the obligatory prayer is that you're ill, maybe you're with fever or something, you can't get out of bed, you can't do it, or you're insane. So those are the two choices. And nobody's checking on you. You're your own master. You have to check on yourself. But we're told that Baha'u'llah knows everything that goes on. He's another kind of consciousness. He's different from ours. He knows everybody. I mean, that's why you can pray. I can pray. She can pray. All in different parts of the world and it's quite effective. There's nobody else that you can go to with those kind of powers. Baha'u'llah is there. He says he's at the door of the heart. And Abdu'l-Baha'i in his turn says I'm always present with you. If life becomes too difficult, if you have a terrible task, you fall down, you get up, you catch yourself up. He says lean on me. So sweet. Abdu'l-Baha'i says lean on me if it's too hard. And the useful years of our lives are filled with challenges. And we learn by mistakes. We learn by victories. You have to remember that God is ever forgiving. You can't ever think of yourself. You say, well, I've done things. I don't think I can be a Baha'i. This is not the Baha'i life. It doesn't say that anywhere in the writings. It says if you fall down, get up. It says if you have feelings of unworthiness, then ask the forgiveness of God. And don't say to yourself as if you were God. If I were God, I would never forgive me. You can't do that. You have to give him a chance. He's the all forgiving, the ever forgiving. Special prayers for those things. Make your way through the difficulties that you have in this state of life. And meditate on the writings. When you say meditation, we don't usually mean, you know, sitting in a yoga position and trying to feel nothingness. The faith says meditate on the writings, on the verses. Look at them. Ponder their meanings. So on. Study of the writings. The institute course is the beginning, but individual study beyond that, far beyond that, is needed for you to fill in the gaps, if you will, in your understanding of life. The problem, it's not the problem, it's the way life, creation seems to be organized. We're born into a certain family, a certain community, a certain outlook on life. We absorb that as children. We then go to school. We absorb other points of view that we get in school. We then associate with people who are good or not good, and we absorb their thoughts and their ideas. In other words, basically all of our knowledge, acquired knowledge is borrowed from others. Now, if you've been raised in a Baha'i family, you've had some by-input in that borrowing, and that's wonderful. Sometimes you'll be inspired to turn back to it. Think about it. But if not, and maybe you haven't paid much attention to the writings yet, when you read your prayers or you do your obligatory prayer, how can you, all of the cells of your knowledge, as if your brain has these borrowed cells, each one of those has to be replaced by something from the writings that gives you the correct point of view that enables you to look at the world and understand what your role is and what's the successful way that you can proceed. So, reading the Rani's is very important. And Shoghi Effendi stressed particularly that the youth should read the dawn breakers. Now, you may want some help, some of the friends that can facilitate your study of the dawn breakers or maybe you study it with each other. But as you read it, as you, many of you from Persian background, so you'll be able to pronounce the names, those of us who didn't come from Persian background had a terrible time trying to figure out, you know, this mullah guy seems to be everywhere, you know. It takes a little while to figure it all out. So, highly recommended that you look at the history of the faith because it gives you examples of how other people have lived for the cause. The question of sacrifice for the faith is very important. Sacrifice, Shoghi Effendi said, is the fuel of the cause. It makes the cause go forward. If we all do what we think we can do for the cause, we make efforts, we do whatever we can do, we maintain the cause. If we do more, if we go beyond our limits, if we think we're being immoderate a bit and we're exceeding our possibilities, sometimes you're in a project for the day and teaching and you're so tired you just want to go and have a coffee or sit down or do something, and whoever the group leader is saying, no, no, we have to go to this next building or next house or something, you say, I can't make it, you know. Then you buck yourself up and you say, okay, let's push a little harder. In the pioneer field, that's your menu all day long every day, pushing, pushing, trying to do more, trying to do something, see what's going to happen. And when you make that effort, then you find it gets rewarded in a very special way. There's a certain perseverance and steadfastness in trying to serve the cause that is a wonderful assistance to you. It'll help you to move forward in the faith. The rewards of serving the cause, of helping others, of deepening in the faith are inestimable. Even from our present position, we realize how much more there is ahead. I mean, I've been out of California to pioneer 50 years ago. And I see so, just preparing the talk the other night about the higher nature, the spiritual nature of man, I see so much that isn't done, that has to be done in my own life, in my own outlook. If you start early, if you take advantage of associating with Baha'is that you see have light in their faces and in their eyes, in the sense that when you're with them, you feel uplifted and they're a good influence on your life. If you're around people that are pulling you down, well, do your best to try to lift them up, but don't get lost in that relationship. Keep yourself alert. Make new friends easily. That's not always possible, but in a gathering like this, you will be, we've talked the other night about how like or attracts to like and the company of their kind. You'll meet people that you can assimilate with and that will help you at this particular stage. You'll eventually want to see what you do in terms of pioneering or travel and teaching the faith and career professional activities. If you look in the first book of Messages of the House of Justice, they addressed the youth of the world in several letters and what they talk about there is that each of us is different in our capacity and nature. Some of us are inflamed with teaching and we want to teach. We've been involved in a campaign and we just want to do that. We don't want to do anything else because parents are telling us something else or somebody is telling us something else. The House of Justice says you have to decide whether you're going to go and serve and pioneer for a while or travel teach in a way that you taste this service of the cause and that then that helps you to orient yourself on what you might want to study and what career or what capacity, what activity would reinforce your service. It's very hard to tell when you're sitting at home how that is. You think about what I'd like to be in life and it's a terrible panorama of different things. Thinking about what a combining of what your interests are, what your natural attraction is to a career and then which are those careers which have that element but also will enable you to serve the cause and make enough income so that you can sustain yourself as a pioneer or a travel teacher because that's a big challenge. There is a level of the cause. I've seen a tablet. It makes us think of Martha Root. She says that there is a level of service in the cause where you arise with such a spirit that you do not need material means. They come to you. This is a strange kind of a thing. People offer to feed you. Things happen. You have to get out in the jungle to have that experience but I wouldn't live in a rainforest for a while. Sometimes I would say, how am I going to do? I don't know where to go. Where are we going to find a new village to teach the faith? I'd ask about the trails and then I'd go and pray at the beginning of the trail and say, which one should I take? I said, okay, let's go this one. I'd take that and meet somebody on the way. They said, you're going to reach a river there. You won't be able to cross and there's nothing there. Where will you sleep? How will you eat? I said, don't worry about that. Something will happen and then I get there and there's some canoes there from a village up the river and they say, what are you doing here? Where did you come from? I said, well, I'm here visiting. I'm carrying a message and they say, oh, come to our village and take me out to the village. It doesn't always happen but enough times it happens that you say to yourself there's terrific reserve of assistance here when you need it. I'd carry some bread in my pocket just in case at the end of that. Also, while you're young, you're able to move around like that. While you're single, when you have a family it gets more complicated obviously. And if you can have this opportunity of teaching under different circumstances from the ones you've been raised in, where you've lived it's a terrific enhancement of your vision of the cause. Some of you have served in the World Center. Some of you will probably serve in the World Center. There's all kinds of things to do there. It's a wonderful way to come to the center of the cause and have a chance to sort out all kinds of things in your life and be of assistance. There's a constant wave of youth that come there and then go out again. And a lot of them don't go home. They go somewhere else. I remember the whole band of youths when Russia when the Iron Curtain fell down and the Bay youth in the World Center were the ones that arose and went out all over Eastern Europe and Russia. Kids, many of them were young, young people, really young people. And they left their mark on the whole history of the cause in that area. Now the possibilities you have of pioneering within a cluster itself, adding new centers of activity and intensive programs of growth and understanding those things, those activities are operating all over the world. So by having carefully gone through the institute courses, for example, the Ruhi books, you'll be prepared to offer those courses, to assist as tutors in other parts of the world. So if you can't go right away, or if you're in your studies, think about how you can use the little free time that you have to help yourselves. Shoghi Effendi said, it looks like to the Baha'is that the faith needs them. He says, this is a terrible mistake. They need the faith. We need the faith. The faith doesn't need us. The faith Shoghi Effendi quotes from Baha'u'llah. He says, Baha'u'llah says, if the bais don't arise, he'll raise up the pebbles or the rocks. Sometimes I think that the bais didn't arise and we're the rocks that he's working with now, just lifting us up and throwing at each other and carrying on. We have lots of golden opportunities. Each stage of the unfoldment of the cause opens up. New challenges and new bounties, the source of new bounties. So think of the balance in your life between prayer, meditation, study of the cause, and action. There's a number of letters from Shoghi Effendi to university students, for example, where he says that whatever else you study, be sure you do not leave off the study of the writings, the study of the faith, because that's the source of spiritual nourishment. If you went to college and you said, well, I'm going to college, I'm in college now, I have to really concentrate on what I'm doing and I don't have the funds to eat, I won't eat anything. I'll just study until I get it over and then I'll worry about eating and making myself strong later on. How far will you get? Somehow for the spiritual example of that that doesn't come to our heads and we say, we want to say to ourselves, I'm just too busy but I'll have to understand, there's no time. But if you really examine the time, if you take a period of the morning for reading the verses and reading the writings and trying to think about them, if you carry the hidden words around it, when you have a chance of sitting on a bus or in a subway or something, start meditating, thinking about them, make the writings your own, adorn your inner being, enhance your lives, that is an everlasting development. The study that you have in school, at best, it maybe prepares you for a career, often times you get out of school and you don't want that career, you decide to do something else. Maybe you realize that the best benefit you have from going to school and being studying in university is to learn how to study, is to learn how to learn. So many people think, well, I'll get through my studies and I'll be finished. I'm non-Bahai, I just generally think that's the end. Often times they don't even want to read to anything out, they've had so much of it in school, it's finished. Or we get out of high school and say, I don't want to read another book in my life. I probably never have read a book in your life. I mean, I would ask some of the youth in the Holy Land to read books, books, whole books. They were there, they were dedicated, but they just had no habit of reading, no habit of study. And okay, you can go to study classes, you can study with each other, you can do that, but you've got to develop this way of nurturing your own inner being. There's too much of it, it's vast. As you can see when you walk over there to that bookstore and you say, what shall I choose? Where would I start, you know? You start with the essential writings. You at least get a sense of like the Dawnbreakers and the Gleanings and the Katabi Ghan and some answered questions. This core, these very, very essential writings, you want to become familiar with them. In fact, Shoghi Fendi says, and this is often times in letters to youth, he says, you should read these books. You should reread these books. You should digest these books. You should master these books. You should memorize key passages from these books. And every effort that you make enhances your, it spiritually enriches you. It enhances you and makes you more prepared to offer the faith with that kind of assurance and confidence and light that attracts other souls to the cause. I don't give you a big lecture, but maybe you have some questions that are a burning issue that may be of interest to others. So even if you're questioning, you think your question is a silly question. There's lots of people in the room who might not find it silly. They may think, oh, that's my question, but I didn't want to ask it. So if there's something you'd like or some subject that you'd like to address, I'll be happy to do so. It's a big crowd for brave people here. Yeah, please. Yeah. In our daily life. Well, of course, there is such an individual deepening is what I'm talking about here, because we have a program and most of the friends are occupied with the institute course. If you've been through the whole institute course, okay, then you can perhaps have some study classes. It's not out of the question, but I think you'll find oftentimes the auxiliary board members are encouraging their friends to just engage in the activities of the faith because we were pressed with trying to get to the 1,500 intensive programs of growth. So there's a lot of emphasis on that now. In the RISVON message, the House of Justice has a paragraph about deepening and the importance of deepening and summer schools and these things. They're a part of high life, but they've been a little bit in the background for these couple of years to get the new processes going in order to establish the new culture. But certainly there's a place for deepening classes, but there's nobody's going to question you about your individual deepening. That is something everybody has to do and it's not enough to just depend on a class, although you may need classes in order to prompt you or stimulate you or get you started. Yeah? Our cluster growth committee, has been struggling a little bit with the concept of direct collective teaching. We know from guidance in a world center that often where an intensive program of growth has stalled a little bit, it's because direct collective teaching has been perhaps somewhat lacking. I was wondering if you could give us some examples from other clusters in the world what the direct collective teaching approach practically looks like. In our cluster we've experimented with two practical types of direct collective teaching. One is called the door to door where we approach homes or houses where people of whom we're not friends with and are familiar with and we just start talking about the message of Baha'u'llah. Or another practical application would be small teaching teams perhaps gathering together once or twice a week, studying direct teaching approaches and then going about in their daily lives with elevated conversation and directly teaching their friends or colleagues or neighbors individually and again coming together at the end of the week with their teaching teams and consulting on that and sharing their learnings. I was wondering if you could give some more examples of what the direct collective teaching looks like in other clusters. Well, I think, you know what you're talking about, that's the script. Now you may have to rehearse a lot before you get to the full performance level and all those things. You want to learn how to do it and there's a lot of in dealing the experience of actually face-to-face direct teaching opens the way, it shows you the way. In other words, your mistakes also you go home and you reflect on how you want to talk on that subject right away because the people reject it. And the whole idea of Anna's presentation is to give us a bit of a framework in which we can learn to talk with confidence about the faith to strangers. It was mentioned earlier about receptive souls. We want to, seeking souls, receptive souls are a percentage of the population, but it's not all the population. And you want to try to find those souls. And those souls somehow in my own experience is always a question of like getting up in the morning when you're going to have an activity and you pray and ask for how a lot of make me aware of the ones that I should be approaching and teaching. And if you put me in the presence of a seeking soul help me to understand that that's what's happened. And that results I think in ways of becoming more aware of those in your surroundings, maybe in your school surroundings or maybe in your professional surroundings or whatever happens to be. As to different examples of it, I read about the successes but not in much detail. And I've been in Haifa for so many years that I'm now going around and watching and learning myself what people are doing in the way of direct teaching. It's a challenge. The question of visiting people in their homes depends on the nature sometimes of the neighborhoods, although I've seen some amazing examples of there was a woman who went out teaching her neighbors in a very fancy neighborhood in Montreal. She says, I live on the corner and I just wanted to come and tell you that I'm here and she got together at the devotional meeting and people are studying looking at the courses and things. You can never tell. People say well, the read books are very simple approach. I just wouldn't feel good in Germany. They said we were hesitant to invite professional people to study the read books right off but there's a study circle there of physicians medical doctors. They're so excited about it. I don't know where they got maybe they're up to book 5 or 6 or something now. Very excited about it. And some of some of the way we present the faith is so important. Our attitude towards it, our love for it should be evident, you know. That becomes a very useful tool. The radiance of your face becomes a useful tool. There was a story of a team that was going out to do some direct teaching. I'm not repeating this as an example of what to do but it's an interesting story I want to share with you. There were three to go out. There was Caucasian a white lady and there were two Persians who were going to go. There was a group of three and they were going to go. Well, they got up in the morning and the lady was sick. So she couldn't go. So now the two Persians are there, two Persian men they want to go door to door in a strange neighborhood at a time that the husbands have gone to work and the wives are at home. It's not, you know, they didn't feel too good. So they said, they went and said some prayers and they said, okay, only one will go. There's a little less overwhelming for the whosoever in the house and they started and they got to this house that had quite a few stairs on property of its own and went up to the door. This guy went up to the door and he knocks on the door. Somebody opens the door just a little bit. An eye looks out and says, what do you want? And the teacher looks down and sees that the guy has a pistol in his hand. So he's, I mean doesn't know who this has come to his door, why they've come to the door. So he says to him we have a message we want to deliver to the people of this neighborhood and invite them to a new kind of knowledge and understanding and he says, I'm not interested and he pulls the door and is going to slam the door. The Persian gentleman our by-friend is inspired to stick his foot in the door. The guy has the gun and it's his house and you've got your foot in his door and so he looks down with the gun at this foot you know like take your foot out of the door and the man says, give me 10 seconds. This is the most important message you will ever hear in your life and we are sacrificing ourselves to go around and try to tell people and we don't want to bother you but you will regret if you don't hear what this message is and he pulled his foot out and started walking away. About 10 seconds later the guy came running down the steps. He says okay I want to hear the message. He left his pistol behind and he's one of the active Baha'i supporters in the community now. Be careful with the ones with pistols that side. There was another lady told me the story she was I think she was in Birmingham in England. She said she was telling a story. She said I've been searching I was really searching. I went to all so many religious groups and I was not satisfied and finally I got to the point where I said okay God I don't know you very well and I don't know where you are or what you are but I'm going to search for three more days and after that I'm not going to search anymore. So if you have something to tell me you better tell me within the three days. That's pretty bold. So she said the three days passed nothing happened. She got her pajamas on jumped in bed she's trying to read. She's wide awake she can't go to sleep. What's the matter with me? I can't go to sleep. She's trying to read a book. She can't read the book. She's nervous. She says this is ridiculous. I'm wasting my time lying in bed. Let me go and send some emails. She's on a campus in a campus situation in one of the campus email rooms and starts writing emails and corresponding with her friends. On the other side of the campus is this guy who's been saying prayers to find seeking souls and he can't go to bed either. He can't go to sleep either and he's thinking about it. He said he felt he had to go to this email room but he said I don't have any emails to send. Well I could check my mail I guess. And he went to an email room and he's sitting in the email room all alone. She's in another email room on the opposite side of the campus and doing her business. Then he gets the idea this is not the email room I'm supposed to be in. I'm supposed to be in that other email room. Look at the kind of intuition now you don't always get it. So obviously you did and it happens to us and we do it and we say I'm being silly but we do it. And he got over to the other email room and the lady was there and he sat down here and he started typing and he said I've got to talk to this lady. He said hello he said are you a Baha'i? That was his opening line. She said no, no I'm not a Baha'i. What's that? Well she's in the community now serving. So there's lots of stories like that that you can find. It's purity of intention, purity of motive which is so important that we want to serve the faith because God wants us to share the faith. We want to share the faith. And then prayers to be open to whatever guidance we might get. Those are the examples. Any other question? Yes please. My question is about if you're you have for example friends or friends of the faith who are going through difficult times and they want prayers but they want the magical prayers that you pray for them and something happens and so something doesn't happen and it kind of leaves them a little jaded and you know they don't want to talk about the faith anymore so how do you deal with that? I don't know, I remember the little girl has been praying for a certain Christmas gift and she prays and prays and prays and finally Christmas comes and she doesn't get the gift so the mom says it must be disappointing for you. She said no, she said God said no. It's as simple as that a childlike response that the prayers are there but you can't pray for what you want you can't pray for what God wants so somehow introducing the prayers these lead us these prayers lift us and guide us to the things that we need most and maybe you're supposed to be hungry for a few days sometimes it comes down to that I mean often Latin America or something in Africa people don't have enough to eat sometimes you don't have enough to eat with them so but the whole thing works out I think it's a question of the prayers are to orient us to the thoughts and the aspirations that are noted in the prayer and God is not listening to the prayer but maybe we shouldn't say these prayers will produce miracles I mean not that you've necessarily done that but we have to be careful that the people don't expect too much from that you can there may be other people who have answers to your questions they can talk to you afterwards to give you other ideas please it's one of our super youth here if you could answer the subject of behavior towards the community and friends basically our behavior towards in life you know how we behave and that can be a teaching instrument yes well you know one of the important writings I think some of these are covered in the study courses as well but the Advent of Divine Justice is a very important book because it sets out the standards of behavior for the vies and it talks about how those things are essential prerequisites the way we do behave and at least we should be clear about what we can do and encourage each other in the direction of obeying the teachings of the faith this is I think it's wonderful the relationship of romance and things with young people in the faith when both sides understand where the limits are you're free to have the feelings that you have but neither side is pressing beyond such attractions to some kind of acts that are inappropriate and both of you know that so it isn't that he doesn't love me well enough to make a pass at me he's actually observing the teachings and he knows it and you know it and that makes for a kind of friendship where you can really get to know each other in that regard Isabel Sabri who served on the Continental Board of Counselors in Africa and then was appointed to the teaching center in the early days and she had met the guardian and she had a young son about 16 so she asked the guardian when my son wants to get married what are the qualities that he should look for the good qualities he should look for in a partner and Shoghi Effendi looked a little shocked he said the good qualities no not the good qualities the bad qualities is what you have to look for everyone can live with the good qualities but the bad qualities you have to look and weigh the shortcomings of the potential partner and see whether you're going to be able to live with them because once you get married you will live with them you have to live with them you can't expect to change people so that's one thing also the inheritance that for instance that girls get Abdul Bahar recommended to the fellas that had come from Tehran we're interested in wives he said you're looking for wives and you're thinking of pretty faces and rich father and laws he said both of those changed very quickly then he said that you will he said what you should do is look at the qualities of the girl and you may not be able to see all the qualities in the girl so you should look at the qualities of her mother because her mother will have imprinted upon her those things that can keep her character in a good shape and the girls that haven't been well prepared that way are in greater danger of not making good wives and making good mothers because there isn't inheritance so it's something to bear in mind I don't say it's an absolute rule and it's a pilgrim note as far as you're concerned but it's something to bear in mind I don't know what the girls are supposed to look for in the guys that's another matter then you grab your prayer book and you say wow getting the right marriage partners is a very serious business really serious business look at the rate of divorce in the outside world and even within the faith there's a lot of divorces because they don't get it right my wife and I when we're asked about what's the best way to prepare for marriage or so on, think about it of course you read the marriage compilation about marriage and it's very helpful and it's inspiring and it's lovely but we say go read the divorce compilation don't read the marriage compilation go read the divorce compilation see what the restrictions and what the effect of divorce is in the life of the individual it's so serious then if you're reading that together maybe it gives you some ideas whether you want to take the step or not or whatever happens to me how do we get on that subject any more hands out there somebody want to go some other direction somebody else had to be there so during this conference I've been hearing a lot about how the word of God, the writings they have a lot of power to them that we when we read them it enters us spiritually and they're very different than any other types of writings I was wondering if maybe you could expound on how that connection between humans and the word of God how the spiritual connection works I know that when I read the writings I really begin to interpret them and think about them and study them but I was wondering if you can maybe just talk about the spiritual connection and the potency and the power of the word of God you said a lot of good things in your question as well though the word is the most common place of words for how Allah says in this date it is endowed with supreme potency he uses a word that we would use and we'll see in our other books but it has a different meaning a different implication and the words have meanings at different levels we were talking about as your level of perception increases in the cause as you ascend the ladder of spiritual growth or through the seven valleys or make your way whatever that the same words will have new meanings in Baha'u'llah in the Kulata'am the tablet of all foods he says that these the divine words have these different meanings at each level he says for instance the word Israel he gives the meaning it has in this world and then he says but that word when it's encountered in the concourse on high has these implications and then he says and in the supreme paradise it has these implications it gives you some idea that there are things hidden in these words that are not hidden in your writings and my writings so it's it's an elixir it transforms you it has the old writings about the alchemical elixir is one drop and you're transformed and it's the same thing but a lot depends on your focus and concentration when you look at it you see some of the old Baha'is they hold they take the writings they hold it they kiss it they put it on their forehead there is something about attitude it doesn't necessarily mean we all have to do that but we should have this reverence to the writings and that sometimes we can inherit from our folks or sometimes it depends on our own meditations there's a book that's very neglected and that's prayers and meditations of Baha'u'llah we never had the manifestation of God telling us about his own experiences and some of these meditations that he has there maybe we have the book or we see it and we open it and it says thou seeest me shut up in my prison house and we say oh that's not for me here's 10 pages of the manifestation pouring out his relationship to mankind we're told that Baha'u'llah suffered more than anybody ever suffered who came to the earth his sufferings are immense and yet people say well yes but he wasn't tortured he didn't lose his fingers he didn't throw boiling oil worse things have happened to other people I think we're missing the point it isn't so much the tortures he is the supreme manifestation of God he encompasses the whole human race he knows your potential everybody's potential he's so great he's so full of dynamic spiritual wonders and the people are ejected and not only that they hound him and they push him out of his home and they prison his family and move him around and shut him up in a prison house thank you very much you know here's God come to show you if any he chose this title God passes by it's the reflection of God the closest we're going to ever get to God is Baha'u'llah we know there is a God we don't say he is God although in certain conditions the manifestation speaks I verily am God there's no God but me but in the Qatabi Ghan and this is why we have to keep reading the writings to balance this whole thing out it says that in certain conditions the manifestation has the consciousness that God speaks through him in the first person otherwise this absolute essence that manifestation doesn't understand it himself he says he founds himself invested with the power of being the lord of the worlds and lord of the universe and from that perspective he prescribes what it is we need when we say religious truth is relative it's not absolute but relative it implies that all these writings that Baha'u'llah is given have application and meaning in this dispensation they're not excessive they're not over mystical they're not impractical they all have special meaning we will discover and at each stage of our life they'll mean something else to us but you have to expose yourself to quite a bit I remember when I was a brand new Baha'i I met Nancy Phillips passed away in Oregon a couple years ago she was a long time auxiliary board member and she was the auxiliary board member the first auxiliary board member for propagation they had one named who went to the Indian peoples of Arizona and New Mexico and so on and she was that person but she had been taught the faith by Howard Colby Ives on the east coast Howard Colby Ives he wrote Portals to Freedom a marvelous Baha'i teacher and student of the faith so on and she was married to a non-Baha'i physician and he moved to Phoenix there wasn't much community at that we were talking decades ago there wasn't much community in Phoenix certainly not the Phoenix conference that you hear about now so this put her in a position where she was writing letters back and forth and she shared when I was a new Baha'i she shared some of these letters with me and he was saying that you know of course she was a housewife I think that is a small child but she was able she had time to read and he said you should read the writings he said you know you should give yourself alright he says at first you start off two hours a day but then you build up as your capacity increases looking at this two hours a day I'm going to read the writing it's startling you know but that was Howard Covey Ives and he said you have to immerse yourself in the ocean of the writings now some of the writings they're hard for you to read and that also needs a time get a dictionary help yourself sit down with somebody that has fuller knowledge of literature the thing that I think we've seen over the years is that Baha'i students that have learned to read Shoghi Effendi for example in university they startle their professors with the use of vocabulary where do you get this vocabulary from person your age you know that's because they've been reading Shoghi Effendi or Shoghi Effendi's translations of the writings this is a terrific education in itself it isn't the substitute for education but the education without it is very poor again you're wandering aimless not knowing where you're going how are we doing well I don't know if you all got lunch or not I think unless there's some other burning question here's two super Baha'is the older Baha'is that have questions any of the youth have a question before we take that yes sorry about that yes please they've illumined me and I can't see you my question is regarding prayer going back to prayer and praying for something for a really long time and wanting it and investing a lot of time and energy into it and when do you realize and it's not working out when do you realize whether it's a sign from God and that you must move on do you keep going and keep trying or when do you realize it's enough this of course is a general question you're asking not about your own situation right I don't want to advise you directly in front of everybody here but I think this is very important to say prayers and to think about it not extend something beyond the time that it's healthy in other words we're not supposed to be in long term, hot, romantic relationships and then not get married after a year or two years or three years or something if you're very young and you're not feeling like it's time to find a partner to marry then it's better that the Baha'is gather in groups maybe they're still quasi couples but they go out in groups together and do activities and they don't separate themselves off alone where they're put under intense pressures by the society around them or by the movie they happen to be watching or whatever it happens to be all kinds of things that you have to be you have to be awake and careful and cautious it seems to me yes, you have a retort to that oh relationship at the beginning what are you talking about, just friendship in general anyway the answer might have been useful for someone else now what is your question for career, aspiration and career how do you know when to pursue something or not I don't know, I was a film actor the faith hit me and I went pioneering that was the end of the film career so I think you have to it's like people also going pioneering they say where should I go pioneering you can look at the list yes there's a list and it's helpful to be guided by the institutions in this but there's also the element of your own particular nature and character and stuff that it needs to match and if you go out I remember telling pioneers in South America they got to some country they were miserable they said we came here we arrived you know we gave up everything to come here and nobody even came to the airport I said why do you think they asked for pioneers for this country if they had a lively high community they wouldn't be wanting pioneers they'd do their work and you could go someplace else oh I never thought of that or they're just so miserable that you say to them look don't run away from pioneering because one country doesn't suit you try to visit some of the neighboring areas that's why it's nice if you can do international traveling teaching during summer times and you visit several communities and you see activities and you get a feel for the different communities and the character of the people in the different countries has developed in different ways they have like in South America in Brazil and Argentina there's two very different the character of the people the public character of the people is very different and Argentina at the time is very negative if you wanted to talk to somebody on the bus or anything you'd say oh what a miserable day I can't breathe with the smoke in the air that would start a conversation just fine if you said what a beautiful day or something they would look at you like what's the matter with you but in Brazil you go to buy a ticket for an airline or something and the girl says hello how are you sincerely asking what interested in you as a person and then to do business with you it's such a different national character and you're on the streetcar and you say something like that what a beautiful day oh it's so good it's raining it's going to help the plants there's a positive thing but there's this different mentality everywhere you go I don't know how I got on that you're trying to figure out your career ok super boy here you go as a youth if we're responsible for our souls and the question is if we have friends in front of us that let's say use really foul language and those who don't should we steer away from those who use foul language in the interest of protecting our soul or should we not have any of those filters and just associate with everyone equally you know when I was a teenager I kind of grew up late so I was small and I used to get picked on a lot and I had the foulest mouth of anybody but I wasn't the Baha'i Zadeh so there you are but in any case don't give up on the ones that have foul language try to get through to them and awaken them too because they should get over that and if you're a Baha'i well be careful of your language you've got Baha'u'llah watching you and you're afraid but you wouldn't want to make him sad if you think of your actions I remember Ruhia Khanum which was a bit startling to all of us she was with the youth and she said you know if you go to the movies is this a movie that when you walk out and you meet Abdu'l Baha'a outside the movie house you're going to feel okay about that's a good way to find out which movies to go to you may have a lack of entertainment these days it's after the time you have a great experience and thank you for coming