2002-01-26-Existential Blues
Spokane #98
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: Existential Blues
o 1.2 Group: Spokane TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Paulo, Michael
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean, Ginny
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
3.2.1 Peace
o 3.3 Dialogue
3.3.1 Stillness, Socialization
3.3.2 Human Condition
3.3.3 Heroism
3.3.4 Urantia, Agondonters
3.3.5 Thought Adjusters
3.3.6 911
3.3.7 Growth
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: Existential Blues
Group: Spokane TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Paulo, Michael
TR: Gerdean, Ginny
Session
Opening
THOROAH: We always are learning lessons. As you go along they are just less and less traumatic. So I think we’re in a trauma state down here. Everything seems more dramatic and traumatic. We’re emotional beings.
GINNY: Right, but I also think that’s a part of being immature, too.
THOROAH: Yes, because babies are very dramatic.
GINNY: Yes, they are! Indeed they are!
PAULO: : Hi everybody.
GROUP: Hi, Paulo!
PAULO: : I haven’t been around in awhile but . ..
GINNY: Welcome back!
PAULO: : . .. I thought I’d pop in. Things are under control, in that I don’t have to be away.
GINNY: Our group fell apart when you weren’t here.
Lesson
PAULO: : It’s because I’m the new kid on the block and controversial. See how you are? You love to live on the edge. When you start feeling serene, you think this calm equates to boredom. You start looking around for trouble to get into. You’re at least on a higher track than the masses, for your availability for trouble is that which you were promised when the Master said that following the leading of the Indwelling Adjuster — or Him — would certainly be the sure pathway to trouble. This is a far cry different from the pathway to trouble that is a result of rebellion. So much of your lives are a reaction instead of a response.
Peace
GINNY: Sorry to interrupt your lecture here, but what’s the difference then between being peaceful and calm and being stagnant and just too passive?
PAULO: : Well, let’s take the analogy of water. When you see a clear pond, it’s a sure bet there is a trickle of water coming in and going out, so that there is movement under the surface. The same is true for a lazy river, which may be quite deep and swift, and yet it appears to be calm on the surface, but it’s moving, you see. It’s following a natural course. It’s when you get caught up and stop flowing that you become stagnant, and sometimes this is brought about by and through complacency, and in this way you meander off the natural byway and tuck yourself into a crevice which allows you to be still but in a negative way. You’re just hiding in the shadows, allowing the film of life debris to cover you over, mosquitoes and dragonflies abounding.
Yes, our swamp friends are revealed here and, believe me, there is character and personality in the swamp, that stagnant area that still teems with life, but it isn’t the same refreshing and revitalizing flow of the living water. And that’s the context of the stagnant pool as compared to the one that has a Source and a direction. Do you know when you are calm and secure as compared to when you are sneaking off to bemuse yourself in the bull rushes in unsavory ways?
Dialogue
Stillness, Socialization
GINNY: I’m beginning to notice the difference a lot. Somehow when I look for amusement or calmness or peacefulness, I think that if I try to take care of those needs, sometimes I feel guilty that I should be more active in doing more stuff “out there”. I’m learning now to value my time, where I choose to do stillness more, and believe it or not I feel guilty when I’m doing stillness. Isn’t that silly? And to do things that I really like to do, to fulfill my other needs rather than just having to make a living all the time.
PAULO: : It’s because you are rising to the occasion of relationship with Divinity, and in many ways you are alone. This is the existential blues that you are singing. Everyone is gregarious (except for those asocial types, or anti-social types, and even the anti-social types enjoy their own perverse socialization). In your gregariousness you realize the importance of association and that is what would lean you to/ incline you to think you were being anti-social or selfish to be seeking the company of your own Indwelling Adjuster or even your own mind.
What kind of ego would enjoy such an indulgence as its own company? Well, a healthy ego, actually. But in moderation, for the effect of a quality stillness will usually bring the soul to a position of readiness to be of service or to live in such a way as to reflect that deity level which presents the highest standard of relative perfection available. It’s a wonderful aspiration, to allow your perfection to express itself by being. And there are many who are uncomfortable with these manifestations of perfection for it reminds them of their own imperfection. It’s one of those animalistic behaviors that is bent on destroying that which is good for it. It’s a facet of rebellion.
To stand alone in light of divinity is at once a lonely place, even as it “all there is” because you are saying, “I want to be with God. I don’t want to be with you” and the gregarious aspect, the sociable aspect of your nature is offended and concerned.. This is part of the project of knowing yourself, knowing how your animal nature plays tricks on your mental composition, knowing how your mental composition operates under stress or in fear, understanding when your motives are altruistic and when they are self-serving, appreciating how you can be of service and when it is that your desire to be of service is possibly the worst thing you could do, for that purpose, for that person, at that moment.
Human Condition
PAULO: The mind arena of choice is where you live. It’s the arena wherein your Thought Adjuster and your will meet, and wrestle, where the victor of the battle will result in a recognition of the Spirit of Truth. You were talking earlier about experience. The value of experience, and how it is that it requires experience to learn these lessons, that on other worlds perhaps the lessons are not so brutal or long-lasting, the circumstances of a controlled world being different than the circumstances on a decimal world. The only way you can develop perfection is to have the experience of knowing what doesn’t work.
The example of Michelangelo’s unfinished captives has been used to prove the point. Within each block of solid marble is a prisoner of the material world. Each creation reflects the power of life to force itself out of the confines of the unyielding material reality to reveal the naked truth of itself. The potential is glaring in these works as it is in you who, like Michelangelo’s captives, half-carved and half-buried in marble, reveal yourself only as you are impelled to push your way forward into reality, into thin air, as it were, into spirit, as compared to material. And surely you must recognize that your living conditions, your life circumstances as mortals on planet 606 of the System of Satania, are as dense as marble in any analogy of your emerging reality.
Usually life is not required to force itself so hard into becoming, but for you to grasp the hand of your Thought Adjuster, as it were, and rise to the occasion that is presented in your one short life in the flesh, you indeed do grapple. Even to stand up has required great effort. If you knew how hardy you are, you would be surprised, for you think of yourselves as weak, doubting, insignificant, pale by comparison to those you admire like Jesus, who was a Creator Son.
Heroism
THOROAH: We don’t have a lot of icons in between Jesus and Moses, so to speak, to relate to. That is a real dichotomy. I hadn’t thought about that. It’s the only thing we’ve been given. We’ve been given perfection to compare ourselves to rather than to be able to get into the relative state of things.
PAULO: : Here we are in an area we might be able to do something about. Here we are in an area of allowing ourselves to begin to think of heroes, heroes being someone you might look up to. Have you given any consideration to the heroic aspects of your own character? Have you ever thought of yourself as being a hero? I won’t embarrass you if you haven’t thought of that or wouldn’t want to say.
GINNY: I think that – here we go again. It seems like we need a huge crisis like the World Trade Center to bring out these heroes. There were many heroes in that scenario, but in our own personal lives we seem to not be able to feel as much admiration for our own selves and for our own friends that surround us every day. We don’t seem to see that as much, and here again we are speaking of – it seems to take a disaster before we see the heroism, but I think there are a lot of heroes and heroic acts if we just look a little more deeply at the people around us.
PAULO: : Indeed. Indeed. (Long pause.) I’m not responding because I would not know where to begin in painting a picture for you of how heroes are born, how they operate. A hero can be someone who provides eye contact at just the right instant, just the right instant for your Thought Adjuster to attach innately to the Thought Adjuster of the individual you look at. The point here being that in that eye contact is the potential for your spirit self to reinforce your fellow men such that they are encouraged. Indeed, stimulated! And thus accelerated. And empowered to go forth and do good works. Perhaps to smile at someone else who needed their reality reinforced.
There was a discussion just the other day at this Teacher Base about this kind of thing, this opportunity that you have here on this world to oblige spirit reality. This is the “why” of when you hear the celestials envy your opportunity, and why the angels weep over your stubbornness. If you were to open more of your self to the divine nature and give in less to the seductions and demands of the animal nature, you would be able to feed these hungry lambs. You would be able to bring them into a field of influence in which spirit can operate.
But as you fall back into your old comfort zones, your old habit patterns of not wanting to be different, of not wanting to be heroic, of not wanting to stand up and rise to the occasion of being all that you can be, of acquiescing to the tired humor of yesteryear, of divesting yourself of your ennobled inheritance and cuddling up to the creature comforts of the litter, of extending overmuch sympathy to the faint-hearted, acquiescing to authority that has no business telling you what to do, these are ways and means that are provided for you that we would eagerly pounce upon. Or at least we say we would! We are not in your shoes. But from our perspective, from our vantage point, from our experiential level, it would certainly be a lot more enjoyable for you if you did engage in these kinds of things that would enhance reality and bring you and yours much more happiness and peace.
THOROAH: I think we think of peace as passive. That’s not necessarily the case. Peace could be rather dynamic!
GINNY: There was a question in Coeur d’Alene a couple of weeks ago about how we can be peace makers and still have the qualities of a warrior. There was a question that was put to the group that we had a chance to think about.
THOROAH: It’s easy to be peaceful when we’re isolated. I would like to be at peace in the middle of the activity, and have peace of mind so that I am in control. There needs to be some element of self-mastery in the equation.
GINNY: I just got a chance to review the movie “Ghandi” which has been on the television the last couple of days and that’s an example, a more modern example. I tend to think that Jesus was a long time ago and his world was different, so here was a chance to see a more human, a non-divine person, come up from the dregs of the society that looked down upon the untouchables and people of other cultures and other races. Their hopes of this man who was willing to stick his neck out, so to speak, and was able to influence millions of people, from India, to adopt a non-violent attitude, but certainly not passive! He was not a passive person. At all! He was very active, but it was non-violent, and it was just a beautiful example of how that can be done.
PAULO: : Yes, peace is not passive as much as it is non-violent.
GINNY: Non-violent, but active. Taking steps that he thought was a righteous goal. He was . ..
PAULO: : Heroic!
GINNY: He was heroic.
PAULO: : You are very reluctant to nominate your fellows to heroic description. You also tend to shun recognition of heroism in your own experience. And yet look at the Christmas story, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Each life is a potential miracle, and each human being certainly does impact everyone he or she touches. Whether they affect people positively or negatively is up to you.
GINNY: I think because of our gross nature we tend to need a lot of sensationalism to impress us. We have be hit over the head before our attention is gotten, and I guess that is just a matter of maturity. We have to learn to spot our chances for heroism in a quiet way rather than needing to be . ..
THOROAH: Entertained.
GINNY: . .. entertained.
THOROAH: We get entertained and I think that distracts us enough so that we don’t have to really do anything.
GINNY: Right. We have to be hit over the head before they get our attention. We have to have tragedies or disasters.
PAULO: : You love status quo.
GINNY: Certainly all these people at the World Trade Center disaster were what they were before the disaster, which certainly wasn’t something that just popped out automatically. Certainly all these people were prepared to be heroic. But I think we are also prepared to be heroes if we just step out. Like that Nike thing, “Just Do It!”
PAULO: : That’s the way to rebel on this world. Just step out and do it!
THOROAH: I like what Earl Nightingale used to quote, someone who said, “We follow the leaders when we start to school following the leaders,” and actually back at school we’re not even following the leaders, we’re following the followers. And we learn early in life to fit in.
GINNY: And what a sad day it is when we as children learn that those we love are not really as noble as we thought they were.
PAULO: : This is true, and it’s not the same as recognizing they are imperfect; it’s that they are sometimes fatally flawed.
THOROAH: Sometimes we have the wrong impressions.
Urantia, Agondonters
PAULO: : Well, that’s the unique experience that you have – you Urantians — you’ll never again be able to compare yourselves to others and blend into the masses like you do here. You’ll be identified. As you say here, “You can spot him coming!” This is true however for all Agondonters.
THOROAH: I think that possibly with all of that identity that we carry with us that it’s going to dawn on us in a heavier fashion that Yes this was the world that our creator chose to bestow himself, but this is also the world that killed its creator. That . .. How could you not be identified for the rest of your existence!
PAULO: : Indeed, I can see someone coming up to you from another world, having heard your planetary history, and say, “how can you stand to live with yourself?” How can any survivor of such a travesty endure? How shame-based that must prevail within your social consciousness. Such an awesome sense of responsibility must permeate your cellular structure on some unconscious level that recognizes you have murdered your creator.
THOROAH: And now we’re going to do something about it. Turn that around into something positive.
PAULO: : It certainly means you must stop blaming yourselves and rise to the occasion of stepping outside that mental paradigm that dominates Christianity and that is also prevalent in other major religions as a result of the same primitive and warlike ancestry of your evolving animal nature. It must reach a point of allowing the animal conditioning to take second place to the spirit awareness that is your actuality. Rise to the occasion. Support each other in this heroic struggle to stand tall, without shame, without guilt, without blame. But with full understanding of how that woeful experience, as well as other many planetary mishaps, have distorted your roots such that you have had to rise above a great many tribulations in search of the Lost Chord. Having found that Lost Chord, hold fast to it and let it carry your voice into the realms of purity that are high fidelity. High fidelity attainment. Is that the music of the spheres?
GINNY: I think we can be too hard on ourselves, too, when we realize what we’re starting from as Agondonters, that we have been able to at least make friends with our Adjuster. If we can at least get that far on this planet, to me that’s an heroic act.
PAULO: : Indeed this is an accomplishment. And this is your first duty. Only as you are able to identify with your God Fragment are you able to be useful, truly useful.
Thought Adjusters
THOROAH: Where are Thought Adjusters created? Well, they are a fragment of God. They come from God, but they gain identity someplace. I guess that’s “where” I’m looking at. Where that identity comes to be.
GINNY: They don’t fully gain personality until . ..
THOROAH: We have the personality.
GINNY: We give them personality. I would have to re-read that section to answer that question properly. They are God. They are a fragment of God.
PAULO: : They are a part of the Mystery, but they do hail from Divinington, yes, and no, of course, I have not been there.
GINNY: Have you read that section in the book?
THOROAH: I probably have read that section. I’m just – the reason I asked that is because I think the hero – one of the heroes in all of this has to be the Thought Adjuster!
GINNY: Oh, yes.
THOROAH: Because the Thought Adjuster found this mission. We’re latching our boat to the Thought Adjuster and so far has us being heroes. I think we’re enabled to be heroes. We’re hanging on for dear life and there’s a whole lot of heroes that we’re latching onto.
GINNY: Yeah, the Midwayers are certainly heroes.
THOROAH: Yeah.
PAULO: : And this is where you can cooperate with them. These heroes that you think of who, without thought to their own safety, rush off to the aid of others, have given up their self-interest to serve others.
THOROAH: There would be myriad waiting in the wings already active but waiting for more and more activity. I think we’ll be seeing or meeting a lot of those people who have given up everything of their own thoughts just to be around here to help us.
911
PAULO: : The factor that we haven’t seemed to touch upon here today is that while our discussions emanated from a reflection of what the World Trade Center travesty brought upon you as a people, that is to say impelled the growth of faith, the growth of the spirit, this is true throughout the world. The experience in New York has triggered the experiences of others, everywhere, to review their own – not only their mortality, but their traumas, their own life traumas that have been nicely packed away in a memory bin somewhere. The audacity has brought forth the hidden feelings of millions of people.
The post traumatic stress disorder of war or accidents or violent acts of all manner are being relived by the collective consciousness of Americans in particular and world citizens in general. Yes, it is indeed a trigger point for growth, a large one, but there have been many others and there will be many more until such time as these times emerge into a clearer tomorrow, a brighter destiny because these many psychic wounds will have been healed. The spirit has been able to nurture many people into growth, into more mature pathways already.
GINNY: I can imagine. Someday our world could have these responses without a disaster. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? If people would come out of the woodwork and be willing to help each other.
PAULO: : All it takes is the right trigger, the right impetus, and this is where your opportunities lie. This is how you are able to bring your training from Divinington into your arena and uplift the man or woman or child who stands next to you, by seeing their spiritual counterpart captive in their mortal density. Reach inside to the potential, to the power of potential inside. Help them to rise up, push out from the constraints of the material world into the freedom of a life in the spirit. One step at a time, one moment at a time, one mortal at a time.
Move the world along, advance it into more of its own destiny. There’s no time to become stagnant. If you do stay protected in your alcove or your comfort zone, you yourself will deprive yourself of the opportunity to live a vital and thrilling existence, one which pays off in eternal dividends. But as long as you continue to equate yourself to the animal kingdom, over and above your identity with your spirit nature, you give the fleshy parts 51% and morontia mota 49%.
THOROAH: We don’t want to indulge that fleshy part. (Group giggles.)
Growth
GINNY: And also in the transcripts from Coeur d’Alene, I was just reading Elyon – I think it was Elyon – maybe it was Lantarnek. It was the lesson on growth, how it is necessary to be content with yourself in order to grow. In other words to be content with where you are now, that you can’t get anywhere, you can’t grow anywhere unless you understand where you are right now. So it takes being in touch with what you are and where you are and a forward looking attitude, that there is something better. Both are needed.
PAULO: I will say that it isn’t necessary that you be content, but it is necessary that you accept. In fact, if you can accept what is, without feeling content about it, you will see where the growth potential lies, and you will have innately the impetus to do something about it, but if you’re comfortable, where’s the point? I’m not saying comfort isn’t a natural part of sonship, or even of creature life, but you don’t need comfort. You need acceptance. Acceptance isn’t always comfortable, but this is where there is growth, even in conflict. I’m out of my league in psychology. I’ll leave that to first phasers.
Closing
MICHAEL: This is your sovereign and your friend. Can you imagine that? Having a sovereign as a friend? If you would but spend some time with this truth you would have many hours of contentment. My mandate for you to be perfect is not meant as a burden. It has become burdensome because you have to deal with densities and complexities of the material world. And you have done well to be able to see beyond this gross part of your reality and this indeed is the purpose of this your first experience as a personality, to have the ability to choose your path, your fate.
It is our intention that you take this responsibility, this gift, with a true and light heart and to keep in mind the eternal destiny which you have. It seems at times so very, very far from you, but in reality it is also very close to you. As soon as you recognize your companion of divine origin, this is my intention that you have some relief, some hope, some certitude about your existence here, and I’m sure all of you can certainly say with great certainty, that this is true, for where would you be without this realization. There are many who do not have this life. There are many who flounder in darkness. There are many who have no hope. So where do your heroic acts lie? Where can you activate that part of yourself that reaches beyond the gross, temporary solutions to modern problems.
When I was on your planet I had to deal continually with communion with my Father and still pay attention to the needs of my children, my earthly children, who were constantly tugging at my sleeve for some attention. I know whereof I speak. I share this experience with you. I have experienced what you are at this time dealing with, and accepting the reality of each person that you contact as a stepping stone for spiritual growth. Everyone hungers for honor. Everyone has natural craving for truth, beauty, and goodness because it is a natural outpouring of recognition of your anticipation of divinity.
You may not think that you have much public recognition in the world, but who are you trying to please? Whose accolades do you want? Whose attention do you really need? If it is ours, you have no reason to doubt or fear that we understand and recognize your heroism. You don’t have to explain very much to us. We see everything. All important values and attentions and desires are seen and used in a timely fashion, so be assured that all your good thoughts and desires and intentions are felt and appreciated and used.
We do not grow one iota from your good deeds except, of course, as our Supreme Being grows. But we do delight over every thought and intention of yours that is coming from a value, whether it becomes a reality on this planet or at some other time. Be assured of my recognition of you as heroes, on the path of righteousness. In you I am well pleased. Be of good cheer. Good night.
