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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">North Idaho Teaching
Mission Group</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">Topics: Grace,Collective
Visualization,
Questions on Prayer</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">Teachers: Lester, Elyon</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">November 17, 2002</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Lester
(Jonathan TR):  Greetings to you,
this is Lester, taking a shot at first at bat
rather than be the one to mop up at the end.  I
wish to express my take on the grace of God.
If I may settle into the manner of your
wonderful teacher Elyon, I would like to
“metaphorize” this by saying that grace is like
grease.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
know, as you have just now uttered
your solemn wishes and hopes for ailing
friends, that it is this grace that you seek to
be bestowed.  It is as you know much needed in
a world that is so fraught with shortcomings,
you may call them diseases or ailments or
catastrophes, but from our perspective we’ve
learn to see them all as shortcomings.  So, it
is like your world being a frying pan where the
heat has been turned up perhaps a little higher
than it ought to have been.  Instead of that
long, patient simmer some of you feel at times
like you are roasting.  The grace of God is not
placed upon you to put out the heat but rather
it greases the pan, and it allows you to
spiritually mature, to cook through without
burning, to find yourself at the end of your
endeavor tasty, delightful, transformed but not
seared, dried out, and tasteless.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
know that grease is used also as a
means of reducing friction where two parts may
wear rapidly were it not for the presence of
this lubricant.  Again it is the function of
the grace of our great God to go between, to
stand as that film between you and the abrasive
encounter you are experiencing in your life.
This lubricant does not isolate you from the
calamity or difficulty; it rather modifies you
to better engage and to do so without undue
damage.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">     
Perhaps the greatest inspiration we can
derive from Michael’s life on this little world
was the manner in which he faced his
crucifixion.  He allowed the grace of his
divine Parent to be that lubricant to sustain
him when life’s tribulations grew too large for
one single human being to handle.  He did not
ask for a back door exit; he simply asked for
strength and courage to pursue the Father’s
will in spite of all episodes ahead of him,
what they may bring, and the impact upon his
life.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    I
will take one more minute and  enter my
plea and prodding for you to practice your
stillness.  The daytime of your short life on
earth is as intense as your noontime summer
sun, for this world is rather topsy-turvy in
many ways.  So, stillness becomes your
sunscreen that you must put on to anoint
yourself in this grace of God that you can then
not shrink from the sun but rather boldly face
the intensity and accomplish the will of the
Father in your life and for this world.  Thank
you.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
This is Elyon, greetings to you,
friends.  I am pleased with Lester’s slick
presentation, if you catch my drift.  I am
desirous and would be delighted to converse
with you regarding your topic of conversation
of collective visualization and so will make my
comments as you make yours.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Tom: 
You first, Elyon.  </span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
I would begin by acknowledging the
appropriateness of your sensitivity to a shared
understanding through a visual technique, or
audible or tactile, that encourages each
individual mind to meld into a group
mindfulness, for this is akin, no, it is
exactly the technique that is synergy, that
compounding above and beyond the sum of the
parts into a more potent whole.  While you
could express the esoteric quality of mind as
always being interconnected, it does the human
mind much good to use these aids that you speak
of, the visualization or rituals, to focus.
Yes, indeed, you may not be creating the link,
that collective mindfulness, but you do need to
tap in consciously to that existing condition
that is the nature of mind.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    These
practices are much like, for
instance, the step to the door of a bus.  The
bus already contains enough seats for every one
of you, however, it can be difficult to climb
into that bus, high riding as it is, without
that aid of the step.  Your attempt to develop
a mutually acceptable form to approach your
prayerful healing circle provides that step for
you to enter into that mindfulness, that family
of mercy bestowers, of healers.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Your
turn.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Kirk: 
Sometimes when praying for healing
I think that if I were suffering I would like
the collective consciousness to push me over to
the other side rather than prolong suffering
for fear of what the other side is.   I think
we often pray for healing because we are afraid
to push that person to the other side.  I would
rather have people pray for me to go over and
start my morontia career.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
You have expressed what has been
ingrained in the human mindstream, that sense
that death is terminal and must be avoided at
all costs.  I can assure you, and Lester who
stands by my side agrees, that that has been
one of the most remarkable experiences of our
lives.  It truly transforms the soul.  It is of
great value what you gain in experience while
domiciled upon this world.  It is an
experience, I assure you, unlike what is to
follow.  However, it is unlike what is to
follow, and the morontia career is stupendous,
breathtaking, exhilarating and enlightening.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
are correct to not place death in a
form of avoidance and finality.  The Father
does know all and will direct or allow events
to unfold as He, indwelling an individual,
discerns to be of the best spiritual welfare
for that person.  In a short interval of time
it may appear that one was stopped short, did
not gain all that could have been derived on a
world like Urantia through an early disease or
an unfortunate accident.  But these occurrences
are one small interval of experience in the
long span of eternity, and as important as they
are to a human being whose life is rather short
and extremely valuable, it is after all one of
the most precious possessions you have, your
vitality.  In a broadened perspective these
calamities are no worse than a child’s scraped
knee or cut finger, but at the time was so
traumatic.  As the child soon learns as age
increases that these injuries, while they must
be reckoned with, are not as fear intensifying
or as dramatic as they once were, you apply the
techniques you know to allow the healing to
proceed, and you recover.  Soon with age your
nicks and scrapes are noticed, tended to, and
you proceed on with little upset to your well-
being.  In a few millennia you will better see
how disease and death are quite similar,
particularly in how they are dealt with as the
little child’s injury on the playground.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    I
would never discourage you from the
expression of hope and for your faith reliance
upon God to enter in to your needs and desires
and to provide remedy as you wish it to unfold.
Yet it is wisdom that brings to one’s mind the
understanding you express, that perhaps a
disease or condition may not be suffered to the
bitter end, that in a way as you have
expressed, does the prayer become like your
medical machinery that keeps people alive when
the suffering would cease if they were allowed
to transpire?  This is the secret of the
potency of the prayer, “Not my will but Your
will be done.”  Many times a human being has
lost faith because in their earnest prayer for
the recovery of a friend the friend passed on,
and bitterness towards God resulted.  They
prayed that their friend become better, and
they perceived death to be worse.  Yet the
prayer was answered; that soul transcended that
physical form.  I would not ever advise you to
pray for the hasty death of a fellow, but it is
good to context your supplications for relief
of another who ails with the understanding that
a full healing and recovery in physical form
would be beautiful and magnificent, but the
translation into the higher realms of morontia
living would be likewise and even more so
beautiful and magnificent.  Remember that
prayer is as much a method for your own
reflection and growth as it is a supplication
of need whether for self or others and that as
you long for help for another it enlarges your
grasp of the context of this trouble.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
indicate in your question the
sensitivity to this awareness of the bigger
perspective.  As you pray earnestly and with
hope for another’s recovery you also enlarge
your spiritual consciousness, the cosmic
context.  This will become a possession of
yours that you will retain long after any
particular episode that you request healing has
been concluded.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Evelyn: 
The rules for effective praying
in The Urantia Book indicate that you ought to
exhaust all the avenues of applying your own
efforts towards accomplishing something before
resorting to praying for divine assistance.
Yet we all experience what seem to be answers
to prayers when we don’t feel like we have
anywhere near exhausted what we could have done
to make it come about.  Would you care to
comment?</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
These conditions you speak of were
presented to you by revelators whose intent was
to further deepen in the minds of human beings
your participation, your engagement, in the
answer to prayer as well as refining the
quality of your petitions in prayer.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Far
too long it has been that the human
mindset around the world is that you are like a
spectator in the stadium cheering on the team
to make the goal while not a player yourself.
Yes, it is true that the cheers of the fan can
bolster the energies and efforts of a player
and cause great performance and goal
attainment.  These are the prayers you speak of
where you feel you have done little of your own
resources to bring answer to prayer.  But for
you who have engaged in the play of sport know,
the thrill of carrying the ball yourself to the
goal is far greater than cheering from the
stands.  By applying these prayer conditions
you speak of you are jumping out of the stands
and onto the field.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    There
is no order that you must approach
these conditions.  There is no requirement that
you must absolutely fulfill them prior.  It is
more that you begin the application of the
actions that these conditions promote.  The
answer to the prayer will be forthcoming.
Again it is like the game.  When the ball is
hiked the quarterback is looking for the player
running down to whom he may throw that ball.
If a fan in the stands were to shout, “Throw it
here!” do you think the quarterback would do
that?  But if the player down field were to
call for help the quarterback would
unhesitatingly discharge that ball into the
keeping of that player.  Not to be unfair to
the fan, the fan who says, “There is the player
who’s in the open!  Throw it!  Throw it!” will
be heard by the quarterback.  Prayer of a
passive nature is good.  Active prayer, prayer
wherein you get on the field and participate in
the answer to the petition, brings not only the
fulfillment of the petition, the answer to the
prayer, but likewise, as I illustrated in
talking with Kirk, it brings larger contexts,
lessons not to be directly connected to the
specific request.  Other peripheral spiritual
values and meanings are derived.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Has
this been helpful?</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Evelyn: 
Yes.  Instead of a right and a
wrong way, there’s a good and a better way.
Any prayer is good; then there are those even
better, more benefiting all.  If you’re praying
for someone’s pain to be relieved and the pain
is relieved, that person derives the benefit.
But if you engage yourself in doing what you
can to relieve that pain then you also derive
some benefit for having gone through the
experience, as well as the person being
relieved of the pain.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
Yes.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Tom: 
That’s what we are endeavoring to do
in our healing circle, change it from passive
into a more active form of prayer.  That’s the
benefit of adding as many senses as you can.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
This is true.  And you know, for I
discern the spiritual maturity of each of you,
that it is additionally helpful when praying
for another that you also, for instance, visit
the bedside, for these actions are part of the
healing.  But you are also developing the
sensitivity to those conditions of healing that
engage agencies such as the midway cousins and
the angels who can work with the circuits and
cause the manifestation of the divine healing
energy to appear in that particular individual.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    The
universe is a like a team, and
teamwork accomplishes the desires of the
players.  The Father can directly bless, heal,
grace, any individual.  As I have stated there
are peripheral experiences to any action of
this nature.  Rather than doing so of Himself,
He does through His Son and His Spirit and all
the agencies derived therefrom, and each one of
us is blessed with His grace in the
transference of His energy to another.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    I
have expressed in years past the triad
of worship that entails faith, focus, and
feeling.  Your prayer circle is engaging the
dynamics of this arrangement.  You have begun,
initiated, your prayer circle prior to inviting
myself and others into your discussions because
of faith and because of your compassion for
your fellows, and for your desire that many be
comforted when ailing.  This is the feeling
element.  Now you seek for focus, how to
develop a group concentration that will
intensify what is essentially a worshipful
experience, for you are relying upon the divine
to distribute the healing through whatever
agency is deemed best.  This act of reliance
upon God is an act of worship, the
acknowledgment of Almighty power, of all-
knowingness, of divine compassion.  I will
offer one method you may use.  I do not offer
it as a technique to bring healing; I offer it
as a technique to establish group focus.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    This
group tends to sit facing one another
in a circle, and this allows for you to
physically focus inward toward each other.  So,
it is appropriate to being your collective
focus something in the middle of your circle.
I offer that you visualize the appearance of
divine spirit, be it Michael, Mother Spirit,
however you wish to define the presence.  See
it at first not present and then ever so small,
beginning to emerge from nothing into view.
Small, white, energized, sparkling, crackling,
powerful, enlarging until each of you clearly
sees this presence.  This is the beginning of
the focus.  But I encourage you to not simply
allow that presence to hover centered between
you all but to let it grow until the perimeter
of this sphere of divinity encompasses you and
shrouds you from your backside.  This technique
stimulates the feeling of being together.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
have mentioned the difficulty of
holding hands from the standpoint of physical
discomfort for long periods.  By visualizing
this light energy entirely surrounding you all
you have created a hand-holding condition on
the level of the mind.  Now, rather than being
discreet individuals praying and hoping, you
are a unified body encased in the divine light,
encircuited and energized.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Out
of that center where that divine
presence emerged at the beginning of your
focus, you place the one you are praying for at
the very coordinates you perceive the emergence
of divinity, and let that be where you seek to
bring healing to.  Undergo that same expansion.
Transform from nothing -- in this case the
condition of ailment, the absence of health --
and expand, become energized, illuminated,
glowing with the warmth of spiritual healing,
mental calm, and physical well-being.  Likewise
let that individual’s presence expand to
surround you all so that individual merges into
the feeling of the presence of Father.  In a
sense in this manner of visualization you have
placed the individual of whom you were praying
into the care of the Father, and that is faith.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    You
are under no obligation to undertake
this method I present.  I offer it as a friend
not as an assignment.</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Kirk: 
Has a circumstance ever come up
where a group or individual is praying for
someone suffering who is going to die anyway or
that it’s the will of that person to go on,
does it ever prolong their suffering?</span></font></div>
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<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">*   Elyon: 
Prayer by nature is unable to
bring harm.  The will of the Father prevails.
If an individual, even though sincerely and
earnestly is praying for an outcome that is not
the will of the Father, it will not condition
the timing, the sequence of events, to fulfill
His will.  Be not concerned that you may
interfere with the rightful unfolding of
events.  Do know that the Father understands
every creature, and that you can and ought to
pray what you truly believe and hope for, that
you will not bring damage or undue hardship,
only that you will acquire greater wisdom as
time unfolds.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    Recall
the episode of Lazarus  and how
Jesus said that this was “not to the death”.
Lazarus had been dead for days.  If it was the
master’s desire to demonstrate the source of
his divinity through the resurrection of
Lazarus, would not one consider it undue
hardship for this fellow to have gone through
such an excruciating disease, death, and --
within a culture that distanced itself from
things dead -- to have to emerge from a grave
before strangers?  There are many times in the
human life when the implications and the deep
meanings are not fully understood.  The one who
wished to have Jesus heal before death, that
prayer went unanswered.  Yet the outcome
benefited many for centuries to come.  Pray as
you are moved to and welcome the answer of
spirit.</span></font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New" size="4"><span style="font-size:14pt">    My
friends, the time goes on and I would
release you from my engagement.  We could
continue to talk until the dawn of the next
age, however, it may not promote much
understanding if the mind grows tired and the
body would like Mexican food!  Farewell. </span></font></div>
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