[tmtranscripts] Poctello Transcript

[Bill Kelly]

3-19-99

Business and Sharing

Daniel (Bob S.): "My children, I am Daniel, your guide, teacher and friend.
How we enjoy your sharing with each other.  It takes us back to a younger
period in our own lives when we were just beginning our spiritual quest, and
it brings back many fond memories of years long, long ago.  No, I will not
say how long!  Your interactions, while they may seem innocuous and shallow,
perhaps superficial, are in reality quite important, for they lay the
groundwork for growth.  It is in reaching out, it is in exploration, it is
in considering what has here-to-for been unconsidered, that one opens the
possibility for real growth.  

So, my friends, we heartedly encourage you to exercise these opportunities,
and do not enter reluctantly.  Do not let your shyness, your fears, your
humanness get in the way of your spiritual dimension.  This side of you as
you now well know is immature.  It has to be that way because of the nature
of the planet upon which you live.  This environment is the result of the
rebellion, the default of your material son and daughter, the many years of
planetary isolation, which led inevitably to your circumstances.  So do not
worry,  fret, overly concern yourself with what you may consider to be
trite.  You are all being guided.  You know inside each of you is a fragment
of the Father Himself.  Allow yourself to be open to His leadings.  His love
overcomes everything.  There is nothing His love cannot overcome.  So, my
children, allow yourselves to be indulged; allow yourselves to touch the
Father.  Allow yourselves a glimpse of what can be and will one day soon be
for you all.  The Father loves you so much.  Allow yourselves to capture
some of this encapsulating, invigorating, all-encompassing love.  When you
feel it, you will wonder why you waited so long.  Well, my friends, with
those words of opening I now turn the rest of this evening over to another."

Minearisa (Nancy): "Greetings, my dear friends and students.  I am
Minearisa, instructor in residence in this greater Southeastern Idaho
teaching base.  It is my thrill to address you tonight on the topic of fear.
Last week we introduced, dangled, teased, to try and bait you with the topic
of fear in the context of the issue of evil.  

>From past lessons, discussions, and conversations, you have become familiar
with evil as error, as stemming from the incomplete and unperfected reality
of the material universes.  Evil does not imply the existence of an external
force.  Rather is evil the result of individual free will choice.  You have
become more comfortable with the concept of error and you are learning to
see your errors and to correct them.  Last week we asked you to introduce
fear into this concept.  Tonight I wish to inquire if anyone here tonight
contemplated the connection of fear to error.  And if so, are you willing to
share those thoughts with one another?  Angie, my dear, do you have thoughts
about how evil and fear or error and fear work together?"

Angie:  "I can see how evil and fear work together, I'm not sure about error
and fear."

Minearisa:  ‘In this case I am using error as another term for evil, both
are the result of choices made apart from God."

Angie:  "Well, did you pick on me because I have a lot of fear?  I do have a
lot of fear about a lot of things!  Fear's not very comfortable."

Minearisa:  "Will you elaborate, please?"

Angie:  "About it not being  comfortable?"

Minearisa:  "Yes, and more about your fears and how they might lead to
choices that are not in partnership with God."

Angie: "I don't know. 
. I don't know what to say."

Minearisa:  "My dear, I am pleased that you are aware of your fears and,
yes, they are not very comfortable.  In fact, they are as close to hell as
hell is reality.  Hell does not exist as a place.  It is, however, a state
of being.  It is a state of allowing fear to take precedence over the truth
of God's infinite, uplifting, upholding, ever lasting, never ending, love.
My dear, God would have you relieved of your fear.  He/She holds you in
tenderest love; and beyond, knows the path through the dark and twisting
maze if you will allow this loving presence to take you by the hand and lead
you step-by-step into the light of love where fear is not.  These are
abstractions and I would delight in discussing the more personal details
with you at your convenience, if you so desire."

Angie: "Yes, I would like that."

Minearisa: "Please make arrangements with one of the many TRs who would be
more than willing to serve in such a manner."

Angie: "Alright, thank you."

Minearisa: "My pleasure, my dear.  Ken, what are your thoughts on fear and
its relationship to error and evil?"

Ken: "The Father did not intend for us to live in fear, to experience fear
and to let it control.  Fear results in evil if you follow that fear.  So
trying to understand what causes the fear and going within to the Father to
understand that, and to conquer the fear and use it as a step of growth.  I
don't know."

Yes, you do.  Very well said!  Thank you for succinctly delivering our
lesson this evening.  However, I would like to invite further interaction on
this subject, either intellectual or personal.  Do I have other takers, please?"

Bob S.:  "I had a thought that might be interesting. I didn't do my homework
so I was quickly doing it in my head here when you broached the subject.
I've come to conclude that fear is the opposite of love, not hate.  Fear is
the opposite of love.  I wish that was my own creation,  but someone told me
that.  And I've come to believe firmly that it is the way that it is.  And
if that is true then, if evil is the opposite of love, fear and evil then
must be closely related, because they are the antithesis of love.  And I
hadn't ever thought of that before, so I'd be interested in somebody else's
reaction to that, because that's sort of off the top of my head."

Cathy:  "I started categorizing all actions from myself and others as being
fear-based or love-based.  It's as if you could draw a line right down the
middle and you can say that ‘this falls in the fear-based category or that
falls into the love-based category.'  I'm not sure how we're using the
definition of error or evil.  I just know that misjudgments and situations
that are unjust and unfair all come from fear-based behavior -- all of them,
and I'm looking and I'm seeing it everywhere, from my son's daycare to work,
world politics, it's all 
. I've just started monitoring myself while I'm
trying to make a decision and figure out what the basis of it is, and if I'm
absolutely certain that it's love-based I can feel pretty confident that I'm
doing the right thing."

Bob P.: "To the extent that fear is like trust  (inaudible)  trust in its
totality, it seems to make sense."

Bob S.:  "Years ago I read an article called ‘Fear is the phantom' and the
idea behind it was that much of what people do is based upon fear but it's
unrecognized because we don't want to face that side of ourselves.  And that
made a lot of sense, so I began to wonder ‘what about you, Bud!  What part
of what you do is fear-based?'  But I really had a tough time addressing
that whole side of me because I think it's a side of you that has been
repressed for so long.  And, of course, men in our society are not
encouraged when they are young to talk about their fears like the ladies are
encouraged at least to talk about that.  But the guys, hell, no fear!  (too
fast – inaudible comment)   that's kinds of the way we were raised, so we've
never had the opportunity to address that.  So I'm trying to do that now and
that's 
 I'm nowhere near the point where I'm ready to address that.  But I
like your idea, if we could kind of separate things into fear-based and
love-based, and try to make some distinctions there, that's a start."

Gwen:  "Minearisa, I'm lost.  I'm wondering if you can clarify things a
little bit.  I'm having a hard time even making any connection, and I'm
wondering if you can 
 maybe I'm stuck on the word fear.  I'm not exactly
making a connection.  Could you guide me a little bit?"

Minearisa:  "Is the difficulty with the word fear or with the word evil?"

Gwen: "Fear."

Minearisa:  "Yes, I will guide you.  Fear is part of your natural, animal
inheritance.  As a biological being, fear serves the protective mechanism.
It signals the brain to produce adrenaline that allows your fight-or-flight
and survival in animal beings.  And this is its proper function.  However,
this current society on Urantia is permeated by such thick fear that it is
the poison in which the beings of this planet are drowning.  The history of
this planet, the rebellion, in which the spiritual creators turned against
God and the circuitry being cut from the rest of the spiritual universe,
left the inhabitants of this planet with the intense experience of
isolation, separation, and unreality.  The horror of the experience of
aloneness has cast a shadow that has most of Urantians responding fearfully
most of the time.  We do not believe that the universe is a loving place.
You do not know of the spiritual protection and overcare that is continually
present and provided.  You do not know that you are precious children of
God.  And so this survival mechanism is jammed constantly on in many people.  

Making the distinction between fear-based responses and love-based responses
is important.  God is love.  God is truth, beauty and goodness.  When one is
acting from a place of true love, then there is an absence of this poison.
Where love is expansive, fear is contractive.  Where love adds, fear creates
a black hole.  Where love gives, fear takes.  There is, of course, healthy
fear, and there is unhealthy fear.  If someone is coming at you with a knife
that you know intends you no good, that is what fear was created for.  It
releases the adrenaline, it allows you to flee or to fight for your
survival.  If someone disapproves of a decision you have made, and there is
this emotional state of anxiety, contraction, stomach pain, the need to win
back that approval, that is unhealthy fear.  In this case the fear of being
disapproved of; which, if one follows that to its ultimate conclusion, it is
often the fear of aloneness, separation, an unreal existence in which God
does not exist.  Is this of help to you?"

Gwen: "Yes it is.  Thank you very much.  That really helped my understanding
of fear.  And I guess what I wasn't understanding was how the relation
between fear and evil is, because evil is intentional and fear is not
something that you can control, necessarily.  It's in your subconscious,
it's something you may not want, like I don't want to be to have that
unhealthy fear.  But how is it the same as evil, because I see it being
intention, whereas fear is a reaction."

Minearisa:  ‘Yes, I understand the difficulty.  Let me briefly define terms.
In the Urantia book, the terms evil, sin, inequity are used.  Evil refers to
the state of making mistakes, of unintentional actions that are not in
accordance with God.  That is the definition that we are using here, that in
this case, error may be a term you are more comfortable with, for many
Urantians consider evil to be intentional, however.  We use the term sin to
refer to intentionally going against God's will.  The term iniquity refers
to continuous sinning, continuing to know God's will and going against it.
And so, the difficulty, I believe, is in our semantics, how error, evil has
been defined.  Do I need to say more?"

Gwen:  "No, thank you."

Barbara: "I just have a thought.  I assume it's my own thought. In order to
feel fear, its related to your perception of danger.  And maybe the error is
in misperceiving something as being dangerous, because if you misperceive
something as being dangerous then you become fearful and then you act out of
fear.  And the original fight-or-flight response was there to protect us, it
was easier for us to identify what the dangers were, it's easier for animals
to identify what the dangers are, but we get really confused about what
danger is.  And I'm just wondering if that's where the error and the fear
link, through perception and misperception?"

Minearisa:  "Yes.  You're spiritual reality is perfectly safe, ever
protected, gently cradled within the hands of God.  God loves each of you.
God has a blueprint for you.  It is in believing that your 
. Let me begin
again, please.  Perception of danger is indeed much of the problem.
Perceived danger arrives in many packages.  You  have your favorites.  These
perceived dangers are generally not the case, and if you would take these
packages, unwrap them, cut them open, tear them apart, and give them to God,
God would take care of them for you.  That is enough for now, yes, I agree
with you.  Are there further thoughts this evening concerning fear, and let
us call it error?"

Angie: "Are you saying that to fear is error?"
Minearisa:  "In a way; and fear also leads to error because fear leads to
errors in judgment and yet fear is the result of errors in perception.

My dear friends, the hour grows late.  But before we say our goodnights, I
wish to communicate to each of you how deeply loved each of you are.  There
is no reason to fear.  God, the most perfect guide, resides within you all,
has the answers that you desire, allow that brilliant light, the love, to
lead you to a place of peace.  Fear not, be of good cheer.  Good evening."