1998-11-29-Setting the Record Straight
Pittsburgh #71
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Setting the Record Straight
o 1.2 Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas, Merium, 0802-AB-Jack
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session 1
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 The Teachers, Reverence
o 3.3 Closing
• 4 Session 2
o 4.1 Lesson
4.1.1 Trust
o 4.2 Dialogue
o 4.3 Closing
• 5 Session 3
o 5.1 Dialogue
5.1.1 Sincerity
o 5.2 Closing
Topic: Setting the Record Straight
Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas, Merium, 0802-AB-Jack
TR: Gerdean
Session 1
Opening
TOMAS: Good afternoon, dear friends. I am Tomas, your teacher.
GROUP: Good afternoon, Tomas. Great to see you.
TOMAS: And indeed, my dear, it is also great to see you, to be with you all here in joyous assembly of our predilection to conjoin with spirit reality and to expand our appreciation for kinship in the spirit. May I begin our afternoon’s visit by announcing that we are indeed in a celebration of anniversary. Today is our anniversary date of actual teaching in this base, as we have established it, both for myself and for my predecessors and so hooray for us and hooray for you who have participated and grown in these many ministries of mind and spirit reality. Before I become engaged in our more substantial discourses, and speaking of parties, I understand you wanted to talk to me and/or Merium about a party. Is this correct?
ELYSSIA: I wanted to ask you about a party for the Christmas holidays, which would have to be within the twelve days of Christmas but after the actual day of the 25th.
TOMAS: And you seek my input? One moment.
MERIUM: My friends, this is Merium. They have sent me in to represent the Teaching Corp in Charge of Holiday Festivities. What a Committee I have gotten myself into! Of course, but of course, we should always have parties. What mortal does not enjoy social festivity and communion in spirit revelry. What better opportunity indeed for you to convey your good wishes upon men of good will than by imbibing in holiday fashion. It gives you an occasion to get together to acknowledge the birth of Jesus.
Always are we delighted when people convene to acknowledge the reality of the Creator Son. Always are we gladdened when you join together in song and praise and acknowledgment of your existence because of his existence, for what are you, after all, but his children, the grand children of the Eternal Son, the great grand children of the Universal Father. What a family reunion you can have at this party.
It sounds like a fine idea. I would not get further involved in your plans such as menu or litanies or the musical scores, but you certainly may be assured that we will be in attendance and, as always, actively seeking an opening to plant further spiritual seeds of living love and on-going supreme reality. See you there!
TOMAS: I am Tomas and we have another visitor this evening, if you will. One moment, please.
RACHEL: Our pleasure!
JACK: 0802-AB Jack here.
ELYSSIA: Oh, my goodness!
JACK: I am an old friend. It is always a joy to be in your presence. I am indeed here.
GROUP: Greetings
Lesson
The Teachers, Reverence
JACK: It is on behalf of your efforts to amass together a history of our “movement” and your (Gerdean’s) excruciating pains toward establishing the correct record that I come to offer my assistance.
You are not alone in your integrity, my dear, in attempting to be as accurate in your portrayal as possible. It is to your credit that you seek to engage all facets of truth herein; however, Our Mother, Infinite Spirit, is already engaged in assimilating your various applications of truth in order that they may make sense. All you need to do is report your experience, and let the chips fall where they may. You are not asked to do an academic report or a scholastic undertaking but a testimonial, and if it needs editing embellishment, that can be done by those who are proficient in that art.
All of you who are engaged upon a revelation of expanded truth, beauty, and goodness upon Urantia are only asked to do what you know to do based upon your personal experience as a child of God — the God of your understanding, and ultimately that God which is over us all. We are not asked to be perfect for everyone, but only for our own relationship with divinity. Only Our Father is in a position to determine our value and He is Love. You are not judged by your understandings.
Share from your heart. It is the heart that is the vehicle, the vessel, of love. The mind is that arena wherein you make decisions, not where you love. Love comes from the heart, the heart of Michael, our Sovereign. It gives me great pleasure, children, to be a participant in this stage of your planetary development. We have, as you know, maintained a steadfast vigil at the wheel of your destiny course on Urantia and have seen some winding roads, some turbulent weather, some bizarre traveling conditions, but always have we been led forward by our faith in that which also leads you Agondonters on in through the dark, always seeking just ahead for that light at the end of the tunnel.
Keep your eye on the light. Follow that gleam of perfection and you will in the course of time, stand in that radiant light, having come through your experience the better for it.
ELYSSIA: Jack, I always wanted to experience your personality. After Gerdean first told me about you and told me how she had gotten so close to you and missed you when she had to have the time without associating without you, and so I thought maybe you would tell us just a little bit about yourself so that we can connect a little bit because we know Gerdean has tremendous affection for you.
JACK: Gerdean has affection not because she has facts about my existence, no, but because of the truth lessons she has learned in her own personal spiritual experience in her life and that we have been able to share these experiences along the way. I am nothing unusual. I am a secondary midwayer. Many of us have been around here for a long time applying ourselves to these same efforts that you now apply yourselves to – the unfolding of the light of truth on Urantia.
We are affectionate. We feel affection toward many of you as we observe your mortal struggles. Your difficulties are, in many ways, the same as ours but, of course, in many ways different, for we are not limited in the physicality such as yourselves. Of course, by the same token, we do not have the cheap thrills that you get to experience, either. Even so, we find you to be a noble bunch of beasts and have deep appreciation for those of you who conscientiously apply yourselves toward the rigors of ascension.
ELYSSIA: We feel an affection for you because we know that you have been with our planet for a very long time, and you will be with our planet, if I understand it correctly, for a very long, long time into the future.
JACK: I will be around a little while longer, yes. We just keep rolling along. I am going to tell a tale. You were speaking earlier Elyssia, about how little girls are inclined to look up to their mothers, and under ideal circumstances – or even normal circumstances, depending upon your background – adore the parent, and say, “My mommy is so beautiful” or “My daddy is so big and strong and handsome.” This is a charming facet of children, and many of you have the same charming facet in regard to your teachers.
You look up to your teachers and say, “My teacher is so beautiful!” “My teachers words are perfect.” “My teacher is so strong and mature.” And this is charming, but unnecessary. As you grow up, you will realize that you, too, have charm but it is as your mota reports, you truly have acquired no virtue until your acts make you worthy of it.
There was a time when I had to take Gerdean on my lap, if you will, and advise her that I was not to be adored, although I was her friend for a long time and I remain her friend. The point is that you must not allow yourselves, in your appreciation for spirit help, to put your teachers up so high as to worship them. Only the Father is worthy of your worship. The rest of us are all working toward the same goals, and the sooner you embark upon the journey as a team member, as one of the ranks, as a colleague in the Melchizedek University, and as a soldier of the circles in the army of the Lord, will you begin to feel effective and be effective in this organism of divine love.
It has been a real joy to be able to converse with you. As you know, I have been in a foreign country and although I do not have the barriers inherent in language differences as you do, inasmuch as I and my siblings in the United Corp of Midwayers do not depend so much upon language skills as on other communication skills, we enjoy this process of interchange of ideas and ideals in and with the human children of time and space, our cousins. I used to have this opportunity a lot and it’s nice to have this time again. I look forward to more opportunities in the future, but be assured I have not been sitting around with my feet up or eating grapes.
ELYSSIA: Well, you do float around some nice parts of the world, like Hawaii and places like that.
JACK: Oh, yes. I’ve been around the world many times. It’s a small neighborhood.
RACHEL: From YOUR perspective.
Closing
JACK: Yes. I am not going to stay longer this afternoon. I am going to give the platform back to Tomas. I believe he would like to apply himself to his craft for a few moments, but I want to again thank you for this opportunity to be among you I and appreciate your focused attention to perspective. Thank you.
GROUP: Thank you, Jack.
Session 2
November 29, 1998, Part 2 TOPIC: Trust
TOMAS: I am Tomas, and I also thank you, my young friend Jack for your kind visit to my students, your cousins. You are wise in admonishing our peers here to reserve worship for the Father, but I am also inclined to add that a reverence for divinity is always in order, and to the extent that we are all related to divinity in one way or another, it would behoove us to develop an appreciation for one another that included respect and reverence for that which is of the Father within us all.
Lesson
Trust
TOMAS: This afternoon, my friends, I would like to speak to you for a moment about trust. You read this afternoon about The Spirits of Trust. You read about their interest in promoting a level of operation which is a result of your ability to open up in faith of your destiny path and trust that which has been presented. Faith, you know, is a gift, and it is enlarged and expanded because of your trust. It therefore is your decision that expands your trust or curtails your trust. Trust is a result of your free will. (One moment )
ELYSSIA:I have never thought of it that way before, that trust is a matter of my free will, but I can see the connection. Now those words have increase d my understanding of it. I like what they said about God today, because they said even God trusted Himself to do these marvelous things for us, He puts trust in us. That was in our Paper.
TOMAS: He gives a part of Himself, he entrusts Himself, to you in your God fragment, that It may work with you, to divine your thinking, trusting that you will seek communion with this Source of all good.
You earlier discussed the deer in the wood behind your house, and remarked upon the seeming trust these four-footed creatures had in their overt eye contact with you. The remark was made that they seem so vulnerable there. And the comparison was made that you children of earth are like the deer– Vulnerable, to be frightened, or shot. These deer are ministered to by the Mother through the adjutant mind spirit of courage. Their little hearts tremble as they hear loud noises, as they see a human tromping nearby, slamming doors, wielding objects. But they have also a sense of safety and security in the moment of their being.
I ask you each, if you will, to look at your ability to trust as these deer must look at their environment and their life. What keeps them from turning on their heels and running into the wood? A sense of security and safety in their being. If you also could develop a sense of safety and security in your being, in your being indwelt by God himself – not only through the Divine Minister’s adjutant mind spirits or the Michael Son’s Spirit of Truth – but by the Father’s very Self, you would know you can feel safe and secure – as you are and where you are. And you can learn to trust also. Safety and security in the spirit is the only viable security you’ve got. It would behoove you to become acquainted with this reality to the extent that you trusted it implicitly.
Dialogue
ELYSSIA: Why can’t we trust more? It doesn’t look, when you look around , like you can trust life here for things, or that kind of thing, but you can trust in the fact that you can turn to God, and that seems to be what I have discerned. I would like to ask you for your input.
TOMAS: Go further.
ELYSSIA: Well, I’m looking around me and I know that at my age I can’t t trust my body, and my husband too. And so I’m having some sense of betrayal of the physical, so to speak.
TOMAS: Vulnerability.
ELYSSIA: Yes, but I just come up with that answer, that I can turn to the Father within for comfort and guidance, and He has proved this in the past tome so many times.
TOMAS: He has proven himself to you. How do you prove yourself to him?
ELYSSIA: By turning to him when I find myself caught up in fear.
TOMAS: Good. Then you are doing what you can to establish and reinforce your trust in him.
ELYSSIA: That’s good to know.
RACHEL: This whole conversation’s pretty interesting, Tomas, because I’ve just been running around the same old trust thing. I was having this conversation with God just yesterday, about trusting him! And I said, well, the bottom line was: Do you trust God? And I guess I have to! Because there’s nothing really in this world that I CAN trust other than that Source!
TOMAS: You have certainly intellectually resolved it!
RACHEL:Yeah, I’ve intellectually resolved it, but I’m being plagued by doubts and things these days.
TOMAS: Perhaps what you need to do, all of you, who are troubled with distrust, troubled with distrust of the Father and His path for you, or your understanding of your path through Him, is remind yourself of what you have learned, what experiences you have experienced, what lessons you have attained, what wisdoms you have assimilated, what accomplishments you have overcome. You sometimes become too focused on the moment, to the exclusion of perspective.
RACHEL: It’s difficult, you know. I suppose in growing up in this world that there hasn’t been one person I could trust not one, not even my own parents, to be there when I needed them, so it’s kind of a difficult thing to adjust to.
TOMAS: It is nothing to adjust to; it is something to embrace. It is a new reality entirely, reality. It is in fact upon your plate. If you say that you have been discovering that you have no choice, then you must now trust the choice that has been presented to you: The Father Himself.
RACHEL:You know, I feel like my soul trusts the Father explicitly, without a doubt. It’s my mind.
TOMAS: Yes. Give your mind, then, to Him.
RACHEL: Well I said that, but then He said, “But you always take it back !”
TOMAS: Are these not those spiritual habits that are so troublesome until they are mastered?
RACHEL: I suppose, yes, they are.
TOMAS: All right. So you have established that you have a working arrangement
with God. You have a tennis match going. Let Him win.
RACHEL: Okay. Well, He always wins in the end anyway.
TOMAS: But is that not The Way? Is it not true that as He wins, you also win?
RACHEL: Oh, that’s very true. I mean, I look back on my life and see so many things – where I didn’t even KNOW Him!
TOMAS: Good. Now you’re on the right track.
RACHEL: When I wasn’t even fully conscious, so I say to myself, “How can you have doubts in trust when He was there before you even knew Him? And now that you know him!” It seems ridiculous. But it’s going to a deeper level of trust.
TOMAS: This is then a decent assignment for you for the next few days. Accept your trust in that which you know to be your perspective as a result of your quiet time with that God within you that gives you your very being.
Closing
Are there (anymore) questions this evening?
Session 3
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 01:23:26 EST TOPIC: Sunday School
Dialogue
TOMAS: Are there questions this evening?
Sincerity
ELYSSIA: I do want to ask you, Tomas. I had my little Sunday School today, and I was disappointed in the effects and I was disappointed with what I d id and disappointed with the result, and I wanted to ask you again to help me . That lesson that you started to tell me about, I didn’t really understand it. It was something about asking the little ones to talk about what you really care about? Is that what that lesson was? I wanted to get it straight.
TOMAS: The lesson is about sincerity. The exercise is to ask them to manifest their sincerity as compared to their superficiality. In order for them to manifest sincerity, it is necessary for them to speak intimately. There is a difference between intimacy and familiarity. Most people speak familiarly because this is how they learn it at home, but a new way, trusting the Father, you will learn through trusting him and trusting the God within your brethren that you can be intimate, and this is a more satisfying sort of relationship in which you can be sincere. The lesson was for sincerity. Practice sincerity until you recognize how it is intended to be used to promote your own relationship with divinity, and pass this on to those you teach.
ELYSSIA: Can you put that into words that I can use for my children? Or do you want me to do that?
TOMAS: Become as a little child and speak sincerely and intimately with them, engaging them in an intimate dialog about something meaningful, something of value. Allow them to experience this and to relish the flavor of this degree of reality so that they have been reinforced. It will be their duty to re turn to their environments and be exposed to lesser realities, and yet they will have had this feeding, this opportunity to enhance their taste of sincerity.
ELYSSIA: What is a possible thing that is of value that we can talk about, for instance, in this intimate way?
TOMAS: By and large you may take a Bible story and apply a feeling to it . I suggest this since you are talking about a Sunday School class. If you have a lesson or a parable or a scripture and Jesus is the focus, if you have his words to use as a backdrop, you can then sincerely discuss how he must have felt, and how you can share that feeling with each other. Bring the sincere truth of his mota to life. Allow these children to revel in the reality of Jesus’ words and how they personally can attain that same sensation of value in themselves and in their extended relationship with others.
ELYSSIA: Okay. Let’s say: Today we had the story of Jesus healing the blind man. I would talk about how Jesus felt deep concern – and these children always respond beautifully to that – so caring.
TOMAS: Perhaps then you could, for an example, blindfold a student, and rather than making light of it, as if it were a game, as if you were playing Blind Man’s Bluff, instead of turning them around and making them dizzy and laughing at their blindness, allow them to feel the loss of vision, the deprivation and the sudden leaning toward acute development of the other senses to allow for a compensation of sorts. In other words, you become more acute in your hearing, or you become more aware of temperature or other external sensations in order to compensate for not being able to see.
And although there are always silver linings, you can surely share with the blindfolded youth, the deprivation of blindness. And once the game has gone beyond fun and into reality, release the blindfold with Michael’s blessing and show how wonderful it is to be able to see the gift of sight. And if they are with you, if you have captured your students, if you have engaged them in their sincerity, and if you have time, you may be able to then analogize how it is to learn to see with eyes to see in the spirit.
It is always a challenge, Elyssia, to be a teacher and a preacher, but always when you ask Our Father for counsel and guidance, you will be given it. You must begin to develop your own curriculum, based on many of these teaching techniques you know I have used with you as well as the many, many opportunities for learning the exemplary methods of Our Master when he walked on Urantia and taught.
ELYSSIA: Could you simplify one of Jesus’ lessons for me that could also be useful for next Sunday, because really I don’t think I have a feel for this. I can’t believe it because I love my Lord and his words, but to teach my reactions is just teaching a lot of emotionality.
TOMAS: You do yourself a disservice, Elyssia. There is much more to you than an emotional appeal. If you short-change yourself like that, you will never be an effective teacher. There is in you One who can and will if you will work with that desire to give what you have received. I cannot give you an effective example, inasmuch as it is necessary for you to be where the lesson is. And this in itself is a lesson. The Master was skilled at it. He would look at a circumstance and find within it the ingredients to create a lesson of lasting value, based upon the raw materials at hand.
ELYSSIA: The only one that comes to my mind is the story when Jesus told the children to come to him and the people standing around didn’t think that it was seemly, and how often these little ones have experienced that.
TOMAS: Is it necessary for you to plan in advance how you will teach and preach? Can you not go with the mode O’day? How do you suppose Jesus thought about his many lessons ahead of time?
ELYSSIA: But that was our Creator Son!
TOMAS: And did he not say that you would do wondrous works also? Even greater.
RACHEL: I agree with Tomas. Only because when I plan, it seems to fail more because I’m constantly thinking of the plan, but when we pray for the guidance, it seems to just flow naturally, without forethought.
TOMAS: Here again we return to the citadel of the spirit wherein you attain your reality and learn to trust, whereupon you are intrusted.
ELYSSIA: Well, I certainly feel that I know and love the stories of the life of Jesus. Now that’s the one thing I think I really know. I know that I love the stores about Jesus.
TOMAS: I know you are saying that you love the stories of Jesus, and I hear you with my ears to hear telling me that it is the stories that you love. Remember that the stories are representative of the value, and it is the value, Elyssia, that you want to impart as a reality to these humans. If they grasp the value of the lesson, the story itself becomes an embellishment of the reality, instead of the reality itself.
ELYSSIA: I’m sure if I thought that through for a minute I would be able to find the value. Maybe I should.
TOMAS: Aesop would call it fable with a moral.
ELYSSIA: The moral to the fable. Okay. They are all so beautiful, these little children
TOMAS: Yes, we are.
ELYSSIA: I mean these little children in Sunday School are really beautiful.
TOMAS: I can see you have a certain loyalty to your class and I can, to some extent, admire that and identify with it.
ELYSSIA: Well, I think they are going to be incredibly wonderful in serving God! They are so I think very sensitive, imaginative and bright.
Closing
TOMAS: Pray then that your faith in the Father and in their indwelling spirits will see them over the hurdles and that their trust in divine guidance will overrule the obstacles en route. I pray this for you also. I am going to depart now. I am with you always.
