PITTSBURGH, PA, USA

VOLUME III, Part 11 of 13

August 20, 1998 - November 12, 1998

 

C O N T E N T S

 

Date	Topic	Page
August 20, 1998	Your Soul's Perspective	1
August 27, 1998	Creating a Greater Reality	13
September 3, 1998	Abandonment	23
September 10, 1998	Emotions as Spiritual Tools	30
September 17, 1998	More on Compassion	36
September 24, 1998	Your Cultural Conditioning	44
October 1, 1998	Useful Teaching Format	52
October 8, 1998	Rebellion	59
October 22, 1998	Lesson Lost	70
October 29, 1998	Buddhism and Other Wonders	70
November 5, 1998	Personality Integration	78
November 12, 1998	Reflecting on Experience	87
	[End of Volume III, Part 11 of 13]	97

 

DATE:         August 20, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, P.A. USA
T/R’s:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS

Pittsburgh group:      Elyssia, Leah, Evangel, Gerdean and Hester

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 119, THE BESTOWALS OF CHRIST MICHAEL
#1.  The First Bestowal (a Melchizedek Son)
#2.  The Second Bestowal (a Lanonandek Son)
#3.  The Third Bestowal (a Material Son)
#4.  The Fourth Bestowal (a supreme seraphim)
#5.  The Fifth Bestowal (a pilgrim spirit) f6. 
       The Sixth Bestowal (a morontia mortal)
#7.  The Seventh and Final Bestowal (a mortal)
#8.  Michael's Postbestowal Status

REMEMBRANCE SUPPER:
Paper 179, THE LAST SUPPER
#5.  Establishing the Remembrance Supper

TEACHER SESSION: 
TOPIC:

YOUR SOUL'S PERSPECTIVE

TOMAS:     Michael is with you. You are in the Father and the Father is in you. Your teachers are present. The angels sing. Peace be upon you. I am Tomas.

Group:    Good evening, Tomas.

TOMAS:     Good evening, my beloved family, my flock. Merium and I embrace you. We are very pleased with you select and cherished children of the Most Highs. How wondrous it is when we see you comport yourself so freely as believers of this revelation and its pronouncements. How satisfying it is to your celestial hosts and helpers when we behold you honor the words that convey to you the distribution that Michael has made upon his universe in his many bestowals, his supreme visitations.

I would like to stretch you into morontia appreciation based upon your very being, your own perceptions, your own comportment in your evening, in your remembrance of Michael and in your actual acknowledging his reality in and throughout the universe.

Remember if you will your soul's response to the testimonies of his various bestowals. Remember when you saw him acting as a secretary? And remember when you saw him as a Melchizedek or as a Material Son, doing it alone, preparing the way for those privileges and duties subscribed to the Material Sons and Daughters on the evolutionary worlds of time and space? Recall to yourself your sense of identification with the Master in those experiences, for surely you were stirred in some part of you that goes beyond your intellectual understanding or appreciation of a conveyance from one cornerstone to another, from one political post to another. Some part of you responded, resounded.

That part of you that responded, you could say was your human self being very impressed with your Creator Father in his bestowal experiences, in his claiming his own destiny as an aspiring Master Son. But look closer, my spirit brethren. Look closer. And do you not realize that that in you which is observing so keenly his bestowals is indeed the very Father which lives within you, that beholds these appointments? And in its observation, in its pride, says, "Behold my son in whom I am well pleased!" Is it not the Father in you that recognizes that Father / Brother / Caretaker?

I bring this to your mind because of the growth of your soul. Your souls have expanded, have enlarged to appreciate this recital of the bestowals on yet an expanded level, for now you understand that you yourself in conjunction with your indwelling Adjuster have a perspective. Your soul has a perspective. And this is the lesson. This is the message that I bring to you this evening in your very poignant place of comprehension and appreciation.

Your soul has a perspective. It is a perspective that is not exclusively the Father's and is not exclusively human. It is the perspective that is being delivered by your association with divinity and through your continued devotion to divinity. I will ask you this week, then, in order to accentuate and bring to your awareness even more this very poignant truth, to reflect upon and be aware of your soul's perspective.

I have concluded the formal part of the evening. I hope you don't mind my rather weighty words and attitude, but my children, my friends, it is a reflection of you yourselves in your joyous acknowledgement of our Master's pronouncement to us that he is with us indeed, in word and in deed, as we go about doing His will in our daily lives.

Your consecration to the living Word is what prompts me to address in you that honorable and respected aspect of reality which you work so hard to grow and develop, which we spend unlimited hours, untiring effort, developing -- your own realization of yourself, your soul. How are you this evening?

Group:    Fine.  Good.

TOMAS:     I am going to call upon Merium and we will conjoin with you in a somewhat lighter frame of mind. I embrace you. One moment.

MERIUM:     I am Merium and I am coming in but I am not going to stay. I have been in active association with Hunnah this evening in her presentation of living truth to a viable audience. I have been helping her with her presentation as you can well imagine and we have fluffed so many pillows there are feathers flying and it will take an eternity for them to come to rest. Isn't it wonderful?

Elyssia:      That is wonderful.

MERIUM:     I, on the other hand, have been fully apprised of the light shining in this corner of Urantia. I am glad that Tomas has asked me to come in and fluff up your pillows. You will see that I have gone hoarse with my shouting and cheering for our Hunnah and so I will give the microphone back to Tomas but I am heartened by the revelation of your own good will this evening. I'll see you soon.

Group:    Thank you for coming.  Good to hear your voice.

Elyssia:     It feels so good to celebrate, but the funny thing about celebrating is that there isn't any celebration like reading the words of the Book! There isn't anything that we do that's more wonderful. The way of the world may have fireworks, but reading the Book is so exciting and thrilling.

Hester:      And very fulfilling.

TOMAS:     I can only say that you have grown up, for the remarks that you make are not the remarks of an indulged child but of a consecrated soul who finds its greatest joy in knowing our Father and having recognized this in and of yourself and acknowledged it to each other, you can only grow from here. As you grow in your spiritual adulthood you can become more and more as children, and so your life becomes more rich, more fulfilled, and as you were saying earlier, Hester, you become more and more of a light that reflects outward; and as you were saying Evangel, people will be drawn to your very being just because you are there in and with your reality in truth.

Elyssia:     It seems that there is so much richness in the Book that when we try to find a wonderful passage it's just the easiest thing in the world to do.

TOMAS:     Having reached that point, we will have great fun then when we begin again at the beginning next time, or when we start plowing through the geologic history eras, and even attacking the Papers on the Evolving Supreme. We will have lots of fun.

Elyssia:     But I was thinking tonight because we have enjoyed the Book and we still have so many things to enjoy, I thought you would tell us about one of those wonderful bestowals that we read about but that was not in our Urantia Book, since you are going to always be giving us more beautiful information. My impression is that we will be getting more and more, but -- maybe we will have to wait a long time, but -- I did think it was possible.

TOMAS:     It is possible, but not probable. The pieces that were put into your Book were well chosen. The controversy surrounding many of the parts that were included are still having residual effects throughout the universe and so we do not take lightly these bits of information that may or may not be included.

Recall that "Government on a Neighboring Planet" had to be approved by many supervisors, many superiors, because of the nature of that world as compared to yours and how it might have an effect on you and on the development of your world. We are very aware of the susceptibility, even the gullibility of the mortal who has no good discernment as to authority.

Hester:      They're plentiful.
TOMAS:       Authority is plentiful, indeed.

Hester:      No, I mean they don't recognize authority.  There's an awful lot of people who rebut authority.

TOMAS:     Indeed. Yes. And until such time as you have matured somewhat in and through the assistance of this epochal revelation and your own work with your own guides and teachers, your own spirit reality, perhaps in time we will be able to feel a little freer about discussing those things that right now are still controversial.

Elyssia:     That's fine, because we are quite content with the incredible breadth and depth of our Book. We're more than content with it, but the stories sparked our imaginations.

TOMAS:        Indeed they would.

Elyssia:      And we thought we could intuit some of those lives.

TOMAS:     Indeed there are speculations abounding. In this T/R's mind, in fact, there was a bit of a diversion in terms of the phrase having to do with Jesus having been born as a normal child of the realm and how it was that the impregnation was and remains a mystery, one which will never be known to you, and yet Gerdean speculated she had the answer. And so how amusing you all are.

We are quite accustomed to your exercises in speculation and we encourage them in-as-much as it would be fruitless to discourage them. We ourselves engage in speculations and in planning, in fact, for there are opportunities in the future that we contemplate, much as you in your colleges will study the Fall curriculum and see what fits into your agenda, your interests and your aptitude. This is a normal part of life, to be interested in learning, and it is a wonderful gift of the creators to provide us with those avenues wherein we may learn.

Imagine the joy of being selected to be part of this engagement as a teacher for you who are emerging from the darkness of isolation! Imagine for us the thrill of beholding your souls come into a realization of itself, very much like newborns.

Hester:      That's really what we are!

Elyssia:     I agree with you because I have been watching little babies. I've been thinking that exact thing. Their joy, their excitement in discovering their environment and it does remind me even of the things we feel as we discover more and more about spiritual reality.

TOMAS:     I will tell you that you are engaged already upon your assignment, in-as-much as you have already ascertained an aspect of your soul's perspective. Well done!

Leah:        I wanted to ask, in -- at the beginning of this discourse, you said something like, we might make a discovery in reading, as opposed to mentally trying to figure it out. (Yes) So if I understood you, you were talking about this is the Father within you, so -- what you were saying was this is Thought Adjustment? Spontaneous thought of recognition? Or...?

TOMAS:      Yes.
Leah:        Am I on the right avenue here, or...?

TOMAS:     Yes, you are broaching an appreciation of morontia thought. If, for example, you were looking at it as an entirely intellectual point of view, you would academically acknowledge the information, but not necessarily have a residual stirring within. Even if you were to have an academic appreciation for the Master's ability to be exceptionally good at his bestowal and you would take a certain pride in it because it is your Creator Son, you would be, even still, in an intellectual mode. You would be mental about it.

What takes it from intellectual and sets it into morontial is the Father's -- your Father's recognition -- through your Thought Adjuster, and so, yes, your Thought Adjuster's recognition.

Hester:      Tomas, is this not more a heart thing than a brain thing?

TOMAS:     I am discussing this, Hester, and it is certainly not an exclusive brain thing nor is it really an exclusive heart thing, because your understanding of the heart can become confused with a romantic or an emotional or a maternal or a human interpretation of the heart. It goes beyond even your understanding of the heart because it incorporates the heart of the divine which goes beyond your understanding intellectually OR emotionally of what love is.

And so, yes, it brings it up to a level that is unfamiliar to you, that you really do not have a grasp of, but even so, which you can aspire to because we all aspire to a greater understanding/ comprehension and perception/awareness. Right?

Elyssia:      Yes, we do.
TOMAS:        I'm sorry, Leah.  I interrupted you.

Leah:        Well, I was just thinking -- I don't want to be thinking particularly, but when you speak, sometimes I get mental pictures, and I got this mental picture of -- a puppeteer climbing into the facade of this puppet, just the whole bestowal thing. A couple of times I read it, it was just words. I couldn't even understand how to pronounce half of them. Not that I understand it particularly now but at least I have an idea that Christ Michael took on those roles.

I know that I read those words before and that I probably was aware of what they said, but tonight it was like, "Oh, Wow! He went and jumped into all these different costumes and was the expert at everything he did!" and I had never really thought of it like that before.

TOMAS:     And your comprehension and understanding grows. Do not decry your dependence upon your mind and the pictures it creates for you to comprehend these lessons for you will remember that your Thought Adjuster uses your mind in whatever context it can to convey to you certain truths, certain levels of reality ...

Leah:        Actually, that is what I was asking. You get a picture. Is that a picturization or an idea-ization? Is that what they call it? Is that your Thought Adjuster helping you?

TOMAS:     Actually this is probably more a gift from the Mother. She is the one who has given you the mind, the incredible mind, and the mind is gifted at interpreting for the Father. The Mother is helpmate to the Father (and that oversimplifies the concept). The Thought Adjuster is more inclined to bring you to an awareness of your own potential divinity. Not so much the thinking process as the being of it.

Leah:        I see.  Okay.

Elyssia:     In the Course in Miracles, I'm always trying to figure it out. About planning. There may be some people who need to plan more than they do, and I'm wondering if I'm not one of those people. I'd like to ask you about different types of personalities and what place does planning have?

TOMAS:    Why?
Elyssia:    Pardon me?
TOMAS:    Why?

Elyssia:     Why? Well, you think you might be more organized, you might get more done, you might have time to sit and read your Book if you plan a little more efficiently with your time segments.

TOMAS:      I am not the one to teach you that, Elyssia.

Elyssia:     But I'm wondering what you think about this business of planning. I gather when the Course says "do not plan" it means you are interfering with the action of the holy spirit in your day and maybe that isn't what it means at all. I'm just wondering what you think it might mean.

TOMAS:     I cannot interpret for you a lesson from the Course in Miracles because if I interpret for you the lesson, then you have intellectualized a truth that can only be known by your realization of it. That is the purpose of the Course!

Elyssia:     To think about it is to intellectualize about it? Is that what you are telling me?

TOMAS:     Yes. I am urging you all to appreciate the difference between your mind and the mind of your soul. The mind of your soul is a morontia reality.

Elyssia:     I didn't know my soul had a mind. I always separated my mind ... I didn't realize that.

TOMAS:     How do you suspect the spirit thinks? Do you suspect that the universe administrators are mindless? How do you suppose we speculate?

Elyssia:      Well, I,... I guess I thought a mind was a mind.
TOMAS:        Remember that the mind you use here is on loan.
Elyssia:      Oh.

TOMAS:     When you are finished with your mortal experience, you will not need this mind any more because it serves you here in your material configuration. Even so, there is the greater mind. The Universe Mother Spirit has given intelligence to the entire universe. I am urging you to recognize and utilize your higher mind more often, and recognize the essence of your greater reality which is not higher mind but which is your soul.

Even so, you still need to make decisions in order to advance. I fear we have gone afield of the assignment. I do not want you to leave this evening confused as to what we discussed, for we have discussed two things, both of which are rather advanced, one of which is your assignment, having to do with an appreciation of your own soul's awareness; it is a feeling thing.

The other thing that we discussed was the mind and the aspects of mind. I cannot discuss planning with you.

Elyssia:      Okay.

Leah:        What I was hearing Elyssia say was ... You think of the Conjoint Actor or the Universe Mother Spirit, Mother Nebadonia, as filling the mind circuits, but we think of them as spirit, and that is what I was kind of hearing in my mind that you were talking about. We got into some difficulty between mind and spirit.

TOMAS:     It is probably because you do not have a clear understanding of your soul, in-as-much as you may still think of your soul as an intellectual reality rather than an actuality. I also am concerned that we are getting into an existential conversation that is too deep.

Leah:        Perhaps I could just ask a simple question. I just want to understand. The soul has its beginning when the first moral decision is made, is that correct?

TOMAS:    Yes.
Leah:        Okay.  And then it evolves and grows ...
TOMAS:    Yes.
Leah:        ... throughout the mortal progression and beyond that.
TOMAS:    Yes.

Leah:        With the exception when someone decides they don't want to go for anything else they have the right to do that. Is that a correct understanding?

TOMAS:      Yes.
Leah:        I guess I don't want to get into any of the mind stuff.

TOMAS:     You realize, too, that at a certain point the soul develops a life of its own. As you work with your soul, as you begin to work with God, your soul becomes a viable reality. It is this aspect of you that Jesus refers to when he says you may be assured of your survival, for you have made sufficient decisions as to warranty your continuation -- barring, of course, some hair-brained heading off in a contrary direction, but, barring that, your soul has sufficiently identified with the Father that it has come into its own, so to speak. It is that in you that is eternal.

As you yourself, the mortal, fall away, even so your soul will radiantly live and continue on.

Leah:        Okay. I just want to ask -- it's probably in the Urantia Book. When you are taken to Court or are put on trial, it says you shouldn't worry because the spirit speaks within you. I understand what you're saying that the body dies and the soul goes on but is that --- is that spirit or is that soul that's happening there, when you just put your total faith in God and say, "whatever will be will be."

TOMAS:     Because of spirit, because of your cooperation with spirit, your soul responds appropriately.

Leah:        And then if you make the appropriate response, your soul grows.
TOMAS:      And your spirit speaks.  Yes.

Leah:        Okay. I think I'm beginning to have a little bit better understanding. Sometimes this seems so elementary and other times it seems like it's the highest university I ever heard of.

Elyssia:      I've got to get a better grasp of this.
TOMAS:    It is a good assignment, then.

Elyssia:     Even when I read about it in the Book I could never remember what I read about it. Now that says something, doesn't it.

TOMAS:     It is the real you. Surely you want to know who the real you is so that you can foster your good reality, and the good reality of the indwelling Adjuster who has worked infinitely patiently with you to allow you to come this far that you would actually know of your association with It and as is evidenced in and through your own soul.

Leah:        You can see Elyssia's eyebrow going up over there.

Elyssia:     I'm excited by this lesson. I think that I'm coming close to finding out something that I'm going to have to find out.

TOMAS:     I am excited for you and with you and I will perhaps bridge the gap between our two systems of discussion this evening to suggest that as you think about it, that you neglect somewhat to apply your intellectual mind, and allow yourself to think with your higher mind. That way, you will be bridging the realm into morontia reality. You will have left behind the mark of the beast of the intellect and begun to appreciate the Mother's mind.

Elyssia:     Can you give me an example of a person that is thinking about a certain anything with their mind and then how they would think about it with their higher mind? I wonder if that would help me?

TOMAS:     It would help you only if you understood it personally, and so let us talk about you and your mind. You have given us, in fact, an example this evening, that being that your former understanding of celebration involved a large company, and yet in reflection you have discerned that a true celebration, a celebration of value in the spirit, is a matter of quality rather than quantity. And this is a thought that came to you by and through the use of your divine mind. Your higher mind. Right?

Elyssia:     Well, I think I got myself into my original problem because I was again deciding what my assignment was -- on this planet, which is, I decided, "Well, I should try to invite people into the group to get them interested in the Book" and so I think I was doing it for the reason that I thought I would be serving the Father. But, in a sense, it was like I had programmed myself. I said, "This is what you'll do," and then went mindlessly ahead and did it.

TOMAS:     It is understood, Elyssia, the steps that you have taken to attain this current degree of appreciation and understanding of the value of your communion with Michael and his flock. In times past, in your background, in your society, indeed in your fellowship, in your history, in your social evolution, you have been trained in this way. It is the gracious way to comport yourself. It is an invitation to the dance, and it is understood that your integrity would lead you naturally through that ballroom, up to this private and sacred pas de deux with divinity.

Elyssia:      I like that picture.  Quite nice.  A dance.  A dance. Yes, the sacred dance.
TOMAS:        Indeed.
Elyssia:      I know you have used that concept wonderfully, as far as I'm concerned anyway.

TOMAS:        We teachers use it much as the Master spoke in parables. We like to dance.

Elyssia:      I always like those allusions throughout the papers that you use.
TOMAS:        So you have a greater understanding, now, of your soul's awareness?
Elyssia:    I do.  I really do.
TOMAS:    How does it feel?
Elyssia:    I like it.

TOMAS:     Share with us the feeling of the soul in terms of ... pick a situation, any situation.

Elyssia:     Well, I'm always off-putting my desires, my soul's desires, for something I think I should do. I should! I have a lot of that in my mind all the time.

TOMAS:      Excellent!  Excellent!

Elyssia: I think that if I do what I want to do, it's usually like this. It's more satisfying, like this evening.

TOMAS:      Indeed.

Elyssia:     With just close people. Not having to actually -- you know, it's a struggle bringing people in that don't have the joy that we do in the Book, and when we don't do it, then we're all together in that pleasure.

TOMAS:        They will be embraced.
Hester:       In their own good time.
TOMAS:         What better sisters and brothers to share the mutual embrace of the Master?

Elyssia:      It's so often that I don't allow myself to do the things that I really enjoy.  And this is a perfect example.

TOMAS:     I am reminded of the plea of the Adjuster. Pick an Adjuster, any Adjuster, who yearns for your cooperation, who beseeches you to pay closer attention, to abide more graciously to its direction, and to follow its suggestions, follow through with its assignments, and to undertake its learning experiences more cheerfully. All of these appropriations of the Adjuster are its efforts to conjoin with you in order that it may attain for you eternal life.

As you work with it, as you opt to find its joy for you, its assignment for you, and its direction for you, you grow in the greatest joy there is.

Elyssia:     You were, I know, a very advanced soul when you were on your planet, because you had Trinity Teacher Sons, and you must have found ways to enjoy the Father.

TOMAS:        Oh, yes.
Elyssia:      Did you feel him present with you all the time?

TOMAS:     All the time. It is therefore an unimaginable adventure for me to be here and see the incredible opportunities that are available that are unnoticed by you. The suggestion has been made many times, and yet it is amazing, while being understood, how it is that you do not see these opportunities as opportunities but as dire circumstances, dreadful happenings, ungodly burdens, dreadful expenses, and so on and so forth. From my vantage point I can see them as opportunities. I could not do that without the perspective of where I come from and my challenge now is to see, if you will, the solution to the mystery and see all the clues and wonder why you can't guess who did it, you see.

Elyssia:     Could you give us an example, for instance, of a part of your day? You arise in the morning on that planet, too. And you must pray. Maybe you don't pray. Maybe you're always with the Father, as you said.

TOMAS:     It is a matter of waking, and even before conscious waking, the subconscious is immersed in an understanding of its existence as a result of the Father. A day is a day of anticipation. It would be quite dull for those of you who are exposed to so many challenges.

Elyssia:      You awaken and you are already in ...
TOMAS:        In worship.
Hester:       Expectation goes along with this, doesn't it?
TOMAS:        Anticipation, spiritual expectation, living faith, yes.

Elyssia:     What is it that makes your subconscious mind already open to the Father, even before you are consciously awake? What have you done the day before, the night before? What have you thought about?

TOMAS:     It is not so much what the individual has done, but what the entire population has done. The entire collective consciousness, for if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to defend yourself against. If you are at peace, you can wallow in the sense of peace and assurance. You can become comfortable there. You needn't worry. You needn't have anxiety. And so many of the things that are part and parcel of your existence here, simply did not exist in my world.

Elyssia:     So if one is not in a state of anxiety, if one has less fear, then one's subconscious mind is closer to God? Even as you are sleeping?

TOMAS:     Indeed! However I will say, in fairness, it is still necessary for the mortal to make those decisions that will allow him to stay in such a state of grace. An ornery mind has always the option of that contrary route. It is possible for the ego to rise up at any occasion and snarl and grapple, to spar with God, if you will. Those individuals, however, on a planet settled in light and life stick out like a sore thumb. It is very easy then for everyone else to surround the individual with love and prayers and melt the rascal on the spot. An over-simplified retort, perhaps, but effective none-the-less.

Elyssia:     Well, you are awake and are already in a state of joy, I assume, because you are already feeling close to the Father.

TOMAS:     Your yearning for joy here seems to be a necessary counterbalance to the lack of joy that you know.

Elyssia:     When I say joy, I really mean the kind that responds to the beauty of the world around you, that kind of thing.

TOMAS:     Indeed it is a natural part of your reality. It is also true that the very real concerns of life are ours as well. If any of my offspring, for example, had a fever, I, like any parent, would have concern. If my mate were gone longer than I had been advised, I would of course be aware of her absence and give that some focus. But my worries and anxieties would not reach the fever pitch that attends you. It would not become an obsessive concern.

It is still possible to go about your business and have a degree of peace of mind in the knowing that the Father is in charge and that there is a certain harmony, a certain pattern of perfection that prevails and when you are living within that pattern of perfection, accidents are less likely to happen. Harmony truly is a reality.

I have diverted more than enough for the evening. I am happy to divert because it helps bring us down from the sacred mountaintop where we have been this evening in adoration of Michael, of Jesus, of the life that we live in concert with him and with the Father. Beautiful children, I am blessed to be in association with you. I have given your assignment and I am going to call it a day. You have another righteous and joyous day in the fields tomorrow and so you need a good nights rest. Good night and farewell.

Group:     Good night.

Elyssia:      Tell Christ Michael we said "Happy Birthday".

*****

DATE:        August 27, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, P.A. USA
T/R’s            Gerdean and Hunnah
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM

Group:  Elyssia, Celeste, Liana, Hunnah, Leah, Evangel, Gerdean, Hester and Iyana.

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 34, THE LOCAL UNIVERSE MOTHER SPIRIT
#1.  Personalization of the Creative Spirit
#2.  Nature of the Divine Minister
#3.  The Son and Spirit in Time and Space
#4.  The Local Universe Circuits
Paper 111, THE ADJUSTER AND THE SOUL
#1.  The Mind Arena of Choice
#2.  Nature of the Soul

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
CREATING A GREATER REALITY

Gerdean:     

“Hi, Michael. We are all very glad to be here with you and very glad that you are here with us. I'm going to be very personal in this, and perhaps not make it a group prayer but it is certainly in the spirit of all of us who love you. We have been appreciating the response of our notice of your birthday. Every year when we honor the anniversary of your birth here, there is a flowering of spiritual stimuli, and I want to thank you for the messages that we have received from the teachers that you have sent to help us.

"The messages from Melchizedek and from Ham and many of the other teachers have been as always fruitful, loving and wonderful, and in this context, Creator Michael, I want to thank you so much for our teachers at our own table here. How grateful I am and I know we are for the blessed friendship and companionship, guidance, counsel of teacher Tomas, beloved Tomas, and dear, dear Merium.

"These teachers have done so much for us. They are so real to us and they have taught us so much. They have helped us become real by causing us to think, guiding our reactions, encouraging our responses, stimulating our thought processes, inviting our love for them and for You and for each other and for ourselves. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this wonderful gift that you have given us, these beautiful teachers.

"It is a privilege to be a student in this Teaching Mission.  Amen.”

MERIUM:  (T/R Hunnah)      Good evening.
Group:    Good evening, Merium.

MERIUM:     Pass the tissue. It is indeed a good evening. You have done very well this evening. I just love to hear Gerdean. She just pumps these words out and smells them like flowers, puts them in her mouth and rolls them around. It is such a delight and we are so amused, so indeed it is good to be here with you again and I did have a good time with Hunnah the other night. We are going to go on the road! Anyway, it was a raging, roaring success and there are successes all around this table. Secret moments, quiet victories, private hurrah, hurrah, cheer you on. I happen to know that Hunnah has been being taught all day. She has opened her mouth and shut it so many times without saying anything, you just would not believe it. It is very amusing to me.

And you also do a great deal of it yourself because you will know you are pre-empting what has to be said, and you'll catch yourself and you will say nothing.

Welcome, Iyana. It is very nice to see you here on your roller blades. You are all so dear to us. Hester, dear heart. Oh, I must tell you before I have our guest speaker arrive, that Hunnah received a gift and Hunnah is not sure why she is bringing this up but it is a picture of Johanna, and it is a very nice picture. She is sitting at a table eating, and so are you, every time you come together. It looks like you are nibbling and crunching but you are really being fed. You are all very en-hungered, and our camaraderie and our mutual agreement is your own meal and it will sustain you. We all know the difference between false appetites and spiritual hunger; never-the-less it's a lovely picture of our dear child.

My talk this evening could turn into a gentle silence and you would feel the embrace of the many who have come in throngs to be about your configuration. How dear you are and how pleased we are with Gerdean in her delight, her joy, in this new gift of communication and the generous heart that helped bring it about, JoniEl. Thank you for letting me come in and introducing the evening. Tomas, is our girl ready? Gerdean?

Gerdean:    What?  [Group laughter]
MERIUM:    Would you like a little more time?  I'll tell a story.
Gerdean:    Tell a story.

MERIUM:    I have been challenged. How is the world going to get along without me? How is the human situation in your particular situation going to get along without you? I would like to have you reflect upon the role you play in your personal life, and the pattern that you have developed, your configuration in your role. What would happen if you were not allowed to play your human role? Iyana has had her opportunity to play a different part, but how would it be for you if you were picked up like a piece in a chess game and given a different role.

I'm not talking about death. I'm talking about your comfort zone, and where you are and how you are and who you think you are. Now we've been through the "who you think you are" but I would like to introduce to you "how" you are, and not with a magnifying glass, but I would like to urge you to allow your personal teachers to help you observe yourselves in your everyday life in a way that you have never done, ever. It will be a beginning for some of you, an introduction to impersonalization. Impersonal, non-judgmental, judgment. Where will this take us? I'm hoping to help you relax the outer layers so that the flowering of the high intent, that soul that you discussed this evening, might have a little more room. The structure of having always done it a certain way, or being a certain person, a repeating a pattern, is very much like a molded, living, under-girding of false reliability.

So I would like to have you make it playful, if you would. Break your routines that you have developed and see what kind of good damage you can do to your daily fare. The best example I can say is to reply to someone in a different way than the usual. The most common reply, other than, "Thank you for shopping at K-Mart" would be "How are you?" "Fine, thank you." Or perhaps they don't even say that anymore. "How are ya?" "Fine!" Not true. You are not allowed to say "Fine." You have to say something original, or you can tie them up for half an hour and tell them your trouble, but I would like to have you break that groove and give yourself some more space. It will be fun.

That was not a story, but it was a start. Another start on your story, the story that you are. We like stories up here, but we want to see that soul story build. Thank you. Now, I'm going to try again. Are you ready?

TOMAS: (T/R Gerdean)     Tomas is here. I have been ready and Gerdean has also been ready. We have however enjoyed your recitation and your counsel, indeed, your invitation to an expanded reality. You might as well, in fact, encourage the evolution of your soul for it is the true satisfaction. I will confess to you that the tears of Gerdean in her prayer were not emotional tears of the human but joyous out-pouring of living water from her soul. It is a difference.

I will tell a story on Gerdean. On Christmas Eve, experiencing communion in a Catholic service, she was overcome suddenly by tears and not understanding the experience she inquired of the nun who suggested that tears did not have to be tears of sadness, but could be tears of joy. I will go one further on that and suggest that the soul that has developed has a life of its own and it has its own feelings. You have contributed to the reality of this entity, this reality, the soul, and yet you are largely unconscious of it.

I would like for you to consider the greater reality of that which you are creating. Have you ever felt, for example, a certain sadness that had no reason? Have you ever felt a certain longing, a certain craving that could not be satisfied with chocolate? It could be, it could well be, the sense of yearning in your soul. Souls have been known to weep. They long for your cooperation. They yearn for your devotion. They shrink from your irreverence. And I tell you these things to enlighten you to the greater reality that you will become if you continue to co-operate your mind with your indwelling Adjuster. This evolving soul which is your immortal reality, the you in becoming, is other than the you that you recognize as yourself today, and it is a fascinating unfoldingment.

I believe it was last week in your time frame wherein I discussed with you the incredible challenge for us in the Teaching Mission to come here to begin to observe your souls emerging from the darkness and as we sit here at the table here in amusement and in appreciation of your budding realities and in your various and sundry efforts toward developing your greater reality, we are entertained and challenged beyond your imagination.

Your potential is staggering. I smile as I say that for certainly that could be interpreted as, "Your limitation is astounding" as well, but we embrace you, we love your being, even as it is emerging from the cocoon of your human selfhood, your original mortal identity, encouraging you all the while in your efforts in soul growth.

Beloved Gerdean, we appreciate your prayers for us. Your uncommon unselfishness in this context is a gift to us which indeed contributes to our very souls as well. There is great power inherent in prayer and to know that you are being prayed for is a great boost to the effects of that prayer, and so we know in our heart that we have been prayed for in your sincere and very earnest commendation to Michael of our efforts with you here. You also are an answer to our prayer, our prayer to serve Michael, and so we are growing in our spirit community, in our co-ordination of spirit unity.

Even though we in the hierarchy, if you will, reside on different levels of ascension, it is ever true that we are the family of God and we support one another as a healthy family will do. I, your elder brother, your uncle Tomas, love you all very much and am very pleased to behold your growth in-as-much as it is apparent that your efforts to advance are because of your very personal and very real relationship with Our Father, and so, real ones, we pray for you as well.

Merium, I am indeed charmed by your gifts, as always. I am going to throw open the floor for questions.

Iyana:      Tomas?
TOMAS:      Yes.

Iyana:     Do you mean that you want us to call on you for any help you need or anything like that? I know you say you pray for us and you watch over us, but are we to call on you, too?

TOMAS:     You know, Iyana, when you realize that you cannot do it alone, you begin to realize that you need someone to share the experience with. This includes the wonderful parts as well as the difficult parts. Companionship is a fruit of the spirit. The ability to sit and confer and counsel and nurture with a fellow traveler on the road to Paradise is a profound gift of the spirit and so yes, child, you may call on me as you will call on any friend who will say, "Ring me up," and "Call me and we'll talk sometime. We'll talk it over together." Yes, child, my little sister, you may call me and I will visit with you as any of your teachers will do. You don't need to have a mediator. Indeed, there is no priesthood in this ministry.

Iyana:      Thank you.  I'll call on you.  Often.
TOMAS:      I am prepared to be busy.

Elyssia:     We're enjoying this soul thing that you started last week, Tomas, and it's something I'm really looking forward to enjoying with the group, a little bit each week. I think it's going to be a couple of wonderful weeks and I thought you might have a comment about our study tonight on the soul. We stopped a few times and had questions between ourselves.

TOMAS:     I will respond, Elyssia, and first I will thank you for developing the topic. You have, for all of your childlikeness, a gifted soul, in-as-much as it has been derived partly because of your thoughtful considerations in the capacity of teacher. Because you have been a teacher, you have been able, in some recess of your soul, to bring around the focus of the classroom.

I owe you, indeed, a vote of confidence (wrong phrase) for bringing us into a study in character. It was you who persisted in the cry for enlightenment and study in character which led to our series of lessons on the Fruits of the Spirit, and now, my daughter, you have brought into your arena/to your table for our study and dissection, the topic of the soul.

What a marvelous teacher you are, to bring this to the attention of your class, your classmates and your teachers, for it is an excellent study, an on-going study, and one which will astound and amaze you as you begin to perceive your soul. Not only to be aware of it but to perceive its responses, its hungers, its abilities, its marvelous capacities.

It is said in your text that at a certain point the soul begins to take off and grow by itself, and it is to this end that we encourage you to be aware of what it is, thus it can perhaps take off more readily with your permission and your co-operation.

Your studies have been therefore noted and very much enjoyed, but as you know, and I tell you these are not Gerdean's remarks here, even though you would think so, it is like any classroom before it settles down into the fascination of the subject at hand, there is a certain amount of, yes, giggling and twittering, turning pages and throwing spitballs. We see this in this classroom often, and even though it irritates Gerdean, it is not a serious distraction for the teachers for we cannot teach you until you are ready, so like Merium has suggested, what we do is we just simply rest.

We wait until such time as your appetite has been sufficiently whet by your peers, by your connection to divinity in your Thought Adjuster, by your own sense of wanting to keep up with the others in the class, by wanting to get brownie points from God for being a good kid in the kingdom, and for your own soul's hunger to expand and become more real. We await your mind arena of choice wherein you will indeed approach this meal with a hearty appetite and chew on each concept so that you will be nourished and you will grow in your own reality.

Elyssia:    Well, that's something to look forward to.  Very much.
TOMAS:    We ALL look forward to that.
Elyssia:    Could I ask a question about what Merium said?
TOMAS:    Of course.

Elyssia:     She suggested if someone asks you "How are you?" don't just say "Fine" and I remember that I did that. I changed what I was saying and it was absolutely terrible, because I started to talk about a lot of things that turned out to be sort of negative, I guess, so I think I'm going to have to really think about how I change my responses. I think I'm going to have to give that a lot of thought.

MERIUM:     I would like it if you would NOT give it a lot of thought but let the new form that is developing in you reply. I am sure there is enough in there to choose from that you will not have to use your old mode of taking thought. "Here comes Mrs. So & So, what will I tell her?" It is not like that. It will float forth effortlessly. You will hear it and it will still belong to you and it will be appropriate.

Elyssia:      And then we are to tell you?

MERIUM:     You can; you don't need to. But I want YOU to be aware of how it goes. And not just there in that setting but in your own home situation. For example, in this situation, almost everyone sits in the same chair. It's like owning the pew. When you come in next time, sit somewhere else -- even though I understand that there are some who are positioned closer to the door because it's physically convenient, but don't be afraid to sit in a different place. It will give you a different perspective.

Elyssia:     Thank you. And now getting back to our subject of the soul, I think I was wishing that you would comment about the soul as you do sometimes and give us a little lesson on it. I was going to ask both of you if you would give me a Sunday School lesson because Sunday School starts on Sunday and I really appreciated those lessons last year; I felt they were powerful.

MERIUM:     First of all I want to tell you, my dear, the old form of you (and it has its place), is very structured and it is very sensitive to time and space: how much time and how much space. And it's as if -- oh, I will steal from Hunnah. Her friend had a dream. She was climbing the mountain and she was carrying her tape recorder and books and she said, "I heard a voice say 'Put them down'!" Put them down. You already know all that Sunday School. Let that which you have been holding within you come forth in your higher way. [Hunnah departed with lyana]

MERIUM (T/R Gerdean): We are talking about how it is that you are so habitual, you mortals, how you are such creatures of habits, and how your habits determine who you are and when you are challenged to re-define your identity through the stimuli of a greater reality, you feel you cannot function for you have not functioned that way before. This is the moral of the story of my friend who was admonished to drop her books and tape recorder. She was relying on her intellect and on her cognizant mind and was asked to consider thinking with the higher mind, the cosmic mind, and allowing some of her life to transpire by and through living faith.

It is also why I have suggested throughout the week you respond differently. You as creatures of habit have a tendency to create patterns in life that are hard then to break, hard to allow the spirit to work with. If you were to consider, for example, a resilient piece of tin foil, and it were crumpled up into a ball, but within seconds, opened back up into this fine film, plain sheet of foil....

Evangel, you recognize this from the ...

Evangel:      When the space ship crashed and they picked up all the pieces ...
MERIUM:       Yes.
Leah:        The Roswell Experience.
Evangel:      ... in Roswell.
MERIUM:        Yes.   Do you recall what they called this metallic substance?
Evangel:      I think it was "unknown material".  I don't know.

MERIUM:      I say you do not have a word for it, but you know what I mean.  Anyway...  Your culture would have you wadded up into a ball and I would have you go back to being a fresh film, sheet and allow yourself to enjoy just being, rather than habitually crumpled. Tomas is shaking his head [group giggle] but I know that you know what I'm saying. At any rate, it is something that I would say so you understand me and where I'm coming from.

I am going to also, Elyssia, give you a few words in the context of your Sunday School if you are still interested. I do not have access to the same files in this T/R as I do through Hunnah, but I will rummage around in here and find an idea. Perhaps you would like to introduce to your students at the beginning of this term, a concept of the soul also, so that these little souls will be immediately stirred by your acknowledgement of their existences.

You are not, you hear me, just dealing with Mrs. Baker's precocious son and Mr. McCullough's spoiled daughter. You are dealing with potential immortal souls here, and although they are young, they are also relatively un-crumpled. They are still fairly fresh, and I know that children are very responsive to the invigoration of imagination and a realization of spirit that their parents are perhaps incapable of.

But let me suggest to you that you take a simple sentence, such as your Bible would present, let us say that Adam is laying there and into him was breathed the breath of life and he became a living soul. Now, let's not just give that an habitual response like "How-are-you-I-am-fine. " Let us look at that. What does that mean? Can we not use that as an opportunity to discuss the holy spirit? Can we not infuse Adam with more than protoplasm and molecules? Can we not infuse him with the seven adjutant mind spirits? Or something bigger and better than merely breathing?

Breathing, of course, is important, but what does that do for the soul? How does that address these children in such a way as they would even be inspired to know who Adam is! Except some historic feature that comes across as being "How-are-you-I-am-fine". "Who-was-the-first-mortal-Adam." What does this have to do with the breath of life and the living soul? This is a very simple scripture but it is not developed, in truth, to feed these young minds and you are in a position to do this, certainly.

Elyssia:      I believe it.  That sounds very intriguing and I believe they will be quite interested.

MERIUM:     I am going to give the microphone back to Tomas. Not because I'm not having fun because you know I am. Nor because I am unwelcome in this T/R's configuration for I get along with Gerdean now that she understands me better, but I am also offering a platform for Tomas, in-as-much as HE has been prayed for and HE wants to strut his feathers!

TOMAS:    SHE is such a companion I can't believe it. I am Tomas I am back and I am glad to be here. It is very true that men and women will be men and women throughout eternity and as you know from your studies, a good deal of the relationship is antagonistic, and yet it is a stimulating antagonism, if you will, for perhaps the greatest comparison I can give you is a healthy competition. It has been said that only socially will men and women compete and what are we if not sociable, so I have got the mike. Now I can run with it. And yet, the evening runs on.

Good evening, Sean. I am grateful to you for your allowing us the use of your home. You have always been exceptionally gracious to those of us who occupy your spouse for hours on end. Thank you.

Are there other questions?

Leah:        Could you give a definition of time and space that may be more to the liking of everything we were contributing for lyana, that she might be able to read it in the transcript?

TOMAS:     I am going to refer you to your text. There is a section regarding time and space and it can address the question academically and in better phraseology than I am able to at this point. You are creatures of time and space. What is it to you? What is time to you? It means you have a certain period of time in which to accomplish things. You measure your life by time.

T.S. Eliot measured time in terms of coffee spoons, and yet it was still measured. It is a method of determining space, linear space, because only in these special concepts can you have a linear understanding of what your life is all about. Let me suggest that you think of your life in terms of relationship. [Tape turned]

Hester:     I got this as the evening progressed. When they were talking about the soul, I asked the question: "What is the definition of the soul?" And this is the definition I got: "It is the spiritual essence of our reality, the real essence capable of understanding spiritual capacity and spiritual activity and converting it to our use."

TOMAS:     You have a somewhat of an understanding, Hester, and a noble portrayal of your understanding. We can work with that, as can you.

Hester:      There is more.
TOMAS:       Yes, there is more.  Are you going to share it with us?
Hester:      Not yet.  It has to come together.

TOMAS:     Indeed, it is exactly what I suggested to Elyssia. Yes, let us take the process, and you will find this in your further studies. Let us say that you make a decision based on the reality response required at the moment. You may gloss it over, you may not see it. You may rely upon a habitual response. You may -- this is to say your ego mind may say, your human mind, mortal mind, may say, "I don't have time for that right now. I don't want to be bothered with that decision right now. I'm going to put that on hold for awhile."

But your mental computer, your spiritual computer will keep bringing it back up until such time as you deal with it. You must make the decision in a certain context, and that decision will either spiritize your thinking, it will contribute to your greater reality, to your belonging to and being aware of a larger reality, or you will begin to shrivel up and shrink in your capacity to absorb greater realities. This is a dramatized interpretation but true none-the-less.

It is easy for you to think that this only relates to the big decisions, but that's not the case. It relates also to those millions of small decisions you make on a regular basis, for as we have discussed, the configuration of each moment is different, and each time you encounter a person there is a different constitution of the relationship for no one stays the same.

You may want to stay the same, you may hope to stay the same, and the human likes it regular. The human does not like to go through changes. They like to have everything down pat. They like to keep it mechanical. They like to have their textbook and their tape recorder. They want their routine. They want their time and space so that they can feel as if they have control. They can feel that they have control and they do, but they can manifest such control that they shut off the growth of their soul, which requires depending on someOne else's intelligence, someOne else's guidance, someOne else's power, someOne else's reality than that which you puny little people have.

Now as you begin to be -- as you begin to BE -- as your soul begins to be and as you begin to feel the reverberations of the reality of this soul, as you begin to find the discomforts and also the bliss of this soul, you begin to relinquish that which you believed was control, that which you held in check, for the greater growth of this reality, this spirit reality, this soul, this You that is becoming.

Remember that the you that is a human being will die.  Many people find that a very frightful concept, but it is likely because that's all they know about who they are, but as you develop your soul and as you begin to recognize your soul, as you begin to work with your soul and have perceptions, through your awareness of your soul, as you begin to respond to the needs of your soul and the stimuli of your soul, which you have helped to create by your decisions, your opting to follow the Father, in all of your life circumstances, you have developed that which is greater than the human, greater.

You recall the excerpt from the Book that says that with God you are greater than that which you were. You have become supermortal, you see. This is not mere fiction, not mere fantasy. This is reality, but it takes courage to allow the human self to give up what it thinks is control.

Elyssia:     Well, if you provide opportunities for your soul to experience truth, beauty and goodness, does that develop your soul?

TOMAS:     IF you allow it truly and not depend upon your human perception of what truth, beauty and goodness is. You may, for example, see beauty in a healthy child but let us say that Mother Theresa sees beauty in a child who has wounds and sores because she sees beyond the obvious. She sees the beauty of the soul. She sees the beauty of the potential. She sees the beauty of the heart. Not the mere surface, not the external.

Truth, beauty and goodness are a part of the inner life. They are facets of the soul and yes they are keener, made keener by your appreciation of them, but they are not truth as in saluting the flag, beauty as in listening to a symphony, or goodness as in giving an apple to the teacher, no. They are expansive interpretations far, far deeper and greater than your initial understanding of what truth, beauty and goodness are.

This is not to decry your initial perceptions, but you have such potential -- you have such potential! -- and only as you go deep in there and work with your spirit. Let your mind and your Thought Adjuster work together to create this entity, which is that which you will become and which you will be throughout eternity.

Elyssia:      Thank you very much.

TOMAS:     You are very welcome, daughter. I am very glad of your renewed interest in this subject. I am going to prepare to depart. It has been, again, a robust and invigorating evening. I will however before I go convey to you that I, too, would like to wind this up with a prayer and I, too, would like to say,

"Good evening, Michael. We come to you in reverence, dear Father, for the wondrous works of your creation and the infinite mysteries of unfolding perfection. We are grateful for your grace which envelops us and makes us want to be like you in terms of our relationship with our Father.

"Father/Brother Michael, thank you for these children. Thank you for the association. You who met with your apostles and ordained them as workers in the field understand my devotion and appreciation for these tender hearted children who come to me in trust, who come to Merium for nurturance, for their spiritual companionship and guidance.

"Dear Father/Brother, give me the integrity that you would have of a child, of a follower, of a servant, of a brother, of a friend, that I may teach and preach as I pass by as you did in your honorable sojourn here on Urantia. Let us go. Amen."
*****

DATE:          September 3, 1998
LOCATION:      Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R’s:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM

Group:          Elyssia, Celeste, Gerdean, Leah, Rachel and Hester

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 34, THE LOCAL UNIVERSE MOTHER SPIRIT
#5.  The Ministry of the Spirit
#6.  The Spirit in Man
#7.  The Spirit and the Flesh Paper 111, THE ADJUSTER AND THE SOUL
#3.  The Evolving Soul

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
ABANDONMENT

TOMAS:      I am Tomas.  Good evening, my friends.
Group:    Good evening, Tomas.  Thank you for coming.

TOMAS:     Welcome to the cosmic dance. We are engaged upon an exercise of harmony this evening. It is a harmonious assemblage of beings -- spiritual, morontial and mortal -- divine in nature and in purpose. I have been counseled by the Master this evening to discuss with you the necessity of abandoning old systems, old beliefs, old patterns, old expectations, old habits.

Abandonment is the word of the day, for many of you hold fast to these habitual practices and even personalities and relationships which allegedly/ supposedly provide certain purpose/ function/ stability/ order, but they are chains which hold you from real life. Abandon those perceptions which stifle you in tradition. Bring the light of living love, the truth of spontaneity into your thinking. Allow yourself the freedom to know your relationship with the unrevealed.

His unchanging nature will give you the freedom to change continuously en route to understanding who you are, but lean not upon your old props, your old assignations, and this message has been from the promptings of Michael.

Leah        Could you give us an example, please?

TOMAS:     I will rather ask you to give me one. Let us use this as an exercise for our engagement this evening, for when it is late and when your minds have been sustained if not saturated already by the scholarly application to your Urantia Book studies, to the joyous interchange of soulful delights and social activities, it is wise to incorporate you into the party rather than lulling you into oblivion through my monotone.

Let us indeed ponder the assignment of abandonment. What can you each abandon? Let us think, then, on this for a moment. We will go on pause while you all think quietly to yourself what you could abandon.

[On pause]

TOMAS:      I notice that none of you said you were going to abandon your teachers.
Group:    [Laughing] No!  Never.  Never.

TOMAS:     I am glad of it. I shall not abandon you either. There are, even so, a lot of things we could leave behind. I myself have had to leave behind more than you have yet experienced, and yet I have been made better for it.

I am delighted with your aspiration, Celeste, to give up procrastination. This bespeaks a true value lesson, entering into a mature morontial soul. Indeed, in the mansion worlds you will be required to give up every last vestige of procrastination and so it is honorable that you believe that you can begin now to realize that value.

When your soul has ordained your actions, when your human intellect, your personality has given authority to the soul to act on your behalf, and/or on the behalf of other good, you do not want to usurp it's authority by your proclivity to put things off. Can't you just see the disastrous effects of procrastination if, for example, an angel were going to whisk a child from the jaws of death, an on-rushing vehicle, and the will creature decided to "wait a minute". This is an over-dramatized picture but you see the point.

Celeste:     Tomas, when I first said that, I thought it would be an interesting thing to say, but now that you have spoken, I really want to learn not to procrastinate.

Elyssia:      Yeah, me too.  I really want to learn that one!

TOMAS:     Then you must be aware, allow yourself to be aware of your propensity to procrastinate, and this is something that can be made aware to you by your own asking for awareness of your habit. When you ask the Father in good faith where you have fallen short in your ability to live up to those standards, those capacities which you have, you will be shown, it will be revealed to you and you are working harmoniously with the spirit forces which are conspiring to bring you upward into God-consciousness and effectiveness. The word reality-izing comes to my mind.

Our various and sundry resolutions regarding yet what you will abandon are interesting indeed, but I (aside from procrastination) am inclined to side with Hester. It is a valuable tool to share and commend yourself to another, but it is also of value to conform to the will of Father, and if you should discover through conversation/ communion with Him that you are practicing a bad habit, one which interferes with your happiness and the effect of your teaching and preaching, if you will, your awareness of this practice will be best and most poignantly revealed to you by and through divinity, for always is divinity gracious in its revelations. It leads, it never drives.

And so even as I ask you to discuss with me your affirmations as to what you will give up, you have merely given yourself an assignment and learned how, again, to drive yourself rather than allowing the spirit to lead you into a relinquishment of that down pull, that bad habit, that dependency which has stood in your way and which stands in the way of the soul's development. In truth, it stands in the way of the Father's revealing himself to his creation through you because you have, yes, procrastinated in your will to give up anything which stands in your way of being the best you can be: supermortal!

It is a testimony to the spiritual muscle which we have developed in Gerdean we are possible to get a lesson addressed this evening, and thanks to Michael for his coaching because our little one here is exhausted and doesn't know it. It is therefore in the light of graciousness that we will not go late, you may be assured, but I am always of a mind to address you in our most poignant and intimate friendship, therefore I will engage with you in such a fashion as to allow you to establish our format. Are there questions?

Elyssia:     I was going to ask: we should abandon that which is stopping us from spiritizing our minds or developing our souls. I mean, that would be something that would come to my mind, and so I think this week I am going to try to think of it that way, in addition to that which I described. I think that which I described will help me to look at myself as we had said we would, in an impersonal way, and then after I do that, I think I'm going to think of these things, that if I abandon them, I can spiritize my mind or develop my soul more. Because I've been thinking about that and trying to relate a lot of my thinking to that particular study.

TOMAS:     I would like to call to your mind the rhetorical question about your faith, about control also, as to who it is that is in charge. If it is true that the Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men, if it is true that the Father upholds the universe, if it is true that Jesus has ascended to sovereignty and is the Master Son of all Nebadon, if it is true that there is a divine plan afoot to ascend you to perfection, if there is a teaching mission in effect to assure you of an end to isolation and to an embrace of spirit association, if there is a faith path for agondonters such as yourselves, an association of believers such as this -- is this not then that which you should put your faith in, instead of leaning upon those false values and false props of man which are designed to foster the old way?

Look at your life and determine, as Merium is inclined to use from Hunnah's software, "Whom do you serve? Mammon or God?" and look at your behaviors. Is this feeding and supporting a temporal reality or a spirit reality? And I can hear your ego minds rising to the defense of your human existence and saying, "Yes, but this is where we live! This is our environment! This is our arena! This is our responsibility! This is my family! This is my job! This is my government! This is my wallet! This is my lover! This is my animal! This is my Bill of Rights! This is my moral duty!"

I can hear you saying all of this and certainly we will not detract from your sense of mortal identity because it is as important for you as a human to manifest yourself as it is for your indwelling Adjuster to also manifest itself through you. However, all of your humanness can be a part also of your spiritual reality. It is an act of trust, children, when you allow the Father control, when you give over to the Most Highs the authority of governing your universe, including your own arena, and including your own home.

I will point to you the word "obey". All of you have learned to obey a lesser rule, a lesser law, a lesser standard, but like good children you have been well trained and societally appropriately trained to obey other than the Father, for as you become reborn, as you open to the spirit circuits, you will discover a new authority. That is the authority which rules the world. That is the authority which determines which relationships will come into being and foster truth, beauty and goodness.

Learn to discern that higher authority and follow that higher authority and abandon all those lesser authorities which would usurp your loyalty to the Creator and to his ideals and goals for you and for his world.

Elyssia:      That's really good.  I think that's very, very helpful.

Rachel:     So maybe it's a constant review of going into stillness and asking the Father to reveal to you what it is that you should give up, because I know I've given up a lot of things and I was, of course, sitting here in my superiority saying, "Okay, you know, I've given up procrastination," but yet I haven't. There are other things now, I see, that maybe I am procrastinating about. It's probably never ending, due to our conditioning.

TOMAS:     I believe that self-punishment/brow-beating was on the general list of things to give up, but it is wise to recognize that these are things which you have recognized in your subconscious. They go very deep. There are things in you and part of you which may never need to be revealed because you will have abandoned your mortal flesh and the ways of the mortal flesh before they have even had a chance to arise and make themselves consciously known, but if you allow yourself, in humility, the gracious love of God to wash you clean, you will be shown subtleties and challenges presented to you that would give you insight into how you react/ respond/ behave that are self-oriented rather than God-oriented. I mean self-oriented in an egocentric sense rather than in a healthy sense, you see. I am not against you, my child, but against certain practices which are harmful to truth, beauty and goodness.

All mortals have these. You had a wonderful discussion earlier about a teacher lesson of worth regarding a mortal cry, about the deplorable circumstances on Urantia and its pain and darkness and so forth, and so you are aware that you have a lot built into you that needs to be abandoned. It is not your fault, but it is there, none-the-less. Let's say you've moved into a house on the corner which has great potential.

You can see that it will have large shade trees, in time. Perhaps it has water that runs through it. The town is nearby and the country is apparent, but when you move into this house the foundation is a little shaky in the northwest corner, the porch needs reinforced, the shingles are loose on the south side, the wallpaper is ugly and the carpet needs replaced. These kinds of things, you see.

You are lovely and you are a good home for your Thought Adjuster, but I'm sure that in time he'll want to upgrade the plumbing.

Rachel:       [Esoteric chuckle]
Elyssia:      I wish you would expound on that about the house a little more, please?
TOMAS:        Oh, you like to be entertained.  [Group laughter]

Elyssia:      No, I mean I really want to understand the way it applies to me.  I just didn't get it.

Gerdean:        There's  nothing  there!  [Group  laughter]  How embarrassing!

Hester:     That's okay. I think I got some answer. If you see your life as a house that's in-the-building, in the process of being built, and then you see this room is totally vacant, no windows, no nothing. What am I going to do with it? There's a couple of steps missing going from one floor to the other and little pieces of this and that and the other -- there's nothing great big in it. We have been working and it would be against our soul's growth to say there are big holes there. It's just the little things we're working on now.

TOMAS:     Yes. The analogy is, Elyssia, that you have moved onto Urantia, a planet that needs some work done. Also you can parallel that analogy to your being less than perfect, adequate and with great potential, but because of the nature of the wear and tear on you as a result of just simply being here, you will need some upgrading. Do you see?

Elyssia:      Yep.

TOMAS:     We are aspiring to come up out of the mud and to evolve into light and life and so you might see yourself the same way, or the evolution of the species in the same way. There are some who even now still wallow in the mud. There are some who are in light and life, in good degree, in their environment, in their pristine homes and their perfect association with Father and Mother and associates of this nature. All of you who are on a spiritual path have experienced a glimmering of personalized light and life because you have been with the Parent and honored in this way.

Some of you walk around in a sense of light and life all day, on occasion, but if you look around you, you can see very clearly that there are many that need to do a lot of work. They have essentially not even moved into the neighborhood.

Elyssia:       Will you describe the situation for us and sort of describe where we are? And ... would you continue?

Celeste:      Tomas, would the people in this room not be out of the mud?
Hester:       I've got to read this.
Elyssia:      I think he said we have had an occasional glimmer.
Hester:       It says here ...
Celeste:      Yeah, but I ...
Elyssia:      It says we have moved into a big house.
Celeste:      Okay, so we're out of the mud.
Elyssia:      It needs a little help.  Here and there and everywhere.

Hester:       This came out while you were talking. "We are all elevated animals, having come from the lower limits of life, we have a great growth opportunity for our souls at this time. We are so very near the angel realms. Go for it."

Celeste:      Wow. That's wonderful.
TOMAS:        You are a real cheerleader, Hester.
Hester:       I'm willing!

TOMAS:     You have all come up far. I have seen a picture lately of the lily that grows in the mud and perhaps you can equate yourself there also, for although you are, in some regards, still in the swamps, you are able to grow in perfection even in the face of your environment.

Hester:       If Jesus could do it, so could we.
TOMAS:        Are there other questions?

Elyssia:      I really liked the lesson so far, so very much. I mean maybe because something seems so very -- immediate about it, and thank you very much.

TOMAS:    You know, it is said that where the woman is, is the home, and perhaps it is the analogy of the home that has thrilled you, Elyssia.   It is a picture that you can personify.

ELYSSIA:      I can understand the point because of that picture.

TOMAS:     I am going to abandon the subject. Not permanently, I am certain we will return to our good fellowship, but I am going to abandon ship for a few hours. I am going to send you on your way so that you can all get home and to bed at a decent hour for a change. I am going to remind you of your assignment, to ponder that which you can abandon. And remember that when you give it up, it will be replaced and so don't try to replace it on your own. In other words, don't say, "Alright I will give up cookies," and then replace it with pretzels. Let the Father guide you in your growth. Let him help you realize your potential. I love you my children, my sweets. It is so good to be back with you after our busy, busy visits.

Celeste:      We love you more.
Leah:        Did you have a good time on our trip, Tomas?

TOMAS:     I and we had a wonderful time, yes, thank you. Indeed we always do. It is, even so, somewhat of a treat to share these experiences and to appreciate your enjoyment of them. It does give it a dimension that allows us to perceive your appreciation of us in a different way. It is apparent, for example, that you believe us, you believe in us, and you believe we are a reality. This is a very heartening thing to behold because of your obvious faith testimony. If you did not have a core belief in a greater reality, that which we share, you would not have the courage to comport yourself in a way of such confidence and acknowledgement of our very being.

It therefore is a testimony of your own faith when you announce that your teacher is here. It is an authority that is developing in you in and through your soul, and one which will give you great strength. This is a dimension that comes above and beyond the intellectual understanding of an array of spirit helpers as outlined in the text book, The Urantia Book. The text book is comforting but the actuality of our working with you is a dimension of reality which brings it into an organism, a reach toward this living organism of the Evolving Supreme.

We are obviously in touch with each other often and so it's not quite the same kind of a reunion as it is with you, and yet as I have said, it is an outstanding experience for us. It is also an interesting and wonderful experience to observe you independently, separately going your ways afterward and watching the effects of our lessons and your faith impact upon your peers in and through their Thought Adjusters and their personal teachers.

Without relaying what goes on, in-as-much as this is personal between the individual and their Mystery Monitor, suffice it to say that the lights that are flickering are fun and encouraging. It is a true thrill to see the spirit light shine. We thank you for your efforts in this regard. When you abandon that which you should give up, think hard and fast on this reality which is becoming  Goodnight and farewell.
*****
DATE:        September 10, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R’s:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM
Group:         Elyssia, Celeste, Liana, Leah, Mary Theresa, Gerdean and Hester

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 35, THE LOCAL UNIVERSE SONS OF GOD
# 1. The Father Melchizedek
#2. The Melchizedek Sons
#3. The Melchizedek Worlds
#4. Special Work of the Melchizedeks Paper 111, THE ADJUSTER AND THE SOUL
#4. The Inner Life
#5. The Consecration of Choice

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
EMOTIONS AS SPIRITUAL TOOLS

TOMAS:     I am Tomas. Good evening, my lovely friends.
Group:    Good evening, Tomas.

TOMAS:     It is good to be with you and a pleasure as always to be in your company. Merium is with me. We and the battalions of supporters of the cause are rooting in the bleachers, enjoying the invigoration of your Autumn environment. We are cheering you on and rooting for your TeaM, your individual teams as well as your united purpose.

This evening I would like to spend a few moments talking with you about emotions. We have had many conversations about emotions, many of which were about how NOT to become overly embroiled in emotions but rather how to rise above them and step up onto the high, dry ground of the faith walk rather than relying upon the emotional mainstream; however, it is valuable for you to realize the effects of emotions, for emotions can be a tool for you as teachers in your milieu, in your environment, in your working with humanity, because it is the one thing that all humanity can understand: that is, feelings.
Even though many people are in denial of certain feelings, you can be assured that the feelings you have are shared with everyone. Everyone has the same array of emotion, and potentially of feeling. I say potentially because many people refuse to feel, and when they refuse to feel, what can you guess, based upon your reading of the development of the soul this evening? They refuse to/ neglect to come into contact with that in them which is potential of spiritizing. They eliminate from their frame of reference, that which is real, that which has value and so it is pointed out this evening the value of emotions, and I will reiterate again the importance of not allowing them to swallow you up, but using them as a tool in your ministry.

In your sharing this evening, you expressed your inner life, emotionally, by and through your concerns for those you love and for your world at large, the relationships that you hold near and dear and that you hold in high esteem even from afar. Your love, as a reflection of your understanding of love by and through your relationship with the First Source and Center, has begun to leak out into ministry in a new degree of serviceability, for you are more able now to objectively observe where some of these difficulties are, other than merely having an emotional reaction to the difficulty itself There is great strength in being able to be master of your emotions to the extent that you can use them to better your world. It requires faith and a degree of skill, but it can be very effective.

Your discourses this evening regarding your concerns for humanity are a good opportunity for Merium and I to point out to you your fatherly affection and look upon your younger brothers and sisters from a level of God-consciousness and awareness that will enable you to parent humanity. Some of you have spoken of little ones three months old, three years old, of the Sunday School students who are nine, ten, the nieces who are 15, 16, nephews who are 18, 19, the sons, 25, 30, the spouses, 70 and 80. All of humanity is potentially your child, your flock, your younger brother and sister in truth.

Your reading this evening also brought up the subject of young people needing to be well schooled in ethics, art, cosmology, philosophy and so forth in order for your civilization to flourish and develop. Yes, of course, it refers to literal young people but it also refers to spiritually young people (we must begin somewhere!) and where do you suppose they are going to find those adults who are going to reflect art and cosmology and ethics and philosophy and so forth except from their elders.

Now you have all lamented to some degree the paucity of leadership and/or of supposedly mature people (mothers, presidents, and so forth), but rather than distain the fallible efforts of these mortals, look rather to the solution which is "It is my will that His will be done" and set yourself out as a teacher and preacher of those adult themes that will promote and sustain the young all around you, even those are chronologically older than you, those politically who have more power than you, those financially who have more money than you; it matters not for you are being schooled in that which has lasting value.

You are fortunate enough to be coming into contact with the realization of your own living soul and an understanding of the power and strength of that soul inherent in the very fact of your consecration, your mind in coordination with the will of God. This is a power and strength, a wisdom and a value that is not known in any other way but through this path that you are on, the Way that was shown by the Wayshower many, many centuries ago.

When you look to your young people -- young and old young people -- ask yourself, "What example have then had?" Have you not been teaching your children, has your civilization not been teaching it's citizenry to excel in the ways of the world? In commercial, sectarian, capitalistic, competitive, scientific, and so on ways? None of these are inherently fostering true value. And it is true value that is sorely missing in your world. It is a dreadful burden, indeed, for the young. It is a burden for you all, but this is truly what responsibility is about.

The responsibility of developing a civilization is indeed a supreme and wonderful opportunity. The idea of responsibility is not onerous. The idea of responsibility is thrilling. The idea that you can accomplish something you set your mind to do, that benefits others, is extremely, supremely satisfying, and so the entire value system of your world is inside out, upside down. It is necessary for people like you to foster value, true value.

Approach the souls of those you meet. Not just their Thought Adjuster, but that human being whose will is able to say, "It is my will that His will be done!" Consecration potential will change Urantia. And believe me, young people are eager for this kind of motivation and this reflection of their own worth, their true worth, their inner life, their value -- that which they are here to reach and to express. You are not alone. We are here with you. The entire universe resounds with your every effort, your every attempt to engage in promoting value and embracing the goodness inherent in greatness of God.

It was good to see Mary Theresa this evening. It is always a pleasure to observe the genuine embrace of divine friendship. And I and Merium are enjoying the embrace of all of you this evening. How are you?

Group:    Fine. Thank you. And you?

TOMAS:     Excellent. Thank you for inquiring. We are invigorated and supported by the universe. I will not say, "Fine." There are so many other adjectives and attitudes available, it is a little response to the magnificence of life. Well, my children, are there questions this evening?

Elyssia:     I tried to deal with procrastination and with self-punishment, and so I tried to write something and maybe you can give me some thoughts on it. I hope you can make a comment or two. I guess I was disappointed when I meditated on paper.

Tomas:     You are creating a hot-fudge-sundae, pouring hot sauce on cold ice cream, in attempting to deal with procrastination and self-denigration within the same week, for as you observe where you could be growing in a subject as broad as procrastination, you have a lot of potential brow-beating available. Give yourself a break. It is much like those who ask for patience and then have 25 tests per day as to how impatient they are. When you are paying attention to the lesson, it can be the entire focus of reality.

Be gentle with yourself, Elyssia. That you have become aware of your propensity to procrastinate conjoins you with the human condition, but that you are consciously aware of it, also puts you in a position to keep yourself in check and work towards that goal, but not to beat yourself up if you have not mastered the lesson in a day or two.

Liana:     It seems to me that everything in our environment, everything in our reality, is purposeful and it is our lesson that if you ask a question, it's not going to come through your ear, it's going to come through the unfolding of the day. That's what's been happening to me. It's unbelievable but it's wonderful.

TOMAS:     It is the glory of the existential and the experiential. The experience of life is wondrous indeed and it is not a mere material life, it is multi-faceted and includes your Thought Adjuster's involvement. When you have committed yourself to a spiritual way of life, your dimension has grown; your experiences now can be assimilated with the farther view in mind. It is enriched by the association with divinity. There is, however a-- what do you call it: piece of Spanish news? Part of your association with divinity and your open walk in faith, understanding that the universe is a friendly place and that each moment can provide opportunities for growth and that you can find reflections of the Father or divinity anywhere you look, will put you in a position of finding divinity even when it isn't required, even when it isn't so. But it is better to err on the side of belief than on the side of skepticism and miss an opportunity to praise God for his many wonders and to experiment with the experience you perceive to be presented to you as a learning and a refinement of your spiritual nature.

Elyssia:       When I was writing I thought I was doing okay, and then I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm just trying to play some kind of game with myself again." so I procrastinate.

TOMAS:      How interesting that you have it on paper!
Celeste:       She has it on tape! I wish we could play it. Tomas would love it.

Elyssia:        I don't know how long it is. It took me a lot of days to do this thing. I hope you won't be disappointed. After I was working on it for awhile it didn't seem fresh. At first it was.

Hester:     Could it be because all of a sudden it's strange to you?

Elyssia (on tape):     "And we're waiting for some words of friendliness to be received. Now. It is the now that we live, grow and create in. Leave, for the moment, using it for future planning, past reviewing, and open your mind and heart to the immediacy of the ministrations of God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, guide me now. Self-punishment, procrastination, can be replaced by other attitudes, by God in loving answer to a cry and need to move on.”

"A poem, a story, an essay can be done and change the old wearisome patterns, verbalizing fleeting and unformed thoughts, is pleasureful relief and sensation of going into unexplored countries, existing wonder-filled, and waiting to reveal their glories in an instant of decision. Paint a landscape with your words, a desert country stretching out before me, the edge of the horizon tinged with a mustard hue and brush strokes of rose. It's a broad and sweeping landscape. One's eye moves across and in to seeming miles and then one travels on and on in one's imagination and seeming to have wanted to have such an expanse, making the familiar worlds far, far behind, no connections now exist, and now there is a sense that one is unencumbered and the accustomed behavior and the habitual responses are not useful here, here in this distant place."

Hester:     That's pure poetry, girl.
Celeste:     It's beautiful.

Elyssia:     "So I am found now here in this distant land once more. I am free to explore the world within and the world without but ‘Why’ you ask ‘did I come so far to go within?’ I cannot answer that question at this moment.”

“I am seated on a broad, flat stone now beside a bright, clear brook, and as I look into its pebbled bottom, I see, see reflected in the water, a deep blue sky above me and a kindly face smiling down on me and I know that at last I am meeting my guide, Maugham, a shining figure of translucent color. I rise to greet him and he takes my hand in his and as he holds it he speaks in gentle tone. His voice is melody and softly reassuring. Now we meet on this plane and we are even closer than we've been before. We've been in communion and now we are together in another way.”

“Let us leave this wooded place and walk to the peak you see above you, and we can view much of the land you see below us then, I find a sturdy branch just long enough to use as we are climbing. A scent of the dense greenery around me is reminiscent of cedar and pine, fresh and delightful. I am filled with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. I have been looking forward to this moment, sure that it would come. No need for concern. It will be the right time when it comes, and here we are now, well known, evidently, to each other. We have promised to be close as long as we shall choose.”

"We are unhurried in our climb, enjoying a tranquil camaraderie, words not needed now, the time to speak will come, and soon we have reached the peak and pleasant grassy meadow with low-lying shrubs, some blossoming and faintly fragrant. We look over our vista far below, extending many miles, beyond us into a suggestion of blue haze. 'Have I come from that land below us? And am I going on into that land I see so far away?' He answered, 'Sit here beside me and you shall discover where you shall choose to be. Let us discover where you can serve and learn and grow. Where shall it be?' I answer, 'Where God shall place me. He knows all.’ ”

"He said, 'He knows all, surely, but you have accepted co-creatorship with him. Is that not true?' I answered, 'Will you not guide me to that place where I should go?' He answered, 'You will find it as you go within. Listen often in whatever way occurs to you. There are many ways. And this particular way is a good way for you.’ ”

TOMAS:        Have you concluded, then, what way that shall be, Elyssia?
Elyssia:     That was the last chance I had to do this, but....
TOMAS:        I regret to say I can find no procrastination in the afore-mentioned.
Elyssia:     Procrastinating because I didn't get into the ... we're still sitting on this hill here!

TOMAS:     Oh, shucks! I can see by your intent that you yearn to savor truth and promote goodness. How can you fail, Elyssia? What lovely prose. What a wonderful experience to hear you share your inner life and to observe the most precious meeting with your spirit guide, as it were, face to face. I am impressed that Maugham should meet you at the site of the living water. It is always fascinating to me how the Mystery Monitor manages to merge the mind of the mortal with morontia mota. It is indeed a fascinating co-creation, a co-parenting even, of that maturity of yours that will develop in your association with your spirit helpers in order that you may tend to your mortal flock of spirit children, as we do in this mission. Wonderful work, daughter.

Elyssia:     But I can't figure out why I'm still sitting on this hill. I think I planned it that way. I think my mind is playing tricks with me so that I'm fooling around and don't have to get to the main point.

TOMAS:     Well, you know, if you are sincere in your efforts, it will reach a moment wherein you will feel the need to come down, even if you are lured by a bauble that you present yourself as needing. Perhaps a scheduled appointment that you are overlooking, but you may be assured that your emotional bank will pull you into the mainstream of life in order for you to feel you those satisfactions that will give substance to your existence in your developing awareness of who you are. You cannot live alone on a mountaintop for very long and find satisfaction there, for part of the wonder of the universe is that you will want to come down to your little chicks and nestle them under your wings, and bring them with you into fruition. This is the I AM aspect.

You will want to have for others the same satisfactions you know for yourself. You will want to; you will feel compelled to take the Father's love into your arena. Now perhaps what you are doing there on that mesa is contemplating your arena below and ascertaining, with the help of your spirit companions and your Creator, how it is that you can most effectively serve or touch your realm.

I don't believe that you are procrastinating. You have too much wisdom and too much earnestness to dally without reason. Have more faith in yourself. Have more faith in the Father that you will be led, as you have opted to serve. As Maugham has advised, you have determined to do His will in co-creation and it will come to you through the Spirit of Truth and in compatibility with your own Father-bestowed personality, that which is most appropriate for you and will therefore be most effective for Father and all.

Elyssia:    Thank you for your comments. And the group for sitting through it.
Celeste:    We loved it. I would be nice to read it.
TOMAS:    Hopefully it will transcribe and so we shall all get to read it.
Celeste:    I think I'm going home, Tomas. It's late.
TOMAS:    I will not detain you, Celeste. It has already been a full evening. Shall we close?

Group:    Yes. We love you. Glad you keep coming.   You are indeed patient.

TOMAS:     Then let us embrace one another in the spirit for our upcoming week and rejoice in the consecration of your will to do His will. Farewell.

*****

DATE:        September 17, 1998
LOCATION:      Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R’s:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM

Group:         Elyssia, Celeste, Leah, Mary Theresa, Gerdean, Rachel and Hester Prayer

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 35, Local Universe Sons of God
#5.1 The Vorondadek Sons
# 6. The Constellation Fathers
# 1. The Vorondadek Worlds
# 8. The Lanonandek Sons
# 9. The Lanonandek Rulers
#10. The Lanonandek Worlds
Paper 111, THE ADJUSTER AND THE SOUL
# 6. The Human Paradox
# 7. The Adjuster's Problem


TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
MORE ON COMPASSION

TOMAS:     I am Tomas. Good evening.
Group:     Good evening, Tomas. Thank you for coming.

TOMAS:       I would first like to thank Hester for her prayer earlier in the evening and convey to you that the coalescing effect of group prayer cannot be underestimated in its value. The bonds of your fellowship are vital to the sustaining power of this configuration of believers.

It is a vast array of speculation, investigation, and perturbation and so on that greets you as you step out into your arena and the adjacent arenas. It is important for you to remember who you are, even as you adapt to your environment, that you may the better teach and preach in your arena. But, therefore, recall to mind the solidifying effects of your association with your core family, the disciples of Christ, the brothers and sisters in the kingdom who share with you the hunger for righteousness that you find yourself filled at this table, this table of plenty provided by Michael, his Melchizedek Order and through the Teachers and through the Spirit of Truth that prevails when you remember our Creator in group worship, in confirmation of our reality and in remembrance of him whom we follow and in his admonitions to us, his teachers and believers.

There are so many things barraging you each in your growth, so many adventures assailing you, so many fragrances whetting your appetites. These are exciting times indeed. There are those who find only the horrors of the old way dying, and those who see only the radiance of the new way emerging, but as you read this evening in the section called "The Adjuster's Problem", you can clearly see the inherent balancing act that is taking place in each aware mortal as to those enticements on one hand and those invitations on the other which only the individual can decide for him/herself which way to go and our prayer is incessantly that we should call upon the Spirit of Truth to give us guidance on which way to go.

I would like to touch upon two things: one having to do with compassion and one having to do with enhungerment, the enhungernent of one who seeks to grow.

First a brief note on compassion. I like to play with your language, you see. Passion is something that evokes different things to different people, and so when we say compassion -- with passion -- it looks rather odd when you think that the customary understanding of compassion is externalized for one who suffers. But look to the act of passion as something that has been infused with life -- a lust for life, a passion for living, a vibrancy in existence, an edge, if you will, a morontia edge to the mere existence of the mechanism, for even a superb animal existence. Therefore when you look with compassion, you are looking with Life. When you see Life reflected back, you may rejoice in the Life that IS, and when you see it not, then indeed, look with compassion upon that person who has yet to discover what true Life and true passion really is.

We touched on this Tuesday in the excerpt from the text that speaks of those that Jesus passed by as not being hungry for truth, not being dissatisfied with themselves, and this ties in somewhat with your talk this evening about pride going before a fall, when you become so content with yourself that you forget to remember that you aren't finished yet. The many philosophies and theories abounding around you in your arenas are enlivening, indeed. Passion-inducing even, and yet they must allow for the prospect of ascension and growth for whenever you accede that you have attained God-hood itself, you have eliminated a conscious yearning to ascend to greater perfection. I AM a son of I AM. As I AM a son of I AM, I AM all that I can be, all that He wills me to be. And without Him, I am nothing.

Are there questions this evening?

Hester:     I was going to ask about 1066, Tomas.
TOMAS:       Are we looking for a page number?
Hester:     I don't know. I think it's a date.
Tomas:       October 1966?

Hester:      10-66. I was meditating on the situation that exists in the world today incur USA world, and I was given -- with Jesus, who often comes -- and reminded me that he had said, "what is that to thee? Follow thou me" and I said, "alright" but what is the reasoning behind it all? There has to be something, and that is where the 1066 came in. Ten-sixty-six. And I wasn't sure if it was A.D. or B.C. Do you have any connection with that date in either of those time frames?

TOMAS:       It is illegible, Hester. I have no comment.
Hester:     Okay. It'll come.

Celeste:     I'm worried about our country today, in all that is going on, and the sadness that our young children cannot remain innocent until they are grown up enough to learn about life. And I'm sure that Jesus is watching us and I pray he would come among us all and help us.

Elyssia:     Is there a sentimentalistic lack of -- inability to come to grips with this? Because people are using the words of Jesus -- not to cast the first stone, to allow this kind of thing go on -- to have this kind of thing not dealt with. To me, it's like a twisting. Again, it's like ... This man has called on ministers. It's -- to me, and I apologize to anybody who doesn't see it this way, to me it's just a terrible, terrible farce, and the use of religion to continue in his ways, so I do apologize to any of you who don't feel that way, but that quoting of Jesus' words in this time is very difficult for me, and I could speak reams about it but I'm not here to speak about it. I'm here to possibly listen to you, who come from a higher place, Tomas, to help me and perhaps others.

I intend to stay informed. I intend to read everything that seems to be true. I intend to think and I intend to keep in touch with the people that I know in government, or that I have a right to write to. I intend all those things, but at the same time I am open to any help that you might be able to give us, to give me, I don't know about the others.

TOMAS:     It is very difficult for me to become embroiled in your political situation and it is indeed a political situation that is the difficulty, for if you set aside the politics of the matter and see a human being in deceit, in difficulty, in turmoil, it is easier to be able to separate your emotional veins and assess the human being, but it has, it is made great, made public, made to be this pinnacle of focus, because of your media, because of the political battlefield, and indeed, above all, the moral decay of your society at this time.

He, your president, is an exemplification of a sort of the moral decay which is rampant on Urantia and particularly in your affluent and allegedly advanced society. In the last fifty years or so there has been a tremendous upheaval in the status quo. Your political arena is not going to be exempt from the same defrosting process that all of the other crystallized systems of Caligastia's regime has handed down to you,

As a Republican it is certainly an affront, and a righteous affront. As a registered Democrat, it could be considered a "good-old-boy" situation and human. But you see it's not just a political situation. It's not a matter of "Do we vote for or against?" It is a matter of moral decay, and he is not alone. He is the true figurehead, the true representation, the symbol -- not of the Democratic party, not of the political system, but of your time, your planetary time.

He must have incredible strength or stupidity in order to not have already blown his brains out. He must have incredible stamina in order to see this thing through. It has been a pattern on Urantia for years to keep your secrets hidden, to keep the family skeletons in the closet, and this enforced secrecy has created secrecy and division, it has invited continued distrust, it exacerbates inherent anxiety in the unknown, it explores phantom fantasies, and the way to overcome it all is to put the cards on the table and face the facts, face the fears, face the problem, as Rodan has outlined. What we are seeing is the cards being laid on the table.

Unfortunately many have, and have for centuries, put leadership on a pedestal. Kings, rulers, emperors, popes, rabbis, all of these leaders have been set up as impregnable, infallible, and the people want it that way! Because if the leaders that represent them; then the people don't have to act. They can let the rulers do it. And when the ruler fails, they can crucify him. This is the reflection of the value of looking in the mirror to determine who should throw the first stone.

We are experiencing a re-birthing process. A very painful and bloody, if you will, birthing of a new era, a new millennia, a new standard, a new realization of human failing, a new appreciation for human conditioning, perhaps a beginning to a new political era! Look also at the rest of the world at the same time. You are not alone in your upheavals. The global situation is changing.

Put down your national shame and your national pride and begin to think in terms of the rebirth of the new era. Allow the new millennia to be indeed a bridge into a new way of life: fresh, clean, one that would enhance what is true, beautiful and good. It will take some time, but allow this growth to be had. Only when the mortals of Urantia begin to honor the Most Highs, the spiritual laws of the universe, will this cesspool of poor judgment and bad taste come to an end.

Try to be patient. Try to be compassionate. Not just for one individual or two, but for the global situation. This universe is in the keeping of the Sovereign Son. He knows what's happening. Have faith that it will work out for the good.

Celeste:     I think it has to be very hard for the parents of children young enough to know what's going on but too young to have to hear it, and I just wonder how the parents can handle this, how they can talk to their children.

TOMAS:     Parents should talk to their children regardless of what's going on, on the news. If parents have a loving and intimate relationship with their children, as good parents will do, as true parents will do, then they are nurturing that child in the way that he or she should go, they are supervising and overseeing its comings and goings, they are censoring the world at large and instilling in these children a sense of safety in their own homes, at their own dinner tables. If these children are at home and safe in their family's loving arms, they will become fearless and they will grow to be concerned and independent thinking, sensitive beings.

The responsibility of parenting is not to judge the outside world so much as it is to love the child. Love is the answer. To every question. It is a living commodity. (Very large acorn dropped on the roof) That was Rom the midwayer adding emphasis. [Group chortle] Do not become unduly chagrined by what you have no control over, but rather stick to your own agendas and follow the path that He has laid out for you. Will we be trivial if we refer to the Serenity Prayer?

Group:    No, you wouldn't be. Not at all. It's a wonderful prayer. It's a good time to remember it.

TOMAS:        Perhaps we could recite it together.
Elyssia:     Let's do it.

TOMAS & Group:    "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Leah:        May I offer an adaptation?
TOMAS:     Certainly, Leah.

LEAH:     "God, grant me the serenity to accept the people that I cannot change, the courage to change the person that I can, and the wisdom to know that that person is me."

TOMAS:     In case it wasn't apparent beforehand, yes. Even in changing yourself, you can do nothing without the sanction of the Father. He is the One who breathes in you the breath of life, the passion for truth, beauty and goodness. He is the one who whets your appetite through your life's experiences that attends to you like you might attend to your garden. You come along and hoe away the weeds and spray it with water and select the right patch with the right amount of sun so that the garden can grow. The Father does the same for you. He gives you the opportunity to grow in your patch and all you can do is grow, thanks to Him, otherwise -- are there questions?

Celeste:       I was just going to say that I'm always talking about having so much joy in my heart and I still have it, but just lately, I've noticed that I don't feel too joyful, and I want joy in my heart every moment of my life.

TOMAS:     It is understandable that you should and indeed, my dear, you can if you remember that joy is something that is known through sharing. If you cannot share with your mortal associates, remember that you can share with your indwelling spirit which is the font, the source of joy. When you know the Father, you have eternal joy in your association with him, then as you can experience eternal joy with those without, your life has expanded, extended into the Kingdom and herein we wish and pray with and for you for extension into the Kingdom in joy indeed!

And yet perhaps you may be sensing the birth pangs of the new era. You may be aware of the stressors that are being experienced by the multitudes in their own throes. The collective consciousness has an impact and, like a human climate, can become oppressive. In your private joy, Celeste, gain strength to withstand the down-pull and the hysteria if the world-around you as it confusedly searches for the light of truth.

Earlier, Elyssia, you referenced the irritating, to you irritating propensity of certain individuals to call upon scripture to support their position, and this my dear has been a tactic used by all political beings, including yourself, from time immemorial. It is a part of the reasoning process of the rational mind and it is a part of the spiritizing aims of those who would either seek for higher reality or who would subjugate you by their wisdom. In either case, you must not allow those quoters of words to be an influence on your pro or con, but allow for the Spirit of Truth to speak.

If you have heard the Spirit of Truth in any words, those are the words to hear, regardless of the source. Even I have suggested to you to stop quoting the prophets of old and the teachers of today and depend upon your own understanding of your indwelling Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as you perceive it. Your own authority is sacrosanct. The Father himself has bestowed upon you the sacred gift of free will and it is your choice as to what you will do with your free will. His will be done.

Elyssia:     But you had said quite a few months ago, its better that it comes out, and I have been always remembering that, Tomas, and I wonder how you apply it to the present moment.

TOMAS:     It is perhaps a subject that could fall under "confiding trust". As you can discuss these things in confidence of the Father's overcare and love for you, for you all, as his actual children and his potential children, it is in trust of his divine overcare that you can allow your imperfections to be revealed in order that you may begin to see what can be done, what you can have the courage to do something about.

Elyssia:     In general you still feel that it's better to have these things come out than have them smashed down and hushed up and ignored and that sort of thing.

TOMAS:     Oh yes. As difficult as it is, indeed. It is an adage that honesty is the best policy, and yet it is very difficult to learn to respect, honor, appreciate and enjoy honesty when you have lived a legacy of dishonesty for thousands of years. And judgment is in the very fiber of your DNA. It must cease in order for acceptance and appreciation of the humanness of the children of God to be advanced. It's an evolutionary step; a big evolutionary step. But it is one that must be taken, and we prevail upon you, Elyssia, and you others here ~ Rachel, Leah, Hester, Celeste -- to work with us in this advancing process, to trust the Father that as you die, you experience rebirth, as the old passes away, behold all things become new, and they will become new in and through truth, beauty and goodness only after the old shell of ego has been broken apart and after pride has caused you to fall.

We don't need that anymore. Lucifer and Satan and Caligastia have had their day. We are now going to begin to flourish as open, honest, loving, beautiful children of God. We will all, Celeste, become these cherubic innocents in a sense, but only as we begin to appreciate the light, the light of day, the light of truth, the light of reality. It is only when it happens in the dark, in the shadows, that it's fearful. When it's out there in the sunshine it's not so scary, you see.

Celeste:     Urn-hum.

TOMAS:     It is also easy to say the parents should know. The parents don't know. They have not been raised under ideal circumstances. Adam and Eve defaulted in their assignment here and so the ideal of parenting has been lost; civilization's pattern has been retarded; you have a lot of negative legacy to overcome. All of you need to become like innocent children, children indeed, children of God, free of the legacy of the past. Let the past go. Let it give up its old way. Remember there are many who will clasp it to them because it supports the only reality they understand. It may support their job; it may support their retirement, but as you say, Hester, what does it matter if all things earthly crumble? It is the spirit that lives on, and you in your intelligent spiritizing process will survive as well.

Elyssia:     Would you repeat what you said about confiding trust? You said something was confiding trust. I didn't get that.

TOMAS:     You will forgive me, Elyssia, but it will be in the paper and available to you for your mastication.
Elyssia:     Could you perhaps continue a little bit of your various discussions about the soul? I don't think we're through with it even though we're finished with the chapter.

TOMAS:     We have NOT finished our discussions about the soul indeed. We have bit off a piece, but there is more that we can savor. But I will give you this evening one little tidbit and that is that the purpose of this life here is for your soul birth. This is the opportunity for you as a larva to become. The human experience is that plateau of life which gives you the rugged opportunities to choose existence and eternal existence. It gives you the opportunity to opt to follow the Father as compared to the way of the flesh. This is a testing ground, even under ideal circumstances.

Elyssia:     We were listening to Samuel Clemens last night. He was wonderful at making fun of pomposity. Poking fun at things in that culture and ours. It seemed to me as if people were more thoughtful. The average person today, Tomas, can't even read a paragraph of that kind of writing and certainly you were talking about the importance of the mind in developing the soul, so -- in that area it doesn't look hopeful.

TOMAS:     You mustn't confuse culture and intelligence with soul-making decisions.

Elyssia:     But I'm thinking about the way they were very thoughtful and when you're thoughtful, at least you're going to analyze and when you analyze you're going to discern things about behavior that -- or about the soul, you're going to -- I think you can grow ...

TOMAS:     You are reiterating that each generation has its own unique advantages. In today's world you have the advantage of the circuits opening and the epochal revelation, this tremendous renaissance of spirituality, but against it you have a highly mechanistic age, very materialistic, and pell mell pace. The pace is such that you don't take time to savor or think and this is difficult. It is an obstacle, but on the other hand, the spiritual impetus is also great. The evolution of the human race itself is enough to forward, to advance forward-thinking souls. Your Thought Adjuster is incessantly applying itself to spiritizing your thinking, and when you see that it's become popular, that certainly helps, and that is an advantage that you have today.

Elyssia:     I got a letter from a young girl and she says "I don't know God" and I was sort of thinking of a way that I could help a little bit. I felt that she was so very sincere. And she's a lovely, very bright girl. And I remembered that when I was in college and I was an atheist, my dear friend gave me E. Stanley Jones and he starts off by saying "God, I don't know if you're there, I don't think you're there," or something like that. I thought perhaps you might...

TOMAS:     It is also fashionable to experience atheism at some point, in particular, in young adulthood, for this is a time when the independent mind, which is no longer under the thumb of tradition, convention and family value, is beginning to branch out and investigate its own existence and this includes its sexuality and its understanding of spirituality, both of which are an integral part of the identification of an individual, for one represents the physical and one represents the spiritual. The Thought Adjuster will encourage spiritizing thoughts and the animal will encourage thoughts of perpetuation of the race, and so these two are favorite topics of development of conversation among young intellectuals.

Your young friend is indeed an invigorating challenge for you to share, in confiding trust, what you will share with her -- your young sister that has the humility to realize that she does not know God -- for who does! He is so much greater than all of us, it could be construed as egoistic to even express such a thing as that we know God.

Elyssia:     I like that. If I do any talking to her, that's a wonderful place to start.

TOMAS:     But on the other hand, that God fragment that resides within you will respond and resound to truth and will convince you in your very essence, your very soul, that indeed YOU KNOW THAT YOU KNOW and you cannot be dissuaded from that which passes all understanding.

Elyssia:     You cannot be dissuaded. Hum.

TOMAS:     Perhaps your clock is running out. It is again an opportunity to remember your time-space frame. We enjoy your evenings together; we appreciate fully that you come together, that you have become such good students, you read so eagerly and readily, you share so graciously and generously, and you seek counsel and companionability from your teachers so lovingly and appreciatively. We will come back again. We will all convene again in this loving embrace. At this beneficent table the Master has prepared for us, his children. When we come together next week, we will have become hungry once more for the companionship of each other and for the confirmation of our Father's and Mother's infinite and eternal, divine and gentle, love and affection for each of His boys and Her girls in this glorious kingdom. Amen and farewell.

Celeste:     Thank you for your loving and gentle kindness.
*****

DATE:        September 24, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, P.A., USA
T/R:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM

Group:         Elyssia, Celeste, Mary Theresa, Hunnah, Leah, Gerdean and Hester

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 36, THE LIFE CARRIERS
#1. Origin and Nature of Life Carriers
#2. The Life Carrier Worlds
#3.   Life Transplantation
Paper 165, PEREAN MISSION BEGINS
#6.   Answer to Peter's Question
TOPIC:
YOUR CULTURAL CONDITIONING

MERIUM:     I am Merium.
Elyssia:     Good evening, Merium. Thank you for coming. 

MERIUM:     My lovely little ones, I have come to comfort you. I am in my favorite place which is my nursery with my babies. I am going to bounce you on my knee a bit here before your Uncle Tomas comes in, and address you as indeed as if you were little ones of two, and in some ways at this point in your spiritual growth you could be construed as toddlers up on your feet, making strides, getting into things, and still toppling over now and again, getting back up, ready to go with the next adventure and yet being needy on very short notice.

Your feelings are alive and well. You get angry at the drop of a hat. You become hurt at the slightest little thing if you are tired or hungry. When you are tired you want to sleep NOW or you become cranky. There are many aspects of you as little ones that is a point of truth in your personal lives. I myself am glad to see you here today in this frame of mind because it tells me that you are even more real than you have been and I know this may sound strange to you because don't all mommies want their babies to be good boys and girls? Well, I tell you, when you are a toddler, all you have to do is BE and mother loves you. Unless of course you are pulling the hair out of the child next to you, in which case you are still loved but you must learn certain behaviors. In order to get along in your society.

My dear little girls, you have all been such good girls and have learned your lessons so well from your mothers, from your society. You have been taught your roles to play and you have been playing them for a long time. Not only are you quite conditioned as to the amenities of polite society, you are also in your developing spiritual awareness, becoming aware of your own will dignity, and so sometimes your will dignity confuses itself with the cultural conditioning that you have been a part of for so long. Let me use an example.

Putting one's feet on the coffee table is a perfectly normal behavior for family, but when you are trying to be grown up and learn to be a will dignified person, you want to say, "I have learned my lessons well. I am grown up now. I'm mature. So I won't put my feet on the coffee table." And yet when you are not playing this role, when you are just being yourself, you don't think about your feet on the coffee table, you just be comfortable. This is how I am with you. I get on the floor and I am comfortable! Now, if you insist that I sit up and pour tea and wear my white gloves, I can do that and we can do that and have fun, but let us understand that we are at a tea party and we're not just hanging around in the family room.

And so, at the risk of being called studious, it is indeed important to some extent to define your terms, to set the stage, to provide the environment. Part of the difficulty here this evening that you have expressed among yourself, is that there is a mixed appreciation of the purpose of the gathering. Each of you have individual needs which you bring, and this is the agenda which you approach the evening with. And it may or may not coincide with the need of he or she that is with you in the room.

It is not so much a problem as it is a normal function of growth.   Remember you are a group of people, and groups of people require social architects that can distribute the authority around equally. It is in this way that we learn to share our toys. We learn to be mannerly, not as a social forum but as a genuine appreciation of balance and sharing in the most God-like sense. Each of you are precious. Each of you have your reality to share, and yet each of you is a unique child with your own unique manifestations of personality. Allow yourselves plenty of breadth, for whereas one of you may be a tap-dancer, the other one may be a kitty who likes to curl up and swat the ball of yarn.

Give yourselves time to discover who you are REALLY. Not what you have been taught; not who you think you're supposed to be, but learn to be comfortable with who you are. What child are you? Indeed, let me give you that assignment for your week. Look at yourself as a little child and see what this little child wants and needs from life.

TOMAS:     I am Tomas. I will take the lectern.  In-as-much as we have a time consideration, I will only speak briefly. I want to speak regarding authority. I have spoken to you before regarding authority. Our ultimate authority is the Father and in obedience to the Father. He will guide and direct us. As we are able to see what his will for us is, we then have the authority of his direction as to how to proceed in life.

The only time individuals have authority over each other in a social situation is when such authority has been delegated consciously by and through a system of government, even the government of your group or the government inherent in family life. This group does not have an authority figure. I am perhaps an authority figure, but my authority is limited to teaching. It is your responsibility as a group of individuals to work out your own government and perhaps it is time for you to think in these terms, including rules of procedure and term of service.

It may be short-term or long-term, but it is an essential aspect of your developing understanding of order and judiciousness. It is a growth process to learn to be a director or a manager. Our Father himself upholds the universes and bestows much of this responsibility of administration on those under him, around him, and thus the organization of the universe functions. Anything less than the Father will produce relative degrees of perfection in its manifestation. There are beings created perfect who function perfectly, but in the will arena, such as you have, you must grow into an appreciation of group management, only as far as taking care of what you have come together to do.

If it is a social time, it can be approached socially and pour tea and wear white gloves and enjoy yourselves. Celebrate and honor your fraternity. Revel in the spontaneous and delightful manifestation of your unique and precious personalities. If it is for a scholastic application, then apply yourself to the work at hand in order that you may rest in the end understanding more than you did when you went into it. And if and when it is for spiritual purpose, assign its purpose as to whether it is a time of prayer, a time of worship, a time of inquiry, a time of soul-development. Is it a time for adventure in the superuniverses? Or is it a time for digging into the mine of personality?

Many, many things can be addressed in all phases of coming together. You all accomplish a great deal and have over a long period of time in your unorganized approach and so you are indeed to be commended for having accomplished as much as you have, and you may continue in this vein, understanding that you are human beings running into human beings. This is a wonderful adventurous growing experience in and of itself, worthy of taking the time out to engage in, for in your encountering one another in these ways, you have learned, will learn, are learning more and more about socializing your beliefs and as your beliefs change and develop, you can manifest then new facets of who you are, who you are becoming, and your pain and your joy, your delight and your sweat in the process, or you may organize yourselves to some degree.

This is your choice, but I thought I should add some words as to authority, inasmuch as we have here a lot of people who are developing a fine-tuned sense of authority within themselves and this strength is encompassing of a lot of energy and a lot of space. As you become stronger, you need either more definition or more elbow room or fisticuffs are inevitable. I am sure of your love for each other and I am certain that your hearts yearn to continue to get to know yourself in the context of your relationship with your sisters and brothers and your relationship with God.

In light of this faith, we shall proceed. Are there questions this evening?

Leah:        Yes, could you speak of grave illness and one who has accepted Christ in their life. It dismays me to find out how much suffering exists in the name of medicine. Could you respond?

TOMAS:     One moment. Illness, disease and death are disturbing. Indeed, it is in the medical field that the ill go for cure or care and the medical field does what it can. It has become exceedingly fine-tuned in terms of its organization, even perhaps too much so, but the research and advances in medicine on your world and in your society in particular have been astounding.

The monies that have been poured into research on some of your diseases have virtually banished them from existence, and yet there are still many diseases that exist and there are some that have not yet come into their own.

Disease is in large part a matter of cause and effect. If you have a diseased, an impure environment, germs will propagate and the impurities that were -- I don't want to say "implanted" in light of your studies on the Life Carriers, because I don't want to give the impression that the Life Carriers implanted disease -- but, life was implanted and later on disease developed because the natural pattern that was established went awry -- when the life plasma episode, at the time of the dispensation of the Material Son and Daughter, went awry.

This is not news to you who are familiar with the premise of the Revelation, but it is a good reminder that the pattern for your life here was rendered defective when the default occurred.

Even so, your scientists, your doctors, have made tremendous and admirable, noble and miraculous strides in the study of these cellular anomalies and are doing great work toward putting the pattern back into its natural and rightful state. In the process, however, before this alignment is perfected, there are effects from the original cause, that being Default. In default the realm becomes vulnerable and it is the vulnerability in the cellular structure that has given rise to some diseases that would not have been here had your planet not suffered its unfortunate deficiencies. There is hope in sight because of the wonderful work being done even now.

I am speaking to you in terms of your world, your earth, your medicine, your physical realm, your material aspect, and not in terms of miracles or things of that nature because I want you to have an understanding that is available to your conscious minds that you can use to not only understand for yourself, but perhaps be able then to convey to those who don't understand why they should be suffering, at least some reason for it, for many people retain the ancient belief that if they are sick it must be because they have done something wrong and that it must be some punishment of the gods for themselves or for their forebears and this added burden or, sense of grief and guilt and anger and confusion at what an angry god would do, is enough to turn a person off of God when they need him most. If you can be as academic and factual and knowledgeable about this aspect of your planetary development, you can be of immense aid in comforting those who have this experience thrust upon them, and having established the fact that they are not at fault, then you are able to embrace them in the light and help them prepare for the transition to their greater life which lays in wait ahead. Has this been helpful?

Elyssia:     Very much so.
Leah:         It's been helpful. Can you add anything else?

TOMAS:     Assuming that the person then who is gravely ill is not blaming God for their illness and does not feel that they have brought this disease upon themselves through their own shortcomings, that person who has brought Christ into their life has already an understanding of his tender loving care and his embrace,... I'm not certain I understand your question.

Leah:        I'm asking the question on behalf of someone else and I feel that you have answered the question. Thank you.

TOMAS:     You are welcome.

Elyssia:     I was very grateful that you were giving us this help tonight. I think we are going to be discussing these points and everybody can think about it and I think it's going to be an interesting assignment.

Leah:        I have a suggestion. Perhaps each one of us might want to bring in -- we may need a suggestion box or something, since we all seem to have different ideas about how things should be operating -- but maybe we each need to come up with our idea of what our program should be. Maybe we need something like they have in the concert hall where you open the Program and you know what is expected at certain times, and I believe there may be a timer on the microwave which may be of help.

However, I do have another question. Merium or Tomas, either of you can answer this. Gerdean has asked me to ask what is it that is going on with her nerves. She feels just really distraught over her lack of ability to cope, I believe, and that she's just suffering terrible with her nerves being shot and she had asked that I ask on her behalf:   "What is going on?"

TOMAS:     I am Tomas. I am smiling. I am close to Gerdean. I am of several opinions, however I am not going to respond. I will allow her personal teacher to work with her somewhat, perhaps from an outside source, Merium might like to address nervous disorders. I do feel it appropriate to note that Gerdean's distress is particularly related to her auditory sensitivity and this is affecting her ability to cope with, in her mind, incessant noise. (Tape turned; words lost)

MERIUM:     ... so in your established effort, you are having to look for a habit and you may expect certain things to be a certain way. You can expect the excitement of the yeas and nays of being involved -- but, also when you have chosen your allegiance, this human has to take a back seat. The human appetite. And that means a great deal of discomfiture.

In regard to health, there are inherited tendencies.   You are lighting up the lightboard within your own system with your own chakras. They are having their own growing pains and there are many, many blocks in your systems. You are undergoing neurological adjustments in your spine(s) There is great energy coming in on the planetary level, so you are dealing with many, many disturbances. Meaning in your inner comfort zone. Many of you will seek medical attention and find simple remedies to alter this discomfiture. If you have a toothache you are not going to sit in the silence and strain to chase it away when it is so easy to go to see a dentist and have it taken care of. We can talk about this another time, perhaps.

In regard to the hearing, let us say that it is an out-picturing of many things. It can be the simplicity of a problem in your ears, a mild infection, neurological changing; it can be a simple matter, it can be passing, it can be allergy, it goes on and on this human condition. On the spiritual level, there can be a misunderstanding or a tension in understanding something that your personal teachers can assist you with, and you will find it will settle down, and will clear out in its own way.

I am not a diagnostician; I am here to comfort and reassure, to tell you once again, just as Tomas has so well, how very loved you are and how very impatient you are with your own development. If we went around the table this evening we would have quite a variety of maladies that you are all living with, at least enough to make you all uncomfortable. And some of them are more tolerable than others, and each of you has a different capacity for coping with discomfort. So there is no right or wrong answer in that department....

I don't know if these words will bring you comfort but there always seems to be something on the back burner. You will be reading new books and saying "What vitamins might I be deficient in?" The mind is agog with recipes. I will agree with Hunnah's recommendation to come into the silence because when you do enter the silence you are bringing in the repose to represent God, and your design, your pattern, your facility will come in and rest, and if you wish to use some imagery, you can imagine with roll playing and just cuddling up on their lap with many others and allow yourself to feel intensive peace.

If your nerves are really shot, there are many ways today to help them receive temporary relief, so I am not going to say "It's a this, or It's a that" I simply want you to come in and take a look at yourselves, bring that within-ness, that light that you feel you are. Bring it back up objectively and look at yourselves and see the places of yourself that require attention. A human being has hormones, there is just... it's an endless cyclic change, so I want you to develop a little compassion with yourselves and just remember who you truly are in the sight of our Father, and to be of good cheer.

I hope my words can bring some comfort to you.

Student:     They are a comfort to me.

MERIUM: Compassion is ever more as with you as you find tension of the moment with each other. It is not lasting and will clear and this shall be forgotten. Thank you.

Group:    Thank you, Merium.

Leah:         What did you mean when you said something about the spine? What did you mean?

MERIUM:     There are adjustments as you learn to transmit. There are adjustments in your spine. In your DNA. Some of you are aware, some of you are not, beyond your heart all your glands are responding to a network of light that has been, you might say, liberated. Some of you will find that you require less sleep. Some of you will feel that you need more sleep. It is comforting and does help to talk about it with someone. If you do not have changes coming about you, then how is it that we are improving your circuitry?

If the Father, our Father, your Father -- it used to be so simple before. -- My father told me -- I was directed to -- It occurred to me -- I suppose -- and you would utter the new enlightened comment, but today we feel privileged to say for ourselves, "I was talking to my teacher and my teacher helped me understand such and such." "I felt touched by an angelic presence and ..." "It occurred to me ..." We call the world insane but in the last ten years people are more comfortable with identifying and personalizing what used to be simply described as "divine guidance". If you were Clerical years ago, many, many years ago, if you were a rabbi, if you had the proper title, then you could in foil public state that you were told such-and-such. That was understood. But as a commoner, as a man of the street, eyebrows rise if you feel that you were told to do something. ... You would look the fool. But today people are more comfortable with your revelization of your atoms and being alert to areas of inner wisdom and inner guidance. It is simply inner revelation by and through the teachers.

It occurred to me that I needed more vitamin A in my diet. Where would such an occurrence come from? Perhaps one would read a book, be inspired, and another would literally say, "I think I'm needing Vitamin A." Guidance comes for human comfort and for your view and tolerance of this life on this planet. You will not have an exercise on vitamins. You will have your own light bulb flash as to what will be appropriate to bring about a restored serenity within yourself, but remember, above all, the first prescription is "be still and know that I am God." That is worth being still and coming to. That peace which passeth understanding is the most appropriate prescription of all. "Seek me and find me and I will bring you peace."

How very dear you all are. We really like to party.

Let me tell you a story. Tomas and Merium like to call you children, and we know that children like stories. Hunnah has made a new friend, and she revealed to her that she was wakened in the night and she saw an angelic presence and then her whole room was literally beating with beings of light, little tweaks of light that expressed the message to her, "Come play, come play, come play, come play." It is a playful universe. You are intended to be so light and lovely. There are so many playmates for you to play with.

Tonight, if Hunnah had shared the theme which she had intended to, she would have shown you what play was waiting for her. She broke down, as she would put it, and took Jasmine for a walk. Now Jasmine is not the name of her dog. She took this walk and then found herself leaving the sidewalk and crossing the yard to admire roses. And while she admired the roses, she looked to the right and saw a person had trimmed back the irises but there in late September stood one iris plant, very, very sturdy and very, very "about the business of blooming".

There was a splendid, a magnificent white iris, all by itself in this bed of heightened bloom. It was the only standing stalk. The gardener must have been so thrilled to find one iris that he decided to show it off, trimming back all the others, and it stood out in all its glory. Can you imagine how delighted Hunnah was when she discovered it? It was like bowing to a holy presence. It is this sort of magic that the message "come play, come play" is trying to tell you, that there is this ability to see and hear that is so rewarding, so fulfilling. It is literally manna. And it is a reminder that you are designed for celebration.

I hope that you will enjoy this week coming and allow yourselves to be wooed by the silence shouting, "come play, come play, come play!" Thank you.

TOMAS:     We will then recess for the evening. We have enjoyed our association with you this evening. It is such a privilege to come into your presence and be here as you focus your attention on the greater reality. We priceless members of this spiritual kingdom are ennobled by the association of one another, even in our abstract differences, we are still one. Peace be upon you. Farewell.

*****

DATE:        October 1, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R's:            Hunnah and Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM

Stillness
URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 36, THE LIFE CARRIERS
#4. Melchizedek Life Carriers
#5. The Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits
#6. Living Forces Paper 103
# 1. Philosophy of Religion
#2. Religion and the Individual


Sharing and Prayer
TEACHER SESSION:
USEFUL TEACHING FORMAT

TOMAS:     Radiant and jubilant, we enter in rejoicing. How are you this evening, dear ones?

Group:     Group: Elyssia, J.M., Celeste, Mary Theresa, Hunnah, Leah, Gerdean and Hester Good evening, Tomas. We are fine, thank you.

TOMAS:     We are so glad to be with you this evening. Your atmosphere is astir with creative stimuli and we are delighted to embrace with you our sister called J.M. Dear J.M., how lovely to have you with us again. We are always pleased to enfold the children of God in our embrace and behold their presence at this table of plenty, this feast which has been provided for us by our Lord Jesus.

Beautiful children, we are embarking upon a new season, a new season in your realm and therefore in ours, for always are we required to modify and adapt our energy patterns to consort with your abilities at any given moment. Beginning an autumn season is one of invigoration for those of us who relish the concept of in-depth study and focus for the days of summer have come and gone and now we can nestle in to those cups of hot chocolate and crisp pages turning that gives rise to reflection and meditation on meaningful things and moments in eternity. We are eager to see how we unfold.

Have you questions this evening? (Long silence) You are unaccustomed to my opening the floor so quickly. You are prepared to hear me orate, and perhaps a new procedure for the new season will be to allow me to step down from the lectern and, like the movie, The Dead Poet's Society, walk into your classroom and be among you. Let us then "Seize the day!" You have had more than enough material delivered to your mental palate to create a season of creative reflection and direction based upon these materials. Your mental plate is full, but your experiential platter has yet to be tasted. There is this large feast of experiential to be savored, ingested, experienced.

Elyssia:     There was a case of a member of our group who mentioned that one of her children was on the edge of divorce and it brought to my mind that one of the young couples in our family is struggling a little bit and I made some observations of these two and felt that it was a certain lack of kindness in both of these people and I wondered if I couldn't meet them for dinner or lunch and ask them about how things are going. I wanted to point out this lack of consideration, but when she said that her son resents this type of thing, my feeling was I didn't know what to think about that, and yet, is it my responsibility to a certain extent, in this situation? I'm wondering about that.

TOMAS:     One moment. This is a matter which you first receive your go-ahead from the Father Himself. You must not stumble upon your sense of duty or social service, even to the extent of being mindful of your many friends' distresses. How would the Father handle the situation? What would Jesus do? Remember when He was here he did not involve himself in domestic issues, aside from an occasional message as he passed by which imparted a fundamental truth. He was not embarked upon a system of salvaging marriage or even family life as it was known and lived in that day.

I think perhaps we must begin the new season with an understanding of who is comprising this group. I am not suggesting we have a roll call, no, but that we have an understanding of who we are in terms of what we intend to do. I have no objection to any of you choosing a role, but I would like to know what it is. Let's say we are in a Melchizedek University. Let's say we have begun on the human level, and you are intending to major in economics, or domestic engineering. Let us say that you are going to be an apostle and proselytize the Master's teaching. Let us say that you, on the other hand, are going to be the self-assigned administrator and ultimately you over there have decided you want to be the spokesman for a spiritual Dear Abby.

Now, each one of you in your self-appointed determined idea of who you think you are and what you will do and what you will expect to gain from this class, and therefore what you will bring to the experiential table, will impact upon not only my words to you but my words to the entire class. For I remain a group teacher even in a laboratory setting. So when you address a situation, I must then calculate in my response who you are and why you are seeking my guidance I must remind you time and time again that I am a teacher assigned you how to spread the good news of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. I am not here to salvage marriages or home life situations.

However, insofar as the situation that you are working with impacts on those values that are inherent in the family of God and therefore in the family of man, I am willing to incorporate them into a teaching format useful to everyone. And so I will say to you in this context, Elyssia, that you must remember, in your textbook it indicates that marriages are not necessarily made in heaven and that human beings will conjoin until such time as the divine will decrees their separation. If individuals have gone into a marriage without thought as to its ramifications, they well may be totally unprepared to stand up to the rigors involved. It may be necessary for them to recognize their failure to function in a unit such as a marriage gives.

It is not my job to be a marriage counselor, nor is it yours, but if you can speak to their soul as to those matters of lasting value that they can grasp and hold unto themselves that will make them a better individual, that will enable them to associate themselves with a value from their own religious experience that will then radiate out into their environment as a manifestation of love and service, then you will have served the purpose for which I am here and the purpose for which you are here and the purpose for which the Master came, you see.

Leah:        Tomas, how would that fit in with statements in the Book that state that we really shouldn't offer advice unless it's asked for.

TOMAS:     Well, Leah, I will ask you then to take that point and make that point. I am standing next to you, my coworker and I support your theory. Let's hear it.

Leah:        I don't like it when you do this to me. [Group laughter]

TOMAS:     You are here to learn to be a teacher and a preacher, is this not true? You have within you the capability of being a proselytizer of truth, beauty and goodness. You are indeed a walking Urantia Book. You are a walking example of truth, beauty and goodness, indeed, of spiritual wisdom, and so begin now to practice this in your daily life. Not only in your behaviors but in your aggressive association. Let us call this phase of our community the Perean Preaching Tour. Preach to us, Leah, about giving advice when it is not asked for, and let us observe how you do it.

Leah:        I really don't know where to begin but if we were just having a conversation at the table here, I think I would have brought up that point that she is familiar with the Book, I am familiar with the Book, and there is a statement in the Book -- I think I would have brought up that point to not offer each other advice unless it's called for and I can only go from my own experience, and I'm sure that Elyssia is more intimate with this couple, but if you would call me up and say, "I want to meet with your husband and you and discuss our situation, as much as I know that her intent was excellent, I would be resentful. I would feel that she was meddling somewhere where she didn't need to be.

Elyssia:     Yeah, I guess I can see that.

Leah:        But I don't know what your situation is with these people. They may have been in your home; you may be quite intimate with them.

Elyssia:     Oh, they are my family!
Leah:        Yes, well, that's a little different.

Elyssia:     Yeah, I'm the only person that can speak to these particular two people. I'm the only person who could represent a parent. There are no parents.

Leah:        There are no parents? I mean to this young couple.

Elyssia:     I mean, well, there are parents on one side. It's the other side I'm trying to influence. My side! I said something to my husband about it. I thought there was a certain lack of kindness or something and he said, well, just talk to them and tell them how it would make you feel if you were on the other end of something like that. That's what he said.

Leah:        Well, essentially that is what I just said to you. Is that if you were to call me and suggest we get together because I want to speak to you about this, my humanness would say, "What the heck do you know about my marriage? Or my situation?

Elyssia:     I wouldn't say anything about theirs; I would say something about mine.
Leah:        Okay. I can only listen to the discourse that you presented at the table.
Elyssia:     Yeah!

Leah:        But the idea that there's a lack of kindness you feel on either part, is your feeling. I don't know any other way to say this but it sounds judgmental, but it may be very apparent but maybe there is some understanding between these two that we don't understand, you don't understand. A lot of people cannot understand my situation, but it's something that I can live with and I think it's probably for the best in the long run. So, also based on what Tomas had quoted out of the Book about "the marriage papers" that two people will stay together as long as God intends and it's very hard when you've been brought up with a tenet that says it is until death do us part and I had a terrible marriage, my first one, and I would not get out of it because I did not want to offend my parents, the priest, the church, and what kind of a person would I be? And I knew three days after I was married I should have gotten out of it. I knew it!

J.M.:         I've heard so many people say that!

Leah:        You know. In fact I married the young man again, because the priest came to the house and told me how I was living in sin and I think that -- this is just my opinion, okay? -- and I think I'm saying that because I don't want to sound judgmental, but I think if you want to take the people to dinner and tell them how much you appreciate each one of them and they've been a lovely couple together and you'll support them in whatever decision you make, and I still hope to be....

Elyssia:     Oh, they're not talking about divorce.
Leah:        Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood, then.

Elyssia:     I just see it ahead. I feel like if I don't get in there and at least somehow or another just very gently point out some of those shoals. I mean, if you've been around as long as I have, you had to learn something!

Jane:        You see them destroying their love for each other by their treatment of each other.
Elyssia:     By their lack of sensitivity.

Leah:        And on the other hand this may be a catalyst for them definitely to go their separate ways. I'm not saying its right or wrong.

Elyssia:     That's why I'm concerned. They can do anything they want to. No, there are children involved in the situation and I see something down the road and you think maybe you can gently somehow say the way you would feel in a marriage ....

Leah:        I do understand what you're saying, but on the other hand, I have been associated with people who have done everything they could to keep a marriage intact for the sake of the children and, I think, would have been a lot better off where the child was in a situation where there was love in the home with the individual parent or one or the other of the parents rather than have them constantly witness fighting and the unkindness that you speak of. That can be just as difficult.

Elyssia:     It isn't that extreme. It's just...

Leah:        It all comes back to "Trust God". You pray for these people that they are enlightened to God's purpose for them, their spiritual illumination, and ....

Hester:     While this was going on, I got a little message and it says, in effect, that "have you questions this evening?" Tomas said, and then they said, "like the movie, walk into your classroom to you and be beside you. "I'll be beside you." And this is Jesus speaking, and then he says to this business about this couple, "What is that to thee? Follow thou me. Know you not that the experience you see as less than good may be exactly what is necessary for they who are involved in the situation. Which seems less good to you, may be their highest good for those two in their marriage that you speak of." It may be their highest good. As a result of the experiences that they are going through together, between the two of them.

Leah:        And biblically, the quote that God can make good out of anything ...
Hester:     Turn everything to good. Everything.

Elyssia:     You know what, I think I'll have a private session with Tomas because I don't want to take up our study group time.

Leah:         I'm sorry that I got on a roll here, but...
J.M.:         Yes, me too!

Elyssia:     No, no. In thinking about it, I think I should have a meeting -- Gerdean does do that on occasion, when you need personal... and I think maybe this is a personal question.

TOMAS:     It is also noteworthy, however, that your discourse was excellent and prime laboratory experiential. I appreciate also your contribution, Hester, for that clear message of interpretation of our work here in this arena. It is good that you learn to confide in each other, and not only in your personal comings and goings, but in your ministries. You will recall that on the first and second teaching tours, the apostles went out and came back then, filled with stories as to the situations they encountered. And they spoke with each other late into the night and they asked the Master to refine for them their attitudes and approaches to these very real situations, these troubles that affected the minds of the peoples of that time, for that is the soil in which the Spirit is planted and the Living Vine takes root. Well done!

Elyssia:     That's interesting.
TOMAS:     Are there other questions and/or situations?

Leah:        I think it was really admirable that Elyssia has the sincere intent and the impetus to want to do something about this situation.

Elyssia:     Well, I'm the only possibility for this one person to have anybody to -- There's nobody else. Nobody else that can talk. Yeah, I mean, I'm the only person. Personal. The only person that would have the right to say anything because I'm standing in stead of the parents that are not there.

TOMAS:     How old are the children?

Elyssia:     Oh, they're 38. And they have a very beautiful life but I just see certain kinds of things that are creating concern and, you know, it's the kind of thing that if you don't say something now, later, if things do go the way you're afraid, then you'll be sorry you didn't say something. That's what I'm feeling.

Leah:         Well again perhaps at the example in the Book where Jesus encounters the couple where the man had struck his wife ...

Elyssia:     Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Leah:        The scenario that you present seems to be something of the ilk that you wish to give advice on. On the other hand, you may be in a situation where you could ask a question of them. Why is it that you behave in such a way. Which is what Jesus asked.

Elyssia:     I like that!
J.M.:         Does he ask questions ...?
Leah:        ... to facilitate.
Hester:    …something.

Elyssia:     That's good. I'm going to read that over again.   That would be a very physical, a physical thing, but again, it's a lack of kindness, so I think it's a lot like that. I think I'll read that again and I like that idea. "Why is it that you behave this way?"

J.M.:         I actually do have a question for Tomas. It's been on my mind for quite a while. It's about relationships, I guess not just between a man and a woman, but in the Bible it says that men and women should come together that are equally yoked, which I think I understand, but my question is when we talk about religions having the same values and goals but different beliefs, I believe that. But my question is about the Jewish religion? I don't know that much about it but I do know that they don't believe that Jesus Christ was our savior or the Son of God.

Is it possible for someone whose beliefs are so different from that, opposite of that, can you have a close relationship, even a man and woman type relationship?

TOMAS:     You can have a friendship but you cannot have a devoted fraternity if you cannot have an appreciation of your mutual Father. You can have mutual respect for each other because of the integrity of the differing beliefs. You can have a degree of admiration for your friend for their stalwart attitude as to what they believe in, but unless you share the understanding of the living God as your Father, you can only know each other culturally or intellectually.

A true fraternity is born of the understanding that God is our Father. That there is some question as to the role of Jesus does not have to interfere with your fidelity as friends in the highest sense. There are many who do not know Jesus, but you can share the living Water with them anyway.

There is a great deal of confusion as to that tenet that you cannot get to the Father except "through me". You can indeed get to the Father, because he dwells within you. But you cannot attain all the way to Paradise without going through Salvington and meeting your Creator en route, and the Jews will trudge through Salvington and meet the Master en route to their God, as will you.

Hester:     They will accept him.

TOMAS:     The same truth is in place for those who have been born in India, for example, in the caste system. Those who have found Nirvana through Buddha have found the Father in their going within, and they may never have heard of Jesus of Nazareth, but they are aware of the divine spark of God and may be counted among his children, and they too will pass by the shores of Salvington en route to Paradise.

It is error to think that just because you have a personal relationship with Jesus, you are in some ways superior to your brethren.

Elyssia:     Well, I guess, Tomas, I'm trying to remember the part in the Book that says, unless you believe in Jesus, you can't develop to the same extent spiritually on this planet. It's in the Book and maybe it's wrong but I remember reading it.

TOMAS:     That you cannot develop to the same extent does not mean that you have a superiority. The same truth can be held for those who have affluence. They can perhaps affect their society more readily because they have "green power", they can accomplish many things, but that does not negate the little guy on the corner who unobtrusively serves.

Elyssia:     Okay.
Celeste:       I love those answers.   I really feel good about them.
Elyssia:     Yeah, I can understand that. I'm glad I asked the question.

TOMAS:     These are good questions and good answers, but how do you carry them into real life? And when you hear ignorance, when you encounter the downtrodden, how do you respond? This is the true laboratory. This is the test.

My lovely ones, I am not going to stay much longer for your hour grows late. I am, as are you, eager to resume the journey and I am curious, more than curious, to ascertain how you are going to resolve your organizational miasma. And so I patiently abide by your ruling in that context. In the interim, my dears, I am very pleased to have been able to account for some time with you on your agenda. It is my supreme pleasure to be here with you in this classroom, in order to learn how to carry the light of truth, beauty and goodness of God into your lives, into the arena of Urantia.

Bless you, my children. Good night.
*****

DATE:        October 8, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R’s            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS
       
Stillness and Prayer
URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 37, PERSONALITIES OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
#1. The Universe Aids
#2. The Brilliant Evening Stars
#3. The Archangels
#4. The Most High Assistants
#5. High Commissioners
Paper 100, RELIGION IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE
#1. Religious Growth
#2. Spiritual Growth

Group:     Elyssia, Celeste, David, Leah, Rachel, Gerdean and Hester)

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:   
REBELLION

TOMAS:    I rejoice indeed to be in your company this evening, dear faithful flock. How wonderful to be with you again. I am Tomas, your teacher.

Elyssia:    Great.
Celeste:    So good to see you again, Tomas.
Hester:    Welcome to this group.

TOMAS:        How wonderful to embrace you.   I see we have a brother among us this evening! "Behold your brother!" "Brother, behold your sisters," How we embrace you, all. It is always a joy to alter our configuration. Each time we come together there is a difference in the energy and in your patterning, for inasmuch as you are alive and growing in the spirit, even you are changed from one moment to the next. And from one day to each other. And so when you come together having not seen one another for an hour or a year or a day, you are not meeting the same person you had known before. Always allow for the growth of spirit to have given healing and nourishment to that in your which is eternal and give credit too for the growth that will allow for the dead skin of old ways to have molted off, fallen away.

Behold all things ARE becoming new, including you. It is not a joyous approach to existence that each moment is truly a viable reality and one in which we may rejoice, knowing that the adventures of the day are there for our unfolding.

We have been discussing Birth of the Soul, becoming in and through a working arrangement with those composite energies and realities and wills that constitute the living soul. Each of you here is obviously comprised of your very wonderful, stalwart Thought Adjusters, your delightful creature personalities, and as your delightful creature personalities opt to do the will of God, you become that which is eternal. In due course your eternal aspects are that which will enable you to discard and eventually molt your human life entirely. It is in coming to know the soul that you begin to live within the kingdom and work for its promulgation in all your affairs, for this then is the only reality worth fighting for and holding up as exemplary to all who would see.

I have been mindful this evening of the tendency toward rebellion in the human personality. It is not always as devastating as the rebellion of Lucifer. Indeed as a youngster begins to grow, he/she will test his/her boundaries, will try the parents' patience with its attempts to go beyond that which is acceptable to the parent, in order that it many learn certain social techniques of civility and training which will enable it to live and function within the framework of the social mores of its culture in its day and time. And so the child will often balk at those limitations and pull against the tethers of the harness of the constraining parent, will struggle for its own freedom to discover, to be adventurous, and to branch out into the adventure of existence itself.

This tendency does not go away just because you have learned how to be civilized. The adventurous nature, that inherent in you as a result of your racial composition, your electrochemical composition is always with you and is always reaching out for those investigations that will perhaps give rise to new discoveries which may benefit all mankind but, again, which must, may be fun or dangerous. But that adventurous spirit that lies within the heart of the human being is a part of the human spirit. It is that also which denies the constraints of conventional behavior and beliefs to reach out beyond the norm and find that which is exciting, adventurous and alive in terms of living reality.

Many of the great prophets and spiritual teachers of Urantia and other domains have arisen as a result of their rebellious nature. They have rebelled against the status quo or against the stifling traditions of their time and culture. The fact of rebellion is not necessarily a bad quality in and of itself. I am reminded now of the young people who, in their way, rebel against the previous generation by outdoing the previous generation in outrageous comportment, loud music, puncture wounds [group laughter] of vanity, and always in their own language, their own rhythms. This form of rebellion is healthy. It enables them to identify themselves within their own generation and within their own time and space as a group of people facing the difficulties uniquely theirs, including what they have inherited.

It is only when rebellion goes beyond the bounds of decency as far as individual integrity for him or herself in humble obedience to the authority of divinity that it becomes out of line and awful. When you encounter rebellion, when you encounter behavior that is antithetical to your appreciation for civilized behaviors, remember the adventurous spirit of the youth of Urantia and that verve that forwards you into greater discovery and evolution. Without those who forge ahead in good faith (not to mention good fun!), we would be slower to evolve.

Well, my friends, I have outdone myself. I have talked for too much. I have promised that in this new season I would open the floor for your involvement to a grater extent and indeed perhaps we can learn to incorporate the sharing in these teaching sessions because as you come to learn to be teachers, you can put your teaching techniques into effect in and through your association with one another and call it practice.

I would like to open the floor. I would like for you to perhaps suggest a discussion. If you all talk at once, however, it will be ineffectual. I am glad to see your suggestion boxes filling. We will have many matters to deal with when we begin to study government, but for now, let us proceed with our techniques of socializing our beliefs. And how do you suppose that is accomplished? Anyone?

Rachel:        I don't know. By just talking about our different beliefs and incorporating them
with each other?

TOMAS:        I see. What do you believe?

Rachel:            I believe that I am a daughter of God. I believe in Jesus. I believe in living my life to the will of the Father. I believe in faith. I believe in goodness.

TOMAS:        And how are these socialized?

Rachel:            How are they socialized? By sharing them with other people. Helping other people, I suppose.

TOMAS:     Elyssia, I would like for you to meet Rachel. She is a daughter of God.
Elyssia:          [Laughing] How do you do!

TOMAS:     It is very easy if that is all there is to it. Socializing one's beliefs is not a matter of saying, "This is the Urantia Book and this is my belief system" therefore "See you later." The actual process of living the life, the experiential part, if you will, is the theater, the arena wherein you are given the opportunity to express your beliefs in your arena. You do not walk up to someone at a horse show and say, "I am Rachel. I am a child of God. I believe in Jesus. I have faith. I believe in goodness." But rather, you would talk about the weather, first, perhaps.

I agree with you, Rachel, that you are socializing your beliefs when you put forth your self in such a way but it is necessary in teaching and preaching, generally, to open the door to an introduction to that soul of its own reality, in order that it then may respond to you in kind, as to how you two can relate as brethren, as kindred spirits.

Rachel:           Okay. I see. So you're saying, how do we open that door? Because sometimes when I'm with people that door opens. Somehow I bring it about. I'm not really conscious of what I'm saying, but it seems to flow. Whether you simply mention the word God … or ... I don't know! But it simply seems to come about! More and more often. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just -- it's the Mission!

TOMAS:        Your childlike approach to socializing is endearing and delightful. Is it in every
instance that you are this effective?

Rachel:          No. It's not.
TOMAS:        It is the areas wherein your effectiveness falters that you remain the student.

Rachel:          Right. SO in those areas where you are not being effective, then how would be the most effective way to open the door? Because that's where you stumble. And it kind of slams shut!

TOMAS:         Do you have any suggestions, Leah?
Leah:        Well, I am reminded of the Golden Rule, to treat other people the way you wish to be treated, to extend yourself to them, smile and start a conversation with each individual you meet. Let your light shine!

TOMAS:     I can anticipate that a human mind will focus on the obstreperous individual who is not smiling, who is opposed to your good cheer [group chuckle], who has no desire to be embraced by the living love of the Father, but perhaps rather wants scratched or fed, comforted in some way, perhaps has become grumpy because its needs are not being met.   How do you manifest and socialize your belief in that kind of situation?

Leah:        I certainly don't have all the answers, but again, I just think you can extend yourself. I was brought up in a good Irish household and you always asked three times or extend yourself three times, and if they're not interested, leave them alone, and pray for them that their needs -- that they be open to some other avenue if you cannot be effective in their life.

TOMAS:     Very good! As a student you can be fully aware that you are not God, you are not the only teacher, you are not the only opportunity for this individual to encounter enlightenment and/or the gospel. You are not the only one to cross paths with certain elements of humanity, but there are indeed times when you are the only one to serve at a given moment. We discussed this last week when Elyssia suggested, in a situation, she was the only one, the only one who was in a position to effect a change and possibly some growth in another person. How have you fared with your meditations regarding that value, Elyssia?

Elyssia:     Oh, I've been working on that. I talked to the person but I didn't get heavily into the problem. I suggested it. I was able to restrain myself, which I can't usually do, so I thought that was a certain amount of socialization of my faith there because left to my own devices I could have been more nonproductive by being angry or something like that, so anyway that was sort of a minor victory there. And then I also have spoken with my children and they are -- one of my children in particular -- is going to try to work with this person. She has a way ... she can coax people to talk with her about the way their personal problems are and they share with her.

TOMAS:     You are approaching now perhaps a generic but specific answer to our dilemma. You have introduced the fruits of the spirit. You have suggested your daughter perform merciful ministry through her gifts of confiding trust.

Elyssia:    Yeah.
TOMAS:    It is in and through these fruits of the spirit that the spirit can be made known.

Elyssia:    She has so much ... honesty without being ... what was it? It was part of the fruits of the spirit. It was not a harsh kind of honesty.

TOMAS:    She has, rather than rigorous honesty, she has enlightened honesty.
Elyssia:    Yeah. That's what she has.
TOMAS:    An art indeed.

Elyssia:     Um hum.   She has that and so she can ... but then I talked with my other daughter and she said, No, you cant turn this over to somebody else. And I had said that to you last week, that I had felt that I was called upon to do when the time comes. It was my place, but in the meantime I'm getting some other people to help me.

TOMAS:         Indeed, we are truly discussing the art of living. Our affections are with you
Celeste. Aloha.

Celeste:         Oh, thank you so much! I'll be thinking of you while I'm away.
TOMAS:     You will be held in the loving care of the Mother. Fear not. Have a good time. Celeste:         Well, I'm really happy that you have spoken to me. It makes me feel very good!

Elyssia:       She'll probably be in some of those beautiful cathedrals, and don't they evoke a
tremendous sense of gratitude for the faith of our fathers? In days of that?

TOMAS:         Surely. I see no rebellion in your itinerary.

Celeste:          Oh, good! That's wonderful. Now I'm really glad that I'm going. But I'll miss
you.

Hester:      We'll miss you back.
TOMAS:        We will miss you at our table.
Celeste:       Thank you.
TOMAS:    I am eager to make the acquaintance of David. How are you my friend?
David:        Excellent.
Tomas:    How good it is to hear a solid baritone.
Celeste:    It is good.

TOMAS:    I have been the only rooster in this barnyard often and I am always pleased to share the limelight with a fellow. It is good of you to join us.

David:        Glad to be here.

TOMAS:     I hope you will return and perhaps commingle with us in and through our meandering of truth-seeking and soul-development for the glory of our Eternal Parents and our beloved Sovereign, Michael of Nebadon.   We are devoted to the flowering of Urantia and to the cultivation of the flower gardens thereon, comprised of you people who turn your faces upward to the Son for the warmth of His love, and the rain of Her joyous tears. How are you doing?

David:             Excellent.

TOMAS:     This is good to hear. Any time you want to talk about your state of affairs, we are always eager to socialize our beliefs and those comprise a genuine appreciation of the human condition and its aspirations to ascend into and through life to perfection.
Well, my children, I can see that I am still "controlling" the table.

Hester:    I have a question.
TOMAS:    There we go.

Hester:       I recently have been literally catapulted into a group of people who have been traveling this earth for over 6,000 years. To be real down to earth and blunt about it, they are practicing Jewish people, and they have their religious ways and I have mine, and they go together like hands going in opposite directions. But out of it is coming a relationship of acceptance -- they of me and me of them, that is most unique because I really feel that they've spent more time bringing God to the forefront than we as Christians have. And more honest time, let's put it that way. I don't know how else to phrase it, because they really believe what they believe and they practice what they practice. And not that I'm ready to reject Jesus as they had, but many of them quietly have accepted Jesus. This is the amazing thing about these people.

They are proud of the fact that Jesus was a Jew, and that's a step in the right direction. That's a positive step. And somehow or another, I feel like this century that we're coming into is going to bring all of us the opportunity to be really (tape turned) for ... I mean this is a biiiigggg little planet. And as long as everyone allows the other fellow to be them, there's not going to be any ... I mean, war is going to be a thing of the past! It's because wars are created by people trying to make other people do what they want them to do.

TOMAS:     You have no reticence in socializing your beliefs, I see.

Hester:     I'm very solid in my belief. I'm very solid in my belief. But I believe that they belong to God just the same as we do.

TOMAS:     Indeed they do, and indeed that faith, its origins have been a foundation for the entire Judeo-Christian ethic and it comprises a powerful force on Urantia. Machiventa Melchizedek, in his visit to Urantia, established it that these people, this race of people, should bring down the line the concept of one God in order that the conditions would be readied for when Jesus was incarnated here. They did anticipate that he would come here and they prepared the way as much as possible, considering the Lucifer Rebellion and the Adamic Default, and so the cradle of civilization that Jesus rocked in, was the arms of Judaism, and they provided the basic structure for his teaching and preaching as a mortal of that day and time in and through their service to the planet. We are assimilating them also, inasmuch as they are sons and daughters of the living God.

We have had occasionally, conversations about the theory that one cannot get to the Father without going through Jesus and how that might affect the Jewish peoples, since they rejected him as their Messiah but since we have delved into the fact that those who are born in India and live under the caste system and have always and only been taught the ways of their culture and their religion, their evolved spiritual consciousness, may not know about Jesus but they have become one with the Eye of Infinity and as they accept their assignment to advance, they will indeed advance up through the mansion worlds and on to Salvington where they will stand before their Sovereign Creator en route to the Father.

It is typical of mortals to think short-term, shortsightedly.

Elyssia:     It does seem to me that in the Eastern philosophy, I'd say India, they certainly seem to spend much more of their energy and time thinking about "spiritual" things than we in the Western world do.

TOMAS:        Yes.
Hester:        They do. I've had two close friends from India.
Elyssia:      It's humbling that they do that.

TOMAS:        It is admirable that they do that, for they are seeking conscious contact with the Father. Their religion has set aside times of the day to pray. They are at ease in stillness and Christianity is not and indeed its major influences are continuing to suggest that stillness is a "Devil's workshop" and so your civilization is not as advanced as you might like to think, but in perspective, we are seeing these things and not shortsightedly. I will introduce to you also that you here at this table will know each other throughout eternity.

Hester:    Amen.
TOMAS:    Assign that to your thought processes.
Rachel:    Wow!
TOMAS:    And remember that I too will know you throughout eternity.
Elyssia:    Mmm. Great.

TOMAS:     There are millions of beings you have not yet met but who are involved in your evolution. And many of these are human beings that have also lived on this planet. Throughout eternity you have the mark of the agondonter upon you, and you will always have a common root with many: the local universe of Nebadon.

Elyssia:     Well, is it true that for instance in the east and in India that they are closer to the truth when they don't have such dualism? Good and evil that we tend to make — it's very stark. Differences.

TOMAS:        I cannot compare apples and oranges.
Elyssia:     Okay.

TOMAS:     They have advantages and disadvantages as does Christianity. The important point is, as Hester has introduced, that you begin to accept one another, even with their differences, as children of God and sacred unto themselves as a result of their association with divinity. You are all different. Culturally, economically, socially, racially. In many, many ways you are different, but in many, many ways you are the same, and indeed the Master would like for you all to learn to see each other as one in his family, to allow for the differences to dissolve sufficiently that you may embrace in a heartfelt recognition of your eternal kinship, for eternally, eternally, will you be bonded in this experience of Urantia origin and ascension.

Leah:        Hester, when you spoke to Tomas you said you had a question, and then you were talking about being catapulted into a situation. Did you ever ask your question?

Hester:     My question has been answered. I guess because I knew it was going to be. And it is that We Are One, and it's — well, to get real simple, there's just one hand in the universe.

TOMAS:     There is one hand in the universe, this is true. And it is the hand that holds every soul, but remember the Remembrance Supper and the symbology of the lesson Jesus taught: “I am the bread of life; eat thereof.” Therefore as you reach out and touch the hand of your brother in the flesh, he too, your sister, she too, is the bread of life and the Father resides therein. It is all very well and good to be transcendental in your love and in your philosophy. It is far more difficult to love unlovely mankind, and yet that is the true assignment, that is the real venture, to love those who do not know that they are loved.   Until such time as they learn who they are they are lost sheep and we are admonished to go find that sheep and bring him home, bleating, bloody, muddy, angry, rebellious, uncomely and grouchy, it is the child of God that is our holy assignment.

Rachel:    On that note, Tomas, I'm feeling compelled to go out and see my sister because she is -- needing me, because she has so many questions, so I'm thinking of -- I want to -- She has already told my mother I'm going and I haven't even told my mother! So she's obviously wanting me to come.

TOMAS:    Is this your sister who has been "called?"
Rachel:    Well, Jesus saved her four years ago and she put it in the back of her mind.
TOMAS:    That doesn't sound like a difficult assignment.

Rachel:     But I really think she's starting to question, now, and she is craving what she hears in me, to find that too and -- oh, I don't know. I suppose I'm a little leery. I took the words Merium used once, the Jesus that comes down off the cross and walks and talks with his brothers and sisters, and that's sort of the Jesus I would like to portray, so I took her advice and I asked Jesus to take a walk with me. It was a very fascinating experience because he was truly right there; and then I took it one step further and Madagan (personal teacher) and I were in meditation in our -- visualized in our morontia forms, and then I opened my eyes and stayed in that and we walked through the field. Just to try to stay in that frame of mind while your eyes are open and you're walking.

TOMAS:     Yes.

Rachel:    It was more difficult than anticipated. Just because your mind tends to wander. It wants to come down.

TOMAS:    It needs the discipline, does it not?
Rachel:    Yes it does. But it was a fascinating experiment.
TOMAS:        Wonderful.

Rachel:      And I want to go out and I want to help my sister but I don't really want to pound a Urantia Book on her.

TOMAS:     You will not be able to walk with her in the Elysian fields, either. You must begin at the beginning and a pint cannot hold a quart. Remember that the Spirit of Truth will be with you and it will be with her. There is no point to browbeat her into your religious experience, for each individual must grow their own. That is why it is a personal experience. You may philosophize with her. You may radiantly and joyously express your delight in knowing our Father. You may share with her in confiding trust your experiences, your strengths and your hope, but she must develop her own experience and you must honor and respect her enough to allow her the opportunity to follow the path that the Father has laid out for her, which is her own and not yours.

Rachel:      Right.

TOMAS:    But how you may rejoice in the prodigal sister, embracing you at last. There is little that can be as joyous as the family of man and the family of God intertwined in one wondrous reality.

Rachel:     It's almost too wondrous for belief. No, but you're right. I don't want to bowl her over.

TOMAS:         I am going to ask for one further question and then resign for the evening.

Hester:     I would like to ask for a prayer for -- this is my question. Only it's a statement. I invite you to pray your prayers as a seeking, a leading that I have had playing around in my mind and is not being actively to pursue a spot whereby a Unity educational system, i.e., a church, would be developed in Wexford. I ask for prayers for my leading in direction.

Leah:        I'll agree to that if you put in a qualifier. That it's God's will that it be in Wexford,
or wherever He'd like it to be.

Hester:     Well, North Hills. The North Hills area, but I keep coming back to Wexford, because Wexford is six miles square.

TOMAS:    Well, in that case ...!

Elyssia:     I do have a question. You said just one more, but I do have a question because I'm trying to talk to this person that I care about. And I've never -- I've been careful not to use my influence. Not to just use it, so to speak, on unimportant issues. But as I've said, I'm very concerned about this person, younger than I, my young relative, and I don't want to come across as like -- I don't want to put him on the defensive, I guess that's what I'm saying. I guess I really want some advice about how you don't do that. I know Jesus says don't give any advice unless they ask you for it.   He didn't ask me for any advice, and yet I see there are dangerous shoals ahead for him. I see ahead something so dreadfully terrible, that he would tear his family apart.

So I feel that I must -- and I'm the only person in the relationship who can do it, or has the right to do it, so to speak -- and yet, as I said, I don't want to spend my little meager influence without its being effective or without its being well-thought though and without its being nonjudgmental and I don't want to arouse defensive reactions in this person. Did I make a question out of that?

TOMAS:     I feel your heart felt yearning for a miracle, Elyssia. I hear your desire for the highest good for the parties concerned and I hear your yearning to guide and direct your flock as you feel they would be tended lovingly, appropriately, according to your sheepcote. It is indeed a sacred institution, humanly sacred. It is indeed the basis of civilization, this home and family life, not to be taken lightly. Indeed, to be regarded as the highest opportunity for service and integrity growth.

Elyssia:     Well, I see these children, beautiful children, but they're very, very much in need of a stable environment. I would say even more than the average children. They've both been, I'd say, I don't know. They need. They desperately must have the stable environment that they have right now.

TOMAS:     I hear you.   I hear your song. I hear your psalm. I hear your prayer. I extend that prayer into Urantia and embrace all of the tender children who do not deserve the pain, the sorrow, the hunger, the alienation, the abandonment, the abuse, the sorrow, the cold, the neglect, the anger, the pain, the isolation. I extend that into Urantia and include the adults who are also children, who do not deserve much of what is dished out on a daily basis because of habit and greed and faulty conditioning. I pray that the rebelliousness of the Eternal will rise up and fight the good fight of faith for these children throughout Urantia, that we children here, together today at this table today, can find sufficient strength in each other that we can rally to the cause of supporting each other in the belief that we can overcome, that we can bring into existence those values that will assure all of the children of Urantia, big and little, young and old, that they are loved, that they are cared for, that they are embraced, that there is an abundant, prosperous, wonderful, bountiful universe, a loving parent Father, a loving parent Mother, healing nurturing power wisdom purpose plan and glory in the life of the most small and insignificant of its creatures.

In line with these insignificant creatures, my sister, Hester, I embrace you and I raise your prayer up to provide for these precious and priceless children a home, a place to go, a place to worship, a place to be with one another, a place where the air is clean and fresh, where the faces look upward as do the faces of the flowers, seeking the warmth of the Son and the tears of the mother's joy.

Hester:      Thank you. Amen.
TOMAS:    Amen. Farewell.

*****

DATE:        October 22, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R:           
TEACHERS:       
Group:        Elyssia, Liana, Gerdean and Hester
URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 37, PERSONALITIES OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
#6Celestial Overseers
#7 Mansion World Teachers
#8 Higher Spirit Orders of Assignment

TEACHER SESSION on “the Mind,” was lost owing to technical failure.

A Business Meeting was held and, based upon the groups' Suggestions, the following format is being discussed to be 7:00-7:30 p.m. - Social time: snacks in kitchen; personal talk 7:30 p.m. - start promptly with PRAYER aloud, followed by 2-3 minutes of meditation/Stillness ; The sequential reading/study, for 45 minutes 8:15 p.m. - 30 minutes (other readings or voluntary presentation TEA in advance) -10 minute break to merge into ... 20 minutes sharing of Spiritual Growth each speaker to monitor his/her own sharing with the timer (No cross talk)  9:15 or soon thereafter, a moment of stillness in preparation for  9:30 at the latest: Teacher Session, for generally one hour

*****

DATE:        October 29, 1998
LOCATION         Pittsburgh, P.A. USA
T/R:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS
Group:          Pittsburgh Pumpkins

Subjects: 
(1) Buddhism;
(2) Meditation;
(3) Reincarnation;
and (4) Being Angry at God

TOPIC:
BUDDHISM AND OTHER WONDERS

TOMAS:     Greetings, my friends. I am Tomas. How are you this evening?
Liana:     Hello, Tomas.
Elyssia:     Just great.

TOMAS:     It is wonderful to be with you. It has been a very gratifying evening for us who watch you and await your coming of age in these concepts of acquisition enabling you thus to be effective in your association with yourself and in the subsequent enchanting exercise of association with others. You are the workbook. You are the exercise. You are the test question itself, and you, in your ability to accept the next lesson, the next rung on the ladder, are then able to formulate for yourself your own next adventure in accomplishment of yet new truth. You do this as a result of your reality in and of and through divinity, that which you are and which you are becoming.

Your discourses this evening have provoked many curricula and yet, in keeping with our recent promise, we are going to be subsiding in the lecture department and allowing for more interaction. It, therefore, has been most gratifying, I repeat, to behold your intercourse on such delving’s as you did on Buddhism and The Course in Miracles and how that relates to dogma and divine mind.

My friends it is funny that you feel you have been on vacation because we have not had transcripts for several days, but what we have had is active participation in the classroom of life. There has been no vacation here, inasmuch as all of you have been involved in ongoing processes of enlightenment and increased awareness of your faith path and in the observation of that faith path or lack thereof of others in your immediate arena, those upon whom you most actively impact.

What will we follow up with, then, from your earlier discourses? What would you like to delve deeper into in terms of your own experience, in terms of your own understanding of a reality which you perceive would be beneficial, if only for its experiential qualities?

Elyssia:     I would like to be able to firm up my understanding of this Buddhism thing because it is widespread  and I would like to be able to understand these people better and to not be saying to myself that they lack the important thing, which is, of course, to me, always, The Urantia Book. So I guess I'd really like some help in trying to consolidate my feelings or -- My thoughts are not firmed up. I want to be effective on this subject, because if I go out there and talk about Buddhism, I really think people will know, "Yes! Yes, it's true. It's everywhere!" and yet I was hoping, Tomas, that you could clarify a bit just these feeble little thoughts that I have.

TOMAS:     I will be brief in my response to you, for poignancy sake. It would be much like saying that if you could play rinky-dink piano, you would be familiar with the soul of the black; or if you shrewdly invested your money, you would understand the Hebrews; or if you celebrated Christmas, you would know the mind of Christ. You cannot be well versed in Buddhism with a few poignant facts. Buddhism is a way of life, an experiential frame of mind which is one of those things that cannot be comprehended by and through academics, and so you will not be effective in attempting to convey a heartfelt belief about Buddhism because you are not Buddhist. You do not know Buddha.

You can discuss your understanding of the philosophy of Buddhists or the standards ascribed to by Buddha, but even there you will fail to assimilate the subtleties of such a belief system that is so ingrained it tints every aspect of their life, much like your Christianity affects every aspect of your life. These evolved religions are very slow but sure. They are so evolved over such a period of time, there is no real dividing line between before they were and now. You can however, appreciate a belief, a culture, a religion, a way of life, by and through your support of its tenets or aspects in and through your personal attitude, and this is where you are the workbook, my dear.

This is where you are the exercise. For in and through an attitude of acceptance and love of all of your brethren in and through Our Father, you will see their value, that which they have known, how they have become, that which they have to offer, some part of what their limitations might be, and how they might overcome those deficits by and through a greater revelation of truth beauty and goodness such as all of you are capable of assimilating. 

Elyssia:    Do I understand it correctly when I think that they seem to meditate a lot more than we do and they spend a lot more time in stillness in general that -- perhaps I should say that about my friends here; I should say that about myself!

TOMAS:    It is not so, although the tradition is set forth, but think of how Buddhists might behold Christians!  They might think of you in terms of how your tradition would have you look also.  If you are known throughout the world as the kind of mortal who will "turn the other cheek" then you might appear somewhat vulnerable to attack and if your God was crucified, you may be regarded as somewhat foolish for worshipping a mere mortal.

These kind of value judgments or observations are made through ignorance because of the lesson above.  It is hearsay.  It is dogma.  It is a history lesson until such time as you feelingly experience it for yourself.  Remember that in many of the countries where Buddhism is practices there is a caste system and it is often a luxury to be able to worship and perhaps only the wealthy can afford to sit in stillness.  On the other hand, there are those who maybe so hungry and amid such squalor that they can only find peace through stillness.  Each individual is a record unto him or herself.

It is not a good idea to classify a large sector of believers as manifesting a blanket truth, for in EACH individual there will be shades of coloration based upon the individual's personal experience and much of this has to do with the ability of its Indwelling Adjuster to make impressions upon its superconscious mind that will lead to increased enlightenment.

Elyssia:      In the Book it says that -- I think it says -- better not -- on this planet -- meditate for more than 20 minutes at a time.  Has that changed, Tomas?

TOMAS:      I am not familiar with a legislation as to worship.  It is certainly not to be encouraged as a method of escape from the rigors of living, but genuine prayers are also eager to follow up and be of service.  It is not a good idea to fast and to go without spirit food, nor is it wise to become a glutton, but a real relationship with Our Father will enable you to maintain a sense of balance in your practice.  Many times in your culture in this day and age, if you can secure 20 minutes it is an accomplishment, not to be disdained if you can find half an hour!

I have a sense, Elyssia, that you are attempting to understand and convey something in extension of an appreciation for the Buddhist philosophy.

There are many religions that practice meditation and forms of prayer.  It does not make them a spiritual people.  Even those who sit in stillness for hours maybe only cogitating their grocery list.  "By their fruits they shall be known." 

Elyssia:      Well, I don't think it came as quite a surprise to me when I read the Book and I found what I've been trying to figure out for a long time: what was the attraction of Buddhism to so many delightful young people that I have known in recent years? And I found that part that gave me an answer [Ed: UB, 1039: "This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity.  And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion."], and now I guess I'm thinking that we haven't developed that part of our faith, I didn't think, as much as we should have. 

TOMAS:    Are you making reference to the teaching of making contact with the First Source and Center within?

Elyssia:    Yes, the part in the Book that said they believed you could make contact and they've striven to do it and I was beginning to appreciate the young Buddhist people in the world more, suddenly.

TOMAS:      Let me then bring you back into your own culture and suggest that there are people in your own social circles who practice this fine art of meditation who are not Buddhist, but who also seek contact with the Center within -- the young people of today are merely hungry for personal religious experience and this can be had in and through transcendental meditation and inner reflection, inasmuch as a believer has established a relationship with a reality which is other than the material life outside and external.

This is not limited to Buddhism but it is historically an Eastern practice.  Your Western world and Christianity have resisted the Eastern religions.

Contribution to spirituality because it allows for the individual to find a direct relationship with Father, with divinity, and thereby rules out the "middleman" that is a large part of the culture of Christianity; going all the way back to early, early priesthood.

Elyssia:      Then they probably don't have a lot of this stuff about sin, because I had to listen to this last night.  Our wonderful rector spends part of his marvelous sermons every time I hear him, telling us how sinful we are.  We're filled with sin.  There's nothing but sin!  And then I was thinking that Buddhists have avoided this trap.

TOMAS:    I wish I could see your mind, Elyssia.  Perhaps you will have an opportunity to engage a new look at it when you see your words on paper.  Perhaps I am not privy to the subtleties of your understanding by and through your words, but I cannot comprehend why you describe this man, who repeatedly lambastes your practices and your very being as sinful, as "marvelous."  How browbeaten are you that you would elevate him to such a status when he has relegated you to such a lowly position.  How peculiar.

Elyssia:      He is a product of this thinking that is in the church, but on the other hand, he has such a devotion, a love for Jesus, and speaks of him so beautifully.  He has a tremendous relationship; I am sure, with Jesus.  He is a victim of this thing about the sacrifice, the lamb and everything, I gather, that St. Paul perpetrated, and so it's a very mixed -- and so I think he's very, very wonderful because of his love for the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do …

This thing about Buddhism…  I can see, don't labor under this.  And the Jewish people evidently don't seem to have it either.  I was listening this morning to Rabbi Cushner, I guess his name is, and he's delightful in every way and he was talking about people getting down on themselves and he was quite funny and humorous about -- you know. He said, "David murdered Uriah and all these people" and "They were the BEST people!"  So it's quite interesting to contrast these non-Christians and it just amazes me. 

TOMAS:      It is amazing, too, from my vantage point, in studying all of your evolved religions, to the point that they have attained today, how incredibly diverse they are and how loyal you are to them.  It is like your studies, Liana, of the chakra system and Ms. Myss, whom we have discussed at length many times, and her discussion of the tribal loyalty.  The tribal loyalties of the evolved races are tenacious and they will stand by what they have been taught to believe in by their ancestors in the face of their own good sense.

The concept of reincarnation is so well-established in the minds of Brahmans and other Eastern elements, that life has become fairly cheap, for there will be another opportunity on the morrow, and this is a travesty, but it is accepted, and these same truths hold true in your Christianity, and Christ has died in so many ways attempting to bring to you the concept of His love and the Father's love, and yet you "adore" these personalities who tell you how lowly you are and how unworthy.

It is and remains a travesty, and this indeed is why we have come to instill in you an appreciation for your next adventure in assessing truth, beauty and goodness.  As your text says, your world is hovering on the brink of a new discovery -- the discovery of divine love and the ascension of those who follow the leadings of divinity into increased heights of awareness and revelation.  Onward and upward.  Inward and upward.  Enough already with the bowing, the scraping, the repenting, the repeating.  Enough already!  Forward!

Elyssia:      Well, one cannot enter a discourse on the subject with this person I know because it is like one of the basic tenets of the church -- original sin -- and if you don't believe it, you can't teach Sunday School.  And I figure I'd better try to hang out there in the Sunday School.  I figure I might be able to do some good there. 

TOMAS:      You cannot do any good there if you are continuing to propagate untruths. 

Elyssia:      But I don't DO that!  I stay with the things that you, for instances, have suggested.  And if you have any little Sunday School lessons you'd like to pass along, I'd sure like it, because you gave me some good ideas and I used them and I like to use them.

TOMAS:    And so I am to perceive of you as one who has infiltrated the enemy ranks.
Elyssia:    You're right!

TOMAS:    It is necessary often that we adapt ourselves to the environment, the circumstances, that we camouflage ourselves in order to go among the masses.  The adage of "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" is a wise adage indeed for it enables you to be in the world but not of it.  And so I will not discourage your beautiful efforts in salvaging the souls of the children that you minister to in Sunday School, but do not forget your purpose.  Do not become so swallowed up in the beast that you become fodder for it.  It is dangerous work ….

Elyssia:    [Laughter]
TOMAS:    Elyssia.

Elyssia:      I like that.  I really agree, and I understand.  I am glad you put it that way.  It requires a readjustment of ones feelings every time you come out of that sermon, every time you leave.  But a friend of mine is really into this reincarnation so I'm so happy to have this little bit of ammunition here.  This person doesn't see that it's not valid.  A very bright person. 

TOMAS:    It is wise, then, if this person is very bright, that you expand your own definition of the concept of reincarnation to become extremely sophisticated in order that you may meet minds with your friend, for it serves no purpose to become a battlefield of tenets and religious dogma.  It does not make points.

Elyssia:    I would like to be effective without being a bore.

TOMAS:    You must then go to that one who hungers and thirsts.  Forget those who are already smug and self-satisfied, for you are only fooling yourself to think that you are being effective if your seeds are falling on barren soil.

Elyssia:      Yes, well, what would you think of somebody that was mad at God?  Now, this is a person that I know quite well and this person is mad at God and I have all kinds of answers that make sense to me, but I would be happy to have some help.

TOMAS:    This is a reflection of a deep personal problem, one which, on the surface, may be construed as a temper tantrum, a child who is holding its breath, turning blue.  When it has a need for air, it will gasp and clutch life.  There is nothing in the meantime that you can do to convince this person intellectually that they err by being angry at God. As a matter of fact, it may be a smart thing for them to do, for if they are that angry, it is best that they allow God to handle it, rather than lambasting the mortal associates with that kind of fury which would be devastating and destructive of the human condition, God can handle it.

Elyssia:    And He probably will handle it.

TOMAS:    What you can do, Elyssia, is, in your private time with the Master, pray for your friend that she will see the need for her hardened heart to soften to the realization of the wisdom of Father's assignments.  It is very difficult for a child who has been indulged or who is in great fear to grow up and trust the Father's discipline and direction.  But the wise one will realize the faiths following such an admonition as "Be ye perfect."

Elyssia:    It's a certain attitude that I can't quite even understand, this thing about being mad at God.  I guess it's a certain temperament.

TOMAS:    It is a certain "moment in time."

Elyssia:    A certain moment in time.  I get the picture of this little kid having a tantrum.  I can get that picture very well.

TOMAS:    A child.

Elyssia:    But, I mean, everybody does have a childish part to themselves, it seems.  The "inner child" I think they call it.

TOMAS:    Indeed.

Elyssia:     And then why is this person the victim of his inner child? I mean, don't most of us recognize the inner child when it's dictating to us? We pout, we're disappointed, we are inordinately ego-centric.   

TOMAS:    Let me paint a little picture for you, Elyssia, that portrays a truth.  You may recall that in the text it speaks of those who have been educated and fostered in an environment of loving association with value, with Jesus, with those things which would give rise to a comfort zone in their belief system, whereas others may only be born of the spirit through trial or tribulation, through a psychic trauma of some sort, and it could be that you were born in a situation wherein your relationship with Father was fostered naturally.  When you see someone who has not had your experience, be understanding of and compassionate of their background, for they may not have had the advantages that have led to a natural assimilation of their own God-consciousness and it may be a frightening experience for them, and thus they are in the throes of a soul birth….

Elyssia:    Oh!

TOMAS:     Which is a difficult birth.  Much labor pain involved.  And this is the child I refer to.  Not the psychic inner child or the emotional child, but the soul who has only now been born of the spirit.  Or even is screaming in labor of being born of the spirit.  But this is a personal birthing experience between that individual and the Father, and the wise thing to do, as a spiritual midwife, is to offer comfort to your brother, your sister in their birth throes.

Elyssia:    This is sort of one of those upheavals it talks about in the Book?
TOMAS:    Yes.
Elyssia:    When somebody becomes suddenly …
TOMAS:    Some lessons are harder to learn.  Some truths take longer to be born.

Elyssia:    Well, this person came out of an environment where it was socially acceptable to be a devout Christian and perhaps just kind of secretly went along in the way that person wanted to and now is having a tendency to, perhaps, grow traumatically.  I hope that that's the case.  It's very encouraging that you would say that, so I'll just sit back and take a different attitude at this point.

TOMAS:    I remind you again of the fact that you are the workbook.  Your life experience is personal to you, and as you develop your own reality, it will impact upon how you observe the life experiences occurring around you in your brethren.  It is and makes for an even more fascinating existence.

Elyssia:      It's exciting.  It's fascinating.  It is truly that.

TOMAS:    Let me then lift us into verbal acknowledgement and praise to Our Father for the breath of life, for the experience of the I AM.  Let us thank the Eternal Son for the manifestation of His divinity in and through the Creator Sons, and our own Creator Son Michael of Nebadon who has given us life as we understand it on our native sphere, which he shared with us in his life here many years ago.  Let us arm in arm with Jesus of Nazareth acknowledge the birth of truth here and carry it forward into eternity.

I will see you later my children.  Farewell.

Elyssia:    Thank you, Tomas.
Liana:        Farewell.

*****

DATE:        November 5, 1998
LOCATION:        Pittsburgh, P.A. USA
T/R:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:        TOMAS, MERIUM, ABRAHAM

Group:     Elyssia, Celeste, Leah, Gerdean, Rachel and Hester

Prayer, Stillness

URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 38, MINISTERING SPIRITS OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
#1. Origin of Seraphim
#2. Angelic Natures
#3. Unrevealed Angels
#4. The Seraphic Worlds
#5. Seraphic Training
#6. Seraphic Organization
#7. cherubim and Sanobim
#8. Evolution of Cherubim and Sanobim
#9. The Midway Creatures
Paper 48, THE MORONTIA LIFE
#7. Morontia Mota: 1-6

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
PERSONALITY INTEGRATION

TOMAS:     Good evening, Ambassadors. I am your friend, Tomas.
Group:    Good evening, Tomas.

TOMAS:     I appreciate the attention you focus on what is important, and what is important is adaptable from one moment to the next depending upon the given needs of the moment, as you find it in your arena, your environment, in your service to your fellow men in your daily life. I also appreciate it when you recognize in yourself a call to order in and through the authority of Our Father whose spirit speaks and you listen. This is a phenomenon of the spirit reality, that when you are sensitive to divinity, you WILL hear its call and respond when it calls to you to respond.

In your sharing this evening, Leah, you told of a spiritual experience you had when you lay on the green grass of the coast, hearing the surf in one ear and the trickle of a brook in the other. You can do this as an integrated personality walking through your life here, hearing the Father in one ear, and the call of humanity in the other. Mothers are gifted in this also. They can hear for the baby's whimper in one ear, and hear for the husbands key in the front door with the other ear, and yes, Hester, it is true that you can hear angels in one ear and the mew of a kitten with the other.

It is wonderful to be so well balanced as to be able to identify with your materiality and your spirituality. To deny either, as I have said many times, is to invite disaster, inasmuch as you are material creatures and you are called upon to be perfect in your sphere as the Father is perfect in His. And so I would like to ask you this evening to focus for a moment on what you regard as perfection for you in your sphere. You, Celeste, in your sharing indicated a prayer given by a young woman: "Father, create me to be the woman you would have me be." And this is a prayer of a sane person, who would say: "Bring all of my faculties to the fore; help me be all that I can be, human and divine in one". An excellent prayer. An excellent example of a unified personality.

It is also true that a unified personality can become so comfortable in this identity, that it can function fully in both realms at one time. You can with one hand josh and caress, while on the other you can praise and counsel. You can become a dignified son or daughter of God in the flesh. I bring this to your attention this evening to enable you to be comfortable with yourself in the face of the anticipated increased insurgence. You have discussed/ we have discussed/ you are aware of the snowballing energies as we approach the calendar millennia.

We have now been mindful of how far we have come in these recent years toward opening the circuits on Urantia to everyone who is interested in connecting. And at last we have your forerunners paving the way through the media to bring to you Ambassadors, readied now, practiced, balanced, integrated, loving, joyous, helpful, happy individuals, prepared for the progress which we have awaited in the term "Urantia hovers on the brink." You each, at this moment, are hovering on the brink, and you may well ask yourselves, "Am I ready? Am I ready to manifest the fruits of the spirit in my life in such a way as they will know that I have been with Michael and I have sworn my loyalty to him, that I have consecrated my will to serve him, that I have been reborn of the spirit, that I AM a child of God, and that, as a faith son/daughter, I AM astounded by the miracles of life and the opening of light and life before me -- all the while, able to comfort and counsel those behind you who are also advancing in their ascension.

Look at your arena now, and make it as perfect as you can. Not on the surface, particularly, but inwardly. In your own integrated reality, so that you call wheel and deal effectively with man and with God, so that you yourself can be a living channel between the material and the spiritual, so that you do not get stuck in the circuit, and that your message does not become lodged in your throat. Allow yourself to be perfect as you are.

You all feel quite perfect at this moment. You all feel quite at peace, to me. It is because you know that you are loved. It is because you realize that there is order in the universe and everyone is doing their job to make it move forward in harmony and grace. You also are standing with your right foot forward, prepared to go forth into tomorrow, with the knowledge of His companionship, that when you open your mouth, His truth will come forth. He will speak through you as human and as divine.

Behold the woman. Behold the man. Not suffering, not beaten, not dysfunctional but empowered and liberated. Envision yourself thus. Know that you are thus. Identify with yourself thus. You cannot ignore the legacy that you come from, but you can rise above it, as you can rise above your heritage, appreciating, in fact, how far you have come, as we appreciate how far you have come and how far we have come together in consciousness of our yearning to become more Godlike, to be relieved of the density of your earthly existence. Soar! Soar even in and through the vagaries of human existence. When the doors open, when they come to see what you are like, you who represent this Book, you who are the living testimony of this epochal revelation to your planet Urantia, how will you represent the Father?

ABRAHAM:         This is Abraham.

Group:         Greetings, Abraham. You were our first contact.

ABRAHAM:         I have been devoted to you for a long time. I have been devoted to the Master even longer. I have been trying to come and visit you, but I have been assembling troops elsewhere. All things occur in good time, in the Father's time.

I AM always astounded at the power of the spirit. I AM even more astounded by the spirit now that I am no longer restrained by my mortality. I can see from the vantage point of the commander of a large army, an army that functions efficiently, that is disciplined, that lends itself well to appropriate uniformity, even in its individual diversity. Such is the advancing army of our Creator.

In you, there is a divine spark that I am privileged to recognize, that I work for. That divine spark is part of that which has created you and me. In due course that WORD which resides within you will speak and we will move as one vast army, bidden by The Universal Father himself. The pattern is already established. It only remains for us to develop our perfection-hunger, for in that perfection hunger is the key, the answer to the mobilization of the troops. Advance.

MERIUM:     Well, if I ever saw a need for fluffy pillows, now is the time for me to come in and soften your corners.

Elyssia:     Great.

MERIUM:     It is always true that Father Abraham gets us to sit up straight in our chair. I always appreciate our elder brothers who are able to instill in us a respect and an awareness of their maturity such that we have someone to look up to. It is very unfortunate, at this phase in your world, that you have so few heroes, that there are so few heroic personalities, and so it is such a privilege to have -- not as heroes, necessarily -- but as strong characters that we can emulate and look up to in such beings as Abraham and Melchizedek and even our Teaching Corps. I am beginning to notice certain heroic personalities among you mortals of the Teaching Corps as well. You of Reserve Corps status have been able to function, even unconsciously, in certain moments of emergency and crises, as a result of your willing to do so. This has given you added strength, added experience, which gives you heroic "stuff". Heroic feathers, for your pillows.

I mention this about our elders, not just because we have so many of them, and not because one was just here, but because, as children, as youngsters in this eternal career, you need to know that you are looked after and that someone can come in and tell you lovingly to shape up and you will do so willingly. Your human minds are peculiar. Your conditioning and your intellect may tell you that you will not automatically obey, that you have independence and you will think about it first. This is a result of your long sought-for liberation as well as your inherent right as an ego personality with will; your free will status confers upon you the right to make decisions, and for someone to come along and tell you what to do, is possibly a concern, a potential problem, unless you can honor that authority, that outside authority, that voice which compels you to obey. Our Father has that kind of voice. Our Father has the kind of voice that can speak to you in such love and authority at the same time, that you focus everything you have and everything you are on satisfying that desire of His.

And so, in my way, I will confirm and confer upon you an appreciation of your ability to respond when it is required of you, and also to fluff your pillows and let you know that we have confidence that you can do it, that there is a part of you that can and will respond to this eminent challenge. Are there any questions this evening?

Elyssia:     Well, I was going to ask again -- I'm marveling at the fact that we have this president that we have. If -- we read in scripture that power comes from God, and we pray for those in authority in our church, which seems to say that they've been put there, and I wonder: Have they been put there by God or by mammon? I'm trying to figure it out.

TOMAS:     There is not much to figure, Elyssia. They are evolved religions. If they are evolved religions, they are what man has created out of his need for religion, and so it is by the authority of man in search of God that these positions exist. They are secret only inasmuch as and to the extent that these positions are fulfilled by men who are close to the Father, and this requires NOT a philosophy or a theology, but a personal spiritual experience. That is the personal relationship between the mortal and the Father. In both cases, in church and state, these being man-made institutions, evolved in your societies.

ELYSSIA:     We have a hero in Thomas Jefferson, they are shooting him down because he was a lonely widower on a plantation and had a relationship with a slave and they are not even representing him, I feel, with any degree of accuracy, in order to make this president seem acceptable. And so we had a hero and they are shooting him down....

TOMAS:     I am not going to discuss heroics in terms of your evolved society, your evolved civilization. These are human heroes. I am not going to discuss human heroes. I am discussing spiritual reality. You seem to want to stay in the evolving spheres. I am trying to live in the revealed spheres. Your definition of "hero" must change. You have had heroic figures in the past, but not many, and not for a long period of time because we are talking about a temporal reality, and so the value of temporal heroes is limited to the role they play in the time they play them. The status of the Reserve Corps, those who function very much as heroes and heroines in time of emergency of a spiritual nature may never be mentioned. It is possible that one would never know that they existed, but they have impacted on the development of your spiritual reality. This is the facet of heroics I refer to -- the quality of heroics. Your president does not attain to that level. None of your presidents have attained to that level.

Elyssia:     Now, for instance, we cannot even have Van as a hero because the description of him in the Book is simply very, very incomplete. There is simply no way you can get wrapped up in him as a hero. He must have been a hero. He must have been a great hero of great moral stature, but you know, how can you even work it up because The Book doesn't do enough on that. Could you perhaps tell us about him? And help us to connect with that picture of him?

TOMAS:     Van's claim to fame, if you will, was his steadfastness. It doesn't speak to his moral stature. It speaks to his steadfastness over hundreds of years, and it is evident that you have no one to compare him to in your world because your circumstances are not the same at all.

Elyssia:     Well, my daughter Norma has a lot of these heroes that she seems to have found who were moral authorities in history. She seems to have found a lot of them. John Guest, our rector, has found a lot of these people and talks about them and wants us to study their lives and they are very real to him but they are all preachers, and I don't relate with them that well.

TOMAS:    I am going to suggest that you regard them very much as you would biographies of great people. They are certainly to be admired for their contributions. Indeed, in a philosophic sense, Elyssia, everyone can be regarded as heroic if you want them to be. The heroic stature that I am insisting upon focusing on, is that which responds to the call forward into this next dispensation. The power pull that elevates you and lures you into greater reality, not into a more sophisticated civilization, not into a more successful church, but into a greater reality. Perhaps…

Elyssia:     I guess, my friend Lillian said Socrates was looking for one honest man and Jesus was that honest man.

TOMAS:     He is certainly the finest example of a hero I have ever seen. And he was able to live an integrated personality with the human and the divine, much like you can, much like each of you can -- and do on a regular basis.

Elyssia:     Well I remind myself of one of the apostles that -- I mean, if I may be so bold as to do that in the first place, but they were very, very human and fell short so much of the time -- but then of course they gloriously gave their lives at the end.

TOMAS:     Do you find that that is some kind of compensation for their humanness?

Elyssia:     Well, I can get involved in thinking of them as heroes when I read the way they sacrificed their lives without a single thought.

TOMAS:     They were certainly heroic, yes.
Elyssia:     So I could think of them as heroes . ..
TOMAS:     Yes.

Elyssia:     ... so if that would help me to be more heroic, then maybe I ought to concentrate more upon that. What can you do to ...? Now, I have a book called "The Hero Within" -- maybe I just better read that book. Somebody has been trying to make me read it for the last five years.

TOMAS:     That might be a good idea.

Elyssia:     I think it is a good psychological study of how to find some greatness within yourself. I think that's the idea behind the book.

TOMAS:     I know you have greatness in there. I have been addressing it for three years now.

Elyssia:     I think reading about Jesus was about the closest I ever came to being inspired.

TOMAS:     Let me give you an assignment for this week. Since we have discussed what we have discussed, and we graciously ourselves now on He who was the Greatest Among Us, look to yourself and see what you have that compares to what Jesus had. Compare your life with Jesus, given the difference in your status as ascending son as compared to Creator Son, of course, but that within him which made him heroic, was his devotion to the Father, and to those values which made him a fine, mortal human being -- the father of his brothers and sisters, a neighbor to be admired, a man to be loved by Rebecca, a merchant admired by his comrades, a creative worker, an inventive person, a teacher, a preacher, a jokester, a good guy. All of these things are part of the human Jesus, and while he was this human being, he was also the Son of God and he remembered his loyalty to His Father.

This is what made him a hero. This is what can make you a hero. This is what could make your president a hero. This is what could make anyone a hero if they were applying themselves to it, if this is what our greatest reality was, if this is what we sought in our leaders, if this is what we looked for in the church and in the state, if this is what we yearned for in every relationship, in every nation, in every country, in every village, in every person; if we yearned for the balance of the human and the divine in each moment, we would be living in light and life. Indeed, we would be in light and life all the way to Paradise and so this is the threshold that we stand before. This is the brink upon which we await tomorrow.

Elyssia:     In your society, you had access to tremendous truth. You told us how you were conscious of the presence of God almost all the time. Now, could you describe the way some of your contemporaries developed into heroes.

TOMAS:     You have a frame of reference in the Urantia Book that speaks of supermortals. It is this supermortal quality that is heroic. It does not mean that you have muscles like Hercules or money like Rockefeller. It does not mean that you are the world's greatest this or the world's greatest that. Heroic qualities are indeed from within. But in the eyes of the spirit, if they have been all that they can be within the pattern of perfection, and then they have met the mark, thus making them -- and you -- heroic. Are you going to be heroic in your moment to moment existence by maintaining your integrity in and through the spirit and in your service to mankind?

Rachel:     Well, thank you, Tomas. I'm feeling woefully inadequate after tonight's discussion.

TOMAS:     You, I hope, understand that words and lessons along these lines is not to call to your attention any woeful inadequacy, but to stimulate you to accept in yourself those qualities which are inherent in you that are heroic by the nature of your association with the Father and that through Him you can maintain your integrity and that makes you heroic, so to the extent that you live with Father, you are supermortal, superhuman. You can do things that many cannot because they know Him not.

Rachel:     Oh, I know that. I've done many things because of the Father in me that poor little Rachel couldn't do, and poor little Rachel keeps doing more because of the Father.

TOMAS:     Rachel is doing very well.
Rachel:    Yes, I suppose she is.

Elyssia:     Well, actually, we've read that, in our society they've been talking about who is honest and who isn't honest, and all I can say is at least we thought about it, about a year ago, and examined ourselves from that point of view, and some of us, I think, managed to move ahead a little bit, in that area. That was a sort of feeling of satisfaction. Didn't everybody sort of feel that way?

Rachel:     I got a lot out of that.

Elyssia:     Honesty. The media, of course, has been talking about it a lot in view of the recent happenings.

Hester:     Question, sir.
TOMAS:     Yes, ma'am.

Hester:     Isn't this business of facing honesty and the internal being of ourselves part of the program extended, planed for this earth shakeup that has to come about for this new age to come into full fruition?

TOMAS:     Each individual must eventually face him or herself honestly, in order to face his fellows. It is a fact that you have lived a legacy of deceit for thousands of years; we have discussed this. It is so ingrained in you it is a way of life. Remember in Abraham's time they sacrificed as a part of their religious ritual, and when Machiventa told Abraham it was not necessary, Abraham believed his teacher, but he continued yet for many years to sacrifice because he was conditioned somehow to believe that, and part of his mind thus feared that if he did not, he would somehow be punished. It is an indication of your tribal conditioning, and you are all suffering from a certain amount of tribal conditioning.

The human tribe, under Lucifer, lies a lot. It is because your values are completely distorted. Only in and through association with divine perfection can your turn yourself right side in. Only as you begin to recognize God in others, associate yourself with family members that you can trust, that you can be yourself with, can you begin to reveal yourself honestly without being stoned, without being ostracized, without being judged.

Elyssia:     So do we find people that we can be honest with and sort of start there? Is that what we do? Is that how we can improve ourselves?

TOMAS:     Yes, you cannot expect it from strangers.
Elyssia:     Oh, okay.

TOMAS:     You must begin inside with yourself, and then in your intimate associations, and intimate in these terms means the intimacy that you experience with other friends of God, other people who are intimate with Our Father -- not those who study him, or who follow him, but who are intimate with him as you are intimate with him through stillness. You see what I mean?

Elyssia:     Yes, I do.

TOMAS:     Those are the ones who know the Father, who have been embraced in his love, who recognize that they are a loved child, that their human foibles are understood, that their soul is advancing, and that these human things will fall by the wayside in the child's yearning to be more like Father. As this little band of intimate associate’s mounts and builds, it begins to create a new society, a family first, a family of brothers and sisters under God. As your little family is growing here in the pumpkin patch, there is another little family growing over there in the berry patch, and there is another little family growing up there on the lake, and there's another little patch growing up there on the other side of the falls, and eventually these patches, these families, extend and grow and they connect, and when they connect they create a grillwork, and soon we are holding hands from village to village, and soon we are gaining strength and power, and becoming more honest and accepting of each other, and this is the brotherhood, you see. This is what we are working for. It is a goal. Do not look to the past for the reality of the future. Look within.

We have been at it long and hard this evening, my children.

Elyssia:     Well, I was going to ask you ... It seems to me maybe humor might help one to be honest with others. A humorous approach might help one to, sort of, practice a kind of honesty with others that you care about.

TOMAS:     Yes, it has been elevated to an art form in your society and there is black art and also good art in the comedic fields.

Hester:     Another question.
TOMAS:     Yes.

Hester:     Isn't it true that I have to learn to see everybody through the eyes of love -- no matter who they are, no matter what they wear, no matter what color they are, no matter whether they are thieves or whatever. I have to see the God-ness in that person.

TOMAS:     You cannot love a person by an act of will. If you love the Father and he is in you and you seek to be like him, then you will see them as He sees them.

Hester:     That's what I'm talking about.
TOMAS:     Then you have answered your own question. Yes.
Elyssia:     Well, we have our assignment now. So I guess we'll see what happens.
TOMAS:     Indeed we shall. Rejoice.
Elyssia:     It's great to talk with you Tomas, and great to have Merium pop in!
Hester:     Yeah.

TOMAS:     It is always a joy to be here with you. It was a particular joy to have Abraham come and spend some time with us and it is also a pleasure to feel the ministrations of our sister Merium. It is even more wonderful to feel your loyal presence here, my flock. It is a sublime honor for me to have you as associates and scribes in these truths. You are loved. Be at peace. Farewell.

Elyssia:     Thank you.
Rachel:     Thank you, Tomas.
Hester:     God bless.

*****

DATE:          November 12, 1998
LOCATION:      Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R:            Gerdean
TEACHERS:     TOMAS, MERIUM

Group:    Elyssia, Liana, Leah, Gerdean, Hester and Mary Theresa

Looking Back at Life,
Looking Ahead to Death

Prayer & Meditation
URANTIA BOOK STUDY:
Paper 39, THE SERAPHIC HOSTS
#1. Supreme Seraphim
#2. Superior Seraphim
Paper 48, THE MORONTIA LIFE
#7. Mota #7 - #20

TEACHER SESSION:
TOPIC:
REFLECTING ON EXPERIENCE

MERIUM:     This is Merium.
Group:    Oh! Hello, Merium. Great!

MERIUM:     I am being ushered in to engage you in a moment of focused attention so that we can assign you a lesson and in order for this lesson to fall upon fertile soil, that you will be receptive and that we may be effective, I would like to take my babies in hand, hold your hands, hold you on my lap, hold you to my breast, nurture you with the love of the Divine Minister, as we approach our Father/Brother Michael,

“Blessed be these children. Blessed be our offspring, Father, who have come to you for guidance and instruction, who look to you for wisdom and administrative abilities, who seek your council in all these affairs of their developing young lives. They come to you, Michael, in hopes of understanding their purpose, in appreciating their design, so that they may work and play in accordance with the will of our divine Father and that they may be pleasing to your eyes and to the eyes of our Divine Minister.

I am always in awe of you, Michael and Nebadonia, for your wonders and for the opportunity to serve in your kingdom and to work with, play with and form with these children of Urantia. Lead us now, Father/Brother Michael, into the presence of our Father in heaven that we may know a moment of blessing and His sanction in this day in the life. Amen.”

Group:     Amen. [A long moment]
TOMAS:     Good evening, my little ones. I am Tomas, your friend.
Group:     Good evening, Tomas.

TOMAS:     It is good to be here and I am very glad for the association of each of you. I and we have very much appreciated your in depth and sincere sharing this evening, even though it extends your schedule, perhaps, beyond your desired constraints, it none-the-less gives us a look into your hearts and souls which reflects to you also a facet of your reality which you have been thus willing to share with your friends, giving yourself then permission to assimilate greater understanding of your experience. Thus we all gain wisdom! You, for the experience itself; the ones you love and share with, because of their empathetic appreciation of your experience; and we also benefit by knowing how it is that you respond to the vicissitudes of human life. Were there no difficulties to overcome and no experiences to trip over, wisdom would not be forthcoming and you would not deepen in your ability to know God and be like him.

In your lesson this evening, my friends, you read about a transport -- the transport initially between this life and the morontia realms, and later, again, you will be engaged in a long sleep between the local universe and the superuniverse, most particularly the final sleep from the superuniverse into Havona. These passages are, in a way, graduations, and I would like to introduce you to the emotion, the sense of accomplishment in your passages that will enable you to understand your experiences and your wisdom now, having had those experiences.

We have spoken to you before; it is in your text -- you are encouraged to stop every now and again and look back upon your journey to see how far you have come in order to gain perspective on where you are today and where you hope to be in the future. It is encouraged also that when you are having a "dark night of the soul" or a "hard day's night" you look back upon moments of a precious friendship with a heartfelt appreciation of the value of the love that you once shared in order to give you strength.

Now, flock, this evening in your sharing, it could be understood, your sharing. It could be construed that when you look back -- at this point in your growth -- you do not find the reflection to bring about in you a sense of joy and satisfaction. The duly honored sense of nostalgia that can be known from looking back is not there in many cases. Instead what we find are regrets and recriminations, bitterness, sadness, a sense of defeat or a sense of futility that your ideals cannot be met and so why try to attain them. These attitudes are toxic to your spirit. They are humanly understandable. They are emotionally as a result from the mental approach to your life experience, but from a backward vantage point.

We would introduce to you this evening the concept of a different vantage point, one which will allow you to look back upon your experiences in the sunlight of the spirit rather than in the shadow. I will remind you, too, that it is in adversity that you gain wisdom, and so, rather than complain that you have known adversity, appreciate the adversity that you have known. Assign to yourself an understanding of the strength that you have garnered from that experience. This is not an easy assignment. You are asked to look at your experiential history, or segments thereof, and allow the dark cloud to have a silver lining.

In most of your lives, as a built in defense mechanism and a survival technique, you do this automatically. You are very defensive of your tender emotions and so you will stick out there your armor of justification and defense of your tender feelings. "Oh, no!" you say, "I'm not tender about that!" But in truth you are. It is not to say that you are wounded; it is to say that you have experienced something FEELINGLY and it is necessary in your spiritual development that you know these things FEELINGLY.

Therefore, the fact that you have seen dissolution of matrimony, you have seen children suffering the effects of broken homes, that you have seen the death of a loved one or the loss of an institution that you have known, career failures or severe culture shock -- all of these traumas that flesh is heir to are not for naught. They are in the ideal sense, opportunities to learn great strength in order then to sustain yourself in life's experiences, to assist others in their growth through their transitions into wisdom, and to provide you with a true chapter book of true heartfelt journeys into which you can happily go in full appreciation of the entire experience -- the potential and the actual; the happy and the sad; the good and the seeming bad; for in the end, our Divine Mother will align these experiences in order that they be a part of your greater reality and in your aligning yourself with the Father who will use these to the greater good.

As you have mentioned in your mota: the act is ours; the consequences God's" and so, do not regret your human experiences, but willingly offer them up as a sacrifice to the Father and say, "Father, I offer these experiences to you on the altar of learning, that I may be a more joyous child and servant in your kingdom."

Are there questions this evening?

Liana:     I have a question.
TOMAS:     Liana.

Liana:     Yes. It's an ethical question. Last weekend I was visiting my husband's aunt in a nursing home and the woman that she shares the bedroom with is in bad shape. She has a lot of bedsores and she's not cognizant and -- that whole thing always bother me. I think to myself, are we -- is this a humane thing to do? I mean, to leave -- to let people just die in that particular manner? And I can't come to terms with that and I think I need a thought adjustment on that. It seems to me it would be so much more pleasant just to give them an injection or something. I mean is there a reason why she has to hang around like that, in that kind of a situation?

TOMAS:     Your compassion speaks to me across the chasm between our worlds, daughter, and I am aware of my limitation in terms of setting precedence for you as you are administrators of your own realm and this is a battle which you will need to evolve to, this and many others, but it is certainly not humane to allow a body to suffer under these circumstances. No, and of course not.

I am not in a position to face the administrators of your institutions, your governments, your hospitals and so forth and call to their attention the inconsistencies and ambiguities of policy. In due course you will, as a race of people and as a society, instill in your fellows an awareness of the greater realities such that all of humanity will in due course fall in line with the Most Highs, however this is an evolutionary matter and one in which you are encouraged to become involved. It is a process of education. If they had a greater understanding of the spirit, they would know what they were dealing with. You would not allow a dog to suffer thus ...

Liana:     Right! That's my feeling.

TOMAS:     ... and when the spirit is no longer capable of effecting changes in the mind of the mortal of its indwelling, as long as no decisions of lasting import can be made, then the living carcass is essentially finished, has served its purpose, and is eager now to rest in peace, for the soul has been developed, has been created, has been born.

It is true that many times these decisions are only made towards the latter part of a mortal life, but these "deathbed decisions" are really much more a matter of theatrics than realities. Not only is it cruel in the case of this patient you mentioned, but it is severely cruel to those who have cared for this person during their life and for those who must witness the throes of the human animal in its advanced state.

Now, in time also, my dears, death will take on a new aura. In time your transition from this world to the next will be more natural and more elevated, but as of yet you are still rather primitive as is evidenced by the way many of your institutions allow themselves to carry on with the letter of the law but not the spirit of it.

Liana:     Thank you.

TOMAS:     You are correct, Liana, that it is an ethical question, and ethics are a matter of awareness based on God-consciousness. Ethics are a result of a personal life with God, a living understanding and appreciation of what is -- not right in the moral sense or the conscience sense, but -- in the true sense of the word.

Elyssia:     Well, the problem there is that the woman needs better care! It's not that she could be -- her life could be terminated, in my way of thinking, as much as the question is that the care isn't what it should be. Isn't that correct? Isn't that what you're saying, dear?

Liana:     Well, the care is not correct, but it …
Elyssia:     Bedsores and everything.
Leah:         That happens.

Liana:     That happens, if you have no movement on your own. You know, if you're not talking to anybody and you're not able to move your own body, and you're not able to feed yourself and you develop those huge sores that need to be dressed and are very painful, I just -- I don't understand. It's the quality of life. Personally I would not want to live like that, and if that were somebody I loved, I wouldn't want to have to see that, and so I just wonder, what's wrong with us that we -- is that immoral? I guess that's really my question. Is that immoral, to help somebody die like that? I mean, it seems that that is what our moral question is as human beings when there are these people in these situations, is that we don't have the right to take another person's life.

TOMAS:     We have discussed this, Liana,...
Liana:     Oh, you have?

TOMAS:     ... in our sessions before, yes, and it gives rise, if I speak frankly, then for you to quote, "Oh, Tomas said....!" and this is not the issue. It doesn't matter what I say, you see. What matters is that you evolve to a point of managing your affairs and as mature adults of the realm and a mature adult of the realm is one who is aware of what life is, where life comes from, and where life is going. It is necessary for you, again, and still, to become more vigilant in your spiritual efforts. Only as people are enlightened as to the living reality, the immortal soul, the elimination of the fear of death, will these superstitions and anxieties be eliminated from your value system.

It is still very primitive here. Your unwillingness to let go is so apparent in so many aspects of your life. Just like I mentioned in my lesson this evening, you cannot let go of your life experiences. You continue holding on to them even though they are enshrouded in bitterness and regret. You must begin to see life from a positive vantage point. You are accustomed to seeing the Spirit of Truth operate as white spots on a black background, and you must begin to see the white background with black spots, and when you see a black spot, rub it out through prayer and enlightenment -- fearlessly. They I will be able to say, "Look! Liana says ..." [Group chuckle]

Elyssia:     Tomas, I beg your pardon for bringing this up again. I'm sure I have said it before, but I just feel that it's apropos for me to cough it up again, which was that Jane Roberts was bringing in Seth and it's the only thing I ever read in any of those books, not that I read much in any of them, but that I responded to. She said that if some of these elderly people seem to be almost unconscious, they are being taught on a deep level. Well, I don't know if that's true, but it seems that some of my family hooked up to that idea pretty strongly, and they thought it sounded true to them.

TOMAS:     Yes, Elyssia, it is true up to a certain point and it is not just the elderly that this happens to. As you life develops and you go through various passages, you are then prepared and readied for the next phase of your existence. Your culture is very youth-oriented and very fearful of death, and therefore you keep putting off many things which are a natural part of your evolution in order that you begin to depend upon the spirit more, rely upon the morontia realities more, and lessen your dependency on your physicality and your more literal aspects. It is not a matter of waiting until you are elderly and unable to do anything else.

Mary Theresa:     Then are you saying that it's up to that individual to stop their own suffering by turning -- by letting themselves go to God rather than it's up to us to assist them in suicide? Is it because they have never learned to trust completely in God and don't want to let go?

TOMAS:     I did not say this, Mary Theresa. However, it is an interesting discourse you introduce. No, one cannot say that someone who is "on their deathbed" is responsible for whether or not they leave or stay. I am, however, saying that it is the responsibility of each of you to be aware of your existence as a mortal in your tabernacle of flesh as well as being aware of that which resides within you which is not dependent on your life in the flesh. The entire subject of euthanasia is essentially something that is separate from our discussion at hand, although it would naturally lead to a greater understanding of euthanasia which is again something we have discussed before.

Elyssia:     Well if the Thought Adjuster leaves, after the mind becomes abnormal, because of the aging process, if the Thought Adjuster leaves, there is no governing energy to end the life of this human carcass, in a sense, so is it possible that we could program ourselves to move along with a lot of faith to try to avoid fear so that when we finally lapse into unconsciousness we will have already made the decision to go.

TOMAS:     You have been making your decisions all along.
Elyssia:     Well that is what I was wondering.

TOMAS:     It is very unfortunate for those who do wait until the last minute, for they fight death so terribly, they have not investigated their true reality. It makes life much more difficult for them, for their families, and for the thought adjuster itself.

Elyssia:     My daughter's mother-in-law says she fears death extremely. Now, she's been brought up as a very devout Roman Catholic, and I can't help but think that there must be some kind of fear that was pounded into her little head …

Hester:     It was.
Elyssia:     ... for her to have this extreme fear.

TOMAS:     Remember, in Christianity a great emphasis is placed upon the wrath of God and divine judgment, and overly conscientious individuals who feel they have not met up with their own standards of spiritual behavior, are going to feel unworthy under that theology. It is perhaps your responsibility to encourage them to embrace a loving God.

Hester:     Well, Tomas, I went to the Catholic school for three years when I was in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades, and they taught us exactly what they're saying here, and put fear and hurt and pain in us, and it took a long time to outgrow it.

TOMAS:     When I gave you my lesson this evening about looking back, I will extend the invitation into that arena also for I know that you have happy memories of happy moments during that time as well as the difficult programming, and so when you review the times in your life, when these moments, memories, float to the surface of your mind for your reflection, allow the negative to fall away and take with you the jewels of truth and harmony that will sustain you on your journey. Encourage others to see the joy in living and to abandon the fears and the darkness of the dark ages behind.

I appreciate your words, Elyssia, indicating that you should perhaps talk yourself into having enough faith to make your mind believe something that you have been conditioned all your life against, and in part this is effective, but when you have sought clarity from Our Father and when the Spirit of Truth has shivered your timbers, you will not need to talk yourself into faith. You will feel it inside out and you will affect others by your living of it. Practice makes perfect.

Elyssia:     But usually the conversation doesn't turn around to these extreme moments.

TOMAS:     I am going to be an instigator here and tell you that you are a worker in the field and you can listen for these moments and even elicit them by bringing up conversations that will gear a conversation around to an opportunity for an individual to make a soul choice. This is part of working in the field. It may not come up automatically, but I know how clever you are, how creative you can be.

Elyssia:     As long as I don't get -- Jesus said don't press people in an emotional way, and so that's one thing I try to remember.

TOMAS:     Right.

Elyssia:     You know, one of these women that I know is afraid to die because her old stepmother, she figures, up there, and she's afraid to meet her, in heaven.

TOMAS:     You have definitely got some work cut out for you. [Group laughter]

Leah:        Tomas, you have spoken to us about making a full-fledged attempt at seeing in the light of the spirit as opposed to the shadow, and I am wondering about what Liana was talking about. I remember going as a teenager to a nursing home and the feeling of pleas from these people, calling out to you, and there just isn't enough of you to give to these people, those are the conscious ones, but when you encounter someone, or like Liana can encounter someone like she did, what is the best avenue? I don't know how to see that in the light of the spirit, although I see myself answering the question a little bit. I suppose we could be grateful this person isn't living in India, where, you know, they are in a clean bed, that there are people attending to them.

TOMAS:     You misunderstand.

Leah:         I know we could pray for them, but how do I see this in the light of the spirit? I need some help here.

TOMAS:     I am going to personalize it for you because there is no way that you can find a silver lining by an act of the will regarding the suffering of millions. I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that in your own personal life's experiences, you find a memory that you can savor even in the face of it having been painful and difficult. Along these lines, let me strike up the example of your association with your mother-in-law and her death. You were with her intimately through this experience, and you reported to your peers and to the heavens at large, a time and more wherein your spirit was impressed by the greater reality in her adaptation from this plane of existence to the next, and you also bore witness to the experiential depths of your fellows who also knew her well and went into this experience either feelingly or who avoided feeling her exit.

I realize when you as a human being look back upon the death of an individual you respectfully honor their suffering and the sense of human loss, and those are perhaps the two primary emotions that are allowed in your social chain, but your stories themselves testify to her strength, in spite of the given understanding of the physical decay and destitution, her stalwart spirit was able to survive the devastation of the moment. This is what I urge you to remember: her courage and the courage of her indwelling spirit that would minister to her in this experience and to the angelic corps, the seraphim, who enabled the environment itself to adapt to her release into the greater reality.

When Michael spoke and said the stones themselves will sing out, the entire universe is constructed to raise its voice into the victory cry of spirit reality, and as far as the physics of the cosmos are concerned, all things conspire to bring about the will of God, and passing from this life to the next is part of God's will. His will be done. Look at your experience as a reflection and understand therein how it is that His will has been done, and this will give you a greater appreciation for your experiences. It is not to eliminate the sadness or the pain or the difficulty, no, but to honor that sadness, pain and difficulty and realize that the spirit has triumphed!

Leah:        I thank you for your answer. I still am stuck with -- if I were to go into a nursing home and encounter what Liana did, I feel as if I should pray for this individual, but I don't know what I would say. I don't know if there is something to ask for. Would you pray that you didn't suffer? I don't know what kind of attitude, I would be so -- shocked, I guess.

TOMAS:    Perhaps you have no business going there. If you are led to or sent to an environment, you will be given that which you need to experience it. Do not project in advance what your experience will be, unless of course you are inviting the universe to give you the opportunity to experience just that so that you will know first hand how to feel and what to do.

You know that as a child of God, one who has been reborn of the spirit, one who has devoted many hours to recognizing the reality of God in himself, in you and in your fellows, have by now begun to perceive what that reality is and how it feels. You have been urged to begin how to recognize the presence of God in others. It is at some point assumed that you know what that feels like, and when it is not there. You can sense the spirit with your spirit. It will respond, in truth. If the spirit is alive, rejoice in the spirit. If it is not there, it is a carcass; it is cellular and unconscious of its suffering.

Elyssia:     Well, it's particularly a problem for all of us now because we can see that people are being kept alive so proficiently …

TOMAS:     Yes.
Elyssia:     ... for untold months of agony.
TOMAS:     Yes.
Elyssia:     We all can see it!
TOMAS:     Yes.
Elyssia:     So, it's only getting worse, although medical science is getting better.

TOMAS:     You know that on more advanced worlds the forward thinking peoples are able to set the pace of what can be believed. I have witnessed in a very short period of time the turnaround of cigarettes as being acceptable to being unacceptable. In a very short period of time, the greater bulk of your social structure, has engaged itself in a ban against cigarette smoking, in particular, in public places, and I am beginning to observe that this is true in terms of diet, for you, as a race of people, are being encouraged to exercise more and to reduce and or eliminate fat, sugar, cholesterol and certain elements from your diet, and these are very popular and they are good for you.

Now, there are some who like sugar and butter and object very much to you telling them what they will eat and what they will drink and what they will wear. Indeed, their free will may have them on a campaign of another sort, however, it is true that you can affect the mores and the styles in this way, and if you are forward-thinking individuals with the benefit of the fifth epochal revelation, with an understanding of what happens to you when you leave this planet, that you will be received into the Resurrection Hall and given divine guidance in your development on the next level of spirit attainment, then you can fearlessly let these truths be known such that your truths will blend with other forward-thinking human beings who also have a sense of compassion and mercy for the human condition and these things will be changed and they will be changed quickly. Do not focus on the excessive mercenary aspects, but forge ahead into the real heart of the matter and that is spirit discernment. The spirit is stronger, and love is more contagious than hate.

Leah:        Thank you.

Elyssia:     I would like to change the subject for just a minute, Tomas. I would like to ask -- I seem to feel that life is taking on a speeding up aspect, and I'm just sort of trying to -- I'd like you to comment because you are a sort of an observer and so you can probably comment with a lot of clarity to my question, but it seems to me I used to have time to sit and read a novel. Now I never read novels because if I'm going to read I'm going to read my Book or something, because I don't want to just read a novel but I have enjoyed novels tremendously in the past. It seems to me that life has speeded up. Is it I who have speeded up? Or is it life that has speeded up?

TOMAS;     It's all that sugar.

Elyssia:     Come on, Tomas. You know I don't even eat as much sugar as probably most people.

TOMAS:     Technology has contributed greatly to the accelerated pace and it is other forms of sophistication that adds to your sense of action. It is therefore even more imperative that you take that time to establish yourself in stillness, that you develop your own reality. You remember the effects of the collective consciousness, Elyssia, and allow yourself to be yourself in the face of some tremendous pulling and swaying in many directions. I sincerely urge you to maintain your own integrity as an individual in your own time span and in your own value system. Do not continually adapt your values to those around you. Your realities are based on the Father. Your realities are as important if not more so than those around you. Be firm in your foundation. Allow much of life to pass you by for it is going nowhere. You must learn to be the calm eye in the hurricane.

Elyssia:     I really appreciate those words. I remember the Book says overmuch socialization borders on evil. But I have a very difficult time deciding how much is too much. You know, I don't want to miss being friendly with my neighbors, I want to help my kids, I like to be in my church. All these things. It must -- I can't really see all these things clearly, but I'm thinking it must add up to more than I can actually sustain without a loss of my own privacy completely.

TOMAS:     If you feel that you are being of service, then give yourself space, permission, to be of service. If you feel you are just being a buffer to their reality, then you might want to take another look. If you are just allowing yourself to float downstream, you may be doing everyone a disservice. Remember the mota you read this evening, that the angels refuse to help those who will not act upon their light of truth, and so what does that mean to you?

Elyssia:     Well, I'm certainly trying to figure that out. I am working on this problem, but I don't see anything getting too far.

TOMAS:     Perhaps you are in denial. Perhaps we have extended ourselves into the evening beyond what is healthy.

Elyssia:     Yes, I'm sure that's true.

TOMAS:     It would seem that we are ready for a nap. I would like to thank you for your attention this evening and for your provocative questions, but I do want to stress that my lesson was not limited to the subject that Liana brought up and that we spent the bulk of the evening on. When I suggest that you look back at your life experiences, and find joy there and value, I am not limiting it to your experience in terms of death, but in the passage of life's journeys. In anticipation that your life's journey will provide you with substance, reality, joy, even growth, I am your loyal companion, and your friend and loyal teacher, Tomas. Farewell.

Group:     Thank you, Tomas. Thank you so much.