2011-02-03. Response-ability.
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Lightline #293
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Response-ability
2Group: Lightline TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Tomas
2TR: Gerdean
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
3Dialogue
4Closing
Heading
Topic: Response-ability
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
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[speaker]
TOMAS: Good evening. I am Tomas, your host and teacher and friend. Welcome one and all to this format. One moment while we stabilize the T/R; technology is unnerving to her.
While we settle her down, let me welcome Wayne and Gwen and Bob and Linda and the others who are here and who have not been here before on the Light Line calls to which I have been privy. It is always wonderful to meet new personalities and to share the exhilarating time together enhancing and expanding our appreciation for the living love that feeds us and sustains us, that comes from our First Source and Center and distributes itself throughout the universes of time and space, even to the mortal creatures such as you here, and all we between. It is like becoming plugged into a large circuit board which hums a harmonious tune when everyone is in place. And the discordance is easy to see when someone is out of place, thus making it so much easier to help them find their way. Trusting now that everyone is in their place and harmoniously situated, I will proceed with some words this evening and then we can interact together.
Lesson.
I would like to speak briefly this evening about responsibility and responsiveness. It is perhaps a takeoff on my introductory remark on how it is that the energy comes and the love comes from the First Source and flows out into the universe. Here you are in your live, living your life, involving yourself with what you do, what jobs you undertake, and I see now the situation of the weather pattern playing havoc on much of your nation. Indeed, many areas are in a state of emergency. Oftentimes you see states of emergency on your world — the situation with Katrina, the floods, typhoons, tsunamis, hurricanes and so forth — those being the more dramatic but there are also those of a lesser scale that occurs in your private life: the transmission goes out on your vehicle or the dog gets hit by a car or the kid comes down with the flu at the same time you have an important business engagement and you can’t be two places at once.
These are the times when your inability to be two places at once or to be more than your simple self is frustrating and can discombopulate you, allowing you to feel overwhelmed. A lot of people feel overwhelmed these days – without work, without shelter, without secure income or insurance — and while I did not come here to talk about these dire straits for so many, I did come to talk about the qualities that will help you bear up under such duress and in large part it comes from your ability to respond to what is going on around you and your sense of responsibility.
Many times things are going on around you and you feel so overwhelmed by it, you choose not to pay attention at all. It only helps you feel helpless and incompetent and insignificant to know that you cannot do anything about the war or the weather. You can only do something about your immediate environment and sometimes even that is beyond your control. And so how can you be responsible over that which you have no control?
There is a fine line between responsiveness and responsibility. You can feel and empathize with all of humanity; you can appreciate all sides of the situation, both sides of the coin, both the conservative and the liberal, the foreign and the domestic, if you can allow yourself to be responsive to the human condition. That does not mean you have to be responsible for all these situations. If you were to be responsible for all these situations you would have to be superhuman and you are not. They are beyond your capacity. You must allow God to be responsible or some power greater than yourself; otherwise, you would throw up your hands in despair and throwing up your hands and despairing is not going to be part of the solution.
To respond appropriately is to be responsible for that which you can do something about. To empathize, yes, to be aware certainly, to be prayerful and attentive as much as possible to the danger and the hardship and the difficulty and the challenges of others even as you are struggling to be responsible for that which you can do something about. These are tough times. They are not always so difficult. Difficulties ebb and flow. There are times of great peace and abundance and harmony and joy but in times of stress and struggle, it is easy to succumb to the feeling that is all uphill, all a struggle, and yet it is not all uphill. There is also victory and triumph and success.
Coming from the First Source is the power and energy to deal with what you need to deal with. Put your faith in divinity to be and do all those things that you cannot. Look to spirit for your strength and for your courage. In you, in the adjutant mind spirits, you have tremendous resources; you have the will to survive, you have courage, understanding; you have the qualities, the attributes that have kept humanity alive for centuries, and progressing, ever progressing. Even as mortals reach the end of their rope and the end of their sojourn here, the adventure continues, and again, that virtual reality comes from a divine Source, a divine lure.
There is a divine plan. There will always be things to overcome; there will always be some amount of traction necessary. It just seems that on such a world as this, during such times as this, it can be overwhelming, overwhelmingly difficult. Reach out. Reach out to others and know that they too are feeling responsive to human need. They are responsive to the human condition that longs for security, assurance, companionship, consolation comfort, and when these things are exchanged even on the most rudimentary level, it is an expression fellowship and brotherhood. It is also from the First Source; otherwise it would all be a mad scramble for survival; where you just take-take-take and fail to be responsible.
You cannot always be responsible for the needs of others. It is just not humanly possible for you to fix everything and provide for everyone, but you can be responsive.
So let us take this spirit of responsiveness and spread it out across the world as a yellow blanket: mercy, harmony, nurturance, safety and faith … as a prayer, a living prayer … to comfort those in need. As you express this kind of empathy and concern for your fellows, as a prayer, it is lifted up and the angels act on your soul’s cry. They may turn around and give you an opportunity to be specifically responsible, but by opening yourself in prayer to be responsive, you have availed yourself to assist the angels in their efforts to comfort and uplift mankind. This is how we work together. This is how we encourage one another.
I hoped this evening to help you focus on that little point of contention that occurs in the mortal mind of wanting to be much more than it is, wanting to do so much more than it can, but taking delight in doing those small acts of kindness and gestures of tender mercy that can make such a difference and that is so possible for so many to do so easily.
I am going to disconnect here sufficiently to un-mute the line or make it possible for you to engage with me and with the others. I need to read the instructions here through Gerdean. One moment please. We’re back on and we’re in “open mic” mode. Now is the time for us to interact, ask questions, make comments.
Dialogue.
Student: Who was the teacher?
Gerdean: Tomas. Student: Yes, thank you.
TOMAS: I am Tomas. I am with the corps of teachers, the members of which have volunteered to come here to help with the Correcting Time, to act as mentors for those of you who wish to engage in a spiritualizing process of yourselves. The Teacher Corps is a by-product of the Urantia Papers (which we consider the basic test for the fifth epoch) and we are teachers and teacher assistants to help you personalize the teachings in the book so as to become familiar with them and — more to your personal challenge — study the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it so that you can live a life as fulfilling and productive as the Master.
There are also many lessons to be learned and reviewed such as civilization, government, marriage, and many other topics that are set forth in the Urantia Papers. We try to help you personalize them, bring them alive, make them more meaningful for you by taking them out of the pages of a book and putting them into the pages of your life.
There are many helpers today hailing from the spirit realms, many movements. It’s the order of the day you see, this fifth epoch. There are so many backgrounds, so many different kinds of religious conditioning, cultural conditioning, socio-economic conditioning and so forth that appeals to the hungry souls, and they nibble or feast on these messages as they pursue their path, their destiny path. Sometimes we are able to whet their appetite; sometimes we are able to provide food – food for thought, food for growth.
There is also the Monjoronson contingent, a parallel party, involved in action, actively attempting social change, political change, in anticipation of the coming of a magisterial son to this world. It has become a bit of a global movement when you consider all the many, many movements / factions / groups of people who are tapping into the great unknown, looking for a reason for being here on this planet and we are all interested in serving the needs of those of you who have long been kept in isolation due to the quarantine that has been in effect for many thousands of years since the Lucifer Rebellion.
This Correcting Time is oriented to stabilize you as you let go of the old paradigm of fear and open yourselves to the new paradigm of faith. Correcting Time begins, of course, with personal correction and it extends out into the arena where you live, work and play and indeed eventually into the government and schools and churches and gradually and eventually your world will change for the better … naturally … and you will be changed with it; you will have been active participants in the change itself.
That little overview was imply a means of introducing myself and what I do here and what I have been doing here for nearly 20 years with this Teaching Mission. I have learned a great deal myself through the experience and I have observed that many of you too have learned a great deal about yourself and your world and your relationship with it. I have seen the lights come on. I have seen you become discouraged and I have seen you rise above it. It has been a very invigorating and gratifying, albeit challenging assignment. Does anyone have a question?
Student: Yes, I have one question. There are some transmissions that come over the internet that have to do with the Galactic Federation. I’m interested to know if they are affiliated with the Correcting Time.
TOMAS: Everything is a part of the Correcting Time. And indeed the Galactic Federation is a part of the solution. It is not based in the Urantia text, but it is based in other aspects of science and religion that support our work.
Student: Thank you.
TOMAS: We look at them as a fraternal association.
Student: In some of these transmissions there are mentions of past lives, which in the context seem at odds with what longtime UB readers terminology is used, so this is sometimes confusing, but that can just be set aside in as much as there is helpful and positive information as well.
TOMAS: Yes, this is ongoing. It has been “a bone of contention” for many for years and as you know the text gives Some insight to reincarnation by stating that it is only the spornagia* that experience true reincarnation but it does not address the belief of reincarnation as it is believed by millions of people on earth, only to say that it is a shame that so many people hold onto this old idea of a recycled life rather than the ascension plan and rather lays that on Buddha as if it had been his responsibility that he did not live up to.
The tendency these days, rather than renouncing someone’s belief, is to play with it, make it malleable, figurative, to rearrange it so that it is a metaphysical concept, alliterative even, so that “another life” can mean many, many things. A former live, a previous life can be one that is enjoyed by a Thought Adjuster indwelling another person on another world at another time; it can refer to the DNA that had been kicking around since the time of Andon and Fonta and carrying with it the cellular memories of the gibbons and the various historic advances made through the years and identifying with those experiences in those days as well as the experience that many believe they have had as a pirate in a bygone life or Cleopatra, and so the concept of another life has changed significantly. It cannot be assumed that everyone is speaking the same language when you talk about another life.
There are those too who, having lived a few decades on this world, refer to their childhood as another life, or another marriage as a prior existence. They all represent a paradigm of life that can be looked at, studied, appreciated, learned from, and this is the important thing about the phrase “former lives.” What did you learn there, what do you bring forward from it, how does it help you today and what will it do for you tomorrow? It becomes more of the maturation process than reincarnation such as we understood it fifty years ago. Does that help?
Student: Thank you very much. That’s most helpful. And among UB readers I think the clarification you gave here has helped very much. To have your comments has helped very much.
TOMAS: It has found to be detrimental to simply draw a line in the sand and say: “This is true and that is untruth.” For those of you who have read the text and found great comfort and intellectual assurance from these truths, you came by them willingly. You were ready for them. There are some who are not so assured and will find it offensive if you insist that your book is right and their faith is wrong. That is not effective teaching. And so we in the Teacher Corps are hoping to teach you ways to assimilate your fellows, understanding that in due course error will fall away and the truth will emerge and take hold and carry the day.
Diplomacy is a very important part of revelation. Jesus was skilled. He was so gracious. People would listen to him even when he told them things they didn’t particularly want to hear, but he was never rude in his teaching. He was also sensible and spoke the language of the people he dealt with. He put his parables and his allegories in the language that people could understand at the level they could understand it. Sometimes we see Urantia Book readers as proud of having found this knowledge and so eager to teach it and spread it around, they act that it was their news and they had found it singlehandedly. This comes across not as assurance but as arrogance. And arrogance is not going to help. Tack and tolerance will.
And so we help you learn tact and tolerance, even when that means you have to set aside your cherished beliefs so that they can be born anew into the heart of those who will get it if you let them along long enough for it to grow in them. You cannot take a readymade belief and project it onto someone any more than you can take a civilization and project it onto someone. These things need to evolve and grow. It takes time.
Now when people are hungry, they will find the food they need, and sometimes it will be less than nourishing. There used to be a phrase about “looking for love in all the wrong places” and people who are hungry for cosmic consciousness are liable to look for it anywhere and get excited about a lot of lesser realities as they ascend into the light of truth. But just as parents take pride in their children graduating from kindergarten and elementary school on the way to high school and college, so do we delight in the small advances made by seekers worldwide. Just grasping the divine reality above and beyond the finite reality is a tremendous step forward and to cultivate that and to fan the flame of that little illumination is all that is necessary for it eventually will burn down and they will look for a brighter, more enduring and lasting fire and the truth will be revealed at that time.
And so the lesson reveals itself in this example, that we are responsive to the growth of others but we are not responsible for the growth of others. They have their own path, they have their own way. We can respond to them from that which comes to us from on high, but each of us has a responsibility of living out our own destiny, of doing the work that we have been given. Sometimes that involves helping others. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just a matter of “chop wood, haul water” and enjoy being a part of the process.
One of the things we enjoy being responsive to is that hunger that is heard in the voice of those who yearn to know more about God. They may not even know they are seeking, but if you are responsive, you will hear it, just as Jesus was able to hear it in the longing looks of “The Young Man Who Was Afraid” and respond to that need, responsibly but naturally. Not feeling overwhelmed but feeling the appropriate thing at the appropriate time. You know when you are “In the Zone,” when the voice comes rising up from within you and you hear it speak. This is being responsive to spirit reality. And to allow it to come forth is to be responsible to your destiny calling. This of course does not mean you don’t also have to shovel the snow off the sidewalk and bring in the groceries and all the things that human beings do in the process of being born and living a life, rearing children, raising crops, growing old, and passing on.
Closing.
We are at the top of the hour once more. I will wind down now in anticipation of our closure but I will pause to see if there is something else you would like to address before we end our session.
Linda: Thank you. It’s been a help, actually. Thank you very much.
TOMAS: Thank you, daughter.
Wayne: Thank you Tomas and Gerdean.
TOMAS: Thank you, newfound friend and neighbor. Thank all of you for this special session, this time together.
Linda: I just want to say I like the idea of the response-ability, the ability to respond. I think that’s a wonderful way of using those words.
TOMAS: Yes, well, practice those this week as you go about your affairs and we’ll see you back here again the next chance we get to pursue our association in spirit. Blessings. Amen and farewell. Aloha!
