2002-03-24. God Is With Us
Rio Rancho #6
Topic: God Is With Us
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Opening
TOMAS: Good afternoon, beautiful friends. This is Tomas & Co. and glad to be with you. Today is one of those days when surely the stones cry out and rejoice in his coming. The beauty of Spring is with us, not only on your calendar but in your hearts. The dark winter is behind us; we face the blossoming of the new season, the joy of living, and rejoice in knowing the sun [sic] has risen. This is a day to rejoice indeed, to celebrate the arrival of the Son of Man — arriving in the city where he will meet his detractors and state his purpose once more before offering himself up to the culmination of his bestowal here.
Lesson
Presence
Haven’t you felt a similar gladness when, after struggling with a situation for a while, you make a decision? Having made the decision then, you have a happy heart, inasmuch as it is your sense that you have made the right choice, that your soul has reconciled that His will will be done in your life as a result of your choosing. Having made your decision, having stated your faith, and proceeding to walk therein, you have hope of the final resolution as being a selection which would be pleasing in the eyes of the Ultimate as well as serviceable to the moment.
Only as you give yourself up to the Spirit of Truth within you will you have such clarity of mind, such serenity of soul, as to emit such radiance of positive energy and affirmation, as to reflect the divine nature of God himself. And in this reflection of divinity you reveal to the life around you – [to] the stones on the side of the road, the leaves on the trees overhead, the countenances of passers-by — thus revealing to your arena the radiance of the Father as He may live through you. This is the gift given in Jesus’ arrival at Jerusalem that day long ago which is celebrated today — the realization that God is with us.
How do you realize God in your life How are you able to recognize Our Father in and through your relationship with him, with the spirit, with divinity? Certainly there are those who see Him in nature and testify to His greatness because of the beauty and grandeur of His creation, even the tiny reflections of perfection as they are revealed in the veins of the leaves or the veins in your hands. There are those who see God in their fellows, in their relationships. They see the Family of God, the Holy Trinity, revealed in the Family of Man, the marriage relationship and offspring of such unions, to people tomorrow — civilization-in-becoming. They see this as a reflection of divinity.
But how many of you realize that your very energy, when aligned with the God fragment which resides within you, is imitation of divinity such as to influence everything you touch, everything around you. You, too, may enter the City of Jerusalem, humbly riding on a borrowed ass, and radiate the Father’s goodness, greatness, divine beauty to all you see.
Divine love is contagious. As you live in love, as you walk with The Master, as you walk with your hand in His, as you align yourself with divinity, as you choose to do His will, as you seek His favor, you absorb and radiate His nature, and thus you walk as a Son of God and a Son of Man also – brothers now with Christ, workers in His field, fruit of his branches.
We in the Teacher Corps have enjoyed our assignment of appropriating truths from your history, your culture, your nation, and incorporating those concepts in ways which will speak most closely to your heart, your mind, in order for you to feel those values, and in feeling those values, responding to the guidance of the indwelling Guide, thus hearing from God Himself as to how you shall go, how you shall think, how you shall feel.
So it is with great pleasure that I close my lectern and mingle among you for conversation and discourse as regards your concerns in your life as you pass by. In this way how much more readily we will be able to conform our lessons to those yearnings of your soul which will render you a better reflection of the Father as may be useful to you and your fellow men and your world. Would you ask questions? Or offer commentary?
Dialogue
DORENDA: Well, you can always count on me for a question! Hi, Tomas. Welcome. Happy Palm Sunday, and I’m so glad you’re here! This is so great to start. So that was first and foremost. Most of all I don’t have anything except a full heart to bring, but at some point in the next few lessons, one thing I would be interested in talking about is in dealing with fellow workers, of the balance between applying what is right and what is good, working with different egos, and kind of turning the course away from fear into a more positive way. I don’t know if I’ve expressed that very well or not, but at some point in the next few lessons, that would be of great interest to me as a topic.
TOMAS: Daughter, greetings. I pause to touch your brow, to bless you in your openness and honest heartfelt desire to better serve. The breadth of your concern will give us subject matter for many afternoons, for there are so many varieties of flowers and weeds that grow along the path you walk. So there will be different methods of relating to different personalities, depending upon how best you might serve the moment.
Service
ESMARELDA: Tomas, this afternoon we have some guests that aren’t usually here, and from other towns and other states. We have Willie with us from Columbus, Ohio, and we’re very happy to have him. We have LaReen and Ashley from Idaho and Utah, so this is quite a widespread group and we’re very happy to have all of them. Especially, Tomas, I’m happy to have you in my home for the first time. This is truly a blessing and a joy and we’re looking forward, so much, to each week. And studying your lesson over again this week, after I finally got it on the internet, was just really a blessing. You are such a good teacher! There’s going to be no problem at all growing to love you like we love Ham and Abraham. But one of the things that I’d like help from you is, it doesn’t seem that I do very much in the way of service. I know that I haven’t been too well for the last year and a half, but I think my health is improving enough now and I feel I should be doing a lot more than I am, and so any help that you can give me along those lines will be very much appreciated.
TOMAS: The service you have provided by your outpouring is adequate to keep us all busy for a week, and so you have truly served. Let me see if I can arrange my responses so as to give honor to your words.
Indeed, we are blessed to be among kindred spirits, and those of you who are from distant parts are as close as those who reside here. There is nothing to separate those who are like-minded. Time and space are realities of the material life, but in the spirit, there is no separation; thus we embrace our students far and near, even as each and all of us are your teachers, companions and associates in the morontia realms as well as the material way. Every day we are united in purpose we grow in power. Our community extends and expands and the kingdom is enlarged. Indeed, in time, this love of God that meets in moments like these, in homes like yours, are those foundations that give reality to the physical connection you share, as well as the morontial reality we all share, and the spiritual reality which we are all creating by our collective voice.
This thing about service, Esmarelda, has a qualitative affect to it. Not only is it quantitative, for you understand that as you gain in wisdom, you no longer need to “spin your wheels” learning how to do what you’ve already learned to do. And so you become spiritually expeditious. Just because you don’t spend time doing what you once did, does not mean your energies are not now put to quality use, because you have learned how to focus your Self in such a way as to organize your mind for consecrated service. It doesn’t take what it once took. This is the value of experience. This is why there is no replacement for personal experience.
Simplicity
ANN: Tomas, during the course of your lecture, you gave us a personal ass to ride into Jerusalem, and I am trying to get the symbol of whether…. I know that it is sometimes what they call “transportation,” but today, is that ass that I’m riding on “humility” so that I am always open to the people around, no matter what the circumstances are? Or is that ass that I am riding on, into the village, “hardship” that takes me to a better place?
TOMAS: This is a typical human question. It gives me an opportunity to provide you with an either/or response, and the truth is there is some element of reality in either case. The “humility” is, of course, the ass that we would choose to ride, not so much as to portray ourselves as pious or self-righteous, but simple. Simple is a hard concept for your society, your culture, to appreciate. It will, however, come to pass that simplicity will provide the efficient vehicle because there is no need for all the extraneous trappings. The trappings of life are those embellishments which humanity uses to assert himself as if to say he has learned, he has mastered, he has arrived. If and as a sojourner in life speaks and acts with simplicity, it will be easier to keep your eye on that which is meaningful, on that which truly feeds the hungry.
ASHLEY: Tomas, hello and thank you for coming. I am grateful that I have an opportunity to get to know you and to share with this lovely group of people. I have some thoughts on healing and different techniques of healing as a group. I know that Rayson is taking people into toning, and I understand that we are all going through a healing time, a cleansing, a purging of ourselves and everything up to the surface, letting go of the old and becoming new. And also I am aware that this is a crucial time right now for us to either go forward or step back, and I’m curious if there is any healing techniques that you have that would be of assistance for us as a group.
Healing, Stillness
TOMAS: Interesting question, in that I have not anything to offer, as I have not discerned a favorite healing technique, aside from the value of personal time with God in Stillness.
However, I have certainly been present at many demonstrations of physical adjustments which could be considered healing or even miraculous (but certainly an improvement!) as a result of the mind’s will to apply itself in faith and hope of a better reflection of itself, in and through its material organism. Having paid some attention to these results of faith in action, I have enjoyed the many devices derived by humanity to prove the point, to demonstrate the concept, to depict the truth of the value of faith.
It is possible to heal many of these mortal ills as an exercise of faith and conscientious application of essential laws of nature. But the miracle I enjoy most is the heart that begins to rely upon the Spirit for the answer to all its questions. When you begin to realize that the Universal Father is the First Source of all that you are and the Center of what you are becoming, you realize how dependent you are upon that energy, that power, that pattern which you depend upon as being yours and yours alone. As you trust Father, as you sit in His lap, in faith of His overcare, as you hold your hand in His and seek perfection, He will help you attain perfection.
He will help align your mind and soul in such a way as to give you that hunger that will find what it needs in order to be filled. In some cases this is a more material representation, as in crystals and minerals. There are essences more etheric, as toning and aromas which speak to and heal other areas of the mind which crave that more aesthetic level of perception, that will enhance spirit connection, that speaks to that human being. There are those who enjoy the physical hands-on contact, as Reiki practitioners, as Life Carrier healing practitioners, phrenology and reflexology experts.
These different techniques appeal to the different tastes and propensities of the various racial strains and cultural inclinations as well. Many of these are mere superstition, but as faith is added, it is exalted and elevated to worship, and this worship is accepted On High as viable praise of Deity as it is understood by the Children of God. So to ask if I have a favorite, no, nor do I have one that would be a panacea for all humanity, except for that tried and true practice which we promote, that being the practice of sitting in Stillness and listening for that quiet voice within, that part of God which is yours and which you are destined be one with.
ASHLEY: Thank you.
TOMAS: You are welcome, child. You are a delight and a gift to those who know you. All of you are cherished, precious, unique and priceless in your own right. Different you are, oh, so different — like snowflakes are magnificent and unique — and yet if you only are seen from afar, you are not discerned. It is when you are clearly seen and when your facets are illuminated by the eye of discernment that your uniqueness and originality is allowed to come through such that you can each only bow to the immensity of our Creator that such works are able to come into being.
One more question.
The Teachers
WILLIE: I have a simple one. This is Willie. And I work with Anatolia in Columbus, or vice versa, and she said that she’s not from our galaxy but that she is basically from a planet that was already been established in light and life, and from what I remember reading from the transcript from your group last week, it sounds like, Tomas, you have moved on well and you said you are, apparently, from our galaxy. Do you happen to be from the same neighborhood as Anatolia, that the two of you are working in the Teaching Mission? And I know it’s a big universe and beyond but had you known one anther before or have you only met in the hallways of the Teaching Mission?
TOMAS: How marvelous a question, for this enables me to expand your appreciation of the local universe. Yes, I know Anatolia. She and I have been students together in classes we have taken along the way. We know each other, respect each other, and enjoy each other as personalities and we knew each other well before we were each given the opportunity to serve here on Urantia, but we are not from the same world. There are so many worlds in Nebadon it would be unusual for many to hail from any one particular world.
I have made it a point to investigate the home base of many of my peers only because it’s part of my personality propensity as a human and as a cultural anthropologist. I enjoyed my work of going into the cultures of those outside my immediate environment and studying their way of life. Thus I have a list of the worlds of my co-workers in the Teaching Mission that I intend to make a point of visiting when I have completed my assignment with you; however, that will not be right away. And so I will need to wait, and look forward to those adventures even as I encourage you, over time, to look forward to those many adventures that you will have as you ascend through the Father’s many mansions en route to Salvington and beyond.
I have visited worlds settled in light and life, and yet it was not possible for me to assimilate all that my eyes beheld because I was not exposed to that reality level to that extent. My world was advanced, but it was only pieced together. The experience of an entire planet settled in light and life was even beyond my grasp. However, as I become more familiar with the architectural spheres of Mansonia and beyond, I am more able to appreciate worlds such as that which Anatolia comes from and the tremendous acuity that must surely be the characteristic of anyone who had that experience.
I have certainly found her to be sharp, keen, brilliant in her character reflection of our Eternal Parents, and I’m certain this has much to do with her upbringing on her world. However, again referencing snowflakes, in the far-flung universe, her clarity is no [more or] less beloved than your uniqueness here. Even with all its difficulties, these very difficulties have helped to forge a character which is priceless and unique in all of Nebadon. Again, another illustration of the magnificence of Deity.
WILLIE: Thank you.
TOMAS: This is my pleasure.
Closing
The heavenly angels sing. The rocks cry out. The world is alive, rejoicing in anticipation of his coming. In the days that follow, as the collective consciousness of your realm is enlivened by the topic of Easter and the Resurrection, as you endure Good Friday and the reflections of Maundy Thursday, be mindful of his coming still. Relinquish him not. Hold fast to his garment. Seek him. Look for him everywhere. Find him, speaking to you in the flowers, in the rocks, in the rain, in the wind, in the music, in the mind, in the soul, in the heart, and allow him admittance.
I’ll see you joyous ones next week. Farewell.
