2004-08-08. If God Were To Search You
Rio Rancho #101
Topic: If God Were To Search You
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Teacher: Tomas, Anatolia
TR: Gerdean, Matthew
Opening
MUSIC: Elena on Piano: “Oh, God, You Search Me”
PRAYER: Matthew: Let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, the Christ. Master Teacher, We come to you today with a full room of participants who are willing and able and desire to be taught, as well as to teach, for we can only teach what we know and as we become more fully aware and more incorporated into the responsibility that we have to be and to share love as we acquire its meaning, then we can be truly more like you. We can never be you, but only become more perfect as you have encouraged us to be – more perfect like our Father in Heaven is perfect.
We ask for the teachings that are made possible today through you and are grateful for this gift of T/R and for the group that shares its worth and receives its value. We place all of our needs before you, each and all, as you know them to be, and we entrust their care and just resolution to you. For this and all else, we are eternally grateful. Amen
TOMAS: We are eternally grateful to be your mentors and teachers, we in the unseen realm. Eternally grateful that you are reaching up to Our Father to seek His counsel and guidance on all things, for Him to make you malleable to His will by and through your heartfelt yearning to please Him who is great beyond compare.
This is Tomas, and I am here this joyous afternoon with my associate Anatolia and your personal teachers, as well as student visitors, the loyal midwayers, several seraphim, and may we become mindful of the overcare of the Melchizedeks and Michael himself, who is always with us. And so we are, indeed, in a holy place — this place where we meet — beyond the material covenants, to engage in the new covenant with divinity.
Righteous Parent, it is our will that your will be done. Send us forth to be your ambassadors, to bring peace in the face of strife and joy to overcome the sorrow.
Lesson
The path to your effectiveness in your ministry has a great deal to do with your own maintenance of a clean heart and a clear mind. Here is where your personal teachers are most effective, and here is where, today, I would like to focus, in order for you to have a feeling for how these beings impact on you personally.
How can you sit down and attempt to engage someone you do not know without motive? Perhaps today in this exercise I will be able to lead you into a new understanding of what service your personal teacher can provide, in order for you to determine for yourself how it is that this teacher can and will, has and does, help you in your own awakening to spirit reality.
I am not going to call on you individually or go around the room so as to provide pressure for you in this exercise, but those of you who would like to invest yourself in this exercise are surely welcome to do so and appreciated for the examples you can provide for your fellows here in this group as well as in the points of light beyond where you serve, and so, share your inner life and your correcting time experience with your family.
I am going to ask you to abide by the reflections in the music played, “Oh, God, You Search Me.” If God were to search you, what would He find? What do you know of yourself that is in you that is effective or ineffective?
Yes, we reach within to find that we are beautiful beyond compare by those standards which hold us harmless (blameless) as we believe the Ancients of Days will do, but the exercise includes also an appreciation of those personality defects or shortcomings that you engage in, or bad habits that you have been intending to do something about that may be impinging upon the better way for you to go.
Let me ask you to ponder in your mind if you have an imperfection that you would like to work on with your personal teacher. In this way you have invested yourself. You are committing yourself to pruning your own dead branches so that you may bear forth abundant fruit. Have you a dead branch in your composition that you would be willing to present today that your personal teacher can help you with, or that you would hope they can help you with? Is the exercise understood?
Dialogue
Group: Yes.
TOMAS: Are there questions about the exercise at this point?
Group: No.
TOMAS: I will disconnect from the T/R so that all of you may engage in this mortal appreciation together. And I will insert myself at the appropriate time. Take a moment and think about your configuration, what you will share, and do this one at a time, soulfully, meaningfully, and I will ask you if you would rather turn off the tape or would you rather let it run?
Group: It can run, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter.
TOMAS: We will let it run, and as you suggest, Thoroah, if someone wants to go off the record, we can do that. Very well. Take a moment to center yourself and so be it.
Men-O-Pah: I suppose that, like most folks, I have some dead wood that I would like to be rid of. When I’m really very tired, I’ve worked hard, and I’m tired and I’m hungry at the same time, my temper is very short. We are always, you know, praying that we will be ready for our spirit to depart this body at any time, that we will have clean hands and straight eyes. And also, under those circumstances, my language is sometimes not very pure, and so I should like to be rid of those things.
Paula: Don’t forget, we’re aiming for 100. I’m not in any hurry to die.
Men-O-Pah: Well, of course you aren’t. But we don’t have an awful lot to say about that, and it may be later than you think.
Paula: Don’t say that!
Esmeralda: Well, the dead wood that needs pruning in my case is — I don’t know whether you’d call it lazy or inert, with too much inertia. I’m not good with Stillness and I don’t persist in it. So I think it’s not something that needs to be cut off, but it needs to be cultivated. I need to be more diligent, more persistent, and try to contact Celene more. I know she is there; I just don’t know how to get through to her, but it’s probably that I’m not trying as much as I should. So that needs to be cultivated, I think. Probably cultivation rather than pruning.
Elena: The one I would like to look at, to develop, is — I have a driving force, and it could be pushy, wanting to get things done and keep things on track. There must be a better way, not only for myself but for those that know me. So it would be better if I were not so driven.
Reneau: I need help with procrastination. I am always putting off things. Putting off doing things, putting off writing letters, putting off filling out forms, putting off, putting off, putting off, until later and later, sometimes. I would like to be able to get things done without conflict.
Myra: I suppose the dead wood that I would be working on would be the act of remaining with my inner thoughts and trusting that other people could help me with that. I think that I just prefer to tune [indistinguishable].
Thoroah: I think I have problems with being hungry and cranky; I have problems with inertia, and procrastination. (Group chuckles) The dead wood that kills me, I think, is the curse of self-consciousness. I feel like I’m watching me watching me watching me watching everybody else watch me, and wondering, assuming what they’re thinking, and all this kind of stuff, and it’s a whole bunch of stupid baggage to deal with. I know there’s a positive way to approach that; I need to be aware of how I come across, but I would like to get control of that.
Reneau: When I’m hungry and tired, I just cry.
Thoroah: Men would too but they’re not supposed to.
Matthew: I have to admit to the same thing, although they usually don’t occur at the same time, being hungry and tired; it’s one or the other. I’ve made many changes already and quit smoking and a number of things. I’m as human as anybody else and the list of things aren’t occurring to me at the moment, so if you know of some that I don’t, go ahead and speak up now! Hearing none… I’ve been sitting here the whole time plotting that one.
Thoroah: And they’ll probably help you get over that!
Matthew: I have a mental block. But as the prayer that I started with, to become more perfect like our Father in heaven is perfect, I remember several years ago thinking, now isn’t that a little bit too much? Aren’t you asking a little bit too much of us? But the more I thought about it or felt about it, after a while I thought, “I could see that” because I believe the Urantia Book, as Jesus had admonished, to become perfect in our realm as our Father in heaven is in His. So from that perspective, it is a lot more doable, only because we can perfect our own reactions through our emotions as we grow with it.
One thing that I am becoming more aware of, and I’m trying to understand, is: I get upset over politics, as we see things that occur to us are just outrageously unjust, and the other list of descriptions, and how it is upsetting and disturbing. And then, at the same time, try to understand the motivations of others that would motivate them to do the things that they are doing, that seem in actuality totally destructive. And then to try to realize that God loves them at the same time that he loves us. So I don’t know that my perspective or motivation is that I am better or more pure in heart; it’s just that I cannot imagine doing that in a million years, but have already done wrong and will probably in the future, and my motivations in doing wrong weren’t evil or ill intended; they were just plain wrong.
So perhaps the dead wood needs to make room for other people to be human, even gargantuanly human, to the detriment of others’ lives and livelihoods, and to allow room that somehow they – I mean, they too are children of God, but to allow for that pruning or correcting to occur in their individual lives and that I am not a judge nor jury of theirs, so that is what I think about that.
Gerdean: And I have the same old retinue of co-dependence issues, which are that others’ people’s happiness means more to me than my own does, to my own detriment. People-pleasing and listening to other people’s opinions as if they knew more than I do instead of trusting myself to know that I know what I’m talking about. I want so much to be taken seriously and yet I don’t know how to give myself that self-esteem that I crave, as a result of being whole, which I feel I would be more perfect if I didn’t have these emotional shortcomings. I’m not saying I don’t want to be supportive or gracious or any of those wonderful qualities, but I am sure there are negative side-effects from my pattern, and if they are detrimental, then they need to go. If they are dead wood, they just don’t need to be here, so, help me be all that I can be and trust that that’s good. That’s what my potential and my right is, to be the best that I can be, and just accept that. And then I would probably realize that other people are probably being the best that they can be, too, so that is something I could probably use some help with.
Paula: Well, it isn’t always easy to see somebody else’s viewpoint when you have your own ideas, and I can remember when I was a little kid my cousins lived across the street from me and he was a little monster. He was always trying to get me in trouble and a lot of times he did. I got a few spankings I wouldn’t ‘ve gotten otherwise if he hadn’t opened his big mouth. And this one day we were quarreling about something and of course he knew my folks at the time always voted the Republican ticket. So he said, “Well, you’re nothing but a nasty little Protestant Republican!” and that was about as mean as he could get. And I couldn’t think of an answer. That was my trouble!
Gerdean: What’s wrong with that?
Paula: I wish I couldn’t come back with something really smart.
TOMAS: Are we concluded with this soul-searching exercise?
Group: Um-hum.
TOMAS: Well done. Each of you have reached into your basket of personality patterns and found one, like a rotten apple, worthy to hold up so as not to ruin the rest of the apples. It is most gracious of you all in recognizing the qualities within that you are eager to expose to the light of the sun so as to clarify and heal that imperfection en route to greater perfection — yes, Matthew, here in your realm, which is all you can do anyway.
However, if you live each day loyally as a tadpole, you will become, eventually, a frog and you will eventually attain Paradise. In fact, you will stand before the Father and be one with him for that eternal priceless moment. That will alter your course forever, enlisting you in the Corps of Finality of those who have attained perfection, even unto the Father, and thereby set out upon a career unending and untold.
Your efforts in this undertaking are not immaterial. They are an essential part of the cultivation of the spirit, which is the only solution, not only to your personal conundrums but the political picture as well. As you have all heard from the Teachers many times, love is the answer to all the questions. It is simply how the questions are interpreted and responded to that reveals the kind of love that will be necessary in order to heal the wounds and advance this great state of being.
These now are on record and testified to in the presence of witnesses and your work with your personal teacher may now commence in full understanding of how this process works. You have acknowledged a need and they have committed themselves to your adjustments of personality that will render you perfect. Follow their guidance. Bring to them your lamentations. Accept from them their praises. Allow them, in conjunction with your divine indwelling Adjuster, that shard of infinite perfection which indwells you, to provide to you the divine perspective that is enshrouded in love that will see you reach for that which you may will is the higher path, the better way. Even so, it will in time become your pattern of behavior, the modus operandi of your existence, and in this process, your perfecting renders you fragrant in ways which are conducive to the work of the spirit. You will find yourself of value not only for your material realm but for the spiritual reality which depends on you to nurture and foster these realities, even as you tread the material soil of existence.
Now whenever these thoughts come to mind, recognize the work of your helper. You are not alone in the process of perfecting yourself. Your personal teacher is your guide and counselor in the process of weaning yourself from that which does not serve so as to be more aware of, appreciative of and focused on that which matters, in truth. I am finished. If you are still with us.
Group: We’re with you!
TOMAS: Anatolia, would you like to engage?
ANATOLIA: Welcome, friends and family. It is my pleasure to be with you again in this fine land of enchantment. It is a pleasure to be with you, both in person and in the presence of your teachers as we continue on the topic of personal teachers and the need for personal effectiveness. You know that so long as (the old saying goes) “where there is a will there is a way”, provided you have a will to desire more for yourself, there is a way to accomplish it. It is not material desires that I speak of, but desires for yourself to know more, do more, be more.
These are not goals that are even accomplishment-oriented, for one who is a wretched individual inside where he or she truly lives. If you desire to have more, be more, do more, then it is truly possible that your inner world may become a Shangri la. Not out of delusion or escapism, but rather true knowledge of who you are, for there are many ways to approach this. As it has been said, there are many paths to the Father and each will lead there. All one needs is the desire to find one’s way on that path. It is only he or she who is recalcitrant or ambivalent, or simply does not care, who is in danger of losing themselves – not in a judgmental or ‘fire and brimstone’ perspective, but losing him or herself in terms of the internal will.
The will to survive is primary. The will to thrive is your choice. It is my desire for each of you to acquire the development of an internal Shangri la, a chamber or temple that you could live in for all eternity. For it is in this internal working that you are building your future, for your consciousness is where you will perceive your future. It is your consciousness that enables whatever you desire to become reality. For surely you could not disbelieve that you will do something and yet do it unless it is through change of heart and your will, for seeing is believing, doing is creating — as the reverse is true, creating is doing. I believe you get the picture that it is entirely up to you.
Now for the topic of the disengaged, those who have quit, surrendered, given up – these are the individuals to be pitied, for they have relinquished their will to that of the four winds, who lie subject, waiting to be tossed or turned as if an object in the seas. This is, effectively, a living hell, for without the desire to create a perfect will, a perfect world, one that is full of righteousness, justice — what is good for you is good for me and what is right for you is right for me – these things they will not know until their consciousness is perked and reminded that they sit wasting under a tree, for fruit that is not picked up and utilized, simply lies rotting, waiting to be buried.
I wish to bring you good news today instead of the contrary, for my purpose in presenting today is to reinforce within you that everything is based upon your willingness and your desire to see it through. The old saying, too, “God helps those who help themselves” was not a discussion of petty thievery, but rather one that places faith where it truly belongs, for so long as there is a desire to go forward and walk straight and to move calmly with your God, it is up to the individual to do so.
The Father could have avoided the inconvenience of creation had it been his choice to share parts of himself that were already perfect, that had no choice but perfection, for in reality no choice but perfection is no choice at all, so you have the ultimate in opportunity, the ultimate choice of whether to become your true selves and to reunite with your Creator in eternity, or to simply lie dormant, as fruit, to be buried at the bottom of the tree.
I place this with you not as a burden but as a reminder that it is up to each of us to choose life, to choose light, and to choose the life that we are entrusted with and born to live. Are there any questions this afternoon?
Elena: Well, yeah, because I’m trying to think of all the people I know and I think that most of them are in one shape or another trying to see the light. I mean, I can even think of some people that I would put in the category of having to go light years before they could even get a glimmer of light, but I think they might even be fine to do that, so, what’s an example of somebody who is not choosing the light? I mean, everybody thinks that they are trying, I think. So I don’t get that part.
ANATOLIA: It is primarily those that are not trying, who are simply waiting for the light to be turned on as if they are going to receive motivation, ambition, desire, win the lottery, whatever it may be that may be a ready-made program for them that they will only have to choose between, rather than those who are engaged in life (whether they are fully conscious of it or not). In effect, one who is engaged in life and who is not full of vehemence, ill-intention and otherwise what you would perceive of as evil in their purposes, are engaged or are doing the best that they can and, after all, what else can they do but to do the best they can?
It is those who are not engaged, not participating, and waiting to have the answers provided them that are in the truest of need, for this is the purpose of my presentation today, to remind you that it is all within yourselves and the purpose of growth and perfection is a matter of choice; it is not a matter of “becoming” through some dispensation that enables you to become perfect. It is always a choice, for the saints, as you refer to them, were not born as saints, but acquired within themselves the ability to rise above, become greater than their emotions allowed, and even enter into the shared responsibility of light and life of the spirit that enabled them to do super human things. It is this internal consciousness that I am speaking to. Does this help any?
Elena: I think so, yes.
Reneau: And then there are those who are truly seeking, but don’t know they are seeking and seek in all the wrong places and directions. And – I’m talking about the drugs and alcohol, where they – I feel they are just lost; somewhere along the line got on the wrong train and couldn’t get off. But still, if they had been given proper guidance or choices would not have chosen those directions, but don’t know any other way to go. And so many of them I find are desperate, way lost, not because they are evil but because of circumstances, you know? And so those people, I think, really need – really are seeking the light. They just kind of lost any direction of where it is or how to get it. Is there a reply to that? Though it’s too late sometimes.
ANATOLIA: I was speaking in generalities, of course. Whenever light is discussed, it does not preclude that there are shades of light within the darkness. I will not nor do not, generally, speak in terms of total darkness, but have often spoken in terms of wherever a ray of light meets the darkness, the darkness is no longer, so that darkness is no longer as dark as it was, nor light as light as it could be. So this did not include the realms in which you presented, so it is appreciated that it is not black and white.
Certainly those who are seeking within their own lives, given the social or other conditions that they are living within, are not lost, are not forlorn and unforgiven. It is a realm that is frequently fraught with very difficult circumstances, for which those who are unable to escape or overcome, are not thrown away or wasted. I was speaking of simple terms in order to reinforce your understanding within yourselves as to your ability and responsibility, knowing what you know and being able to help where you can help, that it is up to each individual, for those that you can inform, who are caught in a world of vicious cycles, that knowing there is a better way, one that is not subject to addiction and being caught in a dark vicious cycle, that you may be able to share with them where it is at all possible that their decision to change the hellishness that they experience is up to them, as it is up to you, as well.
Does this make any sense?
Reneau: Yes.
ANATOLIA: Anyone else?
Thoroah: I have a question about something that seems to affect us as humans. You talked about it earlier, about being tired. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing physical labor or mental or emotional labor, there is a fatigue factor to life that is sometimes able to color everything and color it darkly. Fatigue is a killer. I think it ruins us, hurts our relationship with each other and with life in general. I am wondering what we can equate the fatigue factor of life with, in a spiritual analogy, so maybe we could be better able to handle fatigue.
ANATOLIA: It could be likened to “the poor in spirit” for the poor in spirit has been discussed from many perspectives, but my perspective offered for the moment is those who are fatigued, those who do not have a sense of who they are, who are simply vestiges of their former selves, who need to be reminded that they live and, therefore, have opportunity to rejoice. It is those who need to rest and to become reacquainted with who they truly are who have been discouraged or led astray, for lack of another term — dissuaded, duped, misdirected — in terms of what their time, talents and worries ought to be about, for the effort to live and do more than survive (which is sometimes all that some can do, given their circumstances).
There is more to life than simple living or surviving; there is true living, which can be done in poverty and in squalor if one is rich from within. I am not an advocate of that, mind you, it is just that it can be done. The secret is to be able to know who one is, to rest, to get things into perspective, and to know that reality is beyond the four walls or the physical world that one may experience, that after rest, replenishment can enable one to once again carry on with their inner knowledge intact and their re-commitment to living life fully may be regained. Is this helpful or does this sound more pious than time and reality permits?
Thoroah: I guess I can become fatigued from being happy! I can be exuberant to the point of fatigue in this life. It’s hard to get away from being fatigued because of the many demands in the physical sense of we have to sleep, we have to get our rest, we have to take care of ourselves, and we have to do all these things that we are trying to cram into a 24-hour a day — which I know is not 24 hours anymore. I’m getting older and slower and time is going faster!
So, it makes me wonder. It’s just a matter of trying to equate the fatigue thing and the age-old thing that you’ve got to take care of yourself. I think I would like to get a perspective on fatigue. It’s like gravity, but gravity is more obvious than fatigue. There is just something about it and we can’t escape it. Whether we are positive people or lost people, it doesn’t really matter. Fatigue is just a matter of life in the physical world.
ANATOLIA: It is a diagnosis for depression, as well, so that it need not be purely a physical experience, but can speak to the inner life, or soul, as well, and therefore I invite you to consider the nature of the discussion today, which is to help you realize and to help you help others realize, that their inner life is a matter of choice and to entertain the possibilities that encouragement and achievement of progress is a matter of desire and work, but that it need not be stressful and burdensome. The things that are achievable in life far outweigh the objects or millstones that can detain but not defeat accomplishments.
Thoroah: So we create a lot of our own fatigue by going about things in the most indirect manner.
ANATOLIA: Or, perhaps, what is the motivation? What is one working for?
Thoroah: Yeah.
ANATOLIA: If you are on a treadmill and are working for “the man” then not having your own life and being a slave to your environment or society is truly an invasion and a war with yourself against those outside influences that keep you from being the inner being that you are entitled to appreciate and to live. Therefore, your Shangri la is a shambles and it is up to you to regain the focus, that you may rebuild.
That really is the good news, in terms of what I alluded to earlier, in that, one’s life is not limited to the opportunity in the physical, and, therefore, if not perfected is therefore unacceptable. It is not up to me to say what is unacceptable anyway, mind you. It is a matter of statement that the opportunity for further development and growth lies before you. Nevertheless, it is as if you were attending a sporting event that is your life. Why not play the game when the time is presented for it, rather than get suited up, go to the event, and decide to not participate? Now is the time to learn the plays and to play for fun, unlike any other time that may be. Does this help any?
Thoroah: Yes. Thank you.
ANATOLIA: Hearing no further concern, I hope that you may be able to celebrate with me the idea that God is within and waits for your care and your concern and to know that you care for his or her spirit as much as he or she cares for you. This will keep you going for awhile, if nothing else will, knowing that your Creator waits for your loving touch, your care, your concern, as if everything waited on it, as it does. But, perfection being what it is, is already. Welcome to your share of it. Peace be with you, and know that all is well.
Group: Thank you, Anatolia.
TOMAS: Tomas returning to ground us all again in the configuration of our comings and goings. I understand, speaking of comings and goings, there are innumerable highways and byways ahead for our group and its members. In terms of your calendar, is there yet one more occasion for Anatolia to conjoin with you here?
Group: Probably not.
TOMAS: Then we are entitled to a celebration — not of closure, but of accomplishment, for we have entrusted to ourselves and each other and to God this portion of our lives which we have known as the “Anatolia and Tomas Era.” It well may return. It is a magnificent future ahead of us all, and when we have occasion to, most assuredly my companion and I will re-engage in our co-creative effort as colleagues in this Teaching Mission to further the light of truth, as is our injunction by Machiventa Melchizedek.
Also, are summer celebrations for the Master’s birthday as Jesus; and the culmination of the season of singing hymns, psalms and praises to the Lord. It is the celebration of the Urantia Book and Teaching Mission annual conference, at Bogus Basin second time around. It is a second honeymoon cruise for the honeymooners who, even now, are on the eve of their second annual celebration of lovers, as Mr. and Mrs. Bowen also will celebrate their fifth anniversary this month. (Group applause)
We thus have much ahead of us to celebrate and rejoice in — not to overlook the triumphant accession by my friend and helper Matthew, who departs from our presence to attend to his advanced studies in the seminary, in order to prepare himself to better serve in the realm of Christianity, in order to bring together the many concepts that precede us in this effort, as well as those which now are being woven into the fabric of Urantia consciousness, those being the precepts put forth through the epochal revelation in the Urantia Papers.
We do indeed celebrate the progress all of you have experienced in our work together. As we now have a break in our formal activity, let me commend you all to a high-falutin’ time of it, in whatever the manner of your engagement, and I will welcome you back to our humble and happy family grouping again at the close of these weeks, in order to be again grounded in the process of returning to school, to returning to the application of the mind and spirit consciousness — as we have, as we do and as we will, in fostering this mighty effort: Michael’s mission for Urantia.
Closing
Blessed be art thou, beautiful students and friends. Rejoice in the spirit. Be of good cheer. Peace be upon you. Amen and farewell.
Group: Thank you, Tomas. Thank you, Anatolia.
