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Vol IV Tomas - Butler, PA - August 17, 1999 thru March 28, 2000 - Part 13 of 13R

This segment of transcripts represents an enriched conclusion and a new beginning. The addition of Gorman to the group invested it with tremendous energy and gave us tasks that put our spiritual program into action. It was difficult to "let go and let God," but closing the shop, the students going off to their sundry destinies, including ours to the Pacific Northwest Territory where members of the Coeur d'Alene TeaM assured us of a warm welcome, knowing we were being companioned in all these developments by our celestial associates, added new dimensions to all of our lives. In the final analysis, Butler benefited from our presence there, as we benefited from our sojourn in the City of Butler.

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BUTLER, PA, USA

Volume IV, Part 13 of 13

August 17, 1999 - March 28, 2000

C O N T E N T S

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Date	Topic	Page
August 17, 1999	Cosmic Connection; JUBAL, AHL	1
September 21, 1999	Love is a Living Experience	9
November 9, 1999	Anticipating Relocating to the Northwest	17
November 23, 1999	Taking Charge	24
November 30, 1999	MORONTIA COMPANION on Companionability	29
December 14, 1999	Paradox and Irony; a VISITOR	41
December 21, 1999	Contemporary Urmian Platform	48
January 4, 2000	Personality and Energy	54
January 11, 2000	The Burden of Guilt	59
January 18, 2000	The Horse Before the Cart	63
February 1	Personal Experience	65
February 15, 2000	Let The Chips Fall Where They May; a VISITOR	71
February 22, 2000	Early Beginnings	74
February 29, 2000	Let Go and Let God	82
March 28, 2000	Desperation. Tomas's Farewell to Butler.	88
	[End of Vol. IV, Part 13 of 13]	91

TOMAS: It is good to be here with you and in company with celestial hosts who hover around to observe your loyalty to your cosmic connection. This evening I would speak with you for a moment about this cosmic connection for it is the essence of our format and our very being. All of us are connected in one way or another, through some form of circuitry or relationship, because of the organization of the cosmos and the life contained therein.

Our connection with Father is the connection that charges all force fields and activates all desire, culminates in an enlargement of Himself. The cosmic connection extends outward into the dense realms of time and space and returns again to the Father through the Supreme. En route, encircuitment is a constant, an ever-expanding expression of life/ energy in its many states.

Our connection with each other is a cosmic connection. You need to recognize your relationship with your universe and the personalities therein in order to receive our impressions and to incorporate them into your meaningful existence.

Ultimately a cosmic connection is between you each in your social arena and for this reason we encourage you to continue in maintaining and cherish the associations that you develop and build with your fellow believers and others who are supportive of those qualities which enable you to be strengthened in your faith path and in your purpose.

The effects of the Supreme are made more evident in association with your spiritual kin. Your interweaving one with the other is like a hemp rope which enables you to hold up yourself and your associates that you may be mindful of your next faith step. It is therefore not enough to know that each other exists, but rather are you encouraged to interact in ways that confirm and reconstitute your reality and the subsequent connection with the cosmos that will ultimately help lift up the shroud of darkness that has laid heavy upon Urantia for so long. Thus you find purpose in maintaining that which is joyous for you and for your peers.

Indeed these messages are the essence of simplicity, and it is becoming clearer to you that our way is one of essential ease in that it is not necessary for you to fight your friends in the spirit. You do not need to be aware of us in a suspicious manner. You may open your heart and relax and trust in our affection and our motives.

There are many who do not understand or believe that such a way of life is possible, but by being a reflection of these simple and harmonious truths, you are able to reflect the simple goodness of God into your arena in order that your inner light may give stimuli to those that you encounter as you pass by. Many make a big deal of the spiritual life and place great demands and responsibilities upon the religionist. Those responsibilities are a personal matter, which will be dealt with in your refining process. As your sense of responsibility is ironed out into appropriate application, you will be able to assume only that responsibility which is yours and not the responsibilities which are superimposed upon you by those who do not know the simplicity of the Father.

It is perhaps why your simple smile can anger and disarm. I am not suggesting that you grin at folk to get their dander up, but to reveal to them the potential happiness that is theirs even as a creature of the realm, in alignment with the love of God.

I am not alone this evening. I am flanked by my many associates from near and far and your co-workers. I would therefore like to share this platform with them to the degree that we are able, and so I will open the floor to your involvement, ask if there are questions, and ask also if you have commentary or remarks which would induce any or all of these associates to come to the fore in response to your needs.

MERIUM: Good evening, my sweet flock. The catastrophes of the finite universe can wait for a moment while we entertain Thoroah's question. What is it that's on your mind, our friend?

Thoroah: Gerdean and I were talking about this. For as long as I can remember, I have talked with God or talked to God and have only sublimely felt response; I've always felt presence, and this has progressed through the years after I got acquainted with the Urantia Book and whatnot, but I have always had this dialog going on and I understand that it's probably not with my Thought Adjuster, and since it behooves us to know our cosmic connection better, I'm wondering if that indeed has been my personal teacher or teachers that I have had this basically one-sided conversation with.

JUBAL: Your fundamental cosmic connection is with the Father. Without your relationship to Him, there can be no other communication. No other communication would make sense. It is when you are born of the spirit that you begin to perceive with spirit eyes and ears a level of reality which resonates within which constitutes your budding morontial soul, which indeed is essentially due to your relationship with your God as it affects you from its place of indwelling.

There is a section in your text which discusses briefly that your overseers have not worried overmuch about you while you have been in quarantine because your essential connection with your indwelling God fragment was undisturbed, remained intact, and thus every mortal was able to continue to pursue his/her spiritual path, their enlarged reality because of the indwelling Adjuster.

It would be disrespectful then for us, or for me, to infer that your communication with your indwelling Adjuster was negligible or that the conversations you have had in your mind have fallen short of the mark of attaining communication with God as you sought and deemed possible. We will therefore presume and carry with us an appreciation of the fundamental presumption of your inherent relationship with God as a child of God and that relationship shall remain a reality for all time, as it has been for all time.

Our Father is so incredibly wonderful. He has all of the universe in hand, and many of the facets of life in the universes are organized to assist in your upbringing. Our Father delegates. He delegates greatly to his partners in holy trinity. From the Universal Mother Spirit we have realms of time and space; we have energy, mind and matter; we have the angelic corps and myriad other personalities which are devised to contribute to the ascension plan of the Creator Sons. Through the Eternal Son we have the Creator Sons who love their children and devote themselves in the main to fostering their spiritual reality such that they are at home in the universe and with their spiritual family.

Additionally, on Urantia and some other few worlds which have unique circumstances, such as rebellion, there are opportunities to alter the course and be creative in the ways in which we are brought into an understanding of our place in a friendly universe. Such is the case in the plethora of teachers that have been coming to your world and the offers of assistance.

On those worlds where there is a natural evolutionary development, without your traumatic set-backs, the communications between the teachers, the heavenly helpers, are more readily accepted and yet it still involves an evolutionary process of assimilating and understanding the difference between the mind of the mortal and the greater mind and how they may inter act in good faith, in good stead. It is also noteworthy that in the evolution of an awareness of "otherness" which allows you to become aware of invisible life influencing you, en route to your pure contact with Our Father, you go through a period that is denoted by the mortal talking to itself or to its alter ego. In this phase of development is a fork in the road and as the mortal race evolves past that plateau, there is the inherent possibility then of accepting the sense of otherness not as a reflection of the individual but a reflection of divinity.

I would hope to weave together these threads in order for you to understand that your evolutionary development, in terms of your spiritual nature and your human understanding of your spiritual nature is such that you can realize you are in a new era, a new dispensation, and in an original and unique situation of being able to appreciate the presence of many teachers who have only recently arrived.

Granted the midwayers have been long-suffering assistants of their mortal cousins and of course the Thought Adjusters have been untiring in their efforts. You yourself have reached for and attained certain altruistic realities by accessing your higher mind, your morontial mind. But now all of these advantages are added to by the presence of the teachers and an awareness of them that has only been possible since the reopening of the circuits. As more circuits are opened, more influence will come to bear.

At this point it is nothing to worry about or be over concerned about as to whether there is a dividing line between this personality and that or between this energy and that, because we are all working together to uplift you and your understanding of your place in your world and in your universe, including your invisible reality, your morontia reality, which is alive and well even as you resided in a material world and in the flesh.

Many of the teachers have been here from the beginning of your moral development but have been largely unable to make contact because of the constraints of the circuitry, and so now that the contact is available, they are attempting to catch up. By the same token, many (mortals) have not had a spiritual bent until recently, and they are being supplied with teachers as they desire to be developed, or more accurately, as they allow themselves to be developed. Has this been helpful?

Thoroah: Yes. That's been my sensation. Although I've been becoming aware of nomenclature, I think of it all as talking to God. The biggest difference is that teachers through the transmission/receiving process have been able to carry on actual conversation, but I've always just had a sense of supporting presence and it didn't really make any difference to me who all the entities were and now it just becomes a curiosity and it isn't really important that I know.

JUBAL: It is wise to give credit to the Father, for as I said in the beginning, it is He
who has made it all possible. All of us work for Him. We are all elements of his
essential reality.

JUBAL: You are welcome, and yet you are also correct to recognize that there are differences. The personalities of the various assistants will become more apparent as you become more fluid in your communications with them, as you open yourself and allow them to open themselves to you. There are inherent limitations in your communication which will be made up for when you translate to the morontia worlds and function in a more expanded vehicle. It is rather like a training process in personality appreciation. I might suggest to Machiventa that he place Personality Appreciation on his curriculum.

For now, however, I will step down and allow the others to participate. I am glad for this opportunity to express myself and to offer my counsel and again to engage with you, my friends and loyal companions. Good evening.

MERIUM: Alright, then. This is Merium. I am doing that emcee thing and fluffing the pillows as I go. How about a stretch. You ought to open your windows. It is warm in here. I know only because of the discomfort of the transmitter. I myself am very comfortable.

MERIUM: In the interim I believe there is a question formulating in the mind of our lovely Leah. Have you got it formulated there, girl?

*Leah; Well, somewhat. I'll put it like this, experientially. Last night Evangel and I were listening to a documentary about the glacier melting, and ultimately that the carbon dioxide levels are rising to a dangerous level and they are forecasting that if they are not corrected in some way, there will not be any living people on the planet in 60 years. Now, I am not really prone to delving into catastrophic predictions, but the way that this was presented was quite phenomenal, and I couldn't help but wondering at the time that this was said, could this be why, is this a physical manifestation of why the teachers keep on telling us that when people are confused that they will be turning to us for explanations and for uplifting and prayers and . .. I guess what I want to ask is can you give me some insight into my insight to that?

MERIUM: My chore now is find out which one of these many volunteers will be the responder to your question. One moment.

TEACHER: Good evening. I am a teacher also. I have not met with you before. I am a visiting teacher. I am not going to bother Gerdean with my name. I was in my mortal life an engineer or the sort that would be able to give you a more critical explanation of some of these planetary factors, were I able to operate through a mind which had more words in it that I could utilize. As it is, I am limited in my ability to explain to you in scientific terms what I might otherwise be able to do.

But even if I were able to give you scientific explanation and assuage your anxieties, as a teacher in the Teacher Corp, I am not inclined to do that for you, for that does nothing for your faith. That does not help you develop your soul. That is your receiving an intellectual understanding of a physical circumstance and only addresses the physical reality, not the reality that will endure.

When you are admonished by the teachers to be the calm in the eye of the hurricane, when you are reminded to be a peaceful presence among those who are in fear, it is not specifically because of the physical changes on Urantia, but that is certainly part of what makes people anxious.

Indeed, your planet is undergoing many changes, and these many, natural physical changes are coinciding with your calendar millennium and a spiritual resurgence. It is a part of the drama of your lives.

Your planet is supposed to tilt on its axis. It is not error that it should be. Let me cite for you a scientific experiment, elementary, of an orange. Take a pencil and insert it through the orange so that each side of the orange has a portion of the pencil sticking out. Now, stick the pointed end of the pencil into a mound of clay so that the orange is standing upright on the upright pencil. Consider the eraser end the North Pole.

Take now, if you will, a flashlight and shine it on the orange at an angle. The angle that your world has been at is at a degree, and not upright. I correct myself here. I am not saying that your planet is to become upright. I am saying that it is shifting in its axis. As you shine the light on the orange, lean it over from its natural configuration. From there you will see that the light shining on the orange has caused the shadows to alter and the focal point of the beam to alter. This is natural science.

All right now. Dismantle your experiment. Eat the orange. Turn off the flashlight, and take some notes with your pencil. Our efforts on Urantia are not going to lead to the destruction of the planet. How long have we been here in your time? Less than ten years, still. And there are how many advancements made in these short ten years? The advancements are such as to be noticeable to even the hardest non-believer. As this gains momentum and picks up, the various fields of study will also be shined upon and altered.

It is because of divine love that these changes are being made. It is because you are children of God and children of the earth that you desire infinite perfection to reign on your world. You choose to bring God into your life and that means you bring Him into your laboratories, your warehouses, your farm lands, your school rooms, your banking institutions, your stock markets, your kitchens, your rivers, your air. Your world is being altered naturally because it is supposed to be tipping on its axis at this point in time and it is being purified and cleansed as a result of the outrage and upheaval being brought about by the more vocal of the objectors of the abuses of nature brought about by war and chemical usage and misusage and so forth.

Now we come to the weather. Isn't it interesting that the third factor here is the global changes, the earth changes that have been discussed for so long, the earth plane situations, and the weather changes. Remember that orange? As it moved, and as the flashlight shined upon a different spot, a different part of the orange was highlighted and a different part was in shadow. As your world tilts on its axis, of course things will change. It is no surprise, then, that the ice floes of the north are being brought into the sun and melted. By the same token, the deserts are greening, and massive global change is taking place naturally as a result of how it is supposed to be. Your sun is not going to dry up and fade away.

I will call to your mind one last technical fact. Ask yourself how long has this planet been in existence? If it took 87 million years to get the permit to build it, it's not going to evaporate or destroy itself in the next 60 years because of some gases. I will borrow crudely upon your humor and suggest that perhaps your world has indigestion and has developed a severe case of gas, but it is not fatal, and your job as believers in -- if nothing else -- divine mercy, is to portray the peace that passes all understanding, that no matter if the heavens and earth crumble, what can harm a person who loves the Lord? Your life is forever. It is assured because you are loved by the divine Creator of all.

This is the good news. This is where your strength lies. This is your assignment -- to bring that spiritual peace, that awareness of divine love that will continue to alter your world, that will continue to melt the ice and green up the deserts by infusing the hearts of all humanity with an appreciation for their relationship with the Creator, the loving Creator of us all. Have I been helpful?

TEACHER: You must be cautious of your world. I will attempt to configure an image for you of a parent who, in attempting to impress upon its teenage offspring a lesson, says, "If you don't clean your room you will never watch TV again!" Well. Of course they will. But the emphasis is on the moment, to assure the teenager that the parent means business, and when you observe your media, look at them as if they were attempting to be a parent to a lot of unruly teenagers. "If you don't get your chemicals out of these rivers and sky ways, we will not be able to breathe! If you don't clean up your act, we all will suffer."

Appreciate their urgency and their attempt to instill in you (as they have obviously successfully done) a sense of importance. It does not mean you have to take them literally. Ah, but, Merium reminds me now that I am speaking to Leah the Literal-Minded.

Leah: Well, I appreciate you, Teacher, and I appreciate your analogy and I appreciate Merium's prompting, but this last little analogy that you gave us, for myself, is, despite your thorough and exploratory explanation, I've been able to grasp what you've been trying to tell me in the last little thing. But I'm, still going to try and do that orange thing. I'm going to try and do it anyway.

MERIUM: All right, then. I'm Merium, back again. Is there anything else? How are we doing in terms of time? I am not so ethereal as to overlook your physicality and your mechanical contrivances.

AHL: Evangel, my son. I embrace you. How good it is to be called into your awareness and to share our friendship with these others who love you as I do. How can I be of service to you this evening?

Evangel: I've been thinking about a lot of stuff lately. Bear with me in my nervousness. First of all, how long have you been with me?

AHL: I have been with you from your early age. As a child I was assigned to you, aware of you. I even have had some slight contact with you, off and on, and yet always have they not been the most auspicious occasions.

Evangel: That answers part of what I'm into right now. I've got a lot of questions. When I met Machiventa -- wherever that was. On the morontia level, I guess. I don't know -- just before I met him, I was in a large room with a bunch of people waiting in line -- it seemed like I was waiting in line -- and there was a what I would call a morontia mortal in the vicinity with long blonde hair. By any chance would that have been you?

AHL: Only my hairdresser knows for sure. [Group chuckle] I jest, my son, for I am not blonde nor brunette. In your world I would be most peculiar, for I am not hairy. In fact, in the morontia state, there is no such thing, and yet your perception has graced me with light, and as you perceive me to have light which reflects back to you, you have seen me as blonde. That is the best I can do with that.

Evangel: Okay. I don't know if I remember all I want to ask here. Can you tell me why, when I was young, I was contacted by what looked to be a flying saucer and then later Andrea told me it was an angel and then other different beings . ..

AHL: Yes, I can tell you why you were. Because it was necessary, given your origins, your mortal origins, it was necessary to impress upon you another reality in order for you not to succumb to the limited reality of your mortal existence.

Evangel: Well, it's gone on most of my life. I can see things that other people can't. Is it -- 1 mean, it might have started out for that reason, but I mean, you know what goes on, what I experience. Even people who die say goodbye to me! I mean things that nobody else at all goes through. Why do I see and hear things that other people can't or don't?

AHL: Because of your early experience with . .. "altered states of reality". Is that the phrase I need to use?

AHL: No. Altered states are not necessarily drug-induced. Looking at or seeing life through other eyes is an altered state from the norm. You began early. You've been privy to this view. It can be reused. It has been used by your conscious mind on occasion to step from one realm of understanding into another, as if it were an escape, but it also is a roadmap which you have studied and been impressed by to such an extent that you can follow the map and get from place to place, therefore when opportunity is allowed, you can grasp in your minds eye things, realities, perceptions, that are not easily accepted by those who have no experience with such perceptions.

There are many people who could see if they would choose to but they find it frightening. For you, however, life has often been more frightening than your visions.

AHL: This has been immeasurably to your benefit but it has also unfortunately allowed you to feel outside the human race, or outside of what is acceptable, and much of this has been to your detriment for it has played upon your self esteem. But we have done much work on that, you and I, as well as other helpers, and so now your find yourself essentially with a gift that might be polished and used to assist, if you were inclined to find that you could perform the Father's will by utilizing your perception of these other realities, this "otherness" of greater reality.

AHL: You are making great strides toward being confident of yourself. I urge you to continue to protect yourself against that which will try . .. (tape ended)

TOMAS: I am Tomas. Good evening. I address you this evening as my fellow apostles. It was the practice to send his apostles out two and two, lest they be falling into mischief. A pair of you together can aide greatly in alleviating those temptations which befall the justifications of the solo participant in life's ventures, but those of you who have heeded the call to foster the gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind have committed yourself to a mighty challenge and a soulful path, one which requires the support of the universe, including your trusted brethren.

When Jesus sent his apostles out to teach and preach the gospel, he did not send them out to introduce them to a book. He did not attempt to educate them to educate their hearers about the previous visits to your world by other celestial helpers who had gone astray. He did not burden the hungry of spirit with historic details or of excessive cosmology or hierarchy. He taught the love of God. That is the crux of your teachings also.

Love cannot be taught; it must be experienced. And love in its ideal is learned and when it is learned it is never forgotten. A flash of cosmic insight may come upon a person as a spiritual experience which is unique for that individual, and all seekers may have a significant experience, but many times, in their sense of unworthiness, they do not accept their personal spiritual experience as the touch of God; therefore they need to learn how to accept the love of God in their life, and even this you cannot teach by yourself but you must call upon the Spirit of Truth to accompany you and, in trust of its ability to do its work, you will find the words necessary to enable the Spirit of Truth to open the hearts of those who hear your words, of those who seek to know the love of God.

The love of God is simple and profound. It is a living reality. It is a living reality that will live beyond this life in the flesh. It will transcend the difficulties of this mortal existence, giving this mortal existence a new dimension of appreciation for the religionist. I use the word religionist and realize I'd best define my terms. A religionist is not a scientist of religion who studies academically and intellectually a religious way of thinking, even others'. This is a theologian. A religionist is one who lives his life as if he was having a constant and on-going religious experience. It is one who incorporates the Father in all that he does and all that he is.

The hunger for Father's love and direction is that which is sought by all sincere seekers. It is true that they have learned to cling to any truth that has tickled their fancy and helped lighten their burden, but only the love of God will fill their souls with that for which they hunger and thirst. For you to teach and preach the gospel is to manifest divine love in your very life. Through your behaviors and attitudes, and as active apostles of the Christ, there is responsibility and grace entailed -- and danger, yes, of a sort; excitement, certainly -- but the joy of sharing your knowledge of your experience is your greatest gift, your testimony.

This may entail your personal story, over which you have some authority and conviction; it may entail your philosophic assessment to what is going on in the world today; it may entail your praise and thanksgiving and your confidence of a happy ending to all life's challenges; it may entail any number of things and be genuine -- if it is yours.

I am reminded now of our many lessons long ago about the symphony and how it is that you are all your own instruments, musical instruments: the lute, the harp, the trumpet, the kettle drum, the violins, the piano, and each one has its own notes to play, its own sound, and as its instrument obeys the leading of the Divine Conductor, the symphony is created and music is heard throughout the spheres. And so as you minister as you pass by, it is true that you will reflect your own instrument.

Do not compare your teaching and preaching techniques with others. There are different sounds to emanate from different instruments. You need to know who you are and how you sound and be sensitive to the cues from the Conductor so that when you have the opportunity to play your notes, they will be clear and appropriate, as a part of the living symphony of this divine love. (Pause) How are you this evening?

Thoroah: If I can speak for us, I think we're fine. I think we're excited. We are anticipating this weekend. There are a couple of things that just happened to come up today and there's a lot of cosmic coincidence involved in what's happening and that is exciting, as you alluded to earlier, and now your message is very timely since we are about to go on the road as apostles, and I appreciate your insights there very much.

TOMAS: We are coordinated. We are part of the symphony. Part of the choir. And we have learned how to abide by the direction of the Conductor, the Choir Master. I was pondering, my friends, about the business of being an agondonter and how alarming it might seem when you begin to perceive these seeming synchronicities occurring, when the faith path opens before you like the Red Sea, and when you compile these incidents in your notebook of material to chew over, you can clearly see that there is direction and pattern to your lives that is being revealed and that has been accelerated since the opening of the circuits. Correction: since the announcement of the opening of the circuits.

If you sit back and survey your recent history, you will see indeed there is a pattern, a plan, a program, and it is all a process. And so as you observe your ledger, assure yourself that even though your faith is being conditioned and reconditioned again and again through seeming coincidences, it is necessary, even so, that you believe (in order) for them to be actualized. If you did not have faith, and act upon your faith -- blindly, as it were -- it would not be possible to see the panorama of your own spiritual evolution portrayed for you and spread out before you.

It gives more meaning to the word "agondonter." Rather than detracting, it adds an element of drama and contribution that is to be cherished. As you identify your peers as fellow agondonters, you know that they, too, have made these decisions in the dark and come forth into the light. They have believed without seeing. They have surmounted innumerable difficulties and their faith has been made wholer and fuller as a result of their desire to follow the leading of their indwelling Adjuster. They are even more precious because you know what they have gone through to get to be where they are today in their faith path.

Indeed the world is an arena where you may practice your compassion at length and at will. Manifesting appropriate and genuine compassion for those who suffer and compassion for the experiences of those who have prevailed, are both representative of working in the field, a way of teaching and preaching the gospel, a way of leading men to God that God may reign upon them and make Himself known more and deeper and show His love more clearly and it will be accepted more readily.

In this way the love of God becomes the consummate reality. The God of power, creation, is taking part in our lives with us. This is invigorating. It is worthy of getting excited about, but let your excitement be enduring, let it be a song of praise and thanksgiving, joyousness and renewal. Indeed, did not the Master himself say, "Be of good cheer"?

Thoroah: I was thinking about that before I came in the room. I felt the anticipation and whatnot for what we are going to be able to do for Byron in Cleveland, and I was thinking that I would hope that my daily routine existence would be in such anticipation.

TOMAS: Yes, it is very easy for the mortal to succumb to the comfort of habit and routine, to the security of the human existence, and yet even while you slide into your patterns of normal life, your other life, the divine life, seeks to express itself dynamically and creatively and is eager for opportunities to reveal the divine life. It is thus well to maintain balance in order that you continue to ground yourself in your human existence while preparing yourself to springboard into the next service opportunity.

Thoroah: I was thinking about the whole concept of living by faith, being ready at a moment's notice to do what needs to be done -- and I think that I've always liked that feeling --but I've also had to deal with that feeling of not being prepared, and I've learned a lot of lessons about preparation. Preparation seems to be important. How do you balance preparation with acts of blind faith?

TOMAS: You spend time with the Father who prepares you. He will not give you more to do than you can do, does not put you in positions that you will not be able to handle. But remember too, my son, that as you are intimate with the Father and He is intimate with you, He will give you the words; He will speak for you, and so all you need to do is be close to him. That is your primary preparation.

Thoroah: So in essence, the living faith is the preparation. Because there are some times when you are on display, you're putting on a show; you're making a presentation; other than just "passing by".

TOMAS: As in speaking to the multitudes or speaking in the temple rather than in the market place or around the supper table?

Thoroah: Yeah, the more obvious moments where there seems to be more pressure to perform, if you will.

TOMAS: This is because people like to be entertained, and they think that when they go to a public place to hear a speech or to see a play or to witness a presentation of some sort, they are programmed to believe that they will get their money's worth and, if not, they have a right to complain. They expect to be educated and entertained; they expect to be told an appropriate number of jokes so that they are allowed to feel humored, and they expect at least one quality message that might bring tears to their eyes. This is the art of conveying information in many formats.

It is not a process that an apostle need subscribe to, for your words, your lines, your attitudes and your gestures are all a part of your composition. It, of course, is a good idea to have some knowledge, but at this point in your life you may be assured of a lot of knowledge, and people who come to you to hear about truth and beauty and goodness, may or may not be interested in your knowledge. They have plenty of knowledge also.

They hunger for divine love. They want to be accepted and embraced in a manner in which they can feel affected. And this is the job of the apostle -- not to present himself as an ambassador of a book or a theology or a philosophy, but as a Son of God. And in this understanding of who you are, you will find it easy to juggle all the information, philosophy, cosmology, merchandise, et cetera, et cetera, including jokes that are part of who you are. (Pause) I hear papers rattling. That must mean something. Are there questions?

Thoroah: I just wanted to say that -- I was just thinking of the fact that you were talking about our job as apostles, and I was thinking, "that's true, but if you are representing a book or a theosophy or something," and you answered that. Thank you. So I guess you are talking about our true character coming through.

TOMAS: Yes, you are the fruit of the Living Vine. That is THE reality. That is the gospel.

Thoroah: I like what you said about personal experience because obviously what we know is our personal experience and if we can relate that in some way, that truly makes sense.

TOMAS: Remember, too, that you are attempting to communicate, and that the ultimate purpose of all communication is communion, and as you, with your sensitivity to your hearer, are sensitive to them, their Thought Adjusters and yours are able to communicate and convey to you, in your highest sense, where their hunger lies; therefore you will be able to gauge from your audience what they are hearing and hungering for.

Do not let them take you down a lesser path just because they might want to go there. Be a noble ambassador. You are not there to amuse people. You are there as a testimony to the living God, without whom we would not exist. And truly, these mortals want something of substance. And so if you can find within your hearers those who hang on your words, grasp them to your spirit heart, embrace them fully, and speak to them as if you were a living fountain, and the others will get wet in the process.

Thoroah: Well, I have something I told Evangel I would do for him, since Evangel and Leah have departed for Florida, and this may have something to do with just plain knowledge, but I do sense in Evangel he is trying to make some connections that will psychically help him out, and one of his questions has to do with the fact that -- if I can recall correctly -- that Machiventa implied through a T/R that Evangel was privy to, that Atlantis is mentioned by a different name in the Urantia Book, and Evangel was curious about that; and I'll admit, since the question was there, I got curious about it myself because I could not find Atlantis in the Urantia Book.

TOMAS: It is not noted. If Machiventa knows about it, he did not tell me. It is more curious to me that Evangel reports that Machiventa inferred through a T/R. This is provocative. Actually the entire topic of Atlantis has fascinated people far and wide, for it seems to have all the earmarks that would delight the mind of man which enjoys such mysteries.

TOMAS: Yes, other realms are always more fascinating than the work at hand -- even though, of course, mysterious realms and other civilizations always hold the promise of some perspective on our life here.

Thoroah: When I look at the provocative things that are there -- as you probably noticed I am curious about a lot of things -- it probably is more from a perspective basis than anything else for to me the most fascinating thing that could possibly happen has happened in my life time! And that, first of all, is that the first epochal revelation has begun and, now, that the Teaching Mission is here, and it is the Correcting Time. I mean, the things that have happened in my short life span far outweigh anything else. Maybe it gives me a base from which I can be more curious and adventurous, too.

TOMAS: I am fascinated by the human fascination with Atlantis. I have read the history of your world and know that the garden whereupon Adam and Eve materialized, was set upon a peninsula that was inset into the Mediterranean Sea and that it gradually sunk. And it would be understandable to the molecular memory of mankind, perhaps, to be interested in knowing what the first garden looked like that had been created by the Material Son and Daughter bestowed upon your world.

If I were a mortal, I would elaborate that theme when I encountered people who were fascinated by the former civilization of Atlantis, if indeed it had ever existed, for what are they truly seeking? What perspective are they looking for? It is this that I would find most interesting.

Thoroah: It would seem that any mythology that would have grown out of the original garden would obviously have translated itself somewhere into an Atlantean type of thing.

TOMAS: Yes, and in a young planet such as this, that has had considerable turbulence with mountains forming and continents drifting and so forth, it is not unlikely that many civilizations have ended up under the sea.

Thoroah: As a cultural anthropologist . . . No, never mind. I'm not going to go there.

Thoroah: For that sunken Garden of Eden. I suppose it's still in the Mediterranean someplace.

TOMAS: It was something like 35,000 years ago. It would probably show no remnants of its earlier glory, although if one were to go down there as was afforded the scientists who raised the Titanic, they might be able to discover some of the aqueducts and the temple if they knew what they were looking for, but that's a project that has not been formulated yet in the minds of Urantians.

Thoroah: No. They are more interested in Noah's Arc than the Garden of Eden. Evangel had another question. It's along the same line. The subject of a disaster such as the sinking, this has to do with something that was revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls and, of course, the Bible talks about Sodom and Gomorrah. The Dead Sea Scrolls said something about it but the Urantia Book said something about "the natural disaster that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah" and, curiosity being what it is, we were wondering what kind of a natural disaster that could have gained this mythological proportion.

TOMAS: Volcano, is my understanding. That would be called a natural disaster, when the earth erupts and buries a city. It is my understanding that it was a volcano eruption, but I could be wrong. It may have been earthquake or other, but I think it was volcano.

Thoroah: Well, that would be a -- thinking of what a volcano can do and considering the times -- a "vengeful God," in the context of those days. That might have been a good representation of such vengeance, for a volcano to spew forth.

Thoroah: Thank you for the common sense approach to some things we get so fascinated by, sometimes we don't see the obvious.

TOMAS: My associates Evangel and Leah are always getting into one adventure after the other and assimilating the associations of their ways, bringing home their trophies of knowledge and exposure as cats bring home mice and birds. They are a delight to me, my children.

Thoroah: It's such a temptation. We have a sounding board, if you will, this talking to personalities much wiser and experienced than us to offer us insight. It's a wonder we don't bring more toys and dead birds and mice to you.

TOMAS: I assure you, you bring plenty, and I admire them and dispense with them as graciously as I know how. Unfortunately, on occasion I might appear to be a natural disaster, opening a large hole into which we all fall, but that is to be expected in a communication such as we are developing. We are all growing in this experience together. I am learning how to reach you and how to respond to what will feed you without becoming a bore or a burden, and you are learning to be comfortable with the counsel available and accept it as you are ready.

It is a gracious arrangement provided, and we do well to succeed in it to the extent that we do. We are very pleased, over a period of time, to observe, with the human perspective, how we are developing. From our standpoint, we have said all along that we were amazed at the way your spiritual wicks caught fire, but now you are beginning also to believe it and see it occur. It is invigorating for us to know that Father's universe is expanding into the darkness; His light is shining into the shadows and helping lift the fog of conditioning on your world.

Thoroah: Sometimes we don't know how handicapped we are. That's sort of the double-edged sword of enlightenment, because it reveals our handicaps.

TOMAS: It is also why it is valuable to learn to be gracious with yourself and to often sit in the comfort of Our Father for in knowing Him and feeling his protection, you know that you are loved, even though you may still struggle and tumble and fall. You are beloved, and the more you realize this, the more courageous you can become in learning the lessons that will enable you to grow to spiritual adulthood.

Thoroah: Well, your relationship has really helped me. I look back at where I was in March and I'm amazed, and I know that I had a goal, when I came back from Colorado to Michigan, that it was obvious that I needed to learn how to love and to be loved, and the things that have correspondingly happened since then -- I don't doubt that I am loved. Intellectually, I know it more than ever. And I am now starting to KNOW it more than ever. Like I was saying the other day, I don't have that feeling of impending doom, like the other shoe is going to drop all the time like I used to and it's a wonderful, wonderful absence.

TOMAS: This is truly one of the side-effects. Faith levels have increased exponentially here. As each of you become aware of your direct connection with divinity, that creates a safety net for everyone. This sense of doom and gloom is a result of the isolation, and the conditioning was long and deep, but as the sun shines and you are aware of it, the love will eradicate the fear, the doom, the gloom, and all of that. (Pause) Rejoice.

Thoroah: I want to say that on these birds and mice and things we bring before you and we learn from them, I'm learning how you deal with them and in the way you answer the curiosity, I'm learning from you how to do that myself. I know that we are supposed to be learning how to teach and the way that YOU handle them teaches ME. I don't know if that is part of the Teaching Mission Manual or not, but the way you handle it is a good lesson for me.

TOMAS: You have paid me a high compliment, Thoroah. I am obviously doing my job if you are learning that lesson. We are teaching you to be teachers, and as you see your teacher's methodology and find them of value, you might try them yourself and see how effective they may be for others, since they seem to be effective for yourself. These are lessons that I teach based upon the approved curriculum of the Melchizedeks and under the guidance of Michael, our Sovereign, as he himself taught "as he passed by."

TOMAS: I enjoy you very much, as a student, as a friend, as a co-worker and as a fellow apostle. It would behoove you now to go to your rest, for tomorrow is another day, a day in which the Lord will reign supreme in your life and in the lives of all of those who give honor to him. See you soon. Amen and farewell.

TOMAS: I came by way of a circuitous route. Your circuits are considerably more clear this evening than they have been and so it was necessary that some adjustments be made in order for this transmission to be as fresh as it might. I commend you both for your efforts toward improving yourselves. This smoking cessation program will indeed affect our realm as well, for as you prepare yourself and uplift and ready yourself for service, we respond. Indeed, all of the universe responds to your efforts to rise to the occasion of living love.

I am not prepared to deliver a formal lesson this evening. I think it is not necessary. Before we close this evening I would like to attempt to deliver a message or have a communion with one young son Michael who has asked for a word from me, but that, too, can take its course.

Let us be filial. How are you doing in your life in general, in your spiritual growth in general? Are you aware of your growth experiences in the spirit and can you or will you voice them for us? It is not required that you share these words and experiences, nor is it, certainly, required that you allow them to be disseminated abroad through your media, but I am your teacher and your companion, and in-as-much as your plates are often full and you have given testimony to your desire to grow in order that you might serve and better be prepared to function as an Ambassador of the Kingdom, yielding greater happiness for yourselves and your loved ones, I would converse with you regarding how you are in this very important realm of operation.

Thoroah: Okay. I didn't know . .. Gerdean had mentioned she had a question about . .. Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my growth, and maybe that's why I'm listless, the last couple of days, besides the change in chemistry from the drastic cut-out in cigar smoke and everything else. It's amazing the change in routine. It threw everything off. But I just have not been able to function mentally and emotionally energy-wise the last couple of days. Maybe it has something to do with a growth period and a rest period, too. There's pressure to do things for the Journal and get things done, other things, but I am trying to take the implied, if not off-stated fact that sometimes we just have to step back and take a breath, so I'm not feeling as guilty about being listless, I'm just feeling paralyzed by being so listless, I guess.

TOMAS: It will pass. Allow yourself down time to let yourself be reconfigured. You are allowing yourself to be rebuilt, remade, reformed, refurbished, revitalized. You need to give your DNA a chance to expand. You will be led by the spirit when the spirit moves you and you will act. Fear not. "Be not afraid" as the Master has said. I cannot get that concept through, quite, to Gerdean. Her fear is so difficult to put a finger on. It may well be a side-effect of her psychic availability, an exchange if you will, but we shall see. None of these are worth worrying about.

How do you feel about your new community? The community you anticipate being part of?

Thoroah: I'm excited about it. We have a number of people we have become acquainted with over the years that live up there and that is nice. We thought about a number of different places. Some were just like -- I guess we didn't want to go back and try to relive old friendships, old relationships, and so the places we looked at, we didn't have anybody around that we knew, so we would have been going back fresh into an area of strangers. And the Coeur d'Alene area seems to have been a gathering place for some really good energies and wonderful people and personalities, and so it feels good, and from their description of things, we feel as if we were pieces of a puzzle coming together up there to serve a purpose. And that's exciting.

TOMAS: Yes, it enlarges the heartthrob of the Heart of the Northwest. You will be well welcomed into that community and quickly be assimilated into it and made a vital part thereof. We delight in the comforts you will know as a result of a community of this nature, as we delight in the advantages you also bring to your brothers and sisters. I have spent much time there and have made inroads into the neighborhoods and find it compatible and to my liking. It will give Gerdean some freedom from the sole responsibility of being transmitter for her community which will be a change for her, one which will no doubt be beneficial for it will give her an opportunity to have more psychic time for her other fields of interest not excluding her marriage partner.

Thoroah: I think that that will be nice, too, because every once in awhile I forget what a service she provides, not just by her ability to be a T/R but then it's the writing out of the transcripts thing which, to me, would be the hard part -- the drudgery of typing it out for everybody and even if it's just for the two of us and I really appreciate her efforts along that line.

TOMAS: I know she has enjoyed her work and continues to enjoy it and laments only that there are not more visible means of support in terms of congregation, if you will, but I am not as worried about that. As we have heard, it is a spiritual kingdom and it does not require that it be seen with the physical eye to know that it is alive and well.

Let us take, for example, our comrade Tom who visited recently and was impressed, indeed very impressed, with the clarity of communication between the teacher and the student (namely himself), the ease with which this is accomplished. His personal experience has been affirmed, confirmed. That which he held in the back of his mind as magical and mysterious has now become a reality and thus he himself, as a mind, as an individual, as a person, and as a son of God, has become upheld and his dignity is being restored and so we have served. Even if he is not an active student in terms of sitting in the class, his light has been strengthened, his reality has been reinforced. His fraternity is guaranteed. And so the mission has done its work. It can only do its work, in fact, as allowed by the lives and wills of the individuals in the vicinity of its influence. Our idea of success is perhaps a little different than yours.

I was interested, in your reflections, Thoroah, about human contact. There is a bit in the Book about friendship, that when you look back upon your life there are moments in time that comfort you in your aloneness and times of pondering, perhaps, your purpose in life. You have had moments of friendship which have made your life meaningful. Great friendships are the rewards of life. The laughter and camaraderie, the simple mundane routine chores that people do together that give continuity to time, knowing that your companion is there, day after day, to help you with your chores or spur you in your ambitions.

The shelves of literature written about human association is unfathomable and they are all based on experiences that touched the hearts, minds, souls, of the authors. Every mother, every sister, every father, even brother knows these poignant feelings. But what of the hope for contact with God from these people if they are so content in their human existence that they cannot take time out to think of the miracle of their lives, the blessings of family and parenthood.

The concept of the antichrist is one perhaps which could become a social/spiritual movement to become aware of those who, in their way, deny the Lord, even while they profess to believe in Him. How can we lift the level of materialism up to include the joys of the spirit if we are afraid to incorporate the Christ into the daily life? The spiritual life is not about words. It is about reality. It is a response to life.

Thoroah: You proposed a question that is the question, and that is how to get the Christ in people's lives. Back when I was just a born again Christian, if you will, wanting to serve, it was the same question. It's going to be that question for a long time.

TOMAS: It is the crux and challenge of human contact, for to make real contact with your fellow humans, you must have an awareness of each other as a reality. Puppies can nuzzle each other in a litter. Even monkeys can nurture their young and manifest social behaviors. But we are talking about human beings who are God-indwelt. You can be in a room full of people and ostensibly be enjoying all manner of human contact, but if you are not aware of the presence and the interaction of the spirit in and with your lives, your experience lacks that quality which makes it memorable. To have a friend in the spirit is to have an eternal companion.

The value that you experience in your families may be remembered for its value, but the individuals involved don't matter. It's the value. But when the individual is God conscious and contributes to the reality of the moment, consciously or unconsciously, then the moment, the individuals and the values are ALL memorable and made part of the Evolving Supreme.

Thoroah: Sometimes in those sharing moments with this God consciousness, sometimes it's not as obvious that a person is God conscious as it is an intuitive sense of . .. in our society it's not... it's not cool to be pushy. People have gotten so tired of pushy religionists -- and I think this is what's happened to Urantia Book readers to a great extent. They're really happy just to have it. And there are others who are not necessarily Urantia Book readers but who have a God consciousness but they keep it to themselves to the extent that they don't want to be pushy or to seem like they want to get mixed up with certain other people. It makes it difficult sometimes to be evangelical just because of that social thing that's out there.

TOMAS: Yes, Christianity has presented myriad challenges for you new apostles, indeed.

Thoroah: But that is a challenge. I mean, you're right. It is a challenge. And that's where the intellect comes in handy sometimes. Having been a part of that Christianity onslaught at one time, I know what it's like to be on one side and now on the other, which is helped me identify some with different facets, but I look for intuitive keys when I'm dealing with Christians to see how I can represent the new Father, the new Christ, the new Spirit to them, and I think they are the biggest challenge. I think I'd rather deal with an atheist.

TOMAS: Anyone who has become so convinced of the lightness of their belief system as to become crystallized is not open to discussion, regardless of what belief system it is they subscribe to. It is therefore best when you find those who are open, the sheep who can be led but they are often jaded because they have been led too many places already and they have barriers up against your invitation. It is best to show yourself as non-predatory and non-adversarial and allow them the opportunity to come out to you and open up to your spirit freely. And when this occurs, it is wise to give them what they can absorb without overwhelming them or challenging them too severely. Rather, as it is said, whet their appetites for truth. Allow the seed that they have allowed to be planted within them the opportunity to grow. Perhaps you will not be there to see it watered and fertilized, but if the seed is well planted infertile soil, you have done good work. Your challenge in this day and age is to till the soil.

Thoroah: I found that worked very well on some of the correspondence I had with people I was contacting for the Light and Life Journal just that openness, sincerity, non-judgmental, non-superior attitude kind of thing. It worked out really well. I hadn't even though about it on that level, dealing with them. I was thinking of perhaps on a wider scale, but the real benefit of the networking with those people is the position we are hosting these various networks, if we can establish a really good relationship with them it will benefit everybody and that was a very good experience for me.

TOMAS: Yes, it was. It was good work. It was genuine work, incorporating your understanding of the spirit with theirs in such a way as to interweave your realities, and thus expanding the brotherhood. It is how we like to see things done, but again, interestingly, it has been something you have been able to do by not knowing each other in the flesh. Sometimes the actual physicality of communication makes things difficult because of your preconceptions of what things mean, because of cultural conditioning. The truth cuts through all of that.

Thoroah: I'm trying to learn and get a feel for that, Tomas. That simplicity thing that you talked about, with the getting back to sincerity, simplicity. That is just so important. I've thought about that all week and, how I've been flippant with a lot of things when I should take the time to be sincere. I think I became a flippant person because I've basically always been a sincere person and I thought that I was being a sincere fool, and my sincerity was being taken advantage of and I started becoming a flippant person, so now I'm trying to go back to being my honest, simple, sincere person and I think that's the key to getting through to the core of situations and conversations and things, to be able to find the right things to say.

TOMAS: Yes. Sincerity has been disdained because it is genuine; it requires honesty; it leaves you vulnerable to feelings, and so long ago a defense mechanism was created to disallow a manifestation of sincerity lest you experience this rejection of your feelings. It is a callous social arena that thrives on the cynicism and sarcasm in lieu of sincerity. Sincerity is not necessarily sentimentality. Sincerity constitutes great strength, but this is something that is not normally understood by the child, only by those who have been reborn, born of the spirit, and come to recognize the strength inherent in simplicity and sincerity for what did sophistication and glitz get you?

TOMAS: Where you can see "all the lonely people." It is a good time to turn the channel.

Thoroah: I am glad you are aware of your religious life and that it has nothing to do with attending services. This life you live as the life of a religionist allows you to carry your church within you. You are your own tabernacle. You can take your church to the people and minister "as you pass by."

TOMAS: The universe is set up this way: that you learn and that you be of service. All of these are done by and with and through love. You learn in love, you teach in love. You serve in love, and you learn yet again, through love. Service is an extension of yourself that will become a part and parcel of all you do. Service for the Master, service for the Kingdom, service for your fellows. It is a matter of doing for others as a contribution to the Supreme, thus you serve God.

Thoroah: Getting back to our original topic of human contact, it's hard to serve God without doing it through other humans. I don't know how to serve God unless other humans are involved.

TOMAS: You are correct. It is not necessarily service to commune with God for that is your personal relationship, one of prayer and worship. Introverted. But as you turn outward, as you become extroverted, you are immediately in your arena and you are immediately in service. As to whether or not you are immediately met by individuals is neither here nor there, but your attitude as you go out is to serve, and so your attitude itself will see you through. It will see you into areas where you may be of service. If it is to your job, if it is to your workshop, if it is to your typewriter, your easel, your kitchen, your yard, your classroom, your transportation or whatever element of life, you will be led into paths wherein you can be of service and the challenge then is yours to see how cleverly and creatively you can weave the Father's reality into your life such that He may be seen, such that you can lead others into an awareness of his divine nature, his qualities, his personality, his living reality.

Thoroah: I'm becoming more impressed with the reality everyday in that sense. Especially the Teaching Mission reality and the door that the Teaching Mission opens up. It's -- I'm trying to find the balance in my mind of where to be frank about it all, instead of avoiding the issue, if you will.

Thoroah: Because I think there is a time to be very frank about these things.

TOMAS: There is a time to be boldly open, yes. It is indeed time. Perhaps your comrades in Coeur d'Alene will give you that kind of confidence and together you will make a loud and joyful noise, but it would be good were you to recognize this power within yourself even before you conjoin with your fellows so that when you move the camp to Pella [a reference to "Moving the Camp to Pella" from the Urantia Papers] , you will take your strength and your commitment and your ability to wield your faith into effective methods of service, even as you go. Yes, it is a valuable growth step, one which is just ahead of you, and it is anticipated you will grasp that great reality and embrace it to your ability to do something about it and with it in the very near future. Allow yourself thus to be listless if that is the fruit of this germination, for it is the kind of fruit that will feed the Teaching Mission, its followers and devotees, its detractors, its constituents, its contemporaries and its sheep. The power of living faith cannot be hidden under a basket, but will ring out and chime for all to hear. It is this song, Thoroah, that we long to hear sung. It is the instrument we yearn to hear played. The bell of truth, the song of songs.

TOMAS: They thought John the Baptist was beside himself. He was, however, filled with enthusiasm and faith. The same is true of the Master. They sometimes thought he was beside himself. But he was aware of the driving power of living love. He was aware of his Father, our Father, and of divine love, of the supernal purpose for creation, and his life and death among you. The service ministry which is before you is not for everyone and cannot be for everyone, but for those who will, let him come. "Knock and the door will be opened. Seek and ye shall find." "Yea though I walk through the valley of Butler Pennsylvania I will fear no evil for thou art with me." He has prepared the way for you. Believe in Him. Please convey this message to Michael as well.

My children, it has been a delightful repast with you this evening. I have enjoyed the opportunity to share with you once again your true essence, your very souls, in communion with one another and through the grace of our Creator. Amen and farewell.

TOMAS: I'm glad to be with you. I'm glad that that you opted to be with me this evening in our customary configuration of learning how to assimilate Our Father into your very lives. This evening I would like to spend a few moments discussing the phrase "taking charge".

I come into your environment and take charge. I can do that for a number of reasons. One, is I have assumed the responsibility for you as my assignment. Another is because you have given yourself over to me as your teacher to be taught by me and thus putting yourself in the position of being students. Thirdly, it is because it is sanctioned, ordained that you advance and be brought forward, that you learn these many lessons in conjunction with the lessons of other teachers as well as your own life experience, your real workbook. And last but not least because our will has willed it to be so.

Surrender to God is a paradox, indeed, although many people regard it as a blanket reality allowing for no variation. Surrender, yes. To surrender to the will of God is to allow God to guide your life. To surrender to the love of God is to fill yourself with that energy which allows for you to carry on. To surrender to that which is good for you allows you to thrive. But surrender also entails mortal involvement, for whereas you may surrender, you do not merely become subject to whatever happens to you. Your free will is involved and you become a co-creator. You participate in your destiny by your free will decisions. Thus your surrender coincides with your willingness to act. To surrender is to surrender your self will to His will. It does not mean you quit. Yes, God will do it all, but it is required that you assist. In this way you begin to participate in the development of the Supreme, in the building of your own soul, and any number of valuable results come from your willingness to surrender your will to His will.

But there are those who feel that to take charge is an act of self will. To take control of a situation implies self will in action, without considering that it is possible for you to attain the integration which allows for your will to be in alignment with His. The idea of such self-acting behavior can be intimidating to those who feel that total surrender infers total helplessness. When you step out of your self will sufficiently to allow divine will to act with you, when your self will is spelled with a capital S as a conjoint cooperative with divinity, you too can take charge and you too can wield spiritual power. Wielding spiritual power does not mean ruling over unwisely, but ruling in such a way as to be harmonious with the Father's will.

The text indicates that religionists will act, and this is the context of such a statement. When you are infused with the desire to do his will, you will respond to that desire by attempting to take charge in such a way as to do something to help evolve the darkness into light, the ignorant into enlightenment, and the fearful into the courageous.

Be aware then that when and as you choose to take charge in conjunction with your perception of His divine will for you, you will meet with opposition. You will even meet with opposition within your own being. This is when the ego identity exerts itself the strongest. This is when the master intellectual fraud known as fear will rise up in order to effectively way-lay you from taking charge in your faith path. This is the time now for you to take charge of your will and your persona. It is time to tame the beast, time to train the animal. Make it heel and become subservient to the greater will of the higher mind which is aligned now with Universal Mind, with the mind of majesty.

My friends I have observed your worksheet in terms of this very lesson. Your on-going experiential training is a topic of taking charge of your will in your life, in submission to His will for you. For those of you who think that this is an easy task, be advised that it is not, for your wills and your egos are powerful in and of themselves. These can be contemplated as conflicts of the soul, but when your vision is clear, you can see the Spirit of Truth directing you in the way to go. There will be no progress until such time as you again align yourselves and your will with that divine will which you languish without, for it is and has become your very reality.

These soul struggles are admirable growth steps for you in your experiential path. They are as if you were to encounter a large boulder in the road, a tree felled across your path. These are the matters of cosmic problem-solving which make you into spiritual adults. They are not tests; they are exercises designed to increase your stamina and to increase your fortitude and therefore your ability to preach and teach that which is real, that which is of the Father Himself And so proceed, my young students. Proceed to take charged and forge into the Kingdom. (Pause) Will there be commentary?

Thoroah: This is a complex formula, this proper arrangement of the ego and the will and the way. I’m wondering if the ego doesn't to a certain degree represent what some people think of as the 'devil' and I'm also wondering if on worlds such as on the one that you are from, if you had to deal with ego as we do here on this dark planet.

TOMAS: The response to your first inquiry/analysis is yes. These are often construed as bouts with the ‘devil.’ But on normal worlds where our Planetary Prince was true to his task, we recognized a developing ego for what it was and it was made more apparent by being able to simply accept that the human mind was at mischief without all the complications and colorations of a rebellion. We were not able to blame it on the devil. We had to assume responsibility for our behavior in ways which you here have not yet begun to assume.

However, you do have to respond in part to the Luciferian legacy, which has completely infused your existence. Your behaviors are grossly complicated, and thus your egos are twisted beyond recognition on occasion and in certain circumstances because of the major fallacies inflicted upon your world and its general learning abilities. It is an incessant challenge for us to realize the extent of the damage that has been done here and we continue to marvel at those of you who choose to take charge of your own correction in order that you may begin to build anew the world of Michael's nativity and your own. When we come in with praise, we are not merely flattering you with flowery phrases, no, but truly in support of the complexities which have arisen around your approach to something meaningful and of lasting value for yourself and your progeny.

I was from an advanced portion of my world, and even though I visited the more primitive peoples of my world as an anthropologist, as a scientist who studied the behaviors of the less sophisticated, it was much, much more like observing the behaviors of your primates in terms of pereljehavior; whereas you mortals who inhabit Urantia are extremely complex creaturesY*6t at all as simple as a mere animal species because of the fact that your minds have been so affected by your legacy of Lucifer, and, I must say, by the Adamic default, for as you well know, had they succeeded, then- influence would still be among you, giving you stabilization and direction for your civilizations and your societal behaviors.

Without this kind of guidance, you are like a ball of twine that has gotten all knotted up from the cat toying with it, and it's a wonder your circuits can make connection at all But we are attempting now to reach a point of operation wherein we set aside, as we can, that blame theory and say "the devil made me do it" or "it's Adam and Eve's fault." My responsibility with you includes enabling you to assume your own center, your own cosmic connection with divinity, to impress upon you the inherent connection between you and your First Source and Center sufficiently that you become well-grounded in this fundamental and essential reality, which is the only way that you will get your wires uncrossed and the knots out of your ball of twine, and which is also why we encourage you to be mindful when you go into the outer arenas that you not become toppled by the incredible downpull of the fears resident on Urantia, those fears which have been able to take charge of your very world because of the self-will of the undisciplined and unsupervised egos of your myriad ancestors. (Pause) Is there further discussion?

Thoroah: I think I grasp what you said and I get the feeling that this intent, this desire, this surrender of the will to the Father's will, gives us sort of a magnet or that allows us, as we practice and practice, to sense more objectively our ego when it's taking place. Maybe it's a sense of uneasiness or a gut feeling or something but there is more of an indication as we go along of when our ego is playing games with us, and we get to see it more as you might have on your planet.

TOMAS: Yes, good perspective. Yes. The response herein refers once again to circuitry. There is a gravitational pull between you and the Father, and once you have found that sense of gravity which leads you back to your Source, you become familiar with its energy such that you know you are more or less on track, but when you become derailed from the awareness, it is because you have indeed somehow allowed some lesser reality to thwart you and revert your focus from your faith path.

What I suggest here is that as soon as you recognize your discomfort or sense of disconnection or alienation from that which is your umbilical cord to life itself, realize that is, that you take charge. Encourage your higher nature to restrain your lesser self in its myriad distractions willing you away from that which is for the greater good. This takes stamina and discipline, but it is not so difficult as you might think because the discomfort in being seemingly cut off from that gravitational pull which you know to be your lifeline to infinity, will produce within you such a yearning to restore yourself to wholeness, that you will find your way back. You have at your disposal many resources which also seek to retain you and return you to your path, not the least of which is your own Adjuster.

Being able to identify the circuits is very beneficial, for you can study their energy pattern and observe the way your life is progressing within that framework, whichever circuit that may be, which there are many, but they are all ascending and connected, and only as your complicated ego-system opts to argue with or lead you away from that which your higher mind would choose to do, do you feel the difference, so yes, you are gleaning correctly, Thoroah.

Thoroah: I also got the impression that maybe our world -- and I’m not using the rebellion as a crutch either -- but I just get the feeling that our destiny -- which we seem to be being guided back to -- was quite special. Your analogy of the complexity of our mind, et cetera, compared to those less sophisticated people on your world, even though your world wasn't affected by rebellion, that this planet had some unbelievable potential, maybe even as compared to other worlds. Is that... ?

TOMAS: Oh, no question about it! Your world began as any world, with a plan for its ultimate perfection. Your being a decimal planet would guarantee some adventures, but nothing as outlandish as you have had to experience as a result of your unfortunate isolation. Your world is, in your terms, a shining example of Murphy's law, and if you will observe even your own interactions involving your own peers today, you will find residue examples of Murphy's law in operation because all the wires aren't straightened out yet, all the twine is not untangled. When and as you apply yourself to your own healing and correcting, you contribute greatly to the annihilation of Murphy, and as your co-workers and peers also work to control their wiring and to put themselves into appropriate alignment, their victory over Murphy is also afforded. Thus in the course of your working through your own growth steps into alignment with divine will, will all of your communications improve and prosper. Has that been helpful?

Thoroah: He appreciated everything from our last get-together and he misses the immediacy of the contact and being here. His question: "Am I correct in encouraging my siblings in the trust that belief is but a mite better than the little bit we know, whereas faith is that place which in this very moment we embrace all that was, is and ever shall be?"

TOMAS: Yes, you will do well to encourage the supremacy of faith over belief. But do not disparage their beliefs, for it is the scaffolding upon which their faith will be built. Encourage the embrace of living faith, in that which is alive and which transcends the borders of beliefs. Beliefs are discarded over time, as the snake molts its skin, but faith is enlarged and added to and made more because it is freeing, liberating, expansive and vital.

Faith as an adjunct of that which is alive is not able to be crystallized as beliefs can be. Therefore do not reduce your concept of faith to mean "a faith" or "a mere faith", but allow it to remain alive and living and free, that you may be spiritually free also. Free to grow in the spirit and in faith.

We appreciate your connection to this group, my friend. I enjoy addressing you in your long-distance questions, in complete appreciation for your yearning for the immediacy of this kind of contact and for the immediate soul satisfaction which it brings. Be at peace, however, my friend, when you know that I visit with you and there are others who visit with you, including Merium, who sit with you and enjoy with you your repose in the Father's arms, bringing a sense of immediacy, even as you experience that same immediacy in and with Our Father.

Yet let it be said, we enjoy your companionship and miss your mortal company in this configuration. Do visit again soon, for your own nurturance and for the camaraderie of your fellows. Be of good cheer. (Pause) Are there other matters this evening?

Thoroah: I was just mulling over in my mind the beautiful explanation that you gave in the difference between belief and faith. That's very helpful.

TOMAS: It is my pleasure to be a teacher, and to receive immediate feedback that my teaching is falling on fertile soil is more than I would expect. I appreciate your remark. I appreciate even more, however, your fertile soil, which has taken the seed and allowed it to grow within.

Thoroah: I wish to be a better teacher myself. I have a note on my monitor that says "be a teacher" and sometimes I forget and I become a preacher instead of a teacher and I just need to be cognizant of being a teacher without trying to patronize. All the Teachers that I have witnessed are so very patient and able to take almost the impossible and turn h into a lesson, andJhS lesson itself is as educational as the object of the lessons.

TOMAS: My son, the clue is to enshroud your heart with love and the Source of such love is to be found in the relationship between the child and the Father. "Be still and know that I am God" is the only way you can infuse yourself with the love (Tape failed; closing lost. Too bad! It was an inspiring depiction of the love of Michael.)

TOMAS: Yes, I am here. I am Tomas, your Teacher. Good evening. It is a warm glow you give off this evening. The glowing embers of your hearts are a joy to us as we perceive the comfort of the campfire of your love. The light in you responds to the light within each other and gives recognition of the Source of light.

Welcome! Welcome! How wonderful to be in this configuration this evening. What a glorious homecoming for you all, to be in the embrace of your mentors in the spirit and your friends in the flesh. The conversation preceding intervention had to do with cosmic socialization, and so we had a quick staff meeting, if you will, and opted to introduce a visitor for the purpose of embellishing and extending your understanding of the concept and reality of cosmic socialization, for we have a volunteer Morontia Companion who would like to be among you this evening. I will step aside and allow him to interact with you. I will be back and I commend your enjoyment of this personage.

MORONTIA COMPANION: My transmitter is self-conscious. I am grander than she portrays me, but it will suffice for our purposes if you relax and assign not to your minds any unnecessary burden of behavior.

We were observing the unlimited potential of the expanded actualization of light and life in your ability to manifest your own cosmic bubble of awareness of your being enveloped in a life with God as your focus. Your walk through life, then, in awareness of relative perfection and your place within harmonizes naturally with the similar experience of those who flank you as soldiers of the circle, so we have a five-point star here this evening of potential cosmic socialization, even while you walk the paths of mortal endeavor.

The essential factor of enlargement of light and life upon your world is that it be shared, socialized. We have observed a lot of discourse and excitement in the area of retreat centers and communities, zooidal colonies, week-end gatherings, conferences, and other avenues of getting together which is intended to reinforce your acknowledgement of your dependency upon the spirit life and the socialization of your beliefs through intercourse with like-minded fellows and kindred spirits.

So here I have come in and done all the talking. How dreadfully rude. I've usurped the entire platform. However, I have been heard. I feel better. I can relax now and hear what you all have to say for I am here to be a companion to you, not an instructor, and I, in my companionability, would be charmed to perceive your expressions of the socialization of your awareness of your cosmic connection.

(Long pause) Perhaps I might introduce a question that you might respond to, for is it not the Master's technique to draw you out into conversation? Well, then, let's manifest how this might compare to the family foundation. Any volunteers?

Sivad: Yes. Well, could I ask a question rather open-ended and you could address it or anybody with you.

Sivad: Speaking of family, I think this in some way has to do with it. I mean, it has to do with our socialization of the experience of divine love and truth that reveals and speaks to the same and there are two parts to this that are always problematic, it seems, for us humans. And it has to do with the tendency for any so-called revelation to inspire more enthusiasm about the particular event than the truth revealed, which causes some dissonance, it seems, and challenges and creative tensions which are all stimulating of greater need to love, but I was just curious as to how, in regards to socializing what we know, what we have been given of truth in this particular generation, how we might coordinate our efforts more fully with those of our Master Seraphim, each of whom guide particular aspects of this, and I am particularly interested in coordinating with the religious guardians, so called, and the progress angels, one who always seems to be fostering a form that can be easily identified with and the progress angels who seem to be fostering a bit of freedom from that form and less dependence upon the same. In their case, of course, they've got a clear line of command to reconcile their differences whereas in our realm it seems that we tend to reconcile these differences sometimes in not the most ideal forms, and perhaps you could give us some sort of help in how we might better coordinate our efforts here with those On High.

COMPANION: Well, let's look at your recitation. A two-part discourse. Perhaps we would do well to reiterate the matters in a nutshell. Have we anyone here who would like to encapsulate what was addressed in part one?

Thoroah: Well the angels seem to be able to communicate and play team ball and humans can't.

COMPANION: That's all right. I will suggest that the first part was why does this powerful insight well up so strongly yet manifest so feebly. And the second was, as you say, a difference in the modus operandi of various orders of angels, perhaps specifically the angels of progress as compared to the angels of traditional religion. Is this a fair outline, Sivad?

COMPANION: Then, any discussion? (Long pause) The source of revelation is always from within, for your connection with divinity is within. That within you that is divine will recognize itself and reveal itself to you in self-revelation, in insight, even though it may come from an outside source, such as your neighbor or your media, you are still assimilating through your inner life. Thus the source, your real Source, will feel the effects of your insight for it has been underscored by the First Source and Center. But as it essays to reveal itself, the mortal will is up against a plethora of social circumstances which thwart the free expression of such a wondrous and awesome experience as insight or revelation or conversations with God, if you will.

And so the creature is censored. Almost self-censored because of the limitations allowed it socially. Thus, you see, our interest in cosmic socialization for one must learn to transcend the social skills of the mere human in order to incorporate the super human strength and realities of Paradise. So that light and life can life and illuminate the planet Urantia and assume its place in the unfolding of the perfection of the universe of which it is a part. Therefore, you see, all of this delight in socialization and going off to retreats and conferences also has with it a responsibility. An inherent responsibility of being better able to live up to the realities which are yours as children of God.

COMPANION: Then we are at the second part of the inquiry/commentary, and it explains to some extent why it is so difficult for you to function fully as a spirit- led, God-knowing mortal of relative light and life, manifesting this in your arena -- the difficulties of manifesting this support in your arena without the cosmic sociability of your peers in the spirit and in the flesh. You will need to allow that there are differences.

Allow the differences. As the various orders of angels allow the differences in their orders, in their very function. I could be called boundaries in your language. You establish social boundaries, but the word boundaries is a negative word when it comes to the ideal of socializing your cosmic connection, cosmic awareness. For one likes to think, in the spirit there are no boundaries; no separations. And in the most positive light this is true, but, also, within the structure of the universe there are appropriate boundaries based on, well, Job Assignment, for example.

In the universe, however, each element of existence is cherished for what it does and what it represents. When there are disagreements between orders of beings in the universe, it is a matter of learning more about the structure of their Job Assignment. Their distress would be with the functioning of the individuals within the organism. In your world, you get angry at the person and lose sight of the principle. When you are however working in harmony with spirit, you continually are reminding yourself of the principle and all the while you are loving the individual, and so you are functioning on a much higher level when you bring God into your socializing practices, even in the world as it is today.

Why do you think they send the Mormons out two and two? Why do you think the missionaries go in company with another? Even Jesus himself sent his apostles and disciples out in clusters or pairs to support one another. The benefit of cosmic socializing is immense, and we rejoice that you have begun the art of appreciating the difference between each of you and the interconnectedness of all of you.

Sivad: Well, yes, in a broad way. Of course, I had -- there were particulars involved and now it's my job to do something with those but I'll trust that we can proceed constructively. Thank you very much.

COMPANION: We are inclined to paint with broad brush strokes and then we can get down to the refinements as the background has been well established, the foundation has been well drawn. That way we stand a better chance of perfection. Honing in on the particulars too quickly can destroy the art and reduce communications to science which lacks having God's hand involved, and so if it takes longer to bring the Father into the realm of operation, take that time for it will make all the difference.

... but there are points we are actually performing, and I know, but, in performance of any kind, really, whether it's music or speech, whatever, dancing... a performer can just really forget, for the moment that they are actually... You know. They are not so conscious of themselves?

Thoroah: They get into the third eye thing. That was a break-through in tennis, you know, when they -- that whole idea of going within yourself and watching yourself here, in the third eye, it was a complete Zone to go to, which I think is . .. just practice.

Sivad: We'd be inclined to call it instinct, but it's a higher instinct that functions.

Thoroah: It gets better when we focus it on God, too. Imagine what it would -- When we're just out there using it, our physical skill, imagine what we would do if we put God in it. It Really has potential.

Nathaniel: I was just trying to think or remember what... I don't play tennis and I don't play music, so I'm trying to think when I have been in "the Zone". I know I have been, but....

Rachel: Many times I have been . .. feeling in the flow of God. Everything happily following along and hopefully I don't step in a hole somewhere.

Sivad: What's the normal thing!? We have yet to fuse and [Group laughter] . .. in spite of the fact that you might be fused, you still have to be practicing!

COMPANION: Well, the soul is perfecting and growing all the while and that is something you have created by your decisions. You own a certain amount of credibility for having made the decisions, in particular the initial decisions, but the very existence you testify to and aspire to is a gift in the first place. Were it not for the Creator creating, you would not be able to co-create. And this is the charm, the humble charm that allows even the most ingenious among you to remain true to your integrity in trust of true sonship.

You would do well to be mindful of the difficulties of your communication techniques, that you carry into your fellowship with your spirit brethren, only because of your conditioned responses to the world of non-believers or those who will not embrace the light of truth - the world at large.

I don't mean to say that in such a way as to make it appear unlovable, no, or infer that we do not have feelings of tenderness and deep love for the unenlightened, for as we know, Our Father is able to function through good folk more often than not, and even through less good folk on occasion; and so they are not without care and comfort. But those of you who are professed religionists, agondonters, enlightened to the degree you allow yourself to be, and other descriptive phrases that distinguish you . ...

Thoroah: I was caught in the dot dot dot. I'm sorry. [Chuckle] I was listening to the conversation we were having during the break about your role in our development. I don't know that much about a Morontia Companion. I was just wondering if you could clarify what you do and what you are doing to help us.

COMPANION: I will let you read about my Order in the text, in the beginning, at least. And thus I will not have to overly repeat myself. I am companionable. I am not a teacher or mentor in any scholastic sense or even in any heady sense, but the value of socialization is something which you need to learn, to master, and so our discussion of the socialization of your cosmic/ celestial nature. As you begin to master the skills of socializing the spirit, sharing the inner life, you extend reality. It becomes more important as you evolve, and in-as-much as you have evolved to this point, we are delighted and we have come to engage you in skills of socialization in hopes that you will, among yourselves, begin to appreciate the value of such an art of communication that you can begin to manifest and reflect the glory of God in your arenas and bring into existence a new level of reality.

And I didn't say that there was that much wrong with the old reality, but it is an ascension plan, and as you are ascending in awareness and realization of your own relationship with Our Father and your reflection of His nature in your life, it is -- all right, then -- "classroom material" that you begin to practice, to study, to master, the socialization of your beliefs. Not the tenets and creeds and particulars of your belief, but your faith. If you believe that you are accompanied by a retinue of helpers, then engage them. In anonymity if that is the wiser approach, but incorporate them none-the-less and it will help you stay afloat when the vagaries of existence become nettlesome.

TOMAS: I am Tomas. It is a busy evening and one which calls for being quick on your feet, and indeed it is a part of the adjustment between the divisions of labor, if you will, that certain overlaps occur -- up-stepping, down-stepping, side-stepping. I have been on holiday, it feels, with the visitors. Are there any questions this evening?

Rachel: I was wondering if I was . .. what the MC was saying was that in our conversation skills, we should bring our God-knowingness into the conversation? We're not sharing it enough? Practicing it enough?

TOMAS: The way you present that, Rachel, would indicate you felt we were asking the impossible. I assure you, you know how to do this and yearn for it and do it many times, and let me recall to your mind when you once had your hands in healing horses. You would release your experience in enthusiastic terms, having the impression and giving the impression that the Father was a part of the healing process. The kinetic energy, the ability to maintain the sensitivity between your hands and the horse, was an avenue of divine intervention and supply. Through your conscious will decision to embrace the life of the animal, you gave yourself up to the spirit and the spirit was able to work through you, and you were aware of it; you told people about it; you were excited. This is an example of bringing God into your life and sharing Him.

It does not necessarily mean that you are trying to introduce people to The Urantia Book or that you are trying to educate them to the real story of what happened back then, or even to some extent what is happening today. What is happening at the moment is most important. And having yourself in the Now sufficiently that you are there with God and being so aware of Him that He reflected Himself in the very air you breathe, in the vibrancy of each molecule, each flower, each insect each gust of air or eddy of dirt, the Now aspect of light and life, which comes from being with the Father, even in your daily doings. This is the reality. This joyousness in being.

TOMAS: It is a time of growing, then, and you will experience your passage into awareness with varying degrees of turmoil or confusion or ease depending upon many factors, but you, child of faith, will come through your growth experience, you will be united with the vividness of your relationship to divinity and you will realize once again how much you are loved, how well you are cared for, how great is the God of us all, who knows every hair on our head, as it were.

TOMAS: Rejoice, daughter, and embrace the experience as a poignant episode in learning the love of God and His many mysteries.

I just had a reflection of how your society must regard the attitude of one who has childlike faith in the style of one Wendy. How irresponsible it must seem to your serious world that one could be so care free. You are reacting to the seriousness of your world. Re-establish within your heart what your world is, Rachel. Work with your Father in Heaven to renew your awareness of what Your World is, in Him.

Sivad: Tomas, it's good to be with you. I missed being here, but since we were on the topic of cosmic socialization, I wonder if you would tell us how you and your peers work with personality typologies of other sorts, in similar ways as we do here, to better understand different temperaments and character types, to appreciate or respect them more fully. It's evident that you must in some way because we are of the twelve apostles all reflected different personality types and I was wondering if you could share with us a bit or, if that's the case, how that helps you, and how you could illuminate our own understanding that we have with our various systems of appreciating the same.

TOMAS: You may! I am challenged, but what can I expect from my colleague who is effective as a teacher and as a communicator. I accept your assignment. One moment.

I think, my friend, the solution is in the ability to be detached. The effectiveness of detachment sufficient for you to make a non-judgmental assessment is essential to appreciating the nuances of difference inherent in the different personality types and different orders of beings who serve multi-functions and manifest varying degrees of personality reality. In your terminology you may regard it as an ability to stand firm and accept the fact that there are many things in the universe that are not any of your business, and allow much of what goes on in life to be.

If you can observe or behold what you survey, without relating to it in such a way as to call attention to the difference between you rather than the incredible diversity available through the universes of time and space through the auspices of the Michael Sons, you will be truly charmed and amazed at the variety out there. You are eager little monkeys, wanting to play and screech and chatter and make social noises, but as you impart a reality of divinity as . .. (tape turned)

You want to bring forth that which is of the Father in such a way as to bring a greater reality to your world. This must be the seventh time I have said this, but it is still true. The more real you become, the greater your opportunity for further growth and for service. So it is your free will decision to contribute to greater spiritual reality or allow a continuation of the status quo, by and through your actions, your desire to bring Him and His reality into your world.

You are the vortexes. You are the conduits. This matter of learning how to walk in light and life, how to live in a state of light and life, is an on-going challenge for those of you who have made the decision to ascend, to advance. Therefore we will help you in this work, help you to gain skills and abilities in the art of kingdom-building which will enable us to realize greater reality in our realm and for other people. This advances the entire system. You grow weary because you forget your fundamental, elemental practices and attitudes which are essential to healthy growth.

I sound, to myself, as if I were scolding, but I am not scolding nor do I mean for you to perceive this message as any sort of chastisement for not being able to be in light and life full-time, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. That would be terribly unkind of me to call your relative imperfection to your attention.

Thoroah: I will just interject this as an element of sociability here, that observation sometimes amongst our friends can help us because we get so subjective and sometimes we don't look back and see the growth, but I can see the growth in the short time that Rachel has been away, so I see growth, if it helps to throw that in. Sometimes we just don't see our own growth, and then when we step back and we do see it, it's a nice thing.

TOMAS: It is very gracious of you to make that observation aloud, Thoroah, for you have supported your sister and this kind of socialization is essential to your developing community of believers. This upholds your self-respect. This engages your appropriate self-esteem. This enables you to reflect in confidence on your growth, your hope, and your successes. The value of affirmative friendship cannot be stressed enough, and you need not worry about indulging one another by telling each other too often that you are appreciated or loved or respected or admired or liked. These qualities of the individual are qualities of goodness, beauty and truth which you need to know how to adopt into your own understanding of who you are. Eventually you will begin to believe it.

You have already made great accomplishments. I remember, again, not long ago when you were a virtual fetus. And so you have been born, you have cried, you have learned to crawl, you are walking around holding onto the furniture and babbling as if you might speak a full sentence any minute. How can you say that you have not grown?

Rachel: Okay. When I let go of the furniture, I'll be all right. [Group laughter]

TOMAS: Where the woman is has always been the home and the rumor is that Nebadonia never goes out of the house, so you want what you want where you want it. It is to be taken into consideration, for part of your personality is the fact that you are human, and you can't overlook that. As avant-garde an attitude as that may appear, none of you are neuter gender. Accept your natures and respect them. Accept the nature of those you love as people who are true to themselves, that which you love about them. Then you are encouraging that which is real and meaningful in each other.

Thoroah: I don't know if anybody told you this recently, Tomas, but you are a good teacher.

Thoroah: Well, just in case you haven't gotten a compliment in awhile, I just want you to know you do some helacious teaching.

TOMAS: Yes. It has never not been okay to love those who are of the nature of God.

TOMAS: That you recognize God in me is to our credit and we can love one another for that very reason.

TOMAS: The Morontia Companion did a good job of, as Merium would say, "fluffing up your pillows". You have gotten quite comfortable in your skins, in your configuration. It is a comfort to feel and sense and perceive the harmony that is revealed when individuals such as yourselves reach out to one another and to the Father for sociability and companionship in the spirit. That we are able to be a part of this communion and communication is a treasure for us that will remain a part of our working reality forever.

This is a great experience, to be in this Teacher Corp on this planet at this time in your planetary history, and in your spiritual growth as a budding race of super mortal beings -- superhuman.

Although, of course, there's nothing wrong with being simply human! It might even be a point to note that if you can be detached, even from your own human condition, you might begin to transcend yourself sufficiently that you could more readily, more easily, apply the principle that would allow the creative personality of the Father to reflect itself in your being, in your doing, even more than the mortal co-creator.

Thoroah: I have a question, Tomas, about the detachment thing. You talked about it earlier and the ability to detach, for instance, with the orders of the angels to be detached. I think we relate detachment with . .. total detachment. I mean, how do we love if we are detached? And I know you are speaking of detachment in a different way but I just think that our instincts are that if we detach ourselves from something, how do we love something we are detached from?

TOMAS: It is learning to love in a new way. Love must be redefined on each new level of awareness of its existence. The love of the Father is an expansive experience. The example of... What shall I say? . .. two two-year olds who are on the floor playing, sharing. They are friends. They have fought and laughed awhile together on a number of occasions and they are a great delight. As a detached observer you love both children. You probably love your own child a little more because you have invested yourself in your own child, but they are both precious to you and you see them in their playing.

You are perhaps at the table working a crossword puzzle, watching out of the corner of your eye, and they begin again one of their games that they have played before, and you observe them without their paying much attention to whether you are observing them or not, until you get a handle on the degree to which they are beating each other on the head with a stuffed animal is going to cause harm. They have an understanding of how mad they are at each other and now you also have an idea and you can continue to work your crossword puzzle with one eye on them and one on the paper and remain detached.

If you were not detached, you would be emotionally blinded. You would not be able to see that each child was contributing to the socialization ensuing. You perhaps might feel that your most precious child was being assailed, and have a mind to alienate the other child -- or any number of scenarios that are possible -- if you allow your emotionalism to rule where a detachment would lend dignity to the process of life taking place. That does not mean that there is any love lost.

That would indicate that there was overcare, much like the Father provides overcare for His children, but he does not necessarily interfere with every little thing that you are investigating for fear you'll hurt yourself, for fear you'll get lost, for fear someone is going to set upon you.

In His detachment, to allow you to go about your life decisions, He is perfectly able to love you infinitely and personally, but not any more nor any less than any of His other children. Detachment in your culture is a weapon, often, a case of emotional blackmail, a relic of highly conditional love. "I will love you IF." "I will love you under these circumstances, and if I don't see results, I will withhold love and interest" and who knows what else.

Thoroah: It sounds like sort of an indictment of emotionalism. Is there any other divine emotion than love?

TOMAS: The reflections of love. The quality of love which gives rise to feeling, including deep feelings of sorrow or grief, but not of rage or not of revenge. Emotions are good. They are a reflection of your feelings. They are a dramatization of your personality. Re-examine the word detachment. It is not a negative word if the motives and intentions are to maintain a perspective which allows for wisdom.

TOMAS: You are welcome. I am glad. We have been going on here for a while. I am willing to go on and on, as you know, but it is also appropriate of me to be mindful of your human condition and your animalistic natures. There are needs which coincide with your need to sustain yourself on spirit strivings and spirit satisfactions, so I will ask you if there are any further questions or considerations for this delightful configuration.

Sivad: Tomas, speaking of the animal rage that we periodically may experience. When we find this in us, can you say anything that will help identify how we can actually somehow benefit from something that might be very hurtful and disappointing to discover, some things that we no longer identify with but may sometimes encounter within ourselves. I have found it only helpful to go into stillness, but I can't sometimes in the moment. It's only afterwards that I recognize the need for an emergency session, as it were. But there's so much power within our feeling, and we would use it for good and not ill, but as we are so young, we do fall prey to harm periodically.

TOMAS: Yes, this is a fact. It is an observation and a reality. It is also one of the reasons why we have come, to help you have different reactions, to help you work through the source of the disability. Your reactions to life's circumstances can be corrected. To seek the sanctity of stillness at once is sane behavior. To realize that you are still capable of such a reaction is cause for chagrin indeed, your ideals being what they are. The fact is, life is a process. Self-mastery is the project. Character building is another description. Perfecting is the ultimate goal.

What is the value of knowing these things about yourself? What you accomplish by learning how to overcome the animal nature, learning how to be the master of all you are through the Indwelling Spirit. The giving over of that which you were and allowing yourself to become more than you were, is the process that will allow you to ascend. Through sincerity, more sincerity and more sincerity, and by making decisions and more decisions and more decisions eventually you will master your reactions.

If you understand your fellows you will eventually fall in love with them, and so it may be necessary for you to look for love in some very strange places so that you will be able to bring love to your self and teach appropriate self love, self respect, to others who also have need to learn the mastery of the self, the lesser self, the animal nature, curtailing the spirit poisons and grasping faith.

Never be ashamed to run for cover into the Father's arms, the Mother's lap. Never regret your childlike nature that would seek their comfort and counsel, for therein is the power to bring you up to spiritual adulthood and to ultimate perfection on behalf of all that is true and beautiful and good. (Pause) You gave me a lot to talk about, Sivad.

Sivad: Thank you for your encouragement. I also want to thank you for something you said a couple of weeks ago. (Indistinguishable)

TOMAS: Unfortunately, your human reactions -- not only yours, my friend, but All of yours -- are so defensive that you are reluctant to expose that more tender and part of you that you feel is most vulnerable but which is actually your strongest part. You are self-conscious of your relationship with Our Father. You are aware of each other and aware that each other is aware of you and yet you have not brought out this understanding into your socialization practices such that you are more confident of the reality of God in your life than the inexperience which would allow you to lapse into mere social form.

I thus encourage you all to continue to find the divine within yourself, within the citadel of the spirit, and permit yourselves to be in light and life as you pass by, accepting that being in a state of light and life is not a superior stance but one of wholeness and embracing.

I am going, also. We are having a wonderful time of it. There are many observers and we want to thank you all for your investment in this most unusual unfurling of a reality which would be your soft slippers if you were anywhere else but Urantia. So let me then just embrace you each one more time before I sign off. Go in peace. Father's love upon you all. Farewell.

TOMAS: The circuits are clear; we may proceed. Good evening, my friends. I am Tomas, your Teacher. How are you all this evening?

TOMAS: We proceed in good faith. Your initial reading from the text is always stimulative if those circuits which give rise to a recognition of your association with divinity and thus we are more a part of your frame of reference. It would seem, based upon your reading and upon our e-mail inquiry, that our subject this evening again is relating to comparisons of paradox and irony. I will give you the floor, Thoroah, to put the discourse on the record.

"Tomas, some time back you invited me to 'sit beside you and contemplate together' the meaning and relation of paradox and irony. I wanted to let you know that I have enjoyed the fruits of your invitation and would offer you my thoughts and await your comments. I have observed that when the infinite finds conceptual expression in the realm of the finite, it always wears the clothing of paradox, whereas its concrete action on the mortal stage abounds with irony. In this manner they appear related much as the concept of philosophy and the action of religion.

"Was it not the Master himself who spoke in parables often wrapped in paradox, and when we beheld the concrete illustration of his teaching, it appeared as irony? Consider his statement that 'we must lose our life in order to gain it' and 'the last is first and the first is last' in the context of the meal with prominent Pharisees where Jesus was met with the adoring gratitude of Mary Magdalene.

Was not Mary one who had lost her life in this world as far as Jesus' hosts at dinner were concerned, and yet she was the very one who came nearest to the Master with her humility and adoring appreciation of the mercy and love exhibited in his teaching and countenance while those who would have been expected to appreciate his teaching most were furthest from him? And again, was not the blind man healed of his affliction among the very least in all the land, but his testimony all but challenged the most august of ecclesiastical bodies with his simple eloquence and wit such that they began to feel uncomfortable with the truth he so dramatically proclaimed?

I am not unaware of the pejorative meaning of irony linking it to insincerity as used by the Midwayers in their composition of the narrative of Jesus' life and teaching when describing the comment of Pilate when he said to Jesus, "What is truth?", as well as the various meanings of irony employed in drama and literature, but what I witness in my own experience and that of others is that this meaning is becoming transformed along with the life of our world to where it is often observed that when we behold the upending of the expected order by the unexpected manifestation of the 'superior' often within the form of the 'inferior', we say "How ironic!", not to mock the good and true, but to recognize that God may actually be jesting with our settled presumptions of the same in a loving manner?

Following a different tack, I wish you to know how much I have treasured our sessions together with Gerdean and Thoroah as well as others even if I have known you but briefly, and the thought of your departure along with them has me grieving as I will miss you immensely. Even though I know you may visit from time to time and whisper words of encouragement and counsel, the opportunity for nurturing cosmic friendship within the context of these meetings is one that I can only replace by drawing ever closer to Father.

TOMAS: Thank you, Thoroah, and thank you, Sivad, for your further commentary and study on this most intriguing topic. It is a study indeed in relativity.

Your views reveal the eye of the beholder, and therein is the greatest irony, perhaps, that you who can see can see also those that do not. The light side would be along the lines of the remark overheard by Thoroah recently wherein he indicated that the only thing necessary was to turn life inside out. All of this has to do with perception, and those of you who have been born of the spirit have a new perception indeed.

The experience of life gives rise to many paradoxical situations even among those who are born of the spirit, in order to further your experiential wisdom, and also in order for you to be an inspiration to others as to how you might endure the irony of the moment.

The experiences, such as are indicated from your reading on page 51 about the inevitabilities of life, learning experiential lessons of value to increase your appreciation of the attributes of God so as to embrace them as your own, is an on-going process. The levels, however, of appreciation for these attainment levels vary according to your commitment to your spiritual path and your ability to withstand the growth experience itself. This is the qualifier whereby many give up the struggle, for they cannot see the love and mercy of God in the seemingly unfair circumstances of experiential life.

Be assured, however, that it is not the Father's sense of humor that enjoys observing you struggle with your growth. Indeed is He in your comer and in support of your on-going decisions with the caring of the supernal being that He is. It is only the lesser being who finds humor in the foibles and failings of its fellows.

Thoroah: What about when we find humor sincerely in our own failings? Being able to love ourselves enough to find some humor?

TOMAS: For you are the one who has the authority to reveal to yourself with affection your own stumbling blocks en route to your recognition of your own growth, and when your experience is expressed and appreciated by others, in mirth, then, you have rejoiced in kind. This is healthy. It is a result of your acquiescing to an appreciation of the relativity of your perfection.

It is not, obviously, gracious to laugh at others' difficulties, even though it is common practice to do so. Slapstick comedy is well loved by many, and it is an art form that pokes fun at the human condition, and so there are occasions of enjoying the universality of humanity, enabling you to find humor in your collective condition, in order to appreciate your commonality with humanity, not your superiority over them.

My friend, I would like to remark for a moment regarding your most touching sentiments having to do with our association and the very valuable testimony of the experience of hearing the Teacher or interacting with the Teacher as compared to reading words provided by and through a Teacher. Your emotional content is a supreme example of how it is that our relationship is personal, and I, too, will miss your immediacy and occasional social contact.

Your appetite has been whet, as they say, and I am also, in part, reluctant to vacate this Teacher Base which we have so firmly established here. Were you or anyone inclined to open your own circuitry to my existence, my presence, I would be more than glad to befriend you in this fashion through yourself or through another. I do not belong to Gerdean. I utilize her because she is willing to accommodate me and we work well together, but I am not exclusively attached to her and am most interested in remaining in contact with those individuals that I have had the pleasure and privilege to become acquainted with and to know and love and teach and befriend in my sojourn here in this capacity as your Teacher.

It is my supreme pleasure to allow that there are other Teachers in this quadrant, and there are many, many Teachers in the wings, as it were, awaiting the opportunity to come on-line and teach in just this fashion. Remember the notation that love is the benign virus? Well, the fact of these transmissions, these visitations, is a loving gift to Urantia from Michael, thus we are a part of this benign virus and so I will, in good humor, state/aver that we are also contagious! And as you have been exposed to us, you might just come down with something and begin to feel the effects of the contact.

I thus invite you, Sivad, to embellish your skills in Stillness and sense my presence, for I will come to you when you invite me, and as you become willing to take the leap of faith, I will be happy to be with you and speak through you and teach through you as I know you would enjoy and benefit from. In any case, I am not far from you. I embrace you. I look forward to all of our meetings throughout eternity, in any capacity that we see fit.

It is a delightful irony that this evening we are also gifted by a visit from Tom. You gentlemen met at a meeting before, and so it feels like a familiar configuration. How are you, Tom?

Tom: Very good. It's always a pleasure to be here and to talk to you. It's very enlightening.

TOMAS: I share the pleasure, I assure you. We have been diligent in making these in-roads and you have been loyal to the promptings of your Indwelling Adjuster that would seek out spiritual companionship in order to further and foster your own appreciation of your own connection to divinity. It is appreciated and understood that you have also had meaningful contact with your personal guides and helpers. All of the cosmic neighborhood conspires to bring you up into an awareness of a greater reality than the mere fact of the flesh and the material existence. Thus you are enriched, as are we, by the association. Have you any questions?

Tom: No, I'm just getting a great deal from your teachings, and . .. I was wondering-- Earlier you were speaking about inferiority and superiority.

Tom: And some people can feel inferior to others and yet superior and it just seems that in the case . .. whatever one's feelings is, one can feel two different ways about the same person, and I was wondering -- Who makes the final determination as to who is inferior and who is superior and what qualities make up that.?

TOMAS: Indeed, a good question. In the first place, it is essential to realize that these words in themselves are only human words reflecting concepts and the concepts are going to vary from individual to individual, but in the spirit realms the understanding of superiority and inferiority are altogether different than that which is understood by the human. In the human understanding, the common connotation for superior and inferior is a value judgment that often seeks to attain the upper hand, and the human ego is good at elevating itself to positions of superiority that it might find itself comfortable in its skin, not caring what effect that attitude might have on others.

In a spiritual being, including your more spiritually inclined brethren, you will not find this callous judgment, for we know that we are equal in the eyes of the Father. The Father loves all of His children the same. Even so, in terms of the organization of the universes of time and space, there are beings who can be considered superior in and through the nature of their perfection. And even in the lowly mortal, which is inferior by comparison in terms of perfection attainment, the individual may essay within himself and judge himself to be superior or inferior to others by and through a comparative analysis.

The habit of comparing yourself with others is one which you share with all of humanity and it is to a great degree an unfortunate habit/tendency, for it looks to others outside of yourself, other imperfect beings, as a guideline or an example of how you want to be or don't want to be. And although this may give you some indication of how you would like to be, or how you don't want to be, you need to find out for yourself and through your own experience how you can be the best you can be in and through your association with divinity.

Again we return to the Source -- the Source of your being, the Source of our being -- that which created us and knows our destiny. The Father knows you and knows your potential. There is a plan for you, a particular and specific and detailed and delightful, challenging and replete plan for your development, happiness and perfection attainment, and if you look to Him for guidance and direction, you will find your way home untroubled by the many primrose paths you might wander down in search of your Self indefinitely if you look to other human beings for the Source of who you are.

When you know who you are through your relationship with God, with that Fragment of God who resides within your very soul, you will no longer find value or threat to those degrees of existence designated superior and inferior for you will know who you are and where you stand in the scheme of things, in the greater universe. I am more experienced than you; I am not superior to you, however, except as you allow me the respect given to one who has superior knowledge by and through extensive experience, you see. Nor do I look upon you as inferior because you have not had yet the opportunity to experience your full life as well as the tremendous experience of translating from the flesh to the mansion world existence and proceeding through those levels of worth to attain the education, experience, empathy, et cetera that you will. I merely regard you as less experienced.

And so in the appreciation of your vocabulary, look to see who is defining the terms, and consider the source. The Source, as you already well know, is the Father -- the First Source and Center. If your peers are coming from the point of perfection, then you might hear their assessments in good grace, but if their source is their own voice seeking ego gratification and the like, disregard the attitude, for it will only bring ill will and you don't need it. None of your children need any more ill will than is yours by virtue of your nativity here, so don't cultivate the values of your unenlightened brethren.

That's easy for me to say, huh? It will be easy for you, too, my friend, when you have walked a little farther along the path. Father has brought you here. He has introduced you to me and to many wonderful personalities. Indeed, throughout your life you have had meaningful and warm experiences with others. Those are the one-on-one experiences and values that enrich your life. Find strength in those kinds of value associations and disregard the rest. As you can be of service, you will be guided and led, and you may well be a part of a paradox that will enlighten someone as to your true beauty and value as a son of God.

I did not come in this evening with a lesson, but I did want to say something. One thing. And that is how much I appreciate your conscientiousness in attempting to live up to our commitment of gathering together in the Father's name to become one with Him and with each other. Your simple obedience to this Teacher Base and to your own spiritual development is more than endearing. It is essential, and I wanted to commend you for your loyalty to your goals and ours -- that being, the extended, expanded family of man. Thank you for coming.

TOMAS: I am indeed a reality in your lives and I am glad to see how much you have grown and benefited from the association and the encouragement. I am not alone. I am flanked, as you surely appreciate, by other valuable workers in the field The fact of our friendship with you, the growing awareness of our existence and the slow, steady assimilation of those simple faith lessons that we encourage you to endure, are giving rise to a great light.

VISITOR: Good evening, my friends, I am a Teacher. I am a feminine presence. I am unable to convey my name to you but it matters not to me if you appreciate my inexperience and delight to be in your presence. It is a joyous opportunity to have the occasion to practice my approach to you through this vessel in this way. I am a proposed group teacher but I need a group and I am working on having one in your vicinity, but closer to central New York.

My friends, it takes time for these platforms to become existent. It is an enterprise we engage in with you and through your cooperation. There is a plan. There is a picture of the map of the United States with three concentric circles earmarked where you are having Journals sent out. This is a picture I have borrowed from the mind of this transmitter, but it is illustrative of how it is that we will have Teacher Bases located throughout your country and eventually throughout the world The fact of the existence of the Teacher Bases that are in existence already is a mere drop in the bucket and it is because of certain forward-thinking individuals who have allowed in faith for these relationships between the Teachers and the students to become a reality. But we are not finished, and I will tell you that while you are growing in numbers, you have yet to attain (as an evolving wave of people,) you have yet to attain the next plateau which will then attend the next ripple.

Let us say that you are the first circle. The next circle will come in a bit of a wave over a period of time and then there will be another. This ripple effect is appropriate and it allows for growth in a gracious and timely fashion. Those of you who worry about over-rapid growth in this movement need not worry, for you are not alone, remember? The heavenly helpers have arrived and we are indeed encouraging you to step forward. Those who do are embraced and put to work. Those who want to wait awhile before they embark, are given time. There are college educations to attain, families to raise, retirement programs to mature and many things that are a part of your valuable and wonderful lives that preclude you from becoming actively engaged in such a program as the Teachers have embarked upon.

But there will be more when these goals have been met, and when the spiritual hunger has risen to a loud acclaim. In the meantime, we are busy working -- working with each other in terms of better ways in which to affect a change in your system that will allow for you to be responsive to spirit guidance and directives. We are busy in the healing fields and busy indeed are the angels and midwayers and others who have come to focus our energies on embracing this beloved waif of a world which has become wrapped in the arms of the Infinite Spirit and the Universal Father.

Be of good cheer, and do your deeds without fear. No one is inferior or superior. All is in accordance with divine order. Attend to your own destiny path and when you embark upon it, recognize you will be enabled to continue one step at a time, bit by bit, until you find yourself facing the next great gift.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to approach you and to practice this process. The experience of greeting you is an unspeakable pleasure and yet you may be assured I will speak of it with my peers and we will discuss what impressions we have of you and what we observe of your impressions of us, not to compare but to savor that we are kindred in the Father's family and getting to know you better is indeed my chief delight. Again, thank you, and good evening.

TOMAS: I am Tomas once again and I am now ready to stretch and exercise myself as I am certain you are also. It is a valuable experience to come together and conjoin with one another this way, to appreciate the fellowship and pause in it all to give thanks, to acknowledge the Creator and His gift of life to us.

TOMAS: It is also advantageous when we have the good sense to know when it is time to put our energies and efforts into service fields for others and for ourselves, and so I will leave you now to go to be of service to yourselves and to your fellows. Until we speak again. Farewell.

TOMAS: We are gathered here this evening en masse in a manner of sharing with you your experience with us and with this process of aspiring toward perfection, of attempting to do The Father's will in our lives, in expressing Him and His nature in our very being.

We were prepared to entertain and regale Tom with a lesson, but he is not here to enjoy it, and so, with your permission, I will defer that discussion until another more appropriate time while I take up with the agreement of my associates, invisible to you, the discussion you were having about Cymboyton and his amphitheater of religious/spiritual discussions in the days of old and how it is the modus operand! Of your immediate peers in your service project.

What is keynote for my discussion is the area of ideal, that pinnacle of perfection which would appoint everyone as being dependant on The Father to such an extent that any differences would not be sensible.

Let me point out how difficult for an Urmian school to succeed for Urantians today. You are culturally, still, very competitive and personally defensive, and thus offensive. As you attain to the understanding that when you, in liaison with your Indwelling Spirit, have ceased to do battle with your environment and when all of your neighbors have likewise begun to find reality centered in the infinite I AM, the expressions of the differences between you are recognized as differences of Father's many-faceted reality, and so each viewpoint is found to be interesting, impressive, amusing, insightful, endearing and any number of valuable expressions of integrity, which is different than the format of debate or education.

The educations which were gotten from the Urmian school were gotten because the listeners were fed, and they had the option to absorb or refuse any information which came their way without assault, objection, praise or feed-back of a nature to infer undue influence over the uneducated.

It is difficult to be an effective teacher. An effective teacher is careful not to talk down to his students, but rather to convey the information that will allow the student to express himself where he is, which is where the teacher has met him, and together they can ascend through the endearing relationship of student and teacher which incorporates the universal truth that the teacher is also the student and the student is also the teacher.

This mutual self respect creates an atmosphere of spiritual fragrance. These discussions, then, are a manner of acceptance, and if there are portions unacceptable to your mind, rather than reject it wholesale, allow it to remain tethered to a file in the back corner of your mind so that one day you may use it in your methods of teaching and preaching and in the process you will have manifested its value, thereby incorporating even that which you found objection to, into truth, beauty and goodness.

It goes beyond but does include forgiving tolerance. In the ideal and when we reach this pinnacle of attainment, for you individually or as groups or as nations or as a globe, you will know peace. You will have ceased to argue reality for reality will have become part of you and each other. And yet, while we aspire to attain that eventual evolutionary plane, we begin to practice the art of discussion and we have the Morontia Companions to thank, in great part, for the developmental work they do with the pilgrims, when they attempt to learn the art of living in conjunction with the morontia way of life, the morontia thought attainable by those who experience a degree of light and life in their human existence.

It is always a great adventure for me to attempt to assimilate all of the incredible history of your planet and incorporate as well its intended outcome/goal and appreciate the level of development you are at now. As you can put into perspective where you have come from, as compared to where you are going, it rounds out your current existence in such a way as to be able to more readily accept the status of things at hand and, as well, give you some definitive point upon which to focus as an area in which you might be effective as a contributor to the advancement of your world.

There is certainly much to be done, and in a manner of speaking, an individual could be bowled over by the immensity of all that will be necessary in order to bring about world peace and eventual light and life, but despair not. It is possible for you to find your own tether and grasp it so firmly that you will follow your footpath wherever it takes you, no matter what is happening to your right, to your left, behind you or in front of you, for you will be so secure in knowing that you are thoroughly, conscientiously in His care.

I have now concluded my "lecture" and am assuming a more reposeful position. You may now envision that I am draped in my chair and am eager for discussion. Is there anything you would like to discuss, my friend?

Thoroah: I have some questions about the Urmian system. In the process of these presentations, as the teacher presented and the students listened, and then one of the students ended up coming up and being a teacher and so on, as that went on, was there someone who " decided what could be said and not be said? Or was this all handled by the social consciousness of the setting?

TOMAS: There was a reputation about the place based upon the way it was managed, but across the board it was very much as if you and Al, Steve, Rick, Calvin and Marty were in a room. One of you might have some commentary about something that interests you, and it might be Edsel automobiles and the spiritual effects of such an invention, while Rick opted to discuss musical instruments and how the tonal qualities of the strings versus the reeds reflected value to Paradise as compared to hell.

You might think that one of your brother's philosophy was all wet. In the structure of the Urmian schools these discussions would take place and at another time there was opportunity for discussion. Let's say you fellows retired to the pool room and were kicking around each other's lectures. You in your culture today might laugh and slap each other on the back and josh your way around saying that you think their philosophy is all wet, or you might conjoin in the bar room and get more physical about your differences.

But under the terms of the School, these discussions and debates were also held in enough of a formal fashion that such behaviors were not wanted, therefore not endured. The debates were controlled discussions and they did not get out of hand or they were interrupted when they reached that point and admonished to begin again. It is the formal factor that allows for such composure, such disciplined attempts at communication. An informal method, such as in the pool room or in the bar room, are less formal and therefore more common in your culture. Thus the difference. Have I been clear?

Thoroah: Yes, and it would seem to me that you mentioned that if something did get out of hand, or became distasteful for the status quo, basically the audience, the crowd, the people would put a stop to it just because they weren't going to accept it?

TOMAS: The people who were listening would certainly support the civility of the environment, but this was the way it functioned after having been established with certain guidelines. Let's take the example of a men's club in -- What shall we say? -- England, 150 years ago. There were certain decorum’s that were culturally required and it would have been regarded as gouache to break away from the traditions of this gentlemen's exclusive club, thus culturally it would not be tolerated.

Let me point out also the Presidential debates that some of you enjoy, and indicate that the format is understood by everyone who approaches this quorum. There is a certain amount of time and there is a great deal of tolerance allowing each to express himself fully and effectively (if possible). At least everyone has an opportunity to have their say.

A discussion, now, is a different social matter than a debate, and even in social circumstances, discussions are art forms. The School was about religion and Jesus was invited to participate. Imagine how Jesus conducted himself and how the students must have responded to his impeccable teaching methods.

I can anticipate that it would have been a coveted position to find yourself in a discussion with the Master, one which would make a lasting impression, certainly, but if there are 35 students in the room and each wanted to have a discussion with the Master, then it would be poor form for the first questioner to usurp all the time from the others. And yet, if our masterful Teacher were speaking to one person, but speaking all the while with everyone there, everyone there, then, would feel they had been personally addressed by the master Teacher himself.

It is not every teacher who can master himself sufficiently in order to address the entire congregation in such a personal and compelling manner as did The Master. But it is something we aspire to attain, even so.

Thoroah: That brings up two questions. Maybe it's more of a comment with a question mark. I think that you have been teaching -- for the past eight months that I've been here with you -- you've been teaching us the importance of sociability, you've been teaching us the importance of simplicity, directness, sincerity in conversation, being real in our conversations, and I can see now that that is what you were talking about in this debate form, and your analogy of a bunch of us guys, we know each other, sitting around and totally loving and respecting each other and saying, "Have you ever thought about it like this?" It's a very nice, sincere sharing, so you have to come from a very sincere place; that you just want to share this with somebody.

TOMAS: This is what makes it ^“religious". It is high ideal for you. It is sincere because you believe it. It is worthy of your worship.

Thoroah: It's different in a discussion, too, because what this Urmian form, you don't have an opportunity in a discussion where somebody says something and it triggers a whole bunch of thoughts in your mind and all of a sudden you're already preparing what it is that you want to say instead of listening to what was said, and so in the Urmian fashion, you basically had to listen because the chance to interject wasn't there and so that made for a chance for communications to be a lot better.

TOMAS: It is a grief that you cannot realize that when this happens in your discourses with people, it is because you are being stimulated. You may be being stimulated in any direction, but you are reacting to a stimulus. If you do not react to the stimuli, but respond to the entire presentation, allowing yourself to see beyond the obvious to what is being said through the Spirit, then your perspective is different and your response will be deeper, more connected to your spiritual reality rather than, as they say, off the top of your head or by the seat of your pants.

And in your society today you are all by and large in such a hurry to be glib and in such defense of your cherished opinions, you are pointedly obnoxious in your attempts to socialize your beliefs therefore your value.

TOMAS: You are not even aware of it, in the main. And yet, it is to your credit that when you do become aware of it, you make a correction in total. It is wonderful to see you all grow so well in the spirit. You are so dear to us.

Thoroah: Thank you. You've become very dear to me. I know that you've been dear to Gerdean for a long time, but I feel -- all of you -- I can almost see all of you sitting in the amphitheater as we started this meeting so I sense the presence of everyone, but it's just become so real and special. There's a fire burning in me about it that I want to do the right thing with this because I do want to share it. It is really wonderful.

TOMAS: Indeed, it is wonderful to be able to commune with that which is value and that which has value to you. That is what you wish to share with others and it is particularly wonderful when it is Your Father's and He is the ultimate Donor and Giver, and thus it is He who is responsible for all good.

Thoroah: On the manner in which Jesus, Michael, spoke -- spoke to one person when speaking to a group. I got a real excited feeling about that because that was one of the things that I learned in my broadcasting. I had a good mentor. Thank you all who arranged that. And one of the first things he taught me was that when you are talking on the radio you are talking to one person. And so that's part of my consciousness already. When I'm trying to communicate I do try to write to one person because I know the effect of that. So I feel like I have a tool to work with already.

And I know you do that, Tomas. I hear you, when we're in meetings, say there’s six or seven of us around and you're talking, and I feel like you are talking to me. And when you get done with the meeting you find out that everybody there felt like you were talking to them! And so that ability, you have a real grasp on.

TOMAS: This is an expression of truth. Truth is universal. If I am speaking to your Thought Adjuster (as we say), if I am speaking to the God part of you, your divine nature, I am saying the same things and being understood in the same way as if I were addressing any of the other Thought Adjusters of any of the other individuals in the room.

TOMAS: It doesn't change from one person to the other. God is no respecter of persons. It is true, too, however, that it is necessary for the teacher to respect the personality of man.

TOMAS: There will be false prophets among you, and I do hope we have all reiterated to you sufficiently that you believe this in your heart and in your mind, that should anything fall upon your ears which is inimical to the truth as you understand it, that you not release it into yourself without examination.

Thoroah: Keep it in the corner a little bit like you said before, too. Give it that chance to ruminate...

Thoroah: Yeah, if it's the truth it will last until the next time you check it.

Thoroah: Yeah, we are very defensive. We gotta shoot, our mouth off, -- let everybody know what we think we know, and I guess some of my activity on the e-mail lists . .. I found myself criticizing what other people were doing, but I was doing the same thing. It was a place to express yourself; that's what it really was, and to deny that it isn't is kind of phony… and I guess I just wanted to back off of trying to broadcast my opinions for awhile because that's what it seemed to be getting down to is just a comparison of opinions instead of an exchange of ideas.

TOMAS: I see you have bridged the gap quite well. It is wonderful to be able to touch people through words and expressions of an artistic nature, but it is also a value when you have such physical proximity which allows you to feel each other and learn to respond to each other in these deeper ways which result from intelligent, mature, spiritual discussions as compared to clever or patterned responses to stimuli.

In due time, you will meet all your Urantia fellow sojourners -- all the ones who have become meaningful to you will be advancing with you throughout eternity. The arts of scientific and spiritual and other kinds of attainments will be your blessing for eternity, and so have patience with yourselves when you find yourselves coming up with clever retorts and questionable humor, because you are still in the process of weaning yourselves from that which you have known all your life. While you learn to love yourself, you will want to be better to and for yourself for you know that you are a reflection, now, of that Who has created you.

Well, children, perhaps we should tune out this evening and get some rest. You have been working long hours and you need to eat and rest. We thank you for the opportunity to spend time with you this evening and to once again find value in this operation of teaching you to be fishers of men. Farewell.

TOMAS: I must say there is a mild degree of interference here in your environment. It is not unsurpassable, however, and so let us forge into our evening's session, our precious time together, and assume that any lag on your transmitter/receiver will be overcome.

But your computer humming in the near distance gives rise to what we refer to as the silence, the stillness. The stillness is a relative condition, as is the silence, for our universe is humming with activity and it is literal that silence is deafening. There are many circuits on-line throughout your local universe, even Urantia, which will give life to your systems, and although your ear cannot hear, yet and still are they in operation, humming as we speak.

The busy-ness of the universe is, of course, an activity of which you have little knowledge. Even in your studies of how our Upholder lays out the scheme of things, applying His energies and powers, infinitely throughout eternity, you are unaware of most of these activities and rightfully take them for granted. They are part of the life support system for your life form.

But those circuits which are actuated by personality and for personality are yet another thing indeed, and it is across these kinds of circuits that you and we make contact. Personality circuits thus are vastly different than energy circuits. Energy circuits are, in the main, subservient to personality circuits, although personality and energy are both bestowals from Paradise.

When you speak of your spiritual experience in terms of energy, it is your awareness of your actuality in the universe that you refer to, whereas when you discuss relationship, when you meet personalities and engage in discourse with them, meaningful discourse, you have bridged another wholesome gap in reaching for duality in balance that will result in your fusion.

It is a very fine line for the human being to determine the relative degrees of personality manifestation with each other. Some may have very high energy and some may have very vital personalities. When these people who have energy and personality function, it is with a great deal of intensity. You become your own power centers. You turn on the light for the entire city block, for those who respect personality as well as those who honor energy, are instantly swept into your energy field.

An appreciation for personality and energy, as separate yet entwined, is a bit like looking at religion and science, weaving their way together. One is whole unto itself, as is the other. And yet when they are woven together, interchangeably compatible, they innately have an expansion of power. There are many facets to this business of circuitry and I would likely not have brought it up except for the fact that you are meeting here in your office and the hum of office equipment is a reminder that the hum of electricity, although you are electro-chemical creatures, is not essentially spirit, but both spiritual energy and electrical energy affect you and your system, and each has an independent impact upon your personality.

We have a number of visitors here this evening, not the least of which are Sivad and Tom, in the spirit, and others attached to your energy base here and many attached to my base, as well. We thus interchange our values one with the other and create a greater power, lighting up a city block.

Your minds have been pre-occupied with your interests in your service through your destiny paths, and so you have not sought learning but the experience itself, and so I can find no fault with your procedures. Indeed, you are living the life and planting seeds as you pass by, which is what we have come to teach you to do. When you work in the field, when you encounter a situation and you would like to discuss it with your Teachers as an example in a field trip situation, feel free to do so. Have you any questions this evening?

Thoroah: My mind is whirring around, Tomas, trying to land on something that might be relevant and useful. If I could have a moment. There are so many things that have been going on since you last paid us a visit and, as you mentioned learning while we work, the learning process sometimes just almost feels overwhelming, although I'm learning to try to deal with that . .. quicker, and take these spurts of learning and accept them and go forward, but they are . .. they are thrilling. All the time, they are thrilling. I just don't know exactly where to focus right now.

Gerdean: I have a question for Tomas that I gleaned a week or so ago. Thoroah and I just read from page 2014 and 2015 of the text in the paper The Time of the Tomb, under the section During the Sabbath Day, beginning with “We are not able fully to explain . .." - that paragraph. And the question is: When Jesus said goodbye to his spirit, he said, "Unto your hands I commend my spirit." They, the midwayers, discussed not knowing exactly what he was giving up. Could you discuss this or elaborate on this a little bit, Tomas?

TOMAS: When have I not been eager to discuss anything with you that you have brought to my attention? Almost always. And thus I would be happy to discuss this with you, but since you don't pose to me a question, I will not respond as if you had, but rather I will ask you, Gerdean, why do you ask?

Gerdean: Maybe because I'm a mortal and I was thinking the other day about my ego identity, my personality. You discussed personality earlier. I can see being on my death bed and saying, "Father, unto your hands I commend my spirit," and I see why the midwayers would focus on spirit, but I also, as a human, am very tenderly attached to my existence here. I would cease to exist as a human being.

I would somehow want what I had contributed, or become, or experienced, or grappled with, to be made honorable somehow. I suppose that goes into the great beyond with me, as my value, but it's in a different state. It's no longer in the human state. Somehow the human has an identity separate and different from the morontia reality. It has to, because in the morontia worlds we don't have the same concerns.

I've seen people who have died or committed suicide or had not made what I would consider ANY decisions as to their spiritual destiny, but I realize that much of their good is assimilated into the Evolving Supreme somehow. That when the person ceases to exist, their good stuff is somehow made part of the Evolving Supreme. Maybe just because of the human no longer existing. My perception on that can be completely in error, because I'm looking at it from my human mind.

But I was kind of feeling like Jesus the other day. Ha. For some reason, and lamenting the potential loss of my self. In a context that I can't even put my finger on. And I didn't think you were going to ask me to say WHY I wanted to know. I don't know that I'd thought it all the way through as to why I wanted to know. I wanted you to fix it for me. So, I asked you to discuss it.

TOMAS: Yes, now we have something to discuss. And, yes, I can identify with what you are expressing, daughter, because I, too, was mortal and at one point faced that precise moment you speak of, and indeed it is a letting go of what was a viable reality and which will be no more. You are correct. And your sense of grieving your own passing is to your credit, child, for it indicates you have learned to love yourself. You have accepted your humanness and find it of value.

It is my contention that it must have been that Jesus felt that same longing, even though his life, like yours, was not entirely a bed of roses, and moments exist which present humiliation and pain, but still the miracle of experiencing life is worthy of noting its passage. Now rise up and fear not, but rejoice in the day the Lord has made. Be glad in it and give fragrance to it.

Thoroah: Tomas, I had a question. I wonder if you might discuss the relative value in understanding something to the actual experiencing of the same?

TOMAS: I will go to the metaphysical appreciation of Oneness in answer to your question, for whereas nothing can take the place of experience, it is also true that many lessons can be learned through the experiences of others, if you allow for the value of their experience to become such a living and integral part of you that you have walked a mile in their moccasins.

It is thus not an intellectual undertaking, but a soul undertaking that you experience your brother's burdens. This is how Jesus does it. Or so I am inclined to believe, based upon what he has done for me and others in sharing the experience in the spirit, in the One Soul experience. Has that been helpful?

Thoroah: Yes, I think so. I would like to take it further but we need to turn the tape.

TOMAS: Very well. [Tape turned] Efficiency is indicated in your attitudes in this room as compared to your attitudes in the parlor. Interesting observation. I'm interested also in continuing our discussion and I was poised to hear what Thoroah was going to say next, and so, what is it?

Thoroah: Thank you, Tomas. On this subject of experience and understanding the relative value, the reason I ask is that I wrote down the other day that "my religion is knowing, and knowing that I know is my religious experience" and I just wrote that down for whatever reason and then explored what I had written, understanding that, yes, I have a religion, I am religious, I suppose, in my approach to knowing things. And I don't mean just facts, but there are things that come in the way of knowing that hit me like a bolt of lightning sometimes. Mini bolts. Just little bolts of lightning thank goodness, but something will be made so obvious to me that I experience it, in that sense.

It's like I DO experience it, only in a different way than maybe what I'm thinking the experience has to be. You talked about before, as we grow, our troubles will not go away but our troubles might not be as trepidatious as we grow, and that's why I asked. I have these things that happen in my mind, it seems, that seem to effect my whole being.

TOMAS: Indeed, you are experiencing revelation, and in-as-much as you are a professed religionist and a religionist actually, your knowledge is beyond the academic, but is the intrinsic, the existential. You know that you know, and thus you experience that reality which is your spiritual experience. Your jottings are indicative of one who has given himself over to the leadings of divinity, for one to say "my religion is knowledge" could readily be misconstrued to mean "book lore" or material knowledge, but your apparent appreciation for the morontial interpretation of "knowing" aligns you with the true religionist.

When we discuss it, we discuss the reality of the individual as often separate from what it's belief system is, or what it's behavior patterns are; therefore, the tendency to pigeon-hole personalities by their creed or race or occupation is erroneous, for you are not always what you do. Experience of this sort, Thoroah, is existential, in-as-much as it is a contact of a sort with another reality, a greater reality than the material mind mold will allow.

You are seeing with eyes to see, and this gives rise to a spiritual experience, augmenting who you are and what you know then becomes what you know indelibly in your soul, and that which you express to others in words as to what that meant or what that means, for when you bring your experience down into words that can be understood by the human race, you are perforce speaking in a material language and thus the interpretation becomes a critical issue.

It is also why, when you discuss what you know, it is always most effective when you LIVE what you know. For that way you have been able to side-step the quagmire of intellectualization and explanation of your experiences, for a reflection of the divine as it expresses itself through your experiences. Yes.

Thoroah: When you say 'live it" I think we all understand on one level what that means, as far as living what we know. Also, in another level of living what we know, if indeed something that you discover in the ethereal, in the dimensional quality, as being a truth, and that truth affects how you even begin to live from that point on, then it's taking part in the experience in that fashion.

TOMAS: Indeed it is, and it is affecting, then, your behavior as a result of your ethics and morals based upon your religious experience. You then begin to manifest this reality through your behaviors in your dealings with your fellows ^“as you pass by”.

TOMAS: You are welcome. It is simplified in the discussion about how it is that children learn from what their parents do, not what they say. And an astute child will know when they are being glossed over (deceived) by a parental machination. When you deal with your children in the spirit, when they present themselves to you for your 'guidance as an enlightened son of God, portray for them the highest perception of reality you are possible of conveying, because it is “feeding his sheep" affecting your very world.

Thoroah: I heard a description the other night. It might have been Machiventa, who said that Jesus walked through this life with such dignity that anyone who passed by him noticed it, and I caught just a glimpse of him walking, and that dignity was a radiation of some sort in my sight, but I felt what it might be like to, at least for that second, present oneself with that kind of dignity, that I hope that icon, that vision stays in my mind so that I can come as close as possible.

TOMAS: I would like to see you grow into your shoes also, my son, and with this fleeting vision of how the Master portrayed himself as an inspiration, trust that his work with you will enable you to find in him an example you can live up to. You are not a Creator Son, perhaps, but you are a son none-the-less, and ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ IF it is the Father that you are reflecting.

It is possible for you to live up to your own goal here, and it is by such fleeting glimpses of inspiration that you continue to strive and aspire to be more godlike. Where do you think this comes from? It comes from your Indwelling Adjuster seeking oneness with your personality.

We care deeply for each of you and all of you, and see your struggles in growing and are inspired by your tenacity to the Father. It is amusing and endearing and ennobling observing you.

Thoroah: Thank you. Sometimes it's difficult to know what we have earned and sometimes I just try not to even worry about what I've earned.

Thoroah: I think so. That's something else I just discovered, Tomas. In the human language, when I affirm something, I say, “I think so!” But in some people's minds that might indicate that I have doubt.

TOMAS: Indeed. And yet, “I think, therefore I am.” It is, again, a reflection on what you know, how you utilize your mind, what goes on in the adjusting of your thoughts. “I know that I know.” I think.

TOMAS: I feel enlivened and invigorated and I feel that you each have relieved yourselves of a burden of some sort, and it may have only to do with our camaraderie and that you have relaxed in my presence, but for whatever reason, it would appear from here, your minds are at relative peace and your spirits are whole and happy. Give yourself the rest of the night off.

TOMAS: I would like to discuss with you this evening the burden of guilt. So many of you carry around a burden of guilt and this self-righteous burden is a heavy weight that disallows your full freedom in sonship. Guilt is something you have assumed. You have taken it upon yourself. You have consciously allowed yourself to be less than you can be. Why is that? It is because of expectations. And ideals. And your inability to live up to your own ideals. And so you have guilt, and you carry this burden of guilt as if it were a cross to bear, heavy beams that are truly no more than a mote in your eye of perception.

Understand that you are accustomed to feeling guilt. It is a part of your culture. It is a deep part of your religious heritage. And of your parental influence and social influence. Even in your relationships with your peers today. It will require enlightened honesty to get past guilt. And let me exercise [sic] you in this way:

If you have had (and who of you has not?) an opportunity to say of another who has wronged you or who has been accused of a wrong, "Father, forgive him, he knows not what he does." Understanding the true depth of that perception, can you not also turn that view toward yourself and say, "Father, forgive me, I know not what I do"? For if you knew -- if you truly knew -- you would be prompted to act upon your light of truth.

Something then is blocking you from the sunlight of the spirit. A belief, perhaps, that you could be perfect or more perfect if you were just to try harder, and in your trying harder to please Him, in yearning for His approval, you pile expectations upon yourself beyond your capacity.

A pint cannot hold a quart. It is for this reason you are referenced as tadpoles. With each new cycle of growth, the egg gives rise to the tadpole, gives rise to the frog, gives rise to the egg, and always do you come around to the realization of your appropriate sense of smallness. In this humble place you know that you are loved by God not by what you have accomplished, but because you are. You are His.

In this loving acknowledgement of the mercy of the Father of all, we turn in gratitude, in praise, and seek to become a frog, to grow up, to be able to do great works, make great noises on behalf of our Creator, sing anthems of glory. Praise God! Release guilt, that you carry for yourself and release it from the shoulders of your brethren. It is no longer necessary that you shelter one another beneath that yoke. It has been lifted by the Light. Rejoice in the Light.

Thoroah: Well perhaps not coincidentally, in my stillness awhile ago, I observed a trait that I have, and I felt myself criticizing myself for the trait. And then a large voice somewhere deep within (probably my personal teacher-said: "Why are you criticizing yourself for that?" and I realized that I have a tendency, when I discover things about myself, that I am critical, that I judge myself.

Evidently I feel guilty for these things that I do rather than observe what I'm doing and then look at what I'm doing. I judge myself just for doing them! So, knowing that, now - plus what you just said about the guilt - there is just a heavy layer upon layer of guilt that we deal with and we don't even know about it.

TOMAS: It is now on your plate to observe. It has been called out of the darkness to be looked at, studied, and understood. If you are incessantly beating yourself about the head and shoulders in guilt, it is a fair bet to say that you are projecting those feelings outward, defensively and offensively, allowing it to prevail in your relationships with others as it is with yourself. If you can learn to accept yourself, you will find it easier to accept your fellows. And when they are accepted AS THEY ARE, it is easier for them to also let go of the burden of guilt and imperfection.

Recognize it for what it is. When you hear your consciousness belittling you for not being good enough, recognize what is transpiring in yourself, and gain mastery over that which would insist that you be less than you can be. Much of your human existence is based on habit, on conditioning, and re-conditioning yourself is a process, but like the layers of the onion, in due course you have peeled away all the meat and all the membranes and gotten to the heart of the issue. It is in the heart that the seed lies.

Such freedom can be yielded in relinquishing guilt. And again, it is, except for its cultural reinforcement, an attitude you bring on yourself by accepting it (guilt) as your rightful inheritance. This is deplorable to the dignity of a faith son. Thus, shed the dead skin of useless guilt and see the coat of many colors revealed in your personality and in the personalities of your fellows.

It does not take a genius to discover that ego will cloak itself with guilt in order that it may hide under self-righteous justification for not facing up to its own potential.

Thoroah: I can see where we sometimes can take our inspirations and project them into the future and create these expectations for ourselves and we set up a way to break our own heart, instead of just taking it a step at a time.

TOMAS: It is really aligned with why we [the Teachers] are not inclined to predict. If you have tomorrow completely sewed up, where is the adventure? It is good to plan; it is good to anticipate; it is wise to be open to potential variables, so that you can weigh, with your wisdom, the wise path, based on your assessment.

If you are doing your best to be sincere in your manifestation of yourself, you will not have reason to assume any guilt. It is only one who is trying to get away with something that would have reason to entertain guilt.

Thoroah: Interesting. So there's a fine line between setting goals and setting expectations.

TOMAS: It is in your role of co-creator that you make the plans and then forget the co-Creator in your expectations. It is good to remember free will and appreciate that another's understanding of God' s will may not be your interpretation.

The higher you go in your evolution, the more you will find yourself interacting with others, and the wiser you become in your evolution, the more you will know you can depend on your fellows but you need not have expectations.

Let me help you recognize when you might be acting out on your humanly inherent guilt when you find yourself working overtime, shifting into fifth gear, when you, like "Little Black Sambo" have run around the tree so often you've turned into butter. Guilt thrives on keeping after you so that you have no rest, so that you cannot seek and attain serenity, so that you only find peace of mind when you are in Stillness and at once upon leaving Stillness you again begin to chase your tail.

It is the insidious nature of guilt to keep you stirred up, and it is a form of anxiety that must be abandoned. It is indeed self-judgment, and who gave you the authority to determine your value? Your worth? Who planted those seeds of expectation within you that tell you that no matter how hard you try, you will never measure up? Who has the right to take that away from Our Parent who loves you as you are? It is some one, some thing, other than Love, other than Truth, Beauty or Goodness.

It ought not be mistaken here that I am encouraging you - any or all of you - to become complacent and nonchalant about your reality, your relationship with divinity, your relationship with yourself, or your many relationships with the world at large. But rather to help you see how your mind works, in order that you may better know yourself and live to greater purpose, yielding for yourself more genuine happiness and manifesting more genuine reality.

Reality is not a burden nor a curse. It is an acquirement, as a result of your decisions and your growth. Until you know everything, you know not. "Father, forgive me. I know not what I do. Show me the way. Teach me. Help me. Stand beside me. Encourage me. Strengthen me. Enlighten me. Enjoy me. And love me. As I know you always have and always will." It is guilt that disallows you from knowing this feeling of affinity with Our Father.

TOMAS: I am Tomas, your teacher. Good evening. It is my pleasure to be with you, to feel your embrace, and to appreciate the avenue of communication granted us by our Creator in order that we may further our love for one another and for His creation. In this, we are indeed sharing the joys of the Kingdom and acting as Our Father would act toward us -- a considerable challenge, wouldn't you say, for such worldly and un-evolved creatures as these who aspire from the outer rims of the universe to gain the central abode of God Himself?

It is a wonder and a mystery how Our Father can be upholding all things and willing all things into being from his central Isle of Paradise, while even at the same time, indwelling the Throne of your Most High Heart. Wielding the personality of the individualized expression of divinity, is an opportunity to walk in grace, and therein are all of your ambitions and desires for personality expression made manifest. When you act in faith of Our Father's overcare, you act instinctively, spontaneously, decisively, dynamically, and in ever-present clarity. In the actual moment is experience realized.

It is good that you do not overmuch look to your future or weigh your future in terms of your past, but allow yourself to be in the time wherein you find yourself. From this instant of being, you are at once in a center of reality which at its ideal is in a heart of God, a citadel of the spirit, a safe, happy place along the journey from the moment before to the moment incoming.

What could go wrong, after all? You could make a choice involving a need to learn a fundamental spiritual truth, for you to behold your reality from yet a newer, deeper, truer, wider perspective. Has the experience in the long run revealed a truth that had previously eluded you, and which contributes to your appreciation of the deity around you, in you, and before you? Has it enabled you to know yourself better and has it contributed to your self-mastery over those things which would allow further growth.

It is therefore, even so, wise to perceive what the Spirit of Truth is conveying to you in your walk, in each moment of your life path. In each moment, then, as you consult with the Spirit of Truth, you have the consultation of Michael, who will show you the Way, and you know you can trust a Master Son who represents Our. Father in Paradise to his mortal children. What a tender, loving, merciful, caring and thoughtful universe it is. For all its power and dynamics, it teaches you gently, if you open yourself to its unfolding. Resist not. (Pause) How are you?

Thoroah: A little breathless after that. It was beautiful. I just wanted to let you know that, and I had to think back this past week, my getting knocked down with whatever one of the flu bugs that might be going around, and I had expressed this morning to a friend that it had been a blessing, and I think because of what you just said, that it's even more of a blessing. It slowed me down a little bit. Everything has been geared into a near-focus, sort of sensing of things. It's trying to get me to think closer to home; I know it's been a problem, and for about a week that's been going around and around and around in my life in some fashion. It keeps showing up.

I just read something about the Dakotas and the founding of the Dakotas and how those pioneers and whatnot were living on the barest of availabilities to fulfill their needs. Seems like everything I'm touching gets me right back down to basics and that was geared right for that. I think maybe I had to get sick in order to see the lesson. So it is a blessing.

TOMAS: It is a blessing if you allow yourself to perceive it that way. Indeed. The easier softer way. For to resist is to make it more difficult. Even to succumb to a flu is a holiday from a consciousness level that gives your system an opportunity to catch up with itself. It is again a part of the wonder and mystery of creation, to be able to observe how this spiritual choreography allows itself to be interwoven with many levels of reality.

The connectedness of it all is astounding, even to us. It is a part of overcontrol, assuring us of our rightful place in the universe. One of the gracious things about being in the moment, in your time, in synch with creation is that it is more and more apparent how the connectedness of the many levels of universe reality are reflected in your existence.

It was true of the ghost cults, the early believers and the superstitious, but it has advanced in you who perceive the light of truth in spiritual/ morontial vision. You can see God operating in your lives. It is apparent that his agents and agencies are actively involved in maintaining your world, in interacting among you and with you, in affecting the material environment, the atmosphere, the air waves, and currents and circuits of all sorts.

That you lie down for awhile and rest is not a reflection that there is no action, but that you are allowed a "time out" in order to rest while the other players in the drama of life are there frolicking in the arena in your absence, and the true dance is indicated when you rise up and the swell of the music lures you onto the floor where your partners await. A happy life, indeed!

I will not overtax you, inasmuch as it has been fruitful to be lenient in my requirements upon your time/ requests for your time. In due course and soon, it will again be busy around here, and so enjoy the lull. Good evening.

TOMAS: Good evening, children. I am Tomas, your companion and teacher, glad to be with you to share this quiet evening in repose with one another, in company also with the many visitors who always enjoy our gatherings. We have with us this evening a group of Morontia Companions and they have suggested that we entertain one another with stories about our experience so as to give your sense of spiritual striving a respite in accordance with the more passive energies of your environment.

My story, if you will, about my experience has to do with my native world, wherein I experienced the mortal life as a man of the realm. We on our world, my native sphere, had what you would call severe climate, sometimes similar to what you are experiencing. Our temperature range was rather extreme, and we were able to establish ourselves and develop ourselves as a group of people, as pioneers, by intelligently learning how to control our environment. In this way it was possible to apply ourselves in our advancement even though the climatic conditions may have been inhospitable, even uninhabitable.

Those of you who know me have some idea that I was a Cultural Anthropologist and I went into the realms of the world at large in order to observe the behaviors of the peoples inhabiting the realms outside of our structured and controlled civilization. In many ways it was similar to those of you in your culture who enjoy the risk of the conflict of man against nature, for whereas I did not hang glide or mountain climb, I did run the risk of disease and any number of other dangers, by entering into the uncontrolled environment of the rest of the world where I studied and where I would stay but where I did not live.

The conditions in these unregulated realms were, for many of us, quite an adventure, like a safari into an entirely different culture. And for good reason! Whereas we lived almost entirely enclosed in our - what you might call artificial environment," we derived great satisfaction from our soirees into the outside kingdoms. The peoples out there would not have been content in our structured civilization. They were very unruly and were disinclined to function as a team. They chose the more primitive level of tribe and clan behavior, but we were always made welcome as a curiosity and tolerated in our research, while-we were careful not to wear out our welcome and we always brought gifts.

Without going into my work experience, I would like to tell you a bit about my home life and the home life of those of us who had learned how to master our environment so that no matter what conditions were outdoors, we were protected from the severe cold of winter, the severe heat of summer, the torrential rains of spring, and the dry blasting heat of Autumn. When we set ourselves behind superimposed walls, we created our own environment and discovered leisure time to begin to pursue our more spiritual interests and the art of living, including culture and scholastic studies and art.

Your contemporaries and you have been sampling the subject of retreat centers and getaway places or community environments in which your mutual interests can be promoted and extended. We are interested in this trend for many reasons but I am personally interested in it because I can see, in many ways, that the lure of a controlled environment is what was necessary for us to launch our advanced civilization also. It was not so much that we chose to isolate ourselves from our peers, no, for we were much like them, but for the fact that we opted to commingle with kindred spirits, adventurous and striving, very much like yourselves.

We are so adaptable, we who have been fostered from the material worlds. We have made our way in, under and through such diverse environments and experiences, it is not hard for those of us who will, to find something in common with each other upon which we can continue to build and develop our options for a greater reality than the one which will give rise eventually to complacency and boredom. The adventure lure is inherent in you for a reason. It will advance you and your civilization into light and life very much as have those worlds which have already evolved to such a plateau of realization.

I have been aware that while I have been speaking, the mind of Gerdean has flashed on various movies she has seen, adventure movies involving jungles and bugs and crocodiles, and yes, Gerdean, it is as colorful as that, those areas I visited and in which I worked, but I was not the hero as depicted by your notable actor [Harrison Ford]. I was not nearly as debonair. It is possible, in fact, that those of us who were less adventurous in the flesh were rather more adventurous in the soul, and that allowed for our great expansion, while some of us were also afforded an opportunity to revisit where we came from.

And I tell you, I always marveled at the big difference between these two aspects of my native world, and I would not have changed it. It always seemed appropriate for me that I would live in the more controlled atmosphere than in the more enigmatic existence of the natives. And again, much of it was because of the climate. The idea of spending six weeks in a cave or in an igloo does nothing for me, but I can be very happy enclosed in an environment of my own creation which includes all the technology and creature comforts that I am able to acquire by my resistance to the lure of the mortal adventure as it is lived by the evolving races in these early times of development, such as you know first hand.

Getting to know each other is always an interesting part of the relationship phenomena. The saying is that ^"You cannot tell a book by its cover" and although there may be certain clues that give you a certain perception, it is also true that within each individual is a universe of uniqueness unlike any other, and inasmuch as it is the experience that we live for, the kaleidoscope of potential personality development and expression within each individual is truly incredible.

We are looking forward to your developing your communication skills such that you are able to stimulate each other' s minds and hearts beyond your conditioning and beyond your correcting and into a new range of being.

I need to learn for myself a skill or two in the art of communication with mortals, for I have been your teacher for so long, in your time frame, that our relationship is fixed, if you will, in terms of mentor and student . But there are many things to be learned in the social arena, and all of them are not administrative or exploitive. I thus can ask you to tell me about what your understanding and perception is as far as adventure is concerned, and how do you find adventure in your human experience, in your realm today?

Thoroah: Are you looking for an answer, an opinion, an expression from ourselves here? Or was that rhetorical?

TOMAS: Indeed. No, I am attempting to engage with you in an art of conversation.

TOMAS: I can elaborate to say that inasmuch as I have been your teacher and you have been the student, I can perceive that you would almost automatically ply me with further questions as to my environment and since I am not encouraging a teacher/ student rapport but an art of conversation format, I am asking for your input and suggest that you might like to think about adventure, but you are certainly free to remark about anything you like, or nothing at all.

Thoroah: All right. I think for myself there' s a sense of adventure all the time. I think I try to control my own environment, to a large degree. I could be accused of being anal sometimes because of that, but it's almost as if I put myself in a state of comfort so that I can then get itchy and recognize adventure. I must do this subconsciously because I have a history of being on the move. There are various mitigating factors in being on the move, but that is my history. I find adventure in a lot of things. Engaging somebody in a conversation, a stranger, is an adventure. Taking off in your car to go drop videos back at the video store in the middle of a snow storm is an adventure.

I've always been one to find romance, if you will - I don't mean Valentine's Day romance, I mean I find romance in a lot of things that people might not all find romance in. It's probably part of my own self-entertainment system. But I was curious as to why you studied, by the way, those outside of your society, if there was in your attempts to study them, ways to help them grow or improve their lives. Was that part of your civilizations efforts? To civilize the rest of the globe?

TOMAS: My work was through the auspices of our government. Everyone was not sent out. I enjoyed the adventure, and even though I was not the romantic hero of your adventure stories of the day, I was at least enough interested in the cultural differences that I found the work fascinating. No, we did not have an overt program of uplifting or enlightening, educating or furthering, those who were not within our walls.

Thoroah: Would your planet, in that status, qualify for the age of light and life?

TOMAS: Our portion was very advanced, yes. It did not include the entire world, but we were not messianic as you tend to be. When one from the outside made appeal for entrance - which happened on occasion -we were glad to inculcate them if the adaptation was worthwhile.

TOMAS: Let me say that we looked with a certain curiosity on them as they looked upon me with a certain curiosity, as if we were two different species of creatures.

Thoroah: So light and life can actually take on a portion of mortal civilization on a planet?

TOMAS: Yes, very much so. Light and life can begin with the individual and as it clusters with other individuals, it gives rise to a greater pocket of light and life, but even though a great many of you may attain a high degree of spiritual awareness and cultural advancement and so forth, there are still many who choose to remain ignorant, and they have a right to make that choice.

Thoroah: But the natural evolution of light and life, then, it would seem, would be a clustered evolution.

TOMAS: Yes, always are social groups gregarious. Even the barbarians are smart enough to know that there is power in mass.

Thoroah: It almost seems as though this country of the United States of America began with a real potential, the groundwork for such a community, based on the ideals on which it was founded.

TOMAS: Yes, and had it been able to withstand the lure of adventure to foster its newfound freedom in genuine spiritual pursuits, it might have succeeded in creating a colony of light and life, and yet, in an understanding of evolution, it is appropriate that your world be explored, and the adventure lure of the people moving west was necessary and desirable. The early days of the United States certainly did have within it the seeds for a great civilization and in many ways has attained its goals but it is fraught with problems.

TOMAS: Well, you have great regard for money and wealth and what it can do. It is an impressive power. It will pass, this value level, for the spirit will persist and your evolution will continue. We could say that America has been a part of the scaffolding of the one world, one people, one God ideal that many worlds of time and space attain relatively naturally and easily by comparison to you here who have had so many difficulties.

Thoroah: Did the awareness of other worlds within your system, and the fact that you had open communications and not suffer quarantine, help them in this advancement to understand their singular nature in a world?

Thoroah: As a race. In other words, this idea of the world, or the globe as I look at it, is fraught with all kinds of problems. Part of it is because we don't know of our citizenship in the cosmos. I'm wondering if the awareness of such a citizenship helps worlds unite faster, under the concept of one people, one God.

TOMAS: Yes, because the universe is also gregarious, and once you have made a friend out there, you will bond and develop the friendship even into the entire system. [Tape turned] I have already told you that my work was to go into the outer environment and stay abreast of the people out there, and in fairness I will say that part of my responsibility was to watch for anyone who might be inclined to be unhappy where they were in such a context as they might be compatible as a community member in our portion of the world, but I did not invite them. I would report them as a part of my job.

There were other fields which other people went into, and one of them was investigating the outer universe in search of intelligent life there. We had made contact with two neighbors with which we had established an elementary form of communication and were making initial contact with a third further away by the time I left my world. But since I have been in the mansion worlds, I have met and shared my experiences with many ascending mortals, some of whom came from yet more advanced worlds than mine, and they reported, in some cases, a highly developed relationship with their cosmic neighbors.

And in some cases, there were actual visitations, physically, between the worlds which were undertaken as a part of their scientific discoveries and investigations, but by and large, the worlds tend to be isolated physically, in order that they may develop in the natural way, and when they have developed, then they have also attained the skills that will enable them to reach out in love in a desire to share the experience of life and learn from each other rather than try to destroy each other. There is merit to the evolutionary scheme in more ways than one.

Thoroah: Yes. Well, I was thinking along that line about our planet, about the fact that it's so abnormal, as would be most of the other planets that were under quarantine, if our global consciousness was made aware of a cosmic citizenship with such a physical visitation, that it may change the concept of this brotherhood of man issue that we're dealing with so much.

TOMAS: You are not the only one. And the fact is, your world has been visited by many, Michael being one of them, and you see how much you have grown as a result of his presence here. In time you will be visited by others, but they are no guarantee that the people will listen or that your world will be suddenly more mature because of their visit.

There is only so much that can be done from outside sources. The work is still upon your shoulders, even though, in your case, it seems grossly unfair, since you have many deficiencies, but you have also been recipients of many blessings and you are beginning to see the benefits of this more recent revelation to your world and the many good things that are coming about as a result of the natural course of events.

It is an observation by many of us that the relatively short time span between the fourth revelation to your world and the fifth is an uncommon event and should be construed by you as highly merciful. The cry of those of you who yearned for God has been heard and responded to, but planets that follow a more natural course of evolution are not granted their revelations in such a short period of time.

Thoroah: It would seem that if there was a visitation of a physical kind, that didn't require the search as much as what finding the fifth epochal revelation or the teaching mission or any other of the other phenomenon that people are searching for and it was something obvious, all that would do is establish a different paradigm that would then be passed on generationally, and that's basically how the growth, I assume, would happen. Parents would then confirm to their children something that the children would take forward as fact and it would be new fact or a new truth, compared to generations before them, and so each generation either stultifies or advances the next generation.

TOMAS: Yes. And every revelation will be advanced by individuals, and not groups. Individuals may group together. Groups may come into being because of and around individuals, but always will the individual in conscious or unconscious liaison with divinity be those forge the path through to yet greater awareness and greater light. Those who confine themselves to the comfort of the group will always be supportive of the group consensus, and their leaders, but you have a long way to go before you know how, as a group, to lead or bulldoze your way into advancement for everyone.

TOMAS: It is not required that you be patient in general, only that you be patient with individuals including yourself. It is understandable that you should know impatience for a better way, for peace, prosperity, happiness, music, all the pleasures, all the joys of fraternity and family en route and in praise.

I have been nudged that I must keep my disciplines and remember my conditioning that I ought not wear out my welcome, and so I want to thank you for spending an hour or so with me this evening to talk about things that interest us and that matter to us mutually, communally. We are always heartened by your mind's willingness to grasp what it can in order to feed the grist mill of your ambitions to be of service to God and to your fellows.

TOMAS: Again we thank you for your affection and availability, for it will encourage you and others as we pass by. Until next week, I am your loyal friend and Teacher, Tomas.

TOMAS: I'm going to begin by acknowledging our anniversary of seven years working together in my appearance in your classrooms in your mortal realm. My appreciation runs deep for your loyalty and for your commitment, Gerdean, to your responsibility as T/R and I want to thank you for your integrity throughout the years under some very trying circumstances and often when I gave responses that you were abashed to hear. As I told you long ago, if you stay out of the procedure and let me teach, I will speak to the persons who need to hear me in a way they can understand.

I will use this point as a springboard for my words to you this evening and that has to do with a phrase you are familiar with by having read in the Urantia Book that Jesus never worried about being misunderstood and he did not follow up. I bring Jesus into the picture as he is the perfected God-man example of what a perfectly unified personality would manifest, and if he did not worry about being misunderstood, there must be value in that stance and reinforced by it being called to your attention, as well as that quality of his that did not need to follow up.

How different this is from the mortal being in your conditioned response to the demand that your ego be acknowledged and your wisdom be expressed.

If you are being true to yourself, your inner self, you are allowing your inner self to express itself and your ego-mind is not intent upon making the point because your heart, your soul, your spirit are expressing your words. When you speak from the heart, those attitudes will speak more loudly than the words you use and your intonation will be couched in love, embraced by graciousness, in such a way that your essence will be heard; and when the words pour forth, they will fall on fertile soil if the soil has been tilled and is receptive.

And so no amount of explaining or describing or pontificating will allow that seed of truth to be planted in the heart of the hearer.- It is similarly fruitless to follow up on what you have taught for, based on the outline above, your heart and spirit were speaking and the intellect is subservient, and so be wary of that intellect attempting to gain strokes for itself by coming along and hoping to follow up with your heart's lesson.

This is not to say, of course, that you cannot answer questions if questions are posed to you. And, of course, it is always a good teaching technique to draw people out by asking them questions. But these are different than the urge to follow up, which is essentially an ego-activated behavior.

You have a phrase "let the chips fall where they may" and it sounds like a gamble, a flip of the coin, a careless and thoughtless gesture. But there is a difference between carelessness and faith.

When we make reference to the many opportunities that you have in your world to be of service, to teach and preach the gospel and to assist in actualizing the experiential reality of the living God, we attempt to whet your appetite to know what those opportunities might be, and how can you put yourself in a position to exercise your will to do His will as you pass by? But if you are willing, and if you avail yourself of these opportunities, it will astound you how many times you have occasion to express the Father's personality in your dealings with men.

And a review of these interchanges will reveal to you if you are a better righteousness recommender today than you were yesterday; if you are less reluctant to be misunderstood in order to express divine affection; if you are willing for others to follow up with your seed-planting efforts through their guidance from Our Father, you will relieve yourself of the sense of responsibility that that kind of assumption of prerogative would call for. Let God run the show.

It is anticipated you will have many such opportunities to be of service as you pass by in these next several days as you meet with many of your peers in the kingdom. I am not going to keep you late this evening. I am not going to require that this transcript be posted before you go on holiday, Gerdean. Indeed I do not require that any of them be followed up. It matters not to me personally, but it is a manner in which you, in your material world, make the word flesh, as it were, and we realize the value of a tangible "proof" of that which is deeply embedded in your heart and soul.

It is an honor to be a Teacher in this Teacher Corp at this time and in this place. I can think of no assignment more rewarding and I look forward, with you, to the prospects of socializing our beliefs with our brethren in these wondrous days to come. (Pause) What have you on your minds this evening? Are there questions?

Thoroah: I don't really have a question, Tomas. I had been thinking earlier about needing to get my mind and heart working together. In my case, my mind seems to go far out. I need to take my heart with it. And so I appreciated your talk on the relationship.

TOMAS: Yes, kind of. It enables harmony. It produces balance. It congeals the energies of the will for effective living. Your culture provides several interesting studies already on the benefits of the alignment between the heart and the mind. These are interesting studies that you evolved in order to reveal to yourselves the nature of the human being in conjunction with a spiritual inclination. As you traverse, you will maintain a spiritual frame of reference and observe how the body influences the greater spirit reality. But these changling steps are interesting and worthy of note.

Even so, in an attempt to harmonize your mind and your heart, ask Michael to help you. Ask him to be the heart of your existence that beats in tune with the pulse of the Father. And ask him to direct your thinking in alignment with divine wisdom. Set aside your little mind and allow the Universal Mind to order your thinking. Trust that Our Eternal Parent has bestowed upon you qualities of mind that are in your best interests, in that, your "best interests" is Him and it dwells in you as your divine Thought Adjuster.

Man is not only a reasoning creature; he is also intuitive, and it does not require great intellect to be a devoted child of God. It takes a sincere heart, a clear and clean mind, housed in a body of clean habits, well balanced neural systems that give optimum conditions for a happy and joyous life in the spirit and in the flesh.

That will be it for this evening, my children. I thank you for your patronization of this communication method we've been given. I embrace you in the full sense of the word. Have a good holiday. See you next week; same time, same station.

VISITOR: Good of you to keep the line open. Good evening. I am . .. here to visit, to practice. (Long pause) I have not done this before and I am finding it awkward. (Long pause) I am impressed with those of you who have experienced this sufficiently that you converse readily without stumbling as I seem to be. But perhaps I am getting it. I appreciate your indulgence. I am your servant. How may I help you in your life?

Thoroah: Seriously. That leaves me with a blank sheet that . .. I would have to take it much more seriously to actually say "here's how you can serve me" but thank you for giving me perspective. I don't have any answer right now.

Thoroah: I have never had anyone tell me, in exactly that way, with those words, that they were here to serve me. In the context of what was said. I've thought about that. The idea's been presented to me before, but it was never put me as you just did.

VISITOR: I have been encouraged to give you an assignment. It is on record that when you are given an assignment, it actualizes more quickly, for you are eager in your yearning to grow your soul. Be therefore mindful, effective now, of a desire to serve and be mindful, too, that there are yearnings in each of your kin to also be of service, but you don't know how or you don't take it seriously or you are too self-sufficient or proud or challenged.

I would like for you to break the ice and begin to ask people for help. A simple thing is all that is needed. If someone is going to the kitchen, ask them to bring you a drink of water. If they are nearby while you are reading, ask if they know the meaning of this word or this sentence, to help you understand. If you are confused, elicit the guidance of others. It is a gift to God when you allow others to serve your sincere desires.

Practice service. Going out and returning to you. Allow this quality of life to become a working part of you, a real part of you. In time it will be so much a part of your reference, you too will say, "how may I serve you in your life?" I am grateful for your ears, in order for me to express these value lessons.

TOMAS: Greetings, faith children. I am Tomas, your teacher, your companion, your guide and your friend. How are you this evening?

TOMAS: We are well. We will embark on a mini-lesson in a moment but before I begin I would like to pause in order to greet you personally and testify to my supreme delight in being in your company. It is, of course, always a pleasure to meet with old friends. Because of the space in time between our gatherings, it gives me deep pleasure to greet you, Loreenia, and embrace you once again, my stalwart child and busy young worker in the field. We rejoice in your efforts and take comfort in your presence here this evening.

My hat is off also to you, known as Heather, for your courage, child, and for your yearning to expand your understanding of spirit reality much as we yearn to embellish our Father's reality in the lives of all His children, and thus stimulate a new way of life for your world and your global brothers and sisters.

My brief lesson this evening will be about early beginnings. As a robin in the early Spring is intent upon pulling the fat worm from the moist soil, so are we interested in pulling forth from your soul those fat worms of truth, beauty and goodness which will nourish your mind and body and thus augment your spirit progress.

When we speak of new beginnings we are not limited to the seasons of your terrain. It is indeed at last early Spring, and your thaw is upon you. Your flowing sap in your branches give rise to new life which seeks to unfurl itself as fruit of the Living Vine. We watch when your new seasons begin within your heart and mind and soul that may or may not occur upon the beginning of Spring but can begin at any new plateau of growth within your spirit progress.

An ascension into greater spirit awareness and appreciation with its incumbent responsibilities and joys are the stuff of our mission. We encourage your courage to allow yourself the bounty of your own growth. Many times your human companions are fearful of growth and choose to remain in the comfort of the germinating state, but you who launch upon new lessons of reality are commended and encouraged.

Indeed, as you share your inner life with one another, you become bonded and you encourage and stimulate the spirit reality of each other, and this effectively cements with your own understanding of yourself that you are also in a process of growing, ascending, aspiring, and becoming more Godlike and more real.

These new beginnings are sometimes fraught with turmoil and turbulence as you push up and away from that which was into the spacial freedom of the new paradigm of your development, and this period of confusion, while sometimes enough to stall your growth, is not enough to end it, for the Father Himself has called you forth according to the laws of life that it be abundantly portrayed and lived, and so you are assisted by God Himself in your growing, in your striving to become more real and to be more like Him.

It is through your decisions that you grow, that you give yourself the permission and the opportunity to investigate the eternal adventure. That you are drawn by the light of divine Love, to come into a greater awareness of how this divine Love interacts with you, is a part of you and how you can bestow this divine Love upon your fellows in loving service. And so today I, in company with you, celebrate the joy of Spring with all of the noise of the symphony, striking the cymbals and blowing the trumpets, rejoicing in the new dawn.

We are companioned this evening by many who delight to observe your gathering and your attempts to understand more about our Eternal Parent and His relationship with His children. May we hear from you delightful children, in a repartee of good will, for in this way we will be able to share our knowledge and encourage our very souls. Have you any questions or any remarks, any of you?

Thoroah: I'd like to thank you for reminding us that it was Spring for the day went by and I had forgotten it was Spring!

TOMAS: It is just as well, my son, for it is one of those hallmark dates established by your manmade calendar, and you have known in your sap for some time that Spring was coming. In fact, the juices flowing within you are already tromping down the boulevard of life, whistling a tune and catching worms. It's best to be involved in the stream of life such that you are living it rather than studying it, if you will. In this way you are experientially contributing to the surge forward which is inherent in the new beginnings of the new season of humanity.

Thoroah: It's interesting that you point out that experiencing part. I can remember a few months ago talking about that very thing, how I had reached a certain point of awareness but that living of the awareness is the key experience of it, and that is kind of what's been going on, with everything being so disrupted. I am not in such a studious mode as I was. Personally, I am actually doing more living right now so I hadn't thought of it.

TOMAS: This is the natural result of your growth. This is also a good time to remind you all that it is not uncommon to be going along in your life, busily growing, and not know you that are growing until you pause and look back and see how far you have come. It is good to put perspective on your efforts.

Thoroah: Thank you. I was just going to say that lots of times we don't get that perspective until you point it out.

Loreenia: Tomas, a few years ago someone passed on information about building what I've drawn. Does that still need to come to the physical?

TOMAS: Well, yes, and yet it ought not require all of your focus. It is a process. The difficulty in establishing in your mind and having it confirmed that this plan (whichever plan you may be talking about), is something that the Father would support.

TOMAS: Yes. And there are hundreds of people now, if not thousands, across the nation and even across the globe, who are involved in developing community, society, spiritual retreats, temples and universities and whatnot, in support of the new way of life that they perceive to be a new plateau of living, that will enable all of humankind to enjoy the benefits of a higher consciousness.

It is important that all of you workers remember that the physical structure is secondary to the morontial reality that must become real first before the physical manifestation of that higher reality can be presented.

In explanation for Heather I would like to address the word "morontial" for morontial is one of the words we use which designate a realm of reality which has gone beyond the physical but is not yet pure spirit. It is -- you will excuse my phrasing -- a happy purgatory of sorts, which is midway between here and there. Now this delightful realm of morontia reality is where you will reside when you leave your body and wake up on the other side. You will experience, as the Bible says, "In my Father's house there are many mansions." You will ascend through the mansion worlds, increasingly becoming less animal and more spiritual, and when you graduate on the other side, then you become pure spirit, at which time you proceed then to the presence of the Father, but all of those intervening ages are going to be spent in the morontia form and learning morontia values. But we are here to encourage you to begin to realize morontia reality even now while you remain members of the mortal race, for in your higher mindal recesses, as you touch upon the Indwelling Spirit, that Fragment of God which lives within you, you yourself are capable of spending time in the realms of morontial thought and bringing into being a glimmer of morontial reality. In this way the spirit is able to infiltrate the material world.

I will also add, and this is a value lesson from the Program, that the spiritual life is not a theory, you have to live it, as well as that thing about, You must put your spiritual life first, and this too goes along with what Jesus said when he said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom and all things will be added unto you." It's a matter of keeping your perspective, for we don't want to overlook your material reality and the many works that will be done in His name as your world evolves in Light and Life and becomes a paradisiacal land befitting the Creator Son, but don't get the cart before the horse or you'll end up arguing with each other like the Tower of Babel, and all will be lost.

Thoroah: The concept of cart before the horse and arguing with one another over it.

TOMAS: Of course, and you know this in your heart and mind already. It has been your legacy, in fact, to build things from your mind to your material world without regard for the spirit reality that would make it possible. When you, as a committee, for example, set out to accomplish a goal, a purpose, when you as an institution opt to build a building or bring into being an institution, you are dealing with minds and egos which often bring with them a private agenda, a motive for self-aggrandizement or power seeking, and this has been the norm, but we urge you to incorporate the spiritual truths (such as Jesus' "Seek ye first the Kingdom . . . ") so that your perspective is such that your spirit reality prevails, comes first. Father leads. His guidance gives you the good orderly direction which your ulterior motives would bring into effect.

It's a simple matter of the difference between bringing God into your committee meeting and leaving him out. You can all have wonderful ideas, but you need the synthesizing effects of divinity to keep it on an even keel, so that you remember your motives, your purpose in your project. But this does not preclude the opportunity to continue your investigations of the project. Even though it must be understood that when it literally comes to pass, the plans may be completely different than the plans that you see because you are seeing them individually, and as you grow, as you become two, the configuration is different and the view broadens. Similarly, when you are joined by another, then you have three minds, you have a group and you have a particular set of problems just because you have become a group, and as you grow in mass, you grow in possibility of quarreling among yourselves as to how it should be done, based upon how you have seen it, when in truth, it needs to be syncopated, synchronized and supervised by a divine hand. "His will be done." "It is my will that His will be done."

Loreenia: I was amazed at the others who were seeing the same thing that I was seeing for a long time, and it's a wonderful experience.

TOMAS: Isn't it thrilling, yes. It is proof positive that we are in a new era and that you are no longer alone. There are others alike who are reaching for the great God who lives within you and seeks to bring about His divine will upon your world. You are sprouting up like mushrooms in the fresh soil of Spring in your new beginning.

Loreenia: Is that, part of morontia? When you are all thinking about creating something morontial?

TOMAS: It could not take place without the guidance and assistance of morontia reality, yes.

TOMAS: And, additionally, as it comes to pass, as it IS actualized on your world, you have contributed to the Supreme, to the growing God of which you are partial creator.

Heather: In order for you to be able to living out God's will and working toward the physical space, do you have to also be meditating on all these feelings of powerlessness or can you reside in the more positive place? Or do you have to, in order to be there, just keep yourself in check?

TOMAS: Yes. Let us discuss this era in which we find ourselves in this day and age, in this time and space. We are in Correction. We are calling this era "Correcting Time" and it is in an awareness of our ambition to be corrected to live according to divine will, that we pursue what correction is necessary in order to bring about this divine state of Light and Life on your world. And this Correcting is initially an inside job, the inside job of each mortal being, and so as you begin to be aware of your twisted fate as a result of your experience on this distorted planet, you align yourself more and more with the will of God and you recover from that skewed perspective that rendered you in need of correction. All of this world is in need of correction in one way or another and it begins in the individual. It will then affect your institutions and your world will be able to make the change, the transition from darkness to light.

As you begin your personal correcting process with the assistance of your heavenly helpers and spirit guides, you encounter those apparent areas of distress which will need to be dealt with initially in order for you to shrug off the burdens of that which has kept you down and away from divine Light. It is like a seed that has been planted in the soil. As you reach for the Light, you throw off the dirt around you and holding you, until such time as you yearn upward, reaching for the Son and finally burst through into your greater enlightenment and awareness.

You still, however, need to continue growing, and it will require -- because you live in this environment, which is over all in need of correction -- you to continually aerate your soil and prune away your dead branches as they are revealed so that your growth can be productive and plentiful, so that the fruits of the spirit can manifest on your branches and you can be fruit on the Living Vine.

These early struggles in early Spring are only the initial turmoil’s of new growth. As you grow, as you see the perspective of your soul becoming more real and your life experience gaining a perspective of wisdom and worship and thanksgiving and other realities which reflect the divine Light, your faith has grown such that your growth steps, your further correcting, is less turbulent and more of a faith walk. You will overcome your early afflictions: guilt, shame and deceit, betrayal. The healing realities of forgiveness and compassion and love are all a part of what you now experience, and love has more endurance and more value than that which has error. And so you are becoming stronger and greater, for you are becoming in a true sense, more Godlike. You learn mercy and tolerance and graciousness. You are able to be of service to those behind you who are still afraid to be born into the Light of day, but having experienced it yourself, and knowing the results of your efforts, it is possible for you to rejoice, in truth and to enable your younger brothers and sisters to forge ahead into their own correcting efforts toward learning more about how beautiful they truly are.

Heather: Yes. It just seems so arduous, though. There's so much to go! Such a long journey.

TOMAS: Your remark is typical of the mortal. You look at eternal life and become exhausted, but you know full well, child, that you have one day at a time in which to do what you can and no more is required of you.

Indeed, I urge you to find companionship in the spirit realm, and that is in your meditation and time with Father, with Higher Power, in Stillness, in meditation, in communion with that within you which is divine. When you have our Father as your Source of reality, you can go into the world with the perspective that He provides, which gives you purpose for being here and you are not buffeted so greatly as you would be without His staff to lean upon.

Be aware, too, as our friends here have stated, of the assistance of celestial helpers. The heavens are filled with beings, angels and the like, who yearn to help you in your path. Your difficulties come when you believe you are alone. When you are flanked by living Love and comrades in the spirit, you are aware of your infinite support system which will help defray the sense of isolation you may feel when you become lost in the maze of your experiential life. Therefore, you are commended to seek out those who also require a presence of God and His helpers in their lives, so that you can reassure each other of the greater reality.

When you have the camaraderie of kindred spirits, fellow believers, you will be able to grow with this awareness and your miseries will be greatly diminished. It is your pattern to accept your isolation and your difficulties without a struggle and when this happens you lie down and beat yourself about the head and shoulders in despair of your experience, and Our Father rejoices with you in love of life and would have you rejoice in your relationship with Him and His vast family; therefore, support your own soul growth by grasping this truth: you are not alone. Even when you cannot see with the literal eye, you can find, through your spirit perception, the reality of truth, beauty and goodness which accompany you on your life path.

Select your associates carefully for support, and when you cannot find a mortal comrade, depend upon the Indwelling Fragment of God deep within you that will never abandon you and will always respond to your slightest flicker. Develop this greater reality, daughter, and depend upon it as being a greater reality than the one which meets your mortal eye. As you live more and more within the reality of your true self, you will find these growth experiences more easy to bear and your dark nights of the soul will be diminished. It is a promise to you.

Loreenia: Tomas, the location that I'm looking at now, in Western Pennsylvania, up north of here, for the location, buying land, is it basically in the right area?

TOMAS: It is a beautiful area, yes, and conducive to the peace and harmony which would foster your dreams and the desires of many, but be gentle with yourself and take it slowly. Allow Father to help you with your ambitions, and as you pursue your dream of the ideal, you will be joined by others who can strengthen your sense of purpose with their own desires. In this way you will be able to work together for good and eventually bring about your desired effects. And in the interim, you will have each other as comrades and friends; and as you well know, your aims, ambitions and goals are an ideal but your friendships are an end in themselves, and so rejoice in your friends and in their spirit, in their creative approach to their life and thus you will forge friendships that will last throughout eternity.

TOMAS: There is a need for a base of operations here, yes, with Gerdean and Thoroah relocating to the Northwest, we suffer a vacuum in this area. This specific "vortex" as you understand is going to need to be re-founded. While you are the beneficiaries of many blessings in the form of children of God in this vicinity, we would like to see a Melchizedek University and one day temple to the Father, even in your backyard, but it is not our purpose to press beyond the natural rate of growth potential inherent in any individual or in any cultural group. We are ambitious for people to connect with the Father within, and He will indeed direct the show.

Loreenia: Is that too far to go? Up toward Tianesta? Franklin? Or should I play it closer to home?

TOMAS: I will not meddle in real estate. Your intelligence is able to ascertain what place would suit your purpose and your specific abilities. Again, when you conjoin with others of like mind, you will gain momentum and better focus, and so focus now on those personality connections which might be of such a nature as to bring about a working Unit of personalities that can bring such a civilization into being. It's the people that make up a culture, not the building or the real estate.

Loreenia: I understand that. The energies up there feel conducive to the project.

TOMAS: You have heightened sensitivity and you are as a divining rod when it comes to many sensitive spiritual energies. You will do well to trust your sense of your energies but do not become so enamored of your own skills that you preclude the guidance of others who also have their gifts and skills to add to the mix.

Loreenia: Because the gifts I have aren't complete until they're added to others.

TOMAS: Indeed. It is how it is that we are all parts of the whole, and parts working together can do more than each individual can do. I do not want to outstay my welcome. I am aware of the fact that I am a new experience for our guest, Heather, and I do not want to tire her, and so I will ask one more time if there any further questions.

Heather: Does the Father want me to have a spiritual teacher in the mortal realm or in the non-mortal realm?

TOMAS: Our Father wants you to have all the help you need now, and it is possible for you to have the help now of spirit guides, very personal spirit companions, who will help you with your concerns of growth. The ministrations and associations of personal guides are a gift given to you and others on this first day of Spring (figuratively speaking) so that you do not have to pull that fat worm up all by yourself. You can use the spirit resources available to you and it is through association with Our Father, the primary Source and Center of all that is, all that was, and all that will be, that will direct you into an awareness of your personal teachers who will companion you and accompany you on your journey throughout your eternal career.

You would do well to develop your own relationship with your own spirit guides and it is possible in just such a way as you are experiencing in our contact at this time. In addition, again, it would behoove you to augment your studies and your growth in your spirit reality by association with fellow religionists, other ascending sons and daughters who yearn for a greater grasp of the living Spirit of God in their lives, thus you augment your inner life by reflecting it to your companions and they will reinforce your reality back to you if they are also your kindred spirits, your friends, your brothers and sisters in the Family of God.

Heather: So if I just maintain conscious contact with God and keep practicing my meditation in the morning, then He'll direct me where I'm supposed to be. Is that true?

TOMAS: Yes, that is true. And he will help you learn how to perceive the presence of your personal spirit guides who will help you in your walk through life, in your faith path and in your human growing experiences. Truly you are not alone, and as you develop your relationship with your trusted guides, you will begin to realize how great Our Eternal Parent is, that He and our Divine Mother are also interested in the slightest concern of their beloved children. The love of Our Parents for their children, for you, and you, and you, and you, and me, is completely beyond our comprehension, but to the extent that we can comprehend and enjoy this association, we welcome you to the realm of spirit reality -- goodness, truth, beauty and love.

In complete faith of Our Father's overcare and Our Mother's hand, we leave you this evening to pursue your way through the adventure of your life, one day at a time. Amen and farewell.

TOMAS: I am amused to discover and to share with you that my original profession as a sociologist is brought back to me more and more as I work with you here on Urantia. There were so many things about my life that 1 had let fade from my recollection, not because they were unpleasant memories, no, but because of the accumulation of experiences throughout my lengthy career.

There are many, many eras and experiences which fade somewhat in the memory because of the tendency to live more and more in the now, and when there are no residue hang-over issues from the past, the only generally recognized reason to go back into the past is for the recollection of moments shared in a sublime friendship, but my experience with you has lit the fires of recollection from my career when I was a mortal.

It is therefore a somewhat natural propensity for me to project onto you my interest in sociology and cultural anthropology. Is it not, after all, a natural consideration that in Correcting Time, as we correct errors from the past, the future unfolds with an entirely new configuration, one which provides unlimited opportunity for learning and advancement in the realms of sociology.

In your current vogue you are enthralled by the concept of community, retreats, and other means of living at peace with one another. This is so exciting for me, you see, because it is concrete proof of the encroaching era of Light and Life, for it is therein where brothers and sisters long to befriend each other and practice, as you understand, the Golden Rule and even to go beyond that, but lest we go too far afield, my initial instruction and foundation has been and always will be of a spiritual nature, for it is through the spirit that we are guided, that will advance and aid each civilization undertaken.

But I would like to speak more about the configuration of groups of people, and this does not count a husband/wife team; that's a partnership, and even when Jesus is a part of the relationship, it is still a relationship of two mortals and that kind of relationship has its own blessings and curses, if you will. The group begins when you have at least three, and from then on each additional person presents an aspect of change for every member of the group. The goal, again, is to be self-governing through your own maturity, through your ethics and morals established through your relationship with Our Father and socialized throughout the brotherhood of man.

This is an ideal having not yet been realized sufficiently to turn the tide of your planetary government. Here I speak of another aspect of the Hundred Monkey Syndrome that has not been attained yet but it is a reasonable goal as we enter into the dawn era of Light and Life on Urantia — to be self-governing and to acknowledge that your peers are also self-governing, not requiring your leadership or counsel, only insofar as your relationship is mutually dependant upon the living God that is understood, respected, revered and worshipped by all.

One day your world will be settled in Light and Life and that will be the culmination, the glorious culmination of all these many thousands and thousands of years of effort on your part and on the part of your relations in the material realm ~ your predecessors and your progeny — animal, vegetable and mineral -- attaining a way of life which gives appropriate acknowledgement and homage to Our Creator.

But until the global attainment, until full stage Light and Life is here, it is fascinating to speculate, in this extremely intriguing environment on Urantia, what might be effected in effort of attaining a degree of fraternity that would allow for the beginning of this potential to begin being realized and actualized. Configuration. Configuration is so important an element that the social architects aspire to bring together those compatible sorts of personalities which will be most effective in their relationship together, even serving throughout the future eras/ages to come.

Always must you remember the configuration of your members. Each occasion provides a different energy package. Each of you are becoming sufficiently astute to know and love each other in understanding of your strengths and in compassion for your weaknesses. By maintaining your spiritual roots, your ethics are able to acknowledge that in any given configuration there are strengths and weaknesses derived from the elements of the configuration. (Pause) Was that clear, Thoroah?

TOMAS: If you are in a group of people that you, in your assessment, have ascertained to have certain strengths and certain failings, you will know instinctually, intuitively and inherently whether or not the configuration of the parties are in a position to make a wise decision about a matter which would be influential in the community at large; whereas a ruling or a determination by another grouping of parties will garner a different response.

I will be elemental and give a crass example of four women in a group will come up with a conclusion and four men in a group will come up with a conclusion and it's not necessarily so that the women's conclusion and the men's conclusion will be the same, and therefore, it would behoove you to appreciate the balance of the four women and the four men intermingled, and with the balance made more equitable, then determine the strengths and the weaknesses of the composition of the community, of the social group, of the family unit, at its largest and most effective point.

This allows for greater representation, greater democracy. It allows for all your brothers and sisters to be a part of the reality of the family. Jesus is the decided head of the household insofar as he is God and has lived as man, therefore he represents, perhaps, the highest ideal. But your future world will be comprised of men and women taking their instructions from the invisible realms, not necessarily from human rulers. In the future there will be public servants in the appropriate sense but rulership, as it is understood in your government and has been known down through the ages, is a step in evolution that will evolve away.

TOMAS: It is therefore very tricky, these times you live in, because you cannot relinquish your leaders, but they cannot be allowed to stranglehold you; and you people, you avant garde of spiritual beliefs and values, are still subject to so much of the effects and cause and effects of your predecessors in politics and in government and in civilization, and so you are incessantly vulnerable to the might that is, even though it may not be right.

As you advance into your paradigms/prototypes of civilization which afford spiritual liberty and qualities having the earmarks of high civilization, you will do well to begin to appreciate the immediate configuration, feeling and sensing the Light and Life qualities therein. As that becomes a reality for you in your intimate associations, in your small groupings, you will feel emboldened to open yourselves to the possibilities of greater embrace, greater connection to others, and thus expanding the configuration and subsequently expanding Light and Life.

Thoroah: Great. As I mentioned to Dan and Jill today, I feel as though I may have had a lobotomy. The last few weeks I haven't had the same things going through my brain all the time. My life is just kind of up in the air, it seems like, and it feels good on one hand and it feels different and strange on the other.

Thoroah: And I'm not exactly sure what I'm feeling or what I feel about what I am feeling, but it just seems like I'm going through a change.

TOMAS: I am certain that you are. I don't know how you could not be going through changes, under all these circumstances. 1 could list several circumstances that are obvious; I however want to point out that feelings are simply feelings and whatever they are, they will pass, but the spirit is a reality that will not go away. It is constant and steady and not as invasive or as dramatic as feelings, nor is it as exhausting. And so perhaps as you stand naked on your new plateau of growth, you are able to discern that you are somewhat removed from your habits of your previous understanding, and so everything is different. The configuration of Thoroah is different.

And of course that immediately reminds me that each of you are constantly undergoing change and in this, too, each configuration is different. If it isn't different, in a growing sense, it will become stagnant and stale and in need of a Fatherly fix, which, given your integrity, sincerity and intent, you will be provided with the impetus you desire.

Your personal teachers have been working with you diligently for several months. Your health habits have changed and they are paying off. The geographic changes coming up are immense and your employment and financial circumstances are in limbo. It is difficult, thus, to get a handle on anything familiar and you are forced to resort to faith and you are finding it alive, flowing, and malleable, but hard to control. How fun for you to be experiencing these growth steps and exploring these opportunities. So you have been feeling odd.

Thoroah: Well, I have to say you explained the way I feel exquisitely, and that's another one of the benefits of having the chance to have these conversations. You are as a sounding board because I can talk to you about the things I am thinking about and you give me a reasonable sounding board so that I know that I'm not crazy. If I have an idea and it's good you let me know that and if it's not, you let me understand why it's not. That is such a valuable thing to have, from a mortal standpoint.

You mentioned the conversation and the guidance will be coming mostly from the spiritual side, in the future. I had to laugh, as though it would be almost a complete abdication on the mortal's behalf to allow the spiritual side to "tell us what to do".

Thoroah: But having this conversation right now about that, this is so invaluable. I can't take it for granted and I learn more about it every time we have a session and I'm getting a little more zealous about how to let people know that they can have spiritual conversation without telling them they can have spiritual conversation.

TOMAS: These are the challenges we face also. Understood. We are making progress, however, you will notice. When we let Our Father reign, his will is done. We don't have to work as hard as we think we do.

Thoroah: You know what I have to work hard at, Tomas, is understanding what letting go really means. It's easy to say "let go and let God" but I'm not really sure what it is that I need to let go of.

TOMAS: This, of course, is why it is difficult to let go. Every aspect of the issue has to be investigated fully in order for you to finally release what it is that is not good for you, while you may retain that which has been good for you or might continue to have value. But to simply say, "let go and let God", that is a difficult assignment for a mortal, and in respect to your intelligence and your free will, we would expect you to investigate your options and appreciate that in the beginning a child will want to have his cake and eat it too, will try to get away with anything just to find out how far its limitations run, but in time the appropriate guidelines are learned and enjoyed, stretched and sometimes comforted, and so there comes to be a realm of operation which maximizes the personality potential in service and in enjoyment of the life. That is the place which one would aspire to, were one to aspire toward human individuality, a unique child of God.

Thoroah: You can only get there by experience, I would assume. When you experience doing the right thing and the requisite results of doing the right thing, if you do that enough, pretty soon you understand what doing the right thing gets you, so as you learn to do that, give that to God, that experience must be what we keep going back to.

TOMAS: Yes, yes indeed, and your parallel challenge is to recognize that many of your habits are natural to you and comfortable for you but they are not in keeping with His will for you, and so you weed out those less than ideal patterns while you cultivate and flourish within the recognition of your true reality. Then comes the confidence and strength, enabling you to quickly ascertain what to hold onto and what to let go of, or what not to embrace in the first place.

TOMAS: This is when you are making use of your adjutant mind spirit of wisdom, and the personal gratification is experienced in the worship circuit that is so much a part of you that rarely gets an opportunity to flourish. Well, that will change as you begin to find happiness within yourself, as you become happy and acknowledge it is because of your immediate and intimate relationship with the Father, your love for Him is such that you honor Him freely and openly, and this, Thoroah, is how you feed His sheep and how you present the Father's love to them that they might see and know that they, too, can have Our Father as a living experience. [Tape turned] Where were we?

Thoroah: How to let people know that God loves them just by showing them how much we love them.

TOMAS: Sometimes is an understatement. We do not know how much the Father loves us. We cannot know except to the extent of our own capacity to perceive what love might be. So as you grow in your awareness of the reality of love, you grow in the awareness of the reality of Our Father, therefore you are able to express Him in how you express your love.

This is why love must be redefined frequently, for you are growing and expanding, assuming you are also appreciating your experience of life and not just taking it for granted.

TOMAS: There are certain things you can assume about Our Father and that is right, healthy, appropriate. But there is also the admonition to not presume upon divine mercy and there is the admonition to produce fruit and this requires occasional pruning away of your old branches or aerating your soil, so to speak.

Thoroah: So if we don't produce fruit and we don't produce fruit enough, we are no longer alive, is that correct?

TOMAS: I would have to say that is correct; however there are certain shrubs which only produce every six years, and so who is to say what your production levels ought to be. Only your Thought Adjuster knows for sure.

Thoroah: And that would be grace. Which we can't presume upon either. It feels real secure, I have so say.

TOMAS: That alone is enough to motivate a loving son to be pleasing in the eyes of the Bestower of such grace. In faith of grace, I will leave you this evening to enjoy the experience of your growing reality.

TOM AS: Good evening, my friends, I am Tomas, your teacher. It gives me great pleasure to be here with you. It is our last sojourn together in this time and space, but I am your eternal companion, and I grieve not. In fact, I rejoice in your comforting presence. This evening I would like to speak to you for a few moments regarding a quality unbeknownst to any of us, but one that is threaded throughout your planet's consciousness. It is one in which you can help. It is the quality of desperation.

One of your literary personalities has evidently indicated that most people live lives in quiet desperation and it [this idea] has been heard and set aside as mere words, for your collective consciousnes cannot conceive that it, in its infinite capacity to outsmart your challenges, would be desperate in any way. When you are competent and confident, it is unheard of to conceive of yourself as being desperate, as you give such a quality only to those who are in circumstances far beneath / below your circumstances. It is a rare person who acknowledges any sense of desperation, for the feeling is so bereft of that confidence which you have or portray (and) which you believe is your birthright.

But there are millions of people, my friends, who are living lives of quiet desperation. They have a hunger inside that is tearing them apart. They yearn so for a connection with a greater reality. You know, I say these words I have said so many times, and I can see how they would fall on deaf ears, for they are so inadequate to convey that which I would convey to you, but there are, even so, millions of people who have no real sense of who they are or what they are doing. They have no real focus. They have no direction and no one to trust. They cannot trust themselves either, for they know not who they are, and fear is something that will not allow you to have confidence in the unknown.

I point this out to you, perhaps, in reflection of the many, many hours we have spent together in comradeship and companionship as siblings, as children of our Divine Parents, and to the degree that we are able, we are aware of our reality, our potential, our connection with life and with the Source of life. It is such a gift. It is such a gift to understand that you belong to God and that He/ She/ It is infinitely in love for you. The freedom from that dreadful desperation is such a gift. Thus, when you prepare yourself by shoring up your soul with the love of the Father, wrapping yourself in the comfort of the Mother, and steadfastly entering into your arena with God only knows how many desperate, you are bringing to them the reflection of the reality they so deeply seek.

This is the real reason you are here. This is the real reason you are urged to now carry your faith into your arena in acts of kindness and compassion. It is the reason you are well-received and it is the reason why once in awhile you are stoned. There are those who would feel that in this society, in this year 2,000 A.D., with the freedoms of your nation and the economy allegedly flourishing, with education and health care readily available, with food and goods plentiful, that there would be no cause, no excuse for anyone to feel any sense of desperation. Well, you can see very clearly that whatever you do to your body, to embellish your material existence, food and drink, clothing, credentials, all of the gifts and trappings of the material existence, are inadequate to save you from a desperate need for your own understanding of your Source, and a relationship with that Source.

"Put on a happy face" is what is expected, and while they wear a semblance of a smile, their heart weeps for it knows not what. When you stir the living waters within them, they are brought closer to the realization of what the living God is, and it is not a theology or a philosophy; it is not an idea or even an understanding. It is a Reality that will completely change your life from one who has lived in the dark to one who has emerged into the light.

I point this out to you also, my children, my flock, my students, so that you can reflect upon how easily these children can be influenced. How vulnerable they are to the passing fancies, the undulating tides of life until they are anchored in Our Father, indeed, they are as leaves in the wind, unclaimed and desperate. They may indicate that they are not interested. They may be in a big hurry. They may be any number of things, but you may be assured of this: as you enter your arena and your eyes fall upon those whom you have known, if you do not see the Light of Truth reflected from God within, then you are seeing a degree of quiet desperation.

And herein is where those abundant opportunities lie. Each instance gives rise to an opportunity to reflect that Reality which they so hunger for and which so patiently waits to be acknowledged by these poor desperate children. It might serve as a reminder for you to be grateful to Our Father for His incessant care and concern for you.

Thoroah: I just wondered if I had missed something in your lesson, Tomas. You were mentioning those that have this quiet desperation for they know not what. You were talking about how we can affect people. You said as we reflect that which they are missing, we can say anything.

TOMAS: Correct. Indeed, I even greeted you this evening by referencing your comforting presence. In this step/ place, you are not aggressive, you are non-threatening, and to someone who is desperate, a sales pitch for God is the least of their interests. But one who will sit with them or stand by them in order that they may feel that safety that comes from the presence of God within you. Indeed.

And remember that they are indwelt, and that the Adjusters can communicate. You can assist the Adjusters of your fellows by stilling yourself sufficiently that your Adjusters can also commune and stimulate the course that will harmoniously reach new heights. It induces trust. It is now an opportunity for your friend to change the subject, or to divert your attention to a lesser reality. And here is another opportunity, for if you allow them to take you on aloft to those winds of chance whither they go, you will have forfeited your foundation of faith in your responsibility and opportunity to bring Our Father into His existence into the hearts and minds of His children.

Thoroah: That sounds as though you're steering the conversation in that situation.

TOMAS: It is, because your world is so busy it does not have time to wonder. It is bent upon taking care of business. It is infrequent that you just stand around and look at the view together. In your arenas, for the most part, you are about your business buying and selling, taking care of your affairs, tending to the needs of the material life.

How many times have you been in a situation where you had a couple of moments and you immediately began to discuss the weather or the current health vogue, which may be the flu or the common cold, and depending upon your proclivities, you might launch upon the sports news or even realms of national politics. These are commonplace diversions, and they do provide a certain companionship, yes, but they do not answer the soul's yearning for fulfillment.

You, as Ambassadors of the Kingdom, are in a position to introduce to your peers a new dimension of their own reality. Plant the seed and let it grow by Father's hand. You cannot know how easy it is to feed these sheep unless you understand how achingly they await an opportunity to grasp a love of God that speaks to their essential self, for that is the Reality; that is what Life is all about. This existence will come and go, will return to dust, but the budding immortal soul is being born in this mortal existence, and I urge you to encourage the birthing of this future soul by your loyalty to your Father's will for you, which is to reveal Him to His children, that His children, then, might open their hearts and minds in order to let Him in, so that they too can become more than they were and all that they can be.

As the Light comes on in the eyes of your peers, your world expands. As you expand from one to two to three to a large group, to a gathering in company with others, in awe of the majesty of Our Father, your Light is free to shine. It shimmers and glows as a beacon for all to see. You know not of desperation when you are surrounded by reflections of the Father. Your hope is stimulated; your courage is mustered; your ambitions are fed; your confidence is unwavering, as a result of your relationship with divinity.

It is such a great and joyous experience to observe the Light of Truth coming into the eyes of those who sat in darkness; it is a miracle to behold, to witness the mortal making contact with their own indwelling Adjuster, giving rise to a new reality level for them and for the Supreme. It is the reward of your efforts, seeing His Light come on and grow bright and extend into the greater arena, thus enlightening and enlivening all of your world.

Gentle teachers, go into your arena teaching not from your academic and intellectual standpointbut as the Master taught, by the way in which he lived his life, commingling with his fellows, ready always with a reference to his Creator, Our Father, uplifting and upstepping each person, each encounter. A worker in the field such as he was, is seldom seen. An inspiration indeed. And you yourself can be an inspiration also, even to me, even to Michael.

We have planted many seeds in this vicinity, children. We have seen many lights come on, and many steady glows that were in existence have been elevated by the energy instilled in this area. It is an assignment I commend you for, Gerdean. You have done well, and your work will be those who know, know where the Source of this great light lies. We will proceed as if we knew what we were doing, without desperation, for we do what we do in the full knowledge of our kinship and our sonship.

I have completed my words. I hear you quietly pondering. Are there things to discuss or are you in a prayerful mode⁹

Thoroah: I'm in limbo and tired. I'm very much at ease and comfortable. I don't know if anyone else does or not.

Loreenia: Tomas, I thank you for coming to see me all along. I wasn't exactly aware who was, but I should have known. I hope you will keep coming back to see me.

TOMAS: I will never abandon your friendship and I thank you for the invitation. You may be assured I will come and sit with you and visit and, if you are willing, I will even bring some friends.

TOMAS: I have enjoyed knowing you, daughter, and look forward to our expressions of affection communally for many, many eras to come.

TOMAS: Those are prized friendships indeed. These are to be fostered and treasured for eternity. I am going to stop on account of the tape process. It may already have run out, but I will unhook myself from this circuit, which is tired. Thank you for your service, Gerdean, as usual. I will not press you further. You have been working hard and you will do well to rest, for as they say at the picture show, "tomorrow is another day." I will speak with you again and soon. I love you each and all and I bid you a fond farewell.