MERIUM:  Good afternoon, girls, this is Merium.  I was amused at your exchange there and wanted to say that men and women are mutually dependent on one another.  It’s a dirty trick, but it’s also life’s greatest pleasure, so you get the bitter with the sweet and you find balance.  This is what it is to live in maturity.   You learn to find balance.  That does not mean that there is not value in movement from one side to the other, and placating or coercing, intriguing, exciting, oppressing, and delighting -- almost as a dance, with its own tempo, be it a boogie or a minuet.

Balance.  It is hard to find balance, really, in a construct where everything is going around in a chaotic manner, totally unsettled in civility or order, but just running willy-nilly out of energy, unbridled and untrained, it’s quite a task to remain civilized, and so it is no wonder that so often all of you are guilty of rattling someone’s cage, stepping on someone’s toe, being the brunt of someone’s joke, or vice versa, for much of the time.  How delightful it is when your extremes do not carry you too far in either direction, when your tenacity does not draw blood or when your ethereal nature falls short of becoming addle-brained. Balance is on one hand a struggle for survival and on the other a path the likes of which are pure and narrow.

Truly, though, as you advance, as you come to know one another, as you come to know yourself, the antecedent causations of your behaviors and your -- shall we say ‘charm’? -- your personality potential is so endearing as to become an environment in which you can smilingly gloss over so much of what is said that is virtually meaningless and unintentional as trees give off pollens with no intention of causing allergic distress simply because they do what they do, and rightly so.

Again, we do try to avoid extremes.  We try to avoid letting it go completely – in any direction, really, because moderation eventuates in charm and charm is the characteristic that will enable you to win men over – men and women!  Charm goes a long way.  It is not to be used, however, as ammunition or as a costume; if it isn’t genuine, it isn’t really charm.  It is wiliness, cunning, laying in wait to pounce upon its prey, its victim, the meek, the guileless, the innocent. Then they want to know why God didn’t protect them.

This is a lovely afternoon and there are many lines open.  Are there questions? Are there concerns? Are there complaints? Are there day-dreams? Are there prayers?

Renault:  I have a question, maybe.  I have been running into people – friends, neighbors, and other people –whose children are suffering from mental disorders: depression, bi-polar, just weird things.  Is this part of that generational matrix? Is it a result of the parental lifestyle? Or is it just one of those things that inhabit the human race in more of a random pattern than being able to say ‘it’s because of this or that.’

MERIUM:  Well, I do think we could probably put our finger on something there as to what’s causing it because it is, in fact, occurring.  And I believe your text points it out in the Paper Rodan of Alexandria where it discusses the art of living and the fact that if we are so ingenious as to grow so fast and learn so much, we will out-run our ability to assimilate it all.

[Ed.-(160: §1; ¶3) The more complex civilization becomes, the more difficult will become the art of living.  The more rapid the changes in social usage, the more complicated will become the task of character development.  Every ten generations mankind must learn anew the art of living if progress is to continue.  And if man becomes so ingenious that he more rapidly adds to the complexities of society, the art of living will need to be remastered in less time, perhaps every single generation.  If the evolution of the art of living fails to keep pace with the technique of existence, humanity will quickly revert to the simple urge of living – the attainment of the satisfaction of present desires. Thus will humanity remain immature; society will fail in growing up to full maturity.]    

A lot of people are on information overload and emotional stimuli saturation.  What kind of guidance does this give the young people who need the stability and assurance a parent should be expected to provide?  But the parents have no idea where their next insurance policy is going to be introduced or what about the job situation, following the mortgage disaster, on top of the war and rumors of wars.  How can these young people be expected to provide more maturity than their elders manifest?

Machiventa is here.

MACHIVENTA:  Greetings.  I am observing your interlude here and enjoying your repartee with Teacher Merium.  I am intrigued with this piece of the conversation because it does indeed reflect on the emergency nature of our presence here. When I say “the emergency nature of our presence here,” I am not referring to tsunamis, earthquakes, or global shifts.  I am, rather, speaking of the principle of the emergency nature and it not being physical, although those certainly have been dramatic and noteworthy of late, and they will likely continue, but not because of this emergency nature but in spite of it.

In times of transition such as we are undergoing here … you are undergoing here … in the wake of the arrival of the Urantia Papers, in the face of such unheard-of technological advances, as many citizens of the globe have been involved in your consciousness, or as many latent concepts are coming to life in the minds of the many who have much mental housekeeping to do, many fears are being uprooted, unearthed, and the ghouls and phantoms of these fears are haunting the neighborhoods and the beast must be stopped -- the beast of fear.  It is an emergency.  Yet and still the people continue to panic and the leadership, also chaotic, provides yet more panic.

There is a major transition underway.  It is as if the entire global collective unconscious were on a tight wire, on a unicycle on a tight wire …

Renault:  Is that because of the fear they have been fed?

MACHIVENTA:  Nerve endings are raw.  How many people can you see starve to death?  How many injustices can you see that the courts don’t know how to handle? How much medical trauma, financial disaster, social debacle or cultural devastation must you witness, knowing that you could be next?  There is too much of too much and not nearly enough of it is tranquil, or soothing, or anything that you can trust. Even your concept of God is confused!

There is an urgency about our work, but how can we get your attention regarding the urgency without contributing to the fear?  

How can we call to your attention to the truth of your being, that the answer lies within, and if you respond to that which is within, you will walk in beauty without?

Renault:  I’m wondering about the young people having so much trouble going within, or that makes for the mental disarrangement that follows their lives.

MACHIVENTA:  Well, I have to assume that is a rhetorical question because I just spoke to that issue.  The young people have a hard time tuning in because they are afraid.  They can’t sit still.  They are also hampered by the hormonal phase of existence at a certain point and so the idealism of youth is often set aside for the pleasures of youth.  And when there is much to fear, the need for pleasure is much greater.  When there are insurmountable problems ahead, the tendency/the need to escape problems is enhanced.  A pint cannot hold a quart.  It will spill out over and beyond.

Renault:  How are the emergency procedures that you guys are here to do, how are they being implemented in the material realm?

MACHIVENTA:  Let me ask you, since you are an instrument on our control panel: how does your purpose contribute to or participate in the stabilization of those actions and behaviors that are an effect of the fear cause?

Renault:  How do I contribute to it? Or how do I help it?

MACHIVENTA:  Both!

Renault:  I try to give hope … thoughts of a better way of being.

MACHIVENTA:  That is what we hope to provide as well.

Renault:  And I must say, because of your teachings, and the Urantia Book, it can go through my mind and not my mouth but to my heart and to other people I try to reach, and so thank you, thank you, to the celestial realms out there.

MACHIVENTA:  Well, we do hope to enable you to foster the understanding of truth on your world.

Renault:  Thank you.

MACHIVENTA:  And thank you.

MERIUM:     This is Merium again.  Machiventa enjoyed his visit.  We will take a brief recess.

[Recess]

WHAT ABOUT BOB:  Hi kids. I’m happy to see you at the plow, tilling the fields, fertilizing the soil, planting the seeds, making ready for a new crop; also happy to see you hard at work, Gerdean, on the chakra book.

Renault:  What an interesting concept!

WHAT ABOUT BOB:  It’s worth taking a look at.  People talk about the emotional I.Q., but they haven’t really spent much time or energy on these adjutant/chakra ideas of how it is that Deity indwells you – even electro-chemically.  You might even play with the idea that you are the electro-chemical and the Adjuster is the personality – the true person that emotes through your electro-chemical system … which is what you will be like, after you fuse.  You will be a personality able to manipulate your energy circuits.  Might as well begin now, don’t you think?

I’m hearing some complaints that there is not enough material on the latter two adjutants, wisdom and worship, that even the spirit of council falls short of the potential inherent in the groundwork that was established in the first four.  Well, what you see is what you get.  At the time, that’s where we came up to what we could do at that time and there was no time for anything more.  If you want more, you have to invest more time.  It’s not like I couldn’t talk or Lady couldn’t talk for days about the spirit of worship and the spirit of wisdom, or for that matter, a few paragraphs to embellish if that’s what you want to do.

Renault:  Could you arrange that, Gerdean?

Gerdean:  Yes, I probably could arrange that, if that’s what we should do.

WHAT ABOUT BOB:  It would seem that’s what they want.  Gerdean, you will need to put some more work in on this thing – obviously more than you intended to, or wanted to – but if you want to do a bang up job, you’d better make sure you please everybody … or at least as many key people as possible.

Who are the key people?  That might be the question to ask.  The people that can make it possible for you to succeed … those who influence what your community does, those whose opinion people admire and advice they follow.  It doesn’t mean so much that you need to fork over a few bucks to have these tasks accomplished, but that you have to kiss a few behinds.  It’s just the way the games are played.

Renault:  Can we just be charming instead of kissing?

WHAT ABOUT BOB:  It’s all semantics anyway.  How about browning noses?  The point is, if it’s going to be a community production, a production  that requires community participation and involvement, such as artistic display, creative embellishment, editorial commentary, marketing venues, reviews, critiques, and the like in your listening audience, in your focal group, this is politics.  If you only want to please God you don’t need to play politics.  But if you want to please others and yourself, then politics are an inherent part of the program.

Socializing and politicking is ever so much the same thing.  Everyone has some kind of an agenda.  Everyone has certain self-interest in addition to the fact that everyone has something interesting to offer and something which they are eager to exchange something for something and will even provide something for nothing if they are feeling magnanimous and abundance.

This cooperative aspect is what will be required for your community to begin to function and produce as a team. It is under the auspices of the spirit of wisdom.  The spirit of wisdom will allow you to find ways to work together without compromising your ideals or your standards, even as you accept the eccentricities and skills of others who, like you, seek to serve in this milieu of the Correcting Time.

The spirit of worship, you have been observing, manifesting in much blockage … each of you having your own god concept and holding it up as worthy of everyone to follow, even as you turn your back on what others are holding up as worthy of you to follow.  And so while everyone enjoys a certain amount of worship in their own paradigm, it is difficult to find others with which to worship in a group setting because of the inherent distrust that comes from separation and denominations.

The spirit of worship and how it is a very individual experience.

It may be one God we all worship, but we all worship this one God in our own fashion, and so it is not going to serve us in a community sense, until we attain to the spirit of wisdom which will allow for the differences, and not be offended that others don’t see God precisely as we do … that indeed, in some cases, may even seem to be diametrically opposed to what you hold up as the highest concept and worthy of the worship of all humankind.

It is important to learn, sooner or later, however, that everyone has that self-righteousness that self-consciousness will reveal.  But it is also true that you need not sustain this self-righteous attitude beyond a certain usefulness.

The spirit of wisdom does not mean everyone stands around agreeing with one another.  Does not mean that everyone is so grown up they see eye to eye on every issue.  The spirit of worship allows, however for wisdom to prevail.  You have incorporated the process of counting the cost in your deliberations.  You have counted the cost of friendships, real estate, geography, finances, life, death -- all these things -- and have learned to reckon with them as an integrated personality, adaptable and yet having convictions … gracious and yet inconcussible … amused and amusing.

From here, the Spirit of Truth can lead you and all of you where you need to go.  The Spirit of Truth is not a side effect of the spirit of worship. Nor is it a side effect of the spirit of wisdom.  It is not a side effect of anything, but is a reflection of the Master’s perfect personality presentation.  He always knew how to handle the situation, and always did so with Father’s blessing. He did not take it upon himself to fix it – to fix humanity or its social problems or financial concerns.  He was not a fixer and he was not a fixer-upper; he was a self made man, just as you will be when you go through your seven psychic circles in harmony with your seven adjutant mind spirits and when these energy vortexes invest you with the self-mastery to walk through life as a son of god, a daughter of divinity – regal, noble, spiritually fragrant, humanly divine.  These are the goals. These are the challenges.  This is the undertaking.  And we are well on our way.  We just have to get past this last little hurdle and we’ll be able to enter into the long stretch for some “practice makes perfect.”  Call me back if you need anything else.  Lady and I will be in your vicinity and happy to pop in on short notice.   Have a nice afternoon.

MERIUM:  This is Merium again.  It seems the equipment is getting old.  We’re going to have to trade this piece in for a new model.

Renault:  Can’t we just refurbish the old one?

MERIUM:  We could try.  It has been rebuilt a number of times already.  But you know it is true: the baton must be passed at some point – if it is to be passed – and this area needs to be kept on the map.  The spirit of worship demands the reality continuance of the Teaching Mission in the Great Southwest.  So you will need to cultivate it into the future somehow.  This paradigm will not last forever.  I’ll be around as long as I am able.

We’ve all been around this afternoon in delight of your company … and look forward to being with you next time we get together.  Enjoy the season. Allow yourselves to unfurl as springtime will unfurl before we meet again.  Have a nice season. Bye-bye.
END