Rayson; Development of Intentional Communities - June 02, 2002 - NOCO 18
Group: Northern Colorado TeaM Group, Lesson #18
Topics:
Teacher: Rayson (TR Daniel)
June 2, 2002
This is Rayson; I will speak here in the beginning rather than Daniel. Do your usual merkaba work, your connection, and your intentions, your invocations and commitments. See the mind line, and the heart line and all the lines of the merkaba. We wish you to relax at this time, we know that you study the Urantia Book during the middle of the week, and oftentimes each of you is very busy during the remainder of the days of the week and you come to TM and you listen attentively. Today we would like to give you space, an extended period of time for quietude, for your time to receive solace and guidance and information from your teachers and from Michael and Nebadonia. So we will have an extended repose for meditation, and you can use this time to use the merkaba to send energy to others or for your own use. This is a quiet time to enjoy, so be prepared for an extended time of quiet. (Very long pause.) And now consciously rejoin the group, please. You may open your eyes for a few moments before we begin.
When you go into meditation, such as these quiet times, when your mind is not working on its own but under guidance of your will, and you have some spiritual work to do, you will find yourself extending out into the universe to assist others, to make contact, to be receptive. And sometimes you simultaneously feel the "glowing presence of light" of your Thought Adjuster within you. And sometimes you feel the glow of all God’s love and presence surrounding you, and this comes fairly close to the truth of your being in the larger universe, that is under the First Source and Center’s watch-care. There is needed time to do this, to feel this, to reconnect. It is not always an intellectual pursuit of some goal, of some training, but practicing the presence, your presence meeting the presence of the Creator within you, which is ironically infinite and yet so finite. And this is the juxtaposition you will be in for the duration of your spiritual careers, even through your Uversa educational experiences. It is good to know this and feel this from time to time. And we want to provide these opportunities to you as well as the lessons.
Let us continue then with the development of intentional community. The following construct may be a bit difficult for some of you to visualize; for others of you, it will be quite easy. But I want you to visualize a two-dimensional schematic of a community. You’ve done this before, you’ve seen organizational maps, organizational structures on two-dimensions, and in this case, the focus is upon the individual. Last time we met, we spoke about the "intention of community" is to raise and develop and to grow individuals who are of soul-survivable capacity, to be integrated with a larger community, to make a contribution in a meaningful way. So this schematic has the individual at a point or a nexus; from that person radiate connecting lines to all agencies, facilities, organizations, bodies that assist in the growth, support, maintenance and development of the individual.
As comment on two-dimensional organizational charts, flow charts, they are grossly inadequate and really give an erroneous perspective of the course of events, such as in a complex case as community’s support for the individual, and in return, the individual’s support of the community. So what I would like you to do with the organizational chart is to turn it into three-dimensions; it now has depth. And let us also give it another dimension, of time. And the way you would record time in this three-dimensional organizational chart is from a flow, starting from a point, let’s say on your left and it flows through time as it proceeds to the right, so that the length of this chart would be for the duration of the individual’s life, a "full life." So what you would end up with is a rather large tube, a three-dimensional tube, with the flow of time from left to right.
You must realize that the individual begins at a point in time before their arrival at birth, and so the agencies and organizations that have an affect, an effect, (both) on the individual, begins with the procreative parents shortly before the time of their creation in the womb. (I know you can follow this as you have also visualized the merkaba, the mind line and the heart line.) In this case we will make it a little bit more complex because the organizational chart will change at each significant phase of the individual’s career as a growing mortal. And how you would do that is to have the individual as the center, at some point in this three-dimensional construct, and then highlight the agencies in a bright color that would be connected to the individual, so there would be an open phase before the creation of the individual in the womb, and then shortly thereafter, there would be agencies such as "Community Nutrition," "Family Emotional Health," some kind of "Family Services," and procreative agencies in the community that would assist the mother and father during the early phases. And as you may suspect, as you move through the trimesters of the pregnancy, the highlighted agencies would grow, the numbers of agencies would light up as the individual, still in the womb, travels through time to the point of birth, and so on through the remainder of their life. There would be "Home Education," "Nutrition," the "Home Environment," in all it’s broadest perspectives. The individual, or parents early in their life, would have access to all the resources necessary at those time periods for the development of the individual, infant and child growing into adult as they age. This may sound complex, but it is not, really, as each of you has had these experiences already. It simply is a matter of recording these agencies, the individual’s growth and development, and how to maximize their potentials that are inherent within them, when they come into the world and as they grow and develop through their lifetime.
And each of you, let us say for example, is living in an intentional community, and each of you is working in one of these agencies. And so, you, in your respective agency, whether it is "Home Health," "Home Nutrition," "Home Education," whatever it might be, would then, look upon the individual, and in this case the infant and also the mother and the father, as your clients. How would you structure or develop your agency to assist and support these individuals at these times? You would see that the broad mission of your agency would have different goals and different objectives as the individual matures. If you reflect upon the organization of your governmental structure, whether it is the county or the city, the state, and the federal government, there is a tremendous fracturing and separation among and between all these agencies.
But in intentional communities that will develop on this world as they have on other worlds, they will all be integrated, all flow together. It is as though you were living and working in a very large, but efficient and effective corporation where you always are examining for areas that are ignored or overlooked or neglected. And you give the same importance to those issues as you do to the taxation structure, generation of income for your governmental bodies. This plan is a plan for the development of cohesive, enduring communities. Communities that not only beget individuals who are of soul-survivable capacity, but also in the development of community that is enduring, that works.
You in this nation that is so very young, have only begun to see the pulling together of the elements of your society into cohesive, coordinative efforts. Take for example the drought situation, which has developed, in this state, in this region of the United States. Some citizens are consciously holding back on watering their lawns and using water in different ways than they used to. Yet some individuals fear that the drought is coming and so they use even more water now, so that their grass will remain green in the event that they have to cut back. And others yet, are continuing life as usual, waiting for the mandate from the governmental agencies to say, "We are now moving into emergency water restrictions." In an intentional community, water is a primary resource, one upon which you are dependent for your survivability and quality of life, a resource that is not squandered, but used reasonably. When people become aware that there is a drought they begin eliminating certain activities with water. You may guess already that wherever this intentional community lies geographically, it is all groomed using indigenous species of plants so that the plants that are used survive quite well. Yet even in an arid community, there may be certain areas that are kept green, to be used for public recreation, for the use of all people.
Planning of intentional communities begins early on, yet very few intentional communities will spring up solely by themselves in new geographic areas. The intentional communities that you will see in decades to come are those that evolve or develop out of contiguous geographic areas, whether they are four blocks square, one block square, four miles square, or forty miles square. It will be a conscious commitment by each individual to participate. These intentional communities most likely will come into existence simply because of the necessity of their existence to survive.
What values would an intentional community have? Would selfishness survive well? Probably not, it would stick out much as a sore thumb. Yet, while each individual has access to all the resources, they are unique in themselves, a wonderful quality, which needs to be preserved. It is exceptional, unique individuals who make exceptional results. Those individuals who have less capacity than those of truly exceptional ability, and those with great limitations due to their congenital difficulties in life, will require innovative solutions to maximize their potentials. As we said last time, all of you will arrive in the future. Those individuals who have congenital difficulties, those who have abnormal social behaviors, will be there too. What will be different is a conscious effort to minimize the development of those characteristics that do not contribute to the individual’s exploration and development of the potential that lies within them, and the maximization of their latent potentials.
As we said, congenital difficulties will be removed in centuries to come. It is not an issue of eugenics, my friends; it is a matter simply of getting the best results from what you have. Each of you now would certainly be willing to give up congenital near-sightedness, congenital issues related to brain development, neural difficulties, muscular issues, and degenerative bone problems. And wouldn’t you wish for the strengthening of your immune system without allergies, for instance? We are really not talking about developing a "super race" or "super individual;" simply using the individual gene structure that you have now, maximizing it, while eliminating those things which are self-destructive, self-deteriorating, and maximizing those which contribute to your well-being. You have in your chromosomal gene structures, genes that have been shut down or shut off, which could now help you a great deal in overcoming many difficulties. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have these turned on, so that you would be protected, so that you could maximize—simply use that which you have—and it would not be neglected or cared for through medical processes.
The intentional community is truly that in all regards; it is "intentional," and it reaches into every aspect of your being, of your living, and of the development of new individuals. Would you willingly bring a child into your life, one who has great potential with the opportunities to maximize their intelligence, balance, spiritual growth and development and then be struck down at age twenty or twenty-one due to some congenital issue? What a tragedy! Would you be willing to accept that in the name of what you call "normalcy?" I doubt it, if you had a choice. And we are not speaking of mediocrity; we are not speaking of you being the same as other people, doing the same things, living the same way; but living in socially adjusted ways that maximizes your potential to express itself as the unique individual that God created, that could be brought into existence through conscious living.
I would imagine that some of you are having difficulty with this flow chart that I pointed out to you or tried to devise in your minds. Do you have questions about that now? I wish this to be clear, as this is an important construct for the development of the intentional community agencies in all regards. You engineer-types, do you see it?
Student: I can certainly see a flow chart of that nature; I used that frequently in projects. My first
inclination would be, from a personal nature, to start with time zero being "now," looking at all those aspects, but then from your further comments, it seems that there was real value in starting with the birth, so that you identify all of the agencies that you might neglect, starting at a later phase in life. (Yes) And so I see that, obviously, it does have a bearing.
Rayson: The benefit of beginning from the immediate time before procreation occurs is to identify the agencies that will be needed and necessary to support the care and development of the individual’s potential as they age. Doing so, you will identify agencies, organizations, and bodies of service that even now do not exist. And so, the next step is as you see, is to then start from time zero now, to identify those agencies which can be integrated immediately into an intentional community, and then to develop new agencies to fill in the gaps where those do not exist at this time. Other comments?
Student: In trying to visualize the communities, how large are you seeing them? I’m trying to visualize if we are talking about small neighborhoods or whether you are talking multiple townships. Can you clarify that?
Rayson: Certainly. In the beginning, you will need a prototype to begin and there already exist some prototype communities in the world. Most are not complete and most do not have in existence the spectrum of agencies and services necessary to serve individual’s growth, which also gives meaningful employment to those who live there. In the beginning, we are talking about a community that is perhaps 500 to 1000 individuals. But eventually, as your society grows and matures and sees the benefit of these, there will also be a maximum or optimum size of community, which in true reality would be groupings, constellations of communities within a larger— I would not call it metropolitan or urban development— as much as a cohesive, integrated, larger mega-community of perhaps half a million people. This would be the maximum size to give the quality of life that is necessary, and also provide the full spectrum of services that individuals would need, which would not be provided for in the smaller communities in which they live. For smaller communities there is no arbitrary size other than it being a functionally sized organization and grouping of families and neighborhoods sufficient to provide the services necessary to fulfill the philosophy and mission of the community.
But would it take one person per agency? Perhaps so. One person, who may work in a satellite office, coordinated by a more centralized office. If you were thinking of a storeowner, let’s say you were having gas stations, how many gas stations would you need for a given community? Depends on the number of cars and the traffic flow. How many small neighborhood pizza parlors would you need, or grocery stores? So the services that are provided in an intentional community are very similarly devised and developed and put in place. Depends on the service need. How many schools, for instance, could one community nurse serve? Perhaps you would need one nurse per school, perhaps two. Perhaps they would have other capacities besides physical well being, but emotional well being as well, and so on.
In the beginning stages of intentional community development, you will be dealing with only the most gross, large functions necessary to help a community survive and sustain itself. In time, it will become more complex and replete in its services to the individual, and so, becomes a more meaningful place to live. If you think back to decades in the past, you will see that sometimes individuals were raised in a community from which they adventure out but return. For in that community, much is provided to them that is satisfying and of interest to them for the development and fulfillment of their lives. So too, communities in the future will not be boring places but interesting, where there are meaningful contacts and meaningful experiences by individuals as you have had. We are not talking about social automatons, spiritual automatons at all, but individuals who live in a dynamic society where they can move and go from place to place.
Your services may not be needed in your immediate community, but in another one in another state or region of the country in which you live, so you would move. And this will happen over and over as it does today. But more and more, people will find solace and continuity in their lives where they live, and go to other places knowing that their lives would only be slightly different than where they came from. But this is centuries in the future. Now, these plans are given to you as a template for you to examine and for possible and probable implementation in the future. It will take you much time to develop a conscious effort and you will know when to do this, for there will be a necessity around you that requires this to occur. As I am speaking to you today, there are with me a contingency of community developers who stand with me, providing information to me as I give it through this individual to you. These individuals are Celestial Teachers who have come from, and have their origins and mortal existence on planets that had intentional communities. They have great experience and through their training on the celestial spheres, they have a much more complete grasp of community development, and particularly through the Correcting Time and the Community Mission effort, their training is specific for your planet at this time, as it is specific for the other planets that came out of quarantine. There is much to do on all these planets, and there is a great deal to do on yours. Although your nation is prosperous, it has taken the ethos of the rugged individual to the far extremes where the individual is left alone to stand and to survive on their own without the supports of community. It also provides a very warped perspective of integration in your society, as there is an endemic selfishness, which is not to be admired, or encouraged. Yet we do not encourage individuals to become dependent upon social agencies for their support, but to become contributors in meaningful ways to their own life, and to the life and function and survival of others, becoming a sustaining influence in their own individual right in their community.
There is much to overcome, yet this rugged individualism is also to be admired because it has created in many of you a sense of hope, of capability to move forward and to make a difference in a land of millions of individuals. Would it not be a very disparate situation if you felt you were incapable and could not make a contribution? In the future in an intentional community, each of you will know you have potential to make a tremendous impact upon your community, and especially upon the course of your life; that your life is intentional and so is your community, and that it is not required that you make a contribution to it, but that you become integrated into it; for the individual who does not, will stand apart and be alone. And as you know from your readings in The Urantia Book, there is no existence apart from the social entity from which you come, for then you lose identity and the meaningfulness of your existence and the way of maximizing the potential that lies within you.
Therefore, these influences, these philosophies will guide your mental health programs, your emotional development programs for the right growth of individuals. So too, will people need to know that they have a meaningful contribution to make and to participate through their employment. Most everyone will feel a connection to all others, even when they are on a tractor in the midst of a very large field, that they are making a contribution that day to the sustenance and maintenance of their community and to the larger state. You do not need to be a physician or an educator to make these contributions or to feel that, but to know that you are there. And whereas today, your meaningfulness is measured in monetary terms, in the future, your contributions will be measurable not only in the quality of your life, but in the quality of your thoughts, the quality of your presence and the sureness of your presence therein in the community.
Student: Rayson, I have a question. You’ve mentioned particularly in regard to the current educational system where children are placed in classes according to their age rather than by evaluating their capabilities and skills and placing them accordingly. I’m wondering how I might, in this present state of affairs, have a positive influence. I know that our educational system needs considerable revamping, yet it seems that to abandon the public education system and go to charter schools is not really the answer. So I am wondering where I or we might make a more farsighted contribution in this area?
Rayson: Certainly. Think of your schools as a resource, rather than a structure that is crystallized in formality and organization. Think of this school and educators and all materials that are in that school as resources for the individual. Rather than thinking of classrooms as graded according to age, think of them as graded according to function. What are the main things that are taught in your schools, the ones that help survivability and the endurance of your communities? You need to have reading, of course, and so you would have a classroom for reading. Rather than for the first grade, you’d have a classroom for first level of reading capability and children would come to that classroom and begin reading. There would be a classroom for beginning mathematics, arithmetic, and so on. And there may be children in the basic reading who are 4 years old, they may be 5 years old, they may be 15 years old. It provides a service for their reading capability at which they can receive guidance and assistance and support and encouragement in their learning process. When they learn to read, they "test out" of that classroom and proceed to the next classroom. For those individuals who are super achievers, or who have high capability of learning quickly, they can move through the reading system rather rapidly. And the reading would then not only be matched to their reading capability, but their intellectual capacity to understand that which they read. If there are eight year old children who understand philosophical theorems that are now presented in college, they should therefore be allowed and encouraged to participate in reading and intellectual discovery at that level. Yet, there are individuals who are age eight who read less than those who are age five or six, and they should be reading at that earlier level. And so reading is not only a means of understanding letters and words, but also of understanding content. It becomes related to a supportive function of mind development, or intellectual development for understanding higher concepts, and then reading becomes an adjunct to that process. Eventually reading becomes phased out as a significant, meaningful event or activity in their lives, but then becomes material that contributes to their understanding of their placement and their growth in the community and their culture and their civilization.
Mathematics would work likewise. You begin understanding numbers and its function and how it relates to the larger universe of physics, geometry, trigonometry, and to the understanding of the forces of energy in the universe that brought about the construction and creation of the universe and its expansion. There are children who are quite young who have the capacity and capability of understanding large aspects of mathematics. Mathematics then becomes a language for understanding the universe. And for their societies, mathematics becomes a medium for understanding social concepts, for understanding statistical information about your societies, and interpolating that into devising a greater understanding of social process.
How do you do make a meaningful contribution? We are even now puzzled in answering that question, as your society is very much stuck and staid in its understanding of the educational process. Certainly, Mr. Dewey, who devised your system back in the 20's and 30’s and even earlier, would be very surprised to see how it has been developed and abused. And he would surely disagree with how it must be maintained. You recall that Dewey devised the "Dewey Educational System Philosophy" due to the necessities of a nation that needed to survive, needed to educate millions upon millions of individuals who were capable of working cohesively, and integrated in a larger society. To educate them in their history, the history of their nation and culture, those individuals who could become shop clerks, store clerks, and machine shop operators would need to understand basic mathematic principles and concepts so they could construct the where-with-all to bring a nation from the horse and buggy era into the technological era that you see now. Certainly, this was a tremendous miracle, but the miracle now is to turn individuals into contributing individuals who are participating as a cohesive part of a larger society – a nation of intentional communities.
You need an inventor of education, one who could step forward and say this. This has been said before. We are at a loss for the time being, of how to make this suggestion ourselves. There are individuals even now who are contemplating new educational systems. If they would think of the intentional community, they would soon learn and understand the necessity of delivering educational services to the level of capability of the individual at whatever age they are, and helping that individual maximize their potential. I know I have said this many times, and you will hear it many times more, this is so important. Know that as this issue is in your consciousness, dear child, it is also in the consciousness of this race and this nation and other nations. It is a concern of many and it is being resisted by organizations, whether it is labor unions or associations of professional educators. They are not necessarily "scared silly," but they see themselves inside this box so securely that they cannot see outside the box of their educational philosophies that they have now. They are stymied as how to take charge or make their wishes and their own dreams come into being. It is as though everyone were in lock-step but going backwards or going sideways, and they are waiting for some individual to break from the ranks and lead them in a new direction. Could that be you? Certainly, you have the potential to make an influence, your voice will be heard. But by whom? Hopefully, others will hear it as well. Thank you for your question.
Student: When I was growing up, things like discipline, ethics, and morals were taught both at home and in the schools. Now I see that one of the problems is that both the parents and the schools have abdicated that responsibility; and part of the problem with children learning is that they are so undisciplined and spend so much time making the classroom chaotic that they do not have an environment for learning. Could you address this? In a community, is there a structure that we should "invent" that would re-institute these teachings? (Rayson: These teachings?) The morals, ethics, values, and self-discipline.
Rayson: Yes, definitely. You have correctly identified the non-system of ethical education that is existent in your nation now. Parents are unable or incapable of teaching ethics and morality to their children because they do not know what it is either. And they are so accepting of the individual child as another free agent, as though the individual child were an adult, that they are afraid to teach the child what they "ought" to do, what they "should" do, what they "must" do. And schools truly are not the place to teach ethics and morality directly, but as a supportive activity for the function of teaching ethics and morality in the home. The educational system must re-enforce that which is taught in the home. When both of these institutions have lost their capacity to teach ethics and morals, you will enter into a society which is amoral and unethical, and has the capacity to become a wild card in each individual, loose cannons, every one, seeking their own ends, and this is extremely dangerous.
Your society is entering into an era where it is in the process of self-destructing at the highest levels, where individuals who are earning millions of dollars a year as executives in corporations, have their own ethical values based on their own self-aggrandizement of wealth and power, and use their corporate structure and their shareholders as individuals to provide that, without any conscious thought of the consequences. The financial debacles that you have see recently in your large corporate institutions will be repeated many times. It will cause great havoc in your financial institutions and the flow of financial capacity throughout the world, and this must be addressed, not as specifics, but as processes, so these incidents do not occur again.
How do you change the educational system to teach ethics and morals? First, begin to see this as a survivability factor. It is not any different than teaching history; history is about the past. You can integrate ethical and moral education into the teaching of history, for ethical and moral education has to do with the future history of your communities and nation. The future is as important as the past; the past is experience and can act as a teacher, a source of verifying and validating wisdom that you get, that supports ethics and morals of a positive, constructive nature. Many of your schools have forgotten why history is taught; they teach history simply as an accumulation of significant dates of historical fact, rather than significance of ethical and moral value. It would be much different if the history lessons were used as interpretations of human will – expressions of conscious participation (or not,) in the larger civilization that you live in. So, too, must morals and ethics be taught in a new history, a new way of looking at the future. This is not about religion! This is not about religious values. This is about conscious societal maintenance; it is a function that must exist. Not to teach ethics and morals and values of a developed society, is to let the" body" deteriorate. It is to eat popcorn and cotton candy for the rest of your life, thinking that this is all there is, this is all we need.
Student: I had another image when you were speaking about children in classes according to their reading level, no matter what age, I remembered several friends I’ve had over the years who spoke about one-room schools that they were brought up in, where the older children helped the younger children learn to read and it was a very community kind of endeavor that each one would help others along with their specialties. That came to mind as you were talking about the reading and mathematics classes.
Rayson: Yes, that is a very important aspect of the educational process that also indoctrinates individuals into providing service to those who come behind. This is "academic" in our lives as Celestial Teachers. Those who are capable teach those who come behind them, and this provides assurance that you know what you have learned, and provides the assurance that you are capable of teaching it to others. It is also a test of your capacity to participate in a larger community, whether you are a Celestial Teacher or a mortal. Learning, and then teaching, assures those who are observers of your life, such as the Ancients of Days/Unions of Days that you know what you are doing, and that you are capable of making conscious decisions and moving ahead or not.
Student: It seems to me it’s also the grounding place for the practice of ethics and morals in helping each other and working in a service capacity.
Rayson: It is one area. The larger proof is in your other relationships, whether you practice them separately or integrate them. As you know, life is not a compartmentalized system of boxes of activities, but are inter-related and inter-connected, so that what you learn in school can be applied in the ethics of your business, and also the ethics of the consumer/client, as well as the ethics of a service provider. Always you will be using these ethical and moral statements and beliefs throughout your life, not isolating them for particular areas and applying "other ethics" in other areas, but that they are truly universal. The difficulty of your society now is that there is not the inherent observance of ethics from within, but only those that are "required." And that is why many of your laws are failing to help guide individuals into "right behavior." There is not also the "right behavior thinking" in the individual.
The next phase of laws then need to involve oversight committees or oversight processes, that provide observation and analysis of behavior of those individuals and institutions that have discretion to observe the law or not. You see in the recent financial debacles that there was the awareness of lawfulness or not, yet the willfulness not to observe the law. And in this case, perhaps oversight would have provided that watch-care that is needed for individuals to voluntarily observe the law, and the ethics required of them. Financial institutions, such as accountancies, that use the ethics of their trade as they wish, do not demonstrate the most positive way to proceed. There must be guidelines, oversight, and definite penalties involved.
The best system is one where individuals are morally and ethically oriented in their own lives and know that which is wrong and that which is right. We are not talking about social conscience, but a higher ethical development within the individual. What you see in your society now is that the social conscience of your society has degenerated to the point where the social consciousness no longer is sufficient for the individual to voluntarily adhere to laws. And when this happens, society deteriorates and will come apart at the seams. It is only through the voluntary participation and observance of social ethics that your societies stay together and can function into the future. When this is not done, then the ragged edges of your society will fall apart. And the hem of law that provides the border between legal and illegal, ethical and unethical, moral and immoral are then shattered and frayed and gone.
Student: Have we brought about this problem ourselves by making too many laws, and therefor people become over saturated with laws and they don’t rely of their own common sense?
Rayson: Creating too many laws is a development of many proportions, one of which is that it is always trying to cover the loopholes, which creative individuals can always devise. Creating laws is a way out of taking responsibility by lawmakers and by individuals who are responsible for adhering to those laws. True law abiding citizens need few laws. The laws will never make a lawful society.
Student: This causes me to think of young people, particularly teenagers, who it seems to me do not have direction toward positive activity, and so they find themselves seeking amusement or some kind of satisfaction in other activities like setting fires or torturing animals or the nameless kind of activity that is hard for us to understand. Why must they go to such lengths to get a thrill? In looking back on my life, it seemed that young people used to feel a greater sense of need to contribute to the society. I don’t see that happening today.
Rayson: This continues to go back to the family. And it goes back even farther to the ethic of having children. Individuals, who want to procreate and bring new beings into existence, must ask the question, "Why?" "Why do this?" If you decide to have children, then to do so responsibly. Children are inherently creative, curious, always pushing the edges of social acceptance and the allowances of society, in the family and in the community. This is nothing new. Yet what is new is the lack of supervision, observation, and guidance, from parents during the lifetime of the children. Their parents are more involved in their "material comeuppance" than the "ethical comeuppance" of their children, to have a larger SUV, a larger house, more material goods, or a huge retirement. They are working, they’re gone, they’re absent; they have abandoned their responsibilities as parents, and therefore will cause, create, bring into existence children who become deviant, or who seek avenues of social adjustment in a realm which you would not appreciate.
Yet all is not lost, there are many positive influences in your society, which are kind and benevolent and good toward the uprearing of children. Having children is becoming more of a conscious process of adults who want to have children and are taking on and appreciating the responsibilities of having children. If you think the loss of these individuals to immoral and unethical living is horrendous, think of the horrendous loss of soul-capacity where individuals were brought into a large family so they could farm, so that they could serve a larger corporate family enterprise, and were worked for many hours; those children who were put into factories by their families because they could not afford to have them home. These children are souls too, and it is a matter of perspective that oftentimes is lost in contemporary observation, but when you look back historically at the rearing of children, and how they were "used" in past times, it is just as soul-numbing as it is now. In an intentional community, there are intentional decisions for begetting children or not. And that when they are brought into existence, it is done with the understanding and the capacity then to support them through their years of growth and education where they become self-maintaining individuals, not only contributing to their own welfare, but to the welfare of the larger community.
Student: Rayson, I’d like to return to the intentional community area. It seemed to me in the earlier part of the discussion that each of the cities is in effect, an intentional community of souls. Thinking about Boulder, Colorado and its approximate population of 100,000 that is well within the limits of a maximum-sized community. If it’s an intentional community with deficiencies, and it seems that to address it, addressing those areas I might personally be looking at, I would have to start looking at the deficiencies that are evident. First thing that comes to mind are the "homeless"…how to better approach them to help them "want" to enter into the community.
Rayson: Let me help you with this a bit. When you speak of "homeless," are you speaking about adults or children? Our concern is for children, and though they may have a domicile or residence to go to, an address on a street where they rest their head at night, many could still be labeled as "homeless." A home requires parents who care, parents who provide supervision. The homeless in your society will always be with you, and that is a personal choice in many cases, for there are many services available to individuals, who do not choose to have responsibility of hearth and home. And in the larger community, you will realize that there are some who cannot survive in a competitive society, but who must be free to wander. And in their wandering, provide them with meaningful occupations that assist in their maintenance, in their livelihood, and give them a positive contribution to make towards their lives, a meaningful enterprise, no matter how humble that may be. There are those who are mentally deficient, who are also emotionally deficient, those who go through an era of great tumult, who have lost the capability of managing their own affairs, and who must seek asylum in a place where they would not choose otherwise.
Let me give you a multi-century perspective of the problem here. Your lives are so brief, you are not capable of being effectively involved in the reformation of your society and its processes to make a meaningful contribution that is effective. That your lives are so brief, as capable individuals, that you cannot see a project from beginning to end, but must hope that there are others who see your vision, pick it up, and carry it forward. This is where the Correcting Time, the Community Mission and the Teaching Mission come into effect. These projects provide a multi-century perspective and influence that helps guide your social agencies, through individuals such as you, forward in a meaningful way, even though your contributions are just miniscule, but not meaningless. It is through this influence that your society will re-invent itself. It is no wonder that many of you are quite cynical about the possibility or capability of you being able to influence your social agencies, your government, the political process, to change or to bring about new processes which contribute positively and constructively to the rearing of children into meaningful adults who can make a meaningful contribution in their lives. The box is so strong that many inside cannot see out, nor wish to. And those who are outside of the box, as yourselves, see this, see yourselves being so powerless, of so small a political power, so impotent to socially influence the processes, that you feel like your capability is non existent. Yet, your participation here today, tells us and tells yourself that you do have the willingness to participate.
And even if it is only through your consciousness, your conscious contribution to race consciousness, that is a meaningful and a powerful influence, in that you begin to work through your lives to make something effective in your organizations, to participate in the policy formation, and to the planning of agencies. Somehow, you will participate in those places; your inspiration will be of great influence. This message is for this small group, but yet for decades and centuries ahead, for thousands of individuals who are seeking meaningful participation in their community and do not know how to do so, even if it is just simply your consciousness and your desire and your intention (and you must, of course, declare your intention,) that you make an influence. And if you sit upon a planning commission or board that has influence, then you have the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful way, for the effective development of policies and laws and regulations help move your system forward. Currently, your educational systems throughout America are in a morass and are in great disarray, and have proven their ineffectiveness to produce individuals of ethical and moral capability, except when an individual chooses to take on those responsibilities! It is not hopeless, by any means, but it is a daunting task, and we have set upon this to help correct this. It is only through individuals such as you, and those who read these transcripts, those new changes can take place. For when you co-creatively and intentionally participate with us, in assisting the development of your societies, you will have assistance, where ever you are. Declare it and we will be there! We are already ahead of you, waiting for you.
Student: Rayson, I have a question that hinges on a previous entry in the intentional community that has to do with homelessness. You mentioned that these homeless people are in most cases, intentionally homeless in terms of the physical structure and the responsibility that would go with that. In an intentional community, you also mentioned that these people would always be with us because they have chosen that path. Therefore, I can only gather that in an intentional community that you are speaking of, we would then give some consideration to these individuals’ choices. And something sprung to mind when you said that, much as though when people individually walk into a restaurant and seek the big table, the community table, or the breakfast bar, perhaps in an intentional community as you’re speaking of, this kind of provision would be there for these individuals, a group home, or a home that is provided for by some means through their working a job, or whatever it is that they can contribute, but instead of having an individual home, with a family and the whole business, maybe they would provide a form of taxation [?] where they would have a place to hang their hat in a community environment with others of similar choosing. Is this something that would be part of an intentional community?
Rayson: That is exactly what I was alluding to, yes. It would be provided. However, in an intentional community, you would not allow "hobo havens" as this contributes to their further deterioration and vagrancy and is not socially responsible by the larger community to allow this. This is the only part where little choice is provided in an intentional community, is that the individuals can travel about as they want, from city to city, community to community, but these services are always provided, and in every community it is known that it is not allowed that individuals could camp out under bridges or behind stores.
Student: No necessity to beg?
Rayson: No necessity to beg, but always the opportunity to provide service and receive maintenance. If you are going to live in a group home, a shelter for the homeless, then you are welcome to live there, but you will be required to cook or clean or paint or maintain, sweep the parking lot, be of service to other agencies in work groups. Almost all of the agencies and services that you can think of for the future intentional community already exist. It is simply thinking of them as providing services in new ways, or to clients in different perspectives. It is to re-invent your communities, or to re-invent your society, your social process. Yes, there will be fewer options for vagrant living, but there will be greater opportunities for contributory living. Your freedoms will not be lost, but how it affects others may be taken into consideration.
I wish you to think upon these issues in the next two weeks, and raise questions in your mind, speak to us during these two weeks, as you have opportunity to, and share your thoughts with us.
This is a large project and can only be completed with your participation and that of others in the future. We are surely focused upon our work and these activities, as we know what is and will come into existence eventually. We do not know when, but we know it will, as there are only certain social constructs of community that can survive, and others will self-destruct. It is a matter of finding what works, and assists the survival of individuals and community, and replicating those issues, those factors, and discarding those that do not contribute to the survival of all and to the individual. As time passes, there will be less and less exploration into new areas, as those areas have been explored and proven to work or not. This is not a decades-level of issue, but a centuries-level of activity and work. We are here to guide you in this generation and all generations to come. Your world is still a "frontier world" in many ways and has so many rough edges to it …that the finished edges are few and far between. They must begin linking together so that your sphere of humanity becomes a shining sphere of consciousness, of right thinking and behaving: A wonderful place to live, an exciting place to grow in your soul, a wonderful place to become more like your Creator, Michael, and the wonderful influence of his compassionate partner, Nebadonia. Blessings to you this day, I am glad you have been here.
Students: You’ve given us a lot to think about. We’re glad we’ve been here also! Thank you, Rayson.
Rayson: Good day.
END