<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2873" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><B>
<P>DATE:</B> October 22, 1996<BR><B>LOCATION:</B> Butler, PA, USA<BR><B>T/R:</B>
Gerdean</P>
<P><B>TEACHER SESSION:<BR>Reviewing Earlier Lessons</P>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Good evening, everyone. I am Tomas. I am your Teacher.</P><B>
<P>Group:</B> Good evening, Tomas.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I have a new name for you. "Little rascals." (Group giggle)</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> You're getting' street smart.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I have been around the block, and so I am becoming street smart,
but I assure you my nomenclature is born of affection and not derision. How you
play with one another and among each other is so entertaining! How you pull
pranks on one another and cry and then laugh, is a part of your heritage which,
although it is cumbersome, is also according to your stature. You are not alone
in this descriptive phrase, but your rascally ways are truly harmless by
comparison to those who would do evil. Yours is the orneriness born of children
who have known plenty, who have known affection, who have known forgiveness, who
have known play and joy and laughter. As you have mercy and patience with one
another, as you behold others' behaviors, those who are perhaps also rascally,
look upon them with kindness and tolerance and patience.</P>
<P>My dear friends, I am fully apprised that you have been fed abundantly and
consistently of late. Indeed, our lessons have been so fruitful and so
plenteous, there has barely been time for you to digest one course before we
have brought on yet another. And so this week I would like to take a break from
our customary perseverance into realms of thought and meditation to reflect and
review some of those things which have come to your mind as if a belch from the
plenteous feasts prepared and served for you of late.</P>
<P>I know we will have much to consider, and so I open the floor to you already.
Hunnah?</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Oh, wow. What I understand is that you're asking us to reach into
the lessons that we have received in the past and, if we have been applying them
in our life and if we have seen -- Is this what you want? to make reference to
it?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Rather. I have seen and heard you all make reference to various
lessons and to pull questions and discourse from behind your ear and I thought
perhaps you might want to ponder these questions and discourses aloud for
further clarification. Before we proceed however, I would like to be introduced
to our guest, that is to say, that I have not met...</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Sorry. I hadn't realized you have not met him. This young man is
part of our larger family and the last name I heard he was David (pronounced
Dah-veed'). This is my son, Barry. We're real pleased to have him here this
evening. Instead of cleaning, doing chores, he's up here almost at your feet.
Barry, this is Tomas.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Hello, Barry. I am very pleased to meet you. Charmed indeed am I
to have your companionship this evening. My flock has rather touted you as a
folk hero among them and it is my pleasure also to make your acquaintance for I
know that your music has stirred the imagination of many, and so you and I have
something in common at the outset. It is truly a pleasure to meet you and to
honor your presence here. Thank you for your indulgence.</P>
<P><B>Hunnah:</B> He is really not closed-mouthed. He'll say something.</P><B>
<P>Barry:</B> I had my name changed.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> I thought you weren't supposed to share it.</P><B>
<P>Barry:</B> I can't pronounce it. (Group laughter) My old name is
[indecipherable].</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I shall call you Dah-veed'.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> I think we all suffer from a human condition called, "What are we
supposed to do now?" and part of me knows that what we are supposed to do now is
practice what we heard, to put these principles into practice, but we all came
back from this wonderful conference kind of expecting to find a note on the door
saying, "this is what's going to happen" and it doesn't happen that way, of
course, but I have personally still been dealing with letting the other fellow
live his life and minding my own business and it's probably just going to be
biting at my heels all the way to forever, but that's one of the things … so I
guess that falls under the category of tolerance.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> No. (Group laughter) It puts you in a position, my dear, of other
people having to tolerate <I>you</I>, and that (group laughter), I know, is not
your desire.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Oh!</P><B>
<P>Ruth:</B> Follow that!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> You are guilty of a common human foible -- of attempting to manage
the show, of opting to be the director of the production -- for if they would
simply do their lines as you see them written, the show would go well, but, you
see, everyone has their own interpretation of how their lines should be read.
Some even follow the guidelines of the Master Scriptwriter, arid so, as you can
relinquish your control over these little rascals and allow them to learn by
their own experience, they will indeed be brought to the guidance of that which
sincerely enables them to speak their lines most clearly, that guidance being
the God of us all.</P>
<P>It is certainly not that you stand alone in this character defect. Your
planet is rife with such ignorance. It makes life difficult. I did riot intend
to chide you in my remarks but rather to help you realize that this is something
that, in illumination, you could, as you are wont to say, allow to evaporate in
the light. Many times awareness of a situation is truly adequate to bring the
light of truth and therefore correction into play.</P>
<P>It is no wonder, I would add, that you and many others have this propensity,
for so many individuals seem to have and truly do have no meaningful direction
in their life, and perhaps as a mother and through the Mother Spirit's influence
you feel compelled to gather your chicks around you and feather the nest and
protect them from the storms of life, but they will not learn this way. They
must learn from their own experience, even if it to you appears foolish or
ignorant or abrasive or immature.</P>
<P>It is necessary that the young learn how to live by their own experience.
When you have thus allowed humankind to go its way, to learn its lessons in its
own time, in its own course, you have released yourself to be free in your own
sphere, to then play and reap the benefits of your own priceless experience. In
this way you find you have more time and more clarity in seeing how to do what
you would do more graciously.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> I knew that you would just take that and do something really
wonderful with it.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> And now the ball is in your court. (Group chuckle) I know Leah has
had some difficulty with the lesson lately having to do with forgiving
tolerance. Leah?</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Well, as I spoke to Gerdean today, I was just saying that I just
found it hard to believe, when the words were spoken, that God has a condition
on love and that was that we know him, and I was just, oh, I was just thinking
that there are a lot of people that don't know him. I'm sure that he loves them
anyway, and then Gerdean informed me and I should have thought of it, you are
speaking to people who know him and perhaps the main -- you were speaking of
people who know God but choose not to know him. That's something that was on my
mind.</P>
<P>Another thing that was on my mind was a similar question to the one I asked
last week and it was a discussion on that, it was about undying hope. Is that
the same thing as faith?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Again, no. But let me pause a moment before I launch into a
response, for I see here how your intellect is undermining your attempts at
soulful understanding. You often, Leah, catch a glimpse of a concept and compare
it to another in your mind rather than allowing the experience to become a
living reality within you. Therefore, faith is a blanket, an umbrella, which
covers all these fruits of the spirit. No fruit can stand without faith. Is it
the same as faith?</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> I see. For a moment I see. Now I lost it again. I had a glimpse for
a second there!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Your brain is your enemy here, Leah. You believe that
understanding is done with the mental faculties when true understanding is born
of the spirit. As you are born of the spirit and become responsive to the First
Source and Center, the very Cause of your essential existence, you have within
you a natural desire to manifest those qualities of God which are in you and of
you now that you have made the eternal association with divinity.</P>
<P>These fruits of the spirit are not something we bring out as if they were
plastic fruit to polish and set upon the table for our admiration and for the
admiration of others, no. These are living fruits, which sometimes are difficult
to digest. The fruit of "forgiving tolerance," for example, is difficult of
understanding when you do not realize that your perceived offenses, or the
perceived offenses of your siblings, are bothering you because you have not
approached them with Fatherly forgiveness, and so that fruit can be chewed upon,
can be pondered in your heart, in your soul .</P>
<P>It does you little good to analyze these fruits in your mind for the human
mind can rationalize anything, can justify anything in defense of its own ego
existence. In turning over your very being to spirit reality, these fruits can
be seen clearly in that knowledge that lies deep within you, that goes beyond
your brain but that is at the very seat of your existence.</P>
<P>How then you manifest these fruits becomes a science, an art, and this
process can be shared with others from your heartfelt soul stance and through
the ministry of your intellect, to share, to realize, to make actual the living
fruit in your life and in your relationships with those around you.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> While you're talking, you kept saying "living fruits". This
week-end we got on the subject of "vibrations" and what I pictured was that
faith was like a decibel of ... like a level that we expressed in consciousness
and it is always what it is. I don't know if I'm making sense, but that
intellectually we cannot have it, we cannot manipulate it or do anything. It
simply is a state of being. That when you come into faith, it does what faith
does. We don't apply it or manipulate it. Am I on course here?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> How can I say whether you are on or off course? You have
presented-- </P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Too abstract:</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Yes. You have presented, shall we say, an abstraction for us to
ponder. I will ponder that abstraction.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> I have to ponder it. Maybe it's too immature.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Let me help you. You introduced the subject through the term
"vibration". You augmented that with the word faith. Let me help to clarify by
pointing out that a vibration is not faith but a vibration is harmonic. It is,
if you could see pattern -- which comes from Paradise -- there is pattern,
perfect pattern, and imperfect pattern, but as something harmoniously strikes
chords of spirit reality or cosmic consciousness or soul unity, a certain
vibrational level may be experienced. You can then understand if this is a good
vibration or a bad vibration based on your experience previous with vibrations.
It is not faith.</P>
<P>You may stand back, in faith, and acknowledge the vibrations of the
situation, even discuss what went into comprising the vibrations of the
situation, but only through faith can you be assured that the reality and the
good of the instant of the vibration will survive and elevate if it is true
reality. By faith you will know that any unreality will cease to be. Even good
vibrations can be sometimes equated to scaffolding which, in the long run, is
only temporary.</P>
<P>Faith is eternal. Faith is permanent. It is from the Father. It is yours.
Through your faith you can create vibrations. You can establish an environment
by, yes, manipulating your environment, by-establishing certain internal tonal
qualities, which will impact on the environment, and thereby establishing a
vibration. Has that been helpful?</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Yes, it has. While you've been talking I've also been picking up
an interacting word which is trust. </P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Indeed, faith and trust are interacting. Let me state something
you already know, to remind you that faith is something you receive as a gift
from the Father; it is part of the eternal reality. Trust is a subsequence.
Trust is something you do. For whereas you are given faith, you decide whether
or not to trust. You decide how much to trust, how far you will trust, and as
you allow your faith to develop, as you trust the Father to provide you with
situations and growth circumstances and service opportunities and insights, your
faith becomes more well established, your trust has been upheld. Your trust,
then, becomes greater also, and so they work together, but they are not the
same. I am speaking in the affirmative, you understand.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Thank you.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> You are welcome. I will add that when one is born of the spirit
and life's circumstances pit themselves against an individual and they struggle
in spiritual isolation from their peers, when life gets hard, it is easy for the
child of God to withdraw his trust. He may still have faith, but faith without
works is dead.</P>
<P>It may be required, it may come to pass that the shepherd will find his sheep
and return him to the fold. It may be that the shepherd will give a visitation
to the isolated sheep, reassuring him/her of sonship/daughtership, thus
reinforcing the reality. And it also comes to pass, as workers in the Father's
vineyard, that you must shine your light so as to reflect your reality to those
who have lost their sense of association with the Universal Parent, and thus
re-establish their faith connection.</P>
<P>This is merciful ministry. This is forgiving tolerance. This calls for
confiding trust, in loving service. These (are living) fruits that you use to
minister to each other and to those who hold back in fear, those who have
dropped a veil between themselves and the light. </P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Confiding trust. When that is being applied, does that connect
with prayer? You just mentioned a call to working at the daily interactions ...
I'm having trouble co-operating with you to getting quality receptivity, and
everybody was fed too much before you came and I hope it isn't affecting the
talk.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> You are having trouble dealing with me on understanding something.
Let not your heart be troubled regarding your friends here. Remember, too, the
twins who slept through Jesus' lessons. "They do well," and look how well you
do.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Yes, we do.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> So do not worry. When one of the others has an urgent desire to
communicate, I will sense their soul's urgency and respond. I do feel life
stirring; do not despair. You are all with me, I know.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Thank you. That makes me feel better. But I still can't get used
to this great opportunity and act as if we're watching' TV and we can get up and
go get popcorn. It seems so disrespectful and I'm guilty of it myself, as you
pointed out, so thank you for your understanding.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I hope you learn to acknowledge me as your uncle, your older
brother, your favorite cousin or some kind of demarcation that will enable us to
develop an eternal friendship. I am not sublime by any means, nor am I worthy of
adoration, so let your mind rest on that count.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Well, I have something. We honor Gerdean when we give you our
total attention because it is such a unique opportunity to be able to
communicate like this and by being attentive, it is also a way of saying Thank
You to her and it shows respect.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It is appreciated.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Tomas, are you saying that like Jesus said, "I am the vine and you
are the branches," so faith is like the vine and the attributes or the fruits of
the spirit we're speaking of would be like the branches? Or am I just getting
too intellectual again?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS: </B>I was smiling and saying, "What a mind you have!" You seek for
comparative analyses everywhere without ascertaining the core reality of any of
them. You are an artist like Salvador Dali.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> I always liked his works.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> You might try putting your mental impressions on canvas and
looking at it to see how it works, for indeed, there are some fascinating shades
of color and form there which you would find very meaningful and entertaining if
you could but see, for as intellectual as you are, as cerebral as your
propensity is, you do not see your mind clearly. Much of your difficulty in
tackling life's simple problems is because you complicate your life overmuch by
your overactive brain cells.</P>
<P>Again, I do not say this to upbraid you, but to help you realize that
comparing one reality to another does not give you an experiential
understanding. It is for you to determine whether you prefer sincerity or
confidence, although it would be very difficult to have one without the other.
Indeed, all reality is tied in.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> When you discuss the way Lean operates, you were talking about
people like Leah also who operate the same way. Yeah! This is a way of human
conduct.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Modus operandi.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Yeah, that's it. But you talked about "the core." Would that come
only -- would that connecting with the Core Reality come through meditation, so
that the left brain could shut its mouth, so to speak?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> The Core Reality is developed -- Your relationship with the Core
Reality is developed through meditation and prayer, through Stillness, but I
will refer you back to the concept of rebirth, the total consecration of the
will, the being washed, baptized in the spirit. Rebirth is a literal occasion,
and once this occasion has been had, it is recognized in the archives as actual
and your experiential life is henceforth altered -- eternally!</P>
<P>Some individuals dance around this fundamental experience their entire mortal
life. Many of them, in their desire to succeed, indeed even to succeed in spirit
reality, make great offerings and perform great services by and through their
intentions and their motives which are good, but they have short-changed
themselves of the actual experience of being reborn of the spirit. This is the
unfortunate lot of most of moral men and women. I stress to you that as you bow
humbly before the reality of your Creator Father, you are brought into a new
awareness and the fruits of the spirit become a natural part of your approach to
life.</P>
<P>I do not intend to bring shame or guilt upon anyone who has not had this
experience -- do not mistake me. I will only unceasingly encourage you to attain
this understanding of kinship in the kingdom, the spiritual kingdom, for this is
where the living reality resides. Otherwise you are seeing only shadowy
manifestations of the living reality. You are observing delightful illusions. It
is a process, for even after having experienced this rebirth, it is an on-going
evolutionary struggle to master the mortal propensities that the fruits of the
spirit may excel in your lives.</P>
<P>It is a marvelous adventure! An unparalleled opportunity, fraught with
challenges and ripe with rewards. And so I hammer at that same old tin cup, for
it is the only cup worth drinking from.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> Tomas?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Proceed, Loreenia.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> I talked to Doc last week. I requested he hang around for a few
days until I had time to have an operation in the physical, spiritual, mental
and emotional levels. This weekend I have been so extremely sensitive to things.
I can't exactly explain it. It's like my mind has taken a leave of absence and
something else has taken over to -- logical mind, like going for a job
interview, everything was forgotten, helter-skelter, and I've</P>
<P>noticed this weekend that I overreacted to some simple notes of communication
purposes, and at the same time I was overreacting I could stand back and
see the overreaction to it. My feelings were solid on the fact. I seem to be
super-sensitive and overreacting all weekend, to little things. And I can't
remember things anymore. I mean, what's going on? The other day I couldn't even
remember my social security number, which is something -- that's the first time
I've ever experienced that! Is this normal?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Let me respond. Yes, Loreenia, it is normal, for you have asked
for a surgical procedure to take place and as with any surgery, when you come
out, you are tender. Like any snake that goes through molting, who leaves its
old skin behind in the crevice, the new skin emerging is brilliantly clear and
reflective. Your new skin is sensitive.</P>
<P>Your sensitivity is temporary, but let me discuss sensitivity for a moment
since you have brought it to the table. Sensitivity is truly a two-edged sword.
Sometimes your sensitivities are such that you are too easily wounded and your
mind takes off on tangents of what its own interpretations are.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> Like electric shock!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> On the other hand, sensitivities are necessary for you to
appreciate your spiritual nature and your divine associations as well as your
relationships with others. To rule out sensitivity entirely is to become a
machine, and so balance is necessary in appreciating the quality of
sensitivity.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> That's why specifically I've asked for balance in all
bases.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> You have asked well arid wisely. Have patience with yourself now
as you are brought face to face with certain sensitivities. Rather than give it
a blanket dismissal as these sensitivities come to your awareness individually,
take a look spiritually, emotionally, psychically, and so forth, and ascertain
why you were sensitive about that particular ort of information and dwell on it
so that you can know yourself better and so that you can improve your
associations with others, or that you may file that one as being an
over-sensitive reaction and let it pass.</P>
<P>Sensitivity is and can be a great asset. Consider the antennae of the insect
realm. Being sensitive to movement and to light and to sound can determine life
or death, and so it is with a newborn being or with a being who has gone through
a significant growth change, which, I would add, is also a rebirth. These
rebirths are also on going. Determine with each sensitivity its value and savor
then your experiences.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> What about the memory? Time being lost?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> If your mind is healthy in terms of getting adequate rest,
adequate nourishment, adequate freedom from stress, adequate time in stillness,
in meditation, your mind will work for you, and you can forget things for long
periods of time, knowing that it is appropriately filed and your mind, your
friend, will flag you when it is time for that fact, that date.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> That happened this week!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It will happen. It, too, is natural. It is not required that you
keep all these things in the front burner of your mind at all times. If you do,
you deprive yourself of the opportunity to experience the more sensory and
aesthetic and spiritual aspects of this marvelous existence.</P>
<P>It is always wise to have a friend with whom you can check in for a reality
check. If your friend does not reflect your true nature in loving kindness, in
loving service, in confiding trust, in forgiving tolerance, in enduring peace,
in undying hope, then perhaps they are not your friend. It may be, then, that
you have your own reality and you are the one who can manifest these fruits to
others who are lost.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> Also, Tomas, my daughter called me this week. I've left my
children in my Father's hands because it's beyond my care. I would appreciate
extra help.</P>
<P><B>TOMAS:</B> So noted. </P>
<P><B>Loreenia:</B> Thank you.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> My dear children, 1 see now you have curled up in your nests and
tucked your feet around you in postures indicative of comfort, happiness and
care. I will leave you thus. I hope you do not find that my words were too
severe. I have been privileged to have these moments to reflect with you on some
of the more refined aspects of our slaughterhouse of information lately. I am
again happy to have enjoyed your<SUP>1</SUP> companionship, Da-vid, Evangel,
Ruth, all of you, blessed ones, go in peace. Farewell.</P><B>
<P>Group:</B> Thank you, Tomas. Farewell.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>