1999-10-19-Paradoxes
Butler PA #75
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Paradoxes
o 1.2 Group: Butler TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Dialogue
3.2.1 Paradox
3.2.2 Friendship
3.2.3 Melchizedek Schools
o 3.3 Closing
Topic: Paradoxes
Group: Butler TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
TOMAS: Having observed you for these past few days, it is amazing to the extent that you have each become a hub of activity within yourselves. Each of you has been bubbling over inside, in your unconscious realms. It is interesting to observe, for while you yourselves remain unconscious of your growth, we can see you literally bubbling inside, indicating that there is much going on. And this equates to eternal values, new growth, good work.
Dialogue
Paradox
TOMAS: And speaking of work, I believe we have an e-mail inquiry from our loyal associate in the east. What has he to say to us today, Thoroah?
THOROAH: R says, “Greetings, Tomas. I celebrate my association and friendship with you. In fact, last week our visit gave me much to ponder and I return to where we left off. I was struck with the irony of your gentle reproof of my estimation of play over its more celebrated sibling work, as I am more accustomed to being reproved by my mortal friends for doing just the opposite. Hence my question, What is it in the finite experience which gives rise to the appearance of paradox and how might it be related to irony?”
TOMAS: : Good lad, come and sit next to me for a moment and we will ponder this together. Paradox. Paradox provides balance. Paradox is the pendulum on the clock of time which swings one way to show you to look at the moment, only to turn again and do an about face to show you yet another look at another moment. And yet and still they are all a part of time and eternity; therefore, what may be true for you today could be not true for you tomorrow. What is true for one person today, is not necessarily the same truth as for another. This is part of paradox, because both can be true, even when they are on opposite sides of the clock.
As you get closer and closer to Paradise, perhaps the pendulum’s swing will enclose itself such that when you have attained perfection, ultimate perfection, there is no margin for error, no waiting. Time will stand still, and there will be only Truth. Not what is true here and what is true there, but eternal and ultimate Truth.
And as for irony, I am not familiar with irony sufficiently to discuss it. Why don’t you let me ponder on your word in order that I may have a more seasoned response for you when we speak again, and in this way I will be able to entice your continued presence here in our configuration, even if it is in altered time and space? I’ll get back to you on that one.
THOROAH: It’s one of my favorite forms of humor. I enjoy the ironies of life. They can be humorous. I suppose that depends on how much good cheer one has.
TOMAS: : I have told you many times that I am learning, and so it seems you have given me something new to learn about.
Friendship
THOROAH: R has another question. He says, “I am given to understand that our ascendant life, at least in the morontia stage, is evenly divided between work and play. What different qualities of friendship ensue from these domains of activity? And, are they not conjoined as the warp and woof of our experience?”
TOMAS: : Yes and no. Work and play is equally divided, yes, much like that pendulum on the ticking clock. In your experience even now your own spiritual composition is such that you are partly and periodically in a state of recession and introversion which embraces the inner realm and your relationship with Father, while it is counter-balanced with external activity and service-oriented qualities in your guardian seraphim and other active participants in your life. Thus you have, even within yourself, cycles of rest and repose and reflection, counter-balanced with living and acting and doing.
These could be moderately compared to work and play, for as you go in and reflect, you become mindful of those things which would give rise to pleasureful activities leading to worship. As you ponder and paint and write and philosophize, it is a state of rest; while you are actively involved in your life, in your experiential, also ties in with teaching and preaching ministries, you are at work. You are working in the fields even when you are ostensibly playing; you are at work when you are outside yourself. When you are seemingly in repose, you are not so much at work as you are being worked on.
Now, how does this relate to and affect friendships? You can see that both parts are valuable and will contribute to better balanced friendships. You cannot say that you can be better friends with whom you work than with someone with whom you play. It may be true that only you know certain persons in your more external mode and they will thus know you more externally, but they know you better, as far as your external qualities of working in the field, and this can give rise to a reflection of who you are on the inside, and this inside quiet reflective reposeful personality, which could be construed at leisure or at play in a non-aggressive realm of dreaming and pondering and reflecting and meditating, in this intimate and sensitive place, you also can develop friends who also understand that the fruits of these labors of repose will ultimately go to work in the field, in the external.
Blessed be the friend who knows you well enough to know there are those two sides and they are essential, as are the pendulum on the clock, ticking between the one and the other in perfect balance and symmetry and harmony, in order to create the well-defined life.
THOROAH: One more question.
TOMAS: : Yes.
Melchizedek Schools
THOROAH: “How do the Melchizedek schools function in the economy of our world, to compensate for the devolution of our present day institutions of ‘higher learning’ into mere technical vocational schools?”
TOMAS: : The Melchizedeks are at work even now in this very living room. This is how the Melchizedek schools will be imparted and maintained. We are the skeleton crew of what will become the Universities of the Spheres on Urantia in the course of time. Your schools are interested in facts and this is what the mechanical mind perceives education to be. Only those of you understand that the fundamental base of all reality is spiritual can appreciate that a material and mechanical education is only one small percentage of what is necessary in order for the mind, the heart, the soul to be so edified as to affect the “campus of creation”.
Your world must be infused with greater spirit purpose, a greater identification with spirit reality. The pendulum is stuck too far to one side, and we are trying to pull it into step with the cosmic clock, the stream of time that allows for divine time to enter in and affect your world. You have had control of it long enough. It is time for us to help you maneuver yourselves back into a comfort zone where the pulse of real education is meaningful and valuable and will contribute to a greater world inside your minds, inside your hearts, and upon the face of the earth. This requires more than academic facts. The Melchizedek schools are eternal schools. Essentially you will be learning for millennia, eons, and the facts will change. Many of the facts will become passe
Thus, when your existence passes beyond this, and yet and still you are entitled to a real education, how do you get along with others? Are you a part of the team? Can you be part of a family? Can you raise a child without losing your temper? Can you see life as God sees it? Can you create and co-create and for what purpose? How do you manage your affairs and others’? Can you organize a world? Can you create a symphony? Can you stick with something for long periods of time? Can you sing hosannas without growing weary?
These elements of the universities of eternity are far removed from what you are being urged to learn in your colleges today. It is necessary that eventually the purpose of education be altered to include your role in the universe, this world being part of the universe. But in the meantime, it is essential that the value of spirit knowledge and actual spiritual reality be made a reality for you, such that you KNOW the necessity of it, so that the WISDOM that you garner in your spiritual growth, in your faith experiences, will lead you into those realms which need an infusion of this same greater reality — the reality which has brought all life and all education into being — Divinity. We begin at the beginning.
THOROAH: R appreciates your answers which, he says, he will savor and he has many more questions and he will share them either in person or e-mail.
TOMAS: : He is a welcome addition to our family indeed. It is wonderful to have prepared questions. It is wonderful also to feel the wonderment of insight formulate within you and well up in order that it might find expression in you who are here in person. It is a wonderful classroom to be in, one which extends far and wide and connects with the greater classrooms in the universities on-going. We are very gladdened and indeed of good cheer about the steady, sure growth of our relationship in and through these means of connecting most soulfully, most tenderly and most meaningfully with each other in this family, divine and human — the warp and woof of friendship.
Closing
TOMAS: Are there any other questions this evening?
THOROAH: I’ve got one but I’ll save it to another time.
TOMAS: : I will be glad to meet with you and expand our association, Thoroah. I am at your service, as you well know. My friends I will thus take my leave in good faith of your good cheer within this upcoming week. Your gladness will impart courage in your own heart and give gladness and good cheer to others as you pass by. Good evening.
