2005-10-16-. Step Lively On Your Path
Rio Rancho #121
Topic: Step Lively on Your Path
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Teacher: Merium
TR: Gerdean
Opening
PRAYER: Our Father, we thank you for this day that you have made and we rejoice in it and we praise your holy name. We remember your words where you said if two or three are gathered together in your name, there shall you be, and so we pray that you come and sit with us and guide our thoughts.
We ask these things in the name of our Lord, Jesus. Amen.
Group: Amen. Thank you, Men-O-Pah.
MERIUM: This is Merium, your friend, coming in to visit, as well as being a spokesperson for many others who also are here, and who enjoy your light shining — the pilot light of your soul, well lit and burning brightly. There have been many days pass since we last met. It is almost as if I need to refresh my memory of who you are and you of me, unlike Tomas, who you knew so well. It was almost as if you could anticipate him and this familiarity is a wonderful thing to develop and establish and work from, but it is also true that variety is the spice of life and one must be careful not to become so fashioned as to overlook the opportunities for variation.
Lesson
Indeed, this is what I wanted to talk to you about today, and it has to do with anticipation of what others are going to say and do, based on what they have said and done before. It has to do with expectations of what one will do, based on what they have done before, or what they have said, including you who become creatures of habit to the extent that you say you will do something, you feel you need to follow through with it even if turns out that you see it is not a good idea, but to change your mind in mid-stream may be disheartening for those who expected you to behave in the way you said you would.
Not to get tangled up in expectations, but to continue my focus on stepping lively on your faith path, I want to address you now as children — youngsters on the path set out before you that is as animated as a Walt Disney cartoon, that is delightfully enlivened by variety instead of consistency and sameness. There are those of you who dislike surprises because they have often been unpleasant surprises, or because you are anticipating the way things will be, based on the way they have been, and this is … finally … coming to the point of my dissertation, because it really boils down to what is acceptable to you in terms of change.
“Welcome to Change” were the first words uttered to you in the official announcement of the inception of the Correcting Time. Since that time, many, many changes have come about — in your lives individually and in your lives globally. Advancement is upon us. And while there are those who feel that much of the changes are old news recycled, nonetheless it is true that there are many changes upon us here. And the yearning to return to familiarity of that which you have known is a part of all those who retain vestiges of the human condition, which, of course, includes everyone.
The most significant change for you is that which goes on within your own soul. And so it is understood why one may want to determine in their intellect what will impact them and what will not, discernment, being the key, since many changes are merely disruptive and lead nowhere but merely keep the waters stirred such that stillness is virtually impossible, peace of mind is virtually unattainable.
This has been discussed by other teachers in other groups — Abraham remarking recently about how many people are having emotional responses to what is going on in the world today and those emotional energies having the nature of emotions are irrational and unreasonable or illogical, perhaps, but nonetheless a part and parcel of the human condition. And thus the effort is in your court as to what you will open your heart to, your mind to, and your spirit to.
If you were walking on land mines, you would have good reason to be cautious, but you who walk in faith are indeed as little children. Father will not put land mines in your path. You may frolic and play and enjoy yourselves in this heavenly kingdom.
You are grownups having a childlike experience.
Thus you can see where and how and why play, reversion, diversion, humor and light-heartedness is an essential part of your being, and one which is granted to you for your enjoyment, while you also understand that we have much work to do on Urantia and the workload does not get any lighter as these troubled times roll on.
It seems we have been apart for so long you have forgotten what I’ve given you as an assignment. Gerdean, go read the assignment. I will put you on pause.
Dialogue
Elena: I did forget! Ooh. Caught.
Gerdean: Well, we may have done it! Let’s see what it is.
Elena: Well, okay, that’s true!
Gerdean: Well, I can see here (referring to the transcript) … we should all go play! Outdoors, in the fresh air, as children. “Don’t fall out of the tree and stay out from under the bluebird of happiness.” Okay.
Elena: You know, I have done things that are more fun, and … put a little bit more effort in that. And it’s been great!
Gerdean: I guess that’s what the assignment was.
Elena: Well, yahoo!
MERIUM: It is not an easy assignment to those of you who are in the mindset that you must be adult, you must be responsible, that people look to you as an example of maturity and stability. In fact, it is a very difficult assignment for those of you who feel that being childlike is somehow antithetical to being a spiritual person.
Elena: Sorry.
MERIUM: I like pets, myself. I have never had any trouble stopping in the middle of a chat to play with the animals.
Elena: Thank you, Merium.
MERIUM: Jesus did the same thing with children, and I find any opportunity — almost any opportunity — to divert from that which is serious to that which is supportive of the playful nature. It is appropriate, if it is done in love and not merely as an irresponsible indulgence. But that is an assessment we can undertake at some other time.
Again, I have no intention of coming in and talking all day. It is you and your growth and your amusement that I am here to cultivate, and so I need to know from you how you are doing. Tell me stories.
Elena: Well, as usual, I’ll start. I have been so grateful and so appreciative of the many blessings that I have in my life: all the people; my home; my dog; my cat; my family — and not necessarily in that order by any means, but I just have really been enjoying where I am … to the extent that I … I don’t feel guilty about it, with all the Iraq and everything. Pakistan and all those things going on. But just really wonderfully enjoying it, and really liking taking some time on the weekends to do some things that are fun, too, so I really think that’s a wonderful thing, and it was something that I really needed to do, so I’m grateful. But I also … when you were saying, “step lively on your spiritual path,” I don’t know — I guess just hoping those two are in concert.
MERIUM: I am seeing a picture in this filing cabinet of Lucille Ball or some other amusing character, who finds her niche and it feels so good, she begins to have a good time in it and gives up thinking about all the considerations surrounding her in the delight of the moment, only to discover that perhaps she has danced off the cliff, or into the rain, and only after the fact discovers that conditions have changed.
This is back to my message about stepping lively. Have a good time, by all means, but allow the adult to keep an eye out for danger zones or land mines or lummoxes or Señor Murphy, for just as soon as you begin to scamper around mindlessly enjoying yourself, is when the path turns to the left or the right and you need to bring yourself back into focus. All this is my way of suggesting mindfulness.
Play is exhilarating to the spirit. It is essential to the human. I cannot help but notice that your new employment may have contributed to your sense of well being.
Elena: I like that job a lot better than the one I had before, that’s for darned sure. And I’m starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with it, too, which is really nice, and feel that I have some purpose and some value and that there’s something that I can contribute to it, rather than just being affected by all the other elements. So that’s a really good thing for me.
MERIUM: Indeed, it’s a wonderful thing. I feel you becoming your own conductor of your own orchestra, making music with the pieces that are your disposal. Making music is a great deal of fun, as you know, since you play, even though there are times when you find your fingers on the wrong keys.
Elena: Yeah. True.
MERIUM: But by enjoying the game, by loving to play, by valuing the experience of making music, you would not think to stop and give up. No. You would forge ahead with your enthusiastic application to making music and triumph over those obstacles of learning to play that everyone runs into when they set out to master a new task.
“Be of good cheer,” the Master said. And it is a great testimony to His loving nature when you are of good cheer, for there is a great difference between appreciating your life, appropriately loving yourself and enjoying your existence, than feeling smug or superior and finding some sort of odd and aberrated enjoyment in submerging others in your own glow.
And what of you, Esmeralda? What have you been doing that has been fun?
Esmeralda: I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the play-offs in baseball. And last weekend also the golf championship was really good. Also, one thing this week, I met a nice lady who was visiting her son and daughter-in-law across the street, and came over to borrow some powdered sugar, which I had none, and so I took her to the grocery store and she was just a lovely lady from Texas, New Braunfels, — it’s close to San Antonio, Texas — and she was visiting her son and daughter-in-law, friends of mine who live across the street, and I really enjoyed meeting a new person and visiting with her. But it’s always nice to meet a new person and to visit with and hear things that the new person says.
MERIUM: Oh, yes, indeed! This variety is the spice of life — learning to love new persons. And this is a vital part of socializing your religion, by learning to love another person, for you share the joy of living, and this is where the rubber meets the road. Not in the cosmologies or the philosophies, but in the actual loving and appreciating life and its players. Good job!
Esmeralda: Thank you. I’m sorry I missed the last meeting, and I’m looking forward to getting to know you a lot better.
MERIUM: Oh, yes, you missed getting an assessment!
Esmeralda: That’s true! I did miss that.
Elena: Oh, yeah!
MERIUM: I will get around to it.
Esmeralda: Oh, good. I do value that, and it’s very good to have an assessment every once in a while.
MERIUM: I was assessing you in a style appropriate for one such as myself, rather fantasia-like, and hardly of the order of Abraham, but valuable none-the-less for my youthful approach. What of you, two? The tree and the nest of robins?
Men-O-Pah: Well, as you know, I was supposed to be away from here working but when it came time to go, I was physically unable to do it. So I suppose I’m chomping at the bit a little bit, but I look upon those things as ‘that’s the way it’s supposed to be’ and anyway, I’ve enjoyed not being there. I’ve talked with them several times now on the telephone, but Paula and I have been enjoying a lot of time together. Every day is precious with us because we know that we don’t have a lot of it yet.
Paula: We’re getting old, that’s what we are!
Men-O-Pah: Well,… but we don’t care.
Paula: We don’t?
Men-O-Pah: No. I don’t.
MERIUM: You have the right attitude.
Men-O-Pah: I don’t feel like I’m old and even though — you’ve heard that old, “my mind is making contracts that my body can’t keep” so … anyway. This has been a good time. And that job goes on without me; it’s just as well and perhaps better.
MERIUM: This is one of the wonderful things about having a childhood as an adult — to enjoy knowing that there are responsible persons taking care of the important things as you lollygag and play. It is very comforting to know that the universe goes on … with our without our help, and to recognize that we have a right to play and rest and take our turn at the many aspects of life that are given. In this way you can enjoy work when you work, enjoy play when you play, enjoy sleep when you sleep, enjoy company when you have company and enjoy yourself when you are alone. Thus there is joy in all you do.
Those who are afraid of life, afraid of living, afraid of dying, have no idea how that feels. You are indeed blessed. And to have each other to share these precious days is a treasure you will enjoy remembering throughout eternity. These moments of sublime friendship and growing old together … the best is yet to be.
And what of you, Songbird?
Paula: Which bird are you talking about?
Group: You! You! You!
Paula: Well, I go on from day to day and I enjoy life and it’s very full and I have good friends and we just have a happy life together and I’m grateful for it.
MERIUM: You have earned this leisure. In a society that stresses the importance of striving incessantly, it is refreshing to see those who have the peace of mind to put their feet up and relax, who have taken time to remember and to savor and to trust, to appreciate that things come and go but that which is real remains.
Gerdean, what have you been doing? Have you been having fun?
Gerdean: Well, yes, I did have fun putting the– Well, I didn’t do it physically, but I oversaw putting down the new flagstone threshold at the front gate, and I did physically pot the new tree, and the rubber tree plant in the new pot, so I have had fun.
And I have had a world of fun watching my website come to life. I would like to say I was creating it myself but it’s being created for me. Again, I haven’t physically done it, but it’s been wonderful to see my ideas come to light through the skilled hand of Linda Mac/Imara, who has been very generous with her creativity and time to help, so yes, I have been having fun.
I think the weather cooling has something to do with our attitudes, as well.
MERIUM: Yes, well, you think too much. Feeling that the weather change has enlivened you is evident in your behaviors and in your demeanors. Thinking is a propensity that comes from being mature and sober and adult, and I am here to teach you how to be a child. So I urge you not to think overmuch, but rather sense and intuit your way. I will in fact give you that as an assignment until the next time we meet — to ponder what it means to intuit your way on your faith path, so that you can step lively and proceed in good faith, even making good time, but allowing yourself the opportunity to lollygag when appropriate and veer to the left or to the right as intuition directs.
It will be interesting to see if and as your faith paths lead you into areas of experience that had not occurred to you. If you can remember your assignment. I have planted the seed. Let us review it when we meet again and see if we are making any progress.
I point out here that there is an opportunity for a party. The Canossian Retreat has been rescheduled again this year for the last weekend in February, and I will be there! I would love for everyone else to come and play with me. For this is what it is to retreat from the world and the seriousness of the world’s conditions and the intensity of your own integrity, and the faith struggles that you individually and collectively enjoin. This is not an official announcement but it is certainly an invitation to come and play with me and others in the celestial realm in the South Valley of Albuquerque. You know I wouldn’t miss a party!
Esmeralda: Well, we’ll try not to either.
Elena: Well, the last one went pretty well, so I think that this one will be a good party, too.
Esmeralda: And I like the play idea, as well. It sounds if Merium is going to be there, she sounds like she would enliven it.
Elena: Kick up our heels.
MERIUM: It was rumored that no other group in the history of Canossian’s existence laughed as much as our group.
Elena: Oh, really?
MERIUM: “Are you always this happy?” was the remark from Sister Antoinette. This is a testimony to the joy of sonship. This is my message that I have been sent to teach. Do you have questions?
Group: Not really, no. I can’t think of any right now. No, I’m actually at a good point, I think. Of course, being mindful of land mines. Ooh. Land mines! Oh, okay.
MERIUM: Let me point out to you, though, dear heart, that as your intuition is enlivened, it is easy to see them coming.
Elena: Okay.
MERIUM: You can assume there will be difficulties because if for no other reason the imperfection of the world you live in, but they need not be fatal or even painful if you are simply mindful. There are those who do blunder into minefields all the time, who have a propensity, as if they gravitated toward them on purpose! Perhaps they do, for the sympathy they receive, and the charity forthcoming.
Elena: Well, you know, now that you speak of that … I’d ask you … actually, you know, just to comment … my neighbor is going to move and man, she seems to … you know, the people that she encounters and everything else. It just … the stories that surround her are pretty bleak, it seems like. So I don’t know. I just try to do what I can for her and I do care about how she does and I just kind of leave it at that. But it does seem that there are those and she is one that started off rather abysmally but, you know, she just seems to kind of …
Esmeralda: Hit a minefield.
Elena: There are a lot of minefields in her path.
MERIUM: She is experiencing and recreating what you call PTSD.
Elena: What’s that? Perpetual something?
MERIUM: No. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Group: Oh!
MERIUM: It is where you relive the experience again and again and again and again until you get it right. And if you don’t get it right, you just continue to recycle the same pattern. Yes, you have heard of warriors who win the battle but come home to experience nightmares for the rest of their life, waking up screaming and whatnot.
Elena: Yeah.
MERIUM: This is one dramatic example of a PTSD experience. On a world such as this, full of land mines, it is not uncommon to run across many who have blundered onto such a mine and been damaged. They need not return again and again and again to the “scene of the crime” but many do because they are fixated on the pain and trauma of that event. It is an aberration, certainly, but it is a psychic result of experiences that one would not expect to happen in one’s life.
These can be serious or they can be ordinary, but if they have a profound impact on the experiencer, it can affect their development. When these traumas occur earlier in life, when they have not developed the ability to reason wisely as to the cause and effect of such trauma, it will be more difficult for them to re-experience the trauma as an adult since they are fixated at the age of the child, and to go back from the consciousness of adulthood to the childhood is virtually impossible for those who have not been born of the spirit.
Elena: Well, I don’t think there’s anything– I think I have done everything I can do to help her, so I just have to leave it at that. I mean, do you agree?
MERIUM: I am sure you have done all you can and probably more than was required. However much or little that may have been, unless and until she chooses to move on…
Elena: Yeah.
MERIUM: … she will not.
Elena: True.
MERIUM: And unfortunately, this is one of the casualties of such a life on such a planet. The travesty for those of you who are of good cheer and living relatively wholesome, happy lives, is to disremember an attitude for compassion for those who suffer. Whether they suffer at their own hand or at the hand of others is really irrelevant. Whether it seems people suffer because they like it or not, is nothing you can fix. But when someone wants help badly enough, they will get help. When the child seeks, God listens. When the child knocks, the door will be opened.
The idea that such experiences such as war, concentration camp, rape, fatal traffic accidents, AIDS and other tragedies are simply going to dissolve and not affect a person is unrealistic. It is a part of the education and this is one reason why a lot of us are so impressed with all the opportunities available to serve on a world such as this, and for the experience you get as a result of living here! You might wonder what on earth would anyone want to experience hardship for, but there is true heroism in those who triumph over great odds. Isn’t that what agondonters do?
Elena: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
MERIUM: You will — I know you have been told this and perhaps you don’t understand it, but you will in time be glad of your afflictions, if you aren’t already. Those of you who have mastered the effects of those experiences, who have assimilated the wisdom that came from that experience, and who are in a position to now teach others or minister to those who still suffer but who would like to come forth — you provide a rich service. If there were no troubles, how would you serve? You would simply be at a party all the time and where would you develop character? Where would you learn to withstand defeat? How would you be able to forestall rebellion? What good could you be in the formulation of eternity? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Elena: That’s a different party! One that we haven’t gotten to yet.
Closing
MERIUM: No, but the lessons you learn here are assimilated into your consciousness and that which has lasting value will serve throughout eternity. Thus, the work you do today and the play you enjoy today is a part of the developing process of your eternal and immortal soul — the experience of becoming one with your Indwelling Adjuster, who has reached down from Paradise to join with you in the momentous task of conjoining wills in order for destiny to unfurl as we have been promised from our Eternal Parents in Paradise.
Being a child in this world is a full time job, so go on out there and have fun. That’s an order!
Elena: Well, we’re glad that you’re here ordering us around, Merium.
Paula: It helps.
MERIUM: See ya!
Group: See ya!
Thank you!
Bye!
