2001-01-07. The Ascension Career
SE Idaho #23
Topic: The Ascension Career
Group: Pocatello TeaM
Teacher: Daniel, Alkon, Loretta, Lorenzo
TR: Bill K.
Opening
Daniel (Bill/Isaac): Greetings. I am Daniel, your friend, your teacher, your mentor, and your guide.
Ken: Greetings, Daniel.
Daniel: It is my pleasure to address you first with words of love and familiar comfort. My dear friends, even as Klarixiska indicated, it is not the size of groups that determine their measure, but rather the depth of love that is shared and responded to. Indeed, tonight, it has been most pleasant for us to see you four in such a comfortable exchange of your lives with each other.
Lesson
Ascension Career
The morontia career, which you are actually beginning, is not pious or stuffy or any of those things that are sometimes associated with “spirituality”, but is characterized rather by increased truth awareness, love hunger, and service opportunity. These qualities, an enhanced awareness of truth, an increasing desire for love, to receive and to show it to others, and to express yourselves in deeper service, indicates, my dear friends, that you are making substantial, steady progress just as we have talked of so often in the past. You are like the mountain climbers who place their hands carefully, and their feet carefully, so they can move upward. Spiritual growth is not a race that is won by the swift nor by those who are engrossed with ego desires, but is a matter of steady, habitual contact with your Indwelling Spirit, with the guidance from your angels and from your Thought Adjuster, and the increased awareness of the opportunities which are literally everywhere present for you to give your service.
Tonight, as you discussed, I feel it is appropriate to allow some time from your personal teachers. Already Klarixiska has made her entrance with an opening prayer. Lorenzo and Loretta and Alkon, as well as Klarixiska, of course, would like to take some time with you. Alkon will be our next speaker.
Novelty
Alkon (Bill/Isaac): Dear friends, I am Alkon, Isaac’s personal teacher and I have had numerous opportunities to share with you in the past. I wish to make a few brief comments regarding newness, the concept of new opportunity. You see, there has been enormous interest manifest on your planet over the change of calendar from one millennium to another despite arguments over whether this was the proper year for such acclaim. This enormous interest belies an underlying hunger present in all peoples who possess Thought Adjusters for the transformation of the mind which will result in true spiritual experience.
It is, of course, obvious that for most this awareness has not been foremost in either their minds or their actions because, in fact, for most people this is not a conscious awareness. Nevertheless, hunger persists for true and lasting transformation in people’s minds and hearts. The problem is that most people don’t know the source of this hunger and therefore try to satisfy it with material or intellectual food. Now, it is important always to strive for intellectual growth and it is necessary to provide for life’s necessities materially. If your planet were a normal one in stages of Light and Life this hunger would be satisfied and people would not be fixated upon the mindal and material realms as they are so clearly on your world.
Newness is the essence of the whole Paradise ascension career, for every moment is new, every day potentially different, every year a milestone of progress. You, indeed, have all become very aware of this dimension in your lives so that what I am telling you is nothing truly new; yet I felt it was important to underline at this time the real transformation which you have understood by participation and which the rest of the world who are spiritually unaware, hunger and thirst for so desperately.
I advise you, in whatever tactful, appropriate manner you discover, to let the world know, individual by individual, that there is a banquet table spread, heaped with delicious food of every description to satisfy everyone’s taste; and that this banquet table lies within that individual’s own inner being, their super-conscious mind. Tell them that there is a well of water which springs up and never runs dry, also within them. Let them know this truth in whatever way you can. As we practiced last week addressing the hypothetical question of why you should have such joy and satisfaction in your lives, this exercise was not done merely for show and tell, but was done to put you in the mode of thinking that you may be sensitive to the opportunities which you might otherwise miss. I am not suggesting that you need to go out, for even as you have discussed tonight, that would indicate your lack of spiritual growth. But be ready to give an answer and be ready to point people to God within and to their essential sonship and daughtership.
This is the newness that everybody needs to know on this darkened, damaged, retarded, but potentially marvelous planet. Michael of Nebadon decided to come here and Urantia is forever the interest of the entire universe of Nebadon. You are amazingly fortunate to be living on this planet in these times; and I, Alkon, rejoice to be part of this experience. I have exceeded my time. I apologize, Daniel. I will now step aside.
Attention
Loretta (Bill): I am Loretta, here present as I always am at these meetings. My topic, very briefly, is to discover at a new level the beauty that surrounds you.You have been told and you understand that a person sees what they pay attention to. As our Master would not pay significant attention to evil, so he saw the goodness of his Father everywhere present. But most amazingly he saw His Father’s goodness in the minds and hearts of other human beings. He looked past their defenses. He looked past their errors. He even looked past their sins and sensed the beauty of their inner Being. While God is resplendent in glory, His glory is muted in nature, although it is there. His glory is more manifest among personalities, persons, for He is the direct author and creator of personality. The great First Source and Center, Himself the source of all personality, desires a universe filled with other persons who can respond to Him and to each other, and enjoy the superb pleasures of personality interaction.
Tonight you have shared your four personalities and there has been much beauty evident to me…much beauty. You are more beautiful than the most delicate lily, the most perfect orchid, the most lavish iris, for your beauty is personal. We who are morontial beings see differently than you do for we can see the beauty of the soul, the morontia substance which is expressed through your minds and bodies. May this new year, for you all, include an enhancement of the sense of beauty in creation, of the world of nature, but much more in the intimacy and joy of personality sharing.
The last thing I want to say is that we teachers are not engaged in evaluation of others. Our purpose is to teach and share what we have learned by our experience so that you may benefit and make your learning experience easier to obtain. I thank you for listening to me. My love to all of you. And…..Yes, Pat, I am still with you. You hear me more than you think you do. I will continue to work with you as long as you so desire. And now to all of you..thank you once again. I must step aside.
Dialogue
Pat: Thank you very much.
Lorenzo (Bill): Greetings, this is Lorenzo.
Ken: Greetings, my friend.
Risk
Lorenzo: Yes, yes, it is a delightful time we are having here this evening! We are actually right in the same circle as you are. We are not up on a pedestal, but down here with you.
I don’t have a prepared lesson tonight, but I was offered the opportunity to speak and, of course, I would not let that go by. I would comment a moment on “the satisfaction of risk successfully completed”. So, you see, just like you people, we can come up with topics on the spur of the moment!I wish to point out that I have experienced over the many years I have been alive, both as a mortal and more so as a morontial being, the immense satisfaction that comes when you step out in faith and do something, say something, attempt something, believe something that you have not hitherto done, thought, said or believed and find that you were successful, that you survived the risk and that you made progress as a result.
In a sense there is so real learning without the element of risk. Think about it. When a child is asked to read out loud this is one of the more terrifying experiences for many mortal children. Regardless of their level of ability to read, only the most confident do the experience of oral reading without a sense of nervousness, fear of making mistakes, apprehension of having all eyes focused on them, or so they imagine. Yet to become a good oral reader, able to read out loud, there is no other way to learn but to take the risk of failure, embarrassment, to eyeball fear and plunge ahead anyway.
Often you have been advised that risk is an essential part of life; and I know you understand this for you have experienced it. I merely want to say to you tonight that there is great satisfaction in taking a risk and finding solid ground. It is a satisfaction of two things: the satisfaction of knowing that you had enough courage to do it and the satisfaction of discovering that what you hoped for, what you had faith in, what you intended to accomplish, came to pass, was a worthy goal and an action that could be accomplished.
You see, from our perspective, this planet and the others without the normal celestial leadership are truly in the dark and it does require so much more courage to trust without the evidence of sight, without the precepts of Material Sons and Daughters as role models, without the Planetary Prince’s visible staff, all these things that you lack as a planet. But because it requires such a spiritual decision to choose, to take the risk, therefore is your satisfaction that much greater.
I have tried to portray my thoughts through Isaac’s mind, but he feels that he has not communicated accurately. Therefore, I am pausing my discourse to acquiesce to his request for any questions of clarification. I personally think I have made my points clear. Are there questions that you have regarding what I am trying to get across?
Ken: None from here.
Lorenzo: Very well. Isaac is satisfied. One moment please.
Divinity
Klarixiska (Bill): I am Klarixiska. While a prayer is altogether worthy as a piece of verbal offering I, too, wanted to have my words in the transcript.
You have heard the words truth, beauty, and goodness as the expression of divinity at the finite level. There are no higher concepts than these three available in mortal experience. The three words, while denoting different things, different concepts, are also united. Truth is both beautiful and good. Beauty of necessity expresses truth and comes from the Source of goodness. All truth and all beauty is divinely good. So, you see, there cannot be truth without beauty and goodness. There cannot be beauty without truthfulness and goodness. There cannot be goodness that is not true nor beautiful. The will of God always embraces these three. It is never the will of God when you contemplate ugliness, falsehood or evil.
Yes, it is difficult to know the highest from among the offering of several choices. It is difficult because we have not achieved Paradise where all this sort of recognition is inherent. It is necessary for us to exercise our free will choice in these arenas of truth beauty and goodness so that in the exercise of that choice we work to discern within the context of our commitment to do the divine thing, to be living divinity ourselves. “Be you perfect, as I am perfect”, said the Father, “within the realms of human perfectability”. This command was never given for us to attain Deity status; that is impossible. But divinity status is not. Within the limits of our finitude we are called to achieve perfection. You will not accomplish this in mortal life; we will not accomplish this in morontial life; we will only finally accomplish this in our spiritual career beyond the Super-universe level as we reach the shores of Havona and as we progressively obtain the Spirit, the Son, and the Father. It is such an enormous adventure that my mind is overwhelmed, as I know yours also are. But I am taught, and I believe, nay, I know that we shall achieve the Father’s desire.
So, my friends, be happy. Be cheerful. Pay attention, as you were told, to the beauty that surrounds you and dwells in each of you and in every other normal minded human being. May this new year bring you all great joy as you progress toward our common goal. My love to you and the love of all the other teachers here present. And now Daniel desires to have the last word!
Closing
Daniel (Bill): My dear friends, how delightful this has been for me. Yes, I wish to say the final prayer and have you join hands once again.
Universal Father, Eternal Son, Infinite Spirit, Sovereign Michael, Co-Sovereign Nebadonia, angels and all others who love and support us….I lift up my heart in thankful praise for these my brothers and sisters who brave the weather, who bring their bodies to a place of meeting despite the distractions. I offer my thanks. Most of all I rejoice to be called a son of God and a brother to these my brothers and sisters.Order our steps to walk firmly following our Master this year, and let our voices speak words of comfort, of hope, of love. Yes, dear Father, Son, and Spirit, we wait as we move increasingly toward you, for that great day when we will stand in your actual Presence. Until we achieve that, help us to rejoice in all the goodness, all the beauty, and all the truth that both lives within us and surrounds us. In the name of Michael, our Sovereign Master Son, do we offer these prayers. Amen.
