Teaching Mission History

Keynote Speech Snowbird, Utah Conference

Karen O’Dell (Gerdean)

July 7, 2001

Keynote Address

TeaM 10th Anniversary

Snowbird, Utah

Embracing Spiritual Reality With Practical Arms

Introduction by Mark Greer:

... and all sit down. Did you want to sit, stand up or ...?

GERDEAN: Stand up. Teachers should stand up, I've been told. And I need to learn how to use this (the microphone), so, okay, I hear what it sounds like, so if I can hear it then that means that you can hear it, right?

Good morning. I'm Gerdean. Nice to see you all here. It's more than nice. It makes my life worthwhile. I'm not alone and you're proof.

I'm not ready for this. I'm ready, but my words aren't ready, so I'm just going to have fun here. I'm going to start by assuring you that this is not just a speech. (To the flipchart.) I got this last night. We had a late night transmitting session and this is a clue as to what I'm going to talk about:

"1. I AM, 2. In us, 3. We are, 4. In them, 5. All"

Okay, this will be clear later on. Okay. (Back to the podium)

Okay. Last year in Oklahoma, where I wasn't, Michael talked about what we're going to talk about this year. (Isn't it wonderful how good he is at knowing what's coming?) He said, "I would have you know I am among you whether you are together or not. I would oversee that the foundation that we make today is strong enough for future generations. We must embrace spiritual reality with practical arms."

Now, since I wasn't there and I didn't have this piece of paper til recently, I said, "Oh, yeah, I'll give the speech. Okay. That's great! That's really an honor," and somehow in my mind I had - (I'll get my breath here in a minute. It's the altitude, not because I'm nervous. No.) Where was I? Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, I got the theme. It's "embracing the kingdom with practical arms," so I've been approaching this in my mind as the kingdom, and last week Calvin said, "that's spiritual reality with practical arms" and I said, "Oh, my God! I've been preparing the wrong speech!"

So it's like Mark (Turnbull) was singing in his song last night, "I got baggage"? Man, have I got baggage! I got so much baggage here. I got more Urantia Book excerpts and teacher excerpts. I got way too much, and this is why I'm not ready. You know, it reminds me of when I was taking a class in some kind of history and I had been recently introduced to the Urantia Book, so that history was more important than world history or whatever it was, so I was going to really ace this exam, I was going to bring in all that Urantia history. HaHaHaHaHa. Man, did I confuse myself!

I enjoyed Rob Crickett - but he's not here at the moment, I don't think, - but I really enjoyed his presentations in our area and he said 'just throw away the papers', so I'm going to do that eventually, but I'm going to tell as story first. We get it started with a story; I'm going to learn how to do this speech stuff.

When I was a little girl I lived - at one point - in Hillville, Pennsylvania. I was about 6 in this really provincial little town and the Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door and my mother answered and I was hanging on her apron strings, because nobody ever came "calling" and the Jehovah's Witnesses were smart, in this case, because they saw that I was a predominant influence in that family, so they chose a scripture that would sucker my mother based on my mentality, and so they read this beautiful scripture out of Isaiah, [Ed: Isaiah 11: 6-10] and it talks about the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and something about the ox, and the little child shall lead them, and I was going, "Oh, yeah, that sounds really cool", and so my mother looks down at my face and she says, "Well, if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me", so she became a Witness, and still is as a matter of fact, though I lost favor with them at some point along the way. But this idea of the Kingdom goes way, way, way back in my mind and part of my point this morning is that we are so deeply conditioned.

And I'll get back to that later, but I need to say - if someone would please check your watch. I don't have a clock. I can't see where I'm at. I don't want to short-change myself. This is such an opportunity to address people, to practice my public speaking skills, and share, but I don't want to talk all day and ruin the schedule for the rest of the day, so somebody let me know. You know, start getting antsy or something, if I'm not finished? (When?) An hour from now. I have an hour. And I've got so much baggage!

Okay. I really do, I have so many papers here. And I did a really diligent study on the kingdom of heaven paper which is Paper 170. So anyway, I was talking about embracing spiritual reality and why that is like embracing the kingdom. I think they are interchangeable so I'm more or less on track. But Jesus always made reference to his apostles, he always taught the kingdom as embracing man's personal experience in relation to his fellows on earth and to the father in heaven. So he made it clear that spiritual reality (the kingdom of heaven) be centered in the dual concepts of the truth of the fatherhood of god and the co-related fact of the brotherhood of man, and that if we learn how to do this, we would have new courage, augmented spiritual power. We would have new confidence. It would provide true consolation for all men. It would bring in a new standard of moral values, a new ethical yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct. It would even bring about a whole new order of human society. It taught the preeminence of spiritual compared to the material, glorified spiritual reality, it exalted superhuman ideals, and it talked about spiritual attainment as the true goal of living. This being what the kingdom was supposed to be about.

He taught eternal realities were the result of righteous earthly striving, like in the prayer, it says "on earth as it is in heaven", so this kingdom idea - of course he had a hard time with that. People kept thinking it was going to be a material kingdom - (attempting and discarding the stationary microphone) ...

This I found interesting. ( This is the only way I know how to do this is to just flip through my notes and jabber.) They didn't get it. The apostles didn't get it because they kept thinking about the material kingdom, because we are so material minded. We are constantly taking what the Teachers say, what the Urantia Book says, what God says, and dragging it down to the dead level of us, you know, crystallizing it and if we can "fix" it, then we can think we have control over it, because the world can be very overwhelming and some of these truths are too exciting, and if we can "get a fix on it", if we can control it, then we somehow feel that we've got "self-mastery". Isn't that a joke!

So what does it mean to embrace the kingdom with practical arms? Well, here. This is why I went to this particular Paper, because ... (I don't know what all these notes are about.) ... Alright. Here we are. This is why I put it on the bulletin board. One. Okay, these are my points. These are the big points here. This is where I'm getting my theme from. Number one. Here. These are five phases or epochs of the kingdom, so is it not true that there are possibly five phases of spiritual reality!

One, being the personal and inward experience of the spiritual life of the fellowship of the individual with God the father. And that's how I see these last ten years since the Teaching Mission started, is a wonderful opportunity for us to be reborn of the spirit, born as a little child (and a little child shall lead them, remember), so here we are - children - and developing this relationship with our parents, our infinite parents, and realizing we are not alone. There is a connection. There's relationship. We have - We're loved! We've been learning about love. We've been learning how to receive love, in the spiritual sense, that there aren't really strings attached. A whole new understanding of what love is and very liberating! It actually does all those things. It's empowering and it's personal and it's rewarding and we can rejoice in it and we can see, and this is, to me, what these last ten years have been, is a personal development of a relationship with divinity. So that is "I AM". I AM. Not a figment of somebody's imagination. Not an extension of somebody else. I AM a daughter of the Most High.

Okay, so, these teachers have been talking about phase two and I'm not really sure of what they mean by phase two, but here - "Jesus noted no less than five phases" - so maybe this is it. Number two: "The enlarging brotherhood of gospel believers, the social aspects of the enhanced morals and quickened ethics resulting from the reign of God's spirit in the hearts of individual believers." Okay.

It's like (forgive my little plug here, but) this is what I was writing about in "The Zooid Mission". I figured eventually (I figured this back in 1970, by the way) that eventually people were going to know who they were and they were going to want to learn how to get along with each other. And I concluded that is what phase two is, we're going to have to learn to get along with each other. It's the natural outgrowth of having this personal religious experience. It's going to need to be socialized. That's one of those universal laws. We don't just do this by and for ourselves. So that's where we're going to encounter our initial challenges. That's where some of us have already been encountering some of them, and I'm going to get back to them, but I also want to point out the other three things here. That Jesus noted. The five phases.

The supermortal brotherhood. "Number 3, the supermortal brotherhood of invisible spirit beings which prevails on earth and in heaven, the superhuman kingdom of God," and off the top of my head I interpret that as the Teachers, the Melchizedeks, the midwayers, the celestials hosts and all those great friends I've got. They're - Well, I'll just tell another story. I'll just take the opportunity. I'm not out of time yet, am I?

When I was little, even before I moved to Hillville, we were living at Grandma's house down in the hollow, and out behind the house was a natural spring ...

[distraction on the patio outdoors] We got some adventure here? Oh! A fallen bird! [a respectful moment of silence] Show stealer. [Laughter]

... okay so I'm down in the woods behind the house in the hollow. This is where my Thought Adjuster came to me, by the way, so it's my secret place, my quiet place in nature. When I do the construct, I go down there by the spring. I was down there with my invisible friends. I had invisible friends and that was the beginning of my spiritual reality. Shoe and Sock was their name at the time. They subsequently elevated themselves to Trieste and Adrian, my personal mentors, but they are very real to me, these entities. I had no trouble embracing the Teaching Mission because I know all about invisible friends. They were at one time more real to me than my own parents. They're real good at unconditional love and earthly parents aren't. You know? They really are controlling.

So the fourth phase of this kingdom, as I'm looking at it practically speaking, is the prospect, "Number 4. The prospect of the more perfect fulfillment of the will of God, the advance toward the dawn of a new social order in connection with improved spiritual living the next age of man." So I extend this, I call this - (uh, the "We are" is the teachers. All together. The Interspecies Alliance. All of us together are the we are.) And number four "in them" - who's "them"? Who's them, you know? "Them" is everybody else. And it's not just - and I'm going beyond the little picture of our society, our movement, and our social paradigm that's growing here, our little kingdom here, to include the kingdoms of the Pleaideans and the Galactic Federation, and the Assembly of God, and lots of other movements that are grasping the personal relationship with divinity and running with it, however it is that they understand it. Those are our neighbors.

And not only that, but what about .. What about life on other planets? That's coming into the picture. Jesus himself said, "I have ..." what was the phrase? " ... not of this flock?" I have children not of this flock? Other sheep? Right? "And the lion shall lie down with the sheep." Well then that might mean that we in all our dynamic might have to lay down with those neighbors on another planet and learn how to get along! We have a tendency to be very ... egoistic. Egocentric? Myopic! Myopic is perhaps the word I'm looking for, and it's probably because we've been isolated for so long; it's just part of our conditioning.

And then Five. The fifth phase of the kingdom as Jesus taught, "the kingdom in its fullness. The future estate of light and life on earth." And since I think grandly, I think about the ultimate light and life not only for our planet but for our system, our constellation, our local universe, our super-universe, and the ages beyond which we are in training for already! What's in store for us in terms of eternity.

So the kingdom, "embracing spiritual reality with practical arms," really gives us a wonderful plethora of opportunities to do something. Something practical. In terms of building this kingdom. Jesus said - well, not Jesus - whoever wrote this Paper said, "This world has never seriously or sincerely or honestly tried out these dynamic ideas and divine ideals of Jesus' doctrine of the kingdom of heaven."

We're really - you know, they talk about the animal mind, the "slothful animal mind". We are [I feel myself wheezing, for crying out loud. (Water offered) Yeah. How tacky! (Thank you.)] Oh, here we are. Here's the Teachers. "By the process of gradually changing mans will and thus affecting human decisions (Thank you, Calvin) Michael and his associates are likewise gradually but certainly changing the entire course of evolution, social and otherwise."

So right off, right off we're getting some practical knowledge from the Teachers. Here's five practical keys: "The preeminence of the individual." I AM. Not just me I AM, but YOU AM, too! You are important! I can't just willy-nilly be walking around without regard for you. You count! Jesus was always respectful of the personality of others, and we're very self oriented. And we only think about ourselves. Consistently! This is the way it's been, and you can't blame us for our conditioning.

Here I want to jump to introduce you to one of my invisible friends. This is What-About-Bob. When he showed up we said, "What'll we call you?" and he said, "What-About-Bob?" so we said, "Okay, What-About-Bob is good." So even today he calls himself What-About-Bob. Not just Bob. He's a seraphim, beyond midwayers, so he says, "I have observed and I have, along with my peers, been astounded at the many ways in which you divert yourself, as pleasure seekers. Your propensity to enjoy pain is an immediate result of your planetary handicaps. You have had to learn to enjoy yourselves in the face of discomfort. You have had to learn to justify pleasure in the face of such dreadful conditions as have prevailed, and this is not only physical but emotional and psychic as well.

"In order to endure the thoughtlessness of your selfish fellows, you have learned sardonic humor. You have built crusts upon yourself, for without these crusts you would cry, and it's not manly to cry, nor is it womanly to cry incessantly ... (much laughter). And so you toughen yourself up. You create a bar against the pain. But sometimes the crusts shackle you to the point where you are inflicting your own pain, even when the source of distress is absent. You have habitually sought comfort in the distortion, and so when the attack is not being made upon you, you make it upon yourself in order to continue to feel comfortable."

I mean, is this ...? It's true! We do this!

"It's a serious challenge then for me and for us to assist you to learn new ways of responding to the vagaries of life so that you can change your responses, your physical reactions, your defense mechanisms, so that you are not buried behind your own denial of what is, in order for you to see what is not, and can thus can begin to build what is meant to be."

He talks about the ego here because, he says:

"It's difficult particularly in the ego area because that's the one thing you have determined belongs to you. It's your body, your lungs, your feet, your back, your face, your presentation of who you are and you have charge of it. One thing you insist upon is your individuality, your freedom to be your own person. Well, this is a lot of whistling in the dark, but it gives rise to a tremendous mental defense system that you each and all have created inside, which you life with - your rationale, your dreams, your ambitions, your guilt, your shame and your attempts to creatively present the picture of what you would have mankind see when they observe you. Much of who you think you are is based upon what you have talked yourself into being, and how tenaciously you hold onto that perception of yourself. You have created this in order to find a certain degree of freedom and ability to function in this world and as such it's not anything you are willing to relinquish lightly."

Now the thing I love about these Teacher messages is, if they're talking to me, they are talking to everybody. And that means that you are also hiding. That you're saying "I'm fine" and it's not fine! You know, I'll know. I'll know if it's really fine. I'll feel it! I'll feel the presence of God in you because for ten years I've been practicing. I've been sitting in Stillness to recognize what that feels like, and I can feel it. I can feel it when I walk in a room if He's there or not, if He's trying to make a presentation or a point. You can feel this kind of stuff.

You get familiar with spiritual reality, it becomes the bigger reality, it becomes your life blood, and then you go, "That was not real! That was a smokescreen. That was something you've talked yourself into believing." So that's part of the practical approach to the Kingdom. If you realize that if people aren't with the Father, they're lying to themselves, then you've got all kinds of opportunities to ... pull their covers, call their bluff, plant a different seed, tell them who they Really are.

And when I say "tell them who they really are" it's like What-About- Bob says, "In the alternative, if you allow yourself to feel good - not through your defense devices but through honesty and submission to that which is the Real you, the elegant and ennobled and childlike and free child of God."

Well, that simple reality is really frightening until you've practiced it because you have to let go of your control. It's that thing about free fall, faith being the free fall, and if you're not acting in faith then you're acting in fear, which we've been doing for centuries, and so everybody's grasping really hard to who they think they are and they don't want to let go of that because if they let go they're out of control, and nobody wants to feel out of control.

("Love you!" - a friend had to leave to catch his flight)

This reminds me - this little snippet here - of what we are up against. Here's an example, in talking about what Bob was talking about. This is an excerpt from the Urantia Book, I don't know what page.

"At the conclusion of the service Jesus looked down before him upon an elderly woman who wore a downcast expression and who was much bent in form. This woman had long been fear-ridden and all joy had passed out of her life." (How many of those people do you know?) "As Jesus stepped down from the pulpit he went over to her, and touching her bowed-over form on the shoulder, said, 'Woman, if you would only believe, you could be wholly loosed from your spirit of infirmity'." (What a great phrase!) "And this woman who had been bowed down and bound up by the depression of fear for more than 18 years believed the words of the Master and by faith straightened up immediately. When this woman saw that she had been made straight, she lifted up her voice and glorified God. Notwithstanding that this woman's affliction was wholly mental, her bowed-over form being the result of her depressed mind, the people thought that Jesus had healed a real physical disorder."

That might be where Jesus was talking about we'll be able to do even more interesting things than he did. Because look at the backlog of stuff we have to operate with! And we know that now everybody of healthy mind - more or less healthy mind - normal mind! Is indwelt. There are no ... no rebel midwayers or ... there's nothing bad out there anymore, so if there is -- somebody doesn't feel good, it's because they've got a bad habit, and the only thing that's going to break that habit is an appreciation of the fact that - the will! Is the determining factor. And you can feel good if you want to. I'm not going to rub your nose in it if you don't feel good.

As a matter of fact, that reminds me. This phrase, "Get over it!" Can you just picture Jesus walking up to somebody and saying, "Get over it!" That totally lacks compassion.

PART 2 of Keynote Address at Snowbird TM Conference, July 7, 2001

I want to talk a bit about ... about forgiveness, because they're making a big deal about this thing about forgiveness in the Kingdom of heaven. It must be that we're going to have to encounter forgiveness somehow in building the kingdom. Okay. Here we are. We know who we are, we love ourselves, we know what makes us feel better, and now we reach out to others, these people in this room, the immediate siblings and learn how to get along and, man, I know that it comes up and bites your butt before you know what happened. It's like (hiss) "What was that? That's Caligastia in disguise. Oh, man. And I thought they were my friend."

This is a result of conditioning that goes way, way back and it's fairly unhealthy conditioning, in the main. So a lot of us - I don't even want to say unhealthy conditioning, although certainly it would be in perspective, but, like - I myself have gotten really, really ticked at at least two people in this mission. And I mean really ticked. I mean fatally ticked. And I have seen - I have seen it happen among other people, and the Holy Spirit in me just weeps when I see this happen. I mean, not just when I see it happen in other - out there! I mean ... (static on the microphone) ... I love you so much ... and I love YOU so much ... (loud static) and what's with this thing? Am I doing that? (Looking up) Did you want to have something to say? (Microphone exchanged for a headset.)

Oh, man, I feel like myself! (I can't hear.) Isn't it amazing how we love to hear ourselves talk. I can't hear myself talk? This isn't going to work. It's the only way it can balance it on my head. I have to plug 'em in there. As a transcriber, it only feels natural that I have my earphones on. Are you sure this okay? Higher? Well, I don't want you to hear me breathing, that's so gross! (Laughter)

Oh, God, where are we. We're forgiving. (Laughter)

(Audience input as to where we were, including "you're ticked!") Oh, no, I'm not ticked. No. I'm giving my Keynote Address. (Laughter) I'm having fun now!

No, when I see my loved ones do battle, it just pains me. It just wrenches my stomach, I go into a state of abject prostration because I have idea what to do. And it affects me! "This is my kingdom! What are you doing to my kingdom? 'And the lion shall lie down with the lamb.' Which one of you guys are being the lion here? Get it together!" I feel like Nebadonia must be a little bit like my mum, and like your mum, too, who would walk into the room and see the kids fighting and say, "What's the meaning of this?" And this is sometimes what I want to say when I see my siblings in the Teaching Mission at each other's throat. "What's the meaning of this?" And yet I've been there. You know? And so I spend all my time trying to figure out what's going on because I can't stand it. I can't stand the fact that my kingdom is disrupted. It takes everything I have then, to apply myself to bring back that harmony. I mean, it's a job I've taken on, you know? And I know that I can't do anything about your fight, but - I give a lot of prayer energy, that's pretty practical.

When it happens to me, though, I have to look further, and when I say I have to do these things, I'm implying, I'm inferring, that you have to do this, too. Because as I mentioned, or somebody mentioned here, we have "not seriously or sincerely or honestly tried out these dynamic ideas and divine ideals of Jesus' doctrine of the kingdom of heaven." We are his new apostles, children. This is our job. This is what we have commissioned and assigned ourselves and consecrated ourselves to do, is bring about the reality of the Master in our world. How can we not approach it as practically and pragmatically as possible? We don't have time to fight, and if we got a problem, we gotta get in there and fix it.

It is remarkable, however, with our conditioning, how we are so accustomed to pain we just laugh it off and say, "I'll deal with it. You know, in terms of eternity. It's not like I have to do it tomorrow." Yes, you do. Yes, you do. We can't afford these leftovers and hangovers. We need to fix these wounds. I mean that's what we've been given the opportunity to do. Look at the tools that we've been given. We just have all these wonderful tools and Teachers and forgiveness is the big one.

But what happens with our conditioning ... I've got a note here that tells me what we do. What we do is we ... This is why spiritual reality is important here. "Sin is the offspring of a knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will." So we have this terrible conflict, you know? "I know I should do the right thing, but damn it, it's not my fault. It's not my fault, it's his fault. See what he said? See what he did? See what he made me do? Look at how he thinks! He thinks like my enemy! How can I love this guy? He's my enemy. Look what he did to me."

Look what he did to the image that I spent so much time building up so that you would know who I am and that guy came along and pulled the slats out from under me and now I'm embarrassed and I'm mad at him and it's HIS fault! Oh? This is where forgiveness is really important. And this is kinda sorta where the Course in Miracles thing comes out. Anytime there's something bothering me about you, I'm looking at a reflection of myself, and man we don't want to go there. We don' want to go there. We want to feel like we're in control.

I was really mad at Daniel Megow. I was really mad at Daniel, and you know what? Like months after we moved on and got our own place, I realized that he reminded me of my dad. Not all of him, just a little piece of conditioning there. But it was so deep seated and I was so mad at my dad, that I kept confusing my dad and Daniel. I was mad a Daniel. That wasn't right. Why would I be mad at my brother? Because I was mad at my dad and Daniel looks like my dad. So I had to forgive my dad! Again! (Laughter) You know? Ah...

Am I out of time yet? (Laughter) Oh... Let's see.

I've got all these little pieces of paper here and they're all just wonderful things because they all contain spiritual reality and there's just nothing better. Nothing better than spiritual reality, even when it's really difficult.

This is ... oh. "Even if" or "even when". This is one of my favorite things, and this is another practical thing that we can do. This might be the prodigal son story, I'm not sure. I just clipped it out of the Book because I really love, again, another phrase here.

"Now this father had grieved much for his son. He had missed the cheerful though thoughtless lad. This father loved his son and was always on the lookout for his return so that on the day he approached his home (the lad), even while he was yet afar off, the father saw him and, being moved with loving compassion, ran out to meet him." I mean, get off your butts. Let's go get those guys! Jesus talked about it in "Why do the heathen rage?" Well, because their goals are short-sighted. They can go get what they want. And we are guilty of pining for spiritual reality when we need to learn to take it by spiritual assault. Spiritual assault!

And this, again, goes back to one of those things. A cardinal feature of the gospel which we are commissioned and consecrated to doing. "The transcendency of the spiritual over the material in the human personality," so even the human will - which is certainly preeminent - may not realize it yet, the spirit within that person wants to come home to Father, so go out and get him. Go out and get him! Have faith in that brat. Have faith in that child, that thoughtless child, that we miss.

Oh, here's another phrase. I love this phrase, talking about that kind of thing. Here. Jesus. He first talked about those who were poor in spirit, hungered after righteousness, endured meekness, and who were pure in heart. "Such spirit discerning mortals (that's us!) ... such spirit discerning mortals could be expected to attain such levels of divine selflessness as to be able to attempt the amazing exercise of fatherly affection. (And so we can do that; we can go and get 'em.) ... That even as mourners they would be empowered to show mercy, promote peace and endure persecution, and throughout all of these trying situations to love even unlovely mankind with a fatherly love."

This is talking more and more about the Golden Rule, the brotherly love versus the fatherly love, which, if we'd get out of the brotherly love, which is fine up to a point, but with so much work to do, we can't afford to sit around and bicker in sibling rivalry! We've got to get the mantle of the Father on our shoulders and get out there and start doing something! And the midwayers - love the midwayers; boy, they're doers, they're workers, they're, you know, none of this exalted stuff, you know, 'get off the cloud, roll up your sleeves, there's people over there committing suicide, shooting up, falling down drunk', I mean there's terrible, terrible despair out there! Go get them! Go get them. Don't wait for them to come into our little happy kingdom and sit around with our smiles going, "Hi! Get over it!"

But the phrase I like here is "even as mourners". This reminds me of how they said - it was about Jesus' countenance, you know. They say he didn't laugh very often. But he said that in future times they would be aware that we really are a mirthful lot, that we do have a sense of humor, and we do find joy in the kingdom, but "even as mourners." Well, when I look at the potential, and I see how unhappy people can be without our Father, without this that we've got. I mean, how lucky are we? Sure we've made the right decisions and we continue to work hard toward the goal of the kingdom - in all five of its phases - but ... sometimes it's really ... (long pause) - "even as mourners, they can be empowered to show mercy, promote peace, and endure persecutions." And if you're prepared to do this, then you're prepared to ... forgive. Like a father. Your little brats. And those who have distorted reality so as to find some kind of satisfaction in living when Caligastia did such a good job of making such a mess of our whole basket.

So, there's a lot of work to do. I mean, smiling is good. You know. But there is a lot of deep psychic surgery that's required, being aware of how the other person feels, not shaming but elevating, helping people see the brighter way, that there is hope, offering hope. And, hey, you know, there's mopping the floor for somebody or washing their car. But don't just wash their car and wash their dishes without giving yourself an opportunity to plug the Master and to plug spiritual reality because it's like miracles. It's not going to do any good if they don't learn anything from it. You're just wearing yourself out doing scrub work! Get to the substance of this, where the joy is.

"The Golden Rule, when divested of the superhuman insight of the spirit of truth, becomes nothing more than a rule of high ethical conduct, and that, when literally interpreted may because the instrument of great offense to one's fellows." Because we all have different conditioning. What's appropriate for me may not be appropriate for you, so I can't look at your life completely based on what my values are. I have to look at the bigger picture and ask God to counsel me. Take the Spirit of Truth. "Michael, what'll I do here?" And set aside my own ego and my own understanding of things and ask for guidance and counsel from Higher Power.

I feel myself subsiding. I feel my energies changing. I have a hunch my hour is almost up. (Audience: "I think your hour has come!") My hour has come? Good! I'm going to take advantage, then. (Displaying the cover art for TZM) You're going to see this in print pretty soon. The Zooid Mission. This is what it is. The Zooid Mission is the kingdom. Yeah, really it is. I'll just take a moment and give this plug because, see, I'm not up here transmitting. I'm just up here talking as myself.

There's another excerpt here. Let me find it. It's really good. I think I got it. "The realities and values of spiritual progress is not a psychologic projection, a mere glorified daydream of the material mind. Such things are the spiritual forecasts of the indwelling Adjuster, the spirit of God living in the mind of man and let not your dabblings with the faintly glimpsed findings of relativity disturb your concepts of the eternity and infinity of God. And, in all your solicitations concerning the necessity for self-expression, do not make the mistake of failing to provide for Adjuster expression, the manifestation of your real and better self."

Well, I've spent ... I've been reading the Urantia Book for over thirty years so, you know, I've been chewing on these morsels of morontia mota and psychologic upliftment for a long, long time, and many, many times I have set aside my self expression for adjuster expression. Boy, do I get a chance to do that as a transmitter, because I don't feel it's my expression, and I've really pumped iron for the Teachers and for the Teaching Mission and I love it, but I'm turning this around now here, and saying "concerning the necessity for self-expression," I'm going to not make the mistake of failing to provide for personal expression, as I'm doing a lot of this transmitting and work in the kingdom spirit expression.

Because really and truly and frankly, I feel like I have reached the point where my will and His will are one, and I'm not in this for me, except as far as the preeminence of the individual I AM, but I am ONLY insofar as I am a son of I am. I'm nothing without the breath of life that comes from God. And so I can advertise this in good faith.

This is a novel, and when I started writing it, we were under the injunction to be really, really - almost secretive regarding the Urantia Book. It was just on such a high pedestal. It was intended for future generations, it was to be done one-on-one. It was so sacred, it was such a gift. We just almost didn't talk about it. So I didn't use any of the words. And since our world, our planet, was such a mess just before Correcting Time opened up and I got to see some of this real cake and ice cream of spirituality, we didn't even dare use the word Jesus or God or religion or kingdom or any of these words because mankind was turned off completely. I'm happy to say that advertisements for God, conversations with God - God's making a come-back and I'm real happy about that. [Applause]

But when I wrote my novel it was "under cloak" and so it's completely fictional, but interwoven through it is everything I could garner out of the Urantia Book and spiritual reality to plug into the mind of the readership which might be a "cosmic soap opera" kind of thing. But it was, like, okay. Man. Here we are in this really dark hole, mess. Urantia just really needs a major scrubbing from the inside out, and our goal is light and life, and we're 5/7th of the way there, supposedly. That means we've got a lot of work to do in the next two epochal revelations to come, so how do I get from here, where we are, to where we want to go? Practically speaking. So I spent twenty years in my mind, in my creative imagination, and with ... with help (gesturing up), setting out what my ideals were and what we could do and letting them take my ideas and throw them out one after the other and plug in a better paradigm, a better ideology, so I have grown so much in the writing of my novel that I like to think that somebody else might have a chance to grow a little bit, too, with some of the concepts that are implanted there. That's my personality expression, so I just would give it a little pitch.

And any pitch that I have is for the kingdom. "And a little child shall lead them." And I'm going to lead myself off the stage now. We all have lots to do, lots to celebrate, lots to be humbly grateful for.

I'm not going to get into that part in there where it talks about the church. I get in trouble when I get into talking about the church, and I have so much forgiveness to do it wears me out.

Thank you.

E N D of A D D R E S S