2003-11-16. The Quality of Mercy
Rio Rancho #74
Topic: The Quality of Mercy
Group: Rio Rancho TeaM
Teacher: Tomas, Anatolia
TR: Gerdean, Matthew
Opening
MUSIC: Elena on Piano: “I Need Thee Every Hour”
PRAYER: Matthew: Let us place ourselves in the presence of the Most Highs. Jesus, Lord of all, I changed things just a little to include the Most Highs, as those who preside between heaven and earth, as you know them well, and as we aspire to know them. We take your teachings and what you left, in terms of the gift of faith as our inheritance, which is our ticket to eternal life (for which we are forever grateful), and look forward to the times when the Most Highs may be among those that we know in creation and in eternity.
We aspire to all that is promised to us, simply through faith alone, and are grateful for all that is ahead of us. Now is the time for us to live the love that we have been given and to share it with all who we encounter. And for the teachers today, we are grateful, and appreciate the wonderfully warm attendance today and for old friends as well as new, and for all that you have accomplished through your gifts to us, we are forever grateful. Amen.
TOMAS: Good afternoon, faithful friends. I am Tomas, your host, teacher, companion and friend in company with many in the invisible realm who conjoin with you in this familiar setting to once again raise your countenance to those On High who look to you to carry out the mandates of divinity.
Let me pause, before we commence our lesson for this afternoon, to simply enjoy you, and let me invite you to participate in this practice with me. What I am prone to do, without your knowledge, my practice is to acknowledge the spirit in you each, to actually and literally pause before that in you that is real and eternal. In this way, I acknowledge the part of you that is being created by your efforts in divine consciousness. While the mortal trappings are what you obviously share in your material life, it is the inner Self, that part which does not necessarily reveal itself in material terms, which makes you most real and which indeed is eternal. Therefore, let us pause for a moment to greet each other in the spirit, to allow your soul to step outside your mortal identification and embrace the soul of your fellows. In this way you become more in tune with the spirit realm and then simply expand your hearts in order to inculcate those of us who are here with you in this same eternal context. I greet you now and invite you to greet each other the same.
What a bouquet of flowers you represent! Each of you a unique blossom, but together a full bouquet of beauty and loveliness.
Lesson
The message from me today is Mercy. A simple word, even a common concept, but so misunderstood and unappreciated by those of you who feel mercy is mere weakness or reserved for those who are pitiable. Well, my friends, there is not one of us who has tread the evolutionary path that has not known that condition of feeling truly pitiable before the magnitude of all there is. The natural sense of smallness that comes from being a mere spec in the vast realms of space and the all too familiar dissolution of identity completely as you dissolve into the ocean of infinity your one droplet becoming part of all that is. Look at how merciful our God is in his individuation of you each! Not simply as constructed by cellular intelligence, but constructed in the divine sense by being indwelt by God himself, by that element of reality that goes beyond fact and fiction but enters into Reality itself.
This is mercy, in that you are given consciousness to know your path, to know you exist, to know you are a participant in the on- going stream of consciousness that will culminate in the Ultimate, in the Absolute. In the interim, in the near infinite interim, you are called upon to prevail with others who are also on this same path, albeit with their own individuation, their own composition, their own personality and their own approach to life, to death, and the continuum.
In this process of advancement, en masse, as you do, it is so easy to run aground of the remembrance of your shared plight, your mutual congress. Mercy allows for each to be each, as Father allows you to be you. And herein is the core of the admonition to love your enemies, to forgive those who abuse you and to show mercy where mercy is denied you. To do so is to be godlike.
This is not easy for the mortal mind to comprehend because so much of your nature is involved in survival and competition and amassing a hedge against insecurity. And yet from the paternal/maternal/eternal point of view, you can perceive that these machinations are brought on by a concern that is from another source than the Source of security you enjoy as a conscious child of divinity.
Conscious is the key word. I am not concerned about beliefs. Beliefs are mortal inventions to help you understand your concept of who you are and why you exist. But consciousness of consciousness results in super-consciousness, and this is the realm which borders on the spirit, and that reveals to you, and thus creates, a higher dimension of reality, even for and in your material existence.
And those of you who have touched upon this reality, and who have flickered with the eternal light, are now in a position to manifest that same quality of mercy on your fellows who reside where they inadvertently do harm to one another though ignorance and fear, as these are those to whom mercy is needed the most.
The Son born here as Jesus is the personification of mercy. Ever was he filled with understanding and compassion, and even when he denounced those who would destroy him, his soul was filled with mercy that they may see the error of their ways and come to believe and know the glory of God.
The voice of mercy weeps with you and for you in your travails. All those conscious of consciousness understand their own fallibility, their own relative perfection, and gladly accept His mercy. We can talk more about mercy and other values as we carry on. For now I would like to leave off my remarks in order to counter my energy with those of another.
Matthew: That means go ahead?
Gerdean: I guess that means go ahead. I don’t feel anybody over here.
Matthew: Okay.
ANATOLIA: I am Anatolia, for the record, and for informal opportunity to present my credentials as a member of this universe and all that is; I am grateful to be here. Welcome, friends, to this wonderful meeting that we are fortunate enough to have once per week in this Land of Enchantment.
The reason I frequently refer to the Land of Enchantment, is because this is in large measure, much like the realm from which I hail that in my material life was a sphere in which light was finely filtered and we had a broad, open, spacious sky in which to enjoy our place within the heavens. So it is not unlike that which you experience, as an open sky, broad spacious form of light enhancement and enjoyment. I often find it more than a pleasure to enjoy your company on these Sunday afternoons in what you may all but take for granted.
Even from my vantage point now, far removed from the physical world, I find your environment to be stimulating and exciting, and were I to encumber a body again, it would be in a place much similar to your own. So maybe this explains my constant reference, and you will have mercy on me for what otherwise might seem to be a lack of imagination but truly is reinforcement of what I, too, appreciate in your placement on the planet.
For today’s presentation, mine is not a formal one, but rather is one of placement for where one’s priorities ought to be. This is a conversation item that may or may not in reality deserve to be on your plate within a truly open-minded and spirit filled manner, for to determine for you or to dictate or preach to you of what your priorities ought to be is a presumption on my part, and one in which our teachers from the highest level would not encourage or subscribe to, so you will not get a thumping over the head for any implied misplaced priorities. I, on the other hand, wish to present you with a consideration of priority determination, and that is, what is it that you can or should place your energies into.
You realize that the world in which you live, breathe and have your being is a world of limitation. From every direction and every consideration that you will consider, this is a world that has limits in the physical sense. This is where your spirit / mind sense enables you to bridge that physical limitation to include infinity and all that exists between it, for without this dimension, you would be non-conscious beings and simply existing in some realm within creation. While still inclusive of all, you would not be mindful of your place within it.
So I invite, for your consideration, a priority to be placed upon your awareness of who you are and your place within creation. For to be self-aware is to be on the path of self-awareness. Even a dog or a cat is self aware, but for their capability to know where they fall within the breadth of possibility within creation is not theirs to enjoy, for you have the opportunity to sit at the hand of God, to share in the glory and the manifestation of All-That-Is.
Imagine if you will, like last week or perhaps even more expansive yet, you were seated at the right hand of our Heavenly Father. Imagine, if you will, what that would be like. Being that I, too, have not had this experience, I can only imagine. But place yourself there as you may and as the mind of our Creative Source and Center presents to you all that is before you, in creation, and as clouds, for example, were to roll forward and open new vistas of seeing, you would see forms of life and beauty far surpassing anything you have imagined.
Picture the most picturesque scenes you can imagine: a rainforest, or an orchid-filled front yard, or a mountaintop that is glistening and overflowing with water and greenery at every turn. These are only stepping stones in the beauty of All-That-Is in our Father’s mind and reality, for to be in the mind of God is to be All-That-Is. For you to be in the mind of God is to be included in All-That-Is. And it is in this Centerpiece that we all find ourselves in the mind of God. It is our identity; it is our true place, our true home.
The beauty of it is that it does include everything and everyone, for to bring creation back into a center point, before it expanded, would be to still include everything and everyone. It would be the same point, whether creation had expanded in the mind of God, All IS, anyway, and All is included. So I give you this not as a source of frustration, but rather as a source of a focal point from which all goes forward and all will return.
It is with the beauty of all ages that I invite you to be and to include yourself and everyone within your room and within your realm and within all ages past and forward, to be in that moment of creation and the eternal truth of what is. I will be happy to rejoin you whenever you will have me, and I leave this moment of bliss and blessedness, as the first creation took place. Go forth and be bountiful! Peace be with you, and may the love of Christ abound in your heart. Amen.
TOMAS: Thank you co-worker, sister and helper. Let us communicate! Greetings, Emily. How charming to enjoy your presence once again. How have you been?
Emily: Well,… busy! Doing well. Dealing with work and looking after my grandmother and traveling, and I’m glad to be back here with you all. I think of you often.
TOMAS: We are a home base for you when you choose. We are oriented to help you reconnect with your Core Reality. What a wonderful base to operate from, really. From such a Core of supporters and promoters of the Real You, you are able to enjoy the many mortal activities of relationship and adventure. We will, no doubt, enjoy your sharing more of your contact with the material life as you find it, inasmuch as this is the experiential path you weave as you find your way home to Paradise, a path we are all engaged upon. We are like a classic book in your library, one which can be appreciated again and again, parts of which bear repeating, many parts of which are only revealed after many uses. What shall we engage in today that augments who you are?
Dialogue
Gerdean: I would like to say to Anatolia how much I appreciated the elaboration of the idea that we are not just physical, but we have spiritual and mental realms in which we can operate, because I find myself being more and more limited in the physical things I can do. I despair that my life is wasting away. But as you pointed out, Anatolia, the realms of the mind are nearly infinite and the spirit is certainly infinite, if I can just aspire to some of that transcendental space, but the mind is such a great realm of being: the imagination and the study and the history and psychology and conceptual thinking. It is truly a universe to discover, right between my ears, and so I will remember that when I start feeling wimpy about the fact that I’m not as strong as I used to be; I cannot rearrange furniture at the drop of a hat, and don’t find running around as fun as it once was. So I appreciated that, Anatolia, and I just wanted to thank you for that.
ANATOLIA: You are most welcome.
Paula: You know, Gerdean, just as Mary Jo said the other day, we’ve become very close over these months that we’ve been together, and like she said, it’s just like we were one great big family, and we take care of each other, so you’ve got a lot of people behind you and saying, “Buck up, now! Life is still very good, and you have a great deal to be thankful for, as well as things that bother you.”
Gerdean: Well, I sure have you as an example. Thank you, Paula.
Thoroah: I appreciated what Anatolia said about imagine sitting at the right hand of God. And I finally got a vision of that within my mind, of God here and me here. Being on God’s right hand. And I don’t think I can put that into words, but that was a nice awakening there. Positioning. As she was trying to get across.
Esmeralda: Which reminds me also of the disciples, they wanted to know who was sitting on the right hand and who sat on the left.
Thoroah: It’s a symbolic thing. But as far as in the mind, it really made a connection.
Elena: I liked the part about being IN the mind of God, and I guess, what the positioning … that seems to be one of the key words. Rather than being outside of things, or feeling like an outsider, or not good enough, or whatever. How could you be anything but wonderful if you were inside the mind of God!? I found that to be very comforting, and helpful in establishing priorities, and like she said, without giving guidance for what those priorities might be, but to give you a way of finding out what your priorities are.
Gerdean: And again, I think it was Tomas who was talking about the fact and fiction and reality. When you think about being in the mind of God, you think, “I am a figment of God’s imagination!” which would be fiction, perhaps. But we are not even just fact. We are a Reality presence. Having been created by God, who is Real – and not mere fact and not mere fiction – just added another dimension to that. Being in the mind of God is not just a figment of God’s imagination, which could be erased in a second draft! We’re in it for the long haul.
TOMAS: This is quite charming, to hear you converse openly about your impressions of the teachers’ impressions on your mind. It is a good start toward being able to continue this practice of retaining a perspective that can be carried over into all you do and all you are. But there are many things about you and what you do and who you are which will fall away and become as dust or a faint memory in the course of time, and which may or may not require a focus by you and your peers because it is so temporary.
But there are times when – especially at this juncture in your growing soul consciousness, your developing morontial reality – that you become enamored of a concept or connected to a concept that endears itself to you in such a way that you refuse to let go. These are often mind sets you have been trained in culturally, genetically, or socially, that you would be hard pressed to recognize and abandon as a stumbling block for your spiritual growth or the growth of those around you.
The danger of such a configuration as the one we enjoy, as compared to the advantages that it provides, is that if you all become comfortable with the congeniality and compatibility of the consciousness you have experienced, you will be reluctant to grow from that range of reality into greater dimensions of reality, for it will often mean leaving behind that scaffolding, those underpinnings which have held you together in your growth thus far. This is the infrastructure of your society.
And the principle I am trying to make is that you are as a microcosm of the greater society which you are impacting by your greater reality, and thus you as a group of individuals is able as a group to help lead your greater culture into higher dimensions of thought and spirit appreciation. While that may appear to be impossible, even absurd, from the intimate graciousness of this small but impressive configuration of mortal beings, you are here in company with each other because of your desire to know God and to be of service to that reality. And thus you will naturally perpetrate what you can of this reality on what you touch every day as you go out into the fields to provide for yourselves in the ways of the world and to speak the truth of reality when and as you can, as you pass by.
You are not promoting despair; you are not demonstrating hostility; you are familiarizing yourself with qualities such as mercy; you have begun to extemporaneously weave the truth of the divine into the frame of reference you have for the mortal life and thus, you are impacting your world and yes, it is a slow evolutionary process, perhaps boring and tedious to those who yearn for more dramatic and seemingly effective ways, but this up-stepping of humanity from its roots is the most assured way of advancing civilization from a realm of barbarity to a realm of light and life.
Your contribution is important. It is appreciated, and we encourage you by the simple sessions wherein we share the inner life, the recognition that we are points of light in the mind of God that do his bidding. Even while you work and play in the field where you are planted. Any problems you need to work through that could use a fuse?
Esmeralda: One thing that I think I need to do is to think about mercy and to check out the mercifulness in some of my thoughts – especially when it comes to politics. You used three words together, Tomas, that I thought was really beautiful: paternal, maternal and eternal. I liked that process of words.
TOMAS: Thank you for your compliment, and yes, thank you for developing a need for more mercy in your thinking processes.
As you become aware of your impact on others, you are able to see how your beliefs and opinions are able to carry a message that often goes beyond the simple confines of your mind and your thinking process to encourage, as well as inflame, the minds of others. If you are going to affect the way other people think by putting forth your opinions, which you are quite open to do and freely do, give your own sense of truth an opportunity to plant the seeds of mercy in the minds of those you touch by not passing such severe judgment on those who are not acting according to your perception of truth, beauty and goodness, for even while it may be true, inflaming the minds of others is not a productive way to bring about the reality you seek. Instead, it causes the snarl, the opposite effect. So having an appreciation for the value of mercy will not necessarily alleviate your opinions, but will certainly contribute to your understanding of how your opinions might affect others, and thus you bring mercy to the situation, and sometimes being merciful to the human condition is even more pertinent than being merciful to the human being himself.
Emily and Elena: Could you tell us a little more about what you mean by that?
TOMAS: The mortal sees things overtly and materially. It sees one individual at a time and it has opinions relating to each individual, but a farther view, a philosophic perspective, will allow for overall perceptions. It will include group consciousness and – not just political, not just cultural, not just social, but a general consciousness that has power over the individuals therein.
For instance, you understand conscience, as compared to conscious. Conscience is based on what the group will allow. When you do something that the group does not support, you feel guilty, you feel alienated. Your conscience bothers you because you have done something outside the support of that peer group.
Thus, there are bigger minds than individual minds and bigger people will think in terms of bigger situations, and while you may not, frankly, care enough about one ignorant individual to allow that mind to matter that much (in terms of mercy), if you can conceive that that mind is one of many like minds which has more power than one mind at a time, then you might consider the factor of that collective consciousness. That is what I meant. Is that helpful?
Thoroah: As in, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do?”
TOMAS: That, of course, would be taking it to the maximum extent, yes. And that is certainly mercy in its highest demonstration, but this is not to say that you are not also encouraged to manifest mercy even to those ignorant individuals who do harm by and through their ignorance. Even as that is a personal matter.
Thoroah: Mercy would be the antidote to war.
TOMAS: Truly. For then each individual warrior would be able to see the folly of his ways in attempting to right the wrongs of humanity through one individual contact, in particular, one that was fraught with the many layers of animosity which have been built up through generations and centuries of conflict and disdain.
You are a whirlwind of extremes this afternoon, Thoroah, but why not ought one look at one extreme to the other when one considers such a quality as mercy, for has it not been said, “Father, have mercy on me as I show mercy to others.” For how do we know when we are being merciful? What we are overlooking that might be better served to be confronted? But in faith of the overcare of the divine, who knows the end from the beginning, the act of showing mercy, even to those who would be called thine enemy, is truly at the heart of those who seek peace. Those, too, who would forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Closing
The source of understanding all this is the Source of love. God is love. Love is the desire to do good to others. And, to do good to others is to show mercy in the face of the circumstances of the mortality that you all enjoy and endure, as you seek to rise above the conundrums of the evolutionary experience to the joys and triumphs of the spirit.
Thanks be to the God who indwells each of you and us as this divine reality will allow and enable you to take these thoughts to heart and nurture your soul growth to play in the fields of your mind with these relative truths until they sit at the right hand of God and find their place in the scheme of things, and thus take their place in the onward march of ascension. In the meanwhile, go about your business, working and playing, living and toiling, rejoicing and showing mercy. Amen and farewell.
