1997-01-05-Stillness
No Idaho #37
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Stillness
o 1.2 Group: N. Idaho TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Elyon
o 2.2 TR: Mark Rogers
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
3.1.1 Stillness
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
3.3.1 Perfection
3.3.2 Thought Adjusters
o 3.4 Closing
3.4.1 Faith
Topic: Stillness
Group: N. Idaho TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Elyon
TR: Mark Rogers
Session
Opening
Stillness
ELYON: (Mark TR): Greetings once again, my friends. We together have engaged in this moderately lengthy pause in our interactions to once again visit the stillness together and to illuminate and emphasize the importance of the practice of stillness. We as teachers are well aware of the cyclical nature of your lifestyles, your commitments to external forces, and we are ultimately understanding of these. However, I feel like the school teacher whose responsibility it is to occasionally ring the bell and refocus the students on the lessons at hand. I take this opportunity this morning to visit the stillness with you as a means to emphasize priorities. If the students are preoccupied with their playtime activities, it is often very hard to grasp and internalize the daily lessons. Therefore, once again we are able to refocus our energies and prioritize and arrange our focus by means of visiting the stillness.
Lesson
ELYON: If you do not allocate the time to do this separately, then priorities dictate to do this when together, as this is key to moving forward together and separately. I know that this might sound as a broken record to you, the repeating of the importance of stillness. But it is my job as a teacher to uphold the principles and priorities necessary for your proper development. I will continue to harp on issues which remain relevant to you. I will also do my best to move the lessons along, to spice up the teachings, but I am bound by your constrictions and restrictions, and you will find that I am exceedingly patient. It is so wonderful to have you all in attendance again, in class. It truly is a highlight of my experience to meet with you, to share with you, to simply be with you as we are here now. You will come to find here more and more that we resonate to the same tones, that we, in a sense, march to the same drummers. You will learn to recognize this as time passes.
Do not waste any energy on guilt or sorrow for not having devoted enough time in your minds to the mission, as all things go in cycles. Simply address yourself to picking up where you have left off and to moving forward. It is helpful in your move forward to reestablish your practice patterns. As a good musical student knows, you simply must devote and allocate the time to the practice of the making of the music before the music can easily flow. Likewise with learning and attuning your spirit to higher lessons, this involves a practice, a return to helpful learning habits. The change of the year is a perfect time to examine your priorities. Recommit to those priorities that you feel are worthy, perhaps even shake loose those priorities you deem no longer worthy. I would encourage you to do a self-exam and go over in your mind those aspects of your lifestyle and your habits that you deem worth spending and allocating the time on and those habits and lifestyles which no longer seem as important as they once may have been. Take this opportunity to adopt your highest ideal and to let go your lowest ideal. You will see the positive effects if you do this.
Make no mistake, each of you here is fully committed to the mission, to the path ahead you and I have chosen. All are worthy and eminently qualified for this future mission. This does not mean that there is not always and evermore room for personal spiritual growth. I have warm affection for each of you and look forward excitedly to working together with you, to exploring our upcoming lessons. Witnessing you each honestly grapple with your own spiritual progress in the lessons we provide is the reward we get as teachers. I thank you all for what you give me in that regard. I would open up the floor for your questions or comments. I am available to you as are others at this time.
Dialogue
Perfection
Ginny: Thank you for your encouragement.
JONATHAN: : Your encouragement to reach to our highest ideals and drop the lower ones, I felt implied also letting go those things that don’t even rise to the level of an ideal, mark-of-the-beast type stuff. I’ve been wrestling with failure feelings. I think it’s because I put too much emphasis on my ideals rather than acceptance of things I can attain. Is there any insight you can offer to balance between the ever-elusive perfect action and being satisfied with success that falls short of that?
ELYON: : I am, we are, primarily concerned with your spiritual growth and development, those ideals that rise up to the spiritual level. I would encourage you and everyone to reach for the highest spiritual ideals and make every attempt in your lives to realize these ideals, to make them part of your being. I would also encourage that minimal amounts of your energy be directed towards any negative aspects of your being. I realize that this is extremely difficult in your surroundings. However, it is important to begin to realize when your energy is being directed in a not-positive direction, to consciously make efforts to redirect this energy into the positive counterparts to that equation.
When one looks at a glass and sees half empty and devotes valuable, precious energy into being discouraged that the glass is only half empty, this drains the available energy which can be used to be exuberant that the glass is all the way half full. This is a common challenge that everyone of you grapples with at times. There is an overriding tendency in the human mind to look for and at the incorrect. Through exercise and practice one can learn to channel this same energy into the tendency to see what is right, what is good, what in this situation is the best of the situation, and how could this be made better in this situation. This is, indeed, a true challenge, to look at a glass and always challenge yourself to see how wonderfully full it is.
True, there is room for more growth, for more water in the glass, but it is indeed all the way half full. I recommend that you all be more aware of this challenge in your lives and consciously attempt to redirect whatever energy falls below the center line into the negative, to redirect this energy above the midpoint into the positive. It is the same energy; simply the direction has changed; thus the outcome is vastly different. You will all see the rewards of this exercise, of this challenge.
JONATHAN: Thank you. I can see how I add the little qualifiers like “only” half full. As you pointed out “all the way” half full is a better perspective. I’ll try to do that when I feel that what I’ve done isn’t good enough. In the light of what I have done, it has got me all the way to that point. A stepping stone.
ELYON: : One more point of value would be to more fully realize that you lead somewhat of a double existence; your spiritual life and your spiritual growth are somewhat separate from your physical existence and your material being. One may be making great strides in your spiritual growth and be ultimately challenged in your material being. The far more important to nurture at any time would be your ultimate spiritual growth. This you will take with you; this is part of you; this is the eternal part of you. Whether or not your material wellbeing rises to the level you might like is an entirely different matter. It may be helpful to you at times to separate these two, to take inventory of the great fruits that you bear spiritually and the fruits that you bear materially. They are quite separate.
One should not get discouraged over the evident material status in this life as you all are, indeed, quite well off. None of you lacks in food, clothing, shelter, the basic necessities of life. There are many, many people on this planet who would consider everyone in this room quite wealthy. So, even your material well-being is quite relative, even on your same planet. I point this out by way of taking your spiritual and material inventories. Do not fail to factor in your position in your life compared to all the other people who share this planet with you.
Thought Adjusters
Ginny: I have a question about the stillness. When we practice stillness, how do our Thought Adjusters participate in that? I’m sure there’s a communion with them, too, not just with a separate being.
ELYON: : Never fail to realize that your Indwelling Fragment of the Father is always and evermore looking for opportunities and ways to contact you. They are ever vigilant in their attempts to communicate with you. They would gladly seek and find any opportunity you would offer them. Stillness is very valuable in this regard in that it provides your Thought Adjusters with manifold opportunities they have during your regular lifestyle to communicate with you. So, yes, you are correct that the stillness is also helpful to your Indwelling Spirit. If you consciously make this part of your meditation, it greatly enhances the abilities of this Thought Adjuster to do the task that they have at hand.
Ginny: So, the Thought Adjuster helps us to have a cleaner, clearer communion with God, or is it one and the same?
ELYON: : Indeed, the Thought Adjuster helps you have a supremely direct communication with the Father, far more direct and accurate than any communication you would ever receive from any teacher or outside source. This is ultimately the communication you will rely on for your eternal career. So, any activities you pursue to foster the growth of this communication are well spent. As it has been said before, even the teachers, or any outside influences, have to be cleared through your individual Thought Adjusters first. So, by all means, seek this communication in our life.
Ginny: Thank you.
Closing
Faith
EVANSON: (Jonathan): Hi, I’m Evanson, and I would share a perspective on faith-certainty and would like to compare it to prayer. Prayer, as you well know, is an attitude expressed by the soul, and you have understood that wording of a prayer is not necessarily the prayer itself. You can use religious jargon; you can use street language and still convey the meaning of the prayer. Likewise faith; faith has composites similar to the words of prayer. These are beliefs. You can change your beliefs and still express your faith. Faith is like a house; your beliefs are like the materials that construct it. It can be adobe; it can be straw; it can be wood and still be a house.
When you pray, attempt to pray silently, without words. You will discover that deeper soul communication of which the words are but the mind resonating to this soul. When you wrestle with beliefs and the doubts or convictions that go with them, pause in stillness to experience your faith. Again, it is the soul attitude of which beliefs are but the mind’s resonance. It is easy to realize that the changing of the words of prayer do not disintegrate the motivation and attitude of the prayer. So, when your beliefs shift and change, likewise realize this is not a threat to your faith.
