[tmtranscripts] Spokane TeaM (Lesson) 09-22-01

[ZooidODell at aol.com]

DATE:  September 22, 2001
LOCATION:  Spokane, Wa.
TEACHER:  TOMAS
TOPIC:  Human Associations 101
T/R:  Gerdean

TOMAS: Greetings.  I am Tomas.  I am here to continue the series of lessons 
and further understanding of human associations - the brotherhood of man.  
There are those of you who would feel that Human Associations 101 is 
elementary and far removed from your status as accomplished spiritual 
citizens of the realm, and while that may be true in part, it is also true in 
part that human associations are a unique field of study because of the human 
factor.

There are many sons of God who are not aware of God.  There are many children 
of the Most Highs who have no conscious contact with divinity.  Does this 
make them less your brothers?  And, if so, how so?  This Human Associations 
101 is not an elementary course.  It is the groundwork of your relationships 
from this day forward.  

The Father in Paradise has an eye to see the end from the beginning, but His 
view is, for you, the culmination of an eternal career.  And while we all may 
aspire to the universal viewpoint, we must factor in a frame of reference for 
the relativity of our attainment.  

I have a frame of reference, for instance, which in many ways is just like 
yours.  I can put myself on equal footing with you as an ascending son, a 
pilgrim of time en route to Paradise.  And I can also acknowledge I have 
enhanced experience as a result of – if for nothing else – the fact of my 
survival after death into a morontia way of life, further enhanced by 
significant morontial training.  However, I seek a relationship with you, and 
in seeking a relationship with you, I seek to have an understanding of your 
frame of reference.  

In observing the evolutionary level you have attained, I am privy to a frame 
of reference, then, that allows me to see your incompleteness and attempt to 
augment your education by what your needs may be at any given time based on a 
consensus of spirit factors.  In consultation with my peers in the Teacher 
Corp, I can and we often do observe our students in their growth experiences 
and commiserate and attempt to understand how they are thinking and why they 
are thinking as they do.  And the insights we have garnered as a result of 
studying you, as a race of people, as relatively new spirit-born souls, 
engender heartfelt compassion for the obstacles you have to overcome and the 
deep-seated conditioning you've been subjected to.  Even so, we observe you 
as I once observed individuals in my mortal career of Cultural Anthropology.  
 I therefore invite you to observe human behavior as a cultural 
anthropologist might observe it. In the context of the study of 
society-building, and separations of social aspects that will allow the 
personalities of the individual citizenry to flourish as it allows other 
sociological clusters of cultural propensities to also flourish.    

The fact of your humanness and your materiality is what makes Human 
Associations 101 a very complicated and fascinating subject indeed.  If and 
when you observe each other as merely fellow animals, it does not take long 
to see how it is that your behaviors regress and level out to the lowest 
common denominator.  As you regard each other as fellow spirit beings, you 
all over-reach and disappoint yourselves and each other and thus undermine 
aspects of spirituality which you could well afford to embrace and inculcate 
as a part of your reality, but not at the expense of your humanness, for this 
is the well-balanced, well-unified mortal experience: son of God, son of man 
functioning usefully and happily in the flesh and in conscious awareness of 
the spirit.  

Look at your immediate environment.  Your immediate environment, yes, is ... 
What?  Your body.  You live in your body.  Without your body, you would leak 
out onto the floor or into the air.  Your tabernacle of the flesh is the 
primary realm of functioning.  In it, you are embraced by divinity.  Thus 
your essential environment is intact, and yet you are not an island.  You 
need to extend your reality out into the next level of your social expansion 
and that would be into your home.

And everyone who lives in a civilized world, even semi-civilized, has 
cultural ground rules to follow in terms of how one will behave in one's 
home.  Your culture has its ground rules as have other cultures.  The 
differences are great.  They incorporate food, attire, socio-economic 
factors, climate, language, and they are all different, all varied, all valid 
and fascinating in their own right.  

The brotherhood of man is confronted with the problems of Human Associations 
101.  Look at your global situation today and observe how many have failed 
the course, having no idea how to communicate, how to respect differences, 
how to work through conflict without resorting to violence, how to accept 
other people's ways as right for the other people but not necessarily having 
to have them forced upon others.  

***

Gerdean says I am her favorite albatross.  I trust that represents some kind 
of burden.  And I acknowledge her acknowledgment of the responsibility of 
being my friend and my transmitter/ receiver.  Although I am mindful of her 
occasional discomfort and disgruntlement, I'm confident that our experience 
as co-workers in the field is sufficient to see us through, in particular 
when it is understood that she is also my albatross.  I have a responsibility 
to follow up on my promise to be here for the long haul and to work through 
your spiritual growth with you, as companionship allows and mentoring 
benefits.  

Any relationship in which you have any responsibility, there is an element of 
the albatross, for you are human and humans don't always "feel like it".  
They don't always want to be responsible.  They don't always want to be 
noble.  They don't always want to be dignified sons of God.  Sometimes they 
want to be squalling brats having a temper tantrum.  Sometimes they opt to be 
cynical rather than sympathetic.  Sometimes they say things out of cruelty 
because they hurt or they are exasperated.  And this is part of Human 
Associations 101.

Spiritually speaking, we may all borrow on the ideal and insist we love each 
other, and indeed in the Source, it is exquisitely true. But inasmuch as none 
of us are in the Source, we are incomplete, in process of growing, we have 
our moments of unloveliness.  Those who have been badly abused are unlovely 
indeed.  Does this mean that God does not love His children?  Of course not.  
Does this mean *I* don't love His children.  Not necessarily.  Does this mean 
I like all of his children?  Certainly not.  Like you, I find certain aspects 
of personality more pleasing than others.  Even people I don't like, 
sometimes I can have great admiration for.  And there are certain skills that 
are developed by others that are so well done as to call forth high praise, 
even though the art form is the least of my favorites.  

And so in considering our relative imperfection, our experiential status, and 
your mortal facets, you are not able to consistently observe your peers as 
generously as does Our Father or Our Mother.  Human Associations allows for 
all these variables.  It allows you to look at your fellows as physical 
representations of culture.  Perhaps not YOUR culture, but culture, even so.  
 

You would not stand for someone to come to your house and be a guest in your 
home without expecting them to abide by certain ground rules established by 
the civilization within your home.  Just as, if you were to visit Thailand, 
for instance, you would not put your feet up and show the bottoms of your 
feet to your host, as this is regarded in their culture a gross insult.  How 
would you know you are insulting your host by performing a common American 
custom, unless you observed how your host behaved and act accordingly in his 
environment.

Human Associations expects a visitor to honor the practices of the natives.  
When I was mortal and visited the native tribes, I saw all manner of aberrant 
behaviors and ones which would not be tolerated in my camp, but since I was a 
stranger there, a guest, it was not my place to point out to them their 
error, inasmuch as I was not a part of their political structure; I did not 
live there; I did not belong there; I did not have a vote.  

The idea of the vote brings me to the actual specific and poignant difference 
between those of you who live as animals and those of you who live as human 
beings.  As human beings you have a right to determine the behaviors of those 
who live within your environment, and as your influence extends out into the 
culture and farther out into the sociological mainstream of humanity, that is 
a part of your responsibility.  It is the albatross of being human.  It's a 
privilege when it works in your favor, and when you don't feel like it, it's 
an albatross.  When your friends do what you want them to do, they are 
someone you want to show off and be proud of.  When they act like a jerk, you 
want to denounce them and recoil from their presence.

Human Associations is very hard work.  I know many of you think it should not 
be difficult, that if everyone just acts like a son of God it will not 
present any problems, and yet who among you are without sin?  Who among you 
are not prejudiced and biased?  Who among you haven't got cause for righteous 
judgment?  Who among you has not got experience that has, to your mind, 
taught you certain basic lessons that will by your determination remain a 
part of your conditioning despite the objections of others?   

Not two of you are alike, and it is also true that if you stick with those 
who are like you, you might get some things accomplished; but if you also 
allow yourself to encounter those who are not like you, and who have other 
agendas than yours, you will run into attitudes counter to your own and, 
educated as you are already, it will add to your education to acknowledge 
others as they are and not as "fresh meat to carve", not a mission to 
culturally convert to your way of thinking.

Might does not always make right, but there is indeed strength in numbers, 
and numbers of thinking people are those who impact the world.  

Are there questions? 


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