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<P align=justify>DATE:</B> November 18, 1997<BR><B>LOCATION:</B> Butler, PA,
USA<BR><B>T/R's:</B> Gerdean and Hunnah</P>
<P align=justify></P><B>
<P align=justify>TOMAS, MERIUM, MORONTIA COMPANION<BR>The Art of Communication;
<BR>Love: The Superior Way <BR>Emotional Everglades; <BR>Inward and
Upward</P></B>
<P align=justify></P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Good evening, children.</P><B>
<P>Group</B> [Hunnah, Gail, Aniela, Gerdean and Leah]: Good evening.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS</B> [Gerdean]: We are here and as you know we have been here for quite
some time, enjoying your communion in the human realms, one with the other. You
understand, and last week we rejoiced in, how good it is that you enjoy each
other's company, and find laughter and camaraderie among yourselves, even with
your many differences of character and background. Now this evening we are again
rewarded to see another level of oneness among you, and that is in your
emotional realms as women in the experiential mode.</P>
<P>There are obviously many, many responses that are available in the realms of
the mind in response to your many emotional sharings this evening. The category
of subject matter pertaining to spousal association is one that has carried
humankind over the hills and dales of discourses and behavior for more centuries
than we have been apprised of Urantia; but it is not our intent to give you an
elongated dissertation of the human condition as it relates to spousal
relationship, in particular not when the subconscious realms of you all are rife
with the inherent emotional and sentimental mainstream of the situations
presented and reflective of your cultural values.</P>
<P>What I will however do is inform you that your sharing this evening was of an
ilk that is invitational to Morontia Companions. I would like to bring one of
the Companions in to visit with you briefly, and in its association in
socialization with you, you will feel elevated and rise above the rich emotional
tapestry of your evening's discourse. I will return, of course, and Merium is
also with me and will witness the effect of the Morontia Companions upon your
souls and your personalities. We will visit with you then after the Companion
has concluded his time with you.</P><B>
<P>MORONTIA COMPANION</B> [Gerdean]: Gracious listeners, peace be upon you. How
fine you shine. Your lights are steady this evening. Your emotional currents
have subsided from the tumult earlier. You are similar to a pond, a pond of
water. Each of you is a pond of water, individually, and your ripples are in
accordance with your association with your core, and so when your core is at
peace, your ripples are still, and you are reflective of peace, that peace which
passes all understanding; you are serene and approachable, and it is then that
your mouth is able to spill forth those pearls of divine wisdom which enlighten
and enrich lives of those around you.</P>
<P>When you are in your emotional eddy, which is part of the flow of the water,
you are like a washing machine that has its agitator activated and your waters
splash! You make waves. You spread your moisture on the banks about you, and
this is a way of allowing the stagnancy to dissipate. It churns the water for a
purpose. The emotions are here for a purpose, and they are not to be eschewed.
It is a wonderful opportunity for you to feel and experience the bounty of life
as a creation of the divine Creator, and this occurs in and through your
emotional composition.</P>
<P>And yet, when the tumult has passed, the ripples subside and your waves lap
gently upon the shore, your ripples allow for a rocking, gentle movement for
those lily pads you are familiar with, that your little frog kingdoms can find
harmony in croaking to one another across the pond. And I have observed your
storm at sea this evening and have observed the waves subside. I have seen you
assume your place upon your lily pad and assume, too, the lotus blossom that
accompanies you in your sphere. And now we sit in the larger pond altogether, in
the living waters indeed, appreciating the lull of tranquility in the waters
that have been purified of the algae and stagnancy of non-action.</P>
<P>We are now free to commence the art of communication, and so I have made my
appearance as a Morontia Companion and for those of you who are not familiar
with a Morontia Companion, you may read about us in your text. We are
companions; we are companionable. We are not full of advisements. We are not
here to teach or preach, but to companion you.</P>
<P>Now, the art of communication between mortals is a hard art to develop. Your
culture has given us a panoramic cinema of engagements to observe and wonder at,
but only as you elevate your awareness of reality into those realms of morontia
reality that is that level of mental appreciation that abuts and bridges the
realms of the spirit, can you appreciate the full nature of a morontia
communication and at that time begin to appreciate and savor the concept of the
association of a Morontia Companion such as myself.</P>
<P>It is not, at this point in your evolution, a diet you would choose to have
night and day, for it is still desirable that you have some agitation and tumult
in your emotional realms, as it is a natural part of growth that these throes
take place. You splash in the water as you make these changes. It is necessary.
It is only when you have allowed these things to subside that your appreciation
for a morontia communication or association is appropriate and allowed.</P>
<P>These kinds of communications will continue, advance, accumulate and increase
as time goes by. It is our hope, our purpose, our intention, in exposing you to
some of our personality aspects, that you will find a certain degree of dignity
and poise and ease of being, that you will find a morontial way of life enticing
and comforting. </P>
<P>In your association with your teachers, both a personal and a group teacher
activate you in terms of your growth -- your cosmic, emotional, intellectual,
psychic and so forth growth -- but when you associate with a Companion, you are
not striving, you see, you are <I>being </I>and sharing your <I>being </I>with
others who also know how to <I>be</I>. </P>
<P>I will come back and visit you another time. It has been a pleasure and a
rare occasion for me to express myself this way. Adieu.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Merium, as my colleague, I am eager to hear from you and to hear
your remarks to the class regarding our associate and any other remark that you
would make.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM</B> [Hunnah]: Good evening, everyone. I hesitate to introduce myself
in the evening talks because I like to hear Tomas and I like to hear him say it
all, and then when he winds down, then I'm allowed to come in. Hunnah plays
Scrabble with a friend and she likes to be second also; it gives her something
to build upon, and I would like to take this evening's sorrows and make a little
fire out of them, and we will burn them, but not without knowledge of the fact
that there are growth lessons in all relationships.</P>
<P>My dear, do not hasten your feelings. Be kind to yourself. Get your rest and
treat yourself the way you would treat someone else or you would want to be
treated. There are times when we need a little pampering and this is a loss for
you, and it requires some tender patience, so just know that you are not alone
and that the picture will look pretty to you again in the not too far
future.</P>
<P>I do not feel inclined to give a lesson because I can see the maturity that
is here in this gathering, but I would like to expound and take advantage of
something Gerdean talked about regarding loving many. You are designed to love,
to interact, to remember the good times, and to be considerate. You are allowed
to have pleasant memories and moments of remorse. You have feelings and you
should allow yourself to know that it is good and that they have to be
expressed.</P>
<P>There will be a form of grieving. Grieving can take place in changing jobs,
in relocating. There are many reasons to grieve because the human condition
likes to have things in control, and I want you to be patient with yourself.
Tolerance has been the fruitage in this group -- tolerance, acceptance,
understanding.</P>
<P>Hunnah was telling a friend recently about this group and said that she was
enriched because "if we hadn't gone beyond the superficial niceties of getting
along and having The Urantia Book material in common, we would not have become
empathetic in a healthy way."</P>
<P>There is always a continuous challenge of fear in the human condition, fear
of change, and it is not a welcome guest. It is turning and going backwards. You
have all been exercised in the subject of trust. Trust is a forever lesson.
Trusting that which you truly believe in, from On High, like the powerful
structure of your consciousness as it has been developed, you cannot see the
strides which you have made. You have gone from house to temple. You have gone
from the clutter of an interior home to the beauty of the inner temple. As usual
I will continue to spend more time there.</P>
<P>I am inclined to ask you for a question this evening, but it is all right not
to have one. [No response] Could we have quiet for a while, please? I feel that
we are being brought into preparation. Shall we be quiet?</P><B>
<P>[STILLNESS]</P></B><U>
<P>Love: The Superior Way</P></U><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> In the Thursday gathering, Hunnah asked to be allowed to read the
13th Chapter of Corinthians -- and it was an amusing discovery that a proper
Bible was not available, and we did not decide that this was a growth or error,
but it simply was not available -- so she asked that the group read the 13th
chapter of Corinthians as homework. I am going to ask you, who do not attend
that group, to read this chapter because if you do, it will give you a fresh
perspective of what your destiny contains.</P>
<P>Humans are so used to doing things and then giving a report on how it was
done. Our lessons are about the recipe of simply Being. B-e-i-n-g. Being
yourself. Friendships and companionships, the backdrop of familiar faces, come
and go, but being yourself can only continue to develop. Every situation that
comes into your life is an opportunity for you to redefine and allow yourself to
be in and with a new situation. If you are living in a situation that seems
stagnant, then you are allowed to ask to have us stir the waters and revitalize
your ability to appreciate that which you have, and it is on-going even though
it appears to be at a very slow pace.</P>
<P>The 13th Chapter in this Letter to the Corinthians will bring forth an
attitude of you that you can carry out into your daily life. It is true in your
human condition that you need to vent and you need to stand firm for your
principles and your definition of what is to be and what is not to be. This
homework will remind you just what you are about, and that when changes come
into your life, as startling as those that have been discussed this evening,
that means that you have an opportunity to be free to develop and become what
you might not otherwise be allowed to do if you were bonded to your situation
that has been at hand for a long time.</P>
<P>Relationships can become a corral and they are not (meant) to be. They are to
be fluid and graceful and supportive and generous. Watch yourselves for
negativity. It is like stale air; it will leave you ill and you will be gasping
for breath. Nip it in the bud. I sound like Abby, but I would really like to
throw the windows open and have you rejoice at your very being here together,
that you are in a place that you understand what a candle light represents.</P>
<P>We love you when you're happy and we love you when you're sad and we love you
when you're full of foolishness or filled with questions or chasing away
inertia.</P><U>
<P>Emotional Everglades</P></U><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> This is your trusty companion Tomas and I have in mind to take you
on two trips, and the first trip that I would like to take you on is a trip to
the Everglades. This is a trip that I have been on before, and I have spoken of
the Everglades as the equivalent of the emotional realms. The Everglades are
quite fascinating, quite dangerous, quite beautiful, very deadly, exhilarating,
incomparable, sticky and any number of descriptive adjectives and they are very
much like the emotional realms.</P>
<P>If and when you go into the Everglades, it is well to have a guide. Indeed
now you know that you have your personal teachers that can go with you. Most of
you do not know you have been to the Everglades until you have come Home and are
safely on shore, whereupon you look back in your movie at your photographs of
visual imagery and realize where you have been and it is your personal teacher
then who can help you interpret what you have seen and what you have
experienced.</P>
<P>After you have become familiar with the Everglades, that is to say, after you
have been there a time or two, you become adept at navigating your way through
the many, many variations of this terrain. You learn how to avoid the quicksand
and the quagmire of many feelings that will suck you down and gobble you up. You
will learn when to grab hold of a vine and swing across, as compared to when it
is free for you to jump and swim in realization of the safety of the water -- or
is it filled with crocodiles?</P>
<P>The sticky aspects of the Everglades is reminiscent in your frame of
reference to a humid place filled with mosquitoes and other little gnats and
bugs and you are all certainly familiar with the gnats and bugs of life, those
irksome irritations that do not amount to a great lot worthy of an emotional
pique, but are so irksome over a period of time they are enough to cause you to
have a tantrum. This is an aspect of the Everglades -- the emotional realms.</P>
<P>The wisdom of having been to the Everglades on a number of occasions and
having learned how to traverse the path, allows you then to go there
well-equipped. You have now your knife, your rope, your knapsack, your boots and
your know how to deal with life as it is lived in the dense humidity of the
Everglades of Urantia, of the human experience, and now equipped with your
insect repellent and so forth, you can enjoy the path.</P>
<P>You know where to step. You know what will hold and what will give and where
to sit and have lunch. You can enjoy the incredible music of the many voices:
the birds, the croakings, the crickets, the 'gaters, the snapping, the buzzing,
the howling -- all of these incredible noises that you are familiar with on your
planet are echoes of the Everglades. The colors, the smells, the richness, the
pungency, the fragrance, the aromas, the greenery, the vibrant flowers, flora
and fauna, the incredible wonders for the senses are all part of the emotional
Everglades.</P>
<P>And in this paradise, safe from the 'gaters and the skeeters, you can enjoy
your life immensely, and even learn how to be a guide for others who, in their
naivete and their innocence, blunder in for an adventure and find themselves up
to their neck in quicksand.</P>
<P>I bring this analogy to your attention because you are emotional creatures,
and it is not for you to avoid an emotional state, but to appreciate that it is
an emotional state and that you are guided in and through your experiences, and
as you master your life and your experiences, realizing that you will come out
on the other end of the 'glades in one piece, that you can enjoy the adventure,
it makes it much, much easier, you see, to appreciate that you are a dual nature
being.</P>
<P>Your indwelling Thought Adjuster, your God fragment, your spirit guide
inside, is the one with the experience, is the one who can help you go through
this emotional morass without succumbing to the many toxins and bug bites
available. The animal of you is that which hurts, is that which runs to eat the
fruit that will poison you, that sees the berries and gobbles them up before
realizing they will upset your stomach, the many, many things that the human
will do in a realm such as the Everglades without knowledge, without
guidance.</P>
<P>And so as you walk through the experience of an emotional Everglade of life,
take your Guide with you, and ask Him to sense for you whether you should step
here and if you should step there. Should you step quickly? Should you stand and
rest here? Or should you move on before it sinks, before it moves underneath
your feet? Only your internal Guide knows for sure, and inasmuch as you are in
for an adventure in this existence, and in your many existences to come, you
will be provided the occasion, the opportunity to experience as much and more
than you would like, as long as you are in a learning mode and enjoying the
process.</P>
<P>I would like to also take you on another trip and this trip is not to the
Everglades but it is into another realm of the imagination. It is into (and
perhaps you can help me in this one, Merium) it is into your own
superconsciousness that allows you to make contact with your own spirit guide,
into a mode of reflection and meditation that provides a universe of sensitivity
and it is all behind your closed eyelids.</P><U>
<P>Inward and Upward</P></U>
<P>It is not in the emotional realms, not in the Everglades of existence. It is
not "out there" but it is inside. Remember it is said that The Father dwells
within you and that to attain Paradise, you go inward and upward. What does that
mean? I will ask you now to come with me into those interior realms of reality
that will enable you to make contact with your own spirit guides and find that
firm footing on the realm of spirit reality that will keep you from sinking into
quagmires of emotional unreality and difficulty.</P>
<P>The practice of stillness, as we have discussed many times, is a practice of
stilling the body and, as the Companion spoke earlier, in your emotional state
your waves are splashing on shore and you are not in stillness, you are not at
peace. Occasionally you will allow yourself a steady ripple as if you were
seeing a faucet drip into your pool and it was just enough movement to keep the
pool alive, feeling that you had attained Stillness, adequate Stillness, for by
comparison, see how quiet it is! You can barely, barely ascertain that there is
a ripple. Only you know that you have not truly attained Stillness.</P>
<P>In order to attain this at-oneness that is effective, you need to become
perfectly, perfectly, still. Physically quite stone still. Do not allow the
Stillness to frighten you, and you must not think of it as being bored. It is en
route to a rapturous adventure in the cosmic realms of your morontial
existence.</P>
<P>After you have become perfectly still, you will feel certain physical
realities, you will be aware that you feel grounded, that your limbs feel heavy.
Your sense may be that you feel warmth. There are any number of side effects,
physical side effects from Stillness, all of which are beneficial to your
health, all levels of your health.</P>
<P>We have experimented here before wherein you feel that your mind is not
willing to hold still and yet it is imperative that you allow your mind to learn
Stillness, for as long as your mind is churning, you might as well be dropping
water into the pool.</P>
<P>It has been said in your psychological realms that self-mastery involves mind
over matter, and this is true, but that is not all there is. In order to attain
full self-mastery and attain full-fledged Stillness, contact with divinity,
person-to-person, you must allow for spirit over mind over matter. And now you
have, as you say, your ducks in a row. Your spirit can accommodate you if you
give your spirit permission to take over your willful mind and assure your
willful mind that it can resume its adventure as soon as you have had a moment
with The Father.</P>
<P>This place of Stillness is vast. It is as large as the cosmos. As vast as
space. It goes all the way to Paradise. I am not going to encourage you to go
surfing on the cosmic Internet, no. I am going to encourage you to stay here,
for it does no good for Urantia to have you playing in the fields of the Lord in
Orion or Sagittarius. It serves more purpose for you to begin to understand how
it is that you have a relationship with the First Source and Center that
accompanies you night and day.</P>
<P>Your relationship with the First Source and Center is your key to your
understanding the purpose of your life and in finding supreme happiness in your
life. Not the happiness that you feel that you will find when you go into the
Everglades, no, but the happiness that you will find when you go into Stillness
with The Father, when you sit in His presence and obediently await His time and
His prompts and His direction for you in your life. He will tell you how to
feel; He will tell you what to do; He will tell you where to be. His is the
agenda of eternity.</P>
<P>It will make you happy, children, if you but believe that you have a right to
know happiness. It is only your reluctance to know this sublime happiness that
interferes with your attaining it.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> Bravo. Well done, Tomas. Well done. You do not need any ruffles
or curtains on that wonderful discourse.</P>
<P>Perhaps we need to close. Brother Michael has been in the wings. He wants you
to know He cares very much for your little group and He is joyous at the
prospect of companioning you more because you have learned to invite Him. I
think you have plenty to tend to and we should recess, then, if it's all right
with you, Tomas.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It has been a pleasure to be with you this evening. Be at peace,
little ones, devoted flock. Anticipate the wonders of the days ahead wherein you
will observe the Everglades of your surroundings, the cacophony of sounds of the
birds and the beasts of the realm, and understand that you may step firmly upon
the lily pad of your faith and you will not fall for He is with you. </P>
<P>We bid you good evening. Farewell.</P></FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>