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<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">DATE:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>September 5, 2013</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">LOCATION:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Light Line</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">T/R:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Gerdean O’Dell</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TEACHER:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOMAS</B>, with <B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">JACK</B> facilitating</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOPIC:<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Interior Landscape<?xml:namespace prefix
= o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></B></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Prayer:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Father God and Mother Spirit and all our
wonderful heavenly helpers, we rejoice in knowing you and in knowing you are
part of our lives as much as we are part of yours. Getting to know you has been
the joy of our life, and the fact that it will continue through eternity is more
than we can fathom.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Let us rejoice
in today and in this format, this forum that has been set up that we so enjoy,
in which we can exercise our communication skills and attempt to literally talk
with you and those that you have sent to be of service to our learning and
growing. Amen<o:p></o:p></I></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">O802-AB Jack</B> here. I’m coming in first
to greet you. I am enjoying the liveliness of your group. It is indeed a highly
invigorated bunch of young souls and this is pleasing naturally for it requires
youth to carry on the work. Notice I said nothing of age. Old people can also be
youthful in attitude, so you all qualify. And you all have much to bring to the
table and much to give to the task, so let us be about the Father’s
business.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We have guests this
evening that I will be happy to introduce and … I’ll be back</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOMAS:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Greetings. I am Tomas, your teacher. I
am glad to be here with you and I want to spend a minute with you, in terms of
the greater audience, to reiterate that I am a member of the Teacher Corps.
These Teachers who have come in this Corps to assist in bringing the light of
truth to Urantia have been chosen and well-trained for the task. We are 20 years
into the project now, and while it may seem that our mission is waning, it most
assuredly is not. It has simply simmered down from the elation of the early days
of our first arriving when your faith was so high. Your faith has not lost its
vigor but it has settled into itself such that you can emit the quiet glow of
knowing as effectively as you could the jubilant dancing of yesteryear and get
your message across … that message of good cheer which the Master espoused. Not
to say that we don’t enjoy that young jubilance, as Jack has already commented
on, but there is a time to settle into your studies and your growth and that is
when our kind is called to serve.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Before I go on to give my lesson
for the evening, I would like to also acknowledge and commend those other
workers in the field who serve on Urantia in myriad other capacities, those from
the spirit realm and the morontia realm … the many kinds of spirit persons and
powers that assist you and others in the tasks that are necessary to advance our
world into light and life -- at least those things that are appropriate for
this, the Correcting Time. We will return now to my reason for being here, that
being to teach. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Eventually, and as you develop a
taste for the quality of these lessons, you too become teachers. You develop a
consciousness of a greater reality and sensitivity to the spirit that yearns to
elevate the consciousness <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">of all that
is,</I> as a natural progressive way of life. Although it is entirely
appropriate that you take the time to appreciate your accomplishments and to
admire the view, while it is appropriate to take time here and there to pause
and reconnoiter, to make sure that when you counted the cost you still have the
same calculations as then so that you can proceed, and that the reason that you
set out in the first place is still legitimate, is still a heartfelt motivation,
and once that is all well-established in your mind, you begin then again to
serve and teach as you have been taught.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>And thus the baton passes on, not
just from one generation to the next but from one epoch to the next, from one
individual to another, and even one country to another. I will not engage in a
discussion about your global state of affairs in terms of nations rising against
nations; that is not particularly my purview. My task is to help you be all that
you can be and serve in the most effective ways that you can serve in your life,
in your path, in your sphere of influence.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>There are arenas/areas of concern
over which you have no control, where you have no influence, and so beyond an
honest prayer for resolution, your energy is perhaps better served if you focus
on those things about which you <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">can</I>
do something. And sometimes there is not much you can do even about those things
that are in your immediate vicinity -- in particular if and when you are in
relationships, be they business, social, fraternal or otherwise, for the other
person is always to be considered -- the other people and their purpose, their
motives, their agenda. And so, often there is not much you can do there
either.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>There is always something however
you can do with yourself, your -- shall we call it your interior landscape, your
mental horizons, the hills and valleys of your emotional condition, your
memories, your dreams, your feelings, your prejudices, your reactions, your
habits, and how they affect you, therefore those around you. For as those
[conditions] that are within you are rectified and directed appropriately,
others will gain by your experience, they will learn from your experiential
wisdom, and perhaps be inspired to also learn such self mastery as to take it
then to heart and apply it in their relationships, eventually and gradually to
leak out into all of humanity, even to other nations, even to all the world.
</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>This is the time of correction.
And it will take a long time for all of the aberrant cause and effect errors of
all the centuries to work themselves out.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>There are ills on this world that go back at least 300,000 years;
certainly 200,000 years ago there were issues, the residue of which you are
still experiencing today. You cannot go back 200,000 years and make another
choice about what transpired in the Caligastia revolt, the Lucifer rebellion,
but you can contemplate those meanings and values that were at issue, that were
at odds, and make certain that your choices are clear and that your path is well
chosen.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>These ‘sympathies for the devil’
hold up progress. Tolerance of such evil affects everyone like a poison and just
because you learn to live with poison does not mean you are living a healthy way
of life; you have simply become accustomed to the poison.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Fluoride comes to mind, arsenic, many
things that are in the water that you drink that is not enough to kill you but
is enough to alter your consciousness and render you less than you could be were
you not affected by it, and so the subtleties and the long-range effects of
these matters are not to be glossed over. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>So many people say, “That was so
long ago, I don’t even want to think about it.”<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Of course you don’t! But do you want to
live with the effects of it? Do you want your children to live with the effects
of it? This is part of the correcting time.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Not just to take it from this moment
forward, but to look back at the errors that were made and undertake to undo
those errors that you are still making. Understand why these things occur and
you have a treasure trove of insight, then, into why people behave the way they
do; and when you can understand why your fellows act the way they do, then you
can learn to love them. And when you can learn to love them, you can affect them
positively. This is a skill, an art. The master had it. You can have it. But it
is not born in a day and it is not easy. It takes application. It takes
conscientious application. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>In the mind of many, this can be
equated to recovery, such as is popular in the 12-step programs. Once a closeted
reality, now a popular sport, more and more people are comparing notes as to
what’s wrong with them. “Oh, I was abused as a child.” “Me, too! How were you
abused?” It’s as if they were sharing intimacies as they would share recipes,
and this is healthy because it gets it out of the secret places of your heart
and soul and puts it out for the sun to shine upon it, taking away the stink and
the germs that make it unhealthy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It allows for freedom from dis-ease; it allows for curing and
healing.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>It’s a process, and there are
millions of people undergoing this process of recovery, consciously and willing
and happily, people who not only have found succor in drugs or alcohol or sex or
those seemingly pleasurable pursuits to excess, people who gamble, spend money,
shop; there are also people who find distraction and pleasure in food, in
particular kinds of food; there is the sin of pride which is very popular these
days, and there is the false pride of abject poverty. Many people do not need to
live as poor as they do but they enjoy the pity as well as the assistance. And
so it is systemic. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who has not been
saturated in the aberrance that began 200,000 years ago and has continued up to
today. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Granted, recently much work has
been done toward eliminating much of this distasteful and unhealthy
pathology.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But this is my point,
that when you realize that you don’t have all the answers, that God isn’t
finished with you yet, that you do not have to be perfect in every regard, you
need not hide your flaws or pretend you don’t have any. This is not to say you
should flaunt the flaws you have, either, but just accept the fact that everyone
has difficulties, personal problems to deal with, and to be mindful of this fact
helps people be kind to each other – kinder than they might be if they thought
everyone is as perfect as they purport to be.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>I go to the lengths I did this
evening to discuss all this because it is apparent after 20 years of working
with you that there are still many, many areas untouched, unworked, unresolved,
even within your own tight circle of friends, within your own families, within
your own intimate relationships that are glossed over or end up in a snag, an
ineffectual situation where everything comes to a standstill, where there is no
progress, where nothing can be done. It comes to an impasse. The flow is
virtually stopped. The spirit is virtually strangled by those of you who will
not work to get through the problem.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>But to get through the problem,
you need to acknowledge there is a problem, and then not blame someone else for
it but to look to yourself and say, “How am I participating in this mess? What
can I do? What have I done? What do I continue to do time after time? Why is my
reaction--? Why don’t I respond--?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Why do I feel--?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Why does
that person make me--?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What can I
do? Show me the way.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Help me,
God.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Help my mind to step outside
of its own little box, its own little controlled contrivance to look into the
psyche of others to find out.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>What
do you think I might be able to do to bring peace and joy to the situation, to
that person who seems to be howling in pain, that child that is demanding
attention, that poor thing who is hiding in the closet afraid and shy?” How many
victims there are! How many ‘perps,’ as you say. So much dysfunction. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>I know. There are you who say,
“Oh, Tomas, stop already. You’ve been talking about this for years. We’re sick
of hearing about it.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I smile here
and say, “I am sick of teaching about it!” But I know what I am dealing
with.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I know something about the
time it takes to work through a problem of this magnitude. I say “something”
about a problem of this magnitude, but not all there is to know about a problem
of this magnitude because I have never seen one quite like this. That is not to
say they don’t exist somewhere else in the superuniverses, but I have never
personally had the experience of intimately and conscientiously working with a
snaggle (is that the right word?) quite like this one -- the most bizarre
conditioning I have ever seen.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>The amount of affection, care,
patience, tolerance, compassion, empathy, sympathy, concern the universe has for
you and each of you is amazing. I myself am often touched to sense the love that
is being channeled to you through the myriad heavenly helpers, angels,
midwayers, teachers, Melchizedeks, guides -- so many entities.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Don’t presume upon divine mercy. Don’t
take unholy advantage of this, because there is a lot of work to be done all
around the world, and although we cannot perhaps get to all that today or next
week, we must get to it soon because there are people who are starving to death
and dying miserable deaths that are unnecessary.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Once you have a perception of the
compassion of the universe for you, you will be compelled to take your
compassion into those areas – if only through prayer – and hope for some day in
the future to arrive when those conditions are assuaged, dissolved, resolved,
when they are at peace, when the warring factors find peace within themselves
and go home to rebuild their nations, their families, their governments, when
the world is settled in light and life - which is our distant goal, yes, but
there are so many stages, so many steps between now and then. Do not be
discouraged that we cannot attain light and life in your lifetime.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Rather, be celebratory that we can do
something and we <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">are</I> doing something
today, in your lifetime, even if it is just you learning how to overcome your
one bad habit, your one negative attitude, your one lingering bad dream that
reaches out and soils the atmosphere for others.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>You have with you and in you and
around you the power of God to make this happen.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Let us pray and give thanks to our
Creator and our God in Paradise for this hope, this challenge, this opportunity
to make a difference, a personal poignant difference, and to be a part of the
solution.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Dear ones, I am so glad to be a
part of this Corps of Teachers that has been invited/enabled to come into your
life like this, to come so close to your soul and your mind and seek to affect
you by my words and my attitude without causing harm, without causing undue
distress.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Forgive me if I have
meddled.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But I feel your love for
me, and for those of us, including each other, who are sincere about this mighty
effort, this mighty effort to turn on the light of truth, to come out of the
shadows of darkness, to leave behind the wages of sin and to uplift our
loveliness. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Are there any questions, this
evening?</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Eva:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Hi! Yes.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is Eva, and please, meddle!<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Meddle away.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Everything you said resonated with me,
Tomas.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And thank you! Thank you for
using that word “snaggle.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I
learned a new word.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Everything you
say, Tomas-- and before you, Jack; both of you are very empowering.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Everything you say affects me
deeply.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I drink in every word and I
just want to say that I don’t want to soil the atmosphere of others and I give
thanks to the Creator for I must do better. I see myself doing that very
thing</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>And my question is about
faith.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>When we know that the Lord
is the author and perfector of our faith, can you tell us, is our faith the
author of the kingdom, of the good news? I ask because Hindus and Muslims are
given the ultimate respect of having their beliefs affirmed when they graduate,
when they move on to the mansion worlds. I know that their faith is respected
when they die. They are not beaten over the head about our beloved Master. Would
you speak on how important our specific faith in Jesus good news is to our
eternal career? Because it is going to differ from other types of very beautiful
and very strong beliefs in one equal god.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Thank you in advance, and I love you both.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOMAS:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you, Eva, for your praise, your
encouragement and you question.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>As
to your question, if I understand it correctly, it’s about faith and faith
transcends dogma, even the dogma of religion. There are many who think to call
their faith Episcopalian or Hindu or Buddhist or Baptist. That is your religion.
Faith is something very personal. It is virtually unstructured. It does not
require personality, either the personality of Buddha or Allah or Jesus. I
daresay it does not even require a god-type personality such as is imagined by
many believers. You will recognize that as the judging god, the Jehovah, the
jealous god, or the energy that atheists look up to as one might look up to the
omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of deity. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Faith is something you receive as
a gift from god, but once having received your faith, assuming you take it, it
is your task then to cultivate it. And I don’t mean to say you tithe or attend
services but that you cultivate your spiritual nature. There are many rites and
rituals that people go through as an expression of their faith but there are
people who go through expressions of faith who have no faith. They have only
expressions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That is to say there
are people who bow, who kneel, who pray, but it is empty, it is a mere gesture,
whereas there are those who incessantly talk to God or what they imagine to be
their guiding Light and they have no structured religion at all.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>The preciousness of organized
religion, or evolutionary religion, even revealed religion, is to mankind’s
betterment. Any religious counsel or training or belief is better than none.
Having something to believe in allows the believer to focus on something other
than himself. It elevates people when they believe in something; sometimes it’s
only their mate or their job or their car, but they do things because of that
which they might not do otherwise. I’m getting off track here a bit but you did
give me a big question there and I’m trying to say that you cannot marry mortals
to my Lord and yours any more than a Buddhist can require you to acknowledge his
god as the Supreme Being.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>But before it’s all over, before
we meet in Paradise, we will have met all these entities, including our creator
son, now our Master Son Christ Michael, and so we will not get to the Father but
through him. We cannot leave the local universe without passing by his desk on
our way out.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This will be a
thrilling moment, but there is also the opportunity somewhere along the way to
experience the presence of many other “gods” and religious figures as they have
participated in the spiritual development and evolution of the planet you call
home.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>I am trying to convey (not very
well, I’m afraid) that one must be extremely diplomatic in this business of
faith when it comes to characters, personality, dogma, doctrine, religion and so
forth.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The supreme faith is the one
that does not involve all those characters and their names because favoritism
enters in and favoritism turns people off. You don’t want to turn people off of
the Master or the gift of revelation for the sake of evolutionary religion.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But you cannot proceed without them --
both revelatory and evolutionary -- and so do what you can to not set one
against the other. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Therefore I say to you that faith
is a very personal thing and if your faith is weak, ask God to improve your
faith, to strengthen your faith, to give you more faith, to show you what faith
is, how you depend upon it, how you need it. Ask Him to take it away so you can
feel its absence, so that you can ask for it back, so that you can appreciate it
in its fullness.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Learn to
understand your faith inside out, for it is a part of your relationship with God
and all that matters. It is more than a simple task or tenet. It is your life
itself.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Your spiritual life is
intimately, integrally tied up with your faith. </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>Perhaps this is why it has been
said if you have faith, have it to yourself, but people of religious faiths want
to convert you to theirs, or tell you why theirs is better, or why those are the
infidel, or why those don’t count, or why these are ridiculous. This is human
talk. Faith transcends human talk. It is extremely personal. And it is as
meaningful to you as it is to any other person of faith – IF it is genuine faith
and not merely a pretense.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Does
that help?</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Eva:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Yes.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You know what I just realized? When I’m
listening to you, when I’m exploring these thoughts, I feel like I’m expanding
my mind.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You mentioned earlier
going inside your mind and looking out?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It feels like that. It’s a different way of thinking and I want to thank
you for that.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But I do want to tell
you that my faith is my life, yes it is my life. I remember though what keeps me
from saying to people “Have you faith? Then keep it to yourself” many times is
my remembrance of reading how our Lord and the evangelists and the early
apostles went out from door to door; because it was the early part of our
gospel. They did impart their good news in a way that belies what you just said,
but that was an exception.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOMAS:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It was not an exception; it was
appropriate for that day and time. What is appropriate for today is not that you
go out door to door but that you clear yourself, as we discussed in the lesson,
so that when you do go out you are going out with a clean heart and that what
you convey is godliness. You give instead of take. You point out the light
instead of the darkness.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Eva:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Amen, yes. Absolutely.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>You are the light.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And when I have spoken to Hindus and
Muslims I have been able to find our common ground and it’s beautiful. It’s
absolutely beautiful because you have that give and take sometimes. The real
faith comes through; it shines through when you’ve got that faith. Not the
dogma, just that faith.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It’s just
about walking the tightrope.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Don’t
let distractions make you look down; just keep walking because we’ll walk
towards each other and it’s the same God so thank you.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you very much.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">TOMAS:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thank you, Eva.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Namaste.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Eva:</B><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Namaste.</P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal><B
style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">JACK:</B> This is Jack and I’m back. We’re
running overtime, in case you are still here. I am going to call it a day and
thank you for coming. We had a marvelous time, I know Tomas did.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, we’ll “catch you on the futher
brother.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Later!</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>