2004-04-10-Personal & Group Resurrection

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Topic: Personal & Group Resurrection

Group: Rio Rancho TeaM

Facilitators

Teacher: Merium, Tomas, Anatolia

TR: Gerdean, Matthew

Session

Opening

PRAYER Matthew Let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus, the Christ.

Master Teacher, we come to you today with the group of us that are here willing and able to be of loving service. Those who are not with us are excused, for various reasons, but the important thing is that so long as one of a group is present, then the group is represented and alive through the one representative. That happens to be my own philosophy that I just made up; nevertheless, it seems to make sense. And for our purposes we are willing, able and present to our purposes in you. Even though it may not be understood and may not be totally accepted within others, we are present within ourselves and we are called to -- as well as the group, again, even though the group may not be in full agreement.

We are conscious of this day being the day you spent in the tomb, or at least your body, and that you were out in loving service to accomplish that which you did. We commemorate that through today and rejoice in the resurrection that so ably took place, when it did, through the burst of energy that occurred at that time, to bring us the good news of your resurrection. How exciting that must have been.

We celebrate with others in the memory of that event, which is alive and well in our hearts now. It is not history but living presence that we are fully appreciate of and grow in the awareness of. For this and all of our purposes before you and our Heavenly Parents we are forever grateful. Amen.

MERIUM Little ones, this is your friend Merium. Tomas has given me the okay to come out and to greet you and say hello. I have not been here for some weeks. I have been busy in my assignment. However, your meeting on a different day has given me a chance to be here and so I come into your environment like the mother hen gathering her chicks, clucking softly, making sure you are well within the confines of my nest, warm and with your own kind.

What a delight for us to share this happy moment of feeling we are where we are loved and cared for, with others who likewise are overseen and tenderly looked after. What a tremendous security that allows you and I bring it to your consciousness now that you may share it with your kindred spirits here today and in the future, for these few precious moments we have congregated together in the concept of the mother hen and her chicks.

Your future is far away. Rest here with me and your family for awhile, taking in the clucking noises of the supernal teachers who look after you, protecting you from the fox and assuring your safe passage into tomorrow.

It is my job, it seems, to continually remind you of your childlike nature since you are all so determined to banter about and crow about your own accomplishments prematurely. I find you so amusing. We are so endeared of you, precious chicks.

No, I am not being sexist. “Chicks” in the realm of our fine-feathered friends may be male or female. Your language again plays havoc with your consciousness. You have already taken me too literally. There is no use. I will give up and go sit in the corner.

Elena Oh, wait a minute! I didn’t do that. Oh, no. I was thinking about little chicks. Little fluffy yellow chicks!

Reneau It is Easter, after all.

Elena Yeah! Don’t go away over that!

MERIUM I will not go far. I will go into my corner of the room as you are and in enjoyment of our sibling similarity, be still, that others may speak.

Reneau Thank you, Merium.

Elena Nice to have you back. And you didn’t fluff any pillows this time.

Lesson

TOMAS Well, I will speak then. This is Tomas. The hesitation is due to the consultation we undergo on this side of the veil, for we are obliged to address you where your needs are, your soul needs, but a cursory review of your souls would indicate they have been calmed by the ministrations of Merium, and so indeed we shall open the curriculum with the fact of the resurrection, and in this, my focus, is going to be not on the resurrection of Jesus, which you acknowledge this weekend, but on your own resurrection, for surely you identify, have identified at some point, with the fact that in Jesus’ life he did, as you do, experience many small but poignant crucifixions, as when you are going about your business and find yourself being “sucker punched” by thoughtless mortals or ignorant animals, uncaring of their potential or the divine nature that resides within all, and would be awakened were the decision to be made.

The philosophy has it that for anyone who lives in either world, the facts of life are quite simple. If you live in the animal realm, you think and function as the animal. This is not innately negative, for there are some very fine, noble animal traits and many animals are docile indeed. Similarly, those who live entirely within the realm of the spirit are not conflicted as to their intent and purpose because they have the full consciousness of their spirit identification, but those who live with one foot in the material world and one foot in the spirit world are naturally buffeted about as they begin to walk the path with a desire to be a balanced mortal, identifying with both the material and the divine.

Herein you are indeed vulnerable to being bounced around, for you have not given yourself over, fully and wholly, to one view or the other. I subscribe to this philosophy and teach this philosophy to those of you who are still in the flesh, for you cannot overlook your mortal aspects. Not only can you not overlook your mortal aspects, as long as it is necessary that you feed yourself, house yourself and clothe yourself, and make your own choices, but because the gifts of your existence are only fully recognized and appreciated because of the fact you enjoy your humanness, the experience of putting yourself in the position, as if you were one of Merium’s chicks, is a human feeling, and belongs to the realm of the animal creature.

This analogy, which is directly connected to the essence of the controversial novel “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” [by D.H. Lawrence] is about the sensual nature of the human existence. It need not be discarded or cast aside as unworthy or unuseful. How do you suppose Jesus found such pleasure in the shop outside his home in Nazareth, in the wood shavings, and the boring of the holes to tap in the pegs that would join the parts together, one with the other, to create the furniture or boats that he contracted to create? The smell of the wood, the touch of the grain are things he created and has the right to appreciate and realize, just as you have the right, as a child of the realm, to appreciate the taste of food and the scent of nature.

But when you are in the animal realm, you are susceptible to those who are less placid, those who are foragers and predators. In this, it is wise to be aware of your higher nature for you are able then to hold yourself up as having a breadth of perspective that will foresee in advance what danger lies ahead, very much as Jesus was able to anticipate the times and the effects of his presence on the world, just as he knew, when he went into Jerusalem at the last Passover, that he would not live through the weekend, that they would in fact put him to death.

This made his experience a complete and total experiential reality. The movie that portrayed the humiliation, the blows inflicted on his person, are pains you can experience in your own minds because of the wounds you have yourself had inflicted upon you, physical wounds as well as emotional wounds, because of the fact there are those who delight in making meek people suffer. This ignorance is simply a matter of not having the spiritual perspective, and so those who seek to have the perspective of the Son of God have the responsibility then of foresight as to what the effects will be from the causes you institute.

Today, being Saturday, the symbol is that Jesus sleeps the sleep of death in his tomb, having experienced the pain of death, and not yet being risen up. This is the period of time you experience in your life after you have been wounded, as you are recovering from the onslaught of unkindness and ignorance. And these, of course, are in many degrees based on your capacity to withstand such assaults. This place of stillness is how you heal from the wounds of time. You allow yourself the slumber of death … even ego death or submersion of the will to the overcare of the greater universe … and then, on the morrow, when you are called forth, you are called forth full of faith, renewed, having left behind the wounds of yesterday, the assaults and insults of the ignorant and the unwashed. Therein lies your future. The fountain of living water that floods into you and renews you with new life in the form of new insight and greater strength to carry forward into the reign of truth beauty and goodness you bring upon your life experience, and reflect to that kingdom over which you have dominion Your life, as a part of the whole of the kingdom of God.

The day in the tomb may be cold and damp to you in your perception, but to those of you who are embarked upon the process of becoming a spirit by the growth of your own soul, will understand that this period of time will also serve as a good time to cuddle yourself under the wing of that Mother hen who has only a desire to cluck over her chicks, caring for them until such time as they are able to care for themselves through the ministry of time and eternity.

I therefore wish for you many happy resurrections, that as your path proceeds and you encounter the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” you hasten to the tomb to collect yourself in that nest, that psychic nest that we enjoy this moment, and wait for the infusion of the Spirit to lift you up into that which you will become, having gone through what you went through yesterday.

This time of waiting is indeed filled with quiet, silent growing the satisfaction of trusting the universe to pull you through. To be all that you can be is the joy of living. Rejoice in it and be glad.

ANATOLIA Welcome, friends. I, Anatolia, am happy to be with you this calm day, cool and inviting of re-entrenchment and pulling into one’s shell for reflection and introspection, is an opportunity for such occasion. I am grateful for the opportunity to be with you on such an occasion and weekend such as this, for it is unusual for us to be able to address you, even in the group size that you are today, other than a Sunday, which is typically well within the spiritual sense of our purposes of teaching to you as a group on those days when everyone has already established the mind set that enables teaching from our sphere to be fully accepted and incorporated into your daily routine.

Nevertheless, today is out of the ordinary syncopation of your days of setting aside Teaching Mission activity. For t his we are happy and grateful to accommodate, because it is sharing in another vein or opportunity for like seeing someone in a different setting than you ordinarily see in another. You will remember when you would see your schoolteacher at the grocery store or somewhere outside his or her natural habitat, it was always surprising and a little giddy overseeing such an occurrence.

It is not exactly the same thing today, nevertheless, it is an occasion outside of the usual that actually reinforces our reason for being and removes us from a stereotypic role. So it could be you who would be chuckling by seeing us in the grocery store rather than behind the desk or podium on a Sunday afternoon. We are not here to discuss roles or seeing one outside of the expected role as our reason for being today but as a long-winded opportunity to discuss the transition from one scenario to another. It seemed fitting to address the opportunity for a new meeting, or occasion for meeting.

This is a fine day in which to be among the living, for it is a day that in both traditional and non-traditional teachings was a day that our Master left the physical world and went out to the realms that needed to be addressed prior to his return to his Father in Paradise to receive his due reward and recognition for accomplishing so much. We have discussed this in the past, and it will take more than one lifetime here for you to realize the depth and extent of his commitment that he demonstrated here in the flesh for those years of service, that he committed, and the halt to his service that was accomplished that weekend of Passover, 27 AD.

It is this time period in which many who had not been able to acknowledge or recognize his act of loving service, both in coming into your world, as well as leaving your world as he did; they were unable to appreciate that which he performed. In other words, as it was told and as it occurred, his spirit went out into the realms where ages of souls had gathered, lingering, waiting for news of resurrection, where they were able to rejoin the human race and the sanctity that was renewed as a result of his accomplishments in the flesh and in the spirit.

For it was in these realms, or nearly forgotten realms, that he re-established his priority within all creation, here within your sphere and within this universe. I wish for you to consider what that may have been like for those who had been sleeping, not knowing that life had, in fact, a continuum that needed to be filled and addressed, that all those lives, at whatever stage of awareness, were now brought back to life with the opportunity to pursue completion and continuation of the path. This is as much a day of resurrection for them as for those who recognize, once again, on this world, that the Master has risen.

This is one of the sublime reasons for the resurrection -- it was a resurrection from within for so many, for so long. And for that reason is always going to be a truly marvelous event in our realm as well as your own. So we wish to join with you in recognition of our Master’s life as a way of living and a way of loving that is beyond compare. This is our purpose and our reason for being – to aid and to be that level of living and loving that was modeled to us only 2000 years ago.

I wish to leave you with these thoughts that tomorrow, when you remember the empty tomb, remember what that demonstrates. It demonstrates that not only this world but also the worlds in physical and spiritual reality were liberated the day that he spent within the tomb and came forward to announce, by his bold and unprecedented statement of existence, far-reaching beyond the physical body.

Thus, I leave you with the good news that life abounds and waits and rejoices in the renewal that is brought forth each and every spring and will continue to be brought forth in each and every spring, whether in the physical or not, for renewal is the nature of our being and is, in effect, our reason for being. Therefore, peace be with you, and may you enjoy that much more of an awareness of what resurrection day is all about.

Peace be with you until we meet again.

Group And to you, Anatolia.

TOMAS Are there questions, are there conversations, are there concerns?

Dialogue

Maria It seems that the timing and the regularity is important for them? Is it important for the spirits for these kinds of activities?

Reneau I.e., Sundays. Do other groups meet on Sunday as well, or do they sometimes meet during the week?

TOMAS This is not a choice we arbitrarily superimpose; it evolves according to the group, and its singular needs. Many groups have met at many times during the week at many different times of the day, yet there are many who choose to gather together on Sunday as an extension of the Christian conditioning. This is not a rule but a preference based on your lives.

This has all evolved. What we were and are concerned about is that you continue to keep your relationship with the unseen world active in your consciousness, for this is a method of upholding your faith and your energy and your evolution into greater consciousness, be that as a mortal of the realm or as a citizen of the universe. But humans are creatures of habit, and it is only natural that you would weave your appreciation for your Teaching Mission activities or your spiritual ascent motives as they are socialized into a format which is mutually compatible, which we then are happy to accommodate.

I will tell you, however, that as you gather together and maintain a schedule consistently, it becomes solidified and provides a platform from which you can operate. When and as you change your format, your subsistence alters according to the alteration of your agenda, your calendar.

Elena What does that mean?

TOMAS When you meet, for example, every Monday, you have the confidence that next Monday you will do something that feeds the interest that you invested this Monday. It has continuity, and develops a life of its own. It becomes a viable reality in your life. It may very well help formulate the very life you live. As Monday then is impacted by an outside influence and you need to meet on Thursday afternoon, that will have an effect on the participants for there are different energies on Thursday afternoon than there are on Monday evening. A new schedule may not hold up, as it does not have the energy that provided such subsistence on Monday.

Elena Okay. I get it now.

TOMAS And since you are essentially gathered together for religious purposes or perhaps social purposes under the religious umbrella –

Reneau Or both.

TOMAS Yes. – your Sunday gatherings have worked very well to provide subsistence in social and religious undertakings. If you were to move your meetings to Saturday, we would be happy to accommodate your gatherings on Saturday henceforth with the same devotion, even though you, on Saturdays, may be influenced somewhat differently because of the paradigm of your own existence – your energies, your work schedules, your very lives and all that entails. We just enjoy the fact that you continue to come together to feed your soul and your society in the ways that we present as the stuff that spirit is made of.

Elena Tomas, I wanted to tell you that the way you said it, this afternoon’s lesson on the resurrection, had a whole lot of meaning to me. That helped just tremendously. That has been a big deal on my work stuff. I mean, that just hit between the eyes. That put that in a whole different light for me and I am really grateful to you.

TOMAS I am glad to have served. I am glad to have rung your bell.

Elena Clang clang! And just looking at the tomb as a healing time, a time of getting – that was … I just thought that was great.

TOMAS Indeed, this is why we urge you to engage in stillness regularly. The fact of your existence here on Urantia is often a brutal and difficult experience. The ignorance that abounds on this planet bequeaths you the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune on a daily basis, and the safety valve of seeking stillness, of entering into your tomb, of going into the closet to pray, is the same principle. And the result of this time away from the rigors of the human experience, are sufficient to connect you, again, with your life-giving energies that will renew you and release you to greater service as you recover from life’s experiences and face tomorrow with hope and good cheer.

It is the same principle, but seeking the stillness for one, or five or ten minutes is a shorter time span than a weekend of being put to death and resurrecting. Even so, it is the same principle, and as you consistently allow the process of dying to the old ways, giving up control over the world at large and how people behave toward you and/or towards each other, but rather, finding your strength and sustenance and succor in that still quiet place within, when you emerge you will have conditioned yourself once more to the truth, and will have experienced yet another time, the truth of the message of the Master that said, “I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way. Follow me.”

For those who buckle under and seek to stay in their cave, nursing their wounds eternally, they have given up the greatness that they can become. However, lest you think I am inviting you to judge those who choose to sleep in their tomb, I have only to remind you that there are millions of souls who sleep the sleep of death, only to be reawakened upon the role call of a new dispensation and they, too, will come forth, responding to the tender touch of the life-giving, merciful God within.

Beautiful message, beautiful reality, beautiful Teacher who demonstrated this vital truth, this on-going universe reality, what wondrous opportunities lie ahead for us all! Even those of you who are burdened with the backward beckoning of a world gone mad, you are able to find strength and comfort in gathering together, and in mutual expression of your faith that will see you through and reveal, in the end, a radiance unsurpassed and unstoppable, as is our Universal Father and His designs for His universe. Rejoice and be glad.

Group Amen.

TOMAS Have all of you had a chance this week to make contact with your personal guides? Have they made their presence known to you, as we discussed last week?

Elena I had another … left ear kind of experience. I don’t always have very much time to-- I don’t-- I should do more time on the-- I know that’s an obstacle, but I welcome whatever progress I can make.

TOMAS Yes. Understood. You will only invest yourself in this new paradigm of reality as your tolerance of the old paradigm loses strength. As long as you are able to find justification and ennoblement in the pattern you are living within, you will not be motivated to forge ahead into something new. And so give yourself the grace of growth. Nothing is grown overnight.

Elena Thank you for the encouragement. I appreciate that.

TOMAS Having a set time will make a significant difference. It is like I discussed in how you establish your meetings. After you have gotten a pattern going, you can be quite effective within that paradigm, but when the habit is broken, the good works can readily fall by the wayside. This is the unfortunate propensity of mortals who seek for short-term rewards. They accomplish what they think they set out to accomplish, and then want to go on to something new and let that one go, not realizing that the furtherance of that design is added to the development, not something other than the development.

That was difficult to express.

Elena I think I got it.

TOMAS Okay. If you are looking for cheap thrills, that’s what you will get. If you are looking for enduring value that’s what you will get. And I commend to you the latter for it will provide all you need … plus cheap thrills!

Group (Laughter.)

TOMAS As pleasure seekers, I thought you would enjoy that.

Reneau I noticed that, talking with my granddaughter, she is attracted to the glitter and bright colors, and I think that’s a human thing too -- cheap thrills -- the glitter and glamour rather than the beige and brown of life.

TOMAS This will be learned as she undergoes the many treks to her own Passover – to pass over from this value to the next, to recognize that the twinkle, while delightful, will only develop into the sustaining glowing ember through time and experience. This is the joy of living, the experience of life, the opportunity for the young and the innocent to find out what these values truly are. And remember, the pint cannot hold a quart, so while you may know what’s good for her in the long run, it behooves you, as a wise grandparent, to allow her to find out from her own experimentation a great deal of these life lessons that will enable her to know and grow within herself the realization that the quality of life is more substantive than the glitz and glamour.

But you are correct. It is a natural thing for the human intelligence to be attracted to the baubles and the jingles that stimulate the senses. These same things might scare the cat, but you are not cats, nor are you chicks, but you have enough of a sense of the animal nature to appreciate and recognize that if you were altogether perfect and flawless in the spirit, you would have no use for this human existence whatsoever. Therefore, the process of being human and evolving into a soul of value and enduring meaning, is a process that we have all undertaken and which we have found to have been the right choice, even though in the beginning, the blows of our youth and the humiliations of our origins are often obstacles to overcome. And we see, too, those many who will not rise up to act upon their light of truth. But … I will say to you that you will be with me in Paradise, for I have been with you today in a perfect moment, a perfect representation of our desire and need to come together in recognition of our Sonship, our kinship, and our dependence upon the Divine nature to provide our needs, to stimulate our growth, and to comfort us in our efforts to advance.

Closing

Are there any other matters? [No.] Then, let us be on our way. There will be more to come. We’ll see you next week.

Group Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS Farewell.