2010-04-29-Planning for the Future
Lightline LLN#257
Contents
1Heading
1Topic: Planning for the Future
2Group: Lightline TeaM
2Facilitators
1Teacher: Tomas
2TR: Gerdean
3Session
1Opening
2Lesson
2.1Teaching Mission, Progress
2.2Experiment
2.3Quality of Life
2.4Potential, Growth
3Dialogue
3.1Groups, Teamwork
3.2Interdependence
3.3Stillness
3.4Simplicity
4Closing
Heading
Topic: Planning for the Future
Group: Lightline TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
TOMAS: Good evening dear friends –friends present and friends beyond – I am Tomas, your teacher.
Lesson
Teaching Mission, Progress
It brings me great joy and satisfaction to be a representative of the Teacher Corps in the Teaching Mission. When we began this little experiment many years ago, we had no idea what would come to pass or come out of our efforts, but as the years go by we have found in many ways you have exceeded our expectations even as sometimes you have been somewhat of a disappointment. The good overshadows the bad so that we are overall quite happy with what efforts have wrought — your effort s and ours. Primarily, we see the effects in your personal development; the diligence with which you have sought the Stillness and mortal connection with divine sources; how you have utilized the strengths of Deity to help you heal yourself from some of the infirmities of time and lift yourself up into the sunlight of the spirit.
These efforts cannot be overestimated. If nothing else is accomplished, this has made the trip worthwhile. Your growth has been truly phenomenal, in some cases more so than others, but overall truly significant, and this is what will keep us going, what will keep this mission alive — far more than the futuristic plans we all share and the current challenges we all face. It is this coming into being as young, joyous, healthy souls, eager to stand side by side with your fellows, eager to set forth into the challenges we face, ready and willing to be all that you can be for the cause. The lessons you learn in this initial phase will serve you throughout eternity. Having these kinds of foundations underneath you, you will be able to build new worlds, cultivate new relationships, attain new ideals, and beyond.
Experiment
Not long ago we talked about experimental life stations and how it is that you each have experienced a semblance of experimental life stations in your own lives at differing phases of your mortal existence. How difficult it can be to let go of a life experimental station once you have finished with it and difficult to launch upon the search for another one that will serve you in the next leg of your journey!
Be assured that you are always given “a hologram” in which to live. Some of them are short-lived and some of them are extensive, depending upon the nature of you as a creature and the work you are undertaking and the circumstances of your existence at this point in time. But it will be created for you to accommodate your needs because that’s just the way it works. A lot of people go to a lot of trouble creating an environment for themselves only to have it pulled out from under them because it was not meant to be.
Quality of Life
I marvel at the industry with which your housing industry operates and the enthusiasm with which young people hasten to set themselves up in an experimental life station that is pre-programmed for them, in which they may never find themselves, and in some cases in which they are certainly doomed to fail, because they approach the matter of their life experience from the perspective of its trappings rather than its quality of living. Evidently they feel that “quality of living” means something other than what the spirit realm considers quality of life.
Quality of life in a supernal sense has nothing to do with square footage or number of bedrooms or amenities or recreational facilities. The needs of the body are such that Mother Nature provides all the exercise you could possibly need, simply by walking and swimming and working and playing. When you arrange your exercises and your recreation down to the nth degree, you deprive yourself of the contact with mother earth that feeds your needs in a fundamental sense such as you would have by putting in a garden or planting a tree, irrigating a ditch. In your eagerness to become civilized, you are sacrificing your connection to the earth.
Fortunately, these paradigms can be gotten into and out of fairly readily if you have any imagination at all, or any ambition or sense of exploration, but for those who opt to embrace such a lifestyle and have the ability to adapt, the adventures then are perforce to be had in the confines and constraints of that “hologram” and there are tremendous varieties of mental amusement that can entertain one for a lifetime.
This is the nature of the material mind with its adaptability and creativity. One could literally live in the confines of a very small area for a lifetime and not go mad, simply because of its many hobbies and interests, and now, with technology, it is possible for you to find a cubicle somewhere and live in it for years on end without seeing the sun. Indeed, there are certain worlds that live this way. The population has seen to it that they are crammed into honeycombs and they function like ants, in a very regimented and disciplined way, making their society run and being very efficient and effective, but at the expense of certain freedoms.
Potential, Growth
I develop this idea to convey to you the possibilities of future developments for your planet here. It has not been overrun with people. It is not brought down by disease. It has not been destroyed by pollution. All these concerns are in the public eye but it is still “quivering on the brink” (UB 195:9.2) of some wondrous times ahead and the potential for creating a brave new world toward light and life is exciting. In some ways, what you do from this point forward will determine what direction your world will take.
There are certainly those who feel that it will destroy itself, but we will not focus on that destructive angle for there are too many young people and idealists in our midst to stimulate and encourage and this is what I opt to do today, to stimulate and encourage the young people who have wondrous ideas about a better tomorrow for this planet in terms of power, wind power, water power; in terms of design of cities; in terms of public transportation; in terms of growing food and making sure that what you take into your body is good for you, wholesome, and that how you live in proximity with others is invigorating and stimulating and wholesome also so that your relationships are the foundation of your existence rather than economics.
The relationship you have with each other and with the world, with the earth, makes all the difference. The possibilities for a new and different approach to experimental life stations is on the forefront. Experimental life stations that will take a piece of land and develop it as a young village, a young society, and cultivate it as a living thing that will support its citizenry – wholesome, clean and healthy – something to thrive in. I was fortunate to live on a world that had designated pockets of light and life. The entire planet was not settled in light and life, no.
There were some areas that were like a disease that had to be cut away, alienated from those of us who were advanced and opted to live a progressive and spiritual life style. And so even as your world has its turmoil and difficulties, even as there are still some very primitive people that need to work out their basic natures, there are among you who are peace lovers and altruists and there is no reason why you cannot pursue the dream of light and life for your area, your friends and family, your little piece of the rock.
These kinds of stations are an oasis and they are an example to others of how it can be done. People can live in harmony. People can transcend their petty difficulties. People can figure out how to succeed in the face of difficulty. People can do it if they give themselves a chance, if they work together, and if they work with the spirit and the spirits that will help them do that very thing.
I know that the Master said “my kingdom is not of this world” and I am not suggesting that you attempt to create a heaven on earth as a token of your devotion to religion or to the Master or to that which is sublime and holy – only to that which is humanly divine, humanly sacred, and that would be family, cultivating the fields, tending to your people as the Family of Man, respecting one another and respecting the Earth plane that is your cradle. Humility is the hardest thing for people to embrace. They feel that in their aspiration for greatness they need grandness and grandness is not required. Goodness is required, in order for you to be great.
I intended to encourage you this evening. I hope you find yourself encouraged, at least those of you are young idealists and who would change the world to the better. There is hope for you. And there is great hope for this world, this planet. Do not let the naysayers get you down. Do not let the wars and rumors of wars and the economic upheavals of your economy today destroy your appreciation for true peace and wealth. They reside within, and you have them both in abundance. Let go of that paradigm that is no longer serving and create a new paradigm, a new experimental life station that will eventually extend from coast to coast, from pole to pole, in a grid work of humanity embracing humanity. Amen.
I am eager to engage with you in your lives and in your concerns. I am here as your teacher not simply to lecture but to help you in your studies, in your life studies, in whatever way I can. Are there questions?
Dialogue
Marty: Thank you Teacher Tomas. I want to thank you very much for this subject you brought up tonight. I have been thinking about all of the help that we are getting from the celestial beings who are all flocking to help us and what I have begun to realize is that it is help that is being offered and the initiatives need to be taken by us. That was what was making it so interesting because of the need for us to be able to develop our relationships, to be able to work together, to make group decisions on how to bring our planet ahead to relate to the universe, to all of the neighbors that are coming to our shores. Just an interesting thing to see how we are going to do that, and that is the kind of help I think we need the most, is how to work together.
Groups, Teamwork
TOMAS: Well, you certainly have addressed the most potent workforce and the most challenging problem. Learning to work together is truly the issue. This is why we have tried to encourage the group concept, to have a Teacher who has a group, to cultivate that group as a community, because that community has strength. Some people together can do more than one or two alone. This is elemental physics. Prior to the Teachers coming along and encouraging this idea of group, the Urantia Book students were also encouraged to develop Societies. There is a reason for this. And we have had tremendous success on one hand and tremendous disappointment on the other because, yes, one is the groups keep splitting up, but that is not a problem. This is an example of growth and adaptability.
It is when the groups separate based on hostility or anger that the problem arises because then there is a rift and the rift has to be mended before significant group growth can continue. It is okay to find yourself in overcrowded circumstances and realize that someone has to move and so some move and some stay and growth takes place. This is healthy. But you have also seen unhealthy growth. It tends to resemble the paradigm of mortals here, that being an attempt to destroy that which no longer serves. It isn’t necessary to attempt to destroy that which no longer serves because it in fact does serve the greater whole even though it may not serve that aggressive or productive element of the group.
It takes us all together to create this large and living organism of love that will impel us into the phases of light and life, that will be necessary to establish, and, having established, we need to live within that paradigm. It takes time! It’s not a matter of “Build it; they will come; now it’s done.” No. “Build it, they will come, and we will learn the lessons that are inherent in that paradigm and then we will grow from there.” It’s a process, an ongoing process. It’s a fun process, really, if you can adopt the farther view.
Anyway, to the extent that we fail in this group metamorphosing, we are slowed down. But we are not stopped because the impetus lies within each member, each mortal that feels that calling, and that is everyone that is alive, really, certainly everyone that is alive to the revelation. And I say that “revelation” loosely, for revelation is a big word and covers a lot of territory, even as there are millions who could care less about revolution or revelation but want to live simply and quietly in their catacombs as they have done for generations and they, too, have their story and their importance. They provide tremendous stability for those of you who launch out ahead of the others to forge new realities, new experimental life stations.
Yes, group is important but it doesn’t have to be like … well, the Borg, to use a phrase as many of you are familiar with from Star Trek. You don’t have to all think alike and act as one at the expense of individuality or creativity. Each of you has character, each of you has interest in some field or other and those of you who are like-minded are often drawn to each other and if there are potentials to be had in that amalgamation, then it might behoove you to stay with that group for awhile. Perhaps it is like the social architect who gathers together those who are of like mind in order to accomplish certain tasks, in order to be productive, not just for the self but for the whole.
There are many patterns from your upbringing on this distorted world that you carry with you into your tomorrows and that get in the way of those very same tomorrows, and thus the need for continuing education in the fields of being all that you can be individually. Personal correction is an on-going thing, and it will be throughout the mansion worlds. There is much remedial work ahead, even as you have accomplished so much. In some cases you are barely recognizable from the individuals who blundered into the Teaching Mission 20 years ago, but there is no graduating from this. Not at this point.
There is always something to learn, some new refinement. This keeps you fresh. It’s that thing about ‘the teacher must always remain the student (UB 130:3.7)’. Furthermore, it reveals your humility, and while there are those who love a leader who has no flaws, they will love even more a leader who admits his faults and attempts to make rectification for them. This is the kind of thing that endears people to their leaders. When your President, for example, can come out and say, “I wish I would have done that other choice.
I wish I had done it differently, but this is what I did and I’ll stand by it. But if it comes up again, I’ll know better next time.” This is the kind of thing that while there are those who would love to pick him apart for being less than perfect, will admire him for being able to say he doesn’t know everything, because no one on this plane knows everything — no one.
This of course is the value of group. In the group, you share all knowledge, so you bring forth what you know and you bring forth what you know and you bring forth what you know and you can find the consensus and you set forth your consensus as group consciousness. This is something you can all live with. It’s not something that someone set down as law; but is something that you all agreed upon as a community. This is important; it is teamwork; it is the most important thing you can learn here. You are not going to get much accomplished without the rudiments of teamwork.
Marty: Well, you know we are totally trained in competition, and we’re starting from a backward place, just looking at our religions on this world today.
Interdependence
TOMAS: Well, yes, I understand that, and to the extent that you understand that, we have an agreement that this is what we have to leave behind. Rather than sitting around all day commiserating about what we have to get rid of and making excuses for why we are not making better progress, we need to accept the fact that this is where we came from but we are not going to stay there. We’re going to bring it forward. We are not going to use the same old tools and fall into the same old same trappings, ideally.
Marty: But we do still have people who are in that realm and behaving that way, and just – criminals.
TOMAS: Yes, we do. This is why I am talking to you who are not.
Marty: And we live in this world with them. Now, you spoke of your world where people were isolating themselves from that kind of thing but …
TOMAS: Yes
Marty: And I guess we need to do that kind of thing.
TOMAS: Yes.
Marty: But we are kind of like economically tied together. I mean these bankers, they’re unbelievable! Everywhere we turn —
TOMAS: You need to establish your own economy. You need to establish your own values and work within those values. Even as you have to put up with that, yes, but that is not the main reality. That is something you have to do like you have to put on like you put on your shoes.
Marty: Well, you might be aware that I gave my life entirely to doing exactly what you just said, and I still find that I’m associating with people who are stuck in their realm.
TOMAS: Yes.
Marty: I’m just bringing it up. I’m not complaining about it, I’m just —
TOMAS: Yes. These are the people in the catacombs.
Marty: We have to deal with it.
TOMAS: These are the people in the honeycombs who like the way they live and don’t want to change. But you don’t have to stay there. You don’t have to embrace it as a way of life for yourself.
Marty: I can understand that.
Stillness
TOMAS: And I also want to say that there are two ways of looking at what I am saying. One is literally and the other is metaphorically. If you practice the Stillness you are separating yourself from them Right Now. You are developing a reality of your own; you are developing a spiritual reality and base of operations that has more power and more energy than what you were raised in. And I’ll grant you that the current material and political paradigm on Urantia has tremendous power, but it does not have as much power as that which you will find in Stillness and when those of you who are peers also adopt the practice of Stillness and the values inherent therein, you have a new playing field on which to operate. You are armor against that lesser reality.
You have sanctuary from the cacophony of their propaganda beating around your head and shoulders. You have the fruits of the spirit that live for you and represent light and life that your fellows can recognize and feed upon instead of trying to pull you down and suck you in and use you up.
You need to wrench yourself from that reality. In your mind’s eye is where it begins. Eventually and gradually you become disassociated from those values and the values of eternity replace them. This is part of our task, children. This is part of the challenge we face. And if you as individuals can master these lessons and embrace the group consciousness that will help you move forward, you carry with you the entire destiny of your world, because the weight of all that history cannot keep up with you. It cannot.
It is error and will fall away like old buildings that deteriorate from time and use, so will these old paradigms of political reality or economic structure fall away and deteriorate and become as dust. In the meanwhile, you have been building up your treasure in heaven; you have the strength of yourself and your associates in this new paradigm of value that you have created by your own will to do His will, to nurture your earth and cultivate it as well as your relationships and define your industry and … just redo it!
You become new and then you make all things new. But there is not much you can do about that old way of living. Burn your bridges. Embrace the new paradigm. Create a new opportunity for a new experimental life station to be created around you and according to your new needs. You need clean water, you need fresh air, you need good earth, you need loving associations you need wholesome food, you need sunshine, laughter, affection, clean thinking, good thought, stimulating ideas, creativity, time, leisure for inventing and praying. You don’t need to live like ants.
You know, Marty, the rewards of living outside the system — the precious aura that surrounds your little patch of land and goat farm. What a treasure!
Marty: Beyond belief.
Simplicity
TOMAS: There are, by the way, many third world peoples that find just such a treasure in their beasts of burden, in raising llamas or goats of their own. People think that unless they have a big car and a nice condo and a health plan, they can’t be happy. People can be happy with a simple life. They can be and they are if they have family and friends, laughter and love, because they are already indwelt with divinity. They have everything they need right here.
Marty: And the blessing of the animals is enormous.
TOMAS: Enormous.
Marty: They don’t even have personalities but so much of Father and Mother come through them.
TOMAS: We have such wonderful Creators. Michel and Nebadonia have gifted us all in our individual experimental life stations with so much. I don’t have goats where I live now but I have had the benefit of creatures.
Marty: Univitatia?
TOMAS: I don’t get to see too many of those – not on this assignment, but I know when I need them they will be there for me. I do remember well how I enjoyed my animals when I was a mortal as you enjoy yours — not only pets but herds. It’s hard work but it’s simple and gratifying. Well, one would say, “Here’s Tomas trying to get us all to become shepherds.” You could do worse.
Closing
I see we are coming up on the end of our hour. Are there questions or concerns before we close? (Pause) Perhaps when I come back I will tell you about some of the adventures I have been having. The other worlds in this reclamation have been ministered to by the Teacher Corps as well, so some of us have spent some time attempting to cultivate some of the other worlds that have been quarantined. It has been quite an adventure. There is always something to do. But for now I will simply thank you for your companionship and for your ear. It is an incredible forum that has been established, this Light Line. And we will make every possible best use of it. Thank you for supporting this odd meeting in the sky. Go in peace, knowing that you are smiled upon and watched over, companioned and cared for by myriad invisible helpers. Amen and farewell.
Students: Thank you, Teacher Tomas. Thank you very much.
