[tmtranscripts] Consecration of Choice (04-10-97.PGH)

[Gerdean]

DATE: April 10, 1997
LOCATION: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/Rs: Gerdean and HunnahTEACHERS: TOMAS and MERIUM
TOPICS: Consecration of Choice
Q&A: Growing Beyond Michael
Begin a Love Affair with God

URANTIA BOOK STUDY: 
Paper 5: God's Relation to the Individual

TEACHER SESSION:

TOMAS: This evening, loyal friends, we greet you together, Merium and I, on behalf of the Teaching Corps and are happy to be with you as always in, again, an expanded mode of ascension. Always is our path growing; always are opportunities diverging and expanding, multiplying.

Elizabeth: Thank you for coming.

TOMAS: Blessed child, I thank you for being here and providing a space for us, for without your mortal cooperation, we would not have this format, this platform. Again we return to our mutual appreciation, our community. I would like to speak briefly with you this evening regarding consecration of choice.

I know that in your lives you have many opportunities for choices. There are those among you who lament that there are too many choices to make, that there are too many varieties of goods, that there are too many costumes and accessories, that there are too many toys, too much data, much too much that compel you to make choices, some of which need to be made again and again. There are those, too, who complain that there are not yet enough choices, that choices are too limited, that the possibilities of choosing yet remain undeveloped. And these many, many topics regarding choice are within the realms of the mind and the body, the adornment of the person, the sciences and so forth.

But what I would speak to you today regarding is the consecration of the soul, that choice which you as an individual make that will further the growth of the soul, that will enhance your meaningful existence, that gives breadth and depth to your heart of hearts, that sublime commitment which focalizes all of your creative energies, all of your desires, all of your wants and needs on the consecrated goal of devotion to Deity, to the First Source and Center, that which is the goal of the soul and the source of your being.

That decision is the big decision. When they talk about "the supreme decision," what do you suppose they mean? Anybody have an answer?

Elizabeth: I think it means the time that you decide to try to turn your life over to God.

TOMAS: Indeed, it is the motive required that you try, but it is not in the trying but in the doing, when you succumb to His will and testify that it is your will that His will be done, when you relinquish your own control to the over-control of divinity. This is the decision, and thus the soul grows, takes on a life of its own, ascends and expands by leaps and bounds, even without your knowing, for it is now harmoniously working with your Thought Adjuster.

As you read this evening, your personality (your will) and your Thought Adjuster have become betrothed, they are engaged, they have given birth to the soul. This consecration of the soul to the doing of The Father's will is the hallmark of the dynamic life, the vibrant experience of living life with gusto and in fullness, in appreciation of all of life's wonders, in experiencing freely the many feelings and emotions and senses that have been given to you as a being, a mortal being, and a potential spirit being.

As you operate in this framework of cooperation with your Adjuster in support of the growth of your soul, you are at liberty to experience all the wonders that you can in your own limitations and those spiritual experiences that you can experience almost without limitation.

I know that I have sounded rather heavy-handed, Merium, but you well understand how I am and I will appreciate how you are, that you can take my big words and hefty concepts and put voile around them and make them shimmering shafts of light for the adornment of daughters and sons of a more reachable God than I sometimes point you toward. Do you have words to add this evening, Merium, along the lines of our lesson plan that would edify us all?

MERIUM: Thank you. I embrace your talk, and while I am going to talk to you this evening, I must tell you that I am very amused because Hunnah is just beside herself; it is as if she were at the edge and falling off into an abyss of quaking. She hasn't the faintest idea of what I am going to say and she is in a panic. But I will address two matters here.

One is the seeming you and one is the aligned you. In your lesson this evening, the alignment, the mystical alignment was presented and appreciated by several of you as if it were fresh manna or fresh definition; and the you that you are accustomed to, that is continuously bombarded with dividing yourself to so many causes and duties, it is a puzzlement for you to bring the two together as one.

And in one author's book he has written that you are able to develop the art of living between two worlds or two modes of thinking - one that is embellished by your Father's direction, and the other by your human loyalties, your human habits, and we have new leadership in this body that you are trying to bring together as one. The Apostle Paul talks about bringing the two ("twain") into one new being, and this is what I would like to present to you this evening. I would like to have you go forth into your daily living and become more sensitive and aware of the fact that you really do hear your inner workings, and that the more you let yourself listen in, the smoother your experience will be and the more objective will be your communication with those around you.

In your lesson this evening Jesus told his disciples to expect excitement, to expect controversy, because they are bringing their personality into an established society that is not responding to its immediate arena in its normal way. You will not be engaging in conversation, perhaps, the way you were. You may not become embroiled with an opinion the way you were. This is because the inner connection within you is becoming more finely meshed and strengthened, and you will find yourself being far more reserved, less opinionated, perhaps less amusing than you have in the past, but as your allegiance is to this Christ-making, you will be demonstrating a puzzlement to yourself as well as to others, and you will find comfort and strength as you go to your stillness, to go into the wings of the theater, you might say, to be renewed and to allow yourself to gain greater confidence in this new being of which you are becoming aware.

TOMAS: Are there questions this evening? (Silence) We will take a brief intermission.

[INTERMISSION]

Gerdean: Okay. This is Gerdean and I had a couple of questions and I don't know if it's to satisfy my soul or my curiosity or what, and the answer might even be in the Urantia Book but I forget right now. Anyway, the two questions are:

One is, "Why did the revelatory commission hail from Uversa?" which, I guess, is the capital of our superuniverse, and how come Uversa instigated the Fifth Epochal Revelation to Urantia? I don't understand why Uversa has that job. I would have thought that it was Michael's job. Maybe it was and maybe he did appeal to the supervisors of the Sector or something. Anyway, I was one day suddenly impressed that it had come all the way from Uversa, and I wondered about that.

And then the second question that has been flashing on my mind of late is a bit of an anxiety but it's a ridiculous anxiety because I have obviously thousands of years to go before I have to worry about it, but I got to thinking, as we evolve and go through the System and the Constellation and the Local Universe or the Mansion Worlds or wherever it is that we end up going, eventually we're going to have to leave our Local Universe, and the idea of leaving Michael's universe fills me with grief. And I'm not even close! - but I just-- I can imagine that as being a terrible trauma from here, although maybe from there it won't look so traumatic. But the idea of leaving Michael's universe and going beyond.... And what's to happen to Michael? I mean, what is his destiny? As a Creator Son?

Hunnah: I must say you are unique. I can't imagine ... You've heard about Henny Penny and Chicky Licky. This just about fills the bill, what do you think? I'm gettin' ready to start to worry ahead of time and I'm going to worry for the next trillion years.

Group: (Uproariously laughter)
Leah: I think it's great!
Hunnah: Go ahead, Tomas.

Gerdean: Well,...
Hunnah: Do you want to mail that to someone else?
Gerdean: No.

Hunnah: Are we on the record?
Leah: Yeah, so either Tomas or Merium can answer the question.
Hunnah: I don't think Merium is going to...

Leah: That's just it! You say, "I don't think" and she says "I don't think" but you don't know!Hunnah: Okay, let's open it up and see if we can stop laughing. (More laughter)
Gerdean: I like Hunnah's response about Henny Penny.

Hunnah: Here I am just coming out on the ice with my skates on and you . . .
Gerdean: I give you a question I've been pondering for a year and a half.
Hunnah: Maybe they'll call in an oracle to answer you.

Gerdean: Right. I'm not convinced they're going to answer it, but sooner or later they will. I'm ready for another question, though.

Elizabeth: Well, I have a question! I often ... when I don't have time (and I say "don't have time" in quotes) to really pray in the morning and study my lessons and things . I cram my prayers into driving here, driving there, running into the bathroom and I sit with my little papers and things, and then I feel like I'm crowding Jesus into these little spaces and that is not really very courteous or something, yet if I do it I get to say some of these prayers and if I don't do it, I don't; so then the upshot of it is that I get a chance to be in a certain kind of stillness anyway, so I feel very confused about that. I feel sort of ashamed of crowding something so important into these little spaces, and so ...

Leah: Well, okay, we put these things out on the table.
Hunnah: Anne, do you have something that's tickling your curiosity?
Anne: I'm just taking it all in.

Hunnah: Okay. Or if you have a question during the week, jot it down on a piece of paper, and if the answer doesn't come to you yourself, you can bring it in.

Leah: How are we doing, Tomas? Are we doing all right?

Hunnah: Of course we're doing all right. We were just hugged and kissed to death the other night. We're just ...

Leah: I know, but I forgot already!

Elizabeth: I have another question. If Jesus is in Salvington before we, for instance, become pure spirit, does that mean that he is not pure spirit, that he has some kind of physicality as we reference it, as we think it? Because we still have some part of our physical self in Salvington. It's not until we leave Salvington that we become pure spirit, so since Jesus was following the steps of a mortal into the morontia levels, is he also, in that respect, in some way partly physical still, as we would call physical?

Leah: I hope there's an auditorium listening this evening. 
Hunnah: I hope you start transmitting this soon so that we can ...

Elizabeth: Well, you guys, look, if we don't have questions, they won't come around!
Leah: Oh, they'll come around.

TOMAS: I will address your question. We are quite bemused and quite impressed that your questions have gone beyond the crystal ball stages to being actually interested in the universe and its composition and its destiny. In that, you have indicated that you have indeed come a long way. I will reserve the right to withhold certain answers, as they do not fall under my jurisdiction. You surely understand that I myself have not advanced so far as to know the answers to these questions, and so I am ....

Elizabeth: But Tomas, I know that you studied in Salvington and Jesus would come along and make comment.

TOMAS: And, indeed, I did and I have been with the Master. There is, of course, a certain "material" element, for even in the higher spheres there are actual places. Even Paradise is a place, and so no matter how high you go, there are places to accommodate you. The architectural spheres are real. There are structures that accommodate the beings resident therein. Just because they are not physical in the sense that your Empire State Building or your Alamo were/are physical, does not mean that they do not also have their actual structure.

And indeed so do personalities. Even when they are "spirit" they take up space, if you will. They exist. They are. And I appreciate that your understanding is limited, but to all intents and purposes you may picture them as taking up space much as you take up space. But in that dimension, by the time you attain that dimension [tape turned] -- understand that it is not the same kind of dimension that you understand here.

Elizabeth: Um-hum. Thank you.

TOMAS: I am glad you are happy with the answer; I am not, but I am restricted from answering for more than one reason. I am here to address your soul needs, and to the extent that this gives you peace of mind and soul certitude, I can draw you a picture, but it is far beyond your comprehension and even mine in some cases as to how and why and wherefore.

I will affectionately identify with Gerdean's concern that she may one day outgrow Michael of Nebadon and, along with you, I will smile and say it is not anything to worry about now. 

You are just becoming aware of the divine nature of your Creator Son; you are just beginning to learn to love him. You will get closer, and you will find his attributes and qualities so wondrous that you will indeed fall in love with him many times over. But when the time comes for you to take on spirit status and fly away Home, you will do so with a complete new understanding of relationships, including your relationship with Michael, and so I say to you, "Do not worry."

It is as if you had a crush on your Teacher, like a third grader will have a crush on her teacher and want to marry her when she grows up. It is very much the same, your comprehension today. It is touching, Gerdean, but trust me, it is unrealistic to be a worry for you at this point.

MERIUM: Tomas, may I comment? 

TOMAS: Yes, Merium.

MERIUM: In Gerdean's outreach for this speculated future, she has had her thought process scintillated and stimulated by the possibilities of what tomorrow will bring and in this case tomorrow is totally beyond our sights, but just as a worldly concern for where you will go or what route you should take, this is not any different. It is also my observation that in the course of some of the questions, we want to avoid finding out how we can apply them, the immediate truth of the answer, into our daily life. And as we speculate about, "how will I ever be able to bear not having Christ Michael in the sense of his greatness" that Gerdean is contemplating at this point, it makes her anxious, and, in a worldly way, we can become anxious at the cost of our personal life, of allowing this "Christ-consciousness" that wants to divulge itself in you is a costly affair because it will change the scene in your daily lives in some ways and it will bring great comfort and solace to yourself and many others if you allow yourself to reach the heights that you are permitted to travel.

It is human nature to keep the questions outside of yourself so that you do not have to address the issues of personal growth, and we have been at liberty in this small group to talk about personal growth and I am hoping that as we share our talks on the Thursday evening with the base of the attention on text, that we will be able to embellish the appropriateness of the lesson into your personal lives, because it will strengthen this connectedness, this oneness that was discussed earlier.

The teachings of the text and your personal development and your personal growth are allowed to be a harmonious and acceptable assignment. It is not foreign to Tomas' and my goals to be allowed to have the two remain compatible in both sessions. I hope that you, as you offer your questions, will be able to bring both aspects to the floor, that we may be able to see the appropriateness of applying the wonderment of the workings of the Father's creation to your own individual areas and where you are going to be developing, because you all have an agenda. You have a wonderful opportunity and destiny waiting for each one of you.

I think that I have said all that I wanted to say, but it was in Gerdean's awe and her appreciation and her excitement -- she reads the book as someone who is reading a western or a science fiction novel; it is a mystery and a wonderment to her -- and we appreciate that, but we want you all to be able to take the explanation and apply it to your personal lives. Thank you.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium. And your words have now been a springboard for me to add that as we study the concept of community and teamwork, as we read the text and apply its truths into the workshop of our Teaching Mission and the extended lives of the arena in which we work, take this, too, to include the cosmic sense of the word "community." Incorporate your neighborhood into the heavens. Include as family the heavenly hosts and begin to think in terms of "the group" as the greater family, the association with the galactic bodies as your fellows, your neighbors in truth. 

Begin to lift up from the quagmire of legacy and stretch forth into greater truth and appreciation of your beingness. Cover yourself with the airy voile and dance among the stars with each other, touching the ground but ever so lightly. Are there other questions?

Leah: I have a comment. I was thinking about what Gerdean asked and it states repeatedly in the Book that anything with truth, beauty and goodness will always remain with us, so her relationship with Jesus will always be with her and, of course, we mortals have no idea what is beyond, and as you state, you don't know, but it has to get better because it always does get better.

MERIUM: Very well put. I like to hear you speak, Leah. I am hoping you will write down questions and often make comments. We are looking forward to your transmitting, as well. You have no idea how wonderfully expressive (and if you'll excuse the comment) and therapeutic you are.

Hunnah had a daydream recently; she was thinking about you, and she said, "I wish that Leah could read the Book and put it on tape because she has the most wonderful resonance to her voice." This is not just sweet talk. Remember we are instruments, all different instruments, and you have a beautiful resonance in your voice. It is a pleasure to hear from you, dear.

Leah: Thank you. I have been requested to do that before, but I heard that there actually is a recording.

MERIUM: Well, perhaps you could record your favorite parts. It doesn't have to go to press. It could be shared among us.

TOMAS: Perhaps you could record favorite parts of our lessons; I would love to hear them through your voice.

MERIUM: Perhaps we should mail them to some of the people that we miss.
Leah: Well, thank you very much for your votes of confidence. 
MERIUM: We are recruiting, dear. 
Leah: Well, okay.

TOMAS: We are becoming a community of ambitious souls, consecrated to loving each other and "spreading the gospel," of sending up and out psalms and hosannas.

Elizabeth: Well, I had a question and I'm still hoping that you'll answer. I asked, but I'll ask again, of course. I'm crowding some of my prayers into these little scattered moments and I think it's not very polite in a way to do it and so I have a. certain ambivalence about it.

MERIUM: May I, Tomas? I have a suggestion because I eavesdropped earlier and I heard the word "lover." I suggest that you take a new lover. (Group laughter) I suggest that you clearly look at your opportunity to practice the stillness as a liaison affair and that you look with great anticipation to that moment when you may steal away to be alone. If you allow yourself to look at this in a playful sense, because intellectually you are very obedient and studious. If you allow yourself to look for those little snitching moments where you can escape for just a little while and be quiet and wait for your lover...

I heard those words and yet I don't mean to make light of it, and yet I do! and that is part of the purpose of my coming, to help us lighten up and to take duty which we are so duty-bound, and to set that duty into a new form and allow yourself to find to your amusement and to that of our Beloved Michael, to allow Him to show you that this Lover is indeed your Best Friend and that He will show up for you by allowing you to be quiet and to feel His peace and the refreshment of that living reality of this little bit of time that you were seeking, and before you know it, the little bit of time, like tithing, will become a greater amount; it will be like leaven and you will find fruitage in this effort, or you will find another original idea come to you of a way to resolve this problem.

It is not a problem. You are telling us that you are ready for a change and your appetite is appropriately going to be satisfied.

Elizabeth: I like it. I like your answer a lot. Thank you. Thank you, very much, Merium. You're really delightful and I really am responding to your personality. It's really fun to have the feminine point of view and now, I suppose, we have kind of a balance working here, because Tomas does come across as being appropriately masculine, which, I like it immensely well, and so now it's just so great to have a feminine point of view.

TOMAS: I am not meaning to infer that this is a male point of view but I will follow up with a remark of my own insofar as your current practice is concerned and I hear you say that even though you frequently take a moment here and there, as Merium suggests, steal away for a private moment with the Lover in terms of prayer and thought and worship, you need to actually plan a get-away vacation and go off with Him and spend some quality time wallowing in His caress.

The fact that you say "guilt" is an indication of your need to expand your relationship with Him, this is true. It is not necessary for you to feel guilty, for you have admitted to practices which benefit, i.e., you pray, you talk to him, you have these "spiritual" thoughts, but they are snatched from the bulk of the day which you devote to other causes and, yes, you would do well to have a renewal of your vows and a recommitment, another consecration of the will, to allow your soul to burn with that fervor, that enthusiasm that would allow you to once again raise up and early in the morning if necessary, in order to spend quality time in stillness and in conversation, in communion with Michael and with The Father.

Elizabeth: Good.

MERIUM: I will add one little suggestion here, and we know about the human addiction to soap operas, and I know that you have surely outgrown the need to come home from getting groceries to watch the soap opera, but what there is here is the evidence of a block of time, and if you would allow yourself one month, just as an example, to every day block off a particular time and say, "I will not be available to the world from this point to this point" and keep that date, then you will develop a loyalty to it and you will find out that it will mean so much to you that it will take a tornado to release you from the commitment, so as you examine your time, in your heart, ask for the foresight to know what that recipe for you should be and I am sure you will find great fruitage for you.

Elizabeth: You're a very impressive combination!

TOMAS: We like each other, you see. We have our work in common and we are naturally compatible, inasmuch as we have attained this level of functioning, which is, of course, why we are working together with you, that you also may attain such levels of mutual admiration and affection that your radiance will spill out into the greater community and affect Urantia as a result of your love for each other.

My dear ones, it is time for us to call it a day. We have had a rambunctious evening. Merium and I are very pleased to be part of your lives, to be part of this Teaching Mission, to be part of the growth of the living organism of the Evolving Supreme. We offer our gratitude to Michael and to the Eternal Father for bestowing us with this gift of life, for sharing with His other creatures.

Be kind and good to each other this week and review your consecration and find out where your true loyalties lie. Good evening.










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