<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2>DATE: March 31, 2002 - Resurrection Sunday
<BR>LOCATION: Rio Rancho, NM, USA
<BR>TEACHERS: MERIUM, TOMAS
<BR>TOPICS: SHEDDING LIGHT ON LIFE
<BR>T/R: Gerdean
<BR>Music: "Blessed Assurance"
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<BR>[Editor's note: Alas, the recorder was not plugged in for most of this long session, so we do not have it on record, but we will attempt to recap the highlights.]
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<BR>MERIUM: Tomas' associate from the Pittsburgh Teacher Base, "told a story" of the Old Lamp Lighter from our literature, who went around lighting the street lamps, one at a time. In some cases the lamp was a solitary illumination, but sometimes there were enough lights to encourage a social opening where townspeople could gather in safety, sharing their knowledge, thus world civilization was seeded through the Old Lamp Lighter. This was the theme carried throughout the session.]
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<BR>TOMAS: Greetings and salutations. There was quite a bit of Tomas' message that kept referring back to the blessed assurance - that assurance of knowing that you know. In light of our new association, Tomas asked if we had any questions from our sessions so far. During the Q&A - Esmerelda opened everything up commenting on seeing Jesus in the resurrection of everything in nature the previous week as Spring came into view - very befitting activity, considering today was Resurrection Sunday.
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<BR>Q&A:
<BR>(1) Dorenda wondered about the Town Council meeting she attended in which she spoke regarding plans for the golf course and how that would impact upon the neighborhood.
<BR>(2) Ann wondered about a School Teachers' Meeting she attended in which she stood firm on behalf of the children and wondered how she could have been more effective.
<BR>(3) Angus wondered about the intensity of strife existent between the Palestinians and the Jews and how that situation might impact upon our lives and our world.
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<BR>Tomas warmed to these topics. Drawing upon his mortal experience as a cultural anthropologist, he responded to these concerns. He then recommended we check the tape, whereupon we discovered it was not recording. "Side two" --
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<BR>QUESTION: As someone who goes through enormous ranges of highs and lows in life, from inspiring creativity to crushing feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, I often wonder how these emotional highs and lows help or hinder my spiritual growth. That is, are these diverse experiences of feeling and emotion of experiential value, or are they merely animal characteristics that ride like excess bagtgage on my "higher learning"? Looked at from another perspective, do the current crop of antidepressants help or hinder our spiritual growth and experience?
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<BR>TOMAS: Hello. I welcome your question and appreciate your thorough coverage of the condition you in quire about. This field of emotion is, in the main, a part of your animal heritage. It is part of the marvelous palette of your creature existence, but there are many who live entirely within the realm of emotions and exclude the influence of the intellect or the realm of the spirit, even ignoring the physical plain. There are those who live intellectually and avoid emotions entirely, as if they were too messy to deal with. There are those who thrive in the spirit who appreciate how the emotional fields conspire to add a human dimension to the gift of sonship. There are those who live a purely physical life who regard emotions as their birthright and make no attempt to understand how they feel.
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<BR>You have obviously entered into an area of growth that is giving you an opportunity to perceive your emotional base states, thus you are able to see how it is that you are happy at one moment and unhappy the next. Many moody people assume this as a way of life. Many people who are sensitive have anxiety they may be manic depressive because they have such a dramatic range of feelings. There are many who have discovered that their diet has tremendous bearing on their emotions. There are many who have discovered that their emotions are where they escape to when they don't want to think, and some who have recognized that they only want to think and don't want to feel.
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<BR>These emotional colors that are a part of your personality palette are able to be understood and therefore enjoyed and even mastered. Emotions can be effective tools in ministry. There are those also who would diminish the effects of their emotional life by regulating their synapsis through pharmaceuticals. I cannot state, as might a medical doctor, what an individual's physical condition is, nor is that my purview, but I can state that the propensity to witness life through the eyes of an artificial stabilizer, deprives themselves of the experience of getting to know themselves, and discovering for themselves their own well of natural resources that are a part of your packaging.
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<BR>To stifle who you are, in order to make yourself presentable to a society in psychic disarray, is certainly compatible with the circumstances you find, but how honest is that? How have you served yourself and your Higher Self by submerging yourself? What a wonderful range of reality you are -- all of you! - and what a superhuman individual you can become if and when you know yourself, inside out, as an animal, as a social creature, as a specimen of humanity, and as a worker in the field. The more you know yourself, the less inclined you are to judge others. The more communion you can experience with your fellow human beings, the more you experientially bond with humanity. Does this bring us back into that Lamp Light, that social coming together that you may experience and share all knowledge? How can you share all of who you are, in all of your greatness, as a fragment of the divine, with personality expression, if you cannot face yourself -- your fears, your desires, your needs, your talents, etc.?
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<BR>The tendency to allow drugs to be the common answer to life's questions is escalating. You will soon be a nation of zombies, an aggregation of artificial emotional insemination as you are told how to feel and, in comfort of that reality, you will sacrifice your own skills in thinking to accommodate the numbing of existence.
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<BR>Barring a need for deep-seated counseling under controlled circumstances, dispense with the narcotics. Life can be painful, yes. Emotions can be wrenching. But they can also reveal your bliss and your passion for life, which is your birthright, so don't deny yourself your birthright in the highest sense because your animal heritage is a handful to manage.
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<BR>How much messier can it be, after all, to discover how you feel about things than what's going on in the Holy Land? That's some very messy emotion in that mix. Very deep-seeded indeed. Emotions are lovely when they know their place. They are part of the tools that you are given. They are part of the joy of living. They need to take their rightful place, with a clean heart, and clear and clean thinking, in order to augment the spirit and the fruits of the spirit.
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<BR>This is a nudge to urge you to fertilize your roots, your emotional roots, so that they can provide you the nourishment that will give you the well-being to be genuinely productive in your life experience - not just to feel good, but to do good - so as not to just not feel bad, but not to do bad. The emotions are indissolubly connected with how you think, and how you think is reflected in your every utterance, so to be a better teacher and preacher, to have more effective and spiritually fragrant personality expression, it behooves you to have an understanding of how you feel and why you feel that way, for that effects how you think and how your thinking impacts on your world.
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<BR>Take these matters into consultation with the Spirit in Stillness and develop your relationship with yourself such that you know yourself, you know when you are being angry and why, so that you know when you are sad and can endure it, when you are excited and how to express it. But this is the one field wherein you have total authority, so make yourself comfortable in your own playground, in your own sandbox, in your own home - for this is where you live - with your feelings and your thoughts.
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<BR>Father, we thank you for this group of children who have come to serve you, who have a desire to know you, that they might reveal you in their lives and enjoy the sonship experience with each other. Such joy they bring. Such expressions of life they are. Bless them in their sojourn, in their experiential situations, that they might see You and learn of Your ways, Your divine Way, the Way that was revealed in the light of your son, Our Michael, when he visited here.
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<BR>We today remember his release from the human experience and from the bestowals. Such a vision of loveliness we have here, from this vantage point, this humble vantage point - to be mindful of the emerging from the chrysallis of the material life, the blossoming Son of this universe, our Master Son, rising to His own sovereignty. Joyous Lord, share your joy with us as we make our way in our world, in honor of you and to your glory. Amen.
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<BR>GROUP: Amen. Thank you.
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<BR>MUSIC: "A Medley of Praise"
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