Elyon102499Review_Truth_CourseOfStudy

Coeur d'Alene Teaching Mission Group

Elyon

Lantarnek

Jessona

Topics:

Striking the Harmony Chords of Truth,

Evaluation Review,

The Mind at Play

October 24, 1999

Elyon (Jonathan TR): Greetings, friends, this is your associate Elyon. I would present to you some thoughts regarding truth, and I would insert here the comment that this applies to goodness and beauty as well. The subject matter is, "striking the harmony chords of truth".

Let us perceive truth as melody and the accompaniments to truth being those chords that create harmony. In the case of truth such harmonious chords are those such as wisdom and understanding, knowledge, insight. But where we have over time discussed these elements that harmonize with truth, to surround truth with greater orchestration, expanding it such that it is attractive to a great variety of individuals, I wish to talk about the strings on the harp of God that create the harmonies.

When you desire to be of service to your fellows on this planet and to the spiritual supervisors of this world, you are of course desirous of expressing those revelations that you have been privileged to grasp so that others may benefit from the same rewards of such perspective on reality. Each of you has experienced the frustration of witnessing that the information that is conveyed is either more than can be believed in or comprehended at any one point in time. Let us consider that these strings on the harp of God are all the spirit ministries that are available to every individual that you encounter. Let us consider these strings as the angel attendants, the Mother Spirit's adjutant influences, and the like. Michael taught that it was a blessed thing to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Knowing full well the spirit influences that are present for everyone and knowing, likewise, that what you may convey to another individual may be more bounty than the banquet table can hold, the best approach is to stimulate that hunger and that thirst, to foster the aromas. With the presence of the bestowal spirits you can demonstrate love, even wisdom, joy, and your understanding and knowledge, but focus rather than on content; -- though it is an ingredient in your ministry -- focus on resonating those harp strings of the divine, for when they respond in resonance to your efforts, you have created those harmony chords that accompany the truth you wish to express. In this manner you have the power of Paradise itself working with you. When the strings vibrate in the mind and soul of another individual they experience an increased hunger and thirst for that righteousness.

You may cause those strings to resonate and walk away from this divine instrument only to have it vibrate for years to come after you have had but such a small influence in this individual's life. The beauty of this harp of God is that He keeps it in tune. You only need to play it. Truth is a revelation; so are goodness and beauty, but the harmony chords you can express as an evolutionary acquirement of experience.

A musician understands that some strings complement others while others may cause vibrational conflict. In your ministry that is the point for the exercise of discernment. Which harmonies are you going to apply to the truth being revealed?

I have finished expressing my thoughts for you today. As always, I welcome your feedback, and as always I have not come to this meeting alone.

Lantarnek (Mark): This is Lantarnek. I will engage you briefly today.

I would offer the observation of myself and those in my position that we have passed by the time of another anniversary of ours and that is the inauguration of this latest phase of the Melchizedek schools in your lives. Upon reflection on this period of time we are greatly pleased as to our progress together in this school and have seen many individual growth spurts as well as a collective, overall pattern of growth. We are in the process even now of developing further plans for our classroom we share. To that end it is desired to solicit your feedback and observations as to your opinions of things that have been effective and things which you may desire more comment on, more information about. So, perhaps I would request a homework assignment of you gathered here today to give some thought to directions in which we might proceed together and clarifications which might be made or questions you may have which have not been satisfactorily explained. You may be helpful to us in administrating our future lesson plans, as we are constantly looking to the future of our mission together and the eventual success of this project to even greater heights.

We can witness without your testimony that you have grown a great deal in our relationship together. We solicit your honest evaluation of the materials presented to you and, more importantly, your grasp of these materials. In a sense you are some of our test cases which allow us to develop lesson plans and develop approaches to these lesson plans which might be most effective.

I must state clearly that we are most pleased with your progress and your development and growth throughout this process. It has given us much cause for joyous expectation about the future outworking of this teaching mission. Now we simply desire to take your comments and observations more closely into our confidence as we proceed further with your group and begin other groups as well. We are together pioneers in this process. Never before on your world has be this process been undertaken, certainly never to this magnitude and with this focus of individuals such as yourselves and celestials such as ourselves working together hand in hand. But this is the new mandate, the new plan, and we are extremely excited to see its effectiveness and its reception by you and have great anticipation of the outworking of this entire plan.

So, perhaps you might give some thought this week to a teacher's evaluation as well as propose courses of study. As you note through the review of your transcripts, many lessons are repeated with slightly different approaches so as to accommodate the perspectives of many different individuals. You, having heard these lessons delivered from these several perspectives, are now in a position to gauge and judge the effectiveness and, much like the contact commission for The Urantia Book, are also involved in offering your questions and suggestions which also serve to direct our actions.

I request that you keep this assignment light and not see this as yet another burden of great magnitude on your lives, but simply your impressions and observations and suggestions, big or small, critical or praiseworthy. We will assess all comment for its worth.

My comment, our comment, to you is "well done". You have stuck with this program since its inception . You have tackled many concepts foreign to you, and you have grown through this process and have conquered much of this subject matter and have grown as a result. It is all that we could have hoped for or asked when we began this process, and we are excited and elated at your progress. We simply desire to be more perfect, to grow towards perfection in this process as in all processes. Therein you may be helpful to us.

I thank you for your consideration of these matters, and I would return to solicit your comments at a later time.

Jessona (Jonathan): This is Jessona, and I give you a hearty "hello".

It is witnessed your alertness to our encouragement that you practice stillness, and we also discern your willingness to apply your mental abilities toward comprehension of the meanings expressed to you through the teachings of the teachers. There is a time in the normal and healthy cycle of the mental environment that you let your mind be at play, to free associate, to not be concerned over evaluative judgments of worth, to let the activity of mind be restful. In doing so, you will discover rising to the surface previously unconsidered ideas that you would not have dredged up through a concerted and disciplined mental probing. So, I encourage you to be playful, to let the mind go, to let it romp in the playground. The musicians among you understand how often it is in the jam with other musicians that a new hookline appears that makes for a new song that is not necessarily discovered by deliberately sitting down to compose a hookline. The mind at play is the rearrangement of potentials. The mind at work is the application of potentials. The mind in stillness is an event that has no comparison.

I have finished my expression. Thank you.

Mary: When I discover I've learned something or deepened my understanding, it's usually at the oddest times, when my mind is wandering. It's not usually when I'm studying a lesson, though those insights at the time of my mind wandering are seeded by study.

Jessona: As one engaged in fostering culture on this world, I take delight in observing how each civilization develops over time, to witness those developments as they crystallize into traditions and cultural standards, and to witness how they undergo revolutionary change or even gradual development into new practices and procedures.

The culinary arts on Urantia, are, in themselves, fascinating. The artistic quality of cooking, cuisine, to use that word, is a morontia equivalent. Feeding the body to sustain its energy is a physical activity, but the development of recipe and presentation has morontia equivalents. This can be likened to the mind at play in regard to many potentials, for it is in the playfulness of food preparation that you have the many varieties of cultural dishes. They, like religion and philosophy, crystallize into a form that is repeated. Its good merit is the preservation of the expression of beauty from the past. Its defect is the elimination of that creative playfulness that would invent new forms of food presentation. Yes, I do stress to you the benefit of play, that it isn't just recreational reversion; it can contribute significantly to progress and bring results that deliberate workfulness may not bring about.

Jonathan: Lantarnek, this homework, should we write a general reflection? Should we itemize lessons learned, lessons desired? Should we give A through E answers as to how well we think the Teaching Mission is progressing and how well we feel fulfilled? What kind of preparation would you like for your next visit?

Lantarnek (Mark): I would reflect back on what Jessona just offered you, and encourage you to be light about this, to simply reflect back on our work together and to come up with whatever rises to the surface off the top of your head, so to speak. I do not desire that this be a significant labor on your part but rather your impressions which , as they rise to the surface, tend to become predominant factors in your experience. The directions you proposed are each one valid, and I would ask you to simply pick an avenue of approach to your consideration of this matter and let your impressions rise to the surface. Again, I do not require of you great study or serious problem solving. This is more your opinion of this process and what about it is significant to you. If you have any suggestions bring them to the surface but do not force the issue and require yourself to enumerate examples in a forced fashion. Simply allow yourself the time this next week to let significant impressions rise to the surface.

Does this help to clarify?

Jonathan: Yes, that's good. In my upbringing an instructor would test the students to see if they have grasped the lessons. I admire how you celestials teachers test yourselves to see how well you have done.

Lantarnek: Admiration, my friend, is something we share for each other, and it is necessary from time to time to hear honestly from the student and to see what items of significance rise to the surface. This further helps us in our determination of human nature and of interest in areas or subjects. We certainly place great value on your direct observations as students in the classroom. I know that we share, the students and the teachers, a desire to be more perfect in this process. This is simply another self-evaluative step we take together.

I could have asked each of you directly here today just to enumerate off the top of your head what your thoughts are. I thought it best to perhaps give you a period of days to reflect. Either way may have been appropriate. I thought perhaps you would be more comfortable with the second option.

Jonathan: I know the transcriber would enjoy that.

Lantarnek: I hope to instill the impression in you that we are functioning as a team, that we indeed honor and solicit your testimony as you so earnestly and honestly solicit our lessons.

Mary: I have trouble taking the lesson ideas and ideals and connecting with what happens in life. I understand when we are talking about it, but I wish I was better at grasping what was really going on in ministry situations, the crux of the matter. I wish you would say, "This experience you talked about, what was really going on was intimacy" or tolerance, or a concrete example of triangles. I realize it takes awhile for seeds to sprout.

Lantarnek: Three points could be made here, if I can take this time.             Number one is we, as teachers, walk a fine line between laying things out, as you state, and allowing you to discover the truths for yourselves. We constantly have to monitor our zeal for providing you with the insights and the lessons which you crave and allowing you the freedom and growth and opportunity and experience to absorb this for yourselves. So, it may seem at times to you as though we might even be withholding or somehow not providing for you when in fact we are struggling to bite our tongue, so to speak, to allow you the freedom to get there for yourselves.

Point number two, you are getting there for yourselves. It is witnessed. It is a matter of record to the universe of universes that you are proceeding in a glorious fashion at a very difficult task, which is point number three.

In a world of light and life or subsequent developing spheres, you begin the process with the basic premise that you are a developing world, that you are developing toward the Father, and you have morontia guidelines to where to develop. Your case is starkly different from that. You have been raised and have grown up for your educational life living one reality. It is your own reality and the reality of those around you. To most individuals on your world it will be the only reality encompassed throughout their entire existence. For you, you at a later phase in your life, have been and are being introduced to a subsequent reality, a different reality than the one you have lived to this point. You are making attempts and you are succeeding at overlaying this separate reality onto the reality which you live daily. Your degree of success is what you are striving for in your daily actions and routine. To somehow transform the reality you have known since birth with the addition of another separate and higher reality, to commingle the two as one, is an arduous task. It does not come easily for those of your nature. It is as if living two realties, two lives, two different ways of life. Your choosing to more and more let go of your previous reality in favor of and as a result of choosing a higher more spiritual reality, this is a monumental task. This task is so monumental that it is often not even scratched the surface of in this existence.

You are now torn between these two realities. Your soul, your indwelling spirit, desires that you adopt more fully this higher reality that you are now aware of. But your life and habits and those around you are all existent in this different reality. So therein lies your challenge, which you will have for the rest of the time on this world, to make peace with yourself over this apparent duality of realities. I am here to tell you that the more you try, the more you succeed, the easier it is to make the two into one, to apply the higher reality to the lower and more base elements of your life. In each aspect of the life you came to know since infancy you can enhance, you can increase, the spiritual nature of this reality at each step. This is your great challenge.

After this existence there will not be this great separation of realities, there will not be this great choice made at every crossroads of your life because you will be aware of your destiny, of your surroundings, much more clearly. But in this life you must grapple with this issue.

You may not be aware at this time, but the actions you are taking now are exactly correct for making this transition in your lives. It's not a sudden thing; it's not an overwhelming or profound occurrence, it is a day by day choosing, an application of what you have learned in our classrooms into your daily lives. Be gentle with yourselves. You are thinking of these ideals and thinking of bringing them into your lives. That is all that is required of you as a mortal of the realm. You are successful; you simply desire to be more successful. This is a good motivation, but do not let it be a discouraging force. Proceed onward exactly as you are now. Do the things you think you should do, you know, you feel you should do. Forgive yourself the shortcomings that you have as a mortal of the realm.

Do these words help your understanding?

Mary: Yes, I realize you struggle with not putting more on the table than we can eat. Through these keys you give us of stillness, reflection, reversion, balance we work on these problems together. It's beautiful.

Lantarnek: I am forced to point out to you that when you reach these apexes of dilemma, you must see this as success because if you had no dilemma, you would have no options, no choices to be made in your life, no growth subsequent to choice. If you come to a point where you feel that you are not doing all you could and you wish there was more that could apply to your life from the spiritual side, that is a wonderful sign. We sing with joy when you reach these points of frustration, of desire, that they may be your catalyst to once again take a step forward. So, do not see this frustration or impatience as defeat in any way. It is the exact opposite. It is success, because you now know the presence and the way in which you would like to effect your life with spiritual change.

END