[tmtranscripts] S.E. Idaho transcript when list was down; 8-12-03

[Bill Kelly]

S. E. Idaho TeaM
8-12-03

Daniel(Bill): Be at peace, my friends.  I am Daniel.  Let us pray.  

To You Who made all that is, but most importantly " Father" to all Your
personal sons and daughters; to You, great Creator, we turn our hearts of
gratitude and worship.  We call You, "Father", "Great Parent",
"Unfathomable Love", "Perfect Graciousness", for that is how we experience
You in our souls.  May Your nature continue to fuse with our human nature
so that the two together can become one perfected pinnacle of joyous
creativity!   Tonight, my friends, may our hearts melt to each other with
no barriers or misgivings present.  Put aside all things and let us
endeavor to do the will of our Father, our Brother, our Mother, our Sister.
 Amen.

Daniel(Bill): This is Daniel, your teacher, your friend, your guide, and
your joyous companion.  Your hymn says, "All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God
made them all!"  I wish tonight to focus our attention on the experience of
grateful enjoyment.  

"All things bright and beautiful, all things wise and wonderful", do you
not harmonize with those thoughts?  Have you not experienced a sense of
awe, of the majesty, of the perfection, of the works of our Creator as you
look at everything around you: yes, creatures great and small, other
people, your brothers and sisters, and the very universe of universes which
stretches out in incomprehensible majesty in the night sky when darkness is
allowed to illuminate the heavens?  Grateful enjoyment comes from the
knowledge of who you are and how you fit in to all that is.

You live in a society where the quest for enjoyment is frenetic, frantic,
and frustrating.   People often chose the pathway of hedonism, to indulge
the senses, where, " if a little bit is good, a lot more is much better",
is the philosophy.  But, as you know, this pursuit of pleasure, in and of
itself, is a dismal failure.  One sensation has to be followed by at least
as much, in terms of energy discharge, to keep the excitement going.  So,
some people become adrenaline addicts.  In their search for pleasure they
totally turn inward to their own nervous system.  This happens also with
substance abuse, as you know.  

Grateful enjoyment is quite different.  It comes from knowing who you are
and how you fit in with everything that is.  When you know that you are a
son or daughter of the Creator of all, then you know that you have a
primary connection to the Source of reality.  Primary, I say, rather than
marginal, secondary, provisional, conditional, maybe this and maybe that,
or most discouraging of all, only an accidental connection.  A primary
connection means you are of the same substance.  You are a person from the
Father of personalities and you have a part of your Parent in you, the
prepersonal Thought Adjuster/Controller.  Consequently, because of your
primary connection with your Source, our Father, you then have another
primary connection; and that is with each other.  You are truly brothers
and sisters, not because you are "homo sapiens", but because you are
children of God.  

Knowing this fact of your sonship/daughtership as children of one Parent
makes the rest of creation friendly.  It gives you something of the feeling
that native people have where they recognize their kinship with all living
things.  The understanding of that kinship is a different explanation in
native religion as expressed in its mythological stories, but the sense is
correct.   The other aspect of the sense of connection with nature that
traditional authoritative religions recognize, the stewardship aspect, then
becomes more humane.  Stewardship has been conceived as ownership, with the
subsequent belief that the earth and all other living creatures on it exist
for the purpose of satisfying the desires of homo sapiens.  What I am
suggesting is a different concept of stewardship, more like the stewardship
of the oldest person in the family, who wisely administers the resources of
the family for the benefit of everyone.  Grateful enjoyment of the earth,
of creation, of your relationships with other people, comes from this
perspective.  You are not apart, separate from everyone else and self
sovereign.  Rather, you are connected to everybody as brothers and sisters
and to the rest of creation as caretakers.  Your role is to take care of
it, not to exploit it and destroy it.  Grateful enjoyment, seen in this
context of beneficent stewardship allows you, then, to harmoniously use the
resources of this planet.  

Grateful enjoyment allows you to interact with other people with the
recognition of your family connection, so that you are not "us and them" or
you against the world, but you are within the fabric of humanity.  It
allows you to transcend ruthless competition, in fact, to abhor it.  I am
not saying you cannot have some friendly competition that is governed by
honorable rules, as in games such as the Olympics, etc.  But to cast
everything into the framework of a war, as your culture currently is doing,
is to deny your connection with other people and the rest of creation.
Wars are fought between adversaries.  Wars are not appropriate ways to
relate within the bonds of family structure.  

In grateful enjoyment, the enjoyment comes as a result of the gratitude,
which comes as a result of understanding who you are and how you fit in to
everything that is.  

The other aspect of grateful enjoyment is the result of the ability to
"live in the moment".   For it is only in the moment that there is
enjoyment, real, vital enjoyment.  True, you can pass a great deal of time
thinking about past enjoyable moments.  In this process you are rewinding
your tape recording back to a previous time of moments where the enjoyment
occurred.   And even if those previous moments of enjoyment were also
recollections of previous moments, eventually you will realize that all
original enjoyment began in "the moment".  It is obvious in a child, for
children are not reminiscing on the past.  They are in the moment, enjoying
being alive.  It is in the "moment" that you experience connection with
other people, not in remembering the past or planning for the future.  In
the "moment" the ever present "eternal now" is the potential for enjoyment.  

Therefor, if you are looking for grateful enjoyment, what I am recommending
is that you first of all recognize what you can be grateful for: who you
are, and how you fit in.  Then, with that knowledge supporting your
understanding, you can make an effort to block out the past and put aside
the worry of the future, and perhaps, even allow the present to be
humorous... [Ed. Note: Bill, the TR, has just knocked over his glass of
water while gesturing] ...as, indeed, is Isaac's second spilled liquid
during a meeting bringing humor to his mind. (Laughter)  

Today I am a grateful person, for in my morontial life, which you will one
day share, I am constantly amazed how what I thought was such a wide and
complete perspective can suddenly be greatly expanded.  What I have told
you in words is only a very diminished and limited attempt at what I now
experience.  My friends, I have met ascendent mortals from other places,
with totally different histories from my planet of origin, not the least of
which is my experience on this planet of yours.  So, my experience goes
greatly beyond yours at this point.  
My gratitude to be one of God's sons knows no bounds.  My gratitude
includes the fact that I have been given this charge with you, that I can
sit down with you, my little brothers and sisters, with my arm around you
all, and say to you, "Oh, my friends, let's enjoy life!  Be grateful for
what you are and what the universe is like that you are born into.  Be
grateful that we shall ascend to our very Parents, Themselves."

I will stop now and we can discuss this, or you can ask me questions, if
you wish.  The floor is yours.

LaReen: Daniel, I appreciate this lesson tonight.  I have been feeling
disconnected spiritually for a week, now.  I guess the bottom line, that it
comes down to, is remembering who I am, where I came from, and where I am
returning home to.

Daniel: Yes, my dear.  That is the most important thing that you can know:
to know yourself, who you are, where you came from, and where you are
going, as you say.  In that understanding you then know also how you are
related to everyone and everything else.  I am glad that my words have been
helpful to you, yes.

LaReen: Thank you.

Daniel: You are welcome.

Virginia: Daniel, this lesson reminds me of a saying that one of my friends
gave me,  "Gratitude is the key to abundance".  I think that when you start
being grateful, you realize how much you really have. And I am not talking
material things.  I am talking about that which LaReen mentioned, that we
are children of God and we are on our way to Him.

Daniel: Exactly!  That is the key to abundance, the key to enjoyment,
grateful enjoyment.  Both of you have stated the point I was trying to
make.  Thank you for your contributions tonight.  

Bob D.: I think a lot of the struggles that I have is in trying to let go
of the past and recognize the present.  I constantly struggle with not
being a good dad and treating my kids right and what needs to be done for
my family.  Also, my service projects become scattered.  But what I have
the biggest struggle with is some guilt for when I don't do things exactly
the way I should, and when I behave poorly, one way or another, as in
selfishness or speaking harshly with my kids or being argumentative with my
wife.  When I come for that stillness I have a hard time letting go of that
sense of inadequacy, of being able to handle it all.  I am looking for any
insight you can offer as to how, besides the words, "let go" and "recognize
the present and what we have"...how do we learn to move beyond our
perceived or actual failures that have already occurred?

Daniel: My friend, your words are greatly appreciated for your dilemma is
the human dilemma.  (Chuckles from the group) Therefore, what you have said
touches everybody.  You used the word, guilt, so let me talk about that.
(More chuckling)

Bob D.: I know what the Urantia Book says about guilt and how it is not
that worthwhile.  But I have a hard time still getting past it. (Cackling
laughter from group member)

Daniel: And so does this TR, and so do you all!   I am not going to give a
dissertation in answer to your question, but it would be a good topic for a
major presentation in the future, however.  Rather, I will try to summarize
for you what may give you some assistance.  

The textbook (The Urantia Book) does say in several places that the
direction that you are heading is more important than where you are.  It
also says that the key to spiritual growth is sincerity, sincerity, and
more sincerity.  

First of all, the experience of guilt needs to be framed in a positive
manner for it is an indication of your moral awareness.  If you did not
experience guilt then you would be sub-human.  So, the fact that you
experience guilt is a good thing.  It means you are a normal human being.
There are people that don't; who can only be described as sub-human.  But I
won't get off on that.  

The second thing about guilt is that it is mostly the result of breaking
the taboos and the mores of your culture which are internalized as
conscience.  And you must always remember this, for the mores and taboos
are relative.  There is a difference between a sense of guilt and a sense
of separation from your spiritual Source.  The guilt of cultural taboo
breaking and the violation of mores has a different feel to it than the
darkness that results from a fully conscious refusal to do the will of God
by embracing what you know to be wrong beyond cultural relativism, or by
rejecting God in His divine Presence.  So if guilt means you are human and
is due to breaking the rules of the culture, it is different than the
results of sin and iniquity.  What you are describing does not sound like
sin or iniquity, but rather the conscience of a highly principled, highly
moral individual, who is somewhat of a perfectionist, and  who is harder on
himself than he is on others.  You are like children learning to walk.  You
stand up and take a few steps and fall.  Now, think about it, does a little
child struggle back to their feet with an apology on their lips?  A child
doesn't waste time feeling guilty about making a mistake, about being
clumsy at walking.  

You have taken on a major change in your life, my friend!  You are a father
and a husband and at the same time, still a human being.  With these other
people to interact with constantly when you are in their presence, life is
much more complicated than when you were alone with your own thoughts.  The
opportunities for failing to do as well as you wish you could are simply
much greater.  Okay, you know all this.  What to do about it?

Here is where you have a choice.  You can waste your time feeling badly
about the things you have done.  That is one choice.  Or, you could make
sure that you make apologies and amends for things that you would like to
do differently.  Apologies by themselves are not sufficient.  Amends
require changes.

Bob D.: That's where I struggle the most...making the changes and not
repeating the behavior.

Daniel: If you can lighten up your self criticism and accept that you are
going to make mistakes, then what you have to do is not waste time feeling
guilty but get up, do your amends, and think about the patterns that are
bothering you.  See if you can figure out anything causal that can be
discovered in those patterns that you haven't understood before about
yourself.  Once you have figured that out, if you can, then you have a new
basis to proceed.   You also have a very loving and intelligent spouse.
She, undoubtedly, is an assistant to you in these matters, for that is the
benefit of a good partnership marriage.  You can assist each other in your
growth.  She may be able to help with patterns.  Finally, talk with your
Thought Adjuster and try to resolve any residual guilt feelings before you
fall asleep each night.  You will sleep better and it will put a limit on
that kind of struggle.

You see, it isn't God in you Who is struggling to forgive you.  (Chuckling)
It is you who are struggling to believe in the generosity of God within.
But if you intend to grow, Bob, it is not where you are but the intention
to move forward which is the important thing.  Have I given you any help
here, my friend?

Bob D.: Yes, you have.  Thank you.  To be able to focus on the patterns and
behavior and to find the relationship to the behavior and some of the
circumstances that I am going through.

Daniel: You will have to go back into your childhood.

Bob D.: Oh, I know that.  I have been contemplating what affect that has on
current behavior characteristics.

Daniel: Um Hum.

Bob D.: I appreciate that.

Daniel: You are welcome.   (Pause)  Well, if there are no further questions
let us stand again and hold hands.  Klarixiska desires to give our final
prayer.  

Klarixiska(Bill): Our Father, our Mother, we are Your children.  May Your
peace, devoid of disharmony, but full of joy, comfort, and compassion so
fill our lives that it crowds out all anxiety, suppresses all ego centered
anger, and keeps us ever mindful of who we are as we relate to the rest of
creation.  Send these, my dear brothers and sisters, to a new day tomorrow,
after a good night's rest.  May their eyes be open to see the beauty that
surrounds them.  May their hearts vibrate with the truth that they know.
May their lives display the goodness which results therefrom.  In the name
of Michael.  Amen.