2007-05-06. No One Is Denied
Rio Rancho #146
Topic: No One Is Denied
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Teacher: Merium
TR: Gerdean
Opening
Music: “The Holy City” [sung A Capella by Carl, back-up by Dorenda.] Adolph Adams
When as night as I lay sleeping I dreamed a dream so fair I stood in old Jerusalem beside the temple there I heard the children singing and ever as they sang Me thought the voice of angels from heav’n in answer rang Me thought the voice of angels from heav’n in answer rant. Chorus: Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Lift up your voice and sing! Hosanna, in the highest. Hosanna, to your King. And then me thought the scene was changed New earth there seemed to be I saw the Holy City Beside the tideless sea The light of God was on its street The gates were open wide And all who would might enter And no one is denied. No need of stars to shine at night No sun to shine by day It was the new Jerusalem that would not pass away It was the new Jerusalem that would not pass away
Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Lift up your voice and sing! Hosanna, in the highest. Hosanna to your King! Hosanna, in the highest. Hosanna to your King!
MERIUM: I am Merium.
Group: Hi, Merium.
MERIUM: I am impressed. I am humbled and enthralled by your performance. What a wonderful presentation of the Lord! Isn’t it amazing what is possible when your heart is in it? Even the work of the realm, the medial jobs that people have to go to, are made more, embellished, if it is done for God, in that same earnest intensity as is in the song you sang. We are enthused to prayer when we see this attitude take place. For indeed it is a prayer, this diligent application of the self to the life you live. So many people just go through the motions of living, and operate as if from a checklist and overlook the art of living and the enthralling task of cultivating morontia reality in your own environment.
Lesson
Yes, feng shui is a good start along those lines. I have observed that many of these toys and tools of the trade are effective and do serve until the spirit gains the upper hand completely and then the regimen, the habit, the scaffolding upon which the reality was grown is no longer needed, and yet what fun it is to see you each at your own level of soul growth and spirit development, to see how eagerly you invest yourself in what it is you love … what it is you think you love.
Perception of love itself is never-ending. Unceasingly our appreciation of love is unfolding and changing, even as it is the one recognizable Reality all of us yearn for. If people could just see that being in the presence of God is no more than simply giving oneself to the task at hand, in full consciousness, they are giving homage to creation and to the Creator.
I don’t have a lecture today. I don’t have anything on the agenda. It is early spring. Everything is in readiness, and yet we are in no hurry. “T’was early in the month of May ….”
Dialogue
Renault: Can we ask you questions, then, Merium?
MERIUM: I’d be delighted, yes.
Renault: Well, one is … maybe I should–
MERIUM: Don’t edit yourself like that! Just spit it out.
Renault: I was wondering about the Adam and Eve default, and if the other planets in quarantine that received Adams and Eves (as I’m sure they did), and how long if at all it took them to break down and lose track of their mission scope and perhaps default. Or are our Adam and Eve the only ones? Or can you expound on that at all?
MERIUM: Well, I see what you mean that you don’t know where to start because you asked about 20 questions there.
Renault: I was just wondering.
MERIUM: Our Adam and Eve — that is to say, the Adam and Eve who served on this world — had problems that no other Material Son and Daughter ever faced before because of the nature of the Rebellion. What makes yours different from the others is that the other 35 worlds participating in the rebellion where not at the same juncture as you were here. Adam and Eve thus had more unique problems on your world than on the others. I will try to explain it this way.
In terms of divorce in mortal families, children are always effected, but there is a certain phase of their development that such upheaval would be more devastating than others. Little ones, it is said, forget, and so they adapt much more readily. And after a certain point the personality is sufficiently established that they can adjust. But that mid-realm there, which is quite vulnerable, is where your planet lay.
There are many exceptions, because of the fact of your status as a decimal planet. The others are not affected as you are. I am not saying that they weren’t affected. I am sure they were. But the devastation on this world was sheer hell. There have been other rebellions in other universes and some of them have had defaults by their Material Son and Daughter also, although for other reasons, different circumstances.
Adams and Eves are trained to be planetary parents, but unfortunately occasionally they do err. Perhaps not to the extent that yours did, by messing up the blood plasm for eons to come, but they have also been foolish. But surely you can understand why would, why their judgment may be impaired when the circumstances for which they had been trained are altogether unlike what they expected.
You could compare that to your own life, again, by thinking about if any of you have ever been through a divorce, that your ideals may have said, “I’ll never have a divorce!” And yet when you got to that point of facing the fact that divorce may be the only viable solution for the situation, you had to recognize that you don’t have all the answers, and sometimes you cannot live up to your ideals. You just have to forgive yourself and move on. And that has happened many times with other Adams and Eves. It just has not always reached the extent that yours has here with the life plasm, the crowning glory of Caligastia’s folly.
The work of the Adams and Eves is a very important job. They are not selected to serve on a world without certain sponsorship, commendation, just like Caligastia had to be approved by his elders before he was sent here to be Planetary Prince. Same thing in your life, you can be appointed to a political position or given a situation to deal with and circumstances are such that you have to say, “I’m outta here!” or you get into it so deeply you can’t turn back. That happens. That’s part of the fatality that can occur because you have free will.
Even the Most Highs are vulnerable to error. But the higher you go on the spiritual hierarchy plane, the less mistakes are made until you finally get to a level where they just don’t make mistakes. They do everything perfectly and, of course, the Universal Father is perfect. He sees the end from the beginning, so perhaps if we had His perspective we would say “All’s right with the world in every aspect,” because for some reason or other it will work out somehow. In the end He will win. And as long as we don’t mind that, as long as we support that, we are in good graces with our self.
I was just thinking about the song you sang. About everyone being allowed to come in. “No one is denied.” This is how it is that some folks choose not to go ahead. They choose to go a different way and there is no light at the end of that tunnel. They would rather take their chances on ceasing to exist than give up the idea that they are in any way limited by design, and the fact is, all of us have limitations because we are each only one fragile filigree in the fabric that is creation.
What did you ask me about Adam and Eve? Several things. What have I overlooked? Or have I put you all to sleep?
Renault: I was thinking that it only took a hundred years for the default, you know, for them to get off track, and how much of the bio plasm did not get passed on to future generations. And the results are arthritis and other– cerebral palsy and things that afflict the human species that might have been diverted. You know. We might be a healthier species had they had a little longer to proceed.
And I was wondering, if perhaps the other worlds were more advanced in light and life prior to their quarantine, and ours happened so early in our development, it’s almost like we never even had a chance. We were doomed from the beginning, almost. Not doomed forever necessarily, but a long, long time. The other planets … were they more advanced in human developments … in light and life?
MERIUM: Not necessarily. Like I said, some may have been younger, some may have been older. It was the peculiar circumstances of your world that beat them. Yet they [Adam and Eve] did not embrace evil on purpose.
Renault: No, no! Just misled. Off down the wrong path.
MERIUM: They made a few wrong choices but they did not set out to do evil, and even now, today, they serve on the Council of 24 in Jerusem — the New Jerusalem.
Renault: Is there a way to help correct our bio plasm? Our DNA? To help the human species on this planet not be as disease-ridden and crippled and …?
MERIUM: The pattern has been implanted in you and so there is a possibility that over many thousands of years your DNA can be up-stepped, modified, corrected, improved, as long as it falls within the prescribed pattern that was planted in you by the Life Carriers. It is probably more important for you to focus on the social aspects of the default than the scientific, although it is certainly appropriate for scientists to investigate these solutions.
Stopping the downhill spiral of inferior breeding would help a lot, too. That is something you can work on as well. You are an organism, after all, and like an organism that has had a disease, once the disease is cut out the healing process can begin, but whether or not it can fully recover is a mystery. Whether or not you regain all that was lost does not mean you cannot learn methods and means of compensating.
Maintaining the attitude of good cheer is helpful, even in the face of disabilities and handicaps. You just have to learn to forgive and forget — if at all you can. If you sit around blaming or pointing the finger, you waste valuable energy that could be spent accentuating the positive. We all know that all is not right with the world. There is starvation and disease, devastation, pollution, not just geologically but the peoples themselves are flawed, ill, unbalanced. Some are destructive and some are incredibly altruistic and giving. But if you can focus on your task at hand, and approach it as if it were a song of praise, you will be part of the solution more than the problem.
In a way it has probably been helpful for you to learn about Adam and Eve, and Lucifer, as someone with whom to be angry about things that happened to you that causes you supreme displeasure. It’s always somewhat mortally gratifying to blame someone else for their problems and when you all understand that there are certain inherent problems that everyone has to deal with, then it is okay to become a little bit more compassionate with your fellows who may not have born up under the pressure of this world any better than Adam and Eve did. It is really all very relative.
They defaulted after only 100 years? Oh, yes, 100 years may seem like a very brief time in theory, but when you are walking on hot coals and don’t know how, 20 seconds can seem like an eternity. How are your patience factors? Your endurance levels? Do you get discouraged? It is inherent here. That is something that we are trying to help you overcome. We are trying to help compensate for the absence of your Material Son and Daughter.
They would have provided the development that would have by now created a Garden of Eden on your planet. The wars would be a thing of the past. The races would not be blended because they were here well before Adam and Eve got here, but they would have learned how to live together and work together. There would not be this tribal warfare going on between the races incessantly, nor would there be the driving competition. It would have been a gentler milieu, with much more songs of praise and hosannas, but since Adam and Eve didn’t do it, it falls on you to do it and we are here to help.
They will not be sending another Adam and Eve because they came to up-step the life plasm and they defaulted. So you can’t get another, but you can see what the ideal is that they wanted to implant and you can rise to the challenge of being their loyal children, like many who experienced divorce and who, even without divorce, cannot understand their parents until they themselves are parents, or until late in life when perspective changes such that they can see farther.
Elena: Well, I’m kind of curious. We’ve also been told that when we go from this world to the next one, that what we haven’t learned in this world then we get other opportunities so I guess, put in that context, am I understanding that right? What we don’t achieve in this world then we certainly have the opportunity and are given the guidance still in the next one, to achieve what we haven’t in this one? Is that right?
MERIUM: Yes, you can, but it will be personal. There is much that you can do here, while you are here, that will socially improve the world. The midwayers would certainly support any efforts that you could generate to help evolve the planet as well as yourself. If you have great ideas and ambitions for this world, yes you will still likely be able to do them in the morontia life, although many things will not be interesting there that are here.
Still, if you want to serve in civil service, you will find ways to serve On High as you would here, but you may not necessarily have the option of running for Mayor.
Elena: Well, you know, speaking for myself, I do get really discouraged here, about a lot of the things that are here. I mean, that doesn’t mean that I don’t keep trying to do what I can, and I certainly continue to start doing things; I’m not lacking in enthusiasm there. But I guess it does hold some comfort for me to know that what I don’t achieve here, it is certainly possible in the next one, so I don’t know. I look forward to accomplishing what I can in this world, but I also am enthusiastic about what it would be next, I guess is what I am trying to say, because, Merium, you mentioned the people who happened to have the experience of being a parent, or this or that or the other, that you’ll have opportunities in the next world to get that which you don’t get in this world.
MERIUM: Yes, of course. Yes, you are right. Opportunities abound, and many of the opportunities of Mansonia are remedial opportunities, such as making up for what you didn’t get here. But there are other things you can learn in Mansonia — in the mansion worlds — that are new, like the universal language. There is no point in learning it here. It’s just one big unfolding adventure, one vast school.
Esmeralda: It sounds exciting.
MERIUM: Well, it really is very satisfying. It can be exciting, but exciting is not as important to me as it is perhaps to your mortals.
Esmeralda: I think your saying “satisfying” was a better choice of words than exciting.
MERIUM: It is for me.
Esmeralda: I think for me, too. I’m not always pulling up the right world.
MERIUM: Sometimes mortals confuse excitement with fright. There’s a fine line between excitement and fear.
Renault: The roller coaster has a certain amount of excitement and fear to it.
MERIUM: Yes. There is some strange phase of human development that loves to be scared.
Renault: Um-hum. That’s why Steven King is so popular.
MERIUM: Indeed.
Elena: Well, we’re not going to be bored, I don’t believe, are we?
Renault: Or scared?
MERIUM: I think not. You won’t be bored. There is no reason to be bored, put it that way. Or scared. You wanted to know more about what to anticipate in Mansonia?
Renault: Sure.
MERIUM: And you wanted to know what it was like on worlds where other Adams and Eves defaulted.
Elena: Right, and there are 36?
Renault: There’s quite a few.
MERIUM: I see a lot of looking for other perspectives, looking for ways to learn more about what the options might be, some comparative analysis.
Elena: Have you been through them all?
MERIUM: I have been through the mansion worlds, yes. I think that’s remarkable for an 18-year old babysitter, don’t you?
Group: (Laughter) You get around! All seven of them? Well, babysitters are in big demand, I take it then, huh?
MERIUM: Indeed, on a world such as this. You all need to be observed and cultivated, nourished and coddled, and disciplined and attended to.
Paula: You know, I’ve always wondered whoever thought up the original idea of an Adam and Eve in a Garden of Eden. It’s a beautiful story! But of course we have no idea whether there was ever such a place or people. It was a story that they started so that people would try to do good instead of evil, and if they didn’t tow to the line and obey everything, then they’d get kicked out of Eden just like Adam and Eve did. Well, we have to tell stories like that to our children just to get them to learn how to behave and tow the line and do what they’re supposed to do, and I don’t think anybody figures you’re supposed to take it literally and figure that there really was an Adam and an Eve and a Garden of Eden. You just don’t —
All the different cultures had to have something like that, that they believed in, and I go to church and I believe that the Bible is a pretty accurate history of the things that went on and the wars that were fought and who was supposed to do the right thing and if you didn’t do the right thing you really got punished, but that is what we taught our children. Behave and if you don’t behave, Daddy will take you over his knee and give you a good spanking. And out you go. You’re dumped out of Eden. And that was, I’m sure, what they were trying to do years ago when they first wrote the Bible. You weren’t supposed to take everything in it literally, word for word.
You were supposed to understand the history of it and if you do things right, probably your life will be blessed and if you do things wrong you’re going to get punished, just like you did when you were a little child and Mommy said, “Do thus and so, and if you do it the other way, Daddy will take you over his knee and spank you.”
(And that’s why I got a lot of spanking when I was a little kid, because I was an only child and they figured that if they didn’t reprimand me, I’d do the same darned thing all over again, and I didn’t like the spankings and I didn’t like especially being put in my room with the door shut, because I had claustrophobia and I don’t like it, but that’s getting away from the lesson.)
It’s just general idea. Some people, like my Grandmother, took every single thing in the Bible and said, “This is it! It happened exactly the way it tells you.” And, of course, everybody knows that history has a lot of mistakes in it. I mean, it wasn’t written down for people in those days. It was word of mouth, and you know what that means. That some of it is going to get mixed up and tangled, but the general idea behind it is try and tow the line and do things right and everything will turn out just fine. And if you don’t, you’ll probably get punished for it.
MERIUM: And another thing! They always blame it on Eve. I think that is unfair, don’t you?
Paula: Yeah, I always thought so too.
MERIUM: Well, it’s good to see women rise up and become self-aware and stand behind one another, but it’s also true what you say that many stories have been handed down for centuries. This reflects in stories about the way they did it then as if it should still be done that way today. Earlier, Renault was telling Gerdean a story. Do your recall the story Renault?
Renault: About tying up the cat?
MERIUM: Yes. Tying up the cat devolved similar to the story about why they always cut off the end of the loin before it was roasted. Come to find out, great grandmother’s pan was short, and so they cut off the loin back then, and the daughter did the same because “that’s how Mom did it” and 500 years later they are still cutting off the end of the loin, because that’s the way it’s always been done, just as they are still tying up the cat.
Well, this is the way it has been with Bible stories, you are absolutely right. And you are right, too, that there are those who believe it to be the gospel and God’s truth and make life insufferable for those who have a different opinion. This is the root of the Crusades, actually, because it becomes a sticking point of one interpretation of God versus another interpretation of God and so the battle is on. This is the way it is, though, in evolved religion.
It is fortunate that the gods understand that the evolving worlds go through certain phases. It’s a good thing God is watching what’s going on and can keep an eye on your growth. Just like children at some point need to be weaned or toilet trained, then learn to share, then learn to be responsible, and so forth, so must the children of time and space. That is why we have come. That is why throughout time someone or something has come to each evolving world at certain points in their evolution, to mark the culmination of an age and stimulate the growth of the next.
All the evolving worlds throughout the seven super-universes are given a planetary prince in the early, early days of its existence. And at some point on every evolving world throughout the seven super-universes, a Material Son and Daughter arrive to up-step the plasm of the mortals on the world so as to make them more receptive to divine leanings. Every inhabited world receives a Son of God who comes to implant the Spirit of Truth that will allow for the floodgates to open for the Thought Adjusters to come.
There are certain developmental phases on the evolving worlds that happen in the course of the maturation of the world. Your world is 5/7 of the way toward its maturity. But it has had some handicaps. You could say that it is almost a grown man, but it shot itself in the foot and broke its leg back there, and so he is gaining strength, he is still handsome, can still have children and work, but has a bit of a limp.
More will be revealed as you evolve. The Bible is an historic document deliberately compiled to serve a world in the wake of the appearance of Jesus on this planet, and it is to be commended for the work it has done in keeping the concept of the Son of God alive, even as it has done much to damage the Son of God by its inherent imperfection.
The Urantia Papers are the fifth epochal revelation and there will be two more. This is the commentary of a teacher, Teacher Merium with the Teacher Corps. The Teacher Corps serves those who have knowledge of the Urantia Papers. The Greater Teaching Mission includes the Teacher Corps and the Teaching Mission, but it may provide other philosophic contributions, many of which are from other religions in other parts of the world, many of which have Christian underpinnings, and many of which are quite refreshing and new.
But as a Teacher in the Teacher Corps, it is my responsibility to advise you of the epochal revelations to your world, the Material Sons and Daughters being one of them. You may want to investigate to find out who they really were, what they really did, what really happened to them — not as a Bible story, but as a revelation. It’s really quite a fascinating story.
[Gerdean questions the use of the word “story.”] Story yes. Saga. Because still all the details are not known, all the minor points are not revealed. All of the emotions and effects and facts are not on record in the Urantia text but you have enough that it adds a great deal to understanding who you are, why the world is the way it is, and what you can do about it to find joy in it and to be of good cheer, as you minister to those you encounter as you pass by.
The entire universe is one vast school. You can certainly pour tea in class. It isn’t all brutal learning. And it isn’t all a lie. But it does help when you can understand things within your own context such that you can find intellectual peace. Those who have intellectual peace will not be troubled then by the disturbing the peace of others.
Have we covered enough for one afternoon or do you want to go one more round?
Renault: Thank you so much.
Elena: I think that’s some good stuff there. It’s certainly given me something to think about. Really, it gives me perspective about accomplishing what we can. This is probably an understatement, but those things that were meaningful to me today were the importance of striving in this world to not only serve others but get as much as we can from this world so it will put us in a better place for the next one. And that there is a lot of variety, certainly, of things to do in the next world.
I got a good review, actually, about the Adam and Eve story and how that happened, about the plasm part. I had read that, but I hadn’t picked up on that, so that was very interesting to me, too. I’m going to try to ask Gerdean what’s in her upper filing cabinet. That kind of intrigued me, too, so it’s been good.
Esmeralda: It’s been a good lesson.
MERIUM: I’ll just see if I can’t cram in one more final thought then that might help tie together my little lecture to Paula with your question about what lies ahead, and that would be to elucidate that although you are just now approaching the fifth epoch, and you have the sixth and seventh phases on your world before it is settled in light and life, and before it reaches the fruition of its potential.
As I review the experience of the morontia worlds and attaining Jerusem citizenship, I oversee and wonder about and anticipate for you, the many things that you are learning now that are first mansion world and second mansion world realities that will increase as you pursue, advance and aspire and as time goes by, such that mortals will be able to learn here what they would learn on the fourth or fifth mansion world, and even at the height of your planetary development when everyone loves God and seeks to serve.
Even the sixth and seventh mansion world lessons will be able to be mastered on the material plane, such that worlds that have attained light and life don’t have to go through the mansion worlds. They leave their planet of origin and arrive in Jerusem. That is a goal that we can see, we who have more experience and a broader perspective on time/ space than you do here in your time/ space configuration as finite mortal beings.
And so, as you tell tales of what went down, you can also look to anticipate what is yet to come. And even in the talking of it and the dreaming of it and the fantasizing about it, the real thrill, the real miracle, the real joy is the doing of it. The giving of yourself to the moment in sublime peace and trust of your doing it with and for the Lord, for truth, beauty and goodness. Doing it for love. And none will be denied. Bye bye!
