[tmtranscripts] More on Self-Mastery (05-29-97.PGH)

[Gerdean]

DATE: May 29, 1997
LOCATION: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
T/R's: Gerdean and Hunnah

Stillness, Prayer and Textual Study
Urantia Paper 8 on The Infinite Spirit
Re-reading of Lesson on Self Mastery

TEACHER SESSION:
TOMAS and MERIUM
More on Self Mastery

TOMAS: Greetings, my lovely Family. 

Group: Greetings, Tomas.

TOMAS: We are doing some weaving, Merium and I. The warp and the woof of tapestry making, merging and blending together concepts drawn from high spirit realms, knitted to and with your finite lives. We have been discussing personality, yes, and we have been studying the three persons of Trinity. Again this evening your labors revolved around The Infinite Spirit, Third Source and Center, the God of action. 

Recall that we have now touched base with the Thought God, the Word God, and the Action God. Remember, too, that as the Thought God and the Word God met in harmony, you had love and mercy. And as now you humans seek to be like God, you can compare yourself to this trinity action by acknowledging your Indwelling God Fragment as the Father with you, the omnipresence of The Eternal Son as surrounding you, and as your will is in accordance with His will, you will then act in perfection, including in your scenario, the Action God that moves you, that puts your thought and word into deed, into action.

We discussed this to some extent recently in Butler and at this point of beginning to act, I asked the group to read the section in The Urantia Book regarding the Lesson on Self Mastery, for it is here that you are impelled to act, but how are you going to act if you have not self-mastery? Even in faith if you seek to do His will and yet are crippled by -- what is it they say? divers lusts, fears, various poisons and so forth, even hatred -- how can you be perfect? And so we look at the lesson on self-mastery, at which now you also have looked. 

I pull upon the yarn of personality and elaborate somewhat that your personality is a gift from the Father. It is inherent in your being. As you are registered a human being, you are registered as a personality, and so your personality is a part of you from the time you breathe the breath of life. What happens to that personality in subsequent years accounts for much of how effective this individual will be if and he or she stands in harmony with the universe and seeks to do His will, who seeks to co-create.

Personalities adapt to circumstances. Consider the difference whether or not a personality is fostered in a home that fraternizes with spirit reality, wherein a good character can be developed, as compared to an environment of fear, anger and destruction. That personality will adapt. It is still the same person, but it has learned certain things and may compel them to act in certain ways. As your personalities have learned how to survive, have learned how to succeed, you have adapted. You will be adapting throughout eternity, and you will be adapting to other personalities.

If indeed now you chance to look back upon your life you will remember yourself as a child, you will remember your own core reality perspective from that time onward, even though life circumstances were different when you went to school, when you went away to college, when you were married, where you were an early mother, when you became a grandmother, perhaps when you were in military service. Many circumstances of life contribute to your need to modify your personality in accordance with your surroundings.

Last week we discussed the aspect of the Conjoint Actor, and I suggest to you this week that what you have done is you have learned how to act. Some of you have been fortunate enough to play in some very fine scripts; some of you have had to content yourself with rather shabby writing, but you have acted none-the-less and you have, within the framework of your ability, put on a jolly good show. Now as you seek to act for God, see how much conditioning you bring with you, for so much of your life has been based upon trigger responses. 

This is your conditioning and it runs as deep as your personality. And so, of course, you may seem to be a different person than you were then, but you are truly the same person. Remember that Jesus was known from different periods in his life. He was known as the Boatbuilder of Capernaum, the Scribe of Damascus; he was a caravan leader; he was a fisherman, and so forth. Often he was not recognized in one personality circumstance, whereas he would have been easily recognizable within the confines of the circumstance in which he was known.

And the same is true for you, and when you awaken on the Resurrection Halls, it is your personality that will be recognized. You will no longer have with you much of your material trappings. You will have with you your personality, which will be augmented by your increased association with your Thought Adjuster. You are giving birth to your soul. Merium?

MERIUM: You have had quite a bit to say! Good evening. As you were talking about the development and the revealing of your true personality, I was thinking of a child who is told something that they cannot see and they can imagine and hope for it to be of the quality that they had heard about, but they cannot really understand what is being told to them as a predicted promise, so I would like to allow myself some poetic license and talk about personality in the sense of it not being threatening but as a fluctuating expression in your human experience.

Your true personality is stable. It is in essence, you might say, like a beautiful mural of glass or of precious stone that has been covered. It is a treasure that you were born to discover in time, and when I say in time I do not indicate that in 60 years or such, because there is so much conditioning overlaying this personality that we talk about. There is such pleasure on our part because there is a freedom to appreciate it here and to interpret it in a way that you are not able to in your realm.

Let us say that you, in a reflection of your life span on earth's sojourn to this point, you can see a thread of consistency in the development of your personality from when you were very young to this date that has not veered. You can be distracted by the human conditioning which flavors the personality which you are wearing, but it is a fluctuating pattern and it has bright moments and shadows and can leave you confused as to how to really, truly define yourself.

In this cluster of vibrations that emanates from this human personality, you will find that there are likes and dislikes that will influence the performance of this personality in their daily living. Hunnah had a teacher at one time who said that in the new reality of your divine expression, you will find yourself having preferences instead of likes and dislikes, and that preferences are something that will show upon you in a more flattering light and it will simply involve your experiences in life, such as you prefer not to have to wait in line but you can tolerate it.

As your personality reveals itself -- as a refined expression of your personality is revealed -- you will find that the influence of its divine overtones will soften as well as strengthen the elements of this manner in which you perceive yourself. I would like to ask you if you have a question that you would like to ask regarding personality, and then if I stumble with it I can pass it over to Tomas. (No questions) Has the idea of having true individual unique personality that has not been tainted by your earthly sojourn, even entered your conscious awareness to ponder? What would it be like?

Elizabeth: I've been thinking it so much! It's just been really fun to think about it. I really have been enjoying the study about personality. Thinking about all the people that I know and what they were like, probably, when they were little.

MERIUM: Not too long ago Hunnah had an opportunity to look at what I would prefer to call a pattern of tendency for personality that is born on such and such a date.

Elizabeth: Oh!

Group: (Murmurs about "Astrology!")

MERIUM: She was -- In a sense you could think of it that way, but she was most amused that the person she knew, who had a birth date under that so-called sign, was an absolute perfect pattern for what was being described for that sign. So it is as if someone gave you a limitation to live through and you would mistaking that pattern that was from that sign, in this worldly sense, as being their personality. But in essence what it is is the reality of that being living through this complex combination of expression -- patterns of expression -- and on her there is an endless supply of these variations.

So would it not be in the best interest of your human experience to have a link, a flow, of light that can come through those patterns and bring them forward in the best way possible, so that that pattern could perform at its best and enjoy its acquaintance with itself in the best way possible and also develop an appreciation and tolerance for those that are not like themselves?

So that when you are dealing with other people, in the back of your mind, you will be able to hold the pleasure of the truth of their being as well as a gentle understanding that the pattern that is being shown to you at that given moment is definitely a personality that has been bent by the prevailing winds of life's experience, and when you add this ego essence to these patterns, you will find them even more complex.

So with Tomas's depth of delivery of what your divine personality is, you have the comfort zone -- when you deal with other people -- of knowing what is behind scenes, and that is why you are allowed to be led into the path and the reminder of serving the Christ. It is the gentlest way, it is the most expedient way, and it is the most meaningful and pleasurable way to live. And you knew I would come up to that eventually, didn't you? Of knowing Who it is before you and knowing Who it is within yourself that may honor that person and that personality that is before you. Thank you, Tomas.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium.

Celeste: It is kind of nice to know that your personality is going with you. Because that's all you know about yourself. Don't want to lose it.

TOMAS: It is indeed the greatest gift. As we have read in the [Urantia] Papers so far, there is a great thrust of interest on the person, on the personality of these high beings throughout time and eternity, and it is important because you yourself are a person. You have your own unique outlook, your own free will, your own identity, yes.

Elizabeth: Well, ever since I've been thinking about this personality thing, I think I've been much less judgmental about myself! That's one of the things I just came to realize here tonight. I look at myself as a separate entity, not somebody who is right or wrong, just somebody I'm observing, which, I think, this is an improvement over the way I used to think of myself, because I was always sort of judging myself. I was either right/wrong, good/bad, but this is a new way for me. I think it's helping.

TOMAS: I would certainly hope so. You are on the right track. You have been admonished before perhaps. If not, I will remind you again that you are not in a position to pass judgment even upon yourself, and as you relinquish the need to judge yourself, you will find it easier then to not need to judge others, allowing yourself precious freedom from the restrictions of self-imposed judgments.

Elizabeth: I've been enjoying myself. But I've been enjoying other people, too, in a way that I didn't do before.

TOMAS: I would like to put on the record that the summation of the weaving of the day is to reiterate the importance of the practice of Stillness, for in Stillness you have a direct link between your unique personality and The Father. You have that connection which surpasses any conditioning or circumstances. It is not necessary to play a role or to comport yourself as anything other than a child of God seeking to know Him better. It is a reinforcing practice. And not only is it reinforcing for you, it enables you to present yourself more peaceably when you stand before the challenge of other personalities.

Elizabeth: I think I'd like to ask you to explain that a little bit more, please.

TOMAS: About the stillness? 

Elizabeth: That paragraph.

TOMAS: Well, I will perhaps modify [tape turned] ... not so mechanical as to deliver the same words verbatim, but I will reiterate the paragraph's purpose, to remind you of Stillness, for when you sit in Stillness, you sit as a personality in direct communication with the personality of your Father, as Father and child -- pure personality to pure personality -- without the roles that have been assigned to you or that you have assumed to play by way of your societal influences. You can speak directly to the Father and He can speak directly to you and love you for who you are and as you are, for you are His child that He has created. It is in this context that He is your Father and that you are His child. This personality. As you have been indwelt by His fragment, your personality can become eternal.

Elizabeth: I think I'm going to try to think of my human father to help me to ... I'm enjoying the things you're saying so very much ... I think I'm going to think about my father here and the way I was like him.

TOMAS: It is very well known that you learn from your mortal fathers, your earth parents, those lessons, those impressions, those first impressions as to how the eternal parents would behave. You learn whether or not it is a friendly universe by the way you are treated in your home by your parents, as an infant, and it is interesting to observe how it was that your earthly parents have influenced your personality. This is indeed a strong part of your conditioning, perhaps the strongest part of your conditioning. It is interesting also, then, once you have observed that you have learned these particular characteristics and personality responses from your earth parent, to compare how you would be taught by your heavenly parent.

Hester: Tomas. 

TOMAS: Yes, my dear.

Hester: Concerning these children, these babies, these parents, serious mistreated. What purpose is served?

TOMAS: You present your question as if the universe had established it for them to learn certain lessons in the experience and you misdirect your anger at the creators when it is not their fault that the animal race has not yet learned how to be human. It is in large part evolutionary, my dear, and a cruel and demented human animal is a travesty to the understanding of a loving and merciful God.

Hester: That was really an honest question, Tomas. There is no anger there. I wanted to know and you answered it, as far as I'm concerned. The lack of understanding on the part of the parent, the lack of recognition of their own soul-self. I understand it. And I wasn't angry; I was really asking.

TOMAS: I hope I have helped.

Hester: Yes you have.

MERIUM: May I interject, please?

Hester: Yes.

MERIUM: If you look beyond the situation that you describe as abuse and ignorance, and you look at the world at large, you will see this great variation of ability to cope, and as your worldly tensions increase, those who are not capable of handling themselves will act out of ignorance and fear. As an enlightened individual may help develop organizations that will feed the masses and will bring medicine and such to children who are living under deprived conditions, you have on the other side of the coin, or in contrast, those who are only equipped to meet the need of a moment and they are in constant stress and fear, fear of each other, fear of lack and all the creature comforts that they are denied in this society.

Man instinctively loves his child and civilized man will love and protect his grandchild, but enlightened man will bless and love and care for all children. And a child in this time of enlightenment has been uplifted, is in the community and continues to be a gift. In a society that is wavering in its judgments, this child can be used, used incorrectly for material gain and remember in your evolution you have witnessed cruelty through the Industrial Revolution, large families because they needed the help, etc. --this is just a review for you because you really have read it and understand it -- but emotionally, it's such an intolerable state that one can become outraged by it because they have so far surpassed that mode of behavior. They do not see a child as a burden or another mouth to feed or as an unworthy being, so you have this constant fluctuation in society here on Urantia.

I am reminded of the wheat and the tares. That parable can be applied in many directions and it is loving tolerance that allows you to witness it and also to act.

TOMAS: Thank you, Merium, my able colleague. In the interest of time and owing to the fact that you have been bountifully served this evening, it is my pleasure and responsibility to call our session to a close. You have reams of words to read and miles to go before you sleep and so I embrace you in our realm of love.

Elizabeth: Do we have an assignment?

TOMAS: Yes, I am going to bring you back once again to that moment before you act. As we have been studying personality, you are getting a bigger picture of what goes on in the personalities of those around you. Perhaps after this evening you will give some thought as to why certain behaviors are apparent and will bring you yet again back to that moment when you ask to serve and are activated by the spirit.

Are you sufficiently master of yourself that you can serve in full faith of your fellowship with Paradise, or are you acting out of sheer conditioning? I will not give you the assignment to bring to me a perfected personality of total self-control by next week, but we are working on it. Or, perhaps more palatable to Merium's ears, we are spending time with it.

Elizabeth: I guess I just don't understand the assignment. 

TOMAS: Grow, Elizabeth, and reflect on your experience.

Hunnah: Remember the lesson we had on react or respond? If you pause, you're apt to respond. If you do not, you will get caught up in the speedy reaction, the conditioned reaction.

TOMAS: Let me release you now so you can enjoy each other. Merium and I wish you a fond farewell.

Group: Thank you. Farewell.




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