2011-07-07-Free Will, Worship, Urantia
Lightline #315
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Free will, Worship, etc.
2Group: Lightline TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: 0802-AB Jack
2TR: Gerdean
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
2.1Free will
2.2Worship
2.3Growth
2.4Urantia
2.5Service
3Dialogue
3.1Guidance
3.2Providence
3.3Healing
4Closing
Heading
Topic: Free will, Worship, etc.
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: 0802-AB Jack
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
Father God, thank you for being with us this evening. Help us with the process, the technology, the wisdom, and all things that we need to make this work – both the session and our lives. Thank you. Amen.
0802-AB-JACK: Jack here, again and still, observing, watching and having a good time seeing you at it — at life, at its challenges, at its opportunities. I have had the opportunity to enjoy such for many thousands of years, and while it is often confusing, it is also almost always interesting.
Lesson
Free will
0802-AB-JACK: You might be interested to know that we sometimes feel deep chagrin, consternation and worry about you and about the circumstances we observe occurring. It is only normal for elder brothers and sisters to be concerned about the shenanigans that our younger brothers and sisters get involved with. Sometimes we find them playing with unfortunate associates, or engaging in unfortunate activities and yet with Free Will, there’s not really much we can do about it.
The guardian seraphim, of course, have an opportunity to interject and sometimes we can help them avert real danger, but for the most part, “you’re on your own” and so we do indeed observe and bide our time until such times as this when you are in a position to be still and hear your own thoughts and actions reflected back to you through your elders. Now, I am not going to set myself up as some kind of super being; I am your cousin. I am not troubled with the animal legacy as you are but I also don’t get to enjoy the animal legacy as you do. I can only pick up with you on the same page where we find ourselves, and that would begin with the spirit of worship and into the spirit of wisdom.
Worship
I find so many ways you worship, it is mind-boggling. It’s been that way for thousands of years, of course, and the Urantia text talks about the many things you have worshipped, including yourself. It is not any different now that it was except it might be a little bit – a little bit – more advanced. I would say that people don’t worship rocks anymore but they do. They exalt crystals. They exalt elements like gold and uranium. They worship the wealth that comes from these elements … these rocks, virtually.
They worship the ethers of air, much as they did in the times of the ghost cults. Like the breath of life that is emitted from the body in breathing freezing weather, they construed that as the spirit leaking out into their environment and it is the same today as you find yourself listening to every utterance from people’s mouth, you feel it is spirit reality when it isn’t at all; it is merely air, warmer than the environment. It’s hot air! It’s just a lot of hot air. And yet you continue to put it on some exalted pedestal as if it were coming from God Himself.
I make these observations because I live here and I have been observing it for a long time and I marvel – I marvel – at the mystery of it all. How it is that God – all-seeing, all-knowing, all-present – can be cognizant of this — all of this — and know what to do and act correctly in each instance. The mystery of God is beyond our comprehension. And so we build superstitions and belief systems and theories and postulations and all manner of things in an effort to construct God in a way that we can understand God.
Actually, this is not a bad idea. But you can’t expect everyone to believe in the same God-construct as you have because everyone has his own. Everyone should have his own — or her own — construct of what God is because that’s what you deal with when you deal with your existence, your very existence. When you ask questions of yourself, you are really asking questions of the God within yourself. But so often, the mind gets in the way, the body gets in the way, the emotions get in the way and God is completely short-circuited. Any genuine religious experience is so often completely short-circuited by your short-term goals. I’m not scolding anyone here; I’m just speaking my mind.
I want to say that I am Gerdean’s oldest friend on the planet, not counting her personal teachers who have been with her since she was a child. I met Gerdean in 1968 and mentored her for a number of years, through her spiritual childhood and adolescence, watched her flounder and fail and finally rise to the occasion; she became part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. And so you are going to hear from her, in her dealings with you and her peers in the Teaching Mission, her programming, her conditioning, much of which is from me. And I was a very no nonsense mentor.
Growth
When I got hold of Gerdean [long pause] … I can’t even begin to convey how far we’ve come. But this is what happens when you work with spirit over a long period of time – you become more spiritual, and yet retain your mortality. Part of my teaching always was to be both human and divine. You cannot stop being human in order to be more spiritual; you need to reassess, re-evaluate, re-train your material sense in order to accommodate the overriding and ever growing spiritual sense.
This is where the wealth comes from the experiential wealth they talk about in morontia mota, “the combined ministries of nature and grace.” Jesus did this; he walked a path that incorporated both the human and the divine; he did not give up one to be the other. He was both Son of Man and Son of God together. While you are here, that is your task.
I boxed her ears many times, just like I was taught by watching the Master work with his apostles. They were lifted up and then fall flat, to be lifted up and brought down again on this anvil of experience, molding and formulating, cultivating, refining the soul which will survive this life and go on to Mansonia to be greeted by the welcoming Adjuster who will come out to meet the soul for resurrection. This is a serious process.
At least, I construed it to be a serious process, given how much heart and soul Jesus put into it. He was the inspiration for me to turn around from being a Child in Need of Supervision to a willing worker in the field. I was so inspired by that man, by his life. Any student I have ever had, I have tried to replicate what I observed him do. Even so, he was much more effective that I am, but I am just a midwayer and he was a Creator Son so I appreciate the difference but that does not make me less.
My work is here, on the world, on the earthly plane. I am here until such time as I am released which is not for a long while yet, not until the planet is settled in light and life. No, not just one or two individuals, one or two communities, but the entire planet. That’s a lot of work, and so I tend to take my work seriously and I appreciate it when my students take their work seriously. That does not mean we do not enjoy ourselves. There is tremendous joy in our rejoicing.
I tell you this because in your culture, in your TeaM culture, Gerdean has more than once been controversial and I am going to take a great deal of responsibility for that because I taught her. And I think she is doing great. She is upholding what is essential and that is the individual’s relationship with their God to formulate their soul and then allow that soul to release itself in service to others. There is nothing in any programming or conditioning that I have ever received that tells me I need to teach her or other students about other entities throughout the cosmos. That, I was assured, is covered in the textbook. And even without the textbook, living a righteous life is more than most of you can handle.
Of course, I am somewhat repentant. I lived many, many years, many hundreds of years, thousands of years in willful disobedience to the divine will. And I have turned over a new leaf. And how I enjoy seeing it when others reach that point where they are eager to turn over their will to find out what God’s will might be for them. Not then to throw their will away, but to put their will to proper use in serving Him and your fellows.
Urantia
This planet has got its hands full. There are problems all over the map: politics you wouldn’t believe; power struggles on every street corner; disease, virus, death. We have starvation on one side of the street and obesity on the other. The imbalance of wealth is enough to make you stagger. Well, it’s enough to make me stagger, and often we do stand back and figuratively speaking scratch our heads in wonder at how you could have gotten yourself into such a mess. I know, Lucifer didn’t help, nor did Adam and Eve, but even so, you have so many things going for you. It’s time to turn over a new leaf. Roll up your sleeves and get busy on the problems this world has and needs served.
I know, here in this area there are forest fires raging. That does not mean you need to run out and become a volunteer fire fighter. Further east, there are floods. That does not mean you have to start building boats and levies, sandbags to hold back the floods, but there is always something that can be done, no matter how small. And this is one of the peculiar things I find about human beings: you have such a tremendous need to be grandiose and heroic. You think you need to do something really, really great when the truth is some of the smallest acts of kindness are what is the greatest.
Service
If you just accept where you are and work within the parameters of where you are, you will find more than ample ways to be of meaningful service. If you allow yourself to be open to do something, to assist your fellow human beings, your Mystery Monitor will certainly provide you will opportunities to fill the bill. I know you don’t all pick up on the opportunity that comes your way but there are so many, so great, it would be virtually impossible to fill every need, but there are opportunities, even so, to be a part of the solution.
I urge you to keep your focus on this realm. This is where you are, this is where you live and this is where your work is, here and now. Yes, you probably should have a general understanding of what has gone before and certainly some goals and ideals to aspire toward – individually and as a community. But if you are right with God, you will be guided and directed into service fields that will cause you to rejoice evermore and be an inspiration to those around you.
Well, I hear rattling going on. It tells me that you are getting anxious to participate or stand up and stretch, maybe have a drink of water or use the restroom, so I will back off from my podium and invite you to open the door to engage with me and with others in the process of socializing our beliefs. In this way we bond with one another as fellow religionists, as workers in the field, and perhaps can encourage and stimulate each other in the huge tasks that await our attention.
Thank you for your ears. In order to come back in, now, I believe the technique is *6.
Eva: Are you ready for a question now?
0802-AB-JACK: Yes.
Dialogue
Eva: Oh, great. Hi, 0802-AB. This is Eva. You’ve got my number! All my short-term projects, Jack, that’s what I’ve been concentrating on. Short-term, short-term, short. Are you really watching us? Is it just sometimes, or always? Because that is a great help. I’m just wondering if I am just spinning around sometimes I feel beat up and I put myself in situations where I need to go. I say situations, you know, because there lives in me one – the Father Absolute — who can.
So I roll up my sleeves, I do one-on-one in the small opportunities. I love helping. But, I go down the wrong path, I’ve made wrong decisions, my ego is one of my short-term projects, hitting my head against the wall, trying to change, and it’s all about me, really, because it’s a reflection on me if I can succeed and, you know, none of that matters. So it would make me feel so much better that whatever way I’m going, we are somehow truly being directed and our lives are being planned out. If we are obedient to God’s will.
If we knew that, then I – with all my turning around in circles and all my going down the wrong path – I’m coming back, because my intent is good. And He somehow has me in the palm of His hands. Because when I’m spinning around like that, it feels like I’m out of control, and when I’m doing something that does not result in what I feel to be fruit of the spirit in my longer term projects, talking about the smaller, short term … um, when I get like this, is the Universal Father really aware? Has he planned my life out? Because it doesn’t feel like it.
And then again, of course, when I am doing something with resounding success, you know, makes my soul come alive, helps people and they give me that smile of “You had no– Good for you! You made me feel–” People are what I hoped people could be. That kind of feed-back just makes me want to go, and then I feel, “Yeah! This is planned out for me from day one.”
But then again, when I’m wrapped up in things that are old, old CD’s, then I say, “Come on, now, is this part of the problem?” I know the universe uses everything – everything! — but it really does help me to hear what you just said, that we are being monitored. It’s so important to remember – although you did say, you know, we’re on our own; we do have to act on our own. But just that, even when you go to sleep and you ask the indwelling Spirit, “Use my dreams. Even that little bit I get such great, great response from my indwelling Spirit.
Guidance
But I guess what I am looking for is the kind of assurance that our lives are planned out somewhat, a little bit, if we are obedient to God’s will, because I need a pilot. Forget co-pilot! And thanks, Jack, if you would just try to make sense of that because I don’t know if I was clear.
0802-AB-JACK: It was good to hear from you Eva. You had quite a bit to say. I think sometimes when we have these occasions that come up, it’s like you are like a pressure cooker that is letting off steam that has boiled up under pressure and must escape. Just the expression of all that must leave you feeling better, so I will approach two or three of things you said which was interesting but no the universe does not use everything.
There is a lot of roughage and drivel that is unnecessary, but it’s allowed to take up space, just like dead leaves and dust are allowed to take up space, whether they have any nutritive value or saline contribution or whatever. But this is part of the process of gleaning what is of value and what isn’t. And this is something you can determine to a great extent.
Yes, you are monitored. Not only are you monitored constantly by the Father through His indwelling Spirit, you are monitored also by the Spirit of Truth which has been with you all along and intimately you are monitored by the very active adjutant mind-spirits of the Mother. That is the element that knows when the sparrow falls, and that every hair on your head is counted.
You are part of a living universe. You are so much more than the sparrow. And so, of course, the Father is interested in you and in your destiny. He is not willing that any should perish, or that any should get away, and so he is going to dog your tracks, shine a light on the path, and whisper in your ear at every opportunity “this is the way.”
Providence
Now, there is discussion in the Urantia text about predestination. Not much, but the word is mentioned and so this gives rise to tremendous speculation on the part of creative human beings as to what that means. And some take it extremely seriously, even down to the last jot and tittle, to the extent that they feel that this marriage is sanctioned in heaven, that job is what God would have them do, they were predestined to become this particular profession, and so forth, and even to the ludicrous extent of what kind of car or shoes you should buy.
Now, there is merit to weighing the pros and cons of all your mortal decisions, choices, but they do not always impact significantly on your destiny. Much of it has to do with creature comfort and personal preference, but that does contribute to helping you feel more comfortable with yourself and at home in your world, and so a certain amount of “me, me, me” is understandable, even commendable. It’s when “me, me, me” rises to the level of supremacy that it becomes problematic.
If you are not taking care of you and your needs, how then can you serve others? Again, there are controversial perspectives on self-forgetfulness, but unless you have a self, how can you forget it? So, don’t beat yourself up if you have thoughts about your own well-being, your own wishes or your own ambitions. But consider what effect they will have on the overall destiny the Father would have for you and what effect it might have on those who surround you? Are you stepping on the toes of others to get what you want? In that case you might want to think again.
I know that many organizations in corporate America – and beyond that – it is important that you go for the jugular when you are in the arena. Otherwise you will be eviscerated by someone else. This is not a game I encourage my students to play. It is really a relic from a time and day when survival was uppermost and in this culture of today, you here have no need to concern yourself about starving to death. You have access to friends, neighbors, and facilities that could provide for you if you found yourself in dire straits.
There is no excuse for much of what goes on today in the name of progress or abundance, but I am not here today to pass judgment on those situations; I am counseling you and frankly it seems to me – and I confess I don’t know you well, but it seems to me, you are either drinking too much coffee, eating too much sugar, or might have a hormonal imbalance, because you are a whirling dervish of scattered energy and resolve, and you are doing no one any favor, least of all yourself, by continuing to function in such a chaotic pattern.
You have a good heart and your goals seem to be spiritual, but you are worrying so over the minor details of life such that you are not allowing your faith to see you through. Rest in the arms of the Comforter until you are satisfied, and then take His hand and let Him lead you into the throng, there to help you reveal yourself as yourself, and part of that, you will find, is divine.
Eva: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. “Part of that is divine.” I wish I could take this sense of calm that I gather when I am around like values with me into areas where I feel I am trying to overcome obstacles that relate to long-buried memories so it is avoiding trigger spots and that’s what I need to do.
0802-AB-JACK: You need to then establish …
Eva: Boundaries.
Healing
0802-AB-JACK: … a schedule with yourself to give yourself an opportunity to have spiritual therapy.
You do not need to hire a therapist to help you with this because you have within you the Master Therapist Himself and heavenly helpers who will go with you into those problem areas and help you reveal the crux of the problem and heal you, or allow you to heal yourself, from the choices you made that were the only choice you felt you had at the time but which has subsequently turned out to have been a wrong choice, or it needs to be revisited.
This is part of the healing process inherent in the Correcting Time. Fear not these healing experiences. They are the heart and soul of Correcting Time, of recovery of the planet.
Eva: What do you mean, Jack, by “needs to be revisited”?
0802-AB-JACK: Well, generally things you want to push aside from your consciousness and not look at. The things you want to hide from and not want to see reveal something about yourself you might be proud of, something you might be ashamed of or unhappy with. It may have been an assault to y our self-esteem or a betrayal of what you felt was a rightful relationship which failed, and so you are angry, you harbor anger or resentment; it could be a million things, many things that the heart latches onto and holds as an obstacle toward appropriate self-love and acceptance.
These can be healed by revisiting the circumstances, by forgiving yourself and others. It’s not easy and it’s not quick, but it is worth it and it is essential if you expect to come out of this experience with any real degree of happiness. You have confessed to me that you are running around like a chicken with its head cut off because you don’t want to sit down and look at some painful things. If you looked a few painful things and got them straight, you would not have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off making matters worse.
Eva: Right.
0802-AB-JACK: This is the whole point of Stillness. Get still. Be with God. Let Him show you. If you truly believe that this is a loving God, everything that you learn, everything that you will discern that has hobbled you and tethered you to pain, anger, resentment, or betrayal, can be dissolved, cured, in love and compassion, with understanding, with mercy, such that it becomes a miracle, not a nightmare: a miracle. God can do this. He can turn you life inside out. He can turn your opinion of yourself inside out. As the Master points out, His gospel is to restore self-respect to those who have lost it, and so many … so many children on Urantia today are suffering from low self-esteem.
And to compensate for low self-esteem, for these very things that we are discussing, [they] go for the jugular of others, because if they can go for the jugular of others, if they can destroy others, they will not be destroyed themselves. It’s not a pretty picture. It’s not a happy solution. In fact, it’s no solution at all. It has to turn around, and you are in the position of being in the vanguard, for as you turn yourself around, your light can so shine as to reflect your blessedness on others. Not that you have to do anything about it at all. Just be yourself and He will shine through. Your very energy will be altered.
Eva: [Something about] energy. Funnel it. I have a lot of it. Use it the right way. Right. Jack, the Master taught us that we should resolve relationships, work two-by-two, have people to work alongside us. Isn’t it – Doesn’t it behoove us then to have someone specific to– even though we have our lives transformed by God. When we visit a therapist, I think that I have – I believe they can help. We don’t have what they had in years gone by, helpers, tribes of people, elders to help, someone to walk alongside of us. I would think that someone around could just contain you. In and of itself, like balm to your soul and let the real you come out a little more.
0802-AB-JACK: It could also be a jailer, or someone who controls you, and that’s not what you want. You do not want to put yourself in a position where someone will keep you under control. You need to be able to manage yourself. When you can manage yourself through your own consciousness — God-consciousness – when you have attained a certain degree of self-mastery, then you will attract those who also have a modicum of self-mastery and you may find them compatible. In that case then there are two people who are able to go out two-and-two to spread the gospel as the Master recommends.
But for two dysfunctional people to go out, we have the blind leading the blind. That is not beneficial. In fact two such people can contribute to the others’ delusion, such that you have a very dangerous paradigm. I can think of a number of couples in your Urantia history here who became rich and famous but their dysfunction was great and so what they did was they sent thousands of people down the river – made a fortune off of people’s willingness to believe what they told them to believe – because so many people are unwilling to do their own thinking, to do their own work. It’s so much easier to let someone else give us that sense of security. But it’s a false security.
Closing
I know we lost some time at the beginning of this program due to technological difficulties, but it is coming around to the midnight hour, as it were. I’ve had a really grand time this evening. I appreciate having these meaningful discussions. It is this slow and thorough process of spiritizing that gives rise to life’s most interesting challenges and circumstances that call for you to make those decisions which will advance or retard your development, and so they do take time but there is undeniable progress for those of you who are in pursuit of Paradise.
I will do everything I can to encourage your efforts, to become all that you can be. Whether you have any additional assistance or not, you are a treasure trove of truth, beauty and goodness unto yourself. I will give the hour one moment more to ask if there is someone who has something they must ask before we close this talk. It would seem that the hour has sufficed, and so I thank you with sincerity and deep joy for the opportunity to sit with you and to share with you the inner life that leads us to God and to a greater appreciation for what this eternal adventure is about.
Blessed be art thou. Later!
