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Tomas Vol IV - Butler, PA - June 17 1997 thru September 23, 1997 - Part 4 of 13

Just as aspiring psychoanalysts are psychoanalyzed in the process of gaining their credentials to psychoanalyze others, transmitter receivers will be similarly prepared by the Teacher Corps to minister to a wide assortment of personalities. In this segment some energy is devoted to organizing the mental filing cabinet used by Merium, as provided by Hunnah. After the initial excitement of accomplishment and praise, Hunnah grapples with the effects of the Teachers on her mind, as all T/R's do.

Into this process there are inserted visitations by, i.e., a Melchizedek receiver and/or a social architect, which provide an intellectual oasis. Otherwise, the lessons continue.

The plethora of personal teacher visits shows how much we long for personal contact and communion with a loving being, an entity who cares for us personally, even privately, who knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us unconditionally. It is a real need, and we are Correcting that deficiency by this method of communication.

*****

BUTLER, PA, USA

VOLUME IV, Part 4 of 13

June 17 1997 - September 23, 1997

C O N T E N T S

Date	Title	Page
June 17	To Act or Not to Act; Righteous Judgment	1
June 23	Reality of Living Love	10
July 1	Feel My Embrace	19
July 29	Washing the Feet of Your Fellows	27
August 5	Assessment and Future of Teaching Mission	33
August 19	Emotional Excitement	46
August 26	Human Coloration in Transmitting	59
September 2	Be Light in the Drear	68
September 9	PERSONAL TEACHERS	79
September 16	Altered States of Consciousness	85
September 23	More on Altered States	92
	[End of Vol. IV, Part 4 of 13]	97

TOMAS: It gives my heart deep joy to be in your presence this evening. It gives me great confidence in Our Father when you reveal to your teachers and to each other your difficulties in your soul growth, in your aspiring to do His will in your lives. It is indeed heartening to recognize your earnest desire to be about the Father's business and to sincerely serve.

I am assisted this evening by my companion, my colleague, Merium. We are also graced by the presence of many angelic helpers and student visitors. It is not on our agenda, however, to have an open house, but rather to help you in your growth throes this evening.

How astute of Merium to advise an assignment of increased mental capacity! I would suggest that her assignment was truly on point, for your minds have come sufficiently enlarged to seek questions that disturb your way of going about things, your behaviors, your emotional constitution, and not so much your spirit, which is vested in the desire to serve.

There are many references in your text to shed light on your quandary. Let me reiterate our subject of discussion for clarity before I draw upon those references. The question is: how and when does one know when to provide assistance and when to withhold assistance, and how does one discern that action or non-action? Is this a fair assessment?

TOMAS: I will take you back first to our scene that we have been following throughout our recent course of study having to do with your being a microcosm of Paradise Trinity, for this indeed is what the question is about. How do you manifest your perfection in an imperfect world? You have with you the love of The Father, the word of The Son, and as you pause in anticipation of the action of The Spirit, you have that moment to think in terms of self-mastery as to how you will serve and for what purpose you will serve.

And here is the merit of the assignment of mind expansion, for it is also true that The Infinite Spirit brings ministry but she also brings mind. Now we have the mind arena of choice, as to how to proceed in service, and here we have the development of your mortal discernment, through the eyes of a spirit-born, God-motivated individual. How indeed would The Father deal with the situation?

Of course, the Father's eye is infinite and can see those things which you cannot, but you can aspire to see the Father's point of view by asking the Wayshower to show you the way. It therefore is important that you stop before you automatically serve, in-as-much as your actions affect not only that individual but all individuals in line to receive the ripple effect from that Cause which you implant when you act. Again: motives.

You desire to be of service. To be of service is not always to provide every need. I will call to your mind the reference from The Book having to do with prayer, and the analogy of the human parent and its child, for a wise father will not always indulge every request of the child, for the child does not have the wisdom to always understand what is good for it and what is not. A wise father will look at the effects of this bestowal, this granting of the wish, and ascertain the effects of this gift on the child.

To be graphic, an indulgent parent may be happy to give an ice cream cone to a cherub-faced child who delights his heart and has asked in sincere supplication for the wish of ice cream to be granted. But the father can see that it is 15 minutes before dinnertime and refuses to grant the wish of the child. Now the child may have a temper tantrum, it may pout and scowl and shed tears and plead and cajole and do all manner of cute things to influence the father's decision, but the wise father sees what is best for his child and acts accordingly.

It is therefore incumbent upon you, in that moment of ascertaining your intent to serve, to probe yourself as to whether or not your service is in accordance with the wisdom that the Father would accord the request. If you were to act in the spirit of love, given your human comprehension of love, you may feel impelled to bestow ice cream night and day, for it is something that you can do that can manifest visibly your desire to please, and certainly the Father desires to please His children, but if the pleasing is an indulgence that does not contribute to the welfare and the betterment of the whole individual, love then is in need of a new definition.

I will say, too, that in this practice of discerning how to serve, you are given responsibility and it oftentimes is a responsibility you would rather not have, it would be easier to act without thinking, and trust that the Father will make it all well. Indeed, He will, but your mature contribution to the Evolving Supreme and to the service of humankind would have you become a co-worker with Havona, would have you learn to be responsible for your growth and for the growth of others where possible.

You will notice that in my remarks I have not once made reference to the word Judgement. You are not called upon to judge the individual, their need, their circumstance, your decision, your merit or anything. Judgement has no part in this process of being of service.

It is also indicated in the text that the angels will not help those who refuse to act upon their light of truth. If the angels will not assist those who will not act upon the light of truth, how is it that you feel above the angels? Apply your expanded mental capacity and your discernment to ascertain if the child, in his or her request, has done his or her best to act upon his or her light of truth. Not in his or her entire life, no, but in the instant that he or she has presented himself or herself to you for an answer to their prayer. Has this discourse been helpful?

Leah: Yes, it's been helpful. I just don't know how to get out of the judgment part about "when they presented a situation." I noticed you said not in their whole life but the situation as presented at hand.

TOMAS: Even there it is not necessary for you to judge, but to ascertain whether or not they have acted upon their light of truth that would put them in the position to hope you could reveal the answer for them. An assessment is appropriate; indeed necessary. And you may take your time in making the assessment. You may even take adequate time to inquire as to some particulars, and having now garnered information, you are in a better position to make a determination based upon what you have learned as a result of your investigation.

It is always appropriate to ask your Indwelling Adjuster for support and for guidance in any decision you make, but you must not cross your mind up with anxiety about your actions. It would behoove you to be objective and therefore at ease when you consult with Father as to His wishes in the situation. He is with you. He indwells you. He sees clearly. If you cannot see clearly, it is all right for you to defer and say, "I cannot make a. decision. I cannot see the circumstances clearly enough to make a wise choice." But if, as you have paused to consult with the Father, the Spirit is compelling and leads you to ministry, then follow the will of the Spirit. Has that been helpful?

Leah: I perceive that part of what's not being put on the table here is our inability to say "no" -- our human inability to say "no."

TOMAS: On one hand we have you eager sons and daughters of the Spirit who seek to serve, who are willing to please, as compared to, perhaps, many others who refuse even to consider such a thing as service. If we are going to discuss an inability to say "no," we are discussing emotional constraints that are a result of a mental attitude which has locked the door on the possibility of allowing yourself the freedom to make the determination on the Father's behalf that you may say "yes" or "no" in accordance with His will. It is a human limitation to be so circumscribed in your thinking that you cannot say "no," and that is a matter for Correction.

TOMAS: What mental conditioning has trained you to believe that you have no right, no strength, or no purpose in refusing what life presents? Are you so hungry for experience?

TOMAS: It may be your gender conditioning, for it is frequent that females find it more difficult to say "no" when someone asks them to serve. We are speaking of cultural conditioning which covers millennia. If that is the case, it is defeatable, transcendable. It is indeed important for you, as a child of God with spiritual rights equal to men, to have that inner realization of your relationship with the First Source and Center that would assure you of your self-respect and its incumbent ability to act without regard to generations of genetic conditioning and cultural conditioning.

It is also for that reason that I am pleased with the recent assignment having to do with assuming an increase in mental capacity -- mind expansion -- for your thinking, even as a race of people, is very limited. By and large you are still very tribal in your behavior patterns and it is necessary for those who have freedom in the spirit to be able to act outside of those conditionings. Those conditionings, although many are necessary and beneficial to maintaining a civilization, can also be curtailing and mediocrity-inducing.

I challenge you, then, to step out of cultural mediocrity and stand firmly on your faith and decide for yourself, as a child of God, in co-creation with divinity, how you will act, how you will serve, how you will think, and how you will feel, for all of these affect the greater good, the greater whole. We will be in recess.

MERIUM: Dear friends, it is I, Merium, glad to be on-line and in your embrace. It is always a pleasure to be with you in this way. I have occasion to be with you often, as we are always in contact in our frame of reference, not always to your awareness, but it is such a pleasant experience to begin to manifest my personality to you that you may begin to know me and understand my personality presence and indeed my individual charm . ..

MERIUM: ... as compared to that of others. I see you find my remark amusing, Leah. Was it that I had the courage to admit that I have charm?

Leah: Yes. And the fact that someone, a long time ago, referred to Tomas as an old stuffed shirt. [More giggles.] Sorry.

MERIUM: He is somewhat formal and I am, too, for that matter, although both of us make a sincere attempt to be congenial and fraternal, if not quite human. It is our attempt to reach you, you see, and interact with you, that instills in us an urge to (I must say) come down to your level, but it is always gratifying when we perceive that you also have made an attempt to lift yourselves up to meet us, at least half way. It interferes with the quality of our relationship, the impact of our lesson plan, when you regard us as a mere form of entertainment or when you do not strive to reach for those higher concepts that will help you stretch your frame of reference from your mediocre state to a more exalted state.

How I have offended you now! For I have "judged" you as being mediocre and I have "judged" myself as having charm. Well, let us discuss that for a bit, if I may. I have Tomas' permission to run on for a bit, and I will.

I enjoyed your questions earlier. I enjoyed your soulful expression of your confusion in dealing with some of the more troublesome elements of your society (your personal society, not your society at large necessarily). It is a good glimpse of you as individuals when you can share yourselves so agreeably. It also was a privilege to hear Tomas hold forth on his lesson this evening. We teachers do have admiration for one another and always admire the creative delivery of each other as an aspect of their God-given personality expression. It in some ways enables us to have, referring again to that analogy of the symphony, a solo performance on occasion, rather than the entire orchestra all the time.

I have chosen for my aria this evening to discuss that which my friend Hunnah has often exercised an interest in, and it also has to do with your lesson this evening. I want to thank Teacher Ham for his well-chosen words on Judgement that was savored during your recess, for my subject now has to do with this term of "righteous judgement" which is a concept based in Christianity and has no real worth in the kingdom of God.

If you will get Hester's dictionary out and look up "righteous," it is apparent that righteous is one who does right, and judgement is a sentencing of an individual's behavior. It is not possible for you to manifest righteous judgement, and so there is no sense in developing such a dichotomy. One, who is righteous, does right. One, who judges, does wrong. And so how can one describe the other in harmony?

Righteousness, as was set down in the scriptures, was largely influenced by the early testaments that included a severe and stern God who wielded vengeance as a sword, who wrought plagues upon his people, who, according to fable, brought destruction upon the earth. The Father which Jesus introduced us to in his assignment on Urantia, clearly clarifies that Our Father is not that kind of a father, that He is indeed loving, that He sees all from the beginning. He knows from the beginning the course, the destiny of His creation, and knowing that it is an evolving universe, knows that imperfection is inherent. And you who are imperfect, who know only a relative perfection, have not that far-reaching view that would enable you to judge, even righteously, for righteousness involves a high morality. It is an indication of that which is the right thing. That which is the right thing is that which God would do and He would not judge. So your righteousness includes not judgement but moral rightness for yourself, following what you feel is His will for you and not for another.

Well, both Tomas and I have been substantial this evening. We have been partying now for several weeks and Abraham has spoken and said, "Back to work!" and since we have had a good rest, much levity and lightness of spirit, we will begin again in good faith and resume our quest. How did you enjoy and/or are you enjoying our assignment about mind expansion? Have you found it intriguing?

Leah: Yes. Yes, it is, and I feel as if a lot of information is being funneled through and is allowed to expand as received. However, I'm wondering about my behavior recently in not . .. in the same vein of character that it usually has been and I feel sort of callused in my reaction to some people, but I'm hoping that it's just some adjustments going on.

MERIUM: Have you not been advised that there is no growth without conflict? And so as you ask your mind to grow, you will know some agitation. This is a natural process. You may construe this, my daughter, my friend, as being proof of the pudding: you are beginning to experience expansion of your mental capabilities to include, perhaps, the ability to see a situation with a broader perspective, with a farther view, with more of the Father's viewpoint, and so there is a natural unsettlement of how your responses to growth are affecting you.

These are different feelings than you have had. It is a symbol of your growth and your expansion, and so you say you feel perhaps callused, but let us consider semantics here and toss out that rough and hard bunion of a word and pull in one that might be more firm or solid or stable, and not necessarily coarse or rasping, for as you accustom yourself to your expanded consciousness, that roughness will be indeed refinished. As in a fine wood, it will be buffed and polished to reflect the light.

Do not be cowed by your new feelings, but allow for the growth to continue until you attain that plateau you seek whereupon you can have a flash of spiritual insight and breathe deeply then, knowing that in due course, you will grow in your mind to that spirit level of awareness and reality.

MERIUM: It is very reassuring for us, also, I assure you, that you are following my conversation, that you are understanding the process of spiritual growth, and that you are willing to continue on your path. It gives us great confidence in you when we perceive your hunger for spirit reality and your willingness to go the distance, even through moments of tenderness or awkwardness, as the duckling grows, in grace.

Are there questions? [None] I will return the platform to Tomas. It has been very satisfying for me this evening, my children and my friends, to be with you. We will lighten up again. Indeed, perhaps in a moment. But I did want to commend you for your focus and the results of your sincere desire to grow. Thank you, and have a good evening.

TOMAS: I am Tomas and I realize it is growing late. Your personal teachers are all here. Are there any of you who would like to address your personal teachers for any reason while we have a circuit available?

Leah: I would just like to say to Jay-Orzh that I really thank her for her patience and her tolerance with me.

JAY-ORZH: I have no problem with patience with you, my dear, for I am amazed by your efforts. If I did not see you attempting to do as much as you attempt to do, I would perhaps grow impatient, but I have no reason to feel that way. You are somewhat scattered in your growth efforts, but you are very active in your sincere desire to make strides. How can I begrudge you anything when you approach your destiny so sincerely and fully?

I might draw an analogy of a child in school who perhaps will one day grow up to be a dentist, and so it is important that they learn math and chemistry and physics and yet here we have Leah the future dentist who is very eagerly applying herself to Latin and Spanish. I would never deny you the joy of applying yourself to learning and expanding that which will enrich you, even though they may or may not contribute to your ultimate career. The enthusiasm and application that you have in your desire to learn, and indeed to serve, is too gratifying for me to fool around with something like impatience.

In short, you are very industrious and so I am very pleased. I do enjoy your efforts to communicate with me. I do believe that we have the rudiments of a good rapport going. We are becoming more conscious of each other's techniques, shall I say. We are getting to know each other, and this is a great joy for me. You are a unique specimen of personality and I am uniquely suited to be your companion. And although there are diverse paths that we take in our daily walk, we somehow manage not to lose sight of each other, and touch base fairly regularly.

I am enjoying our walk together. I am discovering things on the path that I might have overlooked were it not for your adventurous spirit. I would perhaps forego some of your adventures [Giggles from Leah], but I have committed myself to companion you and to help direct your correction, and sometimes it is necessary for you to show me what needs fixed so that I can call it to your attention; I will then take you on a walk and show you how we can fix it.

Well, isn't this interesting? We have finally fallen upon something we can fix together! In our own back yard. We have much to work and play with, my lovely Leah.

JAY-ORZH: As am I to share these moments with you. It is so satisfying to feel the reassuring presence of one who loves you deeply, as I do you. I am very happy that you realize this and that you trust me, that you are beginning to trust me even more and to open your heart to me. We rejoice together in our friendship. I will see you on the key-board.

PHILOMENA: I am here. I had a hunch you would want to say hello. How are you, my dear?

Ann: I'm just tickled pink that you're even here. It's better than Christmas. Well, it was one of the better Christmas presents that I ever got when I found out about you last week and I've been pretty excited about that.

PHILOMENA: I am also glad. I am so glad that you have acknowledged me as a Christmas present for it is, indeed, as a result of the birth of Christ in your consciousness that has allowed me to be a reality for you in your new-found spirit realms. This expansion goes on throughout eternity and it is my supreme delight to be able to share your (the word is not available. I regret that, but) your "mossy bank" is what I am trying to convey, your verdant beginning, your dense origin in such a place of beauty, such a pristine place in the woods are you, a green and mossy bank beside the still water. This is how I embrace you, my loved one. Not literally, of course, not as vegetation, no, but as symbolic of tender young growth, new vital color, rich to behold and to touch.

It is indeed a thrill for me to be allowed the opportunity to share your life intimately with you. As Jay-Orzh conveyed to Leah, I convey to you the joy of our friendship and our rejoicing in knowing that we shall be friends throughout eternity. I would be with you as often as you reach for me. I will work with you as you will work with me. I entrust your care and my guidance to Our Father, and you may believe and trust that He is our salvation. Always are we en route to the embrace of the Father.

Dear one, I will leave this method of communicating only to embrace you in the spirit and to walk with you as you go about your day and as you rest in the night. I will speak with you when we have developed our method of understanding each other or until such time as we have another opportunity through a T/R to make contact. Be assured of my presence. Farewell.

TRIESTE: I am Trieste. I am also glad to be given a moment in your consciousness. It is a rare opportunity for me these days to have a moment to spend with Gerdean in this audible vein. It was once our practice to regularly engage in conversation on tape. I regret that she has become so accustomed to me that she only speaks to me now in her mind, for there is a certain charm in identifying our personality separation.

I encourage you all to realize that your personal spirit guides are true personalities, true beings that enjoy acknowledgement. They are not you, nor are they your Thought Adjusters, nor are they your guardian seraphim. We personal teachers are your companions in the spirit realm, as real and viable as the midwayers or the angels.

I have lectured, and I did not come to do that. I have that same propensity with Gerdean, which is perhaps why she doesn't call me like she used to, but by the same token, that's part of my personality, which is well suited to hers, . .. and so "That's just the way it is, girlie. Call me up. [Leah giggling again.] Quickly!"

I will, however, join with my companions and convey to you my affection. I understand you already know that I love you very much, but as we are wont to say, it does not hurt to be told, for none of you are told enough how vital and important you are. You take yourselves for granted, you take each other for granted, you even take your Father for granted, for what is there to do unless you make a point of it, and so I make a point of telling you, Gerdean, how delightful I find you, how co-operative you have become (and yet even more bull-headed in your tenacity in other matters), but I am still enjoying our friendship. I am still relishing each day's adventure with you. I am still steadfast and devoted.

TOMAS: I am Tomas and I am going to tuck you all in. I am very pleased with our session this evening, as is Merium. Merium and I are always honored when you open your lives to commune in His presence with us as guides and companions. We are, again, honored by your devotion to truth. Good evening.

A MELCHIZEDEK RECEIVER: I am a Melchizedek Receiver. I will not trouble you at this time with a name, but my designation should speak for itself. It has been my pleasure to be working in this area, not only with your group here but with several other groups and interested parties. There are groups forming that you are not aware of. There is tremendous interest in the Teaching Mission, even in remote individuals. I have been, you would say, assigned to this vicinity. I am stopping in today to acknowledge your being, your being as a group of devoted individuals in service to our Master [Son] Father Michael and Father Melchizedek.

You are becoming more cognizant of the ministry inherent in your desire to serve in and through this Mission of Michael's to bring peace, love, truth, beauty, goodness, light and life to Urantia, as are we. Your growth struggles are recorded and your victories are noted in the archives. I am overseer of several group teachers here including one Tomas and one Merium, both of whom are active and viable teachers of truth. My realm encompasses other groups but I am here this evening to commend you for your integrity and your developing growing comprehension of the truth of this Mission, indeed, the reality of living love.

Tomas has consulted with me on behalf of his bases of operation and I offered to attend a session, not to engage in question and answer but to graduate you, in some respects, to acknowledge to you your growths. As you grow you are called upon, and as you have reflected and become willing, as you have been tested and found not wanting, you will be called upon to contribute in service to this noble effort of introducing Father's kingdom, His love, to those you meet.

I will offer this platform now to Tomas who has been an able teacher, a very creative and enterprising teacher, affectionate and patient. I commend him in his efforts with you, for although some of you concern yourselves over the results of his and your efforts, it is apparent to those of us on this side that your light of truth is glowing and becoming brighter.

We are also pleased to have Merium among you and as companion to Tomas. Her compassion knows no bounds, and we are very hopeful and encouraged by the team, and by your consecrated efforts to allow them to lift up the spiritual consciousness of those who have ears to hear.

Do not forget me. It will come to pass, as time goes by and as you become ready, [that] we will work more closely together. Perhaps we may even develop into a university. There will certainly be one established in this vicinity; it remains yet to be determined where and when. Continue with your efforts, sons and daughters. Your efforts are advancing your world. Thank you. Farewell.

MERIUM: In this pause, and if you don't mind, I would like to step upon this lily pad that has been waving -- and perhaps I am pushing in front of the group -- but I would like to greet you this evening with a few words of encouragement. And I might say that it always is distraction outside, in your own experience, and there's plenty to talk about and to see. I will just briefly ask you all to attend to your own little niche and then you will see collectively the unity of that experience and the powerful changes that it can bring.

Please remain steadfast and be not distracted by the sounds that you hear. Tend to this quietness that it may direct you forward to your daily fare and know that it is a portion that is meant for you and that you do not have to be burdened by solving the problems of those around you. Celebrate the season; enjoy this lovely summer weather. Thank you.

TOMAS: How wonderful to be in your embrace, all of you. It is invigorating to be with you this evening. We have expanded our horizons socially in the realms of the mortal life and the spiritual life, and with this expansion there is a greater embrace, a greater expansion of possibility. This possibility and potential on one hand is exciting and invigorating, but on the other hand, it can be frightening, it can be overwhelming. I would like to discuss, this evening, the aspect of influence, that you yourselves have been influenced and that you also influence.

As you are influenced by the First Source and Center through your association with your Parent, you are in the best of associations, and as you extend yourself into your arena, into your family of loved ones, you can extend the Father's influence into your arena, influencing them by your love and your elevated spirits, your good cheer, your lightheartedness. This is as it should be.

However, influence is not always generated from Paradise. Indeed, influence comes from all manner of sources. All influences are not particularly beneficial. How many parents have discouraged their sons and daughters from certain associates for fear of their influence? influencing them to fall away from the path of their choosing, the wisdom of their guidance and direction?

Influence is very subtle and humans are very adventurous. They are constantly on the look-out for diversion and stimulation. Various personalities are excited by various influences, distractions, even ideals and romantic notions, and you look for these. You look for influences, for many times you are rewarded, but the realm of influence can also be undermining. You have sufficiently united as a community that you have within you, as a community, the strength to withstand lesser influences.

I will draw an analogy from Gerdean's history, with your permission and hers. [Long pause] She will not give it and I honor that. I will find another way to convey what I would like to convey. The point is that when you want to be liked, when you want to be able to be part of the community, when you want to belong, feel a part of, feel embraced, when you do not want to feel lonely or alone, you will often accept a lesser influence. There is much more to be said here. I will allow Merium to contribute.

MERIUM: Thank you. I think I can bring something forth on this business of feeling unfulfilled. You can become saturated with the human call for satisfaction, entertainment and need to be accountable and having contributed; for whatever reason, the pattern is evident. We are dealing with a different level of understanding here, and as we speak to you this evening, I am speaking to you in a manner that I feel that you understand, and it is understood that when these human false appetites and signals of habit of the flesh come forth, wailing and wrangling after you, it is definitely time to feed the true baby.

The baby needs a bottle. And the baby I'm referring to here is this part of you that needs to be acknowledged, because when you are saturated with the sound of sensual clamoring and it makes you uncomfortable and you even hear your own words joining into the chorus, you will become more adept at pulling away and dealing with the symptoms, as such, by turning in to that mature part of yourself that knows where it's true meat is drawn upon and where true provision, entertainment and fulfillment come from.

It is time to really dig in and make sure that you are taking the cue in knowing when you are sounding like an echo of this cacophony of clatter that goes on in your world. And before you know it, you do drop down to the lesser way and repeat your old patterns. This is not an easy route. This is the call of the mature, and I don't want to tiptoe around about it, but when you hear your old sound (and you are going to become very, very good at recognizing it), you will know that it's time to immediately halt. Feel the tether of light upon you, and allow that which is true to you, that which is the digestible Mother's Milk, so to speak, come to you, fulfill you, and bring you in line, and as soon as you allow this to happen it will strengthen you immediately, you will feel more comfortable and you will no longer express the desire to return to the old sound.

These opportunities will be many, will come at you every moment of the day. When someone comes up to you and speaks the old dialog, you will say, "Ah, I recognize that sound, but she doesn't live here anymore. There is a new being that is in residence." Do not expect your friends to recognize the change.

Hunnah, who has been reluctant to read the little book God Calling, caught one line recently and it said "They do not understand your language," so why would you worry yourself trying to pour this new language upon someone who is not interested in participating in it? You will become more and more comfortable with not trying to convince anyone that you have found the chosen way. You will not feel inclined as before to prove to them that you have improved or that you understand or you are more enlightened.

You have entered a new realm and a new level of living and I want you to not, please, accept these words as criticism, but I am stating them because you will, after this evening, become stronger in your ability to draw the line and not continue a conversation that you normally would have. It will be a graceful moment and you will be able to ease back into your new poise and this will take place without offending anyone. Tomas?

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium. I appreciate how you set forth that these things can be done with such ease, for truly they can and will be done with great ease, but there are moments of resistance. There are temptations, so to speak. The visitor you had earlier, the mortal visitor, indicated that on her diet, she feared being influenced by those who would lure her into fattening up and she would be undermining her high purpose by allowing the influence of those who feel and express that they know what is good for her.

The resistance to such well-meaning but subtle and undermining influence is an effort, if only to acknowledge that the undermining influence is at hand. But like all good habits that are time-consuming at first, when they have become a part of your pattern for perfection, you will indeed wear it well and easily, in effortless effort, and so I call to your attention this evening the word "influence" and how in your desire to belong and even in your desire to serve, you will sometimes allow lesser influences to come into you and to steal away your purpose, for your purpose need be to sense and hunger for the influence of the First Source and Center.

There are at least two options here, as I see it. We can take a brief recess to stretch and focus on the lessons or on the appearance of our guest, our celestial guest; we can have question and answer; or Merium can suggest another alternative.

Hunnah: I have been weighing the conversations from the last few months and this analysis of living in the world, and I have found it very heavy going. One moment we are lifted in truth, we are filled, and the next moment we are expected to chew over a worldly challenge of lesser behavior, and I find this quite bewildering.

I was listening to a tape recently and it was talking about the different levels of material, mental and spiritual, and I have been, I felt, bonded with the development of spirit. But so much of our energy and time has been involved in mental explanation and mental definitions and endless lamenting of the physical woes of the established personality that we are arising from. And I would like to know if I have said enough that will give you an opportunity to put your finger on what I'm reaching for.

I have felt that dealing with all these sundry symptoms and preferences or likes and dislikes have been defeating the purpose. I guess that's what I wanted to say. I have felt that way. If the situation [a construction project] here at my home is too distracting for you, this can be discussed at another time. We have had some time to ourselves and we perhaps should have taken advantage of it sooner. Thank you.

TOMAS: Thank you, Hunnah, for voicing your concerns. When we have lessons that could be construed as ponderous or mental, it is not for you to carry this atmosphere with you night and day, but it is an opportunity to bring your focus to a point to give it some consideration in hopes of giving you some understanding of who you are and how you are; who others are and why they are; and why you respond or react, and they, too. This is not meant to be a ponderous lesson that you carry daily, hourly, moment by moment, for the spirit is light and the path is joyous.

However, the realm of the mind is that area wherein comprehension can be known. You can know in the spirit, yes, and act in the spirit, yes, but not all of your perceptions are accurate because of your conditioning. It is not possible for you to go completely beyond your mortal conditioning, nor is it my desire to spend an eternity discussing your conditioning, but there are certain facets of understanding I am calling to your attention for your realization that are in fact bringing you intellectual peace and enlightenment.

The ascension entails your decision-making process, and decisions are a mental function. I have been attempting to introduce you to your mental realms in conjunction with your spiritual reality, and the behaviors that lie in those realms … how your behaviors affect those around you. There are some, Hunnah, who are far more carefree and imbued with a spiritual way of life. There are also, however, some who are wonderfully pensive and thoughtful. There are many, many different personalities, which personalities approach life differently.

I know, Hunnah, that you like it to be light and carefree and you loathe the studious and ponderous aspect, but in pondering that moment when, for example, you stand looking at an influence that is coming at you, and you recall this lesson on influence and realize that what is happening is that you are being influenced, and so now, how will you handle the influence that's coming toward you? Will you succumb to that influence? Will you rise above that influence? Will you embrace that influence? Will you educate that influence? Will you ignore that influence?

That is the point of these lessons. It is not for you to study seriously the influences upon your life or as you go down the street, but these things that have reality will joggle your mind when you least expect it and it will come to your awareness that, "Aha! This is what he was talking about! This is an influence that is leading me downhill, and if I resist it, I can be strong and return my focus and, indeed, the focus of the entire community, back to that which is more elevated" and more, indeed, to your spiritual liking. Do you see?

Hunnah: Urn-hum. Well, I felt like -- I guess I had empathy with a friend who said that she had a week away from the old way, enjoyed the new way and the lack of pressure, and now she is back in the turbulent waters of her turbulent routine, and I can appreciate that because today I was trying to impose some sensible choices for myself and I hung in there until around 4:00 and it's just -- it wasn't doing battle, particularly, but it was really … the intention of, you know, "stifle your desires"? That type of thing? And I found it very, trying. Not very trying, but I was aware of it, and so now I have empathy with people who are trying to admit that they are trying to discipline themselves. But it can be quite draining, especially if they do not have an awareness of this greatness that they harbor.

TOMAS: Indeed, our entire purpose is to reveal to them that they reveal to themselves that the Father may reveal within them their own great font of life. It is tiresome, my dear, I agree. It is the work of the field, for how much better it is when we sing songs of joy and praise and love and harmony. But the influence of the rebellion has permeated your world deeply. It is filled with fear, with anxiety, with greed, with all manner of unfortunate attitudes, beliefs and attributes. It is the role of Correcting Time to bring it back into alignment with The Father.

Those of us who understand the joy of the Father can well look at those who do not know Him as being, in your words, "a pain in the neck," but that is a judgement that is not ours to make. If we have sought to serve, that is part of the service. If we indeed love, and realize how much we are loved, then the natural, spontaneous result of that true divine love is that we love others. And that involves going down deep into the trenches, even into realms and arenas where people do not even like themselves, in order that we may show them how it is that they are loved by the infinite and personal God of us all.

Hunnah: Thank you. I was also thinking, as much as I don't like to be challenged and to be led back into an old way that I also pull others down. I have led them further into their faulty ways, but have mis-identified it. And in this conversation this evening this has been drawn to my attention, and I appreciate that. It's a surprise contribution for me and it will give me something to think about. Thank you.

TOMAS: Thank you, Hunnah, for acknowledging that these sessions are growth-promoting, thought-provoking, and soul-stimulating. Indeed, there are lessons -- perhaps I have already given some -- that help you deal, then, with the fact that you also influence others and oft times influence them, as you say, by pulling them down. This is part of the human condition.

It is part of why we are urging you to learn how to communicate with each other, how to trust each other, how to listen to each other, for it is possible for you to have a scheduled opportunity to allow your utterances to be expressed in such a way as you may express them without influencing others detrimentally. It is a matter of learning how to define your communications, and before you lament the disciplined and scholarly and structured approach that would seem to have, I call to your attention, rather, the pattern of perfection which provides all of your happiness and all of your needs. Your brothers and sisters are eager and willing to be of service to you if they know how, as are you.

There are ways and we can learn ways if you have patience. It does help me when you acknowledge that you are growing and learning in spite of your own resistance. This is a human condition, one with which we are all intimately familiar.

Hunnah: Just briefly, I am reminded of a line of scripture, "choose this day whom you shall serve, man or God", and perhaps this refresher will strengthen that ability to make a better choice.

TOMAS: Indeed. We are not overlooking here, I realize, that God is also in man.

Ann: You mentioned something about workers in the field? Working in the field?

TOMAS: Yes. You have worked alone in the field without even knowing you were in a field or what were you to do there. As you become more aware of your true self and your spiritual destiny, as you begin to learn to trust and have faith in the Father and in those of your siblings who also seek to become close to the Father and serve Him, you have gained family, you have gained spirit community.

And so then, as you go out into your arena, you have the understanding that others are encountering the same things you are encountering, and the same inability to know what to do about the situation, and the same joys of success. And so as you return, as a community of believers and kingdom builders, you can discuss among yourselves your work in the field, your concerns for those you encounter, either specifically or in general; you can discuss with each other your reactions, much as we have been doing. This is to encourage you in your outreach efforts and in your in-reach efforts to find the Father and to be of service in the field. Is that answering?

Ann: Well, you sort of answered it. Is was . .. how would we know what field we were to be working in?

TOMAS: I must smile at your literal-mindedness. The field is that arena out there that is filled with individuals who have yet to know their personal relationship with our Father. It can be in any temporal field, any economic field, it can be in the field of law or the field of packing, or in the field of education, or in the field of picking cotton. Any field is the field of the Lord. Are you understanding?

TOMAS: I wonder if Jay-Orzh would like to speak through you and say hello to us this evening. Would you be willing to allow her to make that attempt?

TOMAS: We will focus our attention on her ability to access your language center and stimulate you to speak for her. Jay-Orzh, come forth. Say hello.

JAY-ORZH: This is Jay-Orzh. I am delighted to have this opportunity to extend my greetings to this group this evening.

TOMAS: How wonderful for you to make a visit, Jay-Orzh. Your voice is music to our ears in the environment, both to the ears of the human and the divine.

TOMAS: Then you must encourage her to yield to your influence, to respond to the influence of the circuitry. There is no pressure here, Leah. You are not being tested. We are simply glad to hear our fellow and glad for your willingness to allow her, her gracious presence.

JAY-ORZH: Given the resistance, I am fully surprised. Leah wants this. Like all things new, she is reluctant to venture forth.

TOMAS: It will soon be like the highway and she will be as at home on-line with the teachers as she is at home on the highway, as confident of being guided and protected here as there.

JAY-ORZH: Perhaps these other words she desires to hear in order to venture forth. I am pleased to have been with all of you and I look forward to speaking to you again.

TOMAS: Thank you, Jay-Orzh, and thank you, Leah, for your courage and your faith.

TOMAS: It feels good to be working with spirit. It brings your best morontia self forward and therein is the happiness, the wondrous joy.

My friends, I am going to bow out. I am not going to stay any longer. Is Merium still here?

TOMAS: Merium, I would like for you to, as they say in surgery, "close for me." [Group giggle]

MERIUM: Well, I'm going to possibly put something in each of your hands. You will have a souvenir to take home that will act as a talisman for you as you go out into your daily life. Be aware of your hands this week. Look at them. Watch their obedience. Cream them. File your nails. Kiss them. Thank them. They reach into the periphery of man's experience and they are here to serve you and others.

You have the Father's hands and it is your opportunity to do and bring good will with them. You are free to caress yourself, to pat yourself on the back with these hands, to peel an orange. Today Hunnah had an opportunity to speak of gratitude and to remind someone that in spite of illness, gratitude was to be called back into the fold and put back into action. It primes the pump and it pulls you away from the distractions that are not worthy of your time and attention.

So I want you to let your hands show you how busy and how expressive they can be. When they come together, not in a stiff manner of intent, tense like prayer, but when they rest together, remember that they are partners, and that they are capable of following directions. They are a fine example of how your whole body shall be someday. They will express the will of the Father and as you feel fit, you may add to this observation by sending it into your arms, your shoulders. You can make this a very creative experience for yourself and you can do it in private, but this week it will be the hands, and we will dedicate this week to the hands that serve, hands that applaud.

Look at the hands of others. Today Hunnah was looking at the hands of a two-year-old. How very perfect they are! She sees the hands that are gnarled and that do not move well any more, but they work, and she will encourage her patients to carry this exercise that would be a good one to share with friends. It would make a wonderful conversation. There are many ways to take a conversation that is not going well and uplift it. And the person that you're talking to may be surprised or may just glide right into this new direction that you are pulling them to.

Enjoy your adventure this week. Thank you for coming. Thank you for allowing this network of celebration to take place. We cannot tell you enough how important it truly is. Good-night.

TOMAS: Good evening, my children. I am Tomas, your teacher and your friend. Your sharing this evening has been meaningful, and we are appreciative of the confiding trust that you manifest when you express your deep concerns so tenderly with each other. These concerns are indeed integral to your soul development and your mental poise. It is this type of communication that we refer to when we urge you to learn to communicate, for as you yourselves observed, having experienced a quality moment of stillness, all the trivialities of your material life fall away as insignificant, and you are then free to explore the depths of your soul and your true human concerns as to your meaning in life.

I will, of course, respond to you, and also Merium is eager to greet you and share with you, but before I launch, I would like for you to -- one more time -- look around in your native sphere this evening while the light hangs damp and serene upon Urantia, and remember the adage from your text that refers to your life en route to becoming a frog, and that is that you should learn to live each day loyally as a tadpole.

Therein is your strength and your happiness, for in observing your surroundings and the simple peace of your realm, you can appreciate your innocence, your child-like-ness, your naivete, and the many, many miles to go before you sleep in vast knowledge and wisdom. Be at peace, my precious tadpoles. Do not force yourself to leap about before you are ready.

Many things you have brought to the feast this evening. My first response is to the matter of "original sin." Original sin is a concept that has been adopted by Christianity and is one of the more serious handicaps to the flight of the spirit, for it inures its adherents to believe that they have begun in a state of shame. You are therefore a "shame-based society" and such a concept is deplorable to a loving universe, for you are not victims of your life here, you are the recipients of a wonderful gift, the gift of life! You are deity-in-the-making; you are en route to Paradise perfection. You are, even today, capable of manifesting relative perfection in your desire to serve and in your steadfast worship of those who have created you, those Trinity parents.

No, it does not reflect upon the shame of sex, but upon the concept of the knowledge of good and evil, for those who would question the word of God are, to some, a threat, particularly when they have established what will be and what will not be "the Word." Those of you who understand the Word to be the Second Source and Center, who has indeed instilled in you a desire to rise to meet Him in this spirit-gravity circuit, would recognize that it is your destiny to stand tall. It is one thing to have humility and quite another to have shame. Shame is a way of keeping you in place, in line. It is an artificial obedience imposed by those who fear the truth.

We have spent much time developing concepts that would enable you to rise above a belief in original sin. The Caligastian episode, the Lucifer Rebellion, was not your doing; the Adamic Default was not your doing; nor was the crucifixion of Christ your doing. For you to assume any sense of responsibility for those historic events is absurd. You are a new soul. You are a budding new reality, having fallen from nothing, but rather being risen in awareness and enlightenment toward your rightful destiny as a spirit being in and through the Universal Father Himself.

It goes back to self-respect. It goes back to your relationship with your Indwelling Spirit. It is necessary that you develop your own spirituality through your relationship with that God which resides within you, and not from theologies of ages past and olden prophets; and yet that concept, original sin, holds millions in bondage even today, for they fear to question, they live in fear. This is not the Father's will that His children should live in fear and feel justified in comforting themselves and surrounding themselves with yet more fear.

It is our duty and our privilege, having come from darkness into the light, to show the light to those who still languish in darkness, that the knowledge of the Lord is not an intellectual knowledge, but a living and vibrant reality, a birth-right. It is enough to keep your hands full for a long time to come. Radiate your light, children, and let it be known that the knowledge of the Lord is good and brings joy, real joy. Does that help clarify, Hunnah?

TOMAS: I will speak now somewhat regarding your concerns having to do with your understanding of your relationship with your teachers, whether they be personal teachers, group teachers or whether indeed these teachers are real at all, and as Gerdean said earlier, when you are in a place of questioning a reality, does it make sense to go to the question and ask if it has reality?

It is indeed your desire to have contact with spirit reality that has fashioned the Teaching Mission, but you err if you believe that you have managed to create us all on your own. We also would err if we were to say that we are handling it without you, for indeed this is a TeaM effort. We are co-creating. There is no question about it. Whether or not you regard it as a viable reality is a matter of personal free will choice. As it is or is not real, then you select accordingly, and that is the way it is with truth.

Hunnah: Then that really is the approach that we need to make. Anytime you start wrestling with questions, we must realize what level we are at, at the time, and it is almost an indication to rise, so to speak, to pull in, and that we are, if we're quarreling with a situation that we are off-track. It's a clue that we should pull in, and not wander.

TOMAS: I will say this about that. There is no growth without conflict, and because you are experiencing a conflict does not mean for you to throw the problem away as if it didn't exist or to shut the door on a situation that has given you cause to grapple. It is, always has been and always will be your inherent right to question every step of the way on your journey. We do not expect you to passively lie down before anything. You are dignified, free will creatures of intelligence. It is your decision-making that expands you and ennobles you and enlightens you, and so it is desirable that you indeed ponder these things as they come to you, that you may make decisions about them -- heartfelt decisions and soul-searched decisions.

Will you please recall that I prefaced my words this evening with an allusion to the tadpole, and when in your idealism you hope for the best and find you have fallen short of your ideals, rather than beat the critter to death, recognize the stature of the tadpole that has a ways to go before it becomes a frog. Your ideals are great, and you are aspiring toward your ideals, but remember, even in this process of communicating with that which is your highest aspiration, always will the ideal be slightly beyond your capability of sustained attainment, for that is the lure of perfection.

Even as you attain the height, you discover yet another hill, and lest you become tired of climbing the hills, turn your back and look at the view. Appreciate the perfect vista that has laid itself out in front of you; and after you have rested and reflected on how far you have come, on what you have mastered, what you have experienced and what you have given, then turn around with renewed strength for the next leg of the journey, the next section of ascent.

And so when you feel conflicted, yes, take it easy; do not try to force growth. Do not try to demand a resolution, but allow the growth its natural unfolding. Spirit reality is real; the spirit reality will endure, will prevail, and will persevere. That is all. We will be in recess.

JASMINE: Good evening, my lovelies. I am Jasmine, and I am very happy that you have asked for me. It is very heart-warming to be called by name. I would be happy to serve you, any of you, but I am intent upon my charge, my beloved. Hunnah, my dear, what can we do?

Hunnah: Well, first of all, thank you for coming, and I would like to give you an opportunity to address some things that you feel would benefit our relationship. I have -- apparently I have been stretched to the point where I have been reminded that I am allowed to approach you this way and I really should, and I don't have a particular new need, except that I -- well, I'll stop there. I would like to give you an opportunity to address something that you feel that I should know.

JASMINE: It is presumptuous of me to hand you information based upon "information that I feel you ought to know." I am devoted to your growth, but only insofar as you are establishing our pace. I will call to your mind the tactics of Teacher Tomas, a group teacher, who is devoted to your progress and who prods you in your development; but as a personal teacher, I am not at liberty to prod you. I companion you, and I can show you things if you are willing to see them, but it is almost as if you need to ask. I realize that you could be saying, "But Jasmine, I just did ask and you are side-stepping my request!"

Hunnah: That's all right. I kind of put you on the spot. I guess I'll address this one. I know that it is the human condition to comfort itself and that in this activity of comfort it can become a habit and then a habit can become a handicap and then we get way off course. I am concerned about putting back on weight, and my inability to manage my diet better. I gave up meat, and it seems now (it's been several years now), but I feel it's such a trial to eat properly anymore, and I carry it all the way into my work. There are solutions.

I guess what I wanted to do was approach you the way I would an altar, like the friendly priest: "This is my anxiety, therefore I know if I talk to you, by vocalizing it, somehow or other I will release this from myself and it will go away and never come back! (Until next time.)" Maybe it's an inclination to be lazy and I like to have it done for me; but I just found it to be a problem. I'm not free of it, of some of the disciplines that I feel would be beneficial . .. to my spiritual development! and . .. that bothers me. And the same thing is not having an appreciation for exercising. This is not unique, but it's in my way.

JASMINE: Your perception of the challenge lacks the appropriate stimuli that would allow it to be enticing and effective for you. You are berating yourself for a lack of discipline on one hand, when, rationally, you understand that that is a lie, for you know yourself to be extremely disciplined, perhaps even superior in certain areas entailing discipline. And so the entire concept of not being adequately disciplined is immediately pooh-poohed and disregarded; it is, therefore, erasing itself.

Now, let me address an approach which may more appeal to you, as it is more uplifted and more edified, and that has to do with the attitude of play and adventure. If you were to schedule yourself that period of time that would allow for you to take a brisk walk instead of exercise in a dank basement with artificial equipment, you would take to the task far more readily. And so it is in your attitude of how you approach the task at hand.

Of course you are not inclined to do something that is shrouded in gray. But if it were something that was luring you with pink and blue and yellow, you would have an entirely different approach to it. Think of me as your puppy dog and take me for a walk. I am in need of exercise, not you. If you serve me, you will inadvertently serve yourself by taking care of what needs to be done as a result of being of service to me. Do you see the different approach? As you approach your life in service, your needs are met and you are made well and whole in the process.

Hunnah: You have just made my day. I think you've made Gerdean's day too because you have answered -- absolutely put your finger on it. I am now thinking that you are the author and finisher of my playful self. I have talked (on the job), I have done something similar and said something, somewhere to people who have been stuck, and I will attempt to call my Golden Retriever "Jasmine" and see if I can come up with looking at and approaching it and perhaps packing a child's lunchbox. I will challenge my creative juices and that is indeed what was lacking. I have a bicycle that is far more playful than the treadmill. Color. You mentioned color. I will try to keep that in mind.

JASMINE: I would like also to address nutrition. You have heard Merium speak of "Mother's Milk," that you need to feed the baby, and I will tell you that much of your appetite is not for food, my dear, of a material nature, but for food of another nature. There are many aspects of you besides the spirit that are not properly nourished. Much of you is crying out for well-roundedness and it is materializing as a well-roundedness that you do not enjoy.

It is not so much a matter of the foods you eat, but that you are not feeding those parts of you that need nourishment. Were you to feed them, you would feel less inclined to feed your body, for your hunger would be filled. I don't recommend, necessarily, returning to a diet of meat, for that is an advancement.

JASMINE: Having set meat aside, you have done well. I would not urge you to return to meat-eating, having already accomplished that feat. Fruit is always a good choice and grapes are good friends, for you can pop grapes all day and enjoy the effect of eating without risk of putting on unwanted weight. Frozen grapes are fun, too, but again, I am not criticizing so much your foodstuffs, as your negligence in feeding those parts of yourself that would satisfy your many hungers.

Your creative appetite is great, for example, and it is seldom satiated. Your social appetites are great, but they are distorted by many of the avenues that you are involved in. The development of your soul's urge to share will help to satisfy that, for you will begin to be heard on the level that you need to be heard and when you hear with that part of you that seeks to hear and respond, that too will satisfy one of your hungers.

Hunnah: You certainly have put the light on this in a new way. I also feel as if I am stifling a lot of anger. Or perhaps frustration, because I am frequenting patterns that I would probably pass up if I didn't -- if I had my choice. There are things that I wouldn't bother doing, that take me in places where I find eating a problem, but being able to look at it will probably help make it right. Thank you for addressing an expanded awareness of appetite, because I can use it in my daily work. I think it's extremely valuable that you have included nourishment to involve mental and spiritual needs. This is something that is absolutely overlooked. I'm not sorry at all I pushed for this.

JASMINE: Not only on the exalted realms of spiritual and mental, but also nourishment in the emotional realms, the sensual realms, and the childlike realms. There is a lot involved in being a well-rounded human being. It is often that people think that if they aspire high and live on a plateau they will be happy, but it is necessary to find happiness also with your human self, your animal self -- a good massage, a good bubble bath.

To work hard in the dirt and saw wood and dig holes -- this gives you a sense of connection with the earth that satisfies a hunger in the mortal. That is something that, in your society, gets pushed by the wayside when you become "civilized" but it leaves a hunger in the heart. I only add these so that you will understand the full-bodied truth of nourishment.

Hunnah: I feel more optimistic about it, and I'm glad you've addressed it in the manner in which you have. Just being able to talk to you and admit that this bothers me is a help.

Student: I find that I have such a comfortable life and yet I find the energies and the focus of my companion very, very draining and we manage but we are working at two different paths, so to speak, and I find it . .. it's just a very common problem and I'm not feeling sorry for myself, but I know that is a drain on my energy that could be used better because I find myself wasting … spilling milk, I guess you could say.

Student: And I feel resentful that something I find so precious should be such that I should fall in these traps, and to the outsider it would look quite idealistic, but it frustrates me. May I ask you one more question … and it's a matter of counsel?

Student: You know I used to ask about judgement? Human judgement. I do know -- I would like to relate better to my daughter, and I miss the balance. I want so badly for her to have the kind of balance in her life that I feel is missing, and it causes me stress. She's fine! She's doing fine. She's doing her thing. But what troubles me is, probably, trying to make somebody over to the way that you think they should be, and I would like to be the best I can for her and allow myself to accept her and her value system and her way of doing things.

JASMINE: I have words to say regarding this situation that you just mentioned as well as the previous situation regarding your relationship with your husband that you did not ask for commentary about.

JASMINE: They are both the same, in this: the . .. well, earlier you used the phrase "collective consciousness." The collective consciousness of your civilization has endowed you with roles that you play. This is the collective consciousness of marriage, if you will, and you and your husband are both affected by what your prescribed roles are supposed to be; and your daughter also is under that same umbrella in terms of her relationship with her husband. There are roles that are played. They are learned from their parents and reinforced by society.

It is a part of the maintenance of civilization that men and women have the roles to play, but it is highly detrimental to spirit -- even the spirit of the individuals -- when they take those roles so seriously that they lose themselves in the role that they play [in order] to satisfy society's expectations and their feeling of marital obligation. This, if not checked, will make a mockery of the partnership of men and women.

And this is why it is a concern to you in your marriage and why, perhaps, it is that you feel, in some respects, that you do not know your daughter, for you can see that she is very adeptly playing the role of wife and mother and Mrs. America, very much as you have done in your career with Abram, but it precludes the stripped-down bottom-line reality of your true relationship with these people: (1) that Abram is your Brother, and that relationship will far outlive the spousal relationship that you share with him; and (2) that the stripped-down bottom-line relationship between you and your daughter is that you are Sisters, and that relationship will last throughout eternity, and that is wherein you feel a frustration.

Only as they understand their own poverty in the role they play and lean toward the spirit reality within themselves will they feel free to share their spirit reality with your spirit reality. But, my dear, if you continue to overextend to them your role of wife and/or mother in lieu of your own genuine self, then you will be contributing to the estrangement that is inherent in anyone who plays a role rather than relying upon the reality of truth to bridge these gaps.

Student: Boy, that was a good one. I hope that Gerdean will be able to type this up but leave off the identity, because I think that anyone could benefit from this talk. I agree, absolutely. I get caught up in the role-playing, and that extends itself into my son -- into all my avenues! If we can give up that role-playing, how liberating it would be.

JASMINE: You have been conditioned by your society to grow up to be a wife and mother, and you accomplished that; and you are still a wife and mother. But you can relinquish much of the disciplines that were necessary in that early on. You have come into your own. You have raised your children and your husband is a man among men. Of course you are still there for these people. They are your mortal family and you will always have a place for them as wife and mother, but you are your own person, and it is that person that is hungry for its own existence. It is that part of you that wants to be nourished appropriately … and to take her teacher for a walk.

Student: Well, this has been very enriching. I really appreciate it. I can hardly wait to experiment. Years ago in my journal I resigned my worldly title in my work, because I had this revelation that I couldn't do anything about all the problems that I was dealing with, that I could only go to be myself and meet with them, to help them manage their lives. It was a streamlined new definition for me. So in a sense I can apply this to myself as a wife and mother -- and as a T/R or whatever has to do with having a label on it. I can release it to spirit and step back and see what happens.

It's going to be, hopefully, not overrun, because I have to remember that the person I'm with has their definition of who I am and what role I'm playing, and when they act like they expect me to be that role, it's a call to return to it. It's going to take some . .. poise, and understanding.

TOMAS: I am glad to be back, although I have not been away. How peculiar these amenities are that you encumber yourself with. I heard a question, Ann.

PHILOMENA: Greetings. I am startled! I came on-line and a motor started. I thought I had walked into the wrong room! I am unaccustomed yet to this experience of manifesting a part of me in and through another. I am, even so, glad to have the experience. I am looking forward to being more intimate with you, my child, so that we can proceed in our communications one-on-one. Not that I would not enjoy more of these kinds of exposures, but because we could do this without turning on any engines. I do not mean to appear impatient. I am glad you have sought my presence. I am coming very close to you, and embracing you.

I hope you appreciate the challenge that it presents for me to convey this to you in a meaningful fashion. I am embracing you all the time, but you are not aware, and so, in order to make you aware of my constant presence, I will tell you that I am embracing you, so that perhaps you can recognize my embrace, and as you become familiar with my embrace, you will be able to perceive it when you and I are far away from here and this energy configuration.

And so I say to you: experience my energy patterns in company with yours [as] if you were to smell my scent, take it in, and recognize the aroma of my friendship in your everyday realm; hear my musical notes in your ears; recognize my tone and timbre; hear the music that I sing to your soul, harmonizing with you in our friendship. I embrace you, all of you. I adore your Indwelling Adjuster and your potential. I am empathetic with your personal life experiences. I have sorrowed in your sorrow and rejoiced in your joy. I have stumbled when you have fallen and I have helped you up when you have risen.

I am pleased to be your close associate and guide. There is nothing that you cannot share with me. There is no music that you can make that would not be harmonious to my ears; and there is no aroma that you can give off that would not be a delightful fragrance to me, for I love you that deeply and care for you that sincerely. And so, feel my embrace. [Tape ended]

TOMAS: Good evening, my friends. I am Tomas, your host. A different greeting, yes. Be not alarmed; I am still your friend.

I thought to introduce myself differently to you this evening to indicate to you the various aspects that personalities have inherent in them. If you come to know each other only in one capacity, you deprive yourself then of anticipating other hues and points of view. It limits also the expression. If I am to always approach you as primarily your teacher, you will begin to look upon me as studious and methodical. I am therefore also your friend, and this evening I tell you I am your host.

Now, my gracious guests, I have prepared for you a tidbit or two for your pleasure. I have to say I am not the chef! I did not create the hors d'oeuvres; I am only serving it to you. I will talk about serving.

I am reminded, as no doubt you are also, of our Father/Brother Michael who, when he was a mortal, washed the feet of his apostles, and so this evening, symbolically speaking, I would wash your feet. How shall I wash your feet? How shall I serve you from this vantage point when you are finite and I am not? I have to honor your feet. I have to serve you in a way that you can appreciate that I am intending to, and in my essence, am, indeed, providing you a service.

Did it truly matter whether the feet of the apostles were dusty? Evidently not for they sat at their places at the table and did not care whether their feet were dusty or not, for their interests were elsewhere at the time. But if I attend to you in such a way as you feel that you have been served, that you have been tended to, that you have been honored, that you have been paid note of in a loving way, then you have recognized the service.

Your discourses this evening were most entertaining [Group chuckle], and I will say that in hearing each other, listening with ears to hear, you are being of service. You are washing the feet of your fellows.

It is not the custom in your society to wash feet. It is the custom in your society, rather, to share, to break bread, and many other things, and they are indeed, all of these, a service in-as-much as you have extended yourself in loving kindness; you have shown yourself friendly; you have honored the mortal by acknowledging their presence. By sharing their interests, by drawing them out you indicate your concern for their welfare, and your interest in their interests. This is a service that is performed in your culture, and if you would emulate the Master, you would also honor the Thought Adjuster that indwells the human being that also craves acknowledgement and seeks expression.

The human races are greatly admixed and the cultures are blended, by and large, and acceptable to one another, by and large, as if you were all tourists on the home sphere, acknowledging how it is done in other cultures. There are cultures where it would be dastardly to show the bottoms of your feet; to expose the bottom of your feet would be a tremendous insult. There are cultures that condone belching as an indication of satisfaction for the food served, whereas other cultures would regard it as rude.

And so in the human culture there are differences, but if in the expression of your good will toward your fellow men you also include and acknowledge the appearance of an actuality of their indwelling God Fragment, their divinity aspect, the chances of offending the human being are greatly lessened for you honor the true person when you honor their indwelling God fragment. You honor their dignity, their faith son status.

Getting to know you, indeed. I am still getting to know Merium. And as I adjust to her ways and she adjusts to mine, I discover my own limitations. Once I have acknowledged that I have looked with limitation, I am then free to accept the liberating fellowship she provides. This is a passage into fuller appreciation of relationship. Pausing here, I sense Merium' s presence in line to speak. Hunnah?

MERIUM: Good evening. Tomas is so genteel and poised this evening. He must have gotten down from behind his pulpit to walk among you. I want you to know that we can "hang out" too. You have all been adjusting to and rallying to the summer's pleasures and you manage to learn lessons and make observations in spite of the change of your routines and it is new adjustment that requires tolerance on your part. As Gerdean finds, people are not coming in out of the rain to read books.

What can I do for you this evening? There was a great deal of chatter among you earlier. Shall I take my three-minute turn at sharing and I will have your undivided attention . ..

Leah: And not only that, Hunnah said she would like to interview people as a way of finding out what's going on.

MERIUM: Let me think of how I can explain this. It is as if I have always been. It is as if I have always been as enlightened as I am. I suppose you could say a consistency is about me. It is hard to talk to you within my own personality; it would be my preference (my hostess here this evening is squirming a little bit)...

Gerdean read my talk of last week about the lightness that I am and I am comfortable with saying this. And there is no "job" involved in what I do; I am simply myself, and wherever I am I take that lightness with me and it blends with the activity at hand.

I would like to expand this evening and go through Gerdean and have you ask that question again. Would that be all right? [Silence] Is it all right with you?

Leah: Merium, several times Hunnah has said she would like to interview you and we would like to know about you, what your functions are, where you hang out, what you do, and can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

MERIUM: I can. I can familiarize you somewhat with my lifestyle. I have -- as I have indicated before -- great joy in being, and I am not limited by the mortal constraints such as you are and so I have great freedom of being. It is a chore for me to translate my reality into terms that you can appreciate, can comprehend, but it is not a tiresome chore. It is merely an adaptation that I do not have to make when I deal with those of us in the spirit realm, and so in my normal environment I am quite free and quite light, as you might well imagine.

In order for you to understand my existence here, I would have to draw analogies that you could understand, and immediately it would reduce the truth to a finite comprehension. I will say there is certain paper work that is necessary. There are reports. And you can appreciate what that means, but I do not have a secretary or a filing cabinet. For me to file a report is simply to convey an essence of value to an appropriate seraphim and it is recorded. It does not take long at all, but it is something that is done often -- many, many, many, many times a day. You have heard it said that there are notations in the archives as to your decisions and your behaviors and your interactions and so forth, and many of these are my purview.

MERIUM: Purview. I did not want to use the word "job" because I do not want to connote to you that I find my work tedious, and many mortals find their work, their job, tedious. To do that would be to reduce my joy in living to your understanding of work. For me, work is a radiant experience. I worship the work that I do for it is of The Father. That concept alone is, I perceive, beyond your comprehension, but I convey it because it is true and it is part of what constitutes me.

Now there are other things that I do and that we do that you will appreciate and, again, in your terms, we have many staff meetings. We have many, many, many conversations regarding you and your lives. We converse on occasion with the angels and have staff meetings with them. We also work with the midwayers who work most closely with you. There are many personalities that we work with, associate with, on a regular basis. These terms you can find in your text and for the most part they are merely terms, but for me they are vibrant and meaningful experiences. They are contacts of utmost friendliness and happiness.

There is a lot of humor in our realm. We laugh often. We have, if we were human, a warble in our voice from constraining the song of joy that comes from our very being. In our association in the spirit realms and on the morontia realms, the laughter and the music are closely entwined. As you perceive it, in the abstract, laughter IS music.

We spend some time at rest. We become depleted, but we are quickly revived. We revive ourselves much in our worship, from where we receive our greatest sustenance. Indeed, we hunger for time alone with God, and much time is provided us for that joy, that very necessary joy. We have celebrations. These are similar to your festivals. They are not constant, for our joy is constant. Our celebrations are in honor of certain events, events that you perhaps cannot fully appreciate except as they relate to you. You yourselves are cause for celebration on occasion, but you are not a constant party, however. That was a joke. [Group giggle]

Even so, there are moments in your enlightenment, in your upward ascent, that strike chords of harmony that are so vibrant and real as to call forth a true celebration. These range in import and we do rejoice with you, even in your small victories. Your large victories are celebrated even by The Father. I have given you an idea of how I spend my time. Are there other and related questions?

Hunnah: As I listen to you talk about your realm, I'm aware of a lack of or an absence of conflict. It is as if you were all in agreement, and it makes me long to be in such a happy sphere, even though I am not unhappy! You seem to be in such agreement with time.

MERIUM: It will be attained. But, my dear, it is something that we have worked for, we have aspired for and have attained. Every one of my associates on this side has, in large part, experienced confusion and travail. That is, all of my fellow teachers. But we have grown and attained a level of appreciation such as you would compare perhaps to fine dining, fine music, fine theater. We have stumbled and lived in those realms that were less, and we loved them less for being there, but we graduated, you see, a little bit at a time, and the reward is indeed increased grace, increased harmony, increased fraternity.

If we had not sought these things, we would have reverted and stayed in the darkness. It is a natural result of growth, and the wonderful thing is, you see, The Father has designed you to grow, to grow in the spirit, that you may be harmonious, even here and now with each other.

It is a wondrous arena that I live in and work in, yes. It is a glorious experience, but so is yours! Your associates are also sensitive and tenderhearted. They also respond to the caresses of the spiritual harp. Their souls are touched by kindness and tenderhearted affection. Your voice has the power to be the music that soothes the savage beast, that lulls the -- (it's a word that starts with "a" --aggressive, uh,...

MERIUM: ... antagonistic. Thank you.) -- The antagonistic nature of the human animal. This is a level indeed of your joy here, to bring about your own realm of perfection, to contribute to the extension of that perfection into your finite realm by calling upon the forces of light that indwell your friends and neighbors.

There are times on Urantia when we have seen literally glowing, illuminated pockets of perfection, of human beings congregated to praise and adore the greater reality. Whether they are in the Teaching Mission or not, those children of God who seek the Source bring great light, great tidings of joy to their environment, to their sphere of influence.

And so do not "long" overmuch for the distant days of the future, but long instead for the moment that you, perchance, may serve the Master in your brethren and wash their feet, symbolically or, as you waded on the shore, even literally. Bringing refreshment to the soul is the ticket. Washing the dust of the byways away in the dew-like freshness of enlightenment and acceptance and peace is the Way.

Hunnah: I can appreciate the metaphor. It's been very helpful. I never thought of listening as a service in the sense that it was refreshment in that way. We protect our feet these days, and we protect our conversations.

MERIUM: It is armor against the battle of life, but you are now engaged in the good fight of faith. It is part of the process of making it new, allowing yourself to trust and open your heart to love. Granted, you may stub your toe on occasion, but you will learn to walk softly. I will entertain one more question if there is another regarding my lifestyle.

Hunnah: There doesn't seem to be any form indicated, in the sense of abode, or being in a particular structure.

MERIUM: I am not surprised you asked, and I will give you a response that I do indeed have a dwelling place. There are, even here, spheres wherein we reside. There are worlds created for all the children of time and space, including those of us in the morontia form, and even in the spirit. They are not the finite cities and domiciles of your material existence, but they are very real and they accommodate us very well. We have homes. Indeed, cities.

Now, I am here on assignment, as are many other teachers, and so to use a very crude analogy, we have our motor homes parked out back in the campground. Our homes are often Salvington or other spheres, but we are very well provided for here. (I hope I have not painted a picture of a KOA Campground that will be burned in your brain forever as our home away from home, for that is not true; it is quite accommodating and expansive.) Yes.

MERIUM: I am glad to tickle your imagination, for if I could not tickle your imagination, what kind of friend would I be? That is one of the delights of friendship, is that we mutually stimulate each other, and so I appreciate our on-going friendship, our deepening rapport.

It is truly wonderful to be assigned to this neighborhood and participate in the incredible unfolding of events taking place. Such a busy area! I am personally anticipating and eagerly looking forward to a few get-togethers in the more local arena having to do with Michael's birthday party which you are so loyally developing as a new opportunity to renew your vows of commitment to follow Him. The resultant celebratory and thankful atmosphere is a joy to us and a wonder to behold, not to mention the delight it is to partake of and contribute to, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming season.

It is wonderful to get to know you better and I will now return this platform to my colleague Tomas and thank you all for indulging me and being curious about me and my life. I am happy to convey to you these things that I am given to experience. Tomas, you may resume your pulpit.

TOMAS: I am ensconced in my robes and, as I formerly advised, slouched over the chair with this lectern at hand. I am comfortable, in spite of my authority, and even though I testify to being a host this evening, I am the kind of host who will sit on a lounge chair by the pool and watch you baptize yourself in refreshment of spirit association, baptize yourself in the living waters. Are there other matters for discourse this evening, my friends?

My thanks to you for your companionship and my thanks to Merium for her blessed contribution to our community. It is a marvelous experience indeed, this expansion of community, for how wonderful it is to enjoy the expanded consciousness brought on by the sharing with others, and so this week, my friends, go forth and share. Farewell.

TOMAS: Merium and I are here as well as many of your other celestial friends who frequent your gatherings and who frequent your independent lives. We enjoy these occasions of coming together as you do, and we enjoyed this evening prompting you by way of your mechanical contrivance, your candle. It is a way of making contact, indeed, even though you wisely scepticise at its effectiveness, at its existence.

How convoluted that was! I am saying: you are right to question the validity of such a contrivance and we encourage you to continue to question all facets of your path -- not The Father Himself, of course, but -- all things that fall short of ultimate perfection, for therein you are not acting blindly but are acting consciously. You are making decisions that contribute to your growth.

We heard you discussing earlier the supposed phenomenon of the candles and equating the lighting up of them to the superstitious belief of the woman who sought to touch the hem of His garment, and even her superstition, in believing that the mere texture of fabric could heal her, is much like your seeking God-consciousness through a mechanical device such as a lit candle. But, as you testified, it is the living reality of your spirit life that counts, your living faith not in the candles, but in the concept of God that lies behind your belief, the faith that there is a celestial host of personalities who would speak with you if you were but aware of them.

And so we understand your quandary and encourage your investigation into any and all things that will bring you closer to God, that will increase your appreciation for truth, beauty and goodness, that will help you to find compassion for your fellow believers, that will help you to understand the nature of the vast creations of time and space.

That could almost be construed as a blanket invitation to investigate any number of even sordid spiritualist behaviors, and I tell you that it is not forbidden to investigate the runes, the I Ching, astrology, numerology, kinetic cameras, and so on, for although they are not divine revelation, they are interesting scaffolding and they do provide avenues of discourse and opportunity for sharing relative realities en route to greater realities.

How I managed to go down this path, I am not certain; but it seems an appropriate commentary under the circumstances; it is part of the understanding that this period of time in your history is filled with all manner of investigations, and investigations are not discouraged for they lead to growth.

As you discover the merits, the relative value, and the falsehood of those things which you investigate, you can then assimilate or discard them intelligently and willingly; you can relinquish them, then, for those truths which have more lasting value, that hold more substance; and who is to say, in an individual's development, what has merit and what does not?

Even those of us who have attained this level of operation in the spirit realm have experienced many mysteries and would not have known how to choose but for our engrossed investigation of these that were placed in our path. Having experienced them, having appreciated them for their relative worth, we can also appreciate how and why others would stop to linger upon a bright and shiny bauble that held not lasting value but provided temporary joy and beauty in the moment.

There are other investigations that take place, even into the spirit realms, one of which is a discussion among some of us teachers having to do with how to proceed in the various groups and with the individuals comprising the flock of the Teaching Mission. There are those who would have us be more firm and more commanding, while there are others who would molly-coddle affectionately and prevail upon the mercy and tenderness aspects of truth and divinity to foster the understanding of a loving universe.

These are some of the things that we discuss in our "staff meetings" and as there is no 100% sure way to deal with everyone except through an interpretation of love, we are then provided with a similar quandary to those who likewise question the relative merits of these other and many growth hurdles that have been laid in your path.

I would like to ask you and openly solicit your in-put, and it is not required that you come forth with an enlightened and lengthy dissertation upon request, but how do you feel about the Teaching Mission and your involvement in it? How do you feel the teachers would best bring about that which we hope to bring about? Give me your in-put, your contribution in terms of where we are headed.

How would you like to see us progress? Do you feel that we are meeting your needs? Your expectations? Do you feel that we are a waste of time? Do you feel that we are pushing you too hard or that you would like to go further? Do you feel anything at all? I open this to you at large and I will allow you, among yourselves, to respond, understanding that it would be appreciated if one individual only spoke at one time.

Hunnah: It's as if you were reading my mind. I was lying in bed last night just wondering where this was going. In the human world, it is not uncommon for a group like this to have a three-year cycle. I remember when I was in the Casey group it was a three-year cycle and the attendance wavered and I was one of the last ones to stay with it, and I don't say that because I'm any better for it, but because I wasn't catching on that it was over.

And I don't bring that up as a first observation, but how can we be something we are not? I was talking with a woman at work today about her spirit; she was alert and interested in what I was saying, but I could not take her where she could not go, and I was in a time frame where it was not my job to make that visit into a workshop. It's as if we were all given an eyedropper and a small bottle and told that we could go around and put a drop here and a drop there and then someday something would come of it.

It bothers me that I can't dialog with you the way I do when I'm not transmitting, like I am now. I would like to have that type of bantering and listening and camaraderie with you all the time. I went to my computer and sat down and it was another failure, so I left and I thought, "Well, so be it." I cannot say that I am any more stuck than my last meditation. I had a teacher that used to say I'm no better than my last meditation, and I have lived with that suggestion long enough now to find out that it was absolutely accurate in regard to having a meaningful day.

I don't know that I'm answering your questions, but … I have not met anyone who was willing to come into a "Urantia group" but I probably could put together something where people would simply find that they communicated and that the subject matter would rise to a plane better than everyday conversations, and there would be a receptivity. I really don't know what to tell you, but I do know that I've been having a hard time for about three months, and my mental self tells me it's because "I'm processing" -- whatever that means -- but I feel compassion for you because your students can't go any faster than they do, it seems. I'll stop. You can comment.

TOMAS: I am going to withhold comment. However, I would like to hear also from Leah and from Ann. (Long pause) If you have nothing to say, that is all right.

Leah: Well, the question was asked, do you feel we're wasting our time. Obviously we wouldn't be here . .. Maybe that isn't . .. No! I find this inspiring to reflect upon -- things in my life, and I suppose in other people's lives -- not that I should be dwelling on theirs so much. The statement's been made -- and the teaching, I find it very helpful -- but I always wondered if we were going to do some kind of a project, like a community thing or, I don't know what particularly.

I thought perhaps . .. one of the other groups had done something like adopting a highway and picking up trash and something like that to help the environment in the sense of spirituality. I perceive that we'll do something but I don't know what it is particularly, other than to take our essence among people and . ..

I don't really understand all that energy stuff, but it is my understanding that when you take the time to meditate and to reflect on these things, that it does affect other people. For myself I have a joke that I think my ministry is smiling. I like to smile at people. And I like to listen to them, too. I take it from you, Tomas, that those things are important. I know there's so much more, but that just comes to my mind at the moment.

TOMAS: Thank you, Leah. Ann? I know that you have not been long with this community, but you have been a vital part in the brief time that you have been among us. Tell me, has your association with the teachers been helpful to you? Do you feel that we are contributing to your life?

Ann: Yes, I do. Many times I go back and I reflect on the teachings and how it applies to my life at the time and how it could apply in past situations, and it's been helpful for me. And as far as going anywhere with it, I haven't been around long enough to be at that point to need to move on somewhere else. This seems to be enough for me right now.

TOMAS: Thank you, my child. I would also like to hear from Gerdean if she is willing to make some remarks.

Gerdean: When have I not liked making remarks? Thank you, Tomas, for the opportunity to give in-put. I very much appreciate your work, your dedication. I appreciate your authority and I appreciate Merium's gentleness. I appreciate all the teachers that I've ever learned from, and like Hunnah, I have compassion for you teachers, figuring that it must sometimes be frustrating to have…

Well, it's like I wrote in my journal yesterday: "If you've lived all your life in a cave, how can you describe the sunshine?" And I feel as if you have lived in the sunshine and we are in this cave and we can see the sun shining. We're looking at the door and we can see that the sun is shining out there, but it's altogether different than standing out there basking in it like you do. I'm just glad that the sun is shining!

I don't know -- well, I'm sure that every proponent of the Teaching Mission wonders where we're going with it. I do realize how much I have grown and how much my faith has grown, how much my soul has grown. I know that I am no longer alone -- That is a very, very significant piece of reality in my life. Even when my mortal peers are not flanking me, I know that you are. Even when I doubt your existence, I know that what you represent is true.

I hope you don't go away. Even though it's a responsibility and sometimes it's wearisome to try to keep up with the spiritual growth that you seem to think I'm capable of, I also know what happens when I stagnate and fall back into the comfort of the darkness, so I appreciate your prodding, and I also appreciate Merium's molly-coddling and tenderness. However it is that your personalities opt to manifest is fine with me.

I hope you aren't having any arguments in the spirit realms about what to do with us. And even saying that, of course, I bring you down to our level, but you did say, not long ago, that sibling rivalries were possible. If you guys are arguing up there on our behalf, knock it off! We're doing fine. You're doing fine. And to quote you, "All is well". So those are my comments.

Hunnah: I would like to add a P.S. There is an expression that "thank you" with someone you live with is understood? That you don't go around with every statement and say "thank you"? Well, I must say "thank you" and I said "thank you" to my mother because I feel as if one of the greatest gifts that I have received in my human experience is seeing the transformation of my mother's personality, of her fulfillment, of her attitude, of her quality of life, and she is having some tests done today and it -- she was reassured by her teacher that she was in a sense living in her, for want of a description, in her morontia energies.

And my mother has done exactly what the highers, our friends, have wanted all people in her age group to be able to do, is to bask and indulge in this dialog and this opportunity to learn and she is starting to write poetry and I'm so thrilled that she is not in Illinois. I have the privilege of being in close proximity of her and seeing the fruitage of this movement in her, and it is an unlikely area, to see it in a person in her age group, so that . ..

I am extremely grateful, and I am aware of the companionship that's here, but I was in bed last night and I still doubt that I believe! I doubt the quality of my belief in Christ Michael. I doubt the quality of my acceptance of your service.

I went to the chiropractor and I put my arm out and he said "Do you believe in chiropractic?" and my arm went down and we both laughed and he said, "Of course you're having troubles, because you are serving two masters!" and when you embrace a new teaching, there is a part of you that is still married to the old teaching and . .. her description of the light in the cave was excellent . . . because what you do is you go out, like a cat, and you get warm in the sun and you feel good for awhile and then you go back in and you go to the accustomed environment, so apparently what's happening is we're just responding the way people do at our level.

I really thought, for myself, that I would be able to show you more fruitage, but it's apparently happening in an area where I'm incapable of judging, which is probably very good. It's sort of nice that you asked us this. The whole thing just boggles my mind. Oftentimes I can't believe that I'm in the group, but I do respect it, but I don't get to share it with anybody else but us for fear of being a nut in their eyes. I don't want to hurt the quality of what we have by exposing it inappropriately. Thank you.

TOMAS: Thank you, my daughter. Thank you all for your soulful expressions and your wholehearted response to my question. Your testimonies have given us courage. You have heard it said that we are here for the long haul, and so we are, but like you, it is good to hear that you are loved and appreciated, not only on a cursory level but on a meaningful level. We are teachers who have come to teach you to be teachers.

Earlier Hunnah remarked about instigating an environment in your arena which lent itself well to a natural proclamation of truth, and this is the fruitage of your soul's progress, that you would allow for such an environment of Light and Life to prevail, indeed, to help to orchestrate, through the ministrations of the Infinite Spirit, to create the kind of environment that would enable spirit to go from potential to actual, and to thus bring about a glimpse more of Light and Life on Urantia. Another glimmering of truth to add to the Supreme.

The Correcting Time will be on-going for many years, but there are other thrusts involved. It is not now nor has it ever been our intention to keep you churned up inside yourselves trying to purify your own soul, but to go forth in your childlike faith and teach what you have learned; even if on occasion what you teach is not ultimate truth, if you teach in good faith. It will be brought home, whether it is truth or not, and you can grow accordingly.

But there are long-range goals of the Teaching Mission that see past your own correcting, and even past the correcting of the planetary conditions as outlined before, in setting it in alignment with where it would be had it not been retarded by the Lucifer rebellion and the Adamic default. The other reasons involve reaching toward Light and Life, and although it is a way off, it is the new frontier, and you pioneers in the spirit are forging the way through the material mind of the age into the morontial values of the future.

We are preparing the way for the Trinity Teacher Sons, which will surely arrive. Your minds are being prepared for greater teachers than we [are]. Also, this process of communication, besides reassuring you, to some extent, that you are not alone in the universe, is a method of familiarizing you with your own mind sufficiently that you know the difference between your voice and the voice of your Thought Adjuster. In due course, as you evolve, as you become aligned with His will, you will have better communications.

This practice of speaking with your personal teachers and the group teachers, and indeed Michael and other personalities, can give you a conscious awareness, a practice, of the various and sundry personalities that exist throughout your cosmic neighborhood and can contact you in your mind through the circuitry. This friendly universe opens the door for your closer betrothal and communication with your indwelling God fragment.

As you allow yourself to step aside for greater reality, knowing in your heart that it is of The Father, you ultimately will be able to have contact and speak directly with the Father that dwells within you.

There are long-range goals for the Teaching Mission. This is not a card party. It is not a human interest situation that we will outgrow and that will become passe as greater truths come into being, for you, my students, are the greater truths that are coming into being. You are the progeny of the teachers of the Revelation; you work under the banner of Michael, the Creator of this Universe; you are the vanguard to the new age. You are greater than the new age.

Do not grow weary, do not fall short of your own expectations. We are grateful to you. We are very grateful to your application, to your efforts, your growth, your faith, your struggles, even for your doubts and for your fears. We are grateful to you that you are, and in that we are grateful for your very existence, we truly nurture you and hold you to our heart in the most loving embrace.

God and man need each other. This is a relationship that will last throughout eternity, that will expand and grow and continue to plant seeds of satisfaction in your soul that you can plant seeds and bring in the harvest for The Father tomorrow.

I have had my work cut out for me this evening and I feel like I earned my keep. I thank you for your loyalty and your love. I also thank my co-workers in the spirit realm, and particularly Merium for her valuable assistance. All of you, continue. You're doing well. I will see you soon. Farewell.

[This session was extended by Merium, working with Hunnah on transmitting skills, and a visitor, a social architect.]

MERIUM: Hello everybody. I am Merium. How good to be here with you. Lighten up, children! [Clapping hands loudly] [Group laughter] Tomas has put us all to sleep. I see he has been going on in that monotone of his, mesmerizing us all. I have come to wake us up and dance. Shall we dance?

Hunnah: Sounds good. What would you like us to do, Merium? And if you did allow us to do something in particular, would we be able to carry it out?

MERIUM: Oh, you picked the right one to ask, for I am easy. I am willing to do it with you but I don't want it to be my idea. I would be happy to pick up litter off the highway, but I'm afraid you would not see much help on my part for I could only dance and be your cheering section. I don't believe you meant "What shall we do?" was your way of asking "What shall we do as a group project?"

MERIUM: We shall persevere, my dear. I am going to discuss something. I was going to discuss with you, in fact, Hunnah, and Leah, if you are intrigued as Jay-Orzh is, and even Annie here is not too young to begin to investigate her very capable realms of mental circuitry. I am here to provide a pep talk in terms of your transmitting experiences. Hunnah, I heard you earlier ask for definitive clues as to who was speaking.

Hunnah: Yes, indeed. I would really like that because I feel they deserve to be acknowledged and I have trepidation of Hunnah assuming identity.

MERIUM: I appreciate that. You are not alone in your concern. There are others who have the same anxiety, and it enables them to have a delightful and intimate and productive contact with one or two entities that they are sure about, but it also conveniently allows them to not jump in with both feet where they may have to deal with personalities who have been here-to-fore unidentified.

I want you to know how courageous we think you are in the experiences you have been undergoing. You truly jumped off the diving board without an inner-tube in getting on-line and on paper and in the mail so rapidly. Most folk are much more reticent to broadcast, and that you now begin to waver in your resolve is no surprise. It is a surprise that it didn't happen months ago. But, now that you are in the swim and lest you drown or head for the shore, let me help you, if I can.

I am saying "if I can" because it is not in my mind that it takes place. It's your mind, and so to some extent I will need to draw upon the experiences of others whose mind I have used, Gerdean here being one and I have spoken through others but none here, so let me ask you, if you will reflect on your initial contact which was, I believe, with your personal teacher Jasmine. Is that correct?

Hunnah: I was under the impression that my first successful transmission was you. I don't remember. I talked to Jasmine through Gerdean and I found that very, very, very satisfying.

MERIUM: I will help you clarify your own thinking. You transmitted Jasmine at your mother's.

Hunnah: I believe I did. And I brought her through yesterday. And what I would really like, personally, I would like to be able to talk with her the way I talk with her when Gerdean is there for me, but there are things that I don't want to say to Jasmine with Gerdean present, just as she would prefer her privy counsel to be with . ..

MERIUM: You have introduced another problem, but let me get back to the first one.

MERIUM: The one that we are discussing first is that you are unsure of whose presence you sense and whose words you need to transmit.

MERIUM: I am asking you to review in your mind the personality and the experience of transmitting your personal teacher Jasmine and stop and slow down and remember and think and feel for a moment how it is that Jasmine makes her presence known to you, how it is that you recognize her, and then respond to it. Where, within your being, does she cue you that she is there?

Hunnah: I would have to start paying attention again because I just sort of go ahead and hope for the best.

MERIUM: I will ask you to begin at the beginning in that context, then, and when you sense Jasmine, ascertain what her cue is for you, for I know that there is some kind of communication that goes on between she and thee in order for it to come about. How it is that it transpires is already established, and once you understand how Jasmine contacts you, then you will be able to identify that method. Any other personality making contact with you will be a modification of that which you have with Jasmine. It will not be the same, for it is a different personality.

Therefore when I approach you, I Merium, I will not use the same door to your mind that Jasmine uses, but perhaps the one adjoining, or perhaps the one across the hall. You need to determine one door from the other, as to how it is that contact is made. This will be an exercise for you. Agreed?

Hunnah: Am I allowed to initiate visualization with this? In the sense that we had the candles here tonight -- it was a treat -- but in my own mind's eye, if I had a pattern that I saw in my head and it was a light to one direction or the other, it would be like saying that someone was coming through that door.

MERIUM: I will not deny that possibility, no, but I would caution you only one thing and that is when the teachers opt to use your vocal chords, do not put your words in their mouth. Do you see what I am saying?

Hunnah: What you are saying is that I will not participate. I am simply . ..

MERIUM: Availing yourself. You are availing yourself. You are attitudinally cooperative.

Hunnah: Could we use this opportunity right now to demonstrate such a situation by having someone available to me so that I might pay attention better?

MERIUM: Yes. Let me suggest, then, that your personal teacher Jasmine make contact with you. I will stay here with Gerdean and observe and communicate with you. Now, go into your stillness, into your conditioning that tells you that you are on-line. And when you are there, and when you have made yourself very small, indicate to me that you are in your center. (Pause)

MERIUM: You are on-line. You are in the Father's presence. Allow, now, all of your sensitivity to observe what happens as Jasmine makes her approach. Feel the internal and the metabolic and the electro-chemical and the morontial energies. Have you begun to sense an "otherness"?

Hunnah: It is very fine, in the sense that is almost indistinguishably pleasant.

MERIUM: It stands to reason that you have invited Jasmine into your language center to share her presence with those who would listen. You may now be assured that as your availability is utilized by the teacher you will be in accord, as long as you allow her to select the pace, the words, the message, the entire journey. I would, for the record -- and we all would --thoroughly love to hear Jasmine greet us at this point. Jasmine, my dear sister, how are you?

Hunnah: Jasmine is here, and she is also amused to have this opportunity to solo.

JASMINE: I feel as if we were at the ballet and we are having a rehearsal and I am on stage.

JASMINE: Ballet, for Hunnah, was not a thrilling success. She has terrible trauma regarding her ballet experience, but she would say she has a great appreciation of the uniqueness of the body to respond to its discipline and allows herself to feel not such a failure.

MERIUM: Remind her, Jasmine, that The Father and The Mother are re-educating her in a new ballet. This time the instructors are divine teachers and she is lightness of being personified.

JASMINE: I could tell on Hunnah because I live with her intimate visualizations and recall, and it was just today that she was enjoying the respect for partnership. And we have had this in our lessons! And she was thinking about the will of God, and since I was in on this with her, I will share it with you a little bit, about the head and the heart being dancing partners, that the secret of the success of that action depended on the will seat in her and others, and that when the will seat is in agreement with the head and the heart, there can be a successful plurality.

She was also thinking of Kahlil Gibran and how man could evolve into unique individuality and yet remain the perfect harmonious partner of another because that would also be within their state of unique balance, and therefore they would have indeed an enjoyable dance, one being sensitive to the other. And in a sense, this is what she is going to experience now -- that we are indeed partners in this dialog, and that she will be able to dance with me and the will, will be open, the avenue of communication.

It is not unlike the two hemispheres of the brain and having free access and play in the electrical impulses between the hemispheres, so this is the intimate relationship that she will experience with me, and has in the past, only we are bringing it out in a more graphic manner, and I am glad to have this opportunity to snitch from her, her repertoire of descriptive delicacies that she happens to have, and to be allowed to share them this evening in a metaphor such as this appropriate exercise.

I think that we have proven the point here, that someplace out there is a bound up Hunnah, that she is more willing to have less rope around her. How do you think it's gone, Merium?

JASMINE: Well, I want to bring encouragement to the others that are here this evening, because, as Hunnah would say, if it can be done here, it can be done anywhere, and Jay-Orzh is just as willing to dance with Leah, and Philomena with our friend Ann, and we will have a regular ensemble. And won't we have a good time.

MERIUM: Thank you, Jasmine, for your gracious presence and for your teaching context.

I need to now proceed to further edification. You now understand the entry point that Jasmine makes. Do you remember her avenue of approach, Hunnah?

Hunnah: I think I do, but right now -- and I don't know if it's because I'm being grounded and there's so much energy coming in -- but over my left eye. No, my right. I have felt this powerful circuitry that is basically in my right eye.

MERIUM: I ask you to be aware of this and determine accurately where it is in you that Jasmine makes her entry point into your consciousness.

Hunnah: It would be frontal, in a frontal part of the lobe, and, over my eyebrow, and when she's speaking its quite strong.

MERIUM: Her entry point is my concern, for that is the point of conscious identification of personality, at which time you attach a name to your understanding of the personality.

Hunnah: Would there be a correction if I were wrong? Now there! If Hunnah were wrong, it would be because Hunnah was in the way. How would there be error? That's why I wish they would announce who they were!

MERIUM: They do announce who they are if you follow the process, for they announce their personality, and if you take time to recognize their personality, then you will know who they are.

If you become eager or anxious, you may throw a name out there just to put a label on it, and it may not be that personality. And in truth, in the long run, it wouldn't matter, but actually it does because it is one of those things you don't want to slough over indefinitely, for if you learn it correctly in the beginning, you will have it down and the subtleties of yet newer and even greater or occasionally lesser energy patterns of personalities can be added to your ability to identify and transmit.

If you gloss over identifying personality, you deprive yourself and the teacher of acknowledgement, and as you will learn and begin to appreciate, acknowledgement is important. It is not based on a human comprehension of ego, but on identification of an entity, a personality, which is, in essence, divine. It deserves acknowledgement as you, Hunnah, deserve acknowledgement for yourself as a human being and not to be glossed over and lumped into a group of miscellaneous personalities.

It's a refinement process. It will come to pass. It is well enough now that you have begun to appreciate that your contact with Jasmine is specific and will hail in a particular part of your mind. That is the door she uses. That is the key that opens the relationship between you and Jasmine, and once that is identified, that is the door she uses, that is her personality and none other, so when you feel that, you know that that is Jasmine. And I, then, will not use that door. I will come in another way, and so you will begin to ascertain my approach, my identity, my personality, my opening, and in time you will recognize us by our approach and know us truly as the unique individuals that we are.

Another advantage of understanding that we are unique unto our Self helps you to set us aside from you. That is to say, the more unique and true we are as personalities, the more we think and feel and teach without your assistance. We are complete unto our Self. You lend us your language center and your vocal chords and we then can teach you, even as we speak, as if we were two people, which we are. You will be able to speak, as two people, in your mind, which is truth. I am me and you are you. Even though we are both in there, we are two different entities. It will come to pass. It occurs with those who have given the experience some time and testing.

Hunnah: Thank you very much. It's been very helpful. Right now I'm sitting in such a horrible mass of energy, I feel like I'm perspiring. Is there a great one here? I am burning up!

DAMALIA: Good evening. I am not a great one. I am a social architect. I am Damalia. I am not one who frequents your group, but I am not a great one in terms of your understanding of greatness. I am not Michael nor a Melchizedek. I am only a seraphim, but I am delighted that you sensed my energy and that you responded to my presence. Obviously your sensitivities are increasing, inasmuch as you did recognize that there was someone here who was not normally here. I am glad to visit this evening. I would not have spoken, but you called me forth. Perhaps I could say that you lit the candle and I was delighted to respond. At any rate, I am glad to be here. Are there any things that I can help you with while I'm in your neighborhood?

Hunnah: What would your services -- What would we expect? Other than welcoming your presence?

DAMALIA: I am one of those who work to bring together certain compatible personalities in order that they might undertake projects. I earlier heard your discussions about a group project and I am always eager to participate.

Hunnah: There are many personal projects, probably, that could be developed. Each one of us has perhaps has a right to meet someone who they would appropriately and constructively meet with. It would be very nice if we were ready.

DAMALIA: I believe that you are all ready, but I don't know that we could find a project that you are compatible for at this point. You are quite diverse, although I can certainly see some working teams here.

Hunnah: I can't think of us as a group project, but I was thinking of individually in our private lives of connecting, whether it would be in Ann's realm of bringing people together who are in a move for independence and growth, or whether it be the intellectual and teaching aspects of Gerdean, or the mental/emotional in the field that I am.

DAMALIA: At least three. If and when however the solution is presented, you may be assured that I or others of my order will be involved. Indeed we may be importing assistance to round out the right configuration of workers. Don't worry about it. When it's time, it will be there. Don't be workaholics on me. Even in the spirit realm, all things come in its own time.

I am going to go. I only came by to observe. It was only because you "busted me" that I came in to say hello. I thank you for acknowledging me. It has been a surprise, a pleasant surprise to have this opportunity to say hello, and so "Hello" and "Good-bye."

TOMAS: I am Tomas. I am rounding out the evening. I have had my work cut out for me this evening and I feel like I earned my keep. I thank you for your loyalty and your love. I also thank my co-workers in the spirit realm, and particularly Merium for her valuable assistance. It was a pleasure, Jasmine, to enjoy you in operation this evening, and Hunnah, thank you, dear, for your perseverance and your patience with yourself as well as with us. All of you, continue. You're doing well. I will see you soon. Farewell.

[There followed yet another addendum session, involving Leah and her teacher Jay-Orzh through Hunnah, but it is not included herein.]

TOMAS: I feel like the cameraman on our script for the evening. "Rolling!" Is that a phrase they use in cinematography? Our film this evening continues. This outpouring of celebration in fantasy and reality has been entertaining. Your tastes run the gamut. Indeed, when you are in the mansion worlds you will thrill to the epoch pageantry put on by the Celestial Artisans, depicting the evolution of worlds of time and space, and historic events in the development of God-consciousness, as well as testimonials to the wondrous works of the Creator, done by his many creators. You, indeed, are creators. You create not only your environment but the environment for others.

I would like to speak briefly this evening regarding emotional excitement. You are emotional creatures and emotions speak to you. You easily identify emotions and live, in large part, in the emotional realms. The lure and fascination of your entire entertainment industry, in fact, is based on emotion. The suspense of the plot, the intrigue of the entanglements, the paradoxes of the point of the movie, the romantic tie-in between the hero and the heroine, the scintillation of the sensual aspects of the moviegoer, all these are emotional conveyances of feeling and value designed to stimulate you and keep you coming back for more.

When you feel that, in the resolution, the emotional satisfaction of the play, the theater, the orchestration, the pageant, has been met, you are contented and satisfied and ready to come home, having confirmed for yourself that your money was well spent for the ticket. These ministrations of the imagination have entertained and profited you throughout your evolution. I go back that far because in your zoo today you can well identify and appreciate how much you enjoy, still, the antics of the monkeys and without question, your early ancestors entertained each other by their antics and dances. Even though they endured great hardship in survival, they understood to some extent the value of emotion and of ego.

That remark would reveal that the emotions are a playground for the ego. This is true. And, this is not necessarily negative, for your ego is your identity, and it is part of the value of entertainment that you identify with the players, in order that you can have the emotional conveyances that will result in a culminating emotional experience. And so the emotional realms have great value for the evolving being and will continue to present delight and satisfaction even into your morontial realms, but in terms of ministry in the spirit and in relationship with spirit, emotions are a second-best experience.

You spoke last week regarding Jesus' having visited and spoken with you, and after our session was closed, you marveled that when He came by or that when you had seen Him, you did not fall to your knees in exaltation or become beside yourself in some way, and this is because a spiritual experience is not an emotional experience. But you have an understanding that your life is almost entirely emotional, having been emotional creatures all this time.

There is an admonition, an instruction, in the text that suggests that when you appeal to the Thought Adjuster in your associates you appeal to the highest nature and that to appeal to the emotional nature is misleading and short-lived. Indeed, as you seek to plant seeds, it is better to plant your seed in the soil of the spirit than in the soil of the emotions which is like a soil which is not fertile, does not have the nourishment that will take the seed and allow it to take root.

All of you have testified to an emotional experience this evening in your personal sharing and clearly the emotional experience is of value, but it is different than a spiritual experience. As you advance and understand how it is that you can have mastery over your emotional systems, you will be calmer and freer to engage in those emotions which are satisfying, while you deny those emotions which are unproductive and which create a less than ideal environment for yourself and for others. Merium?

MERIUM: Merium is here. So you were all out gathering and experiencing berry-picking experiences, filling your pockets with new observations of how you relate, gathering appreciation and sensitivity of how others are burdened, wondering what your proper response should be. It is difficult to let people "cook in their own juice" you might say. They have their own bath going and you have to stand on the side-lines with a towel when they're ready to get out of the rolling waters.

Being an observer is an art form. Not standing back, but being appreciative of what goes on and allowing yourself a sense of impersonalization. When you have this impersonalization activity, it is, as a rule, without judgment. You are just simply watching what's going on, and if you have been doing your homework and maintaining your base of operations of your relating to your new reality, then it allows you to get very close to these situations without being drawn into them.

You may be amused but not in a state of hilarity. You may feel sad but you may not be drained. You may be asking why with empathy but you will not find yourself entering the scenario of the individual with whom you are keeping company. You are objective. Tenderly objective. And it is a rollicking, frolicking affair! You will move in close and enjoy the essence of joy but you will not be overwhelmed by it. You are living with different equipment, you might say.

I don't bring this in to disappoint you, because it is wonderful to be able to try on the emotions of the star of the show, to feel the threat, to feel joy, to feel passion, but there is an objectivity and an awareness that, once you develop it, it does not leave you. You will know that you are 'watching television'. It isn't really real. And yet, in the same, you will connect with it.

We watch you in this fever bag of activity that you have. Have you ever stepped back and looked at the variety of emotions that you put yourself through in the course of one day or perhaps a morning? It is quite an activity. It's as if you were playing the full scale of the piano all the time, ignoring the melody, but touching every key whether it's necessary or not. In order to allow yourself to truly appreciate the form of the music, you have to pull back a little bit so that there are areas of yourself that are not unnecessarily disturbing the main theme.

I am chattering this evening about emotions and the varying degrees of your ownership to them or toward them, and it might sound frivolous to you. Yes, indeed, you are living in a human condition. That human format has been conditioned as sensitive neurological make-up, but you are to become the master of it and the beholder of situations around you.

It is your harp and you will learn to play it well. This is the harp of the divine creation, and I simply want to lead you into a new view of what's going on around you, of being in the world but not of it, and knowing when you are involved in the highest way, with the true joy, that it feels really right, and once you have tasted this wine and danced to this tune, it makes the lesser look shallow or look unreal to you and you will not as enamored with it.

I was wondering where I was going to be able to inject a comment this evening with Tomas' bringing your attention to all the variations of your emotional overtones that you experience. I hope that in some way this talk will be in your pocket and, as you venture out into your experiences, that you will be able to be a beholder and yet not feel yourself separate, but just having a slightly different view. Thank you.

Leah: I was wondering if we could discuss -- I know it's been done before, but -- a little bit between feelings and emotions, and you know on page 1218 or 1219, it talks about quality being felt. The registration of quality is felt, so, as Merium was talking about a feeling of tightness, could you just talk about that a little bit?

TOMAS: I will begin. I have discussed emotion to some extent this evening, and so I will address feeling. Feeling is that which is yours, based upon your spirit reality. When you feel sad, for example, you feel the sadness that the angels feel when they see you stubbornly refusing their aid. When you feel happy, for example, you feel joy because of love in some form or other -- spirit/love-based relationship, based in love. A feeling is a personal thing, unto yourself. An emotion is active.

Think of e-motion as motion, for when you feel angry and you lash out, your lashing out is in the realm of emotion. If you were to feel jealousy, you are feeling an emotion. It is not truly a feeling except as you understand you are not getting the feeling you want, the security that you desire, and yet it is precisely because it is not attuned to the First Source and Center, which is completely open, loving, giving, non-claiming, non-constricting. Anger is a human emotion. God does not get angry. You can feel anger, but it is a human feeling. When you act on it, it becomes an emotional outpouring. We can pick this apart. Merium?

Hunnah: Before Merium speaks, I would like to make a comment. This is Hunnah. One of the observations that I have made regarding these many months that I have been in Urantia, I have found myself less than enamored by "human behavior" and it has not been a conscious thing, it's been sort of one of those "I don't want to get involved." If I were to be involved, I'd want to climb up on a bank of grass where I could see, have a better view, and I'd want to stay there. I wouldn't want to come down for any reason, other than a valid reason, and I feel that way with a lot of the things that have gone on in my human connections.

I do feel personal toward them, so I decided that the reason this was going on was because I was becoming accustomed to a new reality and I had a new measurement, and having you talk about emotions and feelings is very appropriate in identifying my behavior because it does not mean that I do not feel, it's that I do not want to be drained, for want of a word, for some of the behavior that is no longer something that I want anymore.

If I feel love or silly or want to be playful, that is one thing, but I don't relate or react to things the way I did, and this all fits in with getting in other people's stuff. I find that I want to be there for them, but I don't want to get in the water with them, so to speak. I hope I'm not pulling you away from your subject, but I guess it is rather timely because it even connected with a conversation I had prior to coming here this evening about my friend's observations about a new relationship and how much time and effort he had taken, through prayer, to appreciate that relationship and wanting it to work, so . ...

You mentioned getting angry. I find that when you're up on that new level, where you like it, you don't get angry. It takes a lot of pulling at you before anger even comes near. I guess I wanted to get it off my chest that you seemed to stir that observation that I had been awakening and that I was holding. I appreciate it.

Leah: May I say something, too? I'm wondering, what do you do with a feeling if it's not let out emotionally? If you have a happy feeling, you want to laugh. That FEELS like a positive emotion, but if you get anger . .. I guess I have to judge myself now, but I try to pray that I find some other thing to focus on. I used to deny the anger, but I don't do that anymore.

TOMAS: Let me respond, for you are in the practice of the issue. It is normal for you to feel, and your feelings are valid for they are speaking to you of your understanding of your own experience here. If you do not want to feel anger, you are better off, for then you can say, "I feel anger. I feel justified in my anger. Let me sit with the Father and discuss my feeling of anger," rather than, on the other hand, saying, "I have anger. I have a right to have anger," and then acting out your anger and harming others.

It is possible to have anger and use it effectively. If you have anger and you have discussed with the Father your anger, you will have an unemotional comprehension by way of His response to you that will clarify how it is that you may convey to the situation that it was disturbing to you without an emotional backlash. In other words, being aware of your feelings, even your joy, and handling them in accordance with the Father's will for you, will generate an effect from the Father rather than from your feeling and your emotional base.

Hunnah: The very fact that the word anger comes up is interesting to me because I was thinking that if I ever get "mad" -- which is an emotion -- or suspect that I'm angry, my first reaction to finding out that I feel anger is wanting to re-identify it and saying that I'm probably disappointed. The disappointment and the frustration of not having any control over a situation, or disappointment in not being able to influence an individual to a more developed or mature outlet. These are the things I think I deal with most: disappointment that somebody can't handle themselves better or that I can't handle myself better. Is that anger?

Some people have a greater history of enjoying and experiencing and frequently being angry than some, and it has to do with how a person's brought up, that you weren't allowed to get angry, or you didn't even think to describe it as anger when you did get mad, and it's usually -- now it's related to disappointment that things aren't going better. Like our friend here described some disappointment in her gift, expecting her conversation, she was just reminded of what really irked her. It's disappointing to expect one thing and then to get something totally different. Or you get impatient because there isn't any growth or change. I've monopolized this conversation. I can't believe we're talking about this!

TOMAS: I will hold in reserve, then, a discourse on expectation, which is a viable subject of study and reflection. You have testified to two things, Hunnah, one of which is that in your cultural conditioning it is immature to manifest anger or even have anger. It is a cultural conditioning that at least says little girls don't get angry; it is "not proper." Even little boys are not allowed to get angry, for it is socially unacceptable. This is absurd, for children do get angry. They have tantrums. It is a normal part of childhood.

It is not a shame to have anger, even as an adult. The problem arises when the anger is manifested blindly and causes harm to others. If you have an emotion, any emotion, reflect that emotion back to your feeling and take stock of the feeling that generates the emotion.

You have fairly effectively recalculated your response to life, for your ability to elevate your response to certain situations from anger into disappointment as a method of not lashing out in the moment of anger is an effective discipline that you have undertaken behaviorally, but by the same token, my dear, you subject yourself to more than your share of disappointment.

It is not a crime to be angry, as compared to disappointment. Each of the many, many emotions is a reality unto itself and has its own message, its own learning instrument. If you are angry, recognize it. If you are lustful, recognize it. If you are covetous, recognize it honestly and face it fearlessly before you act out on it emotionally. I want to ask Leah if this is responding to your inquiry.

Leah: Yes, it's speaking to me quite a bit! I wasn't expecting to say something to you right this second. There I go with my expectations.

TOMAS: That is not the same thing. You are not wanting to be exposed at that moment. That is different than an expectation. I will, however, return with focus here to Hunnah and allow her to continue, or if another avenue is appropriate, I am amenable.

Hunnah: I wanted to add one more thing. When you said that culturally if you're not to get angry, then one thing you're going to -- that I did when I was young, literally, was cry. And obviously crying was my second choice. It was just like . .. a leaf blowing over with a least little breeze, and I know that Leah, in the group, used to tear up quite a bit, and that would be my classic recent history, that I would get teary.

Perhaps -- and no matter what emotion, if you take crying and just discipline it … or lack of control or whatever analytical reason there would be, or anger … the thing that I find most trying about the whole ordeal is how exhausting it is, because these emotions had a price, and we don't have anybody speaking right now that stuffs their feelings, but the crying was always my way of releasing tension, and I was teased when I was young about being such a cry-baby, but that was my escape valve.

You pointed out emotions versus feelings and it's like reaction and response, that wonderful talk you gave us about reacting and responding, and it is, to me, being elevated. You go from being angry, which is a reaction, and that is not a response. What is the response then for anger, if...? Yeah, that's a reaction. What is a response for anger?

TOMAS: The response, always, is to take it to the Father and discuss it with Him. Take all of your feelings to the Father. He is not going to deny you access to Him because you come with an inappropriate feeling. If you are angry, then come to Him, even if you must punch Him in the nose with your anger. He can take it. And if you are patient, you can sit with Him and divulge the nature of your anger, to the extent that you can by-pass the emotional aspects of it and seek for the truth of the feeling -- even to the ability, then, to either let it go or to appropriately deal with it by way of ministry.

I want to point out that the thrust of understanding here is on negative emotion and it is important to realize that positive emotions are also exhausting. Even having a good time can be wearing, and so what is the adage? Moderation in all things. Once you can attain that caliber of existence, you have developed charm. "Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in charm."

Having a charming personality is beneficial, Godlike, peaceful, promoting of good will, comprehension, communication, compassion, and so forth, as compared to emotionally embroiling yourself in life's vicissitudes -- either your own or other people's -- in order to keep up the addiction of emotional input. It is a level of reality that is an unreality as compared to spirit reality.

Emotions can be the embroidery of a life. They can embellish your existence infinitely, but without understanding what they are, without recognizing that your feelings represent you in your relationship to yourself, therefore are a door of understanding your relationship with God, they can rather be like a grade B movie that you have paid too much for the ticket.

I did not intend to bring you down, my friends, by our discourse regarding emotion. I indeed wanted to call to your attention only that emotional excitement was not the same as a spiritual experience. That you are emotional beings, however, with a grand emotional heritage, is part of what you present to the world, and as we teach, it behooves you to know who you are and how you affect others by your very being.

As I said earlier and as Merium supported, allow yourself this week to observe life as if you were watching television. Stand removed from life -- in the spirit if you will, if you can -- so that you can see the panorama of emotional behaviors that are enacted constantly in your world. One moment observing a TV screen will quickly point out what emotions look like. You can then see the emotions of those around you as they portray their own reality.

Elevate your portrayal of reality, my children, to be based in and for the First Source and Center. It is an aspiration, of course, in-as-much as you are human and you are and have emotional composition. I don't expect you to never have another emotional reaction, but it is an interesting assignment, and you will find you will have a great deal of freedom, spirit liberation.

MERIUM: We are stretching, putting pressure in tender places this evening, and as this is read in the form of a transcript, it may have some healthy release because I want to remind you that as you are released of the heaviness of the human experience, and the emotions that have burrowed into your flesh and into your emotional fields, then it is a sign of not purging but of letting go, and you will be frequently feeling like a leaking, sinking ship because there will be poisons, painful things that you have, held and kept for the wrong reasons even within your body and within your energy field, your emotional sphere. Your light is dimmed by this emotional cobweb that adheres, and as we talk about feelings and emotions, and as you allow yourself to exercise this impersonal observation, you will be able to look at yourself and see some of the places that are collapsing and you will watch them leave.

Hunnah was on the back porch today and brushed her cat. It had picked up green sticky burrs from the bushes, some type of bush that he had passed by, and he was not too pleased with having them on him nor did he want them to have to be released, so as you travel in this light experience, you are going to find that the grooming process is sometimes uncomfortable and that there are timely releases. There are areas and there are memories that you are not consciously aware that you are carrying with you, but you may be uncomfortable as they are passing by.

And you don't even have to put a name on them. Maybe you are feeling this discomfort of having these burrs being released from your emotional, and your physical being. Celebrate privately to yourself and say, "Oh, there goes some more of that stuff that I don't need!" and know that in the grooming of your quiet time that these . .. this gravel in your shoes is being released from you so that you might be more comfortable.

We spoke to you of being stretched mentally. There is no part of you that is being operated on in any particular way. When we say that you are being stretched, we literally mean the all of you, not a little bit here and a little bit there. We are not picking burrs. We are allowing you and helping you to relax the tension in your being-ness, in your inner confinement. This is a process of releasing, of loosening up the unreality that hinders and makes your experience uncomfortable. We are not fitting you for rose-colored glasses, but we are helping you to use what you have to see with new eyes because your field of vision is going to be expanded.

Let me steal one more moment from Hunnah's experiences. She has had, over the many years, a scenario where she has been on an elevated piece of land with someone; there has been dialog; and over the years, the elevated place where she has stood has been higher and higher and the perimeter of her view has been greater. And in a sense this is what is happening to you.

As you are elevated, your whole countenance is altered, because the work that you are going to be doing requires the release of the limitations that have held you in what might seem an emotional bag to the liberated place of reason, introspection and the willingness to allow a new definition, a new feeling. And you will become honest and generous with yourself. You will consider your well-being as if it was God standing with you discussing your destiny

In the past, your status has been in the community at a community level comprehension with community values, but you have been lifted up. This is indeed an ascension mode. You have been . .. what you might want to call . .. climbing a hill. It is not really that, but these words and metaphors sometimes make you more comfortable with the changes. You are maturing, and you are not going through the pain of puberty; you are going through, just simply, into this intimate service of the living Lord.

I hope that this surprise discussion this evening will help you all to feel that you have taken a wonderful bubble bath and that you will be stepping out, standing taller and shinier and much more comfortable with yourself and there will be a playful appreciation with your friends. It is not heavy at all. It is a lightening up. And I hope that you will be able to accept this lesson this evening and that whoever reads it will say, "Oh, yeah! I like that idea very much." Only love would let you feel this cared for, this appreciated, and be in this much confidence that we will be about the Father's business. Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium. Are there other questions? Ann, I understood you were aligning yourself with "Doubting Thomas" and that you have some concern about your faith.

Ann: I don't have concern with my faith. My questions were always "Why? Why are things the way they are? Why do they happen the way they do?" I accept the things that happen, but I seem to want to delve in and see how they happen, why they happen.

TOMAS: You are a child, indeed. You are being brought up anew. It is well known, in the mortal realms, that when a mortal child attains the age of 4 or 5 or 6 or so, they become a mass of questions and want to know "Why? Why? Why so many leaves are on that tree? How many colors are in that coat?" and so forth. This is a part of the investigations of the new creature. In some ways you, too, are a new creature. You are becoming new. And that you are eager to know, to find out, to question, is a very healthy response. Your desire to know why things work and how things work is not to be disdained. You are in a phase of eagerness to comprehend.

Your understanding of comprehension is, of course, emotional and intellectual. The things of the spirit, however, are morontial and not merely emotional or intellectual. They ascend to another dimension, if you will, and although it is very real, it is also very curiosity-inducing, very question-invoking. It is not unnatural to want to know why, and surely you will learn.

There are certain laws of the universe and you are essentially wondering what they are and why are we barred from something here while the field is wide open there. What sense does it make? Perhaps none at all, but sense is not necessarily the lure of eternity. In time it will make sense, but it will make sense in your higher mind, not in the mind that you have known as a materialist.

You will discover truths as you remain open and eager to receive answers, meaningful answers that resonate not only in your mind but in your very being, that This is the Way. It is this way because it IS, and you will know this reality, this fundamental reality, in parts of you that are yet being developed.

As you ask questions of the cosmos, the cosmos answers, a little bit at a time, a lesson at a time. They are given certain names for your mortal comprehension such as the Law of Cause & Effect, the Laws of Abundance, and so forth, and these may not coincide with the laws and understandings [of mammon], but they are real none-the-less.

And so your asking many questions is an indication of your new appreciation of a greater reality and your hunger to know where, in all this vast knowledge and experience, do you fit and how does it make sense to you. Fear not your adventures, little one. You are given a wondrous playground in which to learn.

TOMAS: You are more than welcome, my child. I wonder do you feel that my response has somehow put your mind, or a part of your mind, at ease.

TOMAS: I am glad to hear you acknowledge your growing comprehension of divine reality.

We will be having more lessons soon. Our season will be disrupted for holiday. Much like your schools here, you take a few days off for Christmas. We will take a few days off to celebrate the birth and life of the Master. And so perhaps in keeping with your tradition, I should wish you all a very merry Christmas.

MERIUM: I am still full of energy, and I was just wondering what to do about it, but there is a statement I would like to make, that I have this impression, that in the future, when you are talking with friends, that you will be introducing new concepts to them in your everyday conversation, and you will help them to identify feelings or emotions, responses or reactions -- not in a sense of correcting them, but in a light, inner, golden dialog.

The concepts that you have received in the framework of these gatherings will be shared with those who do not appear to be students. Your classroom is the world. It is the everyday group. It is the casual exchange. And as you continue to remain focused, you will be appropriately about the Father's business, and occasionally you will hear someone say to you, "Who told you so?"

There is a friend of ours who wrote a book called "The Thunder of Silence" and when this person bought this book she read this line that indicated, "Who told you so? Man or God?" That is a little goodie to keep with you. Who told you so? Man or God? You can use that measure for your own moments of pondering. When someone presents you with a challenge, you will be able to get your yardstick out and say, "Where did they get their information? I will take it to my Source and my authority to have it redefined."

Gerdean: I have a question, Merium. What would you say about the human concern that if I am not steeped in the emotional energies that are common to my fellow men, then am I not going to appear "stupid, boring and glum" and/or am I not going to be wafting around in this-- not saintly state, certainly, but in such an aura of containment, that I'll make people … we'll make people uncomfortable? Does that make sense?

MERIUM: You amuse me. Excuse me for saying this. I love the dramatic overtones of the human condition. Who do you want to impress? Who is keeping score? Are you in fear of human judgment? If you are yourself, you will be appropriate. You will not even have to try to "be yourself" you just simply will be. And when you are in this best place, wear your most appropriate attire, of course, in personality form. You will hear yourself speak and that will be the clue.

You will know that you are wearing Cinderella's slipper and that you are appropriately attired, and the more time you spend in this "scary disguise," the more comfortable you will be, and you will not miss the tatters of yesterday's clothing and conversation and you will not draw to you people who will insist that you wear your old garb of talk in the old form.

There cannot be two. Why would you want two? One is enough to keep track of. You are new in Christ. You do not ever have to put on those old comfortable clothes of yesterday's behaviors and values. You don't have to worry, but when clothes don't fit you anymore, it is time to get rid of them.

HUNNAH: No. When you are fulfilled with the spirit you are not lonely, but you will feel, at times, that you have been taken apart. There is not a me and a you, there is only the fulfillment of satisfaction of your true nature, and that flexibility will allow you to travel the old path but perhaps not linger in certain situations.

There are people who do not want to grow, and you will probably be seeing less of them. There are people who are in partial readiness who will stay in your life but you do not have to trouble yourself with which ones those are. If they are there with you, then that is all that matters, but there will be personalities in your lives but you will no longer be hobnobbing with them, as you say. We do not have to hold on to everything or everyone. We have to remember that they have their own journey and that there are others that will attend to them when they are ready. They may move to another part of the nation and there are others who will have already been prepared to assist them when they are ready for their stretch.

MERIUM: I hope you are not, but it doesn't really matter if you are disappointed with this answer. It is not easy to leave the old habitat. You want a new house and yet you want to take everything that made the old house old and drag it with you. It is human nature to want to hold on to things and relationships, even when they are not comfortable.

Gerdean: Well, I hope I don't disappoint you by conveying that it was a rhetorical question for the record, because I am not worried about being lonely. I realize I have a whole plethora of associates, not only in the spirit realms, but here also. I did like all that talk about a new dress. [Group giggle]

MERIUM: There are many dresses to wear. There are many addresses, also. You will know what to do. You are already doing it. You are already being what you hoped you could do or be. And as in our dialog this evening, we are simply reminding ourselves that there have been many painful emotions, at times, when we felt we were stuck and it all takes care of itself. So continue. This is an on-going movement.

TOMAS: I am Tomas. I would like to mention the fourth dimension, if you will. I know you are all delighted to have your own association with spirit reality, even to include your own seraphic guardians. And you can see how it is that those of you who have that fact of ascension in common are brought together in association and indeed removed from many who are not part of you but are still guided and protected by a legion of angels or a unit or another configuration. These occur right here in your physical realms. As you make certain decisions, you are elevated to a new plateau, even in your own hometown.

There are cases, for example. You will identify with a couple who severed the relationship, who oddly enough don't even run into each other, even in the same locale, and this is often because you are functioning on different levels. Those who you will encounter, Gerdean, who might entertain you as you waft about in your new gown, are those whom you might be able to touch in service. Those who are far removed from you, in terms of what you can provide for them or what they can attain from you, there will be a large span of space, cosmic space, dimensional space, between you, even though you may reside in the same village.

There are dimensions of reality that are under the control of many, many, many types and kinds of spirit beings, all of which are under the Third Source and Center, the Mother Spirit, who has a knack for interior decorating, the likes of which you have not comprehended. And so you will see there is nothing to fear. There is nothing even to question, for your path is laid out before you like those famous lily pads, and as you advance in your desire to know the Father, you will be shown the way.

We have enjoyed our full repast with you this evening. Each of you has brought a full course to our feast. Each of you has been well fed and offered dessert. Merium and I are so blessed to have you as our companions. How we love you! And how we love you even more as time goes by, and we spend time together and we grow together and we experience together the path that runs alongside the living water.

Beautiful children, enjoy your upcoming adventures. Indeed, there will be jubilations across your globe. Even now preparations are reaching a fever pitch in the spirit and in the emotions and in the intellect, for the acknowledgement of the materialization, the incarnation, the bestowal of the Creator of this universe, the Creator who became, for a time, a wee babe, a mortal of the realm, to share with you the experience of being a mortal of the realm, to know the feelings, to understand the emotions, and to reach for and attain the perfect harmony of unity between the divine nature and the human nature that would enable the entire cosmos to say, "Behold the Son of Man. Behold the Son of God."

Well, you know how I love Jesus, and I am looking forward to his being with us in these next few days as we honor his mortal life and his life entirely. I will curtail my enthusiasm, lest I become emotionally exhausted by my torrent of love and praise. I will save that energy for ministry to you and those of us who sometimes wonder what it's all about, that we can be there to spread the joy, to share the love, to shine the light that comes from Michael to all of His children. Good night, my friends.

MERIUM: You are surprised to hear me. I am not surprised to hear you. I have introduced myself this evening through Gerdean, not to alarm you but to introduce an aspect of community, and that has to do with the ability to transmit a teacher no matter where this teacher comes from. I would like to offer Tomas to you, Hunnah, in-as-much as he is an old friend of yours and you know him well.

Let me say, however, that this surprise shift in the manuscript is not required, nor is it something that should cause you consternation. I suggest this because it would behoove you to learn to appreciate Tomas as a personality and not as a scholar. You seem to look to him as an authority on textual matters and, how would you say, "left brain activities." He is a child of God, as any other.

I also add that there was a time in our community history here where Gerdean felt that I, Merium, was not accessible or attainable to her, nor even particularly desirable, for I had become comfortable with you. And it became clear, in time, that it was necessary for she and I to bond, to become friends, to become one. As a result of our communion, now we have a lightening-up in her that I have found refreshing and from which the group has benefited. She has come to appreciate my personality and how it is that I affect my children, my students. Would you be amenable to transmitting Tomas?

MERIUM: I am going to "cheat" a bit, for I know that there have been some questions set to paper. I will ask Leah if she will take one of the questions and address them to myself and Tomas and we will then operate as your customary teachers, and yet we will address you through this shift in transmitters. Is that acceptable to everyone?

MERIUM: Before we commence with the experiment, perhaps Tomas would like to greet you this evening.

TOMAS: Testing, testing, testing. It appears to me that this facility is adequate. Surprise! [Group laughter] Merium is correct. Something happened to Hunnah that she is suddenly cooperative. I think the other evening's rehearsal gave her confidence, and I must say that all will benefit from this opportunity. Well! I feel as if I'm on a quiz show. What about you, Merium?

Leah: Where is the envelope? [Group laughter] I didn't know anything about this.

Leah: Are we ready? I don't know who wrote this, but . .. "Teacher, I'm painfully aware of the human coloration of our transmissions and fearful of diminishing the intent of the Teaching Mission. In setting this question down, I fear I am asking you to assure me that my ego is all right! I need to look up to you, to respect you, but I sense I and we keep dragging you down to our level. Please counsel me."

MERIUM: Thank you, Tomas. The question is noted and provides a plethora of opportunity to respond, but I would, in my fashion, like to say first that you seem to feel, when you say that you are bringing us down, that you are in a lowly place, and I understand that your textbook does testify to your lowly status, but even so, my child, you are a daughter, a son of the living God, and this is no mean existence!

Your existence here is quite wondrous indeed. It is an adventure for us to reach down to meet you! It is not, after all, as though you refuse to come up, for you do! You attend these sessions. You eagerly embrace our presence. That, in and of itself, bespeaks your status. Do not worry that you are bringing us down. We have volunteered to "come down," after all. If and when you find that our humor has become crude or our motives have become selfish, then perhaps you can worry, but for now be assured that we are not being undignified by befriending you. This is our sublime privilege.

It is part of my ministry as a teacher to meet you (and I have spoken to you, Gerdean, of this before). I am not above getting down on the floor and playing with my children. I do expect you to rise to the occasion when the occasion presents itself, but even here I know that you have, as a child of God, an understanding of dignity and responsibility and worth and all those things that comprise your association with God. I need to have faith in you, as you need to have faith in me. It is all right. Fear not.

TOMAS: I find it rather interesting to be with Hunnah this evening because I have access to her very fresh experience. When she sat down in this chair she experienced a new type of preparation, and she found that she was declaring herself as Hunnah and not as the lowly individual who was trying to T/R. In a sense it's almost like a banana skin, the human vessel, and the being that you are becoming, who has received a name for the purpose of these discussions, to help you remember that you are more than you appear to be. And when she allowed herself to accept that name, she realized that she could stretch out and offer herself as a vehicle for my or Merium's delivery.

Perhaps with some imagery you could (I'm speaking to the one that offered this question) imagine yourself as being given a microphone in your hand and being asked to hold it for someone else to speak. In a sense that's what you are doing. You are becoming a microphone for our sessions, and I would like to make reference to this business of coming up and going down and coming up. I would like to be done with it. Let us suppose that we are in a room and it has a door. We open the door and we are all together in the community room. There is not your side and there is not my side. It is that we are together in unity.

There is another something special here that I would like to expound on, and it has to do with the biblical phrase where you stand at the door and knock. This is true at a certain stage of your development, and you can use that phrase as a comfortable crutch, but let us suppose that once you just touch the handle on the door, and you open it, you find out that the door is immense. The door, when you're first in this experience, may seem miniscule because you are uncertain of the relationship of what that door represents, but as you travel on your journey and you have met with us many times, we are simply coming towards each other.

There are many descriptions that sound like limitations and I would like to encourage you all to be done with it. Let us put away the childish talk. We are simply coming together in a room of camaraderie of common knowledge and I want you to accept your new positions and your identity and our relationship with you.

We wear the title "Teacher" for the sake of introduction, but what we really are here to do is to waken you to what you already know. It is in you. It is of you. And we are having this discussion and these sessions so that they may be sewed into the community in your dialog and everyday conversations, and that this good will, will travel every bit the way light travels, like fragrance touches people, the currents of the air carry out the identification that is sweet and helpful, the words will be sweet and helpful.

And I want you to put down this business of being shy. We have been together for quite a while now and I would like to see you stand straight and tall and confident in your new awareness and in your final acceptance, I hope that tonight you will commit yourselves to this and there will be no bowing and cow-towing, and the ranks will be no longer necessary, the robes will be set aside, and we will find out that we are indeed a community in the body of Christ, as they say in the scriptures. So I appreciate that question and I hope that whoever has asked it will receive a copy of this transcript and be done with her baby steps and spread out her confident stride and go to it.

MERIUM: I would like to further address the question and it was spurred, Tomas, by your most thrilling invitation to stride in confidence of living faith, and the section of the question in question here is the use of the word "ego." The use of the word "ego" would infer that the questioner felt that ego was somehow unsavory or undesirable, and I would like to chat about that for a moment.

When you are at one with the universe, when you are one with God, when your will is in alignment with His will, your ego is a mere identity of your individuality and not the ego of the material realms that is interested in beating out the other guy at any cost. Refuse to accept the old definition of ego for yourselves. Accept that your identity now is indeed that which you have become by way of being born of the spirit.

That we share ideas and ideals is good; that we teachers bring concepts to you for your chewing and understanding and edification, and that you do understand and enjoy and delight in these concepts; that you take them on as your own (which they are), is a surefire indication that we are working together, in unity, and that my thoughts are your thoughts and vice versa. It is a harmonious conjoining of motives. I thought that the word ego bore some dwelling on, Tomas. Would you like to add also?

TOMAS: I am pleased with your comments. The ego here in this case is something similar to what Hunnah had to deal with, and what happened was that she remembered that she had denied herself great wisdom and companionship for many years by fearing - fearing - that it was her ego that was bringing it in and that this was not a genuine use of her time. And she has regrets that she lost that time, but understood that the same frequency that companioned her simply took on another form and approached her from another direction, so you are not lost, but your fear of misuse of yourself is no longer of concern. This concern of leaving familiar surroundings will soon dissolve, because what will be familiar to this person will be the level in which we are at this present moment. Thank you. Is there another question?

Leah: Yes, there is. "Teacher, I feel like the elder brother of the prodigal son. All this New Age stuff, this psychic wave, magic, and "ologies" in vogue were part of the 60's. I've 'been there, done that' en route to a more mature spirituality. I say, why do I feel angry that it be so popular? People are profiting financially right and left from this stuff, which is like miracle working! It won't hold up over time. And I'd feel like a retrograde if I encouraged it. Help!"

TOMAS: This is not unfamiliar territory for my hostess. We have to understand that in this awakening process, the -- let's get back to ego -- the ego will want to be comfortable, and you have to remember that when you were interested in these areas, that you were also feathering your nest. It's a phase that you go through, and even though they may have the Spirit of Truth flowing in them, there is a fascination for these other areas that can help people design a new and better life, and as they experiment with this, they will tire, and see that it is not bringing the fulfillment that they hoped it would bring.

It will bring in new friends; it will bring in a new audience; it will bring in new cliches; it may bulge their purse for awhile -- and forevermore for that matter -- but in the long run, their spirit will lead them home.

And when you feel rather disgruntled, fear not. You are looking back at something that you have outgrown and you must allow others to have their own experiences. It was once given to my friend here, by a wise teacher who said that even if the student studied with the Hottentot’s, they would tire of it and their spirit would lead them on, they would leave their group and bring them a greater sense of fulfillment, greater knowledge and greater release to serve their high calling that was stirring in them.

So as we see the many little campfires of questioning arising in the great awakening that is going on here, please do not be alarmed. Be yourself. When they have questions, your maturity and your development of your countenance will be very evident. They will recognize it and you will be there for them when they have need of you. Merium?

MERIUM: Yes. My friend, I am amused by your inquiry -- in particular that you begin your dismay by stating that you feel like the elder brother of the prodigal son. I call to your attention the inflated ego of your remark then, for you admitted you have "been there, done that," and so how can you say that you have stayed at home and been noble all this time when you in fact played in the many "isms" and "ologies" of the fields of the Lord yourself? Perhaps you are feeling sour grapes.

But let me ease your fraught condition somewhat and say that you do have a right to feel like an elder brother, for you are seeing the children playing and you have played in these games and in these playgrounds. The wisdom that you have garnered from your many years of experience is what gives you now this -- shall we call it sadness? -- In your understanding that in some respects these bubbles will burst or will lose their charm and the seeker, perforce, will return to the path for deeper guidance.

Even here, my dear, it is not called upon for you to worry about your younger brothers and sisters, for they are looked after, and the Father knows truly what they seek. Think in terms of maturity in truth, for if you stand fast to what you are being guided into, you are proof that we have hailed you as the vanguard of those who will lead the children of time and space into the era of Light and Life.

TOMAS: This person who has asked the question is not here this evening to state that they are satisfied with our response, but if this reply reaches them, as I expect it will, and there is more in their heart, they are free to approach their own teacher, or an available teacher with further questions if it does not come from this group. I wish them well.

Leah: There was another question. "Somewhere in the Urantia Book it talks about people in Light and Life who get the word from 'On High' that they are going to be translated to the Mansion Worlds. The word comes down for them to wind up their affairs and get ready to leave, whereupon all the family and friends turn out to celebrate the event. Did that happen to you?" Let's ask Merium and also Tomas. Whoever would care to respond first.

TOMAS: I would like to request that Merium answer first because Hunnah is squirming.

MERIUM: Essentially you are asking how did we die. I have to think about it. But your question has to do with whether or not I was prepared in advance. One moment. And I say "one moment" because it is necessary for me, in this case, to receive permission to answer that question. One moment. I can give you a very cursory response, but not the details of my departure from my native sphere.

I was not fully apprised of my impending departure. I didn't know for sure, but it just happened, in my case, that my affairs were fairly well wound up. You might be able to identify with your own life in some regards, not to your death necessarily but to what you might call era, an era in your life, that you knew that a job, for example, would be coming to a close, or a relationship would be coming to a close.

It is not uncommon to be psychically prepared for the next experiential sojourn. I was somewhat finished with an experiential episode, but I was not aware that I was going to be called away to the Mansion Worlds. My world was more advanced than Urantia (and I will not answer for Tomas but I know his civilization was quite advanced even though the entire planet was not).

And so the bottom line, I suppose, is that if you are sensitive to your life in its cyclic nature, you will be more and more prepared with each cycle to approach that cycle when it arrives. I would encourage you, in fact, to be sensitive to the possibility. Not yet to translate, perhaps; you are all very young; but in due time. It is not something you need to worry about. As in all things in the spirit, in the Father's kingdom, it is a natural occurrence.

And that is all I will say about that. It is obviously a curiosity question, but it does point out the innate curiosity of the mortal who will one day leave the terrestrial spheres. And yes it is true. In the advanced worlds, it is very clear. And you may prepare. And it is a celebration. And won't it be wonderful when we approach death here like that -- in your world -- as a victory, as a graduation, as an accomplishment, rather than the mournful event that it is depicted in your world today?

TOMAS: Thank you. There are cultures that exist in the world today that have among the wise ones -- and when I say the wise ones, I might say the ones that are in a sense open to the circuitry of light and life -- who accept the transfer of one existence to another as a continuing journey. I see here in Hunnah's repertoire the Reiki Master from Japan who called his family together to announce that he was going to be leaving because he did not want to be involved in any more death and dying through war and he knew that he would be re-commissioned into the Navy.

This is not the choice of someone who is running, but from someone who has already met the criteria of a high blend existence of service and enlightenment. There are those who will know it consciously and those who will be sensitive to it unconsciously and they will put their affairs in order without even realizing that this is what they are doing externally. Their families will not even be aware.

If everyone were to be in tune with the spirit of his or her true identity, this orderliness would be on a conscious level as well as on an unconscious level and communication within the community would be accepting of it. We are talking about many walls at many levels, but there is this road, this Way, that has already been prepared, and at this moment in time and space these variations of fear and enlightenment are living together like wheat and tares. But there is, within each of us, the ability to follow this higher path and to have this as a smooth journey.

One does not have to suffer before they leave. They do not have to be withered and used up before they leave. Nor do they have to remain and work out the hassle of all the relationships of all those that they have known in their tenure. There is no especially correct answer here because this is uniquely individual. But as you allow yourself to be ascended to light and life, you will find that this is a natural course, that you will have completed a level of service here on Urantia and that you are free to leave or extend your stay. Has that helped?

MERIUM: Yes, you were having a very lively intermission, and we almost regret that you had to stop your lively discourse in order to get us back on-line. Perhaps we can join you in your lively discourse. What is it now that you were discussing?

Leah: We were discussing meditation techniques, silence approaches, vibrations, energy. It sounds like a whole other evening's discourse.

TOMAS: What I see this evening is an expansion of the safe world of your textbook. You are taking the truths that you have learned and allowing yourself to journey out into the community to compare notes, and you are discovering that all mankind is on the move, and that regardless of where they are, they are going to come about, and you will have your opportunities to share the information of the beloved text with those of you of other practices without any suggestion of soliciting.

You will simply be able to allow them to know that such a wonderful compilation of wisdom and knowledge is available and that it can bring them greater hope and it will bring them closer to the reality of their greatest dreams. It will free them from the pie in the sky, so to speak, and give them something more secure, more stable perhaps than -- even though the promises that they have had among their choices have sustained them, they will have been stretched without their really being aware of it, so that their appetite will be ready for greater teaching, they will be more receptive, and when the student is ready, they will find a teacher or a setting.

Now this teacher does not necessarily mean one that is physical. It may mean that the teacher within their self is waking, or I should say has been contacted, and they will be able to graze upon them, a great feast of preparation that is here and waiting, because I have reminded you earlier in the evening that we are together side by side and not afar, having to be called in. Have you noticed that the preparations of our conversations is almost automatic? That there is not a great waiting for the light to go on, so to speak? We are here with you and we are among those whom we hope to know in the future, very close in the future. Thank you.

MERIUM: I have the pleasure now of following up with a basket of flower petals that I will strew upon the path of those who count themselves among the light workers and energy workers, for although they are often in ignorance of the advanced theologies and cosmologies, they are, even so, acutely, keenly cognizant of the vibrational changes inherent in the opening of the circuits.

The almost dizzying array of vibrations and energies that are dancing pell mell on your planet, particularly in certain areas, are in many ways fostered, encouraged and made more actual by those who support these energies, Even though they may not know what the energies are or the vibrations are, they know how they feel. They know it feels good, and they know that somehow it is related to God or to a sublime reality beyond the one that they have been accustomed to here in this long, dark sphere.

Now, for example, those lovely children who have -- I forget the phrase they use, but they have somehow anchored, by way of vortex, by way of sanction, by way of acknowledgement, a particular plot of real estate -- have actually, in their celebration, in their ritual and in their pronouncements, called attention to the reality of spirit in the environment. "The Point" in Pittsburgh is an example of God made manifest in the minds and hearts of those who contributed to the angels over Pittsburgh in that vortex occurrence, as in the Turtle in Niagara, New York.

These events are all part of the flowering, the effects of Correcting Time. Indeed, the spirit is vast. The precious, priceless, personal relationship you have with the Father in heaven, the association that you have with Jesus, and with the Spirit of Truth, are not all the resources available to you. The energies and patterns of Paradise also pelt your planet, and are literally dancing in your environment. All towns would do well to have a day to acknowledge the reality of living spirit, external of the churches and the traditional understandings of energy. It is more than electricity.

I am somehow reminded of the political parades that take place in your cultures. I remember they had gay pride parades to call attention to their existence, as they have done with the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as they have done with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and senior citizens and Special Olympics. These events call attention to a facet of your world and brings them honor and acknowledgement, and so these young people, young in spirit, young in wisdom, have brought the same delightful joy to their innocent comprehension of this grand and glorious spirit and said, "Look! This day, this town, at this spot, we have anchored spirit reality. It is staying. We will see to it. We will support each other in celebration of its existence."

Energy is in music, is in art, is in science, and is in love. Energy is abounding and abundant. It is an open field as to how you may lasso a piece of energy and master it, ride it into eternity. Have fun! Ask your angels to help you formulate your energy in accordance with the divine plan and Wow! What a merry-go-round! What a carousel of happiness you can create.

Well, I don't know if that warrants an entire evening's discourse but I seem to have gotten on a role and done a fair job of it. I would shut up now, however, and see if Tomas would like to add some more or if you, Leah, would like to complain that we have not addressed your issue or whatever.

Leah: Well, you certainly have addressed it. I'd like to hear more, but not this evening. I'm too tired. I think Hunnah is tired this evening, too.

TOMAS: The only thing that Tomas was going to comment about this evening was that if you look at a chip or at a circuitry of a . ..

TOMAS: Circuitry. . .. It is as if you had your own sensitivity that can relate to other sensitivity, and if you add color to all of this and movement, you have a dancing, living, moving tapestry network that is interacting, depending upon the harmony and of lesser harmony, and as it is responsive to the great Source of its intent, this responsiveness can expand its versatility.

It will recoil from something that is not harmonious with it and go its way. I do know that this is not a specialty of mine, but I want you to know that you are all alive, are yourself, are dancing and vibrating to an inner listening, an inner sound, resonating harmoniously with the great sound of the center of the universe. And there are many people who have specialized in this subject and who express it very well. Do not hesitate to let in such guidance. It is a wondrous adventure.

TOMAS: I think we have had a very successful evening. I understanding that you have been traveling, Leah, and we are looking forward to being with you again. You have a very sweet dream this evening.

MERIUM: Thank you, Tomas, and our lovely flock. We have indeed had a fine party and I am tickled to have engaged in it with this new T/R. I think that you sounded very much like yourself, Tomas. …

MERIUM: ... and so I would like to thank your transmitter, Hunnah. I am most pleased.

TOMAS: I am stalling in anticipation of Hunnah joining us, but I cannot stall for long, for you are (already) late getting started. Yes, it is as always exciting to be with you in your most delightful configuration. There are times, flock, when you are quite amusing and we delight to see you in your light-heartedness; it is part of the family of man, you see, that you can be children together and laugh and giggle.

I would like to point out to you, indeed and in fact, that part of the dark cloud that shrouds Urantia is based on the dark gray hues of seriousness, of pain, of responsibility, of crucifixion, of blame, and any number of burdens. When you have begun to feel the lightness of being that comes from knowing the love of the Father, you can relax your armor in joy of kinship, in delight of childlike laughter.

Now, bear in mind your peers, and not only your immediate peers but your peers planet wide -- whether they are young or old, dark or light, short or tall, whether they are Christian or Jewish, Buddhist or Islamic, whether they are Australian pygmies or Native American tribal elders -- no matter what background, gender, educational status or whatever -- these are your brothers and sisters, sharing a natal sphere with you.

In the course of time you and millions of others, as well as Michael, will be able to look back and call Urantia your home planet, but looking at your peers across the world and their many, many diverse understandings of what must be truth, beauty and goodness to them, will surely set up in your mind an understanding of the very, very diverse aspects of humanity, and all of these aspects of humanity have had certain evolutionary burdens to bear. And the yoke of their burdens and the burdens of their ancestors is often carried on their own shoulders for they fear letting go of their legacy lest somehow it be lost or disrespected in the process.

It is possible, as a child of God, to know mirth and joy, even childlike silliness. That does not remove from your awareness, when appropriate, the different struggles of your racial composition, your cultural structure, your national contributions and so on, but people take life very seriously. All across the globe people regard life as very serious business. It is part of their heritage to be deeply respectful and concerned in some way about life, even when their behaviors often do not support that attitude.

It is a gift to you to be able to laugh and partake of sonship/ daughtership and invite your spirit friends in, in your merriment and glee, and understand their affectionate regard for you in your youth, in your growing process. It is a gift. Those who have not discovered the gift of childlikeness still regard life as serious and burdensome, troublesome and dangerous. Yes, Merium.

TOMAS: I have a feeling you want to share in the point. I am not able to presume upon you, however.

MERIUM: What you have been saying as you've talked is reminding the human experience as being one of intense conditioning, and in that conditioning there is conditioning within the conditioning; there is inherited conditioning, the new conditioning, and it just goes on and on into the most complex maze, and yet it is so difficult to accept an invitation to just simply step out of it; it just seems too preposterous for words, and yet this is truly possible because the reality of you is responsive to the area where the freedom lies. It is simply logistics, in a sense, that the serendipitous experience is available to the most entrenched individual.

Just this evening Hunnah was having a conversation with a peer and they were talking about the currency of frequency of light and life that exists once one decides to accept the message of the Christ into their life and allow it to come alive and live in this incredible manner, and she was talking about waiting for something to come along in her life and said that it is indeed like track being laid in front of you.

As you go along and people come in at different points of intersections where you meet, you make contacts with others who are also on this light trail. But you cannot project or inject this new way of living into the old pattern because it operates on a different frequency, or you might say, has a different gauge track, and therefore you would not expect to set something down on the inappropriate rail if it were to be operating on one.

It is also possible to turn away from the old patterns and emotions, just the way you would dial a radio and get another signal. You would hear another (station); your attention would be diverted and you would find yourself appropriately functioning and responding to that different frequency. You are interacting with people all day who know nothing about this, or who perhaps read a little about it, accepted it lightly, mentally, and have gone on their way of their daily habitual pattern.

This is, as you say, "where they are at," but as you continue to emit and express and practice the principles that have been laid forth in this teaching, and as they resonate in you, they will become stronger and stronger and it will be almost like a positive infectious experience that suddenly the light will go on. They will become more alert in areas of their private life, in their private thoughts, and once again a new performance will start to take place. You have had a social situation in your worldly experience take place that has caused a great commotion.

The only way you can ever correct a problem is to begin with yourself. If in some lazy way in your experience you have supported negative situations that harm other people, your attention will be brought to it and you will erase it from your pattern. It will be repugnant to you. You will not buy things that support injurious activities; you will not speak words that will harm; you will not entertain yourselves with programs or books that will hold you down and pull you back into the old patterns; and if you want to change the entire situation, you have to begin with yourself.

So I wish you well in the practice of new self-discipline in areas of your own experience that you have been too busy to notice, or perhaps you could say, as you stretch you will bump into the new areas that are not going to go with you; you are not going to allow them to remain with you. It is not a clean-up program; it is not a roto-rooting program; it is just that you will attend to the situation as it comes to you so that you may continue to travel in this new way of living. Tomas? You know I had a wonderful time.

Gerdean: I have a question, Tomas, or Merium, and it has to do with what you were talking about. It reminds me of the other day I got a bunch of books in for my shop. They're not all Catholic literature, but quite a bit of them are; some of them are quite orthodox, some are far more liberal, even including what I'd call transmissions or channeling, so it's a full range of literature, religious literature. A couple of them have to do with stigmata.

My mother -- I don't know what the incident was that stigmata came up with her, but she -- in her inimitable style (which is probably the way of most people) said, "Oh, I don't believe in that!" and that finished it; the subject was over because, "I don't believe in that. Period." I said, "Well, mother, I don't either, however I like to know about what other people believe so that when I talk to them I can converse intelligently." Well, she could understand the wisdom of that, and this is kind of what my question relates to:

Today there was a woman in the shop. She'd been in before. She was interested in one of these Catholic books in the front window. She found a book where a lady was pictured bleeding, another case of stigmata, and she, who is Catholic, said, -- "Oh, I don't believe in this! Do you?" Now....

Gerdean: Yeah. Inviting conversation. I said, "No, I don't particularly, but obviously somebody does," and she proceeded to lambaste them, saying they were jerks and she (the stigmata lady) didn't know what she was talking about and so on and so forth, which was assailing these people's beliefs, and . .. I think that might have been a little bit about what you were talking about, Merium, is -- we're just not in any position to be assailing anybody's belief system.

But we're really good at it, you know? I mean, not only socially do we pass judgement on each other, and culturally, but religiously! I'm beginning to see how we pass judgement on each other's beliefs. And I'm guilty of it! Somebody wants to talk about reincarnation, I say, "Oh, I don't believe in that!" and that shuts the door, you know? Its like, "Too bad, if you believe in that. I don't!" and that does not bring an opportunity for communication and sharing and ultimately communion into the picture.

I was wondering, when you were talking, Tomas, about people all over the world -- if people all over the world have different backgrounds and perceptions, different belief systems that are personal to them...! I don't know what kind of question that is or what kind of response it might elicit or....

MERIUM: There is an attitude that you may adapt that is an attitude that will let you travel anywhere and talk to anyone about anything, and that is almost a manner of being an ambassador. If you were a guest in another country, it would never occur to you, perhaps, to speak negatively of the customs of that area you are visiting. It has a lot to do with good manners, and as you mature in your growth and you have a wider scope and your peripheral vision is extended, and you simply see the earth as being seeded with so many different cultures, and within the cultures a form of evolution taking place within each culture (some of them are in movement and some of them satisfied with the way it's been for 3,000 years) that after awhile you see enough of these communities that you will feel very comfortable with the fact that that's just the way it is in this particular situation.

And you will become a beholder of that culture and you will see, if you stay in the culture -- let us say if you went to the Amazon region and you were visiting a tribal community, you would not . .. the longer you stayed, you would find that within the framework of that tribal unit there would be varying degrees of beliefs and devotion to their thought patterns and there would still be, in that private community, those that were ready to stretch and leave, perhaps, but have not, or who want to develop anew and expand.

This is a matter of consciousness. As the consciousness of the individual evolves, then they will find themselves uncomfortable with the pattern where they are and they will either leave and seek out and develop more or they will continue to explore, and this is in a sense what television has done for you; it has brought this opportunity for you to expand your awareness of this world that you live in, and to hear the opinions and the strengths and weaknesses of the cultures individually and collectively.

As you have been drawn to this shortcoming in your personality, my friend, you have already won the battle, because you now see that as the Master has shown you through the written words that you will allow a person to make their statement and you will allow that statement to rest and you will give it an opportunity to continue in a respectful way and you will know that when you say, "I don't believe that," that you are hearing an echo of yesterday and you already recognize it.

When you come to these gatherings and you share, you hear your outgrown ideas and you also are here with a cup so that it might be filled with a delicious aromatic presence of the new thought, the new comprehension, and the new fulfillment that it brings. So I'm pleased that you brought this up. Whether it is stigmata or whether the belief is in India or in ancient chantings, statements of the old religions of the world, there is no religious practice on earth today that will not be cleansed, because those that it comes to will become more and more enlightened and they will realize that they have outgrown the suspicions and darkness and the control that the old practices and beliefs have carried with them.

They are like chains, and you cannot -- they will lay around misused and will be discarded with the fullness. This is indeed going on all around you. You see the churches are having to involve all members of the family in the services because the monastic life that was forced upon people who were not ready for it, the celibate life, that they were not ready to handle, they were not lifted in consciousness to their new definition to what that meant -- these are all practices that have to be re-thought and purified.

Gerdean: Thank you for your response, your thorough commentary, Merium. I'm particularly grateful for your using the word "consciousness" because all of this, all these differences, really do relate to evolutionary religion, except where it comes into the superconscious which is getting up there to where we start to tap into morontia reality, onto our higher thought processes which involves abutting with the spirit -- which is not to say that orthodox and traditional people don't also get their thought processes right up there!

MERIUM: It is a matter of having their aim or their goals set. "I want to be a Christian," (Hunnah remembers the line) or "to be more like Jesus". This is the focus! As you continue to practice something, then you do start to emulate these qualities....

Gerdean: Wait. I have to interrupt here. I have to interrupt here because of the word "Christian."

Gerdean: It is one of those words that when I think in terms of my brothers across the world, there's nothing really great about being Christian to much of my brothers and sisters on Urantia. In fact, Christianity in many ways is a disgrace to the man who Christianity was named after. There's a lot of things about Christianity that is not Christ-like nor is it God-like nor is it anything that I would like to emulate or be part of. It's just one of those words that has . .. it has so many connotations that I don't think that it's anything particular to be proud of!

Those who follow Christ, those who attend church at least, are so divided amongst themselves . .. You know, the fact that I've got a spiritual corner in my bookstore and there's . .. someone will come in and want to know do I have anything on Seventh Day Adventists. I don't know. It's all "spiritual" to me, but there's different facets of it. I've got one for Jehovah's Witnesses here, I've got a Seventh Day Adventist here, I've got maybe 12 Catholic books, I don't know how many Presbyterian books -- and they don't talk to each other! And they don't agree with each other! . .. And I don't want to associate myself with a bunch of people who can sit and look at the same Christ and argue about . .. other things, you know? I don't know how to say that.

I'm saying I don't want to be regarded as Christian, is what I'm saying. I don't mind being a follower of Jesus. I am, indeed, a follower of Jesus, but I don't like the handle of "Christian." It does nothing for me, and I think that it does much damage to Hebrews, for example, and our friends at the Turtle -- those who do aspire to have other religious leaders welcomed into the family of man. I know I would love to see Jesus at the head of the table of humanity, and perhaps someday that will happen, but . .. I do know that I have to honor these other spirit teachers who have a lot to offer their devotees.

I'm not speaking down about Christ Michael. I love him infinitely. I'm trying to figure out how to be an effective teacher, how to convey information, have correspondence, communication with people without being judgmental -- which I'm beginning to realize that, in my limited Christian comprehension, I'm very ignorant. And I'm speaking theologically, you know. There's just . .. Again, "dot, dot, dot, exclamation point". I don't know what . ..

MERIUM: First of all, I'm amused. Because you could not have done a better job of showing yourself and others what happens when there is mental titillation and sensitivity regarding coveted feelings. When you read the transcript, it will give you much insight as to what's going on here right now.

MERIUM: And I might add that there is a statement that comes, "Who told you so? Man or God?" Now let us go back to this individual who has acquainted himself or herself with the desire to become more like Jesus. First of all we have an individual who has been acquainted with scripture, who has resonated with a positive way with what he or she heard, and who could be anywhere on the scale of one to ten on "catching on". That statement could be professed by a great enlightened Christian follower or it could be one who has come home with a scribbled paper and mimicked the words, "I want to be like Jesus," so we have a scale of understanding here of Baby all the way to Seasoned Sage within the framework of that religious teaching.

There is a teacher today who makes constant reference to becoming a Buddha. If the person who is of Christian background were to read that, the unfamiliarity and misunderstanding or the lack of understanding would be there because they could be like a Baby and be challenged and threatened that there would be something greater than perhaps they have found, or they would be at the other end of the spectrum, near the 10, that would say, "Of course, become a Buddha, become the best, radiant example of working belief system for what your ideal is."

If you were a Muslim and you lived to the highest devotion to that form of Muslim belief and behavior, it would make you no lesser or no greater than anyone else; it would simply be your frame of reference. When you are working with the intellectual realm, it can only go so far, because it is in the spirit that allows you to carry through this belief system with poise and integrity and without argument.

You know that it's not necessary to correct anyone unless they ask for your assistance. One of the greatest hallmarks of achievement in the Urantia gatherings that have come with the Teaching Mission is to acquaint you, in truth, with the way the Master spoke to those of all levels of awareness.

If you still have remnants of zealousness, if you still have remnants of having to be right, if you still have remnants of having to achieve victory, then that's simply what you are dealing with, and it too shall fall by the wayside as the glorious truth reigns in your consciousness.

You are in ascending mode. There will be days when you will feel as if this is what it must be like, and there will be days when the old guard will bind you like an outgrown pair of shoes, so I am pleased that this conversation has gone the way it has because it will be put in print and the human finds reading very, very satisfying.

Hunnah heard something very interesting today regarding seeing something on television and reading. When you read, you can stop, ponder, pick up again and go on, but when you have something in your face and it is thrust directly at you, as it is in the movement of television, you cannot pause and look at the situation again; you cannot look at the scene and savor another aspect of it; or you cannot correct something that you thought you saw and did not see accurately or you did not hear it accurately.

You have tapes today. You can play them again and say, "Oh, I didn't hear that before!" You can re-read a book and say, "That was wonderful! I missed that the last time!" But the television media is thrust at you, snatched away, and moved on so quickly that you could easily receive mis-information. I hope that will be the same with this conversation. You will hear it at one level; you will hear it in spirit regardless, because that is where we are connecting. You have the privilege of re-reading what you hear and as we talk, I am not teaching you profound truths! We are re-mediating truth, and filtering it so that you might be able to apply what you know to have given you this truth.

I am not speaking revelation; it is as if we were in school and we were reviewing things, tossing out and correcting the information, sorting through. So I want you to allow yourselves to relax and not feel that there is a product here that has to be finished by a certain period of time or that you should be pressured, because what you're producing isn't the same as someone else. This is a very, very individual experience, and we have blown the whistle many times on you and said, "It's getting tense. Time to play." So let us relax and I would like to have you take a break, and we'll be back. Thank you.

TOMAS: We are here; we are back; we are on-line; we have most thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and are glad it resumes.

Hunnah: You really like it when we get all riled up. I feel as if we're gnawing on a bone and it isn't necessary. I don't even know what I really want to ask.

TOMAS: Let me describe to you what I see you say here, and that is getting wrought up, yet have you considered that the dog loves to chew the bone? It is not necessary that he chew the bone; he loves to chew the bone, as you love to chew the bone also, and we love to see you grit your teeth and nourish yourself and entertain yourself with something of substance. When the bone has served its purpose, it will lose its appeal and you will go off to chase sticks or seek fresher bones. Do not fear that you have wasted your time discoursing about what you have discoursed about or that we have found it to be of great value.

Hunnah: All right. We're talking about people who are perhaps readers who have religious conditioning. In my work, I feel as if I'm meeting a lot of people who have nothing, and I think that if I did go out into the world and would see another segment of the people, it seems as if they really have nothing. And when they are in a difficult place, they still have nothing but the convenience of the support system of their neighbors or of a service to come to the rescue.

I am amazed at the degree of what appears to be emptiness that I meet and, in contrast to my friend Gerdean in her challenge, I feel that mine is frequently the absence of any place to go. And one of the things that my background in the Christian church has had that's been very powerful has been witnessing and introducing Jesus to the "lost sheep" -- and I know we're returning back down to this level but you said you like some of the things that we were touching on this evening -- and I've always been a bit shy about saying to someone who seems to be bankrupt, and asking, "Have you ever considered the teachings of Jesus Christ?"

My former cohorts would say, "Yes! That's what you should do!" But today it's socially -- it seems like it would do more harm, like selling a product, to do that way than to take it by action, an attitude of mercy and compassion without letting them stay in their victim state of emptiness. I'll stop.

TOMAS: You're now in the heart of the Teaching Mission, for as you seek to convey and receive reality, as you find there is nothing, or as you encounter academic and traditional belief systems in lieu of the living reality, this challenge then is our challenge. That you bring this bone to help gnaw with us, that we may gnaw it with you is what the Teaching Mission is about. Indeed, it is to bring living love into Urantia.

How can we, one, activate the human spirit; and, after the spirit is activated, how can it be harmonized with the great and tremendous differences existent in the many, many millions of believers from all walks of life and all religious thought? You would seek a simple answer? There is no simple answer. It is on-going. It is our assignment. And to the extent that you find it worthy, it is also your assignment.

When you feel the lack of spiritual reality in your arena, when you find that "they have nothing" but that their resources are cultural and tribal and supportive in the fundamentals of animal existence but lacking in faith or harmony, the challenge is how to help awaken them, how to whet their appetite, how to help the spirit enter into their environment, and when they begin to think, or if they have already begun to think, then how do you get them to relinquish their thought processes sufficiently to feel the living waters?

It is not redundant. It is not fruitless. And it is not a bone lacking nourishment. It is an on-going challenge. It is what the angels weep over, and although we delight in your joy and we share your joy, we also share in the frustration that you encounter in your arena as an ambassador of the kingdom, which is a living reality, which is such a living reality as to cross over all racial lines, all national boundaries, all gender differences, indeed to embrace and encompass all of the children of Urantia, indeed, all the children of time and space.

Hunnah: I don't see that we are really any different than when the times of Jesus. There are those walking around who are receptive and those who are not receptive, and since I've been in the group I see that even wakening to some more efficient system of living just physically is a form of development. If you help a person become aware of their own resourcefulness, even at a physical level, such as repairing your own house or finding food or planting, at that level you are about the Father's business and you are in religion.

Hunnah: So you just, as Casey used to say, "meet the need at the level of the need" and if we are connecting with our own resourcefulness, then something will come forth for them, in the form that they can understand and utilize.

Hunnah: Even if it's silence! Sometimes silence is your gift, because it comes out as a warm acceptance, like an understanding, tolerance. I guess we suffer from wanting to change what we see. We want to make it more the way we think it should be.

TOMAS: It is not so much that it should be the way that you want it to be, for you really don't care. But the Father within has a plan for his children, and that is to attain perfection. As you perceive perfection, as perfection is reflected back to you, it is recognized and you are happy, you are content with the relative perfection you encounter.

Witness your laughter this evening before we came to order. You were comfortable with peers in your own sphere of perfection and delight in not knowing negativity around each other. But as you reach out into the world at large, as you find these people carrying these heavy dark burdens, these cloaks of responsibility and fear and doom and holocaust and crucifixion and all the weight and all the worry that your race is heir to, you want to, the Father wants to lift that burden, that you might all revel in the joy of knowing Him, of knowing the love of the Father, of setting aside the darkness and the effort and the suffering of the past and let it go and let it go.

You want to help them let it go. You want to see the light come through. The Father wants to see the light come through. By yourself as a human being without the Father you would not care, but to the extent that he dwells within you and you identify with Him, you care, and you feel it, and it wants you to invest yourself in the evolution, the awakening. It wants you to help direct your focus on what is just around the corner, what is awaiting, what is right in front of you, what is on the tip of their tongue, just like your spirit guides urge you forward, just as the Father urges you all forward.

And you cannot go any faster than you allow or you decide. I feel like a have been given a job of somewhat summarizing Merium's noble lessons, and I do not mean to have usurped her and shut her out. It was simply my turn at the soapbox.

TOMAS: I would like to assign something for you, yes. One moment. (Long pause) The Master has recommended this assignment, for I would have been far more academic. He has asked me to ask you to love one another, and that is, my dears, a juicy bone to chew on. Have we not been thrown that bone a million times? But is it not true that love is the answer?

TOMAS: I am reminded of the United States, and to some extent the prospects for a United Europe, that the various differences of the States rights have been made secondary to the . .. (incorrect)… have filed in line underneath the umbrella of the Federal government or the Federation of Republics. This is a national picture of peace on earth under one government, or the beginnings of world government.

And along the same lines, Michael has asked that all his children come together, and yet, as we discussed this evening, how can that be possible when everyone is so different, everyone is so individual? They have their own belief systems and, as the races have their cultures, the natures have their cultures, these are things that will not disappear over night, nor are they necessarily supposed to. But it can be done under the umbrella of the Divine.

Yes, we would hope to see it under the banner of Michael, and in time that will be the case. It is His world and He will prevail, but for now let Love reign. Let it reign upon the Turks and the Sikhs and the Argentineans and the Thai, on the Hindus, on the Buddhists, on the Hebrews and on the Christians, on the orthodox and the unorthodox. Let Love speak where even Michael cannot.

It has, again, been a true privilege to be with you. It is difficult, children, sometimes, to present ourselves when you are so lovely and frolicking and we come in and get so heavy, but that is the nature of our assignment, and now we are glad to remove ourselves that you may again be lighthearted.

It is not for you to walk around like us, but to learn to think for yourselves and in your own ways that you are more comfortable with spreading the gospel, as He would have you do it. We are not your gods, you know, we are only your teachers. Merium, would you like to bid your children goodnight?

MERIUM: Yes, I would like that. It's been a full day and we have enjoyed your chatter and want to wish our friend here, Leah, a happy day of celebrating. We are glad that we are here and we thank you Tomas. Good evening.

TOMAS: Good evening, my friends. I am Tomas. I am here with Merium and others -- many personal teachers. I am greeting you, albeit momentarily, for the personal teachers would spend a moment with you. One moment please.

TRIESTE: I am Trieste. I have come to spend a moment in time with my charge, Gerdean, and to offer a lesson, a timely lesson on a matter of deep concern, and that is reflected in Gerdean's approach to feeling good. It is allowed.

Gerdean, I would like to assure you that it is appropriate to have feelings of well-being. I have observed in my many years of knowing you that you seem to feel guilty when you find that you have enjoyed yourself, as if you have done something wrong, and I call to your mind the programming and conditioning of such a message, as many of you are impressed with, that, for example, you must eat your dinner because there are children who are starving, and so everything you do has a burden of responsibility that reflects upon life, even life that you are unaware of, and so your early programming of responsibility has lent itself well to stealing from you the riches of an enjoyment of life for yourself.

It is not selfish to discover that life is true, beautiful and good and that your place in life is sanctioned. Consider your programming, Gerdean, and reprogram yourself, if you will, to allow yourself those very vital and necessary connections with the vibrancy of an enriched life, a life in the spirit, which is your birthright. Yes, all around you there are those who still live in fear, and your collective consciousness would have you all living comfortably in fear, but I call you forth to step out of fear, to walk in faith, in the radiance of goodness, truth and beauty.

Enjoy your very existence, your very experience here. Enjoy the good as well as the more somber. Have fun. I know that that might sound to some an invitation to be irresponsible but that is not the case. You are responsible. Be responsible also for your acceptance of happiness. You know there is no happiness without intelligent effort and you have applied yourself, my dear; you have worked very hard to have attained the right, even to your human consciousness, your own rational mind, that you have earned the right to feel good and enjoy your experience here.

Much of this has to do with the general well-being of being detoxified from nicotine. It gives me great happiness to observe these fleeting realities within you. I encourage your embrace of them, that you may more radiantly advertise the love of the Father as you live the life He has given you. Good girl.

PHILOMENA: I am Philomena and I too would like to spend some time with my delightful mortal associate. Precious one, how are you this evening?

PHILOMENA: I smile to hear you say "just fine now" for I know you well and I know that you were fine even before I came on-line, but you are such a romantic child. You delight to acknowledge the reality of your most cherished fantasy. I am here in truth and I have only actualized for you your hope, your understanding, and so whereas you were fine then, you are fine now, you will also be fine. It is also a joy for me to be with you. I am here to deliver a mini-lesson for you, for I know that you have been a very busy girl. As you have shared with your mortal friends, your lily pads have been laid out before you. You must introduce your friend Hunnah to your new song. But before I go too far afield, I have a message and a moment for you.

Be advised, little one, that you are busily growing, even though you may not be aware that you are growing. Most often spirit growth is unconscious. The seed that is germinating in the ground goes through much, much action before it pushes its head up out of the ground and looks around, and you too are being very busy in your growth. Many times you are not aware, indeed, that you have grown until you have already attained a growth level and turned around to look back to see where you have been, how far you have come, and from this new vantage point then you can say, "My! Look what I have gone through. Look what I have done! I have come a long way! How much I have learned!" and you are in a process of learning even now, although it may not be clear to you what and how your growth is.

When it is said that you will be experiencing a great growth spiritually in the near future, you must construe that, rather, as meaning you will become aware of your great growth, for the growth is happening even as we speak, and even though you may not be conscious of it, it is wonderful to see how eagerly you grow. You are indeed a courageous soul.

We are very happy to embrace you in our spirit family life. All of the friends gathered here this evening in the spirit and in the flesh embrace you, little sister, and cherish your kinship among us. You are a delightful little rabbit and we cuddle you with deep affection.

JASMINE: I am trying to say hello in the face of the scramble for pick-a-number as in your bakery or your butcher shop. Personal teacher night is upon us and I am glad to have a turn with you. You have been so busy! You have been growing by leaps and bounds. It is well that you have a holiday coming soon, not that we are fearful of your over-rapid growth, no, but that you can savor some of the attainment that you have reached in leisure and in reflection.

You have truly stepped outside of yourself to allow for a wondrous experience, not only for yourself but for many others. The example that you have shown by your living faith, your human reluctance and courage in the face of fear, has resulted in a statement of fellowship that is exemplary of true friendship, that you are so honest at heart and so eager to serve, so directed in your intent, in spite of your imperfections, your growth has now rewarded your efforts and we are very, very glad to be privy to the joy that you now know in your faith being realized. Not only have you brought much joy through your personal development, you have brought much joy in those who now can come to your awareness, the awareness of Urantia, through the circuitry that you provide.

I am rewarded myself in our many, many years of association. These personal victories are some things that we experience in our association and in your ascension. There are -- what shall we say? -- private holidays, private celebrations that take place in your advancement. Your Thought Adjuster rejoices upon certain hallmark events and your personal teachers also take great delight in certain activities; your guardian seraphim have their own reward in company with you. In time these will be made clear to you. For now, you will just have to trust my testimony, but my testimony includes an expression of deep and abiding and sincere and devoted love to you which, my dear, you already fully know, but I choose to express it anyway because you have a right to hear and everyone has a right to know how deeply you are loved, how much I appreciate the work you have done, the efforts you have invested on behalf of the Master in your desire to serve and in your willingness to go to whatever lengths He would have you go in order that you may do the will of the Father in heaven. Amen, my daughter, and bless you.

Hunnah: Oh, wow. That was certainly a lei that you put around my neck that I want to thank you for that, for the strength in the face of what used to frighten me. I have a task to perform in service this evening. I have been praying that my partner will feel physically and mentally whole because he has been fatigued and I have asked for assistance with skills. In my transcripts in personal counsel I was told that I was to learn new skills for the sake of service, and this evening is sort of a maiden voyage in such a matter, and it would give me great pleasure to be able to fulfil my responsibilities in an honorable and intelligent way. So I really do thank you for this stature that you have allowed me and the private satisfaction that that brings, and I want to thank you for my loyal friends here and this wonderful and bewildering time of this culmination of characters that we have been, that we know we are rightfully yours and we are a divine pattern, and I do thank you for this tribute and this wonderful opportunity to show ourselves that hanging in there is really an opportunity to see the prize of community. Thank you.

TOMAS: I am Tomas. I am here. I am sorry if I cut short your visits with your personal teachers. They all were eager to come on-line and give you each a gift. Each of you have now savored the gift. I am only back here as an emcee, however. I am under the impression that this was going to be a light evening, that is, we did not come prepared with our briefcase and the lectern. Merium and I are here informally and affectionately and had to hold ourselves in abeyance for the scramble of the personal teachers who insisted on making their presences known and their sentiments heard.

But lest the personal teachers take over entirely, I usurped them with the authority vested in me as Teacher of this teacher base and decided to play host, Merium hostess. And so if there are questions we will field them and can bring your personal teachers back on-line or convey information if that's more appropriate, but be advised we will not be here long this evening. You have already indicated it would be informal and brief.

Hunnah: In my transmitting recently I was given what appeared to be another dancing partner and I was wondering if you would comment and assist me with the name of the presence that came through for me. It sounded like, or it appeared to be Alkanon or Alcaynon?

TOMAS: And it was not error. It was not confused with Alcon, a noble teacher also. There are many, many similarities of names, some of them are quite tricky, and the experiment at hand was to give you the opportunity to identify the name and you succeeded. I am confirming it for you, even though Alkanon confirmed for you at the time that that was correct. He however graciously assured you, as many of us will do in the beginning, that you have garnered the essence, if not the actuality. It is a "ploy" that we sometimes use in early experiencing transmitting/receiving that you feel at ease.

Be aware that getting names is really very difficult, particularly at first. There are some who never do wholeheartedly and enthusiastically allow these more factual pieces of information to come through because the chances of the fact being used to trip them up and "prove" the unreality of the teachers or the teaching mission is too great. The chance of error is too threatening for many to even venture a guess, but it is always offered and to the extent that you develop the fine-tuning that will allow for these identifications to come through, you have expanded your and our abilities to communicate.

Having experienced a brand new personality, a teacher from the spirit realms, the morontia realms, that to your knowledge has not transmitted here on Urantia before is an exciting experience. As Alkanon discussed with you, the reality of the teachers develops as you give yourself over more and more to the growth reality that results, the faith that opens up as a result of your conscious decision to trust the process. The greater reality is its own reality that will indeed lead you into further divine truth. Only as you look at it academically does it seem ludicrous, but as you see it through the eyes of an agondonter, you see the adventure of the ages. All of the spirit companions assigned to assist Urantia in Correcting Time are honorable and well-adjusted, highly trained individuals.

Hunnah: This has been a good lesson in listening. I must share with the reader that when Alkanon arrived it was as if someone handed me a storybook and it was almost as if someone was writing a story about Cinderella and Prince Charming, the stature of, the demeanor of the guest was very apparent to me, and it is my human nature, it seems, that I have this ability to fantasize, or creative when I write, so when this personality was coming forth in this writing, I was . .. part of myself was wondering if I wasn't up to my little short story, and then I could see that it was the way of the teachers to allow me to let this information come through, and it was very skillful, I felt. I was aware of the skill, even though I was transcribing.

So I'm looking forward to sharing him with our readers, and if I was a male and a feminine presence arrived on the scene, not to particularly rescue but to bring balance and a holiday uplifting manner in which one would be taught the truly beautiful and effervescent companion, a male human would be just as delighted in the companion choice of personality companionship that was revealed in that little bit, so I'm sure that all the readers are going to enjoy him and they will feel his strength and his light-heartedness. Thank you for letting me comment, but I find it very exciting. I feel that he will be a compliment to what we have already brought through.

TOMAS: I would like to say, for your understanding, and for others understanding, that as you fall in love with one new personality, you bring vital reality to your life and to theirs, and in the spirit this is just what you have done: you have fallen in love with a new personality, a creation of the Father as you understand it, as the romantic aspects of you understand it. You think in terms of fantasy and fairy tales and so forth, but divine love truly does add a dimension, a refinement that elevates love and brings it into those realms of delight that make the heart soar.

It is not by accident that your new friend has become a dancing partner and that you have blushed and allowed him to take the lead. This is a delightful unfolding of the Father's, the Mother's Paradise in your own experience. Perhaps it is because it is your first encounter with a male personality that you "discovered" that gives it the heightened romantic nature. Perhaps always will Alkanon be in some ways your first love, but he will even so be your brother, your elder brother, and a teacher. As any one of us are, as you allow.

Hunnah: Well, I do indeed welcome his friendship and I am not about to -- hopefully -- misinterpret. I didn't mean to misinterpret, but I was fairly aware of the idealistic qualities that we all long to see in someone who is of the opposite sex here, and I had commented at our retreat about meeting a "man in Love" and if the readers can possibly meet this personality, just as we have in the wonderful qualities that you have delivered, they too will understand what they have to look forward to as they are released from their microscopic experience, as they develop. It's exciting.

TOMAS: Yes, daughter, it is exciting and we appreciate your sensitive expression of this, this observation, that you might share your impression with others. One moment.

MERIUM: I am Merium. I am not to be ignored. I am wondering what can I do this evening to contribute, to become one with you. I am not jealous, my dear, but I am impressed with your new infatuation with our co-worker, Alkanon. I have known him for a long time. As a matter of fact, I knew him first [Group laughter], so there.

Hunnah: Merium, thank you for coming through Gerdean this evening. My human vessel has been tested sorely this evening and I did want to hear from you. An interesting thing that you said, that you met him first, amuses me because I related to him, his essence, as I would yours. You are far-out guys! [Laughter] and you're not heavy, you're so light, and when he came through this -- as powerful as it was -- it was a lightness of coming and because of the way you come through for me, I related a similarity there and I'm glad that everybody's been enjoying all so much. We're going to have quite a gang here after while, especially when these other guys get rolling -- we'll have a real fire going.

TOMAS: Pep talks that go on into the night as the waves wash up on the shore and the fire burns low and the embers are hot. Yes, some great discourse takes place in these late night communions under the stars in company with the friends in faith.

Hunnah: We were -- Gerdean is considering an evening for stillness, and I want to continue the sessions that we have, so be patient with us please while we figure out what we're doing. We could be meeting every other night of the week to have dancing classes with you people -- pardon me, you wonders. Please help us to graciously work out something that will be for everyone. I hope we'll be responsive.

MERIUM: I think that what we could do under the circumstances -- and this is Merium -- is invite a social architect in to visit with you. You know Damalia is a social architect who has visited more than once and he has often wanted you to adopt a group project that he could help with, and so perhaps this is one of those group projects that he might like to help, hobnob with, or direct. I will put in a request for Damalia's assistance and overcare if that would please you.

MERIUM: Then let us anticipate that he will respond to the request and sometime between now and then he will be making his rounds and contacting you each with some tidbit of insight and enthusiasm. When these come to your mind, do share them with each other. At the very least, be certain to jot them down, but better you keep them alive and share them as they are received, even if they sound bizarre, perhaps they are just one of the pieces of the puzzle that when put together will create quite the game plan.

Well, I am glad that I had an opportunity to take part in your evening's festivities. It has been a party; it has been rich. I return the platform to Tomas for his final comments. I look forward to seeing you in a couple days if not before. My love to you all. Good night.

TOMAS: And I too am on my way out the door. I am in the neighborhood, however, children, and always glad to have a late night chat with you if you are inclined. I, too, look forward to seeing you soon -- Thursday for sure. Be well. Be happy. Be. Farewell.

TOMAS: Good evening, children. It is wonderful to be here with you; it is particularly joyful for us to see your great thirst, your deep spiritual thirst, and as you take the time to drink of the living waters, you bring a renewed strength to yourself and to your fellows. You were thirsty and you have drunk deep.

You are correct, Leah, that the moon is full and that has much to do with the seeming chaos going on around you all in your lives and in the lives of your associates. It is also the end of summer and there are many who are balking against the onset of the cold; not so much for the cold itself, but for the long evenings, the possible isolation, and the inevitable adaptation to isolation and/or loneliness that comes when you are shut in.

It is in some feminine vernacular the "nesting time" and this contributes to a sense of agitation. The fact that the hazy, lazy days of summer are ended brings with it a sense of youth passing. It may be just another day to you on the surface, but there are many, many things that conspire to contribute to your day and your perception of it.

These conditions, over which you have virtually no control, are part of the kaleidoscope of your life as an evolutionary creature. As you evolve within your culture and within your set of friends and family, you carve out for yourself a comfortable niche in which you share common humor, common language, common comforts, common customs, common belief systems. It is very big of you, truly, to extend and expand your comprehension of your family to include not only those who share these things with you in the more immediate association, but in the larger scope as well, to include the different cultures, nationalities, races and belief systems.

This is our goal, indeed, this oneness of humanity, that we may all gather around the beloved Sovereign and show our appreciation for His efforts, His creation of us. The ability of you to assimilate those who are different as a beloved brother or sister in the spirit makes evolution easier and makes revelation more effective.

I could go on; perhaps I will. But I would like to step down from my soapbox and be informal for a bit. I am so happy to see you, Ruth, my child.

TOMAS: I am also heartened to have you return to the bosom of your family, Leah, after your most touching adventure/experience. Your jaunts North are always invigorating and gratifying for you; this one seems to have tapped an altered state of consciousness that surpasses your previous exposures. I would like to talk with you about your experience when we have more time, if you are inclined to confide with me.

TOMAS: And my dear Hunnah, how pleased I am that you are preparing to have a holiday with your mate. It is a fine occasion when you can make a date with your partner and enjoy a quality chunk of time in celebration of a quality chunk of time. Happy anniversary, my dear, for both you and Abram.

Hunnah: Thank you. I'm looking forward to opening a package of new days. It occurred to me that I'd be seeing a part of the country that I've never seen before and the majestic mountains and I will be traveling, hopefully, out to angel hangout at Yosemite, so I do not feel anxious about being separated from you. I'm planning to do some journaling and Ruth has asked me to do some sketching, so I think I will be sufficiently prepared to play, but I have a feeling I'm going to meet some people and I'm looking forward to ambassadoring my way across the nation. Like Leah.

TOMAS: I will tell you that it is more than likely that Merium will take advantage of your being away to return to Salvington for a visit. She has not been back since she started this assignment. I am not the one who gets that message, but it wouldn't surprise me if she were to go home for a brief vacation and pep talk.

TOMAS: Jasmine will go with you. You become accustomed to the fact that you live with spirit entities night and day; they are accessible and your life suddenly takes on another dimension. Not only on Sunday, but every day you have association in spirit. Are you amenable now, Hunnah, to allow our friend Merium to join us?

TOMAS: Merium, I tell you that what I was leading into was a mini-discourse regarding what I would call altered states. You recall I made mention of the conditions of the moon and the season that provide an altered state of awareness on some subliminal and some instinctual level of change in pattern. This can be construed as an altered state without your being aware of it, and perhaps part of my motivation in leading into a discussion of altered states of consciousness is bearing upon Leah's experience in Canada as well as, perhaps, Ann's experience in mood change today and others whose behavior has been more excitable than normal. The atmospheric conditions are enough to alter your approach.

All of your lives are so vulnerable it is no wonder you put up barriers, for your sensitivity would be buffeted greatly were you to allow your emotional realms free reign. Each phone call, each correspondence, each news broadcast can impress you with such a deluge of emotional energy and sensation that you are in a constant state of flux, in indeed a constant state of altered consciousness, and even as you seek peace in stillness you seek yet another altered state of consciousness.

As I indicated, you all drank deep of the living water in our stillness. We could feel you as hungry sponges soaking up the quiet and the spiritual focus, as if you had all been running hard in a dusty corral and fell upon the trough and plunged your face in for a drink. This altered state of peace is the most guaranteed and yet almost the most difficult to acquire, for the demands of the material life are so compelling and demanding. The material life is determined to keep you focused on your material existence and your material progress, your advancement in the ways of the flesh, of the world. And yet you will have a hunger and a thirst that cannot be met by any other altered state than the state of peace which comes from being in the presence of stillness with your indwelling God fragment.

MERIUM: Now I would like to have you look patiently at the influences of the atmosphere and know that you are in the world but not of it and that you have learned how to balance your journey and your day by pulling over to the side, you might say, for a little while and allowing yourself to be stilled, that you may be able to pilot on through the turbulent waters of whatever the atmosphere brings you.

If it is a moon that is showing itself as influence or if it's barometric pressure that is bringing you change and you feel uncomfortable, that is simply a signal for you to pull off a little bit and get yourself quieted and centered and come back up. You are reminding yourself that you no longer have to be totally pulled into the undertow of activities of those that you are associating with or in your work place or in your home, whether its dominant personalities or dominant weather.

And this evening it was true that you were all in a different velocity, you might say, and we had some turbulence, but it all settled down because at heart we knew how to do it. I am sure that you are already applying this reminder in many ways. There are times when melancholia will come over you and you will take it, you will see it, you will be in it, you will identify it, rise above it and say "I understand" and you will feel a new patience with your human reactions, but you will be the strong man, so to speak, and you will be the master of your own experience.

I am trying to say that there is new administration in your experience and as you accept your true identity you will find that that is the One power; and that you will not expect people to understand you when they are in a scattered place themselves or you will put the brake on when you are missing the mark of meeting someone else and not allowing yourself to connect or understand that they are reaching out.

This being appropriate and timely in your acquaintance with people and your confrontation with people is almost like having a fine-tuned motor. You will just get so that you know it and you will be allowed to be appropriate for whatever situation arises. It will not keep you separate and it will not allow you to feel that you are above or better than anyone; it will be simply that . .. Oh, I see a wonderful visual helper here to assist me with expressing myself.

Recently Hunnah was in the shop with her husband and he was trying to make something level and it required some brutal force at times because there was something that was not falling in place properly, but it's as if you are given a level, and they come in many sizes, I understand. They come many feet long or they may be pocket-size. So tonight I'm going to ask you all to remember that you have a pocket-sized level and that you can set it into your visual reminder when you are with someone and you will be able to look at the gauge to see if you are centered where you will be the most effective -- not to control an experience but to be appropriate and to bring in the demeanor of this prayer consciousness that is your interest. I like that idea very much.

A visual tool such as this mini-level should be something that you will feel comfortable with using. Someone else may perhaps prefer another example. There are situations where people have a background of yoga or an Eastern teaching and they will take the thumb and the forefinger and bring it together in a circle. They may do this as their own gauge to remind themselves that they can bring themselves into expression for the given moment.

So I will encourage you each to draw upon your own portfolio of experience and allow yourself to have your own little quirk, little tip -- in computer language you have a password -- but it will help you to be brought into appropriateness, and in appropriateness you may spontaneously serve in a more refined manner than you would have if you allowed yourself to be thrown about in a disarray of the varied levels of expression at the moment.

Perhaps there is a question this evening. Is there something you wish to celebrate?

Ruth: Just being back. I miss everybody. I miss Tomas, and my good friends, and it's good to see them.

TOMAS: Yet another altered state. It is nice to see you and feel you drop your defensive barriers. It is a comfort for you all to experience the joy and protection of each other's affection and not feel the innate ego response of defending yourself against unwanted or unknown stimuli. When you can come together and enjoy the warmth of each other's fellowship, in trust of your companionship in this "sacred space," letting down your barriers, your defenses, and allowing yourselves the comfort of each other, is nurturance beyond your imagination.

It is perhaps not something that you even are aware of, how tremendously influenced you are by each other. You have seen some recent studies about physics and how the atoms are constantly moving and your mechanism, your body mechanism in this particular mechanical mold of today's day and age in which you live, is set up to be ultra defensive. It is very difficult for you, for example, to learn to trust or to learn to laugh. These are because of your defenses, your innate survival instincts.

As you come together in company with yourselves under the banner of Michael in these teaching session formats, and allow your barriers down, an aspect of you is permitted to relax, to rest, to enjoy, savor, to know peace, to experience the camaraderie of the atoms, if you will, of your fellows, and not in combat or in defense, but in synchronicity and in choreography.

How marvelous it is to perceive your personalities bask in this molecular condition, without your even understanding what is happening to you. It is a side effect, perhaps, a benefit of the altered state of spiritual consciousness. How you relish the experience and much of it is beyond your conscious awareness. It is also, Ruth, wonderful that you are here to share your composition with these others, for we do enjoy the dance; we enjoy the pas de deux of love that occurs between us and among us here. It is healthy. It will leave you all feeling pink-cheeked and plump in the spirit, a fine and healthy state of mind and being. I talk too much.

Ruth: Tomas. It's very nice to be here and I've missed you. I know I've asked, at different times, questions of you and I've told you that a variety of people come to me and, well, I changed shops. I was apprehensive and things have gone very well. I am meeting a lot of different people. I've picked up a lot of interesting clientele and I just hope that I can help them, as I need to, and I know I generally do, it's just sometimes I stumble across somebody needing something that sometimes I'm very out of depth for and I appreciate all the help I got. I just talked it out. "Help me somebody!" and then out of my mouth comes all these strange words and I seem to be able to touch upon their bodies what they need. We are limited, very limited, in our manipulation. I do want to thank you for every time I thought of you and contacted you for help, because I know it's come to me.

Ruth: Oh, I know, I talk to Him all the time, but I, as I say, I imagine there are times you help me.

TOMAS: We are a support system. It is wonderful to see you being of service, being diligently useful, plying yourself to the ministrations of the minds and bodies and morontia potentials of your associations who are brought to you by way of spirit avenues. You are indeed busy. Do not neglect your own well-being. Allow for recreation and diversion, for affection and relaxation, for camaraderie and support of your own pupils.

It is good for you to be of service to those who come to you for help. It is also good for you to offer your support to those who testify to not needing it, those being your brothers and sisters in the kingdom. I realize that is a somewhat stilted phrase, but your peers in the spirit grow weary, even though they gain strength from the same sources you do, in the spirit realms, from Michael, from the angelic aides and the teachers and so forth.

There is nothing quite as heartening as the sturdy embrace of one of your own fellows. A slap on the back from one of your own kind, a laugh, a joke, a camaraderie, is that which makes you feel as if you have a place in the world and co-workers in which to do your work. It helps to bond your friendships so that you do not feel as though you are working alone in the fields. Come more often.

Ruth: I am trying. It's just that -- I asked for this and I have two shops and I have a lot of people . ... I will make it when I can make it.

TOMAS: You are loyal. You are loyal also to your work and there is nothing more important than the work of your realm. Do not feel that I am chiding you, for I am not intending to scold. I appreciate your diligence and your willingness to work so hard at what you do for the Master. We just are saying, as a friend, it is that we miss you.

MICHAEL: Is it not comforting to allow yourselves to be still? Is it not comforting to know that you can be lifted up and held? And that you can abandon the limitations of your physicality?

I would like to address the subject of comfort. Comfort will be received and interpreted by the level of the need. Twelve can gather in my name and twelve will receive at the level of their need. Sometimes that need is to have nothing to be said, just a gentle stilling.

The human configuration is so complex that it wearies. It has so many systems working all the time, and they tire. You forget that just because one has developed maturity and physical strength of varying degrees, emotional stamina of varying degrees, that that fine-tuned machine does not need to rest. Not only does it need to rest but it needs to be released in a refined environment that would almost permit it to feel as if it was free of gravitational pull, a need to float, a relaxing of every cell.

I want you to look at your lives and truly take a look at the way you live. There seems an abhorrence of idleness. It is in your culture. There is guilt associated when you are not busy. This need to be a productive machine has gotten out of hand.

If there is an individual present who does not seem to be able to get themselves going, then that is simply a calling for tuning, to be lifted into a new sense of worth and a generosity of intelligent expression. When they come into the silence they will receive at every level.

Your minds are cluttered with talk, re-runs of old thoughts, a continuous cacophony (I love that word; it's used here often), a clatter of an echoed previous behavior. It is very crowded in your mind. This call to stillness is so critically needed in this area. You are in a wonderful time when there are many helpers to attend to this long neglect. As you respond in consciousness, you will discover the areas within yourself that have gone neglected, like shoes that have ached to be shined, or food that needs to come because it has a living essence within it.

This is a call and an invitation this evening for you to take stock, not externally, but internally, and as this develops, you will not receive a report in the mail, like an X-ray report or a lab report, but it will come gently into your awareness. It may be you won't do this or that anymore, or that you will find yourself allowing more space between activities or conversations. We know little, here on earth, of what stillness is. The subject has been brought forth as a possible project for this group, but those who gather here this evening have not yet acquainted themselves sufficiently with the subject of stillness. It is not a medication that you have to choke down.

I am going to encourage a release within your intelligent understanding, of allowing you to receive a new definition and to experience stillness. And I want to also remind you that stilling can come within a new form. I have not come to explain stillness; I have come to announce that you will be experiencing it in a way that your human mind can not possibly design.

It will have a tremendous effect upon your gatherings; it is not a damp gray; it is not a rain cloud. These words have come with difficulty this evening, but as you can feel it in yourself, there is a tremendously powerful settling upon your energies. I am going to cease speaking and ask that you allow this radiant gift to permeate your being, and that you allow every cell of your body to fill with new radiance.

Allow the spirit of God to flow into your bodies and into your hands. Be aware of its descent into your feet. It will girdle you; it will strengthen you. What comes to you in sacred secrecy you must be prepared to accept. It will enter your bones. It will shine through your eyes. It shall be a masterful administration. It is empowered to call you to the highest power. It is the maturity you have long awaited. Do not speak of this to others.

These intimate gatherings that you have attended these past months have truly been without definition. When you are called upon, it will be with no hesitation. There will be no question Who you serve, or why, or doubt that you are capable of response. I enclose you each individually in this cocoon of my reality. I fill this room with love. (Long meditation)

TOMAS: Thank you, Hunnah, for your service. Thank you all for being here. Merium and I wish you happy trails. We look forward to our next gathering. Blessed be art thou, flock. Farewell.

TOMAS: Bear with us here. (Long pause) It is a poor connection. Gerdean is weary and mentally exhausted. It makes our process more difficult. I promise I will not unduly tire her, but many times when we come together and begin to flow, there is energy to spare from the circuitry, and so perhaps that will take place this evening. At any rate, it is always worth a try to aspire to attain reasonable heights of consciousness and communication for your own satisfaction.

In-as-much as our vehicle is lethargic this evening, I will not launch upon a lesson at the outset. Are there questions or commentary? Anything you would like to convey to me by way of including me in your evening?

Leah: Well, we had mentioned about possibly talking about altered states of consciousness, but I don't really know what I want to ask. I think we've all just observed so many different ways of communicating, like there are so many ways to climb a mountain, I'd like for you to talk about that.

TOMAS: Let us ascertain what it is in particular that you are referencing when you say "altered states." Are you talking about something specific? I recently talked about altered states in terms of the many variations on your cosmopolitan make-up … that is to say your physical/ emotional/ mental/ spiritual/ et cetera palette, that mood changes can come about as a result of diet or atmosphere or companions or the phase of the moon and so forth -- these many influences that come to bear and can be construed as an altered state in terms of melancholy or sense of well-being and what creates the sense of sadness or well-being. These are altered states in that your mood barometer is constantly changing, is constantly being influenced by external stimuli of one sort or another.

Now, when you are talking about an altered state, Leah, are you talking about that? Or something different? And if it is somehow specific, how is it? I have a hunch you are taking this basic lesson one step further into the higher realms of thought and I am willing to go there; I need, however, to ascertain if that is, in fact, what you're leading into.

Leah: Well, I am aware that you spoke of the things that you just mentioned on a previous tape, but at one point you said something to me about maybe we could discuss altered states of consciousness at some time, and I perceived that you were speaking of, perhaps from, I'd guess you'd call them transmissions or different ways that people do them, whether transmitting or channeling, or . .. I don't even really know why I want to discuss them. There's a part of me that says it's just fine anyway that somebody does it, as long as their intent is to worship God and to spread harmony, unity and brotherhood.

TOMAS: Very well. I think I see what you are driving at. Let me elaborate then, as I perceive you are seeking understanding. Indeed, this process that you are enjoying now, this session wherein you are engaged in a communication with a celestial teacher through the auspices of a mortal vessel, is a form of altered state. It is not something you are in as you are in the shower or are cooking or on the phone; it is a state of mind and being that is unique to the configuration of a teacher session. Is that fair to say?

Leah: Oh, yes, I understand that. I don't know. I just sometimes think that people have an attitude that "my methodology is better than yours" but it's not really spoken, like . .. I shouldn't get into the comparison mode, but it's just that you experience so many different things.

Leah: I like to find the, I call it the nugget of truth within each path because I don't think these paths would exist unless they were beneficial in some way.

TOMAS: The answer really is in the adage about the message rather than the messenger, and in this, truth can come from any source at any time. I would like to elaborate somewhat on some of the more esoteric and/or theosophical altered states.

TOMAS: Then let me say that I will talk more about altered states such as prayer. Each method of prayer is an altered state. Worship itself is an altered state. As you perceive your God and as you choose to spend time in relationship with your God, that is also an altered state, altered from the norm, from the normal day-to-day function of a human being, even a well-balanced human being. It is time set aside.

Now, there are many ways that individuals set aside time to focus on a reality that transcends their regular, normal, day-to-day material existence; these can be construed as an altered state, and there are many of these in vogue today although they have been around for centuries, some more active than others.

Any time an individual seeks to expand and extend consciousness into realms above the norm, there is the chance that the party will be altered as a result of the experience, either temporarily or for a period of time, even perhaps eternally. Another aspect then of being in an altered state is its relationship to time and space.

Drugs are an altered state, of course. Any mood-altering substance, as well as dietary influence, even being in love, can be construed as an altered state. Whether these conditions last 20 minutes, 24 hours, 50 years or on into the morontia realms is dependent upon how real the state is, and this has been the experience of anyone who is adventurous enough to seek to find what is beyond the norm, what is in the unknown, what is around the corner, what is the next thing to discover, to locate, to experience. This is also evolution. It brings about progress.

TOMAS: They may be both. They are more often the former. The esoteric aspects of seeking an altered state involve some degree of secrecy or a confidential approach, for only like minds will be interested in something that is new, and going beyond the norm; otherwise, it would not be fascinating. When it has to do with Godliness and/or a perceived higher reality in terms of the spirit or the spirit realms, theosophy may become wrapped up in your altered state.

Leah: I'm probably putting words in your mouth, but could this be an analogy like what we're doing would be more esoteric and like studying the Book would be more theosophical?

TOMAS: You are seeing your immediate peer group and this is commendable for it comforts me to know that your immediate frame of reference is in a realm which denotes your loyalty to your own theology and philosophy and also to our, what could be called, esoteric relationship.

But the fact of the matter is there are many out there who are seeking altered states in the advanced realms of the mind and spirit that have not encountered the Teaching Mission or the Urantia Book, who are seekers through the Age of Aquarius and/or who are devotees of ancient techniques of meditation and higher forms of thought. These are all part of the avant garde. Even those who are bringing forward the ancient rites and practices of long ago are still forerunners of a new wave of appreciation of a new realm of thought and action, and so whereas today your combined behaviors may be regarded as esoteric, in 50 years it will be the norm, and this is part of evolution also.

Is it not quite exciting to be taking part in forwarding your planetary thought process? Its very spirit nature?

Leah: Yes, it is. Sometimes it's dismaying. Sometimes it's just like totally unbelievable. I don't know. Sometimes it just seems crazy, and other times it just seems . .. like I said: unbelievable. It's too wonderful to believe, in a sense.

TOMAS: It is ever changing and ever advancing and even ever perfecting, and so it is hard to get a fix on it. And here again you are encouraged to see the various altered states that are affecting your perception at the time.

Are you angry? Have you just been with a personality who has drained you of your energy? Are you feeling poorly physically? Have you a virus? Have you been eating properly? Have you gotten proper rest? Have you been feeding your mind good stuff? Have you been giving your mind affirmations and faith-forwarding material? Or have you been feeding it fear and violence? Have you been in the sunshine? Have you felt your association with the miracle of material life, human life? That is to say, have you gotten your hands in the dirt or hugged a tree and appreciated your association with mortality and corporeality? Have you been around people who have been eager to share, or people who were apathetic and bitter or cynical? All of these things will influence your mood. As I mentioned in the earlier lesson, all of these affect you and alter your consciousness to some degree.

It is ever more apparent how and why it is necessary to continue to anchor yourself in your own spirit reality through stillness and through your association with your own indwelling God fragment. The understanding that you develop through your internal connection with divinity will enable you to perceive what goes on around you as a temporary condition and will not permanently alter your course.

Indeed, you will be able to discover the adventure of watching the movie of life on Urantia -- sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, but it will stop draining you and confusing you and buffeting you in your daily experience if you seek your Source, if you seek your primary relationship as your primary and preferred state of altered consciousness -- that being your intimate rapport with the Father.

Many of the movements . ... Never mind. It is superfluous at this point. I am aware of my promise to Gerdean to not ride her too hard. I am also concerned that I be somewhat succinct in my message and not try to bring in too much, for it tends to confuse you rather than educate you, and so I defeat my own high purpose.

Leah: Well, I am looking forward enthusiastically to the questions that you laid out a few moments before. I'll have to take my little checkmark list and go over them. And I don't want to wear out Gerdean either, but I was wondering if you could make some comments about any progress I might be making with Jay-Orzh.

TOMAS: Let me confer with her. One moment. Perhaps the best thing would be to speak with her yourself. Would you be amenable to that or shall I convey it?

Leah: Either way. I don't want to tax Gerdean. However it is more convenient.

JAY-ORZH: Hello, my love, I am your personal teacher. I am your friend indeed. It is good to be here in a situation where I can speak to you face-to-face, as it were. I embrace you, my daughter. I reach out for you and enfold you.

We are making progress, yes. You are at ease with me more than you had been. You are finding the challenge of attaining contact with me simple now, and so we have made great strides there, but we have yet new rivers to cross together. There are realms in our true work together that have not yet begun. You will find that as you allow me to nurture you and befriend you, you will know yourself better and in knowing yourself better, our communication will take on new and greater dimensions. Then we shall truly see progress. We will begin to harvest together.

So continue your strides, my dear. Continue to reach me and allow me to work my way into your consciousness. Dabble deeper. Allow your senses to participate in our discourses. Allow your feelings to enter in somewhat. I am always with you. I am your true friend and I yearn for a closer rapport with you as you allow me. Under any circumstances, it is a joy that we have come this far and so I radiate my happiness that we have made such good progress, that you have been applying yourself well. I like it when you include me in your life and in your leisure.

Leah: Thank you so much for being here tonight and taking this opportunity. I keep on hearing this song about "I am only a bird in a gilded cage" and it went like you had an opportunity to get out again and I'm happy about that.

JAY-ORZH: I would like for you to see yourself as a bird in a gilded cage also, my pet. I would like for you to envision how it could be if together we were able to fly, and yet it is also good to have that security of the nest to return to when our wings have tired from the journey.

Any song you want to sing me I can turn it into a mota and another step toward your acceptance of your daughtership. We have much to do, much work and much play. I will be with you. For now I will relinquish you, again with my devoted affection and embrace.

Leah: Thank you. I'm grateful. I'm just grateful for everything that God the Father has provided for everyone. We just don't really realize it. And every once in awhile, especially when I get a glimpse of it -- I'm sure it's not even a nano-second of a glimpse, but -- sometimes it frightens me, because I used to be of the school that, well, you die and then you go to heaven. It just seems like you have to do so much more now, but . .. it's good to know there's a lot of help.

TOMAS: This is Tomas. It is also fair to report that you also get so much more for your efforts. As a grown-up you appreciate the joy of effort, whereas as a child you appreciate only the pleasures of short-term gratification. I would encourage you not to be frightened by the dynamism of the religious life or the reality of the cosmos, for you will never be given so much as to be over-whelmed, only enough to whet your appetite or to lure you into wanting a closer glimpse, a deeper peek at what lies in store experientially in your ascent.

Not only is your experience that of the emotional creature, but also is it of the existential type, the religious type, and this is not only in terms of religious ecstasy and spiritual high but in observing spirit reality and functioning within that framework. It is a natural place for you, and so as you attain it, it will be right. Do not allow the experiences of tomorrow to frighten you today, for has it not been said that the troubles for today are sufficient for themselves?

TOMAS: And so also as a part of today's allotment are today's glimpses of tomorrow. Let me relinquish you this evening, my dear ones. I am not strong, as I indicated, and I don't want to err, and Gerdean does not want to err either, and so I will give you both a fond embrace and a pat on the head. Carry on, children, and be of good cheer for all is well. You are loved, you are cared for, and you are guided and protected. Sleep well, daughters. Good night and farewell.