2013-07-24-Indefinite Suspension from TML
Rio Rancho #186
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Indefinite Suspension from TML
o 1.2 Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Trieste, 0802-AB Jack, Tomas, Paulo, Merium
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opeining
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Indefinite Suspension from TML
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Trieste, 0802-AB Jack, Tomas, Paulo, Merium
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
Calling upon Higher Powers to bring some clarity and peace of mind to the current situation on a list that Gerdean has been actively involved with for 15 years that she is considering leaving for the reason that she feels she can no longer be effective, and so we’re looking for some counsel from On High. Please, and thank you.
Lesson
TRIESTE: This is your friend Trieste, personal teacher, life-long companion. Welcome, my beautiful friend and all you lovely friends, playmates, companions, girlfriends, children of the most highs, delightful daughters of divinity and fruit of the earth. Let me first take you under my wing, as it were. Let me embrace you in the spirit and acclimate you to the fold, the enfolding embrace of divine affection — something that all faith sons and daughters instinctively, intuitively and inherently respond to.
The question on the table is not a question as to what to do but how to feel. How does one feel when one is ostracized or set aside as having objectionable behaviors, disruptive, as if an unruly child? So you find yourself not just sitting in the corner where you have been banished to, but outside looking in. You naturally feel deprived, sad and angry. From the corner you might feel chided, but hopeful that you will be able to soon join the others for more merriment and play.
But the real issue here is one of authority, Gerdean, and it has always been your problem with authority. It is not so much that you disrespect authority as it is that you disrespect those who presume to have authority over you when they misuse their authority to your chagrin, detriment or ego, thus justice and fairness is at the heart of your feelings. You resent being treated like a naughty child when you were standing up for your faith.
I naturally observed you in your many exchanges and found nothing out of the ordinary except that, as you say, there has been a regime change and the new administrator has a different style. She is telling you and everyone that there will be changes made and you can either learn to appreciate that change is on the way – indeed, it has arrived – or you can refuse to accept the change, the authority, in which case the avenues are curtailed for you to continue involvement in this venue that has found you at its hearth for lo these many years but not always happily.
Rather than prepare your letter of resignation with your righteous indignation at the forefront, let it rest a bit, and understand that you are an elder statesman whose word and authority, which you wielded wantonly for many years, has been overruled by those who choose to invest themselves in the destiny they would have for themselves as you did for yours. It is difficult to step down from any position in which you have presumed some stature in the community, but it happens all the time; indeed, it’s one of those things you might search Corinthians for: there’s a time for this and a time for that. There’s a time to orate and a time to be still.
There’s a time to call things into question and a time to let others learn their own lessons through their own will. Just as parents need to let their children make their way in the world, making the mistakes that they will evidently need to make in order to learn the lessons that would be made less painful were they to listen to the advice of those who have gone before, but don’t. You reach a point of doing all you can do and then you have to just cut them loose and let the chips fall where they may.
Sometimes the immediate result is a clear disaster, but over the course of time that disaster may be made into a mere memory, a simple hiccup in the onward march into infinity and perfection. Rodan has suggested that adults love their children and in such they develop a tolerance for their foolishness, realizing it is the foolishness of youth and inexperience. Give youth an opportunity to make its own mistakes and grow up. You know from all the little homilies you have read that a child, when a child, thinks their parents know everything. And by puberty begin to question and in their teens think their parents know nothing and eventually they come to see that their parents were not so dumb after all and ultimately are able to see the wisdom of their ways and they develop a new appreciation for experience.
Such shall you do. You just have to realize that by assuming the role of elder statesman, you have not quit the race, you have simply changed the role you play and, as your personal teacher, as I am able to observe the effect of these trying situations on your system, I urge you to be good to yourself and back off quicker, ignore more, expect less, and treasure those sweet moments of joy that are yours for the taking simply by spending time with God, with yourself, and with those you choose to be with because of the camaraderie.
Gradually and eventually your myriad lessons to humanity will echo into the halls of humanity and infinity, your presence on this planet will not be lost. Your work will not be undone. Your ideals will not be forgotten. Look to higher authority, that which you know you can trust, that which you have given yourself to already, and don’t worry about the little Caesars and would-be emperors over these little kingdoms and fiefdoms that comprise for many of you the paradigm in which to learn these lessons of personal growth in human associations.
Get busy on your book. That should keep you amused and engaged in these situations, circumstances and personalities that have entertained you and challenged you for so long.
I am going to turn you over to our friend, Midwayer Jack, who would like to offer some words from his perspective. One moment.
0802-AB JACK: 0802-AB JACK here. Hey. Hello everybody. I am always delighted to be given the opportunity to make my presence known to you. Always happy to be asked to provide my perspective on things. Oh, yes, Gerdean, I have things to say about your plight and about the cult that has grown up over the past 20 years, known to many as the Teaching Mission. It will perhaps come as no surprise to you to hear me say that this is not at all what we had in mind, but it is understandable, since mortals think in words and pictures and so what you see is a depiction of reality and not reality itself.
The depiction is kind of interesting and naturally, since it has been set up the way it has, we will take advantage of it, flaws and all, to promote certain values, but the paradigm itself is entirely man-made. The teaching mission is like a hologram that your mutual imaginations have forged, in particular in the early days when so many of you were learning how to access the voices in your mind and beyond — those concepts and figureheads that played so largely in your imagination from having read about them in the Urantia Papers.
It has been said when you are challenged, build a greater reality. You have built this paradigm which serves as a greater reality much like the church served Christianity, so we have a fourth epochal cult and a fifth epochal cult in formation, but they are man-made cults, inspired sometimes by spirit and by earnest and creative individuals, but as often brought about by your own subconscious uprisings, fears, egos, conceits, and so forth, and so there is a battleground built-in along with those Elysian fields of perfection that you enjoy romping around in, those moments when you are childlike and carefree and in complete confidence of divine overcare and affection.
We like to see children play. Everyone enjoys hearing babies’ laughter. We can also appreciate when toddlers play in the sandbox and bonk each other on the head with their shovel. Or get filthy in a mud puddle. But as you are growing up, as you are attempting to grow as you were, making muscles and growing hair, you practice government and domesticity as you have been taught, as you have been conditioned, but not necessarily what is best for you or what could be construed as divine will.
Even so, you know God will make use of what you do, and He would discard the rest but many of you refuse to discard anything that you have had a hand in creating and so there gets to be a lot of pulling and tugging on this way or that way to go and sometimes it becomes completely gridlocked, just as sometimes your Congress seems to be completely gridlocked. Nonetheless, there is a plan afoot, a plan that is bigger than you, bigger than government, and in the end, sooner or later, the divine government and the “holy family” will prevail.
You are here to participate in what you find with the integrity that you have. There are so many errors in your ways of thinking. This cult is fraught with error and misperception, but it is real to so many of you and so we deal with it. It would be much easier to renounce or rebuke some things, but unless that is done tactfully, graciously, intelligently, it will only serve to strengthen the ego’s resolve to hold on tenaciously.
This is a difficult time in the evolution of this world. There is much to be excited about. And yet, there is much to be alert to. For you to drop out of the paradigm, Gerdean, would not be to drop out of kingdom-building, not at all. As you well know, you will be utilized to the extent you are willing and able to function on behalf of destiny.
I have been your friend for a long time; I will continue to be your friend. You have not wandered into a dark alley. You entered into the Teaching Mission in good faith and you served in good faith. The truth, beauty and goodness that you provided, the lessons that you have learned as well as the lessons you have taught are becoming a part of the Evolving Supreme and so it will be utilized in creating this experiential God. It will serve throughout infinity even though perhaps it will not be acknowledged by your peers today.
I will leave you with this song you will remember from when you were young. “Got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now.” And so if you do depart from the list, you will not have lost anything –certainly not my friendship. And I have a hunch that those friends you have made in the flesh and in the spirit world are also hanging in there with that reality which you represent. Just wanted to add my two cents.
I don’t have anybody standing in line here to speak next, but if there are any questions, I’m sure we could drum someone up? Does anyone have a question, since we have the format engaged? Not just about Gerdean’s situation, but about anything.
Dialogue
Student: I would like to know something, and it’s highly personal but … I don’t even know if you can answer. I made a decision and I felt strongly spiritually guided to do something, to loan somebody money. There was nothing in it at the time for me and I am wondering I was indeed spiritually guided.
0802-AB JACK: You revealed yourself to the universe as a good woman, generous, trusting, and you cemented that picture of yourself by challenging life and lending money. If the money were returned, so much the better: you would be able to celebrate this generosity of spirit, and the sense that you were divinely guided to be charitable. If the money were not repaid, it makes you no less charitable; it makes them irresponsible.
Look to your deepest core reality for what you want to convey and what you want to get. The material manifestation of those values may or may not reflect the values you call upon or trust. This is why you can do good to someone and receive nothing from them in return, but receive something from someone else without strings attached. In this way you learn the connectedness of all things and the oversoul, that karmic lesson that what you give out is returned; it just is not necessarily returned from the same source to which you gave it out. That is a way of limiting universe function.
Having an idea, a desire, a sense that God wants you to go here or there, to do this or that, is your own doing. God never tells you what to do, where to go.
Student: No. We have guidance.
0802-AB JACK: They don’t tell you.
Student: No. They don’t. They don’t say do this or do that. It’s just … I call them nudges. I feel strongly prompted and encouraged to take right turn or a left turn or go straight. [Yes.] Sometimes I am guided, and sometimes I sense it very strongly. [Yes] And because this is not working out, I wondered if I imagined it.
0802-AB JACK: If you felt so strongly to act in a certain way, then you did the right thing to follow through with that prompt, but if the results are not what you expected, that cannot be held against God because there are others involved [Yes] and there is free will.
Again, if you felt compelled to act, again let’s say with charity or hospitality, that is your font of goodness. And you express this fond of goodness as a service, as a ministry, as a gift. What happens to it from there is out of your hands. [Yes] When you give a gift, you cannot …
Student: It wasn’t a gift. It was a loan.
0802-AB JACK: Well, they failed to repay the loan
Student: So far.
0802-AB JACK: Part of the problem here is that God is not a banker. For you to decide to lend money is strictly your choice. It’s in the finite realm; it is YOUR choice. God may have recommended you be gracious and generous, but He would never recommend you write someone a check. That is YOUR prerogative, your free will, your choice, your decision to make.
Student: In my meditations I have felt strongly that I have helped.
0802-AB JACK: Then you have helped. It is good that you helped; the person did not reciprocate. Their word is in question. Perhaps this is what they needed to chew on in order for them to make some decisions about their own practices and ethics, and perhaps they will not resolve it for 20 years. But you did provide them the opportunity to consider those meanings and values that were represented by your loan, namely, honesty, responsibility, integrity, ethics, morals, those kinds of things.
You are faced with two challenges. One is the maturity of the individual; the other is the maturity of the race. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t even always happen in one lifetime. Perhaps only upon your death will they be grief-stricken that they never paid you back and then again they may never give it another thought. That is on them.
Student: Thank you. That was helpful. I needed to know that.
0802-AB JACK: It’s been good to see you.
[Recess]
Gerdean: I’d like to hear from Tomas. Tomas, what shall I do about the Teaching Mission, that I have been involved with for 20 years, and the Teacher Corps that I have served, including you, for 15 years.
TOMAS: You want to ask me if I am real? I believe we’ve had this discussion before, Gerdean. I am real enough, because I have represented reality; I have presented myself as a personality, one that you recognize and trust, and that is what makes me real.
Indeed, you have served the Teacher Corps and you’ve set a fine example of a loyal worker and faithful scribe. You can continue to serve in this capacity. You do serve on Light Line, and there are other venues open to you if you feel that your association with TML has become insufficient or your services there are ineffectual. You have a webmaster. You can ask her if she could help you install a discussion board or a blog. Or you can make up another milieu through which to serve. You do better when you are serving somehow. I would not recommend you resign or retire or quit your involvement in the Teaching Mission in general. You have a noble reputation in the Teaching Mission itself. It is that incestuous little group that has given you such consternation.
There are many who would follow you if you were inclined to elicit a following. There are those who would sit in on your classes if you were to teach something. You have lots of email addresses and can contact people outside of the list. You have depended upon the convenience of that list for a long time. And perhaps you would enjoy the liberty allowed when you step outside that little dance floor onto the ballroom floor that is available.
The truth, beauty and goodness that you have to offer, and the love that you have to give, as well as the counseling that comes from your particular life experiences, will remain viable courses of study all through the rest of your life and in fact, indeed, into the morontia worlds beyond, and since we are all admonished to pass on what we learn, there will always be an inherent need in you to do something. Don’t let this social glitch interfere with your gifts of the spirit. Do not in any way feel like you have failed, that you are unworthy in any way, for that would be hogwash.
No mortal is without flaw and your flaws are no worse than anyone else’s, so buck up. Forge on. And be at peace. Merium, Paulo and many others that you know and love have the same opinion as mine. You are a part of this paradigm and although it was modified from its original design, it has served a real need. It’s an experimental world, Gerdean. Experiment. There are no wrong answers. Invite me in to share one of these evenings you have Light Line. I would like to continue to represent the Teacher Corps, to which I have volunteered to serve for the long haul.
Thank you for hearing me. Thank you Student 1, for bearing witness. Is there anything I can do for you this afternoon? I am Tomas the opportunist, teacher and philosopher.
Amen and farewell.
PAULO: This is Paulo. It has been so long since we have had a chat, I almost forget how. But inasmuch as my theme is almost always on conflict and rebellion, I am here to say that I haven’t seen any conflict or rebellion on your part, Gerdean. As usual you are a stalwart worker in the field and you are to be commended for your efforts to take the kingdom by spiritual assault. Keep up the good work wherever and whenever you have the opening. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
MERIUM: And this is Merium, coming in to flush your pillows and wash Paulo’s mouth out with soap. And also to pour a cup of tea with you ladies and take advantage of the moment to tell you how much I miss you and our many soirees together over the years. I have noticed you were in recent contact, Gerdean, with Hunnah, who made my entry into the scene so meaningful and pleasant lo those many years ago in the Butler group.
Yes, my dear, I am real, and I am your friend. You might consider that to those who know and love your nemesis, he too is beloved and real to them. It is perhaps the democratic way to allow all players into the game. Yes of course it’s not a game, it’s real, but it is also a paradigm and a hologram, and so you will be getting a lot of other approaches, other imaginations, other opportunists. Consider it a tea party … better than the bar scene in Star Wars, but the bar scene in Star Wars does more closely resemble some of the situations you get yourself involved in, for some of these people who have a great leaning toward sci-fi as compared to your liking for fantasy. This is why it sometimes seems to be a him versus her situation or a left brain versus right brain situation, an us versus them. When this happens just lighten up. Remember it is a game, a fantasy, sci-fi in its presentation. The reality, the depth, the value transcends the venue itself and there will always be children who need to play and play hard. Just get out of their way.
Closing
Okay, girlies. I’ll just have a cookie, then, and make my departure. Do invite me more often, Gerdean. I so enjoy spending time with you, filling your mind with stories and fun things to think about. Be good! And when I say ‘be good’ I don’t mean ‘behave,’ I mean excellent! See you next time. Bye-bye.
