[tmtranscripts] Butler, PA TeaM 09-02-97

[Gerdean]

DATE: 09/02/97
LOCATION: Butler, PA
T/Rs: Hunnah and Gerdean


TEACHERS: TOMAS & MERIUM
TOPICS: 
Be Light in the Drear 
Become a Beholder
The Heart of the TeaM
Love One Another


TOMAS: Good evening, my friends.


Group (Leah, Gerdean, Ann and Hunnah): Good evening.


TOMAS: I am stalling in anticipation of Hunnah joining us, but I cannot stall for long, for you are (already) late getting started. Yes, it is as always exciting to be with you in your most delightful configuration. There are times, flock, when you are quite amusing and we delight to see you in your light-heartedness; it is part of the family of man, you see, that you can be children together and laugh and giggle. 


I would like to point out to you, indeed and in fact, that part of the dark cloud that shrouds Urantia is based on the dark gray hues of seriousness, of pain, of responsibility, of crucifixion, of blame, and any number of burdens. When you have begun to feel the lightness of being that comes from knowing the love of the Father, you can relax your armor in joy of kinship, in delight of childlike laughter.


Now, bear in mind your peers, and not only your immediate peers but your peers planet wide -- whether they are young or old, dark or light, short or tall, whether they are Christian or Jewish, Buddhist or Islamic, whether they are Australian pygmies or Native American tribal elders -- no matter what background, gender, educational status or whatever -- these are your brothers and sisters, sharing a natal sphere with you. 


In the course of time you and millions of others, as well as Michael, will be able to look back and call Urantia your home planet, but looking at your peers across the world and their many, many diverse understandings of what must be truth, beauty and goodness to them, will surely set up in your mind an understanding of the very, very diverse aspects of humanity, and all of these aspects of humanity have had certain evolutionary burdens to bear. And the yoke of their burdens and the burdens of their ancestors is often carried on their own shoulders for they fear letting go of their legacy lest somehow it be lost or disrespected in the process. 


It is possible, as a child of God, to know mirth and joy, even childlike silliness. That does not remove from your awareness, when appropriate, the different struggles of your racial composition, your cultural structure, your national contributions and so on, but people take life very seriously. All across the globe people regard life as very serious business. It is part of their heritage to be deeply respectful and concerned in some way about life, even when their behaviors often do not support that attitude. 


It is a gift to you to be able to laugh and partake of sonship/ daughtership and invite your spirit friends in, in your merriment and glee, and understand their affectionate regard for you in your youth, in your growing process. It is a gift. Those who have not discovered the gift of childlikeness still regard life as serious and burdensome, troublesome and dangerous. Yes, Merium.


MERIUM: It didn't sound as if you were really finished.


TOMAS: I have a feeling you want to share in the point. I am not able to presume upon you, however.


MERIUM: What you have been saying as you've talked is reminding the human experience as being one of intense conditioning, and in that conditioning there is conditioning within the conditioning; there is inherited conditioning, the new conditioning, and it just goes on and on into the most complex maze, and yet it is so difficult to accept an invitation to just simply step out of it; it just seems too preposterous for words, and yet this is truly possible because the reality of you is responsive to the area where the freedom lies. It is simply logistics, in a sense, that the serendipitous experience is available to the most entrenched individual.


Just this evening Hunnah was having a conversation with a peer and they were talking about the currency of frequency of light and life that exists once one decides to accept the message of the Christ into their life and allow it to come alive and live in this incredible manner, and she was talking about waiting for something to come along in her life and said that it is indeed like track being laid in front of you. 


As you go along and people come in at different points of intersections where you meet, you make contacts with others who are also on this light trail. But you cannot project or inject this new way of living into the old pattern because it operates on a different frequency, or you might say, has a different gauge track, and therefore you would not expect to set something down on the inappropriate rail if it were to be operating on one.


It is also possible to turn away from the old patterns and emotions, just the way you would dial a radio and get another signal. You would hear another (station); your attention would be diverted and you would find yourself appropriately functioning and responding to that different frequency. You are interacting with people all day who know nothing about this, or who perhaps read a little about it, accepted it lightly, mentally, and have gone on their way of their daily habitual pattern. 


This is, as you say, "where they are at," but as you continue to emit and express and practice the principles that have been laid forth in this teaching, and as they resonate in you, they will become stronger and stronger and it will be almost like a positive infectious experience that suddenly the light will go on. They will become more alert in areas of their private life, in their private thoughts, and once again a new performance will start to take place. You have had a social situation in your worldly experience take place that has caused a great commotion. 


The only way you can ever correct a problem is to begin with yourself. If in some lazy way in your experience you have supported negative situations that harm other people, your attention will be brought to it and you will erase it from your pattern. It will be repugnant to you. You will not buy things that support injurious activities; you will not speak words that will harm; you will not entertain yourselves with programs or books that will hold you down and pull you back into the old patterns; and if you want to change the entire situation, you have to begin with yourself. 


So I wish you well in the practice of new self-discipline in areas of your own experience that you have been too busy to notice, or perhaps you could say, as you stretch you will bump into the new areas that are not going to go with you; you are not going to allow them to remain with you. It is not a clean-up program; it is not a roto-rooting program; it is just that you will attend to the situation as it comes to you so that you may continue to travel in this new way of living. Tomas? You know I had a wonderful time.


TOMAS: You do well, Merium. Are there questions?


Gerdean: I have a question, Tomas, or Merium, and it has to do with what you were talking about. It reminds me of the other day I got a bunch of books in for my shop. They're not all Catholic literature, but quite a bit of them are; some of them are quite orthodox, some are far more liberal, even including what I'd call transmissions or channeling, so it's a full range of literature, religious literature. A couple of them have to do with stigmata.


My mother -- I don't know what the incident was that stigmata came up with her, but she -- in her inimitable style (which is probably the way of most people) said, "Oh, I don't believe in that!" and that finished it; the subject was over because, "I don't believe in that. Period." I said, "Well, mother, I don't either, however I like to know about what other people believe so that when I talk to them I can converse intelligently." Well, she could understand the wisdom of that, and this is kind of what my question relates to:


Today there was a woman in the shop. She'd been in before. She was interested in one of these Catholic books in the front window. She found a book where a lady was pictured bleeding, another case of stigmata, and she, who is Catholic, said, -- "Oh, I don't believe in this! Do you?" Now....


MERIUM: Did she mean "you, the shopkeeper"?


Gerdean: Yeah. Inviting conversation. I said, "No, I don't particularly, but obviously somebody does," and she proceeded to lambaste them, saying they were jerks and she (the stigmata lady) didn't know what she was talking about and so on and so forth, which was assailing these people's beliefs, and ... I think that might have been a little bit about what you were talking about, Merium, is -- we're just not in any position to be assailing anybody's belief system. 


But we're really good at it, you know? I mean, not only socially do we pass judgment on each other, and culturally, but religiously! I'm beginning to see how we pass judgment on each other's beliefs. And I'm guilty of it! Somebody wants to talk about reincarnation, I say, "Oh, I don't believe in that!" and that shuts the door, you know? It's like, "Too bad, if you believe in that. I don't!" and that does not bring an opportunity for communication and sharing and ultimately communion into the picture.


I was wondering, when you were talking, Tomas, about people all over the world -- if people all over the world have different backgrounds and perceptions, different belief systems that are personal to them...! I don't know what kind of question that is or what kind of response it might elicit or....


MERIUM: There is an attitude that you may adapt that is an attitude that will let you travel anywhere and talk to anyone about anything, and that is almost a manner of being an ambassador. If you were a guest in another country, it would never occur to you, perhaps, to speak negatively of the customs of that area you are visiting. It has a lot to do with good manners, and as you mature in your growth and you have a wider scope and your peripheral vision is extended, and you simply see the earth as being seeded with so many different cultures, and within the cultures a form of evolution taking place within each culture (some of them are in movement and some of them satisfied with the way it's been for 3,000 years) that after awhile you see enough of these communities that you will feel very comfortable with the fact that that's just the way it is in this particular situation. 


And you will become a beholder of that culture and you will see, if you stay in the culture -- let us say if you went to the Amazon region and you were visiting a tribal community, you would not ... the longer you stayed, you would find that within the framework of that tribal unit there would be varying degrees of beliefs and devotion to their thought patterns and there would still be, in that private community, those that were ready to stretch and leave, perhaps, but have not, or who want to develop anew and expand. 


This is a matter of consciousness. As the consciousness of the individual evolves, then they will find themselves uncomfortable with the pattern where they are and they will either leave and seek out and develop more or they will continue to explore, and this is in a sense what television has done for you; it has brought this opportunity for you to expand your awareness of this world that you live in, and to hear the opinions and the strengths and weaknesses of the cultures individually and collectively. 


As you have been drawn to this shortcoming in your personality, my friend, you have already won the battle, because you now see that as the Master has shown you through the written words that you will allow a person to make their statement and you will allow that statement to rest and you will give it an opportunity to continue in a respectful way and you will know that when you say, "I don't believe that," that you are hearing an echo of yesterday and you already recognize it. 


When you come to these gatherings and you share, you hear your outgrown ideas and you also are here with a cup so that it might be filled with a delicious aromatic presence of the new thought, the new comprehension, and the new fulfillment that it brings. So I'm pleased that you brought this up. 

Whether it is stigmata or whether the belief is in India or in ancient chantings, statements of the old religions of the world, there is no religious practice on earth today that will not be cleansed, because those that it comes to will become more and more enlightened and they will realize that they have outgrown the suspicions and darkness and the control that the old practices and beliefs have carried with them. 


They are like chains, and you cannot -- they will lay around misused and will be discarded with the fullness. This is indeed going on all around you. You see the churches are having to involve all members of the family in the services because the monastic life that was forced upon people who were not ready for it, the celibate life, that they were not ready to handle, they were not lifted in consciousness to their new definition to what that meant -- these are all practices that have to be re-thought and purified.


Gerdean: Thank you for your response, your thorough commentary, Merium. I'm particularly grateful for your using the word "consciousness" because all of this, all these differences, really do relate to evolutionary religion, except where it comes into the superconscious which is getting up there to where we start to tap into morontia reality, onto our higher thought processes which involves abutting with the spirit -- which is not to say that orthodox and traditional people don't also get their thought processes right up there! 


MERIUM: It is a matter of having their aim or their goals set. "I want ? to be a Christian," (Hunnah remembers the line) or "to be more like Jesus". This is the focus! As you continue to practice something, then you do start to emulate these qualities....


Gerdean: Wait. I have to interrupt here. I have to interrupt here because of the word "Christian."


MERIUM: All right.


Gerdean: It is one of those words that when I think in terms of my brothers across the world, there's nothing really great about being Christian to much of my brothers and sisters on Urantia. In fact, Christianity in many ways is a disgrace to the man who Christianity was named after. There's a lot of things about Christianity that is not Christ-like nor is it God-like nor is it anything that I would like to emulate or be part of. It's just one of those words that has ... it has so many connotations that I don't think that it's anything particular to be proud of!


Those who follow Christ, those who attend church at least, are so divided amongst themselves ... You know, the fact that I've got a spiritual corner in my bookstore and there's ... someone will come in and want to know do I have anything on Seventh Day Adventists. I don't know. It's all "spiritual" to me, but there's different facets of it. I've got one for Jehovah's Witnesses here, I've got a Seventh Day Adventist here, I've got maybe 12 Catholic books, I don't know how many Presbyterian books -- and they don't talk to each other! and they don't agree with each other! ... and I don't want to associate myself with a bunch of people who can sit and look at the same Christ and argue about ... other things, you know? I don't know how to say that. 


I'm saying I don't want to be regarded as Christian, is what I'm saying. I don't mind being a follower of Jesus. I am, indeed, a follower of Jesus, but I don't like the handle of "Christian." It does nothing for me, and I think that it does much damage to Hebrews, for example, and our friends at the Turtle -- those who do aspire to have other religious leaders welcomed into the family of man. I know I would love to see Jesus at the head of the table of humanity, and perhaps someday that will happen, but ... I do know that I have to honor these other spirit teachers who have a lot to offer their devotees. 


I'm not speaking down about Christ Michael. I love him infinitely. I'm trying to figure out how to be an effective teacher, how to convey information, have correspondence, communication with people without being judgmental -- which I'm beginning to realize that, in my limited Christian comprehension, I'm very ignorant. And I'm speaking theologically, you know. There's just ... Again, "dot, dot, dot, exclamation point". I don't know what ...


MERIUM: Are you ready?


Gerdean: Yep.


MERIUM: First of all, I'm amused. Because you could not have done a better job of showing yourself and others what happens when there is mental titillation and sensitivity regarding coveted feelings. When you read the transcript, it will give you much insight as to what's going on here right now.


Gerdean: Good.


MERIUM: And I might add that there is a statement that comes, "Who told you so? Man or God?" Now let us go back to this individual who has acquainted himself or herself with the desire to become more like Jesus. First of all we have an individual who has been acquainted with scripture, who has resonated with a positive way with what he or she heard, and who could be anywhere on the scale of one to ten on "catching on". That statement could be professed by a great enlightened Christian follower or it could be one who has come home with a scribbled paper and mimicked the words, "I want to be like Jesus," so we have a scale of understanding here of Baby all the way to Seasoned Sage within the framework of that religious teaching.


There is a teacher today who makes constant reference to becoming a Buddha. If the person who is of Christian background were to read that, the unfamiliarity and misunderstanding or the lack of understanding would be there because they could be like a Baby and be challenged and threatened that there would be something greater than perhaps they have found, or they would be at the other end of the spectrum, near the 10, that would say, "Of course, become a Buddha, become the best, radiant example of working belief system for what your ideal is." 


If you were a Muslim and you lived to the highest devotion to that form of Muslim belief and behavior, it would make you no lesser or no greater than anyone else; it would simply be your frame of reference. When you are working with the intellectual realm, it can only go so far, because it is in the spirit that allows you to carry through this belief system with poise and integrity and without argument. 


You know that it's not necessary to correct anyone unless they ask for your assistance. One of the greatest hallmarks of achievement in the Urantia gatherings that have come with the Teaching Mission is to acquaint you, in truth, with the way the Master spoke to those of all levels of awareness. 


If you still have remnants of zealousness, if you still have remnants of having to be right, if you still have remnants of having to achieve victory, then that's simply what you are dealing with, and it too shall fall by the wayside as the glorious truth reigns in your consciousness.


You are in ascending mode. There will be days when you will feel as if this is what it must be like, and there will be days when the old guard will bind you like an outgrown pair of shoes, so I am pleased that this conversation has gone the way it has because it will be put in print and the human finds reading very, very satisfying.


Hunnah heard something very interesting today regarding seeing something on television and reading. When you read, you can stop, ponder, pick up again and go on, but when you have something in your face and it is thrust directly at you, as it is in the movement of television, you cannot pause and look at the situation again; you cannot look at the scene and savor another aspect of it; or you cannot correct something that you thought you saw and did not see accurately or you did not hear it accurately. 


You have tapes today. You can play them again and say, "Oh, I didn't hear that before!" You can re-read a book and say, "That was wonderful! I missed that the last time!" But the television media is thrust at you, snatched away, and moved on so quickly that you could easily receive mis-information. I hope that will be the same with this conversation. You will hear it at one level; you will hear it in spirit regardless, because that is where we are connecting. You have the privilege of re-reading what you hear and as we talk, I am not teaching you profound truths! We are re-mediating truth, and filtering it so that you might be able to apply what you know to have given you this truth. 


I am not speaking revelation; it is as if we were in school and we were reviewing things, tossing out and correcting the information, sorting through. So I want you to allow yourselves to relax and not feel that there is a product here that has to be finished by a certain period of time or that you should be pressured, because what you're producing isn't the same as someone else. This is a very, very individual experience, and we have blown the whistle many times on you and said, "It's getting tense. Time to play." So let us relax and I would like to have you take a break, and we'll be back. Thank you.


Group: Thank you, Merium.


[Intermission]


TOMAS: We are here; we are back; we are on-line; we have most thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and are glad it resumes.


Hunnah: You really like it when we get all riled up. I feel as if we're gnawing on a bone and it isn't necessary. I don't even know what I really want to ask.


TOMAS: Let me describe to you what I see you say here, and that is getting wrought up, yet have you considered that the dog loves to chew the bone? It is not necessary that he chew the bone; he loves to chew the bone, as you love to chew the bone also, and we love to see you grit your teeth and nourish yourself and entertain yourself with something of substance. When the bone has served its purpose, it will lose its appeal and you will go off to chase sticks or seek fresher bones. Do not fear that you have wasted your time discoursing about what you have discoursed about or that we have found it to be of great value.


Hunnah: All right. We're talking about people who are perhaps readers who have religious conditioning. In my work, I feel as if I'm meeting a lot of people who have nothing, and I think that if I did go out into the world and would see another segment of the people, it seems as if they really have nothing. And when they are in a difficult place, they still have nothing but the convenience of the support system of their neighbors or of a service to come to the rescue. 


I am amazed at the degree of what appears to be emptiness that I meet and, in contrast to my friend Gerdean in her challenge, I feel that mine is frequently the absence of any place to go. 


And one of the things that my background in the Christian church has had that's been very powerful has been witnessing and introducing Jesus to the "lost sheep" -- and I know we're returning back down to this level but you said you like some of the things that we were touching on this evening -- and I've always been a bit shy about saying to someone who seems to be bankrupt, and asking, "Have you ever considered the teachings of Jesus Christ?" 


My former cohorts would say, "Yes! That's what you should do!" But today it's socially -- it seems like it would do more harm, like selling a product, to do that way than to take it by action, an attitude of mercy and compassion without letting them stay in their victim state of emptiness. I'll stop.


TOMAS: You're now in the heart of the Teaching Mission, for as you seek to convey and receive reality, as you find there is nothing, or as you encounter academic and traditional belief systems in lieu of the living reality, this challenge then is our challenge. That you bring this bone to help gnaw with us, that we may gnaw it with you is what the Teaching Mission is about. Indeed, it is to bring living love into Urantia. 


How can we, one, activate the human spirit; and, after the spirit is activated, how can it be harmonized with the great and tremendous differences existent in the many, many millions of believers from all walks of life and all religious thought? You would seek a simple answer? There is no simple answer. It is on-going. It is our assignment. And to the extent that you find it worthy, it is also your assignment. 


When you feel the lack of spiritual reality in your arena, when you find that "they have nothing" but that their resources are cultural and tribal and supportive in the fundamentals of animal existence but lacking in faith or harmony, the challenge is how to help awaken them, how to whet their appetite, how to help the spirit enter into their environment, and when they begin to think, or if they have already begun to think, then how do you get them to relinquish their thought processes sufficiently to feel the living waters? 


It is not redundant. It is not fruitless. And it is not a bone lacking nourishment. It is an on-going challenge. It is what the angels weep over, and although we delight in your joy and we share your joy, we also share in the frustration that you encounter in your arena as an ambassador of the kingdom, which is a living reality, which is such a living reality as to cross over all racial lines, all national boundaries, all gender differences, indeed to embrace and encompass all of the children of Urantia, indeed, all the children of time and space.


Hunnah: I don't see that we are really any different than when the times of Jesus. There are those walking around who are receptive and those who are not receptive, and since I've been in the group I see that even wakening to some more efficient system of living just physically is a form of development. If you help a person become aware of their own resourcefulness, even at a physical level, such as repairing your own house or finding food or planting, at that level you are about the Father's business and you are in religion.


TOMAS: That is correct.


Hunnah: And none of it is separated ever.


TOMAS: That is correct.


Hunnah: So you just, as Casey used to say, "meet the need at the level of the need" and if we are connecting with our own resourcefulness, then something will come forth for them, in the form that they can understand and utilize.


TOMAS: This is correct.


Hunnah: Even if it's silence! Sometimes silence is your gift, because it comes out as a warm acceptance, like an understanding, tolerance. I guess we suffer from wanting to change what we see. We want to make it more the way we think it should be.


TOMAS: It is not so much that it should be the way that you want it to be, for you really don't care. But the Father within has a plan for his children, and that is to attain perfection. As you perceive perfection, as perfection is reflected back to you, it is recognized and you are happy, you are content with the relative perfection you encounter. 


Witness your laughter this evening before we came to order. You were comfortable with peers in your own sphere of perfection and delight in not knowing negativity around each other. But as you reach out into the world at large, as you find these people carrying these heavy dark burdens, these cloaks of responsibility and fear and doom and holocaust and crucifixion and all the weight and all the worry that your race is heir to, you want to, the Father wants to lift that burden, that you might all revel in the joy of knowing Him, of knowing the love of the Father, of setting aside the darkness and the effort and the suffering of the past and let it go and let it go.


You want to help them let it go. You want to see the light come through. The Father wants to see the light come through. By yourself as a human being without the Father you would not care, but to the extent that he dwells within you and you identify with Him, you care, and you feel it, and it wants you to invest yourself in the evolution, the awakening. It wants you to help direct your focus on what is just around the corner, what is awaiting, what is right in front of you, what is on the tip of their tongue, just like your spirit guides urge you forward, just as the Father urges you all forward.


And you cannot go any faster than you allow or you decide. I feel like a have been given a job of somewhat summarizing Merium's noble lessons, and I do not mean to have usurped her and shut her out. It was simply my turn at the soapbox.


Hunnah: Do you have an assignment for us this week?


TOMAS: I would like to assign something for you, yes. One moment. (Long pause) The Master has recommended this assignment, for I would have been far more academic. He has asked me to ask you to love one another, and that is, my dears, a juicy bone to chew on. Have we not been thrown that bone a million times? But is it not true that love is the answer?


Hunnah: It makes the world go round.


TOMAS: I am reminded of the United States, and to some extent the prospects for a United Europe, that the various differences of the States rights have been made secondary to the ... (incorrect) have filed in line underneath the umbrella of the Federal government or the Federation of Republics. This is a national picture of peace on earth under one government, or the beginnings of world government.


And along the same lines, Michael has asked that all his children come together, and yet, as we discussed this evening, how can that be possible when everyone is so different, everyone is so individual? They have their own belief systems and, as the races have their cultures, the natures have their cultures, these are things that will not disappear over night, nor are they necessarily supposed to. But it can be done under the umbrella of the Divine.


Yes, we would hope to see it under the banner of Michael, and in time that will be the case. It is His world and He will prevail, but for now let love reign. Let it reign upon the Turks and the Sikhs and the Argentineans and the Thai, on the Hindus, on the Buddhists, on the Hebrews and on the Christians, on the orthodox and the unorthodox. Let love speak where even Michael cannot.


It has, again, been a true privilege to be with you. It is difficult, children, sometimes, to present ourselves when you are so lovely and frolicking and we come in and get so heavy, but that is the nature of our assignment, and now we are glad to remove ourselves that you may again be lighthearted. 


It is not for you to walk around like us, but to learn to think for yourselves and in your own ways that you are more comfortable with spreading the gospel, as He would have you do it. We are not your gods, you know, we are only your teachers. Merium, would you like to bid your children goodnight?


MERIUM: Yes, I would like that. It's been a full day and we have enjoyed your chatter and want to wish our friend here, Leah, a happy day of celebrating. We are glad that we are here and we thank you Tomas. Good evening.


Group: Good evening. Good night.
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