[tmtranscripts] N. Idaho Team 01/27/02

[Rick P. Giles]

North Idaho Teaching Mission Group
Topics: Stillness
Teachers: Jessona

January 27, 2001

*	Jessona (Jonathan TR):  Salutations!  Jessona with you today.  I greet you
warmly.  I embrace you with the love of our Father.  I encircuit you as a fellow
who cares as deeply for your welfare and your advancement as I do for my own. 
Today I have witnessed your discussion of stillness and would like to address
that as a topic.
	 It is perhaps the most challenging and difficult discipline for an
evolutionary creature to practice stilling the mind and reaching to the
superconscious level of thought activity wherein the Father's gift, your Thought
Adjuster, is most efficient in preparing those patterns necessary for your
growth
as you engage in your daily lives.  However, it is also one of, in a paradoxical
sense, the easiest activities you could undertake.  The difficulty and the ease
are intertwined.  We have chosen to accommodate the terms 'stillness' and 'quiet
time' that are used in your religious disciplines, for they indicate
attitudes of
body and mind that are conducive to spirit engagement.
	Naturally you are wired with a nervous system that seeks activity; it is
the very channel from which impulses activate your being in physical form and
allow you to accomplish all that you do in this life.  This stimulation brings
the difficulty of a period of motionlessness wherein you seek to reach to your
higher mind for communion.  As you have been taught, likewise the Mother Spirit
has bestowed upon you a mind ever seeking creative expression and ideation, for
that is the fountain that generates all that you come to know, understand, and
experience consciously; bringing expansion of awareness.  Were it not for this
self-generating ideational fountain you would advance in no way.  Again,
does the
mind as well as the body create an obstacle for your time of quiet with the
Father.  Yet in contrast the body fatigues; the mind grows weary as well.  It is
the natural state for the human being to engage in activity to create greater
ease in life, to promote time for relaxation, for rest, for inactivity.
Time off
is a sought-for value.
	Communion with the Father, to be honest, is independent of any stillness. 
It is an interaction of your personality with the Divine Presence and can be had
during or in spite of the full spectrum of engagements of activities.  This is
the continual practice of the presence of God.  This is what Michael found and
demonstrated to be attainable by a human being.  You will perhaps never
experience a stillness event like the Mount of Transfiguration, the spectacular
appearance of celestial beings.  You may have the fortune to never
experience the
dark prayer of that evening in Gethsemane, that longing cry for the guidance of
your Father when all seems so lost.  You may never sit upon a mountain and
undertake the organization of your life career, making Supreme decision upon
Supreme decision not only for the sake of your own bestowal mission but for the
sake of a world and a system and a universe beyond.  These are the extremes of
that deep quiet time.
	You will however day after day have the opportunity to lie in your bed and
have a personal talk with the Father.  This is the building block.  This is that
small exercise which prepares you for any stress and for anything that could
happen to you supernaturally.  Knowing full well that the Father is in constant
communication with you, we are certain that the spiritual level of your
stillness
practice is always ongoing, unceasing.  Our emphasis to you to maintain or
develop stillness is to align your physical responses and your mental attitude
that you will better perceive and receive this constant interchange that takes
place at the higher spiritual levels of your being.  This is the element of you
cooperating and coordinating with the divine influence.
	You have been instructed to set time aside, to allot enough time to reach
quietness and not an over amount of time to burden you with undue discipline and
endurance.  Because of the ever constant stream of Adjuster contact to you, time
duration is really insignificant for communion.  It is, however, important for
the level of mind and for the reining in of that natural tendency of the body to
move.
	Let us approach the phrase, "be still and know that I am God".  Beginning
with the tail end of the phrase are the words, "I am God".  He is ever present
always.  Continually do you have Him within.  There is no need to reach to
discover.  His presence is now and always.  Stillness is this knowledge.  To
know
God comes by being still.
	It is often taught to set aside distractions that hinder the stillness.  In
reality these are not distractions; they are natural tendencies of the makeup of
the human being.   All that is really required is to bring balance, and is not
all of human life the management of extremes? the development of balance in a
dynamic means of giving and receiving, of undertaking and refraining, of
activity
and rest.
	This phrase begins with "Be".  All too often the calendar of one's life is
too full to take that moment and know that you are, that you aren't just doing,
achieving, but that you are.  Just as the phrase ends "I am God", you are as
well.  In stillness this is known.
	Given the fact of a continual connection of the Father to your being,
personality, and soul, and given the fact that your mind and body are designed
for motion, you may practice stillness dynamically.  Your text tells you that
religion must act.  It must do something, for the Father has manifested Himself
from the far stretches of eternity past, from that time before time before
eternity wherein God is wholly complete, fully contained.  The age we experience
is this bursting forth of God into dynamic interrelationship.  Therefore you
will
stir, you will think continually; this is the desire of the Father to be moving
about in the universe.  To calm the mind, to relax the body, is for you to
retrace the steps of the revelation, the emanation, the manifestation of God, to
come back to that point of the beginning of all things in your own microcosm and
know this Divine Being and to realize this center of all things is the center of
yourself.
	To the ego the universe revolves around itself.  In reality you revolve
around the Father.  Given enough time practicing stillness you will find that
stillness is always as the eye of a hurricane, and you can be traveling through
your days with 140 mile an hour winds taking you on into numerous activities. 
But if you spend deliberately time in quiet you will discern that eye of the
hurricane, that peaceful center, within you.  Do not fight the activity, for
would a hurricane be a hurricane without its calm center?  Accept the natural
construction of your being and be creative in developing techniques which allow
you to strike a balance between dynamism and stillness.  Stillness brings you to
the awareness of the Father.  The activities of your life bring the Father
to the
awareness of the human being.
	I would like to be engaged with you in conversation and invite you to join
me now.

	Tom:  As we get older at least some of our minds seem to diminish like our
bodies whether through improper diet or lack of use of the mind or overuse of it
or substance abuse.  Our text in the Rodan papers says the master's worshipful
practice brings relaxation that renews the mind.  Does the mind need
renewing?  I
thought the mind was a circuit from the Mother Spirit that's perfect.  It's the
brain that's not functioning.
	Is stillness able to renew the mind to overcome deterioration?
*	Jessona:  It is helpful.  I must place it in context in that your mind has
a physical receptive mechanism that is your brain which is intimately associated
with all else that is your body, and it is the body which is first to run out of
its energy, its life force, to deteriorate.  Since the mind must use this
receptive organ to engage into your physical form and enact events initiated by
your will in this world, it becomes hampered as the physical dimension of your
mental, mindal, makeup declines.  Relaxation renews the mind because it
refreshes
the brain.  When the neural circuits are able to reset themselves through
passivity, through the release of the tension of grappling with thought and
method and events and their coordination, the mind is able to turn away from the
outward focus and to be attracted to the inner impulses of the Divine Monitor. 
Relaxation in a sense closes the door on the noise of the outer world so
that you
can hear the subtle sounds of the spirit dimension.
	The mind itself does not degenerate; the platform upon which the mind rests
undergoes deterioration.  Your mind is circuit-like, and as you age your
patterns
of thinking will remain, though your effectiveness at thinking may slip away.
	I will return to my lesson and point out that the effort to be still and
know that I am God is a knowledge that is grounded in awareness and not grounded
in thinking, that stream of constructed expression of awareness.  The knowledge
or perhaps better the awareness of God subsequently is developed into a
stream of
thought often aided by a stream of words that express that knowledge.  The
awareness is in the mind; the expression is composed in the craft-room of the
brain.  You may encounter difficulty as your biologic form -- I search for a
word
that would not bring undue concern --  but it will deteriorate, for physical
life
is of a finite duration.
	Your mind will never lose its patterns of thinking that it developed in the
experience of the physical life.  When you receive your morontia vehicle, you
will receive the new mind circuit, but your patterns of thought will be
installed
in this circuit, and you will continue the consciousness that you had prior to
your death.  In a sense, your operating system will change, but your software
will be reinstalled.  Then your work begins to transform these patterns of
thought that were born in your nativity life on an evolutionary world into those
morontia patterns that will elevate you in awareness to this pure spirit form of
consciousness.  That, my friend, is a great task.
	To aid in the preservation of the organ through which your mind functions
it is good to practice those habits of health and well-being, be it
nutritionally, be it through activity, and be it through the exercise of
thinking, of problem solving, of wrestling in the mind conceptually.  This will
burn the rust off the circuits or at least prevent further rust development.
	Has this been helpful for you?
	Tom:  Yes, I sure think so.
*	Jessona:  That which you can remember?
	Tom:  You're stealing my lines!
	I'd like to leave my thought patterns here.  Does stillness have anything
to do with refining the thought patterns?
*	Jessona:  It does.  Patterns, thought patterns, are a framework through
which your thoughts flow.  It isn't so much that one thought causes another
thought, causing another thought thereby revealing pattern.  It is more rather
that pattern exists and your thoughts tend to conform to the framework.  The
goal
of the Thought Adjuster is the transformation of your pattern into the soul
pattern, the morontia pattern of thought.  Then your thinking will flow into
that
framework in a new and fresh way compared to today.  Stillness allows you to
break not thought pattern but thought habits, repetitious forms and reflexive
forms of thought that fixate and inhibit creative bursts of thinking.  It allows
you to break the confines, to sit for one moment free of the habitual stream and
to allow the pattern to mold your thoughts into that frame that has been
developed by the Father's continual compassionate and merciful care of your life
experiences.
	There is a gradation.  The mind is a beautiful manifestation of divinity. 
You have at the lowest level of gradation simple physical responses such as
reflex, that you even breathe while you pay no attention.  It continues on up
through many levels of your psychology to that which we are speaking of now, of
pattern that is superconscious.  Then mind blurs and bleeds over into the
morontia state, and that is the pattern of your pattern that is your soul.  This
is mind at its highest in physical form, for the soul is your new vehicle for
morontia life, and it is your new mind for morontia thought.
	You begin your life on this planet largely in physical form, and early on
in your growth your mind develops rapidly, enlarges, becomes more adept at many
forms of activity on a mental level.  What emerges is that higher mind, that
superconscious and soul level of encircuitment.  Once this has developed those
levels may fall away, and they will.  Naturally it is of concern to a physical
being this falling away, but rally your faith and trust in the Father's
care, for
your high mind is sharper than any level below can ever have been at any time in
your life.  Stillness is the reminder to the busy mind of that prize of
attainment that is your soul.
	Evelyn:  You mentioned practicing stillness in motion.  Can you say a
little bit more about that?
*	Jessona:  I will draw from the expression of experience of the humans who
have said that sitting to practice stillness only amplifies how much the mind is
racing.  It is much like pausing for a moment to notice how much wind is in the
air.  But when you are active is the wind noticed?  The day can appear calm
until
you stop and notice the wind.  In effect I am encouraging you to do
precisely the
opposite.  If calming yourself physically only amplifies the internal activity,
try external activity to mark the calmness that does exist within.
	As an extreme let us illustrate:  Yelling at the top of your lungs for five
minutes everything that could possibly cross your mind, stomping, flailing,
agitating, and then pause.  The inrush of the silence is quite noticeable.  Of
course this is an extreme method of meditation, but it may illustrate how
you can
use rather than fight the natural tendencies of the body and the mind to be
active.
	Does this help?
	Evelyn:  Some of us have experienced this with monotonous activity, with
something reasonably energetic there is a quiet mental space you can get into. 
Large amounts of time can go by without noticing the vigor of it all.  I
experience that more than I do stillness while trying to be still.
*	Jessona:  I extracted a key word, "monotonous" and also add to it
"repetitive" and call to mind how effective the lullaby is to bring an infant to
sleep.  The silent room may not encourage that sleep state, but the lullaby
is so
soothing that the child falls off to sleep.  Of course, I do not encourage
sleeping in stillness.  But the effect is the same.  A little bit of calming
dynamics can encourage the development of stillness, especially if the tendency
is to be agitated when attempting stillness of body and mind.
	I have greatly enjoyed my visit with you today.  Elyon sends his regards;
he is about other business.  All your teachers are happy to have you engaged
consciously in working with celestial associates and your divine helpers.  All
beings in the superuniverses of time and space are naturally desiring to
find the
Father and to associate with all the children of God.  It is perhaps a little
more perilous on your level as to whether beings naturally do such activities as
these, but we note that you are undertaking what all do throughout these great
universes; you are seeking the Father and you are reaching out to one another in
love and fellowship.  Do not ever let yourself feel alone in this activity, for
though Urantia has missed many vital lessons that would have helped the cultures
of this world, they will come.  Those lessons will be attained.  But you are in
the company of billions upon billions of beings who engage in that very goal of
life that you are engaged in.
	I will be with you again.