Research In The Spirit

WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1981, 5:15 AM
FARM, STUDY

The presentation you are to do on Saturday approaches fast, o son, and you have yet to make any tangible effort to prepare for that. Since that is an important one, symbolically, I need to jostle you a bit and turn your thoughts toward that assignment.

Commence with a brief description of research, emphasizing systematic study and systematic processing and organizing of data gathered or otherwise made available. Then talk about spirit and the spiritual dimension of health, indicating both the difficulty in and yet the importance of researching this aspect of the individual human… and, hence, of the human community.

Begin to tell your story, with the idea you had first for interviewing, particularly around holistic health centers. Then the story becomes more personal, with the reasons for postponing the study and then of changing its modus operandi to one with more focus in books and tapes… and a special, unique source.

For here you shall have the opportunity of describing a program, this that We do together, which is generating data which should not be neglected as you attempt to describe the spiritual functioning of people. Just present it directly and sincerely, with a spirit I might call “reserved, yet evangelistic”.

You must organize the presentation, but listen, of course, for directions from Me as you make it… cues to what to emphasize and what to soft pedal. After a good, solid orientation it shall be quite appropriate to ask the class group for ideas about how to carry on this kind of research in the future. Some may have insights, even from Me… and some may have an interest piqued that would otherwise have lain dormant.

Select your examples carefully, showing the range of sources that are available. This is going to force you, I hope, to do the task that you already should have done – write a couple of sample stories to show the end product of the research study. You can see, surely, that you should have been working at this earlier in the week so they, the group, could have had a tangible example or two to peruse and comment upon/

You should emphasize that being a researcher in this realm requires comparable training, experience, and dedication to that in the statistical realm… or the historical. Emphasize that some of your data, that which I provide, are original, even handwritten, which his a “big thing” in some schools of research. Not everyone can… or will want to… do such research, but it should be appreciated as a direction for the future.

You may find some use for that scenario you developed this week, with some of the completions composed by your Workshop. You might even have this group do something comparable. (These are just ideas, not commands for action.) I shall emphasize again, however, the importance of this opportunity. You are prepared enough to do it, but you need some organization. After you do some of that I shall have some more suggestions.