PBG72- Perfection, Apostleship, Fusion – Session 1-4

1998-12-01-Perfection, Apostleship, Fusion
Pittsburgh #72

Contents

• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Perfection, Spiritual Pride
o 1.2 Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas, Veronica, LinEl, Merium, Naomi, Gorman, Pearl
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean, Hunnah
• 3 Session 1, o 3.1 Opening, o 3.2 Lesson,  3.2.1 Persecution, o, 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 ADDENDUM,  3.4.1 Apostleship
• 4 Session 2, o 4.1 Opening, o 4.2 Lesson,  4.2.1 Perfection, o 4.3 Exercise
o 4.4 Dialogue,  4.4.1 Fusion, o 4.5 Closing
• 5 Session 3, o 5.1 Opening, o 5.2 Lesson, o 5.3 Dialogue, o 5.4 Closing
• 6 Session 4, o 6.1 Opening, o 6.2 Lesson, o 6.3 Dialogue,  6.3.1 Belief, Faith
o 6.4 Closing, o 6.5 ADDENDUM

Topic: Perfection, Spiritual Pride
Group: Pittsburgh TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas, Veronica, LinEl, Merium, Naomi, Pearl, Gorman
TR: Gerdean, Hunnah

Session 1
Opening

TOMAS:  Good evening, my friends, I am Tomas your teacher. I am here this evening with an array of associates and assistants in spirit reality. We are going to be the recipients this evening of a few visitors, if you are up to it. I am always glad to afford these associates an opportunity to introduce themselves to you and you to them. In order to make our visits effective, I will emcee the situation. It is an arrangement which works well for my T/R and our process. Thus, my first guest to speak will be an old friend of many, an island maiden named Veronica. One moment, please.

VERONICA: Pacific predicators of progress, peace be with you. I am your associate in the morontia realms, eager to enter into your consciousness, enter your zone, so that you may become more aware of my and others’ very eager and earnest attentions in uplifting and enabling an energetic increase in inspiration and entrusting.

LEAH: Welcome.

VERONICA: Thank you, Ahleah. It is a different mind I enter here than I am accustomed to. I thank you, Gerdean, for availing your mechanics. I can see that you are quite accustomed to another pattern/conditioning of thought. I must constantly curtail you from wanting to express words which are not mine but which you would like to have me say. Thank you for your cooperation, daughter.

You seem to want me to talk about the beach, or the sand, because you know I have taught in the Hawaii group, and I have no objection to making my identification with them spread abroad, but I AM, as you know, available to you as well.

I will, however, make use of a conch shell, and enable you in your minds eye to embrace the sound of the spirit which has its trumpet call unending, pounding upon the shores of eternity. Always is this sound of the surf in evidence if you but listen, and so take this conch shell, this gift I give you by way of imagining and hold it close to your ear and hear the sound of eternity. Listen in the stillness of the pounding surf for the voice of the Father, the Mother, the constancy, the energy, the endurance, the lasting-ness of the sea, the ocean of joy. I leave you with this gift. Aloha.

LEAH: Thank you.

JONIEL: Aloha.

TOMAS: Thank you, Veronica. One moment, please.

LINEL: This is Lin-El. Again, I am a new visitor to your arena but I am not new to the efforts which are upon us all. It is good to be in Tomas’ teacher base, to touch base with his flock, our flock also. I am on an errand of neighborliness in my visit this evening. Many of you perceive that your primary loyalty is to your group teacher (after the Master, of course), but this is mere familiarity.

The greater loyalty is indeed to the work at hand, and we are interested in contacting at will, and visiting at large, in teaching and preaching ad lib. It is an interesting environment here. It is very typical of Urantia, yet it has its own distinct flavor. Your lesson from me this evening, then, will have to do with your environment, for what is more important than your environment and the work of your realm?

Lesson
Persecution

LINEL:  You are aware of the unfolding of new life and light and are a part of its unfolding because of your belief, your consecration to truth, beauty, and goodness. But you are a threat to those who fear the reality you represent. I speak not as a warrior here, no, but as a mediator. Remember, if you can, that many of you mortals manage to confuse your perceptions of what love is, based upon what you are shown by outside influences. If you are showing an influence unfamiliar to your beholder, you will throw them off base. You will startle them, and they will react to your very being. Herein is the wisdom of the words to be as wise as serpents and as peaceful as doves. Perhaps you will ponder that when you remember your environment and your being therein .

Dialogue

LINEL:  Good of you to have me. Thank you, Gerdean. And thank you, Tomas and gracious Merium, for your local hospitality. Good evening.

GROUP: Thank you.

TOMAS: This is Tomas. We have another personage, a gentle woman, approaching the podium. One moment, please.

PEARL: Good evening, my lovely friends. I am Pearl. You haven’t heard from me in a few weeks, but I am very much alive and well and with you in your on- going adventures in life’s unfolding.

GROUP: Welcome.

PEARL:  And welcome also to you. I am glad to be in your presence once a gain in your consciousness. I would like to speak in terms of your ability to grapple with and overcome fear. When we last spoke together, we spoke about fear. Terror. Severe angst. Personal emotional crucifixion. It is easy enough indeed for sensitive mortals to sense this persecution. Your predecessors, who the Master taught in his sojourn here in the flesh, were not strangers to such troubles, as you know. They met untimely and cruel deaths, many of them. Down through the ages indeed many believers have been made martyrs to the truths they exalted.

I would like to remind you, who courageously push forward in the face of your profound fears, without compromising your ideals, it is necessary for you to live and to be effective. It serves no purpose for you to be a martyr. It does not serve the Master. It is necessary that you stay alive in the spirit and even in the flesh in strength of Him who sent us, who sends us even now into our arenas in order to find and salvage his lost sheep.

In order to go there and find the sheep, you must perforce encounter many wolves in sheep’s clothing. Do not succumb to the animal legacy of fear. Rise above your instinct to run and hide, but do not be so foolish as to throw caution to the wind and get yourself eaten alive by the lions in the arena. There are trained lions in the ring who are fed royally because they have entertained the masses by bringing (the spectacle of blood and destruction to those who would destroy the truth and torchbearers of truth.

I AM not a bearer of bad news but a staff of strength for you, my children . Stand upright and carry this staff with you and lean upon it as you go about the Father’ s business. Good evening.

GROUP: Good evening.

MERIUM: I am Merium. It is good to be here with you, my little girls. Let me not just fluff the pillows but let me sweep the floor and open the windows because you feel as if you have been cooped up in a concept for too long. Perhaps Pearl’s many words of fear and persecution have brought you down, but I will not let you stay in this serious note my sister has come to give you. It is indeed a pearl of great price. Let us then look upon the luminosity of the pearl and the rarity of its being. Now we have a pearl and a conch shell.

JONIEL And a staff!

MERIUM: And a staff. We are gathering up all kinds of accouterments. Teaching tools. I will talk to you a moment about teaching tools and props and parables. My partner Tomas talked on Sunday to Elyssia about her Sunday School class and indicated that whatever was on hand would be a good thing to use to teach a truth. I am going to give you an assignment this week. Let me see if I can find a starting point. Ah yes, it shall be this. Are you paying attention?

GROUP Yes!

MERIUM: This week, any time you see a pearl, a conch shell, or a staff, – Let’s make that broader. A bead, a fossel, or a stick! – exercise your ability to focus on a spirit gem of truth by creating for yourself a little story around that which is immediately apparent.

You have heard the story that in some cultures, in some tribes, a baby is named according to what it is that the mother first sees after the birth. Then use that same concept and let’s say you are going to the store and you look down and find a leaf – well, a leaf is a bit of a fossil, isn’t it? – or a stone, a stick. Look around. What does it relate to? What is the first thing your eye sees? Perhaps your eye will discard some of the things that it comes upon, but what is the first thing your eye sees? The spirit will let you SEE something, based on this exercise.

Maybe it will be the sweater that that blonde woman is wearing which will lead you to see the blonde woman, which will lead you to see an attitude that she is wearing, and the attitude itself will give to you an impression of a value lesson, which – if she were to present herself to you – you would be able to weave into a pearl of great price to give to her as a gift. A seed, planted, for the Master’s garden. Now that I have given you something to think about and something to do, I will give you back to Tomas.

GROUP: Thank you, Merium.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium, and other visitors. I am glad to be here with you, my daughters. Glad to conjoin with you once again in our customary configuration of student-teacher relationship. Next week, if we are able, let’s turn the tables and you can teach me by your efforts and your results in following the instruction of Merium and bring back to me these lessons you have garnered and I will be your student. But for this evening, little ones, are there any questions? Or do you have concerns or commentary?

GROUP: (Silence)

TOMAS: Your lights are quiet this evening. You are tired. It is enough then that we have companioned one another. We have had visits and stories and gifts . It is befitting this time of year that we should celebrate and give thanks and honor the seasons and the continuity and the comfort of friendship. Be on your way, then, and be of good cheer. Farewell.

GROUP: Thank you, Tomas.

ADDENDUM
December 2, 1998
Apostleship

GORMAN: I am going to introduce myself to you. My name is Gorman. I am a midwayer and I am going to be with you for a while, my friends.

My – I want to say predecessors with you, but that is not the correct word . The preceding era, the preceding epochs — epics not of such a proportion as the Urantia Book or the others, but epochal as far as important. – the preceding eras, shall we say, have been embarked upon by those who would set aside the status quo and deign to live within a spirit of shall we say “assignment” within the assumption of something to do, something of importance.

The forum, as you call it, was a group of such individuals – a good sized group, actually – but that gives you a common framework for what I’m talking about, but even so, in the course of time there have been smaller groups of people, intimate groups of people, let’s say monks or other scholars who have gone ahead and gambled with their gut feeling, gone ahead and gotten entrenched in a project, if you will, which was to affect the course of history. Perhaps not in a major way, or a noticeable way, but in a way, none- the-less which was providential and progressive.

Maybe you could think in terms of those who translated the scriptures into a different edition. Up-grading the appreciation and understanding of what these scriptures meant based upon a greater ability to comprehend what was meant, perhaps an evolutionary forward step in spiritual understanding was then made, perhaps not.

But I’ve come to plant the seed in your mind about that because you have been taught and taught repeatedly about the necessity for going among the people, for shedding your light abroad, not hiding it under a bushel. And in your human minds, your mortal minds, you will say, “Oh? If I become involved in a scholastic or a contemplative project, a commitment of such nature, I will not be making my light available.” Nonsense! You are just broadcasting in a different fashion.

You have gone, in a sense, from personal ministry to public ministry, for now your ministry is more across the board, approaching the epochal level, much like a wave that comes in, crashing on the beach. Pounding. Permit your self, people, to become part of this great wave, this pounding surf….

My sister Pearl, your friend who spoke with you last evening, spoke to you about the conch. (I am not upbraiding you for not doing your assignment.) I am rather, pulling in the idea of hearing the perpetual sound of the surf, the siren call of spiritual evolution. It is steady. It is steady as you are steady. In a conch shell, you do not hear the crashing of the wave. Not the individual crash of the individual wave, no, but the steady actuality of the eternal roar. This is the sound of evolution, slowly, steadily advancing.

But the movement I am addressing is more on the order of one wave, one very large wave, one wave of movement. Your Teaching Mission is a movement. I t is a matter of a number of individuals devoting themselves in part or in full to one thing with such devotion, dedication, intensity that it carries forward the tide of history.

I am even here speaking of the more poignant, more select, more succinct, more specialized factions of people who make up this great wave. The conclaves , the individual classrooms, the cosmic committees. These who accomplish things. Things of the spirit and for the spirit. In your vernacular you might call it the movers and the shakers. Even the politicians. But these, too, are workers in the field.

I come today to remind you of the many possibilities. One on one ministry is, of course, invaluable. You are not to replace your personal ministry with something else, but to add to your personal ministry a dimension of availability. It is like the Master when he taught the multitudes. He could present himself in such a way, through his parables, that everyone present heard something that meant something personal to him, to her. But it was never the same, exactly, as that which was heard by the next person who was also personally touched by the words he bestowed, he gave. You are urged to think now in broader terms. Yes. I am Gorman. Thank you.

Session 2
Date Sun, 6 Dec 1998 21 30 07 EST Subject TOMAS Your Perfection
Opening

TOMAS: Blessings be upon you, good flock. I am Tomas.

GROUP: Good evening. Good afternoon.

TOMAS: This is one of the reasons we frequently offer “Greetings”, so that we don’t get convoluted by your amenities. As to the time of day, the time is now. The lesson at hand is one of your perfection.

Lesson
Perfection

TOMAS:  We would like to discuss with you today your responsibility for assuming your degree of awareness of your own perfection. In assuming an understanding of your own perfection then you are assuming a certain responsibility for the manifestation of that perfection and the resultant effects upon your environment, your peers and, essentially, upon the evolving Supreme. Let us take a picture, for instance, of the process you are familiar with now, wherein you come together and study under the influence of these beings brought to you by and through the Teacher Corp. In this setting here, Gerdean is the person who gets up and turns on the “TV screen” but all of you are watching the movie.

All of you are being affected by the program you are watching. What kind of program are you watching? We would have you watch Jack LaLanne and actually throw yourself into the program, rather than observe it as a divine comedy or a romance, and simply observe it as entertainment that you can turn off at the end of the designated time space. In observing truth, beauty, and goodness, you are not assuming your responsibility in it; but by allowing truth, beauty and goodness to be passed through you, by and through your acknowledgment of your ability to cooperate with perfection, you have contributed yourself to perfection.

Let us look at your perfection. Let me ask you – each – give me an understanding of your appreciation of relative perfection within you by offering me, for example, a quality. Have we a volunteer?

Exercise

CELESTE: I would like to be perfect in my love of God. I would like to know how to worship him with every part of my heart, my being, my soul.

TOMAS: Your yearning makes me smile, Celeste. We would share your desire with you, for we too seek to worship our Father in perfection. The truth is, my dear, you do. You do honor the Father to the extent that you are capable. Do you not, for instance, surround yourself with beauty? And do you not assume this beauty to be your home? And in this environment of human perfection, material perfection, do you not honor Him who has created it all, including yourself? I know that you do. And so you do worship the Father.

CELESTE: But you want to grow beyond where you are.

TOMAS: Yes.

CELESTE: In worshiping.

TOMAS: Yes, and you do well to qualify your ascension. It is perhaps a good place to make mention of the circles of attainment, and even at the pinnacle of your possible attainment you may have contact with your Thought Adjuster, that indwelling fragment of God that resides within. This will insure a greater degree, of course, of willingness to do his will and to walk there in, to trust the guidance you receive and to affect its influence upon your realm of operation.

And this indeed is an aspiration worthy of attaining. And even herein you are apprised that there will be further growth and further perfection as you ascend, but remember that the Father has said, “Be you perfect in your realm”and that is the key note of the sense of responsibility I call to your attention today, that recognition of your relative perfection. If you recognize that you will grow more, you are on course. It is, after all, existential and experiential. Perhaps another of you has an element to offer as to an aspect of yourself which you perceive of as being perfect.

HESTER: Your use of the word “relative” struck me as Yes, I am related t o God. I am his beloved child. Thank you.

TOMAS: Absolutely, Hester, and from that divine relationship you can naturally assume that there is at least some element of you that is indeed perfect, and from that perfect point of contact, you can carry His association with you into your realm, manifesting Him thus as you go.

HESTER: Yea, verily. It is a job, though.

TOMAS: I would like to commend you for holding up as well as you do.

HESTER: Thank you.

TOMAS: I will also remind you all of the merits of community. It is said in your text that fellow religionists need each other. If you look around Urantia you will see that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of different kinds of religionists. The different sects, the different cultures, the different mind-sets, the different theorems – these people believe alike, therefore they uphold one another, they reinforce each other; they have developed a camaraderie that establishes in them a sense of connected-ness to a reality they hold dear. It is enervating, this practice of sharing your perceptions with others, your beliefs.

Your family of siblings under this Father in Heaven that is becoming more acquainted with you by and through your willingness to become more acquainted with Him, is giving you now a greater perspective on the relationship of creator and creature, of father and son/daughter — this divine family. And even though your many mortal belief systems may vary, or your interpretations may differ, you are even so connected by this great God which oversees all of creation. How do you manifest this great God in your own creation, Rachel?

RACHEL: My perfection? I see perfection in my love of nature, the mother, beautiful plants. I see perfection in the beauty in which I surround myself in my home. I see perfection in my ability to change and to manifest actions that I never could before.

TOMAS: Your faith?

RACHEL: My faith? I see perfection in my manifestation of my faith every day. Every day. I see perfection in my desire to be more perfect.

TOMAS: You are indicating to me a healthy perfection hunger.

RACHEL: It’s been a long week of perfecting! Little tiny things have been coming to the surface that I – it’s like I’m learning it, but I don’t know I’m learning. I see the little wheels turning, but not really the whole picture.

TOMAS: It is more palatable to the child to be able to nibble on these truths rather than be force fed a large mouthful at once, upon which one might choke.

RACHEL So true. Very true.

TOMAS: It is better for your spiritual digestion to be able to assimilate a steady diet of growth.

RACHEL I was saying to my sister that God has such grace in teaching us , such utter grace. It’s so little-by-little; it’s not overwhelming. It’s satisfying.

TOMAS: It is satisfying to our ears, to hear you praise Our Father thus. Your simple acknowledgment of his quality of grace, His gentle methods of allowing you to be born of the spirit, are what we long to hear. And herein is my motivation today, to call to your attention the privilege of being actively involved in disseminating perfection because of your commitment to the Source of perfection, and your acknowledged ability to manifest that which He has given you and can give by and through you.

HESTER: This came to me while I was gone. A couple of times when I was pretty deep in facing situations, all of a sudden one of you or two of you or three of you at this table would appear in my mind, and I could just reach out and touch.

LEAH: Thank you, Hester.

HESTER: And everything would resolve without my having to do anything except just accept it. And I want to tell you how much you do mean to me, in my physical life. You here particularly, and you others in this family, are very important.

TOMAS: Yes, indeed, we are all important to one another. It is an opportunity now for me to advise you that there are throngs of other beings that you cannot see that are also integrally involved in your up-stepping and your advancement.

HESTER I am sure.

TOMAS: It is still, even so, good to hear that melody that we are loved and appreciated for our very being and for our relationship as offspring of this divine Parent.

CELESTE: Whenever I say, “I love you, God,” the next thing I want to say is, “Help me love you more and more,” and the more I say that, the more excitement I feel. It is just wonderful.

TOMAS: I cannot speak for the Father, but I can surmise that He must be acknowledging your love for Him by returning the hug.

CELESTE: Oh, good.

TOMAS: My fair daughter, Leah, you have not manifested your voice for me today. Speak and sing your song.

LEAH: Well, I wasn’t entirely sure what the question was, but I guess my response, conditioned on what I believe it to be, is probably gratitude and service. I find myself wondering how I can serve, and also, I find a way of service is to let go of judgment and it happens quite frequently to me, that I find myself on the verge of judging something, when I have a light bulb of truth go on that says, “Why, this is a holy son of God you are encountering!” and that helps.

TOMAS: It is an interesting observation, since you do engage in this practice of observation of your fellow beings. It could be construed as judgment, certainly, and sometimes it is – even fatal judgment, but inasmuch as you are ascending in God-consciousness and awareness of a condition contingent upon a relative status, a relative perfection, you can then acknowledge that in your judgment an individual has been able to grow in the spirit because of their exposure to truth, beauty, and goodness, as you yourself have been able to grow as a result of your exposures and your willingness to allow His will to be done in your life.

CELESTE: Tomas?

TOMAS: Yes, Celeste.

CELESTE: Well, I was thinking that those who have not been exposed to truth, beauty and goodness in all their searching, and their searching and searching for God, for the love of God, and to love Him, they just don’t have the words to express that. It hasn’t been their experience to learn. I think every body is searching for God! Great Father.

TOMAS: You will appreciate that each mortal who is indwelt by a Mystery Monitor is certainly working tirelessly to impart beauty, truth, and goodness to the mortal of its association. But it is a challenge, in particular when the mortal mind is set against truth, beauty and goodness. Herein is a plethora of opportunity for you to bring this love of God that you have in to actuality for others to see. Not in your life, but in theirs! How can you engage them in an understanding of what divine beauty is or eternal truth or the goodness of divine love and even fraternal love?

These feelings, sensations, values are frequently overlooked as impossible of attainment in those who have been deprived of the joy of knowing Father in the ways that you here have been. But you can help to enervate the spirit life without by savoring the spirit life within, and guiding yourself into allowance of perfection manifestation. In other words, you yourself may turn on the “TV” or you may turn the channel. You may turn it off. You have w ill. Free will. And your understanding of perfection is part of that which goes into the symphony. Allow your notes to practice.

Allow your relative perfection the opportunity to warm up, to sing off key as necessary, because in due course your practice of relative perfection will allow you to attain a greater appreciation for your perfection and how you may manifest divine perfection through your willingness to do his will, but it requires a sense of commitment and responsibility. How else will you notice that you have grown, and how else can you rejoice in the growth of the spirit that you see when you look into the eyes of your fellow?

And what rejoicing we experience when we look into your eyes and realize that you are more perfect today than you were yesterday, and that as such you are more willing and able to be of effective service to the many. You radiate the fruit of the spirit more willingly, pray more effectively, rejoice more selflessly. Perfection is a part of your life. Enjoy it. Are there questions this afternoon?

Dialogue
Fusion

RACHEL: I had one. We were reading today about the Adjuster fusion. I was thinking about it this week. I mean, nobody around here does it! Not evolved enough. And I just can’t picture how this could happen TO ME here on this planet. I mean, is there some sort of steps practice, stillness. Do you have to stay in the Stillness ALL DAY? I’d like to think that I could achieve this, instead of ending up in a nursing home somewhere.

TOMAS: Aha! Let us look to your motives.

RACHEL: I knew you were going to say that.

TOMAS: I jest.

RACHEL: But, it’s the truth, too.

TOMAS: I will take your question seriously.
I will take you back to the theory that the Father distributes Himself very freely throughout his grand universe and holds very few things for Himself to do, but allows others to do it. If he were to keep Himself contained with in Himself, soon the universe would shrivel up and die, for the key to life is the manifesting, the giving it away, the spreading it out into the nether regions of time and space, and so for you to suggest that the resolution might be to sit in stillness, in meditation 24 hours a day is not the answer, you can clearly see, because that is not truly Godlike.

RACHEL: Uh-hum.

TOMAS: Our Father is always glad to embrace you and to take you to His heart and love you as His own, to reaffirm and to re-establish your divine connection and your place in His family, but He is also eager to send you forth. And there you may be assured of the ministries of the Infinite Spirit in your working in the field, for Her adjuncts are active in the realm. It is therefore a goal indeed that you become more Godlike, but not that you cease to exist! Service manifestation is an integral part of becoming.

I encountered a Sufi message not long ago. Let me see if I can find it in this memory bank. The question is, do you want to go to Paradise, or do you want to praise the Maker of Paradise? You can go to Paradise in Stillness , but the glory is to be found in the praise of the Maker. That is where the life is, becoming one with the life — the radiant life of the Source of life. Has that been helpful?

RACHEL: Yeah, very helpful. Because one of the things I was working on myself this week was manifestation. And if I sense all this in me, then I have to manifest it outwardly to those – and I’ll use Ethan as the example – to those I live with. And I don’t always do that. And I think I realized that this week, and it’s keeping it IN that holds you back. It’s practicing what you preach, right, that gets you there?

TOMAS: You could say that it is practicing what you preach; it is certainly a mortal phrase.

RACHEL: It’s a mortal phrase.

TOMAS: But to allow yourself to be is more in keeping with the truth. Allow yourself to be in harmony with your indwelling Adjuster and allow your Adjuster to guide your personality such that It’s manifestation is that grace you referenced earlier. Allow the Adjuster to do the work; all you have to do is believe — and avail yourself.

CELESTE: And then you ARE in Paradise.

TOMAS: You are in Paradise, and you are allowing the voice of God to speak, thereby bringing good cheer to those around you. Yet I would go one step further and, when you are given the opportunity, encourage those who hear the pied piper of your joy, assure them it is within them as well, and teach them to turn on the light within, that they may see the program the Father would have them see.

CELESTE: Well, you can get your home program started, but it’s very hard for me to help my children to start theirs. They probably have, but they aren’t quite willing to share or talk about it with me. It’s not obvious to me, but I’ll just wait. I just know it’s going to happen to them.

TOMAS: It is not impossible for mortal families to also share the joy of the spiritual family, but it is not common. Remember that Jesus had that difficulty with many of his family members. He even spoke to that point in his teachings that “the prophet is often unheard among his own people.” It is almost as if you are so close to the forest, they cannot see you as a tree , and so you must trust the Father, the divine Mother, to find those ways which will stimulate their God-consciousness in their own way and time.

Herein your prayers can be your most effective work, but do not make them your clarion call. Set yourself up to be of service to those who will hear you gladly, and then you can feel the joy of knowing that all men are your children.

CELESTE: Um-hum. Thank you so much.

Closing

TOMAS: Have we concluded for the afternoon?

RACHEL: I think so.

HESTER: I think we’ve had a very successful day.

TOMAS: It is certainly a success for me any time I can be in your presence. It is a joy to know you and a privilege to work with you. Let us be about the Father’s business. Farewell.

GROUP: Thank you, Tomas.

Session 3
“Reaching Others” Date Wed, 16 Dec 1998 23 26 11 EST
Opening

TOMAS: Good evening, my friends, I am Tomas your teacher.

GROUP: Good evening, Tomas.

TOMAS: In enjoyment of your gathering and your camaraderie, I, Merium and many, many other celestial hosts come to partake of your outpourings and to be amused by your antics. I am calling to your mind the tale told by Teacher Ham, that you could be equated to children in a sandbox, but I will alter your time of day somewhat and call to your mind somewhat how it is today you seem to me to be a passel of little ones approaching bedtime, and how it is that you must scurry and get a drink of water and you must remember to set this out for school tomorrow and you want to catch the last couple of minutes of the TV show, and all manner of items that require your immediate and urgent and delightful attention as we await the opportunity to settle down into our bedtime regime and prayer.

In that light, little flock, let me then tuck you into my association here and with Merium’s ministrations as well, shall we conjoin with Our Father/Brother Michael in a moment of spiritual repast in appreciation of the events of this day, not only your 24-hour-day, but this day in the life.

MERIUM: “My Friend Jesus, Whom I look up to as an elder brother, Who has known the experiences that we know today, Who has felt the feelings we feel, suffered and rejoiced as we also do, we thank You for the opportunity to experience all of these wonders of life and now, dear Father, that we have an understanding of our true filiality with you. We are truly humbled and exalted to acknowledge our place with you in the Father’s house.

Gracious Creator, our gratitude is our very song today, and we would as k you to help us sing this song in and for your many scattered children throughout our many atmospheres, environments and arenas wherein we work and play. Rest with us a moment here, dear Jesus, as we companion with one another on our merry way home to you.”

TOMAS:  Thank you, Merium, for your gracious consultation on our behalf. My friends, I am very gladdened again to acknowledge our new-found associate. Chris it is a true joy to have you here in company with our teacher base. It is not a surprise that we find you here today, but indeed a delight, and I want to single you out as one to address because you are our guest and our newest member. It is as if to say we already know much of each other, but you are new to us and to our format. Let me then approach our lesson today in and through a value which you yourself have brought to the group and which you have shared with the group in your musical offering.

Lesson

TOMAS:  When you say that you in your art assay to reach the soul of your listener , you and I are co-workers; we are speaking the same language. It is my desire also that I attain access to the soul, for it is the soul that will translate into the next life. It is the soul which is your immortal self. It is the soul which will become one with your Indwelling Adjuster. If that soul is fertilized and stimulated, it will be in a position then to grow of its own accord, and so those of us who have come to teach truth, beauty, and goodness, we who espouse the gospel of the Master, of the living legacy of love, will plant those seeds within the fertile soil of the soul. By nurturing the bed wherein the seed may be planted, you have helped to germinate a hunger and thirst for righteousness and a yearning for greater truth. No greater service can be provided than to foster living love. I am going to cut my lesson short today because we are having such a good time and it is already growing late enough that you are getting weary, my little tousle-haired children. You, however, are playing possum. You have questions?

Dialogue

ELYSSIA: I wanted to tell you that I tried out the suggestions about the Sunday School class and I’m feeling more comfortable with it; I just asked them to tell me what they felt sincerely about their faith today, so they each one told me what they felt sincerely about their faith, and then I asked them to next time we meet to bring a word from the hymn or a sentence from the Bible saying something about Jesus, and then I think we’ll take off from there, and we just talked and I felt pretty much okay just winging it like that.

TOMAS: Good.

ELYSSIA: I prayed before I went, of course, and so I felt that we were getting into the heart of their faith much more than just doing the Sunday School lesson..

TOMAS: Let me ask you something, Elyssia.

ELYSSIA: Yeah.

TOMAS: For clarification purposes for myself, for those assembled, for yourself and for your Sunday School students, elaborate for me, please, if you will, what you mean by the word “faith”. When you ask these children to sincerely discuss their faith, what are you eliciting from them?

ELYSSIA: Well, what they ended up telling me was that they really believe that they can depend upon Jesus to be there when they need Him and they can be safe when He is there. They talked about that and they talked about the fact that they have gone through – one of our little girls has been in the middle of a divorce and she told us about it last year. She said it was very hard, so she said that she felt that she could always depend on Jesus so she said that’ s what she sincerely felt about her faith and that was the general trend of the interchange.

TOMAS: It is good that you are instilling in them an idea of living faith rather than traditional approaches to faith. It is not uncommon for you to learn as children that faith is a religion. “What faith do you belong to? ” rather than, a living value such as you noted of an ability to be able to depend upon Jesus, which requires faith.

ELYSSIA: And they told me what they were afraid of. So that they could say a prayer and call on Jesus and one of them is afraid of getting into an accident when they travel back and forth during the holidays. One was afraid because a girl in her class hates her, she thinks; and I know I can’t remember everything they said, but I felt really good. I felt that – I even got so me more ideas about next time.
I mean, in other words, once I started to try and do it, it ended up being easier than I thought it would be.

TOMAS: It is a truth indeed that when you set out on your faith path, even though you do not know where you are going, the way will open up for you. You know you have the guidance of the Spirit of Truth which will always say, in each crossroad, “This is the way.” Even though you may not be having a crisis, it still will open up before you in faith of your desire to bring about a consciousness of Him who sent you.

ELYSSIA: Thank you, I feel pretty good about this now. I feel like I might be able to go on and do a few more of these Sundays and they will be rewarding. I feel convinced.

TOMAS: I am certain of it also, not only for them but for you as well because you get to experience your own capacities as a teacher of spirit truth. This is good experience for you, Elyssia, and I want you to be able to reflect upon your work and carry it into your adult children as well. They are a little more difficult because they have been further conditioned; they are more crusty, if you will, whereas little children are more open and available. Their soul is quite nice already and not poisoned by life’s bitterness.

ELYSSIA: It’s funny how the little girl whose family was in the divorce always has this knowledge of having gone through something very difficult, and I did mention to them that they may have a lot of challenges coming at them in the next couple years, and I asked them why they thought that was going to happen, and several of them did say “so that they could learn a lot of lessons,” so I thought that was really great and I was really happy.

TOMAS: You might throw a morontia mota at them every now and again.

ELYSSIA Okay.

TOMAS: Just to give them something to chew on.

ELYSSIA :Okay.

TOMAS: I am reminded of that because of the mota about affliction. “The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortal s only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.” [[[48:7|Ed. TUB, pg. 556, #12.]]] If you were to say to that little girl that some truths are not felt except i n adversity, you may be able to help her to understand what she can eternally benefit from as a result of this emotionally difficult experience.

ELYSSIA: That’s great. I certainly will do that.

TOMAS: I will remind you once again, all of you who would be teachers, to refer to your text. It is great to have the spirit to guide you, and you know that as you seek to do His will, you will be able to plant seeds and go about His business as you pass by, but it is of great benefit to you when you have at your mental disposal the text of the Fifth Epochal Revelation which is filled with resources and which are there for you to use in your ministry.

Don’t depend upon your own knowledge but depend upon the knowledge and the wisdom of the universe of universes which has prepared for you a tremendous encyclopedia of cosmic wisdom which will help enable you to give many tidbits of wisdom, not for you glory, no, but for whetting their appetite for truth.

You read this evening in your text about how it is that the soul remembers even when the mind cannot recall, but when the mind is reminded, the soul responds to recognition. This is the same truth that occurs in individuals who have forgotten about their Indwelling Adjuster, or who have not thought to look therein for God-consciousness, spirit awareness. Help lead them inside to meet the Father through these methods of reminding them of their Divinington association.

Always is the Thought Adjuster waiting for an opportunity and working on opportunities to bring greater consciousness, spirit consciousness, to the mind of the mortal of it’s indwelling, and you can greatly assist the Thought Adjusters of your comrades by stimulating their hunger and thirst. This becomes a feast of plenty, for it begins to accentuate your greater reality and your sonship then becomes dominant. More and more do you identify with the Father in heaven and His plan for you, your life in the spirit, and less and less do you look back upon the worries of the world. It is a way of attaining and securing vital perspective. Well, I guess I got a little carried away there.

ELYSSIA: Well, I’ve got another question.

TOMAS: Please.

ELYSSIA: I was looking over the fruits of the spirit and I was trying to find courage and I don’t think I found that in there. Was there a mention of courage in the fruits of the spirit? Did I miss that?

TOMAS: I’m afraid you’ve missed it, Elyssia.

ELYSSIA: It was courageous something.

TOMAS: Loyalty.

ELYSSIA: Loyalty. Okay. Courageous loyalty.

TOMAS: You can take these wonderful fruits of the spirit into your Sunday School class with you and this assignment could occupy you for a minimum of twelve weeks. Courageous loyalty is something that even little children can get a handle on. It is courageous of this little girl to continue to love her parents in the face of her domestic devastation and it is courageous of her to remain loyal.

ELYSSIA: She says she is trying to get her mother to have a faith. She lives with her father and the mother left all of them and I see them there with their step-mother every Sunday and I feel really good about that but she hasn’t forgotten her mother at all! And she is very definitely involved with her mother and she has plans for her mother.

TOMAS: You might help her to salve the wound between herself and her mother, then, by reminding her that her mother is a child of God also. It is not for us to say whether or not someone else has faith. “If you have faith, have it unto yourself.” Perhaps she is mistaking faith for religious affiliation, and this is a lesson she is no doubt receiving from her society. As her teacher of spirit truth, you can remind her that it’s very likely her mother does have some sort of faith, even though it may not conform to what others would have it be. Have faith in your own Mother, the Mother in heaven Who looks over all of her children. Yes, Celeste.

CELESTE: I was just going to say, this is a fourth grade class, I think. These children can’t be , oh, they’re in fifth grade. I was thinking they can’t be older than twelve years.

ELYSSIA: Oh, they’re older than twelve, yes.

TOMAS: What happened to Jesus when He was twelve?

CELESTE: Well, that was Jesus.

TOMAS: What happened to you when you were twelve?

CELESTE :I can’t remember. I just remember that from the time I can remember anything, I loved Jesus. That’s all I can remember. My sister and knelt by the side of the bed and say our prayers and we learned to love Jesus right there. I would say maybe we were five or six.

TOMAS: Yes.

CELESTE: I think it’s a lot to ask an eleven or a twelve year old to handle their parents and their faith.

TOMAS: Indeed. Indeed. But it is important that this child not buy into a judgment of her mother based upon a lack of understanding of what faith is. Perhaps her mother does not have faith. In which case the child’s prayer assumes even greater maturity proportions than we give her credit for, but a child’s heart is capable of tremendous love and longing.

CELESTE: That’s true.

TOMAS: It is also possible for young people to become enthralled with Our Father and with His way of life. I will bring to your mind an inspiration perhaps from other worlds, other worlds which are a little more advanced. In fact, my home sphere was further along in our evolution than Urantia and it was not at all uncommon for our little ones to be exceedingly mindful of the graciousness of spirit reality. You know we had a working arrangement with the Midwayers and often communed with the Morontia Companions, often acknowledged the efforts of the angelic corp.

If a child is exposed to these realities at an early age, it is a natural thing for them to grasp. It is wrong, then, to encourage a child to set aside its innate faith in its Creator in order to take on, as a greater reality, the values of the people – unless, of course, the people are acting in accordance with the Father’s will. And that, in itself, is a situation that would require – if not a value judgment, at least a wise assessment, one which would even require an amount of courageous loyalty!

CELESTE: I am just happy that when I was a little girl all I did was just love Jesus. I loved him with all my heart but I didn’t know the word faith.

HESTER: Thank God.

TOMAS: It is interesting indeed, because everyone has an individual experience, and yours is truly your own and precious to you. It has obviously contributed to your inherent make-up, but there are others who had not been led to pray or know Him, and I think perhaps they might have been benefited had someone sat with them and said, “What do you think faith is, child? What do you have faith in?” for that would have given the child, then, an opportunity to reach for faith, and in reaching for “faith is”

CHRIS: . . . expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates.” [Ed. TUB, 1114, 8. Faith and Belief]

ELYSSIA: You can bring that down to a simple level if you take some time with it, I am sure. I’m sure that that’s the work that I’ve been doing. I just chucked the material they gave me, and I’m trying to follow Tomas’ suggestions on working with what is at hand.

Well, Chris, do you remember? Look where you are now. So maybe you could share, if you would, something meaningful that happened to you as a child?

CHRIS: I think when we are children we learn to have faith through belief. I think belief attains to faith levels. That’s when we are sure. Faith is a knowing, sublime knowing that surpasses all belief. It is no longer belief once you know, once you commune with your Adjuster. It’s a growing up. Children, I believe, believe until they grow to have faith. When someone has a belief, they are maybe – sure of them selves, but when they have faith they no longer are intolerant of other people’s beliefs, knowing that it’s simply a belief. Does that make sense?

I think having faith is a maturing in itself. I don’t think children, per se, can have faith. They can certainly have faith in their parents, but I don’t think they even know that it’s faith until they realize for themselves from experience. Until then it’s a belief because as Tomas said, society tells children so children believe that. That’s not faith until they feel it in their soul in that awakening, so to speak, and then it becomes true faith. Not just merely belief.

TOMAS I will add to that very good commentary, my son, and talk for a moment about belief, which belief system may be totally shattered. Many times during a life what you believe today may fail you completely tomorrow because you have constructed it in your own mind, but faith is a living reality. It cannot be shattered. It is real. When you say you have “lost faith” it is only that you have lost a belief system that enshrouded your faith. Beliefs are man-made. Faith is living. And you develop both of these by and through your free will. You will find how they serve you by trusting in them. If you trust in what you believe, you will be led to find out if it is a viable belief or a faulty belief. And if you trust your faith, your faith will expand and grow.

CHRIS: Absolutely.

CELESTE: Well, I thought as you mature, your belief becomes a faith.

CHRIS: That’s right. But faith always grows. It’s….

RACHEL: A continuance.

CHRIS: continually.

TOMAS: It is sometimes necessary for the old scaffolding of a belief system to be pulled out from under you that you can then learn to stand on faith alone. Are we not Agondonters? If you are constantly supporting yourself with the false props of one belief system after another, you are not developing the full potential of your immortal soul. You may not have developed yourself at all, but rather just have gone from one noble belief system after another, developing nothing of lasting value.

CELESTE: Right.

TOMAS: But in the sincere faith child, even these faulty belief systems will yield some knowledge, some wisdom that can be incorporated into a greater reality and often it is a resource then to teach and preach others who rely upon those false props. It is an invigorating life, this life in the spirit. Never boring. Never dull.

ELYSSIA: Well, I told them that Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me” when the apostles were annoyed, and I think that was something they enjoyed talking about today because it was like, “You’re very important to Jesus.”

CELESTE: It just makes you love him more.

ELYSSIA: They all knew that they were, in fact, loved.

TOMAS: Very well. Yes, it is important for children to realize that they are of value in and of themselves for many times your adults insist that they are lesser, and this . . .

HESTER: Seen and not heard.

TOMAS: Yes. And this is damaging to an individual’s self-esteem. Everyone has value. Everyone has something to say and something to give.

CHRIS: That’s who we are today, from growing up with people telling us.

TOMAS: Yes, and isn’t it wonderful now that Teacher Ham comes along and lets you play in the sandbox and I come along and help you with your prayers in the evening. We are truly your devoted elder brothers and sisters in this marvelous family of God.

Closing

TOMAS:  It is time, little ones, for us to turn out the lights and allow Our Father to work on us as we rest, and to allow Our Mother to minister to our spirits as we sleep. Go in peace this week, in joy, and know that His will is being done in your life.

CELESTE :Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS: Amen and farewell.

Session 4
December 15, 1998 TOMAS [Belief and Faith]
Opening

NAOMI: (Hunnah) We’re going to have a good time tonight. This is station SMILE. Greetings. Greetings to you all. Hunnah had a surprise this evening. While you were reading and while she was being quiet, my name was presented to her. She was quite startled because she remembered that just recently when she sat down at the PC, she announced my name, typed it right out without batting an eye. My name is Naomi.

GROUP: Welcome.

NAOMI: Greetings to you all. Hunnah is very surprised to have an identification of a name, and the short transcript that came through, she simply asked that someone come and I am here and I am so pleased to be here! And I am so pleased to meet you all!

Lesson

NAOMI:Your program this evening has been for us, genuinely, a program, and I want to tell you that you are all experiencing, to a degree, something that has been happening to Hunnah, who has not taken the time until just recently to put it together, but she said to her friend today, “I know, as of today, once again, I am proving to myself that my human thoughts and my human conditioning are just a distraction, because I know that there is a great plan and that we are simply moved into place and to do the appropriate action at the appropriate time.

She was referring to the acquaintance of Reiki in Butler and the human being would say, “Oh! We’ve got to do this and we’ve got to do that”, but the connected heart, the heart that listens to divine order, to that intimate program that is just for you and you alone, is already established in your heart, and as you become acquainted, and as you covet this special relationship which was indeed discussed in this transcript that you read this evening, this intimate relationship that is established with your Thought Adjuster, that knows your every need.

And you may allow yourself to continue to wail or be full of mischief and be very preoccupied, or you can stay home and sulk, you can do anything you want, but the schedule is on-line, the stage has been set, we have been about our work, it has been very successful because we are interacting.

And it is not the sacrifice of your freedom in any way. You could not have the Father’s will come alive in the many ways as it has in your individual lives if you weren’t part of this, but it is very perplexing for you and I know you suffer because you still think that you have to solve things the old way and you do not. There is no wrong way. That is quite startling. There are no wrong answers. There are only the opportunities for you to turn your back on your conditioned behavior because you are new. And you are alive. And you are so beautiful!

And I heard Hunnah say this evening, “I love myself and I put my arms around myself and I embrace myself, and I could not possibly do that,” she said to herself, if she did not have a new definition of who she was and what she was all about. And this is nothing that you can strut and tell your friends. You have friendships on all levels, and out of respect you keep certain aspect s of these truths close to yourself and you save these treasures for those who are like-minded, as Gerdean has shared this evening. She is so thrilled to find someone who is on this path. And you, my dear Rachel, are not the only one who is a holding pattern.

We know in Hunnah’s heart she has watched her son and she has had to allow herself to watch him find his rhythms, find his opportunities, and in spit e of the standard fare of concern and fear oriented propositions and explanations, it is hard and it is grating to hear the old way in your ear, but you have to know, and as you develop in your consciousness, that those calls that you’d define as their old way, and their fears, are really the human way of saying, “I love you child, so much, that I want you to be secure and happy.”

And in their definition of what secure and happy is, is really alright, and your gift will be that you will not longer feel offended. It will no longer be caustic on your nerves because it will not be so sensitive. The old sounds will lose their power; their definitions will be understood in your heart in a way they never have before. It is really, really an exciting time for you all. We know that the doors are flying open very rapidly now, change is picking up and that you are, a lot of you, kind of bewildered by the fact that the things that come about in the way they are, or that you won’t miss something that you thought you wanted for it is no longer your emotional need.

I am so pleased to be able to come here and bring reassurances. I feel like the understudy to the great star, Merium, and it is an honor for me to be able to come in and I hope that you will let me share with you in my way. I sing in the same choir and you are a wonderful audience and thank you.

GROUP: Thank you, Naomi.

Dialogue

TOMAS: (Gerdean) I am Tomas, your regularly scheduled teacher.

GROUP: Hello, Tomas.

TOMAS: It is indeed a bounty to be here and to be enthralled, amused, entertained, edified, enlightened and loved by our visitor, our sister Naomi. Her message is heartwarming indeed and I am even assured our star, Merium, is enchanted with her understudy.

Belief, Faith

TOMAS: Perhaps we can prevail upon Merium to join in our session on point. I would like to be pedantic for a moment and bring about a formal outpouring of wordage belonging to my repertoire of tricks. This one has to do with a balance between belief and faith. Indeed one time, when we were beginning our platform together, Merium and I had opportunity to teach in a format of the two sides of the coin and at that time one of us took faith and the other took trust. This evening I would like to prevail upon Merium to take one of the sides of the coin between belief and faith. Have you a preference, Merium ?

MERIUM: (Hunnah) Oh, I think that I might like faith.

TOMAS: Who would like to go first?

MERIUM: I feel that belief is frequently introduced through the cognitive skills.

TOMAS: Yes.

MERIUM: intelligence, and the reasoning mind, so I would prefer that you set the format.

TOMAS: I will do so gladly, gracious colleague. I will speak in terms of the propensity of the human mind to develop, establish, depend upon and act in according to a belief system. We will pull from the hat the excerpt from the text which reflects the value lesson that whatever it is that man/woman believes is held up to be a worthy belief for all men/women. If it is good enough for me to believe in, it is good enough for everyone to believe in, and the more exalted the concept, the higher devotion to the belief system, the more supreme it becomes, even to the levels of the sublime. Behold now the development of creeds and tenets, divisions. We have interest groups; we have politics; we have opinion; we have a busy society of mental approaches by and through a belief system that we share with others. . . . .
MERIUM: Oh, I have a suggestion. Are there some beliefs that you have that need to go? You see this does lend itself to homework, Tomas.

TOMAS: Are we not teachers?

MERIUM: Yes, but you won’t have to think about it. It will pop into your consciousness just as my friend’s name Naomi did with Hunnah. You have all experienced this type of cue, so I hope that it will be very effective for you.

RACHEL: All right. I’ll give one. I’ll give up the belief I’m in control.

LIANA: Ohhh! Excellent!

MERIUM: I had a question.

RACHEL: Um-hum?

MERIUM: How many “I’s” do you have?

RACHEL: I being the human, Wendy.

MERIUM: So you believe there are two of you?

RACHEL: Well, I guess since I haven’t fused yet, aren’t we still two?

TOMAS:Dual nature, yes.

RACHEL: I am of dual nature. So as I find everything I believed in, Merium, falling apart, I now must have faith that the Father will catch me when I fall.

MERIUM: You need your body. You need your heart and soul. So if you fall, you will have to get back up because you’re needed, because you are developing a new concept of yourself.

TOMAS:And we come back round to the goal of the human condition here in early light and life, and that is to balance oneself sufficiently that you walk in faith and in the flesh an integrated personality. Remember the mota that speaks to this.

RACHEL: What mota was that?

TOMAS:Few persons have the courage to embrace the faith which they really have. The human soul is truly rich but they refuse to believe that.

RACHEL: Why is that?

JOEL: I can tell you why. I think experiences that are negative to you kind of hurt your faith and the more that happens the less you believe in, but deep down, deep down you know of things, you believe in things, you have a true faith in them but then they get boxed away and hidden, a lot of things like bad childhood memories. That’s what I believe.

TOMAS: A+.

JOEL: And so that’s kind of where I’m coming from. It’s kind of weird while we are on the subject because–

RACHEL: It must be everybody’s subject.

JOEL: Yeah. But, yeah, I’m trying to open those boxes. I’m trying to find them.

MERIUM: That takes courage!

JOEL: Yes.

MERIUM: I have another nice word.

RACHEL: I don’t have any courage!

MERIUM: You do have courage, dear. You have a lot of courage! It’s in one of those boxes. It is Christmas.

RACHEL: I’m not feeling courageous though.

MERIUM: It is Christmas.

RACHEL: I’m not even seeing Christmas, Merium!

MERIUM: Perhaps you have packages to open that you have to open in our presence and in our time. If you are going to decide to be one of us, and in a sense you have already made the decision but it’s still partly on the drawing board. For you. But for us it is a reality. You are already where you think you want to be. It’s like catching up with yourself.

JOEL: Is that true for everybody?

MERIUM: Yes. When your heart opens to a high purpose, and in that high purpose you are willing to meet all the variations of your experience here with the same trust and integrity, we cannot want for anything greater from you. You are home! If you want to serve the highest good that lives and reigns in your heart, then why would you care if you were burning bridges behind you? Why would you care except you will be allowed to have compass ion for your human nature, but you will see it in a more objective way.

For an example, I know today I feel that I am grieving. It’s alright if I grieve, but I am not grief. I am observing my grief even when I feel it. It is hurting. When you are in a shadow place you are allowed to ask for a better interpretation of your experience and constantly remind yourself that the room is filled with caring assistance at all times. Our vigil is constant. You are normal because you are distracted, but our song is constantly available to you. And it feeds and strengthens the fibers of the new you.

The new you that your Thought Adjuster, this force of loving intelligence that has brought you here, is constantly with you. So in scripture it says, ” I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” And you know that Jesus said these words but what we are hearing him say is, “I, the truth of your being, will never leave you, and I will be glorified when you allow yourself to hear it, to feel it, to focus on it.”
If you focus on the pain you will be distracted. You may acknowledge it, but we want you to focus on your light force and your joyous purpose for being alive and how very, very important you are.

RACHEL: But I don’t feel any purpose for being alive right now.

MERIUM: In the moment.

RACHEL: In the moment I don’t.

MERIUM: If you are wallowing in the moment, then so be it! It’s like labor pains, is it not?

RACHEL: Yes,

MERIUM: And are you not.

RACHEL: Giving things up.

MERIUM: Yes. Things that you.

RACHEL: Mourning them.

MERIUM: That’s right. Stuff.

RACHEL: Stuff. My whole life! So far.

TOMAS: What does it matter if all things earthly crumble, to those who love the Lord? And what does it matter if a belief system is shattered if it is replaced with an experience which brings about a greater appreciation and understanding of Father and His qualities of truth, beauty, and goodness?

RACHEL: Well, gee, Tomas, I think that Jesus said to me something about that yesterday.

MERIUM: May I speak about friendship and Jesus?

RACHEL: Uh huh.

MERIUM: It is a giant step to read about this personality of Jesus, this empowered being that was here on earth, and then you have this opportunity to meet Jesus within yourself privately and it is indeed perplexing for someone who is in the stage of development that you are all in, you ask yourself why? How can I possibly be having this nonsense going on in my life when I have been so blessed and honored with the holy presence of a living Christ? How can this possibly be?

RACHEL: Who even tells me he will never forsake me!

MERIUM: You are here. We are talking about consciousness.

RACHEL: Um hum.

MERIUM: And Hunnah had a teacher who put it beautifully, she said, “You are living in suffering because you have created yesterday’s consciousness and you are encapsulated in it and it’s like outgrowing something and you are uncomfortable.” She called it yesterday’s consciousness solidified. Let me go further.

If you kept company with a group of people and you developed new ideas and beliefs, as Tomas has brought to our attention, and as our friend earlier suggested (during sharing time) that her sister worked in an office where people were in a sense light years apart from her standards, she had to get out. She had to remove herself from an unhealthy situation. And it takes the belief in herself to do this and it takes this companionship with this Holy of Holies that we speak of, your friends who are gathered here, to embrace you in the move, but it is still going to be tiring and stressful but you will have the satisfaction of having made the right choice of the morsel that is given to you from On High. And you don’t have to tell anyone about it. It’s just the way it is. You have outgrown your circumstances and you are uncomfortable.

Let me also speak of spiritual pride. Hunnah is very familiar with it, and it comes like a wet mop in her physicality. It’s jolting when you have a moment of wondering if you are suffering from spiritual pride. How can I be in such a dilemma when I have kept company with the Holy of Holies and I am putting up with this garbage? Everyone in this room could say the same thing. This is not unique; this is just part of the transition, and if you embrace your transition, I can assure you, my dear, it will not be as painful.

I sound like a divine Heloise, I’m afraid, but when I speak to you, please , I speak to you as a sort of a gentle prodding, with tender respect for your ability to take that and use it effectively, and if I gave you a bucket of soapy water and a rag you would have the sense to know that you would be cleaning something. Well, this counsel, in a sense, is cleansing and in that cleansing there will be a lubricant that will ease the debris of your prior years and your prior beliefs and the sparkle of faith will see you through it. Talk is cheap. But you’ve got to soldier it. Put your shoulder to it. T here is another method. It’s called, “Change My Attitude.”

GERDEAN: Adjust my thoughts.

MERIUM: That’s right.

RACHEL: I asked for that one; the discipline.

MERIUM: It works. You can do it every day, all day long. It works. Do I need to see this differently?

RACHEL: What’s the lesson?

MERIUM: Just keep in touch with us. Keep in touch with yourself.

RACHEL: Oh, I have.

MERIUM: You will, and your wail will fade and fade and one of these days you will hear yourself

RACHEL: I remember wailing in the past.

LEAH: Well, Heloise, how does one embrace this transition?

MERIUM: You are all doing it! You are all doing it and you are doing very well.

RACHEL: I suppose we wouldn’t be here if weren’t.

MERIUM: You are doing it very very well. And you will have moments of connecting with this higher agenda and finding out that you really don’t need to be doing some of the things you are doing; you don’t need to be working so hard at it. Your being a beholder of how much help is at hand would ease everything.

LIANA: “My yoke is ” How does that go?

RACHEL: “my burden is light.”

MERIUM: “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.” That is a very nice line to consider. Light. Light weight. Or perhaps invisible. Consciousness. “My yoke. My yoke is your moving toward me.” I’m talking “me” meaning divinity. Or if you don’t like that word, cosmically. You are acknowledging we are going from matter to energy. It is true, so we will say that your yoke is it is not a yoke; it is not a harness. It is your new choice! It is the arc from which you will enter and say, “This mantle I will wear, and now that I have made my choice, I realize that it doesn’t have any burden.

I do not feel the weight. What is going on here? I don’t seem to feel like I have to work so hard! ‘My yoke is easy; my burden is light’.” And as you have the courage to return to a situation that is unresolved, you are allowed to say every hour if you have to, “I am here to do whatever has to be done in a new way. Help me not to just parrot an old idea, bring up an old feeling, an old hurt, but to see it as a new fresh moment.”

Now, the people you are with, you are congregating with in your old scenario, aren’t going to the same school you are going to in the same way. And it is sort of like white water rafting sometimes, and then you have your opportunities to move on forward without any resistance. They don’t have to know what’s going on with you. You do not have to explain yourself, but you do have to respect the fact that they are where they are and you can’t pull them up all of a sudden. And we have heard A LOT of that from all of you, because you are puzzled and you are trying to figure it out.

TOMAS:It is a puzzle. It is a simple matter of acknowledging that you all have a belief system and if you have faith, you will discover that in the long run they are all compatible, even though you may not be sharing the same belief system at the same time.

LEAH: When you are making that statement, Tomas, are you referring to the people in this room or are you referring to the affiliates that we have in our lives outside of this room?

TOMAS: It is a universal law. All belief is perception. Everyone has a perception, and in the omniscient point of view, in as much as love is all there is, each belief is a temporary illusion of reality as scaffolding to a greater reality, that in which everyone has faith. Are we not all yearning to return to the Source?

LEAH: Yes.

TOMAS: Are we not all in fact en route to a return to Divinington and perfection?

RACHEL: Uh-huh.

TOMAS: Ultimate perfection.

RACHEL: Yes.

LEAH: Well, I guess I need some practical advice on how to be kind to people who are not nice to you.

TOMAS:Each person is a case in point. Some are not worthy of note. Some are worth an investment of untiring effort, and only an eye on infinity can establish for you what each individual person represents to you in your walk. Do not feel as if you have failed if you do not feel the impulse to respond to every flicker. In other words, there is no blanket rule. You do His will as you perceive His will is for you. And allow everyone else the same opportunity. As Desiderata says, “And if you find each other, it’s wonderful!” If not, go in peace. Indeed, enjoy the entertainment. Have we not often testified to how amusing we find you?

RACHEL: Yes.

TOMAS:Why do you suppose that is?

RACHEL: I don’t know. Why is that?

TOMAS:Because of your individuality, your uniqueness; that you each have an approach, that you each have your own assortment of challenges. You each have your own most delightful interpretation of personality. Even in your error of manifestation, it is entertaining. It is not for us to judge your beliefs , but only to be aware of the fact that each one has beliefs. As your beliefs compare with others, you may feel and enjoy that camaraderie of kindred spirits. If it’s not there, then it is not necessary to try to browbeat your peer into believing the way you do, for they could turn around and do the same thing and this serves well for debate or for contention, but does little to afford an atmosphere of teamwork and cooperation, and unity in diversity. Practice makes perfect. And even higher levels of perfection.

MERIUM: Let us pray for our what we used to call enemies. We have been talking about yesterday’s consciousness solidified. That means you are with the same family and you’ve said things that have been written in stone and they have their slates and you have your slates, okay? Let us describe a common scenario of the office where people of diverse interests and belief systems are gathered and we will compound the problem by stressing them with the structure of the work they do. Then we will compound it once again with those individuals who are tense and have personal situations in their home life.

And you, of course, are the one glittering star in the whole scenario and you are the only one who really knows what’s going on in the world (giggle), and you are going to leave and take your toys, but if you are the glittering star in your own story and you really do believe that “I am” continuously congregating with you, and that I too am in the office, and that everyone in that office (let us just say there are twelve; it’s a small group), and they have all their different habits. They drink a lot of pop, they smoke, the y like to watch TV and some of them talk about fish.

Now in this group (You are in the group. Let’s not forget that.) you are not going to take your toys and go home. You are going to be tapped on your shoulder in consciousness instead and say, “Oh my gosh!” and in a lucid moment you will be reminded by yourself, within yourself, that every one of those people have a Thought Adjuster, and a lot of them ARE in touch with their Thought Adjuster, and since you are of the same substance in light and truth, you have a right and an opportunity and the ability to contact every one of them because “Where I am is holy ground.” So if they are there, they are on it too.

And if you are aware of the celestial vanguard that is constantly available to you, then you ought to know too that they have the same services at hand. So there isn’t any enemy now. There is a new perception. And this takes a lot of work! Because you want to be lazy and not have to go into detail and get out your beginners manual to apply it to yourself and say, “Just what are you doing, picking up your toys and leaving? Didn’t I – I want you to bloom where you are planted!” Did that not occur to you? And is not this essence that is in you called love and are they not even invisibly responsive to my love? I tell you, that it’s very easy to pick up your toys and leave, and only seek like-minded people, but that is not what this mission is about.

And you are not there to say, “Well I think you better read The Urantia Book and get your act together.” (Giggle) No, no, no! You are going to be more understanding. You are not going to be more understanding – understand will be emitted from you, from your very pores. Tolerance will come through you. Your very presence in the office will tip the scales and there will be a part of you that will want to jump out with a clipboard and keep track of the progress, but it is not necessary.

All we want you to do is embrace those about you. Those in your home. That person who is nearing difficulty in your face. It is very difficult, but you are here. You are Agondonters. This is your mission! This is what this is all about! You are all in different stages of yawning and stretching and falling asleep again. And in that sleep state there is impatience in traffic. There is disease. There is loneliness and despair. But when you have discovered this precious jewel of the fact that you are allowed to put your arms around yourself and embrace yourself and say, “Oh, my God, I have to fall in love with myself first before I am really going to be able to love others.”

And you have all been doing this for years now in your calendar time and it’s been difficult but you have done so well. You are at the point and all have done it, have just snuggled inside yourself and said, “How joyful! I know that this is true, that the other life that I have lived in the darkness and in ignorance, digesting other people’s opinions and making them my own, all of that is over. I have a new set of rules and they are reliable and I have developed faith in them.”

One of these days in this group and in this conversation we will hear you make this announcement. You will know that you have gone over the top in your understanding that you are of Light and Life, and that the body is your servant and that that is true of everyone else but they haven’t just found the pot of gold and they haven’t even looked up to find out if there was a rainbow.

I hope these words tonight will stay in you. Have you ever seen concrete laid? Where they take bars and reinforcement rods and they lay it down and then they bring in the cement? They have to put this sturdy structure down in order to support the substance that’s poured over it so that it will be useful. This is what has happened to you. We have allowed your circuitry to become these bars of strength in you because they are in contact with the reality of your Being. They do nothing but contain currents of truth, of living truth, and then that which is – instead of being cement – what it is, is what you radiate and represent. And it in turn is a strong emotional structure and an intelligence which influences your surroundings.

I want you to take this metaphor and I want you to allow yourself to put y our own words together in privacy. Maybe even write it. And see how you come out with your own Thought Adjuster’s guidance and your own guides, your own teachers, because remember, you are the new teacher! You are the new way shower! And it is fun to talk about how it’s been out there. It’s important. But what we really want you to talk about is the Good News of what you have discovered, that the principles work and it’s okay to – there are no wrong answers anymore because you are living in the real answer and that’s fulfillment. I really enjoyed myself. (Group delight)

TOMAS:How wonderful it is, Merium, to have you in our midst in your full regalia. It is a joy to observe and subject ourselves to your teaching ministry. I myself have felt in the last few moments as if I were creating a highway to heaven upon which we are all walking, and I am certain that each of us have a road that we will take to find our way Home, one which we indeed pave as we join forces with the Highway Department in the Sky.

I have so enjoyed our evening. I am delighted, again, to experience our teaching corp in its greater capability. It is also good to be able to reiterate to you, faithful flock old and new, how well you have developed. We do not take credit for this; we are growing with you. I did want to, however, respond somewhat to Merium’s outpouring in particular with her remark regarding spiritual superiority. Pride.

I want to point out, referring back to the earlier lesson about belief and faith, that in the belief system shared by others in the Teaching Mission, Machiventa’s proposed materialization in Naperville was and remains an important part of your appreciation for spirit made manifest, because since that time your ability to appreciate your peers in service to our Father has significantly increased, become more real. Your faith has grown as a culture and as a movement and as a facet of spiritual reality, individually and collectively, because of your shared belief and because of your faith.

But remember too that there are other movements afoot across the face of Urantia. The philosophies of Avatar and the Seven Rays and the Sparrow and the various teachers, each have an event. The harmonic convergence. Each have a philosophy. A Course in Miracles, which gives further perspective to the truth that Our Father works with all of his children and any one which seeks to find shall indeed discover the God who will will you Home.

I have every confidence that my purpose this evening has been fulfilled. I am prepared now to remove myself, but I will allow also for any alternative inasmuch as we have a wonderful group and Merium and I have had such fun talking. Perhaps you might like to also. If you would like to, please carry on. If you would like to ask questions, please carry on there also. But if you would like to call it a day, you have my permission to do that as well .

RACHEL: Anybody?

LEAH: Well, I’d like to make a comment, I guess. In the beginning of your discourse, Merium, you more or less inferred (those are my words) that perhaps some of us were in situations that weren’t working, and then later on you talked about getting in touch with the Adjuster of the other person, then we went into the rapids of – where some of us are just going through the rapids and I guess some of us are just standing on the shore (those are not your words, those are my words) – and I . . . I asked the question before, “How do you be nice to people who aren’t nice to you?”

So I feel as if you answered that by saying, “You ask to get in touch with their Thought Adjuster or for the Though Adjuster to get in touch with your Thought Adjuster”, but then we got into missing the people who were in your home and within your immediate presence, which I do seek to do, but I still don’t know how to be nice to people who aren’t nice.

JOEL: I think that she had answered part of it by saying to have faith that their presence is there, and that their Thought Adjusters are working on them too. I guess.

RACHEL: I ask Jesus to come hold my hand. That’s what I do. Because I figure, with him beside me I won’t be tempted to lash out or that I could better endure the onslaught of somebody who is in outrageous aggressive behavior.

LEAH: Okay, then we got into the yoke is easy and the burden is light , and

LIANA: That’s if you give it up!

LEAH: The struggle?

LIANA: Uh huh. But you give it up to your Thought Adjuster. You give it up — however you want to say it — to your teacher or whatever, then your yoke I mean, that was Christ’s words. Then your yoke is easy. But she is talking about giving up the control.

JOEL: Through faith.

LIANA: Through faith and that reminded me of that saying.

LEAH: Well I was just reflecting on it.

MERIUM: Well, I will address that that is a despicable individual. With somebody who is not nice to you, it is perfectly all right to put distance between you. It’s perfectly all right.

RACHEL: What if they follow you around?

JOEL: Then there is something you have to learn.

RACHEL: They won’t leave you! From room, to room.

MERIUM: Might I add something to . . .

RACHEL: Mmmm.

MERIUM: There are . . . This is not a psychiatrist session but let us remember one thing, that when there are relationships and one person changes their value system, it can create a discomfort with the partner, and they will not feel as needed. “You don’t need me the way you used to. You have changed. I want you back. I want . . . Some people are together because they make so many furious sparks. They fight well. And that is the relationship that they maintained for quite a while, so when the one decides not to fight, it leaves the other on unsteady ground, you might say. They are bewildered, and they want to be comfortable so they want the old pattern back.

Hunnah will let me share a little secret. She has with her husband what she jokingly refers to what the two of them do as their “Saturday conversations.” When the husband is home in her territory, there is this dialog and it’s like a tennis match and it lasts maybe twenty minutes and they both know, because they are more mature, recognize this and they will say, “Is this a Saturday conversation?” It is a sparring time, and it can become a habit. Well, it has stopped – it is not as common – because they recognize it and are amused. If humor can rescue you at times, it is very helpful, but I am suspicious that some of your suffering is because individuals who have not done their homework in the same manner, perhaps, and are – it’s like a control issue? –

RACHEL: Yeah, it’s a control issue.

MERIUM: Knowing this helps, but it does not make it go away. You ca n even say to the person, “I know I’m not the same person I used to be, and I know that you perhaps find it difficult to understand.” If you advertise that you are a “Christian” or you quote this or a that, then what you’ve done is set yourself up for criticizing because in their mind, that – let’s use “Christian” for example – should behave in a certain manner. And then when you fail to meet their standards of being all endlessly patient, kind, honest, long-suffering, et cetera, et cetera, and you fail to meet this criteria, then you are going to hear about it.

And that’s why a lot of this needs to be private. You do not have to advertise to people that you find the ultimate teaching and that you don’t do these things anymore because you have found this ultimate teaching. This is where your teachers are so helpful. They help you to be gracefully appropriate.

RACHEL: Um-hum.

MERIUM: And they help you find ways to help you put distance between yourself and that other person, so that you don’t keep them all fired up. Hunnah had a nurse in the office that was making reference to a patient and this friend of hers said, “Mrs. So-and-so keeps herself so upset.” This is a human condition. It’s a form of proving to themselves that they matter. They stay upset. And this is just the way it is out here in this lesser place. This lesser behavior. They are all are living in their yesterday’s consciousness solidified. And when you are uncomfortable, know that you are going to be able to find a way to slide away from them and put a little distance there .

LEAH: Thank you.

MERIUM: This is one of the valuable things about being a parent, is that you know that a child is learning and it’s harder to deal with an adult because you know that they should know better.

RACHEL: Yeah, but they’re like little kids who don’t want to grow up.

MERIUM: But that’s a judgment.

RACHEL: Exactly.

MERIUM: hat’s a judgment.

RACHEL: I know it’s a judgment.

MERIUM: And that judgment is where you err.

RACHEL: Mmmm.

MERIUM: And you’re just going to have to come up with a new way of saying they are having a hard time. Because when you’re having a hard time, you’re begging for compassion from these other people and they don’t have it because they don’t understand. It is just a . . . We are fascinated by it.

RACHEL: I’m glad you are!

MERIUM: And we are amazed that you are able to fulfil the role as well as you do, but what is really important is to know when you’re out there where you don’t belong.

RACHEL: What do you mean “Out there where you don’t belong?”

MERIUM: When you’re in someone else’s “stuff”.

RACHEL: Oh.

MERIUM: And it is hard to let someone else handle their own stuff. And if you are a parent, again I use that as an example because you want to live through your children and you don’t realize that you’re doing it until you’re called on it. And if you’re smart you will use that being called on it as an opportunity for yourself to pull in and take stock and you will find out, probably, that you are right. But it’s their version of love. Concern is their version of love. Even if it is identified as control. But love comes across that way frequently and you all know because you have all extended it yourself.

RACHEL: That’s true.

MERIUM: Wouldn’t it be nice if you could hear our music?

TOMAS: Indeed.

RACHEL: I’d love to!

MERIUM: Our music is available all the time.

RACHEL: Why can’t I hear it?

MERIUM: And I heard Hunnah talking about listening. I want you to do so me listening. (Cat begins to talk)

RACHEL: There’s music!

MERIUM: Music. Re-define that. It can be a sound that you’ve heard many times and at a moment when you feel like you’ve got it together you will hear that sound and it will be music and you will be appreciative of that sound. My friend is tired. Thank you. Thank you, Tomas.

Closing

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium, and thank you class. We are dismissed.

GROUP: Thank you again for your encouragement and your enlightenment.

ADDENDUM

• Meditation from Lliana

Dear Spirit of My Being,
Come, my beloved, commune with me. I feel your love presence in such fullness. What would you say to me this day?
Dear One, My sweet beloved child of God, growing into adulthood-yet always the child to the parent. Love the creative force, the glue that does not stick, but holds the worlds in swirls of glory as humanity spins up the spiral of evolution .

You cannot listen past the doorway of your perceptions. Judgments bar it closed tightly. Blame the parents that came before thee. Blame your God parents that set the pattern of separation that they may birth themselves in diverse ways. That they may come to know themselves through love and through the seemingly absence of it. Blame them, cry victim that you may have life.

That you were born to a self that the one may be many. Cry baby – that’s what babies do. Yet I beg you, baby, give up your baby ways. Life tires of rocking your cradle. Wake to your potential, to the impetus of your birth. Step out into eternal life as the child of God. You who has life in the Father, and you who in the Father has MORE life.