1996-07-11-Personality, Unity, Morontia
Pittsburgh #27
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Personality Expression
o 1.2 Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 Personality, Association
o 3.3 Exercise
3.3.1 Expression
o 3.4 Dialogue
3.4.1 Unity
3.4.2 Names
3.4.3 Morontia
3.4.4 Spirituality
o 3.5 Closing
Topic: Personality Expression
Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
TOMAS: Yes, it is I, your teacher and guide, Tomas of Pittsburgh. (Group chortle) I will not go so far as to say that this is where I was born, but it is certainly where I live, although I had occasion recently to visit our mission workers in Portland and visit there for their phenomenally delightful gathering of believers. It was a joy for me to experience the results of much spiritual application. It encourages me that you here continue to reflect upon my words and those concepts which have been borrowed from the curriculum of Melchizedek toward lifting your motives, intents and purposes toward greater spirit perception and grasping of your true reality.
And so I come refreshed and renewed from my travels in time for your embrace and I greet you warmly this evening and bring you happy tidings from many joyous spirit helpers who are eagerly observing our growth here and who project great gains from the work which has been done thus far in each of you individually, and as we also learn the concepts and actualities of interrelating to one another as sons and daughters of the living God.
Lesson
Personality, Association
TOMAS: I will speak briefly this evening regarding life, since life, as it pertains to us, is that experience of the personality engaged in association with its fellows and its reactions and responses to the life around it as projected also from the personalities of your associates. In association, then, is when personality is truly given the opportunity to function, to perform, to emote and to express those facets of divinity which delight your Thought Adjusters in the opportunity to use you as its co-creator in divinity attainment.
In your intimate relations, your one-on-one personal relations, you well know the power and influence of personality for it has served you in your relationships oftentimes throughout your entire life, and the dynamics of certain long-standing partnerships and relationships bring few surprises for the personality of the other has been comfortable in its framework of the relationship.
When incorporating new associations, it is not uncommon to put your best foot forward, that you may present a pleasant face and give a good impression for the delight of your association and for the self-esteem involved in presenting yourself as a noble creature and socially fragrant, but as time goes on and if your association persists, the truth will be revealed, and if the association survives, you will have related to your new associates the larger picture of your entire range of personality – which often and naturally includes that aspect of ego and conditioning which are not from the Thought Adjuster but from the human being.
Even so, the friendships which are embarked upon, the associations which are undertaken — with the understanding of a friendship being an end in itself (112:2.8)– this is a satisfactory situation, for you can accept one another’s fallibility. In the larger system of your society, in its more impersonal aspects, it is difficult for the Thought Adjuster to express itself through you, for your systems at this point are largely mechanistic and materialistic systems.
In associating with systems, your spirit is rather forced to take a back seat, for the mechanics of the system do not provide openings for the spirit naturally to express itself. It is invaluable then, as you gradually and eventually learn how to take your truth, beauty, and goodness into the larger system, that you maintain your intimate system of association, that your personality is given the opportunity to develop and flourish in and among fellow religionists.
It is, as you know, a comfort to be in the presence of a friend to whom you can relate and discuss spiritual principles and use certain words which connote a mutual understanding. It is not everyone, as you know, that you can pray with and use the word Michael, as an example. But here in this conclave of brothers and sisters, it is possible for you to express yourselves and be accepted by one another in the understanding that you are still in a process of becoming.
Exercise
Expression
TOMAS: I would like to ask you to indulge me this evening, not quite to the extent as we engaged last week with the morontia energy pattern, helping to lift you up, but along those lines. I would like you to experiment with me as we sit around this table in harmonious fellowship and allow your God Fragment to emote itself, to extend itself out from your ego personality, and greet the spirits of each of you. I expect that if this is done wholly, it will take more than a few seconds.
I am willing to allow the experiment two or three minutes for the experience of sending forth your heart, your spirit core, into the environment, that you may touch one another in the spirit. And I will preface our experiment by suggesting that there is nothing to fear in the spirit, that indeed the freedom to love and to receive love is the greatest gift. Venture forth. (The experiment)
As you take a walk among the spirit presence of each other, do not forget, my students and friends, to visit also with yourself. Reluctantly, loved ones, I will call our experiment to a close for now. I do feel that we have made some progress in allowing yourself to be in trust of each other. Now we come back to “real life” and attached to these loving spirits is the unique and peculiar individuals of each of you, these flowers in the garden of life. It is as and how you interface with one another in acceptance of each other that constitutes your fellowship, and it is your choice to allow the spirit to rule, thereby providing you with this haven of safety and warmth of association. In respect and affection for this association of you here, I give you the floor to tell me what it is that you would like to discuss.
Dialogue
Student: When we are interacting socially, can we use this method to be closer to them in some way? Is that what you’re suggesting?
TOMAS: That would be an extension of this experiment/experience. In and of itself it is adequate for now. I am asking you to begin to perceive the spirit realities of those in your immediate association here, your brothers and sisters in the spirit and in comprehension of certain values. Of course, as you extend yourself into your society-at-large, you may also extend your spirit and, indeed, it is desirous that you do so. You well might discover, indeed, that if you take a moment to allow your spirit to seek contact with another’s, an energy pattern will be set up that will enable you to carry on a discourse which provides for greater freedom of expression, including an appreciation for more spiritized realities. Be alert, however, that it may unnerve an unsuspecting mortal and so do remember tact and tolerance in your venturing out.
Student: Should this venturing out indicate receptivity on the part of the person we’re dealing with? Shouldn’t it be asked on an inner level?
TOMAS: I am suggesting that your spirit precede you to greet your peers. It is quite an industrious undertaking to consider that you will remember to do this with everyone you meet. It is certainly not required that you ask permission of their spirit to be acknowledged, for all spirit craves acknowledgement, but the free will of the mortal associate of the spirit is to be respected. As you approach your fellows in the spirit, honor the integrity of the individual to whom you are addressing your spirit.
Student: Well, this reminds me of something that I was doing for a long time and still am doing. Often when I’m with somebody, I ask my Thought Adjuster to be close with your Thought Adjuster. I don’t know if that has any significant spiritual effect, but it seemed to me like it was worth trying anyway.
Unity
TOMAS: It is worth trying. It is along those lines, indeed, that I have suggested this experiential this afternoon. However, my motives in allowing for the experiment was not intended to focus outside the room but rather for you to appreciate the resource of love and support which is yours in this association, this association of fellow religionists.
Student: In other words, it’s like a rehearsal? We are all very receptive and if we do this among ourselves we will gain confidence more gracefully?
TOMAS: I am espousing spiritual unity. As you are united with each other in the spirit, and as that is strengthened, as that becomes a pivotal and focal point of your association, the vagaries of your ego existence are prioritized, are identified as other than your greater reality.
Student: Well, it was funny but one of the times that I thought we had a lot of unity was when we had our Chinese auction. We all forgot to be intellectual. We all forgot to be anything but very childlike in our acceptance, in our joy of the moment, as we actually got to know a certain part of people’s personalities that we hadn’t known before.
Dr. B: Tomas, as I was trying to do this experiment, spontaneously having an interaction with each person, with a couple people something unusual happened that … I perceived myself doing something with them that I didn’t expect, and I really don’t know what it means. Like, for instance, with Gerdean, what happened was this white cream was pouring down over her, but with Mrs. P, it was like a comical thing. It was something I never do to anybody, but it was like putting my arm around her and doing like, ruffling up the hair on the top of her head like kids do or something? And that was totally like — I don’t do things like that, so I have no idea what it was. And the really strange one was with
Ms. D. I all of a sudden saw, like you have, like these little wire fences? And it was wrapping around her.
TOMAS: I daresay from my vantage point what you have experienced is a fringe benefit to what I had suggested, for whereas I suggested a spiritual enterprise, you were also partaking of psychological and emotional visualizations. I keep forgetting that about mortals, that they bring so much with them. They are not like me in many ways, and so as you have no doubt heard before, I learn as I work with you, sometimes in ways which I find truly astounding.
I have found your picturization invaluable as a teacher and intriguing as a personality. It is in your association then with these individuals which tells your personality (which was our original subject this evening.) that you feel fondly toward one sister, you feel barriers between you with another and you feel –it is impossible for me to convey Gerdean’s feelings while she has given herself over to my power, so — cream you say?
Student: That’s the part I . .. I don’t really feel I have barriers with her. And that it was also kind of rusty.
TOMAS: It is also possible that Ms. D herself has also established barriers and, as you perceive her with barriers up, your spirit has gone out to embrace her and met with resistance.
Ms. D: I’m going to cut away the barriers with scissors.
Mrs. H: This is like watching TV!
TOMAS: This is delightful on one hand, but very personal on another and it would not be possible were it not for the domination of spirit in this entire procedure. I have seen and heard you all discuss each other among yourselves in far less flattering terms and I myself am happy to see the spirit prevail among you and your affectionate approach to one another visualized and actualized, made possible even in your perception, for this opens further the door for understanding and for deeper love and deeper commitment to your work in and with and for each other.
Mrs. H: Something comical came to my mind. I don’t know whether Mrs. M. gave us a little book or whether my friend Ellie gave me this little book, but they are tiny, elf-like creatures and they have shoes that curl up and they wear like pointed hats, a little bit like a lamp shade, and on the top it curls around like a morning glory and it, holds a candle, and these books are available but I don’t know who writes them, but I had the . .. I think Mr. H received this book and I think it’s a “can’t stay crabby” book and I was seeing us with these hats on, and when we’d go up to someone, if their candle wasn’t lit, we’d tip our hat to them and their candle would come on.
And it was very playful and precious. I think it’s in my mind because I was at Jack’s store and he had one of those plastic laminated cards with them on it and I have to bring it in to show you that you all have this little pointed cap on with a candle on it. So, that’s what we do down here. We cartoon in order to get over the hard places.
TOMAS: I can see then that you too are playful and precious, for indeed the goal is to recognize each other as fundamental reality and when one of your lights go out, you will indeed doff your hat and bow in service and illuminate the darkness, for this is the way your spirit reality will be reinforced.
You are all, to some extent or another, accustomed to being Agondonters, to carrying on your belief system alone, to trudging the path of destiny with blind faith and ignorant glee, but as you find each other and grow with each other in the spirit, your reality is reinforced and your light is less likely to be extinguished. It is in this kind of configuration that the spirit helpers become more activated also, for you are sometimes impressed to contact a fellow and often it is your imagination but sometimes it is exactly that, an occasion to doff your hat and light their extinguished wick by your recognition of them in the wilderness.
As you all begin to remind each other of the spiritual light that each of you is, your strength grows, your faith in your own spirit reality becomes greatened and your approach to your spirit reality is strengthened so that when you embark into those systems of materialism and impersonal energies, you are not swallowed up and you, in fact, can extend your spirit to go before you and to greet each other in the spirit as you pass by. barring our experience this evening, are there other questions?
Names
Student: Well, I think we did have a question about our spiritual names. We’d like to have you perhaps enlighten us more on that subject, possibly?
TOMAS: Your spiritual name is that which you are becoming. It is representative, indeed, of where you come from, where you were born, and what you will be when you are fully developed. It is quite the vogue to assign names and so many individuals have acquired many names and I tell you that although this is colorful and serves some purpose, it is not equated with a personality which you are in process of becoming throughout eternity.
As has been mentioned, there are interim names, there are pet names and nicknames and various episodes in life give rise to different focuses of influence and interest. In the case of Gerdean, I have her permission to also acknowledge different names for although she was only wed once, she has experienced several surnames, each one of those representing, if you will, a life in itself. And those names have all been discarded or put into perspective.
A spiritual name is an identity that will be you as you grow into your name, as you grow into your reality. I had a dialog recently in Buffalo wherein I expressed that I am not inclined to go into the archives and look up your name and give it to you as if it were an assignment, for I have discovered that as your name, as your personality in truth, is evolved and as you begin to express your more spiritized personality, your name becomes apparent to me and I recognize you.
Thus I understand why it is that some of you don’t like your spiritual name, why some of you don’t want to use it, and why some of you want several of them. They are very personal. Very, very personal.I am of a mind then to utilize your spiritual name as I freely see you and as you have given me your permission to address you thus. I do not command of you that you be your spiritual personality all the time, for I am working with you as human beings with residue in need of correcting, and given that scenario, there is much about the personality which has not been released, which has not become free to express itself in the optimum.
Occasionally I see glimpses of your radiant spiritized personality and sometimes our communication is indeed one-on-one, wherein I recognize you and call you by name. I am not into assigning handles and trying to remember what your handle is. I am into helping you evolve your spirit personality which then graces itself with an address, one which I can read. Has that been clarifying in the least?
Student: Yes, it has been. Very clarifying.
Student: Tomas, I have a question. In our lesson tonight, there was a little confusion on something and it was in regards to a section in the lesson that said there were two basic types of finite will creatures. The animal origin is one type, and that is what we are. What is the other type?
TOMAS: Inasmuch as I am taking that out of context, my son, I would very much appreciate if you would give me a direct quote from the text.
Student: Do you want to answer that later?
TOMAS: I will answer it now if we can find the sentence, and I would appreciate the full sentence.
Student: It’s on 361 (32:3.10), down at the bottom of the page. “The fact of animal evolutionary origin does not attach stigma to any personality in the sight of the universe as that is the exclusive method of producing one of the two basic types of finite intelligent will creatures.”
TOMAS: Thank you. You remember that this book was created for your understanding. I am advised of the midwayers which are finite will creatures. The secondary midwayers. The midwayers were created of material parents, and although they are invisible to your eyes at this point in time, they are regarded as material.
Student: Thank you, that’s quite clear. We understand that. That’s a good answer. Thank you very much.
TOMAS: I am pleased to attempt to clarify and aid your understanding. I am not always certain that I am doing that, so it is gracious of you to say so.
Student: Did you just know the answer? Or did your scribe come hustling in?
TOMAS: I had to give the answer some consideration for I was also reminded of the spornagia, which are finite as compared to spiritual and are intelligent, but are not will creatures in that same context.
Morontia
Student: I don’t know if I’ve made any progress about using my morontia body. I’ve been thinking about, it though.
Student: Oh! I have a question about the morontia body. If you’re going to lift a heavy object, can you direct . . . call attention to it to assist you? The way they do in karate? They acknowledge the center of their energy seat and they can lower it or raise it to accommodate the need? Would the morontia body be able to service us in a similar way?
TOMAS: I call to your mind such newsreels as a young man who was caught under an automobile who lifted the automobile to free himself or those individuals who perform “superhuman” feats of strength in order to save their daughter or their neighbor’s son, and this is an opportunity for greater energies than your musculature to operate, but if I were you, I do not believe I would call upon the universe to give you added strength for lifting boxes and so forth, for without proper spirit motivation and justification, you are apt to hurt yourself.
Student: I was applying it to situations where — what you described usually is an unconscious response. I mean, they just do it and afterwards everybody is in awe of what you did. Okay.
TOMAS: My reference to your morontial energies, your morontial form, was not intended toward material movement so much as an appreciation of the spirit reality of your morontia soul which will survive you when you leave your mortal tabernacle behind. The more familiar you are with the truth, the reality of your higher being, the more you will be eager to equip if for the transition into a life without limbs as you know it.
Your spiritual development is certainly uppermost, but there are other facets of morontia-izing which call the morontia form into play, one of which is, as you saw, the delights of personality expression when not constrained by your material body, and other aspects of your morontial form and personality will include characteristics of thinking and behaving. It is, of course, in those realms that Correcting Time absorbs the most time and energy for it is difficult to be spiritized when there are so many errors and ill-conceived conditionings which you drag around with you as luggage for your life’s journey.
Mrs. M: Well, Tomas, can you give us some examples of how we do morontia-ize our . .. that which we are? How do we morontia-ize it? Is it because we concentrate on what we think a morontia philosophy is? Do we then grow in that way?
TOMAS: Yes, Your understanding of morontia is, I presume, that it is a combination of spirit and energy in its manifestation, but it is also a level of comprehension and value manifestation also. A well-developed character goes with you into the morontia realms, and so whatever you can do to develop character ~ which becomes part of your eternal makeup ~ accompanies you to the mansion worlds, and you have this with which to operate.
Those who have not taken time to develop ethics and character and spirit reality will be welcomed, of course, but will be the more handicapped without a working understanding of their true reality, and this is why I present these little exercises for you to investigate your higher reality in the physical manifestation, in your understanding of energy patterns and so forth, but although it is delightful and applies some perspective, it is the woof of morontia that provides me with the greater challenge and opportunity to serve, as compared to the warp of morontia which is that which you acquire through prayer and meditation and devotion to our Father.
Student: Is the character something like the skeleton structure?
TOMAS: Actually, I would think more that the spirit is the skeletal structure, for it is on the spirit that all things will be developed. The character, then, could be compared to the fleshy parts, that which fills you out, which rounds you out, which gives your personality its flavor. Would we like to, as has been suggested often, embark into some discussion in the near future on character’?
Student: Yes. Yes, I think so. We’ll have a topical evening some night and I think we’ll try out the subject of character in personality, because as you become more spiritual, you are freer to express the personality that God gave to us. Am I right? Isn’t that a correct perception of that?
Spirituality
TOMAS: Let me touch a moment upon your word spiritual, for although I am, of course, interested in your spiritual development — indeed the entire deal is that this planet be ushered into an age of light and life, based upon spiritual enlightenment and the bringing of spirituality into life itself, including your personality, your relationships, your systems and so forth. I am of an opinion that the spirit is not so elevated as to preclude your mortal existence.
To me, there is no occasion apart from spirit, including your routine affairs of life. The eternal pattern, the infinite pattern of perfection, lends itself all the way down into impersonal energy manifestations such as in osmosis or the veins of a leaf, and so surely spirit also converges with you in your existence as an animal of the realm, thus elevating the animal and personalizing the spirit. This enters into integrity of the being, into the character of the man/the woman who is unified in all systems, is whole in spirit and the flesh, who has found life to be good and satisfying.
I only make those clarifying remarks to assure you that I am not aspiring to create a passel of saints here. I will hold off on the nebulous and ethereal realms of morontia existence until you attain those levels naturally. I did, however, want you to recognize them as being part of you and will be part of you throughout your career for many eons to come. I will allow for one more question if there is one pending.
Student: Was there any disturbance whatsoever when I went out with myself, when we were experiencing a part of me?
TOMAS: I cannot speak as one of you for I have my own vantage point but I can, from that vantage point, say that I could perceive your spirit as radiant and gracious as were all the others here, and all of you are present. All of your souls are alive and well, and I know you already knew that, but it was a delight to perceive your spirit reality extended out from the constraints of your mortal existence, to venture into the arena of the heart, in trust of your fellow beings. You have begun the dance of life and I am pleased to be part of this ballroom.
Student: (Laughter) I like that analogy.
Student: Thank you.
Closing
TOMAS: And I thank you, my friends. I am going to wind it up for this evening. Your minds have been stimulated, your souls have been titillated and your hearts have been touched by our association. What more could one ask for in a day in the life? My precious friends, I bid you farewell.
