1996-12-10. Denial & E-motion
Butler PA #11
Topic: Denial & E-motion
Group: Butler TeaM
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
[Extended Stillness]
TOMAS: Well done. Good evening, faithful friends.
Hunnah: Welcome to our home.
TOMAS: And welcome to you, to this configuration of students of eternal truth. I am Tomas and my heart swells with affection for you who steadfastly return again and again to the table which has been prepared for us by Michael.
Lesson
I have some words to offer you this evening which in a way is an extension of one of my lessons earlier on the fruit of the spirit “enlightened honesty,” and it goes to the matter of denial, a form of dishonesty which is a common habit pattern of all mortals. Indeed, denial is a method that the mind utilizes to refrain from acknowledging those things which the mortal being cannot face, either because they are too difficult or they are too exhilarating. It is a limitation of the human, which is part of its evolutionary packaging.
In order to study this packaging, I will call to your mind the word emotion. I will remind you of your current computer term “e-mail” and think now of “e-motion” for it is motion emanating out from you that affects the world in which you live. Obviously, every living creature experiences emotion. A full range of emotion is available to every human being, including the animal emotions, and the emotions of the heart, even to those emotions which are shared by the celestial beings.
As you are comforted in the presence of divinity, as you allow yourself to trustingly feel the overcare of the Infinite Parent, and as you allow yourself to bask in the love and security of Michael and his legions of helpers, you have feelings of joy and acceptance, of grace and forgiveness. And in this citadel of the spirit your cup runneth over, your feelings are full and healthy and your emotions are at bay. When you emerge from Stillness, you enter the realm of e-motion. As you continue to carry your feeling of goodwill and well being, you manifest the spirit in harmony with your personality presentation of all being right with the world. You walk in light and life. And as you walk among your fellows in the arena, you encounter a barrage of stimuli and each of these stimuli impacts on your emotions, on your defenses, and you immediately put yourself in a position of denial. You selectively allow what you will experience.
But comes the time when you find yourself experiencing an emotion, a feeling, in certain parts of you, in your gut perhaps, that are in conflict with the attitude of your mind, with your affinity with spirit. It is at this point – we’ll call it an emotional glitch -that is the turning point for you in your growth and in how you will manifest the spirit in harmony with your humanness or whether you will allow the humanness to take over and therefore eliminate the influence of your spirit life.
As we broach this topic, it becomes apparent to me what a grand study in human behavior there is in the mortal being, and I am astounded, truly, at the circumstances and conditions in which you function and survive and, to some extent, thrive and grow in the convoluted emotional condition of the civilizations and the mental attitudes and emotional outpourings of the peoples of this planet.
Particularly are you vulnerable, my friends, because of your evolutionary status, as coming out of a semi-savage arena into a more mental and therefore potentially spiritual arena. It is fully appreciated and well understood how it is that you who have grasped the reality of your connection with God, how it is that you hang onto it so tenaciously, for truly you remind me of those who would grasp a life raft in the torrid rapids of an overflowing river.
In the course of time I would like to help you all understand better your emotional reactions to life, for as you understand how you are reacting and what you are reacting to, you will the better be able to harmonize your need for and appreciation of the spirit with your honest humanness. It is human to feel anger, even rage, outrage, angst, sorrow, grief, despair, defeat, and to deny that these feelings and emotions occur is dishonest to your own growth. You deny also the growth of the Supreme in feeling that you must protect others from your “more negative” emotions, the baser nature.
It is in accepting these glitches within yourself – when your mind and your emotions are not in harmony – that you can uncover in yourself, and to some extent in others, why you are the way you are. And in looking honestly at your emotions, your reactions to life, you can then do something about harmonizing your inner being and becoming a natural professor of honest compassion and joy, peace and harmony, and acceptance and love. And you will carry your light and life with you all the time. And at that point we will have entered light and life on the whole for Urantia.
Yes, it does reflect upon judgment. Judgment is a form of denial. It is a refusal to accept. When you accept another human being, you do not have to accept their error. You only need to accept that they err.
Perhaps I have saturated my sponges for now. Be pleasant with me now and share with me, that we may evolve our discourse into this precious and humble arena.
Dialogue
Leah: Well, expanding on the idea that you accept that they err, what is the appropriate response? I mean, I guess you can accept the way you react to them if you forgive yourself. Sometimes when you feel as if someone was blatantly erring, you feel as if you should say something to them, and I was wondering if you should say something to them or just let it go or . . . ? Do you just say, “I respect that you have a right to your opinion?”
TOMAS: I must know further the depth of your question. I am not given to blanket responses. Are we discussing someone who side swipes your car or are we talking about someone who has used an inflection, a tone of voice which you found offensive? How sensitive are we here?
Leah: My friend has said that he has visited a teacher who he feels very strongly is teaching error (talking about “bad angels”) and he has spoken to me and says he wants to correct this person and I was wondering, what do you do when you encounter someone who you think is teaching error? That’s what I had in mind.
TOMAS: Are you asking on behalf of your friend?
Leah: No, he has not asked me. I was just wondering about it.
TOMAS: Then it is not your concern. It is not your situation. Only as you yourself are personally affected by the situation is the lesson going to be meaningful, for only as you feelingly experience your life is it real for you. Even these hypothetical situations are rhetorical until the actuality occurs.
Leah: Well, this isn’t hypothetical; it’s something he expressed to me. I’m only stating that he did not ask me to ask you; he more or less asked me and I was just curious about it. Just let it go.
Hunnah: I would like to comment on this. We have an expression here in human behavior of “mind your business” or “mind your P’s and Q’s.” We’re sitting here in a learning mode. Would her role of friendship, when this person talked to her about he felt that this teacher was teaching mis-teaching; he wasn’t teaching truth. Would Leah’s role with him be to say, “Why don’t you take that question into meditation and if you are to take that person and challenge them, then you probably will do so without effort.”? You are in a role of friendship and listening to your friend. But we do meet people who do not teach truth and we are in the wings of this, so to speak. So she was in the role of confidant, you could say.
TOMAS: I will step over here, then, and respond to you, Leah, that my understanding of your emotional sense of responsibility in your conversation with your friend, your desire to serve, would be to stand by your brother in his desire to hear and support truth. As his friend, you can support him and remind him, of course, of the practice of stillness for guidance. However, I feel my entire response here has been one of hearsay, for we are dealing with someone outside of the immediate experiential platform.
Loreenia: Tomas.
TOMAS: Yes.
Loreenia: I have experienced what they are calling a “bad angel” but I would say they are positive and negative and they are playing a role to teach us, but it has been my experience – it was a learning mode for me, the experience – and it had to do with swords and (angel’s swords) being placed in the body and then taken out. And until a soul experiences that, you think it does not exist, or it’s made up, or fiction or they’re wrong. There are those that are different on this planet, that are not all the same, so what may be true for one is not true for another. Is that correct? Am I . .. Have I learned that properly? Or can you expound on that and help me learn even more.
TOMAS: Ultimate truth is unchanging. Your perceptions of truth change as you grow. And so what may be true for one today is not the same truth as for another today. Tomorrow, however, as you change and grow, you may share the same understanding of truth.
Loreenia: So, in affect, we should try to accept every individual, as they are, in the place where they are, until they have a learning experience?
TOMAS: You have no choice! for they will be who they will be.
Loreenia: But you know we humans are always trying to change each other for what we think is the better, whether it’s right or not.
Hunnah: That’s true.
TOMAS: That is entirely my point – that you are so busy denying yourself and your own work by looking upon those outside of you. The point of the lesson and your work is to look at your own response to an emotional reaction to other individuals’ presentation of themselves (therefore their truth) and perceive, in peace, yourself in the face of their relative reality.
If you are angry, for example, if you have a response of anger to what someone has said, your practice is to attack the person who has made you angry, rather than look within yourself to find out why your reaction was anger. You see what I’m saying?
Loreenia: I have found that when one is angry, you must wait until they are in a more peaceful state before you can discuss or share or touch them, until they understand, because it doesn’t work when they are blocked with the anger.
TOMAS: It is true that anger is a spirit poison and it happens to all mortals that they become angry and they shut off the sunlight of the spirit and allow the angry reaction/ response. And it is true, of course, that you cannot share in the more sensitive realms of the mind and spirit when anger is prevalent. I am discussing again, however, not their anger but yours, and why is it that you are angry. What judgment have you made upon that individual that is now causing you to manifest anger into your environment?
Hunnah: I find it very interesting that the subject of feeling and emotion is even on your docket. We are supposed to be acknowledging our community and allowing ourselves to draw upon its wealth, and in the same breath we are supposed to be showing an interest in people’s peculiarities and inherited tendencies and shortcomings and tolerances and all this web of human personality, and I find my own human personality very tiring and testing at times. It’s very heavy, and I really get tired of being tolerant, not only of myself but of others. But if I go into the silence and drink heavily of that which I truly am, then I become better company and other people’s behavior is not a problem. I’m too busy enjoying my life, and it really does surprise me that you want us to analyze or look at man’s — how much understanding does man have to have!?
TOMAS: I repeat: I am not particularly impressing you with studying man’s understanding outside of yourself. I am, once again, asking you to understand your own emotional factors, your own emotional responses to life.
Hunnah: What do you do . ..? All right. There has been an emotional — could we go off the record?
TOMAS: We will go off the record in a moment. Let me also say that the reason I would bring it up is so that you can learn to walk through your emotions without them becoming overbearing, for everyone has emotions, but many people get lost in them and give off reactions which are negative. I would like for you to know your emotions well enough that you can acknowledge them and go beyond quickly back into light and life, but it is also important that you experience them, that you not live so deeply in the spirit that you neglect the human. It is the balance of the human and the divine that makes for a well-integrated personality, the full, whole human being. I am willing to turn off the tape if you . ..
Hunnah: I don’t think you have to. Every now and then my human tolerance gets saturated and I rebel. I guess it’s when you become saturated with other people’s personalities, like in an office or in close quarters, that type of thing.
TOMAS: Yes, and this is because of the lack of understanding between the fine line of familiarity and intimacy.
Hunnah: I just read a transcript that has to do with prisons, and I have this feeling that — I’ve had concern about people in prison for a long, long time, and I haven’t had any way that has shown itself that says I’m allowed to go anywhere near prison, and I met a woman today who is considering getting a job as a prison guard, and I heard myself say to her, “Well, you better make sure you . .. Oh, why would you want to do that because look at the vibrations and the energy and, oh!” I was rather negative. And I thought about it and realized that she may represent a door, a direction.
We had talked about the group having some kind of service work, and when we were in Grailville, there was a woman who talked about her prison ministry that she had been allowed to be involved in, and she was a beautiful, beautiful, special person. How did I get going on this?
Does it look like…? Is it a possibility that I might do prison ministry?
TOMAS: You are asking me to crystal ball gaze for you, darling.
Hunnah: Ah! Okay. True, true.
TOMAS: There are, however – since you bring up prison ministry – many kinds of prisons, as you read in the transcript, and that which we speak of here today is the prison of emotional reaction that keeps many of you confined from freedom of personality expression with fragrance and a manifestation of godlikeness.
My T/R this evening is well aware of the merit of this lesson and is eagerly looking forward to reading it for direction since she recently had an emotional glitch with her earth mother, a glitch which has been recurring, and she has now realized it is necessary for her to understand that the relationship is not as she had wanted it to be in her spirit. Indeed, her spirit attitude and her human attitude are in direct opposition and this has caused distress and a thwarting of any growth whatsoever. And these kinds of situations exist in and through humanity, sometimes for the course of a life or even for generations, because they have not been dealt with; they have been denied, and justified in the denial.
Hunnah: Talking about mother/daughter relationship, we’re dealing with levels of consciousness here, and I’d never heard that term before, but when you know you’re talking on different levels, its easier to deal with it. I thought I’d run into this a lot, and that’s the explanation my teacher helped me to see, just as her teacher helped her to see, that we are allowed to communicate on different levels with people, but for some reason or other, people seem to think everybody has to stand as tall as we think we are, and it is very, very frustrating to live with somebody who thinks they have discovered all the gold there is, and on the other hand, to not be talking down to people.
TOMAS: It returns again to judgment and refusal to accept each other as you are, with your own strengths and failings. It is a way of ostracizing aspects of a personality.
Hunnah: Would you elaborate on that? “Ostracizing aspects of a personality?” Is that like deliberately closing your eyes and not addressing a portion of yourself? Or your expression?
Loreenia: May I answer that?
TOMAS: You may respond for I am not yet transmitting. I am paused. Please proceed. I am interested in your response.
Loreenia: To ostracize an aspect of a personality is to deny that personality’s aspects. Does that sound appropriate?
TOMAS: It is not to deny the personality, but to deny certain aspects, this is correct, but you still can love the personality.
Loreenia: Yes.
TOMAS: It is only certain aspects that are intolerable and/or therefore ostracized.
Leah: Are we referring to behaviors here?
TOMAS: Yes.
Hunnah: “I love you, but I don’t like what you’re doing?”
TOMAS: Yes. And, “I know that you don’t [like what I’m doing], but I’m going to do it anyway and we are not going to worry about that in our relationship. We will love each other here, where we see eye to eye.” It is important that you be able to distinguish the many, many facets of your personality, as well as others’, for wholehearted acceptance of each other is impossible unless and as you are exceedingly spiritual and humanly very compatible. For the most part, this is not the human condition.
It is necessary for you, as a child of God, to express the Father’s love through you in service. How would you then, for example, serve someone in prison if you could not see him as a human being without seeing the crime that was committed? That would be impossible, for you would be blinded by the prejudice of his act. But to see him as a human being who has despaired, who has erred, who seeks forgiveness – who perhaps does not seek forgiveness, who is defiant, who is still angry and still in denial – can you love the human being in spite of those things about him or her that you find grossly offensive to your sensibilities? That is how we bridge these communication gaps and learn to love one another.
It is not called upon you to love every flaw about another individual. You simply have to accept that that’s the way it is, as they have to accept that about you.
Loreenia: Isn’t it easier to bridge that communication gap if you are experienced in that field of their experience? And to be able to listen, to reach out and touch them? Because you have to be able to listen in order to tell where they’re coming from, as well as have some experience to know if that —
TOMAS: Are you discussing a prison ministry situation?
Loreenia: Yes. That’s what you were discussing, basically.
TOMAS: In the context that Hunnah brought it up, no, but it is about listening and I think that Hunnah’s listening skills could be honed. She may learn that art of listening, but at this point it may provide her a better avenue if she were in a position to express herself.
Hunnah: Right now? or generally?
TOMAS: Generally.
Hunnah: It’s interesting you talk about listening, because I was in a situation last year where listening was the subject and it was the subject that was presented as a gift to us light workers, that we would be allowed to be more effective with listening, not only to ourselves and what’s going on externally, but in an inner way, and that resonance would assist the person in prison whether they were in a physical prison or an emotional prison in life.
TOMAS: Yes.
Hunnah: And that by the establishment of this gift, this would be activated, so I don’t have to worry about being deficient in that line, which I am aware of. It will develop in its own time, in all of us.
TOMAS: Yes.
Hunnah: So as we travel through our mortal destiny, these things will come about in time.
TOMAS: They will come about in time. They could come about in another millennia or they could come about in the next three years, depending on whether you continue to remain in denial or whether you learn to accept each other’s foibles and strengths and your reaction to them.
Hunnah: All right. I had a teacher one time who told me that we could have — we would no longer have likes and dislikes, but we were allowed to have preferences, and therefore because of preferences, I fill my life, generally, with people who are positive and who are going in a direction I’m going in. It’s not an act of isolation, but it’s a form of insulation for myself as I grow. It’s very difficult to grow with strong prevailing winds.
TOMAS: Yes, you are correct, and I stand beside you also as a soldier and an affiliate in our advance into spirit reality. You know I am a strong advocate of community and peer support in the spirit, and certainly the preference would be to be surrounded by supportive and loving energies and personalities. There is not the occasion, under those conditions, however, to learn as much or serve as much as you might if you stepped outside of your comfort zone of association and tested the cold waters of another pond.
But I do agree with you that supportive associations are vital and strengthening. Like the woman who took Exodus into the prisons. She was not what you would call a natural candidate for that work, but she was willing to serve and it turns out that she is quite excellent in her service ministry, so do not deprive yourself of the opportunity of finding yourself in something that you would not have suspected would be a viable avenue for you for service.
Hunnah: Interestingly enough, in order to do that service, you have to have your listening skills honed and you have to be very strong because that’s the role you play – non-judgmental friend and a listener.
TOMAS: It is a gift to listen; it is an art to listen. In listening, you can hear between the lines. You can more readily by-pass the initial emotional reaction and get to the true heart of the matter. Listening “with ears to hear” helps you stay in light and life in your path, regardless of your immediate environment at the moment. Listening gives you clues as to what’s coming as well as what has just gone beyond. Listening is a perception of reality, not a mere mechanical contrivance for the ear.
There are no negative angels. There are no hurtful creations in Michael’s universe. Of his creations in the spirit realms, there are no residue rebels. And now we are steadfastly embarked on clearing up, rehabilitating, reclaiming the residue of the rebellion on Urantia and soon that, even, will be history.
Loreenia: Several years ago, though, that didn’t exist, did it?
TOMAS: Several years ago it was possible for a mortal to be influenced by a rebel midwayer if they invited such contact. Only by overt invitation could such take place. Not since Pentecost has evil been allowed to influence or indwell the ignorant or the innocent.
Hunnah: I have a question. May we divert to another subject for a moment?
TOMAS: Certainly.
Hunnah: Ruth cannot be here with us this evening, but I have a question from Jude.
TOMAS: Very well.
Hunnah: He has asked me to ask you if he will continue his mission and growth in another group.
TOMAS: Again, I feel I am being asked to haul out the crystal ball, for I am not the one to make that determination. That is your choice, Jude, and it is certainly our sincere and deep hope that you will make that decision, for we regard you as a true fellow, a brother in the spirit, and we would hope that you would prevail with us in the spirit not only for your satisfaction and growth experience but for the value that you bring to others.
INTERMISSION
TOMAS: Greetings, once again, my faithful friends.
Hunnah: You decided to hang around!
TOMAS: I have not gone away. Your discourse this evening in our interim pause has been regarded as “delicious” by many of us…
Loreenia: Those are our tidbits!
TOMAS: . .. for your sharing has touched upon emotional veins which have been helpful to you in your social graces and your learning to share meaningfully from your more personal aspects. It was developmental, as many of your experiences are, and when the spirit is brought in and given reign in these human realms, wondrous growths can take place, such as occurred this evening in your experiencing your ability to recognize your emotional responses.
There are untold examples of emotional reactions to life which can be discussed and brought to the table for greater understanding in due course. If you were in wonderment about our subject matter this evening, you surely now can see the merit of the topic, for as Gerdean outlined, your decisions are made in the mind and when the mind’s clear thinking abilities are thwarted by your emotional reactions, then your spiritual growth is thwarted and so is the growth of the Supreme. Thus we broach the area of emotion.
You are emotional creatures. The emotions are under the jurisdiction of the mind, for it is how you think that will determine how you will respond, and these are only known experientially. During the course of the week you will have many occasions to observe, in clear insight of your own mechanisms, how you allow others to affect you, based upon your emotional condition as a result of how you think.
What complex creatures you are! It is truly a challenge to allow the spirit to dominate such a tapestry as your mortality. But what an interesting challenge, for no one on the evolutionary plane finds greater delight than one’s own self. Truly, if you continue to find your reality outside of yourself, you deprive yourself then of the marvelous adventure of discovering who you are and how you live your life. We are interested in you and your life for you are a child of God and a vital instrument in the upstepping of humanity. Be patient with one another in our growing. Be patient with yourself. Be mindful, but be patient.
We are looking forward again to our next meeting when we will be back together after what seems to be a long absence. It was wonderful for us in the Teaching Mission to have the opportunity to conjoin with our friends and neighbors in the more northerly climes recently. The Teaching Mission is expanding. The words of the Master are ringing true in the hearts and lives of many, and we are glad to enfold and embrace all of God’s kids.
Are there any final inquiries or comments this evening?
Loreenia: I would like to know who was transmitting through me while you were on pause. Was it Judith? Or someone else? I believe it was someone else besides Judith. Or do you need a name?
TOMAS: Firstly, we do not need a name. A name is sometimes a stumbling block to transmitters when they are called upon to identify the inspiration they voiced, and so often teachers will refrain from defining themselves, as was the case for you this evening. Judith is certainly present . ..
Loreenia: Yes.
TOMAS: . .. and was robust in her support of you, enjoying evidently your expressions of your own personal wisdom due to your own soul growth and insight into your human nature, conditioning and so forth. Personal teachers are like that.
It was unfortunate, Leah, that we did not get to the root of your sorrow during intermission, but we did cover some rather large ground for everyone else, so perhaps you acted as a catalyst for your sisters this evening and perhaps in due course they will be able to accommodate your growth and your understandings also.
I am not certain about the mechanics of our conversation this evening if my response to Jude was entirely included on the first segment of tape recording.
Hunnah: I think it was. I did want to add one more thing for him. It might be partly me that’s interjecting this. He expressed a concern that you might be able to — he felt isolated from his opportunity to develop his transmitting skills, and after reconsideration, he called and said he would come up to the meetings once in a while for the benefit of having transmitter/receivers to talk to. Anyway, I told him we were meeting tonight and did he have a question. He was concerned about the “physical isolation.”
TOMAS: I will address my response to Jude, Hunnah.
Yes, my son, I am truly heartened that your desire to maintain your association with your mortal peers and with your supernal teachers remains active and alert in your mind, heart and soul. You have grown, my son, and I would not enjoy seeing you languish in isolation. You are always welcome to conjoin with your peers, as you know.
Your concern regarding your potential as a transmitter is also well taken, for you do indicate electro-chemically and motivationally that you would be able to serve in that capacity. My suggestion to you at this point is to practice the Stillness religiously, that is to say, allow yourself a half an hour of diligent application to the practice of Stillness a minimum of three times a week. During the course of a period of weeks you will begin to perceive the presence of your personal teacher and/or other teachers who may be passing by who see your light on. As you allow your circuit to open, you will be acknowledged and visited. Do not despair.
I urge you to not languish in isolation, but to visit the Pittsburgh Pumpkins when possible, the Butler group when convenient and certainly the Greenville gathering as often as possible. Your presence there will be a great ministration to that locale also.
Thank you for forwarding a question to me, Jude. I remain your loyal friend and companion, Tomas.
Closing
Anything further?
Loreenia: Jude’s presence in the group had something wonderful and it would be nice if he would participate with us — when you can.
TOMAS: Indeed. All members here share those sentiments. Shall we call it a day, then, boys and girls?
Group: Yes.
TOMAS: My love is with you until we speak again. Farewell.
