2001-05-19-Enduring Peace
Spokane #84
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Enduring Peace
o 1.2 Group: Spokane TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas, Paulo, Aaron
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 Peace
o 3.3 Dialogue
3.3.1 Disappointment
3.3.2 The Teachers
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Enduring Peace
Group: Spokane TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas, Paulo, Aaron
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
TOMAS: Good afternoon, faithful flock, beloved students. My heart reaches out to embrace you, to welcome you home to your friends in the realms of the spirit. This is a continuation of a sort, in that, in my series of lessons on Fruits of the Spirit, I neglected purposely, I neglected to discourse regarding Enduring Peace, offering instead the fruit of Comforting Presence, as it seemed a reasonable step in the direction of Enduring Peace which is a fruit of the spirit we are still aspiring to see, even though each of you as individuals and in Stillness are able to, by varying degrees, tap into the peace which passes all understanding, thereby whetting your appetite for the living water which is deep in the Well.
Lesson
Peace
TOMAS: When you mean to, when you set out to carry your state of grace into your arena and take with you the fruit of the spirit Enduring Peace, it is somehow short-lived more than enduring as it is experienced in the social arena. It is because, in part because you are still combative and competitive, but this bellicose nature is being bridled by your awareness of your impact on others, and this is qualified by how the Spirit of Truth is being interpreted in your life as a result of your perceptions due to your mindal mechanics.
Enduring peace is the kind of peace that is with you even in a social state of chaos, a confused environment, under confusing circumstances, circumstances which are in a constant state of vacillation as a result of its having no anchor, and so the fact that you have been born of the spirit is a guarantee that in some measure it will hold true that you are enduring in your reflection of peace. This is a reasonable facsimile of Comforting Presence.
But what this says, so far, attentive ones, is that while you may know peace within and while you may walk with it into your arena, and abide therein with poise, sooner or later in your involvement, in your experiential aspects, your pacific predilections will run aground and you will find yourself bumping your head against the wall, bucking horns with your adversaries, convincing another of the rightness of your opinion or whatever variable allows for the irritant to muzzle your expressions of fraternal harmony.
You therefore want to develop some skills in your attitudes and associations with other, so that your stance of peace is not taken for disinterest and your lack of confrontational tendencies misconstrued as vulnerable. Jesus was called the Prince of Peace, but there was nothing wimpy about him. He was a man among men; he was rugged. Having the fruit of the spirit Enduring Peace affords you the opportunity to see your own destiny unfold before you, for it is not subject to the countenance of others, and it does not put off or alienate, but rather harbors affection for ones fellows.
“Enduring” is the qualifier, and enduring is so far removed from your culture of today which is so inundated with fast food, quick print, easy on, easy off and disposable representations of reality. You have no frame of reference for what is enduring. Enduring a five minute line at the bank is often more than you can bear; how can you in good faith respect the quality of enduring peace as a way of life? And yet, if it is not undertaken as a way of life, by you first, and soon by many others, until most have complied by the new standard, how else will we develop such an appreciation for world wide and all pervasive enduring peace as a quality of reality throughout the universe?
The challenge for you then is to realize that you can retain the thrill of existence even as you reside within the boundaries of peace, for then you have all that quality time and space within which to develop meaningful investigations into righteousness and reality levels heretofore unavailable to you because you were perforce following the flirtations with your more primitive nature and the lesser natures of your beloved brethren. You have been admonished to “gird up the loins of your mind.” When this is in effect, it is easier to see how your self-mastery reveals itself; or, alternately, how your lesser nature is in the practice of taking your higher nature for a walk down Penny Lane.
The reward for fostering the value of enduring peace is the quality of fraternity that results, the freedom to enjoy that which is portrayed by your spiritual fragrance in the social fields wherein trade and commerce are an active part of your community interactions and sense of satisfaction. You begin to put peace into your quality lives on a daily basis, unyielding as to allowing yourself to be toppled by the ebullient and immature enthusiasm of others. I speak to you as apostles and teachers, as noble sons and daughters of our Creators, as members of my family. I wish for you peace. Are there questions? I have my peers with me. I am not laying claim to the entire session.
Dialogue
THOROAH: Thank you, Tomas. I appreciated the insight on peace. Earlier in the week I got a post and signed off: “Peace,” and I thought, “Now, that’s an interesting word.” Peace – we usually think of it the world-wide sense and I immediately saw how peace really has to be within each one of us in order for it to ever be. It will invite reality, and so it was very timely. I thought also that in the beginning you talked about confusion as being a deterrent to enduring peace and “con fusion” seems to say it; it has the opposite effect of “fusion” and it would seem that enduring peace and fusion might have a lot in common.
TOMAS:: It is like saying the branch has something in common with the vine.
Disappointment
THOROAH: We had a question; this also kind of fits in there, I think “What does it mean to be immune to disappointment?”
TOMAS:: I appreciate the question. The nature of the question provokes my mind, challenges my creativity, stimulates my desire to convey truth, beauty, and goodness, but what indeed does it mean to be immune to disappointment? It is very much, this question, like a child might ask, “What is it like to live in France?” or what you might ask, Thoroah, “Paulo, what is it like to live in an architectural sphere?” For truly, at this point in your growth, you are in need of a disappointing experience every now and again, in order for you to develop some true grit.
As if you were a sapling, a young tree, whose seed took root in the crevice of a rock, that grows now on the side of a cliff; having held on for so long, so tenaciously, it is essentially adhered to the rock so that it cannot fall, cannot blow away. This is how it is when you are immune to disappointment. You have your self so firmly entrenched in reality, you are not mindful of the gales that would rip you from your foundations. They blow past you as meaningless as gnats or butterflies in the wind.
There is a lot to be said in favor of disappointments as a way of learning. What child has not had the experience of feeling disappointed when they did not get what they wanted? What child has not sulked because their parent would not give in to the whims and demands of an ill-advised yen of youth? And what child has not eventually come to realize the wisdom of the parental ways?
The object lesson of experiencing disappointment is to help direct you into a clear understanding of purposive-ness. ((Adj. 1. purposive – having or showing or acting with a purpose or design; “purposive behavior” nonrandom – not random.)) In time, it will be true that you will not regret the direction your destiny is leading you, but you cannot see how cared for you are; you see only that you are not getting your way, as you perceive it, like the child who sulks, not yet mature enough to realize the parent has the long-range interests of the child at heart.
And here’s the rub: sometimes you will be granted your immature wishes; you will be given something that will have to be taken away in order for you to realize the disappointment because that experience then is the rudder that moves the direction of your craft away from bigger shoals. Trust the Father to steer you where you need to be, what you need to learn, and in time you will trust Him so implicitly you will not even feel inclined to experience disappointment, for your entire existence has now become one supernal adventure of experiential faith. Have I addressed your concern? I am available for counsel. I have my psychiatrist’s couch over there in the corner.
I have my therapist’s shingle hanging on the front door. I have an appointment book that has no time slot filled but awaits your visit. I accommodate all as I am given the opportunity. I am here, but I am also with you, and can minister to you in your berth where you are. We have no gasoline prices to pay, no hotel bills. My friend Paulo would like to come in and play. Farewell.
THOROAH: Thank you, Tomas.
PAULO: Yes, I thought I would come in and play because it’s a good idea to balance your studies with diversion of one pleasurable sort or another, which is not to say that your studies are not pleasant, but it is to say that your minds need exercise in order to maintain its elasticity and elasticity is a factor in allowing your self the luxury of sustaining enduring peace in your consciousness. If you are able to be resilient, it’s easier to let go of those things that you might otherwise butt your head up against. So I have come to play because Aaron said I could and because you had an idea to pick my brain about my lifestyle, as if it were going to give you any insight into yours. How is it that you’ve developed an interest in me all of a sudden?
THOROAH: Well, we try to get along with everybody, Paulo.
PAULO: : Good for you. I do, too. Even obstreperous humans, and believe me, some of you are not easy to get along with. Why am I telling you that, as if you didn’t know already?
The Teachers
THOROAH: Last week you mentioned or alluded to your housing. Not just necessarily your housing but as we’ve learned, we have a host of visitors from many dimensions around this sphere and you alluded to housing, an “architectural sphere” if you will, where you dwell in your temporary duty here.
PAULO: Indeed we do have housing provided, those of us who are on this mission to Urantia. It’s a far different sort of apartamente than you are familiar with, but it’s one that enables us to see into your lives so quickly. You would have to imagine it as, perhaps, a space ship environment that had a lot of monitoring screens so that we can see all over the place from the deck. We can network in ways that you would rightfully be jealous of; therefore we can encircle the globe more as if we were the Knights of the Round Table sitting at the Round Table, in the center of which was carved out a circle and in the middle of which hung suspended planet Urantia and we are able to discuss it’s developments as they happen.
This is the architectural sphere I am most familiar with. However, I have been to the daily counsel meetings, the morning briefings, as a visitor, and have been able to see that their set-up, their architectural sphere is quite different, although similar.
And so whatever it is that a body needs to do, there is an environment provided wherein the body may be housed and made ready to perform when and as required. It’s as if, like Captain Janeway, we all had our own “ready room” and so we have a degree of privacy but it’s right down the hall from where everyone gathers in anticipation of the latest developments in the unfolding of the re-encircuitment of the peoples and systems of Urantia. I have to assume that you are seeing this in your mind’s eye, Thoroah, as a UFO, for I said . ..
THOROAH: “Space ship.”
PAULO: : . .. something about Star Trek.
THOROAH: Well, I’m thinking along that line, yes, in the sense that an architectural sphere, we might think of it in terms of a space ship, however, we’ve heard descriptions now that talk about these monstrous constructions, miles wide, miles in circumference, which would in my mind be more like a sphere, per se, than a “space ship” and to be, from our perspective, somewhat holographic in nature and able to be seen at certain vibrational levels depending on how it coordinates between humans and the coordinates you’re operating with.
PAULO: : You are correct, in some regards at least. There is a dramatic range of use of matter and energy that renders visibility, partial visibility, or invisibility – depending upon many other mitigating circumstances. The main thing is the inter-relatedness of it all. Like the Midwayers. They are, by and large, invisible to you but they are regarded as material beings. In time, your optics are able to alter sufficiently to enable you to see your Midwayer associates, but in the meantime you have to assume their existence or develop a relationship with them even in their invisibility, in which case it may be required that you develop symbols and codes between you that enable you to communicate even in the absence of eye-to-eye contact, as it were, and revert also to the Midwayer machinations of using their ability to manipulate the material environment such that you are able to perceive, in faith, their activities and ministrations.
Enlarge that concept now to incorporate the galaxy and you have a fair representation of how the differing levels of reality are able to co-exist in time and space even while on an individual and independent orbit of evolution or development. Also, many of these life forms and entities are mobile and many of them are relatively fixed, and so there is a great deal of reliance upon pattern and recognition of design.
THOROAH: Could some of the pattern and design that everyone relies on, can that relate to some of the things that we look at in a Star-Trek’ian kind of way, of certain stargates, as they’re called? Certain pathways for certain energies are directed on purpose?
PAULO: : I suspect so, however I have not been here long and I have not seen all the episodes. (Giggles) Even so I do understand your mental mechanisms to register half-here, half-there phenomenon that might be mistaken for morontial when it is in fact material, but in a different state of existence, such that you can’t see each other, or one can’t see the other, rather like a mirror on one side, window on the other situation. My reference to patterns and designs, however, has much to do with the activity in the universe, the tremendous and diverse comings and goings of all manner of reality. It looks like empty space to you. Well, I have news for you. It is full of universes of time and space.
THOROAH: So air traffic control must be rather complex.
PAULO: : Highly complex and fine-tuned “well organized channels,” as they say. There are indeed massive craft(s) that escape your radar because they are out of range, just like certain sonar is not heard by all mammals but is painfully apparent to some.
Respect for other life in the universe is tantamount to enduring peace. Allowing life to flow naturally in its pre-designed pattern and pace is like allowing the cells and organs of the body to breath, eat, sleep, function and fulfill it’s purpose. Any organism needs to have harmony within itself or it is a cancer, a dis-ease, a mis-alignment of some sort and you have yet to become aware of how your misalignment affects the environment around you and touching upon so many others. The responsibility is certainly something to consider, but, on the other hand, the view is spectacular!
THOROAH: We need to get on a frequency.
PAULO: : Stay tuned.
THOROAH: Thank you for the encouragement.
Closing
AARON: I’ll just round out this triangle this afternoon and let you know I have enjoyed myself even though I didn’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise. I haven’t been eliminated from active duty, however. As I was enjoying our Paulo’s description of Urantia floating loosely in the center of our table, I was pointing out how many pins I saw on the globe where I have been invited to speak, and I felt rather like I was on a speakers’ circuit of some sort and enjoying the many cultures and peoples of this precious globe.
What a work of art it is! Michael and Nebadonia gave this one a few exotic plants more than most of the others, so perhaps that has to do with the experimental nature of this primitive orb, resplendent and magnificent in its rugged primacy. And what an array of peoples on a world this size. Just big enough to begin to recognize your relative nearness and just small enough to give you the encouragement to reach out. Perhaps we can indeed encircle this globe and reach around with a big hug of enduring peace to enclose us in.
I have enough personal experience [to state] that as you have more peace in your heart, in your arena, in your neighborhood, you have also more time to enjoy life, to love your fellows and to play. Leisure is as wonderful a gift as exploration and adventure, and it is another fruit of enduring peace. So, “peace be upon you” until we meet again.
