TOMAS [following a delay due to a technological glitch]: Greetings everyone.  Thank you for your patience with this technological situation we occasionally encounter.  Throughout the many years we have seen it all and are not alarmed, although I realize many of you read much into this kind of thing, as if to say it is the midwayers tampering with the equipment, or free will being rearranged, or whatever.  It is truly, strictly, technological in nature and has no real bearing on our process.

Welcome to this forum.  I am Tomas.  I am pleased to be here this evening to carry on in my fashion as a teacher and a philosopher of the Teacher Corps.  I specify “of the Teacher Corps” because it helps clarify my role.  I am a teacher. I am not an administrator.  There are those in this mission and related tasks that have administrative duties to perform and that is appropriate, but I have been and will be, through the duration of my association with you here, a teacher, and hopefully I will be able to teach you each and all something about being a teacher in your own right, for truly, even those who are healers or creative artists or administrators are all teachers in their own fashion.  Every job in life requires a certain application, a particular approach, whether that be a bedside manner or a voice of authority or a gentle touch.  Whatever it is, these are some of the tools you use to teach as you pass by, and all would do well to find out what their task is and give themselves to it with abandon.

I’d like to chat a minute this evening about this: ascertaining your task, your role, and sticking to it through thick and thin, and I will utilize the word “gleaning” to make my point.  There is a painting called “The Gleaners” by Jean-François Millet, one of the masters in your artistic culture who strongly influenced Vincent van Gogh.  The gleaners are working in the field.  A back-breaking task it is, this gleaning, discerning that which is to be harvested and that which is to lie fallow in the field.  Potato farmers are gleaners of potatoes, leaving clumps of soil and rocks behind.

I am reminded of the parable of the sower which discusses strewing your seeds and some of them fall on fertile soil, some fall on the rocks, the barren soil, some are swept up by the winds and carried far away to cross-pollinate with other plants and some are used to feed the animals, the birds.  The same it is with gleaning your destiny path.  You will find many, many seeds coming at you.  These seeds may be from the various celestials with which you do business, or may come from your culture, your society, your parents, your teachers, your priesthood, and so forth, but you must glean from these many offerings that which feeds your needs based on what you believe your needs to be.

Granted, in the course of one short life in the flesh, needs vary.  The needs of a child are not the same as the needs of a teenager or an adult, which are not the same as the needs of a senior citizen, and so different phases of personal evolution call for different values to be clutched and grasped and adopted as valuable and worthy.  This of course allows that which you have already assimilated the option to be cast off or kept, depending upon how it is that you glean your acquisitions – not only physical or experiential, but value-wise.  

Sometimes that which was of tremendous value to you at one time no longer needs such a focus, such loyalty.  Changing your loyalties, however, can be disturbing and upsetting to the extent that you may not wish to get rid of anything at all.  You may not want to get rid of that which once worked, even though now it is only taking up space that could be utilized for new concepts, new provisions. But only you can decide; only you can glean what is necessary for your peace of mind, your health and happiness. Assuredly, when you find yourself carrying more than you can handle, you will willingly put down something.  Again, you will glean what is important for you and what is not.  Not to say that all this is without importance; it is obviously all important. It is just a matter of discerning what is most important, and so we come to the concept of prioritizing.

Prioritizing our loyalties, prioritizing that which we would take as our own and that which we can let go for whatever reason, but basically because it does not serve that which you believe to be your destiny path.  Just as love must be redefined on each new successive level of growth, that which you discern to be of value, in terms of your tools, teaching techniques, administrative abilities, ministering mannerisms and so forth, gleaning is another way of refining that which is uniquely yours for your destiny path.  All destiny paths lead to the same place, but they are not all the same.  You are given a personality and a certain predestination.  If you are always setting aside what is important to your personal development, to accommodate others’ opinions or leanings, then you are short-changing your own experiential journey.

This mortal life you life is not here simply to aggravate you and irritate you, nor are the relationships you find yourself in, or the working situations you take upon yourself, these are aspects of life unfolding and there are indeed lessons to be learned therein.  The lessons are to help you in your task of being all that you can be.  And only you know what that is.  Only you have the antenna to hone in on those messages that speak to you.  You know what you need and when you hear what you need to hear, it is music to your ears. It may be disappointing to discover that to others it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard or something quite flat and uninteresting, but this should in no way detract from your enthusiasm and your determination to follow that leading.  It requires great personal courage to “follow your dream” whether anyone approves or not, whether anyone understands or not, whether anyone joins you in the process or not.

If you do embark upon a path in which you have the benefit of associates and companions, so much the better in terms of learning teamwork – a very important lesson to be learned, and a practice which will be utilized throughout eternity.  But don’t fall into the lazy habit of doing what others do simply because you don’t enjoy the rigors of following your own destiny path, which can sometimes be quite lonely.  This is the trial of the agondonter.  The thrill, however, of being an agondonter is knowing that even if no one else understands where you are coming from,  what your motivations are, what your goal is, what your task is, even if you yourself are not quite clear on what it might be, your faith will keep you in pursuit of that which calls to you.  You will glean for yourself that which is for you, and you will make it your own.

The good thing is that as you go along, you will have amassed a great treasure of acquisitions and experiences, and letting go of some, again, leaves room for yet new and other experiences.  And so for an eternity you will be gleaning the right choice for you to make. “Shall I take this, and leave that behind? Or shall I leave all this behind and wait until I hear/ sense/ feel that which is my destiny?”

Living is a social event, in the main.  You come together to socialize and share for many reasons – to rejoice in each other’s company; to stave off fear and loneliness; to enjoy mutual stimulation of the imagination; to amplify your own praise and worship; to confide in one another.  And there are also reasons for you to experience those moments which must be called existential, when you alone are in view, when you must decide for yourself and feel your own feelings and grapple with your own fears and rejoice in your own accomplishments.

This is a good exercise for when you pursue your course through the portals of death into the next level of existence.  The more confidence you have in your soul’s ability to glean that which is right and good, real and appropriate, ordinary and natural for it to do and assimilate, the more easy it will be for you to relinquish your life in the flesh and embrace the unknown of the upcoming morontia existence.

These are the thrilling responsibilities and opportunities of teaching, of being a teacher.  Very personal it is.  A sharing it is.  And so I come to you today to share with you my insight as a teacher, understanding full well that within you are the seeds to also be a teacher if and to what extent that is also your calling. And even if being a teacher is not your primary calling, having the ability to teach as the master taught, with the voice of authority and with gentle persuasion, will also aid you in your ministry and administrative tasks as well.

Gleaning.  Gleaning the tares from the wheat, gleaning that which is for you as compared to that which is not, is a constant and yet subtle process, one in which you are busily engaged in making those decisions which advance your soul growth.  I wish you well in these endeavors.

~*~*~*~*~

I am interested in hearing from you, should you have questions regarding our lesson for the day or from your own experiential path that I might shed light upon or somehow draw from your own font of inner knowledge that will assist and encourage you.  The floor is open.

Jean:  This is Jean.

TOMAS:  Greetings.

Jean:  I have to say that I think this little lesson was written for me. 100% hit home.

TOMAS:  It pleases me when these generic lessons are able to fall on such fertile soil and become so personal, as you testify.  Proceed.

Jean:  Well, I’ve had a week where evidently I need to pay a little more attention to what is good for me in my soul growth rather than what everyone else out there is thinking I should be doing. Not necessarily related to soul growth, but somewhere there is an answer and I just asked to have this situation clarified for me, and funny I should tune in tonight and then hear your message.  I don’t know if you can read minds, but if you can put together what I am saying, I will listen to whatever you have to say next.

TOMAS:  It is not that I can read minds, but the energy patterns are arranged such that they can be “gleaned” if you will.  It is part of the mystery that is inherent in the divine way.  The “Mystery Monitor” is a term utilized to indicate that so much goes on that we find mysterious and yet noteworthy.  It is because, of course, God knows everything, and to the extent that God is involved in our relationship and in our faith and in our intercourse here together, he is orchestrating the session, he knows I am here to serve, He knows you have matters of growth you are contending with, and so as you offer your problems to your Adjuster, you give them to God and God distributes those issues to the various angels and teachers and helpers in his vast kingdom so as to assist in the advancement of the greater reality.

Like you, I am happy to participate and impressed with how it works, which I admit, I confess, I don’t understand either but I am just glad it does.  I have come to trust this and not worry about the particulars, rather to believe that God cares about us and whatever it is that we present of our concerns in faith of His hearing and responding, the magnificent Creator of all-that-is will indeed find a way to respond to His seeking children.  This has been the way it is since primitive times; even the most primitive beings who act in faith and reach for Deity are rewarded with a glimpse of something that assures them they are heading in the right direction.  Such a wonderful Parent Who observes our every step and caters to our every real need.

Your dilemma is not unlike the dilemma of millions of others.  At this juncture of planetary evolution it is becoming a cultural commendation -- this understanding that we have / humans have / you have / life has been doing it is way for so long and yet now the light is shining such that you see the need for a new way. The hoards, the clans, the tribes had a way of doing things and within this grouping there was safety, security, comfort, conformity.  And yet as you evolve and as you begin to glean the possibilities of greater reality for yourself, greater opportunities for soul expansion and spirit illumination, you see that what you have been doing, while good, is in many ways mediocre.  It is standard.  It is acceptable.  It is even necessary and normal but it is also stifling and boring and dull.

You have been gleaning your own potential, child! And finding yourself wanting the opportunities now that will be presented to you will present indeed another great step in your eternal career, in the adventure of becoming more godlike, even becoming more of who you are, and I stress that because normally when one says “more godlike” they think in terms of lofty, holy, saintly, and God is actually quite fundamental.  God works; God gets His hands dirty.  God is involved in everything you are involved in, and so really all you need to do is bring God more into your conscious life, embrace the idea more consciously that you share your life with Deity and it will inherently and automatically take on another dimension than that which you knew as a simple cell in the mortal organism of your society, your tribe, your clan, your culture.

You have a chance now to begin to be self-acting, to make decisions, to glean for yourself, that which you will believe, that which you will follow, that which you will support, that which you will express and that which you will discard.  You will get to know yourself better – not as a product of your society but as an original and unique daughter of divinity.  Your own precious personality will be given the opportunity to behold itself unfold, and when you begin to see yourself become more real, you have something to rejoice in.

You will be able then to see your adjuster operating through you more often and more clearly.  Even if it may sound like an ordinary, mundane comment, if it has been gleaned from the riff-raff and the roughage of ordinary mortal consciousness to reveal the spark of truth, the light of life, the beauty of friendship, the goodness of caring with a divine affection, then you have indeed added to the Supreme and given joy to God and yourself, and the others will also benefit.

Yes, you are beginning to perceive the need to put things in proper perspective. It is not uncommon for mortals, particularly women with their training, to be caregivers, to want to please others and anticipate that in return they will be pleased also, but this is not always the case.  Sometimes those who give so selflessly are taken advantage of – not on purpose, but by default – and in order for you to uphold your own self respect, you need to uphold your own being, your own identity in such a way as to present yourself as an entity and not as just something like everything else.  There is a time to be one-with-everything and there is a time to be uniquely yourself, and there is a reason for both of those realities to prevail at differing times.     

Jean:  Well, Tomas, I don’t think anyone could put it any clearer.  That was marvelous.  I don’t even know what to say next.  You hit the nail on the head and, yes, I know you don’t read minds, I guess, but I see much more clearly how that works and I can attest to the fact that it works because it has worked more than one time.  Many, many times.

TOMAS:  That’s good!  You will soon be a teacher.

Jean:  I don’t know about that.

TOMAS:  You have learned the lesson such that you will be able to teach what you have learned.  There is nothing quite like personal experience. Even when sometimes the e experience is difficult, and many experiences ARE difficult.  Just being God-indwelt does not relieve you of the angst of the human condition, which can sometimes be difficult!

Jean:   Well, you hit the nail on the head.

TOMAS:        Dying, being ill, working a job you don’t like, seeing bad things happen to good people, valuable things getting lost, strayed and stolen – these are things that humans grapple with, whether they have God at their side or on a pedestal somewhere or whether they have Him in a closet.  Of course, I would encourage you to work with God as God wants to work with you.

This does not mean that your tasks won’t still be difficult, but that you will have the ability to glean what the experience is about.  You will have the perspective of the Adjuster to help you through.  And the tremendous, tremendous power and reward that comes from associating with divinity. And I say this not to empower you negatively, but positively. To feel triumphant over your difficulties is a wonderful feeling.  To rejoice in the light when you are surrounded by darkness is a tremendous asset.  It’s a gift of your faith.  These are the rewards that come from the long, uphill struggle.

And I can assure you that nothing pleases those of us who have attained a few of these heights, to look to see those who follow just behind us, meeting the challenge and grappling with the situation and shining their light nobly and joyfully just behind us for we know that they too will pass the message to those that come in their wake, and so the march of destiny continues.  And it goes on forever.

But for today, I hope you are encouraged.

Jean:  Well, thank you.  I can’t tell you how many times the word courage has come up, and so thank you for your endorsing.  Thank you for your response, it was wonderful.

TOMAS:  Thank you, my dear.

Are there other matters pending?  (Pause)  Then I will take that as a cue to draw our time together to a close.  It has been a joy and a privilege to be with you this evening. I reserve Light Line for myself when I have the opportunity, although it is always interesting and how varied are the many visitors who have come to Light Line to teach and lead and encourage those of you who tune in and who may not have a local group to go to for support.  It is a vital service anytime an avenue is instituted that allows others to come together in service to truth, beauty and goodness, and on that note I will bid you adieu until our next opportunity, but not before having the chance to acknowledge the sanction of our Master Son Michael who smiles upon our gatherings in faith of our desire to know God and be more like Him.  Amen and farewell.