[tmtranscripts] 2010-03-04 Light Line: Tomas on Experimental Life Stations

[Gerdean O'Dell]

DATE:  March 4, 2010

LOCATION:  LIGHT LINE

T/R:  Gerdean 

TEACHER:  TOMAS

TOPIC:  Experimental Life Stations

 

TOMAS:  Good evening, friends and neighbors.  I am Tomas.  I am glad to be here.  As you might say in your culture, "It is good to see and be seen."  Social intercourse takes two and so we have a forum here; indeed, we have a party, a dance hall in which to circulate and exchange vows and prayers and messages which serve to uplift and encourage you in your daily path. Yes, there are frustrations along the way.  It is not always easy.  But the important thing is that you continue to try, that you don't give up, and so let us commence.

 

Greetings and welcome to you all again.  I am Tomas, your teacher.  I have thought that I would like to talk to you about experimental life stations, just to focus on the concept.  As you know, those of you who are students of the Urantia text, every tenth planet is an experimental world.  The others provide continuity throughout the universe; they don't have the adventures and glitches that you have here that make your life so very rugged and such a challenge.  They have challenges, of course, but not to the extent that you have here [where] there are so many variables and so many unscheduled developments -- unscheduled as far as your perception is concerned although they are of course quite in hand, quite under the control of those who take care of the living laboratories of time and space.

 

The idea, though, of life experimental stations, or experimental life stations, whichever way you choose to consider it, is an opportunity to think about the flexibility that life provides. When you go beyond here, when you leave Urantia and enter into the greater community of Mansonia, you will meet with many people who have no idea what it's like to be from a sphere such as this.  The very fact of your experiences here, even without the rebellion and the default, would render you unique and different, but I have some question in my mind as to whether you truly appreciate what it is to live in an experiential life station such as Urantia.  

 

Let's bring it down to a manageable size so that you might consider it more immediately.  Take your society, for example, your global society. It is organized into different countries with different governments, and they handle themselves differently accordingly.  Different cultures have their ways, their climates, their languages, and each one is its own life experimental station.  

 

Perhaps when you were a child you understood what your experimental life station was - your home, your family, your culture, your ways.  You were familiar with the foods you ate, how your relatives looked, more or less what they wore, how they smelled, how they laughed, how they talked, how they worked.  And then visiting another culture might have introduced you to people of a different color, or people who dressed funny/strange compared to your family.  Perhaps their food smelled different and strange, foreign/exotic, and you reacted or responded to that difference.  The same will be true on Mansonia when you encounter people from other worlds.  And you will have similar reactions and responses.  One of the things that you can learn now and save yourself and everyone else the trouble later on is to recognize that there are inherent differences at different levels of development . and for a good reason.  

 

Furthermore, in your lifetime you might look back and see that you yourself have enjoyed several different life experimental stations.  As a child you lived with your family, likely a nuclear family; in college you may have lived in a dormitory; as a newly married couple, you shared space with your wife/your husband, and it expanded to include children -- another experimental life station where you dealt with the vagaries of child-rearing; and perhaps as an elder you find yourself in a nursing home, yet another life experimental station - each one providing purpose and value, accommodating the needs and the temperaments of those they serve.

 

I meant to also point out that in your culture you recognize apartment living as well as residential neighborhoods, rural environments and urban communities, and each of these provide their own flavor and their own challenges and to some extent they are each an experimental life station.  Some people never change their station.  They just grow up in it and really never move from it.  And there are some who move willingly and eagerly from one to another.  In some ways it could be said that Jesus did that. He enjoyed going around seeing how other people lived.  He was investigating their experimental life stations, helping them improve upon it by bringing a new dimension of truth, beauty and goodness to that station where people had planted themselves, where they lived.

 

And yet another observation along this concept of experimental life stations is to be found within your own mind, in your own character.  Because the way you behave around some people under some circumstances may or may not be the same way you would speak and act in yet another experimental life station as relationships tend to be.  If friendships are an end in themselves, they too have created an experimental life station.  And they can be moved in and out of, just as on a bigger scale you move in and out of neighborhoods or nations and, cosmically speaking, you move around . not galaxies so much as life stations, morontia worlds -- hundreds of them -- and later on, other areas and worlds for you to explore.   

 

It is difficult to let go of an experimental life station once you have adapted to it.  "Breaking up is hard to do."  Saying good-bye is never easy.  Change is difficult.  And yet, it cannot serve to stay forever in one paradigm.  "Welcome to change" is the motto of this movement. And so, in order to effect change, you need to know what you are trying to build, what you hope to construct, what you are leaving and what you seek to enter into.  Or, in faith, simply step forth and realize that one will be provided for you.  Such is always the case.    

 

I am rather intrigued by the span of consciousness that this topic allows. The pockets within the mind of beliefs which become a real construct in which you live can have a very firm grip on your life, on the way you deal with others, and the way you regard yourself, and it can be very, very difficult to change from your existing mind set. Sometimes it takes a shock or a trauma to get you to open up to another way of thinking, a new way of perceiving, and at the same time, it is necessary that you learn to discern when change is good and when it is simply change for change sake.  Much is required of you - each of you - fledglings.  But you have far greater capacities than you give yourself credit for and you certainly have far more assistance than you can imagine.   

 

Because you have been reared in an environment that has reinforced the sense of isolation, your quarantine, you tend to consider yourself an island, an experimental life station out in no-man's land somewhere, and many of you in your fear of isolation surround yourself with busy-ness and noise and activity in order to soothe that sense of isolation . while many of you have learned to go within and seek solace and companionship in the citadel of the spirit, the most sublime of all experimental life stations.  Your personal experiment with your own God fragment is truly the adventure of the ages.  It knows you well.  It knows you better than you know yourself and it provides for you.  It holds your hand as you ponder the things of today and reflect on those of yesterday and anticipate that of tomorrow. You are truly in God's hands, in His care.

 

I personalize that by saying "his," using the word His and using the pronoun and speaking of God as if he were a personality, for He is, but I am comfortable with that.  There are those, too, however, who are more comfortable with God being energy - omniscient, omnipotent energy - and they have found peace in that, for there is order in the universe, and so again we come back full cycle, to the universe filled with worlds that are peppered with experimental life stations, so as to constantly improve upon the existing paradigms of evolving life.  

 

It's an interesting concept.  It causes me to admire our Creator even more for the variety of opportunities available to those of you who do endure the vagaries of life on an experimental life station such as Urantia.  It is not boring here! You don't really have time to grow dull.  

 

Yes, the time has come to open the circuit to your input.  If you would like to engage in discourse or ask questions of your celestial friends, I am here to accommodate your needs.  How may I serve you?   

 

Jerry:  Yes, Tomas, if you would please just accept my love and appreciation for your service.

 

TOMAS:  Thank you, my friend.  I could say the same.  I have come to recognize the camaraderie of those of us who have been engaged in this process for awhile.  There are indeed different levels of comprehension, teaching, preaching, understanding.  Everyone does not grow at the same pace.  There are new students coming in all the time, even as there are more weathered students in the field already harvesting their season's crops.  We begin to have a picture of the whole of the process, and it is such a comfort to all of us when we look around and see we are doing what we are supposed to do - diligently, lovingly, steadfastly - plodding along through the field, gleaning, reaping, sowing.  Indeed.  It is a comfort.

 

Jerry:  And a whole lot of fun.

 

TOMAS:  Indeed it is a lot of fun.  It is not only amusing but it is gratifying.  It is not only singularly joyous, it is socially vitalizing. Sharing the inner life could be called "fun."  It is certainly, I would suspect, fun for our Parents to observe us engaged in work and play harmoniously.  I have not been sent to the corner lately so I expect I am doing something right in their eyes.

 

Jerry:  If I know myself when I seek to ask of Michael or Mother Spirit, the answer I get back is affirmation of "Do what you think best, my son."

 

TOMAS:  Well, that is how you learn.  That does  not mean that what you are going to do is wise or even right, but that is how you will learn, and there is really virtually nothing you can do that will damage the plan.  There are fortunately build-in limitations so you cannot go too far, and furthermore it has been promised that you shall not have any more rebellions now that Michael is our Master Son, and so no matter how dire it may seem, it is not as bad as it could be.

 

Yes, go ahead and enjoy yourself.  By this time you have some degree of wisdom to know when you have gone too far into recklessness or self-destructiveness and wouldn't choose to go there.  This is how it is that we can have such faith in you.  Still, it is only fair to say that there are casualties.  And yet we do proceed in good faith.

 

Jerry:  Thank you again, Tomas, and thank you for this -- I like this concept of this experiment.  It kind of reminds us that we are in an adventure here and the true meaning of adventure remains somewhat opaque; it remains each moment to reveal itself. 

 

TOMAS:  Yes, it is not just in the worlds ahead.  It is tomorrow and today, as well.

 

Jerry:  I remember asking Anatolia one time if there was still something, as advanced as she was, if there was still something that she could not quite anticipate and she said, "Oh yes, you never outgrow your need for courage."

 

TOMAS:  This is a testimony to the gift of will, of selfhood.  You need to make your decisions all the way through, and some of them do indeed require a leap of faith and a leap of faith requires courage, otherwise you would stay there where you were until you ceased to exist or until you were pushed to act, and so yes, courage is a stand-by. Even in the Corps of the Finality, I understand, courage will be an essential part of the character, the nature of those of us who will set sail for new horizons in the Grand Universe.  

 

Jerry:  Thank you.

TOMAS:  Thank you, my friend.

 

Mike:  Hello. Tomas?

TOMAS:  Yes.

Mike:  Hi, this is Mike.

TOMAS:  Yes, Mike.

 

Mike: You mentioned something that sort of tickled me a little bit regarding how some people are comfortable thinking of the First Source and Center as the personality of the Universal Father and  others are comfortable with the idea of an energy, an impersonal energy, and of course it has been revealed to us the duality of this nature, that He that we name, that personality that turns His face towards us that we can love and understand is but one aspect and this other energy, which is the stage upon which all these beautiful universe adventures unfolds, and I have been sort of thinking a lot about this lately, trying to coordinate my perspective of having a material vehicle, a material body that is quite literally electrons and atoms and flesh and blood and this understanding of energy and mind coordinating with spirit I thought maybe you could elaborate a little bit on this play, this coordination that's happening, this stage that has been set for us in contrast to how we enact our adventure upon that stage. 

 

TOMAS:  Are you asking me to discuss future worlds and future experiences?  Future experimental life stations you might find yourself upon?

 

Mike:  Seeing that that is the topic, you could address it in regards to that.  It's sort of a philosophical perspective of trying to understand this interplay between the Universal Father's original thought being on the one hand spirit and personality and on the other hand paradise and energy and how we are interfacing with all this and yes, as relating to experimental worlds, it seems to me that the creation of these experimental worlds is meant to expand the creative capacities, to push the boundaries of progress and of growth, and I've been thinking a lot about this lately and you mentioned energy versus personality and it tickled me a little bit because I've been thinking deeply on recently.   

 

TOMAS:  Well the truth is, of course, God is both: personality and spirit.  And there are times when either definition is perhaps more appropriate or is more telling.  It really doesn't serve to venture too far into future worlds with that duality concept.  All of us want to grow up and participate in the creation of new universes and new worlds in the Master Universe.  But before we get there, we have a lot of work to do even here.  And I would rather take that aspect of duality in your own constitution and see how that can be applied to experimental life stations here on Urantia.

 

There are certainly constructs in existence that have tremendous hold on many, many people.  You needn't look further than your own political system to see how the experimental life station of a mind-set multiplied by a million people can affect not only each individual but the entire world.  I would much rather help you focus on how to create an experimental life station from your faith that would be something in which you could all live compatibly.  If it is born in the spirit and constructed in the mind, all of you can embellish it and populate it . eventually to overpower the existing, lesser paradigms. But you must dedicate yourself to this task and not waste overmuch time pondering elusive futures of other worlds and other dimensions.

 

I realize that such activity is alluring and does, in fact, serve to provide great escape from the burdens of the material life and the rigors of such an existence, and so they are lovingly tolerated.  But it is also true that the adventures that lay ahead on this planet in terms of creating what this experimental life station was intended to be is a far more invigorating and thrilling and meaningful adventure than any external worlds of time and space, and you do need to have both personality and energy to accomplish this task. Do you see my point?

 

Mike:  Yes. Yes, thank you very much. And what has been in my thoughts a lot lately is the reality of my physical being in association with my spiritual and my mind aspects and the world in which I live in now, you know, interacting with it and coordinating with it, appropriately, not just intellectually and not just in intention but to understand the aspects - I use the analogy of the stage on which we enact our drama and that stage being that energy foundation.  It's been a concept I've been thinking a lot about, trying to balance my own physical energies, not just in thought, not just in spirit, but physically as well and it's such a wonderful mix that we have been given here, this opportunity to live this life, to feel our feet in the soil, so to speak and to feel the value of our feet in the soil . it's just phenomenal.  

 

TOMAS:  Yes.  You are a young man. How old are you?

 

Mike:  Thirty-one.

 

TOMAS:   Yes.  You have a tremendous future ahead of you here . for yourself and for those you will impact.  You have an opportunity to be a hero.  And I say this fully understanding that you think in terms of Superman or Spiderman or one of those superheroes when I mention hero, or even Ulysses, but really I mean the kind of hero who will stand up and represent what is right, not what is popular, who will do the right thing by women and children and his fellow-men, even if it is not going to put money in his pocket or earn him an award.  These are the heroes that are needed for the work about to commence . and in some cases, already having commenced.

 

Mike:  Well, thank you very much for that. That is incredibly inspirational to me, and it helps to boost my confidence in my own abilities to do just that.  That has definitely been on my mind as well.  Just to do the Father's will. 

 

TOMAS:  That's right, and to be the best that you can be, understanding that you will make mistakes but you will learn from them, and no matter what, it will not be so off-the-wall as to not be useful.  "The act is ours; the consequences God's."

 

Mike:  Well, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your words as a reminder to me because you know, we all have to keep reminding ourselves. 

 

TOMAS:   Indeed.

 

Mike:  In times of difficulty, especially, and I thank you very much, Tomas.

 

TOMAS: You are welcome, Mike.  And I would like to add that in a construct of the kingdom such as this world will become when it matures as an experimental life station, you will find much encouragement and support and camaraderie from and with your peers.  Right now there seems to be a tremendous amount of vying for position and much of the old competitive paradigm is still imbedded in your collective consciousness, but this is passing away, and an era of cooperation and mutual support is on the horizon.  Not a negative support, not as in 'enabling' or 'rescuing' or 'coddling' but in real support: in speaking man-top-man, working shoulder-to-shoulder, loving face-to-face.  This is the true grit.  This is the real fun.  This is the kind of stuff that makes your soul smile.

 

We are indeed coming up at the end of our hour, the hour that was extended because of the delay getting started, but I will pause for one more opportunity to share if there is what you might call a "burning desire" [Pause] In that case, my friends, I will close the session with my thanks and the thanks of my T/R for being here and sharing this liaison experience, this experimental life station that we have created and enjoyed this evening.  Go in peace.  Amen and farewell.  
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