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<DIV><B>
<P>DATE:</B> October 17, 1996<BR><B>LOCATION:</B> Pittsburgh, PA,
USA<BR><B>T/R:</B> Gerdean</P>
<P><STRONG>TEXTUAL STUDY: </STRONG><BR>Urantia Paper 160<BR>Rodan of Alexandria,
Cont'd.</P>
<P></P><B>
<P>TEACHER SESSION:<BR>Forgiving Tolerance</P></B>
<P><B>TOMAS:</B> I am Tomas. Good evening.</P><B>
<P>Group:</B> Good evening, Tomas.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Dear ones, it gives me great pleasure to be with you again as you
are pleased also to be back in your customary realm with your peers. The
familiarity of your home environment, our teacher base, is a solace and a
comfort and a grounding experience following the tumultuous ride we just took in
our neighboring community.</P>
<P>My prayers are with all of those who attended, for there will be growth
ramifications. Not only were many seeds planted but also much earth was moved to
allow for these seedlings to sprout and grow. Oft times the mere stirring of the
dirt is enough to cause a tender seedling to collapse, to fall over in fear of
the birth, and so I say my prayers are with them. And to those of you whose
shoots are well-developed and strong, who are standing tall in the sun, who are
putting forth fruit already, be tender-hearted with those new sprouts, that when
your fruit-bearing has ended, they may take your place in the orchard of the
Lord.</P>
<P>My friends, this evening I would like, with your permission, to proceed with
our customary format and address again an aspect of character. This evening I
would like to call to your attention and spend some time chewing on the fruit of
"forgiving tolerance." This fruit is somewhat of a paradox and resembles perhaps
a pomegranate, for in spite of its appearance, it is full of many-faceted
aspects of feeling, attitude and emotion, which belie its smooth surface.</P>
<P>In the first place, I will refer briefly to the word "tolerance" and point
out that tolerance, as an admirable trait in itself, even so, bespeaks a certain
superiority. It is an endurance, this tolerance. A putting up with. Totally
lacking in fruit of the spirit by itself, tolerance is meaningless without the
qualifier of "forgiving" (tolerance), for in forgiving, you have brought
godlikeness into the picture and broadened tolerance from a mere stance of
endurance to a condition of reality which has true life and love
reverberations.</P>
<P>And so I will spend a moment discussing forgiveness. You may have heard it
said that it is unnecessary of the Father to forgive his children, for He
already sees all there is to see and is in complete and total understanding of
all His myriad children. There is nothing for the Father to forgive, for He is
love, and in love, looks upon His children with tenderness and compassion.</P>
<P>The human being, however, is not so easily forgiving, for in the human realms
there are betrayals and offenses and thoughtlessness and these bring about
emotional feelings which make forgiveness difficult. The human cannot see with
the eyes of God.</P>
<P>And yet you are given the fruit of the spirit, forgiving tolerance, thus we
know it is possible that you can learn forgiveness, that you can practice
forgiving tolerance. Not only that you can practice forgiving tolerance, but
that forgiving tolerance can become your very nature, and when you encounter
your fellow human beings who would give you offense, you can see with the eyes
of the Father. Now how is this attained? What, after all, is forgiveness?</P>
<P>Anything, anyone, different from you is external to you and meaningless
unless you personalize the experience. When you personalize your experience, you
are at once vulnerable and subject to feelings. You are at once exposed to the
danger of having your feelings hurt. This can be brought about through
misunderstanding, ignorance, or deliberate viciousness on the part of
unbelievers.</P>
<P>In recognizing the Father's viewpoint, in appreciating that from His point of
view all is human error, you can look then, impersonally, at the situation in
terms of human error. Who has erred and for what reason? How have you been
damaged by the error? What is your responsibility in the error? In the damage?
To err is human, to forgive is divine; and so you must transcend your own human
foibles and frailties, and this is difficult, for then you must let go of your
righteous indignation. You must let go of your opinions, your prejudices, and
your fears. You must learn to see that mortal being as a child of God who is
subject to human error.</P>
<P>In some cases you can ascertain their motives, their intentions in causing
you harm, in causing your hurt feelings. Sometimes you cannot understand why
they would behave in such a way. Sometimes you believe that the violation is so
great that you are justified in withholding forgiveness. Only as you forgive are
you yourself forgiven. As long as you hold in your heart that animosity, that
hatred, you are holding within yourself that block against the spirit. You hold
in yourself a door closed against truth.</P>
<P>To find the courage to open the door and forgive is to become as a little
child, to recognize that you are in the hands of the Eternal Parent who loves
you and who loves all His children. When you can give he/she who has offended to
God, to do with as He will, when you have unburdened your soul of the
responsibility of judgment for that other individual, you have opened the door
to allow yourself to be set free, washed clean of the block of anger, offense,
hurt, fear, and superiority,</P>
<P>I tell you, my students, that as you familiarize yourself with this position
of childlike acceptance and obedience to His will, you rise above the anger and
the pain. You are made free. You are released from that which you held hard in
your heart and you are forgiven your anger, and now when you see individuals who
are different, who are ignorant, who are offensive, you are able to understand
that they are immature, that they have not learned. Perhaps, like you, they seek
to know, and forgiving tolerance now becomes a way of life.</P>
<P>It is not a matter of putting up with, for you would, in essence,
reflectively, just be putting up with yourself, and that is no way for a son or
daughter of God to live, to feel, or to respond to the magnificence of the gift
of the awareness of being part of divinity.</P>
<P>All of you have an understanding of forgiving tolerance. All of you also have
an understanding of when it has been that you have impatiently cast aside an
opportunity to grow or serve because you were unforgiving. Be therefore tolerant
of yourself, and forgiving of yourself as you seek to attain the better
approach, the better way of life.</P>
<P>This fruit, this pomegranate that you can hold in your hand and feel as a
marvelous solid red vibrant fruit of the spirit, is filled with little seeds,
with membranes separating pockets of seeds from each other, and this is the
condition of the human who has many emotional seeds of distrust, despair, anger,
resentment, fear, prejudice, conceit -- these marbles of mortal madness are made
sweet and wholesome, are turned into a fruit of the spirit, by the understanding
that this fruit has been created by God and its ripened juice is sweet, its
purpose is nourishment.</P>
<P>Forgive me for rambling. I have missed you. Those of you who did not attend
the conference, be assured we had a wonderful time, we are glad to be home, and
we are glad to include you in our embrace. Dear pupils, how are you? Have you
questions for discussion this evening?</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Tomas, I'd like to ask if forgiving tolerance is the same as
unconditional love.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> No. It is not the same, although forgiving tolerance may attain to
that. As you aspire to attain unconditional love, which is, yes, a ripe
pomegranate, you must perforce await its ripening, and in its ripening you learn
first forgiving tolerance. This is so because of your conditioning, because of
your ripening process.</P>
<P>Unconditional love is largely a fantasy, an ideal. It is almost always
unattainable, but it remains a high ideal to aspire toward. The human always has
a condition, always has a motive. It may be the most divine motivation
available, but there is a condition. There must be life forthcoming, responding,
resounding, somehow. And so they are different.</P>
<P>It is not a fruit of the spirit that you have unconditional love, for that is
virtually unattainable. Even the Father, who has in His hands the unconditional
love of all his diverse family, has a condition upon His love for us, and that
is that we should know Him and love Him in return.</P>
<P>When you are admonished to manifest the fruit of the spirit "forgiving
tolerance," you are applying the spirit in your work in the field, in your
relationships with others. Unconditional love can be had perhaps for an infant
by a mother, but even children grow up and get into things and try their
mother's patience.</P>
<P>Has that helped to clarify?</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Yes. Yes, it does, especially the analogy of ripening. I heard you
say it was unattainable but then you said the thing about a mother's love which,
I guess, in our human sense it seems attainable. I'd like to ask something
else.</P>
<P>Forgiving tolerance. In our earthly realm, as we start to mature and explore
and discover things, it seems that there is talk of values and what you can
allow and what you can't allow. What struck me is that if a boundary has been
violated, that the person who feels that something has been violated, and this
continues to happen, on the earthly plane there is the opportunity for
detachment mentally or physical separation, but from what I'm hearing you say,
there is something to look at in the self. If this behavior is considered
offensive, something needs to happen. Would you just comment?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Let us take the example of a love-saturated soul whose immediate
agenda of time and space in radiant joy of the spirit is only to expose his or
her loving soul in response to the spirit and in response to the presence of his
brother or sister in the flesh; and let us say that this other brother or sister
in the flesh is equally a love-saturated soul.</P>
<P>Here there are no boundaries; there is total union, spiritual oneness. There
is nothing to forgive. There is nothing to tolerate, for it is a moment of
relative perfection on Urantia. These moments, these experiences are infrequent,
in the norm, for as you go about your life in your maze of patterns and
programs, you are a jumble of behavior patterns and responses. The spirit is set
aside, forgotten. There is no room for the spirit in, for example, a. corporate
environment or a domestic dispute because the emotions or the profit motive or
whatever is involved. These are the realms wherein offense is easily given and
taken.</P>
<P>In the normal course of being a human being, a man among men, a fellow among
fellows, it is so easy for you to misunderstand each other based on your own
unique mental outlook. Your outlook is yours and yours alone, and this is
created and altered by your life experience and your exposures to your various
cultures and the myriad personalities who have impacted you. A simple phrase
that is a common everyday phrase for you, uttered lightly, may, in another's
mind, have inferred to them a slight, a rejection, a vulgarity. These are a
result of being human. By and large they are harmless except as they compile and
it becomes a real wall between you. And so these offenses may not be because of
meanness but out of ignorance.</P>
<P>Only as you attain higher and higher spirit reality levels in your dealings
with others, do these possibilities diminish, for as you know another in the
spirit, you understand their intentions, you recognize their motives, you
appreciate their differences, you respect their personality, and so they can be
found (to be) funny, original, ingenious, mind-expanding, by comparison to the
situation which lacks sufficient spirit content to give it that edge, you see.
The more spirit you can bring to any situation, the more sweet your fruits will
be.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> It certainly takes less energy when you don't have to react and
react and react.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It takes a different kind of energy. Much of it now is divine
energy, instead of emotional energy, and emotional energy is exhausting.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Let me give a far-fetched example. Suppose someone came over to
your house and swept your walk after you swept it and that irritated you. Now,
that's not really that offensive, it's just something which you state to a
person you really don't want them to do anymore, and they continue to do it. My
question is, is there something wrong with you because you don't want them to do
it? Or should you allow something because you want to be tolerant, because it
seems the lesson is about "not putting up with."</P>
<P>Now I understand the gist of seeing this person as a child of God. Initially
the example was put forth of a non-believer or someone who is immature, but if
this person were the person sitting next to you, who certainly understands that
you don't want something done, and they still continue to do it, I just don't
know what to do with the situation.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Have you studied their motives? Have you tried to understand your
brother? For you are aware of the analogy, the picture in the Urantia Book that
describes the man, the primitive man, with his club upraised...</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> I'm familiar with it.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> ... and the point of it is that if you understand someone and
understand their motives, you can learn to love them. If you understood why this
individual insisted on sweeping your walk even after you had swept it, you might
understand that it was a gesture of love or a request for attention or a way of
getting you to engage in discourse.</P>
<P>Also remember that some immature mortals engage in irksome behavior so that
they can get attention, even if it means being yelled at or punched because that
is what they learned early on as a way of getting attention, and sometimes the
only attention they have known is offensive and abusive attention. Look to the
background of the individual who you are feeling intolerant of so that you will
understand if it is necessary to apply forgiveness in the situation. And if
there is, then you will know what you are forgiving.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> What if there is nothing to forgive?</P><B>
<P>Hester:</B> I have to ask Tomas, how does one go about investigating the
background of someone who is only a neighbor whom you really don't know and have
difficulty approaching because they don't want to be approached?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> They are on your front step!</P><B>
<P>Hester:</B> So I own the steps. I have a right to ask them not to do
that.</P><B>
<P>Elizabeth:</B> She did ask them and they kept on doing it. </P><B>
<P>Hester:</B> That's right.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Question also your own motives in territorially. It would be
possible to stand in the doorway with the screen closed between you and discuss
the beautiful autumn leaves or the political debate to open the door of
conversation between you. It sounds like an unusual behavior pattern if you are
truly being bothered by someone who insists on sweeping your steps. I cannot
understand why you would be offended.</P><B>
<P>Elizabeth:</B> I feel like I have to get in on this. My idea is that this
goes back to something about the way you were treated as a child of the family.
This sounds like a repeat, and it arouses the frustration you felt as a child
when you were ignored and you would say, request something and it was just going
to be slid over, and that might be the reason somebody feels bad about their
reaction. They really don't have to feel bad about it because it's something
that's rooted in the past. I mean, I don't know whether that's right or not, but
I'm just thinking that that's something that --that came to me.</P><B>
<P>Beatrix:</B> I remember when I was at that conference and we talked about
cosmic consciousness and this was -- I can't believe how much we let people keep
doing what they want! -- and she gave an example. Now, maybe it's a different
slant on it. Maybe it's something that doesn't have so much to do with
forgiving, but just a boundary, and I think when it interferes with your self,
your respect of yourself, like your value of yourself, that then you were
permitted ... that you don't have to be rude. Is that kind of what you're --
because you're ... It's not that you're angry, it's that they're going past the
line that becomes abusive in a real slight way. Was that an actual example that
you gave?</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> No. I'd like to expand on this a little.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I would like to say that your example, then, is rather like a dog
who consistently urinates on your garbage can, and I am addressing a fruit of
the spirit in terms of your relationships with other human beings in which you
have some degree of contact and communication. This person that you set out as
an example is obviously not communicating with you, and so it may not even apply
that forgiveness is an aspect. Indeed you are perhaps simply enduring a
situation that would do as well to call the authorities. </P><B>
<P>Student:</B> A what?</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> A cop. A policeman.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> Well, this example, it's not a normal ... I mean ... </P><B>
<P>Student:</B> It could be me!</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> Perhaps it's someone who has no more intelligence than a five
year old, who thinks it's important to help someone because his mommy says you
help people. And he's got that mentality that he won't accept the fact that you
say you don't need it done and you don't want it done.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> It's not a real example.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> If it's a situation with a normal person ...</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> You're really talking about your integrity. If you've already
done something and somebody does it, which is in some way, I'm picking up, a
disrespect....</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> No. I set a boundary and the boundary was violated. </P><B>
<P>Student:</B> Okay.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> I also want to put this in because I also had an incident at the
conference where I felt that I did something right. I really wasn't conscious of
what I had done until that person told me that what I had done to them was
entirely offensive, and I was so taken aback by this, that I just couldn't
believe it! And it was a gesture, and the analogy that I originally wanted to
report -- I didn't really want to get entirely into this, but -- it was a
similar situation, where it was stated to me that the boundary I felt was
violated, the party informed me that their motive was not the way I thought that
it was.</P>
<P>But I always thought that if you're going to end up with a broken leg, it
doesn't make any difference whether somebody pushes you down the stairs or if
they trip you or if it was just an accident, they bumped into you, you still
have the broken leg.</P><B>
<P>Elizabeth:</B> Well, we've gotten a lot of good ideas about forgiving
tolerance from Tomas. I think that we're going to read those transcripts and, as
usual, they are going to be very meaningful.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I would like to add something for the record, that I noticed that
the dialog following the lesson went downhill by accentuating the examples of
ways in which you are offended rather on the ways in which you can grow in the
spirit of forgiving tolerance.</P>
<P>The point of the lesson is to take to heart, for your own growth, your own
nurturing of this fruit of the spirit within yourself.</P>
<P>This is not to say that any of us do it perfectly, but we are trying to ripen
the fruit through the spirit. As always, the practice of Stillness brings us
back to a closer understanding of our failing to be tolerant and forgiving.
Always there is a reflection on the self of how I could have done it better. How
could I have shown more tact and tolerance? How can I reach my brother, my
sister, more affably, more lovingly? How can we develop understanding between us
and not allow the misunderstandings to damage the relationship?</P>
<P>Rather than focus on the negative, focus on the positive, even as you sit in
Stillness and seek forgiveness for your misguided feelings. Why, indeed, are you
offended? How is it that your brother or sister offended you even when they did
not intend to? Because <I>you interpreted it</I> in some way that was
unsatisfactory to you! It is therein that you need to keep your side of the
street clean. Always are these (lessons on) fruits of the spirit intended that
you take a look at yourself, that you may better learn to nurture your own
fruits of the spirit through the help of the Master Gardener. </P>
<P>Always is it the relationship between you and the Father, which is primary,
and then the relationship with you with yourself, and then the relationship of
you with others. Keep your priorities in order. You encounter others in order to
serve. When you encounter others to have your needs filled, you run into
trouble. Only the Father can provide your needs. Only He can forgive you for
being so needy. And then you can forgive others because you understand how it
feels to be wrong. </P>
<P>My children, I am going to bow out as gracefully as I can from this lesson. I
perceive that I have struck some emotional chords as --</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> Tomas?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Yes.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> I was reading a line today that said, "Hope causes the energy"
and I thought that was wonderful, and then I thought all the fruits of the
spirit probably cause us to have more energy than we might
have.<BR><BR><B>TOMAS:</B> As they are mastered, yes. <BR><BR><B>Student:</B> As
they are mastered, yes.<BR></P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> But as you read in Rodan, these habits, better habits are
time-consuming and exhausting at first, and so the work of the spirit is indeed
work until you have your self polished sufficiently that you can rather gleam
through some of life's vicissitudes which used to trip you up.</P>
<P>Yes, as you attain maturity, you have more time on your hands and many of the
difficulties of your more troublesome brothers and sisters no longer even come
to your attention and are no longer bothersome for you, for you understand they
are not yours to deal with. You have learned to transcend through forgiving
tolerance and other fruits of the spirit.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> I'll bet our brain really loves those fruits of spirit. Then it
can really work.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Your mind enjoys working harmoniously with Infinite Mind,
absolutely! It is the animal mind that balks, and once you and your Thought
Adjuster act as an animal trainer and get that cat to "heel!" you can begin
putting on a real show.</P><B>
<P>Student:</B> Good!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Dear students and precious friends, embrace one another as I
embrace you. As Michael has taught us, love one another as He has loved you.
This is the challenge of the ages, but it is the most meaningful adventure.</P>
<P><B>Student:</B> And we embrace you, too, Tomas.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Dear Celeste, thank you. I will not give you an assignment. I know
you have enough to do.</P><B>
<P>Beatrix:</B> I was going to say, you'd better give us a couple weeks for that
one!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Enjoy the autumn finery. Farewell.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>