1998-07-28-Relationships

Session

Opening

MERIUM: Good evening, everybody, I am Merium.

Group: Leah, Joniel, Gerdean and Liana: Good evening.

MERIUM: I am glad to be here. Tomas has sent me out to greet you. I am going to play a role today of buffer. It has to do with the fact that you have been romping in the fields of relationship, playing, as it were, "Jack and Jill" and so I have been called to round you up, bring you in, dust you off, and sit you down in order that Uncle Tomas may be able to have an honorable word or two.

In the meantime, however, girls, let's play a little bit because I am never in a hurry to get too heavy. You know I like this childlike aspect of being creatures of the Creator. I like the analogy, in fact, of Jack and Jill because throughout eternity you will be heading up a hill to fetch a pail of water and eternally you will indeed fall down, and I am here to dust you off, pick you up and send you on your way again.

It is such an interesting game when you look at it that way. The Mother is always on hand with her regiment, as is the Father with his. When you remember that you are children, innocent, carefree, it is so much easier to deal with so much of this life. Playing, however, is a realm of functioning wherein you find out who you are compatible with and who rubs you the wrong way.

Lesson

There are personalities, you know, that are more compatible with each other than others. Some are quite bookish and some are quite athletic; some are dreamers and some are marchers; and it is okay for you to find contact and also to find compatibility. You who are in the spirit school, must realize that divine love is the kind of love that umbrellas everyone. You can love everyone in a transcendental way, but in actuality, it is quite difficult often to love some individuals, for they are at odds with your understanding of what is appropriate and/or what is comfortable to you.

I would suggest that children also are rather open to experimentation and they haven't gotten the judgement, the prejudices, that come with a few difficult experiences. Children are likely to just say "Okay, never mind" and go on being buddies, whereas as you grow up, as you become more mental, more sophisticated in your societal behaviors your are inclined to keep the door closed between you, and this does create barriers to growth in communication.

Lest I find myself at the podium waving a stick, I am going to get out of here. I will be back later, but I wanted to help bring you into focus. You realize that it is a process, and it is necessary for you to bring yourself to the process in order that it may convene, and so, Tomas, you may convene.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium, and good evening my loyal students. How good it is to be with you again in our customary configuration and how happy I am to feel your delightful presences and, as Merium has indicated, your fairly focused attention.

Relationship

I will continue this discussion as to relationships, in-as-much-as you have spent a good portion of your evening discussing yourselves in your various relationships with those you love and those you would love. I am also intrigued by Merium’s nursery rhyme and the promise of the bucket of water, for isn't it true that the water, the living water, is real? As Jack and Jill head up the hill to fetch this pail of water, they are united in their efforts; as they fall, however, I and Merium are there to catch you and discuss your fall. Why have you fallen on your way to get your water?

Now if Hunnah were here this evening transmitting Merium, she would no doubt discuss the fact that this pail can slosh a lot of water even as it trudges in the direction that it goes and spilling water sometimes is a way of spreading your graces, your seeds, your good will. It is still apparent to me, however, that the relationship is strengthened by its joint purpose, its climb, for as soon as one or the other opts to step down on the job, the other is prone to stop also, and herein is where you fall.

Leah: Would you please elaborate on that?

TOMAS: Our Father has set into motion a scheme of creation that, for you, involves one of ascension, one of climbing up, of perfecting. You women and you men, you boys and girls, you Jack’s and Jill’s, as you continue to maintain your focus on your ultimate goal, you are able to continue your ascent, and you are in alignment with his will. As you, men and women, set out together, you may companion each other in the ascent, and you may companion yourselves successfully because you have the farther view, the long-range goal which keeps you going.

You may have experienced this exercise. If you "act as if" there is a thread, a cord, holding you up from your breast bone, you can feel yourself being lifted by the seat of the soul. The seat of the soul has been accorded a dwelling place in the vicinity of the breast bone, the chest area. As it is allowed to lead you, it will innately lead you forward and upward. It will enable your climb to be made easier, for your soul is leading the way. It is tethered to the Father/to the Mother in Paradise, and you will be led/drawn up much like a fish is reeled in on the fishing line.

Now, you have this connection between yourself and the goal of eternity. This is the way it works. This is the effective approach. Jack and Jill fall down because they begin to look to each other as the end of the journey, the reason for the journey, the journey itself. It is always best if all remember that all relationships are a result of the primary relationship which is the relationship between the creator and the creature. As you have a relationship with the Father, you are made relatively real, you actualize according to His divine plan for you and your place within the divine plan -- your understanding of the plan, as it can be played out in the circumstances surrounding you.

In your relationship with the Father you are secure in your relationship with yourself and you know who you are in terms of your higher reality. You know culturally that you are of animal origin, of a certain tribe, of a certain culture, of a certain socio-economic, a certain educational, et cetera, conditioning. And this will color who you are in your manifestation, but your actual reality is in and through your reality as a child of God, your spiritual identity.

The spiritual identity of others is that relationship, then, which constitutes your peer group, your spiritual family, others who are also children of God. If you seek a relationship with a Jack or a Jill, it is vitally important then that you ascertain the relationship that he or she has with the greater reality, for that will greatly impact how you will comport yourself in the relationship.

Is it a relationship then with human-divine conjoining, this Jack-and-Jill-ness? Is it a relationship that will sit down on a perennial picnic? Or is it a relationship that aspires individually to get a pail of water and offers companionship in the process to one another? You run into so many difficulties in your relationships here on Urantia because your conditioning is so largely animalistic and it is laced with the cultural, educational, socio-economic, et cetera, arsenic/toxin that coagulates into a system rather than allowing it to remain open and free and related, initially and even singularly, to that ultimate goal, that true connection that keeps you afloat, that keeps you headed upward in the direction of perfection.

Any one of you may review any one of your relationships and see that this is true and you can see also that if you share relationships with someone who is also being led by the Father, you will realize that you are in step with that person even today, for this is the joint ascension, the advancing of the ages, the forward moving flock of faithers into tomorrow -- your family, indeed.

How glad I am that Merium brought you in and dusted you off. I hope now I have not buried you under a pile of methodology. It is just always so fascinating to hear how thoroughly imbued you are with the ideals of relationship, the reality of relationship, and how you struggle so for an understanding of what it is that you expect and what indeed it is that you think you want!

Are there any questions? Are there commentary? I am willing now to share the podium. The floor is open. (Long pause) I find it fascinating that you who have discussed relationships for hours are suddenly now so silent. Have you become tongue-tied because of the perspective or because of the companionship at hand?

Dialogue

Soul

Leah: "Companionship at hand"? What do you mean?

TOMAS: Because I am here. Have you changed your tune?

Liana: Well, there is so much going through my mind, I don't know what to formulate. Actually, relationship is something that I have been contemplating a lot lately, and -- I read some stuff about sex organs being in the throat. Now I don't mean to have children that way, but in the ascension, the focus moves away from the genital area into the throat. It's almost like ... to make that contact with another person, would be like a spiritual word, or a sound, and that this was the way that it was done at one point in time and this is the way it will be done as we move forward. Do you have any comment on that at all, Tomas?

TOMAS: Abstract art form. Yes, I have a comment. I am delighted by the commentary you bring. I am peculiarly reminded of our comrade Carolyn Myss who discusses the throat as the will seat; the voice, indeed, as the voice that speaks the word, and "in the beginning was the word and the Word was God and the Word was with God" and so now we can hear with ears to hear whether or not there is someone there in the potential relationship.

Yes, your connotation that the genitalia resides within the throat has a great deal of abstract art merit, because of the fact that beyond cultural mores and tribal mating practices, not to mention the fundamental hormonal sex urge, there is a great attraction born of like-mindedness, the fact of mental stimuli. There are those who have said that the mind is truly the main sex organ. The union takes place in the mental realms and not in physical coitus.

I will go one further and say that the true union is in the soul, the real coming together is morontial, but that is still a shadow world away. Your picture of the throat, however, is en route.

Liana: So when you were talking earlier about the seat of the soul being the breastbone and just now you said that the coming together is really a soul thing, then, what do you mean by coming together?

Communion, Embrace

TOMAS: Coming together in a higher sense, that is to say a communion. There is a tremendous yearning in every individual to feel "the embrace". This yearning occurs from pre-infancy and continues into infinity. The yearning for the embrace is a part of your make-up. Even though you are an independent entity in many respects, you still have a yearning to conjoin with another and/or others and this conjoining is incomplete unless and until it is a conjoining with perfection.

This is built into your psychological make-up. You will find release and satisfaction when you are in the presence of Michael. You will find tremendous satisfaction standing in his presence, being with him and Nebadonia, but yet again will this yearning carry you forward, even until you stand before the Father himself in Paradise. Only then will the yearning cease because you will have become one with all that is.

Now, in the interim you are here in your human adult existence and as adult human beings, your inherent configuration leans you toward wanting to converge with a mate. The mating process involves many levels and more sophisticated levels as you have advanced and developed, as was touched on earlier, even though in this life a high level of communion takes place in and through human beings by their sharing their most soulful value with another.

This can occasionally include a sexual relationship but it can be found and enjoyed by any meaningful friendship, and so the communion, this coming together, may or may not limit itself to sexuality but everyone has a yearning to merge with the greater reality, and this too is part of relationship. It is one of the wonderful things about your day and age today. You are free to love as many people as you can and in as many ways as you have energy for, for as short or long a period of time as is available.

You can look at a person in a shopping mall over a material item and exchange a glance with someone that conveys oceans of feeling and understanding and in that very instant flash a reality to each other that is genuinely valuable. It is a love affair of the heart for one instant. And that counts. You may also have a relationship with, for example, the postman who delivers your mail day in, day out, rain or shine. You say hello to this individual, you may just nod your head, but there is an understanding that they do their job, they are there for you, they serve you, and you may love them in the full appreciation of the gift they offer you in terms of convenience and you may have a moment of genuine appreciation that bespeaks to them the love you have for the relationship that exists even in its functional and rudimentary form.

All of these different forms of connection constitute relationship of one sort or another. You all yearn for the great romance, the sweeping off your feet situation, the bliss of marital ecstasy or conjugal communion, but it is such a high ideal and such a fleeting instant, you sometimes miss it in your desire to attain it. And what a shame that you feel that that is the only kind of heartfelt soulful communion possible. There are so many viable and varied sorts of embrace.

Leah: Well, Merium did start this conversation with the Jack and Jill came up the hill.

TOMAS: Indeed she did and we have not lost track of our young couple, but it is also true that your discourses of this evening were of a boy-girl nature and so it was appropriate, to use one of your favorite words, but as Rodan testifies also, these genuine friendships can be had between two people who are not boy and girl such as two girls, or two boys, or you four women here who have shared in such a way that you have come together in a familial fashion and shared laughter and compassion for your condition, your human condition, and you have not been lonely. You have indeed been connected. You have communed; you have conjoined; you have come together.

Now, if you like to, we can return to the boy-girl scenario.

Leah: Merium skipped out but she started to say that we might find that some people are not that easy to love or get along with or whatever, and then before she left she ended up saying something to the effect that we overcome that. One time I heard an expression that said, "Yeah, you gotta love everybody, but that doesn't mean they have to be in your face all the time. It just means you gotta throw them a life preserver if they're drowning."

Romance, Human Condition

MERIUM: I am Merium, I'm back. I can speak for myself. I have not jumped ship. I have just moved over so that Tomas could carry on for awhile. We are sharing the same podium and as you well understand, it is difficult to follow a conversation when two or three people are all talking at once. Let's see. Where were we? We are talking about relationships wherein some are more compliant than others.

Well, I am reminded of some of your dramatic romantic movies wherein the man and the woman in the first scene actually hate each other, they say rude things to each other; perhaps she slaps him; perhaps he is rude to her, and this makes for great theater. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl and so forth, so it is not always true that if you don't get along right off the bat, you never will.

This is a case, obviously, of opposites being attracted and perhaps two independent and feisty spirits resisting the attraction even though they know and hope they will succumb to the inevitable in the romantic long run. Again, however, this is theater and even though sometimes real life is theatric and sometimes indeed it has a happy ending, it is also to be considered that there are some people that you can't be with more than two minutes and they start to get on your nerves.

There is also merit in appreciating the relationship of this sort because it is also possible that you are being given an opportunity to learn how to be long-suffering or gracious or tactful or tolerant or any one of those qualities of maturity and character that allow for life to go on without your permission; that is to say, in life everything does not comport to your satisfaction -- and I mean "your" as a generic condition and not you specifically.

Leah: How do you love someone when you discover their behavior is deceptive?

MERIUM: You are dual nature beings. You are of animal origin and you are intended to become spirit. In-as-much as you are indwelt by the Father, in-as-much as you have been born of the spirit and are functioning in and through a viable reality of spirit, that is to say the fruits of the spirit are alive and well within you and "by your fruits you shall be known", you may address the Thought Adjuster and anticipate the gracious reflection of divinity in and through the lives of your peers.

On the other hand you are of animal origin. The animal nature is reluctant to change. The ego is incessantly clamoring for attention. The immature individual worries and frets over that which the mature individual would regard as trivial. The animal has desires and urges which want met; much like a baby will cry to be fed, adults also, until they have learned, will cry and become belligerent and bellicose in order to have its needs met or its discomforts alleviated.

Under those circumstances, it is unique in each case as to how you say "enough is enough". Obviously it is in your best interest to appeal consistently and constantly to that within them that will bring their best, their wisest, their truth-beauty-and-goodness. Obviously that is why we stress that you acquaint yourself with the presence of God in your fellows and appeal to that, depend upon that, rely upon that, believe in that as THE reality, the strength, the foundation of the other person.

The difficulty arises when the challenge to their God-consciousness is inflamed. When you have appealed to the God within them and they then, in themselves, approach a moment of defiance, when they are arguing within themselves about whether or not they are going to follow the will of God or whether they are going to follow their own will, you will sometimes see a turn-about wherein the ego usurps control. You can continue to appeal to the God within them, but it may be, at this point, that there is war going on in the individual and you have stepped into their battleground. At this point it is wise for you to get off the field and allow the battle within them to play itself out unless you are completely in command of your alignment with the Father.

When Abraham talks about the good fight of faith, when he talks about the armies of the Lord, herein is his frame of reference. This battleground is very real, and sometimes the animal wins out. Ego can be very strong and free will is a gift of the Gods. It has sometimes been misused, as your planet has seen. "And there was war in heaven." There can be war within. Each of you has known this kind of war within. Each of you meets with this crises point in yourself. At each turning point, at each point when your ego must die yet another ego death in order for you to become more Godlike, you encounter this moment yourself.

When you have practiced within yourself the practice of focusing on the Father and desiring to do His will, when you spend time in prayer, when you establish for yourself healthy spiritual habits, when you ask the Father to walk with you and you ask your spirit guides to show you where you have fallen short and where you might pick up your reins, you will be guided and directed, and so it is here that your sincerity is of utmost importance. It is here also where you may, in the privacy of your mind and heart, have compassion for those whose conflict is so dramatic and distressing as to be a whirlwind in the lives of those they touch.

Leah: I guess I'm asking how to detach from that. I want to have compassion in certain difficult situations and I know detachment is one of the best ways but sometimes it just seems impossible.

MERIUM: They are battlegrounds, Leah. It is no wonder you have a reaction to the battle when you follow the Prince of Peace. When you spend time with the Prince of Peace, when you know the peace which passes all understanding, the turmoil in the souls of those we know and love are painful to behold. Realizing the throes of conflict in a person you love can be a difficult matter to endure. Much as seeing a woman give birth, you don't like to hear the screaming, but you can appreciate the child coming into being. Appreciate that the pain will pass, that the life will be good.

It takes a certain constitution to be able to endure the crises. Everyone does not have the constitution for it. That's why some people are nurses and some people can't stand to see the sight of blood. That's why some people are good in psychology and some people are good in religion. That's why there are so many variations on the theme. That's also why we are grateful, to the Mother, to bring a sense of assimilation to each new constitution. Each new level of reality growth falls in place because of her ministrations. That is why, after a vicious and painful battle, when good has won out, we can look back on the battle and say, "Well done," and feel a certain pride in the accomplishment. It has been a battle for the good fight of faith -- the only fight worth fighting for. We are talking about souls here. Yes.

Divorce

Leah: It seems like we were talking about Jack and Jill. They were running up the hill to get the pail of water and you said something about they would fall.

MERIUM: When you are starting out, it is easy to look at your goals and how you are going to get there. You can work together; you can help each other in the ascent. But when your goals are not the same, you are separated. You now are in a position to stumble upon each other or become off-balance. When this happens, one may sit down and the other may fall down, at least until such a time as an understanding is reiterated as to where it is you think you are going and are you going in the same direction and can you companion in the journey again and some more or not?

Therein is where you fall. But, you get back up, you get dusted off and you get back on the path. In the case of marital dissolution, it is simply a case wherein you have both sat down on the side of the hill and said, "I think I'll go the rest of the way by myself, but I'll see you from time to time on the way up and I'll see you at the top. Have a good trip."

I am going to move over now. Good night.

TOMAS: I am your trusty Tomas, back again. Are we on schedule?

Group: I think we're always on schedule, even when we don't think we are.

TOMAS: I haven't heard from Joniel for a while. How are you, kid?

Joniel: I'm okay. (Indistinguishable)

TOMAS: How is your daughter?

Joniel: She needs some more help. I try to help where I can.

TOMAS: I am getting a picture of a bicycle with training wheels. She is so eager to "hit the road, Jack" her back wheel is wobbling. Yes, mother, I see your clucking tendencies and have an appreciation for it, in-as-much as I observe it in my feminine companion.

Gerdean: Tomas, are you saying that guys don't cluck?

TOMAS: We crow.

Gerdean: I see. So then, Tomas, are you saying that until such time as there is something to crow about, you don't say anything? Is that what?

TOMAS: We do a lot of strutting.

Gerdean: I see.

Liana: A cock in a barnyard.

Leah: [Laughter] I'm laughing there, Gerdean.

Gerdean: I was making a similar analogy there and I'm thinking, I remember that cocks have great and wonderful and beauteous feathers and I am beginning to see a pattern here. I think I've said enough, Tomas. Thank you very much for your insight.

Leah: You think you see a pattern here?

TOMAS: I want you to know, Gerdean, that it is not necessary for you to praise my feathers. I am fully aware of my own beauty. It is not a matter of concern to me whether you admire me or not, and so do not extend the analogy too far into your realm of behavior. I assume from this interchange that you are finding some merit to an analogy of the chickens to mortals, but this is a limited analogy in-as-much as chickens aren't too bright and I, Merium and the other teachers are far in advance of your barnyard creatures, but in-as-much as you have a profound appreciation for the beauty of the rooster and the maternal flavor of the hen, I will accept some of your artistic representation with thanks for the compliment.

Closing

I think that it's time to roost for the evening. It is a beauteous evening, calm and free. The moon is in a gentle phase, the wind is cool and quiet. Your camaraderie has been fulfilling and your teachings have been busy. Go to bed and rest. Tomorrow is another full day in the life. Good night.