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Tomas Vol IV - Butler, PA - December 16, 1997 thru February 24, 1998 - Part 6 of 13

Sometimes I wonder if the success of the Butler group was because of the dominance of women in attendance. Although it sometimes seems these sessions are glorified gab fests, to which no self-respecting man or spirit would waste his or her time, it is also true that the hand that rocks the cradle fraternize with destiny. Women are also said to be more spiritual than men. These points are made in defense of the first lesson in this collection, about the sensual nature and the double standard society employs to restrain women who might otherwise enlighten them.

This group of transcripts is rich -- rich in friendship, fun, laughter, games, pathos, confession, and all the things that make life worth living. And, as usual, visitors are plentiful and varied.

*****

BUTLER, PA, USA

VOLUME IV, Part 6 of 13

December 16, 1997 - February 24, 1998

C O N T E N T S

Date	Topic	Page
December 16, 1997	NEBADONIA; The Sensual Nature	1
December 23, 1997	SOLONIA; Know Thyself, for thy Adjuster's Sake; JACK	8
January 6, 1998	Grow Your Own Religious Experience	16
January 13, 1998	Mental and Emotional Burdens; GROTTO	25
January 20, 1998	Personal Teachers TRIESTE, ADRIAN, HEATH, EL ANDRA and a Roster of Personal Teachers	33
January 14, 1998	Special Session; Candles	43
February 3, 1998	Shake Rattle and Roll; LESTER	55
February 10, 1998	Came to Believe	70
February 17, 1998	Devotion: Trust and Faith; TRAVIS	79
February 24, 1998	Your Unquenchable Thirst	89
	[End of Vol. IV, Part 6 of 13]	96

SHARING: Extensive follow-up discussion on a recent question concerning real and imagined value judgments imposed on unmarried women.

NEBADONIA: Yes, I am, Nebadonia, your Mother. I am here to hold your hands, daughters, and to offer a word to Our Father in Paradise on behalf of you and your Adjusters who are ascending back to the Father.

"Our Father in Paradise, our Source of all being, I am your daughter Nebadonia and I bring my daughters here to you. We bow before you, Father in Heaven. We devote ourselves to you. We bestow our lives in preparation for you, in praise of you, because of you. Eternal Father, Paradise Mother, we thank you for the gift of life and your creation of us, we who are your daughters, we who would be pleasing to your eyes.

"Give us all grace to manifest Your goodness, Your beauty, Your divine order. Give us the vitality of life, of the Conjoint Actor, to bring vitality to our arena, to our own paradise of activity. Give the divine sanction to our energies and our lives that we may bring Your pattern of perfection, Your divine order, Your mercy, Your love into Your universe.

"We thank you, Father; we praise You, Mother; we adore you, Eternal Son, for the life of our Creator Son, our Creator, our Helper, our Beloved, Sovereign, Michael of Nebadon, Our Lord, in whose name we pray:

"Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

My daughters, I leave you in the companionship of your teachers and the sanction of your Father-Brother Michael who smiles upon you. My children, I comfort you, I nurture you, I love you. And I will see you later.

MERIUM: I am Merium. How wonderful it feels to be in the presence of Our Mother. Her love extends into this room and graces it, bringing praise and serenity and charm. How lovely of Her to pray a prayer you know so well, to bring to you your own comprehension of prayer, in an acceptance of your worship.

It is She that I aspire to be like. She is my model. And I have visited with Her many times. She is perhaps the role model for all feminine facets throughout Nebadon, the feminine, the goddess, the half of the whole, the Mother, the sister, the daughter, the gift, the identification with that which is of us.

Have you stood apart and honored your direct descendancy from Nebadonia? From the Mother Spirit? I know that your culture and your religion is male dominated. Historically and culturally you have always had to consider the male first, and in many ways you have always had to consider your offspring first. Nebadonia would consider you first, as an individual, as a believer, as her daughter.

It is interesting to see yourself as a daughter in your own right, with your own feet on the ground of your own firm foundation of faith, that your ascension is dependent not upon your spouse, not upon your children, not upon your folks or your career or your role, but upon your decision, your personal commitment to ascend to the Mother, to the Father, to your own aspiration of perfection, to be whole in and of yourself, to be perfect in and of yourself.

Ponder this, my daughters, my sisters. Recognize your own strength. Recognize your own value, that which is of the Mother, without which there is no life.

In deep affection for all concerned I will step aside and honor our brother and teacher Tomas who yearns to greet you.

TOMAS: Greetings, my lovely daughters. How well you comport yourself. How wonderful it is to be in your presence, having been washed with the presence and loving care of Our Mother, Nebadonia.

It has been our supreme pleasure this evening to perceive your efforts at soul growth and comprehension of your soul reality, your relationship with your indwelling Adjuster. Your Adjusters themselves are quite thrilled with your progress this evening.

Divinington is their home. Divinington is that part of the Isle of Paradise that is enshrouded in Seven Sacred Spheres of the Father, and so they are a Mystery. They are a Mystery. Have you mysteries in your minds this evening, little ones? Have you questions? Good evening, Leah.

Leah: Good evening. Probably a lot, but I don't know where to begin, so it could be edited, but when we were reading about the Thought Adjusters, we were trying to ascertain that one sentence about [pg. 1196. 2. SELF-ACTING ADJUSTERS, "6. Has served in a time of crisis in the experience of some human being who was the material complement of a spirit personality entrusted with the enactment of some cosmic achievement essential to the spiritual economy of the planet."] We were trying to think of an example of what that particular sentence was about, having to do with cosmic achievement. I think the rest of the descriptions there were something that we could comprehend at some level, but what was that one about? I don't think any of us know what that was about. Can you clarify any of that for us?

TOMAS: I will say that Gerdean has a good handle on it. Indeed it is possible that you, too, can find an example in your experience, Leah, wherein you were acting as a compliment to a spiritual reality. You have represented the Creator on a number of occasions. You have represented the midwayers and the angelic orders.

Whenever you stand for truth in a realistic way that enables your Adjuster to firmly and clearly lead you as an operative, you have functioned as a transmitter of truth by the Self-Acting Adjuster. Indeed, when you have heard truth ring out with clarity and conviction, you have beheld the work of a Self-Acting Adjuster through the mortal. The mortal, then, is the counterpart that it references.

Leah: I envision, possibly, a time that perhaps something came out of my mouth that seemed judicious and I kind of heard my mortal ego say, "I have no idea where that came from!" Is that the type of thing you were referring to?

Leah: Okay. I understand that a little better. Also, I was feeling that the celestials listen in, so I was wondering . .. I don't even know how to ask this question . .. if there's some -- the lengthiness of the discussion we had at the beginning of this evening, starting in the bookstore, about sexuality versus spirituality and if you would care to offer any input into the things that we discussed. I just keep on hearing that, obviously, we are of human and divine nature, so we're going to have to deal with both aspects of these.

TOMAS: Indeed, it is not wise to ignore either. As you also read, you need to grow in all facets. If you remain completely ignorant in such a significant realm as your sexuality or your spirituality, you are creating a deficit in your own reality.

I will say that you must remember that all things material are shadows of that which is real and eternal, and speaking along those lines, although sexuality is, of course, for procreation, it is also an extension of your greater reality. Not only does sexuality include certain genetic factors but personality factors.

You recall that you are bi-sexual, two sexes, male and female, and even within the gender there are variations of strength of component parts. There are very, shall we say, masculine females and very feminine males. This is part of the composite human being.

Now, the fact of sexuality is inherent in your animal origin, yes. It is, of course, a basic function of procreating species, but it is also a pleasurable organism and to deny that sex is pleasurable would be foolish. It was created as a pleasurable experience. It is the reproductive urge that assures procreation of the race; it is pleasure that allows the procreation and the recreation to be a pleasant facet of humanness.

It is a method of communicating between male and female or between males or between females.

It is a method of communicating, and it does not always have to be specifically sexually; that is, it does not have to be a form of coitus, but there are many, many ways of manifesting your sexuality, your genderness, your femaleness or your maleness in your social arena, in your many, many, many kinds of intercourse -- social, spiritual and otherwise.

It is not wise to deny such an important aspect of the personality. It is so fundamental as to be absurd, and yet you have, as mortals, dealt with it in such a way as to try to rise above it. And this is part of your evolution, part of your process of erecting yourself and your society, your civilization, your mores and so forth. In elevating yourself you have overcome your baser, more selfish nature, in some ways, and have therefore relegated basic animalistic behaviors to a status of undesirable, unacceptable.

Your evolution is by and large appropriate. It is necessary, in order to maintain civilization, that a home come into being where children can be raised, where culture can be passed on from one generation to the next, where art and music and learning and science and poetry and decorum and logic and so forth can be fostered. The disciplines, the values of civilization are necessary and desirable. "The backbone of society" indeed!

But there is no shame, in and of itself, in an animal nature. Indeed, an animal is a fine creation. Any of Michael's animals are fine creations, as are the insects and the flowers. Miracles! Absolute miracles of creation, perfect and flawless in their execution. It is the mind, you see, it is the mind that enters in to determine how the animal will behave, how it will treat its fellow animals.

And here it is, "the mind arena of choice," for you can decide for truth, beauty and goodness. You can decide, even in the material realm, the animal realm, to be truthful, beautiful, and good. It is not automatic that sexuality is base or crude, no; it is the mind that makes it so, in observation or in performance.

Remember that, in the ultimate, God is love and love is the desire to do good to others, and if it brings pleasure to an individual to receive love, why should you withhold love? If love comes in the form of a service that is freely given, that is freely received, this is a fruit of the spirit. Shall we call this fruit a flower? Shall we call it a friendship? We can call it anything we like. If it is done in love, it is done in the Father's name, and this is a decision, an avenue of the mind.

I don't know if I have helped, or even contributed to your understanding of some of your thought processes, but I will tell you, we have done some active listening.

Leah: I feel that your answer was exceedingly beautiful. We were wondering about the appropriateness of lust, but not flagrant lust. I mean, I suppose it's like the appetizer or something.

TOMAS: You may find this amusing, but I discussed lust many years ago and I have not changed my opinion. Lust is one of those words that has a negative connotation when that is not necessarily necessary. You have heard of a lust for life. You have heard of a lust for food or drink or dancing. A lust is a deep hunger. Can you not equate having lust to having a deep hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Indeed, in removing your prejudice from the word lust, can you not conceive that the greatest lust of all is the lust to know the Father? That it surpasses all other desires? That it is the passion that drives you? Day by day, to know the Father and to do His will? The most supreme of all lusts? Now, this is a goal, not a current condition, perhaps, but even in terms of your understanding of lust, it is possible to experience a lust for beauty, a lust for intimacy, a lust for togetherness. Lust is not, in and of itself, a negative.

It has been given negative overtones, however, because it is regarded historically as one of those seven deadly sins that at one time stood in the way of righteousness for it has been known to rule men and women completely, blinding them to higher values and greater callings. And so in terms of evolution, it has been necessary to curtail rampant lust, certainly, so that one can take a look at what it is and gain self-mastery.

Love is the most important emotion and feeling and expression, and when you have given yourself to love, to the Father in love, when He has given Himself to you, in love, and perhaps through another individual, in love, as you love, you may love lustily. Love is the greatest. It is a matter of having your priorities in order, perhaps.

Leah: I don't know whether you have or not, but your answer makes the human condition a lot more understandable.

TOMAS: It is very important that you understand the human condition -- not just your human condition, and not just your human condition today, but [that you] have a full and thorough-going understanding of the evolution of the human being, from its origin and through its growth into its current state and even anticipating its destiny. It is indeed one of the wonderful facets of the textbook, The Urantia Book, that you are given a full sweep of your evolution so far.

The growth of the human being is nothing short of spectacular, from the inception of life through the auspices of the Life Carriers in the touch of the Mother millions of years ago, up to and including December 16, 1997, and so yes, it is good to have the entire perspective. Not just today; not just one lifetime; not even just one generation or one civilization, but the full spectrum of evolution, and you understand more about how it is that you can allow yourselves, from your advanced state, to appreciate and enjoy pleasure, food, travel, companionship. These are the results of your long upward struggle.

Leah: I think, in a way, our discussion was: are we not spiritizing if we lean towards or consider the sensual aspects of life, or possibly are we ungodly if we speculate on them, or -- I don't know! It just seemed to be an awful lot of soul-searching going on here in relation to . ...

TOMAS: You are very conscientious, my daughters. Recall that not long ago I spoke at length regarding the Everglades of the emotions, and part of this realm is the sensual. It is part of the emotional and physical facet of being a human being. You can wander around in the sensual realms as readily as you can wander around in the emotional realms, and there is nothing wrong with the senses in and of themselves, as there is nothing wrong with the emotions in and of themselves. It is when you become stuck in them, or lost in them, when they begin to destroy you or others that they become a detriment and a problem.

And so as you keep your spiritual Core intact, as you keep your alignment appropriate, as I am inclined to want to say "your ducks in a row," you can visit the emotional realms, you can visit the sensual realms without guilt and without shame. Do you not enjoy in your culture occasionally a steak? Or, for those of you who are vegetarian, a spinach salad or artichoke? Some sensual delight? Do you not enjoy your Mozart and your Bach? Or even your Beatles? And are they not, in their own right, a sensual delight?

Do you not enjoy the feeling of a fresh mountain stream trickling over your toes on a hot summer day? Do you not enjoy, by the same token, the feeling of a hot mineral spring bubbling up to warm your marrow in your bones on a cold winter day? These are sensual facets that are entirely open to your indulgence, your nurturance, your enjoyment, your total delight.

The warmth of the sun on your back on a day in spring when you have been enclosed in winter doldrums is sensual. The wind in your hair, blowing it across your neck, is sensual. These are wonderful experiences of the human animal. They remind you of life. The smell of the rose is a sensual experience, and these are not a shame to experience. These are wonderful experiences, senses, for your pleasure. Part of life. So many, so many wonderful things to enjoy.

Leah: So would you say that our discussion earlier this evening and our difficulty with it has a lot to do with the cultural taboo of discussing sex?

TOMAS: Unequivocally. There are cultures, incidentally, that have no bar against discussing it. There are cultures, even advanced cultures that are much more natural about it. There are other cultures even on other worlds that handle it in an infinite variety of ways, and so the way that you have been taught is the way that you will perceive it to be. But that is not necessarily The Way. It is a cultural conditioning, having developed out of need and as a value, as any evolutionary thing will.

Leah: Well, I thank you for your answers. I know it talks in the Urantia Book about sex being like adult play at times, but . .. maybe it's just the shame thing or something that . .. I think that sex definitely can be a very spiritual experience, but I think that the general population would be appalled at a statement like that.

TOMAS: I am not going to be an agitator here on purpose, but I will to some extent allow this equation of the taboo against the sexual nature being paralleled somewhat to the traditions of your evolved religions, i.e., structured.

I am reminded that the only place that Jesus did not go was to the public baths where there was pronounced promiscuity. He, of course, did not discuss the mores, for they change from generation to generation, but he did stand up to those traditions and beliefs that were counter to the reality of the relationship between man or woman and his or her God. And so he would renounce tradition of the Church, of the Sanhedrin, on occasion. And whereas you also can and will and do step out of the constraints of traditional religion into the freedom of a personal relationship with the living God, you are also free to step out of the constraints of traditional morality into the relationship with the Father through his sons and daughters.

As I indicated earlier, the sexual realm, in an evolved and enlightened being, is a shadow of the spiritual realm, and it is entirely possible for the morontia bodies to play in the fields of the Lord in the physical realms as well as the spiritual realms. I am not inviting you to digress, boys and girls. I am inviting you to release the shackles that constrain your flight into self-esteem, self-respect and freedom of you as an individual.

Throw off the guilt and shame of the past ages and walk free as an enlightened child of God in guidance of His way for you. He provides all things. All things.

I have a sense that the hour grows late and that perhaps we have extended far enough into this field of strange fruit. I will allow you to savor the taste of your senses in this context, and trust that you will not venture off into some inappropriate lusty venture without taking wisdom with you. Are there any other questions before we close for the evening?

I would like to stay and visit until the wee hours of the morning, and I know that there is a part of you that also enjoys our trysts. However, it is important, as Nebadonia indicated, that you take care of yourselves, and I, as your elder brother, as your doting Uncle Tomas, will tell you, my little nieces, my little daughters, little sisters, it is time for you to get some rest, for tomorrow is another day, a busy day in the life, filled with opportunities and decisions and delights of all sorts.

Be at peace in your minds, children. Be at peace in your hearts and in your souls. Good night.

TOMAS: Hello to you, my dear ones. I am glad to be here with you and to comfort you all. It is a stressful time of year. Even for you who are not aware of the celebratory stressors, we are aware of the impact on you; and it is a supreme delight to be here with you, to find that you seek comfort and companionship with each other. It is wonderful that the established habits of growth and spiritual connection continue even in the face of the ups and downs of your worldly activities and affairs, for the stabilizing effects of your foundation in community and faith.

We have a visitor or two this evening. The first visitor is a rare treat. I will not hold you up. I will not hold her up, for she is in need of departing soon. Let me move over, then, and allow for Solonia to come in and greet you this evening.

SOLONIA: Hello, my daughters, I am Solonia. You know me from your reading. They call me "the voice in the garden" and it is often the case that I am the voice in the garden of your life, for I bring grace and refreshment to your arena. It is good to be here. It is an infrequent thrill to partake of the mortal life, although I am not unfamiliar with the trials and tribulations of the mortal existence. You know well that I have been affiliated with your Material Son and Daughter, Adam and Eve. I have observed the human condition.

It is not in error that I am here this evening in the wake of your discussions of serpents and morality. It is interesting that you understand the animal nature in its deceptive forms. The lure of pleasure is great. The justification for companionship is poignant, and many times it would appear as though, in following in the wake of the personality pattern, you discover yourself in situations and liaisons that tax and test your noble nature.

It is a well known fact to us and to yourselves that you are human, that you are of animal origin, and we would not decry the human condition and the animal nature, but in-as-much as we are aware of how strong those leanings are, those tendencies are, we will always be elevating you up and out of your natural comfort proclivity into those understandings, into that field and range of humor, into that comfort zone of compassion for your own human frailty.

The realms of the subconscious, as you have discussed, and as you enjoy -- for they are colorful and creative and imaginative, allowing for great latitude and great rationale -- these realms are only deadly when you choose to stay, choose to believe, choose to give them too much credit, choose to give them too much credence, credibility.

Do not put your faith, your strength, your hope in these very understandable and very compelling lures and drives. I have seen the results of such frailty. You yourselves have lived in the shadow of such frailty, the disease of weakness. Be strong. Be strong in your faith. Be great in your devotion, in your fidelity to truth, courageous in your efforts to attain actual reality.

I am glad to be here with you. I look at your garden and smile at its symmetry and grace. I smell your roses. I admire your shrubbery. I bequeath you this greatness.

Your teacher has spoken to you of "where I walk is holy ground" and where you are is a garden, is a citadel, is a temple. Allow your garden to be one wherein you dwell not with the lure of the serpent but with the range of angels. Rise up. For your sake and the sake of those who follow Him.

TOMAS: Yes, I am Tomas; I am back. Indeed, Gerdean, she is a noble soul, an elevated entity indeed. I will convey that Gerdean's mind has a picture of a marble statue as representative of Solonia, but Solonia is not crystallized marble, but perfection. An honor indeed to have her visit with us this evening. There will be another visitor in the course of time this evening. I do not mean to dominate. Merium also is here and your personal teachers, of course.

Many, many are in attendance. I think you should know that they are not only here on Tuesday evenings or Sunday afternoons, that many of them are here constantly, and only tune in as there is activity. There are some who do specifically attend, but they may or may not be here every week. It is important that you realize the variety of essences in attendance in our meetings. It is never the same. Never. There are no repeat performances. Each show is an original. Each orchestration is brand new.

And what of you, my daughters? Bring to me what is new in your life. What is new for you today? A perspective, perhaps.

Leah: Despite involvement in my own emotionalism, I've heard of situations with other people that would heretofore have caused me quite a bit of emotional upheaval, as pain, just by the mere speculation of their situation, but they don't seem to affect me, other than being the strong possibility of one of my friends not making it through a medical problem, and the other, I heard of a person who was in an industrial accident, and while I have -- I'm not sure if it's empathy or sympathy for him -- I don't seem to be grabbing onto that vicarious carrying on in another's situation. It almost feels a little on the cold side. I don't quite understand it, but on the other hand it … I don't understand it, but it's not anywhere as painful. Maybe I'm just too embroiled in my own stuff right now. Before, I just would hear of something and I would just be embracing somebody else's agony through some kind of vicarious notation.

TOMAS: An interesting observation indeed, a nuance of growth. It is not finished yet, this observation, for your own growth throe is not finished either. This passage experience you are undergoing, it is very beneficial for you, daughter, for it is allowing you to express and address issues, concerns, feelings, attitudes, emotions, beliefs and so forth, not excluding fears and loves, that have been long submerged. You have discovered a treasure trove.

I am certain there are those who would say you have discovered a Pandora's Box and that all this is trouble, but it is also a treasure trove for you have discovered and can identify, will be able to put your finger on, feelings that prior to now have been as jelly, has scurried away, has skirted the issue. You are discovering that emotions can be experienced and let go. They are not the ultimate reality.

All of life has an emotional aspect. It is part of being an emotional creature; has an impact on you. It is the experiential aspect. Experientially, then, you can go through life without allowing the emotions to cripple you, handicap you or rule you. And so, in this view, from this perspective, this understanding, you will see differently then when you see others experiencing emotion, how they are portraying the emotion they are feeling and experiencing in the current learning or teaching experience at hand. You will be able, yes, to fully empathize without wasting valuable energy on emotion.

Leah: How is it that -- I guess I'm speaking for myself, but -- I've always been this way. Just extremely emotional, and . .. is this a learned behavior? Because I see other people don't get so overcome by emotion as I have in the past.

TOMAS: You are not alone. There are others who share your plight. There are many who are handicapped by their emotions and some manifest their emotionality through anger or tears, but it is best to know what they are. There are many who refuse to give viability to their emotional condition and when and if it finally emerges, it can be overpowering. This is part of Correcting. All of this is Correcting. Let us take an example of an ideal:

The Thought Adjuster has come to indwell you in order that It have personality manifestation. Agreed?

TOMAS: Using your personality. Now, if your personality is swallowed up in its emotionality, in its emotional realm or the emotions of others, it is not at liberty then to cooperate with the Father fragment; it is self-absorbed in its emotional realm. If however you understand your emotions and you let them work with you -- operating as an emotional creature but being motivated by a higher inspiration, the emotions then come into play as assets and you can portray your emotions as assets, helping get the message across, the point across.

You can emote the Father -- His love, His strength, His compassion, His judiciousness, His good humor, His good will, His ability to suffer the little children, His fruits -- but only as you know the emotional realms. When they rule you, you cannot be helpful -- as helpful -- to the Father. You can be helpful, but rather by default. When you allow your emotions to run your life, you are, in a way, like the leaf who has fallen on the flume that runs through the mountain and it is swept along having no control over whether it stops, starts, becomes trapped, sinks, piles up or whatever.

It is better, however, in your evolutionary scheme of things, my dear, to be reckoning with your emotional realm and healing with it and learning it, enjoying it, accepting it, becoming familiar with it, with its strengths, with its weaknesses, than to deny its existence or to be fearful of and therefore try to submerge your emotional nature. It is not healthy to try to hide from how you feel for it will leak out. It is best that you know yourself.

Know yourself in terms of how and why it is that you are fearful or angry or made happy, where you are diverted, how you are strengthened, for these then are ammunition that you can bring consciously to your Father as tools of your personality to function on His behalf. This is part of the personality make-up. You are doing well. Proceed.

TOMAS: It rather goes back to the lesson on self-mastery. It also speaks of responsibility. Many do not want to know who they are for then they will feel they have to be responsible for themselves and they have not yet had to be responsible or feel responsible. Many choose the immature way. When you have matured sufficiently, you can discover the need to mature, to function responsibly, wisely, joyously. It enables you to handle life's vicissitudes with grace, with charm. It enables you to avoid hysteria and the depletion of your emotional energies.

"Behold the man." "Behold the woman." How is it that the human being presents itself? How is it that Leah presents herself? How does Aniela present herself ? And Gerdean? You know that you have a certain way of appearing to those to whom you present yourselves, but how does the Father present himself through you? How does He manifest through your personality, through the Father-bestowed personality? Can you see the Father work through you? Can you feel His energy coming through you and going into those you touch? Can you see The Father reflecting back to you through the eyes of your peers that He has heard you, that He is one with you?

This cannot be attained /sustained in the emotional realms or in those realms of the subconscious to which Solonia made reference. It requires superconsciousness. It requires that you be super-human. Indeed, it requires that you be more than what you are. And that is possible because you avail yourself that divinity may work through you. Why do you resist this? Are you afraid of your own nobility?

TOMAS: It would appear as though you do not live up to the faith that you might have were you to develop greater faith. It is an exercise in faith and trust, an exercise that you cannot be cajoled or coerced into. It is an exercise that only you can determine you are willing to undertake. Why would one want to undertake such an exercise to experience the nobility of divine sonship / daughtership?

TOMAS: It is a rhetorical question. I am asking, yes. Have you a suggestion?

Leah: I believe [it's] because we forget! When you speak of things, of these things, they're very vivid and very heart-felt, but when we go away from these rooms and we deal with the human condition, we forget. When I say "we" I shouldn't include everybody, but . .. I should say "I forget" things until a situation arises, until the light bulb goes on and I remember, but there isn't a constant remembering.

TOMAS: Now here is the trick: you go into your arena and you meet your fellows where they are. There is nothing more important than the work of your realm. And so you go into your realm much as Jesus materialized and entered the human race in order to meet them where they were. You do the same in your life. You adorn yourself for presentation among your associates. The key is, daughter, to not forget who you are while you are there, to not lose yourself so completely in the environment that is presented, in the reality that is presented, that you forget the reality that you are and that you aspire to bring to them.

Here again is one important reason why you know self-mastery over the emotional realms, for you can then see how it is that they work and how it is that they are designed to suck you in, to swallow you up, to take you on a merry chase, a grand ride through an Everglade of experience that has no lasting value. The lasting value is on the high dry ground of spirit reality. That is the high dry ground you have as your faith foundation, that you walk upon as you enter your arena.

You can become adept, my dear, at knowing who you are and carrying yourself into your working arena, appreciating your peers for who they are without becoming embroiled in their emotional condition. You will be able to see it and empathize with it, without becoming part of it. It is a true attainment.

There are those who say about us in the Teaching Mission, "You talk about the same thing all the time!" but you see, I can feel very poignantly, there are things that I am saying to you this moment, Leah, that you have heard a dozen times, but you have not heard them quite this way, quite this personally and this poignantly. Is that not true?

TOMAS: So this is what we are about. We are encouraging you to grasp the faith reality that will make you more whole, stronger, more able to go into the arena and take the living truth with you. This is such a high reality, and yet it is so nebulous to try to put a title on it or a name on it. How can you define "truth," "living love"? These are known, not described. It is the reality that this world desperately needs. It is its saving grace, and you are a worker in the field.

We are happy to see you weep, for it is, to us, a reminder that you are learning to know who you truly are, that in many ways you are washing away a former reality, a former understanding and embracing a newer, greater reality. It is much like the beatitude that says, "Blessed are they who mourn when a friend is there to comfort," for although you are losing a temporal reality, you are gaining a reality of fellowship that is eternal and that will augment your material relationships and enable them also to be eternal.

Your growth is becoming apparent, even to yourself. You are becoming a more capable worker in the field. Your teachers are working happily with you, enabling you to learn these lessons of perception that will create in your heart deep happiness, divine joy, and that will make you a worker for the Master and you will help with the harvest.

JACK: I am touched to be here. I don't always get an opportunity to be where I like. I am like you, you see, I like to be in more than one place at once. I don't like to miss anything. And not only do I want to know what's going on, I want to experience it. I want to experience it all! I believe Beryl said that once, and it is true, "I want it all!" I want everything the Father has to offer.

I look around and (I'll continue using Beryl as an example for it makes her very unique, you see) there are so many who don't dare want anything at all, who don't believe that they have any right to it. Perhaps they feel that if they have it, it is because they deserve it, and so they're big-headed. Perhaps they feel they have to earn it and so they work too hard and don't enjoy it. There are very few who, in calm assurance, know that abundance is possible.

Now, does one who knows that they can "have it all" experience loneliness? Or, does the one who has a lot of company in not knowing whether they can have anything?

JACK: I will discuss it further. I could not possibly attempt to clarify it or explain it. Perhaps I'll try another way. I was talking about, "Is it lonely?" I suppose you could say that it was, but when you are so full, when you are so completely happy, when your life is so devoted and fulfilled, when you have purpose, when you can see your purpose, when you are inspired to do what's in front of you because you know that's what you're to do and no one can do it quite like you, when you can see the results, when you feel the rewards, do you feel lonely?

Not really, because you don't have time to worry about being lonely. It doesn't enter the picture. Lonely is a concern for lonely people, like fear is a concern for people who are in fear. Love is a concern for people who are in love. Joy is a concern for people who are in joy. So don't BE lonely and you won't worry about being lonely.

Leah: I'm thinking I might have not chosen a proper word. I think what I meant was, if you -- I can't think of the proper word. The word I keep hearing is: Are you recognized? And I don't mean by acclaim. I mean, are you alone if you do these things on a human level? I don't think I'm using the right words.

JACK: Well, I tell you I have been around this planet for a long time. I have been around a very long time. I have seen the evolution of field hands, workers in the field. I have observed; I have grown also. Actually I have evolved with you, many of you. The growth of the day is phenomenal as compared to, say, the Middle Ages or before that.

Those who often work alone, they work often without acknowledgement by their peers, but they know in their heart, in their soul, that they are acknowledged by their God, for this is their motivation. Now you are very fortunate these days that you have so many co-workers, fellow workers, and that you have learned the technique of discoursing with your celestial friends (or that the technique is available for you to learn). You are positively wading in the living waters compared to how it was not long ago.

Today you can look around and acknowledge helpers, people who are also working for the same values that you are working for. Far more than it was just a few years ago. And so it is quite a community these days, quite a community of workers. The ratio of workers in isolation as compared to the past is negligible. Isolation is ended. The spiritual circuits are open. Contact is being made right and left. The acceleration of spiritual awareness on Urantia is growing proportionally. No, it's not a lonely job. Yes, you have a lot of acknowledgement.

Leah: I am aware of the celestial acknowledgement. I don't think I'm doing a very good job of putting out the question I'm trying to -- I know sometimes I've been in circles and I just feel like … I don't want to say I feel like it's a waste of time, because I don't preach or anything, but it just feels like, "What am I doing here?" I just don't feel like I have anything in common with a whole bunch of people. But I know that I must be there for a reason. That's what I mean by, "Is it lonely?" The people are friendly enough, but . .. it just feels like, "What am I doing in this situation?" I'm not saying this right.

JACK: I am smiling. I have an understanding of what you are saying. I wish I knew what I could tell you. That is what you're here for, child. That is why you are here today asking this question. You know, there is something in the textbook that says, "We need more workers in the field. Here am I Lord, send me." I hear you saying, "I don't see anybody out there doing it! What am I supposed to do? Send me! It's my job. I'll do it for you, God. I am happy to go serve. I am happy to feed your sheep. I don't know what to feed your sheep, but I'll go if you take food with me for them. I'll look to you for that which you want me to give them. I'll do it for you, but You have to do it through me." This is your job, Leah. This is your calling. To serve the Master. He said, "Do you love me? Then feed my sheep."

You are already doing this unconsciously, Leah, in having intent to serve. As you do it more consciously, you can do it more effectively, and when you discover that this is a frame of reference for you, one which has supreme reality, you will discover a new set of associates, a new level of functioning, a new range of operations, a new satisfaction in your efforts, a new understanding of the rewards of sonship. You will have intellectual peace. You will have an understanding, in your heart, above and beyond that which you see around you, for you have been chosen, as you have chosen, to go forth into the multitudes and spread the good tidings. The words will come. The joy will be there.

I am going. I have other duties. I have been truly happy to come by and share my experience with you. As they say, "my experience, strength and hope." Gerdean, it's good to see you, my dear. It is always wonderful to work with you. Call me back again sometime, Tomas; I like your environment. I didn't get to say hello to Johnny here; how are you, kid? I'm glad to see you. I'll see you later.

TOMAS: I'm Tomas, back again. Merium is reclining on the chaise lounge enjoying all of the visitors. She has been serving grapes [Group giggle] and reciting poetry. [More giggles] She is quite the companion. It is astounding to me that the Father has such a wide variety of personalities. Indeed, never a dull moment. I guess perhaps it is time to think about winding down for the day. We had some good visits, I think.

MERIUM: Solonia and I have been having a nice chat on the other side of the garden. Since you were having a tete-a-tete with Tomas and Jack, we girls went off for a private conference. It is always wonderful to spend time with the visitors. You understand how that is. You like to get company, too, and since Tomas was saying that it's never the same in this environment, I can testify to the enchantment of a serendipity, one after the other. The only thing that remains the same is that which is eternal and good, and so it is not like as if it were going to be dull. What did you want to talk to me about? Anything in particular?

Leah: Well, I wanted to say hello and I appreciate your coming, but Solonia rushed out so quick and there was something about the subconscious and the disease that I was hoping she would have elaborated on a little bit more, but maybe next time.

MERIUM: Actually Solonia is a woman of few words, in spite of the appearance to the contrary. It is not clear to me, either, what she said. It may be clearer in the written transcript. If you have questions, however, I would be happy to take it up next time we get together. I'm sure that she and I see eye to eye enough that I might be able to help her out somewhat in her communication efforts. I'll take those key words back to her. "Subconscious" and "disease."

MERIUM: All right. I'll take it up with her, and also, with your permission, check in with Jay-Orzh and perhaps Alkanon. Often they have helpful hints as to what you might be going through in terms of your comprehension efforts. Okay. I'm going to back to the cornucopia of plenty that is prepared at the feast. Enjoy also your cornucopia of wonders in this holiday season. There will be plenty. Plenty good and plenty bad, so stay poised to promote truth, beauty and goodness, to bring the fruits of the spirit to the table with you. Looking forward to our next visit. Tomas, take 'em away.

TOMAS: I am taking them nowhere, but I am taking myself out. Until we speak again, farewell.

TOMAS: It is quite a nice bunch of fruit we have here this evening. It is a generous contribution you bring. We will be having an artwork of plenty here. It is good to be with you. It is good to have you together. Your tapestry is growing; your colors are brighter.

Merium and I are beginning to feel as if we were addressing the multitudes, for the bounty of our gatherings of late. It is, of course, in part because your holiday season is ended and you resume your routines and we are grateful that your routines include your spiritual development and association. We are aware of the generosity of spirit from Paradise that activates you. You are sensing the pull of Paradise gravity and are allowing yourselves to be lifted up, and we are delighting in the visible manifestation of your ascension.

Allow for a moment, if you will, for our adjustment to take place. It has been some time since Merium and I have connected in this fashion and our re-connection in the circuitry is a viable process which will be upgraded as we adapt, in order to accommodate your energies. You are seven in number, an expansive group, and variegated in background and interest, and so it is quite wonderful to feel your presences, to anticipate your focus and to be challenged by the opportunity to teach the lesson that will reach you each and all.

I thought this evening I would speak, but briefly, regarding the truth that each of you are to grow your own religious experience. Your reading this evening indicated that your personal religious experience was as a result of your relationship with Father. As you find Him and as He finds you, you begin to associate and a reality develops and it is one that you can comprehend because of your personal association with Him.

Now, I would like to bring this to light in terms of an illustration, by way of an illustration, and let us get artistic here. Let us go down into the basement of the church where there is a large room, a dusty room, where an art class is taking place, a sculpting class is taking place, and you have, let us say Amos, conducting this sculpting class, and we have an array today of seven students and the students are going to be working in clay.

You each have your own easel, your own table, your own armature, your own apron, your own area in which to work, and you have your assignment to create your interpretation of your own religious experience.

Some of you have already been dabbling in the art of living a religious life for some while and so your interpretation may assume any number of sophisticated illustrations.

You may depict your spiritual experience as beauty and give it a traditional interpretation and create a Venus de Milo of your own. Some of you may be more abstract in your appreciation of your religious experience and create on your armature an example of what you might call air, or clouds. Some of you may regard your spiritual experience in a traditional realm and create an angel, as depicting an attitude that you identify with in your religious experience.

And let us now go to the fledgling student who is gathering his faith to create his own religious experience, and what shall we have this fledgling create? We are saying that this newborn soul creates an egg. It has created an egg, and the perfection of the shape of the egg of the new student is as profound and is as meaningful, it is as pregnant with life and perfection as is the angel or the air or the Venus de Milo, and yet this newcomer is only new in the process of creating his own religious experience. This demonstration is to amuse you and to interpret for you, perhaps, how it is that you can create your own religious experience for a true religious experience is a thing of beauty, a work of art.

Now, you could say also that this child in its creation is messy, is imperfect, has put little pinches and smudges of clay on the armature and it really represents nothing distinguishable, nothing recognizable to anyone who has any experiencing in creating an interpretation, an artistic interpretation of a value lesson or reality, a concept that is worthy of worship. But who can stand back and laugh at this awkward interpretation of smudges when they are in fact an effort of an individual to depict life itself.

You cannot make fun of someone's ideology, someone's idealization. If you ask them what it represents, they may apologize and they may not, for they are a child, you see, and children are just delighted with their creation. They will say, "Well, can't you see? It's a tree! And here are my roots, going deep into my faith foundation, and here are my branches reaching up to the Father." Children are clever that way. They have wonderful imaginations.

And so I amuse you this evening, my cluster of grapes, that you can depict for yourself in your own mind's eye, this little truth that you create your own religious experience and you cannot disdain a newcomer, for their truth is also beauty, for it is of the Father.

A lot of this religious experience that you've been talking about is something that you will keep to yourself. And you will share it with others, but a great deal of it is intimate and it is the food on your plate, so to speak.

This evening I want to thank you all for staying together, for being supportive and learning tolerance, expanding your concept of tolerance, expanding your concept of loyalty, for allowing yourselves to feel in-depth your own personal situation, to be brave enough to look at things that have not gone right and to still have sparkle and hope and anticipation of what comes next because this is the on-going journey and we don't want you to fall asleep!

Now, mind you, you will find truth, you will find knowledge, in places you did not expect to find it, and you will learn to respect even more those who feel that they have acquired it. You will be fascinated with your new performance.

I'm a little tongue-tied this evening. I'm not going to blame faulty wiring. Hunnah was receptive when she sat down but I'm having a difficult time being myself in and through her. One moment.

Hunnah: I would like to have Erata ask her question regarding her experience about Salvington, and perhaps Tomas will be able to touch on that. Would you mind?

TOMAS: I will talk about the situation, and for those who are not aware, your meditations and soliloquies in the spirit, have revealed to you the location of your spouse, who has departed Urantia, as being Salvington, and I will respond to this to say that according to the creature of time and space, which the mortal is, there is a long time between here and there.

It is necessary for you to traverse the seven mansion worlds, the many, many experiences of the System and then the Constellation before attaining the presence of Michael and the home sphere of Salvington, but in terms of the spirit, there are no time/space constraints, certainly not like you know in your concept of time, and so, whereas one may argue that it is not possible for him to be in Salvington already, it must be remembered that you are looking at time and space from a human standpoint and that in terms of Paradise, all life is already infinite and so the response that he is in Salvington can have value and truth, but it represents a perspective that is far beyond the perspective of you who are of time and space.

Now I will discuss Salvington somewhat. Salvington is the home of Michael and Nebadonia. It is the capital of the local universe. It is a microcosm of the Isle of Paradise. As you take the Isle of Paradise and call it "Heaven" and then include the starry realms of time and space in the universe of universes surrounding it, and call this the Grand Universe, we will look at Salvington, then, as the center of the local universe of time and space with its many, many worlds. It, Salvington, is our local heaven, for it is there that we will meet Michael in his home sphere. It is there that our King resides; it is home to his Melchizedek receivers and many of the administrative aspects of the spiritual reality of his universe.

The composition of a local universe is quite extensive and I do not want to overwhelm your minds with details of its composition over much but the local universe is comprised of constellations. The head (capital) of the constellation here, that you will evolve up through, is where you will find the Most Highs, the government, and the constellations are comprised of systems. Your system, Satania, was isolated from contact with the rest of your local universe and the Grand Universe when Lucifer rebelled, and so you (Urantians) have experienced some deficiencies.

But, a system is comprised of planets and your planet, Urantia, will be regarded as your home base throughout eternity. You have a long ascension between here and Salvington, but in the eye of eternity, you are already there. Has that been helpful?

TOMAS: From your frame of reference, and from mine, since I have visited Salvington (and in some regards it could be regarded as my home, but I am working in the field here now) it would take a long time for you to traverse the spheres.

These experiences are wonderful. They are designed to increase your spiritual reality and diminish your animal nature. All of your experience is educational in that regard. You do not become spirit overnight. And so your spouse is ahead of you in the many mansions, but he will be available to greet you when you awaken in the Resurrection Halls of Mansonia. You have time. You have an eternity to continue to grow together.

I am very heart-warmed by your experiences, daughter, in spirit reality and in your wondrous approach to spirit reality. Your very creative mind, through your relationship with Our Creator, is giving you a canvas of great delight. How wonderful that you have been able to perceive the presence of your personal teacher Wheat and to receive her ministrations. Continue in your advanced ways. These ventures into understanding your relationship with divinity/ deity is our hope, for as you spiritize your reality, you contribute to light and life for all around you. Your spiritual joy radiates and encourages others in their ascension also.

Yes we are having a weak circuit. It is not mechanical. It is in some part due to the configuration; however it is a wonderful experience and a generous contribution to the evening that you are here. Welcome!

MERIUM: I would like to address the puzzling relationship and help you to re-identify the face that looks upon you in human form, the voice that comes from it that has perplexing statements. These individuals in your life can help you give them new identity. I'm going to take advantage of Hunnah's conditioning and her lesser statement regarding someone who is part of this extended group, and in each of your lives there are people who are part of this extended group, because -- I will give you an example.

As Hunnah has been being re-educated regarding her body, she heard herself say to her doctor, "My hormones are part of my body, too". This is a definition. This is expanded awareness. And in an earlier discussion, some of you have a history of bad behavior in your lives, perhaps, who is a puzzlement; the focus is on that behavior and not your own, of course, or your response to them, but I want you to help you lift them up and allow them to have a new identity in your heart of hearts.

The little theater was mentioned earlier. I am going to take advantage of that. I have my sleeves rolled up and I want to take advantage of the theater. Let's all go to the theater and we're going to take a scenario where we have the "enlightened one" -- it could be any one in this group. Your own mind. Let it be you. And in this scenario, I want you to see the coming and going of individuals in your life, those who talk the talk and attempt to walk the walk, and those who appear to be listening to another radio station. Perhaps someone in that scenario will test your patience and break your heart.

Remember that they have a Thought Adjuster, they have an agenda, they have destiny just as the puzzling situation with our friend, Erata. Her husband did appear to be someone responsive to more, as they would say, that they have the shades pulled down and have a different agenda. Through the many discourses we have had, we have reminded you that the Christ presence is living your life, allowing you to meet your definition, to give you courage, to make new paths, to have new choices, to hesitate, to embrace situations that trouble you, to exercise your counsel, to journal; we've done it all in this group. We've been very, very busy.

And now we are definitely setting you out in the field, and that doesn't mean that we are going to put you in a new neighborhood, but we are going to allow you to develop your descendent and you will catch yourself and you will remember, but at this point it will comfort you to know that that person who is a puzzling presence in your life is there because the Father loves them.

They appear to be an irritant, an endless drain on your emotion. A breaking heart may accompany this relationship, but when a relationship stays together it is because in a subtle way perhaps it is responsive, it is acting as a poultice in your own development, a counter-irritant perhaps, but when you embrace that relationship and you bring it to the Father and ask that holy teaching presence to be activated in you so that you may be more appropriate with them, they will feel the absence of your criticism and your disappointment that you have had prior.

You have been activated into service in a way that you have never had it before. You will hear yourself voice pre-programming but when you hear it you will immediately be revolted and you will stop within yourself and you will say, "I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel that way."

Recently Hunnah's daughter pointed out a prayer written by our beloved Paramahansa Yogananda who has -- if you were to say worldly wise in his degrees and having refined the expression and the devotion of his love of his heavenly Source -- he has a sincere and empowered eloquence that can melt down any situation, and in this little prayer he identifies the individual as your, child with a mistaken identity, and he prays for them, the child that doesn't understand.

The bible calls it loving your enemies, but we are going to help you remove that word from your vocabulary because you have been coming to a sense of nudity as never before. You will have more and more difficulty drawing a line and keeping certain people out of your area of appreciation. You are not going to be at war any more with anyone. You will be so busy being in love with our beloved Teacher and example, our devoted Christ, you will be so preoccupied with the service and your own listening that you will no longer be defining those around you incorrectly.

I don't know if I have skillfully uttered these words this evening, but I do know that you will be definitely peacemakers. There is a line in the hymn in this software here. It is, "Let there be peace and let it begin with me," and that is what is already underway with all of you and it's growing so rapidly, you have gone, as Hunnah would say, beyond; you're over the mark. You're 51% and you are on your way. You have hurdled many difficult times.

There are still some of you who seem to draw very frustrating, negative experiences. You will see yourself standing straighter and looking at the situations that come to you and you will suddenly find yourself not drawing them because you will have said that this is no longer suitable for one who serves the First Source and Center. "As for me and mine, we will serve the Lord." You've seen all these little words. How many words! How many words does it take to keep you going. It's alright. There is a sufficiency.

I hope that I have started to develop in you an awareness of not the change of fixing anything or anyone, but I hope you will develop an awareness of your own capacity to be allowed to receive a new definition in the face of something that has taken on a very, very powerful station in your life. We will be able to look at patterns of many, many years that have developed from your youth through some errors that have cemented themselves nearly in stone, and you will be able to reach out and caress it and say, "It's meltdown. This is going to collapse and I am going to be here to celebrate and to witness the Father's power in me to allow this, to use the control in my life. I serve the one living God and no other." These words will stay in your heart, bright and warm like new embers, and they will serve you well.

It thrills me to see you all in such wonderful receptivity. How pleased we are with you and how we love you. We have many graduations for you, all the time. Your vibrational combinations are sweetening every day. Bask in the awareness of your safety. Bask in the awareness of the plenty that lives in you and for the excitement of seeing it show itself. You are really going to be thrilled and you will all have a choral and a chorus together.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium. Thank you all for your rapt attention. It is wonderful to teach such a class that honors their teachers and we are, Merium and I, honored to be given that opportunity. Are there questions this evening? (Silence) We have such bright students, Merium, they have all the answers already.

Fraline: When you are so shunned by someone you feel so much for, who doesn't seem to care, how do you accept and turn that around? You don't want to give up hope on this person. They don't give you anything to grasp for hope.

TOMAS: I will speak to you regarding hope versus expectation, for it is indeed a fruit of the spirit that we have undying hope. We have hope that they will see the light and that we will share with them the Spirit of Truth and our friendship, that we will be kindred spirits, children together, playing in the fields of the Lord. As our hopes are temporarily dashed, we must take a look then at our human expectation, for our human expectation is often confused with our spiritual hope. They are different.

There are no expectations in the spirit realm. We are not in a position to expect on command or on desire, but only as the mortal chooses, through their free will choice, to abide by the will of the Father. Expectations are a human consideration. We have expectations of our peers when we put forth effort. We have hereditarily a cause and effect understanding that says, "If I put forth certain energy, it will come back to me," and in our dense limitation, we often see this as, "I have given to this particular individual and I want to see results from this particular individual" whereas in growth in spirit, we learn that the giving is in giving for God and as we give, our seed falls on many kinds of soil. Sometimes it falls on fertile soil; sometimes it falls on barren soil; and we cannot have expectation that the seed will take root and grow, but we can have undying hope that our seed will fall on fertile soil. And so the differentiation, daughter, between hope and expectation is one which you could consider here. Remember it is His kingdom, not yours. Has that been helpful?

MERIUM: There are times when there are too many justifications for discipline. Just as our friend described earlier, that she had purchased an automobile and it did not meet her expectations -- she has been, you might say, burned -- and in a human sense, it would bring forth utter discouragement and frustration. The champion has not arrived upon the scene to take care of the problem or to have helped her avert it. This is a human configuration.

If you are in business with someone who lets you down, or if you have a family member who let you down, it is very, very painful. If you are going to go out on a floor to dance and the music was playing a waltz and you know how to waltz and your partner wanted to do line dancing, you would be very annoyed.

There are certain things that are going on here at this level of life, this level of consciousness. It is just like living in a constant dodge-em amusement park only its painful. This is some of the reasons that you are willing to seek a better way. There is usually some form of pain that is so constant that you find yourself on your knees in a church of any choice, or in your own private corner, asking for help to try to live in such a mixed-up affair.

You are beginning to weave a new pattern, and there are some quotes out there about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. In a sense that is what has been going on. You know what to expect; you know what you want, but you're shocked to find that you must travel a different road in order to achieve your goal, and as you travel this road and you discover that it is within yourself that you must clean house because you are not equipped to help someone else until you can help yourself.

That's why this very precious relationship with the Christ presence, with the wonderful, loving, gentle Mother Spirit, is so vital, because they hold the recipe and the empowerment to bring what is in you already, forth. So why we are here is to help you to develop and wax strong in the new realization and reality of yourself. You will continue to be frustrated with those who seem -- you have a nursing background here, and if you went to the ward and most of your patients were not focused well, perhaps they have a loss of circuitry that allows them to behave normally, -- you would be accepting of their limitation and you would be kind to them all, but you would not need the gratification of the lure of taking care of them the way you do when you are in a home situation and when the responsibilities are very designed.

So what I really intend to do is comfort you and help you focus on the holy Presence that accompanies your beautiful soul. These people who have gathered here over the years are comfortable with the understanding now that they have woven and you have sensed it in yourself or you would not have survived the tremulous experiences you have had in the past, but you are a light and you are a darling and you have every right to come to this place of shelter and learn how to become strong.

This is a different kind of aerobic. This is a different kind of health center. This is a different kind of no-diagnosis here. We do not talk about diagnosis and treatment. We stay in the light and acknowledge what already is alive in you and perfect, and as we stay together, it is brought forth the way a flower responds to the sun, and I want you to go home feeling totally fit, totally renewed, confident that you have found something that you can grasp and hold onto and yet will keep you focused. It will come rushing to you. Help is so abundant. And I hope these words and the admission of your frustration will create a new kind of fire in you, a new sort of hope, and best of all, the power to make the right choice and the patience to allow the new definition to appear to you in your mind and heart.

Oh, I just love this. It is not Heloise. It is Saint Heloise. Do you think that sounds pretty good? Saint Heloise?

TOMAS: We are reaching the end of our evening. Our energy patterns are stabilized and as usual we have reached a point now where we're rolling and could go on to the wee hours of the morning, but it is now time that we take this momentum and go into the arena with it.

It is a good feeling to be with you and to observe your development, your own acquisition of your own reality. Indeed, you are building your own personal religious experience. I enjoy your little daubs of clay and love seeing you fatten up your reality, and so I look forward to what is evolved throughout the course of the week. Merium have you an assignment for our little flock?

MERIUM: I am always telling them to write but today I will not tell them that. Today's assignment will be hope. The joy of having hope, and the joy of feeling that you're put back on the track. Remember those trains that come at Christmastime and the boys always press the button so much that they go flying off the course? Well, we'll set your wheels back on the track and you can go out all week-end. I want you to feel that you have been realigned and refocused. That's really all, just to be aware that you are in a new dispensation and it's a new year.

TOMAS: I will add that you remind yourself that when you fall off the track, our loyal sister and friend Merium will help lift you up with one of those arms of hers. We'll look forward to seeing you next week in our formal gathering and informally throughout the week. Our love to you. Goodnight and farewell.

TOMAS: It is an outrageous evening in your realm in many respects and we have been grateful and fascinated by your accounts and by the probing trust you invest in your souls and in each other's when you greet each other as you have this evening.

We are not at a loss to know how to proceed, but it is a rather large menu. I will begin by greeting you in the most merciful tones I know. I am reminded of how your planet is regarded throughout the universe of universes as the virtual shrine of mercy. Your tales of your existential being give testimony to why it is that your shrine is aptly identified. Peace be upon you, my children, and let tender mercies, indeed, enclose you all.

This evening I would like to speak to you about the truth of the profession of the Master that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. How is it that you then can absorb an entire evening in intensive discourse regarding the many emotional and mental burdens that you all carry in your lives, in your culture, in your conditioning?

His yoke IS easy. Have you ever stumbled on his glorious truth? Have you ever tripped over his loving kindness? Have you ever felt the weight of the truth of your belonging to him? No. This is the wondrous virtue that he offers in his gift of love to you. His burden IS light. Yet the burden of your earthly existence is fraught with difficulty and therefore we attend to your needs.

You have come far, daughters of Urantia. You have accepted your destiny, and with your joyous acceptance of your identification as daughters of God, in seeking to transmit your radiant joy of sonship, you are willing to soar, but your feet are heavy from treading in the mud of your material environment and you are now today kicking off the clumps of clay so that you might dance in lightness of being, but part of the difficulty is recognizing the weight of your boots.

Combat boots, indeed! And I have, Merium has, appreciated your outpourings and have, of course, much counsel to offer, but let it be remembered that there is no conflict here, for the Master has provided the truth of his message of lightness and freedom in the spirit, but this healing process of Urantia goes on as you are courageously forging ahead in setting the pace and helping to erase the chalk of the lessons of yesteryear.

Iyana: Tomas, Hunnah wanted to know if having the discourse that we've had -- which is more or less negative -- does it have anything to do with her transmitting, if it would be a downbeat instead of an upbeat, I think is what she meant.

TOMAS: If I understand your question, Iyana, it is not negative conversation that we have beheld this evening. We have, rather, beheld a very complex recipe and it will be mastered in due time. The contents of your recipe, these ingredients this evening, have been not negative but complex. It should not, ought not, convolute or distort a transmission but I will remind you all that as your systems are purged of these clumps of mud, your burden will be lighter and your transmissions will soar higher.

It is an effort, yes, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort, and so we are with you. It is part of Correcting Time, you will forgive the phrase and the reiterated reference.

TOMAS: Yes. I am reminded again of mercy; it is a similar context. Whereas you might consider grace the yellow blanket, mercy is a blue quilt. You are enveloped and covered and comforted in these qualities. Yet you are still required to grow. You cannot remain an infant in your awareness.

I want to ascertain if you are trying to get out of growing pains in asking such a question.

Iyana: The question wasn't for myself, because I think that when you receive grace it is a gift, but like you say, we don't just stand stationary; we keep moving.

TOMAS: Yes. In time daughter, your -- and I speak of you in general, not you specifically -- in time your shoes will be shiny and you will tap dance. In the meantime it is grace and mercy that can uphold you and keep you going. It is grace that allows you to know your sonship and not identify with the mud on your boots but with the walk that you are on.

TOMAS: It is very true that we are working in some complex realms, realms of psychology if you will, deep realms of soul-growth, and it is not our purpose as teachers to be your psychologists, nor are these meetings intended to be group therapy, and yet in a spiritual path, it cannot be avoided, for you are dealing with how you think, how you feel, how you behave, how you perceive life, and there is much truth to this reality that you are being re-born and reared by a spirit reality.

You have lived all of your lives, for the most part, in a material existence, a material realm. Only as you experience spirit and know a rebirth of the spirit do you begin to perceive the part of you, the perspective of eternity. As this reality becomes compelling and leading in your life, you begin to see the difference between that which you are becoming in the spirit, reality-izing, and that which you have become as a product of the flesh.

And you can clearly see how you have been trained in ways that may or may not contribute to your spiritual development. These modifications that you discussed in your social time this evening are constructive of growth, even though it may seem like pick and shovel work at times. Remember that none of this is occurring any quicker than is allowed for in your abiding by His and your covenant together.

Remember that God and man need each other. As you need things from God, he needs things from you also, and how can you give him what He needs if you are too consumed with things that you need or things that you feel that He has no business in or business with? Allow for the Father to decide what of you is of value to Him. Allow him to help you clean your boots and polish your shoes.

TOMAS: ` Gerdean is concerned about the time. (Pause) You asked if our discourse this evening could impact upon the transmitter and therefore on the transmission. I will tell you an array of things, material and otherwise, can impact a transmitter and therefore the transmissions. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as you practice this craft, you become sensitized beyond a normal range, and it is sometimes very awkward, for the transmitter is almost inadvertently given glimpses of an expanded view that are difficult.

Erata: We had such a long talk about different things, you know? And I guess it's kind of hard to put it in a question, but if you have to get over something, how do you go about doing it? You know what I mean? If you have a dilemma in your life that you really -- if you're not ready to resolve it, that's one thing, because people do have to resolve their problems or live with them, I guess, but how do you go about doing it in a Christian way? per se . I've been accused of not being a Christian because I put up my boundaries, and so then I consequently question myself, which I'm sure they wanted me to do. And so you seek people to validate your behavior, and so how do you go about dealing with things like conflict, and still remain doing it the way Christ Michael would want you to do it and learn to maybe turn off the negatives from other people?

TOMAS: As you say, your evening has been loaded, and even your question is loaded. You expect a simple answer?

TOMAS: It is possible, let me put it that way, but it is not possible in the blink of an eye. If you were truly purely spirit, perhaps you could handle this as Christ did, but you are not spirit, you're flesh; you are a human being, aspiring to be Godlike in a very imperfect realm. Your challenges are many. We admire your stamina. We are fully appreciating of the work you are facing, all of you.

Your prayer, Leah, was precious, and you are truly cared for and looked after in your efforts to find ways in which to move fluidly through the course of life in seeking to gain entry into the Kingdom and to lead others into it with you. I will bypass the word "Christian" and use the word "Christ-like," and if you are "Christ-like," you might need to offend someone by your enlightened honesty.

In modern terminology, "boundaries" is acceptable. It is necessary for you to establish appropriate boundaries for you are trying to establish a life of light and life for yourself that abuts other lives that also reflect light and life and that is a life that is sustained by and sanctioned by and touched by living love, i.e., Christ, i.e., Father, i.e., God, i.e., spirit, truth, beauty, goodness. And this transcends "ologies" and "isms" including Christianity.

Unfortunately conflict is part of growth -- conflict in your mind and conflict in your arenas -- until such time as, conjointly, you realize that growth does not have to be painful but that growth can be exhilarating and beneficial; thereupon, your growth can truly take off and we will really see some changes made around here, but to obtain that level of understanding and appreciation, it is necessary that you begin to acknowledge the occasional need for assertion, asserting your relationship with God as you understand God, asserting your identity as a human being with needs and feelings, with desires and so forth.

Integrating your belief system into your lifestyle requires establishing yourself according to your own boundary system, and that sometimes requires you to denounce the values of others. And the standard response to such "affrontery" is anger, rejection, retaliation and other negatives. You must have courage; you must have faith and belief that your actions are in accordance with that which you have identified and established by and through your quiet time with your appreciation of divinity, your intimate time in stillness with Father.

This is where your strength is; this is where you look to for your reality. As you in your reality become stronger, you will be able to navigate these currents more readily, more easily -- these antithetical currents. It is a process. Life is a process. You who are learning to deal with life in all of its configurations, within your very complicated minds/psyches/developing souls, are rewarded with things (not literal things. "things", however) that are indescribable. You are privy to insights and strengths and spirit gifts (and I don't mean miracles, I mean gifts) that are astonishing and indescribable.

And so, yes, the rewards are great and the yellow blanket of grace radiates out from you like the Sun and the blue of mercy falls like a cloak from your shoulders upon your fledgling sisters and brothers. There is effort involved in this process, yes, but you are not doing it alone. You are changing the course of life on Urantia. You are tilting Urantia on its axis. It is very real, what you do.

I will say to you all that some of which you are experiencing and verbalizing this evening, is having to do with today's date and time, in that, your holidays have come and gone; your new years resolutions have been put into effect or ignored, and now we get back to life and your life is not life as usual. Your life is forging ahead according to your decisions. As you have asked, you receive. You are advancing in understanding of your own cosmic consciousness, of your own beloved and personal relationship with that of infinity, with life itself.

Rejoice, daughters, that you can feel and that you have each other with whom to share your efforts and the results, for the results are many and they will infinitely radiate your work in service to others. Have I touched upon your question, Erata? -'

Iyana: Tomas, may I ask if I have some guides, and if so what are their names, if they have names.

TOMAS: You have also another teacher who remains mute. You have not gotten to know her. You may not want to know her.

TOMAS: But she awaits your audience anytime you are inclined to want to get to know her.

TOMAS: You know Han very well. You mistake Han for yourself. Your teachers are extremely close to you, Iyana, and you acknowledge Han easily, for you and he have worked together compatibly. You might say he is your aggressive nature; he is your wheeler-dealer; he is your scout.

Your other teacher, your intimate feminine aspect, is also with you. I will try to access her name. One moment. Greta is the closest I can come to -- It's more like Grotto, but you can call her Greta. Grotto is more accurate.

GROTTO: I have been watching you, Iyana, with my touch. Your face has felt the trickle of water which I bless you with, blessed child. You may hide with me in this cave that I am, of secure and cool presence. Grotto is a name I have chosen not in error. Cool, quiet, moist and fresh. You will hear more from me. Fear me not.

Erata: Tomas, remember last week when I was reading you my journal about the Indian guide that I saw? Would that be Heath?

Erata: It was a dream that I had. Actually it appeared to be an Indian, although he was dressed like we are. In my journaling I had talked to Christ and He said he cleared up my path on my journey and I was asking questions that perhaps,... Would that have been he that I visualized?

TOMAS: It is a fair representation, yes. Your Heath has been an associate of Onagar and Onamonalonton and so his influence is intact from them. If your appreciation of this concept of the Great Spirit is of value yet. Your depiction of Wheat as a water bearer is also accurate. Your perceptions are quite good and your imagination is quite active. As you continue to remain close to your indwelling God fragment, you will be given many visualizations, many of which will teach.

Erata: The other day whenever I was sick, I visualized two girls, young, in the forest, put their hands together and put them on my forehead.

TOMAS: One moment. Ministers, ministering spirits. Un-named ministering spirits, and in service of The Mother.

Liana: The Thought Adjuster and the spirit companion. Are they separate or the same?

TOMAS: Your indwelling God fragment, the Thought Adjuster, is directly from Father, directly from Paradise. It is the Mystery Monitor that is un-named. It is your destiny that you conjoin with this Mystery Monitor and become immortalized by your association. Your keenest communication and communion ought to be with your indwelling God fragment.

All of your career is augmented with association in the spirit realm of many who will assist you in your path and many will help align you with that reality, that primary reality.

Under no circumstances are any of your personal teachers or angels or guides or group teachers to attempt to supplant the role that you enjoy as a child of God in and through the Thought Adjuster. That is the most precious arrangement, and yet all of these other personalities are here to assist you in your ascension and in your appreciation of each other and your work in your realm, in your personality development, in your socialization, in your teamwork aspirations and in your creative outpourings.

You have many spirit helpers in the universe and you will get to know them more and more as time goes by, but the ultimate and eternal and important relationship is the one which occurs between you and your indwelling God fragment, that in you which is of God himself. Has that been helpful?

Liana: So if you have a spirit guide or a spirit companion right now that is teaching you quite a bit, is it to help align you? And you might have said this already. Is this to help align you to condition you to be able to be in communication with your Thought Adjuster?

TOMAS: In part, yes. In terms of your personal teachers, your personal teachers such as I was indicating with Iyana and Erata, these personal teachers are here to help you realign your personality with that which would be the Father-bestowed personality. They have come to help your personality; that is very personal. The Thought Adjuster is pre-personal.

There are many other helpers who have other roles to play, other jobs to do. For example, your guardian seraphim guard you. And the list goes on.

Fraline: I'm relatively new to this mode of thinking and I'm interested in possibly pursuing this. How do I get in contact with my teachers or Thought Adjuster or -- because I don't understand it a lot yet.

TOMAS: I appreciate fully your precious innocence and your desire to advance into spirit realms of enticement. I am glad that your path led you to us, for we are going to be good for you. I am going to ask my associate Merium if she would like to address the subject of advancing in the spirit. Merium?

Hunnah: This is Hunnah. I have been about another mission this evening and I cannot fool myself by just pushing a button and bringing Merium in. I had a question myself and the evening is running late and I can hold onto it, but if it's possible for you to bring Merium through for this, I would appreciate it.

MERIUM: Oh, good. I am so glad I get to talk. [Group laughter] I don't care who does it. In fact, if you like, I will begin to learn to speak through you, my dear! I am glad you asked the question and I am glad to have Tomas give me an opportunity to express myself and to attempt to answer your question.

You will begin by assuming the position. Aha! The position is what? To be still. Stillness is the key. You know in your own biblical frame of reference, you have heard the phrase, "Be still and know that I am God," and it is true, it is very true, that if you are still and if you ask, it will be revealed. And what will be revealed? First of all, your relationship with the Father will be revealed, and that is of course primary; but even after adjusting yourself to His presence and His will for you, you may well be advised of your associates in personality adjustment and thereupon they will allow themselves to be known to you. Often it will be one. Often there is no distinguishing between them for they act as one. Sometimes they are androgynous and it doesn't matter, but you will be given access to your personal guides who will help you in your growth.

Also on occasion, if your electro-chemical system is applicable, you may be contacted by a potential group teacher. Now, these are wonderful and fun exercises, but they require a discipline that most people are easy to give up on, and I remind you that it is a process. It is not instant fix. You must work at it, and the more diligent you are at it, the more apt you are to be successful.

I would suggest then, stillness, regularly, religiously, diligently, dutifully, and joyfully. And then we might begin practicing journaling. Often journaling will allow you to begin identifying "other-ness" and that otherness is the beginning then of the development of the gift of transmitting, but again, even that is a process.

It is fun, however, and most enjoyable, most satisfying, even though it may be sometimes difficult, so I encourage your desire to advance, and more particularly, I commend your desire to advance in the spirit, and in your understanding of your identification as a child of God and in the reality that being a child of God represents to your soul. It is truly more important that you become realized than you become a transmitter, but I will not discourage either since they are often compatible.

I am being hastened off-stage. I guess its curtain time. I am still glad I got to say "Hi". You women are wonderful. I want you to know we are in your corner rooting for you. Be good to yourself. This is sometimes difficult and yet it is really very worthwhile. I'll see you soon.

Hunnah: No, it's late. The question I have in mind is having to do with my phone call, and it's late so I'll address it later. Thank you very much.

TOMAS: Thank you daughter. All of you are to be commended for your tenacity and truly for the appetite that you are developing. You are beginning to taste truth and it is more difficult than beauty and goodness, but it will advance you into adulthood. I look forward to our next get-together and I cover you with blue and yellow blankets. Peace be upon you. Farewell.

TOMAS: I will attempt to rise above the level of decibels that are provided by your environment this evening. A cacophony, even in stillness, but I would like to commend all of you in your increased sensitivities and in allowing the moment of relative stillness, in order that your physical systems can become passive and your mental systems can become somewhat focused.

It is a pleasure to greet you this evening on behalf of your many, many unseen spirit helpers. We were amazed at the roll call when it became apparent how many were in attendance and how many are assigned here. Welcome to you all in the spirit and in the flesh.

It is an evening for the personal teachers, by and large. The personal teachers of you all are urging interaction and participation in this, the more informal of our convenings. And so I will make my remarks brief, in order that your personal teachers may be allowed to be present. Merium would also like to say a few words of greeting.

MERIUM: I feel like I am in the front of the room with a blackboard and a stick, but it isn't really true. Our conversations together always produce a lesson. I hope that you will all be attentive and open and allow all of these things that are hidden in the recesses of your mind, that are unresolved in you, to come forward into the clear, and that you will all go home feeling much lighter and more focused. Tomas?

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium, and it goes without saying that you are invited to help orchestrate the evening and that Hunnah, as an able assistant to the practice, is encouraged to access any teacher that is attempting to come through. In this open forum circumstance, it promises to give rise to an interesting evening, an experimental evening, even, if you will, and this is one of the values of the more informal approach.

I include Hunnah as a potential transmitter of your personal teachers but it is also encouraged that individually you begin to access your own teacher, that you might feel the prompts, and when and as you do, you also can feel free to incorporate their personality presence into the evening's agenda. It is not, of course, by any means required, or intended to make you feel pressure of any kind, but is rather an invitation to the dance. It being a free-for-all, I will let it be. I am moving aside. Let us proceed with your evening. (Long pause)

MERIUM: Do you think we should issue them bakery numbers? No one is saying a word, so I will speak for a moment and I would like to address Liana and tell her that I feel that she is closer to allowing herself to T/R than she perhaps wants to admit, and that the environment of this group is conducive. It is possible. Has my mentioning this to you brought a reaction?

Liana: I haven't thought about T/R'ing. I just started with my teacher, at home, writing, so I don't have the confidence to do that. As a matter of fact your mentioning it kind of gives me the butterflies.

MERIUM: That's normal. About the preparation, our friends here are not familiar with the conversations that have gone on in the past and some of the information I would like to present to you is that when you enter this focus, there is a refinement of your nervous system that makes it possible for you to T/R with ease, and there are adjustments that are made and sometimes you are aware of little biting sensations or pressures that you may feel along your spine.

You have this perfection that is being brought into your reality and when you gather here, your morontia pattern is ignited and is developing and that is one of the reasons we are anxious to have you be lifted up and focused in a greater way, and not to be so easily distracted by the human fixation of inherited tendency. (Distraction of a noisy cat) We have a guest speaker here.

Do you understand what I mean? You say, "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be filled with light," and part of your ongoing process is to keep your focus. Your social lives, your personal lives are very powerful and very demanding and it is up to this new administration and this new focus in you to tell them to "heel", like a dog, walk on a short leash and come and go and stay.

And it sounds rather cruel but you will be forever coming out of the chaos of daily living and you will not be getting any rest unless there is some self-discipline involved. So I congratulate you here for taking the time to become acquainted with your personal teacher; she will see you along and through this process if you decide to entertain it.

TRIESTE (Gerdean): I am Trieste. I would like to jump on-line and visit for a moment with you in this configuration. I am thrilled to be here and to be in company with my sisters and brothers in the personal ministry aspect of the Teaching Mission. I was quite thrilled to co-teach with Jay-Orzh recently. It is not always that we get a chance to abut with the group teachers in our lessons, but we had a wonderful time and I was so happy with the response of Gerdean and of Leah in the lessons that we were able to put forth.

I would like, in the face of the discourse aforehand, to speak to you regarding an attitude of coming into association with your teachers, and I recall Merium's words indicating she felt like a teacher at a blackboard with her stick and it is appearing, at first blush, that there is a rigidity to this process and when we speak of discipline you recoil, but it is only because of your understanding of semantics, and I invite you, again, to consider the thrill, the joy, the wonderful self-satisfaction in the spirit that takes place when you begin to accommodate your own needs to direct your soul's attention on that which is valuable to it.

You begin to feed yourself spiritual food as you reach for the cornucopia of plenty that is provided in your association with spirit reality. It has long been a practice of you humans, in your training, your religious training and social training, to discipline yourselves as a behavior modification against slothful approach to life; that is, you need to go to church and sit up, you need to go to school and pay attention, and these are disciplines that contribute to your knowledge, but not necessarily to your immediate satisfaction.

The same thing is true when you are encouraged to go into stillness and develop your spirit reality. At first it seems as if it were a regimented behavior, but indeed it is like coming to know the Beloved. When you make friends, you are eager to run to be with them; we are very warm and loving. I will convey a tale having to do with my charge, Gerdean, and that is, I once conveyed to her I would like to speak with her and her instant reaction was fearful, that perhaps I was going to scold her.

This is what happens when you give authority to any being and I am not an authority creature. I am not authorized to chastize you, and it was a delightful surprise to her when she finally did come into my presence, only to discover that I had in mind to embrace her and to comfort her in her circumstances, and you will find this to be true, my friends, that as you come into the presence of your teachers, you will find love beyond compare.

It may seem as though you are being asked to develop yet another structure in your life but it is actually inviting you to experience a tremendous freedom. I will close my remarks and ask for other personal teachers to come on-line. Anyone who wants to ask their personal teacher a question may do so. We have able T/R's here. It is a free-for-all session. Have fun.

MERIUM: May I help you unearth your questions? There is a line that says, "Choose ye this day whom you shall serve." If you keep that in mind, it will help to design your response to every situation that you encounter. And this is a challenge because you will find yourself parroting behavior and words that you no longer want to carry with you. The wonderful thing will be that you will recognize that this is not a style which you care to companion with any more, and therefore I encourage you to write down questions that you may take them into your quiet and we will preview them with you.

We can easily formulate a lecture, but this Butler group is for interacting and therefore we are reminding you this evening, because you sound rather quiet as stones, and if you want to know how to get yourselves going again, please address it. We have many suggestions.

Gerdean: Since it's a free-for-all, I'm willing to experiment. I would love to hear from Heath. I would like to hear Heath and Adrian discourse. I mean, it's none of my business, perhaps, in asking them to carry on a conversation, but I would find it fascinating to see how our male teachers relate, if they can relate in a way that is any of our business. Does any of that make sense to you? Is that too far out for you, Hunnah, if you were to access one of those guys and I'll access one of them and see what happens?

Hunnah: I have been sitting here aware of a stimulation on the left side of my . . . and I feel . .. I really have a concern, personally, about not identifying, being able to identify people. It really hampers me, because if I'm able to T/R, then I should be able to read their names. And they said they would let me do this. Sometimes when I get Merium's name, I feel like she sounds just like myself, and this evening I felt apathetic but cooperative; and it might be normal growth for me, but I'm willing to do T/R, but I don't have the confidence -- and it's really not required -- I don't understand why they don't come through and say, "This is George Washington!" I mean, just speak up! I mean, I don't mind. If I'm going to be the mouth for the message, I feel that they have to ignore my reservations and be more competent and aggressive.

ADRIAN (Gerdean): I am Adrian. I am a male presence. I don't want you to be intimidated by that, ladies. I am like Tomas. I am also from the left side of the brain, if you will, in terms of Gerdean's circuitry. It is a kick for me to hear you, Hunnah, being charged up on the left side of your brain. I will tell you it is because you are being approached by a different energy pattern. I will allow you to accept the fact that Heath is in your vicinity. I will ask you, in deference to your inexperience, to allow yourself to spend some time with that energy. I am not in any hurry.

There is no pressure and you will find that same truth in your associate Heath. I call him your associate because he is keeping you company for the moment and it is entirely possible for any teacher to visit any mortal. There is no ownership in the Teaching Mission. As a male teacher, I am instructed to oversee the care and development of Gerdean; I am at liberty also to check in with any of you and all of you on occasion. It is possible, in the spirit realms, to do this, unlike you in your material realms who perceive time and space in a limited way. There is not anything to worry about or lose sleep over, but there is a slight difference. Even so my realm is somewhat limited. I am not advanced enough to go marching all over the local universe like Michael can and does and like the Melchizedeks are inclined to do. I have limited jurisdiction, you would say. I am enjoying my role here, however.

I will not speak forever, Hunnah. I will let Heath chat also and in fact I will chat with him through you if that's acceptable to you, but I did want to say, before I converse with my friend and associate, that I am an active aspect of advanced spiritual energy. I am not a reflective aspect such as Gerdean's feminine teacher Trieste, such as Erata's feminine teacher Wheat. The feminine teacher, by and large, is reflective and internal and intimate; and the guys are really much more active, more athletic even.

And so our work with you often is in taking you out into the field and in bringing you into those circumstances in the field that will give rise to yet new experiences for you to reflect on in your personality growth and development. Heath and I and other male teachers such as Alkanon and Travis work in close conjunction with the midwayers who are also active in your external life.

HEATH (Hunnah): Good evening. It is interesting that you said "external life" because that's where the fellows like to hang out, is outside. And it is an outside arena that permits us to have greater influence. Good evening, dear ones. Now you know that this is not an all-female chorus, that the boys know where you are. We are glad to be here to bring balance and to help you receive confidence, to know that there is balance that is developing in you. You are cozy this evening on the couch and not willing to address me.

HEATH: I want you to know that I am your champion, that I help create balance in you. Your teacher Wheat and I know how to shift the responsibility back and forth to help you (tape turned) or when you want another angle on what's going on in your daily life and we are with you when you pray and you do that so well. It is very touching. You are a most rewarding student and host. I can only speak for myself. I have not been with that many others, but I do know an open and receptive heart when I see one, and I am honored, I am privileged to have this opportunity to speak to you this evening. I enjoy your sense of humor and I'm in on it, too, remember.

You have great survival equipment. You are designed for the long ride. You have great destiny. What you are discovering is what you have in your house is a great package of assistance. Wheat and I are a good team. We are not sitting up there with leathers, driving you to do this or that. We are simply there to billow your sail. It does not matter what you do so much as how you do it. The attitude that you take with you has been above reproach. You are learning to become more inner-dependent, dependent upon your inner advisory, your inner agenda, and it causes conflict at times.

Do you understand that you have the success of mighty counsel? Am I reading your palm or your heart, dear one?

HEATH: You bet. You have a very well-developed, receptive heart. So you know that you are not going it alone, as it would appear to those who are ignorant. You are very married to the high purpose of your calling. And Wheat and I are there to make sure that you are not distracted. We are like farmers, helping you to cultivate the wonderful wheat. In my level and in my realm, I know who all of the teachers are. I guess we'll have to see a thesaurus. She can look them up. Adrian?

ADRIAN: I am reminded of the human phrase about, "You cannot tell the players without a program" and it is through practice that you know who is on the program and you don't have to read the script any longer. This show is being directed by Jesus and produced by the Melchizedeks. It has a lot of stage hands and we are some of them. There are a lot of cameo performances, such as we are getting to experience this evening, and which you in your lives also experience as you teach and preach as you pass by.

And so this stage is a wonderful show. The Star is born. We are actors, you see. We are active in the arena. It is activating you that expands our own appreciation of our existence. It's like when you decide to play ball, then we can have a team, but as long as you are on the side-lines opting to watch the game, then we have a lot of spectators and the sport is not as fulfilling, the drama is more of a monologue or cameo performance.

It is yet another invitation to the dance. I am glad to be dancing. There was a long period of time in my relationship with my charge Gerdean that I was unacknowledged and only after Trieste was able to grease the wheel of her relationships with male energy was she able to allow for my presence so close to her inner life. It's interesting in your personal lives (and I am not going to divulge in this more public forum your inner lives, your personal lives, but) it is interesting how it is that some of you are disinclined to acknowledge that about yourself that reflects a part of yourself that you are not yet ready to deal with.

There are a lot of men who refuse to work with their female teacher, that intimate and feeling aspect of themselves. And so we have a lot of work to do, even in these very personal realms there is a lot of work to do. As your personality is modified and amenable to accepting the personalities of others in a harmonious and working, yea sportsmanlike manner, then the activation of the living loving Kingdom of children comes into greater being.

I am being called off and so I'll say so long for now. I am eager to experiment with this again and perhaps next time Heath and I can discuss you aloud and that way you will have an idea of how we work in our realm with you, but for now it is good to encourage you to know that we are your friends and that we are here to help you. Thank you for the opportunity, for the invitation. So long.

Student: Thank you so much for your offer to help. I don't know for sure what you can do for me. As usual I feel a need and I don't even know what it is.

TEACHER: I am going to remain anonymous, like a priest behind a screen, while you speak in my ear.

Student: Okay. Alright, that'll work. What I'm feeling is that I'm dating someone, and this is someone that mother is quite approving of and he's a nice man but I'm afraid he's going to be boring. He's a nice person, you know, and he's not sophisticated, he's not well-read, he's conservative, he's normal, and I'm scared to death I will be bored silly. And it's completely goofy to come to a teacher in the celestial realms with such a dorky situation, but I don't know . .. if I approach him as a brother he can be loveable, but as far as a swain is concerned, never in a million years. This guy is just not the material that I would look for or that would curl my toes, and yet he is good goods, probably would be a decent companion and a noble provider. Just BORING. Can you help me?

TEACHER: Of course. I can help you to learn to appreciate the time that you are in. I can help you to allow yourself to enjoy a friend. You do not know what his intentions are. He has perhaps never met anyone like you before. Perhaps you have the ability to make him more interesting. It doesn't really matter, but it will help you to allow yourself to respect his feelings and to be open.

It is not your nature to keep your feelings to yourself, but you see a sensitivity in this gentleman, and you also recognize that he is a gentle man. He is on an adventure himself, and perhaps he is a bit perplexed by his own behavior. So I suggest that you keep a low profile, and perhaps he will find that he has more on his plate than he can handle and he may be shy enough that he will leave.

In the meantime, let us not forget the higher calling, that he has all the qualities that a man can have, and he may have a hungry heart and a thirst for knowledge that has not yet been revealed because he himself may not even be aware of it.

I suggest that you continue to enjoy this thoughtful consideration. It is most becoming to you, dear. Do not chase it away. Just enjoy his company and find out if you have the ability to not be bored, but to bring out the best in him and let him help himself to discover another aspect of himself. You do not have to keep him for keeps, forever, but you can make a very valuable friendship and a very valuable experience.

Student: Yes, thank you. Good comments, all of them. Very insightful and comforting and stabilizing in the face of my emotional fear, and it is a feeling and it is an emotional thing, because I feel immediately, I mean already, very responsible for his emotional condition. I don't want to be responsible for anyone's emotional condition, but I really felt that I potentially could have a terrible impact on this person's psyche, heart, or whatever, and the responsibility is awesome. I don't like it.

I am glad for my ability to be open because in being open there is no hidden agenda, there is no manipulation, there's a lot of humor, and it allows us to put all our fears out there where we can look at them and laugh at them, and hopefully remain friends through the course of our association, but I do appreciate your remarks.

TEACHER: You may find that you will have a very gentle situation where you can agree to not agree, but it is very good for you to allow somebody to come toward you and treat you the way you are worthy of being treated, and to let your defenses down and to just enjoy being and not wondering always if there is a hidden agenda because for many times, many times you have had this in the back of your mind and it is good that you should allow someone to treat you as if you were a queen, so enjoy this enthroning and allow yourself to just journey ahead and consider it a pleasant -- it's as if the sun is out and you are enjoying it for the sake of what it is.

TEACHER: Would anyone else here like to discuss their love life? If you have a love life? If you do not have a love life I suggest you allow yourself to be poised in a situation as if you really were worthy of one. A love life does not necessarily mean that there will be someone coming with flowers and falling all over you. A love life -- Ah! perhaps that is the homework! I should let you ponder on that very statement and not come in with all the answers. This is something for you to tuck in your pocket and to feel like a little talisman stone. What is a love life? I leave you with that question.

EL ANDRA (Gerdean): Good evening, my friends, and especially my personal charge. How are you all this evening? It is an honor to be invited. It is wonderful to have this opportunity, to have the available resource that allows me to manifest in such a way. It is primitive, but it is better than nothing.

I am especially glad to meet with you, my girl. It is good to be able to speak face-to-face as it were. I am so glad of our communications. I am grateful to you for your conscientious diligence in aspiring to attain a relationship with me and for the many times that you savor my messages to you. We are developing a rapport. There will be greater growth strides for us, for you, when you give yourself a greater freedom.

Freer reign in your realms that would access me. I am not only spirit. I am not only mental. I am not only emotional. I am personal. It is your personal aspects that are my milieu, meter, (wrong word) -- where I work. Our music is delightful. I look forward to more.

I am not as free in this voice as I am with you but it is still a rare opportunity to greet you out loud, as it were. Have you a question for me?

EL ANDRA: You have a committee, actually, helping you with your stories. I am working with you and have accessed the counsel of an artisan or two and also a midwayer has volunteered some research. It will be interesting to see how this performs. There are many who are willing to help in these realms. There are musicians who help to orchestrate those themes that rise to levels of harmony, and so it is not just one but a composite.

Indeed, as you advance, as you grow, you will discover more and more that you are not alone and you do not act alone. You are enmeshed with many kinds of life, many influences, and much assistance. It is more and more a joint effort.

Liana: It seemed to me this last time that I was willing to give up any kind of an attachment or any kind of an outcome to the story, that it just really flowed, and I didn't have to be right about it.

EL ANDRA: You are correct. Indeed, as you allow the creative process freer reign, you lose your controls, your constraints, and it is a more open channel of truth, beauty and goodness. Your disciplines are being modified. It is not that you are giving up anything, but you are altering your capabilities. Your work is advancing greatly on levels of awareness unknown to you at this time. It is in great part because of your faith in your spirit guides and in Our Father. It is in part because of your great faith in yourself. And it is in part because of your own soul whose life is beginning to activate by itself, take on a life of its own, and it will see to it that you grow in spite of your own bouts at balking. Good work.

Hunnah: I was in the kitchen this evening and the name "Sonora" came to my attention and I've never heard that name before and I was wondering if there was any possible connection to the other realm.

EL ANDRA: I, El Andra, am going to move over. I will allow someone else to address this, but I am grateful for the opportunity to visit. I greet you all in the name of the spirit and bestow my deep affection on you, Liana, and look forward to our further communications. Adieu.

TOMAS: Sonora is a teacher, a group teacher, in the area of serving. It is Sonora^'s hope that she will be assigned to a group and as a prospective group teacher she is in our area observing and studying. As is their pattern, they will come to areas where they might have an opportunity to access open channels so that they can experience the human mind and even make contact and perhaps gain experience in the transmitting process. All of this is in advance of an assignment where they can be effective.

It is appreciated when any of you avail yourself to spirit reality that you may begin to be sensitive to them and to work with them in whatever context they happen to be here in. It is not a mistake; God and man need each other, and so do the many levels in between. Yes, Sonora made contact with you and you identified her correctly.

Hunnah: Well, I think that's really comical. In other words, the fact that I do identify with her name would be a way of introducing her to the group this evening? Since I asked? I mean, would we have heard from her anyway?

TOMAS: That may or may not be the case, for there are teachers who come and go. As you become aware, however, of personalities, as you become aware of many friends in your social arena, it is gracious when you can say, "I would like for you to meet a friend of mine," and introduce them by way of our format, for this does indeed expand our horizons and it gives our visitors an opportunity v to make contact and practice the craft as well as giving you an opportunity to practice your transmitting skills with yet a new personality.

Hunnah: Well, this is the third name that I have brought through, minimally, and none of them took place here. Alkanon and Travis and Sonora were names that, like, cruised through my head and with Alkanon's, I just took a leap of faith, I just typed him into the computer as I did with Travis, so that is reassuring for me that I can receive names, but perhaps they can deliver them in a different way, just as when you started to transmit you were seeing words? So that you could see to get you going?

Hunnah: Well, I think that I'm capable of doing that, and if they could just slide that name in, I'll say it, but it's hard when you don't know what to do, so that also means that if I did pick up on her that when I'm at my computer I can call on her, right?

TOMAS: All of you must be aware that you can call upon any teacher at any time. It is not necessarily so that they will automatically respond at your instant beckoning. They may be engaged in conversation elsewhere, but you will be attended to. It is sometimes necessary to ask for a guest appearance. If, for example, you would like to have Ham come to speak regarding forgiveness, it is something that you can decide as a group and that can be arranged, much as a visiting lecturer in your human realm. There are many, many things that can be done to accommodate your needs.

TOMAS: That is correct. A working agenda. It is only Michael that can be everywhere at once. Otherwise, you might get an emissary.

TOMAS: I will suggest also that if you allow yourself to remember that we access your vocabulary, your language center, and not necessarily your mental mechanism, it might help you to appreciate the nuance of our accessing your portion of your mind. You think with your cognizant skills. (tape ran out)

The Butler Berries met on January 29 instead of on the 27th. It was a fun night, overseen by a playful pair of teachers "Frick & Frack" wherein we were, as toddlers in a day care center, encouraged to be childlike and learn to play, to share, to sing, to care.

Perhaps the significant part of this evening's agenda was that Fraline got her spiritual name. Here follows a partial listing of the Butler Berries' spiritual names and names of their personal teachers:

In place of that session, which did not successfully record, we are distributing a most invigorating session from January 14, 1998:

After noticing the candle [designated (1) midwayers and other celestial helpers] lit, Leah picked up and squarely set down each of the other three candles [designated (2) personal teachers, (3) group teachers, and (4) Michael and the Melchizedeks] which all stayed lit. With all four candles lit, Leah sat down to ponder.

Leah: No. I know that if they're here all the time that they must have observed the reason I'm asking this question, particularly because of some statements that were made in this room.

MIDWAYER: We're responsive to your need and indeed all of us are here in response to your need. Always. Have we not said so? "If it were not so, I would have told you."

Leah: So are you saying that I prompted the candles? Are you talking about a mechanistic thing or a desire thing?

PRESENCE: It is a desire thing and it is an affirmation, short of a demand, for if you had been trying to prove the non-existence of this method, your technique would not have resulted in illumination but darkness, in order to prove your point of darkness.

It is very much like your ability to turn the switch on your own spirit reality. You are the one who turns the switch off and on. When you discover that you are in the darkness, you have the capacity to turn the switch and become empowered by the Light. By the same token, when you are in the Light, your free will can cut off the power and you can fall into darkness. You know this already and you know this from the Course.

PRESENCE: You know this also from your teachers, from your own experience as well. And so it is a truth that has been confirmed and reaffirmed. The truth being that it is your will that determines your status and so do you choose life or death, reality or unreality, joy or sorrow.

You are master of your fate when you choose self-mastery, a condition we admire since it enables you to use your intelligence, your consciousness, super-consciousness even, to contribute to greater light, greater reality, rather than passively, non-resistently flowing, even mindlessly, unconsciously, along with the inanimate and immaterial substances.

TEACHER: Immaterial meaning irrelevant. We are not referencing materiality or density here.

TEACHER: We again encounter a difficulty in semantics. It is a full house; it is a full voice which greets you. An abstract aspect of spirituality, indeed you may refer to an aspect of the Supreme -- a shard, a sliver of evolving deity. Immaterial. Have you inquiry? Curiosity? Or commentary?

Leah: All of the above. Sometimes I doubt my faith. An idea was introduced to me in regard to the candles.

Leah: And I dismissed it, but when I put the candle down and it went off, that's why I was asking if it was a mechanistic thing or that it lit up in response to desire, and I feel that you responded to me, but . .. this is so silly because I don't know if you can read my mind or . .. I feel like I want to say something and I feel like I want to take an intermission . .. and that's kind of silly because I know you can hear me anyway in intermission, so the whole situation is so . .. I can't really get out what's on my mind, but I . .. I'm not asking you to be a crystal ball gazer, but . .. I feel like you know what's on my mind...

TEACHER: When you say you have problems with your faith, trouble with your faith, when you say you have little faith, are you looking to your relationship and your understanding of the candle as a proof of your faith?

Leah: Actually, it's more like a disproof of my faith. I'm not sure. It's certainly not the be-all and end-all of my faith. It's like a portion of my faith seemed to be shattered.

Leah: Yes. But it doesn't seem to me that they could . .. that they could alternately just come on and off or . .. I mean, it's not impossible. I wish the idea hadn't been introduced to me.

TEACHER: It is alright for you to doubt in terms of this device of candles; it is indeed foolish of you to determine your own personal eternal faith-path based on anything as material as a plastic, battery-operated candle. It is alright to not want to base your faith on such a flimsy aspect of potential reality. You are not alone in your incredulity. You are not alone.

You are not the only one who has studied barometric pressure, temperature, moisture, elevation, blunt impact, and so forth; you are not the only one who has tested your faith against the candles. It would be foolish, it would be foolish indeed, of those of us in the spirit realm to testify to the truth or the untruth of the spiritual contact based upon any material manifestation and ask you to regard it as religious truth.

Our efforts with you are far more meaningful and more long-lasting than that which will return to dust, which your candles will. We are not so little; we ask you to not be so little as to test our reality by way of your scientific devices, real or imagined. And yet at the same time it is understood that you as human beings will grasp at straws to make literal that which you cannot understand.

We sympathize with your grasp at understanding that which you cannot understand. We are amused at your bemusement.

Leah: Well, I'm not. I want to delight in designating those candles and having them be indicative of certain personalities. I desired that. I wanted that.

TEACHER: Then I will return you to the original comment, having to do with your mind arena of choice that turns on the light switch of your own spirit room that sees the candle go on and says, "Aha! There is Tomas." "Oh, good, it's my personal teacher." "Look! A midwayer has come to call." Or "Oh, my God, Michael has come to see me." These attitudes bespeak a yearning, eager child, anxious to communicate with its friend. It's like your telephone devices that indicate, by way of the telephone number, "Oh, look, Aunt Margaret is calling me." "Georgie, from down the street, wants me to come and play."

TEACHER: When I say "amusement and bemusement" it is not to belittle your human concerns, but to share with you your childlike nature which seeks to understand those concepts that the little young mind cannot yet grasp. It is in loving kindness of your capacities that we are amused, not out of any sense of superiority or lording it over you in your ignorance. This is a nuance.

Leah: I understand that. Call it curiosity or bemusement or . .. what is it Gerdean was just telling me? Sometimes she uses these devices indicative in the same way I just spoke of, indicating a certain personality come to speak with her and she will have a discourse and the light will remain on. Why would that be? Can you offer me any . . . ?

TEACHER: Often the light is used as reassurance. It is a custom in your lifestyle as a mortal being at this juncture in time and space, that contact generally means you want or need something. Remember you are accustomed to being a human doing . ..

TEACHER: ... rather than a human being. We are happy to be being here. It is enough to greet you. It is not necessary that you expend yourself incessantly and we do not require it, and so, yes, sometimes we are eager to converse with you, or to counsel you, companion you or console you, to reinforce you or reassure you, but sometimes it is just to be with you. And sometimes, just because you have finished saying what you want to say and we have finished saying what we want to say, does not mean that our being together does not continue to provide great value to your reality, and to ours .

Leah: I appreciate that and I appreciate the fact that those lights did go on. I hate to admit this, but I don't really think about your presence all the time or significant amount of the time until I see the light or come to transmitting or some other little light bulb goes off in my mind in reference to something I heard.

TEACHER: Indeed it is a reflection of your own illumination, your own Pilot Light identities. We are delighted that you are delighted. It was a clever little device that the midwayers thought up and it seems to be becoming a fad, but it is a rather esoteric fad at this point, for you see we are not inclined to remove the value lesson of the Master about sign seekers and miracle workers.

Leah: Well, somehow or other I don't quite equate it with a miracle, that these lights go on, but [Laughter] . ... Another light just came on, after they'd been turned off. The second one. Which one is that, Gerdean?

Gerdean: Trieste and Adrian. And perhaps Alkanon and Jay-Orzh. Any one of the personal teachers. Jasmine.

Leah: I just want to say that this discourse that we've had so far certainly . .. I don't . .. the idea of testing my faith in reference to the light had not occurred to me until this other individual, other idea was introduced to me, and I didn't really think of it as testing my faith until this evening when I discussed it, that maybe I was lacking in faith, and I would certainly not base my entire…

Leah: ... on a candlelight going on and off, but I just found it disturbing to myself that I have had such delight in this and then the idea that it was probably just some barometric phenomenon that occurs with the heat coming on and off or something, was very disappointing to me and a consideration I hadn't in my own mind, but maybe wondered if I was doubting with myself.

Leah: I don't know. I really don't know. I have to listen to the tape. I'm just confused, but I just want them to come on, whether they come from barometric pressure or whatever. I don't really care. I'm just happy to see them come on. And I'd like to still think that they are indicative of the personalities that they were designated.

Leah: Well, I like that. I like that a lot. And I'd like to ask, if Gerdean is willing, if the second candle is lit, if it's indicative of someone wishing to say something. If she's willing to transmit that or whatever, if she will.

Gerdean: I did feel Trieste arrive right here about that time. It's not like Trieste is gone, but I did feel her presence about that time. I am willing to look around and see who else might be here, but I definitely felt the prompt of Trieste.

Leah: Perhaps Trieste wants to say something to Gerdean. She doesn't get that much opportunity to ask questions when she's facilitating like this.

Gerdean: I don't feel any questions coming up from me to her. Let me see if she wants to say something.

TRIESTE: Greetings, children and friends. We are having fun with you this evening. We are having fun with the attendance. Indeed, the command performance. We rather like it when you are so assertive in your relationship with us. None of you are as affirmative as it could be. You do not take advantage of us like you could. We are quite resilient and able to assimilate your awkward essays /attempts at making contact. We are understanding of your inexperience. If you are obnoxious, I assure you we will work that through. We are not afraid of you.

We will look forward to your developing the ability to forthrightly assert yourself on behalf of your spirit life. You are not experienced enough, perhaps, to make demands or have expectations regarding others. You may not yet have wisdom sufficient to know what to demand or request, but you could assume more from us, you could accept our friendship more readily. You do not, in part, because you do not fully appreciate how it is to be a human friend. You do not presume upon each other, out of respect, but you do not need each other as fully as you might.

You, who are so (you Gerdean and you Leah) who are so cognizant of the concept of co-dependence are, as you know, have read, overly independent -- you, especially, Gerdean; and you are very sensitive, Leah, in not wanting to be a bother; but your friendships are able to go much deeper, much farther. Each of you -- and I speak to each of you because you are here -- each of you are capable of much deeper feeling, much more giving of yourselves. You deprive yourself and your friend of the joy of giving when you do not ask them to give of themselves.

And this is true also of us. You act as though you don't want to bother anyone. I assure you, you are no bother. You are loved. You are important. You are The Father's child. We are sent to befriend you and to enable you to grow up. And to also enjoy your childhood. To teach you how to be friends with God and with yourself and with each other. And your education in friendship has been undeveloped. You are fearful of rejection. You are fearful of being denied. And so your needs are not met and you have become tough or callused or accustomed to going around having your needs unmet. In many ways you don't even know what your needs are.

You have this vague unsettled feeling that something is amiss but have no idea what it is. You know how it is when you have a hunger for something and don't know what it is, or when you have a craving that cannot be filled. These are your needs, daughters, children. Needs you are yet not recognizing. You will grow. You will begin to trust. But you must courageously face the fact that you are not self-sufficient. You are not meant to be self-sufficient. You are a part of a living organism.

It is necessary to flow and give and take and it is also important that when you recognize that you have a need, and that when others have need, a genuine need, that you make a point of it. Come to us with it. Come to Michael. Come to Michael and say, "Michael, I can see that there is a need in my brother, in my sister. They hunger. They thirst. Can we not fill their desire? Can we not prevail upon the angels to arrange a counsel? An understanding?"

All of us are in abeyance of service to the universe, even yourselves. This is a supreme joy. It is a supreme gift to be of service, for service is love. It is the gift of giving and it is, as He says, "more blessed to give than to receive".

It requires devotion. Devotion is a need. You have a need to know and experience and honor your devotion. Yet it is denied. Your world does not give you time to know devotion.

You are also visited this evening by a Morontia Companion. There are many who have seen this light glowing. I will not "bogart" the channel. Jay-Orzh would like to speak for a while also.

JAY-ORZH: I am here. I am here. I will rather take up where my companion left off, for we are merrily rolling along. Yes, I agree with Trieste, I agree fully, and appreciate the example she set, that you need devotion. There are many things that you are in need of that you are unaware of.

Reverence is a need. And not only are you in need of reverence in your own private life and in your sacred relationship with Father, but in your sacred relationships with Father in and through his many other creatures.

Again, you are trained in your realm, in your material life, to overlook reverence, for what in this earth life is worthy of being revered?

JAY-ORZH: What in this life is worthy of your reverence? And so your need of reverence is undeveloped.

Leah: This evening we were having some absurd fun, making some very human comments and a reference to our irreverence in that realm, that material realm.

JAY-ORZH: Irreverence is a form of humor. It is not without merit. Irreverence in a fun sense is no problem. Indeed, it is a desirable aspect of humor. It is sophisticated, in a way. It elevates you up and out of the ponderous, overly serious, weighty cloud of tradition. A certain irreverence is refreshing in that regard, and so, no, we have not found your discourses this evening disrespectful. There are, of course, irreverent comments made that are disgusting and repulsive to the spirit, but we will not be so banal in our considerations.

Your needs are not, in many cases, what you believe them to be. You are not expansive in your appreciation of your true needs, your deep needs, for you continue to regard your needs as an animal and without regard to your divine needs, the needs of the entire being, person. You think in terms of your material needs often, almost exclusively. You think in terms of your emotional needs somewhat, only if they are not disruptive. You actually think very little in terms of your sexual needs or your social needs either.

Leah: Well, if I think a lot about my animal needs, aren't they those things?

JAY-ORZH: For you know not what else to do with your urgency, with your sense of not being complete, of your many interior and advanced needs not being met. It is lazy but true, but until such time as you are aware that you have deeper needs, higher needs, greater needs, in different realms, you will continually entertain your fundamental needs -- these needs having to do with survival, the elemental needs.

It is and has been a study of the animal, the human animal, in terms of its needs. Maslov study is foremost. Inferring that unless your animal needs are taken care of, you cannot then invest in more sophisticated development.

JAY-ORZH: It is evolutionary. Remember that your mind rebels against growth. The animal mind rebels against its slothful habits of pleasure-seeking, self-seeking ease [being curtailed]. If you can be convinced by your animal nature that your physical needs have not yet been met, then you can incessantly stay in the animal realm, convinced that it is justified. And yet you have yet other developmental levels and realms you have not touched, you have deprived yourself of emotionally and esthetically, ethically and mentally, not to mention spiritually, morontially, because you are so primarily indoctrinated by your own animal nature to continue to stay there and satisfy it.

Leah: When you are saying "you," are you speaking to me individually or "you"…

JAY-ORZH: "You" as a member of the species, and so yes, you individually, also. It is a pep talk we bring. It is a new chapter in your growth that we bring, to present to you this evening. It began by suggesting that you do not ask for help. How can you ask for help in the spiritual realms when you have to entertain yourself constantly in terms of your basic animal needs?

Leah: I'm confused. I thought we were always supposed to ask for help in the spiritual realm, or tune in to that.

JAY-ORZH: Oh, yes. And you do. You do. And you are commended and encouraged and you have already grown. Remember, you were taught recently, Tomas spoke to you recently, regarding your great accomplishments. The last few years have accelerated your personal spiritual growth tremendously. You are indeed to consider your accomplishments. It is not to be said here, to be understood here, that we are discounting your efforts or your accomplishments. You are doing fine.

But we are encouraging you here in this conversation to stand up and say, "I need some more help here." I am saying you need to assert yourself in the spirit. It is like a prodigal son. It is like a birthright. You have been treated like an orphan. You have not given yourself the full bearing of sonship that you are entitled to as a son of God. You can say to Father, "Father, something must be done here! We must do something here! Can we not ask the angels to step in?" and assert yourself, rather than always being a supplicant or powerless or indifferent to the welfare of the universe. In particular, the universe of your own realm. Do you see what I'm saying? What we are saying this evening?

JAY-ORZH: I am speaking to you, Leah, yes; and I am speaking to you, Gerdean; and I am speaking to anyone who hears this value lesson, this truth, this growth step, this potential-yet-to-become-actual, this would-be reality-izing of our efforts in this Teaching Mission, in this ministry to you, to you personally, and to you as a group.

Leah: Okay, I . .. maybe I'm not understanding, but I'm feeling a sense of admonishment about, something about my animal nature that I am too involved in it, and that I'm not, like, too . .. I'm aware that I'm not . ..

Leah: I understand. But if I'm understanding . .. all I can think of is -- it's sort of a lesson out of "God Calling" that says that something along the lines that you are like a child in a wealthy home who is afraid to write a check or something.

Leah: But, I'm also hearing, somehow or other I've asked about this for a long time and in the group it always felt as if we were preparing for the next step, but there never seemed to be any indication what the next step was, but I'm also hearing that we're not -- my words are poor -- cleaned up enough to be involved in the next step or something.

JAY-ORZH: You misunderstand, for you have already taken many, many, many, many steps. Individually you have each grown and as a group you have grown. As a community you have grown. As a light you have grown. And yet there is more growth.

Leah: Oh, I'm certain of that. And, is this what you're saying? Is that we're not asking?

JAY-ORZH: This is a new growth step for you, that, you rise up to your full heritage and, yes, in a sense, write the check. Now don't revert that into materialism, but rather take it symbolically and recognize your heritage. There is more to this lesson. There is more to this discourse than your right to ask for help. It speaks to your need to recognize what you need in order that you know what to ask for.

JAY-ORZH: Then let me say that it is only an egg. And in due course this egg will hatch in you as life, an idea.

Leah: Well, I'd like to be assertive enough to ask that if there is any possibility of acceleration of my comprehending this, that I would appreciate any help.

JAY-ORZH: I will refer you again to Our Father and ask Him in your meditations to reveal to you that which you need, that you might ask, then, for help in acquiring what you need, that you will then recognize the need in others and that you will then be able to provide for that need, as a rightful heir of Our Father.

You have strained sufficiently, Leah, this evening. We will release your application here and revert to spontaneity and dancing. When we came on-line this evening, Merium was making wine from grapes. Indeed, she is stained up to her buttocks in purple. I will step aside with deep affection, for now, for our sister and friend Merium to come in and splash you with some of her homemade wine. One moment.

MERIUM: Have we not had a real bacchanal this evening? Have we not just had a jolly time? Drink up. Here's to you. Here's to the evening and the productivity of it.

I might also say we enjoyed your artistry earlier, your entertainment with culture was most delightful. It was observed that you were engaged in art appreciation, music appreciation, and the art of communication all at once! We were giddy with happiness. Is it any wonder that when we settled down and stabilized that the light flickered, indicating that we had come by to say hello. Well, we have certainly done that. We have said hello.

I am going to take this opportunity to thank your personal teachers Trieste and Jay-Orzh for their superlative guidance and teaching practice this evening. It is not often that we get to hear personal teachers apply themselves to their charges in such advanced and intimate fashion. Bravo, girls. Bravo! Well . ..

I am going to back off and offer my companion Tomas a bit of the grape. We will see you soon, but I do believe your initial guest, our host the midwayer, would like to speak to you for a moment before we all disengage for the evening. Ta-ta, gals!

MIDWAYER: Secondary midwayer here, signing in. Haven't we had fun! It has been a real joyous occasion. Yes, we enjoy the communication that comes about when our musical chairs, musical candles, are activated. It doesn't work for everyone, I hope you know that, and there is no accounting for our taste in who we work with. There are different strokes for different folks, and that is just the way it is. And so, just consider yourself blessed in more ways than one, and when you talk about your faith, you might, in the back of your mind, remember the candles, but in terms of your teaching and preaching, it is not candles that will make men fishers of men. We are not here to collect miracles.

That reference is to the story in the Book about the multitude that wanted to make the Master king. Their values were not screwed on straight. We want to make sure that when the candles are screwed on straight, they don't reflect immateriality to the multitudes. You get my drift.

MALVANTRA MELCHIZEDEK: I am Malvantra Melchizedek. Good evening, students and friends. We are glad to be with you and to observe your progress, your diligence, and your curiosity. You are refreshing. I will look forward to our continued work together with you in your community here. Your community is advancing. It is growing in numbers and quantity is certainly an aspect of the Mission that we are interested in. But, I remind you of the value of qualitative application to truth.

Your growth is and continues to be insignificant to its potential, and always will you find this to be true. What you have learned already is manageable and so where is the next challenge? This is one of the truths of you that we look to for help in our efforts in working with you to advance Urantia. And I speak to you here as individuals having Adamic stock adequate to give you a composition ample with adventure and curiosity and this is helpful to us.

You would say, "Now I'm very confused, for the range of your conversations this evening have talked about how it is that we have needs we don't know we have, we have too much focus on the animal, we have grown a lot, and yet our growth has been insignificant. And what do you want from us next?" Well, children, we want you to continue to pursue the path and to find it intriguing.

We have great ambition for you and for your capacities. You undervalue your capacities and capabilities. You have heard, you well know, you can be made more and greater by your work with and through and in the spirit. And we await that time when you grow in your intensity, your zeal. We are not pushing. Fear not. We find you a delicate balance. We have studied you as mortal beings, generally, you generally, for a long time, and have some indication of how fragile you are on one hand and how resilient and tough you are on the other, and yet it is a constant balance, balancing act in your minds, and in the course of time we are making progress. We see progress. We will make more progress, for as you are stabilized, as you are balanced, you become truly great, and reliable and dependable. And this is an inevitability as you pursue your worthy goals, but it does take time, and we are aware that it takes time, and we are not impatient.

We regret any inconvenience this has caused you, for your free will is supreme in your life. We honor your free will and the right to make mistakes as well as to advance the cause of the Kingdom in your life and the lives of others. Good evening.

Leah: Good evening. Thank you. How could it be any inconvenience to us? It's our free will to be here.

Gerdean: That was a whole orchestra, wasn't it? Dang, girl, there's the teachers, and what is it? The teachers are here . ..

Gerdean: Well, isn't that the one that said sometimes they just hang with us?

Leah: Yeah, that's-- I'm glad that Malvantra said, "Well, now you're sufficiently confused because we said this and that," and I thought, "Yeah! This guy is a crystal ball gazer."

Gerdean: They all speak to different levels of us. They do. They work on different facets of us.

Leah: Yeah, but it is striking me that . .. there were a couple of things going on. One of them is, uh, we are, well, like Jesus said when he was at the temple for his last discourse and his first discourse, when he was six years old, he talked about, he read from Isaiah and he read about . .. releasing the bond servants, or . . . you know what I'm talking about, and obviously if we're not living up to our potentials, we're not . ..

Leah: Right. And I mean, I almost feel as if we're never going to live up to our potential, for a long, long, time. I mean . ...

Gerdean: Well, what I got from the Melchizedek is that they have patience. They see it happening. They're sorry for any inconvenience,...

Leah: I didn't understand the inconvenience remark at all. How could it be inconvenient if it's our will to be here doing this?

Gerdean: Oh, to the extent that our free will balks at it. I mean, since they honor our right to say yes or no, the part that says "yes" is cooperative, but the part that says "no, I don't want to," is also part of our free will that is inconvenienced. I mean, it's an extremely gracious remark. It's like, we honor your right to make mistakes. We honor your right to do foolish things and are sorry when you feel the sting of your mistakes. Sort of. Or . ..

Gerdean: Yeah! Sorry you have to go through some . .. Sorry that it's sometimes hard on you.

TOMAS: I am going to introduce our unscheduled guest this evening, Lester, who is in the neighborhood and who is eager to say "Hello." I'll be back in a few minutes. Thank you. One moment.

LESTER: Get down, party animals! I am Lester the, yes, polyester. Glad to see you here my friends. It is a hot time in the old town tonight. It's good to see you. I've been busy. I know some of you aren't familiar with me and some of you are letting your mouth hang open at the unheard of audacity coming through a supposedly spiritual outlet. Well, you know how these radio stations are. Sometimes you get the classics and sometimes you get rock-n-roll. I'm the rock-n-roll part. I will let your peers hip you to my personality if and when you get a chance and if indeed you give a hoot. How is everybody?

LESTER: Sounds like things are rolling along for you all. I've been checking in periodically as I am inclined to do with you groups who meet on a regular basis. You are more easy to check in on because you're more regulated. Some of the groups that meet less frequently or less regularly are not as consistent in your what Tomas calls your configuration, and so I have to fish around a little more and I'm inclined to step in a little less. There are definite advantages to regularity, if you know what I mean.

Well, you're such a lively group I hardly know what to do with myself. I guess I'll check in later. I can see that there are other stops on my agenda, more pit stops ahead, so I'll be along again and I look forward to checking in on you. Whether you want to check back or not is your affair. I am interested, just in case you wondered. I'll be back. I am Lester. So long!

TOMAS: Yes, there is a certain amount of merriment involved in our associate Lester. You see, he is a representation of the survival potential of even those who are indifferent to their spiritual welfare. I am not saying that Lester is indifferent. He has finally gotten with the program, but in his mortal years he was a flagrant party animal, far worse than you think you might be, and it is not to cast negative aspersions on Lester's behavior but to let you know Our Father is merciful and gives even irresponsible individualists an opportunity to expand their spirit consciousness when time is on their side.

I see your personal teachers are all here, all eager to greet you, and I also am delighted to know that you have questions, that indeed some of these questions may even have reached the point of consciousness. Merium, I am eager for your companionability this evening. How are you?

MERIUM: Well, I'm fine, and hopefully Hunnah is left-brain dead and then I can do as much talking as I would like to. She has had her atrophied brain stimulated beyond comfort the last few days and she was not even sure that I would be able to speak to you this evening. I want to know if anyone went out and did any coloring! Anyone? And if you did, was it satisfying?

Fraline: Started out to be real rigid and regimented, thinking I had to do something constructive, then I just started scribbling; that was more fun.

Merium: Did you notice your head didn't work very well when you were doing it?

MERIUM: That you had a little holiday for it? And I will report that I observed that Hunnah did not enjoy herself coloring because she had moved on up to the East Side, so to speak, and had been painting and the paints were more satisfying to her, and she derived the pleasure of the paints the way we hoped the crayons would. She didn't like the nostalgia of the color of the box.

But please keep this in mind, this playfulness, and if you have to resort to a jumping rope this Spring, I would certainly recommend it. Or, another example of the effect of this is to play with a child at their level so that you do not have to be the grown-up with them but you can have yourself a spontaneous situation.

Are there some questions this evening? I was eavesdropping and I heard something that might be coming from Erata.

Erata: Yes. Let's see. How should I put the question? I have dreams and I see visions of things and I remembered back that I had seen a vision of my husband in a hospital bed, and, of course, he got sick and he died; and then I had a dream lately of a lady who -- and I didn't know she had had a left mastectomy, and I was feeling her body from the waist up on the left side and I kept sensing there was something wrong on/in her, and in the dream I had I kept turning her around to the left side so the next day I called her and said, "Did you have a mastectomy?" and she said "Yes" and I said, "What side?" and she said, "Left," and I said "There's something wrong; please call the doctor and make an appointment" and right now she's really sick. So I don't know . .. whether it's something that . .. I don't know what I want to ask, you know? Those things . .. what should I do with them?

MERIUM: First of all, you expressed the fact that you acted on this recent episode and found that it was, to the degree, it was true. We are each other's lives. There would be more of this if people were open to it, where we would be reaching into other peoples' experiences, not to remove them so much as to companion them and to be there for them. This is not one of my specialties, particularly, but I will recommend that when you have experiences of such a nature, that you turn them back and ask that intelligent and honorable companionship help you define these activities and that you may have more clarification regarding them.

Realms that we are dealing with here are also escape areas of fantasy and there is often dribble and misunderstanding on different levels, but when you have a strong feeling that you need to act or pay attention, ask your guidance (which I am supposed to be, but this is not my specialty) but ask for assistance and plan on having that assistance. You can also journal. You keep record of the frequency of it. I am afraid I am not going to be too much help. Tomas?

TOMAS: Yes, Merium. Thank you for your astute input to our unusually receptive Erata, which indeed you are, daughter. You are-- I will not say "clairvoyant" but you are very sensitive, and this has been apparent to us for some time, even to yourself, and now you are reassured and it is confirmed that your sensitivity to ether is unusually keen. You may find the sensitivity unnerving, or you may become accustomed to it and ascertain the extent you may use it as a gift or extent you may regard it as imagination, by your own integrity in intent to serve.

That is to say, if you seek in stillness divine counsel as to your course of action or non-action, you will be advised by the Spirit of Truth, and it is always a matter of your free will as to whether or not you will follow up or follow through with your inclinations.

It is as all of these processes, an unfolding of higher reality, and in many cases, a depiction of a higher reality, and so it is sometimes wise to present your vision as a vision and allow the Spirit of Truth to work within the subject itself. I concur with Merium's remarks as well.

MERIUM: I would like to add to this, now that Hunnah has relaxed a little bit. In regard to expanded awareness, because this is what this is, supposing you were in your home and you looked out the window and you saw something. There are time frames that you do not understand, but you saw something that belonged to someone else in their experience. You have a right to feel that you have intercepted something that is none of your business, or you have a right to act, because, in a sense, they are your business.

I am not making this easy for you, but if you are going to receive a gift, you will always receive the timeliness of action or the intelligence to understand, the perception to understand what is going on. There are clairvoyant/telepathic gifts at a particular level of your development and if you have offered them up to the highest good, then they will be used for that special purpose and you will not be casual about receiving them and you will be more on the alert to use them.

Allowing people to have their own, what you might call experiences -- they have experiences in their lives for their adventure and for their learning, and if you are allowed to be included in them, you will be shown if you are invited in and you will be of service. I think we made a lot of words here when perhaps it is not necessary and you have not interjected or interrupted us but always ask yourself, "How do I feel about this?" and see what you come up with. It may be sometimes you will have them because you need to pay attention to some aspect of development in your own experience and need some guidance on it.

If you were to receive that dream about seeing your husband ill again, how would you feel about that?

Erata: I can't really remember when it was, but I know it wasn't real close to when he got sick, but within a couple years probably. I don't know if Rick would have been receptive to me egging him on about -- I don't mean egging him on, because his dad died young of a sudden heart attack, you know. I asked him to "Please don't do like your father and ignore these things!" because his father had multiple heart attacks and in the autopsy they saw that, so he had also had heart attacks before he eventually died of it, so I told Rick not to be stupid like his dad! To think he was invincible, but then Rick was real macho, so I don't know if he would have listened to me or not. It's really hard to determine but it's his choice as well because he was just as knowledgeable of his father as I was, and so, in that case, I . .. you can't go and rescue everyone either. It has to be their decision, as well, with it.

This other gal, I knew she would be receptive to me because I knew well enough of her, of her faith in The Father, so whenever I told her that, she just understood where I was coming from.

MERIUM: You have also journeyed quite a distance in your spiritual development and in developing trust in your inner communication and at the time when this scary impression . .. Was it scary?

Erata: It concerned me, because the very next morning I made sure that this gal knew about it.

MERIUM: In regard to your husband, a husband also represents security, and when you do have something like this -- and this is for more than just Erata -- you can ask yourself, "What does that represent in my life?" and offer it up. Throw it on the fire, you might say, to keep your tinder for your fire and ask that you be shown greater wisdom regarding these things.

We did take a good bit with this particular situation and we are not psychiatrists, but we do know the complexities of the human design and the fear aspects that are woven in everything that you do because of your planetary make-up, and as you mature you will take all these situations and you will bring them up and evaluate them in a personal way that will amaze you, and you will be able to spin gold from their disfigured appearance. Thank you.

Is there someone else who would like to speak up before we throw a lecture at you? (Pause) Then I will offer you something that's fresh off the press. Hunnah was listening to tapes and I got in on it. All of us are in on anything because this woman's talk is from our own -- develops through our influence here with her. Anyone who is bringing in Light and Life is receiving the assistance of those that are not visible, and what I want to tell you is that she wanted you, as homework in her talk, to be aware of how often you do not tell the truth and to write down, to show you, that you are still operating in the two worlds -- one of self-preservation and one of surrender, so it can be both amusing and uncomfortably alarming, so as a side activity, I would like to have you be aware of what you are saying when you are saying it and hear what comes out of your mouth.

And today Hunnah was sharing the story and the whole time she was telling it, which was appropriate at the time, and she really wondered if it was necessary and if she was acting in her best quality of integrity, so I want you to be aware of the strength of the old pattern, and if you can, as soon as you recognize what you are doing, put your brake on, by all means do so because you do it for everyone by not pounding the nail in a little deeper, the nail of a false pattern, false behavior in mankind. So see if you can hold that unbridled carrying on and be aware of what you are saying.

TOMAS: I am reminded, Merium, of our conversation with the Pittsburgh Pumpkins recently, wherein we read about and discussed and I in fact assigned to the advanced students the idea that they were to look for the efforts of the Universal Censor in their dealings with their fellows. Indeed the Universal Censor is able to abridge your mind from extensive expression. It will help you to censor your unruly tongue from the excessive socialization that flesh is heir to.

In due course, your skill at restraint and at integrity of expression will become so acute, you will be a walking fount of insight, and indeed, your experiences, Erata, are indicative of insight and potential discomfort and gift/ministry that it can effect. Insight is something that comes from the ability to see with the inner eye, the inner eye that is not the conscious eye. Example would be that you can anticipate that something will come to pass because of the antecedent causation. Cause and effect.

If, for example, crudely speaking, someone smokes too much for too long, lung difficulty will set in, and if the inheritance is toward heart attack, and the behaviors are such that would induce that effect, that effect from certain causes, and so an insight can be set up. Remember, Michael, when he was here as Jesus, was able to see in advance of many activities -- not particularly because of his spirit cognizance, but because of his total cognizance -- that if you behave in a certain way, these will be the certain results.

And this is a matter of insight. Being able to see from the inside out. An insight carries with it a responsibility. Perhaps you are not to involve yourself in the insight, but watch how life itself unfolds, for it is not for you to follow up on the insight, but to observe the growing experience of the individual experiencing it.

Erata: Yes; it'll be better when I re-read it. It's scary, though, so . .. You don't want to be labeled or anything like that, either.

MERIUM: Let us suppose that in your pattern you contained a thousand eyes, and let us suppose that each time you were awakened and enlightened, that one of these eyes winked open. And when you hear the word "eye" you think of an eye on the front of your head, but let me describe these eyes as perhaps censors, within the structure of your consciousness that is awakening.

This eye is simply a metaphor in this case, but as you waken, the sensitive skills, these receptors that have the ability to register knowing are activated, and therefore you can look at a situation that you have seen many times before and develop a totally different attitude or appreciation or definition on that particular situation.

It can be, and if you will as you journey, you will find that you will move into an impersonalization, an objectivity, because you will be becoming a beholder of the activity. You will be in it but not of it. And you have heard this before many times and you probably all have had an experience or two where you have already experienced that definition, but it was not of you or for you, but you were just able to be in the moment and appreciate it for what it was, so remember, when you develop, it's sort of like weight.

You people are very weight conscious, but as you put on weight, you put it on all over. You do not develop one plump arm or a full face and that is all; it goes on all over like a layer, and as you waken, this wakening is going on all over, and the areas that have wakened first will become more sensitive and more responsive to the focus which you are aligning yourself with.

So in a way I hope you can see yourself as a flower, with purpose and fragrance, and you do not need to concern yourself so much with the name of what you are or the job that you have to do, but just the fact that you are allowed to be alive and to experience and to express your divinity. Are there any more questions?

Fraline: I had an experience of my own in which I received a message from Mary, the mother of Jesus, and I wonder what the role of Mary is in our spiritual life.

MERIUM: Tomas, I am going to comment here, but I just know that you're going to do a beautiful job with this response.

MERIUM: First of all, I am going to be the role of mentor now, and I am going to let you hear what you said. I want you to repeat it. I want you to ask yourself what does Mary represent to you and "How do I feel about it?" instead of asking for an authoritative definition of who Mary is. What is Mary to you?

MERIUM: Do you suppose that she would like to be considered also a role model as a mother or a daughter or a neighbor or a light in her community?

MERIUM: And, therefore, how do you suppose you could utilize this mentor that you are comfortable with?

MERIUM: I'm not going to answer this because I'm going to allow you to do some journaling on this subject. You have already aligned yourself with her, even though in a sense she has been given to you through the church, but to do her justice and to honor you and that which understands within yourself, I would like to let you see how wonderful it would be if you journeyed on paper to find out and to enrich your relationship with her. I think that you will be very pleased to discover that which you already know.

TOMAS: I will take a turn now. I, again, Merium, appreciate your wise work with our flock. I would suggest to you, Fraline, without taking away from what you treasure, that you consider your own personal teacher, Dharma, as a replica, in many regards, of Mary, for she, Dharma, represents for you "right action", and it is more appropriate for you to determine your own right action as a mother of your children in this day and age than to try to emulate Mary as a mother of Jesus 2,000 years ago in a small Jewish community in a far-away land.

Your personal identity with the Mother Spirit is as vital and real and capable of impressing and teaching your children as any emulation in history, even those which are endearing to you because of your beliefs. Mary was indeed a blessed woman, the mother of Jesus, our Creator incarnate, but in many regards she was no more, no less, than you yourself in terms of her devotion to her children.

Indeed, your children have the flu and childhood diseases, as did Jesus and through which she cared for him; your children have fallen and bunged their knees and their hands, as did Jesus when he was a toddler. The same risks, the same joys, the same teaching experiences and learning experiences, you share with Mary, and so Mary is truly your sister and the mother of Jesus is your mother also, our Mother in Paradise.

All of our Eternal Parents' children, including Mary and Dharma and Joseph and your own children and your own friends and your own lover are all children of the Father and Mother in Paradise. And we all look to them to raise us up, for them to teach us how to be born of the spirit, that we may become meaningful citizens of the universe and vital members of the greater family. That is all.

MERIUM: I will comment. It's as if you could use Mary as a password into your own computered understanding. You trust her, obviously, and feel her acceptance of you, and when you are with someone such as that, and you have that attitude toward them, whether it would be a religious figure or as a friend, when the trust is there, there is open honesty and warmth and safekeeping in that relationship, and I definitely will encourage you to allow the Mother Spirit to come and nourish you as you hoped, engage you in all the promises that are divinely already yours and help you to awaken to this joyful discovery of them. Thank you for sharing that.

Erata: Tomas, whenever you were talking about being born of the spirit, and in the Bible how it says about being born of the spirit, is that what journey we're on? Is this what the Christ meant when he said that? This journey that we're on now in a different way? Than a lot of the churches proclaim?

TOMAS: That which Christ proclaimed is that which I proclaim, that you should be born of the spirit, for as you are born of the spirit you begin to speak the language of the spirit and you become a citizen of the spirit realm and an under-stander of spirit values, that even though your feet of clay may trod the path of earthly endeavor, your comprehension has risen to that of Christ-consciousness and an awareness of your place in the greater universe.

The fruits of the spirit -- loving service, merciful ministry, confiding trust, undying hope, enduring peace, et cetera -- are those same fruits that Christianity and Christendom espouse as virtues that would bespeak Godliness, and so there is a distinct parallel here in our efforts together, for they are the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

He has called upon us to be born again, born of the spirit, wherein we will hear with ears to hear and see with eyes to see in the spirit realm and from the spirit consciousness, not only from the ears and eyes of the animal existence, the mortal consciousness, the intellect and the emotion, but now from the spirit. It is the same.

TOMAS: No, daughter, I cannot. It is not within my jurisdiction. I apologize for disappointing you.

MERIUM: I would speak to you of your mortal mother. She is exactly where you hope she is. She is evolving just the way you are and the love of her family that was here lingers, and it is continually fed as she develops, because any expression of truth and love is continually re-nourished, and as she is developing and learning in her realm, just as you are also developing your new configuration while you are here in a different realm. And her love for you is God's love for you.

We like to steal that word "love" and apply it as it gives ownership, but we really are bathing in the same water and sharing the same truths. It just only appears that way. Be of good cheer.

Erata: I know there was another question. I'm just trying to think of what it was and I am like Gerdean, I probably filed it away somewhere and I can't think of what it was! There's one I was thinking about the other day, and perhaps this might help guide people in this direction as we go. When I was in church the other day, and it's a beautiful ceremony and it's a worship and praise and all of those things, but this is, you know, certainly -- it was new to me and I was really curious about it, so I went further. If we were talking to someone who was receptive to this and try to describe what we are, as … like what we're doing here? . ..

Is it right to say that -- of course we have the ceremony and of course we praise the Lord in our affiliations as we do, but -- this is to more or less teach us now to become what we ultimately want to become? Would that be a fair way of putting it? Or how would you direct that? And I did remember my other question, now I forgot it again, but I'll come up with it.

Erata: Well, the group and how we are learning from you, of course is different than -- most people go and people teach them things, and we are here and you come to us and speak through humans -- in a different way.

TOMAS: You are developing an awareness of your own soul and stimulating its own growth. You are feeding the growth of your own soul. This is what we do. How it is that you can explain that is open to various interpretions.

MERIUM: I suppose that you could take everything that you have said this evening and put it into a form of love. We have been talking about aspects of love, and the movement and the disbursement of this lightness that it is, this meltdown of that which has been congealed and hardened. It is just removing something that appears to be solid and intractable and warming it so that it can be pliable and re-defined, and there isn't any waste.

Supposing our conversation wakens some feelings of pain and disappointment. The very fact that that subject came up, which was perhaps a kernel of discomfort or a hardness within you, that you are able to have it become pliable and lifted up and re-designed into something meaningful. We will take a break here.

TOMAS: Your intermission, as always, has been highly charged, and as always, it has resulted in a clarification of your questions. I am eager now to hear the formulated inquiry.

Erata: Okay. Gerdean had a question that is related to mine. "You say you speak to us where our need is. Isn't it true that the Father provides all of our needs?"

TOMAS: It is a question I am glad to respond to. It is, in fact, a rhetorical question. I have to say Gerdean is well-versed in asking rhetorical questions, and yet it is very true that the Father, in the large, is the one who provides all our needs. He is the one who knows what our needs are before we do, and therefore He knows your needs before I do, and yet I am here in order that I may enable you to bring forth an understanding of your needs, and so yes, I too, am here to respond to your needs but I am here in an intermediary capacity, if you will. I am here as your assistant, and we are both in service of our Master.

So, each is true. Our Father provides our needs and yet I provide a need for the Father and for you, and you also provide a need for the Father; for whereas it is true that God and man need each other, it is also true that I am needed and I need. Indeed, it is a living organism that we are a part of and we all need each other in order for this magnificent creation to function at its fullest and most sublime.

Hunnah: Tomas, I don't think that that needs any ruffles from Merium. I've stepped out here and I have a question. I frequently feel -- and this is not a compliment! -- that the realm that you are in is not expected to answer some of the questions that we have, and one of them is regarding health or worldly things, and even though you let us talk and lift up whatever it is we say so it can be formulated into a living, palatable form... if . ..

We are so in the habit of seeking validation and the assurance here, whether it's because we have been living in fear for so long, but there are things we need to know because we want to take responsible action, and it can be like health concerns which a couple of us -- more than a couple! -- Several of us here are addressing and trying to be responsible in meeting some needs, some issues of maintenance.

And without sounding like I'm taking anxious thought, I would like to NOT address some things to a "medical doctor" because I feel that they are passed in passing, and on the other hand, I want to be responsible and report them in case it is something that does require material adjustment. Have I said too much to confuse you? Thank you. I don't even know if there was a question mark in there, but it's on my mind. I want to get it off my chest. A lot of my problems have been "on my chest".

TOMAS: I grant you it was a heartfelt outpouring, and I agree with you, Hunnah, that there are many, many questions indeed that you bring to the table that I am not qualified to answer nor is it within my realm of jurisdiction to answer, and yet I will respond many times in a comradely fashion. You are correct, the realms of physical health are not my forte, nor is it supposed to be.

I am here as a teacher of your spirit needs, your soul needs, as I indicated before. I am here to help you to adeptly grow in your spirit reality, in your own soul. It is true, however, that your physical health impacts upon your spiritual life and your spiritual life impacts upon your physical health, and so the realm of your physical health is not without interest to us.

How many times have we admonished that it is necessary for you to grow in a balanced fashion, that is, it is wise to grow in your spirit realms, your physical realms, and your mental realms in a balanced way, for if you become over-specialized in one realm or the other, you suffer certain dysfunction and imbalance. Personality askew-ment (there's a word for you!).

Now that you admit to regarding me and Merium and others here as your friends and confidants, you are certainly free to bring any subject at all to the fore. I have listened to your heartbreak and your sex life, your mores, your job situations, your domestic difficulties, your angers and any number of items that are technically none of my business, but the fact that it maintains an integrity that speaks to your development of your soul, it is in my realm of interest, and that is where I try to focus.

Indeed, much of what you say goes in one ear and out the other for there is nothing I can do to contribute to your reality except to allow you to experience what it is you are experiencing, and when it rises to the level of cream, then we can address it.

Hunnah: I'm thinking while you're talking that if I let myself get more consistently still, that my apprehension would clear. It's sort of like . ... I can have piece of mind -- we think we understand better, and yet the knees still rattle. It's almost as if there's some kind of programmed reaction in us when we face these issues, whether it's physical or mental, and even though we talk with you and we can see -- we have a new view of things, it's as if the body still wants to referee its fear dance. It fascinates me!

TOMAS: Aha! You have struck upon a truth! You are a dual nature personality. You are of divine destiny and of animal origin, and so on one hand you are born of the spirit, you have your intellect, you have your faith; and on the other hand, you are an animal and you have survival instincts and impulses and all of that, and fear is a part of the animal legacy; it is built into your chromosomes, and so even though you may have great faith, you may also have wobbly knees or sweaty palms. You may also know an adrenaline rush.

It is courage that allows you to forbear in the face of your fear, and forge on to victory. Think not that because you are a child of God that you get to abandon fear altogether, for always will you have vestiges of fear, as long as you remain a mortal. And this is appropriate! For you are an animal with animal instincts and that old thing about "survival of the fittest" and all that is there for a reason. It is a wonderful plan, and not in error.

Hunnah: While you talk the line came to me (I'm older than anyone here so I can say this. It's probably a private joke, but I was thinking of) "Shake, rattle and roll." If you shake, rattle, and roll in good humor, then the divine can allow the physical to shake rattle and roll and understand and it's like denying a child to cry when it falls down. It would be wrong to say to the child, "Don't you cry!" but it hurts and so the child has a right to cry.

And so in a sense, I am the parent of my body, and I am allowed to allow my body to say, "I'm going to do a very mild version of the sounds that are haunting it or are the echo of its creation in the world", and it's okay to have a pit in the stomach or to have the palpitations or whatever it is you happen to be dealing with at the moment and that part of you that is being acknowledged now is allowed to embrace that and comfort it and not join it in fear.

I hope I've expressed that... and if I have it's because of Jasmine, my friend. I'm in this wonderful situation where I'm allowed to be more objective about it.

Hunnah: But when I get out in the working world of the lesser definition, it isn't the best companionship, so . ...

TOMAS: It is here that you need to remember your invisible army of friends and helpers. It is the greater reality, Hunnah, that you have with you -- not only Michael and the Spirit of Truth, but most immediately you have Jasmine and Travis, in order to help you in bracing you against this onslaught of fear and the tremendous and over-powering pace of your stressful work environment.

It is necessary for you to maintain your equilibrium and your calm, and your environment is very simulative of animal fear. It is stressful, and so, calls upon not only your personal teachers, but call also upon Dharma and Heath and Wheat and any other spirit helper. You need reinforcements in the trenches where you work, a most difficult arena.

Erata: Yes. Who do I pray to? And that also came to me today when I was asking Heath to clear my way. In the past I have always thanked the Christ, and so now I want to make sure that my praises go where they should go because there's a break in my traditional, "Thank you, Lord!" thing, you know?

TOMAS: It is a simple matter of you wanting to know where to send the thank you card and you don't want to commit any faux pas in your new arena, and it is always appropriate to thank the Father, of course. Indeed, it is always a good idea to thank the Father no matter whom else you may or may not thank individually, for He is the overseer of all good gifts.

Now in the case of your personal teacher who has specifically responded to your request for assistance and succeeded, thereby making your way more gracious, he is, of course, and she is, of course, allowed to receive that billet doux, and yet, at the end of your day, when you give thanks for your path, it is appropriate to thank the Father.

Let me address also the truth of prayer for those of you who are not aware of your personal teachers or in the habit of acknowledging the presence of and assistance of midwayers or angels or other designated spirit helpers. If you direct your prayer to the Father, he will send that prayer to the appropriate recipient. It is like He is the great mail distributor in the sky, who takes your thank you notes and sends them where they're supposed to go, so that when you send up your thanks, they always are received by that personality which is to receive thanks. It is not just you, you see. He also sees to it that His children are acknowledged for the efforts they expend on His behalf. Remember, it is a large and living organism and we work together, each one contributing what they may and receiving the good news of the living way.

Hunnah: No. After listening to that tape [by Maas], I was ready to chuck Reiki, thinking that perhaps I needed to trust more and be allowed to accept another avenue of assistance. When I seek improved health, it's because I want this vessel to serve the highest good, and even at a lesser level, even though there is the inherited fear capacity, I really don't feel I can do anything about that, that it will take care of itself, but it's out of a desire to have longevity for service -- at least I hope that's what the purpose is and why any of us should want to maintain our health -- which is inadvertently dependant upon our spiritual health. The original question -- but I'm not going to get into that because I don't want to get into an intellectual . ...

TOMAS: At least I have a couple remarks I would like to make, one of which has to do with "chucking Reiki." I would not suggest that you chuck your understanding of kinetic healing, spiritual healing through touch. It may be that the crystallized approach, the academic approach through healing through a system, is in need of a modification, but remember the Life Carriers are the healing agents of the human form, and as you call upon the Life Carriers to help you align the body, they are highly accommodating and highly effective in and through a Reiki system.

Perhaps I might suggest that those of you who are familiar with Reiki might have replaced the Reiki technique in the way that many Christians have replaced the Church for the living way. It has become a technique and lost its true purpose. It is far more than a mechanistic approach to healing. You are dealing with healing power of life itself, of divine life if you will.

I would also like to suggest to you all that you know yourself and including your body. There was a time when the phrase was to "travel through the universe of your body and not lose your way", that you could come to know your material vessel intimately and determine for yourself if there was blockage or pile-up of emotional residue or scar tissue -- junk of some sort or another, -- by the way in which you could ascertain your systems.

Knowing your body is not just understanding its cholesterol count and blood pressure, but again, an inside job. Many of you are not intimate with your own vessel. You are aware that it is a machine that sometimes needs to go into the garage for a tune-up, but you are not familiar with it intimately.

The same is true for your mental realms. I am not reluctant to recommend counseling with psychiatrists, psychologists or therapists for this is a healthy method, providing you have the right counselor, of getting in touch with your mental and emotional processes. A mental tune-up, if you will. And along those lines, perhaps your stillness is a way of having a spiritual tune-up, an alignment, indeed. It is worth investing the time and energy involved in order that you know yourself in all realms of your being: intellectually, spiritually, physically, emotionally and so on.

Hunnah: Thank you. While you were talking, I was seeing that I had achieved a credible definition of what I was doing, that I had moved beyond the fascination of wanting to change people and heal them, but to see it as an outlet for your, for The Father's action. He has to live through us to serve others and to awaken them and there are many people who keep falling asleep and we are to help them stay awake and to discover themselves, the truth of themselves, and I thought if I came to get myself. . ..

You know, when you hear someone else that's on a roll, you buy into everything they have to say for a little while, it stimulates your thinking and your values and it makes you take stock again and then after talking to you, it reminds me that I am credible, that I have come to a place and I don't have to go back to explain myself to anyone, that I had been through that ego area; if it was there, I have outgrown it and am into a new place and a new demonstration and a new state of consciousness and that we all are, we keep moving, but when you hear someone talking, you have to remember that they're talking to people at every level, and you don't have to go back and think of yourself as being just coming out of the shell, so to speak. We are, anyway, but it helps. Thank you.

TOMAS: You are welcome. I would like to speak a little more on this business of physical perfection. In-as-much as you are the offspring of a system gone awry, you have more disease than you would have had, had there not been the default. I am not pointing the finger at Adam and Eve particularly, but that is a consideration, that there are more diseases today than there would have been otherwise, and so it is not necessarily your responsibility when you come down with illness.

There is a great stress, even here among us, that your mental attitude and your emotional condition has a significant bearing on your physical condition and this is true; however, it is also true that there are many slips between the cup and the lip, and it is possible that even with the most earnest appreciation and care, it is possible for there to be disease and set-back in the physical realms. It does not mean that you are less than good, even less than perfect, in your purpose, but that you are human/flesh, and therefore, like a machine, subject to repair on occasion. That is all.

Hunnah: Without making the evening awfully long, I would like to at some point address when you know that something's finished. It is very hard for me to know when something is finished. I was in a search for God study group for, oh, probably 6 months when it was over. There were three of us that just couldn't catch on that it was over, and in a sense it wasn't over because we were still willing to come together, but what it was getting was dried up, and I'm under the impression that it doesn't matter what you do, it's how you do it.

And simply because work seems to be one of the hot subjects, and I feel it's going on, I just had the door open for me and I could walk out tomorrow, but I don't want to because it is such a unique opportunity to serve, and -- is it true? -- It really doesn't matter what you do, it's how you do it?

Hunnah: Oh. Because, I remember once someone said, "I don't have to have a nervous break-down to take a vacation." This is just a general statement. You could be a homemaker or you could own a business or whatever. Some people literally have a breakdown in order to stop what they're doing, and I don't want to be foolish enough to do that. I just . .. it's just a matter of staying close to your inner counsel and listening to know where it Or does another door open and say . ..? You see, we're so work oriented here! it wouldn't really matter if it just said, Go home and smell the flowers? Do nothing. When you get hungry, get a job, get something to eat, that kind of thing? But we create pressure on ourselves and it isn't nearly necessary.

TOMAS: I want you to know, Hunnah, that I am aware of many instances (and you will find it on the record at least twice in our communications) that you have stated that you were withheld from attending to your professional work and you glowed in the circumstances, circumstances which you would not have taken, had you not been given permission, and this is interesting to me.

It indicates, of course, your cultural conditioning and the conditioning of your society that finds work more important than your life, that you live to work instead of work to live. It is a peculiar aberration of values indeed, and it has affected you all. It has affected your spiritual life, your mental life, your emotional life, and your physical life, and if it has had such profound effects on each of you here, EACH of you here in this room, and you are all on a conscious spiritual path, can you imagine the devastation your system has caused for thousands and thousands of unsuspecting personalities? Perhaps, just perhaps, that is a rhetorical question.

Perhaps also it is time to consider bringing our evening to a close. We have been productive. However, I have not heard from Joniel nor from Liana. I would like to pause in our discourse to see if either of my lovely friends have a question or a comment they would like to make in the face of these proceedings.

TOMAS: I am glad for your presences, both of you. You are entirely dear to me and I embrace you both individually and all of you as a community, my priceless daughters and sisters, our precious co-workers in the kingdom. It is my privilege and pleasure to join Merium in wishing you all a good week and a joyous one.

Remember to be full of the fountain of faith in the face of your fears and frolic in your foibles. Farewell.

TOMAS: Greetings. I am Tomas. I am not accustomed to opening our session with the pronouncement "greetings," which is often the salutation of the Melchizedek's; I normally say "good evening" or "good afternoon". I am, as you might imagine, rambling. I am attempting to oil the gears of Gerdean's mind and perhaps focus her somewhat.

I will tell you that when you have such diversion and distraction as you have engaged in this evening, as delightful and entertaining and even beneficial as it may be, it is a dialog and communication that skims the surface and titillates your imagination and your senses but is far removed from the deep mind, and it is in the deep mind where we are best able to bring forth those impulses and concepts which will feed your soul. And since it is your soul that we have come to address, nurture, foster and so on, it is necessary that you burrow a little more deeply than you have allowed yourselves thus far this evening.

And so perhaps now I have burrowed deeply into the furrows of the gray matter of my transmitter/receiver; and in this cozy spot I greet you, and Merium also is here, as are your personal teachers and a number of other visitors per usual. In the face of your myriad discourses this evening and the many, many levels of value that was touched upon, it is a technique that we have developed in order to "save face" with you, our loyal students and occasional skeptics, that rather than attempt to approach you where you believe you are, is rather, to adopt a subject of our own choosing and thereby require you to come to us, rather than us come to you.

I will pick up where we left off not long ago in a visit in Pittsburgh. I remember discussing the concept of "coming to believe" and in the concept of coming to believe, we are stepping into a new level of reality, one which involves a comprehension of divinity within your life. That is, a stepping into a life which has God as compared to a life which has not. It relates very much to our recent lesson from the visitor, the Mighty Messenger, about rebirth, for once you have allowed yourself to experience rebirth, you have indeed come to believe, whereas before you lived in a realm of factuality.

Now let me pursue the theme of having come to believe, and also contributing to the theme the recent lesson on "emergency and urgency". (I know you may think I am confused and am laying it on too thick for you, but if you could hear yourselves think and speak, you would recognize at once that your minds are very agile, very nimble, extremely capable of absorbing all manner of threads and engaging them into a tapestry, and so I am giving you a dose of your own.) We have now a premise of an emergency/urgent status and you are reborn in this urgent situation.

Indeed, we are now observing the NOW of this evening. You here in this room in a position of having been reborn, looking upon your planet and its current condition, in its current state of emergency, and realizing the need for it to come to believe, so that we can forge on into bringing sanity to Urantia, remember the statement was, "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" and these conditions of today can be construed as insane because they are lacking in reality, they are lacking in God-consciousness, in awareness of a Supreme personal reality, a religious experience that cuts across the grain and impacts everyone equally and profoundly.

I say that because evolutionary religion and all the "isms" and "ologies" available today have created such a vast array of potential and new belief systems, that it will require a genuine personal religious experience with the Father, the First Source and Center, to pull all these factions together and to enforce true reality.

The key therefore is a rebirth indeed, which is what Jesus called for when he said, "I call upon you to be born again, born of the spirit," for it is only within the confines of the living reality of the spirit that sanity resides. Outside of the only reality is insanity and unreality. Insanity may be amusing, it may be entertaining, it may be diversionary and distracting, but it can be destructive, it can be wasteful and it can be hell for one who hungers for reality and the opportunity of seeing reality reflected back through the eyes of these friends.

There is indeed, speaking of friends, a situation,- a part of the culture today in your society -- a counter-culture perhaps -- that enjoys the concept of insanity. "Still crazy after all these years" is a line from a song beloved by thousands, and I will not get into a full study of the semantics of your young people who think that things are "bad" when they're good and "cool" when they're hot and so forth, but you see that the reality perception is varied on Urantia at best, to say the least.

I am not encouraging you all to be the same, I hope you realize that, for in your many-faceted personalities, it is wonderful to see that you are all different and that you each can ascertain how it is that you are different and relish your uniqueness. But even in your difference you can all manifest sanity! It is only when you don't know who you are that you are insane and that a life situation exists which can be classified as insane, even clinically insane. From a cosmic point of view, cosmic insanity results in cosmic suicide, and that is iniquity to the extent of personality extinction, and so you see this idea of identifying with spirit reality is really, truly very critical. There IS a certain urgency involved.

I am reminded of a picture that was done by your Michaelangelo, a masterpiece of a certainty, and in the bottom right corner of the masterpiece, there is a face of a man who has been banished to hell. The anguish in this face is a picture of insanity, and although we do not subscribe to a fiery hell such as is purported in some of your evolved religions, the concept remains, none-the-less, that a life without God is not a life worth living, no matter, children, how entertaining it may appear to be or how alluring it may seem to be.

Now, I have great compassion for your many peers who do not feel that it is necessary for them to engage in a personal relationship with a God of their understanding. I have deep compassion for their ignorance and their naivete, and I know that Our Father in His mercy will be there for them when that one day arrives when they, like the face in the corner of the Michelangelo painting, realize the anguish of this hell without . .. Perfect Parentage.

But I am also very grateful to you, my little garden here, that has acknowledged your need for divinity connection, that has acknowledged your association with spirit reality, your living connection to divine reality. Little flowers, how we appreciate your efforts, particularly in the face of the overwhelming insanity of Urantia today. [Pause for clock chiming] I offer the platform to my co-worker

MERIUM: That was some discourse, Tomas. I think that everyone will have to read it, but I am going to perch upon a line and make my comments because you have very powerfully acknowledged the sleeping dead -- rather the walking dead, I guess, is the expression you use here -- but in the meantime, those of you who have received the wake-up call and who have the ears to hear and for some reason or other are willing to abandon the worldly projects to come and nestle in this fold, I do welcome you and encourage you to take the joy that lives within you out into the masses as they slumber and go about their rote duties.

I am thrilled to know that there is even a small corps [of people] among you who are going out and are spontaneously accepting the task at hand and inserting life, filling life, into the available spaces, nourishing the seed that appears to be sleeping. It is indeed a very tense time in many parts of this planet, but you still have to be concerned in your own situations. You are dealing with your own immediate growth and are handed the responsibility of being resilient and patient with those who are interwoven into your lives.

These are your charges, and they are the fertilization, or I should say the testing grounds, for that which you have embraced, and we have great faith in you and continue to encourage you to address us, and even though you cannot see us with visible eyes, we encourage you to feel our embrace and to just know, to remind yourself that we do exist and that you are of a consequence to the living Parentage that you have in Paradise.

I encourage you ever so continuously to allow the light that's shining into the crown in your head, that lightens up the heart, that lets it billow and glow and warm like embers to bring warmth into the pattern that has not been lost to the higher way in the very presence of the lesser way.

I would like to open the floor for some heartfelt concerns, to see if we cannot encourage you to hang in there, to be more devoted to your silence, your stillness times. We want to encourage you to allow yourself to become more objective and not to be sucked into the vortex of the whirling confusion about you in your daily working hours. Tomas, what do you think?

I would like to call you by name this evening and we are welcoming you, Mr. C. It is nice to have you come by and we feel light and we know what is in your heart and mind. Are you all too physically tired to engage in conversation this evening?

TOMAS: It is my perception, Merium, that they are thoroughly dazzled. We have knocked 'em dead. [Group chuckles] I think we would do well to engage in a moment of that priceless commodity of stillness, that they may gather their wits, for I am certain there are responses forthcoming.

Erata: I may as well talk. Tomas, when you were talking, you said a word that has been on my mind all week, the word "compassion". It's been . .. Where is it? It seems like it's kind of gone from a lot of instances, and it really needs to be revived, as far as I can see. I read an article in one of my Journals that talks about how Christ was so compassionate to the lepers and to different people and he wasn't afraid to touch them. Why is it that people are afraid to touch another?

And then, when I was journaling, it also came up. Compassion almost goes along with being judgmental and not to be judgmental. If we are judgmental then we can't be compassionate. At least that's how my words flow. I don't know if it goes together or makes sense, you know? But the word compassion, and then judgmental, came to mind.

TOMAS: You have given me the subjects for at least three lessons. I will not go into three lengthy lessons, but I do enjoy the concepts that you have brought to the group. The desire for, longing for, need for, observation of, and observation of the lack of compassion is an indication of your own inner yearning for a greater realization of the brotherhood of humankind. And indeed you are correct, it is a need on Urantia. And I remind you that compassion is a word that bespeaks "with passion," with a feeling, a heartfelt feeling, that being a dynamic feeling of love, and so compassion is indeed "with love."

Now I know that you are a caregiver, that you are a medical caretaker, and in one of those fields of endeavor that sees great need, and you have the capacity within you to provide tremendous need to these people, and thank God for people like you and that quality within you that is able to, willing to, eager to serve so abundantly, but one unfortunate thing that can happen to caretakers such as yourself and also mothers and ministers and spouses and so forth, is that the need becomes so great, your capacities begin to wear thin.

It is along those lines of "spreading yourself too thin." And I caution you, child, not to allow yourself to become "burned out", to get what they call "compassion burn-out", for it is better for you to take a holiday from your nurturance now before you have burned it out completely, for then it will take longer for it to come back, and when it does, it may come back with a certain jaded-ness or callousness that disallows the full affect of your full spirit.

This is one of the unfortunate second-hand effects of the tremendous insanity on your planet at this time. The difficulty in having a "heart as big as Texas" and insight such as you have and desire to serve, is that you are prone to become used up. Do not allow this to happen. You are not God. You are a human being with a capacity and no more. Granted, Our Father is infinite, and you can see, perhaps, through your eyes, through His eyes, as you are reborn and He gives you His vision, to an extent, you can see that the need is great, but you cannot do it all.

Pray, rather, that there be more workers sent into the field. We need more workers in the field, and as we nurture other workers, then you have a system, and you are not alone. There are many things that prayer can do, and so as Merium urges, I urge, that you set aside time for stillness. This is an invaluable, vital, necessary part of your life, indeed, of your survival as a human being and as a soul, that you spend time with your Source, regaining your strength and regaining a divine perspective on things so that you begin to work smarter and not harder.

MERIUM: My Hunnah here is just beside herself, and she has bowed to my authority, so I, on her behalf and on behalf of this subject we discuss, a combination of what she is leaking and what you have spoken about and what Erata has brought up, and it would be interwoven with the discussion by Carolyn Myss because she touches upon this subject, but I would like to first of all approach compassion.

And without harping, it's already an established fact, and you know it, everyone here knows it, that their assignment is, first of all, with themselves, because as you do as Tomas and I have suggested repeatedly, allow yourself to honor your own integrity by taking time to enter the stillness, then you will have strengthened your truth self sufficiently that it will redefine your ability to define the situation.

There are so many things that Hunnah was throwing here at me that I could hardly put them in sequence, but as you get yourself in order and draw upon the Christ supply of compassion, it will be appropriately delivered through you, and in turn it will ignite this quality in others, but the thing that Hunnah was squirming to comment about, and I will add to it, is, let us suppose that you were not employed as a caregiver.

How generous would you be, and would you go out and allow yourself to be sent to these people who need you in the same capacity that you serve as a paid employee? How much compassion would be delivered in the course of a day if you were not put out into the community actively as an employee? This is something that you have to take with you, that you allow as part of your delivery, but let us suppose that you did not have this job, that perhaps you were staying home.

How would this same need be met in the overall community? Because you would not be going from door to door to deliver this good will. But Father would have to utilize a different route through you. Perhaps you would be more consistently focused, and that this quality of truth that emanates through you as compassion and mercy would have to, perhaps, be expressed in the form of thought form.

It would have to go into the mental realm and into the community through another vibratory route, vibration-ally speaking. You might have to do your light work in a stationary manner, instead of it being mobile. What would the outcome of this service be? The outcome of this service would be the wakening of the same qualities in others in the community so that this service would be delivered in another way.

I don't know if I have drawn a complete picture for you, but what I am saying here is that your prayers are so powerful that they will penetrate the sleepers. It will penetrate the families of those who have loved ones who are not well. It will waken the urgency, the spontaneous delivery of these goods, through friends. In a sense, we will be going back to a time when you looked in on your neighbor. This is an activity that has totally dried up, because of the pace of your life style here.

Compassion is a fruitage, remember. You are offering yourself to the teaching time in stillness, and then it is disbursed into the community through you. "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me". I don't know if I have taken your question and traveled too far away with it. I do not know if I have been too abstract or if I have totally served Hunnah's enthusiasm and restlessness to speak up, but I do want you to know that we are in a new time of expressing and delivering the goods, and sometimes they have to be delivered under wraps.

So let me tell you that when you express compassion and mercy to any one individual, it goes out into the common pool, in a vibratory sense. As you meet the need at the level of the need, it radiates out. Just like that stone that is thrown into the water, it echoes and echoes and echoes and many are nourished by the fact that you have touched an appropriate chord, an appropriate response and Heaven rejoices in your slightest inclination to please the living truth in your being.

It feeds thousands. Do not weary of doing good. Do not weary of serving the Christ. As Tomas said, though, if you do not protect the vessel that holds this truth, that contains this waking and ascending perfection in you, if you fatigue your body, it will be rendered useless for awhile, until you rally from the unconscious state of exhaustion.

It is true that you cannot serve two masters, and these are the new days of Erata's looking straight at the situation and allowing her guidance to move her lips and redirect those who, out of habit and convenience, will use her incorrectly. If you had a team of horses and you overworked them, they would soon not be able to produce the work, but you are not a horse. You have the living truth in you, and as you honor it, you will learn to honor the judgment of those you work with.

It is true that many in this group are working in the health field, but it is only one version of health. There is mental health, there is spiritual health, and there is financial health. It goes on and on. If you are, and if you serve the Christ, then you are a health worker regardless of where you are. Have I worn it to death? I hope I wore it into a new form of life, this subject of being appropriate with the situation at hand.

TOMAS: I also appreciate your remarks, Merium. I so value you as a co-teacher. I would somehow like to draw an analogy of what you contributed to the remark I made earlier about bringing it into focus, that whereas there are many diversions and distractions that keep us busy on one level, in order to get to the deep mind, to get to the core issues, it is necessary to burrow in, and sometimes when you see the tremendous need, you see the external obvious, but underneath the true need is that hidden reality which allows the individual to come face to face with its own Creator, whereupon all ills can be tended to by the Master and his Divine Minister.

The Great Healers are well beyond our capacity. That is why we are here to teach you to be teachers, to teach your children how to go to the Father for that which will also salvage their sanity and enable them to attain to good health.

MERIUM: I would like to comment here also about acknowledging this statement. "What have you in your house?" Perhaps that can be your homework. Hunnah's background comes from a teaching where one of the main taproots, you might say, of this teaching was, "What have you in your house?" Well, you have the All of God, and there are so many people in the periphery of your contact -- I have to use this nursing visit as a suggestion but it can apply to sales and it can apply to other services, but -- this is a time when we are encouraging people to become independent instead of dependent, and in this dependency is a form of slothfulness but if they have an opportunity to meet someone who helps them realize that they are resourceful, they are intelligent and they are problem-solvers, they will surprise themselves with their coaching and realize that yes they can be and do more than what they appear to be or are too lazy to do.

Your vibratory rates will influence them, will excite them, into the great possibility dialog: "Perhaps I really can do that", and there will be many services performed once again because people have been wakened to the fact that they are capable of experiencing the satisfaction of allowing themselves to be problem-solvers in a new way and a friend to others in a new and stimulating approach.

I hope, once again, I am not being abstract, but I see in this mind of my T/R, this interaction with others that will be very appropriate for your teaching skills. Once again I am reminding you that this is not a therapy session. You are coming into this One that brought you here in the first place. You are the messenger, the message and the way-shower. You will be detained to encourage and strengthen those you teach, not just words but your attitude and your acceptance of them will have a very powerful effect, and therefore you will find that you are not allowed to lose yourself to any one arena in which you are comfortable. You will be surprising yourself when you realize, "What have I in my house?" This is a wonderful adventure and it will help you to remain focused. Thank you.

Fraline: I'm usually very guilt-ridden. It's probably my Catholic upbringing. But anyway, should we have compassion for ourselves first? Because I find out in being out and working, I have all this compassion for others, but when it comes to me, looking at my whole picture, I have no compassion for myself, and I really feel that you have to be compassionate for yourself at times. And I kind of look at it, like, I have to put myself on the back burner and feed everyone else before I'm allowed to have any return, and I don't like to do it that way. Because I think I could give far more if I had a little self-compassion. I'm not making any sense.

MERIUM: I'm going to beat you to it, Tomas, but I'll try to be brief. You have already begun, my dear. You have already begun. The very fact that you have pulled away from your very short leash that is attached to your family, that you have pulled away and you have come here to honor the Father in you, is absolutely signaling to you that this is already being attended to.

And it is true, you will become compassionate and you will also learn to forgive yourself for being less than perfect. It's as if all of the parts of you will be showing up like little green shoots in your garden and every time they come here they will be cultivated, and every time you enter the silence they will be cultivated, and you will get stronger in acceptance that your family will feel, and they really do want a strong expression of your faith in your home .

TOMAS: Remember, you are a role model to your children, as Mary and Nebadonia are role models for you. Always do we look up to those who have more experience and so your children will look to you for an understanding of their own inherited values, and so as you have self-respect sufficient to take care of your own sanity, you will [tape turned]. It is absolutely imperative that you bestow upon yourself those same qualities that you would bestow upon others; indeed, that you take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. It is a fundamental maintenance program, that you take care of yourself.

Your social mores would have you be so self-effacing as to be nonexistent. The Father would have you behave selflessly, true; however, being selfless in a spiritual sense is not the same as being a martyr. There are fine lines here and in terms of recovery. I speak of you as an individual and as a planet recovering from dire conditions. It is necessary that you learn appropriate self-love, so that you may love others, and this comes through your own relationship with your own Source and Center, Our Father. This is the primary relationship and will be throughout eternity. From that primary relationship, then, you can have healthy relationships with others.

This also includes such fruits of the spirit as compassion, for as the Father has compassion for you, you then can understand and have compassion for your own humanness, and thereby understand your fellows and have compassion for them as well. All of these vital virtues are gifts from the Father, that you cannot know unless and as you know the Father. Otherwise they are charades of behavior that you have been told to indulge in, in order to make points with that judging God who has two sides of the ledger, and you know, we don't know him personally.

MERIUM: May I tell you something, please, to tell your children? It is a suggestion, and this has also an opportunity to share something that Hunnah heard today, that when you ask in prayer, you are immediately answered. It is simply the barriers of habit that keep you from reaching and accepting it. But you are free to tell your children that you are beginning to experience answered prayer, because you know that the Father loves you so much that He wants you to experience fulfillment in your life, and that it is such an intimate relationship with you now that it would take too long to tell them how wonderful this is so you want to allow your children to see how love affects you and they will know inherently that it is the Father's will that they are all loved and happy and that you will share with them some of this fruitage of this time for yourself because He wants you to have it, He wants you to have balance in your life.

The words will be given to you, and we are so pleased that you're here, dear; you are such a beautiful soul. We are so pleased to have you here. You are most welcome.

Hunnah: In the light of taking care of yourself, I am going to ask permission to sign off because I have a commitment to my human self to go home and go to bed. [Group laughter] It's my new discipline and I better follow it up.

TOMAS: I will support your new discipline 100% I am glad to be with you all this evening. I agree we need to cut our session --not short, for we have had a full repast -- but close it in anticipation of yet further socialization among you. I will end our session with a brief prayer:

TOMAS: In the interest of spiritual economy and your time constraints, I, Tomas, would like to encourage us all to bow our heads in thanksgiving to our Father/Brother Christ Michael of Nebadon who has prepared The Way for us.

"Thank you, Christ Michael, for your love for us, for your creation of which we are a part. Thank you Father/Brother for the experience of life as we know it and for the life that you present to us and reveal to us as we follow your path.

"You have said to "Follow me' and we essay to follow you in the ways you would have us go. Help us to understand how you would have us be, that we might reflect to each other, and even to yourself, the divine nature as you have instilled it in us through Our Father.

"Open our hearts and minds to an appreciation of the greatness of divinity and the expansiveness of eternity and to the security of our place therein. Beloved Jesus, we thank you. Amen."

TOMAS: Good evening, class. Good evening, Merium. And good evening to our new guest. How wonderful that we are all here together! How I enjoy it when there are seven present; you know how we like that number in the universe. Welcome, young man, to our configuration. It is a pleasure to experience your energies and to recognize your soul as a viable reality in truth. You have all been on good behavior this evening. It must be because of your gentleman caller. How are you, my friends?

MERIUM: I am here. My cheeks are up, ready to go. On with the show. I will speak.

You were talking about devotion not long ago, and how you would permit yourself to express it more completely in your life. Your conversations reveal that devotion is at hand, only it wears a more common garb. The very fact that you have brought this teaching and held it in your heart and are willing to wear it in your everyday life is definitely a form of devotion. You can look for it anywhere you want and give it any name you want, but when you maintain your allegiance to the living Christ, you are indeed expressing the myriad forms of devotion.

Devotion, perhaps, in the past has been looked upon as getting to church on time, or lighting a candle, or for saying some prayers or getting, perhaps, nostalgic or appreciative occasionally, but now we know, as we have been gathering these many times together, that devotion is allowing yourself to live your truth, and then, when you are able to be lifted up, in focus, and witnessing yourself in action in knowing who you serve.

This is of paramount importance, because it is true that the human ego likes to strut and to say, "I am serving Jesus" but if the "I" they pronounce is too loud, then they have a little more homework to do. When you are serving the Christ it becomes, as we have said in the past, the effortless effort, and you may ponder after the fact that it was a glorious expression of honorable obedience.

So I do welcome you, all of you care-givers, caring in every aspect of your lives, whether it's the wonderment and the puzzlement of a new relationship or 'how did I ever get here?' You do take the companioning that you will be now aware of, with you in all phases of your life.

And it pleases me now to welcome our friend and he has no idea how happy the crowd is that we have a young man here. Young man or young woman, we are welcoming you all and are pleased to have this fellowship together. Tomas, what's on the menu this evening? Tomas?

MERIUM: Well, you know, I can whip things up and offer a suggestion for a topic.

MERIUM: I think I will reach in the bag and bring out a favorite subject of mine, and it is that one called Trust. It is so easy to bump into the human walls in your experiences, and when you allow yourself to trust, you know that the hierarchy that has come and reached all the way down to hold your hand, will be there and to move you along.

I will share with you that Hannah has felt very harried for several weeks now, and, like Gerdean, has been concerned about her productivity, but let me tell you, and let me tell you to trust this, that it can be vain imaginations.

Sometimes you can help yourself too much and you can try too hard because this is not something that you get and do. This is an experience that happens to you. Your life is coming in to you. You are not managing your life. Your life is managing you. So, trust me, the subject of "what is my life" again will continuously bring itself forth to be recognized that who you are is not what the world says you are or what you are conditioned to think you are, but you will be resting in the spirit realizations that come to you ever new, to redefine who and why and what you are about.

This matter of trust is an on-going subject, and you have to exercise it continuously and it must be like a well-developed muscle. You trust that you will make the right decision, that you will be appropriate in any given moment. And it is true that when you have prepared for your day (and I sound like a broken record), you have entered into effortless trust because you have prepared yourself and you have been fed more completely and you know that you can continually renew yourself throughout the day.

And also, there is no deadline. You are all out in the world that is requiring excessive accountability, stringent guidelines, and tension that is enough to choke the freshness out of any given moment, so it is almost a duty on your part to insist upon the fresh moment, the new interpretation, and energy and heartfelt appropriateness go with any given situation.

I am hoping that my silent partner is feeling more comfortable and that he will bring his dynamic expression, and perhaps even the chalkboard and the stick. Are you ready, Sir?

TOMAS: I am, indeed, Merium, and I do appreciate your creativity. Indeed, you have struck a chord in me and I will respond to your able baton, for you have presented me with the trust side of the coin and I now will take faith, for we have taught this lesson before and I know we will address it again.

The trust is a result of your faith, and the faith is that which you have built by trusting that which presents itself, and in faith you proceed. It is a wonderful -- shall we call it "game of leap frog", that as you have faith, you can trust, and as you trust, your faith grows, and so you progress forward into eternity in this never-ending cycle of ascension and evolution in reality.

The faith that is born of a being who has devoted himself or herself to the finding of that inner reality that will give substance and credence to his or her existence is that very earmark of existence which is, in fact, faith -- faith that you exist, faith that you are here for a reason, faith that you have a connection that is more than material, faith that there is some divine over-control, some divine plan, some divine being that is in charge and is in knowledge of you and your existence and indeed has a plan for you, that you are not the side-effect of a cosmic accident but that you have a reason for being and a divine purpose.

This faith of your own potential gives rise to a search for, a yearning for, a reality which is greater than all of creation, that reality which has brought creation into being, including yourself, and this, the First Source and Center, is that which we bestow the name upon of Our Father and Our Divine Mother, our creative Eternal Parents who have brought us into being. We, His offspring, we, Her children, these pieces of perfection strewn hither-and-yon throughout the greater universe in search of their way Home.

And so now, my little children, in faith we have found each other and we have found that we have only to "follow him" and he will lead us Home. Now we begin the grand adventure, the career of eternity.

I have gotten warmed up but I have not quit. I am, shall we say, pausing to whet my whistle. Are there questions afloat? [No questions emerging]

VISITOR (Hunnah): We have been eavesdropping, but we would like to have the question that you have in your breast rise and be released from your lips.

It is very easy to be distracted by the everyday activity and it is fun to exercise a little rebellion. It is fun to brag a little. But we know the secret of progress is for you to keep the commitment to the Silence, this time when the light is able to enter and clear your cognitive receptivity and to help you to release emotional bondage in areas of your body so that there will be a place for this living Word to come and dwell and multiply as new form and appropriate nourishment in your body.

Let me tell you that the energies in this room this evening were not just your good behavior. It was a more balanced configuration, and when you are willing to be stilled rather as a group, to settle down after the insanity of some of your worldly experiences, that we can build a real bonfire, one that will lift you and free you and release you into a greater obedience of serving the One True Form of Reality.

I cannot stress enough the importance of this particular form of devotion. It is a puzzlement to many of you, why you don't awaken early, as our friends suggest, and are on your knees in celebration of having a life that permits you the time to take time to listen and to develop the truth of your being.

I cannot tell you often enough the importance of doing this, because it is the only place that you are going to get straight answers. It is the only place that you are going to go that has the power to clear all conditioning that is taking place every moment of your living in this day and age.

This is going to be your only fortress. This is going to be the only manna that you are going to be able to digest. All else, all the necessities will be given, but the true luxury is to be honored by being called forth, as the expression, as a child of God, and you have a destiny that you have a commitment to, and all the heartache and all the lifting up will go on, but your relationship to this commitment will not waver one bit. It will never leave you, and you will feel the discomfiture of having fallen back to sleep.

I am being very serious, but I am being very honest, and I love you all dearly, but only you know just how much you keep your end of the bargain. Do not feel pressured with these remarks; I am telling you these things because it is a clear reminder that you are loved so much that you will be embraced with these words and they will be sweet nectar in your mouth, in your throat, in all your cells.

You have this wonderful opportunity; you are a vanguard of new age. You are tomorrow; you are the influence of tomorrow and as you learn to live more effectively in your moments called NOW you have been encouraged to pay attention to what you are doing. You might be in awe and appreciation from anything to the movement in your hands to watching something in nature and being awestruck by it.

This is indeed a great time of synthesis, as you were talking about. You are bringing vibration of the new idea and the promises into material form in your daily lives, and every day and in every moment you have to decide who you will serve: man, conditioned man, ignorant man, or the awakened God within yourself.

I do hope that you will become more efficient at making this choice, of pausing before you speak, or of not speaking at all while someone releases their heartfelt ache or their joy at the discovery of finding someone with whom they feel so compatible and safe. You are all priests. You are all servants. You are all Santa Claus. You are all fairies. You are all communion. Scientist. Politician. Whatever occasion arises, the Father's light force is allowing you to express yourself in the best possible way.

It has been an honor to come here to be with you in this little group, this joyful little group that revels in its growth, and shares, and has become one and intimate. It pleases us all to be allowed to look into the window of this wonderful creation that is taking place at this time.

I will come again and visit you and embrace you. Wear your honor well. Take this glow out into the world, this wonderful revealed secret of what life is about, and as you do you will indeed be shouting it from the housetops with the various light views of expression. Thank you.

TOMAS: Tomas is back. I am keeping company with your furnace. Are we not a dynamic duo! It is all right, however, for we are fully accustomed to the peculiar mechanical aspects of your material existence. We have found that we are not completely thwarted by your density and [we are] exhilarated when we see that you also are able to cut through the density and lift up into the realms of light and life.

How we enjoyed this particular intermission and how happy we are to hear your testimony, young fellow. It is not only a wonderful experience for you and for your peers here in this young family of believers, but a sublime triumph for all of those of us in the spirit realm who have heard your words.

But even more, we have seen your growth and recognized your reality appreciation and experienced with you the sublime delight of knowing that supreme sense of oneness that transcends all descriptive adjectives, and so for a moment there, you were in our realm and we were in yours, embracing completely, and it is wonderful for us also.

We have indeed come here to your world to assist you in attaining these heights of spirit awareness, not only in the cerebral realms and in the realms of consciousness, but in your own realm of super-consciousness wherein you can say, "I AM a son of I AM" and it will be meaningful. You will be able to smile at this universe and say, "How do you know that I do not know?" and say, "I know whereof I speak" for you have been there. You have followed the heed, "follow me" and you have been led beside the still waters into Paradise itself.

Granted, it is but a glimpse, and yet it is a beckoning, a siren call to yet greater realities. Indeed, this is your destiny, my son and my daughters, that you should attain the shores of Paradise and experience this divine delight. Even as you are able to experience a facsimile of such perfection in your own realm as a mortal being on your world today in time and space, you will attain these depths of experience and these heights of awareness, these true bridges of comprehension and elasticity of reality that gives, how shall we say, "a bungee jump" to the experience of trudging the path of earthly existence -- a poetic phrase indeed.

I am given to understand that there are yet more questions. (A question was detailed during intermission.) I will usurp your need to reiterate your question, and try to outline, for purposes of recollection and recording, that you, Billy, have had an experience in your mortal life that you had a question about, that having to do with your envisioning a Light Being in your youth at a time of danger, and I will respond to you that you have never been alone.

Since the time that you became a registered personality on Urantia, our planet here -- your personality having been registered at the moment of your birth -- you have been accompanied by all sorts of angelic helpers and spirit assistants. As you ascend in your awareness and in your evolutionary life span, you are like the magnet, attracting yet more spirit helpers by your acts and by your decisions, and so as you ascend you are entirely accompanied by a literal retinue of reality personalities.

Now, as for your experience when you were a lad, I will give credit here for your emersion and resurrection from your watery realm to the instruction of the Indwelling Spirit and the associated angelic corps and able midwayers, for you were not then yet assigned your guardian angel. Your more recent experiences have been augmented by the presence of your guardian angel -- and that is not a mere Biblical expression.

Indeed the guardian angel is a pair of seraphim and they accompany you in order to guard you. They guard you from those vicissitudes of life that could bring harm to you, that is, not in keeping with His will. In many occasions they avert danger by intercepting your behaviors, your choices, or through midwayer activities, but there are occasions when there is nothing to do but to grab you from the jaws of death or danger and they are assigned to do precisely this.

Indeed, it is their privilege to serve but it is not for you to go out and purposely endanger yourself to test their loyalty. They are loyal to you beyond your understanding of trustworthiness.

TOMAS: I have become like Merium. I have a smile on my face. For that is the kind of question that a teacher aches to hear, and so I bask for a moment in the sublime delight of having a student who pleases me, who pleases me and inspires me to find the precise response that will be the epitome of the eponymy, and alas, I am not that clever. I cannot give you a succinct answer, for there are many, and yes, journaling is one, meditation is one, Stillness is a vital factor in your development, but all in all, your ultimate growth is dependent upon your own decisions and upon your own sincerity.

Your decisions and your sincerity are the two keys that will ascend you step by step into divinity. Always, when you are presented with a life situation that promises to advance you or retard you, pause and ask for guidance, and always will the Spirit of Truth respond to your sincerity and say, "This is the Way", whereupon you may decide to follow the light of truth or to follow your own will, and it is this decision, my son, that will determine your growth.

If you opt to follow the Spirit of Truth, the kingdom will accompany you and more will be revealed in light of truth and in harmony with the universe. If you opt, rather, to follow your own self-will, you will learn the lesson, but you will stub your toe in the process. Now we well understand that the human being of today is accustomed to stubbing his toe; indeed, if he has not stubbed his toe, he sometimes thinks he has not earned the right to advance.

And yet it is indeed a loving universe and if you can train your mind in the way that He would have you go, you may walk a straight path into perfection without undue turmoil and pain, and so the decision is yours on a moment by moment basis, and it will be assured and augmented by the degree of sincerity that you bring to your faith path. Has that been helpful?

My friend, it is as if it were Christmas morning and you discovered the very best gift of all -- the one that you thought you wanted and hoped for but you did not know when it would arrive, and when you would be able to open it, and if you opened it, what would it hold? Would it hold continuous joy? An endless supply of confidence? The wisdom of Solomon? What would this gift contain?

What it is, is the discovery of who you are and the amazement of what you will become, and in that prospect you will receive -- if you are true to your commitment -- peace in your heart and joy.

We are "thing" oriented these days, and everyone likes proof, but the proof of this pudding is contentment. It is the certainty of having stepped out into the right place at the right time and we are allowed to be aware of it. You will be awake to see the development of the great creation that you already are-to-be, and it is a thrill to be able to speak of these things again, but it is not just you who have called out in joy and recognition of this wonderment, but it is a reminder to those who are sitting in the room that you are allowed to be entertained with the satisfaction of the questions of an every day experience, and that you, too, will be feeling this same inner contentment that you have chosen the right way to go.

I encourage you to become a beholder of Christ in your life, and that will be that perception of your everyday experience that will take on a new dimension for you and you will want to talk about it, so it might end up on paper. By all means, keep a log and enjoy your victory. There is no initiation for membership; you will not wear a robe; you will not receive a badge -- none of those things that are so common in man's overhaul of what he thinks is truth.

But your definition will be noted by those who are enhungered just as you, and they will find you, and they will find the contentment that they feel having descended on someone whom they feel comfortable with, and you may never talk of spirituality or of religion, but it may be a brief encounter and a comfortable one and they will have been fed in that brief moment because the light that comes from you, all of you, is always the true response.

You are frequently left out of the magic of the exchange that takes place in many incidences. You have no idea. People will say to you, "Oh, I remember when you said Such-and-such!" and you won't remember at all, but they were enhungered and looking for answers and they heard them come from your lips. So, welcome aboard, and we look forward to seeing you, whether you are alone or with the group.

TOMAS: Daughters, are you going to be self-effacing into silence this evening? How unusual, if so.

Leah: I don't know. Uh. Not as well as it should be, I know. Well, I'm praying, and I'm attempting to do some exercises, but I could be writing to my guide. I haven't been doing that lately. Does she miss me? Such a human question.

ALKANON (Gerdean): I am Alkanon, and we have not been away from you. How could we miss you? We miss your attentions, however, daughter, and observe how difficult you make life for yourself when you realize that there is help at hand and yet you choose to suffer in silence and keep yourself alone. How silly you mortals can be.

Yes, it is truth and we weep for you sometimes when you see that we are your fans, we are devoted to you, we call you on the phone and you don't answer, but we are not offended, we are not slighted, we are merely in observance of the peculiar function of the mortal.

Your friend and mine, Jay-Orzh, is getting bored, however, and it may entertain her greatly if you were to call her up. I am one of the guys, you see, and I can "tough it out" better, but you girls like that camaraderie, that sisterly camaraderie that you enjoy. I jest. I am glad to speak with you and to put my arm around you, little comrade. You are doing very well and I am looking forward to yet more growth on your part. Later.

TRAVIS (Hunnah): Do you prefer an oracle? Humans are so used to being entertained. You want to sit apart and be told what to do, where to go and how to do it. What bus to catch. How to raise money. And yet, you have your own entertainment center and your own instruction kit. You have failed to read the directions! Everything that you have ever longed for is at hand. And more. [Editor's Note: Travis' "voice" is bubbling up, rippling with restrained laughter.]

It would be very nice if we could get a playful act going here of more self-discovery, and when you're facing the dilemma, get your sense of humor out and say, "Well, I understand the oracle to say that there is nothing to it, if I lighten up!" and lighten up is what I want you to do. This business of trying too hard is so exhausting! [Group giggle]

Did you not know that if you want a flower, all you have to do is put a bulb in the ground and it will happen? Well, all you have to do is imagine that you have a Heloise book built inside, a "how to", and just the very thought of it is ridiculous for you, I am sure, that celestial assistance is a Heloise or it is . ..

TRAVIS: ... yes, or egg and water cake. Voila! It is there! And it is true, if you would allow yourself to give up some of your hang-ups, you would have better service. I must share something, that Hunnah is so amused lately. She is sort of trying to fast, and her fasting comes in the nature of minding everyone's business. Is that a laugh? But we all, especially if you are in a nurturing business, are so used to living what the author said, what your "tribe" has taught you properly, that you don't know how to stop.

You are almost like robots, doing what you think is required. These robots are so well trained to think and be and act in a proper way that society expects of them, or family expects of them, or what the boss expects, can you imagine what it will be like later on when we all loosen up and find out that the core of the family is the celestial nature and that you can have a good time no matter what you're doing? It will be a hilarious bumping into each other.

Have any of you ever gone to the amusement park and gotten into a vehicle called the dodge-em? Where you move and bounce around and laugh and slap your leg because you're being bumped from all directions? [Travis' humor is contagious!] Well, the unfortunate thing is that in this realm you are living in now, you are still like dodge-em's bumping into each other continuously and swearing at each other and using other gestures. [Group giggling]

So I am trying to bring this ridiculous expression forth to you to show you how absolutely ridiculous it is and how we see you from here. You are all so certain that you know how to drive. [Big laughter.] And physically I'm losing control here. My hostess is not doing as well as I am. Anyway, I think I'm giving the point.

I have done this deliberately this evening because I want you to remember the occasion, and when you are out in these ridiculously programmed events where you know what's going to happen, like a poorly written book, that it will rescue you. You will see the absurdity of it. When you hear the endless whining, whining and whining and ….

TRAVIS: ... that you will rescue yourself and remind yourself, "Thank God I'm not like that!" [Collapsing into gales of laughter] Well, I can see that this little lesson is going to make me a hit [subsiding now to mere giggles], and I might have top billing in no time, but I will whine -- wind down [more laughter], but as you are out in the world, without being rude, you will be able to cope.

When you hear the howls and the agonies and the boasting you will find yourself saying, "Oh, yes, I remember that sound. I have made it myself." But no more. And you will hear your own off-key, out-of-tune sounds as you rehearse this new way to live and ponder, so I will leave you with this and I am pleased that my T/R has survived. I have rather enjoyed myself because I have always wanted to play the tuba [lost again in laughter] at these gatherings because I know that this is going to be a musical group after all [renewed laughter].

Well, I'm sure that I'd better get out of here -- Hunnah is going to be wondering about this for the rest of her life -- and I wish you all well, and I hopefully have oiled your sense of humor and released it from its bondage and I tell you, you're going to be a good stand up act because you're going to bring humor to the rescue in many tense situations, and when you are able to laugh at yourselves and the frivolity and the foolishness of so many things that have taken place;

It will help your wounds to mend more rapidly -- the wounds that you discover that you thought you had, and then you find out that they have become powerless with the oil on the hinge of life which is laughter. So I wish you all adieu and I hope you will let me come back with my organ grinder [outburst of fresh laughter] and my monkey. Bring on the popcorn and have a good time.

TOMAS: Good night and thank you, dear friend. What a wonderful flavor you have brought to this configuration of berries. I am going to take my leave and Merium agrees that it is a good time for a parting shot. I cannot tell you how much we have enjoyed your company this evening, as have many, many in the spirit realms. Those of us on this side who have come to observe your growth have really been rewarded this evening, not only for the new spirit life that is born, but for the sense of humor that is being developed. What wonders! Will they never cease!

Our beloved friends, we embrace you and smother you with kisses and look forward to seeing you in due course. Farewell.

TOMAS: Once again, in the interest of spiritual economy, I will help you come on-board by leading you in a simple prayer of acknowledgement and honor of being.

"Dear Jesus, our Friend, we come together in Your name, to honor Your being and Your gift of life to us and through us. Smile upon us, Father/Brother, and bless our union. Amen."

Good evening, children. It has been a flurry of mortality here this evening. I want you to fully appreciate how well you have accomplished your task of setting aside, capably and honorably, those vestiges of your experience that have brought disharmony, dissatisfaction, disarray, disillusionment, and distress to your minds, your psyches, your souls, and so thus you have opened the door to harmony. You have set aside this shell of reality to seek the greater reality.

It may appear to you, at first blush, as though your human life conspires to take up all of your time. I smile as I say that, for of course you are in your life 100 per cent, but as you have reflected this evening in your discourses, the human experience can be completely consuming and taking up a lot of what could be construed as unnecessary energy, and yet you are not having this experience entirely for yourself, for you are ambassadors of the Kingdom, and to the extent that you have acknowledged your association with divinity and your role as ambassadors of this heavenly Kingdom, you will be plying your trade for the Master and affecting other lives as you pass by. And so it is not just for you but for the greater good that these experiences come to pass.

The challenge -- or a portion of the challenge -- is that you are able indeed to manifest fruits of the spirit in the process of living your life. That is not always possible, for as you have testified this evening, sometimes your human experience is so consuming you are not aware of how it is that you have been able to manifest any fruits.

MERIUM: As I listen to this conversation this evening, I am reminded that you are still not feeling the quenching of your thirst. You are not satiating yourself in the living waters, but you are in your frothing experience and you are so used to being there that you forget to come back out to be renewed, but some of -- you have small cups and therefore you must fill them frequently.

One of the purposes of Tomas and me coming here and being with you is to take the quandary that you bring with you and lift the Reality in you out of it. You do not frown; it seems as if at times you do, for as it was mentioned, you slipped through our intense attention.

You have heard our song over and over again and occasionally we bring new words into it to say the same thing so that we might catch your attention once more, that we may cultivate the new reality in you, and in a sense, it is like physical fitness only this is spiritual fitness, for you have to hear it again and apply and apply and apply it so that you know that what you hoped for is really true.

Sometimes words are not enough, but I want to tell you that the part of you that is struggling is not really the Reality, and it is in our hope that when you come together and you share this common cup, that Reality does seem stronger to your sense of Self, and you enjoy the experience for a few days before it dissipates. If you have -- and I will not ask you to take roll call and put up your hands -- if you have kept a vigil, then you will receive the benefit. If you have not, then you will continue to suffer or be delayed. You might say that your main course is being withheld from you because you insist upon eating junk food or living in the lesser experience.

I really do prefer having the light-hearted subject. I really do prefer talking about devotion and celebrating. It is heavy-going at times, and before Tomas and I came on to speak you did not have silence and I want to tell you that if you will participate in silence, it will affect the quality of our sharing time, and I would even recommend a recess that we might be able to experience this as proof of what I am saying. Tomas, do you agree? He almost has to agree.

TOMAS: Yes, Merium, I agree with you. I am not going to speak further for I will become garbled in your social mechanics, your time constraints and so forth.

MERIUM: Are you sitting straight so that your spine may receive the acceleration of the holy vitality in your spine and in your system? You are such a complex organism, that serves the highest purpose, and it is easy to curl up in a humanly comfortable configuration when really it's like slouching in your seat at school. Your penmanship improves if you sit up straight. So shall we begin?

I have a baton and my very presence in this room is enough to alert the life portion in your bodies. The smallest cell is aware when the living truth is present, and as you allow your Thought Adjuster to take precedence over your human authority figures, you will develop the sense of security within yourself that you long for and this Thought Adjuster gift, this living Christ in you, will be allowed to be known more completely. You fall asleep and forget.

Do you suppose that if you were a shepherd and you stepped out into the field that the very sight of your presence would not bring the sheep to you? I think that it would. And this is what you are to experience, this inner command, this inner authority, this inner knowing will call home or awaken all the sleeping portions of your physical expression. A house divided against itself will surely fall, and if you have been living in a divided commitment, and you have been caught up in other people's standards, then you will reap the benefit.

You have within you -- and I do call this a point of celebration -- an agenda, a belief, a Magna Carta, a song celestial living in you and not in a dusty attic. It is the reality of your being. And I ask you to allow it to be the voice of authority. The decisions that must bow to it, the Supreme Authority. You have long been enlisted in the truth of your being and I am calling you to wakefulness that you may dance and live with new purpose and new response.

This does not sound like a normal prayer. There are not any divine words, but you know in your heart of hearts that I am addressing the only part of you worth acknowledging, and as that divinity in you is acknowledged, you will be able to appreciate your everyday experiences in a new and objective way, so please feel these words as an embrace and as an encouragement, that you may go and serve the one Master and with great release, with understanding of purpose, and in that understanding there will be compassion, a virtue that will flow from your very presence.

Thank you for letting me say these words. Thank you for letting me pour water on the fire that has burned you, and yet this same water is the drink that will help your unquenchable thirst. In Christ Michael's name. Amen.

Gerdean: Merium, I know that you asked for stillness, but can I ask you a question?

Gerdean: I have to formulate this question. This is Gerdean, and I have to ask this question because -- It is a piece of a question. I was talking to Joniel the other day about this exact same thing and it seems that Tomas was talking about it Sunday, how it seems to be a theme of late in my -- just underneath my consciousness --and that has to do with the awareness that the human takes up so much time and space and yet underneath this human there is a soul that is aching to be acknowledged and stirred. The Thought Adjusters in these people are hungry to be activated, and I'm eager, of course, to do what I can do, but I'm short-changing myself and my God in my inability to get past their humanness.

There is an admonition in, I think its "Instructions to Teachers and Believers" where Jesus said "you must respect the personality of man" -- Okay. I can respect the personality of man (and woman, of course). I don't think that this is NOT respecting them, but I . .. I'm not sure how far I can go! I think I'm willing to go direct to their Thought Adjuster, but I don't think I know how!

Now when you were just offering your prayer, Merium, I felt it and I felt that you were appealing to the Thought Adjuster in me, and It was responding -- and I am speaking now in response, and I have been feeling this call, and so I'm wanting to act on this and I want to call forth that same spiritual inducement in my relations with others, but when I encounter them, I am so easily discouraged and foiled . .. I give up! At once! Almost at once, I adapt a defeatist attitude and I say, "I can't get through to this person. They don't want to hear what I have to say," and so I have sold myself and my God and the potential short, because I don't know how to go that one step further.

MERIUM: That is so beautifully expressed. I appreciate your bringing the subject up because I would say that it is a bit of a torment that you must endure, and I do have a suggestion: when you are in the midst of this so-called human personality, which is absolutely a perfect example when you listen to them go on and on of their whining or their thoughtless, you might say, recorded message -- then frustration shunts your good intention when you see and hear the lesser way go on in a torrent uninterrupted.

Might I remind you that you are ever free and do commune with their Thought Adjuster, and in a sense there is an understanding and an empathy if you excuse the expression -- it's something you apply in the human matter -- but there is an empathy from one Thought Adjuster to the other because you know that their Thought Adjuster is being out-shouted. But let me remind you that there is such a thing as "proper timing". You cannot and will not be rewarded with a demonstration of immediate response from them just because you happen to know that they have a Thought Adjuster. You do not have to be rewarded with seeing the results of your enlightenment in them.

They are entitled to wear the garment until it's tattered, if necessary. They have to weary of their own sound and their own limited definitions of their life experience and sense their own wake-up call just as you have and the others in this room. Hunnah has quoted scripture, and it says "What is it to thee if they tarry 'til I come?" This is an indication of "until their Thought Adjuster has been acknowledged sufficiently and they are catching on and seeing the light". I can only suggest to you, then when you are being overwhelmed by the disappointing answers that you have heard many times in their personality, is that you let yourself be quiet.

As soon as you feel your disappointment or your indignation, that is a cue that you are drifting and that you will suffer from their problem. It is very catchy, because, as you have described, it pulls you down and as soon as you feel yourself being pulled down, especially when you've made an effort to pull them up. (It is not necessary to pull them up.) What I would recommend is that you acknowledge to yourself that they have a Thought Adjuster and that you salute it and silence yourself. I hope I have not frustrated you with this answer. There is no quick fix.

You can not go around prettying things up just to make yourself feel more comfortable. You cannot push them up into the front of the line or allow them to take all the garbage in the door with them, just because you want their companionship, or just because you want the companionship of someone who is as enlightened as you are, and this is a very common problem. You are so desperate to have this companionship on a level that you feel you are that you want to help them move along, and Hunnah suffers from this as well.

So it is just going to be the matter of embracing every situation ever so lightly and let it be what it is. If they have given you the opportunity to say something that may help their God fragment cultivate awareness, then do so, but do not lament or hold their attention too long. They know more than you think YOU know. They know more than they think THEY know. It's just that they are distracted.

It is very quiet in here and there are others who must wear this similar situation and be wearied by it.

Leah: Well, Gerdean, when she was asking you the question, was sitting here attentively in this room knowing that she is seeking an answer and her frustration is with people who are not particularly sitting there waiting for an answer.

MERIUM: That is right, therefore the smote is in thine own eye. If you are in the place that you think you are, then you would not be impatient! It sounds cruel, but it's true. If you are resting in your Godliness, then their worldliness will not create a feeling of impatience within you, or disappointment. It will be an accepting of "so be it."

MERIUM: And you also have to apply this to yourself, because one does have to get down on all fours now and then to relieve the stress of personal growth. It feels good to get down and holler and hoot a little but, but what is important is that you not linger there. I have not made this meeting into a confessional, but I know, because I spy on Hunnah, I know how often you do not come silently. I know that you amuse yourself and get distracted with thoughts and you drink in thought but your spine is not straight, your eye is not focused, and your ears do not lend themselves to the Father's design.

So I say: practice makes perfect, and if you want what I feel that you say you want, then you will honor yourselves, this Christ presence within you, and you will do it. And this is wake-up call. You do not move any faster than you are capable of being obedient to the only -- the ONLY request that the Father can make of you: "Come all ye who are heavy laden and I will give you peace." Well how do you think you are going to get it if you don't do the coming, or if you just sit out there in the distance having nice thoughts and thinking that you have come because you've had some pretty thoughts.

No, no, no. This takes hauling up the body, the physical structure, and bringing it in off the street and plunking it down and saying "Heel!" H-e-e-1 to the tribal state or h-e-a-1 to the heart level. It is your choice, so if you tend to yourself and you are devoted, you will be off someone else's back because you will be too busy tending to your own affairs. [Silence] Does anyone have a joke?

TOMAS: I am Tomas and I shall be the joke. I am going to talk for a moment regarding ideals, for I heard you, in your sharing, all lament the degree to which your lives do not meet your ideal, and in some ways this discourse that has gone on from Merium and to and through you here, is speaking of the ideal and how the ideal is that which you aspire to. Remember that your urge to strive for is the striving that counts, and how can you attain an ideal if you don't strive for it.

The ironic thing about the striving for the ideal is that immediately upon the attaining the ideal, it has become passe and your soul reaches out then yet for the next yearning, the next ideal. It has been said, in your text, that you cannot live up to your ideals and that is why. It is because your ideals are constantly advancing and growing, and yet when you find that you are not experiencing the ideal, do not lament the loss of past ideals, no! But rather celebrate the ideals of history, for they have been the steps, the rungs of the ladder which have brought you up now to face your yet new ideal which will present itself as readily as a fantasy if you give yourself an opportunity.

I dare say in some ways you have all attained an ideal and you are to me ideal, and yet there is obviously room for growth. I say that I shall be the joke, and I do think that there is a key factor here, for if you can regard yourself lightly and not take yourself so seriously, you might be able to plant more seeds and affect more good. As we have been known to say, sugar catches more flies than vinegar.

It is wonderful that you all have these aspirations and ideals; it is even wonderful that you have cast aside the shell of former ideals, but allow yourself to be light of heart, for as the phrase goes, "the Father has not dropped you this far to drop you on your ass now" and so yes, forge ahead. There is much ahead, many wonderful and laudatory adventures and ideals yet to be met, yet to be attained, yet to be dreamed, including the ideal, Gerdean, of being able to assiduously apply to the Thought Adjusters of those in your environs and effectively make conscious contact with them.

That, too, is an ideal that I will not discourage you from attempting to attain, but as has been suggested, if you can lighten up and apply humor in your teaching and preaching, even under your truth, under your sincerity, this twinkle of good cheer will perhaps open doors that a somber attitude cannot, even when you are sincere of heart.

I have concluded my little lecture for the day. I appreciate your contribution, Merium, to our little flock. Your evening had been quite robust and full of therapeutic outpourings and the lesson this evening has been poignant. Are there matters for discussion or are we to call it an early evening?

Joniel: Well I have two situations that in the past have caused me pain and anger, and serious situations, and I find that I -- I thought that I forgave and forgot, but I find every once in a while I dig them up and look them all over again. Like skeletons in the closet or something, and then I put them back, and I don't feel the pain or the anger anymore, but I just wish I could forget about them altogether.

TOMAS: If you cannot forget these unfortunate experiences in this life, in time and eternity they will have erased themselves from your memory bank. Unfortunately, it is a little like a mosquito bite that itches violently at first and then subsides, and perhaps you rub it by mistake and the itch re-activates. In time, it will go away; the skin will heal; you will not know that a mosquito ever bit you there.

I realize that deep anger is a far cry from a bug bite, but in context they are similar, and so if and when feel this itch and you realize that forgiveness to the extent possible has taken place and that the healing has come about to the extent possible, it is not unlike the human to dig up an old bone to chew on it to see if was worth burying in the first place. These old wounds, these remembrances, will fade away like a poor echo in time.

VISITOR: How beautiful you are. How brave you are to come apart from your world, away to gather here together. You have expanded in your service to each other by listening with tender empathy, with jolly support, with laughter. You are a bouquet. I hand you each a flower and encourage you to think of yourself when you are out in your daily task, of having one of us come up and speak to you, handing you a flower and saying to you: "It's not so bad when we're together".

It's very important that you carry this aspect of your receptivity into your daily path. It will remove the martyrdom from it if you are being abused; it will add enthusiasm when there isn't any; it will give you purpose in your day when it appears to not have any; and if you are in a routine that is almost boring to the point of wanting to escape, then it will sing to you like a little bird and say to you, "Do not forget that you are not alone".

Please remember that you have a wonderful bevy of friends with you, and that it can amuse you silently when you are in a crowd or if you were hearing a dialog that is almost -- I've heard it before; here it comes -- and we will snicker together because we will know that it isn't real, but we are real, we who gather in the name of the living Christ. We are real, and it is attending to this reality that you come here. You have come to be nourished in them. You have received manna and you have received inspiration.

When Hunnah's family comes home she does something very tribal. She has this ritual of gathering things out of the refrigerator and the cupboard and packing a bag of goodies to take home and what it is really saying is, "Don't forget us. Don't forget me." And she has upgraded it. She does not quarrel with the need to pack a bag but she has announced that the bag simply represents: "Don't forget that life is rich and abundant and that there is enough to share with all."

Do not be hard on yourselves. I want you to go out and play. Rejoice. To allow your Thought Adjuster and your teachers, your guides, have their way. You may announce in the mornings, "Guess what! I'm going to let you run the show today. Guess what! I'm going to let you decide what we're going to do, so it's almost as if we're going back into childhood and saying that you have an invisible friend, that you are allowed to speak and have a friendship together. So please, take us with you consciously and not just occasionally.